Who IS This Guy? - Part A

John gives us heavenly perspective. He presents Christ to us as the Messiah, the Lord, the Savior of the world. In fact, as God in human flesh. That's heaven's perspective.

That is not the perspective of the crowd that he is talking to. They see him as a liar, a fake, a fraud, the object of their scorn, the brunt of their jokes. And it's true that to some people, Jesus, he's bad news.

Welcome to Connect with Skip Weekend Edition. You know, Jesus said some very interesting things about himself. In fact, some found it hard to believe any of the claims that Jesus made about who he really was. Well, today in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, we'll explore why that was and why the evidence Jesus gave about his identity is pretty conclusive.

But first, let's see what's going on in the Connect with Skip Resource Center this month. Josh McDowell has written books that rank among the best-selling Christian works of all time. Now with his son, Sean, Josh has released Evidence for Jesus. God gave us our mind and our heart to work in unity.

To what? To glorify him. The Bible, I call it fact, fiction, or fallacy. I want to answer two questions about the Bible. This is what I struggle with as a non-believer. One, is what we have written down the same as what was written down 2,000 years ago, or has it been changed?

Second, was what was written down true? In Evidence for Jesus, Josh and Sean McDowell have adapted and updated the Evidence for Jesus section from their classic apologetics book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, into a concise, readable, and accessible resource for those seeking answers about Jesus. This powerful new resource is our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to support the broadcast ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig.

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Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. We'll start today in verse 48 of John chapter 8. So as you turn there, we'll join Skip Heitzig as he helps us get a little perspective. Perspective is your ability to see something. And when you see something from a different, from one angle, that's your perspective. You're seeing it from your perspective. If you were to move 10, 20 feet to the right or left, you'd see the same object with a different perspective. And you might get a different view of it. As an example, how many of you this morning on a show of hands looked at least once, but you looked and saw the Sandia Mountains.

Raise your hands. Okay, you saw them. They're unmistakable. Now from our viewpoint down here in the city looking eastward, they appear to be almost monolithic, almost one sheer flat band of mountains. But if you have the privilege of ballooning over them, you see a very different perspective.

You see that it's not one, but several peaks that are together, but there is space between them. And it's not the same view that you get from the front side. So the angle makes all the difference. The perspective makes all the difference, both physically as well as emotionally. Philosophically, you have a perspective in life, and it might vary from another person's perspective.

I'll give you an example of how powerful perspective can be. I'm going to read to you a letter written by a college student to her parents. She's not getting great grades, and she needs more money, so she writes a letter. Dear Mom and Dad, I just thought that I'd drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I've fallen in love with a guy named Jim. He quit high school after grade 11 to get married. After about a year ago, he got a divorce. We've been going steady for two months, and we've planned to get married in the fall.

Until then, I've decided to move into his apartment. I think I might be pregnant. At any rate, I've dropped out of school last week, although I'd like to finish college sometime in the future. You can imagine what that would sound like if you were the parent reading that note. On the very next page, she continued, Dear Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I've written so far in this letter is false.

None of it is true, but Mom and Dad, it is true that I got a C in French, and I flunked math, and it is true I'm going to need some more money for my tuition payments. She's a clever gal. She learned the power of perspective. She learned that even bad news sounds like great news when you compare it and contrast it to a different perspective.

Question, do you think those parents were happy to send her money? You betcha. You betcha.

After reading that, you betcha. That's perspective. Now, this is what we have in the Gospel of John. John gives us heavenly perspective.

He presents Christ to us as the Messiah, the Lord, the Savior of the world, in fact, as God in human flesh. That's heaven's perspective. That is not the perspective of the crowd that he is talking to. They see him as a liar, a fake, a fraud, the object of their scorn, the brunt of their jokes, and it's true that to some people, Jesus, he's bad news.

But to those who know him and know better, he's good news. Something else about perspective. This very crowd thought of themselves as heaven-bound.

Remember that? Because we're descendants of Abraham, therefore, we're guaranteed salvation. That's their perspective. Jesus comes along and shatters their perspectives.

He calls them liars, children of the devil, and those who don't know God. Well, you can imagine a conversation like that doesn't go over very well. And what we're about to read is a very important point. And what we're about to read is the culmination of a very heated argument. It's not that Jesus is arguing.

He is simply stating truth. But they are getting very emotional about what they hear. Have you noticed something about arguments?

They have different levels to them. When an argument begins, it typically begins at the intellectual level. Somebody has a point, and they share the point. And then somebody makes a counterpoint. And then you hear the counterpoint, and you think you've got a better counterpoint, so you say it. And that's the intellectual level.

It doesn't stay that way very long, however. The second level, because it goes down from that point, is the emotional level. You get emotionally involved. You raise your voice. Your cheeks get red, and you're thinking, not only do I not like his points, I don't think I like him. And then it can finally even digress to the physical level.

Now, this is what we're going to see here. We've been hearing this point, counterpoint, but they're now starting, they being the crowd, to move to level number two, the emotional level, to call Jesus' names, because they can't deal with his arguments. So it's an ad hominem or personal attack, so it's an ad hominem or personal attack, very emotional. They'll call him names. And by the end of the chapter, verse 59, we're told they want to pick up stones and kill him because of what he says. Now, we're going to look at what they call Jesus or their perspective of Jesus, and we're going to see then Jesus' true perspective of himself. So there's three possibilities as to who Jesus is, and this is a great paragraph because it sort of brings us to that focus. Who is this guy? And that's what they're saying to him. Who do you think you are?

Who is this guy? He's either, number one, an evil imposter, or number two, an incapable promoter saying things that he can't really do, or number three, he is the eternal creator. Let's begin at verse 48 of John, chapter eight. The Jews answered and said to him, do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a demon? Just imagine saying those words to Jesus Christ. You're Samaritan and you have a demon. Jesus answered, I do not have a demon, but I honor my father, and you dishonor me, and I do not seek my own glory.

There is one who seeks and judges. They're discovering that they're unable to answer his arguments, so they are reduced to using abusive language, the emotional level. They'll just call him names. If you remember, they have been trying to trap Jesus in this chapter. In this whole setting of Jesus in Jerusalem at the temple, they tried to trap him.

Number one, they tried to do it physically. They tried to actually send temple police in there to arrest him and get him out of there. They were called the temple guards, so they sent the temple guards in there to physically grab him and take him. They came back without Jesus. You know what they said? They said, well, where is he? Why didn't you bring him?

The temple guard said, nobody ever spoke like that guy. They were just so amazed at what they heard so plan number one failed. They couldn't trap him physically.

So then they thought, let's try a different tactic. Let's try to trap him in his own words. They brought a woman caught in adultery. They said, master, the law says you got to stone somebody like that.

What do you say? They were ready because whatever he would say, they thought, would be the wrong answer. If he were to say, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you, if he were to say, yeah, stone her, I agree with the law of Moses, they knew the crowd would turn against Jesus, the compassionate one.

Where's compassion in that? Not only that, the Romans would get rid of him because only Rome could exercise the right of capital punishment. But if on the other hand, Jesus were to say, I disagree with Moses, I'm compassionate, let her go free, then it would set Jesus at odds with Jewish law, the law of Moses. They thought they had him trapped until he said these words.

You who are without sin, you throw the first rock. And it said they were convicted in their own consciences and dropped those rocks and all walked away. So that failed. They couldn't trap him physically.

They couldn't trap him with his words. So now they are resorting to name calling, a personal emotional attack. You're a Samaritan and you have a demon.

Now we hear those words and we think, well, it didn't sound that bad. I mean, if somebody called you a Samaritan, you probably wouldn't get all shook up. But you have to understand something, 2000 years ago, the worst thing one Jew could call another Jewish person was a Samaritan. The Jewish people hated capital H, the Samaritans. They hated them so much that if they had to go from Jerusalem to Galilee or vice versa, the direct route was through Samaria, they would cross the Jordan River twice to avoid Samaria, adding days to their journey, but they didn't want to set foot on Samaritan soil. Even the woman at the well of Samaria, the Samaritan woman, was amazed that Jesus talked to her and said, how is it that you being a Jew would talk to me, a Samaritan woman, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans? So they call him a Samaritan and that is an insult.

It's an insult because to the Jewish people, Samaritans were religious frauds. They were heretics, false teachers. Did you know that in Samaria there was a rival religion? They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim. It was a rival temple to the one in Jerusalem.

They had their own sacrifices. They had their own Bible and it was in conflict with what was taught in Jerusalem. You may also remember back in Nehemiah chapter four that when the Jews came back from captivity to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and the Samaritans said, we want to help you, Nehemiah and the rest of the crowd said, sorry, you can't help us. And so there was this long-standing animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews. When they said, you're a Samaritan, it's like saying you're a heretic. You're an enemy of the Jews.

Something else I need to insert here. Jesus was the one who was breaking down the barriers, not erecting them. He was the one that needed to go through Samaria, the Bible says. He was the one who loved the people in Samaria as much as anybody else and wanted to save that outcast, that woman who was scorned and despised. So different than the Pharisees. Also, when our Lord Jesus wanted to give an example of what real friendship was, he didn't give a parable of the good Pharisee or the good Sadducee or the good scribe, but the good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10. So Jesus was all about breaking down the very barriers that existed between these two rival groups.

But they call him the slanderous name, you're a Samaritan. Not only that, they said he had a demon. They said that Jesus Christ was demon possessed.

Now that's tantamount to saying you're nuts, you're insane, you're irrational because typically demon-possessed people act and sound very irrational. Now we're hearing something in our text. I want you to get this. Here's what it's about. Jesus Christ of Nazareth comes on the scene and does miracles that are indisputable.

Has a huge following, indisputable. And the people of Jerusalem and Judea, they've got to do something with that. They've got to explain it.

Here's their explanation. False teacher, Samaritan, demon-possessed, irrational. What I want you to know is what you're reading here in John chapter 8 became written down later on in a set of books called the Talmud. The Talmud are many volumes of Jewish literature, part wise sayings, part stories, part interpretations of the law.

But they also write about Jesus Christ. And in the Talmud, they said Jesus Christ learned magic while he was down in Egypt as a young child and led a rebellion. Here's the quote from the Talmud. Here's the quote from the Talmud. Jesus the Nazarene practiced magic and deceived and led Israel astray. That which eventually was written down, this is where it comes from, the reaction here in this crowd in Jerusalem.

Now a question, real easy to answer. Did Jesus Christ have a demon? Was all the things Jesus doing by the power of Satan?

Absolutely not. This is how backwards they have gotten. They are now attributing what Jesus did miraculously to the work of Satan. They're calling God Satan and Satan God.

That's some kind of sick. No, he's the son of God. He is God himself in human flesh.

The very opposite is true. So look at his reaction, verse 49. It says Jesus answered.

And notice how calm and poised and simple the answer is. I don't have a demon. You're a Samaritan and you have a demon.

I don't have a demon. But I honor my father and you dishonor me. That is so simple but so profound. I think of the words of Peter in 1 Peter 2 concerning Jesus. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

He had no ego to protect. It's not true. Let me correct you. This is the truth and he moved on. What does it tell us in Proverbs 15, verse 1? A soft answer turns away wrath but harsh words stir up anger. They're trying to stir that up in Jesus and he just says I don't have a demon. Have you ever thought about what Jesus could have said to them at this point? I mean he's the master of all language. He's shown that you can't contend with him on an intellectual level.

He just shredded those guys to pieces. All of the things he could have said at this point, I thought of a few things he could have said. But all he said was it's not true.

I don't have a demon. I honor my father. The opposite is true and you dishonor me. Next time you're verbally attacked, you might want to think back to this little passage of scripture. Next time somebody says something to you and lashes out at you and you are so tempted to rip into that person and shred him or her to pieces and push their buttons and you know just what buttons to push.

So just think back to this. Winston Churchill had quite a mouth on him. He had an edge to him. It was hard to dispute with him.

He had that reputation. On one occasion, someone that he knew, George Bernard Shaw, the playwright in England, was opening a new play opening night in London and sent two tickets to Sir Winston Churchill with a note, bring a friend if you have one. Not to be outdone, Winston Churchill wrote back and declined going on the first night.

He said, I'll attend the second night if there is one. Right back at him. Well, he became known for that and probably the most famous repartee between Winston Churchill and another person was the lady asked her, a member of parliament, and she tried to belittle him publicly on one occasion. She said, sir, if you are my husband, I'd put arsenic in your tea. And he shouted back, if I were your husband, I'd drink it. That was Winston Churchill. On another occasion, again in public, he had a little too much to drink and she shouted out above the crowd, sir, you're drunk. And he looked back at her and said, madam, you're ugly.

And in the morning I will be sober. You know why we laugh at that? Because we like it. That is our human nature coming out.

Tit for tat, eye for eye, jib for jab. Here's what is amazing. Not Christ. To this verbal attack, he simply denies what they said and gives the truth.

Verse 51 is also astonishing to me. Look at what he says to them. Again, right after their attack, most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

You know what this is? This is an invitation to them. Even in this late stage of their animosity and their rejection, as far as they've gone already in their rejection, he still holds out his hand to them.

Say, I know you don't believe in me, but for your sake, I wish you would, because if you would believe what I say, you would never see death. Now, this is an invitation we've come across many times so far in the Gospel of John. Quick review, John 3.16. To Nicodemus, Jesus said, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. Same truth, different words. To the crowd in Galilee in John, Chapter 5, He said, This is the bread of heaven, that if anyone eats, he will never die. Same truth, different words.

So gracious, so beautiful. So if you have any of those irregular people in your life, they put you down, you don't like being around them because they do. Just again, think back to this.

Somebody put it so beautifully, Love your enemies, it'll drive them nuts. There are lots of reasons why we need to pay attention to what Jesus said, not the least of which is that He revealed the only way any of us will see eternal life. Yet some just couldn't accept what He said or who He claimed to be, and we'll continue to examine why when we resume this study next time. And don't forget to ask for a copy of today's study when you call us.

It's available for just four dollars plus shipping when you call us at 1-800-922-1888. Or when you visit, connectwithskip.com. We'll continue to examine exactly who Jesus is and the claims He made about Himself next time. So I hope you can join us right here on Connect with Skip weekend edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.