The New Testament presents the miraculous Jesus. Everything about Him is miraculous. Everything about Him is wondrous. Everything about Him is humanly inexplicable.
Everything about Him is supernatural and divine. And it's important that we understand that so that we may know who this Jesus Christ really is. Phil Johnson, have you ever gone to a birthday party where there was one person everyone ignored, and it was the person whose birthday you were celebrating?
Sound ridiculous? Well, you know, that's not unlike what millions around the world will do this Christmas. How do you make sure you're not ignoring Christ on His birthday? And practically, what can you do these next few days to keep Jesus from being overshadowed by last-minute shopping and school pageants and get-togethers with family?
All the busyness. Find out today on Grace to You as John MacArthur points you toward the Jesus of Christmas. That's the title of his series. And now with the lesson, here's John. I want us to consider the miraculous Jesus. The New Testament presents the miraculous Jesus. Everything about Him is miraculous. Everything about Him is wondrous.
Everything about Him is humanly inexplicable. Everything about Him is supernatural and divine. And it's important that we understand that so that we may know who this Jesus Christ really is. And so with that in mind, we want to look to the New Testament. And I don't really intend to give you my own thinking. I just want to show you some things in the Word of God.
I want the testimony to come from God Himself. I don't expect to say anything very profound. In fact, quite the contrary, I will recite to you very simple realities concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.
Simple only in terms of their presentation, profound in terms of their implication in reality. Now when you come to the New Testament, there is one dominant theme that marks the life of Jesus Christ, and it is the miraculous. He is ever and always the miraculous Jesus. He is marked out as being divine, as being deity, as being God in human flesh by signs and wonders, by performing that which is humanly, naturally impossible and inexplicable. And so as we look at Jesus Christ, we must see God because there is no other way to explain Him than that He is God. His life is so obviously divine that no human mind could ever have even conceived of such a person, could ever have even created such a person or would have ever done that because why would men invent a man who condemns them all to eternal hell if they don't believe in Him?
And how would men know how to present perfection who are so imperfect? No human pen could have ever come up with the words that He said, the life that He lived. And as Philip Schaff, the great historian said, the life of Jesus Christ is the holy of holies in the history of the world. He must be from God. There is no other explanation. Even the critics and skeptics are struck in awe.
H.G. Wells in May of 1935 wrote this in the Reader's Digest, when I was asked which single individual has left the most permanent impression on the world, the manner of the question almost carried the implication that it was Jesus of Nazareth and I agreed. Schaff, that great historian of Christianity I mentioned a moment ago, says this, the Jesus of Nazareth without money and arms conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed and Napoleon. Without science and learning, He has shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined. Without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator and poet. Without writing a single line, He has set more pens in motion and furnished themes for more sermons and orations, more discussions, learned volumes, works of art and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.
End quote. As you look at the miraculous life of Jesus Christ, you see verification that He is God in human flesh. Everything about Him is miraculous and miracles speak of God. You see, miracles have always been given to authenticate divine revelation. When God spoke in the Old Testament the written word, He authenticated with miracles. When He speaks in the New Testament the living word, again He authenticates with miracles. And where you have miracles, you have the mark of divine intervention. And the fact that the Bible is literally filled with miracles is the testimony that it is the revelation of God Himself. And we shouldn't be shocked by miracles.
If there is a God, then He can intervene in this world whenever He wants. And the fact that He does ought to comfort us, not cause us to be skeptical. And when God reveals Himself, He must reveal Himself in a way that you know He's God and not a man and so He has to do things that are supernatural. And when you look at the life of Jesus Christ, if there's any one thing you know for sure, you know that He's God because He does what no man could ever do. And He says what no man could ever say. And there is no other explanation than that Jesus is God.
And to say that He didn't claim that is the height of idiocy because that is precisely what He claimed. Look at John chapter 5 and we'll start at that point. And we're just going to look at several passages and refresh our minds in the wonder of the miraculous Jesus. In John 5 and verse 18, we read this, Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him. The Jews wanted to kill Jesus.
And here it tells you why. Because He not only had broken the Sabbath, here was the worst thing, but said also that God was His Father making Himself equal with God. Now Jesus was making Himself equal with God. They knew it, they understood it and they resented it. There may be some skeptics and some critics today who don't know what Jesus was saying, but the Jews then sure knew.
They knew exactly what He was saying. He was making Himself equal with God. And in doing that, He was either God or He was the ultimate blasphemer.
He was either Christ or He was Antichrist and there's nothing in between. Verse 23, He went further than just saying He was equal with God. He demanded equal worship. It says that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.
He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father who hath sent Him. He demands equal honor, equal adoration, equal homage, equal worship with God the Father and says you can't separate the two. If you worship the one, you must worship the other. If you worship the other, you must worship the one. And so He demands to be known as equal with the Father, equal in nature and equal in worship.
How so? What evidence do we have that He is equal to God, that He is God in human flesh? Verse 32 of the same chapter, He says there is another that beareth witness of Me and I know the witness which He witnesseth of Me is true. And then He discusses John the Baptist who was also a witness but not the supreme witness. Then in verse 36 He goes back to that supreme witness that He mentioned in verse 36. He goes back to what He mentioned in verse 32. But I have greater witness than that of John.
What is it? For the works which the Father hath given Me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me that the Father hath sent Me. In other words, the miraculous life of Jesus was testimony to His divine nature. I mean if He just did what normal people do, there would be no reason for us to assume that He was divine.
No reason at all. And so He did what people cannot do. He did the miraculous, the supernatural, the divine so there would be no question about His origin. And His miraculous works tell us exactly who He is. Look again at the 10th chapter of John's gospel and this is a particular emphasis in John. That is the deity of Jesus Christ to which He returns time and again.
But again we find the Jews in verse 24 confronting Jesus Christ. And they said to Him, how long dost thou make us to doubt? How long are you going to be revealing yourself in ways that are not clear to us? If you be the Christ, tell us plainly.
Give us a very plain word so that we'll understand without any question who you are. And He answered in verse 25 and here's the plainest statement He could make. I told you and you believe not. The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness. You want a clear testimony?
Look at My life. Look at My works. How else can you explain Me but that I am divine? Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and he said, we know you're a teacher come from God because no man can do the miracles you do except God be with him. I mean Nicodemus couldn't understand what they couldn't understand. Tell us plainly.
Here it is as plainly as you'll ever get it. Look at the miracles of My life and then you decide. And the miracles in the New Testament are literally limitless, vast. And they are verified again and again and again and again by masses of people who are recorded for all of human history. They are verifiable miracles. And they are the clear word about who Jesus is. In John 14-11, believe Me, He says, that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. And if you can't just believe it because I say it, then believe Me for the very work's sake.
Believe Me for what you see. In Luke 7, John the Baptist sent a messenger to Jesus, said to the messenger, you ask Jesus if He is the one that we believe He is. Is He the Messiah? And Jesus said to the messenger after He'd asked the question, you go back and you tell John this. Tell him that the lame walk and the blind see and the deaf hear and the dead are raised from the grave. And you tell him those things and he'll know. Tell him of the miracles.
Tell him of the miracles. There is no greater testimony to Jesus Christ than the Father's power poured through the Son. And that is the testimony of Jesus Himself. Now let's turn to the Word of God and look at the miraculous Jesus and just look at several elements of the miraculous life of our Lord. First, His miraculous birth, Matthew chapter 1.
And we're just going to touch these themes. Matthew chapter 1, His miraculous birth. Verse 18, now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way. When as His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, that was a really a pre-conjugal engagement period. A betrothal where they had not yet come together in a sexual union. They were betrothed. Before they came together, before they entered into a sexual relationship, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.
Now that's never happened before or since. The Holy Spirit planted the seed in her without a man as an instrument. Well, Joseph, her husband, was a just man, a righteous man, and he was not willing to make her a public example. He could have dragged her out in front of the whole community and stoned her in front of everybody for being an adulteress. But he really didn't want to do that. He was a righteous man. He wanted to do what was right, but he didn't want to do what was the most devastating possible option that he had. So he decided to divorce her, the law provided in the case of adultery that divorce could occur. And so verse 20 says he began to think on these things. After all, here was this woman he imagined to be so pure and so spotless and a virgin of the very highest rank.
And he had known her long enough to know the quality of her life, and now she appears pregnant. He knows it isn't him. He assumes that it must be somebody else. He is shattered and shocked and struck down.
He doesn't know what to do except to divorce her. And as he ponders this in verse 20, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and says, Joseph, thou son of David, don't be afraid to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. There wasn't any other man. The Holy Spirit did this. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Jesus meaning savior. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord to the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. And Joseph being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not, that has had no conjugal relationship with her, till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. That is a miraculous birth, a birth without a human father. You say, well, wasn't that added later on by some pagan myths that found their way into Christianity?
No, not at all. You can go back to some documents that have been found as early as 70 AD, and you will find in a listing of genealogies the name Jesus, who is an illegitimate son of a married woman. So even then, they knew that Joseph was not his father, but they assumed the worst, and they assumed that he was an illegitimate son.
You can go back to the old legend of Pantera, the supposed Roman legionnaire who was to have impregnated Mary. And what all that tells you is that there was no human explanation in terms of Joseph and Mary to explain that she was pregnant with a child, and the world wanting to think the worst comes up with an adulterous Mary to solve the problem. What it does tell us is, in truth, that there was a virgin birth that couldn't be explained by the facts of human nature.
You see, when John 6.38 says that Jesus said, I have come down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me, he was saying something very profound. Jesus did not begin to exist when he was born in Bethlehem. He was sent from God into that human form. He already existed. And he came into that human body, and when the time was done, he went back to the Father from whom he had originally come. But he pre-existed. And all the Holy Spirit did was plant the seed in Mary to give physical form which could be occupied by the second member of the Trinity who had always existed from all eternity. That's why in John 1 it says of him, all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. He was the very creator God himself.
He pre-existed his own incarnation. That's why it says in verse 10, he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. That's why it says in John 1.14, the Word was made flesh.
The Word always was. It just became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, and we saw that it was the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It was deity in human flesh. Jesus carried this to the point where the Jews literally became panicky. In John 8, verse 56, he's talking about Abraham, and he said, Your father, Abraham, rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. And the Jews said then, You are not 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham? And he says, Before Abraham was, I am.
You know what their reaction was? They grabbed stones to stone him to death, and he escaped from them. In the 16th chapter of John's Gospel, in verse 28, I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world again. I leave the world and go to the Father. In other words, he pre-existed. He came from the Father into the world.
He'll leave the world and go back to the Father. In John 17, 5, he prayed, Father, restore me to the glory that I had with thee before the world began, because I finished the work you gave me here to do. Jesus Christ always existed in deity, face to face with the Father. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God. He watched on face to face in an equal relationship in the Trinity, and he came into the world in incarnation. That's why in 1 John 4, verses 2 and 3, it says that if you are true to the Gospel, and if you are genuinely representative of God, you will confess that Jesus is God come in human flesh.
Anything less than that, and you are the Spirit of Antichrist. So a miraculous birth is the beginning of the miraculous Jesus as far as his earthly existence is concerned. God, it says in Hebrews 10, 5, hath prepared a body for me, so that the man Jesus was God dwelling in human form. God made that embryo apart from Joseph and Mary, placed it in Mary's womb for care prior to birth. When that child was born into that body was placed the very God of eternity. Sure, it's a biological impossibility, but that doesn't shock us, does it?
If there is a God, he can intervene in natural progress and do whatever he wants. No, the virgin birth is not invented by somebody. The virgin birth is the only way to explain Jesus Christ. That's what the Bible says. There's no other explanation.
There's more to that. What about his sinless life? That's the second element of his miraculous person. Look at Hebrews chapter 4, and it follows as a corollary to the first. If he was born conceived by the Holy Spirit, we would expect him to be different than everybody else, and that in fact is the case. In Hebrews 4.15, it says, We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.
In other words, we're not going to somebody who doesn't understand us. But he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He is sinless. No sin in him.
None at all. In chapter 7, verse 26 of Hebrews, similarly it says, He is a high priest who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners and made higher than the heavens. And he doesn't need to offer up sacrifice for his own sin. You see, he's sinless. And that is the second element in his miraculous person. In 1 Peter 2, and here comes the testimony of two people who lived with him for three years. Peter says in 1 Peter 2, verse 21, For hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow his steps? Listen, who did no sin?
That's Peter. Peter was with him for three years, closely attached, intimately involved with him. And he said he never did a sin.
Never. John, the beloved who leaned on his breast, some feel the very closest to the heart of Jesus during his life on earth. 1 John 3, 5, John says, And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him is no sin. And that's the testimony of John, who knew him so well.
And of Peter, who knew him well. There was no sin in him. Even Judas, who would have delighted to have found some reason to justify the betrayal that he did, couldn't find it. He couldn't find anything to pacify his own pain, to soothe his own guilt, to alleviate the tremendous pain of what he had done. And trying to get rid of the money and wash the blood off his hands, he cries, I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood.
Believe me, if he could have found some way out of that guilt trip, he would have found it. Paul says, He who knew no sin became sin for us. In John 8, 46, Jesus said, Which of you convicteth me of sin? Speak.
Silence. Even at his trial they couldn't come up with anything. In vain do we look through the biography of Jesus Christ for one single stain or the slightest shadow on his utterly pure moral character.
Even Pilate, who would have given anything to have found just one accusation to be legitimate in the conviction of Jesus Christ, to alleviate his own guilt, who would have gladly found just one thing wrong, had to say to the crowd, I find no fault in this man. Nobody ever did. The Romans couldn't. The Jews couldn't. The disciples couldn't. History couldn't. Nobody could.
Because there wasn't any. And it wasn't only the absence of sin, it was the presence of ultimate utter righteousness and holiness. Jesus never could have written Psalm 51. He never could have written Psalm 32.
He never could have written Romans chapter 7. Jesus never confessed his sin. He never needed to confess his sin. There was never any sin to confess. He never needed grace.
He never needed mercy. And so you begin with a miraculous birth and then you have a miraculously sinless life. How can you explain that? You can't explain it humanly.
It's inexplicable. There's no way to explain Jesus Christ other than as God in human flesh. And if you refuse to do that, it is because you love your sin and you choose your darkness rather than light. That's what Jesus said. And he said so pensively, you will not come to me that you might have life. As the Spirit of God prompts your heart, may you respond in faith.
And if you have, may you take your responsibility to go out and preach the message of reconciliation to the world. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, showing you why Jesus deserves to be the focus of your celebration and worship this Christmas. The title of his current study here on Grace to You, The Jesus of Christmas. Well, before time gets away from us today, you probably don't need to be reminded that time is getting short for buying Christmas gifts. And if you're like me, you can kind of feel that pressure building. John, I know you have a couple of creative ideas that can help ease that pressure for our listeners.
I do. And these are things that are available from Grace to You. I want to mention something I haven't said a lot about, but it's a devotional book called Daily Readings from the Life of Christ. Actually, there are three volumes to this, and each of the volumes has 365 devotionals.
It takes you through every day of the year. Each selection gets you in the flow of the life of Christ. That's what they are, daily readings from the life of Christ. And you're just going through the Gospels, designed to help you develop consistency in reading and meditating on the truth of Scripture, and more important, focusing on the person of Jesus Christ. It doesn't take a large time commitment to use these devotionals, but it's not lightweight reading. Excellent gift books, three of them, volume one, two, and three, daily readings in the life of Christ. For those of you who want to build a habit of daily feeding on God's Word, this is a great tool.
And then a reminder of something that's a little more extensive. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, 34 volumes in all, covers the whole New Testament. Commentaries are for anybody who really wants to dig down deep into the text of Scripture. These are available. You can get the whole set at a great discount, or you can order whatever New Testament book is your favorite, and you can get the volumes that relate to that book.
And if you want the entire set, we'll give you a significant discount on every volume. So place your Christmas order today for daily readings from the life of Christ or the MacArthur New Testament Commentary. Yes, and friend, our customer service team can help make sure you get your gift before Christmas. Call them between 730 a.m. and 4 o'clock p.m. Pacific Time to order daily readings from the life of Christ, or a commentary, or another resource, contact us today. Our toll-free number is 800-55-GRACE. And again, to ensure delivery in time for Christmas, call us during normal business hours. That's weekdays from 730 a.m. to 4 o'clock p.m. Pacific Time. Our number again, 800-55-GRACE.
Or you can place your order online and be sure to choose second-day shipping in order to ensure delivery by Christmas. Our web address, gty.org. And when you get in touch, let us know how John's teaching is strengthening you spiritually. Perhaps your family has been encouraged by the daily devotionals on gty.org.
Or maybe one of John's books has helped you disciple people in your church, or shown you how to glorify Christ in your own day-to-day life. We love to hear those stories, so email us at letters at gty.org. That's our email address. One more time, letters at gty.org. Or you can drop a note in the mail to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Keep in mind, you can watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378, or check your local listing for Channel and Times. Also, be here tomorrow for another half hour of unleashing Christmas truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
