Hey, podcast listeners! Thanks for streaming today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org slash podcast and click the donate button, or follow the link in our show notes.
Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. And I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, Jesus never had any doubt about who He was. From the time He was 12 years old and went to the temple, He understood who He was. Today, for the few minutes that we're here at Caesarea Philippi, I want to talk to you about the subject, Who is Jesus?
Is He a man? Is He a myth? Or is He who He claimed to be, the Messiah? Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, every year right around Easter, magazine covers near the checkout line claim to have the inside scoop as to who Jesus really was. But Christ's identity, it's not a mystery.
In fact, Jesus Himself revealed it. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress takes us to Caesarea Philippi, where Christ unveiled His divine nature. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Let me start with a question. When's the last time you escaped your busy life for a refreshing vacation? Let me invite you to join us for the Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska.
The dates are June 15th through 22nd. There's nothing quite like witnessing God's creation to refresh your soul. Onboard the luxury cruise ship, you can expect clean, wholesome fun with like-minded friends from all over the country. I'll be teaching from God's Word, and we're bringing our own music as well with Christian artists Rebecca St. James and Michael O'Brien.
Dennis Swanberg will be with us with his great comedy as well. Now, space is limited, so be sure to reserve your spot right away at ptv.org. Well, Easter is only a few weeks away, and to help you prepare your heart, I'm presenting an eight part teaching series that was recorded on location in the Holy Land. Thus far in our study, we've been to Capernaum. Yesterday, we had a spectacular view overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
Today, we'll be on site at Caesarea Philippi. But before we begin, I'll remind you that our journey to Israel last year inspired a book that I've created for you. It's called The Power of the Cross. Some might call it a photo album, but it's much more than that. The pictures depict the final seven days of Jesus' earthly ministry.
Each photo is paired with a personal narrative for me. I want you to sense and feel, and yes, even embrace, the power of the cross. When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, we'll send a copy of my brand new coffee table book, The Power of the Cross. Now, come with me to the village of Caesarea Philippi as we allow God's word to tell us another story about the power of the cross.
Have you noticed we're in a season when there seems to be a new poll out every day about what you think about so-and-so as a candidate for office? Polls are very typical in an election season, but today we're standing at a place where I guess the first poll in the Bible was ever conducted. The story is found in Matthew chapter 16, and we welcome those of you who've joined us on video as well as in person. We're standing today in a place in Israel known as Caesarea Philippi, and the account of what happened at Caesarea Philippi is found in Matthew 16 beginning with verse 13. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he began asking his disciples saying, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, well, Jesus, some say you're John the Baptist, others Elijah, some say you're Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.
And then Jesus cut to the chase. He said, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Now, Simon wasn't the smartest or sharpest knife in the drawer all the time, but he got it right. And Jesus said to him, bingo! Well, that's not what it said in Aramaic. He said, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to you that you are Peter, petros, the Greek word was petros, large rock, you are Peter.
And upon this, and then he changed his words, petros, feminine, petros, referring not to Peter, but to what he had just said, upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. The rock, the foundation of the church of Jesus Christ, is that Jesus is the living Son of God. Today for the few minutes that we're here at Caesarea Philippi, I want to talk to you about the subject, who is Jesus?
Is he a man? Is he a myth? Or is he who he claimed to be, the Messiah? There are a lot of people today who admit that Jesus lived. You can't believe that he didn't exist without ignoring a lot of secular history.
There's no doubt that Jesus lived, but the question is who was he? And most people believe that he was just a good teacher. Thomas Paine, the deist, said he was a virtuous and amiable man, but his teachings weren't unique.
Confucius taught what he taught years before, and the Quakers taught it years after. But Jesus was just particularly good at his teaching. That's who many people think Jesus was. The problem is Jesus claimed much more about himself. Jesus himself did not give us the option of saying he was simply a good man. Let's consider three unique factors about Jesus.
First of all, his unique claims. There are four claims he made about himself that separate him from other religious leaders. For example, Jesus claimed to be God. Now other founders of religions claim to point people to the real God, but none of them claim to be God himself. Muhammad said, the founder of Islam, I am no more than a human apostle. Whether it was Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Joseph Smith, they never portrayed themselves to be anything more than sinful men. However, Jesus claimed in John 10 30, I and the Father are one.
Now here's why that's important. You'll hear this story over and over again in books or movies like The Da Vinci Code or other things that say Jesus never claimed to be God. That's something people added to his teachings hundreds of years after the fact to gain power, to gain control. But no, Jesus claimed to be God. He said, I and the Father are one. In John 14 nine, Philip said, Lord, show us the Father.
It's enough for us. And Jesus said, Philip, have I been so long with you that you don't recognize that he who has seen me has seen the Father. Remember Jesus very first trial after he had his experience in Gethsemane that we'll talk about in a couple of days. He was taken to Caiaphas the high priest. Caiaphas was awakened in the middle of the night. He was mad about being waked up to begin with.
And he said, okay, let's just cut to the chase. Jesus, are you the son of the living God or not? And Jesus said in Mark 14 62, I am.
In fact, Caiaphas understood so well what he was saying that he tore his clothes and said, what further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. And they all condemned him to death. Not only did Jesus claim to forgive or to be God, he claimed to be able to forgive sins. Again, no other religious leader claimed the ability to forgive sins.
Buddha said the Lord Buddha can forgive no one. But Jesus claimed that power. In Mark 2 Jesus saw their faith and said to the paralytic, my son, your sins are forgiven. Jesus said his whole purpose in coming was to forgive sins. He said in Matthew 20 28, for the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as what?
A ransom for many. He claimed to be God. He claimed to forgive sins. Thirdly, he claimed to conquer death. No religious leader ever said that he had the power to conquer death, but Jesus did.
In fact, his victory over death was the center point of his teaching from the very beginning. In Matthew 16 21, after they left this place, Caesarea Philippi, Matthew says, from that time on Jesus began to show His disciples how He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day. In fact, the resurrection was so central to what Jesus taught that not only did His friends understand it, His enemies understood it as well. Remember in Matthew 27, Matthew records what happened the day after Jesus died on that Saturday. Jesus had been buried. He had been placed in the tomb that we'll see is still empty after 2,000 years next week. But after He was buried and placed in that tomb on Saturday, a group went to see Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator, and it says in Matthew 27 62, on the next day, which is the one after the preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, and they said, sir, we remember that when Jesus was still alive, this deceiver said, after three days, I'm to rise again. Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, lest the disciples come and steal His body away and say to the people, He is risen from the dead.
And the last deception will be worse than the first. You see, they understood what Jesus was claiming. They understood that the signal proof He was the Son of God would be that He would be raised from the dead. And so that none of the disciples would come and steal the body. They said, Pilate, we need a Roman guard unit to guard this tomb. 16 men fully equipped to guard this tomb. And Pilate said, you have the tomb. You have the guard to secure the tomb.
Now here's the point. Jesus' enemies understood that resurrection was the centerpiece of His teaching. Fourth, Jesus claimed He would return to judge the world. No other religious leader made that kind of grandiose claim, but Jesus did. He said, when the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
All the nations will be gathered before Him and He will separate them one from another. Other religions teach that we go to heaven by various rules and rituals. Only Jesus claims that whether you go to heaven or hell depends upon your acceptance of Him. In His book, the World's Living Religions, author Robert Hume surveys the nine largest non-Christian religions in the world.
And they have this in common, all nine of those non-Christian religions. Every founder of every one of those religions had a period of doubt in his life. When he began to question who he was, when he was searching for the light, Jesus never had any doubt about who He was.
From the time He was 12 years old and went to the temple, He understood who He was. Jesus was never searching for the light. Instead, He said, I am the light of the world.
He who believes in Me will not walk in the darkness, but He will have the light of life. Consider Jesus' unique claims. He claimed to be God. He claimed to forgive sins. He claimed to conquer death. He claimed to be coming back to judge the world.
It is those claims that cause C.S. Lewis to write what many people have called Lewis's trilemma about Jesus. He said you have to make a decision about who Jesus was. You can't say He was a good man or a good teacher alone because He didn't give you that option. He claimed to be God. And that means you only have one of three choices about who Jesus was. One choice, of course, is He could have been a liar. He knew He wasn't God, He just claimed to be. He was a charlatan. Do you believe that about Jesus? That He was a deceiver?
From what you know about the life and example about Jesus, does that fit His profile? That He was a liar? If you don't believe He was a liar, option number two is He was a lunatic. He thought He was God. He claimed to be God because He really believed He was God, even though He wasn't. If that's true about Jesus, He should have been locked up in an insane asylum. Again, what you know about Jesus, do you think He was out of His mind?
You think He was a lunatic? Now think with me, if He's not a liar, if He's not a lunatic, and yet claimed to be God, there's only one other option, Lewis said, He's Lord. He's Lord. He is who He claimed He is, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that leads to the second unique thing about Jesus, and that is His teachings. If He is who He said He was, then we need to listen carefully to everything He had to say, especially to what He had to say about life, death, and eternity.
What did Jesus teach us about our lives, our deaths, and our eternities? First of all, He said there are two possible eternal destinations, not one. In Matthew 25, 46, He said the unrighteous will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. We all don't go to the same place when we die, Jesus said, there is a heaven, there is a hell. In fact, I did a study one time, Jesus spoke more about hell than He did about heaven. You can't say, well, I believe what Jesus said about heaven, but He got it wrong about hell. No, He taught about both as possible eternal destinations for you and me. Secondly, Jesus taught that the majority of mankind will enter into hell.
The majority of mankind will spend eternity in hell. You know, I have people all the time say to me, Pastor, how can you say that only Christians go to heaven? Christians are in a minority in the world, don't you understand that? How could so many people be wrong? But that's exactly what Jesus predicted.
He said the majority of people are wrong. The majority of people are going to be in hell, not heaven. In Matthew 7 13 and 14, He said, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction and many are those who enter by it. But the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and few are those who find it. Very few people ever find the narrow way to salvation. And that leads to the third unique teaching of Jesus. Jesus offers the exclusive way to heaven. Your people say, well, I believe there are many paths that lead to God.
It's just like different paths up the same mountain, they lead to the same destination. That's not what Jesus said. In John 14 6, He said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. In a few days, we're going to be in the Garden of Gethsemane.
We're going to have our own private prayer time. Do you remember the intense time of prayer Jesus had there? He prayed and what looked to be great drops of blood poured from Him. He agonized, He said, Father, if there be any other way, let this experience pass from me.
He was searching for another way. But heaven was silent because there was no other way. The only way to secure salvation was through the death of Jesus Christ. Now listen to me, if there are many different religions that lead people to God, if there are many ways to heaven, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, then the death of Christ was totally unnecessary.
The reason Christ died was He had to die. He provided the only way to heaven. Jesus said in John 5 24, Truly I say to you, He who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life, but does not come into judgment, but passed from death unto life.
And by the way, just because you are a sincere follower of another religion doesn't mean you're exempt from the one way to salvation. You know, I think it's interesting that of all the people Jesus could have chosen to give His longest discourse on what it means to be born again, He didn't choose to deliver it to a hardened atheist. He chose in John 3 to deliver it to a religious man, a Jew named Nicodemus, who kept the law. If any man could be saved by good works, it would have been Nicodemus.
But God, Jesus said to Nicodemus, You must be born again. Jesus offers the exclusive way to heaven. And that leads to the third unique factor about Jesus.
Jesus offers the unique solution to man's dilemma. Now, this is going to surprise you that I say this, not all religions are all wrong. I mean, there are some religions that get some things right. Unfortunately, they get the big things wrong.
But, you know, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? Like most world religions admit, there's something wrong with us inside. We've got an internal operating system, they say, that's defective or flawed or bent towards selfishness that needs to be fixed. But Christianity is unique. The world's religions say that the internal problem we have, the solution to it, is internal. For the Hindus and Buddhists, they say it's meditation that will solve your problem. For the Jews and the Muslims, they say, no, we've got a list of rules to keep that will solve the problem and cure you.
It's a different list, they have different lists, but it's all about keeping a list. But only Christianity says, man's problem is so severe, there's nothing we can do to fix it. We're not just flawed, we are spiritually dead.
Romans 3 says, there's not one righteous among us, no, not even one, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And the only solution to our problem is not internal. We can't conjure up our own healing.
It has to be external. It's what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. When we stand at Golgotha and you look at that place where the cross was, think about what God did for you there. 2 Corinthians 5 21 says, God made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. On that cross where Jesus died, God took all of our sin and He wrapped it around Jesus and poured out His wrath on Jesus. And then He took the perfect righteousness of Jesus and wrapped it around us, so that when He sees us, He no longer sees our sin, but He sees the perfection of His Son. That's what Jesus did for us.
And that's the unique solution to our problem. It's not what we do, it's what God does for us. You see, a lot of people who try to work for heaven don't realize how much they have to do to actually earn heaven.
They think, well, if I selectively obey some of God's rules, do the best I can, that's good enough. Do you remember being in school and loving those classes that were pass-fail classes? Weren't those great? All you had to do was meet a minimum standard and you passed. You didn't have to worry about studying extra hard or doing extra well, pass-fail.
Get 60%, 70%, you're in. Now here's the good news and bad news. Did you know Jesus judges us, God judges us on the pass-fail system? It's pass-fail.
Here's the bad news. To pass, you have to be a hundred percent. God doesn't grade on the curve.
You have to meet all of the requirements. That's what Galatians 3 10 says, for cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do it. James 2 10 says, whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. Have you stumbled in keeping God's law? Have you sinned ever in your life? Have you sinned in the last five minutes of your life? We all have. We all have.
We've all fallen short. God demands absolute perfection to enter into heaven. You said, well who can meet that kind of standard? Exactly.
No one can. Only Christ could meet that standard. And when we trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, God takes the perfection of Christ and wraps it around us. Years ago there was a conference on world religions in Great Britain and during one of the breakout sessions a group was in a heated argument and the Oxford Don C.S. Lewis walked into the room and he said, what's the rumpus all about? And they said, well we're trying to decide, agree upon what makes Christianity unique from every other world religion.
Lewis said, that's easy. It's grace. It's grace. You know there aren't thousands of world religions, there's really only two. All the other world religions are the same in that they say the solution to our problem is spelled D.O. Do this, do this, do this, do this and you might earn God's forgiveness. Only Christianity is spelled D.O.N.E.
Done. It's all been done for us by Christ's work on the cross. Paul said it this way, for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.
Aren't you glad that your salvation has already been secured? Grace has done it all. When Jesus Christ took our sin on him and hung on the cross and died for our sins, he accomplished what no one else could. We don't need to do anything because Jesus made sure that the work was D.O.N.E.
Done. That's the power of the cross and I'm pleased to describe a brand new resource we created for you that celebrates the power of the cross. Over the course of 90 plus pages my new book The Power of the Cross guides you through the final seven days of Jesus life and ministry.
Some call it the Passion Week. In words and pictures my book begins with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and ends with his resurrection from the grave. Let me send you a copy of The Power of the Cross. I'll do that today with my profound thanks when you send a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. You might wonder how we use your gifts. Well, your partnership empowers us to share the good news about Easter because the power of the cross changes everything. So thank you for responding right now. When you request The Power of the Cross I'm going to include another brand new resource I've written for you as well.
It's called Three Days That Changed the World. This brochure gives you an hour by hour account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. With Easter Sunday coming soon please take a moment to write, call, or go online. Now here's David with all the details.
Thanks Dr. Jeffress. When you contact Pathway to Victory today to give a generous gift we'll send you The Power of the Cross. That's an all new beautifully illustrated coffee table style book featuring the teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Call us toll free at 866-999-2965 or give online at ptv.org. Now when your gift is $75 or more you'll also receive a very special collection of messages that Dr. Jeffress preached on location in Israel.
It's titled, Live from Israel, Eight Powerful Messages by Dr. Jeffress from the Holy Land and you'll receive both the DVD video and the MP3 format audio disc. If you'd prefer to write to us our mailing address P.O. Box 223-609 Dallas, Texas 75222. That's P.O. Box 223-609 Dallas, Texas 75222.
I'm David J. Mullins. In the days of the prophets in ancient Israel the Israelites often wavered in their faithfulness to God. Was God really in control or should they worship Baal instead? Witness the dramatic scene that unfolded with Elijah on Mt.
Carmel. Join us Thursday for another message, Live from Israel, right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in his word. To become a Pathway partner go to ptv.org slash podcast and click on the donate button or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
