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Who Does Jesus Say He Is?

Renewing Your Mind / R.C. Sproul
The Truth Network Radio
August 3, 2021 12:01 am

Who Does Jesus Say He Is?

Renewing Your Mind / R.C. Sproul

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August 3, 2021 12:01 am

The New Testament ascribes many titles to Jesus, but there is one name that Christ used more than any other to refer to Himself. Today, R.C. Sproul expounds upon the immense significance of this exalted title.

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In the New Testament, we find many titles for Jesus—Son of God, Christ, Lord, the Messiah—but Jesus referred to Himself with one name in particular that has incredible significance. We'll talk about that next on Renewing Your Mind.

Today we return to Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, Your Christ is Too Small. What I want to look at in this segment is how did Jesus think of Himself? Now, scholars have examined all the names and all of the titles that the New Testament uses for Jesus, and they catalogued them and put them in the computer and see which ones come out first and second and third. Well, what these studies have shown is that far and away the most frequent title that is given to Jesus in the New Testament is the title Christ. Several hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times when the New Testament speaks of Jesus, it calls Him Jesus Christ. In second place, what do you suppose is in second place?

Does anybody know? Lord. It is the title Lord. And again, this title Lord is used hundreds of times for Jesus in the New Testament, this Jesus who is at once Messiah and Lord.

Well, we'll look at the meaning of that title Lord a little later. But in this segment, what I'm interested in is the one that ranks in third place in terms of frequency. Anybody guess what that is? Rabbi?

Wrong. Son of man. The Son of man is in third place in terms of numerical frequency. Now, there's something very, very strange about this. And first of all, we have to understand that what ranks number one is in the hundreds or even thousands, and number two is in the hundreds. And so you have this high frequency of the use of the names Christ and Lord for Jesus in the New Testament. And then there's this great numerical gap before you get down into number three. It's either 82 or 83.

It's one of those. Sixty-nine times in the synoptic gospels. And what are the synoptic gospels? Matthew, Mark, and Luther, right? No, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John's gospel spends almost two-thirds of the time in the writing just on the last week of Jesus' life.

It's much more intensely theological, and it's not interested so much in giving us an overview, a biography of Jesus as the other gospels are. And so we make a distinction between John and the synoptic gospels. Sixty-nine times Jesus is called Son of man in the synoptic gospels. Twelve times He's called Son of man in John's gospel.

And that makes 81, right? And I believe there are only two other references in the whole rest of the New Testament to Jesus as the Son of man. Now here's the thing that blows my mind. That every single time that the synoptic gospels use the title Son of man for Jesus, the same person is speaking.

You know who it is? Jesus. Nobody else calls Him the Son of man in the synoptic gospels, but Jesus continuously calls Himself the Son of man. Even at the Caesarea Philippi confession when Peter said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus said, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjuna, but you have to understand this, the Son of man must suffer many things. Even there, when He acknowledges tacitly that He is the Messiah, He still talks of Himself as the Son of man. Why does Jesus call Himself the Son of man? Now when I ask people that question, you know what the usual answer is?

I'm sure you can guess what it is. In our church in the history of Christianity where we formulated our theology and we have our doctrines and everything and we learn in Sunday School about Jesus, we learn that the church believes that Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature. That He is the God-man. From one perspective He's God, from another perspective He's human. And so we go to the New Testament and we read some titles in there and one of the titles is that Jesus is called the Son of God. And then we look at another title and it says that He's the Son of man. So what would the obvious conclusion be from that? That whenever the Bible says that Jesus is the Son of God, it's referring to His deity, and when the Bible refers to Jesus as the Son of man, it's referring to His humanity. Wouldn't you expect that to be the case? Guess what?

It doesn't work. That's not the way it works out. But since that's normally the way we understand the Bible when we read it, when Jesus calls Himself the Son of man, that sounds like Jesus is being super humble, doesn't it? It's like everybody else is eager to applaud Him and exalt Him and they say, you're the Messiah, you're the Lord, we think you're fabulous, you're the King of Israel, you're all of this. And Jesus says humbly, I'm just the Son of man.

I'm just like Sam Ervin, a poor country lawyer. People in self-depreciating language speak of themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, we miss something very, very important and very profound when we think that way. Because the fact of the matter is the title, Son of man, is a majestic title. It is a supernatural title and the title calls more attention to Jesus' deity than to His humanity. That's a paradox.

That's ironic. But Jesus did not invent the title, Son of man. The title, Son of man, was well known in Israel. In the Old Testament we have prophets, I've mentioned them already, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Micah. You read the prophets, you can understand what the prophets are saying, can't you?

Then we have a couple of these guys in the Old Testament that write and you start to read it and you get an excedrin headache and you say, what's going on here? And those are what we call the apocalyptic prophets of the Old Testament. The prophets Daniel and Ezekiel. Well the title, Son of man, is very important to the Old Testament book of Daniel. And let's take a look at it for a second and see what Daniel says about the Son of man. We find the famous passage in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel and where we read that Daniel had a dream. Daniel spoke saying, I saw in my vision by night and behold the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea and four beasts came up from the sea.

Here we go. See, I'm in trouble already with beasts coming up out of the sea, each different from another. The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings and so on. He goes through all of these strange looking beasts and then he says in verse 9, I watched all of this display, bizarre display, until thrones were put in place and the ancient of days was seated.

Now that one's not too hard to figure out. Who in this story do you suppose is the ancient of days? God the Father. And what Daniel is seeing is the throne room of God. Now what I want you to pay attention to here is the visual graphic description of God the Father, of the ancient of days.

His garment was as white as snow and the hair of his head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame and its wheels a burning fire and a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. And a thousand thousands ministered to him.

Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. We're looking into the inner sanctum of heaven where the heavenly host in glory is surrounding the ancient of days. And then it says, the court was seated and the books were opened.

This is rug cutting time. The bailiff has just brought the defendants in and we've heard the hear ye, hear ye. The court is now in session and the judge comes in and sits down at the bench. And then I'm going to skip down to verse 13 and it says, I was watching in the night visions and behold one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. The clouds of heaven, and that's a technical phrase, the clouds of heaven are the glory clouds, the Shekinah clouds, the iridescent clouds, the refulgent clouds. The clouds that gave this external manifestation of the refulgent glory of God. Remember when Jesus was taken up into heaven? It was on clouds of glory when he said that he would return. It's on that same visual manifestation of glory like the glory of God that illumined the shepherd's field outside of Bethlehem on the night of Jesus' birth.

Where the glory of God breaks through and penetrates into the earthly sphere. He said, one like the Son of Man came with clouds of heaven. Now where is he coming? When we think about Christ coming on clouds of glory, where is he headed?

Here. He's coming here. But in this scene, the Son of Man isn't coming to the earth, he's coming to the throne of the Father. And he came to the Ancient of Days and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom the one that shall never be destroyed. I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit within my body and the visions of my head troubled me. Man, if I saw that, you know, I think I'd have some aches and pains in my body too. And my head would be a little bit troubled. But do you see how almost bizarre that is? How strange the language of that kind of apocalyptic literature comes to us. It's so foreign to those of us that speak in a more sober and direct didactic way. But again, what I'm interested in there is the description of God.

Do you remember it? Now I want to flip over to the New Testament apocalypse. And we'll have one more exercise in this strange imagery where we'll go to the first chapter of the book of the Revelation, where John, the Apostle John, has a very similar experience to what Daniel had in the Old Testament. He also has a dream.

He also has a vision. And we read in the ninth verse of the first chapter of the book of Revelation, John says this, I, John, both your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. And I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet. And here's what the voice said, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.

And what you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches that are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, to Laodicea. So you get the scene here. John's having this strange experience. He's having his vision. And while he's in the Spirit, he hears this voice that sounds like a trumpet, and it's like a call to attention.

It's like, now hear this. Now whatever you see, write down. And I want you to send it to the principal churches in the infant Christian community throughout Asia Minor. Then he says, I turned to see the voice that spoke with me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.

Listen up. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire. His feet were like fine brass as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying to me, Do not be afraid, for I am the first and the last. Now that you catch what happens here, that the same visible description that Daniel uses to describe the portrait of the Ancient of Days, of God the Father, is now used to describe the Son of Man. You can bet the Jews picked that up. They understood the significance of that.

Now what does all of that mean? Basically what it means is that in Old Testament Judaism, the figure of the Son of Man was first and foremost the figure of a heavenly being. Now he's a heavenly being who has something very important to do with men, but he's a heavenly being. The first man, the Bible tells us, was of the earth, earthly. The second man was from heaven.

And Jesus frequently speaks not only about his ascension, where he tells his disciples that someday he is going to leave them and ascend up to heaven, but he says things like, No man ascends up to heaven except the one who has descended from heaven. And as we work a careful study of the Son of Man idea and motif in Israel, we see that the Son of Man is a heavenly being who comes to this planet. And then after he comes to this planet, he reports back to the Ancient of Days when the thrones are set up and the books are opened. Now the key here is in the function, the role that the Son of Man plays. The principle role in the Old Testament of the Son of Man is the role of judge. The Ancient of Days calls upon the Son of Man to bring judgment. He is working for the Ancient of Days.

In a way, we could call him the prosecuting attorney who comes down, checks out the scene, and reports back, and then participates with the Father in judgment. When Jesus comes into the world, he speaks of crisis. The New Testament word, kresis, the Greek word kresis is the New Testament word for judgment.

And Jesus in his ministry is constantly saying to people, Look, I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. I've come to set brother against sister, mother against father. That is, I have come because the crisis of human history is right now. And how you respond to me is going to determine what happens in that throne room ultimately. And how you respond to me is going to have eternal significance in terms of your final judgment.

Now I know I'm talking to people who live in a culture who simply do not believe that there ever will be a final judgment. But if there's anything that Jesus Christ taught, it taught that we are each one accountable ultimately for our lives. And that every idle word that we speak will be brought before the judgment, and the judge will be Christ. So when Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, he's not speaking in humility.

Let me just quickly give you two illustrations of this. The Pharisees are arguing about what's proper to do on the Sabbath day, and Jesus makes a very enigmatic statement to them. And where he says, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The rules the Pharisees had on the Sabbath were choking people.

They were crushing them. They were destroying human dignity. They used the Sabbath as a club to punish people. Jesus, that's not the purpose of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And I say this so that you may know that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. Who created the Sabbath?

Who has authority over the Sabbath? Not Moses, the Son of Man. Elsewhere Jesus is in trouble with the Pharisees because he declares people's sins forgiven, and to the Jewish people the only person who could ever forgive sins was God.

And they wanted to stone Jesus for blasphemy when he would forgive people's sins. And he said, I do these things and I say these things so that you might know the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins. What Jesus is saying, and the Jews understood it, I didn't come from Bethlehem.

I came from heaven. The passage I just read in Revelation is one passage in the New Testament where Jesus is referred to by someone else as the Son of Man. The other passage is one of my favorite passages.

There is in the Bible. It's in the book of Acts. When we read the narrative of the death of the first Christian martyr, you remember the death of Stephen. How Stephen preached before the Jewish authorities, before the Sanhedrin, which was the highest Jewish court in Israel. And they were so provoked and so angry with Stephen that the Scriptures tell us their hatred became so intense and vehement that they were gnashing their teeth and picking up stones, and they couldn't wait to kill him. And so there's a kangaroo court, and the highest court in Israel sentences Stephen to death on the spot for heresy. And so they start throwing stones at him. And while the stones are bouncing off his head, then off his chest and off his face, and these were sharp stones and heavy stones, they weren't just little pebbles. And Stephen is about to die.

Do you remember what happened? He's standing there, and he says, Behold, the heavens are open. And I see the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.

Now here's something that I love. Every time Jesus talks about the Son of Man, he talks about him as the judge, and he talks about being seated at the right hand of God. When we do the Apostles' Creed and we say, you know, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified and dead and buried and so on, he ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

What's going on at the right hand? That's the seat of judgment. And so everything the Scriptures talk about the Son of Man is that Jesus is going to be the judge who's sitting at the right hand of God. And in this passage, we read that Stephen looks up into heaven while the Sanhedrin is seated in judgment against him and condemning him and killing him. Stephen looks up at heaven, and he sees Jesus not sitting at the right hand of God, but he sees Jesus stand up. That's the gospel that the judge of heaven and earth, the one before whom you will be held ultimately accountable, the one who will evaluate and examine your moral performance, your obedience or disobedience to Almighty God. He's the one who will sit in judgment to you at the end of the age and who will be seated in that courtroom at the right hand of the Father, and you go in and they say, what's your name? And your name's Mary Geiger, and the charges are read against you, and you look at the judge, and all of a sudden the judge gets up out of his seat and walks around the bench and says, Your Honor, I am her defense counselor. That's the incredible thing that God has designed the judge to be our defense attorney. That's what Stephen saw.

He saw Jesus get up, remove himself from the place of prosecution, and stand there as his advocate, pleading his case, because the judge himself, the one who judges our sin, died for our sin. The Son of Man. Dr. R.C. Sproul with a message from his series, Your Christ is Too Small. Thanks for joining us on this, the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. This is classic R.C.

Sproul material. He brought such clarity to the title, Son of Man, and it's a great example of why we so appreciate his teaching. The series we're featuring this week comes from a special ministry partner archives, a collection of sermons and messages available only to those who sign up to give a monthly gift to the ministry. Our partners are a special group, and we serve them with exclusive resources and other benefits. Their stable monthly generosity also fuels everything we do here on Renewing Your Mind and through Ligonier. If you've benefited from Ligonier through the years, I hope you'll consider becoming a ministry partner. Friends like David are helping us reach more and more people with the gospel. Ligonier Ministries in total has had such a tremendous impact on my spiritual life.

I've listened to Renewing Your Mind for many, many years. And through Renewing Your Mind through Table Talk magazine and the various teaching series, frankly, Ligonier has had the most impact on my understanding of God's word through the study of his word in the Bible and theology in general. I'm so thankful for Ligonier. My wife and I are Ligonier partners, and we just feel so blessed for being associated with Renewing Your Mind and the whole Ligonier organization. Thank you so much. David, on behalf of all of my colleagues here at Ligonier Ministries, we thank you.

David has access to the series that we're hearing this week. And if you'd like to join him, when you become a ministry partner, it will be available immediately in your learning library, along with the rest of the ministry partner library. Partners also benefit from exclusive monthly messages, a subscription to Table Talk magazine, and a Reformation Study Bible, just to name a few. Let me give you our phone number. It's 800-435-4343, or you can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org slash partner. Or if you're already a ministry partner, would you consider raising your monthly commitment? We are grateful for your support, especially in this, our 50th anniversary year. Well, so far in this series, we've heard who men say Jesus is and who Jesus says He is. Tomorrow's message will reveal who God the Father says Jesus is. I hope you'll join us here for the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. .
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-09-18 06:25:08 / 2023-09-18 06:34:28 / 9

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