The Authentic Jesus (Part 2 of 2)

Some people wrestle with the idea that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, but this is actually a foundational truth of Christianity. And today on Truth for Life we'll learn why a Jesus who's only human or only divine would leave us with a powerless gospel. Alastair Begg is teaching from Matthew chapter 16, beginning with verse 13. How would you respond to this statement? The New Testament nowhere states that Jesus is God.

We would first of all say, you know, something, you're right to one degree. You're right in this extent. That there is nowhere in the New Testament that you will find a statement made by Jesus with these three words: I am God. You're right. He never said it.

But he said it in other ways. And then we would turn to those portions of Scripture. And in doing this, we would drive home to our hearers a number of facts to consider. Fact one. The Bible statement concerning the virgin birth.

Turn for a moment to Matthew chapter 1 and let's just reinforce this in our memories. Matthew chapter 1. And verse 18. This is how the birth of Jesus came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through Joseph.

The Holy Spirit. Luke's record of it. Dr. Luke. The re qu the response of Mary is intriguing, is it not?

It's a far-out thought to her that she is going to have a son who is the king of kings and lord of lords, but what is equally far out is that she's going to have a son at all. Because she said, How will this be since I am still a virgin? Answer: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And then, as it were, the veil of mystery is pulled across this tremendous truth. with which Scripture is perfectly clear.

And while we uphold this truth, We must at the same time learn to dethrone an untruth. Which is the holy unbiblical assertion. of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. to believe in the virgin birth. is not synonymous.

with believing what has been taught latterly in Catholicism. For God to produce a sinless son. He did not need a sinless mother. For there was only one without sin. Even Christ and his sinlessness.

conveyed the fact of his deity. The authentic Jesus as presented in the Bible is the Jesus of the virgin birth. Secondly, He's the Jesus of the miracles. The Jesus of the Miracles. And this is where all these people who think that they're going to make Christianity more palatable to people.

Jump off the boat.

Well, we're here to tell you tonight about a Jesus who wasn't born of a virgin. We're sure you don't want to swallow that anyway. And secondly, we have good news for you. We have a Jesus for you who never did any miracles. And thirdly, we have a Jesus who was not raised from the dead.

And anybody who's smart enough sitting out there turns and walks right up the aisle and out into the night, saying, What? Who needs a Jesus like that? What in the world good is that to anybody? What could be more human than Jesus lying asleep in the back of a boat? With a bunch of guys who were known for their ability on the sea.

In his humanity, he looked at them, looked them in the eye, and said, These are the boys to look after this this afternoon. I'll get a pillow, I'll go up the back, and I'll have a good snooze. Because we've already said that Christ knew what it was to be tired.

So up the back he goes and has a snooze. What could be more human than that? But yet what could be more divine? Than that, in the midst of the storm, the disciples come and waken him and say, Don't you know that we're all drowning? Don't you care that we're perishing?

And Jesus stands up and he goes, I'll take care of this. And he looks out over the boat and he said, shh. Whisht. It's a Scottish word. Which?

And the C became car? And the disciples remember what they said? What manner of alien is this? No, what manner of man? is this.

The guide man. The authentic Jesus. What could be more human? Than Jesus' death by crucifixion. What could be more human than the cry of dereliction from the cross?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And what could be more divine than that that same Christ should rise from the tomb on the third day? and reveal himself. to hundreds at one time. And to individuals throughout the journey.

Well, that brings us to the third fact we need to consider: that this divine Jesus is the Jesus of the virgin birth, he's the Jesus of the miracles, and he's the Jesus of the resurrection. I was speaking with somebody this morning, and he was saying, You know, as a postgraduate student in the realm of science, I find myself dealing with so many people who are not merely agnostic, but actually they are vitriolic in their approach to my faith. What should I do? And we talked about a number of things, but in the center of it all, this was my advice to him. Immerse yourself.

In an understanding of the biblical revelation concerning the resurrection. Eat it, sleep it, drink it, walk it, know it. Get all of it down. For upon this event hinges the whole quest concerning the authentic Christ, doesn't it? For that's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

He says, you see, if Jesus Christ is not risen, Then you who those who died are dead in their sins. And those of us who proclaim faith have no faith to proclaim. But he says Christ is also raised from the dead. And what we discover as we read our Bibles is this tremendous fact of the resurrection: the empty tomb, Jesus seen alive, the disciples transformed. And I put it to you tonight that any skeptical explanation is much harder to sustain than the New Testament explanation that Jesus was raised from the dead, as he promised.

Without the resurrection of the dead, there would have been no Christian community to uphold and proclaim the gospel for the last. two thousand years. Do you ever think about that? Is everything just about the fact of the church? When you realize that the disciples all quit him and fled.

And within a matter of weeks they were turning Jerusalem upside down. Oh, yes. The New Testament explanation is far easier to sustain. than the explanations of a deviant. agnosticism.

And finally, under his deity, We have the fact of his self-consciousness and his claims. Luke chapter 2, I mentioned it earlier and this time we'll turn to it, concerning, remember I said the growing up of Jesus and his humanity. This fantastic story, one of my favorite stories as a child. I loved it. About Jesus.

about his mom and dad losing him. In Jerusalem. It always seems so good to me that they that they lost him, you know. Because I figured I got lost a few times, and this is cool. You know, Jesus got, well, he didn't get lost, but they lost him.

And I love to read the story, I love to wait for the punchline. You know, working through.

Now you could never say this to your mom and dad. You try this and you're in deep trouble. I mean, you mess them up and they retrace their journey. They come back and find you and they say, What in the world do you think you're doing here? No other person could ever say what he said.

Right? What did he say? Wist ye not? That I must be about my Father's business. Don't you know, he said.

Who I am? A twelve year old boy. What a profound arrogance, unless true. What a megalomaniac in the making, unless true. What a dreadful liar, unless true.

And Mary and Joseph looked him in the eye. And looked one another in the eye, and Luke says, verse 50, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. And then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. There's this humanity. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.

For she knew This boy was different. Our time is going. Let me move on. The authentic Jesus Will be discovered by considering first his humanity, secondly, his deity, and thirdly, his unity.

Now I want you to know as we come to this third point that this third point is for the honors students amongst you. Those of you who have decided that in this course you are not taking honors, have approximately a five minute break. Don't leave, stay, but I'll tell you when we start on to the fourth and final point, which we'll go by with great speed. All right? Here we go.

We've been singing on these Sunday evenings meekness and majesty. Manhood and deity. in perfect harmony the man who is God. We've been wrestling with the profound truth of this authentic Jesus, that which Wesley says our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man. And at issue in the person of Christ are these two facts, which have been our first two points: namely, that Jesus was and is God.

And was man.

So, how in the world do his humanity and his deity coexist within this one person? For the scriptures teach that they certainly do. And what we deal with here and seek to wrestle with it comes up with at best a formulation of truth rather than an explanation of truth. And it is this area which dominated the debates of the early centuries. It was this concern more than any other which.

wrestled in the minds of the learned. Of all the weird and wonderful notions, none had greater impact. than that which we refer to as Arianism. Arianism. Arianism emerged from Arius, Mr.

Arius, if you like. who lived 256 to 336. A wee while ago, I'm sure you'll agree. He had the privilege of being the presbyter of Alexandria. That's what he did, and that's where he lived.

He was a pupil of another pretty learned guy called Oregon. Or origin. I noticed Americans say origin. presumably to distinguish it from Oregon. But it's Oregon, O-R-I-G-E-N.

Or origin. Whatever. That was his buddy. And Arius, this is what he did. In trying to wrestle with the fact of Christ's humanity and deity, he said the Son, Jesus, was created.

Okay? Said Jesus was created. And furthermore, there was a time When he was not. Ay. There was a time when Jesus did not exist.

He taught that Christ was the most exalted of all creatures, but ultimately that was all he was. an exalted creature. In the fourth century the debate ebbed and flowed. Constantine professed faith. Remember, in the fourth century AD 312, that complicated matters a little bit.

The Council of Nicaea, 325, met to consider these issues. And finally, the Council of Constantinople in 381 resolved the problem. And in the midst of it all, there was a hero. And the hero's name was Athanasius. He was there from 296.

to uh three seven three And Athanasius opposed this man, Arius. You remember, Arius is over here saying Jesus didn't always exist, Jesus is merely a created being. Athanasius is saying, You can't get away with that, Arius. That is not true. Athanasius said, Listen, we've got to read what the scriptures have said.

Let's take what the apostles have said concerning Christ. Let's take the prophecies of the Old Testament and let's ground our convictions here.

So Arius is in the realm of innovation, and Athanasius is in the realm of proclamation. Arius is saying Jesus was not truly divine. Athanasius is saying he certainly was. Because Athanasius was smart enough to realize that anything less than a fully divine Saviour would be insufficient to meet man's need. And so he tenaciously affirmed that Christ was, quotes, of one substance with the Father.

That's where you have the debate of the homoousius and the homoousias. Which you can read about later on. as those of you go on for honours in this course. But at issue was a fundamental truth, which I will come to in a moment. And Athanasius didn't receive good press.

Concerning this. Indeed, somebody came to him on one occasion and said, Athanasius, the whole world is against you. You know what he said? Then I I'm against. The whole world.

And he was unprepared to move from these biblical foundations. And out of that grew the next consideration, which was concluded at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Focusing upon this whole nature of the human and divine elements in Jesus Christ. And by Chalcedon they said this In Christ's two natures. exist without confusion.

without change, without division, and without separation. And what they did was not explain it, but formulate it and lay down a fixed point from which biblical truth then went on throughout the centuries. Or you say to me, Is it relevant?

Well, yes, it is. And I think it's important for us to realize that, as Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:16, great is the mystery of our godliness. Great is the mystery that God was in Christ. And the only way I know to approach these truths It's like the Bethlehem shepherds. In humble faith, and in adoring worship.

You and I will never, this sight of eternity. Unscramble these great imponderables. But we may live to proclaim them when we have the hearts of the Bethlehem shepherds. Humble faith. adoring worship.

They couldn't explain what was happening on the hillside that night. They could not quite get it out of their system. They couldn't fully, adequately absorb it all. But they went and they knelt down before the Christ. And they worshipped him.

The other thing to say is this, that Arianism is alive and flourishing. It was Arianism You know what I'm going to mention now, don't you? In the article in the plane dealer yesterday. That was Arianism. That was what it was.

Unitarianism is merely twentieth century Arianism. Unitarians are saying there was a time when Jesus did not exist. Jesus is merely a created being, the greatest of all, but that's all he is. That's what Jehovah's Witnesses say. That's what the Mormons say.

That's what Christadelphians say. And that is the point of division. That's the distinction between cult and church. And so the authentic Christ needs to be considered in his unity. And finally, needs to be considered as per his authority.

The deity of Jesus Christ. is the essential presupposition. of these two truths. With which we finish tonight. First of all, The finality of Of Christian revelation.

The finality of Christian revelation.

Somebody mentioned Hebrews 1. In the past, God spoke of old by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to as in His Son. And what the scriptures affirm of Jesus is that you cannot go beyond Christ at the apex of Revelation. And without the revelation which we have in Jesus Christ, we are left to grope in the darkness of our unenlightened reason. That's why any quest after Christianity which subsumes the position of Christ, which makes him less than the authentic Christ of the Scriptures, is destined to total failure.

Jesus expresses the finality of revelation. And finally, the validity of Christian redemption. You ought to write these phrases down and understand what they mean because they're very important. It is the authentic Jesus who gives us the finality of Christian revelation, and it is in the authentic Jesus that we have the validity of Christian redemption. If Jesus Christ is not God, then the redemption which he offers is powerless to forgive and to save.

Anselm's great book, Curdus Homo, deals with this tremendous truth. Get it and read it if you're interested. It is God that we have wronged. And it is only God who can redeem. Therefore, unless God should purchase our redemption, we cannot be redeemed.

Therefore, God must become man to effect redemption. But that man must at the same time be God. And in that authenticity. Rest the validity of that, all our claims, all our singing tonight. I may conclude.

by summarizing an implication in a simple way and in this I'm debtor to the late David Watson. Because Jesus was and is the Son of God, what we're saying is this: that He alone has the authority to speak on the issues of life and death. And what we're dealing with here is, I acknowledge, in the arena of faith. The arena of Faith. And tonight, all of us live in the arena of faith.

We might sit believing ourselves to be rationalists, even scientific rationalists, but I want you to know you live your life. in the arena of faith. And tonight, in this group, we could be divided in a number of ways. But ultimately, we'll be divided by those whose faith rests either in the authentic Jesus. or in our personal opinion, that this authentic Jesus is not authentic after all.

Do you get that? Our faith tonight either rests in the authentic Christ or in our overrated opinion that this Jesus isn't authentic after all. And for a man or a woman tonight to profess faith in Jesus Christ, is to remove our faith from the realm of our personal opinion and to place it. in the sure conviction. That Jesus is the person that he claimed to be.

For our personal opinion is shaky, and the claim of Christ is rock-like. All the evidence that we've considered, and we've only poked in it, as it were, endorses the fact that Christ has the credentials to speak with authority on the matters that we're considering. Imagine for a moment that I suddenly have a pain in my chest. I just go to one of my friends. I say to him, Yeah, I got a pain in my chest.

And he says to me, Don't worry about it. A lot of people have pains in their chest. Take an aspirin and get plenty of rest. Not quite content with that, I go to another friend who's a physician. I tell him, I say, I've got a pain in my chest.

And he begins to probe and to analyze and to ask and to discover. And he says, You have a serious problem. You need surgery.

Now in both situations, I exercise faith. I go to one and he says, take a rest. I go to another. And he says, take a table. There isn't a person here to-night who's going to suggest.

that the credentials of the latter are irrelevant. in relation to that question. And any sensible person would place their faith. in the one whose credentials are there to behold.

Well, my dear friends, tonight I suggest to you that Christ's credentials Are there for us clearly to be whole. Are you going to continue? to rest your faith on your personal overrated opinion That none of this is true. Or will you become like a little child? And trust.

in the credentials. Of the authentic Jesus. I command you tonight. Those who believe and those who question. To the only one Who holds the answer?

to the deep searchings of our human existence. He is the Christ. The sun. of the living God. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

If you wrestle with some of the foundational truths that we're learning about in this Basics of the Christian Faith series, let me recommend you go through the teaching with a small study group. We have a companion study guide that pairs up with these messages. And the messages, together with the study guide, give you a great foundational course that explains what it really means to know and follow Jesus. This series presents 13 lessons that will help you dive deeper into key topics that include salvation, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, prayer, the sacraments, and more. Each lesson includes questions to facilitate further discussion and personal application, and if you want to learn more about a particular topic, there are helpful suggestions offered for additional sermons, articles, or books you can consider.

Ask for a copy of the basics of the Christian Faith Discipleship Course Study Guide when you donate today at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. And if you go to truthforlife.org slash Christian Faith, you'll find a free, downloadable leader's guide, or extra copies of the study guide that you can purchase for $4 or download for just a dollar. I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll learn about the Holy Spirit, and if you're envisioning a ghostly entity, you're in for a surprise.

The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.