Word of Salvation – Vol. 25 No. 38 – July 1979

 

Who Is Jesus?

 

Sermon by Rev. Keith Vethaak on Lord's Day 14

Scripture Reading; John 1:1-14, and/or Isaiah 9:2-7

Psalter Hymnal: 310, 376, 410, 135 (1-3), 135 (4)

 

Brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

There has never been a man in history like Jesus Christ,

A man who was born in a cow shed.

Who lived most of his life in an obscure village working as a carpenter.

This man never commanded an army.

He didn't get involved in politics.

He didn't have a publicity man working for Him, indeed he often hid from the attention of the crowds.

He spent just three years in public preaching and teaching, and at the end of those three years He was executed as a common criminal.

And yet, Jesus of Nazareth turned the whole world upside down. Jesus Christ is the best known Man in history, and his teachings have influenced more people than those of any other man.

Tonight, using as a basic framework, Lord's Day 14 of the Catechism, we want to look closely at this Jesus, to ask ourselves the question: Who is Jesus? What was special about this Man - Special enough to make us start counting our years from the date of His birth?

Let's work together as we seek to discover the answers to these questions from the Word of God, and to begin with, let's open our Bibles at John 1 where we will read together the first 5 verses (Read John 1:1-5)

Now, who is this Word that John is speaking about? Skip down to vs 14 - Here's the answer, for the Word is none other than Jesus Christ.

Now let's just hang on for a moment and think about what John is saying.

"In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God". Jesus is God! Isn't this what John is telling us? And John doesn't stop there, but he also goes on to point out that through Jesus Christ all things have been made.

Wow!

No wonder Jesus had such a tremendous impact on the world - He's no ordinary man, He is God, the One who made it all in the first place! But now some of you may be asking this question:

"It's all very well for John to say this about Jesus, but did Jesus Himself ever claim to be Divine, to be God?"

Now that's a good question and it deserves an answer, because you know a lot of people are going around saying just that. They tell us that Jesus Himself never claimed to be God, that this was something invented by the early Church.

Well, the only way to answer this question is to look at what Jesus Himself said as recorded in the Gospels. But before we turn to the gospels I would ask you to turn to Exodus 3:13 where we read that God said to Moses, after Moses had asked God what His name was, "I am who I am. Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’" (Read Ex.3:13).

But now turn to John 8:58. Here Jesus is having a discussion with the Jews and Jesus tells them that Abraham rejoiced to see His day, and the Jews were absolutely dumbfounded and asked: "How is that possible? You are not even fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”

And Jesus answers by saying: "Truly truly I say unto you, before Abraham was born I AM." (Read)

Jesus called Himself God.

Jesus used the personal name of God for Himself, and the Jews realised this for they picked up stones to kill Him.

And now if we turn over to John 9, we have the account of Jesus healing a man born blind, and the Pharisees had thrown Him out because the healing had been done on the Sabbath, and we pick up the story at vs.35 (Read to vs.37).

You'll notice that in speaking to the healed blind man Jesus calls Himself the 'Son of Man'. "Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

Now to understand this title we must read Daniel 7 13,14. (Read).

The title "Son of Man" was given to the Lord of ALL, He who has dominion and Kingdom for ever and ever.

And then notice what the blind man did - he worshipped Jesus for he recognised that Jesus was God.

And do you remember in John 14 where Philip said to Jesus: "Lord, show us the Father" and Jesus looked at Philip and shook His head and said: "Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father."

And then think back to Christmas time, can you remember what was said by the prophet about Jesus? "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and He will be called Emmanuel, which means God with Us."

I think that by now you will be able to see the direction in which we are heading.

There's no mistake about it.

What the Bible says about Jesus is what the Church has always believed about Him Jesus is God.

And there is still so much more evidence which we haven't looked at yet. We haven't even looked at the miracles which Jesus did, many of which were done precisely in order to show people that He is indeed God.

We haven't looked at the fact that Jesus forgave sin, healed people, raised them from the dead and indeed was Himself raised from the grave after three days for the grave could not hold Him.

The Bible speaks with a clear voice indeed - Jesus truly is God. Jesus is the Lord of all, the One through and in and for Whom all things have been made, He is the great I AM, the first and the last.

(Optional pause for hymn to praise and worship our Lord Jesus Christ).

But if we were to stop with the teaching that Jesus is God, we wouldn't be telling everything that the Bible says about Jesus Christ.

For you see the Bible not only tells us that Jesus is truly God, but it also tells us that at one and the same time Jesus is truly man.

Jesus is God become Man.

We have it already in John 1:14 (read).

And of course you all know the Christmas story, you know how Jesus was born to Mary after a nine-months' pregnancy.

How Jesus was born in a stable.

And when you read the Gospels, there you find that Jesus grew up like a normal young person.

He was apprenticed to His father as a carpenter,

He slept, he ate and drank, He got hungry and tired - make no mistake about it the Bible tells us that Jesus was fully and truly human.

There was only one difference between Jesus and the rest of us. Jesus never sinned.

Sometimes people have tried to explain away the fact that Jesus was truly human.

"How can someone be God and man at the same time?" they asked.

And already in the early Church people started to say: "Jesus wasn't really human, He only appeared to have human form, He was a phantom, a ghost."

But the apostle John reserved his wrath for such people saying that anyone who teaches that Jesus did not come in the flesh is anti-Christ and the truth is not in him. (1 John 4).

Jesus Himself made it abundantly clear that He was truly and fully human. Remember how after His resurrection when He appeared to many of His disciples, how they used to flee from Him and cry out: "You must be a Ghost."

But Jesus would have none of that. He made His disciples touch Him, and look at His nail-pierced hands and feet, and He ate with them saying, "A Ghost doesn't eat."

And then remember doubting Thomas who just wouldn't believe that Jesus had really risen from the dead until Jesus took Thomas' fingers and placed them in His wounds.

It is obvious that the Bible teaches two things about Jesus.

The Bible teaches that Jesus is truly and fully God, but at the same time the Bible also tells us that Jesus is truly and fully man.

And now we want to come to the heart of it all by asking why. Why was Jesus both God and man?

God and man in the one person.

The Bible gives us a lot of answers to this question, and we could spend all evening talking about the reasons why, and we could look at things like: because the fact that Jesus lived on earth as true man, and because He has walked dirty, dusty, hot and long roads, and because He has been hungry, and because He has been rejected, and because He has wept with sorrow and anguish and has been beaten and tortured and was finally put to death in a most cruel way, because He has been through all this He understands us, and can feel for us, because He knows, knows through experience what we go through because He's been through it himself.

And all this is very comforting to know, especially in times of hardship.

But let us look at the central teachings of Scripture as to why Jesus was both God and man in one person. And that central teaching concerns the death of Christ.

The whole life of Christ was aiming in one direction, he was always moving towards one point and that point was the cross.

And when Jesus died on the cross he died there for a very special reason. On that cross Jesus took upon Himself all the sins, all the punishment that mankind deserved because of our rebellion against God.

Now if Jesus has just been an ordinary man, if it was just a normal human being who had died there on that cross, His death would have meant absolutely nothing. Thousands of ordinary men have died on crosses and their deaths meant very little.

But when we understand that it was God come in the flesh, Jesus, the One Who was fully and truly God, who died there on that cross, then we begin to understand why His death, why His free-will offering of His life as a substitute for us has so much value, and why indeed it has value enough to pay for all the sins of mankind.

Jesus, because He is God was able to take all our sins upon his shoulders. But then of course there remains the question why Jesus was truly Man. The answer to this is very simple.

It was man who rebelled against God, it was man who sinned and therefore man has to pay.

Even our human justice tells us that the criminal must pay for his own crime. If I rob a bank and I am caught, then the judge will hardly sentence my pet dog to a jail term.

I've sinned, I have to pay.

And the justice of God tells me that because it was man who sinned it must be man who pays.

But the problem is that we as mankind cannot pay.

We are hopelessly lost in our sin and rebellion against God, our lives are a mess and the Bible tells us that there is not a single person in history who has even come close to being able to pay for his own sins.

But because God loves us, and because He doesn't want to see us all lost forever, He sent Jesus, the God-man, Son of God and Son of man, true God and true Man to live and to die in our place.

Do you now understand why Jesus had to be both God and man?

How He had to be true God so that we would be able to pay for all our sins, and how He had to be true Man so that He would be allowed to take our place.

May we then leave you with just one question?

Do you know that what Jesus did in His life and death He has done for you?

All that we have learned tonight is not just theory, empty doctrine, but is the most wonderful news in the world, how Jesus Christ can make each one of us right with God, how He can cleanse us from all our sins, if we have faith in Him.

May God's Holy Spirit grant each one of us a full measure of that faith.

Hallelujah, Amen.