"Who Is
Jesus?" part 2
The Historical Jesus
by
Greg Hanson
Sunrise Wesleyan Church
April 11, 2010
Well,
this morning, we’re continuing our message series entitled, “Who Is
Jesus?” Over the next several weeks, that’s the question we’re going to
try to answer. And we’re going to try to answer it by examining some of
His miracles, some of the events in His life, some of the things He
taught… we’re basically going to discover everything we can about the
man, the mission, the message.
We actually started this series
last Sunday by looking at the most important event in all of history…
the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Which is kind of like starting
at the end of the story, isn’t it? Of course, it’s not really the end
of the story because we believe the story’s not finished yet. We
believe He’s alive and active today, and that someday He will be coming
again. And we’ll get to that later on in this series.
But the
reason why we started kind of at the end of the story is obviously
because last week was Easter. And if it weren’t for Easter… if it
weren’t for the Resurrection… it really wouldn’t matter who Jesus is or
was anyway. And there’d be no point in doing this series at all.
But
as we explored last Sunday, Jesus really did rise from the dead. As
incredible as that sounds… and as hard as it would be for us to believe
someone came back from the dead today… the evidence actually supports
the conclusion that Jesus really did rise from the dead.
We talked about the eyewitness testimony and how reliable that was.
We
talked about the undisputed facts that even skeptics agree on… that
Jesus was indeed crucified, He was dead and buried, the tomb was then
found empty, and there were hundreds of people who reported seeing
Jesus during the 40 days after He had been crucified.
And we
talked about how the disciples went on to be killed for their claim
that Jesus had risen from the dead. If it was a made up story or if
they were just confused or weren’t sure what was going on, surely one
of them would have recanted their claim that Jesus was alive, but not
one of them did. And remember, those followers of Jesus were in a
position to know whether what they were claiming was true or not. So
they weren’t dying just for some abstract faith that they happened to
believe; they were dying for what they saw with their own eyes. And the
message of the resurrection of Jesus became the central message they
would spend the rest of their lives proclaiming.
And as we saw last week, if Jesus really did rise from the dead, then
it proves that Jesus really is the Son of God.
So
right off the bat, right at the beginning of this series, we’ve already
looked at the most important event in the life of Jesus and the core
message of Christianity today.
But you know, every once in a
while, you’ll actually run into someone who argues that they don’t
believe Jesus was even a real person at all. They don’t believe He ever
lived, let alone was resurrected.
Which is really a ridiculous
claim. And I don’t say that just because I don’t agree with it. I say
it because in order to make that claim you have to completely ignore
all the available facts. But still, you might run into someone who
makes that claim. And what you need to understand is, if someone is
making that claim, they are probably just repeating what they heard
someone else say. Because there is overwhelming evidence for the
historic Jesus, both Biblical and non-biblical. This claim that Jesus
didn’t really exist arose in the 18th and 19th century and has been
pretty much refuted. And there are very few scholars today who would
make such a claim. But still, even though it’s been refuted, there are
still many people who buy into it.
So let’s go through this… here’s some of the evidence supporting the
existence of the historical Jesus:
How Do I Know Jesus Even Existed?
A.
The hundreds of references in the New Testament
Now,
people who argue that Jesus didn’t exist will also probably tell you
that you can’t use the Bible to prove Jesus existed. But as we touched
on last week, that’s just and absurd restriction. It’d be like trying
to learn about the Great Wall of China but you couldn’t look at any
pictures or talk to anyone who’s ever seen it. Or like going to court
but you couldn’t call any eyewitnesses because they would have their
own beliefs about what happened.
Why would you ignore the
earliest, the most detailed, and the most credible sources we have? I’m
not even talking here about using the Bible as Scripture. I’m just
talking about using it like any other historical text. And remember,
the New Testament didn’t even exist at first. They were all individual
books being circulated around the known world, there were plenty of
copies being made, some of them as early as 20 years after the events
actually took place. And that’s an incredibly short period of time for
any historic text. In fact, if you bought what some people argue that
some of the books weren’t written until sometime in the second century,
that would still be an incredibly early date. Most historic events, the
earliest texts we have were written hundreds or even thousands of years
later. So the New Testament is strong evidence for the historic Jesus.
B.
The abundance of non-Biblical references
Mostly from the late 1st and early 2nd centuries, you have the
documents and writings of people like these…
[PowerPoint]
Clement of Rome (c. 96 AD)
Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107-110 AD)
Flavius Josephus (37–100 AD)
Julius Africanus (c. 221 AD)
Acts of Pilate (c. 37 AD?)
Babylonian Talmud (70-200 AD)
Pliny the Younger (c. 61-112 AD)
Mara bar Sarapion (1st-3rd century)
Suetonius (c. 70-130 AD)
Justin Martyr (103-165 AD)
Apocrypha & Gnostic writings (up to 4th
century)
Lucian (c. 125-180 AD)
Celsus (c. 180 AD)
Tacitus (c. 56-117 AD)
Thallus (c. 50-100 AD)
Papias (c. 90)
Quadratus (d. 124)
All
of those referencing Jesus. Which is amazing, because remember… at the
time, not a lot of people knew about Jesus. The Bible describes how
Jesus lived and ministered in a relatively localized area, in a rather
insignificant part of the Roman Empire, and was only a public figure
for about three years. Yet we have a lot more information about Jesus
than most major public figures at the time. At the time, it would have
seemed like Jesus would just be an obscure footnote in history, if
that. But Jesus purposefully spent those three years, pouring Himself
into His followers, specifically the 12 plus others who came to follow
Him, too. And He entrusted them with the responsibility and the honour
of spreading His message the world. And here we are a couple thousand
years later… Jesus has been the single most influential person in
history… and we’re still committed to spreading His message today.
Now,
I am not an expert on non-Biblical (or extraBiblical) sources about the
life of Jesus. So let me quote someone who is. Dr. Edwin Yamauchi. Dr.
Yamauchi has some pretty impressive credentials… he has degrees in
Hebrew, and Hellenistics, and in Mediterranean studies. He’s been
awarded eight fellowships, he’s lectured at more than 100 seminaries
and universities, including Yale and Princeton and Cornell, he’s
published dozens of articles in scholarly journals and he’s
participated in archaeological digs around the temple in Jerusalem and
has written books on the subject. And this is what he claims about the
ancient non-biblical references to Jesus. (not in PowerPoint)
“One
expert documented thirty-nine ancient sources that corroborate more
than one hundred facts concerning Jesus' life, teachings, crucifixion,
and resurrection.
“We would still have a considerable amount of
important historical evidence; in fact, it would provide a kind of
outline for the life of Jesus. We would know that first,
Jesus
was a Jewish teacher; second, many people believed that he performed
healings and exorcisms; third, some people believed he was the Messiah;
fourth, he was rejected by the Jewish leaders; fifth, he was crucified
under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; sixth, despite this
shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive,
spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome
by A.D. 64; and seventh, all kinds of people from the cities and
countryside-men and women, slave and free-worshiped him as God. …
“Even
if you were to throw away every last copy of the gospels, you'd still
have a picture of Jesus that's extremely compelling – in fact, it's a
portrait of the unique Son of God.”
~ Dr. Edwin Yamauchi
in “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel
So
again, the documents of the New Testament are the earliest and the most
credible sources we have about the life of Jesus. But even if we did
have to exclude them, we would still know a lot about who Jesus was and
how people saw Him. People who claim that there wasn’t a historical
Jesus are really speaking out of their own biases and are grasping at
straws.
Further Study:
Bruce, F. F. Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.
Habermas, Gary. The Historical Jesus. Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1996.
McDowell, Josh, and Bill Wilson. He Walked among Us. Nashville:
Nelson, 1994.
C.
The thousands of Christian martyrs in the first century
Remember,
people will die for what they believe to be true. But nobody will die
for what they know to be a lie. Yet thousands of people in that very
first century willingly went to their deaths because that the man Jesus
was in fact the Son of God. He wasn’t just some comic book character,
He wasn’t a compilation of pagan myths, He was a really breathing
person who lived and walked where they lived and walked. Many of them
knew Him personally. As we talked about last week, hundreds of them saw
Him after the Resurrection.
Okay, so all of this today is
really by way of introduction for this series. Yeah, I know it’s a bit
odd to do the introduction in the second week of the series, but I
always have been a little different, right? Sometimes holidays dictate
that we need to do things like that.
But through the rest of
this series, we’re going to be looking specifically at what the Bible
tells us about Jesus. But today I wanted you to be able to understand
that even without the New Testament, there’s evidence for the life of
Jesus. We can learn a lot about Him, we can learn what people thought
about Him – His life, His death, His Resurrection – we can discover
what He taught His followers.
In fact, if every copy of the New
Testament were destroyed, and all we had to go on were the
extraBiblical references we talked about earlier and the writings of
the Early Church Fathers through the first couple centuries, we could
completely reconstruct the New Testament with the exception of 10
verses or less with an accuracy of 95%.
So through this series,
we’re going to use the New Testament to uncover the identity of Jesus.
We’re going to explore some of His teachings, we’re going to examine
some of the events of His life, we’re going to see how other people of
the day saw Him, we’re going to talk about His mission in life… we’ll
get into a little theology… some weeks we’ll be a little more academic
like we’ve been today, other weeks are going to be more practical and
hands on… we will get into some of His miracles, but I’m more
interested in getting into His character… understanding who He really
was and is. So we’ll talk about his kindness and compassion, we’ll look
at the way He lived and how He tells us to live, we’ll examine His
priorities, we’ll see what makes Him angry and what causes Him pain…
we’ll talk about the humanity of Jesus, today we’ve talked about the
historicity of Jesus, and next week we’ll talk about the divinity of
Jesus. We’ll explore what it means for Him to be the Son of God. During
this series we’ll talk about some of the other religious figures from
history and see how Jesus compares… we’ll look at other viewpoints of
Jesus today… was He just a good teacher with some good things to say
like you might hear from a Jew? Was He just a prophet of God like you
might hear from a Muslim? Was he just an enlightened human being, who
was somehow able to gain God-consciousness – like someone like Deepak
Chopra might tell you? Is He just one option among many, like Oprah and
so many others would tell you today?
Personally, I’m really
looking forward to going through this series with you. Seriously, this
may be the most important series we’ve ever done. Because the message
we have is the message of Jesus. The hope we have is the hope that
comes from Jesus. The reason the Church exists is because of Jesus. We
even call ourselves Christians or Christ-followers… because we follow
Jesus.
“For centuries, Jesus of Nazareth has been the most
influential person in the history of the human race, and He refuses to
go away.”
~ William Lane Craig
[PowerPoint - Plastic Bobblehead Jesus image]
You
know, many people in our society today, even in Churches, have a really
superficial understanding of Jesus… kind of this “plastic Jesus”
impression of Him. He was just some lovey-duvy guy who walked around in
sandals preaching peace. But we’re going to try to get to the heart of
who Jesus is.
And the Bible makes no secret about just how
important Jesus is. Take a look at these verses… we’re going to look at
several of them… First of all, Matthew 16 where Jesus asked if people
understood who He really was…
What Does the Bible Say about the Importance of Jesus?
Matthew 16:16 (NLT)
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
John 6:35, 38, 40 (NLT)
Jesus
replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be
hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty… For I have
come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me… For it is my
Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have
eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”
John 8:12 (NLT)
Jesus
spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world.
If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will
have the light that leads to life.”
John 8:23-24 (NLT)
Jesus
continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You belong to this
world; I do not. …Unless you believe that I Am who I claim to be, you
will die in your sins.”
John 11:25-26 (NLT)
Jesus told her,
“I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will
live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me
will never ever die.”
John 14:6 (NLT)
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come
to the Father except through me.”
John 15:5 (NLT)
“Yes,
I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in
them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
Romans 2:16 (NLT)
…The day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge
everyone’s secret life.
John 1:29-30 (NLT)
The
next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world! He is the one I was talking
about when I said, ‘A man is coming after me who is far greater than I
am, for he existed long before me.’”
Acts 10:42-43 (NLT)
…Jesus
is the one appointed by God to be the judge of all—the living and the
dead. He is the one all the prophets testified about, saying that
everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his
name.”
1 John 4:15 (NLT)
All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them,
and they live in God.
1 Timothy 2:5 (NLT)
For there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and
humanity—the man Christ Jesus.
Does
it sound like Jesus might be someone important? Does it sound like we
should do our best to learn as much as we can about Him? There’s so
much more to Jesus than just that bobble-head, plastic Jesus. In fact,
we’re going to take the next 12-16 weeks focusing in on the person of
Jesus, and we’ll still only be scratching the surface.
VIDEO – CHIP INGRAM: WHO IS JESUS? From BluefishTV.com (3 minutes)
It’s
the most important question we need to answer… Who Is Jesus? So that’s
what we’re going to be exploring, and I’d encourage you to with us
every Sunday if at all possible.
And let me tell you this; I’m
going to do my very best to make this series relevant for seekers and
still challenging for seasoned believers. So you can feel comfortable
inviting your friends and come knowing there’s going to be something
for you, too.
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