We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church.
This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication,
redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.
Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org.
Old Testament reading, a reading from the prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah 52, 13.
Behold, my servant shall act wisely.
He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted.
Isaiah 53, 3-9.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised.
And we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
And with his wounds we are healed.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way.
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted.
Yet he opened not his mouth.
Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent.
So he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made him his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Isaiah 53, 12.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors.
Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.
New Testament readings.
A reading from the Epistle to the Philippians.
Philippians chapter 2, verses 3 through 11.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
A reading from the first epistle to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 1, verses 18 to 29.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom,
it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brothers.
Not many of you were wise, according to worldly standards, and not many of you were powerful.
Not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not,
to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
This is the word of the Lord.
Praise to God.
Is that you?
Oh.
Do we know what that buzz is, Scott?
Oh, there we go.
Thank you.
Well, thanks for that reading, Melissa, that long reading.
That's my fault.
I kept adding verses this week because I had so many ideas, so many things I wanted to say.
Welcome to Christ Church, everyone.
My name is Andrew, one of the pastors here.
And I ask that you'd pray with me as we get into God's word.
Father, I pray that you would simply open our eyes and lift up our eyes to the crucified and risen Christ,
who is your son, who is God.
And would we behold you, Father, Son, and Spirit, as the wonderful God that you are, for whom there is no one like you.
So would you be honored, Lord God, in the preaching of your word, and would we behold Christ.
In his name we pray.
Amen.
All right, so we're in week six of our seven-week series, right?
Exploring God.
And today we're addressing the question, is Jesus really God?
And, you know, this is, I think, really where the rubber meets the road in our series.
Because if Jesus is not God, then we can just view him maybe perhaps as some kind of legendary hero of Christianity,
someone whose legend has left a mark on the world, but also someone we can't really know the truth about, right?
Or maybe we could accept him as a wise, rabbinical lecturer and teacher,
someone with some pretty good ethical teachings that we can, you know, for the most part,
add to the best of human conventional wisdom.
Or maybe we can reject him as a liar or as a lunatic, someone who claimed to be God,
someone who said, eat my flesh and drink my blood.
If Jesus isn't God, these are our options.
He's either a legend, he's either a lecturer, or he's a liar, or he's a lunatic.
But really, if he's any of these, there's nothing too compelling about him.
There's nothing life-changing about him.
But if Jesus really is God, then he isn't just a legend.
He's not just a lecturer.
He's neither a liar nor a lunatic.
He's Lord, all right?
If Jesus is God, he's Lord.
Our maker, our sustainer, our only hope and comfort in life and death.
And he's the only one who can save us.
He's the only one who can save this broken world.
If Jesus really is God, then that means we were made for him and for his purposes,
and that we owe our entire lives to him and our exclusive devotion.
So whether you believe that Jesus is God or not,
this could have major life-changing implications.
But now, why consider it at all?
Why are we even talking about this?
Why aren't we considering whether or not Steph Curry is God, right?
Why Jesus?
Well, we're not asking this like in a historical vacuum, right?
No one can deny that Jesus and his followers have birthed, you know,
the largest world religion in history.
Even today, there are 2.8 billion Christians in this world.
Our world population's 8 billion, all right?
2.8 billion people in this world right now who believe that Jesus is God.
And more important than the numbers is the impact that belief in Jesus' divinity has had on the modern world,
even the secular modern world.
But now, how do we tackle this question, though?
Is Jesus really God?
How do you prove or disprove that something or someone is God or not?
And like what God or what kind of God are we even talking about?
How do you define the divine?
There are multiple complexities, right, to this question, multiple rabbit trails that we could pursue.
Should we try to define God first?
Maybe get some consensus on a basic, universal, lowest common denominator definition of God
and then see if Jesus measures up to that?
Or can we maybe get philosophical and talk epistemology?
What's our method for knowing for sure that Jesus is God with any degree of certainty?
Or maybe you're here today and you're not even sure if you can believe in God
and, you know, you maybe would like me to rehash a sermon I preached a couple weeks ago.
You know, is there a God?
We could go down all these different rabbit trails
and unfortunately we can't do that in the next 20, 25 minutes, right?
But what I think will be most fruitful
is addressing this question by paying attention to the person of Jesus himself.
See, because, you know, I get it.
If you have trouble believing in God,
and honestly, you might be right to not believe in that God that you have in your head.
We Christians might even agree with you that that God doesn't exist either.
But what I've found is that when people gaze upon and behold the man Jesus, right,
Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be God, whose tomb was empty,
who sparked a movement that altered the world more than any other movement in world history,
when people consider the life and legacy of Jesus,
his claims, his character with an open mind and an open heart,
when people see Jesus for who he really is,
even those who formerly didn't even believe in God,
often I find that they find themselves encountering the one true God
that they actually can believe in.
And so we're going to look at Jesus today.
I want to invite you to just come and see.
Just come and see this morning.
Let's explore the data on this incredible person named Jesus of Nazareth.
Whether or not you end up believing he's God,
you have to at least reckon with this guy who's incredibly unique,
his incredible uniqueness.
Like, if you studied the world religions,
if you considered all of world history,
there really is, like, no one like this God.
You know, there's this scholar, he's passed away not too long ago,
right here in Berkeley.
His name was Huston Smith.
And he's a really big deal, religious studies scholar,
spent the majority of his career at MIT and Syracuse,
and then he retired here in Berkeley,
and he was a visiting faculty there at Cal.
And in his classic textbook, The World's Religions,
he observes something really interesting.
He observes that in all of history,
there have only been two people
who have lived with such influence
and who've lived such compelling lives
and who've gained, like, hundreds of millions of followers
across multiple millennia
and made such an impact that it provoked people
not just to ask, who are you,
but what are you?
And he says, not Caesar, not Napoleon,
not Socrates, only two,
Jesus and Buddha.
All right, but then he notes that for Buddha,
Buddha consistently denied that he was God.
He only ever claimed to be human,
but Jesus, on the other hand,
this was a human who claimed to be God.
This was a human who let people worship him.
Now, when Jim Jones and Charles Manson claimed to be God,
they only ever managed to, you know,
convince a tiny group, right, of unstable people.
They never changed the world,
and their legacy is really just that
of being toxic mad men, right?
No one's gathering to worship them today,
even just decades later.
But with Jesus of Nazareth,
he too claimed to be God,
and yet this is someone you could make a case for
as perhaps the most influential human
to ever have lived,
with hundreds of millions of followers,
again, over multiple millennia.
Think about that for a second.
Like, try to come up with a list
of, like, all the most positively influential,
impactful, compelling, wise, loving,
and compassionate people
throughout world history.
All right, got that list?
And then a list of all the people
who ever claimed that they were God.
There is only one person
who is on both those lists.
Only one person who claimed to be God
and got tons of people
to also believe it,
to devote their lives to him
and gather in churches
to worship him 2,000 years later.
And we ourselves are here listening right now,
entertaining this question,
because you know,
we all know, right,
that this is a question that's worth our time.
We know that if one of the most important,
if not the most important,
impactful person in history
claimed to be God,
this is a person that we cannot ignore.
And as the late, great pastor Tim Keller
would put it,
the magnitude of Jesus' claims
and the magnitude of his impact
indicate you'd better
not just doubt he's not God,
you better know he's not God.
He gives this illustration, Keller,
he says like,
let's say you got a letter from the IRS,
official IRS stationary,
and it says you owe $50 million in taxes,
and you think to yourself,
like, that can't be true,
because I only made 50,000, right?
Right?
Will you not at least pick up the phone, though?
Right?
Even let them place you on hold
just to make sure.
Why?
Because of the magnitude of the claim.
When Jesus says,
I am the way, the truth, and the life,
you only come to God through me,
if you're gonna live as though that's not true,
you'd better know that that's not true.
You'd better do your homework,
you'd better do your due diligence.
Because again, if you live without Jesus,
and he really is God,
the way, the truth, and the life,
then you're living estranged
from your maker and sustainer.
You're going the wrong way.
You're living in falsehood,
and you're closer to death than life.
And contrary to what you think,
you're only inching further and further
away from the most ideal version
of yourself and the world.
You're forfeiting love and joy
and peace and satisfaction,
the satisfaction that your soul
was made to enjoy.
So with that said,
I wanna turn to the data.
I wanna turn to the data this morning,
the most basic, undisputed data points
surrounding Jesus,
the facts that everyone can agree upon,
whether you believe Jesus is God or not,
the historical facts
that no honest and thinking person can deny.
Just put them out there for all of us
to try to make sense of
and account for, all right?
And there are five things I wanna say.
First, there was a man,
Jesus of Nazareth,
lived 2,000 years ago in Palestine
who claimed not only to be Messiah,
not only to be the servant of God,
but he claimed to be God himself.
He let people worship him.
He said he could forgive sins.
And he said to know him and to see him
and to receive him is to know and see
and receive God himself.
All right, so that's number one.
Number two, thousands of people,
thousands of people,
people who liked him
and people who hated him,
they saw him do things
that appeared to be miraculous.
Thousands of people fed
by five loaves and two fish,
paralytics made to walk,
lepers clean, right?
The blind able to see,
even the dead alive.
And again,
not all of these thousands of witnesses
even liked or believed
he was who he said he was,
but they saw it, all right?
It appeared to them as miraculous.
Number three,
Jesus of Nazareth,
he didn't just claim to be God,
but he managed to convince
the most staunchly monotheistic people,
the people with the most transcendent view of God,
he convinced thousands
of first century Jewish people
who lived to uphold
the first and second commandment, right?
Don't have any other gods besides Yahweh,
don't worship anything
that's created or material as God,
the last people in the world
who would have believed he was God,
he convinced them that he was God.
They were convinced
that he was who he said he was.
Number four,
he was crucified, dead, and buried.
And yet hundreds of people
saw him again after that.
Even at one point,
there were 500 who saw him at one time.
And there is no record
in all of ancient history
of anyone ever surviving
a Roman crucifixion.
And in fact,
there are five ancient sources
outside of New Testament
that can corroborate
that he really was crucified to death
and then seen again as alive.
Number five,
this apparent experience
that people supposedly had
of this supposedly risen Christ,
what changed people?
It changed the world.
It changed people so much
that they went out into the world
and even died to spread the news.
They spread it all throughout
the Mediterranean world,
even though many were flayed for this,
many were burned for this,
thrown to the lions,
crucified themselves.
They continued to spread the word
and it's still being spread today
across every continent.
Now having laid out
these undisputed points about Jesus,
I know they don't prove
that Jesus is God, right?
It doesn't prove
that Christianity is true,
but my question for you
is how do we account
for these data points?
How do we make sense
of these facts?
Now maybe you're inclined
to think all this Jesus stuff
is just a myth,
just a legend.
Like sure,
this Jesus guy,
maybe he was kind of special,
but we can't really know
the truth about him.
I mean that was
thousands of years ago.
Maybe he was a pretty amazing,
pretty special dude,
but aren't these accounts
about him in the Bible
just kind of embellished tales
that his followers
kind of wove together?
Maybe his followers,
followers, followers
put them together
long after he died?
How do we know
they didn't put these words
into Jesus' mouth,
spin the stories about him
to make him sound extra special?
You know,
especially with their biases,
right,
and their ancient superstitions.
Can we even read
the New Testament
as history?
Well,
I want to say
that if we approach
the scriptures literarily,
right,
as their authors intended,
if we pay attention
to how the New Testament
is written,
it is very much written,
not as a myth,
not as a legend,
like any other ancient text
that was written
as a legend in that time,
but it's actually
quite intentionally historical.
Luke's gospel,
how does Luke's gospel open?
He says,
as many have undertaken
to compile a narrative
of the things
that have been accomplished
among us,
just as those
who from the beginning
were eyewitnesses
have delivered them to us,
it seemed good to me also,
having followed
all things closely
for some time past
to write an orderly account
for you
that you may have certainty
concerning the things
you've been taught.
Luke's intention
is accuracy,
being historical,
an accurate historical
account and record
in line with the eyewitnesses.
And the rest of the New Testament
is full of tidbits
that you wouldn't expect
to find in myths and legends.
You have historical
and geographical details,
right,
details about the apostles' flaws.
And not only that,
but legends usually take
over 100 years,
150 or more years
to develop.
But you know,
even the most liberal scholars
of the New Testament
would say
there's a consensus
that the latest dates
are within 70 to 80 years
of the time
of Jesus' crucifixion.
Meaning that these writings
were written
during the lifetime
of eyewitnesses.
These writings
would have been falsifiable.
Someone could have said,
hey, I was there,
that it was a lot more
than five loaves
and two fish, all right?
Someone could have said that.
These accounts were written
far too early
to be fabricated
and embellished.
And not only that,
but who would die?
Who would die
for a mere legend, right?
Who would die
for a hoax
like the apostles did
and like many
early church Christians did?
Would they really have
given their lives
for a lie?
Like if they were the ones
who hid Jesus' body?
Now some have suggested,
okay, maybe they,
were seeing visions.
They were hallucinating
because they just wanted
to believe it so badly.
But really,
over 500 people
having the same hallucination
and vision
all at the same time
and then able to convince
another 3,000 Jewish people
to follow them
at Pentecost?
I mean,
what sounds like
the bigger miracle?
And speaking of bigger miracles,
okay,
could Christianity
really have even spread
and endured
the way it has?
Especially as a minority
religious movement
that was violently
persecuted by the Roman Empire.
What legend
has ever been
that powerful
and that successful
when it wasn't true?
Are we here today,
2,000 years later,
because some Jewish fishermen
overpowered
or slipped past Roman guards,
stole their rabbi's corpse,
hid it,
and then somehow
wove together
a legendary religion
about a God
who became a crucified man
whose followers
eventually won over
like the Roman Empire?
Thomas Aquinas said
that if these
miraculous events
about Jesus
didn't actually happen,
an even more
unbelievable miracle
happened,
the eventual conversion
of like the Roman world,
all by the biggest lie
in history.
Like sure,
it's hard to believe
in miracles
and it's hard to believe
Jesus is who he says he is.
I get that,
but might it be harder
not to believe
or to construct
some other narrative?
See, all this is to say
that it is very unlikely
that Jesus is just
some legendary figure
that we can treat,
you know,
like Odysseus.
He's more than that.
But now,
if he's not some
mythical legend,
then what options remain?
Well, again,
some would say
he was just a good
rabbinical teacher,
a lecturer,
a do-gooder.
But the question is
what kind of a good
teacher claims
to be God,
tells you to eat
his flesh
and drink his blood,
right?
Jesus wasn't just
teaching people
to be nice.
He was saying stuff
like I am the I am,
the one who's always
existed.
I forgive sins.
I'm gonna judge
the world.
To esteem Jesus
as simply a nice teacher
is to engage him
with very,
very selective hearing
and not to take him
in his entirety
seriously.
And this is why
C.S. Lewis said,
a man who was merely
a man
and said the sort
of things Jesus said
would not be
a great moral teacher.
He would either
be a lunatic
or he would be
the devil of hell.
You must take your choice.
Either this was
and is the son of God
or else a madman
or something worse.
You can shut him up
for a fool
or you can fall
at his feet
and call him
Lord and God.
But let us not come
with any patronizing
nonsense
about us being
a great human teacher.
So it cannot be said
that Jesus was simply
a good teacher
up there of Confucius
and Buddha,
Dr. King,
Mother Teresa.
Buddha and Mother Teresa
would never have made
such brazen claims.
So then what?
If not a mythical legend,
if not a mere lecturer,
is he a liar
or a lunatic?
Well if you think he is,
I want to at least
commend you
for taking all
of his words seriously
and viewing him
in his entirety.
But then I would ask,
are you really ready
to call him
a liar
or a lunatic?
Are you really ready
to reject him
and put him
on the crazy list
with Jim Jones
and Charles Manson
and all the other
power hungry cult leaders
who claimed
to be God?
Does it seem like
he belongs
on the same list?
Have you studied
his life,
his character
and is that really
the most logical
conclusion that you
can come to
that he is
just a nut job?
Or do not resonate
with or at least
find it hard
to disagree
that he is
an incredible person?
As one Presbyterian
theologian wrote,
no one has ever
yet discovered
the word Jesus
ought to have said
or the deed
he ought to have done.
Nothing he does
falls short.
In fact,
he is always surprising
you and taking
your breath away
because he is
incomparably better
than you could imagine.
He is tenderness
without weakness,
strength without harshness,
humility without
the slightest lack
of confidence,
holiness and
unbending convictions
without the slightest
lack of approachability,
power without insensitivity,
passion without prejudice.
There is never
a false step,
never a jarring note.
This is life
at the highest
when we're looking
at Jesus.
Like sure,
when we consider
Jesus' shocking
divine claims,
right,
it might sound
like he's a liar
or he's a lunatic,
but it's hard
to make that call
when we also consider
his character.
And we might not
be ready to adore him
in faith and honor
as the self-attesting Lord,
but doesn't it seem
just as difficult
to abhor him
in fear and hatred
as the self-aggrandizing
liar and lunatic?
Even if we don't believe
that he's God,
even if we don't believe
he's sent from God
or that he's
the suffering servant
and savior of the world
who died on a cross
to pay for the sins
of the world,
what's clear
is that he believed
this about himself.
And he consistently
lived for that purpose
and to that end.
He said,
I came not to be served,
but to serve
and to give my life
as a ransom for many.
He said,
I am the good shepherd
who lays my life down
for my sheep.
And then just as
was prophesied
by Isaiah,
Isaiah chapter 53,
verse 7,
it's in our bulletin today,
he was oppressed,
he was afflicted,
yet opened not his mouth,
like a lamb
that is led
to the slaughter,
and like a sheep
that before its shearers
is silent,
so he opened
not his mouth.
Like whatever you believe
about Jesus of Nazareth,
this is incredible stuff
that on the one hand
he opens his mouth
to wildly claim
that he's God
and yet on the other hand,
the moment he's about
to be crucified,
he sees himself
as the suffering servant
of fulfillment
of prophecy
and he does not
open his mouth
in fulfillment
of Isaiah's prophecy.
He doesn't say a word,
but instead
as both
self-proclaimed
God
and suffering servant,
he says in verse 4,
he bears our griefs,
he carries our sorrows,
stricken,
smitten,
and afflicted
in our place.
Verse 5,
he was pierced
for our transgressions,
crushed
for our iniquities,
wounded
so we could be healed.
Verse 6 says
he bore our sins.
Verse 8,
that he was cut off
from the land
of the living.
So now seriously,
what kind of a man
was this?
What are we supposed
to make of him?
I mean,
maybe after hearing
of his taking on
of this identity
as a suffering servant,
maybe now you are convinced
that he was a lunatic
because who would do this?
Who would do this?
Who would claim
to be God
and subject himself
to such suffering?
And if he was God,
why would he silently
allow himself
to be an innocent
sufferer
of such injustice
and how could he even die?
And like,
maybe you're thinking
to yourself,
well,
if I were God,
I would never
let this happen.
But what I want to say
to you this morning
is maybe it's a good thing
then that you're not God
and that Jesus is.
What if the lunacy
of Jesus
as both God
and suffering servant
is not evidence
against his mighty lordship,
but evidence
for his merciful lordship?
Not evidence
against his forceful divinity,
but evidence
for his forgiving divinity.
What if Jesus came
to defy
our very notions of God,
notions of God
that we've made
after our own images?
As one Christian
origin scholar,
he writes,
humanity wants
and sometimes creates
gods in its own image.
Gods who serve
the interests
of the elites,
gods who rule by power,
but not gods who love,
and especially
who love the poor
and the powerless.
But the God
of the early Christians
did not follow
that script
because they believed
God revealed himself
as Jesus Christ,
not as a wise man
like Socrates,
not as a strong man
like Hercules,
not as a powerful man
like Augustus,
not as a military commander
like Alexander the Great.
Instead,
Jesus appeared
to be a humble,
foolish,
weak man
who was born
in a stable
and who suffered
on a cross.
Like, get this.
What if Paul is right
in his letter
to the Corinthians
that we read earlier?
What if it's precisely
the folly
and the foolishness
of the cross of Christ
that's actually
the power of God
on foolish display?
Because see,
this is actually
what faithful Christians
have always believed
and celebrated
about God.
This paradox,
this mystery,
this God
who has not only held
the oceans in his hands
and numbered
every grain of sand,
but a God
who has also felt
nails upon his hands
and who bears
the guilt
of sinful man.
A holy God,
set apart,
holy, unique,
unlike any other,
so holy
in his righteousness
that he had to die
for the heinous sins
of the world
and at the same time
so holy in his love
that he was glad
to die
for the heinous
sinners
of the world.
And my question is,
don't you at least
want this to be true?
And if so,
might it be
that it is precisely
the unbelievability
of Jesus as God
that makes it so believable
after all?
Might the second century
African theologian
Tertullian,
might he have been
on to something
when he wrote,
the Son of God died,
absurd,
and therefore
utterly credible.
He was buried
and rose again,
impossible,
and therefore
a fact.
Now,
I want to admit
that none of this,
again,
none of this proves
beyond a shadow
of a doubt
that Jesus is Lord,
that Jesus is the God
of the universe.
But my question
for all of us is,
what's our better story
of the world?
What's your
more intellectually
credible
and more
existentially
satisfying story?
How else
shall we account
for the data
concerning
Jesus of Nazareth?
How shall we account
for the empty tomb
and the eyewitness accounts?
How do you account
for the impact
that he and his followers
have had on world history
such that we are sitting here
2,000 years later
and we're still celebrating
the same virtues
that came
from his beautiful life,
the virtues of humility
and service
and unselfish,
sacrificial love
that Paul commended
2,000 years ago?
Look with me at our text
in Philippians chapter 2.
Paul's saying,
do nothing from selfish ambition
and we say amen,
all of us,
if you're Christian or not.
Do nothing from selfish ambition
or conceit,
but in humility
count others
more significant
than yourselves.
Let each of you
look not only
to his own interests
but also to the interests
of others.
Have this mind
among yourselves
which is yours
in Christ Jesus
who though he was
in the form God
emptied himself
by taking the form
of a servant,
becoming obedient
to the point of death
on a cross.
Therefore God
has highly exalted him.
Do you see that humility,
servanthood,
selfless,
sacrificial love
commended as virtues
because they are grounded
in the reality
of a crucified
and risen God?
Like what genius,
what genius
could have made
this world
transforming story up?
Either we believe
that some fisherman,
a tax collector
and a former Pharisee
invented a legend
about a crucified God
that stretched
into every atom
of our culture
or we believe
that Jesus is God
in the flesh,
crucified and risen
2,000 years ago
and the world
could never be the same.
You know,
there's this historian,
his name is Tom Holland,
he's not Spider-Man
and he wrote
this incredible book.
A few of us read it
a couple years ago,
it's called Dominion,
How the Christian Revolution
Remade the World.
And if you ask him,
he'll tell you
that he's not a Christian
but also that he is
at the same time
thoroughly Christian.
And what he means by that
is he doesn't worship Jesus,
he doesn't pray,
he doesn't go to church,
but he most definitely
understands himself
in all of Western culture
as a product
of the movement
that Jesus Christ sparked.
You know,
this is in line
with a growing body
of literature
testifying to the
undeniable impact
of Christianity
even on our secular
modern Western culture.
And so, you know,
in an interview,
Tom Holland,
he says that,
you know,
as a boy
and as a young historian,
he was always fascinated
with, like,
the strong men
of the ancient world.
The Egyptians,
the Assyrians,
the Babylonians,
the Spartans,
like, he calls them
the big T-Rexes
of the ancient world.
The empires
that our history books
feature and highlight,
right?
And he says he found,
you know,
the little lambs,
like the nation of Israel,
to be unimpressive
and actually quite boring.
But in his studies,
he says he's begun
to be horrified.
He began to be horrified
by how mercilessly
these strong man empires
treated the weak.
And so he began
to ask himself,
why am I horrified
at, like,
the Spartans
throwing babies
who didn't meet
their standards
down the ravine?
And why am I glad
to live in a time
and in a society
where we put babies
on life support?
Why do I value
compassion,
service,
and sacrifice?
Why can't I follow Nietzsche
in casting off
all moral absolutes
and viewing life
as all about
self-interested power
and control
rather than selfless love?
Well, although he isn't
yet a churchgoer,
he's not a man of prayer,
what he ultimately
ascribes this to
at the end of the day
is what he considers
the heart
of the Christian revolution.
Quote,
the image of God
dead on a cross,
a twisted and defeated corpse
that's found to be
the glory
of the creator
of the universe.
This is why I believe
that Jesus is God.
There is no other story
like it.
It's so unbelievable
that I have to believe it.
So the question is,
what will we believe?
Is Jesus crucified
and risen?
Is he really God?
Well, again,
I can't think of any
better news for the world,
news that's both
intellectually credible
and existentially satisfying.
And my prayer
is that this church
would believe that
with all their hearts,
that those outside
these walls
would believe
that Jesus
is this kind of a God,
that God
is this kind of a God,
crucified and risen
and for us
in Christ.
This is the gospel.
Will you pray with me?
Lord, if we are not amazed
at the kind of God
you are
as revealed to us
in the crucified
and risen Christ,
would you make us amazed?
And would you open our eyes?
Help us to see,
I pray.
in Jesus' name,
amen.