Did The Early Church Believe Jesus Was Only Human?

Bethlehem Bible Church

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November 3, 2019

00:00: Well, if you were here for Sunday school back then in the summer, you might hopefully remember the series that I did on controversial questions about the
00:11: Bible. We were talking about challenges to what the Bible is, to its authenticity, and to its authority.
00:22: Some of the questions we looked at back in the summertime were, is the Bible unscientific?
00:27: Is the Bible unscientific? And we talked about David Hume, the
00:32: Scottish philosopher, and his supposed proof that miracles did not exist, and why secular folks are so excited to be able to say that the
00:42: Bible can't be true because miracles can't be true, and so on and so forth. And we sort of went through the whole list of what it means, what exactly the laws of nature are, and the laws of science, and what miracles really are, and what they're there for, and what they prove to us.
00:58: We also, another question we did was, is the Bible racist? Is the
01:03: Bible racist? And we talked about how various fringe groups and false teachers used certain passages in the
01:12: Bible to justify their racist beliefs, but that it does not make the
01:17: Bible racist. And then we kind of debunked several of those teachings and talked about what true, what is the true picture of race in the
01:29: Bible, which I can wrap it up in one word, is that there's only one race in the Bible, and that is the human race.
01:36: And that racism, and it's, what we understand as racism and races is now is really an evolutionary thought process that arose out of Darwinism, and that if we all descend from Adam, that truly we are one family, and we talk quite a bit about the one family of humanity.
01:59: And then we also did a question about who is the historical Jesus, right?
02:05: Because we hear that term kind of thrown around all the time. I've met people and talked to people who've said to me that, well,
02:12: I respect the historical Jesus when I tell them that I'm a
02:18: Christian. And they'll say, you know, and these are the folks who, you know, want to kind of delete lots of parts of the
02:23: Bible and simply talk about Jesus only as a very wise teacher, or someone who's very moral and who had really great ideas for us, and maybe was some kind of revolutionary of the ancient
02:38: Roman period, but not truly a figure worthy of worship, and certainly not a savior.
02:48: So today, I'm going to do one more of these questions. This will be the final session of this, and the highly anticipated final session.
02:57: And it kind of relates to that last one about historical Jesus. And this one is, did the early church believe that Jesus was only human?
03:08: Did the early church believe that Jesus was only human? Or to put it another way, did later
03:15: Christians invent the idea that Jesus is divine? Was it not until sometime later that Christianity, this monolithic whole known as Christianity, invented the idea of Jesus's divinity, that he was the son of God?
03:34: Has anybody ever heard that before? Yes, very good. Where did you hear it?
03:42: Do you remember? School? Yeah. Unitarians?
03:49: Yep. They're a big one. Gary? Right. Yep.
03:55: The Gnostics. Yep. That was a big one. I'll give you another one. How many of you have heard of a little book called
04:01: The Da Vinci Code? Yeah. So The Da Vinci Code, that's its kind of big plot twist, right?
04:10: Is the whole hook. And we'll get to that in a second. But today's challenger, each time
04:15: I've been doing these questions, I've been having a certain challenger who I've been quoting, and we've been disputing him or her.
04:23: Today's challenger is Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman, he's a very famous author and scholar.
04:31: He is technically a professor of New Testament studies, which I always chuckle at when I read those things, because that almost certainly means that he doesn't actually believe the
04:40: New Testament, if you ever see that in their title. Professor of New Testament. And Bart Ehrman, all of his books have a very common theme, which is the fact that he used to be evangelical, he used to claim that he was evangelical, and had a, as we would call it potentially, a deconversion experience.
05:00: And every one of his books takes this sort of same theme of, like, here, let me walk you through the steps of how
05:07: I came to believe and understand that some core central tenet of the Christian faith is really bogus, right?
05:14: And he does this over and over and over again with all of his books. And one of his most famous, which came out in about 2014, was called
05:24: How Jesus Became God. Okay? How Jesus Became God. And this book is about this idea that the early church didn't believe that Jesus was divine, and that only later
05:39: Christians invented the idea. Here's a quote from it. Christianity, as we have come to know it, did not, in any event, spring into being overnight.
05:49: The ultimate emergence of the Christian religion represents a human invention, arguably the greatest invention in the history of Western civilization.
05:57: He tries to be complimentary, I guess. Jesus was not originally considered to be
06:04: God in any sense at all. Okay? Jesus was not originally considered to be
06:10: God in any sense at all. Now, the implications of this idea are really rather frightening, because by saying that we only came to believe
06:22: Jesus is God much later in history, what he's essentially saying is that we made it up.
06:29: Right? He doesn't say that outright. He wants to be charitable and friendly. And like I said, he still calls himself a
06:36: Christian, and he still likes to pal around. He likes to think of himself as just this high -minded, enlightened
06:42: Christian philosopher. But what he's really hinting at, what he's really trying to say is that we made it up.
06:52: Right? The Christians made it up. That Jesus is not really divine at all. And we just latched onto that.
07:00: But, but, divinity of Christ is absolutely essential to the
07:06: Christian belief. Okay? It is absolutely essential to the Christian belief. It is one of the most core doctrines of Christianity.
07:17: Why? Because it takes an eternal God to pay for the sins of a people who've sinned against the eternal
07:22: God. How does one mortal swap natures with another mortal? It takes an eternal God to do this transaction.
07:28: If Jesus isn't divine, you know, the best we could potentially say is, if he lived a perfect life, that maybe we could swap his life for one other person's life.
07:39: He could have, we could say that he could be the substitute for one other. But it takes the divine, the infinite, right, to make a transaction where his one life can stand for all of our lives.
07:52: Right? For everyone who would believe it is really difficult.
07:57: Robert Peterson says it is difficult to overemphasize the significance of Christ's deity. The church's lifeblood depends on who
08:06: Christ is, that he is the God man and what he did that he died in a rose.
08:12: Christianity stands if Christ's deity is true. If Jesus is divine and his claims are true and there is salvation and no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given by which men must be saved, right?
08:28: Because he is God, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him.
08:40: So really, if you think about it, whether you affirm or deny Christ's divinity, it affects every other point of Christology or systematic theology, right?
08:52: Everything just cascades in a failure mode from there if you deny that Jesus is divine.
08:59: Right? Let's, can we think of any, like what, let's, let's think of some other points. What gets turned on its head?
09:05: We talked about salvation already. What else gets turned on its head? His resurrection.
09:14: Right. Our human can't just rise from the dead. So he didn't rise, he didn't, you know, and the Bible actually talks about when it comes to the resurrection, all three members of the
09:22: Trinity having some participation in the resurrection. Right. But if, if he was just mortal, then he's like the, the, the, the, the daughter or the widow's son or all the other
09:34: P or, or Lazarus, right? People who were raised from the dead by someone else. They die and they died again.
09:40: Right. Exactly. Right. Every one of them, Andrew, we got to find it somewhere else. There's some secret knowledge somewhere, which again, it's like, what's, what's old is new.
09:49: Again, the 1800 Germans philosophers and theologians, they were just recycling Gnosticism in a way, right?
09:55: Like, oh, we've got this new secret knowledge. We're going to not look in the new Testament. We're going to find some, or we're going to read between the lines of the new
10:02: Testament and we're going to find out what the real truth is about Jesus and find that real historical
10:08: Jesus. Yeah. I mean, his miracles, his ministry, right? Like everything turns into, uh, it's, it's like, what, what was he, what was he performing miracles for?
10:17: Right. If he was not divine, right. Or it calls into question whether or not they were really miracles, but let's, even if we give the, say that it was some kind of miracle, right?
10:27: Then what was the point? Miracles are supposed to do what? If you remember from the summer point to, right.
10:35: There's their pointers, right? Miracles just done in isolation. Those are the ones you have to worry about.
10:42: The point of miracles is to validate the miracle worker, to validate the message of the miracle worker in specific, in specific, right?
10:52: Miracles always had accompanied someone who was prophesying or preaching, proclaiming something to prove something, to prove that they were truly sent from God, that the word they had was from God.
11:04: Yeah. That Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. Right. That, so, you know, the gospel of John, you have to throw out entire segments of that.
11:10: You have to throw out entire segments of Paul's epistles of revelation, right? Like, and that's probably
11:16: Bart Ehrman's point is he wants to start to throw out all these different parts of the Bible, right?
11:21: And to call them all into question. But you can't just concede these points or even hypothetically try to argue from conceding those points because everything just gets tossed away slowly, but surely.
11:37: Now, Ehrman, he is a very sophisticated and popular scholar. Okay. I mean, popular as scholars go,
11:44: I guess. And, you know, and you can find all those books at Barnes and Noble.
11:53: But as I alluded to earlier, perhaps you remember the less sophisticated, but immensely more popular book,
12:00: The Da Vinci Code, which also got made into a movie. Actually, I think they ended up making like two or three movies, right?
12:07: Yeah. Now, sadly, many people in American society have gotten their entire understanding of early church history from this book.
12:19: Okay. And it's been long enough now since this book came out that it's sort of fading into the mists of their memories to the point where they probably, if you ask them, might not remember that some tidbit here and there that they learned that from The Da Vinci Code and not from, you know, history textbook in school or whatever.
12:38: Right? So let me read to you a particular passage from there.
12:43: Ignore the names of the characters and stuff. It's irrelevant. But just listen to the words of what's going on in this conversation.
12:51: My dear, Teebing declared, until that moment in history, the council of Nicaea, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man, nonetheless, a mortal, not the son of God.
13:05: She said, right. Teeming said, Jesus is establishment as the son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the council of Nicaea.
13:16: Hold on. She said, you're saying Jesus's divinity was the result of a vote, a relatively close vote at that.
13:22: Teeming said. OK. So let's start there.
13:28: Let's start there because that is probably the most popular false myth out there is this whole business about the council of Nicaea.
13:38: All right. So pardon me, but we're going to do a little history lesson. We're going to jump in our time machines. We're going to go back to Nicaea, the year 325.
13:45: Nicaea is a town in modern day Turkey. It's east of Istanbul. It's on the
13:50: Asian side of Turkey. Um, and in 325 AD.
13:56: All right. What's happening? Anybody remember from your ancient church history? What just happened in the earlier three hundreds?
14:03: It was kind of a big deal. Yeah. Yes. Christianity was legalized. Edict of Milan, 314.
14:11: OK, this will be on the quiz later. So the Edict of Milan got issued by Constantine, Emperor Constantine, and it made
14:19: Christianity legal for the first time ever in the Roman Empire. OK. Constantine himself, of course, he has recently reunified the empire after a bunch of civil wars and factional fighting.
14:32: And he's had some religious experiences. Let's just be charitable. We'll call him that. He's had some religious experiences which have led him to claim that he has been converted to Christianity.
14:43: OK. How much that's actually true is up for debate. Whether he actually converted to actual
14:48: Christianity is up for debate. But he's had a conversion experience of some variety.
14:54: OK. And he's made Christianity legal. And at this point now, Christianity has become sort of a political issue for him.
15:03: Right. Constantine's main focus in life through this whole early three hundreds is keeping the empire together.
15:11: All right. This is really important. So just understand this. His main focus is keeping the empire together. That's his big concern.
15:18: OK. So 325, this council gets together, this council of Nicaea. And the reason they get together more than anything else, there's a bunch of issues that they deal with.
15:29: But first topic on the agenda was Arianism. OK. Arianism. Now, Arianism was named after this monk named
15:38: Ariannus. OK. And Ariannus, he was teaching, going around teaching that Jesus was created and that he was lesser than the father.
15:50: OK. That was the main thrust of Arianism. All right. That he was created, that he was begotten. Like he grabbed onto those verses about Jesus being begotten, and he over read into them and made it into a thing that that meant that Jesus had a beginning, that he didn't always exist.
16:07: He wasn't always eternal. And thus, if he wasn't always existing, that he must be. And of course, there's plenty of places where Jesus does rightly say that he is serving the father and obeying the father, obedient to the father.
16:19: And again, Ariannus took that too far. And he said that that means that Jesus is inferior to the father. OK. Or lesser to the father.
16:28: So this is the big hot topic. All right. Is this controversy, because there's a lot of people who are following this
16:34: Ariannus guide, who are falling for it. In fact, much of the Western Roman Empire, which is full of all of the barbarians who sacked and destroyed
16:42: Rome. OK. All those folks are converting over to this Arian form of Christianity, the
16:48: Germanic tribes and whatnot. Constantine over on the east, all of his folks are mostly sticking with what we would call
16:55: Orthodox Trinitarian Christianity. And so Constantine calls this council.
17:03: Again, unity. This is what he cares about. He sees that there's this factioning, this division, and he doesn't like that.
17:09: Right. We're entirely unsure of exactly how many bishops showed up, but it's probably in the two to three hundred people range, probably closer to three hundred.
17:20: So three hundred different bishops, deacons, whatever they wanted to call themselves, pastors attended this conference, this council.
17:29: Now, they heard both sides of the arguments, but they quickly came to a consensus for Trinitarianism and against Arianism.
17:40: OK. Very quickly came to that consensus. And right away, they appoint one guy to go write a creed.
17:49: All right. And come back to him with a draft creed that they can vote on or that they can approve. So one guy, he writes what we now know as the
17:57: Nicene Creed. All right. Which very clearly lays out Trinitarian belief.
18:04: Right. And he writes the creed and he presents it to the rest of the council. And remember,
18:09: I said there was three hundred some odd folks who attended. First draft, only seventeen of them opposed it.
18:18: OK. They didn't have a vote like this Da Vinci Code likes to say. There was no vote, but seventeen different bishops did raise objections in some way or form to the
18:30: Nicene Creed, the original draft. OK. So first off, there was no vote, nor was it close.
18:39: Seventeen out of three hundred is not a close vote. It's even less close when you actually look at what was going on in the debate, because out of those seventeen folks, two of them were like diehard
18:52: Arians, and the other fifteen only were objecting to like certain wording, certain bits.
18:59: There was one particular word, hominus, I'm butchering the pronunciation. Sorry. Um, which means of the same substance.
19:08: And the fifteen guys, they didn't really like the sound of that. I mean, I'm really glossing over and summarizing their arguments, but essentially they felt like it sounded too physical.
19:16: Right. And that that that that was that was too much of a talking of. They were actually concerned that it could be twisted around by the
19:23: Arians to make it again sound like that Jesus was begotten because, you know, to say of the same substance of something else kind of made it sound like, you know, some physicalness was being passed down.
19:36: But after a bunch more discussion and yes, some pressure from Constantine, those fifteen guys flipped sides or eventually just signed on with the crate.
19:46: OK, so at the end, two. All right. Three hundred to two.
19:53: Not a close vote. And I also want to mention, because some people do like to pick this up and they say like, oh, well, the only reason they signed up was because Constantine was pressuring them.
20:03: Well, yeah. But again, Constantine didn't really care one way or the other.
20:09: His Christianity was very like I said, if we're going to be even if we're going to be generous and say that he really was converted, he was very wishy washy and confused on doctrine.
20:18: OK, so he had no real stake in this debate over which side they fell on.
20:24: I am convinced that if they had showed up to this council and two hundred some odd guys at the very beginning had said, yeah,
20:32: Arianna Ariannis is right and the other one is wrong, he would have just jumped on that side and just pressured the remaining folks to sign on to that because he didn't care about the theology.
20:42: He only cared about the unity. He just wanted a unanimous vote or sorry, not a vote.
20:47: He just wanted. Unanimity, unanimity. Sorry. Right.
20:54: That's all he wanted. And he almost got it. So it was also note here, it was not a vote on.
21:05: The son of God, no one stood up and said, I propose that we call Jesus the son of God.
21:11: All right. No one was proposing that no one was. No one was saying that that was a new thing that we should start doing.
21:19: In fact, and this is really important. Again, this was the big controversy. Even Ariannas believed that Jesus was the son of God.
21:29: Right. He actually believed that Jesus was divine. He just had this sort of idea of this.
21:35: He called Jesus divine. He just sort of believed in this subservient. Slightly lesser level of divine.
21:43: Right. But he believed that Jesus was now divine might be the right way to put it to characterize his beliefs.
21:50: Um, and so no one, no one showed up to the council of Nicaea thinking or arguing that Jesus was a mortal man only.
22:01: No one. So what gives them right?
22:09: Where, where does. So, I mean, that's the Da Vinci code. That's easy. That's just a fictional author. Just being silly.
22:15: Right. And just wanting to stir up stuff and sell books. Okay. But where does somebody like Bart Ehrman and the scholars of his earth ilk, where, where are they getting this idea?
22:27: Where are they saying that, um, if it wasn't at Nicaea, when did the early church start worshiping
22:34: Jesus is God. Right. So he wants to talk about it in terms of, and it really, if you listen, read the book or read what he said, it's, it's very like, he, he kind of presents it in the sort of this evolutionary thinking sort of way that we start with this really low
22:50: Christology and then, and slowly, but surely gradually up. But let me, let's, in fact, let's do the same thing.
22:57: Okay. Let's do the investigation ourselves. Let's keep going backwards in time from Nicaea.
23:02: Okay. Let's see if we can find where we started, where Christianity started believing
23:08: Jesus was God. Okay. Yes. Before I go there. Yes, Charlie. Oh, you're going to tell me.
23:14: No. Yeah. Yeah.
23:21: Isaiah 53. Yep. Yeah, there you go. We, we, we, we blew right past it.
23:27: Yeah. Yeah. We're all the way back to before Jesus, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. Yep.
23:34: Isaiah 53, the prophecy of, of Messiah, the prophecy of his, uh, atoning death.
23:42: Right. All the way back there. Yeah. Gary at Pentecost. Yep. Right. Jesus risen from the dead.
23:48: Right. Right away at Pentecost. Yeah. All right. You guys are jumping ahead on me. Yes. Larry, go ahead.
23:56: How about, oh, that is a great one. I didn't have that one written down, but yes, Thomas is a great one. Thomas is presented, you know, right?
24:03: Like he, he finally comes face to face with the risen Christ. And what is his reaction? My Lord and my
24:10: God. Right. But you know, we invented that later.
24:17: All right. Let's go back in sequence a little bit. We, you guys spoiled the whole, the whole last half, second half.
24:23: But anyway, we'll get to Isaiah at the end. All right. First off 112
24:29: AD. All right. You're taking notes. This is on the quiz. Okay. 112 AD. Pliny the
24:35: Younger. Okay. Pliny the Younger was a governor of a area of Northern Turkey.
24:40: We're still in Turkey again. Of a province of the Roman empire. And he writes a letter to emperor
24:48: Trajan. Who's the emperor at the time? Um, asking for help on what to do about these crazy
24:54: Christians that are popping up in his province. He's not sure how to handle them. Right.
25:00: He's, he's looking for advice from the emperor on what, what should I do with these people? Right. Um, and part of his letter describes to Trajan what he sees them doing.
25:12: What they're famous for doing. Okay. He's actually, uh, he's, he's fair in, in his description.
25:19: Um, and so part of the letter, what he says is, I think this is actually a really great, really early source into the practices of the church.
25:27: Right. From a completely unbiased one. You could actually say someone who was biased against Christians. Right. But he was still really fair in his, in this.
25:36: I mean, listen to what this is. They meet on a certain day before light. All right.
25:41: Where they gather and sing hymns. Don't complain about Sunday school at 9
25:47: AM anymore. Um, they meet on a certain day before light where they gather and sing hymns to Christ as to a
25:55: God. Right. I mean, in Roman religious thought, they, they just said, okay, they're just adding
26:03: Jesus to their, to the list of all the gods that we have, but still. So, I mean, his, his perspective as they sing hymns to Christ, as to a
26:09: God, they bind themselves by oath to not commit any wicked deeds. Which he says is really funny because he's expecting that what they would be doing is by, as, uh, performing an oath about performing a wicked deed.
26:23: Like, oh, we all, we all swear to rebel against the empire or whatever else. And he goes, but we checked it out and that's not what they're doing at all.
26:32: Um, and, and they subsequently share a meal of ordinary and innocent food.
26:40: There you go. Corn dogs. Yeah. See, it's right there all the way since the one hundreds now.
26:50: Okay. So yeah, but right. So I'm like, I was getting this and I was like, well, other than the before light part, we could, we could pretty much, someone else could write that about BBC.
26:59: Right. Yeah. Right.
27:11: Right. It does contradict Bart though. Mr. Ehrman. That's what I'm getting at. Ariannas. Like I said, Da Vinci code took
27:19: Arianism and set, tried to turn it into a thing that said, Jesus is not
27:24: God, but even Arianism never really proclaimed that. Right. So that we just debunked that whole business.
27:29: So we can put Arianism aside completely. Now, now it's just in terms of, was there something before Arianism? That was that, that the early church didn't believe that Jesus was
27:39: God. And then we developed this over time. Right. So now we've made it back to at least the one hundreds.
27:45: And even at this point, right. They're believing that Jesus is God. Okay. Now, how about we'll go back even further.
27:54: We'll go to Philippians. Now, does anybody know when Philippians was written? 65, 50 ish.
28:07: Yeah. 60. Yeah. 20. Let's go 25 years ish after the resurrection. Okay.
28:12: After the crucifixion. Do you know what's really cool? I love this. I don't know why, but I don't know why this is, why this is, but secular critical scholars, they love this.
28:22: Love Philippians. They like, they consider Philippians like the most authentic Pauline letter.
28:29: Right. I don't, I don't get it, but they're really, they really like Philippians. You know, they, I, I, I, I, I've talked about this in previous lessons, but you know, these, these scholars with their form criticism, right.
28:39: They try to analyze the vocabulary and the sentence structure and, and, uh, and, and the, the messages and whatnot and consistency.
28:47: And they, they try to argue with each other one, whether, oh, maybe, maybe Paul did write this. Maybe Paul didn't write that.
28:53: So on and so forth. Right. Like they don't, just to give you a hint on this, they don't like any of the pastoral epistles.
29:00: First Timothy, second Timothy or Titus. They don't like them because they say that, um, two thirds of the vocabulary in those three isn't used in any of the other
29:12: Pauline epistles. Right. To which I say two thirds of the vocabulary
29:17: I use when I'm texting Andrew, my best friend, when
29:23: I'm texting him, like two thirds of that vocabulary is not the same as the vocabulary I use when I'm writing to work emails to work, you know, cause we're mostly talking about the
29:32: Patriots all the time. Um, and at work I have to write about, you know, uh, software and, and compiler errors and, and things like that.
29:41: So like it, like the pastoral epistles are written, are personal letters written to a very specific person.
29:48: And so naturally I'm not really surprised that Paul would sound maybe a little different and write a little different.
29:54: I mean, don't you write differently to, to like, if you're writing a letter to you, I mean, Paul calls
29:59: Timothy his son. Wouldn't you write differently a letter to your son than you do to your coworker? I mean, I, but anyway,
30:06: I'm on a photo tangent. Let's go back. Um, but they really like Philippians. Okay. They really like Philippians.
30:12: Um, so, so the secular scholars, they'll be with you on, on saying that Philippians is truly a
30:17: Pauline epistle. Okay. Flip to Philippians chapter two. I should've had you flip in there all this time when
30:23: I was on a ramp, let's zoom in on verse six, Philippians chapter two, verse six. Of course, this whole part, chapter two, the early part of chapter two is this beautiful description of Christ's humility, right?
30:37: As an example to us, to believers about also being humble and being selfless.
30:46: And here's one of the ultimate examples of that verse six, who though he
30:51: Christ was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped.
30:59: Okay. Who being in the form of God did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped.
31:09: So this business was in the form of God, right? Who being in the form of God was in the form of God.
31:16: Um, the, the KJV use the word being in the form of God.
31:22: Um, though that Greek word is the word for continuous state. All right. There are actually multiple words in Greek for being, and Paul used the one that very specifically means continuous state of being right.
31:38: And that form the word for form. Again, there's multiple words for form in Greek that we would translate form, but Paul used the one that means essential character.
31:50: So the two of them together, a continuous state of essential character, right?
31:56: As in eternal. He was eternally God, right?
32:03: He is eternally God. How about first Corinthians?
32:10: First Corinthians was written even a few years before Philippians also generally accepted by the secular scholars as Pauline chapter eight, verse six, just read back starting in verse, uh, five for, although there are many, maybe so -called gods in heaven and on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many
32:28: Lords verse six. Yet for us, there is one God, the father from whom are all things and for whom we exist and one
32:37: Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
32:44: Now, this is an echo of the Shema from Deuteronomy, which says hero, Israel, the Lord is one
32:50: God, right? And, um, some people take this and they say like, they try to make too much of the distinction where Paul says that there is when he says one
33:01: God and one Lord, as if that's like trying to make a distinction between the two, but really the words, and there's not really an and like the
33:09: Greek words make it very clear that he's just saying the same person twice. He's linking, he's including
33:14: Jesus in the divine identity of one God, right?
33:19: And this would be completely unheard of for Jews to be okay with.
33:27: Also flip over to verse chapter 15 here in first Corinthians, and this links us all the way back to months or even weeks after the crucifixion, because Paul here, he claims he goes through in verse, the early part of chapter 15 about the resurrection, and he goes through the resurrection appearances and look down in verse 15, we are even found to be in misrepresenting
34:02: God because we testified about God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise. If it is true that are dead and are not raised for if the dead are not raised, not even
34:10: Christ has been raised, right? And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
34:17: Verse 20, but in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep for as by a man came death and by a man has come also the resurrection from the, of the dead and that backup in verse three, this whole, that whole message.
34:40: He says that it's of first importance of what I also received, what
34:46: I received. What he's claiming is that this is a message that he received. This is a message that we've been preaching from the very beginning, right?
34:55: Charlie. No. Okay. We're kind of running out of time, so I won't get into it. But in Galatians, you know, he talks about his visits, his various visits to Jerusalem.
35:06: Right. And talks about how, you know, he, he went, he showed his message. He talked about part of this chain of transmission that his message was checked and verified by the eyewitnesses,
35:17: Peter and Jesus's brother, James. And then he goes back 14 years later to Jerusalem again.
35:24: And, um, he, uh, has the apostle John this time meets with him. And he also backs him up and he says they added nothing to my message.
35:35: Right. Just to point out that exactly what he's preaching, what he's been preaching, what he's presenting here in his epistles, this is the same thing that the apostles had been preaching from the very beginning, the actual eyewitnesses.
35:49: Right. So the conclusion is, and then we, and then we look at things like, but Larry pointed out that those very apostles that Thomas right after the resurrection drops on his knees says, my
36:00: Lord, am I gone? Right. That from the very, and Peter at Pentecost is preaching a message about Jesus being raised from the dead.
36:11: Right. And that there he's commanding people to worship Christ right from the get -go. That there was never a time when the message of Jesus's divinity and his atoning death and his resurrection were not a part of Christian teaching.
36:28: The answer to the question of when did we start is when Christianity started. Right from the very beginning, there was no invention of Jesus's divinity.
36:40: Now I want to give, I have a few more minutes left. I want to give one more minute to Ermin here, because he actually responds to the and he tries to rescue his claim here about this invented divinity by, he says that what is really being described here is not early
37:00: Christians worshiping Jesus as God, but as some sort of higher angel. Okay.
37:06: And this makes up a good chunk of his book. This idea that he's some kind of higher angel, some sort of gradations of divinity.
37:13: Like I mentioned earlier that over time we sort of evolved higher and higher. So at first they thought of him just as some kind of angel.
37:19: And to back up this claim, he points to supposed, anyway, widespread angel worship during the time of Jesus's earthly ministry, the second temple period.
37:30: And he cites a few historical examples of Jewish mystics, okay, that sort of revered angels or worshiped them or some such.
37:40: But Michael Kruger writes about this and he rebuts him perfectly. So let me just read it.
37:45: Ehrman highlights the limited number of ambiguous or debatable passages about these semi -divine figures and uses those instances to override the larger and more established monotheistic trends of first century
37:59: Judaism. The problem of course, is that even if his interpretation of these passages is correct, they represent at best only the minority report.
38:10: Why should we think that the earliest Christians held this fringe view of divinity when they formulated their ideas about the identity of Jesus?
38:17: Or for that matter, why should we think that Jesus himself held these views when he expressed his own divinity?
38:24: The idea that early Christians saw Jesus in the category of an angel runs contrary to numerous other lines of evidence.
38:31: For one, Jesus is clearly distinguished from angels in Mark. He's given lordship over angels in Matthew and in Luke.
38:38: He's exalted in a place above the angels in Hebrews. And he's accorded worship in Matthew and in Luke, right?
38:49: Again, like the instance of Thomas or on the boat when he stills the storm and everyone's like, what manner of man is this?
39:01: That Peter says, be gone from me, Lord, for I'm a sinful man, right? And also the role of creator in first Corinthians and Colossians.
39:13: Angels are never portrayed as creating the world. They're never portrayed as worthy of worship. Think about it in Revelation when the ain't when
39:21: John drops to his knees and starts to worship an angel. What does the angel do?
39:27: He immediately stops him. So no, no, no, no, don't do that. Worship God only.
39:34: Right. But when people drop to their knees and worship Jesus, does he stop them?
39:41: No, because he's not an angel. He's not an angel.
39:50: Angel worship was not some kind of widespread characteristic practice of first century Judaism. If anything, it was just some weird little.
39:58: And the early church didn't pick up on this trend and make him into some kind of super angel, right?
40:05: Let's look at one more place in the New Testament that I just mentioned. And it was written probably 60 years after the crucifixion.
40:13: That place actually might lay out. We talked about John. We talked about all these other places. But I think really this might lay out
40:20: Jesus's divinity more comprehensively than anywhere else. And that is Hebrews chapter one. Hebrews chapter one.
40:27: Now I know what you're thinking. Hebrews. Oh boy. But here's the deal. I went and looked this up.
40:32: I found it in my notes. We were in Hebrews one in 2016. Okay. 2016.
40:39: So I think it's okay for me to go back to Hebrews chapter one. So here we are. We're back.
40:46: Now I also found out when I was looking at my notes that Mike spent six months on just this one chapter.
40:52: Hebrews chapter one. All the way from December to June. So I'm going to do it in five minutes.
40:59: I'll let you decide if that. Yeah. No, no, I'm not even going to say it. Okay. All right.
41:07: Now I'm definitely not going to do it justice though. But remember that Hebrews is written to who? Hebrews.
41:14: Okay. Very good. You remember, Michael be proud. It's, it's written to Jews.
41:21: Okay. People who are steeped in the old Testament, right? People who grew up reciting the
41:27: Shema over and over again. And this would be the hardest group of people to convince that Jesus is
41:33: God. If there's any group, the Romans, the Greeks, it's almost like, you know, it'd be really easy to, at least for them, probably in their early thinking, they'll be like, oh, he's just one of the other gods like Jupiter and Mars and Mercury or whatever.
41:46: And then you could sort of work with them and make them realize and understand that. No, no, no. There's only one
41:52: God. And Jesus is the one God. Right. But to get them to accept the idea of divinity almost seems like an easier idea.
41:58: Right. Whereas Jews. Right. But here in Hebrews in chapter one, there are three different attributes applied to Jesus that clearly show him as divine one, that he's the creator one that he's to be worshiped and one that he rules the universe.
42:21: Right. All three of these things. And the author of Hebrews uses the old
42:26: Testament. And here we are. See, I told you, Charlie, I know we'd get back here. Eventually uses the old Testament to prove it.
42:33: Right. The Jewish scriptures. Verse two, he's the creator. Right.
42:39: In these last days, he has spoken to us by son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
42:46: And in verse 10. Where it says of this back in verse eight of the son, he says, and then verse 10.
42:52: And so this is also of the son that he says, you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning.
42:59: The heavens are the work of your hands. Right. That's quoting
43:04: Psalm 102. Jesus. And the word here in Psalm 102 is the word for eons that he's creating time and history and future.
43:15: Not just space and matter. And he not only created them, but he also continues to uphold them.
43:20: Right. That he upholds them. That's in verse three, that he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
43:29: He upholds and he holds creation together. He's literally bearing it on his shoulders is the word picture in the
43:35: Greek. And second, he's deserving worship. The angels, like I said, they're very good at rebuking people, but Hebrew says in verse six, let all
43:45: God's angels worship him. And that's a quote from Deuteronomy 32.
43:56: And we heard over and over again from this pulpit, right? Christ is greater. Christ is greater. Christ is greater.
44:01: He's greater than the angels. He's greater than Moses. He's greater than Aaron. God gives his glory to no one.
44:09: And so for him to command the angels to worship Christ, the sun must be uncreated.
44:16: He must be God as well. Otherwise, that would be God giving away his glory. And this worship is part of this great coronation service.
44:25: After Christ's ascension, his earthly mission has been accomplished, and he has sat down now in verse 13, right?
44:32: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And finally, third, that he's the ruler of the universe.
44:44: In verse eight, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. That's from Psalm 45. Verse 13.
44:52: Again, about sitting at your right hand, right? That's from Psalm 110.
45:00: And note, especially back in verse eight, the phrase, O God, right? Your throne, O God.
45:06: And right before it, the writer had said, but of the son he says, right?
45:14: So O God here is applied specifically referring to the son, to Jesus.
45:21: And so what is more assuring then of knowing that Jesus is sovereign? Whatever he wants, he does.
45:27: He can't be frustrated. Everything has a time. Everything has a place or a season, as Ecclesiastes says, right?
45:36: At God's command, on God's schedule. The same one who loved us and loved us so much that he humbled himself to die on a cross for our sins.
45:46: He is the one who's in control. He is the one who is all powerful.
45:51: He is the one who's upholding the universe. Nothing really, then, he, our
45:58: God is love and he is in control and nothing could be more restful of a thought than that.
46:08: So just to summarize here in conclusion, you know, this idea that there was ever a time where Jesus was thought of as only a mortal man.
46:19: Sure, there's a time now. People have thought that Jesus is only a mortal man all the way till now.
46:28: But just because a few fringe people do, or just because, I mean, we could say the same thing. Why not say that because the
46:34: Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons today believe the same thing, why not say that that means that Jesus was never divine, right?
46:41: But Christianity, true Christianity has been preaching and proclaiming Christ as the son of God from the very beginning, if not from thousands of years before.
46:52: All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this time that we could examine your word and refute those who would seek to dispute it or throw it into or make us throw it out,
47:16: Lord, and disprove it. Lord, we know that we can stand firm and stand true on your word for us.
47:27: We thank you, Lord, that despite how hard they try, they cannot prove what is obviously false, to prove that we ever thought of Jesus as human.
47:42: Lord, we thank you that you sent your Son, the eternal Son, to live the perfect life on our behalf that we could not live for ourselves, to die in our place for our sins, to rise from the dead that we too might have eternal life if only we believe in him and trust in him as our
48:06: Savior. I thank you so much, Lord, for that greatest of gifts, and I pray that you would help us to stand firm and contend for the truth, to do it with grace, to do it with love, but to believe confidently in what we know about you and your