Proving Jesus is the Messiah

Matthew 16 and the Signs of the Times

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived. Who are the Pharisees of our day?

This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

We need to do better. The Church, rich in theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.

At the Worldview Youth Academy, we bridge this critical gap. Here, theological depth is not an end in itself but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of his kingdom.

Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges. So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind.

We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom. 2 .0.

I think it won't matter.

No, Mr. President, you are not protecting reproductive freedom. You are authorizing the destruction of freedom for one million little human beings every year. I'm sorry, my friends, but I am tired of seeing Jesus presented.

As a weak beggar.

He is a powerful savior and the gospel is not a suggestion,.

It is a command.

Reverend Moller, don't you sympathize with that?

I sympathize with every single human heart wishing to know the one true and living God, but I believe there's only one way that that can happen through Jesus Christ and the gospel is about repenting of sin, not celebrating it.

For the spirit not experienced this before.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name should be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end.

On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. That's Isaiah 9, 6 through 7.

Opening the Show and the Core Question of Jesus as Messiah

Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the gospel heard around the world. Everybody, I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That's Zach Conover.

Hey, guys.

Director of End Abort... Director of Communications with End Abortion. Now.

But that's not really important right now.

That's right, that's right. All right, everybody. So we're back with another really special episode of Apologia Radio. We think this one's gonna be a real blessing to all of you. Get your Bibles ready for this one.

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When you sign up for All Access, you make everything we do possible. You are actually a part of this ministry with us, and when you're All Access, you get access to all kinds of additional content we make specially for you, just to be a blessing to you, whether it's the Apologia After Show, whether it's the full episodes of Collision, whether it's Apologia Academy, or Ask Me Anything, a private stream once a month where we meet together with just our All Access partners.

We can ask questions, interact with each other via that medium, and so there you go. There's everything. Hey, this is one of my very favorite subjects to talk about, because it is everything. Recently at Apologia Church, we have taken a small sidestep away from the series we've been in, Book of Proverbs, Wisdom from Above, Verse by Verse.

We're about halfway through right now, and so we're doing a series right now called Core Doctrine at Apologia Church, and some of it is sort of core doctrinal teachings of Apologia Church. It could be things like post-millennialism, theonomy, presuppositional apologetics, you know, things like that that are important to us.

We believe that they have major consequences. We think that they're thoroughly biblical, but there's some issues we would say it's core doctrine for us. We believe with all of our hearts it's biblical, it's ectrogenical, it's true, but there are certain things that are core doctrine that are not essential doctrine.

For example, there are brothers and sisters who are far more rigorous than me in their thinking, and solid, and just amazing, and have been gifts to the church. Men like Dr. John MacArthur. Dr. John MacArthur is, I think, responsible for ultimately leading me to Christ out of my drug addiction.

That's where I really feel like I really truly understood the gospel, was reading MacArthur. And yet, MacArthur would disagree with us strongly on eschatology. He is a premillennialist, a dispensational premillennialist of sorts, and, however, we agree on the essential aspect of eschatology, and that is that Christ is returning to judge the living and the dead.

There's going to be a full and final resurrection of the just and the unjust, and so we're in full agreement. Christ is returning, bodily resurrection, all of that, but we disagree on some details about what happens as we get there, and so there's the essentials we agree on in eschatology, but we have core doctrine at Apologia Church that we teach from the pulpit, and so in this series, all that to say, we're kind of weaving in and out at Apologia Church in this short series on what is like a core doctrine, not essential, but then also essentials, and so, for example, we started doing it like a line, building a house anyways, and so foundationally, we're talking about who is God.

That's the first question we ask in terms of the Christian faith is who is God, so we started the entire discussion of core doctrine on the Trinity, the nature of God, the persons of the Trinity, and so we spent two weeks on that, and now we're moving to the next question I think is important as we build that house is who is Jesus, and is Jesus the promised Messiah, because everything really hangs on that, like all the other parts of Christian doctrine are ultimately irrelevant if Jesus isn't actually the promised Messiah, and I think most of you guys would probably agree with me on that is if Jesus isn't the Messiah, then his teachings are ultimately irrelevant, and so everything kind of hangs in the balance on that question, is Jesus the Messiah?

You used the trilemma in your sermon. You said he's either Lord, liar, or lunatic, right? He was either a madman or a conman, or he is who he said he was, God.

Exactly, and I wanted to use that terminology, of course, that comes from C .S. Lewis, the terminology of madman or conman, because I think that that probably strikes all of us in the modern a little more impactful in terms of a conman, someone who engages in trickery and deception, and they're trying to gain, or a madman, someone that's just a nutter.

They're crazy, or he's Lord. He's who he claimed to be, and so that's where we're at right now. I'm doing the second part of the sermon this Sunday. It's actually my favorite part, believe it or not, even though I can talk for days on the first part in terms of the direct messianic prophecies towards Jesus.

They're astonishing, but I think that there's a level we're going to talk about today in terms of the symbolism fulfilled in Jesus that to me is just undeniably divine. People couldn't have thought through that 1 ,500 years before Christ.

They didn't even know what ultimately they were doing when they're doing these rituals and all these different practices and customs. They're separated so far from one another as this revelation is being unfolded in history, and they couldn't have even foresaw exactly.

This is a good point. When you talk about the symbols, and I'm jumping ahead here, but let me tell you how excited I am about this.

Spoiler alert.

Spoiler alert. For me, the direct prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament in terms of the who, the where, the why, the what, the when, the how fulfilled in Jesus, the specific timing indicators, literally nailing down the time of the Messiah, putting a guardrail around the timing of the Messiah so that when that temple falls, if there's no Messiah, there is no Messiah because he had to appear and be cut off before that temple was destroyed.

Those are astonishing to me, but the symbolism is wild to me. It's wild because you'll read things in the Old Testament that look, they're weird for us to look at, but they were also probably kind of weird for the Jews when they received them.

Like, okay, here's this ritual thing we got to do. There's all this symbolism here. Okay, Yahweh commands us to do this, and so we're going to do it, but they didn't understand exactly why, right? Yahweh says, and they do, and so that's what happened, but they couldn't have possibly foresaw what it was going to ultimately be in its fulfillment in Mashiach, but here's proof of it.

Are you ready for this? Here's proof of it that they didn't know 1400 years before Jesus, when Moses is coming and all that's taking place, but proof that they did not even comprehend this was that the disciples themselves, they are tripped up by this and confused by this whole situation.

Like, they didn't just like have the ministry of Jesus and understand all these things perfectly in his life and ministry and his death and resurrection. They're running. They're like denying they even know Jesus, and they're like the road to Emmaus.

Like, disciples are confused. Like, we thought it was the Messiah. He's dead now. He's murdered. We saw him.

Yeah, they had preconceptions, but it certainly didn't look like what they were expecting. I think that is for absolute certain. It's like, and I think that goes along with the message of the apostles is that, okay, brothers, here it is.

Here's the hope and consolation of Israel. It doesn't look exactly like what we were expecting, but he's come.

Yeah, and those disciples, it was only post resurrection and post ascension that they began to go, oh my goodness, this was there the whole time. And look at the fulfillment and nobody controlled this.

Nobody's controlling the narrative.

It's divinely orchestrated historical redemption.

It unfolds right on top of them, right? Like, they're not even prepared for it. Like, I mean, Peter, for crying out loud, is telling Jesus, like, no, you're not going to go and die. Like, we're not going to let that happen kind of a thing.

Like, how much do they understand this? How much are they manipulating the process? They're not. It's unfolding right on top of them. And that's why I think the symbols fulfilled in Jesus are just so trippy.

And there's no way, honestly, to plumb the depths. The more, and I said this at church, the older I get, the more I walk with Jesus, the more I realize I don't understand and don't know, and there's so much more to learn.

And somebody might, like, hear a message that I give on the symbolism of a messianic prophecy fulfilled. I'm like, man, you know so much. I'm going to say, like, get busy, because I know so very little.

There is so much more depth to plumb and to get out. And I'm constantly excited about that. And that's why I love God's word is there's so much that I don't know that I get to learn and understand more.

And I feel like regularly, I'm presented with something new, like I never even understood that. That's unbelievable. Man, God is amazing. But I want to say to start with this, that this question is important, because as I said, and I think everybody listening would agree with me on this, all of the Christian life, all Christian praxis, everything, Christian ethical systems, all depend upon the question being answered rightly as to whether Jesus is actually the Messiah, the promised Messiah.

Like it doesn't do us any good to follow Jesus because it makes us feel good. Like that is not the Christian apologetic. Like it's true because I feel like it's true. It's true because I prayed about it.

It's true because I had an experience. And look, I even said, I said on Sunday, look, your experience and my experience in Jesus is valid if it's true that Jesus is the Messiah, right? Because everybody from across a broad spectrum of religions can give you their conversion story.

I mean, you can, like after the show, just look up YouTube and conversion stories of Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam. You name the religion and there's conversion stories. And some of them are quite powerful and emotional.

As a matter of fact, I mentioned because it's so close to us, you know, you're not going to go to a local ward in the East Valley here in Arizona on a Sunday without sitting through hours of people crying.

Giving their testimony of how they prayed about the Book of Mormon or how they became a Latter-day Saints.

Completely sincere.

Completely sincere with tears, with tears. And so the point is, is that we cannot say that we believe Jesus is the Messiah because it seems so right to us. It feels so good to us because I have had this personal encounter with Jesus.

I'm sorry, that is not an epistemologically sound place to stand. Is it true in my own life, in your life, that Jesus saved me, changed my mind, changed my heart? He's still, He's still changing me. Like, that I know Him.

I love Him.

But you said this in the sermon. It's not just what the Bible says about Him. It's what do you do with the specific claims that He made of Himself and the call that He makes? Like when He calls you to come and die, is that a call that you've responded to?

And the only way that you can know that is if Scripture has indeed led you to the conclusion that He is who He said He was. That He's God. He's El Gabor, right? From the passage that you quoted already.

He is Lord of creation. He receives worship. He forgives sins, right? You have to see these things. You have to hear who He is, who He is telling you He is. And you have to come on His terms. That's what it means for Him to be Lord.

And so I like when you put that distinction because a lot of people like the fruit of His message, the love your neighbor as yourself, love your enemy, all of those things that people like about Jesus and about the Christian movement, but it's devoid of actually having Him and knowing Him and treasuring Him as Lord and Savior.

Have you done that? Do you want Christ or do you just want His stuff?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I try to challenge our kids all the time at Apologia Church with this. Like I was doing our youth group for a number of months and all the pastors are trying to pour into the kids. And one of the things that has kept stressing over and over and over and over again to the teens of our church is that you have to come to Jesus because of you and your relationship with Him, not mom and dad.

Not living with your parents.

Not because you're comfortable in this community. Christian communities are awesome. They're awesome. There's love, there's support, there's affection, there's hospitality, there's graciousness. There's a call to love one another as you love yourself.

That's a great community to be a part of. It's awesome. But that's not going to sustain you in life is that I really like this community. It feels comfortable to me. I'm trying to challenge people. You need to know that Jesus is the Messiah and you have repented and you have believed in Him.

You have come to die with Christ and rise from the dead. And that's a pretty tall order in terms of the message of Jesus. And this is what we went back to on that dilemma is that, or trilemma, you have, you know, He's making claims about Himself.

Let's be honest about it as Christians. As they're trying to impress upon us as a church, Jesus is making claims that do not allow us to place Him in sort of a mid space between like, I really like His ethical teachings.

I love, you know, He's very loving and let the children come to me. And He's with tax collectors and prostitutes. And He loves sinners. He didn't come for the righteous, but the unrighteous. And, you know, He came for the sick.

They're total claims about all of reality.

Yeah, exactly. And you can't be in the middle of there and go, I really like those things and like to turn the other cheek kind of stuff. But I don't want to like really hear those other claims of exclusivity that Jesus makes.

Like John 14, six, I'm the way and the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me. Or when Jesus turns to the crowds and says to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate, and then He names your favorite people.

And He says, you also have to take up your cross to come and die. And He basically says like, you know, count the cost of coming to me or don't come to me. And then He loses this massive crowd. Well, there's the message of Jesus.

Why isn't everyone attaching to that? And, you know, so you can't say, I think He's a great moral teacher, a great ethical teacher. He's a great man. He's a great model, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'll take that, but I won't take these exclusive claims.

You're not allowed to do that with Jesus because He also said that He was God. He also said that unless you believe, ego, me, I am, you will die in your sins. He also said before Abraham was, I am. He also received worship.

He also claimed to be able to forgive sins. And people say, who can forgive sins but God alone? Exactly, exactly. He showed power over His own creation. He's walking on water. He's healing the sick and the blind and the deaf and the lame.

And He's raising people from death to life. And He's called the Savior. And God says in His word, Isaiah 43, 11, I, even I am Yahweh. And besides me, there is no Savior. And here Jesus is the Savior. So here's the point.

You cannot take the message of Jesus and say, I want like half of it. Like He's, because look, He said some other things too. And if He wasn't those things, like if He's not the only Savior, if He's not a prophet, priest, and king, if He's not God in the flesh, then He's crazy.

He's crazy if He thought He was, and He's really not, then He's crazy. And you're not supposed to follow crazy people. If Jesus is someone who was self-deceived and He really wasn't God, the creator of all things, the only one worthy of worship.

If He really isn't God, then He's crazy.

You know, you mentioned not being able to plumb the depths of this, and this just occurred to me. Is there ever a point that you can imagine in the narrative of the gospels where Jesus isn't absolutely sure about who He is and what He came to do?

Right.

Not for one moment.

Right.

Not for one recorded instance in His life or in His ministry did He doubt who He was and why He was here.

That's exactly right. Like we do. Exactly. And so He knows who He's claiming to be. And so again, no middle ground with Jesus. You can't say, well, I personally like some of His ethical system stuff. I was like, nope, He doesn't let you do that.

He says, duh, come and die or don't come. Take up your cross to come and die or don't come. You need to love everybody in comparison to me less. If they're more than me, you're not worthy to be my disciple.

It's total. It's all of life. It's comprehensive. It's every inch of you. It's everything inside, outside. It's all of you.

How about being able to stand up and say, which of you convicts me of sin? Could any other human being make that claim upon his own meritorious record?

I couldn't say that this week with my family.

Yeah.

They'd all be saying, have a seat, Dad.

Why don't you sit this one out?

Yeah, you know, but He can say that. Jesus can say, which of you accuses me of sin? He could say it to His enemies and He could say it to His family. He could say it to His closest disciples who have walked with Him, people who know Him best.

He could say, which of you accuses me of sin? And it's silence, not a word. No one can do it. And so then the next thing I impressed was, Jesus doesn't allow a middle space with Himself in terms of, I like His ethical system, He's a good moral teacher, a good man, yada yada.

But I want to reject His other claims because, look, if He knew, if He knew He wasn't God in the flesh, if He knew He wasn't the Messiah sent from the Father, I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent me.

And this is the will of Him who has sent me, that of all that He's given to me, I should lose nothing. Okay, now He's saying that. So it's true, or He's self-deceived and crazy, or He knew He wasn't sent from God and He was deceiving people, right?

Because if it's not true, if He's not the Messiah, then pick which one, which lane are you in? Is He a con man? Is He a madman? Is He Lord? And so we're just not allowed as Christians to have that middle space with Jesus because Jesus doesn't allow the call of the gospel to be presented like that.

It's total. Repent and believe the gospel, come to Christ and live, come to die, trust in Christ. He's the only way to salvation. It's a total, all-encompassing, all-of-life thing. And so that presents also a challenge that I like to make to my brothers and sisters as often as I can, is do you know why you believe that Jesus is the Messiah?

The Old Testament as the Foundation for Knowing Jesus Is the Messiah

So, and I'll just put it to you in this way, and then Zach, maybe you can jump in on this. What you do see in the New Testament, start at the Gospels. So in Luke 24, road to Emmaus, very confused disciples after the resurrection of Jesus.

They just saw the man dead, murdered on a tree. They saw him pierced through his side. They see blood and water flow out. He's dead, dead, dead. And he's in a grave.

Very dead.

Yeah.

And they know that, you know, dead people don't typically come to life. But, you know, we saw the miracles of Jesus. What was that about? He's raising people to life. But like, can he raise himself to life?

How does a dead person move or do anything to raise himself? And Jesus did say, by the way, he would. He says, destroy this temple. And in three days, I will raise it up again.

Once again, certainty about his claims, who he was.

Exactly. No one takes my life from me. I lay down on my own accord. But so when you consider the road to Emmaus experience, where Jesus then is walking with them on that road, and he's like, what's going on?

What are you guys talking about? And they're like, what do you mean? Where you been? Kind of a thing. I'm paraphrasing.

I love how he approaches that interaction. What's going on, guys?

Tell me about this.

What's up, guys? And then Jesus calls them foolish. And on what basis? This is the key. This is the key. This is what I'm going to say is the epistemological foundation. If someone says, I don't know what that word means.

Yes, you do. It's the theory of knowledge. How do you know that's true? How do you know it's true, right? Not just, I feel it's true. No, no, no. How do you know that that's actually true? So for Jesus, when he chastises him, he says, foolish.

Why?

He says, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. And so his point is the anchor for Jesus after the resurrection is, you guys should have known this. What are you doing being so foolish and confused here?

Slow of heart.

The prophets said this was going to happen.

Yes.

The Old Testament is not ambiguous. And I hate when people say that. Who was I talking to that said that? Andy Stanley.

What, like it's just up in the air?

Andy Stanley. Somewhere in the debate I had, the radio debate I had with Andy Stanley on Unbelievable Radio, it's somewhere online. YouTube, I think it's been seen a lot on YouTube. Somewhere in there, I can't remember exactly how he said it, but it kind of like threw me.

I was like, what? But there was so much to deal with. I didn't get a chance to really deal with that.

Yeah, it was such a short amount of time.

About the resurrection question, it was like it was prophesied in the Old Testament. And he was like, well, sort of. And it's like, sort of? Sort of?

I'm pretty sure it was.

Jesus said to those disciples on the road to Emmaus, foolish, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. And it was in relation to his death and resurrection. So it's not ambiguous in the Old Testament that the Messiah was going to be cut off and that he would prolong his days, right?

That the Messiah was going to die and rise again. It's in the Old Testament. And so...

Does the phrase son of man not have any meaning? I mean, again, connecting it to the very beginning, which is where you're going here. He gave them the greatest Bible study in the history of the world.

But where did he start? And we'd like to think he'd started a certain place. But talking about his connection to Adam as the last Adam, as the second Adam. Well, where did Adam come from? He came from the ground, you know, from the dirt.

And where does Jesus come from? Well, he comes out of the ground. And then he's seen working the ground. That's the first recorded witness of his activity.

Only what Adam was supposed to do.

Yeah, just the gardener, the last gardener, the constant gardener. If you want to get theatrical with it.

Just the one that God told to tend his garden and take dominion.

Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, but go ahead.

We love this.

The symbolism is... It's so deep and so amazing.

It's like the soil.

My point is, so Jesus anchors the validity of his messianic title to the Old Testament scriptures. And so he takes them through the Old Testament, showing everywhere that Moses and the prophets had spoken about him.

So he said, that story is about me. That Old Testament story, they were all talking about me, not somebody else. That's a bold claim, by the way.

Yeah, could a madman or a lunatic have made that claim?

You know? Yeah, so the next one is, as you move through the New Testament, you see the testimony of the leadership of the early church and the apostles approaching the question of whether Jesus is the Messiah.

Not like many evangelicals, or I would say... Sorry, I say many Mormons, or I would say many evangelicals do today. And they base it upon their own personal experience. I'm not saying your testimony isn't relevant.

They are valid.

Or valid. Of course it is. But only if, only if Jesus is who he claimed to be. And the way you know Jesus is who he claimed to be is the same way the apostles showed it. So when Pentecost is happening, where are they attaching this understanding of what's taken place?

They're quoting the Old Testament scriptures. That's what Peter's doing.

Right.

He's connecting Pentecost.

Applying it to themselves.

He's saying, that story is what we are living in.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah, this story is our story.

Right.

Like we have been, we have been made a part of it.

And so that is this. Or he says the other way. He says, this is that which Joel, the prophet Joel spoke of.

And Jesus does that in terms of his own ministry. He stands up to read from the scroll of Isaiah. And what does he say? He says, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me. He has anointed me. Mashiach, the anointed one.

Right?

He is the anointed king that establishes the rule of God over the world. That's what the Messiah means.

Right?

In Israel, the kings were anointed.

Right.

For their particular duties. You have instances of prophets and priests being anointed too. But in the terms of the Davidic dynasty.

Right?

There was a descendant of David promise that would come, who would sit on David's throne.

Right?

He would come from the lineage of David. And that's why in the New Testament, the gospels open up with all these genealogies. To show you that Jesus has the royal right to David's throne. He's David's son.

Right.

He's the heir of the Davidic dynasty. But the thing about it is, the heir of the Davidic dynasty has dominion over everything.

Yep.

All the nations.

Not just Israel.

Right.

Over the ends of the earth. All the nations are going to come to him. Again, getting ahead of ourselves.

No, no, keep filling out like that.

The Messiah is the anointed king. He is the one upon whom the spirit of God rests.

That's right.

In a particular sense.

Right?

He is the one who will build a house for God's name.

Right?

David, one of your descendants is going to sit on your throne. Nathan says to David in 2 Samuel 7. You're going to have a descendant that sits on your throne. He's going to build a house.

Right?

And that dynasty that he builds is going to be in perpetuity.

Right?

It's going to continue.

Yep. So.

And to the point you were making, when Jesus is reading from that scroll in the synagogue, he says, today, this day, the scripture is fulfilled in your hands.

Again, he's just, this is me.

Yeah, it's me.

This is me.

And so that's what Jesus is doing. That's what the apostles are doing at the beginning of Acts. That's how they went into the world. They didn't just say, hey guys, we've had this great experience. And you know, it feels good to us.

And you should join our group and like, you know, pray about this. They didn't do that. They said, all that is what we're living in right now. Jesus is a fulfillment of all of that. And then when the apostle Paul, who was once an antagonist towards the Christian church, he says in Galatians that he persecuted the church of God and he tried to destroy it.

That was his mission. He didn't, he wasn't open-minded to the message of Jesus or the testimony of the apostles or the early Christians. He's not open-minded. He has the Damascus Road experience where now he sees Jesus alive from the dead.