10 - Deity of Jesus Christ, Part 3

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us, and if you have your syllabus, well, you won't be needing it tonight. We will not be looking at the syllabus tonight, and there's several reasons why.

This will be the last class for the year, so you'll get a couple weeks break. I'll get into more details at the end of the show to explain why that is, but this will be the last class of the year. But I will be away next week and will not be able to be here, and then we have Christmas and then New Year's, and I will be taking the time to be working on the material that we're going to go over tonight.

Staying with that, if you look in your syllabus, if you have a syllabus, you'd see that the next lesson is the humanity of Jesus Christ, a very important lesson, and one that many take for granted, shall we say.

And the reason that people take it for granted is because they go, duh, yeah, Jesus is human. Yeah, but that wasn't actually believed in the first century. And so there's some explaining that has to be done to explain His humanity, because that's what much of the New Testament had to deal with.

Many of the writers. But tonight what we're going to do, we're still going to stay within the lesson six. Lesson six, which is what we are dealing with on the deity of Jesus Christ. The deity of Christ.

I want to do one more lesson on this, give you some materials that's not in your syllabus, and it's actually material that's going to be coming out, Lord willing, very soon in a new book. The new book right now, the working title is Jesus Christ, Claims of Deity.

And that is a book that I am working on writing, have quite a bit of it done, of the portions of it. It'll be a relatively small book, one of those little quarter-sized page, maybe 120, 150 pages. And so it won't be too big, but it is going to hopefully be a definitive answer to the claims that people make that Jesus never claimed to be deity.

We're going to go through some of that tonight. And I hope that after tonight's lesson, you'll not only be excited to get the book, which as students, if you enroll in the academy, you'll probably get one for free, but if you want to enroll in the academy, go to the website right there.

Look at that. It's right there. And you can get that. The book that we're going to do is hopefully going to be one that will kind of put a nail in the coffin on this debate, although it really won't because most people that refuse to accept any knowledge other than what they already believe, well, they're not going to accept what Scripture says anyway.

But we're going to go through the Scriptures to show that the evidence is overwhelming that Jesus Christ claimed to be God, that the New Testament claims that Jesus is God. So let's begin. We've broken the book down, and the book is going to be separated into three sections.

The first section, and to help with your memory, it all starts with the letter W. There are the words of Christ, the works of Christ, and the witness of Christ. So it's easy to remember. And this is based out of the fact that when you look in John, he says that Jesus Christ said that his works and his witness testified to what he claimed.

So what we obviously would know is that his words would too. So let's start with that. Let us start with the words of deity. The words of deity. Did Jesus claim the words of deity? That would be a simple thing.

And we're not going to look at too much Scripture tonight because what I'm going to do is instead of reading the Scriptures, you're going to want to go on YouTube later and re-watch this. Of course, until the book comes out, and then you can get the book.

But until then, I'm going to mention many passages of Scripture. I'm not going to quote them. I'm just going to reference them for you to look up later. So you may want to take this class, review it again on YouTube later when it's up there.

Take notes for anything that you missed. But when we look at the words of deity, we're going to break those down into two different categories. Two different categories. The first one is going to be the explicit words.

Now, let's start by saying what does explicit mean? An explicit statement. So an explicit statement is a statement where you have something that is very, very clear. There's a little question in it. It is a statement that is stating something without need for referencing of other things or need of much, well, shall we say, further understanding of the text.

This is opposed to what we're going to talk about in a minute, implicit. But explicit statements. There are explicit statements that Jesus made where he referred to himself as God. These are just through the Gospels, but Matthew 7, 21 to 22, he calls himself Lord, Lord.

Now that's not just a reference to him being Lord as master, as a ruler, or as a teacher. But because it's Lord, Lord, it's doubly emphasized, which is always used to refer to God. So you have Matthew 7.

You have Matthew 11, 27. You have Matthew 12, 6, Matthew 12, 8, Matthew 21, 13. I can go on. But there's some more explicit ones that we want to focus on. We mentioned last time Mark 2. You can look at Matthew 9, Mark 2.

They're going to deal with the same issue there where he's going to make statements that are pretty explicit. He's going to say that he has the authority to forgive sin. He's clearly stating that he has this ability to forgive sin.

He's stating he's God in there because that's what the argument is over. But we're going to see in John 8, John 10, I think two of the clearest in those passages where what you see is that Jesus says, I am.

He calls himself I am. Before Abraham was, I am. Jews pick up stones to stone him. Now, why is that important? Well, we see in John 10, he says the Father and I are one. And you say, well, gee, those don't sound very explicit to me.

Well, they actually are because the Jews of the time, the people of the time, those who understood the meaning, and that's the key. Remember, when we interpret something, we're going to interpret it based on the meaning that people understood at the time.

That's how we interpret. And so when we do that, we're going to see that Jesus Christ very clearly was saying he was God because the people that were there, those that were listening, and those that understood the language of the time, they understood what he was claiming.

They understood what he was claiming because they picked up stones to stone him. Now, why did they pick up stones to stone? They picked up stones to stone him. He says, for what good works have I done that you're going to stone me?

For you being a man claimed to be God. Now, do you see? The context makes it clear that those that were there understood that he was claiming to be God. Well, let's look at the implicit statements. Now, an implicit statement, different from explicit.

Explicit is directly out of. This is something you have to read into. So an explicit statement doesn't need you reading into it. An explicit statement, you'll read into the text. Now, when we go through the rest of the different categories, they really do fit into explicit or implicit.

Maybe you could think of it as direct or indirect claims. But we're looking at the words, the things that Christ actually said that made those claims. Alright? Now, there's many implicit things. For example, Jesus Christ in Matthew 7, 24 and 26, he equates his words with God's words.

That's an implicit statement. In other words, he's saying that when he speaks, it's as if God is speaking. Well, that's pretty clear. You can see that Jesus made statements. You can look at Matthew 10, that Jesus claims that the rejection of him and his message is going to be worse for the person who does that than for Sodom and Gomorrah.

He actually claims that if you reject him, you will face a judgment. In other words, and we're going to look at this even later, that Jesus Christ is saying that he's the standard of judgment. When the disciples of John the Baptist in Matthew 11, 4 to 6, or you could look in Luke 7, 22 to 23, and when you look at those, what do you see?

You see that John the Baptist sends his disciples, because he's sitting in jail and saying, Jesus, go talk to Jesus and find out what the deal is, because is he the one? I mean, I thought he was the one.

I saw all these signs, but I'm sitting in jail. I don't see what I expect to see, and so there's the question. So what happens? Disciples come, and Jesus says, look at the things I'm doing and tell John what you see.

He's implying to them the fact that he has authority over demons, over sickness. We're going to look at those in detail, but he's implying there that he has the authority of God, okay? And we're going to see in a moment why that's important, but you can look at some others.

You can look at Matthew 20, verse 28, the Great Commission. You'll see there, sorry, that wasn't the Great Commission. We're going to get that later. 20, 28, when Jesus announces that he would be the sacrifice, that he would give his life as a ransom, it implies that his life is not just a human life.

It's just not a temporal life. Otherwise, it can't count for all of eternity for all of the people. So there you go in seeing that there's implications. Many of these implications are when you take them with other things, but Mark 10, 17 to 18, Luke 18, 18, Luke 4, 18 to 20, Luke 6, 5, Luke 10, 22.

I can go on, but let's look at the next passage, and that is this one, the fact that there's references to God as his father, references to God as his father. And you're saying, well, how is that a claim of deity?

I mean, that doesn't seem like much of a claim. I mean, we call Jesus father, and in the New Testament, Paul says you can even call him Abba, which in Hebrew is daddy. In other words, we can be so intimate with God that we can call him daddy.

But that is not the way the Jews would see it. Jewish people at that time, and even some today, would find it offensive to be so informal with God that you'd call him my father. But when Jesus spoke of it, it was with a terminology that we see from the reaction of the Jewish leaders that made it clear that Jesus was saying that his relationship with God the father was different than their relationship with God the father.

But there's many passages where Jesus refers to God the father as his father. Matthew 1127, Matthew 1249, 1513, 1819, 2023, and I'm just giving some of them. Luke 2, 48, where he says, did you not know that I must be about my father's business?

He said that to his human parents, making a distinction between his father, Joseph, and God the father. Luke 10, 21 -22, Luke 22, 29, Luke 24, 49, John 2, 16, refers to the temple as my father's house.

When he speaks about his father, God the father being his father, the Jews understood that this was a distinction because they often questioned him on that. Alright, let's look at one other here, another one in this area, and that is the claims that he made when Jesus Christ claimed to know, to have knowledge of the kingdom of God.

Jesus Christ actually claimed over and over again that he had intimate knowledge of things that went on in heaven. For example, he claimed to know the kingdom of God in Matthew 5, 3, or Luke 6, 20. He made the claim in Matthew 18, 19.

He claimed to know what the father was doing in heaven at that moment. How could he see what's going on in heaven? How could he even know? You and I have never been to heaven. Well, okay, I haven't. Maybe you have, but yeah, let's not go there.

Alright, there's plenty of books out there of people that have gone to heaven. And, you know, I always find it funny because if people, when they write books about, oh, I went to heaven and I was in heaven.

They write these books and what do they do? They talk about they were in the river of Jordan having a splashing fight with Jesus. That is about as disrespectful as you can get. You know, when we look through the scriptures and we see people that see God, they're not having fun and splashing and, oh, let me splash you with water.

That's really in a book. When they see God, what do they do? They bow their face to the ground and say, depart from me because I'm a sinner. They're not looking to have fun and play. They see how sinful they are before a holy God and they want God to be away because they realize their sinfulness.

Look at Daniel's reaction when he sees an angel even coming. He's just like, whoa, whoa, and that's not even God. But even more so, what is Isaiah's reaction? I'm undone. I mean, I'm a people of unclean lips.

I'm a sinner and I'm a people of sinners. He's on his face. When John, in the book of Revelation, hears the voice of God, he bows down. He's not playing games. These guys that write these books saying they saw Jesus in the mirror as they were shaving, you know how I know they didn't see Jesus?

They kept shaving. Yeah, you wouldn't keep shaving if you saw Jesus. If Jesus appeared in the mirror, you would not keep shaving. You'd be in fear because you'd see His holiness and your sinfulness. That's one of the beauties, I guess, of the moment we die and we can be gone from this body of sin.

But I think that if we saw our sin the way God sees our sin, even just for a moment, it would probably stop our heart. That's how much we are so desensitized to our sin. We justify it so much. But Jesus Christ, over and over again, claimed He had personal, intimate knowledge of what was going on in heaven, in the kingdom of God, before His existence on earth, during His existence on earth, and what would happen afterwards when we all die at the judgment.

Matthew 18. You can just go through all of Matthew 18. You'll see it a bunch of times. Matthew 18, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 18, 19, 23. Boy, that's just Matthew 18. But we can keep going. Matthew 20, the first 16 verses.

Matthew 21, 28 -32. If you want to go to Mark, well, we've got Mark 9, 42 -48. Jesus Christ warns against sin based on a knowledge of the kingdom of heaven with that knowledge. Mark 10, 25 -26. Jesus knows how hard it is for a rich man who depends on their wealth to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

You can look at Luke 8 -10, Luke 9 -11, Luke 10 -11, Luke 10 -17. Luke 13, 18 -21. John 3, 3 and 5. John 3, 13. Just to name a few. And I literally, I'm not saying to name a few just because I don't have anything more to say.

I'm saying just to name a few because we've got to move on in class. I literally have hundreds of passages. Hundreds. And so, to the question that's in the chat room, yes, all of these are going to be in the book.

What we're going to do with this book actually is this. The book itself is going to be very short. Explaining kind of what I'm explaining to you right now. How these things prove the deity of Christ. But then there's going to be a second section of the book that is literally nothing but the evidence.

We're going to go through and I'm going to give you every one of these passages with a short explanation after many of them that need it. To explain why this particular passage shows the deity of Christ.

Now what you end up having to do is take these things because some of them are implicit. Meaning you read into it. You have to imply the meaning. So you have to take it and understand how it relates to other things.

What are some of those other things? Well, we're going to look at those. Let's look at some of those, one of those things now. We looked previously at the works of deity. Now let's look at the, or I said the words of deity.

I should have said, let's look at the works of deity. And the first work that I want to point out is His omniscience. His omniscience. Now if you remember, we looked at this, when we talked about this, when we saw the attributes of God, the very first lessons we did, the attributes of deity, we said that there are certain attributes that only are true of God.

Okay? And those attributes are the same attributes that Jesus over and over and over and over displays. In other words, if Jesus Christ has these attributes, that means He is God. Okay? Because these attributes are attributes of deity.

So that's what we're going to look at. These attributes that, so the first one, and we're going to look at first under the works of Jesus, the omniscience that He did. Now when you look at His omniscience, we can look in Matthew 8, 11 and 12, where Jesus knows who's going to be in heaven and hell.

How could you know that? How could Jesus know who's going to be in heaven or hell before He got there? Furthermore, how could He know whether you and I would be in heaven or hell? You think about that.

We weren't even born yet. If Jesus was just a man, He wouldn't even know you and I. But Jesus does know you and I. Why? Because He was omniscient. Because He was God. Alright? Matthew 9, 4, Mark 2, 6 and 8, Luke 5, 21, those three passages all deal with that passage, what I referred to earlier, where Jesus answers the questions in the heart of the Jewish people.

When Jesus says to a man, your sins are forgiven, and they think in their mind, read the text, it doesn't say they spoke it, they thought it. And Jesus, knowing what they were thinking, answered the question that was in their mind.

He displayed His deity. But just, I'm going to give just a few. Matthew 9, 13, Matthew 9, 24, Matthew 10, 23, Matthew 11, 11, Matthew 11, 12, Matthew 11, 14, Matthew 11, 21 to 24, verse 25, 26, Matthew 12, 25, that's just Matthew.

Let's start looking at some of Mark. We can look at Mark, I've got to keep going because Matthew is so long. But we can look at Matthew 26, and in chapter 26 we can look at verse 13, verse 18, verse 21, verse 23, verse 29, verse 31, verse 32, verse 34, verse 45, verse 46, verse 50.

And that's just chapter 26. I'm hoping that this is making the point really, really clear, and you're going, hey Andrew, we're not knuckleheads out here, we're getting the point. Yeah, but I really want to bash it over the heads of people that don't get the point, because some people just don't.

And so, we really want you to understand, I want you to see this, alright? But you can go to Mark 8, where the disciples are discussing one another a fact that they have no bread, and then Jesus being aware of this, He walks into the conversation that they were having without Him, and all of a sudden He knows what they were speaking of.

You can look at Mark 8, verse 31, where Jesus explains the future events to the disciples. Every time He gave an explanation of a future judgment, what He's doing there is He is showing His deity. He talks about that over and over, but Luke 7, 40, Luke 9, 47 -48, where He knew the minds of the disciples.

Luke 11, 17, knowing their thoughts is what it says there. Luke 19, 5, think about this, you may be familiar with this story. Zacchaeus, he's hiding up in a tree, okay? He doesn't know Jesus. How do we know he doesn't know Jesus?

Because he's hiding in a tree looking for Him, to see Him. If he knew Jesus personally, he could just walk up to Him. But he's up in a tree looking down because he's short of stature. What does Jesus do?

Jesus walks up, knows him by name. How did Jesus know his name? A man He never saw before. You ever think about that? You see, there's so many passages that people just read over in their Bible, and they don't even think that this describes Jesus as deity.

See, when Jesus said to Zacchaeus and calls him by name, I'm going to stay at your house today, He's sitting there and showing that He knows something that no man could know. He knows the man's name. He knows the man personally, intimately.

You want more evidence of that? Well, what happened when Nathanael sees Jesus? Jesus walks up to Nathanael, and He turns to Nathanael and says to Nathanael, and this you can look at in John 1, 50 -51, Jesus proves to Nathanael when He sees Nathanael, and He says that this is a man without guile, and He says, you know, how could you know me?

Oh, I knew you before you were sitting under the fig tree. You see, He was proving to Nathanael that He was God. Nathanael's reaction? Yeah, he recognized it. In John 1, 47 -49, when that happened, when Nathanael was still approaching Jesus, Jesus declared to Nathanael, and just as He did with Peter in John 1, 24, 42, sorry, when He knew who Peter was, He knows who Nathanael is, and we know that this was a divine, because Nathanael's reaction was to call Jesus the Son of God after displaying His omniscience.

And we're going to come to why that claim is a claim of deity. So that's just His omniscience. Does He have any other attributes of deity that He did by works? Well, sure, we have His omnipresence, His omnipresence.

Now you say, where does Jesus Christ display that He's omnipresent, that He's always present everywhere? Well, it's a passage you're probably very familiar with. Matthew 28, 20, where Jesus says to the disciples, and lo, I am with you always.

And this He's saying to every believer of every age. To be present with every believer in every age at all times is to have the divine attribute of omnipresence. So Jesus is claiming if He could be with everyone.

He's with you in your room right now watching this show, as He is with me right here in this studio, as He is with countless others around the world who just didn't want to watch the show because, well, they're sinners.

No, I'm kidding. I mean, you don't have to watch the Striving for Eternity Academy to go to heaven. But why take the chance? I mean, really? Alright, so, there's some other things that He did as works, and that would be He displayed that He has the forgiveness of sins.

He forgave people's sins. We already talked about the Matthew 9, Mark 2, and Luke 5 passage, so we won't go there. But we can look at Luke 1 .77. Zechariah announces that Jesus will provide the forgiveness of sins.

Luke 7 .47 -50, Jesus declared the sins of the woman in the Pharisees' house were forgiven. And even at the table, there were those that claimed, who is this that He can forgive sin? They realize what Jesus is saying when He says, you forgive sin.

Let me move on because we have a lot to do, a lot more to go through. But Luke 22, verse 22, John 1 .29, just to give a few more. Next, let's get into the authorities. Jesus Christ showed that He had certain authority that only God can have.

So He had the authority of God. What would that authority look like? Well, in Matthew 21, verses 23 -27, also corresponding to Mark 11, 28 -33, the chief priests and scribes and elders came to Jesus questioning His authority.

And He implies that His authority is from God, the same way John the Baptists or John the Baptizers' baptism is from God. You understand the connection there? John the Baptist or Baptizer was not claiming to be God because he baptized.

It was the baptism that he said he received from God. Now, what's the difference? Jesus Christ is claiming He has the authority of God who gave that baptism. So when they challenged His authority, the very question, He implies that He has the authority of God.

Matthew 28 .17, Jesus claims that all authority, this is again the Great Commission, all authority is given to Him to give to us. It is His to give. You can't give something that belongs to someone else.

Mark 1, verse 22. Let's look at another one that you're going to see throughout Scripture, over and over and over again. And many people don't think about this, how this shows the deity. But Jesus Christ had authority over illness.

Authority over illness. You say, well, gee, there's disciples healed. There's plenty of others who did healings. And we see throughout, I mean, Matthew 4 .23, Matthew 8 .2, Matthew 9 .4 -7, Matthew 8 .28 -30, Matthew 10 .1, over and over again.

We can look at Mark, Mark 3 .10, Mark 6 .5. We can look at Luke, and we see that in Luke 5 .17, Jesus had the power of the Lord to heal. Okay? But it's even more than that, because Jesus had the power to heal.

In other words, He had the authority within Himself. And we'll see that He even gives that authority to His disciples. If He has the authority to give the disciples, that He has the authority to give it to them so that they can go and heal others, then the authority is coming from Himself.

And yes, for the person asking out, we will try to get the book in Kindle form. Trying to answer the questions that are popping up in the chat room as well, as they come up. So if you do have a question, you can pop that up in the chat room, which means you should log in live.

It's one of the advantages to being live. But we see that Jesus, before He sent out the 70, He gave them the authority to heal the sick. Okay? So every time Jesus did that, every time Jesus healed the sick, He was proving that He was God.

Because He claimed the authority to, He claimed, when He looked at these things, He said He did it of His own authority. Not the authority of someone else. Alright? He also showed that He had authority over death.

Not just His death, but the death of others as well. Now, His own death is like the greatest. I mean, you need proof that Jesus Christ is God. He rose Himself from the dead. I mean, if He wasn't God, dead men don't rise.

Okay? And so, when you look at that, that is probably one of the greatest evidences. He said, I will raise myself from the dead. But He rose others from the dead. In Matthew 9, 23 -26, which corresponds to Mark 5, 40 -42, or Luke 8, 54 -55, those are the same event.

But Matthew 27, 50, Jesus had the authority to choose the moment when He would die. And that's how much authority He had over death. He hung on that cross and He said, I'm going to die at this moment in time.

I mean, we could think we could take our own life, but there's people who survive a suicide attempt. So, they don't even have control and authority over their own death. Jesus had authority not only over when He would die, but the ability to raise Himself from the dead.

But we see that He rose other people from the dead, Luke 7, 14 -15. He was entering a town called Nain. And He saw people carrying a man who had died. And they were carrying him. He was the only son of a mother, a widow.

He had compassion on her. What did He do? He ended the funeral procession by raising the child from the dead. Alright? And so, let's look at another one. Not only did He have authority over death, but He had authority over demons.

He had authority over demons. And He would do this often when He'd speak to the demons. Demons would have to obey Him. Jesus, in Matthew 4 -24, Jesus casts out all the demons. They have to obey Him. I don't believe they have to obey you and I.

It doesn't matter how much we use these magical incantations of In Jesus Name. We don't have that authority that they have to obey us. They obey Christ. And we could get into a debate on that. That's fine.

Plenty of people do. They do on our one video, Open Air Preaching with a Demon Possessed Heckler. Get it all the time. But you can look at Matthew 8 -16. You can look at Matthew 8 -32. Matthew 9 -32 -33.

Matthew 12 -43 -45. You can look at Mark 1 -25 -26. You can look at Mark 3 -15. You can look at Mark 7 -29 -30. You can look at Luke 8 -2 -3. You can look at Luke 10 -17. And this is the passage, again, where we say when the 72 returned, in Luke 9 -1, Jesus gives the disciples the power and the authority over demons.

And how do we know He has that authority? Because in Luke 10 -17, the 72 come back. They return and they say, wow, we actually were able to cast out all the demons. Why? Because they had the authority given by God.

And if Jesus Christ had that authority to give, that shows that it was His possession. That's an example of how we know He was God. Let's move on to another authority He had. He had authority, think about this, over weather.

He had the authority over weather. Okay? Being God, He can command the weather. Mark 4 -39. Luke 8 -24. Matthew 8 -26. Matthew 14 -32. Mark 6 -51. They're in a storm. What happens? Be still. He says to Peter, come out on the water.

He walks on water. We'll get to that in a moment. But then what does He do? He tells Peter, come on, to walk on the water. And then when Jesus gets on the boat, it's like, be calm. You know, time He's sleeping on the boat.

I mean, you're talking about professional sailors. John, James, Andrew, Peter. These are professional sailors. They're out on a ship and they're scared. Why? They're scared because they're seeing Jesus control the weather.

I've got to move on. Let's continue. One more for you is that Jesus Christ had authority over the physical world. The physical world. Okay? More than just the weather. He can make bread out of nothing.