Jesus the Infuriator

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Today I'd like to talk about Jesus. I think there's a show on VNE on Saturdays that the guy's like, let's talk about Jesus.

Well, I think that's a good thing. So let's talk about Jesus. But I'd like to talk today about Jesus in a way that, frankly, is biblical and provocative, and I think in that order.

Jesus sometimes is simply infuriating to those around him.

He infuriates people. Now, he doesn't infuriate all people. Once he saves you and you're his child, we don't have a father who's infuriating his children.

But people, see, are not born into the kingdom of God upon their natural birth.

They are born enemies of God. They are born sinful nature, with a sinful nature.

They are born with a father, and that father is Satan, because of Adam and Adam's fall, and how

God, the wise God, has considered us in Adam. And so when we're first born, we first understand things about Jesus, and then it means we understand our sin.

We could run across a Jesus that's different than a kind, fatherly kind of figure.

And I'm not confusing Jesus with the Father. I don't mean that. But as Jesus could have the attributes of a father, kind and tender towards a child.

Yet in some passages, we see Jesus as infuriating. Who thinks

Jesus is infuriating? I'll tell you. Those who think they have their own righteousness. Those that don't need to have themselves be told by another person.

Do you know you're so sinful, you need somebody else to pay for those sins, and those sins are a blight against God's holiness, and you ought to pay for those sins in hell forever, and ever, and ever.

And you are an enemy of God, and you are angry with God, and God is angry with you.

And you know, people don't like that. And so here comes Jesus onto the scene, and here

Jesus is the only Savior. There's no other Savior. If you could get saved a different way,

Jesus would not have had to come to earth. Nor would he have had to die. But here

Jesus comes, the only Savior. The exclusivity of Christ does infuriate people.

If you're a Christian, and you talk to your friends, and they say, well, yeah, what about Muslims, and what about Jews? They especially appeal to Jews.

Well, what about Jews? They don't go to heaven? You mean to tell me—you can just hear him say that, can't you?

You mean to tell me, after all the suffering of the Jews, that they're not going to heaven?

Well, the answer is, no one's going to heaven just because of who they are, because no one's good enough for heaven.

No one's good except God. No one is good except God alone. And so Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Baptists, Catholics, are all born with sinful propensities, a sinful nature, and that needs to be cleansed.

They need to be forgiven. They need to be given a righteousness from God to be able to enter into God's righteous heaven.

And so we have Jesus who says, I'm the only way. I am the truth and the life.

No one comes to the—I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. I mean, how audacious, how arrogant for someone to come along saying,

I am the eternal Son of God. Who talks like that? I think, you know,

Muhammad Ali did a lot of I am the greatest stuff, but I don't ever remember him saying that I'm the eternal Son of God.

What about when Jesus talked this way in John 3? For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only

Son of God. Who talks like that? I mean, now as Christians, we say, that's wonderful.

That's great. Jesus is so gracious. But can you imagine, back in those days, after all the false messiahs had come, people saying that they're the next savior of the world, and then here comes this next guy.

Isn't he a carpenter? Wasn't his dad a carpenter? Didn't he live over there in Hicksville, over there in Nazareth? He's just a man.

He's just a—I think that's from the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack.

I'd blast him a soundtrack, but it's in my mind. He's just a man. Who talks like this?

John 4. Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Who talks like that? That is enough to make somebody mad. That is enough to make somebody get upset.

The exclusivity of these claims, the audacity for someone to talk like that.

Does he have a right to say that? Does he have a right to act that way? Boy, that is an amazing thing.

How about John 5? You sure you love Jesus? My Father is working until now, and I am working.

Is that how he claims equality with God? Working. John 6.

This is infuriating to people who are not born again. This is why the pundits, this is why

MSNBC, this is why Huffington Post, this is why just whatever neutral, you know, liberal outlet you want—our neutral outlet, for that matter—this is why they don't like Christianity, because we believe what

Jesus says. He's the creator. He's the sin bearer. He's the eternal God. And he says, nobody gets to heaven except by me, through me, belief in me.

So then we take his word for it. And do I believe that other people who do not trust

Jesus will go to heaven? The answer is no, because the Bible teaches these things clearly.

Whether I like the answer or whether I don't, it's not my truth to twist. It's not my truth to contort.

It's not my truth to pervert and to dislocate. I am here as a gospel minister to say, here is the good news, though.

You're focusing on the wrong thing. If you, Jew, if you, Muslim, if you, fornicator, if you, homosexual, if you,

Mormon, if you, anyone else, calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and trusts in his saving work at Calvary, confirmed by the resurrection, you will be saved.

Lord, have mercy upon me, the sinner. And we know, then, the promises of God. And so that's the good news.

The good news is that God would save anyone, because everyone except Jesus Christ deserved to go to heaven.

Abraham deserved to go to heaven. No, nobody deserves to go to heaven. Everybody deserves to go to hell.

I think I just misspoke a second ago. I meant hell, but said heaven. No one deserves to go to heaven.

They all deserve to go to hell. Moses deserved to go to hell. Abraham deserved to go to hell.

David deserved to go to hell. Muhammad deserved to go to hell. Joseph Smith deserved to go to hell.

I deserve to go to hell. You deserve to go to hell. And that God would save anybody, that's the amazing part.

At his own price, at his own cost, he bought us with a price, the price of Christ Jesus. And so remember, when you think about who goes to heaven and who doesn't go to heaven, you ought to remember nobody deserves to go.

We could have been like the angels in God's plan. Some angels sinned, no redemption possible, done.

Some out now, some in a holding cell, but they're all going to get thrown in the lake of fire later, the ones that fell, no plan of redemption.

But we all fell, and yet God had a plan. He had an eternal plan of how he would save some people to glorify his name.

And you can look at that at Romans chapter 9 all you want, and you will be confirmed in that very fact that no one deserves to go to heaven.

And so if you say the exclusivity of Christ bothers me, you're not thinking properly. You're not thinking biblically.

You're thinking, who could this possibly be? This is audacious. This is infuriating to me. I've got a grandmother who wasn't born again, and you mean to tell me now she's in hell because she's already dead?

See, that's what we do. We get our feelings wrapped up into it, and we don't think through it clearly. So let's just stick with the text.

The only thing we can find out about God specifically is found in the Bible, and the

Bible records the exact mind of God, and it is sufficient for everything we need, including the doctrine of the exclusivity of Christ.

And how we should not be surprised that that makes people mad, because if you really think about it, who talks this way,

John 6? I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the

Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And this is the will of him who sent me. I mean, even coming down from heaven, what is that? You know, that is amazing.

That I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my

Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him—he's talking about himself—should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Don't you see how the exclusivity of Christ and the claims of Christ drive self -righteous people bonkers?

Don't you see that they want to put a man like this in a straitjacket? Don't you see that they've been so blinded by their own sin and depravity?

They can't see the Lamb of God that's before their very eyes. They can't see with eyes of looking at the

Old Testament like John the Baptist did. And so when he saw Jesus behold the Lamb of God—here's the

Passover Lamb—what do they see? They see some crazy person saying that he's God on the earth.

Now, if I went to—tonight I'm going to go to a basketball game—if I went to the Boston Garden—I don't think it's called that anymore—the

Fleet Center—and someone sat next to me and said, I'm God, I think that person was pretty loony.

And so you can kind of understand the gravity of this, but on the other hand, they were just blind to the clear

Old Testament prophecies from Psalm 2 to Psalm 110 to Isaiah 53 and Micah 5, etc.

How about this? Truly, truly, I say to you,

John 6, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds upon my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. I mean, that will send an

Old Testament Jew into some kind of arrhythmia.

Their heart is going to skip a beat. Something's going to be wrong because you don't eat flesh with blood in it.

That's an abomination. And of course, Jesus here is talking figuratively, but he is purposely goading them, putting his finger in their proverbial eye to get them to think.

That's what he did very often. He meets a rich young ruler, and the rich young ruler says, hey, good teacher, and he said, basically, you know, you don't know what you're saying.

I'm—if you did, you'd realize that I'm perfectly good, that I'm perfectly God, and you're perfectly sinful. And that's just the way

Jesus used kind of shock appeal. Talk about always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

That was Jesus. I mean, that's my attempt, but Jesus always did it. I fall short in that.

Jesus's exclusivity and his claims of deity infuriate the self -righteous and endear those who are knowing they don't have any righteousness.

That brings—it's a term of endearment, because we realize this is our Savior. Look at him in action.

Isn't he great? Listen to what he said in John 6. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him, as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the

Father. So whoever feeds on me—forget manna, forget Moses, forget Torah, forget

Aaron, forget the priest, this great high priest, Jesus himself—he will live because of—he also will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread that the fathers ate and died.

Whoever—guess how many people died who ate the manna? Well, every one of them.

They all died. Everybody who's ever been born has died. Some died a couple times.

I guess we have a couple biblical exceptions with Enoch and Elijah. Maybe one of those guys will come back as one of the two witnesses and they'll die the first time.

As a general rule, you're born and you die. 99 .999999 % of all the people.

And here Jesus says, whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Who talks like that? That makes people mad.

That makes them enraged. This is the exclusivity of Christ.

It is Jesus to heaven, no one else. No one else has come down from heaven, cloaked himself with humanity so he can identify with us, die in our place, live the life we should have lived, honor

God like we should have honored God, loved God like we should have loved God, loved our neighbor as we should have loved our neighbor, and then be raised from the dead.

Nobody has done that. And so he's the only one. He's the only Savior because he's the only one that could raise himself from the dead.

Anybody could say these things. If we hear it today, we kind of laugh. But if anybody does say it today, they can't back up the claim because they can't do the things that Jesus did, nor can they say the things that Jesus said.

The tomb is empty. On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out.

This is John 7. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

John 7. Once again, here we're just looking at the gospel of John and the exclusivity of Christ.

I am the light of the world, John 8. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

For those of you who are Christians, we just read that and we can become so close to it, so familiar to it, that it doesn't have the gravity, doesn't have the shock value as it would have to people back then.

I'm God, and you are adding works to this system, and you are contorting this system, and you can't get to heaven on your own.

You're trying to get to heaven by obeying the law, and the law was given to make sure you realized you couldn't get to heaven by obeying the law, and you'd have to cry out for mercy and grace from the sovereign

God. How about John 8? I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin.

Where I'm going, you cannot come. So the Jew said, will he kill himself since he says, where I am going, you cannot come?

There's a special place reserved in hell for suicide people, they thought. We're not going there, that's for sure.

Jesus said, you are from below. I am from above.

I told you, you would die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, and I'm the

Messiah, and I'm Yahweh incarnate, you will die in your sins. Do you think they were mad?

Do you think they decided to put a nice garment on him? Or do you think they decided to pick up stones? Do you think they tried to assault him?

They were mad. Jesus infuriated them because he was trying to drive them to the truth that he alone was the

Messiah. What did Jesus say in John 8? You want to see how Jesus infuriates the self -righteous with his exclusive claims?

I know that you are the offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you.

I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you do not, and you do what you have heard from your father.

And who is that father? Satan. You say you've got Father Abraham, and I'm telling you, you've got

Father Satan. The exclusivity of Christ drives the self -righteous batty.

I am the door, John 10. If anyone enters by me, exclusively by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

What a wonderful picture of the abundant life. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. This is right from the Psalms. The shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

This is just illustrative of what's happening in Psalm 23. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the

Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. If you're listening today on No Compromise Radio, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

I'm getting lots of emails, and I'm thankful for those. Or you can go listen at info, excuse me, at nocompromiseradio .com.

Or you can get on iTunes. Or there's probably other ones you can get onto. But here's the thing. Jesus alone is the

Savior. You're a sinner, and you have sinned with your thoughts, with your hands, with your heart, with your mouth, with your deeds.

And you'll continue to sin up until the time you die because you're a fallen creature.

You're a frail creature. And God has made you on this earth, and he has a right over you.

He has claimed you as his own, that is, creator creation.

And you are made, you are created to worship him. Yet because of sin, your own sin, and Adam's federal sin, headship of Adam, you have worshiped other things, and you have given your life, your lusts, your pleasures, your time, your money, your thoughts, your hands, your hearts, your lips, and everything else to something other than God.

Now you might say it's God and other things, but we know that since you're a born worshiper, you'll find someone to worship.

And so you're a worshiper, and you need to be a perfect worshiper of Jesus Christ because if you're not, you're not going to heaven.

So God could have just said, wipe them out. Let's start over. Wipe them out. Let's not do this again. Yet God, who's slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness, he sends his

Son. He sends his Son. It was planned in eternity past. It was planned before Genesis 1 -1.

In the eternal counsels of God and the great covenant of redemption, the Trinity decided to rescue people anyway to show how great

Yahweh is. And so we can look to God now and say, thank you for that.

But this eternal counsel said there's one way to be saved, and that is having

Jesus Christ die, redeem, re -reconcile sinners at Calvary.

And he's the only one. You know, back in the Old Testament when the snakes were biting the Israelites and Moses put up the snake, and if you looked at the snake, you'd live?

Well, if you didn't look to the snake, you wouldn't live. The exclusivity of looking at that snake to live.

Here we have the exclusivity of Jesus to live. And you must believe in the

Son of God that the Father sent. You don't have your own way. Your own way basically is your good works will get you to heaven.

But that's not going to work. I want Jesus to infuriate you and say, that is a slap in the face of God.

That is a slap in the face of God where he provides his Son. And you say, you know what? But that wasn't quite good enough.

That's like if someone rescued your child from drowning and you went and tracked them down through the reporter and you found out who saved your son.

It was a fireman by the name of, you know, Jack Smith. And you said, Jack, you know what?

I really want to pay you back and say, thanks. You know, here's $1 .25. I really appreciate it.

That's what it's like to say, you know what? Jesus's death was not enough. We've got to contribute some lame mere pittance.

So when you think of the exclusivity of Christ, and by the way, it's over, it's all over.

John 12, I've come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.

There is a truth that Jesus alone died the substitutionary death on Calvary. Like it or not,

Jesus is the only way of salvation. And so people say, well, exclusivity of Christ, I don't like it.

It sticks in my craw. I live in a pluralistic society. Well, there's only one person who paid the full payment of sin's penalty.

There's only one person who has victory over sin. There's only one person who abolished death.

There's only one person who can knock out Satan forever.

McLaren said, is Jesus the only way? It depends on where you're trying to go. So Brian McLaren, the heretic, sees the infuriating person of Jesus Christ.

And he says, you know what? The real issue is in about heaven. So we need to pray for Brian McLaren because I think he thinks probably my program today is full of hate speech.

It enrages. Jesus is trying to say, to go to heaven, it's only through me.

This is not some kind of snooty thing like Brian McLaren makes it out to be a who's in and who's out of faith.

This is your life. One shot. You live once and then you live forever after death.

And the only way you can be pleasing in God's sight is to kiss the sun, lest you perish, Brian McLaren.

Jesus's words make us endeared to him as Christians. But Jesus's words to the pluralistic society enrage them and infuriate them.