← Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life
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Welcome to Gospel and Life. How comfortable are you when it comes to being open about your faith? This month on the podcast, Tim Keller looks at what the Bible says about having a public faith. He shows us what it looks like to be open about our faith in a pluralistic society in a way that creates civility and peace and meaningful dialogue with our neighbors.
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What we're going to do today night is look at who is Jesus Christ. What you just heard depicted orally, dramatically, was how the actions and the behavior of Jesus Christ has continually ignited debate about his identity. And all thoughtful people will be part of that debate. I was a college student a long time ago, very long. My children occasionally over the years have asked me, dad, when you were in college, did they have television, things like that? I used to say, no, honey. We used to entertain ourselves drawing pictures on cave walls of animals. You can see some of them even today. I remember when I was in college, one picture that was. That I've never forgotten. It was in 1970, during. I really don't know the history of this, but I know that during the Cambodia invasion, an awful lot of the college campuses in the northeast United States shut down. Students boycotted them, basically because they wanted to talk about life issues, about where we were going. And as a result, at least of the campus I was at, there was open mics on the. On the college quadrangles. Every day anybody could get and speak. Crowds of people showed up. No matter where you were, you saw groups of people together talking about the meaning of life. And one set of students put up a sign. And on the sign, I remember it was black with white letters, and it said, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is intellectually credible and existentially satisfying. And I've come to see over the years that those are the two tests of any valid worldview, of any valid philosophy, of any valid religion. The two tests, it has to be both rational, coherent, it has to be true, and it also has to be relevant. It has to meet my needs. It has to connect with my experience. Now, modern people have a tendency, when it comes to religion or to philosophy, not to ask the first question anymore. I mean, that really was 1970. Now all we ask is, oh, religion. Who knows whether it's true or not? Does it work for me? Who knows whether it's intellectually credible? I mean, after all, everybody's got their own views. What I want to know, is it existentially satisfying? To me, with all due respects, I think that's a dangerous approach because we do know something called a placebo effect, you know, a placebo effect is this. If I am sick and I take some medicine that I really believe will make me better, but I have very serious symptoms, I'm dying of something, there will be a placebo effect. If I believe it enough, some of my symptoms will go away, I will feel better. But in the long run, the placebo effect is very deadly because objectively, it can't do anything about my disease, and it might lull me into thinking, I'm fine, I'm okay, I don't have to do anything else. If there is a spiritually objective universe, if I'm not saying that there is right now, I'm not trying to prove it to you. I'm just saying if there was a spiritually objective universe, every bit as objective as the physical universe, then to go into a religion or a faith or a worldview or a philosophy, and everybody's got a working philosophy, everybody's got a set of answers to what's wrong with us and where are we going and what is human nature and what is ultimate reality? Everybody's got a working philosophy. If you go at it by saying, all that matters is that I believe it, it feels great, it works for me. What if there is a spiritual placebo effect? What if it makes you feel okay? You know, every single religion, every philosophy, even the craziest and the wildest and the most incoherent can produce people who say, I have joy and meaning in life now because of my adherence to this wonderful organization, everybody, anybody can produce that. The Mafia can produce that. It's nice to have an income. It's nice to have breathers, brothers, sort of. What if there's a placebo effect? What if you feel good for a while, but objectively you're dying of something that this has nothing to do with, that this can't deal with. Don't you see how destructive that would be? Christianity is characterized by a willingness, almost a dare, a challenge to people to say, yes, we're existentially satisfying. There's millions of people around the world who can say, christianity has helped me. Nobody denies that. That's a fact. But Christianity challenges and says. But it's not just that we're existentially satisfying, we're intellectually credible. We're relevant because we're true. That's not the way the modern mindset goes. The modern mindset is. It's true. If it works. Christianity says, oh, don't you see? That'll be a placebo effect. We only ultimately work if we're true. Don't come to Christianity, says the Bible, because it's relevant, though it certainly is. Don't come to Christianity because it's exciting, though Absolutely it is. Don't come to Christianity because it'll meet your needs, though it certainly will come because it's true, and because it's true, it'll meet your needs. It's exciting and it's relevant, and if it's not true, it's a placebo. Now, how do you know Christianity is true? That's quite a challenge, that's quite a dare, especially to do in a kind of confined period of time tonight. And therefore what I'd like to do is give you an overview of the main piece of evidence which I think is overwhelming and inescapable evidence for the truth of the Christian message, and that is Jesus Christ as datum, Jesus Christ as fact. Who is he? You see, John9 that you just heard depicted Jesus deeds were always making people come up with theories. Did you hear the theories? This man is a sinner. Wait a minute, says somebody else. You know, I've never seen sinners do this kind of thing before. This man is a prophet, but is that enough to. And at the end, Jesus Christ says, I'm the one who healed you. And the blind man gets down and worships. Jesus worships. Did you hear that? Worships. And what does Jesus do? He takes it, stays put. Who is this guy? What kind of person would take worship? Huston Smith wrote a great book called the World's Great Religions. It's an old book, it's been around a long time, you know, a staple of college religion courses, a terrific book, the World's Great Religions. And in that book he says there have only been in the history of the world two prominent and influential figures whose lives were so incredible and so tremendous, the data of their lives was so inexplicable that people around them did not just ask, who are they? Who are you? But what are you? Huston Smith says there's only two people that really have had influence in the history of the world whose lives were marked with such beauty that people didn't just say, who are you, you? They asked, what are you? Those two people were Buddha and Jesus. And Smith points out that the responses of those two people were completely opposed, completely opposite. In both cases, people wanted to worship them because they'd never seen compassion, they'd never seen integrity, they'd never seen lives like that. They'd never seen beauty, they'd never seen wisdom, they'd never seen anything like it. And Smith says, people, what are you? And they wanted to worship. And Buddha said, absolutely, don't worship me. I am not a God. Buddha always and continually said, don't look to me, look to my dharma, my doctrine, my teaching. Don't look at me, look at my dharma, my doctrine. Jesus unequivocally accepted worship. Jesus not only unequivocally did not say, I'm not God. He unequivocally said, not even I am a God. He said, I'm the God. And whenever anybody worships, when Thomas fell down and said, my Lord and my God, when the blind man worshiped, Jesus stood there and calmly took it. One of the things that is so inexplicable about Jesus is this. There's a lot of people, there's at least 20 people that we can say are the most influential people figures in the history of the world. In fact, Jesus would also probably be in any group of the 10 most influential figures in the world. In fact, you could probably put Jesus in the three. In fact, it might even be a consensus to say he's the single most influential. But he's in that fraternity, you know, he's in that group. On the other hand, there have also been a number of people who have claimed to be divinity. They've claimed to be God, they've claimed to be divine personages, but there is no overlap between them except one guy. Because the people who have made claims of divinity have always been unable to convince anyone but a group of marginalized, you know, off balance, ragtag little group of disenfranchised people that they are God. Oh, there's been dozens of them. I am God, worship me. There's been dozens of them. And they've never convinced anything but a small group of unbalanced people. On the other hand, over here you've got a whole bunch of people who have been the most influential folks in the history of the world. And in almost all cases, when they talk about themselves, there's a humility. Don't look to me, says Buddha. Look to my dharma, right? They always say, don't worship me. Don't do that. That's what made them great. That's what made them influential. Except one guy. There's one guy in both categories, one man who not only made incredible claims, but also got people to believe. And if one of the most, if not the most influential figure in the history of the world claimed to be God himself, claimed therefore the absolute allegiance of every human being on the face of the earth, there is no Thoughtful person. There's no thoughtful person who can possibly walk away from that without studying it. You can't say I've had a balance and I have a thoughtful approach to life. I'm not a Christian. I don't believe all that stuff about Jesus being God. But you see, I haven't studied a whole lot. I was raised in it. But I pretty much, you know, I had Religion 101. I had Philosophy 101. I pretty much realized most of the smart people and most of the cool people around me didn't believe this either. So I didn't either. Friends, the magnitude of Jesus claims and the magnitude of his impact shows that you better not just doubt that he is not God. You better know that he's not God. The magnitude of the claim. Look, what if you got on very official stationery from one of the major law firms in New York City, you got a letter saying, please come see us. You are a long lost heir of the British throne. Well, now, you might find this easy. You know, what is your first reaction? You say, come on, I'm Chinese. Come on, it can't be. And yet, you know, you know, you're not even going to make a phone call. I'll give you another one. Let's just say you get official stationary from the IRS and it says, you owe us $400,000 in back taxes. And you say, that can't be. I haven't made $40,000. How could this be? And yet, you see, the magnitude of the claim. The magnitude of the claim means that you better not just doubt that it's true. You better know it's not true. Because if there's a chance it's true and you miss it, your life is ruined. When Jesus Christ says, I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to ultimate reality but by me, you better know that that's not true. Now, if he was a crackpot, you see, I mean, I don't think everybody has to study the life of David Koresh because what if he really is who he said he is? There's an awful lot of other people like him that. I don't think that we've got that much evidence, you know, to back up his claims. But here's one, one, one person who's made these kinds of claims and look at the impact of his life. The data, the datum of Jesus Christ. Have you looked at it? Now let me show you what the data is, and then let me show you. There are only five. I'm just going to tick through them. Because this is basically the case. Maybe you've never seen an overall case, the case for Christianity, the case for Jesus being who he said he is. Look at the data and there's only five possible answers, five explanations. Who is this? You have to. I've just shown you that no intelligent person can fail to look at the data and decide which of these five options you believe. Because if you don't even try, if you just ignore it, if you say, well, I don't know, I haven't looked at it, what's the matter with you? Your life could be ruined if you're wrong. The magnitude of the claim. Look at the data, and there's only five ways to explain it. Here's the data. Number one, there was a man some 2,000 years ago in Palestine who claimed to be God, who claimed to be the Messiah, the son of God from heaven, who claimed to be bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Number one. Number two, as he went about with his message, the people who heard him speak saw him do things that looked like miracles. They saw him apparently feed 5,000 people from a little loaf of bread or two. They saw him walk on water. They saw him raise people from the dead. They saw him heal people who were sick. That's number two. I'm not telling you that he did do miracles. I'm telling you that hundreds of people saw him do apparently what were miracles. It created an incredible sensation. John 9 that you just heard depicted for you is just one example. Number three, he not only claimed to be God, but he convinced the people who were closest to him, the people who lived with him, the apostles and so on, that he was God. Keeping in mind that the last people on the face of the earth who could possibly believe that a human being could be God would be first century Jews. Because on the east, their understanding of God in the east is God is sort of a life force that's in everybody and everything. So it's not that unusual to say a person is kind of a manifestation of God. And in the west, the Romans and the. And the Greeks had this understanding of gods. There were a lot of gods and they used to take on disguises and they used to appear as human beings, you know, to make whoopee for a while. I mean, you can see it in the myths. But the Jews, the Jews had a view of the transcendence of God unmatched in any place else in the world at the time. The Jews had an understanding of a God who was not just imminent, but transcendent. A God who was above the world, who had created the world, who was beginningless. And the Jews had been taught in the first two commandments of the Ten Commandments that have been taught for 2,000 years, never, ever, ever worship anything created. Never, never worship a calf, never worship the Son of the moon. Never. It had been, you know, instilled in them for years and years and years. They didn't even use the name of God. It was too holy. The last people in the world who would believe that somebody was God would be a group of 1st century Jews. But not only that, the last people in the world who believe you're God are the people who you sleep with. Hey, there's all kinds of these great heroes, right? Everybody likes them, and then out comes the people who live with them. Somebody gives them a book contract, somebody writes an article. And this is the reason why there are hundreds of people in this column who believed in God, they were God, who said they were God, but who never had any impact. Why? Because basically, there's always somebody who sees the cruelty, somebody who sees the selfishness, somebody who sees the duplicity, somebody who sees the hypocrisy. The last people who you'll ever get to believe that this person is God are the people who you live with, who you see, sleep with, who you work with. Fact number three. The group of people surrounding Jesus Christ not only heard his claims to be God, they believed it. Number four. After he died, dozens and hundreds of people confessed and attested that they saw him risen. Not only did all the apostles, but we know that at least 500 people at one time. Paul tells us this in the book of First Corinthians. We'll get to that in a second. At one time saw him risen. That's fact number four. Dozens, dozens of people, sometimes hundreds at a time, said, I've seen him. He's not dead, he's risen. Fact number five, the experience of that changed those men and women's lives so much that they went out into the world and they died just to spread the news. Many of them sacrificed tremendously, many of them suffered a martyr's death. But they were so completely transformed that they went everywhere and they spread the faith all around the Mediterranean. Five things. There was a man who claimed to be God. He did, apparently miracles. He got the people closest to him to believe that he was God. After he was dead, many people saw him risen. And those people were so transformed by the experience of meeting that risen Savior that they spread the word everywhere. How do you account for the facts. How do you account, how do you account for the data, who he is? You got to come up with something. And there's only five possibilities. And I'll just tick through them and I'll tell you the first two are impossible. They're impossible possibilities. The first two options are impossible. I won't even say possibilities. I'll call them options. There's five options. The first two are impossible. The second two are improbable. The last one's inescapable. They all start with I. The first two. The first two. The first one. Most people in New York get out from under the data this way. So I've got to at least spend a couple minutes on this. Most people say he's a legend. We don't know that any of that happened. That's the average way that New York people get out from under it. Here's, here's what I mean. In other words, if somebody, I come to you, like I said said, and many of you here tonight, I'm hoping that afterwards we can talk and have a question, answer time after the program's over and so on. But, and you might come back with me at this. But I would say most people, I would say, how do you account for that data? And you'd say, huh, how do we know who Jesus was? How do we know he claimed to be God? How do we know he did apparent miracles? How do we know all these things? Don't you know that Jesus Christ, like any charismatic individual, his followers were amazed with him. And so after he died, they began to weave tales about him and weave stories about him. And, you know, you've played whisper down the alley, haven't you? You know, you say it to one person, next person. And over the years, these tales became embellished and the early church began to put into these tales. They began to make up stories and they began to put words in Jesus mouth that met their needs. And so finally they were written down in the New Testament many years after. But they were written by the protege. They were written by, you know, the people who were Christians. They weren't. They're biased people. They wrote these things down much many years later. And so we have no idea what Jesus really said. We don't know which of these things are genuine. We don't know which of these accounts is genuine. You can't read the New Testament's history. He was a legend. That's how I get out from under the data. Let me just give you actually three, three reasons that can't be and this, this is, this would be a great talk all in itself. But I just have to give you three reasons why it can't be. Number one, the Bible is not written as legend. The Bible is written as history.
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We always say the Gospel changes everything and we believe it really does. That's why here at Gospel and Life, August is Go and Share month. Throughout August, we're inviting thousands of our listeners to take a small step in sharing the gospel with someone God has placed in your life. For those of you who make a gift to Gospel and Life, this month we'll send you two copies of Making Sense of God by Tim Keller. It's a powerful resource that explores how Christianity makes emotional, cultural and rational sense in today's world. It's our thanks for your gift and provides a way you can do a small act to share the gospel by reading the book with a friend, giving one to a co worker, or passing on both copies to people who are exploring the Christian faith. It's a simple way to start a gospel conversation or continue it. To request your two copies of Making Sense of God, simply go to gospelandlife.com give again. That's gospelandlife.com give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.
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A lot of people like to say, well, you know, I mean, look at the legends around Buddha, look at the Buddhist writings, look at the Quran, look at these writings. But here's the difference. When you go, for example, the New Testament, you go to like, take a look at the Gospel of Luke. And in the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Luke says this. He says, many others have drawn up accounts of Jesus life just as they were handed down to us by the eyewitnesses. So I have made a careful investigation of everything from the beginning and I've written an orderly account so that you may know the certainty of these things. Now what's he saying? He is saying, look, I wasn't an eyewitness, but I know a lot of the eyewitnesses. So I have carefully gone and interviewed the eyewitnesses. This is a guy writing like an investigative journalist. He says, I went and I interviewed the eyewitnesses. I've compared the various accounts. I have woven them together into an orderly account so you can be certain that these things happen. Another critic, a literary critic, puts it this way. He says, when you read the New Testament, you can see right away the Gospels are not written as legends. In one sense. He says they're not good enough and that, listen, now he's and he's trying to say they're not good enough. Here's what he means. He says if they are not history, then they would have to be realistic prose fiction of a kind which actually never existed before the 18th century. Little episodes like in John 8, Jesus writing in the dust when they brought him the woman taken in adultery. Those little kinds of things that have no particular significance in the story at all are the mark. See what he's saying? He says, you know, today we have fiction that's like the novel, that's realistic prose fiction. It goes into detail. It says she came to the door, she turned the knob, you know, it creaked. That's the way we write fiction. Now, this person said, if the Gospels, with all of their detail, with little statements like when God Jesus received the woman caught in adultery, he was writing in the sand, doesn't tell us what he was writing. It has nothing to do with the plot, nothing to do with the story. Legends don't put those kinds of little details in. The critic is saying they didn't write fiction like that. Luke says, this is not a legend. Luke doesn't write it as a legend. And therefore you have. When you read the New Testament Gospels, you have to assume that they are either absolutely deliberate, intentional hoaxes, they're lies, or they're historical accounts. There is no in between. Are you ready to say that? Now? That's the first step in getting rid of this idea that Jesus was a legend. Because the second step is this. They're either history or they're lies. If they're lies, try these two things on up to about 1900, many scholars said, ah, you know, the Gospels, they weren't written until a hundred years after the events. Research in archaeology over the last 80 years has pushed it back, pushed it back, pushed it back. So all scholars now will say that the Gospels were written around 70 A.D. and you know, you have. The Epistles of Paul were written within 20 years after the events. And this is. What does that mean? It means something very important. If you're going to fabricate, if you're going to create stories and say this happened and this mountain, and this happened on this mountain. This happened, you know, in this year and this happened this year. The only way you're going to get that to fly is if you wait till all the eyewitnesses are dead. In 1970, on my college campus, when we shut down the place so that we could debate the Cambodian invasion and the morality of it, nobody was going around with a camcorder. I Didn't think we had them. We did have movies, but we didn't have camcorders. All right, Nobody sat around and made an account. So there's really no historical accounts. But if I decided now, 23 years later, which is as long after the events of Jesus life as Paul was when he was writing his epistles, if I decided to write that there was a riot on my college campus during the strike and that seven or eight people were killed, that would never get off the ground. There's just too many people around who are alive. Some of them are dead, but most of them are alive. And they would say, what are you talking about? I read the review of this book in the New York Times Book Review. Forget it. It can't be. They'd be up in arms, out they'd come. If you want to fabricate something, you've got to wait until after all the eyewitnesses are dead. So there's no possibility of corroboration or contradiction. All of the New Testament documents, just about all that we know, were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. How could they be absolute and total intentional lies? Paul says in First Corinthians 15, 500 people saw Jesus Christ raised from the dead. At one time they saw him alive. He wrote that 20 to 25 years. Everybody agrees with this. All scholars agree after the event. Here is a public letter. This is public knowledge. How could a faith be based on these kinds of accounts when there would have been hundreds of people back there who could have said, what do you mean the tomb is not empty? Look, there's the tomb. What do you mean those things never happen? Where are these 500 people? I don't know of any of them. Could it be. See, it can't be a legend. It's either a lie or it's historical document. And does it make sense that it is a lie? Not, you know, not because it was written too early. But lastly, did people die for a hoax? Think of the disciples. All of them would have been, had to be in tremendous conspiracy. Do they die for a hoax? Kenneth Scott Latourette, who was a tremendous historian and he worked at Yale, he put it this way. At one point he says, why, among all the cults and philosophies competing in the Greco Roman world, did Christianity succeed and outstrip all others? Why did it succeed, despite getting more severe opposition than any other, why did it succeed, though it had no influential backers in high places, but consisted mainly of the poor and slaves, how did it succeed so completely that it forced the most powerful state in history to come to terms with it and then outlive the very empire that sought to uproot. Is clear. He concludes that at the very beginning of Christianity there must have occurred a vast release of energy perhaps unequaled in our history. Without the future course of the Christian religion is inexplicable. It's a possibility that all these people died for a lie. Maybe possible, absolutely. But put that together with the idea of when it was written. The Christian faith, on the basis of these claims, could never have gotten off the ground. They couldn't have said the tomb is empty unless the tomb was empty because of when they were saying it. They couldn't have said people saw Jesus raised from the dead unless they had seen him raised from the dead, because those people were still there. They couldn't have talked about the miracles. They couldn't have said this. Jesus claimed to be the son of God unless he had claimed to be the son of God. I'm sorry, you can't say he's a legend. You can't say, well, somebody says, I keep reading newspaper accounts that says, scholars say we have no idea what Jesus Christ is actually what Jesus Christ really taught and what he said. Yeah, I know. By the way, they very often put themselves forward as mainstream historians and they're not, they're very, very skeptical. And let me just put it to you this way. If you doubt on the basis of the historical evidence that Jesus Christ didn't said all these things, you have to doubt and you have to say we can't know anything from the past. You have far more, far more evidence that Jesus Christ didn't said these things than you have evidence that Caesar invaded Gaul. Far more. We only have one account of that. We have four accounts of this. The only account we have is a manuscript, the earliest copy 900 years after the event. The Gospels we have, we have manuscripts from just within a few years after they were written. But here's the difference. There's a bias. When you study Caesar's Gallic wars, you don't sit down and say, I wonder if this is true. Because if it is, it'll change the way in which I have to live. It doesn't matter whether Caesar's Gallic wars are true or not. Not the way you have to live. But who in the world can come to the Gospel and see the account and be objective? Don't you know what is wrong with saying, ah yes, as a scholar, I can read the New Testament objectively. You can't Nobody can. Nobody can. Because if it's true, unlike Caesar's Gallic wars, you will have to change the way you live tomorrow. You have lost control of your life. If it's true, you've got to do what he says. You've got to live your life for him. You can't live the way you feel is right or wrong. You have to find out what he says. You have to follow him. Who in the world could possibly be objective studying that? Imagine a judge, and she's about to hear a case about a particular company, and the prosecution is trying to say this company is guilty of fraud. What if that judge was a major investor in that company? What if that judge, if the company was found to be fraudulent, would lose thousands of dollars? Common sense and the laws of this land would say, she has a vested interest, she has conflict of interest. She cannot hear the case. But when you read the Bible and you sit down and say one of these things are true or not, you have even more conflict of interest than she does. If this is found to be true, you stand to lose control of your whole life. And if you know that, you've got that conflict of interest. But you have to study it anyway, and you have to make a decision, there's no other way around it. You better make sure that you double and triple check every one of your doubts because they could be prejudice. You have to double and triple check every one of your bits of skepticism because you know you have a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous motive to not believe it. And that's the reason why I would tell you so many scholars will be skeptical of the historical account of Jesus and won't be skeptical of, you know, what you know, Caesar's Gallic Wars, Herodotus, see all those accounts, Suetonius and so on. He's not a legend. Now, if he's not a legend, then the second impossible option is he couldn't be a good man. He couldn't be. Do you know what he says? Have you read what he says? People like to say, oh, but he was just a fine teacher. How could he be a fine teacher? He says, I'm the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. He says, if you want to follow me, if you want to be my disciple, you have to hate your father and mother. He says, anyone who wants to lose his life, save his life, will lose it. But anyone who will lose his life for my sake will find it. He says, all power is given unto me. And lo, I am with you always. In the end of the earth. You know what he's saying? Let me just give it to you in modern language. He says, I'm the only way to ultimate reality. I am the ultimate reality. He says, if you want to follow me, you have got to give me everything. Your love for me must be so high that your love for anything else, even parents and children and spouses, has to look like hate in comparison. If there's anything keeping you from me, if it's an eye, throw it away, pluck it out. If it's a hand, cut it off, get rid of it. It's not worth losing me. All reality, all the universe, will bow to me. All things will bow to me, and all things will bow to you if you come to me. Who has ever said things like this before? I'll tell you one thing, no good person would say this. This person is either God or he's on the level of a poached egg. A man who says he's a poached egg, he's either God or he's a terrible liar. But he can't be a good man, reject him, hate him, assassinate him, but none of this nonsense that he's a good man, he's not a legend, he's not a good man. Then we say, ah, well, maybe he was a liar, or maybe he was a lunatic. But there's a couple of problems with both of those and I'll just treat them together to get to the end. Mainly because both the liar option and the lunatic option are both the same option. In other words, you're saying he fooled his followers. He was either a very bad person, like the Pharisees said in John 9, or he was really a lunatic. We've got a bit of a problem there. Here's why. For example, look at the quality of his teaching. It's not the ravings of a madman. G.K. chesterton puts it this way. If I found a key on the road and discovered it fit and opened a particular lock, if I found a key on the road and discovered it fit and opened a particular lock at my house, I'd assume most likely that the key was made by the lock maker. And if I find a set of teachings set out in pre modern oriental society that has proven itself of such universal validity that it has fascinated and satisfied millions of people in every century, including the best minds in history and the simplest hearts, that it has made itself at home in virtually every culture inspired masterpieces of beauty in every field of art continues to grow rapidly and spread and assert itself in lands where a century ago the name of Jesus Christ was not even heard. If such teaching so obviously fits the locks of so many human souls in so many times and so many places, are they likely to be the work of a deceiver or a fool? In fact, it is more likely that they were designed by the heart maker. Well then take a look at his life. Look at his life. We see the account is that life the life of a liar or a lunatic. Someone's put it this way. No one has ever yet discovered the word Jesus ought to have said. Read the accounts. You try to come up with better lines. Do you realize what kind of person you have to be to even make this up? If somebody made this up, we would have to be sitting here having the same kind of discussion over who is this incredible person who made it up? What kind of person would this be? No one has ever yet discovered the word Jesus ought to have said or the deed he ought to have done. Nothing he does falls short. In fact, he is always surprising you and taking your breath away. Because he's better than you could imagine. Why? They are the surprises of perfection. He combined virtues never seen together. Tenderness without weakness, strength without harshness, Humility without the slightest lack of confidence. Holiness and unbending convictions without the slightest lack of approachability. Power without insensitivity, Passion without prejudice. The harshest judgment on the self satisfied yet the most winsome. Kindness to the broken and the marginal. Never inconsistent, never a false step, never a jarring note. PT Forsyth said, if God be not thus, he is less than the God we crave and less than than the God the world needs. This is the holy love that deserves to be almighty. Listen, when we describe it, we're done. When we describe it, even describing him, can't you begin to feel a little bit of what they saw? The reason they got down and worshiped him? You can see it when you read the Gospels. You can see it as we just described it. They felt they knew that they were looking through the substance of a human flesh, the very being of God. The last people in the world who would believe this were first century Jews. What power could have gotten them to believe it? What's the alternative? St. Thomas Aquinas put it this way. He says the only alternative is to believe even an even greater miracle. And that greater miracle would be if Jesus Christ did not happen. An even more unbelievable miracle happened. The conversion of one half of the Roman world and their moral transformation into unselfishness and new heights of holiness, all by the biggest lie in history. What's the inescapable option? He's not a legend, can't be a good man. Those are the impossible ones, the improbable ones. A deceiver or delusional. Where does it bring us? Brings us to this place. If you get rid of your bias against the possible supernatural, if you get rid of your bias against the idea of a miracle, if you get rid of that bias, it's hard to believe he's who he said he is, but it's harder not to. It's difficult to believe he's who he said he is, but the theories that you have to adhere to in order to get out from it are even more specious and have even more holes. And as a result, we come to the final and we say he must be who he said he is. If that's true, it means, number one, it means that there is no way that you have really met the real Jesus unless your reaction to him has been extreme. If there's anybody in this room who doesn't hate him, or on the other hand, fear him, think he's the most dangerous person that ever lived, or on the other hand, there's three hands on this man here. Or on the other hand, love him, adore him in his thrown over everything to follow him. Those are the only three alternative responses that are rational. Don't you see? Because of his claims, you should either hate him and attack him, or you should fear him and run from him, or you should love him and bow down before him. But if you have said, well, I don't know what I think, or I think I'm a Christian, I wish I was a better Christian, I don't know if I'm a Christian. You don't know who he is. You have never seen the real Jesus. You're responding to a figment of your imagination. Get real. Lastly, if Jesus is who he said he is, it's great news. You know why? Because he's saying morality and goodness is not the way. See, Buddha says, I am not God, look to my teaching. If you just live a good life, that'll be enough. But if, on the other hand, if on the other hand, if on the other hand, you see Jesus who says, don't look to my teaching, look to me, Buddha says, I'm not God, I show you the way to God. Jesus says, I'm God, come to you. You will never be good enough. You will never be moral enough to reach God. I have come to live the life you should have lived. I have come to die the death. You should have died to pay for your sins. I've come all the way. Believe in me. See, Buddha says this is the way. Jesus says I am the way. Buddha says I can show you the way to God. Jesus says, get real. You'll never get there. You'll never be good enough. I'm God, come to you. That's good news. If you understand what I just said and you're not a Christian tonight, you better ask yourself. Since I have lots and lots and lots of conflict of interest, I have lots and lots and lots of fears that make me prejudiced against the truth of it, please agree tonight to explore. Some of you think everything I said is silly. I hope you come back some other time. Anyway. Hope you'll think about it. Some of you are surprised. Some of you say I need to study more. Some of you are saying I need to get more into this. My stereotypes have been shattered a little bit. I've gotten new ideas to think about. I'm convicted in some ways. I would like you, if you can, after the service is done, to stick around for question answer time and or go to the welcome table afterwards out front, get a little blue piece of paper that will give you a book called who is this Jesus? This is for people who want to know, people who aren't sure who he is, people who are guests tonight. Go out, fill out one of those forms, take it downstairs to the east lounge and you'll get a free book of the same title of the talk tonight. What we're going to do now, I'm going to pray, we're going to hear a piece of music. And right after that I'm going to take just two or three questions from people to get our question answer time started. Then I'll dismiss all of you and the people who need to stay can stay up front here and we'll have a question and answer time right afterwards. Let me pray with you. Our Father. We close this time with prayer because we know that like Jesus said to the Pharisees, because you don't think you're blind, you're very blind. And because you haven't admitted that you don't see, you don't see. But if you admit you don't see, you begin to see. And if you admit you're prejudice, you're losing your prejudices. I pray that your spirit will help people to see that they don't see so that they can begin to see. And you will get people here, oh Holy Spirit, to help people to see their prejudices so they can drop their prejudices so that we can see whether or not Jesus Christ is existentially satisfying and intellectually credible. I ask that your spirit would help everybody here to see that. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the Gospel to your life and share it with others. As you may know, August is Go and Share Month. At Gospel and Life, we believe God uses small acts to do great, great things. If you've already taken a step, maybe you've shared a resource or started praying for someone, we'd love to know. You can encourage others by marking your location on our Go and Share map. Just go to gospelandlife.com share and let us know you've participated. Today's sermon was recorded in 1994. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.