David Asscherick GOD? 07 Who Killed Jesus?- SecondComing.org

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] something that you are hopefully noticing and I'm doing my very best to communicate it so if you're not noticing it I'm not doing my job not even just my job my passion and that is that what we're seeing is is that we're adding things slowly to the table of truth things for example such as creation in our last presentation we talked about the law and justice and and other sort of biblical ideas and doctrines are making their way onto the table of truth but every one of them is saturated with the basic picture of who God is is that coming clear right we don't just want some you know anomalous novel religious idea that just makes its way under the table but it's somehow disconnected or is in any way disconnected from the central truth about who God is and there's too much religion that's that way frankly there are too many little idiosyncratic cultural personal things that that we do in our religious life and by the way there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself the problem emerges when we take those little beliefs or perspectives or even opinions that we have and then we make them normative or standards for other people no no no what we want is biblical truth right we just want to know what the truth is and your own particular way of doing that in your church or your country or your culture or your family whatever hate that is going to be largely up to you within the realms of reason but outside of that let's just see what the biblical data is yeah and try to divorce it from all of this other cultural and personal and opinion you know clutter that gets on the table of truth and we have a hard time distinguishing between what the message really is and the message is a beautiful message of peace in fact the Bible repeatedly refers to God as the God of peace when Jesus is announced in Isaiah chapter 9 verses six seven and eight he is called the Prince of Peace and so we want a message that is beautiful that's biblical that's saturated in the love of God and a message that announces to us who God is and God is a God of peace he longs to make peace with humanity in fact Scripture this teaching of Scripture is that God has made peace with humanity in the person of his son Jesus Christ now that's what we're gonna talk about right now we're gonna ask the somewhat provocative question who killed Jesus and in order to do that I just want you to know right up front that this is a fairly dense presentation if you're sitting there thinking did he just call me dense no didn't call you dense the presentation is dense in other words there's a lot of data here and it's going to require your your attentiveness you're gonna really kind of need to be with me and be in the zone and we're going to sort of do two things the presentations in in some ways going to be divided up into kind of two parts though they fit together in a really complimentary way the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to sort of ask the question did Jesus even live like how do we know that a man named Jesus of Nazareth actually lived is this just a biblical idea is this just a religious idea is this an idea of faith do I just have to have faith that he lived or is there is there good reason is there good evidence to think that this guy actually lived that he actually did the things that the New Testament describes him having done then in the second part we're going to take a look at a Biblical prophecy what's called a Messianic prophecy one of the most remarkable prophecies in all of Scripture that actually points forward not just to Jesus in some ambiguous sense or some general sense but actually points forward to his death and we're gonna talk about some of the implications of his death and who killed him I mean who was it that was ultimately responsible for the death of Jesus and so we're going to sort of accomplish those two things by way of beginning I want to remind us from our last presentation we were asking the question will there ever be justice on earth and we came to the conclusion that the answer is yes there will be but it will be in the new heavens and the new earth well where it reaches its fullest manifestation of true justice true righteousness and true love based living but even here on earth the church God calls you as a member of his church not a member of this denomination under this denomination of this denomination but as a member of the church of Jesus Christ you're a follower of Jesus in your own sphere within your family within your neighborhood within your workplace at your university in your own sphere of influence God calls you to help establish justice on earth by living your life in harmony with the principles of the Messiah the way that Jesus lived his life and therefore you become as it were a tentacle that reaches out a an antenna that that reaches out hands that reach out into the world to establish the Messiah's justice and the Messiah's rule on earth Jesus repeatedly talked about this and he called it the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven he went so far as on one occasion to say the kingdom of the of heaven is the kingdom of heaven is within you it's not some 10 it's not a place that you can go like take a left to drive about three miles you'll go over a hill there'll be a stoplight take the right there and then you'll come to a tee and the kingdom of heaven is on your right no it's not like giving directions to a Pizza Hut or to a Walmart no the kingdom of heaven is not a geographical location the kingdom of heaven emerges wherever someone chooses to live their life with Jesus as the king did you get that the kingdom of heaven is what emerges when you choose to live your life as Jesus as your king so you literally can bring the kingdom of heaven to your office right you can bring the kingdom of heaven to your University you can bring the kingdom of heaven to your neighborhood because if Jesus is your king Obama might be your president but Jesus can be your king right for our viewing audience you might have your president whether you're in Australia or wherever it is that person might be your prime minister or your president but Jesus is your king and when you say Jesus is my king you are establishing when you live that way by His grace and by his spirit you're establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth hey man I mean that's the very prayer that Jesus taught us to pray thy will be done thy kingdom come right I will be done on heaven or on earth as it is in heaven thy will be done and so this idea of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven not as a geographical entity but as a relational and beautiful and love based reality that's what God calls us to in an Isaiah chapter 61 verse 8 one of my favorite little just short passages of scripture God says for I the Lord love what does he love justice and God asks us to establish justice in our own spheres of influence in our own homes in our own families in our own workplaces in our own churches to live the life of justice well let's ask the question all of this is fine and good and nice David and I've been enjoying the presentation somebody might be saying from the listening audience but how do we know that this Jesus guy even lived I mean really how do we can we be sure and what I want to try and do at the outset of our presentation here is establish the historicity the reliability of the historical life of a man named Jesus just last night before I was going to bed I got sucked into the YouTube vortex does that ever happen to you you know someone sends you a link that's actually something that you might want to be interested in so you go and you watch it well that was interesting and then it's like oh well that looks interesting click click click click look like like like like like and somehow I don't know what it was that I was clicking on but I ended up watching a 25-minute documentary on a man in Siberia I think his name is Viserion who claims to be Jesus and the third manifestation of Jesus he's Russian and in the taiga forest there of Siberia he has like 10,000 followers and it's it's it's really very kind of creepy and kind of cultic and kind of strange and and not surprisingly I suppose Viserion is clothed in white you know what else would a messianic figure be clothed in he's got a beard the requisite beard and the long hair so he's very christ-like in terms of just the way he looks and the way he's acting and in the sort of she'll be alright she'll be all right just take her outside give her a bit of a talking-to you know I can't understand why a two-year-old would not want to sit through my presentation um so anyway this Arion is is whoever he is I think I'm saying his name right is sort of like this Messiah figure this Christ figure and the truth of the matter is is that we live in a time where there is no shortage of people who view themselves as Christ figures or Messiah figures or religious leaders and what I want to talk about is the original Messiah the the one who came 2,000 years ago who lived in and around Palestine and can we be sure that this guy actually existed I mean how do we know that anything in history actually happened and I'll just maybe say a brief thing on that as soon as you get one as soon as you get more than a single generation removed from any historical event we are trusting the historians to tell us the truth this is a basic philosophy of history say so take for example the Civil War the United States Civil War the American Civil War there is no one on earth that witnessed those events no one that's presently alive that saw those events with his or her own eyes and so what we do is we rely upon the historical accounts and historians have a variety of criteria by which they establish veracity and authenticity etcetera and so - as we get for as as we get further and further removed from history it gets harder and harder to discern exactly what the historical facts are and so it's very interesting with regards to the case of Jesus some people are of the persuasion or of the opinion that all that we know about Jesus is contained in the Bible and you just have to take the Bible on faith some sort of fuzzy-wuzzy you know like yeah I feel in my heart it's true well I'm not suggesting that you don't feel in your heart that it's true I think that's an appropriate response but fortunately for us there is very good historical evidence like the kind of historical evidence that historians look at and say yeah that's solid yeah that is almost certainly the case and then when you have multiple what's called attestation basically a testings you have you have multiple historical extra-biblical outside of the Bible historical at a Stations of a man named G who lived at about this time who did about these things who lived this kind of a life and when those added stations are largely consistent and congruent a historian looks at that and says that's a historical fact and I want to give you some of those extra-biblical at a stations about the life of a man named Jesus so that we can first talk about did the guy even live before we can ask the second question who killed him and so I'm going to start by just making a very simple point an important point and that is that the question did Jesus actually live is a critically important one because the Christian faith is an historical faith it's what everyone it's a historical faith what that means is well let me just read it and I'll tell you what it means that is it is a faith that is grounded in certain events having actually happened if those events did not in fact happen the Christian faith is not true okay now here's kind of the point in this sense the Christian faith is a very vulnerable faith now hear me out on this because the Christian because the the story of Christ and the basic message of Christianity is rooted in an historical figure and in historical events namely the life death and resurrection of this figure if those things could be shown to be historically inaccurate or historically unreliable then Christianity can be on shaky ground by the way the Apostle Paul makes this very point in Scripture he says if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then your faith is empty it's futile it's vain first Corinthians chapter 15 so in this sense you can just imagine that Christianity as it were places its head on the chopping block like it is what's the word I'm looking for here it is vulnerable to falsification if it could be shown that the man named Jesus really didn't exist or that that that the man that that Jesus that did exist was nothing like the biblical picture that we see in Scripture that the Christian faith here could literally be chopped off at the head quite literally because Christ is the head so so the point here that I want you to really appreciate it if you take other religious faiths and I'm not going to list them here as such but there are other historical faiths that are other religious faiths excuse me that just make like philosophical theological claims about the nature of reality and whether or not well let's just take Buddha for example whether or not Watson mo Buddha ever lived or existed does not would not detract from the truthfulness of what the Buddhist believes about his sayings yep you pick up on that in other words if it was somebody else that said it the saying is where the locus of truth is but Jesus is different than this because if Jesus Jesus made wild claims and the claims that he made about himself and about his mission were rooted in his death burial and resurrection he said things like this you destroy this temple in three days and I'll raise it up again right you destroyed that in the end the Jews were like are you kidding it took 46 years to build this temple how could you possibly but but what he was saying is my claims my healings are are the extension of the kingdom of God on earth and and I will give you evidence of that not only the evidence of the healings not only the evidence of my sayings and the truthfulness of them but but when I'm raised from the dead you will know that the things that I have said are true right so Jesus himself as well as Paul rooted the the truthfulness of what he was saying in his actual historicity and in his of course the historicity of his resurrection because that's what sets him apart from everybody else millions and billions of people have died but the question is did this guy actually raise from the dead well before we can ever get to that question we need to ask the first question did he live in the first place and the answer is in fact he did and I want to spend just a little bit of time here going through some of these extra biblical evidences the first is from a very interesting letter that we have from a man that we simply know as Mara Barr Sarafian and the letter was written sometime around 70 to 100 AD 80 70 to 100 and we don't know very much about him I'm just gonna read you a small portion of this letter that we have but apparently ma revoir Sarafian is writing this letter from prison and he feels that he has been unjustly prisoned and he actually uses three examples of other people in history who have been unjustly treated or or or unjustly imprisoned and one of those examples that he uses is none other than Jesus of Nazareth now the significance of here of this again here is just listen to the date on this this is like circa 100 ad or ad 100 right so this is contemporaneous with Jesus that means that it couldn't event some later invention you know 3rd and 4th century somebody made up this idea of a Jesus figure a Christ figure no very interesting look at what he says he's writing and he says what advantage did the Athenians gain by murdering Socrates for which they were repaid with famine and pestilence or the people of Sammis by the burning of pythagoras because their country was completely covered in sand in just one hour he's basically using here pythagoras and soccer 'is it as two examples of people that were unjustly treated then he says what advantage did the jews gain from executing their wise king it was just after that that their kingdom was abolished that's an unambiguous reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 which we're going to talk a lot about in just a bit nor did the wise King die all together he lived on in the teaching which he had given an almost veiled reference to the concept of the resurrection so this is a very intricate historians look at that and they say that's fascinating because that basic idea is is a corroboration of the the basic picture that we have of Scripture here that a man named Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews that he was executed to some degree by the very people or at least the religious leaders of the people that he'd actually come to help but in some sense he didn't actually die and some movements carried his teachings on well that is basically a fairly accurate synopsis of the New Testament and it's not being written by anybody with a religious agenda and so a historian will look at that and say that that smells like the truth right here's another one Christians derived their name from a man called Christ who during the reign of emperor Tiberius had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate the deadly superstition that's Christianity which of course from a Roman perspective this is Tacitus Cornelius Tacitus notice again here the date a t56 to 120 that's from Tacitus live so these are almost contemporary figures with Jesus and just a quick word here about Tacitus most of what we know about the Roman Empire of the first century and and the preceding centuries comes from Tacitus most of the sort of you know when you get a picture of what rome looked like most of that comes to us from from Tacitus here and Tacitus is writing about Jesus and he says and Christianity the deadly superstition which of course it was regarded as a deadly superstition because it was against the state religion which at this time in Rome's history was was Emperor worship ok well later actually wasn't quite Emperor worship yet but it was about ready to become I don't know that though deadly superstition thus check for the moment broke out afresh not only in Judea also now the location is correct the first source of the evil but also in the city of Rome all that squares with what we learned about in Scripture where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular so even Tacitus is not too thrilled about Rome as a city so notice he says you Christians derive their name from a man called Christ and then he tells us when who during the reign of emperor Tiberius and now watch this detail had been executed by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate this is hugely significant for historians because here we have again this is not a religious writer he's a histamine historian who's writing about the ups and downs and the ebbs and flows of Roman society and he says oh here's something that was happening during this time the reign of Tiberius Caesar there was a man his name was the Christ he was in the area of Judea he was he was a Jew he was killed by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and the deadly heresy spread so significantly it even went to Rome now again that smells a lot like the New Testament picture of Jesus the timing is right the basic perspective is right the the execution is right the person responsible for the execution is right and so when a historian then comes to Matthew Mark Luke John and the writings of Paul and they see consistency between that and other historians they say yeah that that is almost certainly historical facts historical what everyone fact now just another quick word on that basic idea historians do not treat as funny as it might seem to some of us Matthew Mark Luke and John any differently than they treat any other historian because some people would look and say well they had an agenda you know Matthew Mark Luke and John had and I had a and historical and a Eligius agenda well the truth of the matter is all historians have agendas right even today and this is why some had someone once quipped that history is only slightly more difficult to tell what happened in the past is only slightly more difficult to tell them what's going to happen in the future right because because history is always viewed through the eyes of the person who's writing it even your own history man how many times in your own experience have you been just sure that a certain kind of thing happened and then your spouse or your friend or your mom or your dad tells you no it was actually different than that and then now you wonder am i completely insane did that thing actually happened the way I thought it did well no you're not completely insane what happened is you filtered that experience you filtered whatever it was that happened through your own experience and through your own take on it right and then over time it can become cloudy and the thing that you were just sure happened it might be kind of like what happened but other people say actually happened a little different than that right and that's just the nature of history but when you have numerous people who are all saying no this is what happened this is how it happened this is when it happened and this is why it happened okay now we're arriving at historical truth does this help this is kind of a bit of a philosophy of history class here and so yes Matthew Mark Luke and John are treated by historians as having had an agenda but Tacitus had an agenda every historian has some kind of an agenda but here's the point when people with different agendas and different perspectives are giving the same basic facts of the case now we can be sure we're arriving at the actual thing and not just perception so far so good okay here's this is from another Roman historian not nearly as well known as Tacitus his name is Gaius Suetonius tranquillus and notice 80 69 to 130 he's writing and he says Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in 80 49 by the way this is described in the book of Acts this very event is described in the book of Acts now why why did Claudius expel the Jews from Rome because of the riots they were causing at the instigation of and he writes Christus but that's almost certainly a Latinization or a Roman Mis statement of Christ because everything else matches up the Rome the the the the the Roman procurator here the Roman commander kicks the Jews out of Rome because there were riots there was a jeté ssin and it was about this figure Cresta switch sounds very similar to the Hebrew Christ which is the anointed one which is what the word literally means and so here again is an absolute historical confirmation of something that the text of Scripture says yeah that's what happened that's when it happened that's why it happened here's one that I think let me just read it for you here and I want to be sure I get the person right who said it but I think it was Ellucian of sama soda but let's see the one whom they still worship today the man in Palestine who was crucified ah there's a historical consistency because he brought this new form of initiation into the world so this idea that he brought in some new idea moreover yeah Lucian of sama soda who was a Greek play actor and satirist moreover that first law giver of theirs persuaded them that they are all brothers oh there's a consistency there and that the moment they transgressed and deny the Greek gods okay and begin worshiping that crucified softest an unambiguous reference to Jesus Christ and living by his laws so here again we have an actor as he was not writing it from any favorable perspective of Christianity in fact he goes so far as to call Jesus a crucified softest right but the point is is that it's interesting the moment he says a crucified Sophos which is obviously a term of derision he confirms one of the basic historical facts about the man Jesus namely that he was crucified right he was regarded as you know a lawgiver by his people not only that he taught that people were all brothers etc and so again when a historian begins to see these multiple Atta stations these multiple extra biblical pictures of this Christ figure from people who don't have a particular religious agenda associated with that figure they begin to say yeah the corroboration here the consistency here this looks to be very reliable and here's that I think a final one this one's from Flavius Josephus who was a Jewish historian at this time there appeared what Jesus a wise man noticed the time he's giving us about the time of this for he was a doer of startling deeds okay a seeming reference to the miracles a teacher that's accurate of people who received the truth with pleasure and he gained a following now watch this both among Jews and among many of Greek origin so he had universal appeal Gentile and Jewish appeal which is actually what we find in the New Testament he was perhaps the Messiah Christ right now this is an interesting statement here because Josephus and this is actually somewhat disputed because people are saying why would Josephus a Jew actually say that Jesus may have been the Messiah Christ and there's you know sort of half of the scholarly community says that is something that Flavius Josephus likely said and the other half says we're not sure he said it it seemed strange I think he probably said it because he doesn't say he was the Messiah Christ and of course Messiah is just the Hebrew word in Christ the Greek word for the same thing The Anointed One he says he this guy might have been the Messiah and when Pilate US and now we're at a correct chronological time chronologically because of an accusation made by the leading men among us oh so now we know the situation that led the conspiracy that led to his death condemned him to the cross those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so in other words his movement didn't lose steam because of his death goes on to say for they reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion now we have an extra biblical reference to the resurrection and that he was alive and up until this very day the tribe of Christians named after him has not died out now now the point here and I hope you're beginning to see this and this is not every historical attestation extra biblical attestation that we could give but it's some of the most profound basically if we didn't know anything about Jesus from Matthew Mark Luke and John if there was no New Testament I want you this to sink into you if there was no New Testament the things that I'm going to write that I'm in a place here on the screen are the things that we would know about Jesus again even if there was no Matthew Mark Luke or John okay just based on other extra biblical evidences we would know that his name was Jesus or Jesus Christ we would know the place and time of his ministry in Palestine sometime between 80 26 and 36 we would know the name of his mother may we would know that there was something ambiguous about the nature of his birth which is exactly what Scripture confirms that he was born of a woman who had never been with a man and that that was actually we see instances in the intestine where that's suggested oh yeah yeah Oh his mother we know who this guy is as if to suggest that there was something not exactly on the up-and-up with his birth and we know that from extra-biblical sources as well we would know about his fame as a teacher and also his purported miracle-working we would know that many people thought of him as the Messiah or the Christ and that that title was attributed to him we would know the time a manner of his execution namely crucifixion under Pilate at a certain time we would know that there was both Jewish and Roman cooperation in his death and we would know that there were people who at least believed that they saw him after he was crucified that he rose again from the dead now beloved that is the biblical story right that is the basic that is the skeleton that's the skeleton of the New Testament and we would know all of that if there was no New Testament are you letting the significance of that sort of sink in okay so when when we talk about who killed Jesus and did Jesus really live we're not just talking about some figure that you know pie-in-the-sky by and by I hope it was true oh no no no this is rooted and grounded in sober historical fact this is my summary Jesus death is well established by the what kind of evidence by the historical evidence and is almost universally believed by both critical and sympathetic scholars right virtually no one denies that Jesus died at the hand of his detractors when I say sympathetic and critical scholars that is both people who are inclined to believe the story of Jesus and historians who really are indifferent to Jesus and his claims they're just critical scholars they're just academic scholars evaluating the evidence in other words the point is basically everyone Christian and non-christian affirms the basic truth this guy lived he died at the hands of his detractors under these circumstances in this place at about this time so far so good now in addition to this amazing evidence gonna look at another evidence as we seek to answer the question who was it to kill Jesus and there are many possible answers to the question you could say it was wrong Rome killed Jesus and there would be an element of truth to that you could say Pontius Pilate executed Jesus and there would be an element of truth to that you could say the Jewish leadership had a role to play and there would be an element of truth even in that some people say well no it was God God placed Christ there and allowed him to okay and someone says no no it's another answer altogether now what I want to try and show you is that all of these answers are partially right but none of them is fully right and I want to give you what I think the biblical answer is but of course that's the punchline and unlike in past presentations I'm gonna make you wait for this one but you only have to wait about another 25 or 30 minutes now the Old Testament is filled with what are called prophecies and prophecies are just basically a foretelling of a pass or of a future event and we're going to look at some prophecies in this afternoon in our next sessions but basically a prophecy is not a prediction like somebody predicting who's going to win the Super Bowl or the World Cup or some you know election no no prediction has the element of risk it's it's a guess it's you know maybe maybe not but prophecy is not a prediction a prophecy is a declaration by God about what will happen not what might happen and in the case of Messianic prophecies these were prophecies about the Messiah and the the Old Testament is filled with these Messianic prophecies by some count by some counts there are as many as a hundred Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament and basically these are just like little details sometimes they're like little incidental details and other times they're really central to the identity and mission of the Messiah they include things like his birthplace where he would be born and that prophecy is made for example in Micah chapter 5 and we find the fulfillment the very fulfillment in Matthew chapter 2 who his mother would be that she would be that she would be a virgin and we find the prophecy in Isaiah 7 in the confirmation in Matthew which tribe he would come from what family he would come from the time that he would come we're going to get into that in just a second his basic message from Isaiah and then the fulfillment of that in Luke when he in Luke chapter 4 where he actually quotes that Isaiah passage his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey his betrayal and the price of his betrayal that he would be spat upon etc other things that no bones would be broken in his execution that he would be executed with criminals that he would be mocked that he would be ultimately resurrected and the timing of his death I want to spend time on that that prophecy there from Daniel chapter 9 basically what we have is a series of little details that's kind of a cool way to think about it like like these prophets are writing well in advance in some case hundreds of years in advance about this coming Messiah and in the case of Moses more than a thousand years in advance and saying okay it'll be this and it'll be this and it'll be this it'll be this and it'll be this and it'll be this and it'll be this and it'll be this and it'll be this all sort of you have the sort of composite cumulative case that when the guy comes we'll know who it is right or we should know who it is and it's very interesting mathematicians have actually evaluated the chances the statistical chances of one man fulfilling all of the Messianic prophecies or or even some have done just one of the chances of fulfilling eight random eight of the prophecies or or 10 or 20 or 40 and the numbers are just astronomical a man by the name of Peter stone I wrote a book or a number of years ago I think in the 1960s called science speaks and he estimated that the the chances that one man could randomly you know just by happenstance serendipitously fulfill these various messianic prophecies all of them 2:10 to the one hundred and fifty seventh power okay so that's ten with a hundred and fifty seven zeroes behind it and let me just give you a feel for how big that number is the total number of atoms in the universe is estimated by cosmologists and physicists at ten to the 81st power the total number of atoms in the whole universe 10 to the 80th and Stoner says yeah the chances based on his calculations the other chances that one man would you know serendipitously fulfill you know all of these whatever it was you know 96 messianic I don't remember what his exact number his calculation was based on 10 to the 157 in other word not gonna happen not going to happen even if you just take like eight or ten of them randomly it's like 10 to the 17th power which is an astronomically large number right well the whole story that I want to tell here is actually from one of the most amazing I would say the most amazing of all the Messianic prophecies and it's found in the Book of Daniel and I'm just going to turn there and spend basically all of my time there the rest of my time Daniel chapter 9 and here we find a particular prophecy the Book of Daniel is filled with amazing prophecies but in this case in Daniel chapter 9 the latter part of Daniel chapter 9 contains a short prophecy actually it's just a one two three four versus five if you include verse 23 and six if you include verses 22 as well 22 and 23 so just a few verses here and that we're gonna seek to try and understand these verses but in order to really get our minds wrapped around them we have to understand a basic biblical sequence we have established that there's good historical and evidentiary reason to believe that that Jesus lived that he really was an historical figure that lived at about this time and did these things etc so we're on very solid ground here with the New Testament we can feel good about the New Testament in terms of its historical accuracy by the way just a quick word on that it used to be that that some historians thought of Luke the Gospel writer is sort of you know an inexact and uncaring story and when in reality confirmation after confirmation archaeological and others other kinds of confirmations have confirmed in point after point after point the basic accuracy of Luke's perspective and in fact he is now considered phenomenally reliable in his dates his times his geography and his basic perspective and you would expect that from someone who's identified in Scripture as a physician you know he's very precise when he writes this was here and this happened and this person was in charge in church and people say oh yeah yeah yeah nice details you know work on it you know back say 60 70 80 years ago now we know that Luke is fantastically historically accurate and is corroborated by biblical anis to extra biblical attestation as well just an interesting little point there so it kind of all boils down to a basic quincy r a basic sequence that was alluded to in one of the earlier extra-biblical things that we looked at I think it was mana bar Surat beyond when he said you know what why did the why did the Jews execute their wise king the Jewish leadership execute their wise king because shortly after their Kingdom was taken away their city was destroyed and this basic sequence is a huge part of understanding this particular messianic prophecy and under understanding Jesus identity in general and and very simply put it boils down to the the the rejection of Jesus and his messianic identity by the Jewish leadership and the subsequent destruction of their city in AD 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 according to this prophecy it was actually a an inevitable result an inevitable consequence of the rejection of their own Messiah now of course not all the Jews rejected the Messiah that's hardly the case because all of the New Testament with the possible exception of Luke was written by Jews the early disciples were Jews most of the early believers were Jews and so when people make really foolish really blanket statements like the Jews rejected Jesus they are completely mistaken and they're saying something that's frankly really stupid the truth of the matter is is that much of the Jewish leadership rejected Jesus messianic identity but all of Jesus early believers were Jews and later in the book of Acts even many of those that had initially the leadership initially rejected Jesus actually began to accept the evidences of his Messiahship after the outpouring of the Spirit so I just want you to be very precise with your language because frankly it's offensive to say the Jews rejected Jesus not only is it offensive it's not true it's not true the Jewish leadership of the day rejected the Messianic identity of Jesus but later many of those people that initially rejected actually changed their mind and again just to restate my point here so it's very clear all of Jesus early an initial followers were Jewish so to make the statement that the Jews rejected Jesus is just a pure ignorant statement it's unnecessarily offensive we should say what actually happened historically speaking the religious leaders of his day did not accept him as the promised Messiah at least not initially most of them so that being the case what's described in Daniel chapter 9 and Jesus actually picks up on this in Matthew 21 in Matthew 24 is this basic sequence and it goes like this it's very simple the Messiah would be largely rejected in the city as a consequence would be destroyed that's it by the way it's just a quick word on that it doesn't say that God would destroy the city no but that the city as a consequence would be destroyed God didn't destroy the city the Romans destroyed the city but because they had released themselves from God's protective power by rejecting the very Messiah that was sent to help them God's hands were as it were tied what more could he do right and so this is not a prophecy of something that God would do but of something that would happen and in fact it did so get this basic sequence in your mind according to this prophecy in Daniel 9 that we're going to spend time on the Messiah would be largely rejected right and the city as a consequence would be destroyed so that's the sequence Messiah rejected city destroyed Messiah rejected city destroyed by the way John says this very same thing in the opening chapter of his gospel he says in John chapter 1 verse 11 he came unto his own and his own received him not right the vast majority of people were initially resistant to Jesus claims but even those who did receive again were largely Jewish and after the outpouring of the Spirit in the book of Acts the number increased but initially it was like no this guy's not the guy this guy not not the guy etc especially among the leadership so in Matthew chapter 21 Jesus tells a story and in this particular story he says there was a man who had a vineyard and he put a winepress in it and he put a hedge about it and he put a tower in it and then he he left it to some managers and he said okay you guys you know this is my vineyard but I'll come back at some point and want some of the fruits from the vineyard cuz it does take a long time you plant a bunch of new vines for the vines to come to maturity and then just start to produce enough grapes you know so that you could actually harvest the grapes and maybe even make some juice from the grapes so he says ok I'll be back at some time in the future to you know reap the benefits of my investment and so in order to sort of check up on his investment according to Jesus in Matthew 21 he sends some people to go check it out some servants and it says that when the servants came the managers of the facility actually killed the servants and then he sent more servants and then it killed them too and in the men where where am i sermon say Oh so I hear they're being spitefully treatable it was apparently a long distance and he didn't have the time to go so he sent his son thinking oh my son I'll straighten this situation you know I got some rebellious employees over there but then according to Jesus parable he said that when the son came the managers of the vineyard they said oh this is the son if we kill him we can take his inheritance and so he was the son was also killed like the servants that were sent before and as Jesus is telling the story he then asks the question of the religious leaders of his day he says ok so when the owner returns what's he gonna do to those guys is he gonna reward them for their good service no and then they respond and say ah he will miserably destroy those wicked men and Jesus says bingo have you never read in your own scriptures the stone that the builders rejected the same has become the head of the corner this is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes and then he says Matthew 21 verse 43 I'll just quote it for you he says therefore on the basis of your own judgment against yourself he says therefore the kingdom of heaven will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits thereof right so don't miss the basic sequence the son would be rejected and the people would receive destruction so Messiah rejected city destroyed Jesus in Matthew chapter 24 his on into the temple Matthew chapter 23 actually has gone into the temple for the last time and he has implored he has pleaded he is he has just laid his heart out in in total vulnerability and said o Jerusalem Jerusalem how often I wanted to gather you together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you would have no part of it you were not willing I mean here we see by the way that the picture of the character of God God doesn't say get over here right that's what we talked about in our last presentation it's not the ten you won't it's the 10 you will be able to you will no longer its the promises not only duty and obligation and so here we see God's heart on full display Jerusalem Jerusalem ah you that kill the prophets how often I wanted to gather you well he could easily do it he's God he can do what he wants you get him by the scruff of the neck and make him come but what to what end to what end because he's not trying to woo them in some slavery sense or some controlling sense he wants to win them to - not the strength of his nature but the beauty of his character is that becoming a consistent theme here and and when you are trying to lose somebody to make their own decision to come and follow you your hands are tied in terms of coercive force so Jesus you can feel the force here in Matthew chapter 23 you can read it he's well what can I do and in in despondency the Bible says he left the temple he left the temple so last time I would ever set foot in the temple the very temple that was designed to point to him by the way the Lambs pointed to Jesus the priesthood pointed to Jesus all of the sacrifices pointed to Jesus so just imagine the melancholy of that moment imagine the pregnancy of that moment when when Jesus leaves the temple for the last time the very temple that was designed to point to him and they goes out on top of the Mount of Olives there in Matthew chapter 24 the disciples come to try and cheer him up because this has been a rough go here in the temple and they said oh Jesus look at the temple look at how beautiful it is it's cheer up and he says do you not see all these this is Matthew chapter 24 verses 1 to 3 do you not see all of these things I tell you verily I say unto you not one stone will be left upon another that will not be thrown down see Jesus understood and he understood it on the basis of this prophecy Daniel chapter 9 that the Messiah would be rejected and then destruction would come Messiah rejected city destroyed now let's actually go read the prophecy Daniel chapter 9 beginning in verse 24 seventy weeks are determined for your people for your holy and for your holy city okay that's Jerusalem and Israel to finish the transgression to make an end of sins to make reconciliation for iniquity to bring in everlasting righteousness to seal up the prophecy and to anoint the most holy the short version of this verse is that God had extended his hand in covenant relationship over and over and over again to the Jewish nation but that they had consistently rejected his overtures they had been unfaithful to the Covenant and he basically says there's we're not just gonna do this forever we're not going to go around the you know you know the Mayberry Bush forever work we're mulberry bush we're gonna there's gonna be an end to this and seventy more weeks to accomplish and he gives them a list of six things that need to be accomplished I think I have those up here to finish the transgression to make an end of sins to atone for iniquity to bring an everlasting righteousness to seal up the vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy okay then the prophecy comes verses 25 26 and 27 and I just need to spend a quick moment on this the prophecy here is communicated in in parallelism and what we mean by that is that unlike English poetry which often hinges on rhyme and meter like roses are red violets are blue sugar is sweet and so are you not all English poetry rhymes and has metre like that but much of it does Hebrew poetry hinges on what's called recapitulation which is just to say something and then say it again but with different words so for example thy word is a it's a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path right so saying the same thing lamp to the feet light to the path okay that's that's that's Jewish recapitulation and that's how poetry works the Jewish poetry and it can become very complex it can sometimes it's just a bee a bee but it can be even like ABC ABC and they can also have what's called a chiastic structure or it goes ABC be a right or a b c d c b a and basically that's the way that that Hebrew poetry works it works on the idea of recapitulation say something then say it again and then revisit it revisit it revisit it in parallel well this prophecy is communicated poetically in fact if you're reading from the New King James Version like I am verses 25 26 and 27 are actually set in verse they're not written like the rest of the chapter which is prose it's written like poetry do you see that and it's it's written like poetry for good reason and to really get your fingers wrapped around this verse you have to read it in the a.b a.b a.b fashion and we're gonna do that here because i'm an arena through the first time and it's not gonna probably make a whole lot of sense I'll just read it right through and then we'll go back and we'll read just the a parts aaaa and then we'll read just the B parts BBB so let's just read it right through first twenty five know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build jerusalem until messiah the prince there will be seven weeks in sixty two weeks the street will be built again in the wall even in trouble sometimes after the sixty-two weeks Messiah will be cut off but not for himself and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city in the sanctuary and the end of it will be with the flood until the end of the war desolations are determined then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week but in the middle of the week he will bring an end to sacrifice and offering and on the wing of abominations shall make shall be one who makes desolate even until the consummation which is determined is poured out on the desolate okay is that just clear as mud okay part if you're feeling like man that's not super clear part of the reason for the lack of clarity is your reading basically a prophecy about the Messiah and then the city Messiah City Messiah City right Messiah City messiahs City Messiah City what I want to do now is just read the Messiah parts so what we're gonna do is going to read the first half of twenty five the first half of twenty six and the first half of twenty seven you tell me if it makes much better sense you ready what worried just the eight parts know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks and after the sixty-two weeks Messiah will be cut off but not for himself and he will confirm the covenant with many for one week but in the middle of the week he will bring an end to sacrifice and offering does that absolutely come alive it's a complete piece of cake it's totally easy to understand and the same is true if we went through and read the B parts if you go through and read the B parts it's just about the city the city the city right so it's it's very easy to understand the prophecy when we read it the a the a the a the B the B the B but for our purposes here we don't have time to go into every detail of it it's very simple clearly what's happening here is the Messiah will come the Messiah will confirm the covenant he will be cut off killed he will cause he will bring an end to sacrifice and offering namely the sacrificial system and as a result the city will be destroyed by a flood of people that come in of some mysterious prints will come and will overrule the city with a flood not a literal flood of water but a flood of people will destroy the city so don't miss the sequence to go back here basically Jesus said the Messiah would be rejected the city would be destroyed when he told that parable in Matthew 24 he said the Messiah will be rejected and the city will be destroyed well that raises the question where did he get this idea from did he just get it you know did he just create it out of his brain did he just come up no no no he got this directly from the very prophecy that we just read by the way we know that because he actually says so in Matthew chapter 24 when Jesus is speaking about this very thing he actually says go back and read the Book of Daniel he says I'll escort for you very quickly here verse 15 when you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of idea near the Prophet we just read that that's Matthew chapter 9 he says let whoever reads understand let those that are in Judea flee to the mountains so what Jesus is saying here is I read Daniel chapter 7 8 and 9 and I'm telling you that this is what it's prop saying is going to happen and what Jesus describes is that the Messiah will be rejected and then the city will be destroyed by a flooding pagan power that's exactly what happened in AD 70 but the precise details of the Messiah's experience are absolutely amazing and we're just going to go through them kind of quickly here first of all he said that the time allotted for the Jewish nation was 70 weeks or that is 490 prophetic years or literal years and prophetic days and if you sort of just start doing the math here we know that the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem because he says from the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem count seventy weeks and that command went forward in 457 BC 457 BC and you can actually read about it in Ezra chapter 7 when the King Artaxerxes basically sent the Jews back to their homeland sent them back to their homeland and we have that dates very well established 457 BC well if we count forward okay here's what we're gonna do we're gonna kind of count forward first the 69 weeks because it says at the end of the 69 weeks Messiah would come and remarkably in AD 27 this is exactly when Jesus came and Luke the historian tells us this if you want to go back and read Luke chapter 3 it's very interesting and I'll just quickly read it for you here I'm keeping my finger in Daniel 9 but listen to this listen to the precision with which Luke writes I'm glad that we have the opportunity here to have an exam of this look at this Luke chapter 3 verse 1 now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee and his Philip tete his brother Philip Tetrarch of IT Rhea and the region of track and itis and licinia's tetrarch of abilene while Anacin que ifs were high priest the Word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness do you see the precision here I mean he says in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar right we know when the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar is its 8027 right so absolutely an amazing prophecy and this is just an example of how precise Luke is well Luke says in this year a guy by the name of John came into the wilderness and he started preaching and he started doing something that was kind of weird a little wild a little wacky he started putting people under the water and bringing him up so they said man look at this guy he's like baptizing people we'll call him John the Baptizer right so John the Baptizer comes around and he's baptizing people right and he's saying I'm baptizing you with water but someone is coming who will baptize you with fire he's anticipating he's announcing that someone else would come and right there in Luke chapter 3 he also have this in Matthew and Mark Jesus shows up and Jesus gets baptized now when Jesus gets baptized according to the New Testament the Holy Spirit comes upon him and anoints him now hear that language the Holy Spirit comes upon him and anoints him when the Holy Spirit anoints him guess what he becomes the anointed one well how do you say anointed one in Greek you say Christ how do you say anointed one in Hebrew Messiah or mashiac right so it says sixty-nine weeks the Messiah will come The Anointed One will come and Jesus is baptized is baptized and anointed right on schedule it's fascinating and I wish I had time to even go into some of the other New Testament evidences that really undergird that well then it says but in the middle of the week the Messiah would be cut off but not for himself now this is where things get absolutely mind-blowing ly accurate because Jesus was the original decree in 457 went forward in the fall of 457 and therefore when Jesus is baptized he's baptized in the fall of 80 27 now watch this the fall of 80 20 would be a year a fall of 80 29 would be two years the fall of 80 30 would be three years after fall comes winter and then spring Jesus was crucified in the spring of 8030 one exactly halfway through the remaining seventh year the last seventh year that's exactly what the prophecy says in the middle of the week he would be cut off but not for himself in other words not because he had done anything wrong or criminal or deserving of death he would be cut off but not for himself the final three and a half the final three and a half years of the of the Covenant is confirmed and according to the book of Acts Stephen is stoned right at that time a t-34 and then guess what the gospel starts going to the Gentile peoples in other words the Jews probation as a nation now individual Jews of course can still be saved today just Jamaicans and Americans and Ukrainians and others but as the nation the Jewish privileged position as a nation at that point their probation was closed seventy weeks are determined the Messiah had been rejected and the city was destroyed in AD 70 and Jesus said that's what would happen now I want you to appreciate the strength of this prophecy we began by asking the question did Jesus live and we looked at excellent a number of excellent extra biblical historical attestation of the man Jesus that he actually lived but man what do you do with this prophecy the prophecy of Daniel was given some almost 550 to 600 years before the time of Jesus now just let that sink in right this is one of those many Messianic prophecies that we talked about and here we have a prophecy with such mathematical historical precision that it's absolutely remarkable by the way when Jesus died on the cross one of the things that it says is that the veil of the temple was torn from the top to the bottom right the veil that separated the holy from the most holy place from the sanctuary was torn from the top to the bottom now that veil was 30 feet tall right you have these tall curtains back here if I was gonna tear that tall curtain that's behind the screen here the only way I can do it as a 5 foot 8 person would be to tear it from the bottom to the top right I'd have to make a cut at the bottom and then I'd have to pull it probably 2 of us would get and we'd pull it the tear go from the bottom to the top but but the Gospels make a very significant point that when when the veil was torn when Jesus died it was rent from the top to the bottom in other words God did it right God was the one that taught what he was saying was this sacrificial system is done this sacrificial system is is over because the true Lamb of God has come the true sacrifice has come that system is over and so we see that this basic sequence is absolutely amazing the Messiah would be rejected and the city would be destroyed it was a prophecy it was a parable it was a promise and it happened first a prophecy then a parable then a promise and it happened exactly the most beautiful verse here though of course is this first that the Messiah would be cut off but not for himself who who was he cut off for well the answer is for others for the very people that he'd come to save and this gets us right to our question who killed Jesus was it Rome was it Pilate was the Jewish leadership who killed Jesus and the answer is the remarkable answer I'll just let Jesus answer it Jesus in John chapter 10 says as the father knows me even so I know the father and I lay down my life for the Sheep watch how many times he's gonna say that watch how many times he's gonna make that point therefore my father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of myself I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again John 10 15 18 four times he says in these in these four verses four times he says I lay my life down I lay my la I'll a mile nobody's taken my life from me Rome couldn't kill the Messiah the religious leaders couldn't kill the Messiah how are you how are you going to go about killing God's Christ you can't Jesus says no one takes my life I lay it down I lay my life down so in a strange twist of fate the answer to the question who killed Jesus is we did our sin and our rebellion and our obstinacy the human races obstinacy so endeared us to the heart of God so endeared us to him that he laid his life down for us he was under no compulsion to do so he was under no requirement to do so he chose to lay his life down do you know why he did that because he loves us you know why the father allowed it to happen because he loves us for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son if you believe this believe this that whoever believes would not perish but have everlasting life [Music]

Channel: SecondComing.org

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Keywords: David Asscherick, God, Second Coming, SecondComing.org, Religious Videos, Christian Videos, Who Killed Jesus?, asscherick, david asscherick 2018, david asscherick 2017, david asscherick god series, god david asscherick, ascherick jesus, asscherick david who killed jesus, asscherick who killed, david ascherick who killed jesus, david asscherick sermons, asscherick david, david ascherick, christian, david asscherick 5 good reasons, Second Coming of Jesus-

Id: Y793k1qtvRs

Length: 58min 16sec (3496 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2017