The Uniqueness of Christ

we are laying a basic foundation for being a Christian in the marketplace and that means first having a basic understanding of God and the kind of God we should be talking about and it's not the God of unconditional love or even the God of love at all it's the God of righteousness and somehow we've got to get relationships to the point where somebody is interested and asks us what God is really like and I hope from the first session today you know how to answer that question now the next issue I want to deal with is this we are now all of us in a situation where religions are mixing in our community even in Britain when I was brought up as a boy I thought Britain was a Christian country largely because that was the only religion there were churches and chapels in every village and town there was one mosque in the whole of Britain when I was a boy now the Methodist denomination is closing down two of its churches every week and the Muslims are opening two mosques every week that's the big change that's come about and we don't need to go overseas to do missionary work now we just need to walk down the street and this is creating a situation which you already had here but is now a world situation where the religions of the world are living side-by-side and it raises the question as to how we're going to get on with each other and what our attitude is in the same street in the same town in the same village you can have all the religions of the world now indeed if you come to Britain and you walk along the main shopping street in London you will wonder which country you're in because you'll find the whole world walking up and down that Street here you got your Chinese area you've got your Indian area you got your Muslims you got your Christians you've got all kinds of religions rubbing together there are four basic attitudes four basic possible answers to how these religions can live together the politicians of course are very anxious to keep peace in the community and their whole agenda is how to encourage people of different faiths to live together indeed in my country they now refer to all religions as the faith community and treated as a unit in political discussion the four possible relationships between the religions of the world are number one and tagging ISM hostility fighting one another and a lot of blood has been spilled over the ears of history over religion there have been religious wars all the way through between religions Islam and Christianity have fought each other to the death Islam and Hinduism have Islam and Judaism are now at war with each other in the Middle East not only are there wars between religions there are wars within religions in his long case Sunni and Shia are fighting each other in Syrian as they did in Iran and Iraq and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland in my country have been killing each other in the name of religion religion has caused a lot of Wars and the politicians are anxious to bring that to an end the second possibility of religions living together is why - what I call separatism keep them apart if you possibly can this creates ghettos areas where people of one religion can live and then people of another religion live somewhere else it's a policy of separatism and it involves locating religions geographically even within a community and simply keeping them apart there is a town in Britain now in Yorkshire called Dewsbury there's a river running through the middle and everybody on one side of the river is Muslim and then on the other side is the normal mixture that you get with English people and the river keeps them apart and that river keeps the peace I don't think that's the answer it's a privatizing of religion it creates ghettos and the politicians only interest is to prevent what they call proselytizing and legally forbid religions to evangelize each other and of course the two religions that find that most difficult of Christianity and Islam because both are missionary religions both have a world go both wanted not takeover well I think Muslims would probably want to take over the world if they could but Christians have a duty to their Lord to make disciples of all ethnic groups and he told us to do that so we can do no other the third possibility is what's called pluralism which is now the official policy in England or was honor under our former Labour government I didn't say plurality there is all along a plurality of religion faith pluralism is the belief that that's a good thing and that we must encourage different religions because it adds to the variety and spice of life that's the philosophy called pluralism and it's been practiced in my country for some years now in a secular way it's practiced in the name of equality or egalitarianism in which all the religions are treated as of equal value to the community and they are encouraged all our different ways to God the price of this answer is of course that it produces a society that is like a ship without a compass and there is a real difficulty in providing shared outlook and therefore a unity in the community and that is why the word values has come in you noticed how it's now the common currency a search for common values not common truths because we'll never find that but for common values and there are some significant attempts to unite the three basic monotheistic religions Judaism Islam and Christianity on the basis of shared values that's the new language well there is a fourth possibility and that according to the Bible is the one that is likely towards the end of this age to have related the religions together and that's called syncretism to produce a world religion that will combine the best of all religions in one so that the whole world can be united under one faith and one religion that's been an objective which some have tried john foster dulles the american politician really tried that very hard introduced the World Congress of faiths which brought together representatives of all world religions with a view to uniting them of finding enough common ground to unite into one world religion and the Bible does seem to say that before the end of this age that will be achieved now none of these four is the Christian answer and I want to spend this session talking about the uniqueness of Christ the impossibility of ever uniting Christianity with other religions and it is because you can't combine Christ with the leaders of any other religions you can't compare him with other leaders you can only contrast him and when we talk about Christ being unique we mean he's the only one of a kind find and no other religion can reduce anyone like him and that keeps us separate and exclusive as far as religion goes and that will become increasingly offensive in a world that's moving towards one religion we will increasingly appear to be the odd one out if we persist in believing in the uniqueness of Christ in my country now all children are taught comparative religion they are taught about all the religions of the world Christianity being just one among many and taught on the same level and basis as all the others which frankly is facing our children with confusion and leads them to dismiss them all it's the craze of relativism which is perhaps the greatest enemy of an exclusive faith like Christianity relative says everybody's right you all have some of the truth and none of you have all of it that's the thinking behind relativism and therefore no one has the right to say my religion is better than any other and above all to say our religion is the one for everybody that's the height of arrogance in many people's eyes today but I'm afraid we have to say that and it all goes back to the uniqueness of the person called Christ that he's the only one like himself and there is nobody else Christianity is Christ and that makes our religion different quite different so different from all other religions that they cannot ever consider being United now what makes Christ absolutely unique the only one of his kind who cannot be compared to Mohammed or Buddha or Confucius or any other religious leader who's founded a faith well we have to go to the Gospels primarily for a record of Jesus and my conclusion from studying the Gospels is that all religions could be wrong but only one can be right there is such disagreement between the religions that they could all be wrong but it does mean that only one can be right and Christians are convinced that they have found the truth but who's interested in truth today truth has become a matter of opinion dialogue has replaced monologue and the best definition I've heard of a discussion group is pooling your ignorance but da log has considered the way to find truth come together share our insights a little bit here a little bit there there was such a meeting in India not too long ago and representatives of each religion came to that conference and each was asked one question what does your religion offer that none of the others in this room do very good question they went right round and each representative said this is what our religion offers that no other religion offers came round to the Christian and guess what the Indian Christian said he didn't say Christ he said forgiveness and nobody disagreed and everybody admitted that that was unique very interesting discussion the obvious answer we would probably have made was Christ but that man wisely understood that simply to say that without anything else could be argued over so he just said forgiveness now when we look at Christ he is unique the only one of a kind he stands absolutely alone and always will and I just want to run through some of the things that make Christ unique it began with his birth he was not the result of sexual intercourse everybody else is nobody else would exist without a man and a woman having sexual intercourse except that now sons can produce unit tests you but every person in this room was the result of intercourse between a man and a woman Jesus was not that's not what makes his birth absolutely unique but it's one of them and a gynecologist once told me the professor of gynecology in London University told me there have been probably about half a dozen other virgin births in history and he was inclined to believe them on the grounds of spontaneous division of the female cell without fertilization there's a scientific name for that I can't think of it but it's found in nature it's found in plants it's found in some animals and there are report that it has happened half a dozen times in history at least has been claimed to happen but the interesting fact that persuaded the professor of gynecology in London University who was a Christian that Christ's birth was unique was the fact that all the other claimed virgin births produced girls and would have to because every egg in a female's ovary his female only turns into a male when the male sperm contributes something and therefore a virgin birth I wish I can remember the scientific name for this pun absolutely part no Genesis thank you so there is a scientific name for think but it can only produce girls and Mary had a boy which is absolutely impossible but it happened but that is not the most unique thing about Jesus birth though that's what we're all concentrating on at Christmas usually the unique thing about Jesus birth was that he was the only human being who ever chose to be born I didn't choose to be born I didn't choose my parents nor did any of you but he did and that's the really unique thing about his birth which makes him one of a kind nobody else's ever claimed that and that's the beginning of his story do you know I've got it down written down here partner Genesis and I don't even see my own notes his boyhood was unique and we only have one story about it one little glimpse when the curtain of his early life is pulled aside and we see a boy becoming a man and the Jews have a very wise ceremony for a boy becoming a man after which he knows he is a responsible adult that's a very sensible thing to do I wish other communities had a kind of Bar Mitzvah when you knew when a boy became responsible up to that age the Jewish parents are responsible for everything the boy does beyond that age he becomes responsible and therefore today a bomb it's for the boy goes to the synagogue and he reads part of the law of God allowed to anybody there and he's saying I am now responsible to keep the laws of God my parents are until now but now I am responsible and it's at that stage that he puts away childish things puts away all his toys and he moves into his father's trade or profession as a partner it's quite an an occasion in a Jewish boys life in Jesus case they took him up to the temple for his Bar Mitzvah now in those days this is how they traveled they walked they couldn't catch a bus or a train much as the planes that they walked and they could walk 15 miles a day and so what happened was that the women walked first and took with them the children under 12 when they arrived at the destination they set up camp cook the evening meal and had everything ready for the men who then joined them who'd come second very good arrangement isn't it feminists would be up in arms now then they went up had the bar mitzvah and then Joseph and Mary left Jerusalem and walked 15 miles east down to the Jordan Valley first night Mary has got the camp ready in the meal and now Joseph has joined us and they look at each other and say where's Jesus now why had they not realized very simply because he was now man and whereas he'd walked with Mary up to Jerusalem he would now walk with Joseph and yet he isn't with Joseph and so they have an argument quite typically and Mary would say well I thought he was with you now he's a nun oh and Joseph is a but I thought it was you he's not my child is your child and you can do almost overhear the conversation so they left the cabmen went back to Jerusalem and searched for three days and didn't find him finally they found him in the last place they looked the temple and he was discussing things with the priests and showing a high intelligence in his discussion and Mary typically mother said your father and I have been looking everywhere for you you done your father and I have been looking everywhere and Jesus looked up and said but I'm a man now I've joined my father in his business you should have looked in the temple first where the father's business is carried on I'm an adult now and I've join my father's business and now the shock of that was that Mary had never told him about his birth nor had Joseph and they had assumed that he thought he was their son both of their son up till then and Mary must mean shocked she'd kept all these things in her heart she'd never told that boy that his father was not Joseph but he knew it's an amazing insight and the even more astounding thing is that nevertheless he went back to Nazareth and was subject to them and joined Joseph in the carpenter's shop for 18 more years before he even began to do God's mission for which he'd come what ad libs that little story alone would tell you that Jesus is unique because he regards God as his natural father from the beginning I don't know when he realized that when he became conscious of his own a Croatian ship to God which nobody else said the only begotten Son of God but he knew it by 12 then the curtain falls again and we don't see him again until he's 30 now if you and I had been put in charge of arranging the program for the Son of God and the savior of the world the last thing we would have planned would be to put him in a carpenter shop for 18 years but that's what his father planned for him and he learned obedience that way now here's a little mathematics for you he was a woodworker for 18 years and the Wonder worker for three and the ratio of that is 6 to 1 does that bring anything to your mind go and read Genesis chapter 1 of you if it doesn't he said my father works until now and now I work on the six to one ratio very interesting anyway let's get on to the three years because it's then that his real uniqueness comes into public view and has to be faced and there are three aspects of that uniqueness what he did what he was and what he said only one of those would get him into real trouble and the amazing thing is that three years later he is not only condemned but put to death as the worst possible criminal what could he have done in three years to deserve that at the very young age of 33 I remember when I reached my 33rd birthday I thought Jesus had finished his work by now and I had hardly started at 33 that's so young it's half the expected age of those days which was threescore years and ten and yet he was put to death as the worst criminal on earth after only three years of public ministry what was it that caused that well let's look first at what he did I'll refer to his miracles and there's no doubt about it that he did wonders and did miracles in fact secular historians outside the Bible record this for us he was known as a miracle worker outside of the Gospels by Roman historians during his Jewish historians there's a lot about Jesus outside the New Testament and they nearly all testified to his miracles the miracles of course may be classified under two headings the miracles he did were over people and the miracles he did with things the miracles he did with people were paralleled by others they could do that too they're probably not on the same scale He healed diseases and he cast out demons but the Jewish religious leaders did the same he challenged them once when they accused him of doing it by the power of the devil he said then by whose power do you do these things so clearly they were doing them just as long ago Moses did miracles at the court of Pharaoh and Pharaohs magicians repeated them until Moses did a bigger miracle than theirs and so signs and wonders are not proof that they're all divine but his miracles with people covered not only healing diseases casting out demons which other holy manuals also doing at the same time but he also brought dead people back to life which they weren't doing to raise the dead especially after putrefaction was set in four days with Lazarus by this time he stinks said his sister but Jesus brought that man back to full life and health and cured putrefaction which is not copied by others but those were his miracles with people his miracles with things are even more startling to change water into wine I had an American pastor was that it was really tomato juice but I don't believe it it was water into wine and the best one of all then he stilled the storm and the words he used fascinating he didn't say peace be still that's our polite translation he said get muzzled the words you'd use to a puppy dog that was jumping up at you here is Jesus treating the weather as if it's his pet very interesting language and the disciple said what manner of man is this that even the wind and the waves do what he tells them they were right to ask that question because it's not very commonly done it was a miracle over God's creation as the water into wine was on another occasion he cursed a tree because he was hungry and found no fruit on it you may think that's an example of bad temper but that's what he did others think it was a hidden sign about Israel's attitude to him but the plain fact scripture says he was hungry came to a tree when he expected some early figs because there are always two crops and it was the time of the early figs and he didn't find anything to eat so he caused it the next day when they came along the same Road the tree is dead the leaves are with it it's a finished tree and the disaster dilemmas on the tree you cursed it's dead but then if Jesus curses the tree will be dead because he's unique and he's then said an amazing thing he said if you had faith as big as a grain of mustard seed which is the smallest seed on earth from which great trees come if you had faith as big as that you could say to this mountain get into the sea and it would go I have a photograph of that happening in Japan there was a large Christian orphanage of five or six stories and it was full of children without parents and on three sides of the building was a street and on the back of the building was a steep little hill and the orphanage was packed full and the missionaries who ran it got together in the presence of the children actually and we're just discussing it informally and one of the missionaries made a joke and said if if we had faith that big we should say to the hill behind the orphanage get into the sea and then we could extend the orphanage because it was in an earthquake area and couldn't be built higher and there was still more children to look after and they laughed at the joke the children didn't laugh they overheard it and the children went to prayer and said Jesus we want more room for more children will you throw that hill behind the orphanage into the sea for us and they went away for two weeks holiday by the sea and came back and the hill had gone the missionaries were absolutely astonished what's happened to the hill but it shone said what we asked Jesus to throw it in the scene and the truth is and you'll understand this explanation quote that orphanage was in a large city that was a port by the scene and the council were reclaiming land from the sea to build more warehouses for the ships cargoes and that held a meeting where can we get enough dirt to throw into the sea behind it down they'd built and once it'll what about that hill behind the orphanage is serving no useful purpose and while it children been away bulldozers had come and just literally taken the whole hill and thrown it in the sea I've got a photograph of that you know sometimes children's faith because it's simple work we are too sophisticated we know too much we don't have the simple faith of a child and Jesus said that I've caused the trick on it's dead but you can do the same if you had faith as big as that made challenging thing to say so he did miracles with people he did miracles with things and I want you to notice that none of them ever harmed anyone not one of them had bad side effects indeed when Peter preached much later he said he went about doing good and every one of his miracles brought benefit to people in one way or another and yet within three years they're putting him to death as if he's the worst criminal on earth it's not his miracles that did that they didn't kill him because he went about doing good so let's look secondly at what he was and the most interesting thing here is we have a proverb in English which says no one's perfect and it's not altogether true one person was and this was the testimony not to himself he never said I'm perfect it was the testimony of those who knew him best it was the testimony of his worst enemies he challenged those who were intent on destroying him which of you can convict me of a sin which of you can tell me I've ever done anything bad now you wouldn't say that to your best friend he said it to his worst enemy which is a bold claim Peter who'd lived with him for three years slept with the meeting with him he said to him depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord I'm just not worthy to be your friend his cousin John the Baptist when Jesus came and said baptize me his cousin said you're the one person who doesn't need to wash anything away you should be baptizing me which means that the First Baptist was never baptized but we're not happy to say that but that was John's testimony of his own cousin and the fact is that though everybody else after they die their life gets dug over and scandal is found somewhere and skeletons in cupboards were exposed that happens to so many men maybe a hundred years later some do write a book exposing the real person think of the things that came out about President Kennedy after his death this happens to so many great men has never happened to Jesus nobody's life has been more thoroughly examined than these three years of public ministry and Jesus and but nobody has been able to find anything wrong they may disagree with him they may not like him they may not agree with him but nobody's been able to dig any dirt that's unique you can't do that with the other leaders of other world religions you won't get away with it things come out and people in the media today have a motive to dig it out and they do so so readily and they bring great people down so quickly and destroy their reputation nobody has done that with Jesus Christ quite amazing his morality is admitted by everybody who has really studied his life he was spotless he was blameless and yet they put him to death as the worst criminal so it wasn't his miracles and it wasn't his morality because he never showed any trace for the things that we go after he never showed any desire for money sex Fame what else power human beings go after all those things and sooner or later corrupted by them he showed no trace whatever of going after any of those things all his life now this raises the question in a cute form why on earth should people want to put him to death in the worst possible way reserved for the worst possible people the answer is in what he said he was not put to death for what he did or for what he was but for what he said now many people have admitted that Jesus taught higher moral standards than anyone who else has ever told the human race that is admitted by people who are not even Christians people like Gandhi Mahatma Gandhi of India or Russians like Dostoevsky a host of people have acknowledged Jesus as the greatest moral teacher there has been whether they follow him or try to do it the only complaint I've ever come across about Jesus moral teaching for the people is that he said the standard too high most people agree that the Sermon on the Mount would make the world a wonderful world to live in if people did it the only problem is it's such a high standard that who can keep it he said my standard is not just against committing adultery but even thinking about it my standard is not against murder it's against calling people idiots and when you go through the Sun on the Mount love those who hate you pray for those who curse you in those days they were in an occupied country and the the Romans would occupy them had certain legal rights which they proclaimed and one write of a Roman soldier was that he could force any Jew to carry his kit for one mile and Jesus said if a Roman forces you to carry his kit for a mile carry it for a second mile that background tells you what his teaching and it's the most hateful thing to the Jew to be seen carrying a Roman soldiers equipment was bad enough but volunteering to carry in longer was the ultimate humiliation if someone takes your coat giving me a cloak this is the highest moral standard that has ever been taught and as I've said the only complaint is it's impossible it's just too high you should bring it down a bit this is an impossible standard to face people with but Jesus method was not to lower the standard to the people but to raise people to his standard that was his whole approach it should be ours too should be the church as to the churches of England are steadily lowering their standards because the world says you've got to adapt to where the world is now or as the Archbishop of former Archbishop of Canterbury said in one notorious lowering the standard of the Bible he said we must be credible to the contemporary generation and that's why churches accepted homosexuality that's why they are accepting gay marriage they're steadily following the world downhill but usually 15 years after everybody else so the church looks to be dragging its feet what we should be doing is pulling society uphill to Christ's standards but you can't do that if you're not living them out yourself that's the real rub and that's where we are betrayed but Jesus was the highest moral teacher and they certainly didn't put him to death for what he told others to be and to do so were left with one thing that he said I'm going to divide it into ten things but put it into one he said he was God he said it in 10 different ways but that was why he was crucified he was crucified for blasphemy which was a crime deserving death in the Jewish law they put him to death because in 10 different ways he was saying I'm God and in Jewish eyes that's blasphemy deserving death and so in their eyes they were right to burn to death here are some of the ways in which he was claiming to be divine first he said openly that he chose to be born and the way he said it he never said I was born he always said I came now human beings don't all like that because they can't talk like that I came to do this I decided to come to do this and on one occasion I came from heaven to do this that's the first way in which he hinted that he was not an ordinary human being not an average human being a unique human being the second way in which he did it he claimed to forgive a person's sins now the only sins that you and I can forgive are the sins that other people have done against us you can't forgive someone their sin against someone else but it is within your power to forgive someone who's done something nasty to you that's the only scope that we have to forgive but he was forgiving people who'd sinned against God and he was forgiving them and proving that he'd forgiven by raising them from a sick bed from paralysis and he said which do you think is easier to cure paralysis or take forgive sins well I'm able to do both now that was the second way in which you were saying I'm not your average human being I'm a divine being thirdly he claimed to have a unique relationship with God that nobody else had and he had a favorite name for God that nobody else dead to use the the Jews today are still so sensitive about even the word God that they won't use it they say the word heaven instead heaven help you pray to heaven if they write the word God in a newspaper they write it capital G - little D they dare not even write the name God publicly they are very sensitive to the commandment that says you don't take the name of the Lord in vain they are hypersensitive to it and if you ask a Jew to pronounce the name of God it's something like Yahweh but I know persuaded you to tell me they won't tell you I've nearly got a Jew in Jerusalem to tell me that how do you pronounce the name of God and he said yet no you won't get me to do that and so I still don't know the proper Hebrew pronunciation of those four letters the tetragrammaton or whatever it's called J hvh when you put English letters in it becomes Jehovah but J is pronounced like our Y and V is pronounced like our W so that's certainly not his name and we know what the name means I asked God once years ago I'd like to use your Hebrew name when I talk to you but I need an English word that would mean the same and I own and tell you what immediately came to my mind it was the English word always I thought what a lovely name and I've prayed to the God always from time to time always the translation in your Bible probably reads I am that I am it's a participle of the verb to be it's not even quite I am what I am that I am but I am is also an equivalent in English and it simply means the God who is always existing I am and I am exist in the past he exists in the present and will always exist in the future he will always be able to say I am well now the word that Jesus used for God which no Jew would dare to use is a familiar term that every Jewish child is taught Jewish fathers proudly leaned over the pram and teach the little baby Abba Abba and sooner or later the little baby to get rid of this monster leaning over the pram says baa it's our word daddy and it's a lovely word and I love to go to Israel and see little children I remember one occasion when a father was walking with me and we're both walking very quickly and the poor little son was way back struggling to keep up I knew he had his hands up and he was shouting out I think that was a festival headed in its proper setting and that's the word that Jesus used in prayer Abba ABBA I've written a song that takes the Muslim Creed and the Jewish Creed and turns it all into a Christian hymn and the chorus of the hymn runs there is no god but Allah and Jesus is his son who with the Holy Spirit the Lord our God is one and I picked up the Jewish Creed in the last line of the chorus and the Muslim Creed earlier not there is no god but Allah but there is no god but Allah and Jesus is his son it's not been published but I didn't mind writing it anyway so that's the third thing Jesus in calling God Abba and actually teaching his disciples to use the same very intimate word there was a hint there too and he never said our Father he taught us to say our Father but he never prayed like that himself or taught like that he always said my father and your father always made a careful distinction between his relationship and ours that was the third way I must hurry on the fourth way was to use the name of God of himself we find this in John's Gospel where 7 times he began a statement about himself I am actually didn't see that he said I I am and in the Greek it's faithfully translated in the New Testament ego eimi which is a repetition of the word I I am the bread of life bread of heaven I am The Good Shepherd ah and the door I am the true vine i I am the way the truth the life seven times he said that and on one occasion he just said I I am he just made an extraordinary claim to have known Abraham and the Jews said you're not even fifty years old how do you know Abraham 2,000 years ago and he said because Abraham still alive but his answer first answer was I I am he's saying that just like God I was alive in Abraham's day I am and interestingly their immediate reaction was to take up stones to stone him but he escaped that time there were altogether five attempts on Jesus life in the Gospels and from each of those he escaped by the sheer presence of his person the first was when they tried to throw him off a cliff at Nazareth boy you preach 1:7 and they throw you off the cliff but when you look at the sermon he's claiming to fulfill the prophet Isaiah now why did they try and kill him for that I'll tell you why because so many false messiahs had arisen in Galilee and the Romans had wiped out whole communities when one of these false messiahs arose and for their own safety they had to get rid of him all the Romans would have come and wiped out Nazareth for raising up a sigh it had happened before and they knew it and that explains why this said we've got to get rid of this man they'd known him from his boyhood they were familiar with him and yet after that one salmon they said we're not having the Romans wipe out our village thank you and they got rid of it interesting that that was the same reason that Anna's and Caiaphas gave at his trial for his death they too were afraid of the Romans and said it's better than that one person died than the whole nation be punished same fear of the Roman occupying force led to an early attempt on Jesus life at the beginning of his ministry and there were all those other attempts but from each he escaped until finally he said now I must die and he chose when to die where to die and how to die he arranged his own death from one point of view it was a suicide at the age of 33 as soon as he decided to go to Jerusalem and told his followers I'll be crucified and he arranged it carefully at 3 o'clock on the day before the Passover which is the exact minute when thousands of lambs had their throats cut for the Passover peak feast how carefully Jesus arranged his death it's astonishing by the way crucifixion didn't kill him but I'll explain that in a moment I'm still telling you the ways he hinted that it was a unique human being here he is using the same name as God and now he claims to the out to be the only way to God when he said I I am the way the truth the life he added no man comes to the Father except through me now for a religious leader to claim that nobody will ever find their way to God unless they come through themselves that's extraordinary and he did never said I am a way a truth a life but the way the truth which immediately says nobody else is the truth and the life which means that no other life is worth calling life unless Jesus is in it incredible claim no man comes to the Father except through me that is either sheer arrogance or is the truth I've got to number seven he claimed that he would set people free from sin by dying he said that three times that's an incredible claim only God can set people free from sin number eight he said I will come back from the dead before the rot sets in by the third day I'll be loved again and he claimed that before they put him to death I don't know anybody else is dead to claim that but he did number nine that he would be the one to judge the entire human race that everybody would one day answer to him not to God to him that he would separate the sheep and the goats that he would judge every man woman and child on earth nobody's ever claimed that except him and finally number 10 I am going to return to this world one day to rule it and I'll rule all of it now there are only three things you can say about a man who talks like this about himself and the amazing thing is no religious leader ever talked so much about himself and normally you dismiss that as aggot ism but he said all these things about himself nobody has talked like that about himself but nobody therefore we are left with three possible conclusions he was either mad bad or God he was either a lunatic a liar or the Lord and everybody has to make up their minds which it is I had a debate in London with the top lawyers in London but a hundred and twenty of them gathered for debate and there were three speakers in the what's called the Inns of Court where all the lawyers have their headquarters and here were the top lawyers of Britain and three of us spoke one was the president of the British Humanist Association and he told us Jesus was a bad man that he told lies about himself that you couldn't trust anything he said the second speaker was a professor of psychology in London and his address was that Jesus was mad only a schizophrenic would talk like that and the third speaker was poor little old me but I won the debate on one thing which you haven't mentioned it on the resurrection of Jesus which has no parallel and I said it all hangs on that but just before we get to that thing let me look at his death I've told you that Jesus did not die of crucifixion the cross did not kill him and I want to go carefully into this because most Christians think he was nailed to a cross and died as a result there is no record in Roman history of anyone dying on a cross in six hours it is the most lingering painful humiliating death that's ever been devised for criminals they are nailed up they're totally naked by the way no lawn cloth totally naked in full public gaze as a lesson and the shortest time ever recorded for death on a cross was two days the longest time was seven days depends on the constitution of the victim but nobody died in six hours except Jesus and we know what he died of a professor of biology in Dublin did some experiments with dead pigs and he discovered the real cause of Jesus death in medical language he died of a ruptured pericardium in simple English he died of a broken heart isn't that interesting the sins that were put on him and the separation from his father the first time he'd ever been separated from his father the first time he's in my God my God why were you gone why did you forsake me and in his utter humanity he went through that experience of being four same where I'm going to go further in the first three hours on the cross his concern was for other people that's when he made provision for his mother to go and live with John that's when he said to a dying thief you will be with me in paradise that's when he prayed for the soldiers who'd nailed him the then when he said Father forgive them when they know not what they do if you look at the context the then are the soldiers who were simply doing their duty and when they did it they had no idea what they'd done later the Centurion in charge of the execution party would realize what they'd done and say truly this man was the son of God we've made the greatest miscarriage of justice that could possibly have been made that Roman soldier was a man with good judgment so the first three hours on the cross during which the Sun shone he was concerned about making relationships and leaving them right but the next three hours he was concerned about himself and spoke only of himself and even the Sun went out for three hours that's not natural just as a star in the sky marked his birth the Sun marked his death by not shining interestingly enough that star at his birth astrologers say that justifies astrology and I just want to say it actually Dan's astrology it's the very opposite of astrology astrology believes that this position of the stars affects a baby at birth for the rest of their life in character and destiny that's what astrology is based on in Jesus birth it was the position of the baby that was affecting the stars hope you can see the difference wasn't astrology at all but his death the Sun acknowledged and even the earth acknowledged there was an earthquake at his death all kinds of things happened when he died even the dead in their graves walked around Jerusalem and people saw long-lost relatives the whole thing was a supernatural event but during those three hours of darkness he said I'm thirsty and they cruelly gave him vinegar to drink which only increases your thirst and it was during those three hours that he said my God my God why did you forsake me what was happening Jesus was in hell for three hours hell is a dark place God is that not there so there's no light hell is a dry place I'm thirsty hell is a lonely place because God isn't there and he said my God my God why but the very last two things he said were wonderful the first was it's finished now I don't think he intended the theologians phrase the finished work of Jesus on the cross he was virtually saying it's over and he said it with relief it's over the pain of hell was over and he would feel that pain more than anybody else because he was not only from heaven he said the Son of man came down from heaven and is in heaven he didn't leave heaven behind he lived in heaven while he was on earth but not on those three hours on the cross and the very last word was a prayer that his mother had taught him a prayer that he learned at his mother's knee every Jewish child is taught to say goodnight to God with the words into your hands I commit my spirit it's from a son I think it sounds 6 but it's there and he used that prayer that he'd learned at Mary's knee to fall asleep on the cross and say goodnight to his father he added one word which is not in the song but is there in his final prayer and it's the word Abba ABBA into your hands I commit my spirit now the meaning of that last word is very simple he had publicly claimed that God would reverse the verdict and vindicate him before his body had time to rot in the grave and that came true and that's why it is the resurrection that is the very heart of his uniqueness if you don't believe the resurrection then you all Christianity is over for you if the resurrection didn't happen would have to close every church in the world because the whole thing has been built on a lie and is a fraud and we've been deceiving millions of people but if the resurrection did happen then everything Jesus had claimed about himself was not a lie and was not the delusions of a madman but the simple sober truth about himself and he didn't rise from the dead God raised him from the dead it was an act of his father just as his father in the darkness of the womb at the beginning had formed him now in the darkness of the tomb God formed him again and gave him a brand new body which looked like the old body bore the nail prints of the old body but was not the old body the old body simply disappeared and the grave clothes simply collapsed the body had been wrapped in a long roll of linen from about here on the breast to the feet and then another shorter roll of linen had been wrapped round the top of the head as a turban and the face and shoulders were that's how they buried their dead and when John the Apostle saw in the grave the turban still rolled up by itself and the grave clothes still rolled up but collapsed he knew that nobody had moved that body it had simply gone and I shall be preached on Sunday morning somewhere on the resurrection and saying it's the beginning of the new creation and the first part of the old creation to be replaced by a new creation was the body of his own son and that's why Christians worship on Sunday if they can because it's the day when God went back to work the god who had been doing nothing new all through the centuries since he'd finished the work of creation had now gone back to work and was making bodies new and we are living in the eighth day of creation do you realize that we're in the second week of creation when God is making men and women knew the difference is that in the old creation he made the heavens and the earth first and men and women last in the new creation he's making new men and women first and the new heaven and the earth last and the reason it's been reversed is that he wants people of the old creation in the new provided they will cooperate with him and allow him to do his work of redemption that will finish with the salvation of our bodies oh I'm getting excited about the resurrection again but I'm going to be 33 again and at 83 that's a wonderful prospect your your best at 33 why do I say that well it clearly tells me in the word that my new body will be made made the same as his glorious body his resurrection body how old is Jesus now still 33 hasn't had any birthday since then though I saw notices outside churches in the year 2000 this is Jesus 2000 birth our own to say rubbish she's 33 and his new body his new glorious body is looks like his own body but it's a new one that can do things his old body never could his old body never appeared and disappeared but now in his new body he can be visible and invisible he can pass through locked doors and he can eat fish for supper did all those things in his resurrection nobody's ever come back or rather not he didn't come back to life he went on to a new life with a newly created body and we are going to follow him like that and so I can't wait to be 33 again I could go on to his ascension which happened two months later he's the only human being who ever went out of this world two months after he died does that strike you as funny as extraordinary and not only that he's the only human being who went out of this world two months after he died and took his body with him everybody else has left their body behind he took his with him the grave was empty well I must draw to a close about three minutes 45 seconds such is the record kept by those who knew him and remembered him you can either dismiss it as a pack of their lives or you can accept it many many lawyers more than any other profession have become Christians because they understand evidence evidence of an event that they were were not there to witness and the interesting thing is that all lawyers agree that separate witnesses who agree entirely in every detail have concocted the story but genuine testimony always shows slight variations slight disagreement in detail for example someone is knocked down and killed on the roads by a car and people weren't there to see what happened but witnesses were and one witness says a dog ran a row across the road in front of a car and it swerved and hit the person another witness might say no there were two dogs who ran across one was chasing the other both are right there were two dogs but one witness only saw the one and the other saw the two and in the records of the Resurrection one of those witnesses saw one angel at the empty tomb of the other so - it's precisely the kind of little detail that convinces you you're dealing with indepent witnesses and they haven't got together to make up the story I could give you many illustrations of that but the resurrection is the best legal evidence to vent that any jury in the world would be convinced my but of course the truth is people who don't want to believe it who choose not to are free to do so and will convince themselves but the legal evidence for the resurrection is outstanding made up as it is of both eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence which are the two things that convince any court of law that something has happened and they're both there that's another story if you run on Sunday morning in the church I'm preaching in which I'm not telling a widget is are we saying more too many don't want to believe Jesus was who he said he was he has been vindicated by God who has reversed the verdict the human verdict said he's too bad to live and the divine verdict three days later was he's too good to rot for God it said if ever there is a holy person I will not leave him to rot in the grave this body you can see of me now sometime soon will rot you won't want to look at it you won't want to smell it you won't want to touch it and the reason that will happen is because the person who occupied it has been rotten and it's God's sentence on the rotten life that the body will rot my spirit will live on and he will give me a brand new body one day to replace this one with far greater powers than this one ever had and I just look forward to that the clock has stopped but I'm going to say two more things this makes Christianity an exclusive religion that cuts out all other religions and all other faiths is not true as religions that we can never mix with and never combine with once you believe that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life there must be no talk of syncretism or mixing this with anything any other faiths we must be exclusive and Jesus must be the only name by which anyone can be saved there is no other version of Christianity and secondly and lastly it means that Christianity is inclusive it is the faith for everybody precisely because Jesus is so unique so our faith is exclusive excluding all other ways to God and we must living in the pluralistic society of today hold firmly on to that or we cannot be our witness in the marketplace but secondly it's for everybody and we are under obligation and duty to tell every Muslim we can about our faith to tell every Buddhist we can every Confucian every Shintoist whatever the faith of a person we meet we are under obligation to them we are under debt to them to tell them about the only hope for everybody in the world you

Channel: David Pawson - Official

Views: 35,312

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: David Pawson, Christianity (Religion), The Bible (Religious Text), Jesus Christ (Deity)

Id: xrZE9HiSQZ4

Length: 88min 30sec (5310 seconds)

Published: Tue May 26 2015