Every year, TIME
magazine publishes a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In
order to compile this list, they conduct on online survey in which people
choose from a list of candidates and select whether they think that person
should or should not be included on the list. Examining this list every year
gives us a pretty interesting snapshot of our world and our time. This year’s
poll results were released last month, and the person who received the most
votes for inclusion also received the most votes for exclusion – in fact, he
got more votes to exclusion than he did for inclusion. His name is Mohamed
Morsi. Do you know who he is? Since last June, he has held the office of
president of Egypt .
The person with the second most votes for inclusion was Markus “Notch” Persson.
Do you know who he is? He is the creator a video game called Minecraft. If you
want to know about that game, just ask my kids. Third on the list was a guy
named Kim Dotcom, who created a controversial website called Megaupload. So of
the top three vote-getters for inclusion in this list, none of them are people
whose names are what we might call “household words.” In fact, you have to drop
down to the sixth name on the list to find someone nearly universally recognizable
– Kim Jong Un, the leader of North
Korea . Twelfth on the list is Barack Obama,
coming somewhat embarrassingly behind martial arts actor Jackie Chan and the
Korean one-hit wonder pop star Psy. Well, what do you have to say about Mohamed
Morsi? What about Markus Persson? What about Kim Dotcom, or Psy? Maybe you’ve
never given them a passing thought. I’m facebook friends with some of you, so I
already know what you have to say about Barack Obama. But when we think about the
most influential people in the world, I wonder if we might be overlooking the
most influential person who ever lived – Jesus Christ. Two thousands years
after His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ is still having more of an
impact on the world than anyone on TIME
magazine’s list. And though there are, sadly, still some places in this world
that you can go where the people have never heard of Him, most people in the
world have heard at least something about
Him, and would have something to say about Him. Though we may have widely
differing views about President Obama, Kim John Un, or anyone else on TIME magazine’s list, ultimately those
opinions do not matter for eternity. What we have to say about Jesus Christ
does. Life and death, heaven and hell, all depend on what we say about Him.
The late James Montgomery Boice describes an incident that
took place when the staff of his radio program, The Bible Study Hour, went out into the streets of Philadelphia and asked people, “Who is Jesus
Christ?” Among the responses were things like, “Jesus Christ was a man who
though he was God.” Some said, “I think that’s something that you have to
decide for yourself, but he had some beautiful ideas.” Some said, “He is the
one that we look up to as our leader,” while others said, “He is an individual
who lived 2,000 years ago, who was interested in the social betterment of all
classes of people.” Others said, “He was well-liked; he meant well; he was a
good man.” But Boice says that the really interesting thing about this survey
was that no one said, “I couldn’t care less.”[1]
Everyone surveyed knew that Jesus is someone who matters in history, and had
something to say about Him. Of course you realize that not everything everyone
has to say about Jesus is true. As R. C. Sproul points out, “people are prone
to declare their belief in a Jesus who has nothing to do with the Man depicted
in the biblical record.”[2]
Several decades ago, the German liberal theologian Ernst Käsemann
argued that we really cannot know anything about the historical Jesus; He may
not have existed, for all we know. But Käsemann suggested that the name “Jesus”
has become a symbol of human liberation from all forms of oppression.
Therefore, if a person believes in the liberation of people from political, racial,
or even sexual oppression, then that person really believes in Jesus.[3]
That’s just absurd. But that is the kind of radical redefining that takes place
among people who have this haunting suspicion that they ought to think
positively about Jesus, but the Jesus they meet in Scripture is at odds with
their ideology. So, rather than changing their ideology, they attempt to change
Jesus into something that fits into their theology. And I regret to say that
fifteen years of pastoral ministry has convinced me that even in the pews of
Bible-believing, evangelical churches, there are many who do not know what to
say about Jesus, or worse, say utterly ridiculous things about Him. And then
there are those who say nothing about Him when it matters most.
When we come to this brief text that we have read in the
seventh chapter of John today, we find several groups of people saying many
different things about Jesus. John says that there was “much grumbling among
the crowds concerning Him.” Jesus was the buzz in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles.
Everyone had something to say about Him. Some of them were saying the same
things that people still say about Him today. As we look at what they were
saying, we’ll be reminded of things that our friends and family members, public
officials, and outspoken groups in our day say about Him. But the most
important thing is not what any of them say about Jesus. The most important
thing is what YOU say about Him, and
whether or not you will say it when it matters most.
I. Some say, “Where is He?”
These days, you will often hear someone say that they are
seeking Jesus. But in most, if not all cases, what they are seeking is
something that only Jesus can provide, and they are hoping to find it somewhere
other than Jesus. After all, if they can acknowledge that they are seeking
Jesus, then finding Him will not be difficult at all. He is not playing hide
and seek with humanity, as if He did not want to be found. Nothing would please
Him more than to be found by you. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “You will seek Me and
find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” The fact that someone can
say that they are seeking Jesus, but have not yet found Him only confirms what
Paul said in Romans 3:11, “There is none who seeks for God.” As C. S. Lewis
said, “Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God.’”
But, as a former atheist, Lewis said, “To me, as I then was, they might as well
have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. … I had always wanted, above
all things, not to be ‘interfered with.’”[4]
And Jesus Christ is a great interferer. To truly seek Him is to invite
interference with your life. To find Him is to find that interference invading
you from all angles.
In verse 11, we read that “the Jews were seeking Him.” Now,
that’s not nearly as positive a statement as we might think at first glance.
First, by “the Jews,” John means the Jewish authorities – the Pharisees, the
chief priests, the Sanhedrin (Jerusalem ’s
ruling council). They were not seeking Jesus because they thought Him to be the
great destination of life’s spiritual journey. Rather, they had a score to
settle with Jesus because He had interfered with them. On His last visit to Jerusalem , recorded back
in Chapter 5, Jesus had healed a lame man the Sabbath. When they asked Him what
right He had to violate the Sabbath by performing miracles on the Sabbath and
making this lame man arise and carry His mat on the Sabbath, Jesus simply
pointed to His own divine authority. And John 5:18 says, “For this reason
therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He was not
only breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making
Himself equal with God.” That is why John 7:1 says that Jesus could go about
freely in Galilee but not in Judea . Galilee was under a different jurisdiction. They could
not lay hands on Him there; but if He ever returned to Judea ,
it was their intent to seize Him and put Him to death. They knew that it was
His custom to come to Jerusalem
for the feast, so they were on the lookout for Him. Verse 10 tells us that He
had not come publicly, but in secret. But they knew He had to be there, so they
were asking, “Where is He?” Literally, the Greek text reads a little more
antagonistically. They are asking, “Where is that man?”, as if they so despise Him that they are unwilling even
to speak His name. Which man are they seeking? That one, the one going around meddling with our beliefs and
practices and claiming to be God in the flesh. They say, “Where is that man? We
want to find Him. He must be around here somewhere, and if we can get ahold of
Him we will shut Him up forever!”
This is what some still say about Him. If they have any
interest in discussing Christ at all, it is only to raise an argument in order
to squash it. We see it in the militant and aggressively anti-Christian
movement that calls itself “The New Atheism.” One of the chief spokesmen of
that movement is Richard Dawkins of Oxford
University
Unfortunately, Dawkins is not alone in his attack on faith
in general and Christian faith in particular. Another New Atheist, Sam Harris,
proclaims that the Jesus of Scripture is violent and the God who is His Father
is evil. Another, the late Christopher Hitchens added his voice to Harris and
Dawkins in agreeing that training up a child in Christian belief is the
equivalent of spiritual child abuse. According to this movement, the hope of
the human race has to be found in the intellectual extermination of all
religious belief. Though New Atheism is not the only movement seeking to
silence the voice of Christ in the world, it is of late the most influential
one. A surprising number of these critics of Christ in the world today are
people who grew up in Christian families and churches. We might wonder, “What
happened?” And it is a distinct possibility that in some cases, like with the
rulers of Jerusalem
in Jesus’ day, the Jesus that they came to know was a great interferer. He was
met as One who wanted to meddle with their deeply seated beliefs and their
cherished behaviors – and not just to meddle, but to entirely overhaul. Rather
than bowing the knee to Him as Lord, it became more expedient for them to
vehemently renounce Him altogether. But, in all of their vehemence, there is the
accidental admission of a singular and undeniable truth: Jesus Christ cannot be
ignored. Say what you will about Him, but you must say something about Him. It
is a matter of life, death, and eternity.
II. Some say, “He is a good man.”
For the last 2,000 years, the most commonly held opinion
about Jesus is the one that is expressed by this group we meet in verse 12.
These were saying, “He is a good man.” You have heard this; maybe you have said
this. By this statement, those in the crowd are saying something like: “He
teaches positive ideals; He lives a good moral life; He has done good things
for some people. Thus, He is a good man.” Now, there is truth in this
statement, but not the whole truth. Jesus was a good man, but He is so much
more than a good man; He is the God-Man. He is fully God, and fully man; not
half-and-half, but all-and-all. Remember that this is why the Jewish leaders
want to kill Him: He claimed to be equal with God. Now if He truly is God,
incarnate in the flesh as a man, then we must recognize that He is certainly a
good man. But if we only see Jesus as a good man, and do not recognize Him as
God in the flesh, we come up against a serious intellectual and moral
conundrum. Good men, who are only good men, do not go about saying the kinds of
things that Jesus said. If the things Jesus said are not true, then Jesus is
not only not God, He is also not good. He is at best a compulsive
liar; at worst, a dangerously deranged madman; a megalomaniac who is plagued
with delusions of grandeur.
John Stott said that the “most striking feature of the
teachings of Jesus is that He was constantly talking about Himself.” And what
is astounding is the kinds of things that Jesus was saying about Himself. Jesus
spoke of God as uniquely His own Father. He used a word for God that no one
else used. When He spoke to the Father, He called Him abba, a term of intimacy and affection similar to the way a child
calls his or her father, “Daddy.” To people of that day, referring to God with
this kind of familiarity would have been considered irreverent at best,
blasphemous at worst. And Jesus said that if you believe in Him (that is, if
you believe in Jesus) then you will
be given the right to call God your abba,
your Father, as well. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no
one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). Jesus taught others that
the entire Old Testament was written to prepare people to recognize Him as the
promised Messiah and to place their complete faith and trust in Him (Luke
24:27). He said that Moses wrote about Him (John 5:46), as did the prophet
Isaiah (Luke 4:21), and that Abraham believed in Him (8:56), but also even that
the Spirit of God and God the Father gave their testimony Him. He commanded
others to follow Him, to abandon their families, their jobs, their possessions,
and if necessary their lives for His sake. Most astoundingly, He claimed to
have the ability to forgive sins, which everyone knows that only God can do.
But, you see, He also claimed to be God. He said that God’s Kingdom was His
kingdom and that to believe in God was to believe in Him, and vice-versa. He
even received the worship and faith that others bestowed upon Him, rather than
rebuking them for blasphemy.
Now, you have to say something about those claims. If they
are true, but only if they are true, then you can say that He is a good man,
but you have to also say that He was so much more than that. You would have to
say that He is the God-Man, because that is precisely who He claimed to be. But
if those things are not true, then by no means can anyone say that Jesus was a
good man. Stott says, “The claims are there. They do not in themselves
constitute evidence of deity. The claims may have been false. But some
explanation of them must be found. We cannot any longer regard Jesus as simply
a great teacher, if He was so grievously mistaken in one of the chief subjects
of His teaching, namely Himself.”[6]
Yet, we are surrounded by vast multitudes today who want to
insist that Jesus was simply a good man, and nothing more. And that is the one
thing that is absolutely impossible to say about Him. These are not the things
that good men say unless they are true. And if they are true, then He is a good
man, yes, but the God-Man also. I want you to be prepared to explain that to people
in your life who think Jesus is just a good man. You must be able to explain to
them that this is not an option. If He is good, then He is God. If He is not
God, then He is not good. It is as simple as that. Some of you here today
perhaps have not recognized this about Jesus. You have a generally positive
outlook on Him as a good man, but you have never recognized that He is God in
the flesh, who has come down to make atonement for your sins through His death
on the cross. I want you to see the absolute folly of that. He cannot be merely
a good man. If He is not the God-man, then we have nothing positive to say
about Him whatsoever. He was deranged, or else evil, and intent on leading the
world astray by His psychotic ramblings about Himself. And we find that there
are some who say even this about Him.
III. Some say “He leads the people astray.”
Most of us never had the experience that some Christians
around the world have. For many of us, the happiest day of our parents’ lives
was the day we gave our lives to Jesus Christ. Here on Mothers’ Day, some of
you are able to remember how, like Timothy in the New Testament, we were
nurtured in the faith by a godly mother (2 Tim 1:5; Acts 16:1). However, for
many in the world, it was not this way; perhaps a few here today can relate.
For them, becoming a follower of Christ was something that saddened or shocked
their families. Their families were convinced that they had been deceived into
believing something false that runs against family tradition or cultural
beliefs. Just a few years ago, some of us were involved in a situation with a
young international student who found himself in this dilemma of wanting to
believe in Christ, but fearful of his family’s reaction to the decision. They
were convinced that he’d come to America and fallen into the hands
of ill-intentioned Christians who were trying to brainwash him. It is something
I have seen this on every international mission trip I have ever been on. For
some of us, perhaps, it was not that our parents were concerned that we had
become Christians, they just feared that we might somehow be duped into
becoming a religious fanatic. I’m not sure how you can be anything other than a
fanatical follower of Jesus, unless you have not truly comprehended who He is
or what He has done for you, but that is a big fear of some. If you start
talking too much about Jesus or spending too much time at church, start doing
risky things like traveling to third world countries to share the gospel or
reaching out to homeless people, they think you’ve been somehow led astray.
In Jesus’ day there were many who believed that He was out
to lead people away from truth – a “truth” that was defined and explained by
the religious traditions of Israel
and enforced by powerful religious authorities like the Pharisees and Sadducees
– into great error. They said of Jesus that He was a charlatan, a conniving
trickster, out to gain a following for Himself by leading people astray. This
is the polar opposite of those who said He was a good man. This view of Jesus
sees Him as the worst possible kind of man.
Now, it must be admitted, that if Jesus was a deceiver, He
was a very good one. He managed to live His entire life without anyone being
able to point a finger of blame at Him for any wrongdoing. He was able to
perform miracles that authenticated the things that He said. And, He had been
able to draw a vast multitude of followers to His side. How could He say and do
all of these things if it were all merely a smokescreen for some ulterior
motive of deception? After all, even Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees and a
ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we know that You have come
from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is
with him” (Jn 3:2). Was he deceived as well? How could they explain this? Well,
actually, they couldn’t! That’s why eventually they had to resort to saying
that He does these things by the power of Satan—that He is demon possessed. It
was obvious that He had power, but they did not believe that He could have
power from God, so it must be from the devil. Yet, the ironic thing is that
Jesus said that it was the Pharisees and religious leaders of Israel who were
leading people astray. He said it was them who had lost the true meaning of
God’s Word and were seducing people to abandon the truth. He said, “Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to
make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son
of hell as yourselves” (Matt 23:15). Well, who’s deceiving whom? In the minds
of many, Jesus was the deceiver. And this was a crime punishable under the Law
by death (Deut 13:1-11).
Later on, this would become one of the most prevailing
opinions among Jewish people about Jesus. The Babylonian Talmud says that Jesus
was crucified on Passover Eve because He was a deceiver who practiced sorcery
and led Israel
astray.[7]
The Church Father Justin Martyr of the Second Century noted that the Jews
“dared to call Him a magician and a deceiver of the people.”[8] And
this is still an opinion held by some today.
But more often, we hear this spoken, not of gentle Jesus,
meek and mild, but of His Church. Anti-evangelism laws are on the rise across
the globe, and recently there has been renewed discussion in the freedom of
American military personnel to share their faith with others. How dare we claim
that our beliefs are the exclusive truth and seek to seduce others to follow
Jesus? We must have evil motives, they say. We must only be interested in getting
their money, or in gaining strength for our movement so that we can have more
political or cultural sway. But, these types of statements are not new for the
followers of Christ. In the Fourth Century, the North African Bishop Augustine
wrote, “If to seduce is to deceive, Christ was not a seducer, nor can any
Christian be. But if by seducing you mean bringing a person by persuasion out
of one way of thinking into another, then we must inquire what the way of
thinking is that you are calling them from and to. If from good to evil, the
seducer is an evil person; if from evil to good, he is a good one. If only we
were all called, and really were, that sort of seducers!”[9]
It is not we who aim to deceive. Deception is not what
Christ is seeking to do to the world! Rather, Christ has come to announce that
the world has been deceived in a myriad of ways by the father of all lies, the
devil. Through false belief, corrupted belief, through immorality, through
oppressive regimes, and a host of other means, Satan has blinded this world to
the truth of Christ, and thus the world replete with deceived people. Christ
has not come to deceive, but to deliver from deception. And this is the mission
of His church. And if we are going to be faithful to this mission, then we must
speak for Christ – openly, publicly, boldly, courageously. And though everyone
at the Feast of Tabernacles had something to say about Jesus, speaking openly,
publicly, boldly, courageously about Him was something that no one was willing
to do.
IV. No one wants to say anything openly about Him.
Notice in verse 13 that John writes, “No one was speaking
openly of Him for fear of the Jews.” Again here, “the Jews” refers to those
powerful religious and political leaders who controlled every aspect of life in
Jerusalem and
the surrounding area. So fierce has their hatred of Jesus become, that they
will not only persecute those who publicly identify with Him, but there is a
fear among the masses that they will come hard and heavy after any and all who,
“by their topic of conversation, make Jesus a more important figure” than they
wanted Him to be.[10]
No one was willing to speak above a hushed tone about Jesus because they were
afraid of finding themselves on the wrong side of the authorities. They knew
that they were out to kill Jesus; they did not want to find that a cross was
awaiting them too. But, if you are a follower of Christ, you have not been
called to avoid or escape that cross. You have been called to embrace it. Jesus
said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his
cross daily and follow Me” (Lk 9:23; cf. Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34).
For most of us, we have lived our entire lives without this
fear or threat. We’ve never had to plan or prepare for a day which could be our
last simply because we speak publicly a word about Jesus. But I fear that the
present trajectory of our world and, indeed, our nation, casts a shadow of this
cross across our lives. The days could be drawing near when speaking publicly
and boldly for Christ in America
will be a criminal act, as it is in much of the world, and has been for the
last 2,000 years. Already, if you speak publicly about the sinfulness of
homosexuality, the truthfulness of the Bible, or the exclusivity of Christ, you
can expect to be shunned by the world around us. Can the day be far off when it
will not be more severe? And yet, I do not say this to inspire panic in your
hearts. I say this to encourage and embolden you. Could it be that the days are
coming in which God will give American Christians the same opportunity to
demonstrate with the ultimate testimony the preciousness of Christ? Our season
of exemption from the experience of the majority of Christians in the world and
throughout history may be ending within our lifetimes. But if we should see it
happen, we must say what we have to say about Jesus openly, publicly, boldly,
courageously, no matter the cost. Because in that day, everyone will still be
saying something about Christ. Only those who have been redeemed by His cross
will be able to give the true testimony that He is who He said He is – the
God-Man, by whose death and resurrection alone we may be saved from sin and
granted eternal life in heaven in the presence of God. And we must say it
loudly and clearly, all the more as those days dawn.
In the year 155, Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, was
arrested for being a follower of Jesus. When they came to arrest him, they
found him resting in his home. Rather than trying to escape, he said simply,
“God’s will be done.” He had a meal prepared for his captors and was granted an
hour to pray in solitude. Taken into the arena, the Proconsul admonished him,
“Reproach Christ, and I will set you free.” In response, Polycarp said with
courageous confidence, “86 years have I served Him, and He has done me no
wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior? … You threaten me with a fire
which burns for an hour, and is then extinguished, but you know nothing of the
fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly.
Why are you waiting? Bring on whatever you want.” God forbid the day should
ever come that we find ourselves in Polycarp’s place. But if that day should
come, may God give us the courageous faith to say what must be said of Jesus
Christ, and to say it boldly and fearlessly.
[1] James
Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John [Volume
2] (An Expositional Commentary; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 554.
[2] R. C.
Sproul, John (St.
Andrew’s Expositional Commentary; Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2009), 131
[3] Sproul,
131.
[4] C. S.
Lewis, Surprised by Joy in The Inspirational Writings of C. S. Lewis (New
York: Inspirational Press, 1994), 124-125.
[5] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/24/richard-dawkins-jesus-would-have-been-an-atheist/
Accessed May 9, 2013.
[6] John R.
W. Stott, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove , Ill.
[7] Cited in
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to
Jesus (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 310
fn.1.
[8] Justin
Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho, LXIX. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/justinmartyr-dialoguetrypho.html
Accessed May 9, 2013.
[9]
Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of
John, 28.11.
[10] Carson , 310.
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