Questions No.5 Was Jesus just a good man?

On Friday evening we had a rather special occasion. Except for very, very few, the ladies were barred from the meeting because it was the men's banquet. I thought that was rather a grand name, but by the end of the evening I was sure it was indeed a banquet.

In more ways than one, we had a very lovely meal. How the ladies managed to do it on the money I paid, and others of course, I don't know, but it really was a tremendous time we had. And then the banquet continued afterwards as we sang together and heard different testimonies and shared different things that were upon our hearts as individuals were free to share.

Didn't have enough time for everyone on Friday night, so some of the men are going to be taking part tonight too. One of them is Roy Goodall, who is a printer. You see we have all sorts of people in the tab.

Roy is a printer. He works with a very good printing firm. I can highly recommend them.

If you want the address afterwards, I can give it to you. And he will be leading us in prayer this evening. Then afterwards we have John Milton, who will be giving testimony, and John is a plumber.

Then we have our pastor, who is a preacher. Have you got all the Ps so far? You know, we've got a pod full of them at the moment. But we also have Richard Gibbs.

Richard Gibbs, now he had to be awkward and he called himself a management services officer. He works for the health service and he tries to make hospitals run cheaper so that we can, you know, we don't have to pay too much when we go there. So I thought just to keep him in line with the Ps, we'd call Richard Gibbs a penny pincher.

That's his job. So he'll be taking part tonight as well. He'll be doing the reading for us.

Now, as I said earlier, there are all sorts of people in the tabernacle. And it's always interesting to know just how they come to be here. So John Milton is going to come now and I don't think he's brought his tools with him, but he's going to tell us something of his own life with the Lord Jesus.

Well, I started coming to the tab about 12 years ago. It was through my youngest children or oldest children now. When they were young, they came to the Sunday school.

And from there on, we came a bit regular and it was about five or six years ago now. I had an illness and this is what really brought home to me what the Lord meant and to, you know, really trust in him. And from then on, I gave my life to the Lord.

I went back to work. Things weren't quite as good as they seemed before. The odd bit of work that was done on the side and things like that, working on Sundays and working all day Saturdays, that wasn't quite the right thing.

So I decided to give up working for security of a firm and start working on my own. And this was about three and a half years ago. And I left work with one week's wages.

And that was to keep me going until I got my first payment from a job from my customers. And to my surprise, everything worked out right, trusting in the Lord. And he's put everything right ever since.

I've never looked back on working for myself. Many things have cropped up. When I first started work, there was a shortage of copper pipe and a plumber without copper pipe is not very good.

But the Lord always supplied on my needs and many others that couldn't get it. Mine always seemed to turn up. At the same time, we were doing the work next door in the extension.

And we were running short of copper pipe. And one night, there was a knock on the door. And when somebody went down to have a look, there was a bundle of copper pipe that somebody had left there for us.

It was just about enough to finish off the work that we wanted to do. So the Lord's always had his hand in my life since I committed my life to him. And I've never looked back since.

It is surprising how well things go when you're trusting the Lord. And the surprises keep coming. Well, we have the man from the health services as well with us and he's going to come and read the scriptures to us now.

Mark 8, verse 22. They came to Bethsaida and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village.

When he had spat on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, Do you see anything? He looked up and said, I see people. They look like trees walking around. Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes.

Then his eyes were opened. His sight was restored and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home saying, Don't go into the village.

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, Who do people say I am? They replied, Some say John the Baptist. Others say Elijah.

And still others, one of the prophets. But what about you? he asked. Who do you say I am? Peter answered, You are the Christ.

Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law and that he might be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. Out of my sight, Satan, he said. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the son of man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his father's glory with the holy angels. May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy word. Amen.

Let's bow our heads in prayer again. Father, we want to thank you so far for what we have experienced of your grace. We praise you for the men who have been able to participate this evening.

Later on as we listen, as we come to the conclusion of the Lord's Table, some of our menfolk sing. We again want to offer you our thanks for men and women who serve you in this fellowship here and all that they mean, one to the other and to me particularly. Now we offer this time of study and meditation around your word to you.

We pray that you will help us, particularly those who are new to the tab this night. And may they already have felt in the informality and the warmth of what has preceded something of the presence of the Lord. And now by the power of your spirit will you illumine their minds and our own for Jesus' sake.

Amen. Who do people say I am? They answered, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others one of the prophets. But what about you? Jesus asked.

Who do you say I am? I read something quite interesting this afternoon which I want to repeat to you now. Now not one recognized religious leader, not Moses, Paul, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, have ever claimed to be God with one exception, Jesus Christ. Christ is the only religious leader who has ever claimed to be divine and the only individual who has ever convinced a great proportion of the world that he is God.

Jesus is the only religious leader who ever claimed to be divine and the only individual who has ever convinced a great portion of the world that his claim is true. Our subject this evening, which might have encouraged you to come along, maybe a friend gave you a little leaflet or perhaps you saw the notice outside the main door of the tab, is in the form of a question. Was Jesus just a good man? Was Jesus just a good man? That's the option that a lot of people angle for today.

It seems reasonable. It seems tolerant. It doesn't get you hooked into the religious scene and yet it doesn't mean that you're intellectually a bit backward because most thinking people have the estimate of Jesus which seems to suggest that he is a pretty good fellow and he lived a very nice life and what he had to say was really unsurpassed by anyone else and so you are prepared to acknowledge that Jesus was indeed a good man.

But you know, it's not sufficient alas, to say that Jesus is purely a good man. I want to be a little bit more dramatic. If I'd remembered to bring the book at this juncture I would be quoting to you from C.S. Lewis.

So I shall now strain my memory and try to summarize him. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity says this Jesus was either a good man or rather, Jesus was either God or he was mad or he was bad. He was either God mad or bad.

Lewis goes on with a greater degree of eloquence than I can ever muster to say that the Lord Jesus Christ was either divine or his lunacy and here I'm quoting Lewis accurately is akin to a man who claims to be a poached egg or else he's like a demon from hell. He's either God or he's mad or he's bad. The option of being just a good man doesn't even feature says Lewis.

I've only once in my life ever met a person who said that Jesus was bad and this lady was far from being a cretin and a dwarf in her intellect. Actually, her story was a tragic one. She wrote a book, a brilliant book Attacking Christianity.

I happened to read, I think, in one of the papers that she lived here on the south coast so I wrote to her and I said, would you come along and have coffee with me and let's talk about your book. She came. She'd been some 20 or 30 odd years perhaps even more in her life in the cloistered environment of a convent and suddenly she burst out of it on the premise that she hated Jesus.

She despised him. And she wrote a book called The Jesus Hoax. Unfortunately, my meager ability intellectually was no match for hers.

She could run circles around me. But I pressed on and tried to show her that the Christ that she rejected was not the Jesus of the Bible. So, I didn't win the argument though we had a couple of encounters.

She wouldn't see me anymore and a couple of years later I read of her death by suicide also in the papers. The only person I've ever come across in my life who believed that Jesus was a bad man and she thought that because of his teaching about hell and judgment. But at least, my friend was logical in recognizing that there is no middle course there is no middle option.

Either Jesus was God or he was bad or mad putting those two into the same category. And I want to think through with you this evening. Lend me not your mind but at least lend me your concentration and think parallel thoughts with my own and let's see from the word of God drawing evidence from the scripture was Jesus just a good man? Well, I'll grant you that at one level that's a fair description.

At one level. Martin Luther said Jesus ate, drank, slept, washed was weary, sorrowful, rejoiced he wept and he laughed he knew hunger and thirst and sweat he talked, he toiled he prayed so there was no difference between him and other men save this he was God and had no sin. Just a good man just an ordinary man, you say who sleeps when he's tired but on one occasion when he was roughly awakened from his sleep when sailing across the sea of Galilee he stood to his feet and he spoke to the wind and he addressed the waves and he told them to be muzzled to quieten down and the amazing thing was this that what he commanded was fulfilled and the disciples made the comment what manner of man is this? Man, yes he slept like you sleep like I sleep but now he addresses the elements and they fall into order at his behest man truly but not man only a good man but more than that just an ordinary man, you say well, in some senses he went to parties and that's a reasonable thing to do assuming the parties are a decent party to go to on one occasion he was at a place called Caner, Galilee and they ran out of wine and he was told in a very human fashion he supplied all the needs gallons of the stuff not just sort of second rate plonk but good wine to the extent that the man who was running the particular wedding festival congratulated him because his expert palate indicated that this was best quality liquid from the from the fruit of the vine Jesus, a good man, an ordinary man he attends a wedding feast and yet he steps out of the ordinary into the extraordinary from the natural into the supernatural and it doesn't seem as though there's much difficulty involved for him in doing that just a good man I've dropped many a rupee into a beggar's mug or bowl on the streets of Calcutta or Bombay and Jesus was no less than me in as much as he was touched by the poverty that sometimes he saw on the streets but this time in Palestine but when Bartimaeus asked for boksheesh he didn't get that Jesus didn't give him money he gave him his sign you see, he's a good man but he's more much, much more than just a good man how will you say, alright, let's try again Jesus is not just a good man he's a good man and a holy man well, I take your point it's fair enough, a sort of Indian fakir how do you pronounce that word, I'm never too sure and India and the East they're loaded with holy men and we've got one or two that they've exported to the West though, from what I know of them they could well have kept them and we would have been no poorer spiritually the world has never been short of holy men what it has been short of are men of holiness and that was the acute distinction between Jesus there's one fellow who made a million, more lived north of Bombay, just hopped to the States and left all his followers in India gasping because not only did he exploit them he left them Sung Myung Moon, a holy man born in North Korea, brought up in a Presbyterian church comes to South Korea forms his own denomination his own religion evolves from it one of the quickest ways to get rich is by forming your own religion, incidentally you ask Rex Hobart who started the Christian Scientology not the Christian Science, the Scientology movement spends most of his time on the yacht in the Mediterranean or the Bahamas it's a, it's a good way to get rich Sung Myung Moon, holy man well, his holiness can't even demonstrate itself to the satisfaction of the United States inland revenue people every holy man that ever lived that ever claimed holiness with the exception of Jesus is proved ultimately to be tainted in some degree but not not the carpenter who comes from Nazareth on one occasion he's surrounded by hostile people you know, the religious elite of his day they think that they can beat him intellectually and theologically not realizing that they're cretins and he's a genius but it's not just the academic argument that Jesus wants to sustain though that would have been easy for him it's this business that there's something, a matter with his personality that maybe somehow mud has stuck on his character so he says, look here is my life, it's clear now get the ink in your pen, so to speak and splatter me if you can show me one area of my life where I have sinned where I have spoken falsely where I have done a mean act and a record indicated that no one could take him up on the challenge the amazing thing about Jesus is that his holiness was obvious not only to those who were committed to him I don't know what passed for telegrams in those days not quite sure what's going to pass for a telegram today actually all the wonders of modern communications which sometimes seem to slow us down more than anything but leave that on one side here's Pilate's wife, she's estranged from her husband not that they've had a row, she's just physically away from him so she sends him a telegram she's concerned Pilate might make the biggest gaffe of his life and heaven knows he's made enough and she's concerned because he's got Jesus on trial always think that's an extraordinary thing a man like Pilate having someone like Jesus to pass judgment on the carpenter and so worried is Pilate's wife she writes to him and says don't have anything to do with that just man ensure that your hands are not involved in the evil intent of the Jews as they try to rob him of life Pilate takes the point and so he says publicly this man has done nothing amiss there's no reason at all why he should die but the hours go by and you know what happens they pin him to a cross and he's hanging there for for a relatively short time and during that time his holiness makes such an impact that one of the two who is by his side a criminal confesses who he is and commits himself into his care eternally and the rough soldier on guard duty at the foot of the cross says surely this was a righteous man don't tell me that Jesus was just a good man because the way that you use that term good is a qualified way he was more than just good and in one sense in Indian connotation at any rate he was more than just holy oh so you say I'm quibbling at words so let's settle for another description he was just a good teacher and by that he was the best teacher after all he set down the Sermon on the Mount and I well remember my headmaster telling me just how good the Sermon on the Mount was what he never told me was that nobody could ever keep the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount so what use was that Jesus set a standard that no one could ever keep now that is typical of a teacher you see a teacher has as his reason for existence to inform people and if he's a teacher of moral philosophy he informs them about morality and he informs them about ethics our universities have mainly got departments in moral philosophy up and down the country but I won't buy the title good teacher as being an adequate description of the Christ if that's all that is meant because you see Jesus went beyond the ethic to the heart of the person who was receiving what he had to say and on several occasions and particularly to a man who saw him at night because he was afraid to have an interview during the day Jesus said look this business of you keeping God's law really demands spiritual surgery within your heart it's been said that an optimist believes he can change society but only a lunatic believes he can change the individual without operating on his personality and Jesus was no lunatic he sets down the most sublime ethical code that there has ever been let's live by the sermon on the mount and immediately everyone in the United Nations is redundant and what's more the new police commissioner of London can look for another job because we won't need him security corps, well that goes bankrupt too we're all living by the sermon on the mount it's marvelous isn't it there's not one person in this tabernacle this evening who would in any way suggest that there is imperfection in the ethical teaching of the sermon on the mount alright well let's live like that let's not just live here in Worthing let the whole world live like that because there's not an intelligent person in the world who could disagree with the sermon on the mount but the problem is that we can't keep it and this is where I will not admit the title a good teacher as being adequate of Jesus because he goes beyond the teaching and he performs the surgery on the part of the person who would live up to his teaching a good teacher? well yes indeed but his manner of teaching was quite extraordinary let's just think it through at the human level not with the definition that I've just given you of someone going through and doing surgery and the personality of his hearers let's just think of Jesus as an ordinary teacher for a while what did he have to say? well he said the most preposterous things you see the gospel is not just the sermon on the mount and you can't just judge Jesus by his ethics you have to judge him by his claims and there are many people who like his ethics but blush when confronted with his claims I mean they do sound a little pompous verily, verily I say unto you well some will know that that's a hymn but I'm not going to start singing it it's also a verse from scripture verily, verily is a double oath not in the sense of a swear word but in the classical sense of pledging yourself as to the absolute truthfulness by which you speak now the scene is this once again Jesus' accusers they draw near him and they try to trip him and they endeavor to show that his teaching is not in accord with the Mosaic law and in effect he has betrayed and is betraying the Jewish cause and Jesus starts to take them on their own ground you talk about Abraham Abraham's your father you're putting your trust in Abraham verily, verily I say unto you before Abraham was I am it's very hard for youngsters in the temp this evening to understand the significance of that but if you could make a hand grenade out of words then Jesus loved it the Old Testament the name for God is so holy that the Jews would never refer to it even when they took a substitute name for God so holy did they acknowledge his character they would take a drink of water and they would wash their mouths out first those who were meticulous in the keeping of the law but the Jewish name for God in the Hebrew is if you try and transliterate it that means push it through into the English Yahweh and if you don't stop at transliterating it but you translate it, it means I am the one who is timeless the one who is absolute and this is where Jesus can never be compared not with Gamaliel, not with Moses not with any of the great teachers of Judaism because he makes such preposterous claims before Abraham was I am and do you know what they did when he said that? because the Jews were not fools they never have been they produced the most brilliant people constantly throughout the whole history of mankind they reached the religious mandate down to the ground and they pick up stones because they're going to do him to death for what reason? he's made himself like God now you see the point, if he's just a good man just an ordinary teacher and his ethical code is fine then what in the name of logic are you going to do about these claims the claim to be more than an ordinary man, the claim to be the God man do you know on one occasion Jesus said speaking of God, the Father I and my Father are one the interesting thing is forgive me being a little technical the interesting thing is that word one in the original is neuter it's not masculine I and my Father are of one essence disciples have got problems they always had and we've got problems because we're disciples and our understanding is imperfect I was suggesting earlier on today just the nature of some of the problems we have in understanding God's word and how we need to be humble well what were the problems of the disciples, well it was a business of God the Father and God the Son they couldn't quite put it together and if you'd have mentioned God the Holy Spirit then really their mentality or their mental comprehension would have been strained to breaking point and so on one occasion one of them says Lord when He shows the Father and Jesus said if you had known me you would have known my Father have I been so long time with you and you haven't known me let not your heart be troubled you believe in God, believe also in me, you see it's riddled with it, what's riddled with it the statements of the Lord Jesus, the claims that He makes to be more than just an ordinary man so if you tell me that He's just a good man, then I can only agree partially, if you tell me He's only a holy man in the sense that I've spelled out I can only agree partially if you tell me He's just a good teacher then again I can only partially agree, because He goes through the human concept of holiness and goodness and the human ability to teach what man ever said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words did you ever hear Harold Wilson say that? ever hear Mrs. Thatcher say that? just to balance the politics for a moment but Jesus did so important are His words that they will stand the test of time and live on through to eternity you see what Lewis meant you must be seeing it now or else I'll quit as a preacher Jesus was either a good man, or rather He was either the God man or He was a bad man there's no middle and the only slight alternative is that He was mad He was deranged, but does a deranged man ever write the sermon on the mount? did a deranged man somehow create these beautiful parables, these exquisite stories the like of which there is no comparison in the annals of human literature you see what I'm arguing for, I'm taking you step by step, can you really deny the logic that I'm bringing to you, not my logic, but the logic of Scripture see people they reacted to Jesus as though He was different, and He didn't seem to object what do I mean, well a leper came and worshipped Him, and He acknowledged the worship and yet He had said to Satan, when the devil had been tempting Him, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve Cornelius is a Roman soldier, centurion reasonably high up in Caesar's army in the Middle East and one day, he comes across Peter and Peter, it's now in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter's been baptised with the Spirit, he's got clear understanding of the issues of the Gospel, and when Cornelius sees Peter, he falls down on the ground, and he worships him, and Peter says, stop that, get up I'm just a man but when John the Divine sees Jesus in the Revelation that we find in the last book of the Bible He falls down at His feet, and He worships and nobody in Heaven corrects John and nobody ever corrected not even Jesus Himself those who offered Him worship on this earth why? because He was more than just a teacher more than just a holy man more than just a good man still got a little time, let's try another well, maybe He was just a martyr well, have you ever examined the Scriptures that speak of the death of Jesus if you have, you will discover that they're quite extraordinary in as much as Jesus supplied the evidence that ultimately brought in the verdict of guilt, the guilty verdict what do what do I mean? well you might recall that our Lord when He's on trial has the problem of coping with false witnesses actually it's not too great a problem because all the witnesses contradict one another much to the confusion of the high priest who acts as the chief judge and the Sanhedrin who are equivalent to the old Bailey so you've got this great difficulty of the witnesses not spelling out the same story and at one point when the high priest has got really agitated he explodes and he says to Jesus, are you the Christ the Son of the Blessed One? and Jesus says, I am and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven what did Jesus there say? He was the Son of Man He is the Son of God He is the Christ and He is the One who will ultimately return to this world, sitting He says poetically, on the clouds of heaven.

What does the high priest do just then? He tears the garments that He's wearing. Now that was against the law generally speaking. Pure personal grief would not have allowed the high priest to have done that.

But the high priest, if he was in the company of anyone who blasphemed the Lord His God, he was expected to rend his clothes and show his indignation Why did Jesus go to the cross? The charge was blasphemy and the man who brought the evidence was himself and the blasphemy was, in the terms of the high priest, that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and ultimately He dies on the cross and He's raised again on the third day and He underlines in the resurrection again His uniqueness So let's bring everything together and make our conclusions and rapidly at that Jesus is more than just a good man and the only other option to saying that He is God is to suggest that He's mad or bad As for madness, listen to Philip Schafe, a great historian Is such an intellect as Jesus had clear as the sky, bracing as the mountain air, sharp and penetrating as a sword thoroughly healthy and vigorous always ready and always self-contained, liable to a radical and most serious delusion concerning His own character and mission and he says that that is just preposterous imagination Jesus could not have been mad and by very inquiry into His life and His attitudes and His sympathizing with others He could not have been bad. Then what's the only alternative or the only option left? He's more than just a good man He's God Listen A man who can read the New Testament and not see that Christ claims to be more than a man must be capable of looking at the sky at noonday and in a cloudless sky refuses to see the sun Jesus is more than just a good man He's a God man and He said that the value of His pure life when He offered it on the cross would mean that for those who place their trust in Him their sins will be forgiven and ultimately they will be with Him in His Father's house Now look You could have followed my logic this evening and still not have become a Christian You can stay as near as the pilot fish stays to the shark in your response to Jesus Christ and still not be a follower of His What you need to be a Christian is not only to recognize the tuition of Jesus but to open your heart to His surgery and allow Him to cleanse you of your sin and to make you anew and that's the only logical thing at the human level to do when you're confronted by the fact that Jesus far from being a merely good man is the God man Let us pray and I want just in the silence for friends to have an opportunity to ensure that their peace is made with God through the Lord Jesus and if you're convinced not by my reasoning but by the evidence of scripture this night as to the deity of Christ and therefore the need that you represent and as you want to make your peace with God let me suggest you pray quietly in your own heart after me Father, I come before your throne in a way I never saw before I acknowledge who Jesus Christ is I believe that He died on the cross to save me I ask that His blood might cleanse me of my sin I pray that His Spirit might enter my heart I ask for a glad assurance that I now belong to you I pray that my life may be changed as Jesus takes control for His honor and glory Amen