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Vintage Jesus 2 Is Jesus the One True God? Lecture Vintage Jesus 2 Is Jesus the one true God? Lecture - All right, it's 12 lectures, this is lecture number two. Today's question is Jesus, the one true God. You've got notes, if you're a note taker, you won't be able to keep up. There's 20 points. I'm union, I get paid by the point. There's 20 points, we're gonna try and get through it as fast as we can in one hour. Let me pray and we'll get to work. Father God, thank you so much for an opportunity to teach about Jesus. And Lord Jesus, there is no one like you, there is no one alongside of you, there is no one comparable to you, there is no one who says what you have said, there is no one who does what you can do. And so Jesus, please send the Holy Spirit to open our understanding as we open the word to learn about you, and we ask for this grace in your good name, Amen. Well, as we're talking about Jesus, I suddenly discovered when I first went off to college as a non-Christian that every single discipline at the state university was talking about Jesus; sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy. Every class felt some need to respond to who Jesus was and the Christian Church in his way, and it dawned on me, he must be a really big deal. I started examining for myself various claims about Christ to figure out who Jesus is and what Jesus said regarding himself. And as we're dealing with Christianity that is the movement that we're part of that is in the wake of Jesus. Christianity is the biggest movement, the longest standing movement, the most diverse global movement of any sort or kind in the history of the world. Christianity has gone from one nation to all the nations, from one language to all the languages, from one generation to all ensuing generations. And then it begs the question, who is this guy, Jesus, who is behind this entire movement to the Christian Church? Let me read a quote briefly from Napoleon Bonaparte. They were sort of praising him in his day regarding his conquest. And he compares himself to Jesus and says this, "There is between Christianity and whatever other religions, "the distance of infinity." "His religion is a revelation from an intelligence, "which certainly is not that of man." Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself founded empires, but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. But Jesus Christ founded his upon love and at this hour, millions of men would die for him. In our day, it's billions. Billions of people on earth would point back and say, my ultimate allegiance and the change in my life is ultimately attributable solely to Jesus Christ. So we're gonna ask the question, who is Jesus? We're gonna look at some of the answers that others would give and then I'm gonna look at the answers that he would give. We'll start with eight concepts of Christ, and I wanna read to you 2 Corinthians 11:3-4. Some of you are non-Christians. We love you and we're glad to have you. Some of you are new Christians and you're trying to figure out who Jesus is. Some of you have learned about Jesus from other religions, cults, philosophies ideologies. Here's what Paul says, "I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning..." What he's saying is that in addition to God, there is a personal source and sense of evil called the serpent or Satan and his goal is deception, and he wants to deceive us about many things but the most important thing would be about who Jesus is. "Your thoughts will be led astray "from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ, "for if someone comes to proclaims another Jesus." So just because the name Jesus is being used does not mean that the person Jesus is being referenced. This is why I wanna get to the real Jesus and not a false Jesus. Goes on to say, or if you receive a different spirit, that would be the Holy Spirit, from the one you received or if you accepted different gospel, that's the story of the Bible, from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. Paul writes to this church in a town called Corinth and he says, you need to Mark Driscoll || RealFaith.com know who the real Jesus is. And there's lots of counterfeits because everything God has as creator, Satan counterfeits. Jesus Christ is creator and Satan counterfeits that with counterfeit concepts about who Jesus is. We'll look at some of them in session. Number one, alien Jesus. How many of you... Don't raise your hand 'cause we are in church, but you've watched something called the History Channel and all of those ancient aliens shows. I just find it humorous that people think that those are accurate depictions of anything. What happens with shows like the History Channel, they will do all these episodes on ancient aliens. So one of the fastest growing beliefs regarding Jesus, something that other generations didn't really struggle so much with, is this concept that Jesus is an alien. Meaning he did live, he did have superhuman powers, but they would attribute the source of his power not to him being God, but him being an alien life form. I'll give you a brief summary. Think of Jesus and Superman for a moment. Both are sent to earth by their fathers from other places, both were raised by poor parents in rural areas, neither started to publicize their powers until they were around 30 years of age. Both appeared to be ordinary people in every way. If you simply saw them coming and going about their business as a carpenter or news reporter, respectively, both had exemplary character, both were devoted to truth and justice, both help people in need by endangering their own lives, neither married, neither fathered children, both brought people back from death and both came back from death themselves, and both came into human history to rescue the people of earth. It's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me that at least this view of Jesus as an alien does denote that he live and do some extraordinary things. It's not entirely inaccurate, but it attributes to him, him being an alien being rather than a divine being. And Jesus, unlike Superman, is a historical figure who really did live and is not just a comic book fiction. But some would attribute Jesus' capacity and ability to him being an alien, being a being from another planet. He's not, he's God from another realm. There's also a concept of Jesus as an angel. This comes from a cult called the Jehovah's Witnesses, and it was started, I believe in Pittsburgh, if my memory serves me correct. Don't believe anything that comes from Pittsburgh. That's just the first thing. If your religion started where people like the Steelers, you're probably on the wrong team. I've just thrown it out there. Hey, I don't write the mail, I just deliver it. I'm just telling you what it says. Now that being said, the Jehovah's witnesses is a cult and they say that Jesus is not creator but a created being, that he's actually the divine Archangel Michael, who was one of the first created beings and then he aided God the Father in the creation of the rest of humanity. That is not the case. When Jesus Rose from death he said, a spirit does not have flesh and blood or flesh and bones rather as I do. He testified that he was a physical being, not just a spiritual being, creates or not just created. I think perhaps the most popular, prevalent and prominent, is the Jesus is a good man. He's a moral character, he is a humanitarian, he is one who advocates for the poor, the marginalized, the weak, and the outcast. Many world religions would receive Jesus as just sort of a good moral example. In addition, sort of liberal or progressive Christianity would posit Jesus as a humanitarian and a social advocate, but not as a savior and a sin forgiver. We'll deal with this as well as we get into the remainder of our talk. But this is also the popular misperception of the DaVinci code, which was false teaching in the form of a best-selling book and movie. It posited that Jesus wasn't a God man but he was just a good man and he ultimately married, had children, lived to some ripe old age and died without ever rising from death. It portrayed and postulated that Jesus was a good man but not the God-man. Also there is the evolved Jesus. In the Early Church, there was a heresy called adoptionism, and that was the Jesus was a mere mortal in a man, and at his baptism God anointed and appointed him with supernatural power and at that moment, he became a man who then became God. This was formalized in something called the Mark Driscoll || RealFaith.com Mormon church. They get offended when you use that language, they say, no we're the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints.
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