922 Ministries - The CORE & St. Peter Lutheran

All right, again, welcome to week two of Objections to Jesus. If this is your first time with us in this series last Sunday, I would encourage you go take a look. You can see our messages here, our messages online. Pastor Tim here at the St. Peter campus and Pastor Mike down at the core talked about this major objection a lot of people have about God is that if there's evil in the world, how can God be all loving and perfect and all powerful?

I suppose if it weren't for Jesus who came historical fact and proved how all those things can meet at the cross and how God can prevail, I suppose we'd be without faith. But take a look at that message if you haven't heard it yet, and we pray that you could be blessed by it. Today we're going to further ourselves along and take a look at, well, how certain can we be about Jesus as the answer to all our hopes? Is there enough evidence? Is there overwhelming evidence?

And is the scripture trustworthy? This is kind of a two for one Sunday, by the way, just a little side note at the core today, Pastor Michael, one of our other pastors, is going to be presenting a message on a similar thing, but more so, is there evidence for God, who, of course, gave us his only son when so many say, ah, science. Science can prove that, I mean, we don't need a God, or God is inconsequential and there's no real proof for him. So it's kind of two for one. They complement each other.

Maybe sometime during the week, if you have a moment, I'll listen into what the core's message was today. So before we jump into our message, inspired by one Peter, three, let's open prayer.

Sanctify us by the truth, o Lord. Your word is true. It's all the evidence that we really need. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

So what about our opening question there, is there really any evidence for Jesus? If you're a lifelong christian, maybe you've heard from day one that Jesus loves you. Have you ever had moments where you wondered, is this true? And is there really any evidence? And what if you'd been born in another family?

Would you feel the same way if they didn't teach you about Jesus? What evidence is there really? And maybe more than what the scriptures say. But what do the scriptures say? All of those questions that we might have, especially as we remember, or last I checked at least, do you know how many world religions there are in the world?

Some 4000 plus. So in the season of Easter, focusing on the resurrection of Jesus. Christians are bold to say that Jesus is the only right way, that there is only one way. In fact, it's such a big claim that we'll take a little time today to talk about it and all our time next Sunday to talk about, is it true that Jesus truly is the only way, and how loving can that be? But for our purposes today, I mean, who am I to say to the apostafarians who follow after the spaghetti monster?

Did you know that's a real. That's a real religion? Well, it's an official religion. The reason why it got started, well, that's a complicated story. But anyway, who am I to tell the paso farions that their spaghetti monster God, who's credited with creating all things, is false, when our God, who sent his son to the world, who died, actually came back from the dead, when nobody comes back from the dead?

That's true and that's real. I mean, what evidence is there? Or what about other religions like Judaism or Islam or Buddhism and Hinduism, paganism or Jediism, which is actually another official Jedi is Jedi. George LUcas Sci-fi yeah, that's an official religion. Okay, then how do we come to a point where there's enough evidence that we could say, no, Christianity is the only true religion.

It all comes down to Jesus. It all comes down to whether the scriptures which proclaim him are credible. And so we're going to talk about the evidence there is. And when we do, I want to revisit what Pastor Tim shared last week. And this whole series is so critical.

This is not a debate. It can't ever be a debate with those who have objections to people who have found faith in Jesus. That's not blind faith. If we ever get into a debate where it's argument against argument and, hey, we win, well, we lost friends and souls, people who could maybe be blessed by the gospel of Jesus. In fact, we know they could.

This has to be a conversation. This has to be a chance for christians who have been informed, who see the evidence, who stand on the gospel, that we become listening ears, if anything, and we invite people, whether they're our own children and teenagers in our homes or relatives or coworkers or our enemies, to truly hear what their concerns are, what objections they really have and not dismiss them or not leave them to other people who maybe know a little bit more, but to again be informed, to dive into the scriptures, to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have. And so that's a message for us christians today that we'll want to remember. And not only that, but anyone here that's still seeking, anyone here that maybe, like Thomas says, unless I see, I won't ever believe in personal online. All I would ask is that as we speak to some of the evidence that's there, and I would suggest overwhelming even more go to the scriptures.

All I would ask is to have an open heart, to have an open mind, to see. Could this be. Could this be what I've been looking for in a relationship with God? If we can have an honest conversation, I know that the Lord will give us his spirit, and by his word he will win us all over. And this message is for all people to what Jesus offers.

And so that leads me to then this text for our inspiration today. First Peter 315 through 16. We use this as part of our confession earlier. Sin and grace. Peter, who again saw Jesus, walked with him three years.

One of the first disciples, lead disciple, saw him die, denied him three times. In the process he came to believe, saw him after the resurrection, spent decades proclaiming him as the risen Lord. In his concluding words, he says, in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord. In other words, this isn't blind faith, but this is certain hope. So put your trust in Jesus, and then always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have that word to give an answer is a defense, a loving defense.

It's where we get the term apologetics from today, which is defending the christian faith. Now, as he says, being prepared to give an answer, he says, do this with gentleness and respect. See the soul on the other side of that table first and foremost, hear what's on their mind, honor their objections, and then give hope. So what are those objections? Well, we got four that we're going to work through, and these are major objections.

Go online, search chat, GPT, or whatever. These are some of the objections that will come up when it comes to Jesus and the scripture. A first objection. Did Jesus even exist? You heard that one.

If you have any conversations with people on religious matters and you bring up Jesus today, it's a popular idea. And by the way, it's not an old, old idea. This is relatively new over the last century or two, wondering if Jesus even really existed. Whether you're searching that online, talking to a friend, or seeing some TikTok videos, they're wondering, did Jesus even exist? How do we even know?

Nobody has proof, is the thought. Well, I want to give you the answer, and this is kind of our pattern over the four objections. Here's what scholars have to say, and I would dare to say practically unanimous. Scholars who study history and works of antiquity, original sources, archaeology, overwhelmingly believer, non believer, they agree that Jesus existed. There's no doubt suggesting that if you really hold to this idea, he's just a legend, a myth.

You really, really have not looked at any evidence. And I've got a couple sources that are up there, a few of them, and I think this is interesting. It's not just the Bible that talks about Jesus. There are other secular sources, contemporaries of Jesus, who actually refer to him. And it shouldn't be surprising.

I mean, after all, Jesus, so real, so true, so historical, such a controversial and yet monumental figure of humanity, that we're finding pretty much the major religions of the world all have a place for him, whether in the east or in Islam and Judaism, all referred to, have to deal with in some way Jesus. But again, it's not just a biblical thought. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which we'd have to admit probably biased, Matthew, Mark and Luke, John, they were all followers of Jesus. But did you know, Tacitus, if you're big into roman history, a roman historian, about the time of Jesus, he wasn't a follower of the Lord, wasn't a follower to say that Jesus was the Christ risen from the dead. But he did refer to him, and so did Josephus, who was a jewish historian, not a follower of Jesus, but the details that they use, and you could google their names and Google Jesus alongside them, and you'll find that here are a few facts that they relay.

One, Jesus was a real person. Two, he was rumored to be and experienced to be a very moral, ethical man who actually, they would say, did miracles. It's undeniable. And not only that, but both will declare that he died under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified. And then they kind of scratched their heads.

Tacitus will say, and I don't know why, there are people who still follow him to this day, but not only in Judea, but in Rome, the capital of the empire. We can't get rid of this christian thing. They keep talking about how he's risen, Josephus, he actually goes a step further and says, and perhaps he was the rumored Messiah, the one that was to come, non believers, historians all pointing out that Jesus is real. Which leads me to Luke of the four gospels, Luke, do you know much about him? You can read about him in the book of acts, in the New Testament, around chapter 16.

All of a sudden Luke shows up who wrote the book of acts. He starts talking in the first person he seems to be a convert from the apostle Paul's missionary journeys, which happened some decades after Jesus won our salvation. But Luke was a physician, a smart, scholarly man who, I just get to hunch, wasn't into any myths or false ideas, and religion just wasn't his thing. So when Luke heard about Jesus from Paul, he decided to do a little investigating. And he goes from doctor to historian.

He writes an account, the gospel of Luke. But as he does, he does so as a historian. And as far as scholars go today, when they look at Luke compared to other historians of antiquity, oh, they classify him in a rank of the first order, as far as historians go. And I'm going to share with you a little bit of his words, how he opens up with this historical account of what he saw with Jesus and those who followed him. And by the way, as I start notice, he doesn't start off like in a galaxy far, far away, a long, long time ago.

He's not writing a fairy tale. His intent is to write history. And so, he says, many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled, whether Josephus or Tacitus or the other gospel writers, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses, like Peter and the others and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I, too, decided to write an orderly account. And again, scholars are amazed at the details and places where they thought maybe Luke was wrong.

But then, archaeological finds, oh, yeah, this ruler was bearing this title, unlike we thought.

There is so much evidence that Jesus existed. And I think that's really important to understand so we don't fall victim to this idea, this uninformed idea that can't even know if he was really real, because that sets us up to maybe address another objection. And let's go to number two right now. So what about this Jesus, son of God, son of man, faced death, descended into hell, came back. Some will wonder, well, isn't Jesus just ripping off other mythologies?

I mean, Christianity isn't the first to say that, well, there's a God, became one of us, died, rose. And it's true. Egyptian mythology, roman and greek mythologies, even eastern religions like Hinduism, all have concepts of God taking on human form. Osiris or Hercules or even Ganesha from Hinduism. He's the guy with the elephant head.

Strange kind of story there. But anyway, ideas of these deities becoming like human beings and then facing death and then coming back. Now, when you first hear that? You're thinking, wow, Jesus, who came a little lately, I mean, how can we say that anything's original with what he did might bother trouble our faith? We might become like a doubting Thomas.

But I'd suggest to you the answer for that. And I'll show you the scriptural proof as well. Myths echo the original promise of a divine savior, of a divine savior for humanity. And what I'm saying is, I think it's interesting that so many cultures have this idea that God will come, become one of us and somehow defeat death even, and come back like a universal tale. It's almost like the flood.

How is it that so many different cultures have a universal worldwide flood story unless it happened? And so if you go all the way back to our first parents, Adam and Eve, when they fell into sin, they ate forbidden fruit and they were led that way by the devil. Do you remember what God promised to the only human beings that were there, our first parents, from whom all other people and tribes and nations come? The Lord God made this promise and it was a condemnatory statement to the devil. He says, look, satan, I will put enmity, hatred, hostility between you and the woman.

That means you guys aren't going to be allies anymore. I'm going to win Eve and Adam all humanity back to me and between your offspring and hers. So non believers who spin tails, who reject, who object and never come around to those who will believe, between your offspring and hers. And the interesting thing, when God says her offspring, that's weird, it doesn't make any sense because the word here is something only men have. Women do not have offspring, unless, unless it's a virgin birth that we're talking about.

And that's what's implicit here, that God said a virgin birth, that Isaiah would later affirm, it's going to take place. And who will be born? Well, the one who will bring victory, and that's really God alone. He, that one from the woman will crush your head. Devil, even as you strike, even as you give a mortal blow, you strike his heel.

Implicit in that first gospel promise is enough to go on to spend whatever mythologies about God becoming one of us, facing death, conquering evil, coming back. Now, the interesting thing, though, with all these other myths, and they're all detailed and different and strange, none of them have any proof of ever really happening. In fact, those who spun such tales never really write in such a way to suggest that this is true. These are just stories. But then Jesus comes on the scene at the end of time and he fulfills in great detail over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that he was the one promised, and he truly died under Pontius Pilate, face the devil, rose again, proclaimed victory for all.

So I actually like hearing about the myths and the other stories because to me it echoes that first promise and shows that really God has gotten his word out. And the way to be sure, though, is to come to know Christ in the scriptures. All right, another objection, though, that comes, well, then, didn't Jesus followers just make this up? No. Didn't Jesus followers just want a little bit more from Jesus than what they actually saw?

And so they kind of exaggerated things in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And then hundreds of years went by and they kept changing the word. And Constantine, the roman emperor, came along and he put the Bible together for his own political power and for money and gain. And finally, to this day, and this is what Islam teaches, or Mormonism teaches, that what we have now is corrupted text and stories and accounts. Bible is not trustworthy.

They almost kind of picture it like the telephone game. Any of you remember playing that as a kid? You tell a story, tell a friend, friend would tell another friend and go around, how many of you were that kid that you changed the story right midstream? You just made it as weird as possible just to frustrate everybody and went, I was no surprise. I was that kid.

That is anything but how the scriptures were passed down to us today. Here's the answer for this objection. If you want to know the truth about how we have the scripture and how it's unlike any book and how it has not changed, take a look at the study of textual criticism. Now, you might have to be a little bit of a geek or nerd to really dive into that, but it is a fascinating study of theology. And I'll give you a source at the end of the message where you can do that if you'd like.

But the way the scriptures came down to us, and you can actually test books of antiquity to see about their credibility, the Bible is in a category all its own. I'll just give you some examples as far as extent and old manuscripts, which is a test of the credibility of a source document. We have over 24,000 plus fragments, scrolls going all the way back to the earliest of centuries, some of them within maybe 40, 50 years of the original writing. You compare that to any of the works of Socrates or Plato or Aristotle or Horace or Virgil, greek and roman heroes of their cultures, and the Bible passes with flying colors. That's to say if you're going to believe in people like Alexander the great or any of the histories of Caesar, Julius Caesar, the copies of manuscripts that we have maybe are in the dozens of, and the time between the original writing and what we actually have are hundreds of years.

The Bible is in a category all its own and we're actually in a stronger position today than we've ever been from the evidence to show that what we have has not changed. We actually document all the variances that we have from whatever manuscripts and none of them change any of the Bible's teaching. Praise God.

But it shouldn't surprise us because didn't Jesus even say in Matthew 518, truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law or the word of God until everything is accomplished. I think of it this way. If God's going to give you, his only son, the word incarnate to win our salvation, do you think God's not going to figure out how to get that message to you in time? Do you think God's not going to preserve that? I mean, it kind of sounds silly for God in heaven's like, I gave them Jesus.

Oh, but how are they going to get the message? Whoops. 2000 years later, Jesus said as much who rose from the dead. He said, not one letter of scripture will be lost. It will survive the heavens and the earth.

God loves you. It's not going to be by accident or chance that maybe the word will remain. He's going to make sure that you have word of your salvation. Which leads us to the last objection or argument. How is Jesus any different?

And this kind of zeros in on his teaching and which I said just earlier next week, come back because we're going to be taking a look at how christians proclaim Jesus is the only way. But for now, for our purposes here, usually it's my experience that when people say, well, but how is Jesus teaching any different? It's that last objection that people put out there because there's some fear, trepidation about if I say Jesus is Lord, then what does that mean for my life?

I'm kind of afraid to follow. I don't know what kind of changes this means. Am I going to join a cult or what? And so there's safety in saying, well, really, at the end of the day, doesn't it all come down to the golden rule? I mean, just do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Which, by the way, Jesus did teach, which by the way, actually Jesus is credited with coming up with.

But that said, this is where Jesus and all other worldwide teachings differ. Jesus did not teach kindness as the way to heaven. In fact, Jesus said no one can be kind enough, which is why I'm here. But all those 4000 other world religions, they all teach now, if you want a relationship with God, if you want to go to heaven, then it's on you. Love others, love them well, and then we'll see and don't do anything really bad.

But Jesus comes with this message, not of works, but of grace. And he says God so loved the whole world that it doesn't matter how bad you've been, I give you a relationship with God by grace, forgiveness. And Jesus won over the world by that good news, by practicing what he preached, by going to the cross and really showing it's all about grace. The first word was to his enemies, father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.

And not only does that grace rescue us when all other paths will fail, but grace is actually really practical for this world. If you want relationships to work in this life, whether nations or tribes or families or individuals, it has to be by grace, can't be by works, which is interesting by nature. For our relationship to work, don't we demand of others? Don't we have expectations and works that gauge how well we're doing? Grace is revolutionary.

Grace is unique. It's exclusively to Jesus. And I even touched on all the other ideas from the Bible and Jesus bringing equality to all people, men, women and children, and not seeing differences between Jews and Gentiles, but actually bringing them all together.

And so how is Jesus any different? Well, Jesus teaching, I would suggest to you, is the most compelling evidence of all. Never mind anything we just talked about. If we understand that Jesus is all about grace, the embodiment of grace and truth, every matter is put to rest because no one else offers that. And praise God that Jesus does, because that's our salvation.

And this is why John wrote John 2031. He says these words, Jesus teaching, his miracles, all he did. They're written that you may believe that Jesus is the christ, the son of God, and that by believing, persuaded by this evidence, you may have life. That's all John wanted. That's all.

What the New Testament scriptures want is that you know God and that your relationship's by grace. Alright, we've gone through a lot. Thank you for your attention. Hopefully you found some worthy notes. I'm going to sum it up this way and it seems only fitting that if we're talking about apologetics and defending the faith and evidence that I would quote perhaps the greatest apologist, defender of the faith from the 20th century, his name.

CS Lewis. Cs Lewis boiled it down this way. He said, honestly, when you look at Jesus, you look at the evidence, you look at the scriptures. Here's the only thing God allows. Jesus gives you four options when it comes to him.

He's either a legend, he's a liar, a lunatic, or he's lord. Of course, the first three objections we've already covered, he's not a legend. Someone this magnificent can't possibly be a liar or mad, a lunatic. He must be lord. Which is exactly what he convinced his disciples of this monumental moment with Peter that we quoted earlier when Jesus was in the midst of his ministry.

He asked his disciples, who do people say the son of man is that I am? They replied, well, some say one of the prophets, which, by the way, so many world religions say, he's a good teacher, he's a prophet. And like I said before, so many religions have Jesus in there somewhere. But Jesus wasn't content with that. He's not just a good teacher.

He's not just a prophet. So he asked, well, what do you say? Who do you say I am? And Simon Peter answered, you're the messiah, the son of the living God. And Jesus replied, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, by evidence apologetics, but ultimately by my father in heaven, through the good news, the gospel.

And so, friends, there's the evidence. And I pray again that you were encouraged today to see truly Jesus as lord. There's really no other option, but even more that we can rest on the good news that he's our Lord, because he's everything we've been looking for, and he's everything that those who have objections are looking for. Maybe then God give us the words to speak about how God came into this world, to show love, to forgive, to redeem every soul. And may, when we witness about that truth, may God open up the hearts who object.

And so they can no longer be like doubting Thomas, but believe God. Grant this for us all. Amen.