Matthew 16:13-20
September 12, 2004—9:30 Worship
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
As citizens of this land and members of the human family, we learn to respect and live with people who are different from us. When we see that some of the worst human conflicts that happen in the world are rooted in religious differences, we learn to appreciate and practice tolerance of other beliefs.
Other religious faiths have love; they have beliefs about the good and the true. If God had only given us Bible, we may have a good book but we wouldn’t be Christians. We would be another noble philosophy of life or a system of ethical virtues. Only Christianity has Jesus. When it comes down to it, the one thing that makes us Christians is Christ. It’s not church dinners or carrying big Bibles or even pushing preachers. The thing that makes us who we are is who Jesus is. Jesus is the Messiah.
But how can we be sure about that. We are intelligent people—we go to school; get degrees, interested in science and how things work. With all of this knowledge and information, how do we really know that Jesus is the Messiah?
We believe that God came to us in the flesh, as a Jew from Nazareth named Jesus, or in Hebrew, Joshua, meaning God saves. We believe that in this peculiar way, God saves us by getting to us through Jesus. Our astounding claim is that a Jewish carpenter’s son, who was born, lived briefly, died violently in his thirties, and rose from the dead unexpectedly is as much of God that we hope to see.
Now if that is all that we have, we can sympathize with those who look at Jesus and see only a noble teacher, or only a moral example, or even a wild-eye revolutionary. After all, from the very beginning—who Jesus was, what he was about—was far from self-evident. Sure there were some people who stood face to face with Jesus and said, “This is God incarnate” but there appears to be many more people who said, “This man is nuts.”
Are we also nuts to believe in Jesus? Are we compromising our intellect and educational background to believe that Jesus is the Messiah?
The Case for Christ
In Lee Strobel’s book, The Case of Christ, the writer, a law school graduate and a newspaper journalist was a spiritual skeptic until 1981. As a reasonable and smart person, Strobel thought that when he researched Christianity’s claim that Jesus is the Messiah, all these beliefs would come tumbling down like a house of cards. But when he finished his critique, he became an avid believer himself.
Most of the information we have about Jesus comes from the Bible. But as Strobel asked himself, “Can we believe the Bible to have accurate information on which to base our faith? Is the Bible reliable?”
Let’s look at the gospel books in the New Testament. Scholars all agree that the first gospel was written by Mark who recorded Peter’s eyewitness account. It was already in printed form when Luke and Matthew wrote their gospels. Luke was a physician who wrote for a Gentile audience while Matthew’s work was for Jewish hearers. The word, “synoptic” means eyewitness. The writers were around when Jesus was alive, teaching and healing. After the apostolic churches realized that the stories and teachings of Jesus were getting faint from their memories, about 30 to 45 years after Jesus ascended to heaven, the synoptic gospels, namely Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written. The eyewitnesses were still alive to say, “Yes, that’s the way it happened,” or “I was there, and I saw it with my own eyes.”
The fourth gospel, John is quite different from the other three and was written toward the end of the first century. It has little parallel comparison with Mark, Luke and Matthew. It’s an eyewitness account that focused more on the theological meaning of Jesus’ teachings than a historical record of Jesus’ life.
Besides the gospels, we have other eyewitnesses who wrote letters about what they saw. These are the epistles we have in Peter, John, James and even Paul’s many letters based on his dramatic encounter with the risen Lord on the Damascus road.
When skeptics questioned the disciples, listen to what Peter said in 2 Peter 1:16, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.” And in 1 John 1:1, John said that he was writing about “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.”
When you go home today and if someone were to ask you, “How was worship today?” You would be able to say, “With my own eyes and my own ears, I saw and heard the Good News of Jesus Christ proclaimed!” You are an eyewitness to what is happening right now. There’s no wonder that one of our TV stations called themselves, “eyewitness news.” They want you to believe and trust that the news that they are reporting is true. When we read the gospels, we can trust that what happened to Jesus happened just as it was recorded because they saw it with their own eyes.
Did Jesus Lie?
When God came to us as Jesus, most people didn’t get it. Jesus frustrated people’s expectations about how a Messiah ought to act. Jesus didn’t directly say who he was. He didn’t walk around with a sign on his back saying, “Son of God.” Messiahs were supposed to have power, were supposed to take charge, set things right, fix all of our problems.
In Matthew 16 that we read today, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
When Jesus accepted his disciples’ recognition that he was the Christ, the Messiah, Lee Strobel wondered “Was Jesus lying when he claimed to be God?” The fact that Jesus claimed to be God doesn’t necessarily mean that he was God? Strobel reflected on how all of us at some time in our lives padded the truth a little, exaggerated the facts a bit to impress people. Was this what Jesus was doing?
When Jesus was on trial and the high priest asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the blessed one?’ Jesus said, “I am.” Why would Jesus claim to be someone who most likely will be convicted for a crime for which he would be put to death? Let’s say that you are a bench-warmer on a football team and someone was holding a gun to your head and saying, “So what’s the truth? Are you really a starting player because if you are not, you’re going to die?” How long do you think the player’s going to hold on to that lie?
Yet Jesus held to his claim right to the end. Would somebody willingly die for a claim he knew was a lie? From Jesus’ own actions, we can believe that Jesus saw himself as the Messiah, Son of God, the Christ. In Mark 10:45, Jesus told his followers that his purpose was “to give his life as a ransom for many.” He was willing to die a horrible death to pay for the sins of the world so that people could be made right with God.
Jesus didn’t just claim to be God; he believed it. Jesus died not for a lie but for the truth that he is indeed the Messiah.
Fulfilling Prophecies
As Christians, we keep both the Old Testament books known as the Hebrew Bible with the New Testament together. If we only read from the New Testament books, we would only have half the story. The Old Testament books not only portray God’s love for his people and how God tried repeatedly to build a relationship with them, it also contains prophecies that foretell Jesus as the Messiah.
Isaiah 53 provides a description of the Messiah suffering for our iniquities and that through his punishment we are made whole, our bruises are healed. Isaiah 53 was written more than 700 years before Jesus was born. There are about 60 major prophecies concerning the Messiah that Jesus fulfilled to come true in his life, death and resurrection.
Let’s look more closely at Isaiah 53. In verse 9, we read, “They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.” We know that Jesus was crucified between two convicted thieves and that a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph took Jesus’ body, wrapped it in clean linen and laid it in his new tomb.
From Jeremiah 23:5, we read, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” We know that Jesus was a descendant of David in Matthew 1:1.
And finally from Micah 5:2, we read, “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old , from ancient days.” And in Matthew 2:1, we know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
There are many other prophecies in the Old Testament that were fulfilled in Jesus that led to Lee Strobel to imagine what were the mathematical odds of just a few of these prophecies being fulfilled in any one person. He suggests that the one chance would be in the hundred million billions. Personally, I’m not really friendly to justifying Old Testament prophecies coming true by measuring probabilities. It may give us some reassurance that in all probabilities, this was not a coincidence but truth.
But when it comes down to it, we are followers of Jesus not because we are convinced in our intellect or our college degree trained brains that Jesus is the Messiah. It’s not a scientific inquiry that leads us to believe.
Remember what Jesus said to Peter when Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Peter didn’t use his own thinking or abilities to figure this out. It wasn’t his “flesh and blood” in the form of a smart brain that led Peter to declare Jesus is the Messiah. He was given a revelation from God to make this claim. Not our “flesh and blood” but revelation from God that we have faith to declare that Jesus is the Messiah.
Do You Know What to Say about Jesus?
Like Peter, we find our way through our doubts. We find our way through our unanswered questions. We find our way with the rest of the disciples who really didn’t know what to say about Jesus.
Recently I officiated at another funeral of a loved one who is a member of our church. Since I have been at FCBC, I have participated in 36 funerals; that’s three times as many funerals than weddings that I have done. I am reminded of an incident of another pastor’s experience with a man named, John, a friend of this church who was six months from death, maybe less, according to his doctor. Lung cancer was going to take him this time. John wanted to know why some people have a personal relationship with God and others like him, do not.
He wanted to know why some people, like Peter, can name God and say that Jesus is the Messiah and others cannot.
After church one Sunday, John asked his pastor about peace and tranquility. He wanted to be free of worry about his wife, whom he loved with all his heart. He had taken care of her and her bad knees for years—now the role is reversed, and he wasn’t so sure he could stand to see her manage. She was managing well, but he was still worried.
The pastor said to John, “So love is robbing you of tranquility.” He, being the augmentative type, said that wasn’t the case. “So what is it?” the pastor asked.
“Is it about heaven?” “No, that doesn’t bother me.”
“Is it about pain?” “No, pain is pain.”
“Is it about…” Before the pastor finished asking her question, John said after a coughing fit, “I don’t know what it’s about and that is the problem.” When he coughed some more, he said, “It’s about being at peace”
The pastor knew what John wanted, and she even knew why he wanted it. But the pastor also knew why he couldn’t have it. John didn’t have a personal relationship with Christ and this genuine suspicion was blocking his desire for peace and tranquility. Although he has a genuine love for his wife and his family and was worried about leaving them, his encounter with death has left him with no peace and tranquility to think of.
Peace for John is certainly the absence of worry or the absence of the fear about pain. It’s being free from doctors and coughing and oxygen and the details of dying. But peace is also a presence as well as an absence.
For John, he wants to feel the breath of God in his breath. The soul of God in his soul. The time of God in his time. John wants to know that Jesus is Christ, the Messiah. And he doesn’t.
The question for us today is the same for this man named, John, “Do you know what to say about Jesus?” Ultimately, to know that Jesus is the Messiah is not a possession that we own, not the result of our brilliant deduction. Like Peter, to say that Jesus is the Messiah is all grace, a gift from God, a revelation that neither flesh nor blood can come up with. It is a blessing to be able to say, “You are the Christ in my life.”
All of us can probably spend the rest of our waking hours trying to prove the case for Christ. We can count the number of occurrences that can be verified to be true. We can presuppose our own situations and hypothesize Jesus doing the same thing. But at the end, it’s faith that we need to believe. Ultimately to know Jesus is the Messiah is to have faith.
After Peter declared Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus appointed him as the rock on which he will build his church. When we live out our faith in Christ, we will begin to see that our prayers are answered, blessings coming that are undeserved, and a wholeness that you have never felt before. Living out our faith in Christ is the best case for Jesus that we can ever have. Our lives of faithfulness and we as a church will testify in the world that Jesus is indeed the Messiah.
Let us pray. Precious Lord Jesus, thank you for your revelation on earth that you have come to save us from ourselves and our sins. Lead us to have faith in your power of grace and mercy to welcome every person who seeks your truth to be transformed and redeemed. Continue to bless us and reveal to us that you are Lord, Savior and Messiah. Amen.