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Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834
[email protected]
B1021 – May 23, 2010 – Jewish & Gentile Responses To The King
We’ll finish our introduction to the NT framework today. We want to recall the
basic issues of how we’re approaching the Confrontation with the King. First,
the whole thing is basically a debate over who is Jesus Christ? For hundreds of
years the Church went through a lot of debate trying to figure out how to
articulate the person and nature of Jesus Christ so that all the other doctrines
are protected. It’s very important that we understand Christ’s person and
nature. Second, the other side of the issue is who are you? This is the issue
Christ raised when He asked, “Who do you say that I am?” We said that how
you answer that question doesn’t tell us who Jesus is per se but the nature of
the person answering the question. So the answer to that question exposes the
spiritual perception of the person giving the answer. Third, Gal 4:4, all of this is
really an exposition of Gal 4:4, “in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son.”
That’s not talking about it was night and the shepherds were out in the field or
something. The “fullness of time” has a little more content than that. It means
that both the Gentile and Jewish world had enough historical preparation that
there was no legitimate excuse for misinterpreting the who Jesus was. That’s
what the fullness of time means, that the Jews and the Gentiles were prepared
to correctly discern the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. They can’t argue, well, we
didn’t have enough information. That’s not going to cut it, because in history, as
we said, the pagan world was prepared. They had tried to find an absolute in
nature forces and that wasn’t sufficient, man can’t manipulate nature and
generate security. They had tried to find an absolute in man’s intellect, Greek
philosophy and the human intellect with all its wonder can’t generate absolutes,
so people turned to the state. Maybe the State was the answer but that failed.
And after all that they were bankrupt in terms of an answer. But at least after
this process there were sufficient categories of human thought floating around
to be able to understand the answer of Jesus Christ. It’s like today as history
approaches the Second Coming and Christ setting up the world government that
He will set up. If Jesus were to have come back 1000 years ago would there have
been a global consciousness among men in all the different countries to
appreciate what it means when Christ identifies Himself as the King of Kings? I
don’t think so, because what you had was a regional consciousness. People in
Europe were conscious of the region of Europe; people in Africa were conscious
of the region of Africa; people in Asia were conscious of the region of Asia. But
we are rapidly developing today, for the first time since Noah, a sense of global
consciousness, and this is vital because when Christ comes back it’s important
that it’s understood who He is, what He’s about and what He’s doing. God
always makes people hungry before He serves a meal, and that’s what we mean
by the fullness of time. There’s always a preparation before God pulls something
off in order that it be appreciated when He pulls it off.
In the Jewish world, we went through their historical preparation. They tried
the same thing the Gentiles tried, nature. That didn’t work, then they tried
religion, they went into Exile and started Judaism, then the came back,
partially, it wasn’t a full restoration, and they went through the turmoil of the
Maccabean revolt with Antiochus Epiphanes and finally they were crushed by
the Roman Empire. So they felt the weight of being a slave nation under the
power politics of the Gentile world. We’ve noted that both that pagan world and
the Jewish world had come, just prior to Jesus, to a certain consciousness of
their failures. And we gave some neat historical quotes of what people in the
street at the time of Jesus were saying. There was a Messianic expectation in
the air. Clearly the order of Rome was not satisfying the heart of man, and they
craved something else, so there was a hunger.
Into that hunger, Christ comes and presents His challenge. We want to look at
two things; The Method of His Presentation and the Nature of His
Presentation. By the method of presentation, what I mean is that the Gospels
focused on the Jewish question. Jesus was a Jew; He came to Jewish people
with a Jewish program. The Jewish people should have understood because they
had 2000 years of background. The Jewish people, since the time of Abraham,
had been prepared. They had gone through a series of events and it was clear
that these events were leading somewhere and were teaching something. Down
toward the end they saw that the people were hopelessly sinful, that if there
were to be salvation and the Kingdom of God introduced into history, it had to
come from Yahweh. It had to come from the God of the OT, it couldn’t come from
man, it couldn’t come from a democracy, the power of the people, it couldn’t
come from a human king, the power of a mere man, it had to come from another
direction. All the excuses and false routes had been closed off, logically
speaking.
So Jesus Christ in His method of presentation comes first to the covenant
nation, “to the Jew first” and then to the Gentile. Why “to the Jew first?” As we
said the reason goes back to the Abrahamic Covenant. The Abrahamic Covenant
decrees a certain design to history, and in the design of history Israel is the
conduit of revelation. Why is that? Two years ago, when we were dealing with
the Call of Abraham, I made a point about the exclusivity of the truth. By that I
mean that starting with Abraham, God did not speak any more to all men. He
withdrew that opportunity and allowed all men to paganize. And the exclusive
way He spoke to pagans was through His chosen instrument Israel. So John
14:6, “I am the way, I am the truth, etc…” is not the beginning of this
exclusivism that Christianity is so vilified over. That began with Abraham. And
what that means, for every nation on earth, that if you have ten nations there
aren’t ten valid answers to life’s questions. There’s only one answer and one
nation that delivers the answer.
This is very offensive; this strikes at the heart of the pagan. They say, “Oh,
that’s not fair.” Think back. This is where the power of the framework happens.
Why did God have to call Abraham out? Why did He use this exclusivistic
method? Because He tried to speak to everybody and everybody paganized. So
the point when He calls Abraham out is that all men, all people groups, have
lost their right to the truth. It’s very simple. The reason for exclusivity is
because you rejected truth and therefore you do not have a right to the truth.
Try that one the next time you’re in a debate. The reason the gospel is narrow is
because everybody’s wrong, that’s why. Of course, they can’t believe that you’re
saying that. But it’s the truth so say it.
Exclusivity is unavoidable in a sinful world. It’s a corollary to the Fall of man.
That’s why Jesus comes to Israel first. That’s why there are those anti-Gentile
verses we read in the Gospels. Do not throw pearls before swine, go only to the
house of Israel, do not go in the way of the Gentiles. We also said Jesus was a
hardcore Jew. I gave a quote from a non-believing Jew who studied Jesus in the
NT. He said Jesus was a Jew, totally and thoroughly. He came to give His
people an opportunity to nationally accept Christ. I mention this because when
we read the gospels you’ve got to keep in mind there’s a lot of feelings going on
in the Gospels. It is not just sweet stories about Jesus, and it’s not just leading
up to the cross. There’s more to it than that. One of the things going on in the
Gospels is this: is the nation Israel going to nationally recognize Jesus as the
Messiah of the nation? It’s a national decision, not just individuals in the nation.
Yes, individuals are involved, obviously, a nation can’t decide if individuals
don’t. But there is an issue over whether or not Israel nationally will receive
Christ. That question is basically answered halfway through all four Gospels
and the answer is no. It’s when the answer begins to be “no” that Jesus shifts
His methodology and He withdraws and He begins to prepare the faithful
remnant for a new thing called the inter-advent age or the Church.
The Church isn’t explained in the OT. That’s why it’s called a mystery in the
NT. It came about because of this rejection that happened. The Messiah comes
to the nation and He’s rejected. So now we come to this halfway point in all four
Gospels, and then you see Jesus begin to talk about I’m going to die, I’m going to
rise, the Spirit is going to come, and what does the Spirit do? He gives them
power to witness. You shall be witnesses. Where? In Jerusalem, Judea and
Samaria and to the remotest parts of the world. See even then the order is
what? The Jew first then the Gentile. Where did Paul always go first? To the
synagogue. City after city after city, always the Jew first. We’ve seen that in
the Book of Acts. That’s OT, that’s not NT, there’s nothing new about it. It’s the
same old method. Through Israel the world will be reached. Did something
change? What’s the future method? Anybody ever read anything about 144,000
Jews? What are they? Jews. So the method never changes.
Now we want to turn to The Nature of His Presentation. We’re going to
cover four events of Christ; His birth, His life, His death and His resurrection.
In each of these there’s a uniqueness to how He came, how He presented
Himself. We want to get this because Jesus is unique in His presentation.
Jesus’ entry into this world was unique according to the NT testimony. By the
virgin birth Jesus succeeded in acquiring a legitimate humanity without sin.
Additionally, His full divine nature was successfully combined with true human
nature in one person. Thus, while other religious teachers claimed to represent
God” including Moses and Isaiah, “or to be a manifestation of deity, Jesus
claimed to be God.” Why do I make a big deal out of this? Because that’s part of
the presentation. People have to decide, are you going to reject that or are you
going accept it? You can’t be neutral about that. Without coming to the
conclusion that we’re comparing apples with oranges here. It’s the nature of
Jesus that figures preeminently in His teaching, not just what He says; it’s who
He is.
During His life, Jesus said and did many outstanding things. Later on we’ll
make the case that one of the most outstanding features of Jesus’ career was the
authority He assumed over man and nature. Jesus challenged people to consider
how He could control the elements of nature and how He demanded that men
accept His words on His self-authenticating authority. Notice this, very critical
for his teaching method during his life, whereas other teachers justified what
they taught by an appeal to a standard of truth outside of themselves, Jesus
insisted that He was the standard of truth!”
You can’t come to the biography of Jesus and, like C. S. Lewis said, conclude
that this guy is merely a good teacher. Lewis was absolutely right when he said
this in his book, Mere Christianity; Jesus doesn’t leave you with that option. You
either have to put this guy down as a liar, a lunatic, or who He claimed to be,
Lord. But He can’t be a good sweet little teacher, not if you’re intellectually
honest. Jesus made claims that Buddha never dreamed of, that Confucius never
made, that Mohammed never did; no other religious teacher in history ever said
the sort of crazy things Jesus did. You want to fasten on to this little thing
because when you get into discussions it’s good to remember that… there’s no
danger in being refuted…nobody reads the Bible any more. The point is that if
people would read the Bible, they would understand that you cannot compare
Confucius with Jesus, and you cannot compare Buddha with Jesus.
Then we deal with the death of Christ. Jesus was the only member of the
human race who, without the guilt of suicide, chose to die. When Jesus died, He
accomplished what no other teacher ever accomplished and what no OT sacrifice
ever did: He somehow bore the sins of the world upon Himself and received
God’s judgment upon them. The death of Christ has some unique features to it.
Jesus did not die by the injuries of the cross, we’ll refute that point. He was not
a victim of crucifixion. Jesus Christ chose the exact moment of death, and the
choice was His. He, in one sense, put Himself to death on the cross, as a
voluntary sacrifice for our sins.
Then we go to the resurrection. The resurrection is not some kind of magic event
where He just popped out of the grave, there’s something bigger. Remember
you’ve got to interpret these events in light of the OT. So a key here is He
demonstrated that the long-promised ‘new creation’ had begun to appear. When
Jesus got up out of that grave in His resurrection body He was the first piece of
the new universe walking around. Whereas in the original universe what was
the last creation? Man. In the new universe man is the first creation; it’s exactly
reverse. So the Lord Jesus Christ now, in His physical human body, is the first
piece of the new eternal universe.
What we want to do now is say okay, Jesus presented Himself to the Jews in at
least four unique ways, four things He pulled off that no one else has ever pulled
off. All four of these things make Jesus Christ unique. It’s important to
remember how unique our Lord was, and that He can’t be classified as simply a
religious or moral teacher.
Let’s go to the response to these challenges, because there was a response to the
challenge, and it was a very serious parting of friends that happened. Jesus
Christ splits families, Jesus Christ splits nations, and Jesus Christ splits people
apart. The responses are two-fold. He has not been well-received by most people.
So we’re going to see first the Response of the Jews. There are distinct Jewish
responses to Jesus Christ that you need to see to read the Gospels carefully and
observantly.
The first thing you need to understand about the response to Jesus is that there
was a faithful remnant. Some Bible verses are John 12:19; Acts 2:41; 4:4; 5:14,
29. We won’t turn to those, but look those up. They speak of the remnant, the
faithful remnant. In our OT studies we’ve run into this one before. Remember
that during the time of the prophets, when the kingdom was in decline, the
nation went apostate. Remember that passage in the OT with the prophet
Elijah? He was complaining that there wasn’t anybody around and he was the
only guy, and God said, what, are you kidding Me? I’ve got 7,000 other people
that have not bowed the knee to Baal. That is one of the famous locations in
Scripture where the concept of remnant starts to appear seriously. From that
point on it becomes more and more evident that the remnant is a minority; that
the majority are not going to get along with the program, and that’s why there is
judgment that falls upon the nation. The remnant simply isn’t big enough
percent wise of the population to avoid the fifth degree of divine discipline.
Jesus, when He came to this earth it was the same principle. There was a mass
of national Jews and then inside the mass of national Jews there was a subset of
the remnant. It’s that remnant inside the nation to which Jesus, at the midpoint
of all four Gospels, moves. Jesus’ addresses at the first part of the Gospels are to
the nation. In the second part of the Gospels the addresses are to the remnant,
there’s a shift that happens. You want to be alert to that as you read the
Gospels.
What was the Jews excuse for not accepting Jesus? Number one, here’s the first
reason why they got rid of Jesus Christ. Let’s look at the dynamics of rejection,
because those dynamics are still active spiritually in the world. Turn to John
11:47-52. It’s quite clear because it’s an explicitly stated reason why Jesus
Christ was considered expendable. “Therefore the chief priests and the
Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this
man is performing many signs. 48“If we let Him go
now (here’s the crux, watch this verse, observe carefully), “If we let him go on
like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away
both our place and our nation.” Why was that a fear? What did we say last
week? What did we say was the word on the street? The word on the street in
both Jewish and Gentile circles was that there was going to be a ruler coming
out of the East. If you were Roman authorities, would you be comfortable with
that? I wouldn’t. And I particularly wouldn’t be comfortable with it when I had
the Parthian Empire on my eastern front. So law and order had to be
maintained. To maintain it the Romans warned the Jews, you better stay in line
or we’re going to take all your freedoms away. And the Jews knew you can see it
right there in verse 48, they feared the Romans. The Romans had great power.
So the first reason for the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ is political security.
The mere presence of Jesus is a political threat. It still is! Here’s why it is a
political threat. If a person, say you or me, have our ultimate allegiance not to
the state but to Kurios `Iesous, the Lord Jesus, what does that do to the
authority of the person who wants to be in charge of the state? It makes him
second best. And if you don’t have authority over all, you don’t have authority at
all. That’s the political threat. Jesus’ political threat is felt today in the political
system of this country. That’s why the Bible is considered a very dangerous
piece of literature, because it teaches people to have a standard of authority that
cannot be controlled by the president, by the media, by peer pressure or anyone
else.
So what’s happening here is we’ve got fear of the Romans. He says in verse 48,
“the Romans will come and they’ll take away both our place and our nation.i So
number one, political security, Jesus is a threat to political security so we reject
Him.
Number two, legalism. The Jews had experienced over and over their own
inability to keep the Law of Moses in a way that pleased Yahweh; but instead of
resorting to God’s grace, their inability had led them to reduce the standards of
the Law. They should have been driven to Yahweh and His grace for the ability
to keep the Law, but instead they substituted an intricate network of legalistic,
human regulation of oral law. In the Talmud, it states, for example, “My son, be
more careful in [the observance of] the words of the Scribes than in the words of
the Torah, for in the laws of the Torah there are positive and negative
precepts…; but as to the laws of the Scribes, who ever transgresses any of the
enactments of the Scribes incurs the penalty of death.” Look at that. In legalism
what’s the motive for obedience? It’s fear. Of whom? Men. Legalism is ultimately
peer pressure. It’s group pressure. It’s my fear of what other people think about
me. It has nothing to do with God. It’s what man thinks about me. So the first
reason they rejected Him was political security, the second reason is legalism.
A third reason why the Lord Jesus Christ was rejected: (this one was also a
very, very touchy issue and really upset people) Jesus seemed to undercut the
sanctity of the Temple. Remember when Jesus said, “the temple will be
destroyed and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, He’s talking about His
body, but boy, when the people heard that one they picked up stones. What are
you going to do, blow up the temple? They had blown the whole Temple way out
of proportion. They had totally forgotten what Solomon had said in His
dedication of the Temple in 1 Kgs 8, “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven
cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!” YHWH can’t
be contained in a cage in Jerusalem. And these zealous Temple guarders, what
are they going to do? Protect God? Boloney. But with that view of the Temple
you can see how Jesus’ remarks would be interpreted as an attack upon God’s
sacred ground. It’d be just like the Muslims today, worried about the dome of
the rock, if somebody says we’re going to blow it up…you’re going to do what?
You’re going to start WWIII. And that’s literally what would happen if anybody
messes with that particular thing in Islam. You can kind of understand how
they might have got that way. So the temple was almost like the Alamo is for
Texans. That was the place where by golly we’ll fight to the last man for that
one. Jesus wasn’t being disrespectful, He just put it in perspective.
A fourth reason is that the popular imagery of the Messiah pictured Him as a
glorious King, not a suffering servant, and Jesus was obviously not a glorious
King. Palm Sunday was the closest He ever came to it, and within 24-48 hours
the same people who had thrown palms in His way were the ones yelling for His
crucifixion. Very superficial. All these crazy interpretations of the OT are
explained in the NT, and they are explained, and you want to catch this, as
spiritual blindness, a hardened heart.
A fifth reason comes from another highly questionable OT interpretation that
the Messiah was not to be identified as Yahweh Himself. So number four was
the fact that Jesus wasn’t a glorious King, now number five almost in reverse,
but He was going around claiming to be God, and Messiah can’t be God. That
was a stereotypical interpretation of the OT that collided with what He was
claiming. So when He claimed to be YHWH what was the reaction? The Jews
picked up stones again. The Jews were smart enough to know a claim to deity
despite modern Jehovah’s Witness failure too. The Jehovah’s Witness position is
such boloney. There were very few offences where the Jews would resort to
stoning. What they heard that was an offense was blasphemy; Jesus was
claiming to be YHWH, that’s why they picked up stones.
I want to mention another re-interpretation more modern Jews hold to. This one
with respect to Isa 53, a very famous passage. This is 700BC, probably the most
complete Messianic passage in the Bible on the sufferings. How did the Jews
interpret this? They said there are two Messiahs, they believed in Messiah ben
Joseph, he would be the suffering Messiah, and Messiah ben David, and he
would be the glorious Messiah. So they took the suffering passages and the glory
passages, they couldn’t fit them together in one person, so they made Him two
people, and that was a Jewish idea of how to get logic into the interpretation.
Isa 53:1, “Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD
been revealed? 2For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root
out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look
upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. 3He was
despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And
like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem
Him. 4Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we
ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.” Look at verse 5
and think about what you have just read in verse 5. That is a tremendous
introductory statement in the OT that proves vicarious suffering for sin. Notice
what it says. “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was
crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And
by His scourging we are healed.” If you listen to modern debate, you’ll hear it
said that Jews don’t believe this passage refers to the Messiah. The Jews say
that must refer to Israel, the nation. They’ve turned the interpretation from the
Messiah to the nation of Israel, the nation Israel suffers at the hands of the
world. No one’s denying that Israel does suffer at the hands of the world, we
remember the blood libels, and we remember the Holocaust. But is that what
this is referring to? That’s why I’ve got this quote from Arnold Fruchtenbaum.
“To interpret Isaiah 53 as speaking of Messiah is not non-Jewish.” That’s the
accusation the Jews today make, ah, that’s just a Gentile way of reading it. It is
not a Gentile way. “In fact, if we are to speak of the traditional Jewish
interpretation, it would be that the passage speaks of the Messiah. The first one
to expound the view that this referred to Israel rather than the Messiah was
Shlomo Yizchaki, better known as Rashi (c. 1040-1105 AD). He was followed by
David Kimchi (1160-1235). But this was to go contrary to all rabbinical teaching
of that day and of the preceding one thousand years. Today, Rashi’s view has
become dominant in Jewish and rabbinic theology. But this is not the Jewish
view. Nor is it the traditional Jewish view. Those closer to the original writings,
and who had less contact with Christian apologists, interpreted it as speaking of
the Messiah.” Very important! Other Jewish objections have been added to the
first century ones. These include, if you were to interview Jews today, why don’t
you believe that Jesus is the Messiah? Here’s some answers that the modern
Jew would add to those that we’ve already studied. They would include “Jesus’
‘failure’ to bring peace. If Jesus was the Messiah then peace would be on earth,
peace is not on the earth, Jesus is not the Messiah. The anti-Semitic behavior of
groups identified with the Christian faith: most Christian groups are antiSemitic, the majority of the Christian church hates the Jews, it’s the official
position of most churches, God is through with the Jews. The impossibility of a
man becoming God - they have a problem with the Trinity and we’ll get into
that. And the fear that a Jew who accepts Jesus will cease to be a Jew and that’s
a very serious cultural issue among Jews. Who wants to be cut off from
everything they know as a Jew? All those figure into the dynamic behind the
Jewish rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the Jews, and that’s why the
Bible says “He came to His own, and His own received Him not.” All kinds of
reasons. The bottom line is that with the excuses for not believing in Him come
consequences; a veil of spiritual blindness has come over the nation. That
doesn’t mean individual Jews can’t believe, it just means that the general tenor
of the nation is spiritual blindness for the last 2,000 years.
Now let’s look at the Response of the Gentiles. The Jews had their reasons
for rejecting Christ; the Gentiles have a different set of reasons. Both are sinful,
both are rebellious, but they are different brands of rebellion, so let’s look at the
Gentile brand of unbelief. Gentiles continued their idolatry of nature and
arrogant estimation of man’s mental capacities. Pilate’s remarks to Jesus
epitomize the majority Gentile view.” Pilate said to Jesus, “Where are you
from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to Him, You do not speak
to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release you, and I have
authority to crucify You?” What’s that sound like? We’re the bosses here, we run
the show, we run history. If that doesn’t have a satanic ring to it I don’t know
what does, what did Satan say in Isaiah 14. “I will” be like the Most High God.
In other words, whatever importance and authority Jesus had, the Gentile mind
said He was beneath the importance and authority of the ‘almighty’ state.” See,
Rome is the fourth kingdom of Daniel. As an illustration, we’ll get into this
later, a thing called Arianism. Arianism is the belief that Jesus Christ was a
man on whom the Spirit of God came. Jehovah’s Witnesses are modern Arians.
As an illustration Arianism was the main heresy denying Jesus’ full divinity
and was consistently popular in church history with people who believed in
dictatorships and total political power, just like Rome. A very interesting
connection. This is why, folks, today in Eastern Europe, where Arianism had a
tremendous influence, there’s a tendency to not participate in government, but
to let the powers that be trample. That’s why Russian people are so passive
politically. They want a dictatorship. Wherever you have a weak Christology
you have a strong state. Watch that, those two are political opposites. Why do
you suppose that’s so?
Let’s run that by one more time. Wherever you have a weak Christology you
have a strong state. It’s who is Kurios? Who is Lord? If you have a big Lord
Jesus, you’re not tempted to worship the State. But if Jesus is only a man on
whom the Spirit of God came, there’s an open door to have the Almighty State
because there’s no one else to fill the power vacuum. Arianism, the main heresy
denying Jesus’ full divine nature, was consistently popular with statists.
Rushdoony writes: ‘By denying that Christ is Lord and Savior, Arianism…had
made the state man’s lord and savior, and the Arians were dedicated statists.
The emperor, not Christ, His Word and the Church, was central to the Arians.”
“He also points out: ‘In its modern form, statist theology goes further. It not only
ignores Christ and the Church, it begins to deny their right to exist. A critical
background is the issue of taxation. The modern state assumes the position of
having a right to tax the Church as a corpus politicum, and then
magnanimously forgoes this right on the ground that the Church is a charitable
or non-profit institution. The hidden premise is that the Church is under the
state and exists by its permission.” See, we’re a political threat. The gospel is
insidiously anti-state, and people who are conscious, half conscious of this, get
upset. There’s something upsetting about the gospel of Christ when it’s
preached in all the glory of the person of Christ. It’s a threat to the Gentile
statist mentality.
A second issue is shown by an earlier dialogue between Pilate and Christ: Jesus
says, ‘Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate [sarcastically] said to
Him, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38). So another feature of the Gentile mind,
“on a deeper level than the issue of statism, is that modern pagan thought
amplifies Pilate’s remark, “What is truth?’” Follow this because this is what you
will read in the news. Behind it all is this same theme. It’ll come out different,
different people express it different ways, but watch it. Gentile world leaders
make all truth ultimately subjective. That means it comes out of my heart, it’s
what I think. You’ve all heard this, the man on the street knows this; they’re not
philosophers but they still think this way, well that works for you, but this
works for me. Excuse me! We don’t have truth then. There’s no truth, it’s
whatever “works for you,” there’s no objective truth, there’s no standard, there’s
no weights and measures, there’s nothing out there but I decide what is true for
me. Truth to them is merely what one thinks is truth.” Get the difference. Truth
now has become what men think it is. Van Til describes the Greek fountainhead
of this pagan relativism. ‘Socrates discovered the principle of interpretation,
which man ought best to follow, to lie within himself, in nous…. Socrates
possessed a voice which spoke to him, but its advice was actually internally
consonant with his own consciousness; namely if the gods ever told him
anything, he would by himself, of necessity be relegated the task of judging the
truth or falsity thereof. The principle was an internal one.” Where is the
standard of judgment, in me or external to me? What’s the ultimate authority?
Such a view of truth makes any kind of historical, verbal revelation from God to
man impossible. Impossible! Since all truth, according to this form of fleshly
thinking, is ultimately subjective, one cannot reach real truth about God as
Christ insists that one can do. Alan Richardson, for example, illustrates this
kind of thinking.” We’ll get more into this as we go into the life of Christ, but
watch it, because every university course that you will ever go to that talks
about the Christian faith, and every social studies text book that talks about the
Christian faith says the same thing, this is not some abstract philosophical
thing that only PhDs worry about. This stuff is in Jr. High text books.
“‘The facts about the Jesus of history are accessible to us only through the
apostles’ faith in him. The Gospel writers were not biographers or historians,
and they chose to tell us only such things about the life and teaching of Jesus as
seemed good to them to illuminate essential aspects of the Church’s faith in
Him.’” Do you get the flavor of that whole statement? What’s the source of the
facts about Jesus? The writers, “they chose to tell us only such things about the
life and teaching of Jesus.” What does the NT say that shall come upon the
disciples and will lead them to all truth? The Holy Spirit. Who’s the author of
the NT? The Holy Spirit. Who decided what is in the canon and what isn’t in the
canon? The Holy Spirit. There’s no Holy Spirit in that quote, there is only man.
Alan Richardson is an English theologian, a liberal guy, he wrote The Bible in
an Age of Science. “And they chose to tell us only such things about the life and
teaching of Jesus as seemed good to them,” they were the final criterion of what
happened in the NT. Here’s a quote that summarizes the whole point. “In
modern unbelieving thought, statements about Jesus would be merely
autobiographical testimony about what early Christians thought; they would not
be statements about objective reality external to their thoughts.” In other words,
it would be as though I am telling you this is the way I saw it and I’m just
putting my spin on things. It’s just my view.
If all we had was my imaginative thoughts and ideas and you’re imaginative
thoughts and ideas and we can’t really know what something really is do you
see what would happen? Every one of us would give testimony, we could have a
testimony meeting, everyone gets up and describes what’s going on in their
heart, their depraved, wicked, evil, perverted heart. Who wants to hear that
garbage? Without an external standard, you shouldn’t care what’s on my heart,
nor should I care about what’s on your heart. What we should care about is
what the truth is. In this case the only way we can tell what truth is is to see it
from outside of ourselves. That’s what we’re saying. Modern unbelieving
thought says there is no outside, it’s only what somebody said, what Dr So and
So said, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what is real.
So Gentile pagans respond to Jesus by questioning whether truth exists or not,
We’re back to Pilate, what is truth?
Alright, what we’ve done is show where the people are peeling out, how they’re
excusing themselves from believing in Christ, how they handle the unique
challenge of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection. And we’re going to see
that every one of these events are misconstrued, absolutely misconstrued. We’ll
go on next time through the four events of Christ and show you how the believer
interprets the event and how the unbeliever interprets the event. We need to
know how unbelief operates. It’s all around us. It’s in our own hearts, because
we’re not completely sanctified in our experience. And because we’re not
completely sanctified our flesh has picked up unbelief. And we need to shed
ourselves of that, be cleansed. So we have to identify the unbelief that needs to
be cleansed.
i 49But
one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all,
do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the
whole nation not perish.” I’ve always loved John’s Gospel, because John’s Gospel has some of the most
beautifully constructed irony to it. What do you see in that last verse that is terribly ironic? Observe
that text. Do you see a double meaning there? How does Caiaphas intend the text to be taken? He means
political expediency, one dies for all, so we don’t all get killed by the Romans, let them kill one of us and
get rid of it and solve the problem. But in a deeper meaning what has Caiaphas just said? That one will
die for the nation in a way that Caiaphas hasn’t even dreamed about. See how elegant and how
sovereign God is, the words in this Gospel…it’s amazing how He pulls this off.
50nor
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