[0:00] Let's turn this morning, yet again, to the prophecy of Isaiah on chapter 9, on verse 6.
[0:13] This three prophetic verses that have been before us on Sabbath morning for the last number of weeks.
[0:23] For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God.
[0:45] So, this title of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Mighty God, that is our concern this morning.
[0:58] This verse must have been very difficult to interpret or expound before Messiah came.
[1:12] Unto us a child is born. Very common occurrence. But that was not all.
[1:24] Unto us a son was given. Yes, he came after his human nature, did our Savior, as a child into this world.
[1:36] He could be held in the hands of a woman. He was dependent. As any creature of God is in the human race when first born.
[1:47] Dependent entirely upon others. And yet that infant was at the same time a son given.
[2:00] Or the son given. For God sent forth his son born of a woman made under the law.
[2:13] And then we were looking at some of his titles. Wonderful. To the Christian believer, Christ is wonderful. He's the fairest of ten thousand.
[2:25] There's none of the likens. And counselor. As sinners we need a mediator with God. And even as redeemed sinners, regenerated and renewed by the Holy Ghost.
[2:39] And that's how we need counseling. We need help. And guidance. And fellowship. And friendship.
[2:52] And Christ is the counselor of every believer. And you can take away the comma if you like and call him wonderful counselor.
[3:02] I prefer to leave the comma in. He is wonderful to the Christian believer. When the Christian looks towards God, then he has Christ as his mediating counselor.
[3:17] But man doesn't yet fill out the picture of who and what Christ is. He is more, says Isaiah. This one who is our child.
[3:30] And who is our son given. He is the mighty God. And if you take the Hebrew that underlies our authorized version translation. It would be literally this.
[3:42] He is the strong God. He is the God of power. Hell. I want us to look today.
[3:55] Jesus, our Savior. And Jesus, our Savior. As the mighty God. I want you to pause and ask yourself this question.
[4:08] Do you really believe? Do you really rest in? Do you really rejoice in?
[4:19] That such that you Savior is God? I hope you do. I hope you do. Because you have every reason to believe that he is God.
[4:31] And as you believe in God. In him as God. You have every right to rest in him as such. If God became incarnate and went to the cross.
[4:45] My friend, it was to reconcile you to himself. And if he has done not. You have every right.
[4:57] To rejoice in him because he did it. In his love. For sinners like you. Unlike me too.
[5:09] Last Monday evening. I went home from a meeting at which I was speaking. And I saw most of.
[5:26] A television program that was being screened that evening. Under the title. Who was Jesus? And this particular documentary film was just the latest.
[5:45] In a whole series. That we've been kind of bombarded with. Through the screen over the last 12 or 15 months.
[5:58] Men are taking a singular interest for some reason. And I mean unbelieving, critical men. In the Christian gospel.
[6:09] And the Christian faith. And in the one who is at the center of the faith. While all these films and the movement that produces them.
[6:22] While these things have many sad aspects. Perhaps on the other hand they have. Some beneficial aspects as well. And we shouldn't all together deplore them.
[6:36] Although there is much in them. Sadly. To deplore. This particular film.
[6:54] Last Monday evening. Was produced by one of the contributors. To our little book that was published. Last. Summer.
[7:06] The end of July. July. And it caused. A little stir. For a little while. It was entitled. The Myth. Of God Incarnate.
[7:19] It consisted. Of a number. A series of articles. Written by. Men who call themselves. Biblical scholars. Written.
[7:29] Written. Written. All that again. The. Teaching. Of the gospel. That Jesus of Nazareth. Was the son.
[7:41] The eternal. Divine. Son of God. Incarnate. In human nature. The. The. The. The. The. The. Now. One.
[7:52] Wouldn't expect. Too much. Of a film. When. The script. Was.
[8:03] Written. And the investigation. Was done. By one of the contributors. To such a book. And the fact that he himself.
[8:15] Was presenting. The documentary. And the evidence. That he was talking about. Would lead one to expect. Still less.
[8:26] Of the film. This particular film. Industry me. In fact. In some ways. It fascinated me.
[8:37] For one reason. And that was just this. This man. Who was. And known. And known.
[8:48] To be. Attacking. An attacker. Of the deity of kind. Now this man. Should shape.
[8:59] The whole of his documentary. Film. Into proving. That Jesus. Of Nazareth. Was a real.
[9:12] Historical. Passion. That's what he did. The first three quarters. Of the film. Showed.
[9:25] That this man. And I suppose. His contemporary scholars. And when we talk about. His contemporary. Fellows. And that kind of scholarship.
[9:35] We're talking about. Hard. Rationalistic. Critical. Critical. Unbelieving. Scholarship. Of the bible. We're talking about.
[9:46] Nothing else. Let's say this. And it. Fascinated me. As I say. That hard. Rationalistic. Devastatingly.
[9:58] Critical. Openly unbelieving. Unbelieving. Unbelieving. Scholarship. Should come. Now. To the place. Where they cannot.
[10:09] But say. There was. Such a man. As Jesus. Of Nazareth. You might say. Well. That's not very much.
[10:19] Mr. Menem. Every Christian. Believer. Has believed that. For the last. Two thousand years. And of course. Every Christian. Believer. Has. They have known. They have known.
[10:30] In their own experience. What. Authentic. Carried. The gospel. Records. From them. But I say this.
[10:43] My friend. Is a big step forward. From 20 years ago. On 10 years ago. For the last.
[10:54] 100 years or more. This type of scholarship. Our rationalistic. Unbelieving. Biblical scholarship.
[11:06] Has done all. In its power. To prove. That there was never. Any such person. As Jesus.
[11:17] Or not. Or my family. That failed. Abysmally. To do it. Because.
[11:29] With every passing day. And every passing week. And every passing month. And every passing year. Inrefutable evidence.
[11:52] of Nazareth as a real historical figure. What did old man in that program tell us? He told us that Jesus of Nazareth was real. He told us that Jesus of Nazareth lived at the time when our gospels say he did live. He told us that Jesus of Nazareth began a public ministry when our gospels say he did.
[12:22] He told us that he gathered a multitude of followers. He told us that he was crucified at Calvary just as our gospels tell us he was.
[12:41] Believe me coming from this seat of unbelieving scholarship, that is our Lord. Of course it is not all. Because there is another side to the story. Something else in that film fascinated me even more.
[13:04] Here was this man bringing forward evidence that underwrites the historicity of the gospels as we have them. He was consulting other scholars and other centers of learning who also underwrite the historicity of the gospels.
[13:28] One of them I don't know if you saw the gospel. One of them I don't know if you saw the film you saw this man too. One of them was an old Jewish scholar in Jerusalem and I thought he was far ahead of some of the ones who called themselves Christians. Of course he said there was a man called Jesus of Nazareth.
[13:44] What fascinated me more even their acceptance. Their reluctant acceptance. Their hearts of the historicity of Jesus the Nazareth was this. Their refusal to go all the way with the gospel narrative. Did you notice it?
[14:11] There is still that they have to. There they will accept what they have to of the gospel. And reject what they do not yet have to accept.
[14:30] For when it came to the truth. When it came to the truth. When it came to the deity of the man Christ Jesus. When it came to his absolute uniqueness among men. When it came to the spirit of the supernatural. When it came to the miracles.
[14:49] And when it came to the miracles. And when it came to the miracles. And the resurrection. Do you know what this man said? He said until now we've been objective.
[15:00] From this time on we no longer are going to be objective. That was his own admission. He was no longer dealing in the realm of objective scholarship.
[15:19] And then he proceeded. And then he proceeded. Along lines that denied completely.
[15:31] The gospels from which he had taken the authentic historical figure of Jesus. That's fascinating.
[15:41] That's fascinating. But it's not surprising. Because let's remember the kind of scholarship we are dealing with.
[15:53] We are dealing with rationalistic. Unbelieving scholarship. The sad thing is. The sad thing is. But it should claim to be Christian scholarship.
[16:09] It is far from it. It is not Christian scholarship. And we have to face the fact that in the universities and the great centers of learning in our land today.
[16:23] The real believing biblical scholarship is scarce. The real believing biblical scholarship is scarce. It is there. And it is perhaps not as scarce as it was 20 or 40 years ago.
[16:40] But comparatively speaking. The centers of learning. The chairs of biblical and Christian theology is so-called.
[16:53] Are still filled by rationalistic, unbelieving men. Whose minds according to the bible. Are darkened. And who live under the veil of unbelief.
[17:12] So it should not surprise us, us Christians, that these film, documentaries, fail to do justice to the truth.
[17:24] It should perhaps thriller. That God is slowly forcing. That scholarship to accept many things. But it is attempted for many years to deny. I believe he'll force them further along the pathway yet.
[17:42] And the film was left. And the incidentally, the film kind of closed with, by interviewing two men who had contributed to a book.
[17:57] Which set out the opposite viewpoints of the myth of God incarnate. It was called The Truth of God incarnate. I saw two of these men interviewed. You perhaps saw them too. One of them, Michael Greenwell.
[18:13] He did not too badly. I didn't think he did terribly well, but he did not too badly. He hung around the resurrection and he said, well, if you take away the resurrection and that's what you're doing, you've really taken away everything. And of course he was following Paul there.
[18:29] But I really thought that a man in his position might have stood out with much stronger argumentation. And then there was another fellow who also contributed to The Truth of God incarnate, Brian Hebelwey.
[18:45] He is teaching in Cambridge, a lecturer. And really, I thought he was pathetic.
[18:57] It was sad to see someone who was supposed to be defending the evangelical Orthodox doctrine treated the way he was. He gave me the impression at the end that he was perhaps even more modernistic than the man who was questioning him.
[19:16] I don't know. But he certainly gave a very poor show. That's when one gets very angry and very frustrated. And you say to yourself, I wish I was spared.
[19:27] However, we were spared. Now, do we, do we really have good cause to believe that Jesus is divine?
[19:43] And that he is the Son of God? Well, I believe we do. I believe with Isaiah, who believed 740 years before he was born.
[19:55] That this would be the mighty God. Of course you believe it too. And we believe that on very good ground. The church, early in our history, had to formulate what the Gospels taught her about Jesus, and Jesus' own view of himself.
[20:25] One of the first Christian doctrines to be really worked out and elaborated from the teaching of the Gospels, was the doctrine of the Tersion of Christ.
[20:38] And eventually they came to this, that the only thing that could adequately and fully explain and interpret Jesus of Nazareth, his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, and his claims, the only thing that could adequately account for all that, was the doctrine that he was very God, of very God, as well as very man, of very man.
[21:17] He was really God, as well as being really man. And of course, the mainstream church. Christian believers, ever since, have always believed and confessed that doctrine.
[21:36] I believe they do it on very adequate and substantial and sound ground. The time has gone so far, that we can't go into the moral.
[21:48] Let me point to just one or two of them. Now take the teaching of this historical passion Jesus. And just note, for one thing, the moral authority of his teaching.
[22:03] Let's go no further than this Sermon on the Mount. And you see, they all accept the Sermon on the Mount. This is undoubtedly the teaching of this historical Jesus.
[22:19] Now some of the Christian scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount is a collection of the sayings of Jesus, drawn from various parts of his ministry and strung together by Matthew.
[22:36] And they, to a lesser extent, by Luke. I don't believe that. I don't think there is any necessity to believe that. I believe this Sermon on the Mount, as we have in Matthew chapter 5, was one sermon delivered at one time, and that Matthew very carefully safeguards that for us.
[22:56] Because he introduces it like this. He introduces it in a way that tells us where the sermon was preached, and when the sermon was preached, and by whom the sermon was preached.
[23:09] And then when he's closing off the Sermon on the Mount, he says, after these sayings, Jesus did this. Now it's only natural that this teaching was to be often repeated by Jesus.
[23:21] Have you never heard a sermon repeated by one of your favourite ministers? Or do you not find the same teaching emerging in sermon after sermon after sermon, seen from different angles and various viewpoints?
[23:38] If we're going to be true to the faith, that must always happen. It's not surprising, therefore, that you find the Sermon on the Mount repeated in Luke. It's not surprising that Luke should talk about Jesus preaching a sermon on the plain that gathers that much of the teaching of the Beatitudes.
[23:57] It's not surprising that scattered through the Gospel of Luke in various places, you find Jesus repeating this teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. That doesn't require us to go into unbelieving theories that will distort Scripture and destroy Scripture.
[24:18] One sermon, and the people listen to that sermon, and do you know what they said? These people were astounded, they were amazed at the teaching of Jesus. Do you know why they were amazed?
[24:30] They weren't amazed because they knew that Jesus was saying. Because what Jesus was doing was expounding the Ten Commandments with which they were already perfectly familiar.
[24:43] What astounded them about the Sermon on the Mount? The moral authority of Jesus. The moral authority of Jesus. They were amazed when they heard these things and they said, He doesn't teach like the scribes and the Pharisees.
[25:03] This man teaches with authority. You go through that sermon and you find that moral authority shining through.
[25:14] No wonder they were astounded. They were used of course to authoritative preaching. Of course they were. And they were used to the authority of Old Testament Scripture.
[25:28] They looked up the Old Testament and they found, The mouth of the Lord hath spoken. They looked up and they said that God spoke through the prophets.
[25:39] And they listened and they heard, The Lord, I the Lord your God say unto you. They were used to the authority of their God speaking to them in Old Testament Scripture.
[25:55] And they were used to very authoritative preaching from the scribes, from the Pharisees. Of course they were. And to say, I think it's Willie Barclay that says that they couldn't, They couldn't take all the teaching and the sermon on the mount at one time as, Have you ever heard such nonsense?
[26:15] They're like the people in Lewis, these people. They could sit and listen to preaching of closely reasoned doctrine for four hours. They weren't brought up under Willie Barclay's ten minute sermons with these Jews.
[26:30] And, what amazed them of Jesus?
[26:41] This. He said to them, Ye have heard that it was said by men of all.
[26:55] But I say unto you. It stands written, but I tell you. This was a man who was speaking not us from God.
[27:07] Here was a man who was speaking not for God. Here was a man who was speaking not for God. But as God.
[27:27] That's what amazed them. That's what absolutely flabbergasted them. If you believe that's the right word. They were absolutely flabbergasted.
[27:38] Because this man was speaking as only God had a right to speak. And you follow that train of moral authority right through the teaching of Jesus. And I believe that you cannot accept he was an historical person without accepting that that authoritative strain of moral teaching and moral persuasion is shining right through his life.
[28:05] And his teaching. Another thing. Was this his moral demands on man. Jesus. Ah, I said a friend last Monday night.
[28:19] Jesus. Pointed men to God. Oh yes. He was willing to allow them. You see. Hundreds of others have appointed men to God too.
[28:30] What he did not say was this. That Jesus. Pointed men. To God. To himself.
[28:41] In fact what he did not say was this. That Jesus. Often. Pointed men. Not to God. But to himself.
[28:53] And you can't get away from that. I am the way. I am the truth.
[29:05] I am the life. Have you ever heard such claims to deity? Have you ever heard such claims that? I am the life. I am the life. Talking to people who knew the Old Testament.
[29:18] Talking to people who believed that there was one God and that that one God was Jehovah. And he said, I am the life. I am the life. I am the life.
[29:29] He talked to people who knew Jehovah as the shepherd. The shepherd of Israel. And he stood out among them and this is what he said. said listen and these people believed that only one was the good shepherd and jesus stood out and he said i am the good shepherd he was claiming to be one with jehovah and of course they understood that claim far better than kimbridge understands it today let me see that but what did it do to jesus when he said i am the good shepherd i am the one spoken of in psalm 23.
[30:11] i am the one spoken of as a shepherd in the prophecy of isaiah what did man say they charged him with blasphemy because he made himself to be god and of course this was what led up to the crucifixion wasn't it this was what led up to the crucifixion in calvary that jesus of nazareth was a blasphemer because he made himself one with jehovah and they wouldn't wear it and they wouldn't believe it so they took him and crucified him that's what you do with blasphemers and the strange thing is that these guys down in cambridge they they accept the crucifixion we were even shown that the traditional picture of the of the of the crucifixion and the shape of the cross and the way the nails were driven into his hands and the way the nails were driven into his feet that the traditional picture of all that was probably wrong fair enough it was only a traditional picture they can now reconstruct it they can reconstruct the the details of the crucifixion of these days very precisely and in a very detailed manner and they can correct what how men have thought it probably would have been and yet it was never once said all through that program that there was one reason and one reason only why jesus of nazareth was crucified he was crucified because the jews believed him to be a blasphemer the only theory that was put forward for his crucifixion in that film was a nebulous one he was crucified we were told because pilate was frightened that he would lead a rebel band at the time of the of the passover or rubbish the jews were dominated by roman soldiers there was a special garrison in jerusalem just in case there was any unrest among the jews it was certainly not pilate the jews who took the first move to get jesus of nazareth out of the way it was his fun hatred wasn't it pilate did everything in his power to try and free him there is no doubt that the crucifixion took place at a human level behind it of course there is the determinate counsel and purpose of god there's no doubt that on a human level jesus of nazareth was crucified because the jews thought he was a blasphemer why because he claimed to be god he said not only did he say that they must in order to be saved come to him but he demanded all kinds of sacrifice from them he said except a man be willing to forsake his father and his mother and
[34:18] his sister and his wife and his home and all that he has he cannot follow me does anyone have a right to demand that of any man except god and when you take that one claim and place it beside the kind of man that jesus was you understand that his claim is really the claim of one who believed himself to be god there were few skeptics and have been few skeptics down through the centuries who were more transiently against ascribing deity to jesus than thomas the apostle and one thing swept aside all thomas's skeptical difficulties and that was his being faced with the christ crucified and crucified and risen christ and i suggest that when you and when i yes and when these unbelieving scholars should have in the grace and mercy of god happen to them when they are faced with the jesus who is still alive then all the difficulties about his deity of the supernatural are swept aside why because what isaiah claimed for him is true and whether cambridge likes it or not and whether oxford likes it or not and whether trinity college in glasgow likes it or not for two thousand years the prophecy of isaiah has been fulfilled and jesus has been called jesus the child born and the son given he has been called the mighty god and he has been called the mighty god by a great multitude which no man can number who have bowed at his feet and who have found him to be the way the truth and the life and they've come to him and with thomas they've cast everything before him and they've said my lord and my god have you done that and my dream to do that is to put yourself in the hands of one who stays to the others because he is jesus the child born the son given and whose house is the government of the kingdom of god who is wonderful who is the mighty god and there is no other god but jesus for jesus is one with the father and one with the spirit and he is as another said a great god and i don't see and i don't see and i don't see we bless thee oh lord oh god for thy word and thank thee that thy word brings home its own testimony under the spirit
[38:23] the minds and the hearts of thy people we bless thee that thy word shall endure and that nor a jot or a tittle of it shall be swept aside or annulled or or proved to be false we found thee that when heaven and earth are done away thy word will still be true we found thee that when unbelieving scholarship that seeks to deny thy word and we have been taught this every passing year we found thee that when unbelieving scholarship is in the grave thy word will still be true and today we found thee for the great mystery of our christian faith the mystery of godliness that god was in christ reconciling the world unto himself great thy word says great is the mystery of godliness that god was manifest in the flesh without thee today that that was so without thee that in the flesh he died and in the flesh he rose again and we found thee that in glorified flesh he intercedes on our behalf this day before thy throne and we ascribe oh lord we ascribe all honor and power and glory and deity and majesty and glory to our lord jesus and in his name we ask thee to bless us this day amen so you and you