Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

1. Introduction

Recently American forces have been in action in at least one foreign land. As with all wars, there have

been casualties. Behind every single casualty, there are families who struggle to come to terms with their

loss. I heard of the case of a rich American whose son was killed back in the Vietnam war, many years

ago now. The news that his son had died a hero’s death – that his life had been lost while saving someone

else’s – was perhaps little consolation to the grieving father. But then one day, the man rescued by his son

turned up on the rich father’s doorstep. He was carrying a large parcel – it turned out to be a portrait he’d

painted of the man who’d saved his life, the grieving father’s son who’d been killed in action. Understandably,

that painting became the father’s treasured possession, even though he’d a very fine art collection,

including some by the great masters. The father gave this amateur painting of his dead son pride of place

in the display of his collection.

When in due course he died, an auction was arranged to sell off all his works of art. Many art dealers

came to bid for the treasures that were among his collection. The first painting that was to be sold was the

painting of the man’s son by the amateur artist whose life the subject had saved in Vietnam. But this

painting aroused no interest in the assembled company of discerning art lovers. Instead there were

stirrings of impatience, grumblings as to when the auction would get going with the sale of the paintings

the art collectors had come to bid for. The auctioneer tried to settle his restless audience by assuring them

they must simply deal with this one painting first. ‘What am I bid?’, he asked. There was silence. ‘Will

no-one make me a bid?’ Still there was silence. After a great deal of coaxing by the auctioneer, an old

gentleman standing at the back bid ten dollars. ‘Ten dollars. Is that all I’m bid? OK, last chance for ten

dollars. Going, going … Gone! Sold for ten dollars to the old gentleman at the back of the hall.’

A huge sigh of relief went up from all around the auction hall. Now they’d be able to get down to the real

business of the day. Now for the art treasures! The voice of the auctioneer again brought them to attention.

‘Ladies and gentlemen’, he announced, ‘today’s auction is now at an end. I declare it closed.’ There was a

gasp from all sides. ‘What! What d’you mean? It can’t possibly be – we want to bid for all those paintings

listed in the catalogue!’ ‘I have instructions’, the auctioneer continued. ‘My instructions simply state:

“Whoever takes the son, takes the lot”. So all the wonderful paintings now belong to the old gentleman

there at the back who purchased the portrait of the owner’s son for ten dollars. Good day, ladies and

gentlemen.’

Everything God could wish for us is bound up with knowing Jesus. He’s the one whom to know is life

And if children, then heirs; the Bible says. By knowing Jesus Christ, the Son of God - by receiving him

into our hearts by faith, we come into possession of all that God wants for us – like the forgiveness of our

sins and the possession of eternal life. He who has the Son has the life!

The whole of the Bible, every part of it, has many things to tell us about Jesus. Luke makes that clear in

his Gospel when he describes Jesus – now raised from the dead - in conversation with two of his

followers:

The Bible in all its parts has things to show us about Jesus. At that time, only the first part had been

written – which we now call the Old Testament. The Old Testament at that time was divided into three

parts, those referred to by Jesus as the Law, the Prophets and the Writings or Psalms. In each of these three

main sections, Jesus said there were many things written about himself.

The New Testament is also divided up in a similar way. Each section of the New Testament has a lot to

show us about the Lord Jesus, God’s Son. He’s the theme of the whole Bible. What Jesus said about the

Old Testament to the Jewish people one day – remains just as true of the now completed Bible – ‘the

Scriptures … it is these that testify about Me.’ (John 5:39). The Bible’s testimony to Jesus is the great

theme which binds it all together: a wonderful, unique book that is both human and divine in nature

because its words, although penned by humans, were ‘God-breathed’ (2 Timothy 3:16).

If we want to understand the Bible, we need to get to know God’s Son, Jesus. And to get to know him we

need to come to the Bible. But we’ll never enjoy and understand the Bible in any measure until we

appreciate and believe its testimony about Jesus.

If we receive God’s Son, we’ll be able to receive the rest of what God has for us in his book. That’s what I

want you to remember from the illustration of the auction we were thinking about earlier. ‘He who

receives the Son receives it all’. Knowing Jesus is our gateway to appreciating the whole Bible – and to

experiencing its blessings.

In this booklet, it’s our intention to go through the Bible, through each of its main sections, and all the

time asking the question: ‘Who is Jesus?’

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

2. Jesus in the Old Testament – Jesus predicted in the Law

Some time ago I was intrigued to discover how the first written characters used by the ancient Chinese

seem to tell a story of early human history which connects at many points with what we find recorded in

the Bible’s first book: the book of Genesis. They do that because each Chinese character was in effect a

word picture (pictograph). If you’re going to invent a vocabulary where symbols or pictures represent

words, then you want to find pictures with well-known, obvious meanings.

Let me give you a few of the old Chinese examples, still recognizable in modern Chinese, although the

writing has undergone a measure of change over time, as you’d expect. The ancient Chinese word picture

for ‘trouble’ is made up of their word picture for a ‘tree’ inside their word picture for a ‘garden’. Anyone

familiar with the opening chapters of the Old Testament of the Bible, would probably think of the

forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. Yes, the Bible story of Adam and Eve.

The Bible tells how God’s enemy, the Devil or Satan, tempted Eve to eat the fruit of a tree in the middle of

the garden – a tree of which, God had commanded, she must not eat. But she and Adam did. Human wilful

disobedience, set over against God’s own will for his creation, became the very source of all our difficulty

and trouble on this planet - as captured in the early Chinese pictograph it seems.

It’d be easy to dismiss the story told by the ancient Chinese characters as a coincidence if it were not for

the fact that there are so very many remarkable similarities. Take the word picture for ‘desire’ or ‘covet’.

It’s comprised of their symbol for ‘woman’ placed between two ‘tree’ symbols - in what might easily be

taken for a reference to Eve’s temptation by her desiring or coveting the fruit of the tree in the garden of

Eden.

And so it goes on and on. Be that as it may, missionaries to the Chinese have certainly appealed to it to

show Chinese people a connection between Bible truth and the traditions of their own most ancient

culture. But I simply wanted to introduce what I want to share with you in this section by referring to

another one of these Chinese characters. It’s their ancient word picture for ‘good’. The symbol for it

depicts ‘the seed or son of a woman’. That’s a curious connection of ‘good’ with ‘the son or seed of a

woman’...

But the Bible tells us that when humanity corrupted itself at the very beginning, God gave a promise of a

time when another human – someone described as the ‘seed of the woman’ – would make deliverance

possible - deliverance from the results of human disobedience which had begun to trouble life in this

world. The actual words are these:

And so, at the very beginning, God promised that a human descendent of Eve would crush our enemy, the

Devil. The promised human descendent was described as the offspring, or seed, of the woman. Here we

find, in these words, the Bible’s first prophecy of the deliverer or messiah who was coming. The answer to

what we now experience as the human condition - with all its difficulty and trouble - had been worked out

by God in advance. So far in advance that when the first section of the Bible came to be written, it gave

indications that this person was coming: someone who would be God’s solution to the problem our human

wilfulness had caused at the very beginning. When I used the word ‘indications’, I meant such things as

the requirement for prophets, priests, sacrifices. Occasionally, a direct prophecy was given, but usually the

indications were indirect.

The solution was obviously going to be costly. That much was clear from the mention of the hostility

between descendents of Eve who would try to give allegiance to God on the one hand, and on the other

hand, those who would end up fulfilling the evil desires of the Devil.

At the other end of the Bible, the book of the Revelation looks back to the same costly conflict between

the offspring of the woman and the Devil. It looks back from the perspective of God’s plan having

already been put into effect by the time the book of the Revelation was written. The apostle John to

12:1-5 NIV)

These last sentences are hardly the depiction of the nativity we get on Christmas cards, but that’s their

setting. On earth, in the outworking of that heavenly vision, news of Jesus’ birth would trigger Herod the

Great’s slaughter of the innocents. But now let’s turn to more familiar words written about Jesus’ birth:

‘She will bear a Son’. Jesus was the ‘seed of the woman’ long promised by God from the time of Eden’s

garden. Jesus Christ was the one the Bible’s prophecies and its other indirect indications had been

pointing towards. He would save his people from their sins. The deliverer had come at last. What a

deliverer! For Matthew’s Gospel makes it clear that he was no ordinary human offspring of Mary. The

angel had explained to a perplexed – and distressed – Joseph that the cause of his betrothed wife’s

Author Philip Yancey writes: ‘Could it be true, this Bethlehem story of a Creator descending to be born

on one small planet? If so, it is a story like no other.’ A story like no other is indeed the story that unfolds

in the Bible. It is, quite simply, the greatest story ever told.

Bible translator J.B. Phillips has written his imagined account of the reaction of angels to the amazing

fact of God sending his Son to be born as a human baby. He imagined a senior angel showing a very

young angel around the splendours of the universe. They view whirling galaxies and blazing suns, and

then flit across the infinite distances of space until at last they enter our galaxy, our solar system …

‘Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince [the junior angel asks] … went down in person to this

fifth-rate little ball? Why should he do a thing like that? … Do you mean to tell me … that he stooped so

low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?’ To that, the senior

angel replied, ‘I do, and I don’t think he would like you to call them ‘creeping, crawling creatures’ in that

tone of voice. For, strange as it seems to us, he loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to

become like him.’ The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.’

‘Almost beyond his comprehension’? I should say it was! Beyond our comprehension too – but not

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

3. Jesus in the Old Testament – Jesus Predicted in the Prophets

G.K.Chesterton once said: ‘Suppose we hear an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were

puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some

lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation … would be that

he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape …’ At first

reading, we may not fully understand that. But in a way that suits my purpose for I simply want to observe

that there are so many confused opinions about Jesus Christ – and, yes, they’re very often contradictory,

the one to the other. Some people feel themselves to be totally without understanding when it comes to

knowing the real Jesus. Recently, someone wrote to me – someone who had been reading about Jesus for

the first time, it seemed, and she ended up saying: ‘I feel so confused, please help.’ Well, I hope this

booklet will help people like that. For, if we’re going to set about answering the question: ‘Who is Jesus?’,

then we do need to go to the Bible. Jesus is the central theme of the Bible. What we’ve already been

Then the Bible’s second part, the New Testament, opens with four biographies of Jesus Christ. So, in

The next Bible book we come to after the 4 Gospels is a history book, known as the Acts of the Apostles.

It tells us all about earliest Christian history. In it, we can read about how Jesus’ disciples told others

After that in the Bible we find various letters written by Christian prophets and apostles either to churches

or individuals. The recipients of these letters were already Christians, so in them we don’t find Jesus

ideas about him had already begun to circulate and these wrong ideas get corrected in the letters. These

same letters also show us what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Finally, the last book of the Bible is the book of the Revelation. Among all that’s presented in those

awesome visions of the apostle John – in which God allowed him a glimpse into the future – running

through them all, we say, is quite outstandingly John’s message that Jesus is going to return to this earth

You see what I mean about the Bible being all about Jesus. In a very real sense, he’s the central – and

unifying - theme of the whole Bible; the book Christians take to be God’s own communication to us, and

so just as relevant today as it ever was. So far, we’ve made a start with the Old Testament. It’s divided

into three: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. All three predict Jesus, and now, it’s our turn to look

at the Old Testament Prophets. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to try to see it from the perspective of

an outsider looking in. I’m thinking of someone who fits that category whose story is told in the Bible

Maybe we can identify in some ways with this traveller. Although he was from another culture, with

possibly a very different religious background, he did, however, want to know more about the God of the

Old Testament, the God of the Bible. He’d even travelled all the way to Jerusalem to worship God there.

He might have been worshiping out of considerable ignorance, but he was genuinely seeking to find the

truth. God helped him in a wonderful way, and he’ll help you too if you’re also a true searcher after truth.

Our Ethiopian friend in the story was on a spiritual journey as well as travelling through the desert. But

he’d not found the answers he was looking for in Jerusalem. He came away, still unclear about many

things, but he was looking in the right place – I mean by that that he was reading his Bible – reading from

the Prophets - as he travelled homewards again. Parts of the Bible are definitely not easy to understand,

and he was struggling with the Prophets – especially the bit in the writing of the prophet, Isaiah, where

the prophet wrote about someone about to be slaughtered, just like the way people slaughter sheep.

Why should he have been reading that section? I don’t know, but perhaps they’d been reading it at

Jerusalem while he’d been there. Maybe he’d asked Jews at Jerusalem about what this meant – this bit

about a man being led to the slaughter. No wonder he was confused! Most Jews in Jerusalem wouldn’t

have been able to answer his question – about whether the Bible prophet was speaking about himself or, if

not, who else? The reason, I say that the Jews at Jerusalem didn’t know the answer either, is because if

they’d known it, they’d never have crucified Jesus Christ. In fact, as the Ethiopian was about to find out,

Jesus Christ was the very person whose violent death or ‘slaughter’ Isaiah had been predicting hundreds of

years earlier!

This Ethiopian was soon to receive more enlightenment than many Jews at that time – or even since. How

could that be possible? How could the Jews themselves have missed the meaning of God’s message

which’d been directed to them in the first instance? And yet, how often we, too, hear only what we want

to hear, and see only what we want to see. Jews had been conditioned to understand that the Bible

predicted the coming of a great deliverer or ‘messiah’. Not so much a spiritual deliverer, but a heroic

political and military figure. They missed Isaiah’s distinctive picture of the messiah altogether. It’s a bit

like that G.K.Chesterton comment - when he spoke of different descriptions being given of the same man.

The Old Testament does give two very different descriptions of the predicted messiah, the predicted

deliverer. He’s presented as someone who reigns gloriously, upon the defeat of all his enemies; but there’s

this other side as well, glimpsed in the ‘suffering servant’ picture of Isaiah’s pen portrait of a man destined

for slaughter. Suffering or glory: which sounds more attractive? Which would we prefer? It would be so

easy to be selective and opt for the glorious all-conquering hero picture; while pushing away from us the

darker, harder to understand, and much less attractive picture. Many have done that.

But what if they’re both pictures of one and the same person – like snapshots taken at different times in

different situations? Again Chesterton’s words come back to us: about a hypothetical man some reported

as being too fat, others as too lean. Was Chesterton’s man an odd shape – or just the right shape? What we

need to understand is that both the Old Testament’s descriptions of Jesus are just right, of course. One of

Jesus’ disciples later brought the two pictures together when he said it ‘predicted the sufferings of Christ

and the glories to follow’ (1 Pet.1:11). The same disciple then went on to explain why the Messiah God

I have no doubt that this matches very closely what Philip must’ve said to the Ethiopian, because Peter,

too, was using the same Bible text in Isaiah chapter 53 as his starting point. Peter tells us, doesn’t he, that

we’ve all wandered away from God, irrespective of who and where we are, we’ve gone astray like sheep.

Choosing to go our own way, and not God’s way has made us to be like wandering sheep as far as God in

heaven is concerned. That’s Peter explaining what he means by ‘our sins’. That’s why Israel’s longawaited

Messiah, Jesus, God’s very own Son, had to be sacrificed. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, for his

was a perfect life: ‘he committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth’. It was all in God’s plan

that our terrible disease of sin might be healed by his wounds. What a wonderfully loving God! He’s offering

each of us a free pardon which was paid for by his own Son. So what do we need to do? Let’s refer

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

4. Jesus in the Old Testament – Jesus predicted in the Writings

I hope God is helping us to see his Son, Jesus, and to hear his voice in the Bible. But today I want to talk

about something that’s deaf as well as having no eyes. But it can still detect light and respond to vibrations.

Can you guess what our mystery subject is? What if I told you Charles Darwin wrote a book about them?

What if I mentioned that they were terrific gardeners? That over the centuries they passed countless tons of

earth through their bodies?

Yes, you’ve guessed it! We’re talking about worms. I do hope you won’t turn away in disgust! We can learn

a lot of useful things about them – the humble earthworm is much more than bait for fish hooks - but there’s

something in particular that I really hope will help us as we look together into the Bible, and what it shows

us in answer to our question: ‘Who is Jesus?’

You can't get much more down to earth than worms – although did you know that the world’s longest

earthworms are found in Australia where they can grow up to 3 metres in length! But even the very short

earthworms we’re probably far more familiar with are tremendous gardeners. 90% of the leaves that fall

from orchard trees are taken underground by earthworms where they enrich the soil. An average acre can

be home to as many as 3 million earthworms, which can move about 18 tonnes of soil every year. Where

they live virtually all the topsoil to a depth of many inches will almost certainly have passed through the gut

of an earthworm at some time. Worms swallow the earth and digest its nutrients before casting up the

remains on the surface of the ground or in their burrows. In this way they work at an effective and constant

system of ploughing the ground which enriches and oxygenates the soil. They're tremendous gardeners -

always loosening, stirring up and letting in air to make the soil more fertile. The evidence shows God's

attention to detail: designing and planning the earthworm to be the willing, if humble, servant of the plant

world.

There’s quite an arresting verse in the Bible – in the section previously known as the (Old Testament)

We see the stars as points of brilliant light, twinkling like pure diamonds in the night sky. But they’re not

pure. The God who exists, who’s their Creator – only he is pure. We’re not even compared to the stars. In

the matter of purity, we’re compared to worms, creatures of the dirt! The Bible’s message is very pointed

and plain. Sin soils all our lives. It leaves us contaminated, impure in God’s sight, and unfit as we are for

heaven. Imagine someone with a house in which they have a beautiful white carpet, and white leather

chairs. Would they welcome an invasion of worms? No way! And so we get the picture here in the Bible

for us: we’re impure in God’s sight, quite unfit as we are for heaven.

And that would be the end of the story but for the fact that there's a much more amazing verse in the Bible

about worms. Once again it’s found in the section of the Old Testament we’re now considering: the section

known as the Writings or simply the Psalms. It’s a verse that relates to Jesus Christ. We’re discovering Jesus

is referred to many times in all sections of the Bible – and this verse we now come to will help us to answer

the question as to who Jesus truly is. The verse, which is also about worms, is found in Psalm 22 verse 6

First of all try to imagine what it would be like for us to become a worm. We can't even begin to imagine

what it was like for the Son of God to come down so low as to become a man, and then lower still when

dying shamefully on the cross. Remember, those words 'I am a worm' belong to him.

Earlier, we reminded ourselves that ordinary worms are God's willing, humble servants whose work is so

essential for our welfare. When we now turn to think about Jesus, and how he compared himself to a worm,

we’re encouraged to think of how he came and entered the common soil of our humanity in order to enrich

our life; to remake and cultivate our relationship with God. His work on the cross was essential for our

spiritual welfare. Above all else, these words – Jesus saying ‘I am a worm’ – these words graphically

depict the Lord Jesus as an object of contempt as he hung there on the cross nearly 2,000 years ago outside

Jerusalem. In our ignorance we sometimes treat worms with contempt, even disgust. In a similar way

people mocked him, spat on his face, plucked the hairs from his cheeks. He was despised and rejected.

In Psalm 22 (v.6) it's actually the 'scarlet worm' (coccus ilicis) that's referred to. When the female of the

scarlet worm species is ready to give birth to her young, she attaches her body to the trunk of a tree, fixing

herself so firmly and permanently that she never leaves again. The eggs are laid and protected under her

body until they are hatched. When the mother dies, her crimson body fluid stains the surrounding wood

of the tree. What a picture all this gives us of Jesus. He was fixed to the tree where He hung and died. He

stained it with his precious lifeblood. As the hymn says: 'He wrote His love in crimson red, and wore the

thorns upon His head.'

Allow me to bring the scenes of the cross where Jesus died before you. On the middle cross that day two

thousand years ago in the Middle East, hung a twisted, tortured figure with nails through his hands and

feet. His brow was bloodied, his back lacerated – the result of the scourging he’d received before. His

limbs were all wrenched, from the jolting when they’d set the cross up in position. His mouth was dry and

intolerably thirsty as he gasped for each breath. And the whole scene was plunged in God-forsaken

blackness. There Jesus died, bearing the guilt of human sin – staining the cross to which he was fixed with

his precious lifeblood.

All this in God's design that Jesus' death might be the source of life to us. God planned it this way that we

should find our (new) birth in his death. New life through believing in Jesus, because he now lives to offer

us forgiveness. That’s what his death was about – God is offering each of us a new, fresh start. Jesus

invites us to come to him (Matt.11:28); to turn from our sin and come believing. ‘Come’, the Bible says:

Those verses just mentioned are in the New Testament, the second part of the Bible. Everywhere we read

in the Bible about Jesus the same picture emerges. The basic connection between the Old and New

Testaments is one of ‘promise’ in the Old Testament and ‘fulfilment’ in the New Testament – and that

connection never comes out more clearly than in the person of Jesus. The life and death and resurrection

of Jesus, the Son of God who entered our human experience so purposefully answers to all the pictures in

the Old Testament.

Let me remind you again of what this booklet is all about. So far we’ve visited all three sections of the Old

Testament as they’re found in the Hebrew Bible – those Jesus spoke of as the Law, the Prophets and the

Psalms (or Writings – Luke 24). They all help fill out our picture of who Jesus is. In our English editions

of the Old Testament the layout is a bit different with the historical, poetic and prophetic books placed

together – but we’ve been following the layout of the Hebrew Bible as referred to by Jesus himself.

In the next section we move into the New Testament, and so we move from Jesus predicted to Jesus

revealed, as we first of all meet him in the four Gospels. From the Gospel we’ll come to the history book

of the New Testament (Acts) where we’ll find Jesus preached. After that, we come to the Apostolic

Writings where we find Jesus explained or expounded. Actually, ‘explained’ is not the best word to use

because, of course, our small human minds can never fully grasp the wonder of Jesus, the man who is God.

Then we’ll take a separate look at the book of the Revelation, at the very close of our Bibles, just so we

can fix our eyes more on the glory that’s now his, and which will be his for ever and ever.

So, the New Testament can be divided into three main parts just like the Old Testament. And every part

of the whole Bible helps us to answer the question ‘Who is Jesus?’

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

5. The Jesus of the Gospels – Jesus revealed in Matthew’s Gospel as the Teacher

Someone has said you can gauge the size of a ship that’s passed out of sight by the size of the wake or

wash that it leaves behind. By this test of an individual’s greatness, Jesus stands first in all of history. No

human life has had an impact equal to his. His life 2,000 years ago was so powerful that it reset our

clocks – by which I mean that afterwards we changed the way we reckon time by adopting his birth as a

reference point.

We’ve already dipped into the first part of the Bible to find Jesus predicted. In fact, more than 330 Old

Testament predictions were fulfilled by the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s one

sure way of concluding that the New Testament is the intended sequel to the Old Testament, and that

God’s communication to us is in those two parts that make up our Bible.

As the Old Testament prepared the way for Jesus to be revealed in the New Testament, perhaps there are

a couple of main ideas we need to bring with us out of that first part of the Bible. Idea number one is the

idea of a sacrifice. Most of us today are quite unfamiliar with the origin of this idea. So it’s worth just

explaining it very briefly. For it’s only as we let the first part of the Bible condition us to this idea that

was big in the world of the Bible, that we can in some sense be prepared for what happened to Jesus in

the New Testament. Otherwise, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. Long ago when a person was guilty

of some wrong, what God demanded in those days was that he should bring an animal to be slaughtered

at God’s chosen place of sacrifice. The animal was killed instead of the wrongdoer. The life of the

sacrifice was accepted by God in substitution for his own life - which was forfeit through the wrong he’d

done. It was a life for a life, to satisfy God’s perfect justice. We need to pick up that idea and carry it

forward now into the New Testament.

And there’s something else, very closely related to it. It’s the idea of ‘bearing sin’ or guilt. A guilty

individual bore his own blame until such time as an animal - with which he’d identified as part of the

ritual of sacrifice - bore the consequence of his sin instead of him or in his place.

So with these points in our mind, we enter into the New Testament, the Bible’s second volume. We find it

begins with four biographies of the life of Jesus. It’s in these four Gospels, as they are called, that we find

Jesus revealed. What God wants us to know of that unique life which once graced our planet is revealed

to us in the Gospels – from four different vantage points.

Matthew’s Gospel or biography of Jesus’ life comes first, and so we’ll look at that today. In many ways,

Matthew was a Jew writing for Jews. He doesn’t take time to explain Jewish customs, he simply mentions

them. And he makes a lot of use of the Old Testament. It’s as though his Gospel is like a bridge that spans

between the Old and New Testaments. You can see that for yourself if you take time to count up all the

times Matthew points out that when Jesus said or did something, he was actually fulfilling or satisfying

an Old Testament prediction. Matthew really wanted to show us that the Old Testament predictions truly

reveal Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and Saviour.

Very soon in his Gospel, Matthew mentions the child Jesus being taken for safety into Egypt for a while.

That’s around the time when Herod the Great was trying to kill Jesus. But nothing else is recorded of

Jesus’ childhood, and soon we meet Jesus as a man at the Jordan River coming to be baptized by John the

Baptist. After his baptism Jesus endured forty days of being tempted in the desert. And later he gathered

his twelve disciples who would become his companions for his three years in the public eye. At each of

those points we may well be reminded of an early section of Old Testament history. Think of the Exodus

from Egypt at another time of innocent slaughter, then came the nation of Israel’s passage through – or

baptism in - the Red Sea. That was followed in turn by its tribes – yes, twelve of them - being tested for

40 years in the desert en route to their promised land. So someone has described Matthew as ‘a second

Moses’; also for this reason – that Matthew records for us five major addresses or sermons by Jesus. It’s

the fact there are five of these sermons which draws this comparison with Moses because, of course, the

first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses. We sometimes call the books Genesis, Exodus,

Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy the ‘Penteteuch’. The Old Testament begins with these five books;

but the New Testament opens with Jesus’ five addresses as collated by Matthew. And this ‘Christian

Penteteuch’, according to Matthew, includes the sermon on the Mount (in chapters 5 to 7); also Jesus’

instructions to the 12 disciples before sending them out on a mission (in chapter 10); then, thirdly, the

parables Jesus told on the subject of ‘the kingdom’ (in chapter 13); next come the woes Jesus pronounced

on the hypocritical religious leaders at that time among the Jews (in chapter 23); and finally, Matthew

includes Jesus’ outline of future events (as found in chapters 24 and 25). Five great speeches or sermons

by Jesus - around which Matthew arranges his biographical material.

The most famous or perhaps most popular of all these may well be the first speech: the so-called ‘Sermon

Moses’ repetition of the ten chief laws of God – you shall not murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false

5-to-7, which is this first recorded address by Jesus to the Israel of his time. The editor of the Penguin book,

Moses and Jesus of Nazareth to their followers are still inspiring men and women to lead lives based on a

moral code and still, today, changing the course of history.”

Of course, I know people, as I’m sure you must too, who’ll say they believe Jesus Christ was a good man -

a man whose teaching is really much to be admired. They acknowledge that he was a great moral teacher -

that the teaching of Christianity has shaped world history. It has a lot to offer people as a point of view,

they say. But we need to be very clear that Jesus was much more than a great teacher. The last three times

Matthew reveals Jesus as being the one answering to the predictions of the Old Testament, was when they

had to do with the fact that Jesus was going to die on a Roman cross. At the beginning of the last week of

his life, he entered Jerusalem ‘sitting on a donkey’ (21:5; see Zech.9:9). During the course of that week he

was betrayed for ‘thirty pieces of silver’ (27:9; see Zech.11:12). Finally, as he hung on the cross to die, his

executioners ‘divided [his] garments’ between them (27:35; see Ps.22:18). Those expressions about the

donkey, the silver and the garments, or clothes, were all drawn by Matthew from the Old Testament. They

were predictions – among many others – showing how God had planned Jesus’ death.

Jesus was executed nearly 2,000 years ago under Roman authority by the method known as crucifixion.

The victim was nailed to a stake that was driven into the ground. But Jesus’ magnificent moral teaching

could never have become effective for us if he hadn’t died according to God’s plan. By his death, and

resurrection on the third day following it, according to the Bible (1 Cor.15:3), Jesus Christ now offers all

his followers the power to live out that teaching of his (see Rom.8:4). The original, and unchanging,

message of Christianity is that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins (Acts 10:43). A

fresh start with God! That’s why Jesus’ death was not a tragic accident of a good life cut short, but

something God had carefully planned. He’d been leading up to it with those Old Testament ideas of

sacrifice and sin-bearing. In Jesus, the Bible reveals, God was finally substituting his own Son in our

place. God himself, through Christ, was serving our sentence and paying the price of our rebellion. Jesus

Christ gave himself as a perfect sacrifice for us (Gal.1:4). Through his death we can live. Everyone who

turns from their sin and turns to God, believing in Jesus receives a divine pardon, and will not be punished

in the judgement of the last day (John 5:24).

God offers us one way of escape from the punishment our sins deserve. Jesus, the great teacher, taught

that he himself was that way when he said: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6).

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

6. The Jesus of the Gospels – Jesus revealed in Mark’s Gospel as God’s suffering servant

Many who call themselves Christians today are experiencing suffering in many countries of the world.

Perhaps, the second book of the New Testament, the second biography of Jesus, has a special message for

people like that. Because some people think that Mark wrote his Gospel, in the first instance, with

suffering Christians in mind: probably Christians in Rome around the early or mid-sixties of the first

century.

Certainly, many experts believe that the writer of this Gospel was John Mark (see Mark 14:51, 52).

Elsewhere in the New Testament, we meet John Mark as an understudy to Paul and Barnabas (e.g. Acts

11:30). What’s more the apostle Peter also refers to Mark in his first letter (5:13) as ‘Mark my son’ –

showing that a very close bond existed between them. That raises the possibility that Mark was also

Peter’s understudy too, at least for a while. It’s interesting Peter refers to Mark in this way, because I’ve

personally been attracted to the possibility of Mark being Peter’s understudy ever since having had it

pointed out to me that the content and structure of the whole of Mark’s Gospel is quite remarkably

summarized in the record of Peter’s preaching which we find in Acts chapter 10 (vv.36-40).

For Mark, the Gospel story begins – not with any nativity story – but with the mention of John the Baptist

and Jesus’ own baptism at John’s hands. Then the scene shifts to Galilee, the scene of Jesus’ own

ministry (1:14ff). In fact, with Mark, we don’t leave Galilee until the tenth chapter – which is about twothirds

of the way through this shortest of the four Gospels. Thereafter, we travel with Jesus through

beyond the River Jordan and into Judea. Finally, the last third of Mark’s narrative is devoted to the last

week of Jesus’ life. Now compare that with the outline of Peter’s sermon in the house of Cornelius as

That’s quite a parallel. We can perhaps imagine Mark listening to Peter using this same sermon structure

directed by the Holy Spirit – and in that way giving us his Gospel as we have it today in our Bibles. So

it’s possible that Mark’s was the first Gospel to be written - after the story had been told orally for a

generation.

Although there are only 31 verses which are unique to Mark’s version of events, it’s still true that the

Gospel by Mark is very different in emphasis from Matthew’s and Luke’s. Last week, we reminded

ourselves that Matthew’s Gospel is built around five great teaching sermons of Jesus. In contrast, Mark’s

version of events is long on action and short on speech.

The action as Mark narrates it is also fast-paced. No less than 42 times we come across the expression

‘and immediately’. Bearing in mind what we’ve said about John Mark acting as an understudy for Paul

and Barnabas, and the connection of Mark with Peter - and him likely assisting Peter - maybe we could

even say this is a Gospel written by a servant about the Servant – and, of course, I’m referring to Jesus

Christ as the Servant in the sense that he came from God to do God’s will on this earth. So just as

Matthew wrote about Jesus as a teacher; Mark writes about Jesus as a servant. In fact, Mark particularly

focuses his attention (like Isaiah) on the suffering nature of Jesus when viewed as the servant.

In three successive chapters in Mark’s Gospel, in chapters 8 (v.31), 9 (v.31) and 10 (v.32-34), Jesus makes

a very definite point of explaining to his disciples that he’s going to suffer and die. Let’s just pick up the first

8:27-32 NIV)

Notice how Mark records for us that: ‘He spoke plainly about this’. This first plain statement of his

impending suffering and death came as something of a bombshell to his followers – particularly as it

followed hard on the heels of Jesus’ clear confirmation that he was in fact their long-awaited Messiah. Jesus

plainly tells them he’s a Messiah who’ll conquer by means of death and suffering.

Within about a hundred years either side of Jesus, there were something like a dozen others who attracted

a following – people like Judas of Galilee (Acts 5:37) – who led uprisings before being dealt with by the

authorities. In each of these cases, the death of the leader meant the end of the movement. Their followers

either gave up or found themselves another leader from the same family.

But the followers of Jesus did neither of these things. Why was that? It was because Jesus’ death was not

the end. When he rose on the third day, it was really the beginning of the spread of the Christian revolution

which turned the world upside down. As Mark shows, it’d been God’s plan all along to send a Messiah

who’d suffer and die, then rise from the dead. Why? Let me first tell you the true story of two brothers in

San Francisco. The younger brother ran with a street gang. One night during a fight the knife in his hand

met the soft flesh of a rival. Death was swift. The young man ran home to swap his blood-stained clothes

for clean ones, then he disappeared into the night. The older brother arrived home soon afterwards to find

the clothes lying where they'd been abandoned. The sound of police sirens was in the air. By the time the

police knocked on the door, he, the older brother, was wearing the stained clothing as though it was his

own. He was charged, tried and eventually executed for murder. During all this the younger brother

witnessed the love of his older brother - who died in his place and paid his penalty. Finally, it became

more than he could bear. Overcome with remorse, he turned himself in and made a full confession. But the

police sent him away. There could be no charges because his brother's death had satisfied the demands of

the law. And that's what God has done for us. He's paid for our sin in a way that's both just and loving, by

taking our punishment upon himself. He came in person as Jesus to do exactly that at the cross - that's why

Jesus’ death was such a necessary part of his rescue mission as God’s Messiah.

Will you follow Jesus who loved you and gave himself for you? Only after speaking about his cross for

that first time in Mark chapter 8, did Jesus begin to teach his followers that following him will mean they

Remember, this is all in Mark chapter 8. Jesus confirms plainly for the first time that he’s the long-awaited

Messiah; then immediately gives the shocking news that his mission will involve his own suffering and

death – for the reasons we’ve given. And next, Jesus explains to his followers that following him as his

disciples will demand the death of their old self-centred lifestyle.

And so that’s why I think the message of Mark’s Gospel relates to Christians who are suffering for their

faith today. Mark’s original target audience may well have been first century followers of Christ who were

suffering for their faith under the Emperor Nero’s persecutions at Rome. His Gospel was a Christ-centred

reminder to them that this was God’s way for them, as it had been for Jesus himself.

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

7. The Jesus of the Gospels – Jesus revealed in Luke’s Gospel as the Saviour

We begin this section by recalling news of a sensational find. In fact, TIME news magazine (4/11/02) said

it could be ‘the most important discovery in the history of New Testament archaeology’. The find in

question is a ‘bone box’ (ossuary). Nothing too remarkable about that. Such items were known to have

been in use among the Jews from about 20 BC until AD 70. For it was then, during that ninety year

period, that a different type of Jewish burial custom was popular – one which involved the use of these

so-called ‘bone boxes’. Previously, Jews had simply buried their dead, but at that time they buried the

bodies until they had decomposed, then they collected the bones and placed them in a bone box.

Towards the end of the year 2002, one such bone box was found with an inscription which read: ‘James,

son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’. Apparently, it’s quite common to find these things with the name of the

deceased person marked on them. It’s less common, but not altogether rare, to have a mention of the

name of the deceased’s father. But never before has there ever been a bone box found which referred to

the brother of the dead person! But here we have it: ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’.

This Jesus must’ve been someone with a kind of celebrity status in those days in order for him to merit a

mention in this quite unique way. He also must have lived between 20 BC and 70 AD. What we do know

from the New Testament of the Bible is that Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, had other children

including a son called James. This James, although for a while hostile to faith, became one of the early

leaders in the first Christian churches. So this would fit the facts recorded on this bone box: ‘James, son

of Joseph, brother of Jesus’.

There may well have been other people called James, Joseph and Jesus who lived around that time and

who were all related in the same way; but what weighs with the experts is the exceptional reference to this

Jesus as being the deceased person’s brother. There’s really only one candidate for a Jesus famous

enough to merit a mention in a way like this which defied all convention. Even the Jewish editor of a

biblical archaeology journal referred to this bone box as ‘something … visible reaching back to the single

most important personage ever to walk the earth’ (Hershel Shanks, Biblical Archaeology Review).

Another archaeologist, a professor at Harvard, said that this bone box find, if established, would force

people to take the New Testament seriously, even if they’d not previously been inclined to do so. This

sort of thing has, of course, happened before. The famous British archaeologist, Sir William Ramsay

spent 25 years of his life trying to see if history could disprove the New Testament, but, although initially

reluctant to accept it, he came to the conclusion that Luke, the writer of the third Gospel, was a topranking

historian. If we only as much as dip into the third Gospel, written by Luke as we say, we can see

his writing was an attempt to set Christianity on the stage of world history. For example, Luke sets out his

In keeping with this brief, when Luke gives his version of the events surrounding the birth of Christ in

chapter two, his writing is full of historical detail allowing the certainty of the things he was recording to

2:1-4 NIV)

TIME magazine, when writing up the find of the bone box we described earlier, made the comment:

‘almost no educated person these days doubts that Jesus lived.’ In no small degree, it’s Luke we have to

thank for putting Christianity on the stage of world history. And I really do mean world history: For

Luke gives us the big picture – the big picture of the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ –

If Matthew wrote his Gospel for a Jewish audience in the first instance, then it’s just as clear that Luke

wrote the third Gospel with the broader Gentile world more prominently in view. Luke drops us that hint

In that way Luke put down a marker early in his writing that God’s salvation through faith in Jesus

Christ, his Son, was for all people – Gentile as well as Jew.

Not only is Jesus a saviour for all nationalities; but Luke is just as clear in letting us know that the

salvation God is offering through Jesus Christ is available for all types of people. Luke demonstrates that

throughout his Gospel by selecting examples of how Jesus befriended the friendless; of how he went out

of his way to include those who were excluded by society; how he actually touched those who were then

considered to be ‘the untouchables’ and expended his compassion on sick and suffering folks. Luke, it

appears, is at pains to present to us Jesus as someone who had come to reach out to everyone, someone

who had come ‘to seek and to save that which was lost’ (Luke 19:10). This is especially brought home to

us in the three stories of chapter fifteen featuring a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. What these

things had in common was their ‘lostness’; but they were all found!

Have you ever realized you’re lost? I mean discovered you’ve ‘gone astray’ (Isaiah 53:6) from God and

his ways? We can’t be found until we first acknowledge we’re lost. Call out to God now and he’ll find

you. He’s not far away from any one of us (Acts 17:27). There’s a hymn that has this to say about Jesus:

He held the highest place above,

Adored by all the sons of flame,

Yet, such His self-denying love,

He laid aside His crown and came

To seek the lost,

And, at the cost,

Of heavenly rank and earthly fame,

He sought me. Blessed be His Name!

Yes, Luke in his Gospel presents Jesus as a Saviour who came to seek and to save the lost. All kinds of

people are lost. Tax-collectors and sinners; poor and oppressed people; women as well as children; both

Samaritans and Gentiles – they all get a write-up in Luke’s Gospel. In those days tax-collectors were

seen as Jews who were collaborating with the Roman authorities, and so were very unpopular; women

were, you might say, regarded as second-class citizens; age was respected and so children very much had

to keep their place; and Samaritans were looked down on as racially impure. But Luke makes a feature

out of including examples of Jesus ministry to all those types of people! Through Luke’s writing, God’s

making it clear to us that he’s not influenced by what we might think of as cultural barriers and social

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

8. The Jesus of the Gospels – Jesus revealed in John’s Gospel as God’s Son

Some people enjoy the type of puzzle which invites them to find which of a set of pictures or illustrations

is the odd one out. If the range of choice was the four Gospels; then the one which stands out as different

is the fourth Gospel, written by the apostle John.

When reading a book, there's a member of our family who always turns straightaway to the back of the

book to get an idea of how the story ends. For me, that would be a good way to spoil a story, but turning

to the back of John's Gospel, might be a good thing to do before reading the rest of it. Near the end, in

chapter 20 verses 30 and 31, the author, John, gives us his reason for writing the fourth Gospel. He says:

John, it seems, wrote his Gospel much later than the other Gospel writers. John’s Gospel was among the

last books of the Bible to be written – among the writings of the apostle John in his old age. Written at a

time when wrong opinions about Jesus were beginning to circulate. Its message would have been just as

helpful to Christians as non-Christians, encouraging them to remain clear in their understanding of Jesus

as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

To that end, John has been very selective in his record of the signs, or miracles, performed by Jesus

Christ during His public ministry before his death on the cross. He describes only seven of them, and

they're all specially chosen towards this goal: the goal of demonstrating that the man known as Jesus of

Nazareth is in fact the Son of God. These days there are those who specialize in using the media to create

a certain image of a person. It’s hardly surprising then if we now hear people wondering if Jesus wasn’t

just an ordinary son of Mary and Joseph after all – but someone whose ‘spin doctors’ or ‘PR’ got way out

of control. How then does John go about convincing his readers that Jesus Christ really is unique, much

more than a great teacher - that he really was God come as Man?

He does it by carefully choosing from among all the miracles Jesus performed. He presents seven which

would be particularly powerful to anyone familiar with the teaching of the first section of the Bible, the

Old Testament. Each of the seven signs John records Jesus doing is characteristic of the work of God

himself as presented in the Old Testament. Throughout the Gospel of John they are presented as 'signs' or

credentials, demonstrating the claim that Jesus Christ was clearly understood to have made on many

claims, for he clearly did and frequently aroused the Jews' hostility for doing so. Which goes to show that

it's inconsistent then to view him as merely being a good man, a great moral teacher or prophet. For if he

told lies, he surely wasn't even a very good man; but if He didn't tell lies, or make false claims, then we

must go the whole way and receive him as being what he claimed to be – no-one less than the Son of

God!

Let's take the seven signs in the order John presents them. Remember these are the star witnesses in the

case John is presenting: the case for Jesus as the Christ, the Jewish Messiah, the Son of God and Saviour

of the world.

The first occurs at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, as chapter 2 informs us. When the wine ran out

other words - rain to grape or water to wine, just as Christ performed instantly at Cana.

When we return to John chapters 4 and 5 we find Jesus healing the son of a nobleman who was sick at

Capernaum and later, at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem itself, Jesus raised up a sick person with the

Christ exercised them, then we see John's point, don't we?

The feeding of the five thousand comes next in John chapter 6 - the only one of Christ's mighty miracles

recorded in all four gospel accounts. Such a vast crowd of people out in the desert without food, then the

disciple Andrew brings forward a young lad with his own packed lunch of five barley loaves and two

small fish. He'd come better prepared than the rest, but he gave them to Jesus, and, verse 11 of John 6

were to believe! In the discussion between them and Jesus which followed, they compared what Jesus had

done with the provision of the special manna bread during the desert journey their ancestors had made. It

appears that they wrongly attributed this earlier work of feeding the people to Moses. But as Jesus told

them, any reading of Exodus chapter 16 shows that it was God in heaven who sustained the people with

food in the desert - just as Jesus himself had now done.

The evidence mounts even as we stay in the same chapter - that's John 6 - for that's where it's recorded

or lake which was rising due to a strong wind blowing and he walked out to them and entered the boat.

The vision of the Lord walking on and through that wind-driven surf may well have reminded the

disciples of the language of Psalm 104 where God is spoken of as walking amid the elements of wind and

Further on in the same gospel by John, in chapter nine, Jesus and His disciples encounter a blind beggar

by the side of the road. Jesus, verse 6 says, anointed the eyes of the man with clay and sent him to wash in

the pool of Siloam. When he came back he could see for the very first time in his life, for he'd been

someone who'd been born blind. It all led to quite an animated debate, for there were skeptics in those

days as well as today - people who looked for some rational explanation. 'It's a case of mistaken identity',

they suggested, 'he just happens to look like the blind beggar who once sat here'. But the beggar's own

rational explanation for the miracle was not to mistake the identity of the One who made the blind man

The final sign John brings to our attention is the raising of Lazarus after he'd been dead and in the tomb

which is precisely what Jesus is recorded as doing. Supreme among all the miracles which declare Jesus

Christ to be God's Son, is the fact that he raised Lazarus from the dead. He did among us what only God

can do.

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

9. The Jesus of the Acts – Jesus preached

A few years ago I stood on Mars Hill among the ruins of ancient Athens and looked over what remains of

the layout of its ancient marketplace. I tried to imagine it all bustling with life as it must have been in the

time when Paul visited, and when his Christian sensitivities were offended by the myriad idols he saw in

that ancient centre of culture and learning. But Paul's missionary reputation was not for nothing, his

approach was tactful in the extreme. He didn't go ballistic in denouncing paganism there; but he

commented on the fact that one of their altars bore the unusual inscription: 'To the unknown god'. From

this point of contact, Paul launched out into the kind of logical argument the locals were used to;

promising to tell them about the God who, as yet, was unknown to them.

In fact the writings of Plato and others confirm the Bible as totally authentic when it mentions this altar at

Athens. Some time earlier, it seems the Greeks at Athens felt they were under a curse because among all

the gods they worshipped there was one they suspected they'd overlooked. Their history records they

received an oracle to summon the poet Epimenides from Crete (in fact Paul quotes his poetry later, so

very likely he knew the background we're rediscovering). When Epimenides came at their request, he'd

told the superstitious Greeks to let a flock of sheep graze on the hillside and whenever a sheep lay down

they were to build an altar and offer sacrifice to the unknown god who'd given this as his sign. They

inscribed the altars as being to 'the unknown god' so as not to offend the deity by using an inappropriate

name. It appears then that one of these altars had survived until the time of Paul's visit – still standing as a

kind of monument to this episode in the city's history.

It was a golden opportunity for Paul as he met with these philosophers who were always curious to hear

new things. For Paul had things to tell them which would indeed be new to them. Some of their number,

we're told, were Epicureans. Those of this school of thought held to a philosophy which couldn’t see

beyond a purely natural explanation for how all things came about. No doubt aware of this, Paul launched

(Rom 1:19-25 NIV). The worldly wise of Athens had no excuse for the foolishness of their thinking, and

some as they listened to Paul took on board this teaching which was ‘new’ to them.

Next, (in Acts 17:25) as Paul preached to the Athenians, he described the creator God who was unknown

in our achievements. And there’s no doubting that human achievement in, say, medical science, space exploration,

and the world of communications and information technology is truly amazing to our minds.

But, as Paul went on to remind the Athenians, we are not, and never will be, masters of our own destiny.

There are things far too wonderful for us. We can by no means solve all our problems. We operate best in

the way we were designed to operate: when we acknowledge we are dependant for every breath we

breathe on the God who made us.

cells of our bodies, the more insight we have into that revealed fact. Published studies have claimed to

track changes in a type of DNA all the way back to a so-called ‘African Eve’.

But still staying with Paul’s message at Athens, he next acknowledged a basic human instinct – which is

ancient times we find evidence of people being buried together with religious artefacts, in the vain hope

these would prepare them for an afterlife: people, in their own misty way, trying to feel their way to the

God who's there - according to that innate belief within us that God exists. Today we idolize or heroworship

very different things, but the God-shaped hole inside each and every one of us can only be filled

in one way. We were made to glorify our Maker.

So let Paul tell us – just as he told the Athenians - what we have to do. The message here is to all seekers

way of thinking to be turned round. Be assured that this God who's there is going to bring this whole

world into judgement. One day he'll hold us accountable. The day is already appointed; as is the judge

who’ll try our case. Can you understand from Paul’s words who the judge will be? Paul said (in Acts

So Paul preached that Jesus - Jesus Christ raised from the dead by God – will be the judge of all. The

history book of Acts opens with the author telling us that in his previous volume he’d written about all

Jesus had done and taught until his ascension (Acts 1:1,2); the implication is that in this book of Acts, Dr.

Luke’s second volume, he was now writing about what Jesus was still doing and teaching – except now

the doing and the teaching was being done through Jesus’ disciples. The disciples preached a living

Saviour - Jesus. And who is Jesus? The Jesus preached by Paul is the future judge. But the very fact that

he's been raised, means that he once died, died for our sins according to the Bible. This opens up the

tremendous opportunity for us: that we can meet Jesus now as a compassionate saviour; rather than later

as a condemning judge. Receive him by faith as your personal saviour, believe on him as the judge who

himself paid your penalty; trust him knowing that only those who do so are forgiven... then follow him,

for it's the best way to live!

But what if we reject all notion of judgement to come – maybe even question how Jesus could ‘judge the

world with justice’? Perhaps, the words of a playlet entitled 'The Long Silence' offer a challenging

perspective:

‘At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back

from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly -not with cringing

shame, but with belligerence. 'Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?' snapped a pert young

brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. 'We

endured terror. ..beatings. ..torture. ..death!' In another group a Negro boy lowered his collar. 'What about

this?' he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. 'Lynched … for no crime but being black!' In another

crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. 'Why should I suffer' she murmured, 'It wasn't my fault.' Far

out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and

suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light,

where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been

forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said. So each of these groups sent

forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most: a Jew, a Negro, a person from Hiroshima, a

horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other.

At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their

judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on

earth -as a man !

'Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even

his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest

friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let

him be tortured. 'At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die

so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.' As each

leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the throng of people

assembled. And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No-one

uttered another word. No-one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.’

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

10. The Jesus of the Epistles – Jesus explained

We’re going through the different sections of the Bible in order to answer the question ‘Who is Jesus?’,

and now it’s the turn of the letters of the New Testament. It’s here we find ‘Jesus explained’. We’re only

going to sample one of the letters – but it’s the one that’s been described as the greatest teaching letter in

the Bible. It's the letter to the Hebrews. This letter, written to the early Hebrew or Jewish Christians, has

at least eleven references to Jesus as God's Son.

When King Solomon was building the magnificent temple for God at Jerusalem, we read in the Bible that:

into the temple they must have made: those two pillars: one on either side! We enter this letter to the

Hebrews like that. Its opening two chapters are like those two great pillars. All that follows in the letter is

supported by the two things about Jesus Christ presented in these two opening chapters. The first chapter

shows us that Jesus is fully God; and the second chapter, presents the fact that he is also truly human. All

the teaching of this letter – and all the teaching of the other Bible letters too - builds from there.

In this brief review, it'll be more than enough just to look at that first chapter which tells us about Jesus as

God, God’s Son, and supplies important information about his person and his work. The first four verses

will be enough for us because they're packed with so many rich treasures. What were Lord Caernarvon's

words as Tutankamun's tomb was being opened? 'What do you see?', he asked. Back came Howard

Carter’s answer: 'I see wonderful things!' I promise you there are wonderful things in store in just these

There are, indeed, some wonderful things there. We'll pick up on seven of them and work our way

through them with a brief comment to expand on each in turn. Perhaps, we could think of them as seven

points of splendour, because they are certainly full of the splendour and glory of Jesus Christ, God's Son:

full of the majesty of his person and work. He's God's eternal Son -and he's one with the Father. That's the

at least that would be the literal translation. The prophets were mere agents of God's communication -

human instruments God used. But it's altogether different when it comes to God's Son, Jesus. The way it’s

worded, it’s God himself, as the Son, who's speaking.

It's this wonderful person of God the Son that the text now focuses on. The very first thing we're told is

that God has appointed him heir of all things. Thinking of what we read in Romans chapter 8, you might

say 'but what's so special, aren't we all sons of God, all heirs of God, through our faith in Christ?' And

you'd be right, of course. We are - by the grace of God! But this can't compare with the only-begotten

Son, He's the only one of his kind. He, as God's eternal Son, is God's sole heir by right - not by grace as in

our case, but by right.

And he's the one through whom God made the worlds. This brings us on to our second point of splendour,

All things have been created 'by', 'through' and 'for' Jesus Christ, the Son of God. His is the glory of the

Creator, the glory of God, because the builder and Maker of all things is God himself. God's Son is the

eternal Word who has made everything which has been made (John 1). When Hebrews tells us he's the

one through whom God made the 'worlds', it's not directly referring to the natural physical world or

universe around us. It would be better to translate that he's the one through whom God made the 'ages'. It

seems the Bible’s giving us the insight that God's creative work extended to successive periods of time

each marked by specific characteristics and planned events. This age of grace we are living in is one of

this series of ages designed by God.

'ages' he created to govern our lives. Eternally, he - the Son of God - is the brightness from, or shining

forth from God. It's the idea of a radiance from God. As the radiation emitted from an atom determines

which element it is, so there can be no doubting when we see his glory, that it’s the glory of the only

begotten of the Father (John 1).

If that third point of splendour - the brightness of His glory - had a connection with the outward

expression of His divine nature; then the fourth point of splendour is all about that inner divine nature

one: in those New Testament days it was used to describe the impression a die or stamp might make in

soft wax or on a coin. The idea was of two things being individually or personally distinct but yet

completely equivalent. We still sometimes use a hand stamp. Once it's inked, it can be used to print an

address box on a leaflet for distribution. Anyone who's ever done this, quickly realizes that any mark on

the stamp is faithfully reproduced on the paper. That's the idea here. There's nothing in the Father that's

not in the Son - and vice versa, as to their essential nature or character. What this fourth point is telling us

is the clear message that God's Son, Jesus, bears all the characteristic marks of deity.

Not only does he bear all the distinguishing hallmarks of deity, but - as the fifth point of splendour - we

Numbers chapter 11, complained to God that he couldn't bear all the people alone, it was the equivalent

word to the one used of Jesus Christ. Definitely, a greater than Moses is here! Not only does he bear his

people up, he bears the government of the whole universe on his shoulders! More than being Creator, he

sustains and preserves the whole order of things - in him all things hold together (Col.1). But one day,

Jesus of Nazareth will relax his grasp on every atom in this universe, and the elements will dissolve in

fervent heat, as the apostle Peter reveals in his second Bible letter (2 Peter 3).

Without doubt, the sixth point is the most wonderful of all these wonderful revelations of the character of

expression. If we went back to a shop with a problem over some purchase, we'd be flattered if the

Managing Director of the Company came to resolve our difficulty in person, wouldn’t we?. Now, let's try

to grasp what the Bible letter to the Hebrews is saying. It's that the great Creator became our Saviour, and

bled and died for us on the cross to purge the sins of whoever believes on him. God the Son, himself,

personally, attended to the problem of our sins! Amazing grace!

And finally, we're told he's now seated in heaven. He died for our sins and rose the third day (1 Cor.15:1-

3). Four times the letter to the Hebrews emphasises he's seated with God on high (1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2)

where he's now become the High Priest on behalf of all God's people. There's one high priest in the Old

Testament of the Bible about whom we read that he sat down. I'm thinking of Eli. He sat down without

first dealing with sin in his own household - and it was a disaster for the people of God then.

We praise God that Jesus first dealt with all our sin before ever he sat down. He's now demonstrated that

he inherited a more excellent name than any of the angels - for he's God's eternal Son - and everything

we've seen of him here declares that!

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

11. The Jesus of the Revelation – Jesus expected

At the close of the first century, John the aged apostle had, not a dream, but a vision from God. That

vision was really an unveiling of Jesus Christ. For, the Bible word 'revelation' – as the last Bible book is

called - basically means an unveiling. As we see from the opening chapter of the book of Revelation, it is

not so much an unveiling of the future as it is an unveiling of Jesus Christ. Of course, the visions of the

book of Revelation were indeed visions of the future, but we can view the whole book as an unveiling of

the glory of Jesus Christ as He stands related to the eternal purposes of God. These purposes are shown to

come to a magnificent and appropriate climax at the end of this last book of the Bible.

It's a vision that's filled with Jesus - with the glory of his person; the glory of his passion and the glory of

his power. First, let's think a little about the glory of his person. The Lord Jesus Christ, appearing to the

stirring words! Nothing less than an impression of the glory of the Creator, our Maker.

How well these words by the same human author sketch for us something of the glory of the person of

Jesus Christ! The glory of his eternity - he was in the beginning. The glory of his personality - he was

with God - in complete fellowship with God. Then there’s the glory of his deity - he was and is God, the

almighty. As such, as we've thought, there's the glory of his creating - without him nothing has been

made. Then there's the glory of his animating - in him was life. And the glory of his illuminating - for the

life was the light of men. And then, finally, the supreme glory of the incarnation - for he came to live

among us, among his own creatures in this world he himself had made.

But what was revealed to the apostle John in that first recorded vision in the book of Revelation extended

to an unveiling of the glory of - not only his person - but also of his passion too. For Christ went on to

who not only came to live here on earth, but who chose to die and was then raised from the dead by the

power of God.

John had met him one day about sixty years before he got this vision, and at that time John had responded

to his call to follow Him. In those days the Lord's glory was veiled as he toured the country teaching and

healing. It’s true, for the most part his divine glory was veiled: what many people saw was a man whose

identity was hidden from them. 'Isn't this the carpenter's son?' was their typical response. Had they known

it, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the rulers of this world then would never have crucified the Lord of

glory. But crucified he was, because that was God’s purpose in sending his Son into the world: it was his

mission. He died the just for the unjust to bring us to God, the disciple Peter wrote in his first Bible letter.

Oh, if you've never yet glimpsed this glory of his passion, can I ask you now to open your heart and ask

the Lord to show you how he died for you, died to give you a future and a hope: a new life!

Having looked at the glory of his person, and the glory of his passion, we want to come now to the glory

and Hades, the underworld, symbolised at that time the greatest power known, the power of death. The

greatest kings of history had all yielded to its power. But before John now stood one who had overcome

that power.

At the end of the last century, the international News magazine TIME ran a feature on the twentieth

'century's greatest minds': brief word portraits of the hundred most influential people of the century, as

judged by the editorial panel. Some choices were less controversial than others: choices like Einstein who

left his imprint on the atom bomb, space travel and electronics. The last century alone saw the atom split,

the psyche probed, genes spliced and sheep cloned. It invented plastic, radar and the silicon chip. It built

aeroplanes, rockets, satellites, televisions, computers and atom bombs. It overthrew traditional ideas about

learning, mathematics, economics and even the fabric of space and time itself.

TIME's write-up, nor does it belong to the last century at all. Nineteen centuries have come and gone since

that life. Today it is Jesus Christ who remains the central figure of the human race, and the leader of

mankind's progress. The vision John received unveils for us the true identity of the greatest mind to grace

this planet.

Consider this description of him: 'He was someone who was born in an obscure village, the child of a

peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter's shop until He was thirty.

Then for three years He was a wandering preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He

never had a family or owned a house. He did not go to college. He never visited a big city (at least not by

today's standards). He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He

did none of the things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He was

only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. He was turned

over to His enemies, and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two

thieves. When He was dying His executioners gambled for His clothing, the only property He had on

earth. When He was dead He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.' Yet, it has been

said that 'all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat,

all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected life on this planet so much as His one

solitary life.'

The life of Jesus Christ was so powerful that it reset our clocks! – in the sense that we now calculate the

date from the time of his birth. But most important of all – he’s the one who has the power to forgive. Yes,

he’s the only one who ‘has power on earth to forgive sins’ (Mark 2:10). Nothing in this life is more

The revelation John received was an unveiling of Jesus Christ in all His majesty as the Son of God, the

One who stands at the centre of all God's eternal purposes. If we find it hard to believe that his could be

the most influential life this earth has ever known, then we’ve not sufficiently glimpsed the glory of Jesus.

Who - in all the Bible - is Jesus?

12. The Epilogue

One preacher visiting a school assembly to talk about God invited some questions afterwards. One lad near

the back of the hall smirked as he asked: 'You ever seen God, mister?' The speaker paused for a moment,

then said: 'No, but if I'd been around 2,000 years ago, I could've!' For Jesus Christ did claim to be God.

You might object and say "but Jesus never actually said the exact words: 'I am God'." That's true, but

imagine you're out driving one day and your car breaks down. You call George's Garage. Half an hour

later a breakdown truck pulls up in front of you with George's Garage written over the cab. The mechanic's

overalls and the bill you have to sign both have the same words on them. Very soon the car's fixed, but

when you arrive home someone says to you 'but did you ask the bloke if he was from George's Garage'?

Well, no you hadn't, but everything about the man - in the circumstances - totally convinced you. That's

like the way in which Jesus effectively claimed to be God. What he did, and everything about him speaks

for itself.

9, Jesus allowed people to worship Him (v.38). Put these two facts together and what else can you make of

them, but that Jesus was, in fact, claiming to be God? On another occasion Jesus caused quite a stir by

against my neighbour, it's not appropriate for me to grant forgiveness for I'm not the offended party. But

the Jews knew from their book of psalms (Ps.51:4) that all sin is ultimately against God. To them, by

claiming to forgive a man's past sins, Jesus was unmistakably claiming to be God.

After canvassing various opinions about himself which were held by the crowds, Jesus asked his

up to. It's difficult to come up with another answer than the one which declares him to be the Son of God,

for then we'd have to choose between him being bad or mad. And the reason that these are the only other

options, is the fact that, alongside his wonderful miracles and teaching, he persistently claimed to be God's

Son. If that claim wasn't true, he could only be a conman or a madman - nothing else. Conmen generally

deceive to escape trouble, and madmen are typically inconsistent - but Jesus' life, however, was the best.

Recently, I was walking along Princess St in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital. I remembered having read

that years ago, on that very same Princess St, a man had stopped to look at paintings in an art shop

window. There was one of the cross of Jesus with the crowds watching and with Mary also watching. He

hadn't thought about this subject for a while and was vaguely troubled by it. Next thing he knew was he

became aware of a ragged street child beside him. 'That's Jesus there, sir, on the cross. He was a good man.

He died for us. There's his mother there, sir, looking at what they did to him.' The man felt a lump rising in

his throat as the lad continued. 'And he died, sir, for our sins. And they buried him yonder, sir.' It was

becoming too real for the man so he turned and walked away. He next felt a tugging at his coat tails. He

turned to see the young lad who'd been giving him the uninvited commentary. Breathlessly the lad said: 'I

forgot to tell you, sir. I forgot to tell you that he rose again.'

Without that sequel, without the astounding claim that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead three days

after he was crucified, we could all simply walk away from the historical evidence for Jesus. But we can't

really do that, if after having sifted through the evidence in an open, honest way, we come to conclude that

it must be true that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. The whole framework of Christianity stands or

falls on this one event.

I was interested to read the words of British journalist Mark Tully. He’d been revisiting the scene of Jesus'

life to interview people for a BBC TV series on Jesus. He ended with his own view in which he said Jesus

'taught in strange riddles. He didn't convince his fellow Jews. And he didn't overthrow Rome. From that

failure I have come to what, for me, is the most important conclusion of all. That the hardest ... article of

Christian faith, the resurrection, must have happened. If there had been no miracle after Jesus' death, there

would've been no grounds for faith... No resurrection ... no church.'

But since you may still be wondering if it really can be true, let's try to imagine what the other

possibilities are. Perhaps the first idea that occurs to you is that, hey, may be Jesus never actually died in

the first place. Could it be that in the cool of the tomb he simply revived? Well, that’d mean that the

execution crew of Roman soldiers that day, with the centurion in charge of them, somehow got it wrong.

But they wouldn't have dared to leave anything to chance, not in this politically charged case. They were

experienced professionals, they knew their job well, grim though it was. Although they didn't feel the

need to break Jesus' legs - so sure were they that he was already well and truly dead - they did certify him

dead by thrusting a spear into his side.

Next, Joseph of Arimathea took charge of the burial in typical Jewish fashion. After the body was washed,

it was wrapped foot to head in linen grave clothes. Then, because it was the custom, what they did was to

apply aloe and myrrh - a really gooey tree resin. In this way the grave-clothes were in a very real sense

glued on the body. With the spices these grave-clothes weighed as much as a hundred pounds (John

19:39). And then, of course, there was the small matter of something like a two-ton stone rolled against

the mouth of the rock-hewn tomb. The authorities then had it sealed and guarded with soldiers. With so

many people that day wanting Jesus dead and buried, and with all the precautions that were taken, first to

establish death, and then to secure the tomb itself, it's simply beyond belief that Jesus somehow revived

and escaped.

Okay then, someone might say: 'But isn't it possible that the followers of Jesus who reported the empty

tomb on the third day, the women folk, actually went to the wrong tomb - after all, they were in a state of

shock? Think about it - how could anyone mistake the tomb of someone who was really important to

them, especially when that tomb had been sealed and further identified by having an armed guard posted

at it?! In any case, they recognised the same grave-clothes lying just as they'd left them in the now empty

tomb.

Suppose the body was stolen then. If the culprits were supposed to be Jesus' disciples, then they'd first

have needed to overpower the guards. The authorities had taken effective measures against exactly this

kind of thing being attempted. But even if you were to persist in thinking this might still have happened,

what we’d then have to believe is that the disciples would later be martyred for something that they knew

full well was a lie, a hoax. Someone might die for something false if they sincerely believe it to be true.

But that's not the situation here. What we're having to suppose in this theory is that the very people who

fabricated the evidence gave their lives for their own made-up lie. And if either the Jews or the Romans

had contrived the disappearance of the body of Jesus, they could've killed off this annoying new upstart

religion at any time afterwards by simply producing the body and parading it down the main street of

Jerusalem. But what conceivable motive would they have for stealing the body in the first place?

There again you might say it was all in the mind of these early disciples. It was mere wish-fulfilment, or

perhaps it was an illusion - you know those alleged appearances of Jesus in resurrection. After all, there

are some weird enough stories around today that someone somewhere knows someone who thinks they

saw Elvis on some porch in Hawaii. Doesn't fit the evidence either. The disciples don't seem to have had

the remotest thought of any such thing as resurrection, despite the fact Jesus had given them clues earlier.

After the shock of Jesus' being taken and crucified, they were in disarray and depression. Without any

prospect of anything beyond, they went through with performing the full Jewish burial ritual. Yes, they

really expected then that Jesus was going to stay dead. When the news of his resurrection broke and he

began to appear to them, they were slow to leave their state of disbelief. Nor were Jesus' resurrection

appearances fleeting, isolated visions claimed only to have been seen by a few. No, within a few weeks

hundreds of people had seen Him alive.

But you know what the most significant thing of all for me is? It's the transformation that then took place

in the lives of these previously demoralized followers. Within a few short weeks of Jesus' death, these

same followers were out and about preaching for all they were worth that Jesus was truly alive. What

could possibly have galvanised them into such bold action in what was still a very hostile environment -

other than the fact that Jesus truly had risen again from the dead even as they were claiming?

Well, what do you make of it? Lawyers who're in the business of studying evidence for things which are

alleged to have happened have studied the quality of the evidence for the resurrection are declare

themselves satisfied with it. A Professor of Modern History says: 'I know of no one fact in the history of

mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair

enquirer, than that Christ died and rose again from the dead.' It's certainly evidence which demands a

verdict.