The Historical Reliability of the Gospels

Wednesday Night Service – October 7, 2026

We’re going to begin tonight, and I’ll let you get your papers, but then we’re going to take a few moments as we get started to talk about why this is really, really important: the historical reliability of the Gospels. We said we were going to start this several weeks ago—been quite a while, actually—but I want to reemphasize, and I have two points on your outline to reemphasize why this is, I think, truly important.

So they’ve been searching, of course, for Noah’s Ark, and they haven’t been able to find it. They found this place on Mount Ararat, which the Bible doesn’t say is where it is. It says “the mountains of Ararat.” It could have been anywhere. It’s like the Blue Ridge Mountains; it could have been anywhere along those mountain lines. But they have this boat-shaped formation, and they thought it was Noah’s Ark. So they went up there and did these core drillings. They didn’t find any wood, but they came upon this hard rock layer, and they said it could be petrified wood. You can see all this on your outline. The actual results of the core drillings aren’t expected until next year.

Here’s the problem. Even if it comes back and says it’s petrified wood, that doesn’t prove it was Noah’s Ark. It just proves there was wood there once upon a time that’s petrified. And so I think sometimes we’re pursuing the wrong goals. But if it came back and said, “No, it isn’t anything to do with wood,” then everybody that’s been directed to that is just going to become a greater scoffer and say, “See, they tried to find it, and they didn’t.”

The second statistic on your outline, and I’ll read it: New Lifeway Research finds that Protestant churchgoers with evangelical beliefs are more likely than non-evangelicals to express confidence in Scripture and its continuing authority. The survey of Protestant and non-denominational churchgoers found that 34% accept some biblical teachings while rejecting others that conflict with their personal beliefs. “If I don’t like it, I’m not going to believe in it.” This is the argument that people are making. Among churchgoers ages 18 to 29, 54%—half—said cultural change can make some biblical teachings less applicable, while 56% said certain teachings conflict with their personal beliefs.

Now, this has always been true. The Scriptures always conflicted with personal beliefs. And people said, “Okay, I’ve got to change my beliefs to match Scripture.” And now what people are saying is, “Well, if I don’t want to believe that, I don’t have to believe that.” And these are people that don’t go to our kind of church, but they’re people that go to church. So I am forced to repeat what I’ve said before: it really does matter what kind of church you go to. We should never say—not anymore; maybe twenty, thirty years ago we could say—we can’t today say, “Well, at least they’re in church.” They could be in a church that’s tearing down the Scripture, rejecting the Scripture, rewriting the Scripture, and those kinds of things. So it’s very important for us to understand this.

The argument, then, that the Bible accounts are myth, fable, or otherwise made-up stories, play into these issues. The people in those churches are saying, “Well, I don’t really believe that’s what God’s like. I don’t believe that’s what God would say, anything like that.” And they’re rejecting that belief. How do we help them? We have to be able to give evidence—not just, “Well, as long as you believe,” because they could be believing the wrong thing. We have to make sure our faith is in the Scripture. When challenged about personal belief, the defense might be, “It doesn’t matter if these things happened or not, as long as I believe it.”

But here’s the point: it is not the strength of your faith, but the object of your faith, that is important. It isn’t, “I believe and somehow I’m ginning up enough faith inside of me.” It is the object of your faith, that you put your confidence in. And so it’s very important for us to see that. And this is why, even though some of the stuff we’ve dealt with is a little technical and maybe repetitious, and again, most of us probably have not seen it or noticed it, it is very important that we are able to defend—or try to defend—the Scriptures.

The Distinction Between John’s Gospel and the Synoptics

Now, here’s what happens, that we talked about already in the past. Critics say the diversity in the Gospel accounts shows that the stories have no historical foundations. In this study, we’ve examined the issue related to miracles and also the so-called contradictions in the Gospel accounts. Tonight, we want to examine the distinction between John’s Gospel and the Synoptics.

The Synoptics—again, Matthew, Mark, and Luke—they’re called the Synoptics because that word means “one eye.” And Matthew, Mark, and Luke have such overlap and tell the same stories and the same details, it’s as if they’re looking through one lens, even though there is some difference between them. But in John’s Gospel, the differences between John and the other Gospels are immense. And so people, again, say, “Well, this proves they’re making it all up because there’s such distinction.” And this is undeniably—there is a significant and undeniable difference between John and the other Gospels. But the question that we must face is: does that mean that the Gospel details in John were manufactured later to turn Jesus into a God?

You can go on TV—You know, we have Amazon Prime, and we stream it, and you have all these channels, and there’s a program on the History Channel or something that says, “How Jesus Became God.” And the argument is that the church just created this idea of Jesus’ divinity, and they attack the Gospels through all these kinds of things. So let’s look at, for example, how John’s Gospel differs from the others, real quick. We’re going to look at some more specific things tonight and probably again next week.

What John doesn’t say: John’s Gospel has no mention of Jesus’ baptism. The other three Gospels all talk about it and record it with some variation, but it’s all there. John’s Gospel doesn’t say anything about the temptation after the baptism of Jesus. There’s no mention, by the way, of the baptism at all in John. The calling of the twelve disciples—John never mentions that. The transfiguration—again, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have this enormous event; John doesn’t. And then the parables. John has narrative discourses and instructional discourses. He never tells a parable, that is so important in the other Synoptic Gospels.

What John does say that is different: He tells us about the miracle of turning water into wine. And you get into all kinds of implications there, because his mother says, “These people have no wine.” And Jesus seems to rebuke her and say, “What’s that got to do with me?” And he turns around and does exactly what she asked him to do. He tells us about the reanimation—or resurrection—of Lazarus. This is sometimes a different thing. John tells us about Jesus in Judea and Samaria and his dealings with the Jews. And in the Synoptic Gospels, you won’t hear any of that. He’s up in Galilee almost all the time and he’s doing his stuff up there. So there’s a whole different geographical area. His regular visits to Jerusalem: the other Gospels imply that he only goes to Jerusalem one time, and that’s the week that he’s going to die. And John has him in Jerusalem a lot, doing miracles, teaching, etc. He also has extended teaching in the temple and the synagogues. He isn’t just given a parable and moving on. He’s there in the synagogues, in the temple again and again. And finally, John has more reference to private meetings between Jesus and the disciples or opponents. A very important consideration: Nicodemus is one of those people. You don’t find that story anywhere else except in John. And John gives us this detailed discussion about these things.

Parallels Between John and the Synoptics

However, despite these differences, there are great parallels between John and the Synoptics. First is the description of John the Baptist as the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3—”A voice crying in the wilderness.” Both John and Mark mention that. The Spirit’s anointing of Jesus: no mention of the baptism, but he does mention the anointing of Jesus in John 1:32 and Mark 1:10. The feeding of the 5,000 is in both John and Mark—and of course, then also in Luke. Walking on the water is both in John and Mark. In John, I think I left off the book title. So I think it’s Mark. John: Jesus heals the crippled man with the same words—”Take up your bed and walk”—in John chapter 5, verse 8, and I believe it’s Mark chapter 2, verse 11.

Both John and the Synoptics know about Jesus’ mysterious disappearances, where he’s in a crowd of people and then they can’t find him. And this happens in John chapter 8 as well as Luke, where they take him up on the hillside to throw him off. And the Scripture says he “passed through their midst.” We don’t know how that happened, but John is aware of that kind of thing happening there. And I said we would look at more of these in the future.

We’re working from a book, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg. But he also has a book, The Historical Reliability of John. And so I ordered that book to get more details about the kinds of things that critics argue about.

The “I Am” Sayings and Their Roots in Isaiah

Now, one of the key differences between John and the Synoptics is that John is rather blatant in his affirmation that Jesus is God. The other Gospels kind of hint at it, but it’s more veiled in the other Gospels. John just lays it right out there that this person named Jesus is God. John chapter 1, verse 1 and 14, as an example:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Also John, later in that chapter—and I apologize for not thinking of it just now—but verse 18, I believe it is, it says:

“No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.”

Now, that’s the English Standard Version. The King James says it differently, but it stresses—the Greek stresses here—that the only one that’s ever seen God is the one who’s been at God’s side, which is the one who came and became flesh. This is Jesus. “The only God. The only begotten,” it says, I think, in the King James. So John just lays it out there.

And here’s the argument that people make. By the way, what is the most notable example in John of this blatant emphasis that Jesus is God? What is something that happens repeatedly that emphasizes the divinity of Jesus?

The “I Am” sayings. The “I Am” sayings. There are seven of them:

• “I am the bread of life.”
• “I am the living water.”
• “I am the light of the world.”
• “I am the door of the sheep.”
• “I am the resurrection and the life.”
• “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
• “I am.”

Now, most people think of Exodus, because in the book of Exodus, Moses says to God, “Who shall I say has sent me?” And God says, “I am who I am.” Now, that phrase is very involved and complex. There’s a lot in that term. So most people think of that. When Jesus says in chapter 8, “Before Abraham was, I am,” most people think of Exodus when God says that.

But frequently, that phrase appears in Isaiah—again and again in Isaiah—and you hear this: “I am He. I am He.” So look at your outline. You can see Isaiah 41, verse 4.

And by the way, let me pause and slow down just a minute. Beginning around chapter 40 of Isaiah, there’s this running debate, so to speak, with the people that Isaiah is speaking to. And God is speaking to the people through Isaiah. And again and again, he’s proving that he’s God. Again and again and again, he says things that show he’s God. For example, in Isaiah 46—I think it is; the passage that we really know very well, or we should know pretty well:

“Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.”

And when you get into those passages, it’s almost like he’s saying, “Okay, if you’re gods—the idols—if you’re gods, tell us what’s going to happen in the future. And I can do that. I can tell you the end from the beginning. You can’t do that.” So he’s laying out his claims to be God. And in this section of Scripture, again and again and again, God says, “I am He. I am He. I am He.”

And in the Greek—I know this can get technical—in the Greek, it’s ego eimi. “I am He.” And in the Old Testament Greek translation of the Old Testament, that’s the way it’s rendered. So when Jesus says, “I am,” in the Gospel of John, he’s using the very same language that comes up again and again and again in Isaiah. In Exodus, it’s a different word where God says “I am,” and it’s related to the name of God. But in Isaiah, when he’s defending his divinity and rejecting the false prophets and all this stuff, he keeps saying, “I am He. I am He. I am He.”

So Isaiah 41, verse 4: “The Lord—the first and with the last—’I am He.'” That passage, of course, appears in our Sunday morning Revelation study. We looked at it at the very beginning of chapter 1: “You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, that you may understand that I am He.”

Isaiah 43:25: “I am He who blots out your transgressions for my sake. I will not remember your sins.”

Isaiah 46:4: “Even to your old age, I am He. And to your gray hairs, I will carry you.”

And finally, Isaiah 51:12: “I am He who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the Son of Man who is made like grass?”

Now, that’s a verse that has great strength—or should have. “Who is man that you should be afraid of him?” I mean, think about how much stress we have in our culture because we’re afraid of what men can do. And the Lord says, “Hey, I am the one who comforts you.” And notice how he compares men, as he does throughout the Bible, to grass. They’re here and they’re gone. And they make a lot of noise. And they flaunt their abilities. But after a while, they’re gone. And it’s the Lord who continues forever.

But the point is: “I am He.” And in the Greek, “I am He.” The Greek Old Testament: “I am He.” I am, I am, I am—ego eimi. And Jesus picks up that phrase. And in these seven “I am” sayings, he makes this point clear.

Responding to the Critics

Now, why is that important? Why is that distinction important? And at least part of the answer is what critics argue. They say John’s Gospel was written really late, and they made up all this stuff. By then, they didn’t believe Jesus was God at the beginning. And after decades of the church going through its motions, they came up with this belief that Jesus was God. And this is what the critics and the skeptics say today about the Gospel of John: “Yeah, well, it’s different. But he’s got all these claims about Jesus being God. And there’s just no way that you can miss the fact that it’s so late. It all developed after this had been going on. In other words, it’s not reliable from a historical perspective because it was made up over time.” And this is the argument that they make.

Now, we could ask: how can we respond to that claim? When you encounter somebody—now, we have to pray. Here’s my premise right now, at this point in history: the social upheaval and collapse of our culture is driving people to seek God. People are going to begin to seek God again because the system’s not working. It’s collapsing.

I was called to make Lisa an appointment, going back to the medical situation. She’s throwing up. She’s laying in bed, throwing up for hours at a time. “Well, we can’t see you until the 30th of this month. Nothing we can do.” A young lady that works at BioLife, who has some kind of heart condition. She’s been dealing with it all year. They sent her to the wrong place. They did the wrong test. And she’s only twenty-some years old—twenty-eight, I think. And she has this heart condition. She’s in pain all the time. And they put her off into December or something for the visit. And I talked to her the other week, and she said that they hadn’t even looked at the results of the test yet to tell her anything about that.

These kinds of social upheaval, and the things that are happening politically, and the kind of tension and the bitterness—I believe it’s going to cause people to think and turn back to God. And when they do, we need to be prepared to give them answers. And they might ask questions of us. And at the very least, you can say, “Well, look, we talk about that in our church on Wednesday night.” These people that don’t believe any of these things in this survey, because in their churches they’re just telling little Bible stories, anecdotes—”Jesus loves you,” and just remember that. And that’s where they leave it. And we have to be prepared to do a little something more.

So if someone were to say to you, “Well, John’s Gospel is so late that it just can’t be true that Jesus was God,” how would we respond to that? How could we respond biblically? And what I mean by “biblically,” again—don’t say, “Well, you’ve just got to believe. You’ve just got to have faith.” I’m not saying there aren’t times when that’s true and applicable. There are times when your back’s against the wall, you’ve done everything you can, and all you can do now is just say, “Lord, I’m trusting in you, and I’m just going to have to believe you’ll come through.” There are times when that’s appropriate. But you don’t want to ever answer a person who’s asking you for spiritual guidance and just say, “Well, you just have to believe.” We need to be equipped to do a little more.

So how could we respond to that argument biblically, that John invented this stuff about Jesus being God and because it’s so much later? And the estimates vary, but most estimates put the Gospel of John in the early 90s. Okay? So we’re talking six decades after the life of Christ. You can understand how people would say, “Well, that was all made up. Why did he wait so long to write his Gospel?” We don’t have the answer to that question. So there are obviously complications there. He may have written it earlier, and we just don’t have a copy any earlier than the one we have. But what would you say, or what could we say?

And I don’t expect any of you to know—I’ve got answers on my outline—but do you have any ideas tonight to try to make you think about that? Okay? That’s a good answer, Janice, but they don’t believe Genesis. You’re telling them to read a book they already don’t believe in. So, okay. Okay. Okay. Anyone else? Okay.

Three Biblical Responses

So here are three things on your outline that we could say, and we can speak to people, going back to these Isaiah passages.

First: The “I am” language predates the life of Christ. So here is Isaiah using this “I am” language, and that happens before Jesus, in other words, picks up this language. It’s language that’s already been around that people would understand, and they would automatically think of God when they heard it.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls—and I don’t want to go through the whole Dead Sea Scrolls thing here—but remember this: prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest documents that the Hebrews had for Isaiah, or the Old Testament, was a thousand years earlier. Okay? A thousand years. So in 1948, that’s 1048—that’s as far back as their copies went. 1048. Okay? The Dead Sea Scrolls were dated a thousand years earlier than that. And when they compared them to the Masoretic text—the text that most of the Jews had in their book of Genesis, etc.—a thousand years between those two, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Scriptures were almost identical. The Great Isaiah Scroll: so there were fragments of Isaiah. There were fragments of every Old Testament book except Esther. There were some fragments of New Testament books, okay, among the Dead Sea Scrolls. But the Great Isaiah Scroll is like ten feet long. It was one unbroken scroll of Isaiah, ten feet long, dated around—by the type of writing and the form of writing, spelling—they dated it 100 years before Christ. Okay? So this is Isaiah talking at least 100 years before Christ came on the scene. And John puts these words of Jesus—or Isaiah—he puts them on the lips of Jesus, and Jesus says, “I am this, I am that, I am the other.”

It’s very important. Remember, Jews were monotheistic. It’s one of the things that makes the whole idea of them making up a belief about Jesus as God—it would go against everything they believed. They would have to jettison everything they’d ever believed just on the basis of making something up. The best explanation is: Jesus really was God and really did say these things. And this is very important. In a thoroughly monotheistic culture, where would John get the idea of using these passages in Isaiah to make Jesus a God? Where would that come from? They would just not do that. It would have to be a situation where Jesus actually said and did these kinds of things.

Second: You can go back before John. So if John’s Gospel isn’t written—let’s say, let’s just pick a date of 75 A.D.—five decades after the life of Christ. Four decades after the life of Christ. And you say, “Well, John made up this stuff about Jesus being God in his Gospel.” Well, then why do we find references to Jesus being more than a man in passages like Paul in Galatians? Look at your outline. The earliest letter of Paul, dated 53 to 55. And by the way, that’s the earliest. It’s debated, as I said some weeks ago, because some think James was written even earlier, okay? But in the earliest, second-earliest letter of the New Testament, 53 A.D., barely two decades after the life of Christ, Paul speaks of Jesus in an exalted manner.

Listen to what he says. Galatians 1:6 and 8:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

Notice that. And remember where we said that phrase means “let him be damned to hell.” That’s a powerful concept if Jesus is just another prophet. If he’s just another one of the prophets of old, none of the other prophets ever got that kind of recognition or commendation or pronouncement of doom. God says, “If you resist me and don’t accept this teaching, you’ll die and you’ll be judged.” But it’s never tied to a person. It’s never tied to an individual. Here in Galatians, Paul ties this directly to Jesus. And he says, if you turn away from the gospel of Jesus, well, “let him be accursed” if that happens. Let the person who’s trying to turn you from the gospel of Jesus be accursed. And this is not something that you find anywhere else. And of course, if you read the entire book of Galatians—I’ve picked this verse, but if you read the entire book of Galatians—the focus again and again on the greatness and the majesty and the perfection of Christ; he’s clearly being held up as more than a mere human being.

And then we have the Synoptic Gospels, that even though they’re not as explicit, okay? So John records phrases and statements from Jesus to make his divinity blatant. And again, chapter one does that. But when you go to the Synoptic Gospels, you do see them use language about Jesus that says he was more than just a man. They don’t make it as blatant as John.

Now, what’s the importance of that? The importance of that is that their writings are earlier than John. You can’t say John invented the divinity of Jesus if the other Gospels are speaking of him as something more than a man.

Now, it’s interesting. I didn’t bring it up today, but among—let’s see, what was it? Forgive my memory lapse. I don’t think it was the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it was in connection to that where they found another fragment of Mark that was very, very early and definitely within the lifetime of the apostles. And that would make Mark’s Gospel the earliest Gospel of the four and within maybe a decade of the life of Jesus. I should have put down those thoughts. But in Mark, Mark has language about Christ that is also exalted and higher. And it’s evident even at that early point that they did not think that Jesus is just a man, and therefore later on that John invented this.

The Synoptics Also Portray Jesus as More Than a Man

For example, although the Synoptic Gospels are less explicit, they also portray Jesus as more than a man. Matthew and Luke record his virgin birth. And this is not something your average person has.

Now, I will give you a little prayer request, because my goal today—we will come back in December to our Christmas observations. We’re going to pause from Revelation. My goal, whether I will achieve it or not, my goal is to spend the whole month defending the virgin birth of Christ, the entire month. And if you say, “Well, that’s going to be a little tedious, isn’t it?” I will remind you what everybody said when we went through Leviticus, and everybody’s eyes rolled around and we said, “Oh, brother, what is this going to be?” And we had a great time in that journey. And I bought a book by Gretchen Machen that was written in 1932—the whole book this thick—just on the virgin birth of Christ. And there’s a lot of good stuff in there. So I’ll be praying about that. I ask you to be praying about that.

But here’s the point for tonight: Matthew and Luke record Jesus being born of a virgin. And this is significant. No other human being has ever had that, ever made that claim, or even suggested the possibility of it. This is clearly not your average human being.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record the transfiguration and the baptism theophanies. Remember what happens on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Bible says that Jesus’ clothes turned whiter than any bleach could whiten them. His face was shining as the sun. These are all terms from the Old Testament about the manifestation of God. Peter’s speaking and then he’s confused about what he’s saying. And then Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus and then disappear. Well, these are not the kinds of things that happen to the average human being. None of the other prophets have that kind of visitation.

And this is the same thing with his baptism. He’s baptized. A Spirit comes down in the form of a dove and settles on him. And God speaks from heaven: “This is my beloved Son.” This is not the language you find in your average prophet or your average holy man. The typical holy man—and I’m trying to think of a modern example—they have to promote themselves. They have to go out and wave the flag and beat the drum and say, “Look at me.” But you don’t see that with Jesus. His Father is speaking from heaven. This is another in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So they’re definitely looking at Jesus as more than a mere human being. John is more blatant, but they also speak of it.

They record tremendous healings and nature miracles, which went beyond any Old Testament prophet. There were a few healings in the Old Testament, but nothing like what happened with Jesus. And he says, “This proves I am—at the minimum, proves I’m the Messiah.” He heals people of leprosy. He heals people of being crippled. He opens the eyes of the blind. He gives people who can’t speak. He drives out demons. This is not the typical teacher or holy man in that culture. He raises people from the dead. There are three examples in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—I’m sorry, one of those examples is in John with Lazarus. But in the Gospels, he raises Jairus’ daughter and the widow of Nain’s son. And by the way, as we talked some weeks ago on that subject, Jesus commands his disciples to go out and raise the dead. So the implication is they did. Where did you get that kind of power?

And remember how often in those Gospels that they record the people saying, “Boy, nobody ever spoke like this guy before.” He doesn’t mince words and kind of hedge bets. He speaks with authority. All of these things in the Synoptic Gospels are declaring that Jesus is more than your average man.

Notice that the nature miracles went far beyond any Old Testament prophet. And where parallels existed, they’re used to illustrate Christ’s supremacy over those Old Testament people. So Moses parted the Red Sea. Joshua parted the Jordan River. But neither one of them claimed to walk on water. And that’s a significant feat. And Jesus does that. In the Gospels, Jesus calms the stormy sea. And we—you know, I’m not sure we can fully grasp, unless you were there—the disciples are saying, “Hey, we’re going down. Are you going to do anything about this?” That’s the Shifflett paraphrase, but that’s the way it sounds. And Jesus says, “Why don’t you believe?” And he speaks to the winds and the waves. Now, if we’re going to accept that as a true event, then that’s got to—we’ve got to ask: how could just your average man do something like that? He does not pray before he does it. He doesn’t say, “Now God, we’re in a real mess here, and if you’ll be kind enough to allow me to have the power to do something about this.” He just stands up in the boat and speaks. This is not the stuff of an ordinary person.

So people say, “Well, John invented this stuff about Jesus as God.” No, the other Gospels portray Jesus in those kinds of language.

Let’s think about another parallel quickly. In the Old Testament, Elisha multiplied loaves for some people. He multiplied food to feed a hundred, if I’m not mistaken, people. Jesus feeds—how many? How many people does Jesus feed miraculously with the loaves and fishes? Okay. Excellent point. So in the 5,000, that was 5,000 men. Exactly. So Elisha’s miracle pales in comparison, doesn’t it? But there’s another one, which Lisa mentioned. There was the feeding of 5,000, and then there was a separate feeding of—you said seven, but I’m thinking it was 4,000 in that group. But two separate multiplications of the loaves and fishes. This is not the kind of stuff your average man does. And you all—we all know this, don’t we? In the twenty-first century, sleight of hand and manipulation to make people think you did something you didn’t, it’s really hard to do that with 5,000 hungry people.

And in John’s Gospel, it specifically says, “Send them away so they can go get food.” And Jesus says, “You feed them.” “What? How can we possibly feed these people?” “How much do you have?” Who makes that kind of a question? Who asks that kind of a question if you’re just a plain human being? So it isn’t explicit in the Gospel that Jesus has got—like in the Synoptics. But it is evident when you really drill down and look at it. None of the Old Testament prophets did that.

Jesus’ “Egocentric” Teaching: An Implicit Claim to Deity

And finally, the final example is—and I’m going to read a section here from this book. This is The Doctrine of God by John Frame. And he’s got a heading here: “Taking Jesus’ Deity for Granted in the Gospel of Matthew, in the Synoptics.” I’ve got to read this as a big section here. But listen to what he says. And what that “egocentric” means—Jesus turns everything into a discussion about himself. Now, if we would call that person a megalomaniac, is what we would call him in twenty-first-century America. Jesus is putting himself front and center all the time. If you’re not God, you should be pointing to God. And Jesus does that. But he also does it in a way that connects himself with God. And this is in the Synoptic Gospels. So listen.

John Frame says:

“Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels is remarkably egocentric. In the Sermon on the Mount, the last beatitude describes the blessedness of those persecuted because of me. The persecution is like the persecution of the Old Testament prophets because of Yahweh. In the comparison, the prophets—and Jesus is Yahweh. He’s God.

“In verse 17, Jesus denies that he has come to abolish the law or the prophets. But what human being might even be suspected of doing that? Only God could abolish them. The question does not even arise unless Jesus is God.

“In fact, he does not abolish them, but he does speak with astonishing authority, contradicting the traditions of the elders and claiming that his own words represent the foundation of human life. ‘Whoever hears my words and does them’—he doesn’t say ‘whoever does God’s words.’ He says ‘whoever does my words.’ What does that mean? He’s God.

“He says he has the right to determine who enters the kingdom of heaven. Chapter 7 of Matthew, verse 21 through 23. He determines who will know the Father. Chapter 11, verse 27. He demands that people be willing to lose all in order to follow him. If he’s not God, he’s misleading people. He speaks of his angels. It is he who will reward and punish the deeds of men. And the basis of the judgment will be the relationship of men to him.

“Over and over again, Jesus tells people, ‘Follow me.’ In the story—in most of these passages, Jesus’ call comes to men who are to be as special followers, but sometimes it is a general command.

“In Matthew 19, Jesus assumes, for the sake of argument, that the rich young man has kept the commandments of the Decalogue that deal with his responsibility to other humans. Jesus says, ‘What are the commandments?’ And the man lists them. And he says, ‘All these I’ve done from my youth’—but he lists the last six. He doesn’t mention the first four, which all deal with worshiping God. Now notice what happened. Instead of referring him to the first four commandments, which deal with his duty to God, Jesus tells him to sell his goods, give to the poor, and then ‘come, follow me.’ Isn’t that odd? Why shouldn’t he say, ‘Go do this for God?’ He says, ‘Come, follow me.’ What is the implication? What is the inference? Jesus is God.

“Jesus calls on the young man to follow him when we might have expected Jesus to exhort him to worship God. The two are functionally equivalent. No Old Testament prophet ever drew attention to himself in this way, claiming to be the source of all divine blessing and the standard of all divine judgment. Godly teachers typically turn attention away from themselves and point people to God.

“If Jesus is not God, his egocentric teaching is prideful, even blasphemous. Only if he is God is this kind of teaching admirable.

“Jesus places loyalty to himself above family loyalty. He puts it even more strongly in Luke, where he says, ‘If you don’t hate your father, mother, brother, and sister, you cannot come to me.’ Boy, that’s not a phrase you’re going to hear in most of the—God wants you to have it all, and he’s just going to keep giving it to you, and that is not what you hear from Jesus. ‘You want to follow me? Leave everything. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Get ready for suffering.’ That’s just not… And who says that unless they’re God?

“Family loyalty is a very high value in Scripture, enshrined in the fifth commandment: ‘Honor your mother and your father.’ And later in the apostolic injunction of 1 Timothy 5:8: ‘If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.’ Jesus himself rebuked the Pharisees and teachers of the law because they allowed people to dishonor their parents by making special gifts to God. Nevertheless, of course, there is certainly a sense in which God deserves greater honor than parents, but this is only true of God, not of any other human being.

“In Matthew, Jesus claims that very right. And this is an implicit claim that he is God. In Matthew 10:37, Jesus claims an honor due only to God, so believers do all things for the name of Jesus.

“In none of these passages does Jesus teach that he is God, but he simply assumes the status, functions, and prerogatives of God.”

So when people say, “Well, the Gospel of John is just—it was so late, they just made up this stuff about Jesus”—the first thing you want to ask them is: have you ever actually read the Gospels? Do you actually know what they say? Most people in our culture, skeptics and cynics especially, they’ve never opened the Bible up. They’re just going by what they heard, what they saw, what somebody told me. And especially in an age where social media and the internet, you can just ask anything you want and it’ll give you an answer that may or may not be biblically accurate.

So that’s one of the things we can do, and we can realize that these things are reliable because you wouldn’t make up these kinds of statements. You just would not do it.

And in the future, we will get into a comparison of the pagan theologies around that area that did not teach the same thing about Christ as what the Christian church taught, that did not teach the things about their holy men that the Christian church taught that uniquely represented Jesus as God.

Amen?

Okay, so thank you for coming out tonight. Any questions, comments?