Investigating The Historical Jesus

TRANSCRIPT

 But I invite you to come on a journey. If you are watching online or if you're here this morning, and maybe you're not a Jesus follower, maybe you've heard about Jesus, maybe someone's invited you, or you've talked to your neighbor across the fence, or you've heard different things about him, and you've asked questions, you're asking questions, and you, and you're just thinking about it.

I ask you to come on this journey with us over the next few weeks. Well, maybe you are a Jesus follower, or you have been a Jesus follower. And you're asking questions in the opposite direction. Maybe doubts creeping in, and you're, and you're, and you're just thinking about stuff. I ask you also, come on this journey.

It's gonna, it's, it's a very, it's a very, very exciting series, this one we're going to do. Because really, it's, it's basing the foundation of our Christian faith. We are going on this series, Investigating Jesus. Investigating Jesus. And we're going to, uh, we're going to look at the foundation, as I said, of our Christian faith.

Are you ready for that? Do you want to do it? Well, too bad because we're gonna do it anyway, so You know, there's been many events or many discoveries in human history that have changed the world You don't have to look very far to see some of those things I mean, I think of think of the discovery of penicillin for instance that marked the the beginning of modern medicine as we know it And that discovery alone has, like, saved millions and millions of lives from disease and sickness.

Then there's the, uh, invention of that little thing called the internet. Changed communication in unimaginable ways. Woo! We all, how did we survive? How did we survive without having someone influence us every 13 seconds of the day? I don't know how we did it. But we're here. And then, of course, Air travel would never be the same after September 11th and the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Those events, those key things that have happened in history, here's the point, you know, we've all seen the effects of those things. We've all seen the effects of those, but they have become part of history because someone told us about them. Someone took the time to document it. Someone took the time to pass it on and tell us.

So, as we go into this series investigating Jesus, and we think about things written down and things documented, the question we ask, when it comes to knowing if there is a God, or what God is like, or figuring out who God is, does it really come down to, it's because the Bible tells us so? Because the Bible tells us so, that's why we believe it.

We believe these things because, because it's in the Bible. The Bible tells us so. Is that what it comes down to? Or is it other religious literature tells us so? And that's how we know who God is, that's why we believe. Are we expected to believe based on a collection of ancient manuscripts that are written by dozens of men over hundreds of years who never met each other in a world that had no science, where everybody believed in a god or the gods?

Do we belay, do we base our belief on that? Well it turns out, the foundation of our faith is anchored in something far more substantial than that. Far more substantial than the Bible tells us so. Far more sustainable. And it's actually something, as pertained to this series that we're doing, it's something that we can investigate for ourselves.

We're actually encouraged to investigate. It's a good thing to investigate, to find out. Before you leap into something, before you decide to make a choice in this direction, investigate, find out, do due diligence, as they would say. The Christian faith doesn't rise and fall on the accuracy of 66 ancient documents that we call the books of the Bible.

It rises and falls on the identity of a single individual, and that's Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth. That's where our foundation begins. So when it comes to investigating Jesus, the question that we have to ask, the question we have to ask is, is Matthew, Mark, Luke or John a reliable account of actual events? So there, what we call the Gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, are any one of those accounts a reliable account?

Because if they are, if either one, any one of them is, then what they say about Jesus is true. And if what they say about Jesus is true, then ladies and gentlemen, we need to stand up and pay attention. Because it is game on. It's game on. If any one of those Gospels is a reliable account, then what they say is true, then let's go.

If you're a Jesus follower, this means everything. This means everything to us. Now, it's a little bit confusing. It's a little bit confusing because of how the Bible is presented to us, or was presented to us. Maybe you've been involved in church forever, since you were born, since you were little kids, you went to Sunday school, you went to kids church and youth group, and the Bible presented in a way of stories, wasn't it?

Like it's, you read stories in the Bible, you know, read a book, read about Noah, and the big flood, and he built that big boat, and he brought all the animals in two by two, and it's like, whoa, man, that was amazing, how that happened. Well, then you hear David and Goliath, you know, the little shepherd boy swung a rock and he killed the big giant and man, that was the best and he became king and oh, that was awesome.

And then that all just gets melded in and we read about Jesus, you know, he was the son of God and he walked and he healed the sick and he raised the dead and you know, that's super cool, man, Jesus. And what happens is it becomes melded into a group of stories, they're Bible stories. And Jesus becomes a Bible story.

But the story of Jesus is not just merely a Bible story. The story of Jesus, or Jesus himself, is the reason we actually have a Bible. I'll say that again. Jesus is the reason we have a Bible. Um, it's got, if we can do a, I've got a timeline with some pictures that might help us with this. If we could get the big, the pictures up on the big screens on the side, it'd be easier to see, I'm sure.

So we'll look at a timeline. Okay, the first thing is we have an event. We have an event, which is, well, here we go. We have an event, which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Okay, that's Easter Sunday. We celebrate that, Easter Sunday. Okay, it's an exciting time for us. So Jesus was taken captive by the Romans.

He was crucified. He was laid in a tomb and on the third day he rose again. The disciples went to the tomb, the stone was rolled away, Jesus was alive. Okay, that was the event that took place. After that event, immediately a movement began. A movement, a gathering of people, a force of people. It began, immediately.

And then those people that created and formed that movement. That was, uh, that was known as the Nazarene sect. They called it a Nazarene sect. It was called the Way, which eventually was known as the church. So us. That's where it all started, right there, as the church. And so people in that movement, they began looking around saying, whoa.

We better write some of this stuff down. This is pretty cool what's going on. And then, so those people, they began to write and document the things that were happening. And they documented the things that they'd been, they'd seen and heard with Jesus. And they began to write these things down. Now all those, those first three things, they happened about 70 AD.

Okay, so 70 years after the resurrection. In that time frame, these things happened. And then it wasn't till about 300 AD that these documents were then collated, put together, verified, confirmed, and the first Bible was assembled. 300 years. So without Jesus, without the event, there would be no Bible at the end.

So even if one of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, even if just one of them is an accurate account of Jesus, then we need to pay attention, folks. We need to pay attention. And so over the next few weeks, as we mentioned, the next few weeks we're going to explore investigating Jesus. We're going to explore one of those accounts.

We're going to look at the book of Luke. So Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We're going to look at the book of Luke. Now this book, it was named after its author, Luke. It's funny that. Now Luke wasn't, he wasn't a disciple of Jesus, but he knew the disciples. And he spent time with the disciples, and he had conversations with the disciples.

But one thing we know about Luke, is he was a very methodical type of guy. He was methodical, he was organised, all his ducks in a row, he was very thorough. Apparently he was a doctor, and if you want a doctor, you want a guy that's thorough. You don't want a she'll be right type of guy doing some surgery on you.

Oh, Mr. Johnston, sorry about that. You want a thorough person that's going to do stuff like that. And so Luke was very thorough, he was very methodical, he was very organised. And so when he set his mind to do a task, he did it exactly, accurately. And so we're going to look at the book of Luke. We're going to start, we're going to look at the first word, the first chapter, first verse, first word of the book of Luke.

And it's a word, like obviously when we, uh, when we, um, do our devotions or you read your Bible, it's a word you can overlook quite easily because it just sort of skims past and you get stuck into the meat of what's going on. But Luke's first word, we don't know how many times he would have written this or rewritten it just to make sure it was gonna be exactly right, it was really gonna make the, hit the mark.

But Luke's first word, Luke chapter 1 verse 1, first word is many. Many! We don't know how many he's talking about, but many. Many have undertaken to draw up an account. of the things that have been fulfilled among us. Many have been, have undertaken to do this. Many. I was thinking about this, you know, do you know how many, I believe, would undertake to, uh, write up an account about my life?

Or your life? Not. Not many. Not many. Let's face it. You know, we have to delve back into history and piece together little bits and pieces about different figures from ancient times because not many people took the time to draw up an account about these people, like in ancient, ancient figures in history, like Tiberius Caesar, there's little bits and pieces you can put together to find out about him.

Or guys like Pontius Pilate there's nearly nothing written about Pontius Pilate. You know Pontius the guy washed his hands and he said I'm done you know I'll let Barabbas free and you can take Jesus. There's almost nothing written about him. Well then there's Herod the Great who did extraordinary things.

Can hardly find, can find like one little portion in history written about this guy. So why did Luke bother? to bring us a detailed account about a Galilean carpenter turned rabbi who is executed by the Romans. Why was that story so worth telling? Why was it worth telling? Why would others attempt to do the same?

Why would so many attempt to do it? I'll tell you why. It's because something extraordinary had happened. Something extraordinary. And it was something that had implications for future generations, for us, sitting here today. Way back then, something had taken place. But it wasn't just extraordinary, something good had happened as well.

Something good. Something good had happened for the people. Something good had happened for the world. And somebody had to tell it. Somebody had to tell it. Somebody had to write it down. And so many did. So it goes on. So many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were, this is key, were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.

So they're not just writing about Chinese whispers or hearsay or things that have been said. They're writing about things that they were eyewitnesses to, that happened right in front of them. They were writing these things down. So with this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated, remember he was a doctor, he was a thorough guy, so he said I have carefully investigated, I've taken the time to write these things down and I've done it, I've done everything from the beginning.

from the beginning when we read the book of Luke we see that he talks about the birth of Jesus and he talks about you know the birth of John the Baptist with Elizabeth and he marries the two together and he sees how their connection is made and we read about that later on in the book so he's gone right back to day dot to the start that's how that's the type of guy Luke is he's very thorough so he goes right back and he says I've documented and written everything from the beginning so I too Along with many others decided to write an orderly account for you.

So here's my point. Luke at this point, he's got his pen out or his feather, you can just imagine a big feather thing. Luke at that point is not writing the Bible. He's not writing the Bible as we know it. Luke was documenting events that had happened in his lifetime. In his lifetime. He wasn't writing about ancient history things.

He was writing about stuff that had happened just a few years down before. Or things that were happening right now. Luke was writing stuff that had happened in his lifetime. He was documenting the life and the teachings of Jesus. So we, we don't take Luke's writings serious because they're in the Bible.

You don't say, oh it's in the Bible so this must be serious stuff. Luke's writings were added to the Bible because they were considered reliable. Think about that. You go on holiday, you get your, you go to a hotel and there's a safe in the cupboard. Kids like to play with that all the time and mess up the code.

But you get your, you get your valuable things and you put them in that safe, okay? Those things aren't valuable because you've put them in the safe. Those things are valuable so you put them in the safe, if that makes sense. So we don't consider Luke's documents and Luke's account reliable just because it's in the Bible.

That was added to the Bible because they said you know what this is reliable, this is true.

So it goes on, verse four, carefully, I've carefully investigated everything from the beginning. Then something extraordinary happened. Something extraordinary had happened. And it's good for you, it's good for your family, it's good for the world. It's good for all of us. He carefully investigated and he wrote it down.

So with this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus. Okay, now we don't exactly know who Theophilus was, but he was probably a very wealthy and a very curious new convert. Okay, so he had asked Luke to do this, because he knew, he obviously knew who, Luke might have been his, his family doctor, I don't know, and he said, Luke, I need, I need you to find out some stuff for me, and so he's gone and he's done this investigating.

So I too decide to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught. So Luke didn't want his readers, he didn't want us to be left with the impression that Christianity is just to have faith in a faith or a religion.

He wanted to ensure that the reader was anchored to the event, the resurrection, that launched the movement, the force of people. And those people began to document and write things down. Thankfully they did that. And then when it was safe and legal the bishops came out of hiding and they assembled and put together the first Bible.

I mean little did Luke, no imagine he would not have known at all that his account that he had written about Jesus and the teachings of Jesus would be included in the top four. The top four, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Gospels we call them. Luke would have had no idea that his would be included there.

And so it was, his, his account would have been meticulously copied out, word for word, copied out perfectly and then they would have passed that on to someone and they would have made their own copy and they would have passed it on to someone else and maybe made a couple other copies. And then they would have memorized, people actually memorized word for word and then they would teach it to their kids.

Sitting around the table with unleavened bread and whatever they used to eat. And teach it to their kids, bedtime stories. And they'd pass it on and they'd gather together in their little groups. Hiding in their little groups and they'd be learning and reading about teaching it. And this thing spread like wildfire.

It spread like wildfire through this movement, this force of people that would gather together, mostly hidden underground. It would, it would spread out like wildfire and the teachings of Jesus just got pushed out further and further and further, till it was everywhere. And what happened is the religious leaders of the day, they freaked out, as you can imagine.

They said, this is not good, we need to stop this. So they actually demonized the documents that were written. They, they made it illegal. They said you can't have these. No one's allowed to own these, no one's allowed to read them. There's no gatherings of people. No, no, no, no, no. They pulled it all in and they began to collect every copy of these documents that they could find and they'd burn them.

They said this is not, this is not happening. And so they would go and they, they, they made it illegal to get together. They, you weren't allowed to worship together like we are today. Not allowed to do that. And they'd go through and they'd trash things and, and break up this, this movement. They're trying to break up this movement.

The emperor at the time, Diocletian his name was, he realized he would not stop this movement until he got rid of the literature. Because he was looking at it thinking, what are these people, they're passing it on to their children. They're reading it to each other. They're copying it meticulously. He said, we've got to get rid of this literature.

What's going on? He said, pagans didn't even have literature. Pagans who believed in all sorts of gods, they had no things written. They had no literature that they were studying and reading to each other. So he said, I've got to get rid of this literature. I'm not going to stop this movement that's happening.

And so he tried, he tried everything possible. He collected these things, he burnt them, got rid of them, but he was fighting a losing battle. Praise God for that. He was fighting a losing battle because it had spread so far and wide that he realized he was not gonna stop it. He was not gonna stop this force of people that was moving.

with their literature and their documents and their accounts of Jesus. And then, something remarkable happened. Something remarkable happened. New Emperor, Emperor Constantine. Constantine got saved. He got converted to Christianity. And immediately he lifted the ban. He said, no, no, no, no, bring it out. And he encouraged The Christians to come out and to worship publicly and to share their literature and to share their documents and their accounts of Jesus And teach it to each other and teach it to their kids and spread it out Constantine got touched by God and saved the church

He encouraged the public worship he encouraged gathering encouraged the teaching Now this is amazing, this, this blew me away when I was reading about this. This is amazing. So the Empire, the Roman Empire that actually crucified Jesus, they now financed the putting together of the first Bible. They financed it themselves through Emperor Constantine.

They paid for the, the printers, they paid for the scribes. They paid for the ones to go and collect all these different documents and accounts of the story of the life of Jesus and the teachings. They gathered all those. They verified them. They compared them. They made sure that they were accurate and true.

They authorized it. And then they put together the very first Bible. And they financed it. The guys that had killed Jesus actually financed The first Bible.

That's amazing. That's just God. The stories of Jesus in the Bible aren't just Bible stories. The story of Jesus is the story. It is the story. It's the whole story. Because you know at the end of the four Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus is captured by the Romans, he's crucified. He's buried and he rises again.

Something happened. Something happened. Something changed the landscape of the world. And you know it's why we're here today. It's why you're sitting right where you are. It's why we're here. Something changed. Something remarkable happened.

So let's wrap up this first installment, the first week. I'm going to wrap it up and I want to leave you with this.

If you choose, yeah, we talked about the ripple effect. We've had that series on the ripple effect, the tree of life. And we talked a lot about choice, didn't we? Talked a lot about making choice. We all have choices. If you choose not to follow Jesus, I mentioned. If you're online, you're here today, maybe you've been asking questions, maybe you've heard about Jesus, or maybe you have been a Jesus follower and you're starting to doubt, or you've been, you've been away for some time.

If you choose not to follow Jesus because it's inconvenient, I totally get that. I get it. Because following Jesus is inconvenient. I hate to tell you that. Sorry to burst the bubble. Following Jesus is inconvenient. Because following Jesus will require something of you and it will require something from you.

It's gonna ask you to be less selfish and more forgiving. What? What's this teaching about? Love your enemies? No way! I'm not gonna love my enemies. That's crazy talk. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. No, thank you, sir. I'm looking after me.

It's inconvenient. It might actually cost you something even. Might cost you your time, some money, might cost you a relationship. But hear my words, hear these words. If you choose to follow Jesus, then I guarantee you, oh that's a strong word, I guarantee you, Eventually, your life will be better. Eventually, it will make your life better.

And it will make you better at life. I'll say that again. If you choose to follow Jesus, eventually, it will make your life better. And it will make you better at life. But it's not always going to be convenient, I'll tell you that. It won't be convenient. Inconvenience is somewhat of a valid reason not to follow Jesus.

But finally is I ask, don't choose not to follow Jesus because you don't think there's anything to the story of Jesus. Might ask the musos to come back up if they could. Thanks, Tom, for that lead.

Don't choose not to follow Jesus because you don't think there's anything to the story. Because you don't believe that it's true.

History has told us. The thorough process that was used has told us that the accounts of Jesus life and Jesus teaching are reliable and they are true. And as I said, we're going to be looking and studying through the book of Luke about that. So in spite of what you've heard in culture, around the world, there is definitely something to the story of Jesus.

Because it's still here. It's still a powerful force that is moving through the world. Don't give up on following Jesus. I urge you, don't give up until you have investigated it for yourself. If you've been asking questions, maybe you've been a Jesus follower and you've been doubting or you've been asking questions in the opposite direction, do some investigating.

I encourage you, do some investigating. Come with us on this journey over the next few weeks. Investigate for yourself, because if you read the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, you just might be convinced that something extraordinary took place. Something extraordinary happened. And something good happened.

And it changed the landscape of the world entirely.

And it's something that is important. And it is something that is relevant for you. It's relevant for me, for our families. And it's relevant for the entire world. Even to this very day. Let's pray together. Thank you Lord. Father we just thank you. Lord thank you that we can come together. Lord we can come together publicly.

We can learn about you. Lord we can read about you. We can teach each other. Lord I thank you that we can do that. Thank you that that, that band was lifted, Lord. Thank you that the chains were broken. And Jesus, Jesus, I thank you. Thank you for going to the cross to take away our sin, to give us life, and to create that doorway, Lord, for the rest of the generations.

Lord, to be, to have access to you and to have access to our mighty God. Lord, we just thank you for that. I pray, Lord, that you will come with us on this journey. Lord, that you'll open our hearts, open our minds. Lord, to receive and to hear from you. Lord, I pray especially for anyone, Lord, that might be doubting.

Lord, for those that might just be asking some questions, they've heard about this Jesus and they're asking questions, Lord, I pray that you'll just touch them, open their eyes, help them to feel for themselves and see for themselves, Lord, that it'll just be you and them together. Lord, I pray that, Lord, I pray that you'll be with us.

And Lord, we just thank you. Thank you once again for all that you've done for us in our lives and the blessings that we have. And Lord, we want to give you the honour and the praise. And we declare you as our mighty God. And we pray this in Jesus mighty name. And everybody said together, Amen.