SUMMARY KEYWORDS

jesus, god, life, claim, faith, conversation, feel, religion, non contradiction, truth, church, tim keller, settle, loving, talked, people, pray, problem, christianity, exclusive.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

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Hey, Good Morning, Menlo Church. So glad to be with you. I'm so thankful that you've chosen to join us for this extended conversation around inviting people who know God, and people who don't yet know God to explore God together. We're actually coming together with over 160 Bay area churches to provide a safe place for this conversation in the season. We have groups happening at all of our campuses to facilitate this conversation in a small group environment; one of them's happening right here in Menlo Park right now. And we're also three weeks into this series in our services, with today's focus on this question Is Jesus really God? Now, a special welcome to our Bay Area campuses in Saratoga, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and San Mateo, and to those of you joining us online, and a personal thanks for being so kind and welcoming to my friend Jevon last week, who helped us think about the question of God's existence in the context of human suffering, scientific realities, and personal pain - just a light hearted topic to start your week with last week. If you missed it, you can catch up online.

Now, before we get started, I'm going to pray for us. And if you've never been here before, or never heard me speak, I pray kneeling. And the reason that I do that is because in all these conversations, I can't move you I can't convince you, I can't change you. We need God to show up to do that in our lives. And He promises that if we'll humble ourselves before Him, He'll show up in unique ways for us, would you pray with me?

God, thank you so much. Thank you for this unique moment that we get where the rest of our week is yet to come, and the challenges that are waiting for us will still be waiting for us. But we can set all that aside God, whether were people that would say we're following you now or not yet, would you be with us God use this time to shape us both individually and collectively for a conversation that I don't think could be more important. It's in Jesus name. Amen.

So a couple of weeks ago, I got a text message. And the text message basically said this, Hey, Phil, are you excited that these two worlds have come together? To things that had been completely separate in my life, really a firewall, out of necessity, in most ways throughout my life, where this separation has served as a healthy boundary between something I really cared about, and something I really didn't care about. That divide has been broken, at least for now, and it's the actual worst. Now I'm obviously talking about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. And if you thought you would escape this in church, we just have to talk about it. Okay. It's a famous football player, and a popstar that both women in my house love to listen to a lot, and I do not. Now every other commercial that when you're watching a game is one of them sort of capitalizing on the moment. And during the game of Taylors there there is a Taylor cam. And I just think like this has nothing to do with football. Please just let us have this right. That's the way that I think about it. If you feel the same way, I'm glad that you're here.

I hear Taylor Swift fans say this sometimes. Now they say, I'm a Chiefs fan now. And let me just say, you are not that's not true. Travis Kelce, these jerseys have gone up in sales more than 400% overnight, and Swifties are coming in force to football games, but they aren't really fans, at least not yet. They're Tiktok videos explaining the basics of football and celebrities hoping that this will finally help Taylor, settle down right? Now I have my doubts about how long this relationship will go on between the two of them.

But who knows, maybe years from now we'll look back on the early days of a new era for Taylor, if you will. Now, here's what I do know. You can't just say that you're a fan of football, and that's it, it takes more than that. Really following football means that you know the rules that means that you make time for it in your life, it means that you invest in the rich history of being disappointed by your hometown team that will never win. At least as a lifelong Cleveland Browns fan. That's what it means to me.

Now I say all that because the Swifties relationship with football feels a little bit like America's relationship with Jesus; too soon? See on a surface level Americans still respect Jesus as a good moral teacher and someone who is worth our respect, but that's about it. See, under the hood of those kind cultural assumptions, the plates of perspective are shifting in real time in our moment. According to a recent survey, more than half of US adults don't believe that Jesus was divine, do believe that God changes over time and believe that people are born innocent, and the only thing that we can do to get to God forever is to live a good moral life in which our moral behavior qualifies us for a relationship with God. Americans are Jesus-Swifties. Now we know something about faith. We know something about church, we know something about Jesus, but not the things that Jesus actually taught, not the hope that the church has been sharing for 2,000 years; that we are sinful as the human race rebelling against God. And then our only hope is that Jesus is both God, and the one who saved us by His moral perfection, not our moral achievements.

And look, if you are new or newer to this place, I'm so glad that you've come here. And if those are your perspectives, I'm not even criticizing you, if I'd been through what you've been through, they might be my views too. But they aren't consistent with who Jesus claims to be Himself. We've quoted an important book called Mere Christianity

throughout this series. And in one section of that book, the author C.S. Lewis focuses on this idea of Christology. This way, says, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him; I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

So with this as the backdrop to our conversation, I want to show you that Jesus really lived that He really claimed to be God, and that He really came back from the dead. And if this really is a reasonable faith worth considering that maybe no matter what your perspective, walking in today, or logging on today, maybe by the time we're done, your perspective, may begin to shift. One of the things that I think undermines a credible conversation about Jesus is the way that controversy, conspiracy theories, and fake news has become so normative and mainstream in the ideals of our culture. Both sides of the political aisle use these as excuses to dismiss opposing viewpoints, and affirm their own. And unfortunately, we can do that in the space of faith to if we're not careful. But the good news is, this isn't a new conversation, and there are great thought leaders who have been working on this for centuries. As a professor of history for nearly four decades, Edwin M. Yamauchi framed this existence of Jesus this way, he says “Any argument that challenges the claim of a historical Jesus is so ridiculous in the scholarly community, it is relegated only to the world of footnotes.”

There is more historical evidence in secular and sacred texts to support Jesus real, literal, actual existence than much of what we assume in antiquity. And the only reason that we assume it in antiquity is because it doesn't have theological implications. See, we'll dive more into the Bible next week. But we actually have more than the Bible to support the literal historic evidence of Jesus’ literal existence. See the historical record of Nero's persecution of this early Jesus movement, the works of even non-Christian scholars at the time, like Josephus, and Tacitus, who wrote just a few decades into this early movement, where they identified the real life, death, resurrection and implications of this Jewish carpenter. While, we don't know every detail, we can still travel to the place where Jesus walked and lived. We're praying for that region, even today. So if you don't want to believe that Jesus lived, you are certainly entitled to that opinion. It just isn't rooted in reality. It isn't rooted in historical fact.

See, for many of us, it's easy to stop looking into something once we have the answer that we want. We just kind of find the confirmation bias somewhere on the internet and stop that lazy documentary, that YouTube video that confirms your assumptions, and then boom, we're done. But the question is, do we really understand this? If you if you don't want to believe that Jesus existed, that's totally fine. But have you gotten to that

place because you've investigated it or because the investigation has been aggravating? It's really important. Do we not believe that Jesus is God because we have rejected it after investigating, or have we rejected something we found aggravating.

Jesus says plenty of things that challenge our good moral teacher view, that all of us in our culture are feeling the pressure to believe, and hold to. But we have numerous relics from that time period that are at least compatible with the historical record of Jesus’ literal life. One of them is called the Shroud of Turin, it's a Catholic artifact that was believed to potentially be the shroud that covered Jesus’ body, with the impressions of the body that was inside of it still preserved. Recently, it was given to AI and AI was prompted to generate the face of the one that may have been wrapped in the shroud, which if it was Jesus might have looked like this. But here's the thing, I'm guessing none of that is really a big bother for you. I'm guessing most of us don't actually have a problem at all with it, it at least feels reasonably credible to believe that Jesus existed.

Our problem is the idea that his existence carries unique weight compared to other religious and philosophical worldviews. If Jesus is a way we're good, if Jesus is the way, we have a problem, after all, can't we all just get along? What if we just stuck with the words of Jesus anyway, right? Well, here's some words from Jesus, He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.” Well, all of a sudden, we are a lot more uncomfortable about Jesus as a good moral teacher, who leaves the option of universalism open to us. But let's just for a minute, start with what our real problem is. I grew up in a pretty religious home, other than my mom who grew up Jewish and then became a Christian in her 20s. Other than my mom and myself, Christianity, religion, church, it was a topic we didn't talk much about. But early on in my life, I decided to follow Jesus, and then at the age of eight, I felt called to become a pastor. And if you're like, you sound like a fun eight year old, that's hurtful. I just want you to know that.

I felt called to become a pastor. And really, because of that, I sort of became this like, Christian mascot as a kid in lots of different settings. Here's what I mean, every time that we were around a meal where someone needed to pray, you know, who was asked to pray? Yeah, me. I was volunteered pretty quickly. If someone was going through a difficult time, I was recruited to help. If someone had questions about life or death, or even honestly, at a pretty young age, someone on their deathbed wanted to talk to somebody in ministry, I got the phone call. But there was always this subtle pitch, this pressure that I felt, especially when I was talking with someone who was not a Christian, and that was that basically, look, can you make sure, Phil, that they know you're good with everything. That all religions are fine, that it's totally okay. And don't get me wrong, I love people. And I wanted to help. But I couldn't in good conscience sit at someone's deathbed and tell them that I believe that any faith they had partially constructed, or the relative moral value of their life would be good enough to get them to heaven, because I didn't end don't believe that.

Now, if you're a Christian, maybe this is a tension you feel, you feel this with friends at school, you feel this with coworkers, you feel this with neighbors, maybe you feel this

with family members; you want to be kind to everyone, but you're pretty sure you remember passages like this one, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men, by which we must be saved.” The Hebrew Scriptures had hundreds of things called Messianic prophecies, in which a future Savior of the world was described. In Jesus’ life and ministry, He fulfilled those prophecies and claimed to be that Messiah. And here in this passage from the early church, they clearly knew and declare the implications of this reality for Jesus for all of us, even thousands of years later.

Now, don't get me wrong. If you are here and you're Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, agnostic, atheist, somewhere in between, you have every right to disagree with me. But like I shared a couple of weeks ago, I believe that we have the right to disagree. What I don't believe is, I don't believe that makes us all right. See, there is something called the law of non contradiction. And it means that opposing viewpoints can't be true at the same time. The problem is that in a postmodern world where we believe that all personal positions are simultaneously true, we hold to all kinds of things that would violate the law of non-contradiction, here's the biggest violation of the law of non-contradiction. We hear it all the time, you can finish this line with me whether you're a Christian or not, finished this line with me, all roads lead to God, heaven, truth, whatever, whatever phrase we want to finish. We live in a postmodern culture that says it's all fine. The problem is that even the roads themselves that we're describing, don't agree with that premise. Underneath a simple concept, like the golden rule, religions are wildly different, and they claim largely exclusivity from others. So we can want a society that just shaves off the exclusive edges of its religious systems. But in a world where truth actually exists, one of these views is going to be true, and all of the rest of them will be wrong.

Now, don't get me wrong. Determining the path that is true, is worth your time, worth your discovery, worth your investigation. It's infinitely valuable, it's infinitely worth our investment. Because of the law of non-contradiction, we can't all be right. And the ironic response of this in a postmodern culture is that more and more people are just disaffiliated with any religious affiliation at all. And they're claiming that all religion is damaging, and should be discarded, which, ironically, is a claim of exclusivity. They're doing the very thing that they're accusing others doing. And I'm not going to try and twist your arm today, or make you agree with me. I just want to put the cards on the table, that if the goal of our lives is to avoid exclusive claims of truth, and be non-offensive in a respectable society, that that's going to get more and more difficult, over time.

Tolerance, it used to mean that I treat people with whom I disagree the way that I hoped to be treated. Tolerance now increasingly means simultaneously agreeing with constantly changing, contradictory viewpoints. That's a problem.

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. But cultural pluralism, it gives us the right to disagree, to pursue the truth, to hold to our own views. And I will fight for your right to believe, to pursue truth, to have your own religious views. Much of the conflict we see around the world is because cultural pluralism doesn't exist. Because one group is said this is the only way. And I'm telling you, I am so glad we live in a country where we get

to pursue and believe different things. Here's the problem. The problem is metaphysical pluralism that says that all views are simultaneously true. And I will fight against this incorrect view that violates a concept like the law of non-contradiction. It doesn't make sense, but we keep doing it so that we can have polite dinner table conversations with people who disagree with us. So why should you believe that Jesus is really God?

We've talked a little bit about the fulfillment of hundreds of Messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures. And we've looked at how the early church thought about Jesus, but there is one ultimate test that we hang our faith on, and that is the resurrection.

Ultimately, Jesus isn't worth your respect if He didn't actually resurrect. That's the ultimate test. If He really lived, really died, and really came back from the dead, then the claims others made of Him and that He made of Himself are validated in His supernatural power, and worth your consideration, even now, thousands of years later. In an incredible book about honest faith discovery, Tim Keller puts it this way. He says, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that He said; if He didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what He said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.”

I'm not asking you to believe a fairy tale. As we've already discussed, Jesus can handle your scrutiny, and next week, we'll look at how the Bible can handle your scrutiny. But we have to ask, again, do we not believe the claims of Jesus are true because of investigation, or because of irritation? Because of this tension we feel with a culture that we would rather be in good relationship, than the God who created everything. We have four kids and all of them have gone through this phase in their life, where when they were very young, they believe that if they couldn't see you or they couldn't see something, it didn't exist. You ever had kids like this? Right? Where especially if they were in trouble, they've just cover their face like this and they weren't in trouble anymore. You cease to exist, right? And we laugh about it because kids outgrow it.

Oh, you can pray that our kids – no they have, they've outgrown it. But we, as adults, I'm not sure are always so far from that as we think we are. I'm not sure we've really all the time grown out of it. Sure we do it in a more sophisticated way. Maybe for us, our version of covering our eyes is chasing our career or getting into the school of our dreams. And it allows us to avoid faith altogether. Those questions that nag at us, those things that irritate us, those things that make us wonder if there's something more, we have all of these big dreams. But here's the problem. The problem is when all of your dreams come true, and you discover it's a nightmare, you discover that that purpose isn't worth your life. The problem comes when we run out of things to distract us; we often call it our midlife crisis. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago; we're faced with a purpose that we have settled for in contrast to the purpose that we were made for.

We're faced with a existential crisis, and the purpose that we're made for exists on the other side of the exclusive claim of Christianity.

The exclusive claim of Christianity is something called the Gospel, which just means that the good news, and here is the exclusive claim of Christianity, that everything else

is built on. God made you in His image with infinite dignity, value and worth. Humanity is you and me sinned. It's in the human genome passed from generation to generation and continue to sin, as we rebel against God all the time. Jesus came to earth fully God and fully man, to live a perfect life and to die in your place and then to come back from the grave. And because of that, you can turn from the patterns of rebellion that you and I have against God, choose to follow Him and experience life with Him forever, that starts now. And it is the only way to experience that eternal relationship. That is the exclusive claim of Christianity that everything else is built on.

So now, the thing is, for you that might feel too simple, it might feel ignorant to accept this exclusive claim. You might not like what it says about you or how it makes you feel. But in that same book I mentioned just a few minutes ago, Tim Keller says it this way, says “The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.” You have nothing to prove. No matter what you think about God, He loves you no matter what. And your adoption, as His son or daughter is an open invitation whether you're ready for it today or not.

Can I tell you one more reason why I find this exclusive claim of Jesus to be so captivating in my life? Sure, we have to get past that intellectual barriers of belief and determine whether or not this is reasonable at all. And if you came in skeptical, and you didn't believe that, I'm guessing in the last 25 minutes, I didn't like move the needle dramatically for you. But I hope that I gave you some things to think about. I hope that you discover some breadcrumbs either in our services, or discussion groups, or conversations that you have with others. But ultimately, you have to decide if the fruit of this faith in Jesus is worth considering. Some of the smartest minds in human history believed it. As a matter of fact, many of them died, believing it.

This person, Jesus, has inspired movements that have led to modern education and some of our most prestigious schools were founded by Christians. Public Health, and the access that we enjoy, the greatest movement of charity that the world has ever seen. Now, make no mistake about it, Christians and the church are far from perfect. But the church has been an overwhelming force for good in the history of the world. It's not even close. But one of the most compelling reasons that I hold to the divinity and exclusivity of Jesus isn't just because I believe it's true after decades of discovery, which I do. It's also because it's possible. See every other world religions spells itself D-

O. DO more, accomplish more good works, become morally superior to others, create a spiritual resume that the creator of the universe can't help but give you an A for.

There isn't a single religion in the world outside of Christianity that can't be whittled down to some version of personal accomplishment in order to satisfy the standards of a god or the gods of that religion. D-O isn't just an intimidating prospect of faith for me, it's an impossible one. Because if I believe that there is a perfect God, I will never measure

up. Because it's not even just about my external behaviors. It's about my thoughts, it's about my intentions, it's about what's going on on the inside. And I don't know about you, but I know I will never be perfect. Biblical Christianity on the other hand, because of Jesus is the most inclusive-exlusive faith that you can find. Instead of DO it spelled done, D,O,N,E. The system begins with the assumption that you and I can't get to God on our own, that we needed salvation. I need God's mercy and grace, mercy that I don't get the negative consequences my life deserves, and grace that I get the good things that He is the one who deserves.

That is the hope of heaven, and the treadmill of every other religion, including the religion of self-fulfillment, and accomplishment. It's exhausting, and it will get you nowhere. Some of you know this, even though you're not talking about it. You find yourself after the next thing, after the next thing, after the next thing, after the next thing. And faith is just one more attachment to your life that is more life taking than life giving. Just minutes from now, you will be tempted to let all of this fade into the background of brunch, of football of irritating drivers. But don't let the noise of your week push out the pursuit of truth. This is knowable, this is discoverable, this is possible to experience in your own life. If you want to dig in more, I would highly encourage you to check out a book called The Problem of God by Mark Clark, it's a great resource to parallel with that one I mentioned from Tim Keller earlier. Look, you may not end up believing. But at least you'll know you didn't settle. At least you'll be able to say I went down I wrestled this thing to the ground, I know what Christianity is all about and I'm saying no. Don't settle though. Don't settle with lazy research. Don't settle with somebody you know, don't settle with I don't want the implications of this in my life. Don't settle.

Next week we're gonna dig into the reliability of the Bible together. But before you go, I want to leave you with one final thought of what hangs in the balance of yours and my decision to follow Jesus. John 3:36 says this, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” The stakes couldn't be greater. And I'll admit to you that over the years, I will give messages like this, and we talked about some aspect of this from time to time. But you know, these types of messages are somewhat rare. And usually afterwards, someone will come up to me and they will say something like, how could you possibly believe this? How could you possibly believe that every other religion is wrong? How could you possibly believe that Jesus is the only way? And I'm telling you, I'm not saying it to be mean, I'm saying it to be loving; it would be very easy for all of us to have a lovely meal together later and just all agree that we all hold the different things and think whatever you want about that thing. But that's not actually loving. Telling you the truth is loving.

The Bible tells us that the truth will set us free. And the truth is that God loves you enough that even though the problem that you and I have we could never solve on our own, we don't have to - that God has already solved it for us. That's the hope of the gospel. So no matter where you are today, no matter what you face in the implications of your own existential faith and life crisis. Don't settle for a Swifty shaped Christianity. Don't settle for a version of this faith that aims at just being able to put it on a profile at

work or putting on a profile on social media, voting a certain way. No, no, it's so much deeper and more profound than that.

Can I pray for you? God, we lift up each and every person that said on campus today and the work that you're going to do in the hearts and lives of people. God, I ask that you would do it in ways that we could never, ever have seen coming. That God there would be people that have this deep sense in which this is a huge stumbling block. They could never believe this, and then God your loving presence just won't let them go. That God they would sense maybe for the first time how much you love them. How intentionally you’ve made them, and the forever you've made them for. God, I pray for relationships in here that we have messages like this that we sit through if we're followers of Jesus, and we instantly think I wish so and so could hear this, I wish so and so could hear this. God would you give a burden to each and every one of us for the so and so's of our lives. For the people that we can have a conversation with, that we can share a message, that we can invite into a conversation. God help it to not be enough that we know this or that our kids know this. God give us a burden for our neighbors, for our co-workers, for our classmates, for family members who don't know you God. That because of the work you're doing in us, we may not have chosen to be missionaries to Silicon Valley, but you chose us to be missionaries in Silicon Valley. Give us the hope of heaven and help us share it with the hearts of our world. We give it to you now. It’s in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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