Lord, Liar, or Lunatic? | Tim Henderson

You guys, this morning we're gonna finish up our look at John chapter eight. We've been here in John eight for, I don't know, like three or four weeks. It's been a while. And if you grew up at all with a vision of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, I don't think that view would survive John eight. What we've seen, especially maybe last week when Luke was walking us through that passage, is that Jesus can give as good as he gets. And this conversation is supercharged. It's very, very contentious.

In fact, you guys remember over the last week or couple of weeks, what was maybe the most aggressive thing that Jesus said in John eight so far? The devil. What about it, Marybeth? Do you remember what he says? He's having this engagement with people who, by the way, if you scroll back up in John eight, have identified themselves as believers in Jesus. But Jesus doesn't trust them. They're claiming to do things in the name of their Father—by whom they mean God. And Jesus says, yeah, you know what? God is not your father. Your father is the devil and you like to do the things that please him. The entire conversation is super contentious. And we have this group of people that Jesus is really extremely mistrustful of.

And it's in this context here, as this conversation continues, that the tension builds. It actually ends with this big explosion that we'll get to before the end of this time here. And as we walk through it, I want you to see it's not just that Jesus is calling them to do the will of their father, the devil, but they are making some counter accusations to him that are equally strong.

Here they are in verse 48:

The Jews answered him, "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?" — John 8:48

Some translations will make that a little bit clearer, just say that they accuse him of being demon possessed. That first accusation is basically a racial slur. There's no reason to think that Jesus is a Samaritan, and I don't think they think that Jesus is a Samaritan. They just don't like him, and they don't like Samaritans. So when they call him a Samaritan, it's a stupid thing, but it's just essentially them trying on purpose to be insulting by likening him to somebody they hate.

But the second thing they say is even more intense. They ask, are we right in saying that you are demon possessed? And that is where, if you haven't really caught on to it by now, you can see this conversation has completely gone off the rails.

And Jesus responds, of course, with a very simple claim: I'm not demon possessed. But he continues and he says, not only am I not demon possessed, but I am so close to the Father, so absolutely not demon possessed, so like him, so committed to his glory and his glory alone, that if you will just do what I'm telling you to do, you'll live forever. He continues his promise of eternal life. At which point they conclude, yes, you are definitely demon possessed. The very thing that he says to refute them, they take as more evidence that they're right and this guy is completely evil.

Their Logic Is Actually Sound

Now, I want to ask you a question. What do you think of their logic? Of the logic of the Jews that are in this contest with Jesus? Not their discernment, but their reasoning ability. Because I think their reasoning ability is absolutely on point. When they say, our best conclusion at this moment is that you're possessed by a demon, they're right. Not that he's a demon, but that that is absolutely on the table.

The claims that Jesus is making are so ridiculous, so grandiose, so completely over the top that it absolutely restricts our options. We cannot read the things that he says here in John eight and walk away and just shrug and be like, well, you know, he's a good guy. He just exaggerates a little bit. If you don't think that what Jesus is saying here is true, then you are well in your rights to conclude that what he is saying is so horrifically false, so horribly misleading, so catastrophically blasphemous, that demon possession is absolutely a live option.

Here's C. S. Lewis on this point. This is from Mere Christianity. He says, "I'm 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 is merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg, which has got to be the most British way to express that. 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 mad man, or something worse. You could shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and call him 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.

Now, what I want to do here is take a minute and break down C. S. Lewis's logic because it tracks very closely with the logic of Jesus's opponents in chapter eight. And I want you to see that the argument that Lewis is making through prose is actually tight, but it might be a little bit easier to see how tight if we put it in chart form.

Here's the thing: Jesus claims that I am God. Now, this is really important. It is not the case that Tim Henderson is claiming that Jesus is God. Although I do make that claim. But it doesn't matter if I make it. What matters infinitely more is that Jesus makes it about himself. The fact that Jesus himself is making an overt claim to deity is the thing that is really going to constrain our options.

I could be mistaken about any number of things. Jesus's claim about himself is that he is God. And logically, you've only got two possibilities. Either that statement is true or it is false. Either he is or he is not.

If it's true—he's claiming to be God, and in fact he is God—well then, he is the Lord of heaven and earth. He made the world. He invented everything. And the only reasonable response is to bow at his feet and worship him as king. If he made the world, if he really is the Lord, then you do well to make him your Lord.

But if he's not, if he's wrong about this, if the statement is false, then once again we've only got two options. Either he knows that he's not, or he doesn't know.

So when Jesus stands up in front of a crowd and makes these insane statements—"I am the light of the world. I am the good shepherd. I am"—he is claiming to be divine. And if he's not, and he knows that he is not, then he is perpetrating probably the greatest hoax, the greatest scam in the history of the world. His lie is so monstrous, so massive, so completely outsized that we can only label it as demonic.

People lie to you all the time. Every time I get a phone call now, it's somebody calling to check in on the loan that I did not ask for. You're being lied to constantly and it doesn't follow that every lie is so egregious that it must be of demonic origin. But some of them are. And for Jesus to claim to be God and not be is a lie of the highest order.

Now, the other option, to kind of complete the set: he claims to be God, he's not, but God bless him, he really doesn't know it. This would mean only one thing—that he's completely a raving lunatic. He's out of his mind. And you can see the extremity of this. If I tell you that I think I'm the greatest basketball player, you would say, "Well, I really think that you're not. I think you have an exaggerated sense of yourself," and you would be right. But the bigger my claims become, the more grandiose they become, the more ridiculous it becomes, the more that you need to actually start to wonder if I have had a break from reality.

If I tell you that I invented something that I didn't invent—I invented a better mousetrap—you'd say, "Well, maybe you did, maybe you didn't." But if I tell you that I invented gravity, then you're like, "Okay, we've really gone off." If I really think it.

So if Jesus claims to be God and it's true, we worship him as Lord. If he claims to be God and it's not true, then your options are liar and lunatic. And people love to imagine some fourth thing. It's like, "Well, he was just a little bit off, but he's still a great moral teacher." And it's not available.

He is either who he said he is, or he's completely out of his mind. He's a delusional schizophrenic. Or he is the perpetrator of the most demonic lie ever cast in human history. But that's the entire map.

Those are the only possible conclusions that are available to you if you're going to live as a rational human being. Logically, they are all possible. Logically, they're the only possibilities. And logically, only one of them can be true, but which one? What Jesus does here in the rest of this engagement is he points us in a direction to help us choose among these options.

Now, he is not the only person in human history who has claimed to be God. A handful of men, relatively large handful of men have claimed this. But what they all share in common is that they also claim the right to sleep with your wife. Jesus claimed to be God, but he claimed no benefit for himself. And it's the incongruence between the claims that Jesus made about himself and what he claimed for himself that is so absolutely compelling.

I want you to see what it is that he's doing here. Look at verse 54.

Jesus answered, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me." — John 8:54

It might seem like a strange transition, but I want you to think about this. When he talks about glorifying himself, being glorified, do you know what it is that he is referring to? What he's talking about?

Just imagine for a second, maybe none of you have ever done this, but if you've ever daydreamed about being famous, about being beloved, about being admired, about being glorified, there's probably specific details that flesh out your imagination. There might be ways that you imagine for what would you be famous? For what would you be honored? How would that honor be manifest in the world?

We see the same thing play out in the book of Esther. If you remember the story of Esther, there's a king and there's this vile enemy. What's the enemy's name? Haman. And when Haman enters the stage, the king asks him, "Hey, what should the king do for the man that he delights to honor?" And Haman assumes, do you remember what Haman assumes? "You're probably talking about me. I mean, who else would you want to honor?" And so he tells the king, "Here's what you should do for the one that you delight to honor."

For the man the king delights to honor, have them bring a royal robe that the king has worn, and a horse that the king has ridden, one with a royal crest placed on its head. And then let the robe and the horse be entrusted to one of the king's most noble princes, and let them robe the man the king delights to honor, and lead him on the horse through the city streets proclaiming before him, "This is what is done for the man the king delights to honor."

Now, I'd be a little bit surprised if your imagination includes a horse, but there is probably something that you would think: "Man, if the whole world knew how great I was, this is what it might look like." Maybe it's public praise or gifts, recognition, privileges or red carpet.

But do you know what Jesus daydreamed about? The form of glory that he sought? What he meant when he said that the Father would glorify him? John's gospel is absolutely riddled with allusions to Jesus talking about the day of his glory. Let me read some of them to you.

Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." — John 12

That is probably not what any of you imagined when you think about being glorified. Jesus is the kernel—he's talking about himself. He is the kernel of wheat that falls to the ground and dies. And as he imagined being glorified, it was always in anticipation of the glory of dying to bring life to others.

Later on in chapter 12 he says:

"But when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself." He did this to show the kind of death he was going to die. — John 12

For normal people, when we say this person should be lifted up, what we mean is lifted up so we can all shine a light on them and see their beauty and their majesty and their glory and their splendor. And what he was talking about is being lifted up on a cross to die for sinners. That was the glory that he sought.

In the next chapter, in John 13, one second after Judas left the meal to betray him, Jesus explains it like this:

When Judas was gone, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself and will glorify him at once." — John 13

What he is saying is perfect. He is gone to betray me so that I can be arrested and beaten and mocked and spat upon and crucified and glorified.

In John 17, still on the eve of his cross, Jesus prayed this:

Father, the time has come. Glorify your son, that your son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. — John 17

Once again, he was talking about his cross over and over and over again. You'll see whenever Jesus is talking about his own glory, it is never the glory of privilege and praise. It is the glory of suffering and being punished in his innocence for guilty people. And very often, you may have noticed this—very often when he does, it is not simply the glory of dying, but it is the glory of giving. His glory is always related to death. It is always related to his death giving life for others.

He does it here earlier in our own chapter. Jesus says:

If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death. — John 8

His glory is his death. And his death is our life. But the question that we've got to ask here is, can he do it? When he says, "If you just follow me, you'll never die. You'll live forever"—is it true? Can he really do it? And the only possible way he can is if he is who he said he is.

The Central Question of John's Gospel

You have to see this—it permeates. We hit this theme over and over again in John's gospel. John wrote this thing to answer the question: Who is he? There's this massive chapters-long debate, discussion, argument, discovery of the real identity of Jesus. Who is he? Is he Lord? Is he a demonic liar? Or is he a raving lunatic? That is the question.

And what he's gonna do is walk through this debate he's having with them that's recorded so that we can all read it and understand it. He finally comes to his climactic answer to this question. And I want you to hear what he says. Lean in, really hear this. Hear what it is that he is saying about himself. Because whatever he is saying about himself to this group of antagonistic Jewish quasi believers is what he is saying about himself to you. So note it carefully.

After calling them all liars, Jesus says this:

Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, "You're not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." So they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. — John 8:56-59

The Meaning Behind "I Am"

There's two layers to this. The first is obvious, the second is less obvious.

The obvious thing that he is saying right here is: I am the one that Abraham was looking to. Abraham's an incredibly important figure. Let me cherry-pick a couple of the high moments.

In Genesis 12, Abraham was told that he would be blessed and he would be a blessing. He was told that from him would come this particular seed, this particular male offspring who would change everything for the world. Jesus is saying, what Abraham anticipated in Genesis 12 has come to fulfillment in me. I am the one that he was looking forward to.

Or you could say in Genesis 14, Abraham has this crazy experience—this weird, almost Bombadil-ish kind of moment where he meets this guy Melchizedek. And Melchizedek is both king and priest. The kings and the priests are never the same person, so there's a separation of powers. But he meets this one who is both king and priest. And it's this weird thing in Genesis where you're like, "I don't know what that was about." And then later on in Psalm 110, David kind of picks on it and he says, "Do you understand who that was? Do you understand how incredibly significant that was? There is another order of priests. There is a higher order of priests. Not all the priests are gonna come from the Levites. All but one will come from the Levites. But one will be of a higher priesthood, a priesthood on the order of Melchizedek."

What Jesus is saying here in John 8 is, that was me. I am the one that Abraham anticipated in the form of the seed. I am the one that that weird moment with Melchizedek was pointing to, for I am the priest on the order of Melchizedek and I am king.

You can look at Genesis 22 where Abraham goes and he offers his son, his only son Isaac. And as they're going up the mountain, Isaac's like, "Man, we got wood, we got a knife, we got everything we need for a sacrifice except the sacrifice. Do we get the lamb?" And Abraham tells his son, "God himself will provide the lamb." I don't know if Isaac was catching on that this was not trending in a good direction for him or what. But in that moment, there is a lamb. God does provide a lamb—a ram caught by his horns in the thicket. But that ram that was caught by his horns was only a temporary substitute.

Jesus is the lamb that God will provide as a substitute for sins. He has every part of Abraham's story—everything he was longing for. God to provide a sacrifice. He's probably longing to understand what's going on with this Melchizedek guy, and will there ever be a real king and priest? When will the promise of the seed come to pass? And Jesus is saying, all of it that Abraham longed for is me.

That's the obvious part. The less obvious part is found in his bad grammar. When Jesus says, "Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am"—it should make you cock your head, right? He should have said, "Before Abraham was, I was." But the issue here is not that Jesus is a bad grammarian. It's that he's a good theologian. He is quite intentionally claiming to be the great I am.

This is not an allusion merely to Genesis 12, 14, 22. This is Exodus 4. This is the covenant name of God who has revealed himself as the great I am. And this is one of many times in John's gospel where John records Jesus saying, "I am." And what we must see in that is an undisguised claim to deity.

And to be sure, that is exactly how his contemporaries heard this. And the reason we know this beyond a question is that as soon as they heard him say this, they were triggered to stone him. You might have thought it strange—I thought it strange. And it was my idea when we read to you this morning, Leviticus 24. At the end of the reading, we're always like, "Thanks be to God." And I'm like, is anybody gonna say thanks be to God this morning? We're like, "No, get the community together and stone to death the one who blasphemes."

They heard this. They heard what Jesus said, and immediately their minds go: "He's triggered it. This is it. Enough. No more games. No more nonsense. He can get away with saying this, he can get away with saying this." They know exactly what he's doing—he is saying, "I am Yahweh."

And for them, they hear:

Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him, whether an alien or native born. When he blasphemes the name, he must be put to death. — Leviticus 24

And that is what they were doing. They heard what he said and they knew what he meant. And they had already ruled out the possibility that it could be true. So, pick up your rocks—for he is blaspheming. They had concluded, "This man is a demonic liar and he needs to die."

And as I said, their logic was good. Their discernment was poor. For Jesus is not the man who would be God. He is the God who became man. He is the God who became man and then suffered and died in ignominious death so that all who believe in him would find eternal life.

Considering the Options

And I hope that today you will consider the options, but you will only consider the only real options. That is the entire map. If you conclude that he is a liar, you will have to also admit that the greatest ethical system ever offered to the world, or ever lived out by a human being, came from a con artist. If you conclude that he is a lunatic, that will require you to also believe that the model of human flourishing that has rescued millions from poverty and illness, from miserable lives, that has established the greatest order for humanity, came from an insane man.

And if you conclude that neither one of those is possible, I hope you might remember the famous quip that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put in Sherlock Holmes' mouth, who said, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

You guys, I am convinced that the best explanation for the improbable life of Jesus is that he really is the Lord of all things. And he really did die for you. And if you conclude the same, I hope that you will bend your knee before him, worship him, and live forever.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, who are you? Who are you really? What possible explanation can make the best sense of the fact that you lived a sinless life and then were horribly murdered and died with forgiveness on your lips? What could possibly make sense that you deserved infinite goodness but were infinitely patient and suffering evil? And what explanation could possibly make sense of your matchless life and your surrender to a hideous death?

But no one who claims great things about themself does so without claiming great things for themself. For you are higher than the greatest height and more lowly than anyone who has ever lived. We ask that you would add to this enormous list of supreme graces the tragically necessary grace as well—that you would open our eyes and turn us from worthless things and toward you. It is a humiliation that we're so incapable of seeing you in your beauty and your greatness.

So we ask you, Lord, even that step too—open our eyes and stop our ears for those that are here today that have never really considered that our options are few. You are a raving lunatic. You are a demonic liar. Or you are Lord.

Or you are Lord of heaven and earth. Give us the grace, Lord, to worship you as you deserve. We love you, and we thank you for loving us. Amen.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about our church or to plan a visit, head to chsroanoke.com. We'll see you Sunday.