Genesis
These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name,” — John 20: 31.
My subject to-night is Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. You will find the text in John 20:31, ‘‘These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.”
Our text declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that every one who really believes that fact obtains eternal life by so believing. Listen to the text again: “These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.”
I. How Do We Know That Jesus is the Christ, THE Son of God?
How do we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?
I. First of all, we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, by a careful and candid study of the Gospel of John. John says, “These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name,” In other words, John, in his Gospel, presents the evidence that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. We have not time to take up that evidence in detail to-night, nor do we need to. Any of you may take it up for yourselves, and if you will read the evidence as John presents it candidly, i. e,, read it with a sincere desire to know the truth and with an earnest determination to obey the truth when discovered, you will know to a certainty, before you get through the Gospel, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. I challenge any man to study the Gospel of John with a candid mind, i. e., with a sincere desire to know the truth and willingness to obey it when it is found, and to come to any other conclusion than that beyond a peradventure Jesus is the very Christ of God, and the very Son of God. I have seen men try it again and again, many that were sceptics or even thoroughgoing agnostics, when they began, and in every case where any man has pursued that study with a mind eager to know the truth and a willingness to obey the truth at any cost, that man has become a believer that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, by the time he completed the Gospel. The result has been the same in every instance. Every one of them has come to see that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing in Him as such, has obtained eternal life. I suppose I could stand here by the hour and tell you of specific instances that have come under my own personal observation. Let me give you only one.
When I was holding meetings in Wellington, New Zealand, I spoke at the noon hour in one of the theaters to business and professional men, At the
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close of one of these meetings, a prominent travelling man came to me — he was said to be the most prominent travelling man in New Zealand. He said to me, Charlie George (that is one of the proprietors of the leading department store in the city) thinks I ought to have a talk wdth you, but you can’t help me.” I said, ‘’ What is the trouble? “He replied, ‘’I am an agnostic and you can’t help me.”
Well,” I said, I have helped a good many agnostics and perhaps I can help you.” Then I continued: What do you believe anyhow? “He said, I don’t believe anything.” I said, Do you not believe that there is an absolute difference between right and wrong?” Oh, yes,” he said, ‘’I do believe that.” ‘‘ Well,” I said, “you do believe something after all. That is all that I believed to begin with and that is enough for any one to believe to begin with.” Then I said to him, If you have some of anything and want more, what do you do? “Why,” he said, I use what I have.” I said. That is right.” I said, ‘’If you have some muscle, and want more muscle, what do you do? “He said,” I use the muscle I have.” “If you have some memory and want a better memory, what do you do?” “I use the memory I have.” “If you have some money and want more money, what do you do? ““I use the money I have.” “All right,” I said, “you have some faith. You believe there is an absolute difference between right and wrong. You want more. Will you use what you have? You say you believe that there is an absolute difference between right and wrong. Will you use that faith? Will you take your stand upon the right to follow if wherever it carries you, at any cost?” With a little hesitation, he said, ‘‘ Yes, I will do that, but you can’t help me, you are just wasting your time.” Now,” I said, “do you know that there is no God?” ‘‘ No,” he said, I don’t know there is no God. I don’t know anything about it.” Well,” I said, “I know that ther is a God but that won’t do you any good. Do you know that God does not answer prayer?” ‘‘No,” he said, “I don’t know that God doesn’t answer prayer. I don’t believe that He does but I don’t know that He doesn’t.” “Well,” I said, “I know that He does, but that won’t do you any good, but,” I said, “you know the method of modern science. The method of modern science is this — that whenever you find a possible clue to knowledge you follow that clue out to find out what there may be in it. You don’t have to know that there is anything in it. You simply follow it out to find out what there may be in it.”” Yes,” he said, “that is right.” “Well, now,” I said, “are you willing to apply this method of modern science to religious investigation? You admit that there may be a God and it may be He answers prayer. Here then is a possible clue to knowledge. Will you follow it out to find out what there may be in it? Will you pray this prayer — ‘Oh, God, if there be any God, show me if Jesus Christ is Thy Son or not, and if Thou showest me that He is, I promise to accept Him as my Saviour and confess Him as such before the world.’”” Yes,” he said in a half laughing way,
“I’ll do that too, but it won’t do any good; you can’t help me, you are just wasting your time.’^ “Well,” I replied,” I have helped a good many and
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perhaps I can help you. Now,” I said, just one thing more. John says in John 20:31, ‘These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.’ Now,” I said, “John presents you in his Gospel the evidence that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Will you take the evidence and read it? I don’t ask you to believe it, I don’t want you even to try to believe it, I simply want you to be willing to be convinced. Will you take the Gospel and read it with an open mind?” “Oh,” he said,
“I have read it.” “Yes,” I said, “but I want you to read it a new way. Begin at the first chapter and the first verse and read on verse after verse until you finish the Gospel. Don’t read too many verses at any one time. Pay careful attention to what you read and each time before you read, offer this prayer — ‘ Oh, God, if there be any God, show me what of truth there is in these verses I am about to read and what Thou showest me to be true, I promise to take my stand upon.’” Rather languidly and wearily he said, “Yes, I will do that, too, but it won’t do any good.” Then I went over what he had agreed to do and got him to promise me he would write me the result. Several weeks passed. I left Wellington and had gone to Christ Church and from Christ Church to Dunedin. After I had been a few days in Dunedin, a lady called at the house where I was stopping and asked to see me. When I entered the reception-room, she arose and walked toward me with a letter in her hand, which she held out to me. She said, “I have a letter from my husband and it is the queerest letter I ever received. I don’t understand it but he said I could show it to you/” She handed me the letter and I took it and read it. It was from this man. It began:
My dear Wife:
I think I have been converted. I am not sure yet and I don’t wish you to tell any one until I am sure, but you can show this letter to your pastor and to Dr. Torrey; for it was he who spoke to me in Wellington.”
That man came out clear cut as a Christian, as a believer in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and in the Bible as the Word of God, and when we got to England, his mother, who was a very prominent woman in public life in England, wrote to Mr. Alexander to thank us for what we had done for her son in New Zealand. Any one of you can try it for yourself. The result always has been the same and always will be the same. There has never been an exception.
2. In the second place, we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, because that is what Jesus Himself claimed to he, and God set the stamp of His endorsement on Jesus Chrisfs claim by raising Him from the dead. That Jesus claimed to be the Christ, the Son of God, the Son of God in an entirely unique sense, in a sense that no other man who ever walked this earth was the Son of God, admits of no honest question. In Mark 12:6 our Lord Jesus draws a contrast between Himself and all the prophets of the old dispensation, even the greatest, and says that while they were servants and merely servants, He was the Son, the one and only
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Son of God. (See R. V.) In John 10:30 Jesus went so far as to say, ‘’ I and the Father are one.’” In John 14:9, He even dared to say, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” In John 5: 23, He goes so far as to say, ‘‘ All men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father/* Such was Jesus’ oft-repeated claim. This was a stupendous claim to make. If the claim was not true, it was an utterly and shamefully blasphemous claim. The Jews put Jesus Christ to death on a charge of blasphemy for making this claim. And if this claim of Jesus was not true, if Jesus was not the Christ, the Son of God, the Son of God in a sense that no other is the Son of God, then the Jews did right, according to their own God-given law, in putting Him to death on the charge of blasphemy, only they should have put Him to death by stoning and not by crucifixion. You cannot deny the Deity of Jesus without thereby justifying the Jews in putting Him to death. If you are a Unitarian, and are also logical, you must justify the putting to death of Jesus Christ. But before the Jewish authorities put Him to death, Jesus said to them that God would set the stamp of His endorsement upon His claim for which they were putting Him to death, by raising Him from the dead. Put Him to death they did, lay Him in Joseph’s sepulchre they did; roll the stone to the door of the sepulchre they did; seal the stone with the Roman seal, which to break was death, they did; but when the appointed hour came, just as Jesus had foretold, the quickening breath of God swept through that sleeping clay and God raised Him triumphant over death and grave, and so proclaimed to all coming generations, and to us, more clearly than if He should proclaim it from the open heavens above Los Angeles to-night, “This man is what He claimed to be; He is the Christ, He is the Son of God, He is very God of very God, all men should honour Him even as they honour Me, the Father.” I have proved time and time again from this platform that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the best proven fact of history; and the absolutely certain resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ proves to a demonstration that He is the Christ, the Son of God, VERY God of very God.
3. In the third place, we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, by His influence upon all subsequent history. That Jesus Christ claimed to be the Christ, the Son of God, in an entirely unique sense admits, as we have already seen, of no honest question; but that Jesus claimed to be the Christ, the Son of God, a Divine person to be honoured and worshipped, even as God the Father is honoured and worshipped, does not prove that He really was so. But it does prove that He either was the Son of God in an entirely unique sense, as He claimed to be, or else that He was the most daring and blasphemous and outrageous impostor that ever walked this earth, or else that He was one of the most hopeless lunatics that ever disgraced humanity by his mental imbecility. The modern Unitarian position, the position also of some preachers who do not call themselves Unitarians but orthodox and evangelical, that Jesus was not a Divine person, very God of very God, that He was the Son of God only in the sense that we are all sons of God, but that He was a good man,
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perhaps the best man who ever lived on this earth, is the very acme of irrationality and intellectual absurdity. Whatever Jesus was, He was not a good man; that is to say, if He were not God as He claimed to be. He was not good, but one of the most outrageous impostors or one of the most hopeless lunatics that ever walked this earth. Now let me put to each one of you a question. Was the influence of Jesus of Nazareth upon subsequent history the influence of cin impostor? Only one whose own heart is cankered by imposture and fraud would think for one moment of asserting it. Let me ask you a second question. Was the influence of Jesus of Nazareth upon subsequent history the influence of a lunatic? Only a lunatic would venture to assert it. Here then we are — not a lunatic, not an impostor, then beyond question, the Christ, the Son of God, God manifest in the flesh.
4. In the fourth place, we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, by the Divine power that He displays to-day. Jesus displayed Divine power when He was here on earth. He displayed Divine power when He stilled the tempest and calmed the waves by His word, saying, Peace, be still, and there was a great calm. He displayed Divine power when He called Lazarus, who had been four days dead, from the grave and Lazarus came forth. He displayed Divine power when He turned water into wine. He displayed Divine power when He fed five thousand men, besides women and children, with five small loaves and two small fishes and had more left over when He was through than when He began, which was a creative act. Over and over again He displayed Divine power when He was here on earth. But we do not need to go way back into the history of His life here upon earth, nearly 1,900 years ago, to find Him displaying Divine power. He displays Divine power to-day. He raises the dead to-day. He raises men and women who are dead in trespasses and sins into spiritual life and power and victory. He does something far more wonderful than turning water into wine. He turns outrageous sinners into glorious saints.
He turned a Jerry McAuley, a miserable, contemptible, low-down river thief, an inmate of Sing Sing States Prison, into Jerry McAuley, the apostle of life to the outcasts of New York; so honoured when he came to die in the very city where he had been a water thief, that the best people of New York gathered by the thousands at his funeral to do honour to his blessed memory. He turned Sam Hadley, a fugitive from justice, with 138 counts for forgery out against him, and a hopeless barrel house bum, into Sam Hadley, one of the most lovable men and self-sacrificing lovers of his fellow men I ever knew, and whom I once met in Washington as the honoured guest in the home of the Postmaster General of the United States of America. He turned William S. Jacoby, a drunkard at nine, a tough at fifteen, a criminal at nineteen, and a companion of thugs, a desperado in Omaha, twice dishonourably discharged from the regular army, invited to join the Jesse James Gang, unanimously chosen chief of a gang of desperados in the Leavenworth Federal Prison, riding through the streets of Omaha firing his revolver out of the window of a
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cab at everything he passed, into the Rev. William S. Jacoby, the most loved man in Chicago, the dearest and truest friend I ever had, and the most truly Christlike man I ever knew. Yes, and He changed me. I will not tell you from what; but at least from hopeless bondage to glorious liberty, and from awful death to exultant life. Yes, Jesus is surely the Christ, the Son of God, very God of very God. There is no possibility of honest and intelligent doubt of that
II. The Result of Believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
Now let us look at the result of believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. If one believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, what will be the result? Listen to my text again — ‘‘ These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.’’
I. The result will be that the one who believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, will obtain eternal life. All that any one needs to do to obtain eternal life, that greatest of all gifts, a gift in comparison with which all the wealth, and splendour and honour and glory and pleasure of this world are as nothing, the gift of eternal life, all that any one has to do to obtain this wondrous gift is to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Any one in this audience may have eternal life in the twinkling of an eye by just believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Listen again to our text, “These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name,” Listen to another verse: John 3: 16, ‘‘ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” You may be a drunkard, you may be a thief, you may be an embezzler, you may be a forger, you may be a man or woman who is disgraced by divorce and you yourself the guilty party, you may be an outrageous blasphemer; you may have a polluted imagination and a rotten heart; you may be the victim of the lowest and vilest passions that ever cursed a man or woman; you may be anybody or anything; but BELIEVE THAT JeSUS IS THE CHRIST, THE SON OF
God, and eternal life is instantly yours. Oh, how often I have seen men and women of all kinds and conditions and nationalities, get eternal life in an instant by simply believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
2. But, of course, it must be real faith. The faith that John here speaks of is not a mere intellectual opinion; John never uses ‘“faith” in that sense. No man ever obtained eternal life by merely having an orthodox opinion about Jesus. When Jesus Himself was here on earth, the demons held a perfectly orthodox opinion about Him. They cried out (even before men saw it and confessed it), I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God” The Devil himself holds a perfectly orthodox opinion about Christ. He knows, and only too well for his own comfort, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He does not teach it, but he knows it. He gets men to teach that Jesus is not the Christy the Son of God, very God of very God, lecause he is a liar, and the father of it,” He gets men to teach that Jesus is a good man, that He is a great example, but that He is not Divine, that He does not save by the shedding of His blood but by His example and His teaching; for the Devil is, as I say, a liar, and the father of it; but all the time the Devil knows that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He knows that some day he will himself be forced to bow his knee to Jesus and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father,” Yes, the Devil believes in that sense that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, but that belief does not save him from going to the everlasting fire prepared for him and his angels. No, the faith that saves is real faith, a faith with the heart. As Paul puts it in Romans 10:9, ^^9 If thon shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
What is heart faith, real faith, saving faith, eternallife-giving faith? Heart faith, real faith, saving faith, eternal-life-giving faith is the faith that not only enlightens the mind but governs the will and the feelings and the conduct. It is the faith that leads to action in accordance with the truth believed. To believe with the heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, will lead you to act in accordance with the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. The word Christ is really a Greek word and means ‘‘Anointed One,” It means just the same as the
Hebrew word Messiah.” It means Anointed King.” To believe with the heart that Jesus is the Christ will lead you to enthrone Jesus as King in your heart and to surrender the whole control and conduct of your life to Him. And to believe with the heart that Jesus is the Son of God, will lead you to surrender every thought to H:s control: so that if the whole world of German ‘‘ scholarship” and English scholarship” and Scotch ‘’ scholarship” and American scholarship” should say one thing and the Lord Jesus should say another, you would believe Jesus against the whole crowd. If the great and widely-respected Dean Shaler Matthews and the scholarly Professor Case and a whole bevy of self-styled scholars,” some of whom have more degrees after their names than they have real sound sense in their heads and humility in their hearts, should say one thing, and they do, and Jesus Christ should say another thing, and they admit that He does, I would believe the glorious Son of God against the whole pretentious but pitiable pack. And if you believe with your heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you will accept Him as your divine Saviour, who purchased forgiveness for you by dying in your place on the cross, for that is what He said He did (Matt. 20:28), and your risen Saviour who, by His resurrection power, can set you free from the power of sin to-day, for that is what He Himself offers to do (John 8:34-36). Once more, if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you will bow down before Him and honour Him, even as you honour God the Father. You will worship Him as the Divine person He claims to be
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and that you know Him to be. You will do exactly what Thomas did when at last after many stubborn doubts he was brought by seeing the Risen Christ to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, you will fall down upon your knees and look up into His blessed, glorious. Divine face and cry to Him, “My Lord and my God,” and you will obtain eternal life the moment you do. Will you do it?