How can we prove to our unsaved friends that Bible Christianity true – that it is the only true faith? How can we prove to an unbeliever that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and God the Son? How can we convince someone that he is in desperate need of a Saviour? How can we teach people that “there is (only) one God, and (only) one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (the Saviour)”? Perhaps the best way to answer is to investigate how it was that we became convinced of such things.
In the mean time, those questions make up some of the pertinent points of the subject of “Christian Apologetics.” I have two or three large books dealing with this area of theology. “Apologetics.” has nothing to do with making an apology, but rather it is about offering an explanation, or more exactly, a defense of what someone believes. And as I say, the books that I have on the subject are relatively large. That is not because the authors have such a difficult time proving their point, but rather because there is so much evidence that it takes many chapters to cover everything.
Since I am reading yet another book on “Apologetics,” I am in that frame of mind, and at least two things came to me as I looked at verses 60 and 61. First, fulfilled Biblical prophecy is one of the major intellectual proofs of Christianity. I recently read that of the Bible’s 31,124 verses, 8,352 contain predictive material – 27% of the Bible. And about half of those prophecies have already been fulfilled. That fact gives us a firm basis to expect the other prophecies to come true in their proper time. And furthermore, based on this evidence, we have every right to believe that all the rest of the Bible is 100% true as well.
A second point in “Christian Apologetics.” is that the Bible is a miraculous tapestry of unity – in diversity. While the Bible was written by forty vastly different men over thousands of years in time – from beginning to end it is a single book with a single theme – the history of God’s salvation of man. To you who are believers this unity is not surprising because every word was given by inspiration of God – every word was “God-breathed.” Despite the variety of penmen, it is obvious that there is a single author – a divine Author. For example, if studied as more than an history of Israel, the Old Testament doesn’t make sense without the New Testament. Even this Book of Matthew is incomplete without the Gospel of John. Those two books are very different in style, vocabulary and purpose, but they fit together like cog-wheels in a great machine.
The false witnesses.
“Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false witnesses, And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.” Coupled with the cog-wheels of Matthew and John there are Mark and Luke. Then beyond them there are all the rest of the sixty-six books of the Bible. They don’t all directly touch Matthew, but they all link to one another at different points. It is Mark who tells us that the problem with all the earlier false witnesses was the fact that their lies contradicted one another and therefore became useless. “For many bare false witness against him, but their witness agreed not together.” So they couldn’t be used and brought before Pilate.
Eventually, along came two men, perhaps separately but conspiratorially, saying that Jesus spoke against the Temple. Why do both Matthew and Mark call these two men “false witnesses”? “False witness” is one Greek word literally meaning “anti-witness.” They were false witnesses because they were either liars or they had corrupted memories. I will come back to the event to which they referred, but the fact is Jesus never said, “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.” He didn’t say “temple of God,” and He didn’t say, “I am able to destroy it.” Quoting Christ Jesus directly, He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Thursday, Judy and I were chatting, and my wife told me that sometimes as she reads she thinks that the author says “such and such.” But then if she goes back to read the sentence again she finds that she had read her own word into what the author actually wrote. I know for a fact that I do the same thing – I will read my thoughts into what the other man wrote. I’ll leave it up to you to decide, but that may have been what these men did when listening to the Lord. Or then again, they may have been out-and-out wicked men who conspired to lie in the hopes putting and end to Jesus Christ. Perhaps there was a reward involved; perhaps it was simple wickedness.
Returning to those arguments of Christian Apologetics, I remind you of the unity within the pages of the Bible. Ancient prophecy fulfilled in Jesus’ day, binds Isaiah to Matthew. Furthermore other Old Testament and New Testament prophecies bind Psalms and Revelation to our day. Obviously some Bible prophecy comes from the leather-girdled and camel-hair-cloaked prophets. But there is another kind of prophecy which is peculiar to the incarnate Son of God. There are several – in fact many – Old Testament people and events which predict or illustrate different aspects of the ministry of the Lord Jesus. They aren’t the “thus saith the Lord” type of prophecy, but they are prophecy through “type” – “pictures.”
For example, just about every aspect of the Jewish Passover, from the day, to the lamb, to the sprinkling of the blood, all point to the sacrifice of Christ – the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world. The Passover is what the theologian calls “a type” – an prophetic illustration of Christ – one of dozens. As the Jews were traversing the desert to get to the Promised Land, the Pillar of Cloud and Fire is a type of Christ. The Tabernacle of Witness was a picture, or prophecy, of Christ, and just about every piece of furniture in the Tabernacle was another. Many Old Testament people were types of Christ, beginning with King David. His birthplace pointed to Jesus; His pedigree and family pointed to our Lord. The history of his life, can be broken apart and used to teach the life of Christ. There may be a hundred different things in David which are “types” of Christ Jesus. Further back, Adam is a type of Christ, perhaps in a negative sort of way, but positively as well – Christ is declared in the New Testament to be “the Second Adam.”
Out of many other people to whom we could point, I’ll mention just one – Joseph, the son of Jacob. Joseph is a prophecy of Christ – an imperfect picture – but a picture nevertheless. Joseph was especially loved by his father and was hated by his brethren – shall we call them “Israel?” It was prophesied that he would rule over his brothers, but they denied it, although the couldn’t stop it. They sold Joseph for silver, just as we have seen Judas do. Eventually Israel’s despised and rejected son, became their King and their Saviour. And one other thing – Joseph, too, was condemned through the lies of a false witness. That Jesus Christ was condemned based on the lies of these men fulfilled prophecy and ties together the books of Matthew, Mark and John to the Book of Genesis.
The event which the false witnesses twisted – John 2:12-22.
I know that we have been studying Matthew for a very long time, and this might be a little challenging, but as you review in your mind looking for the event in Matthew to which these men referred, I’ll help you out by saying that you will not find it. I’ve not preached on this subject during this series, because it is not even suggested in Matthew before now. In other words, Matthew 26:60-61 makes little sense without the help of the Book of John. John 2 describes an event which took place during the Passover at least two, possibly three years earlier. That was not Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem for this feast, but it appears to be the first described for us since Jesus was just a little boy.
Let me interject that some people foolishly think Jesus developed His Messianic mentality throughout the three years of His ministry. That is a Satanically inspired lie. Christ was every bit the same person at the beginning of His ministry that He was at the end. In the day He was baptized and the days that He spent in the wilderness before His first big battle with Satan, He was every bit the God-man.
And on the first Passover after His public ministry began, He walked into the Temple in Jerusalem and was appalled by the corruption which He saw there. He “found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changes of money sitting. And when he had made a scourage of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple…. And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”
Don’t be confused by the fact that on Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem, just a few days prior to our scripture in Matthew 26, Christ once again cleansed the temple – the details differ between the two events. For example, Jesus’ words were different. On the last occasion he said, “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” The words may be similar, but earlier He said nothing about the “den of thieves.” And He handled the dove sellers differently as well. Then following that first cleansing, a different conversation began. The Jews demanded to know by whose authority Christ did these things. “Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?” In Matthew 21, things had progressed far beyond the question of signs and authority. The Lord Jesus just continued to bless the people who came to Him in need and in faith. “And the blind and the lame came to him in the (then cleansed) temple, and he healed them (all.)”
John 2 says, “Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” For those who know their Bibles, it is obvious that Jesus answered their question in a specific and spectacular way. But admittedly, those unbelievers – His enemies – interpreted the Lord’s words in the context of the moment and with the prejudice of their own minds. All this took place in Herod’s temple, and they assumed Jesus was speaking of THAT temple. “Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.”
Before we go on, I must point out just a couple of things – First, Jesus did not say, as He was accused, that HE would destroy the temple. In fact, what He implied was that HIS ENEMIES would do the destroying – “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Furthermore, I guarantee that as Jesus spoke those words, He was not gesturing towards the magnificent building and courts in which they were standing. Christ Jesus was not a deceptive man – He was not a deceiver, or a liar, and in His mouth was no “guile.” The word refers to “subtlety,” “craftiness,” “deceit.” I have no scriptural proof, but I am sure that when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” He dramatically touched His chest.
What was Jesus saying? what was the true witness?
“Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.”
How can we know that Christianity is true and that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God? The intellectual evidences are abundant – some of them are weighty, while some of them are slight. But the greatest of them all is to be found – or not to be found – in the empty tomb. The Jews demanded by what authority Christ drove the religious merchants from the House of God. Jesus answered – by conquering death, and taking His leave of that borrowed tomb. Notice that John didn’t limit his reference to the words which Jesus said. He added their implication and application. “When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.” Yes, Jesus’ resurrection applied to His clearing out the Temple, but it applied to everything else that Christ as well.
What sort of things had the Lord Jesus said? This takes us back to where I began a few minutes ago. Jesus said for example, “I and my Father are one,” which the Jews knew to mean that Christ claimed deity. There can be no doubt that Jesus Christ claimed divine authority to cleanse the temple and for everything else He did. What does Christ’s resurrection authenticate? Everything. One of the former rulers of Israel, a man named Nicodemus, had been blessed sufficiently by God to have already learned to trust and lean on Christ. I wonder if there were acquaintances, friends, family and co-workers, to whom Nicodemus later returned saying, “We destroyed the Temple of God, and He raised it up again in exactly three days, as He said.” What else had Jesus said to Nicodemus and to you and me? “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Why must we be born again? It’s because we are spiritually dead. We cannot see the kingdom of God until we are given life from above. “Ye must be born again.”
Everything that Christ ever taught has been proven alive through His resurrection. The resurrection is something to which we will return in a few weeks, so I won’t dig into it more deeply this morning. But do want to point out in the context of Jesus’ trial before the High Priests that there was a malicious twisting of Jesus’ words and the truth. But if those words are taken directly and honestly, we find a witness for all the rest of the Word of God. The Bible says that you, me and all our neighbors are in need of this Christ – this Saviour. We are sinners, condemned to eternal judgment. But here in Matthew 26, Christ is one step nearer to the Cross where He will give His life a ransom for many. His resurrection reiterates the gospel – His resurrection is foundational to the gospel. “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” It is absolutely imperative that we come to this resurrected Christ with humility, repentance, faith and love. We must repent before God and put our trust in Christ Jesus the Saviour.
How do you come to Christ – like these priests and false witnesses, or as Nicodemus did?