Sermon Transcript
The penalty for blasphemy in ancient Israel was death. That’s how you start a sermon if you’re in sermon class. They say start with something like that. They say don’t start with something like that, but that was the penalty. Leviticus 24:16.
And blasphemy could include many different types of offenses. You could curse God, as happened in Leviticus 24, and then they really killed the guy who did it. They stoned him to death. You could be a false prophet if you told someone to worship someone or something other than the true God. Penalty was death.
Deuteronomy 13:1-5. And again, those weren’t just empty threats. They really did it. Elijah kills false prophets. 1 Kings 18.
So blasphemy was arguably the most severe offense anyone could commit in ancient Israel. It was derivative off the first 3 commandments in the 10 Commandments. Commandment— if you don’t remember those— Commandment 1, you shall have no other gods before me. I know that’s idolatry too. We don’t need to get upset about parsing words, but if you want to get technical, actually worshiping some other god, that’s idolatry.
But if you say something other than God is God, that’s blasphemy, which you would probably have to do in advance of committing idolatry. Commandment 2: You shall not make yourself an image of God and worship it. So if you take something from creation and say it is Creator, blasphemy. Again, actually worshiping the created thing is idolatry, but saying that the image is God, that’s blasphemy. Commandment 3, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, which goes back to both false prophets and cursing God.
So blasphemy is related to 30% of the 10 Commandments. Don’t elevate yourself equal to God. Don’t elevate anything in creation to the status of God. God is God, and there is none beside Him. And if you claimed anything counter to that, penalty was death.
Now, I assume you disagree with the death penalty for blasphemy and that we shouldn’t do that today. And I agree with you. We should not have the death penalty for blasphemy. And for the record, the judicial laws of ancient Israel are not binding for us today as Christians. We do not live in their legal system, so their laws do not apply to us.
Side note though, in case you think you can throw out Scripture, the New Testament is binding for us. If we say we follow Jesus and the New Testament shows what it means to follow Jesus, we actually do need to abide by the New Testament if we are faithfully following Jesus. But just so you know, to maybe ease your anxieties in case you have some of them, in case you were kind of thinking about becoming a Christian, you’re like leaning in, you’re like, what’s all this about? But now you are suddenly unsure because you don’t like the idea of a religion with a death penalty. Just to clear the air, there is no death penalty in the New Testament for any type of offense.
It’s not a thing. You do not need to support any kind of death penalty in order to follow Christ. It’s not a requirement. Okay, got it? All on the same page there?
But it was absolutely a thing in ancient judicial Israel. The penalty for various forms of blasphemy was death, and it was enforced. They really killed people for it. So, if you were a resident in ancient Israel, or maybe even if you were just passing through on your way to somewhere else, I’m guessing that you would be extra careful not to say anything blasphemous. Or maybe even more so, you’d do anything that couldn’t even be mistaken for blasphemy, right?
You wouldn’t want to get falsely accused of something and end up getting executed. Maybe you’d move. You might be like, this is too intense for me. We’re killing people for the words that they have said. I gotta bail.
And that could have been a reasonable option. I remember in 1994, I was in middle school, so you can do the math. I’m turning 40 in a few months, but there was an American, Michael Fay, in Singapore. You remember this? Who committed some crimes, vandalism and theft, and part of his punishment was he was going to get caned.
Do you remember? They were going to take a long rod and hit him with it 6 times. This went all over the media, and suddenly everyone in the U.S. became an expert on caning. And as my fellow middle schoolers understood it, they would hit you with the cane so hard that it would cut deeply into your skin a number of inches. They would swing the cane with such force the cane would bend as it flew through the air on the way to your backside, and then it would slice into you and leave a permanent scar And they were going to do this to Michael Fay 6 times for his vandalism and theft.
So we, as middle schoolers, started wondering what else might be defined as vandalism in Singapore. Like, what else could you get caned for there? And our beliefs as middle schoolers were exaggerated from reality. Imagine that. But we believed, and our teachers actually told us, so shame on them, but they were probably trying to keep us in line.
They said, that if you spit gum on the sidewalk, like we did in middle school all the time, that was vandalism and you could be caned. It’s not true, but it’s what we believed in middle school. So as a middle schooler, what do you think I thought about Singapore? It’s not fair to them, but it’s what I thought. I thought, I’m never going to Singapore, ever.
I don’t want to do something by mistake or get falsely accused of something and then end up getting caned. Uh, so I’m just never gonna go to Singapore and that will solve the problem. Um, those— that’s, that’s me as a middle schooler. But fast forward to like a couple of years ago, those events from 1994 actually so etched in my consciousness that when Beth and I saw Crazy Rich Asians in the theater, which is largely set in Singapore. I immediately— it like triggered me.
I immediately wondered if someone was going to get caned in the movie. Like, is that going to be part of the plot? Just because of this one data point in my mind from 27 years ago, I now have a permanent reaction to the word Singapore. Not fair to them, but that’s the way it is, right? And that was just caning.
So, imagine if a country was executing people for the words that they spoke in blasphemy. How would we feel about that country? How careful would you be if you lived in or visited a country like that?
And here is the question for us today. If you were in that country and you consciously, knowingly decided to say that someone or something other than God was God, how sure would you need to be of your conviction in order to say that? Or how deluded would you need to be, right? If it’s under risk of execution, For you to say something other than God is God, you would have to be absolutely certain that what you were saying was true, or you could be totally off the farm detached from reality, right? It’s got to be one of those, convinced or crazy.
And you are actually going to need to choose by the end of this message what they were. When they started talking about Jesus. Because along comes Jesus and his followers after the hymn, and they started saying things about Jesus that should only be said of God. And they fully knew the potential consequences. Jesus himself accused of blasphemy, Mark 14, John 10.
And blasphemy is ultimately why the religious leaders of the day pushed for Jesus to be executed. Now, Israel wasn’t supposed to execute people on their own. They’re occupied. They’re an occupied state under Rome, and so they’re supposed to ask Rome for permission to execute people, but Israel still executed people sometimes. An angry mob would form and they would act as judge, jury, and prosecutor themselves.
It happened to Stephen in Acts chapter 7, one of Jesus’ earliest followers. He’s stoned to death by an angry mob for blasphemy. So execution for blasphemy was still a real risk in the days of the early church.
Today, as we look at our text from the book of Isaiah, we see God speak, and we see God speak very clearly about what is unique only to Him. What can be said only of God is what Laura just read. But then we are going to see in the New Testament where Jesus and His followers made those exact same claims about Jesus, the same claims that God makes of himself in the book of Isaiah. Then we’ll talk about why Jesus’ followers were so convinced about who Jesus was. And finally, we’ll talk about what it means for us today.
Okay, so first, what did Jesus and his followers claim about Jesus that God said should only be claimed of God himself from our passage in Isaiah. There are actually 4 different claims from our passage that God says can only be said about Him, but then later Jesus’ followers pick up. And then there is actually a 5th, but it relates to how we should respond today, so we will save that for the end. So, first claim, Jesus’ words determine reality. Jesus’ words determine reality.
Isaiah 45:23, God says, by Myself I have sworn, You remember when Jesus said that? God says, from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return. So when God speaks, that’s the way it is. God’s words determine what reality is. There’s no return volley for what God has said.
God’s words don’t go through a committee for approval. Right now, we disagree with God all the time. I do too, right? But we do that without any amount of authority. We don’t change anything about reality when we argue with God.
What God says, still is, and only God has the type of weight to His words that He can do that. Everyone else, every other creature can be legitimately questioned, debated, reviewed, modified, but not the Maker of heaven and earth. Imagine that you are a video game designer. You are writing the code for the way the game is, how fast the characters can run, how high they can jump, if there’s lasers in the game, if there’s cupcakes in the game. You decide, the creator.
You code it and it is. You don’t code it and it doesn’t exist. You determine the reality of the game. If you decide to change the code of the game, the characters can’t do anything about it, they just have to live with it. They have no authority over you.
What you speak is. So it is with God, and God is the only one who can speak and say, it is the way that I have spoken just because I have spoken it. Only God can do that. But then Jesus comes along. Starting in John 8:12, Jesus is talking with religious leaders.
He’s explaining who He was, and they said to Jesus, you have no proof about what you’re saying, Jesus. And Jesus said, Even if I bear witness about myself, if I’m the only one who says it, my testimony is true, for I know where I’m coming from and where I’m going. Jesus said, if I said it, that’s the way it is because I said it. I don’t need anybody to verify my story because when I say something, it is.
Again, only God can claim that. And then Jesus claimed it. Second claim about Jesus that should only be said of God himself as it relates to our passage in Isaiah: he is without beginning and without end. He’s without beginning and without end. Isaiah 44:6, God says, I am the first and the last.
Besides me there is no God. Isaiah 45:18, God says, I am the Lord and there is no other. There is no other God besides me. Both of those I am the first and the last, and I am the Lord. Those both express eternality.
The word Lord, usually in all caps in various editions, is, uh, is the Hebrew word Yahweh. It’s the name that God— I know many of you know this— it’s the name God calls himself when he’s talking to Moses in Exodus chapter 3. God says, I am who I am. He says, my name is I Am. My name is Yahweh.
Yahweh means I am. Yahweh is essentially, although not identical, to the present tense verb for existence. And that’s what God says his name is. That name itself implies without beginning and without end because he never was. He never will be.
He just is. He is I AM. He is eternal. He is eternally present. And eternality can only be true of someone outside of time.
If someone is inside of time, then they had a past. They once were.
But if you are outside of time, you just are.
If you are inside of time, you had a beginning. You would have a future. But if you were outside of time, words like beginning and future cannot apply to you because as soon as you use a word like beginning, you imply some kind of timeline since that point. You cannot speak of beginning without thinking of time. But what if you are outside of time?
Then you would have no beginning. Because time would have no bearing on you. Hope you’re tracking with me here. We’ll try this another way. Time is a created thing, right physicists?
It’s one of the things that unraveled with the Big Bang. Somehow time was inside of the Big Bang when it exploded, and when that exploded, time exploded everywhere too, right? Yes? Ask the person sitting next to you. But what if you weren’t within the Big Bang when it happened?
And I’m not saying you were outside of the Big Bang because outside would imply space, and space came out of the Big Bang too, so I can’t say you’re outside of it. I’m just saying, what if you weren’t within it?
Then you would be timeless because you aren’t in time, and we couldn’t speak of your beginning because using the term beginning necessitates some kind of measure of time. So, if you’re not in time and you have no beginning, what verb tense would you use to describe yourself?
It’s present tense. It’s I am. It’s without reference to time, I exist. And only someone outside of time can say that. Only someone outside of time can say there was no before me.
There will be no after me because both before and after are measurements of time, and those don’t apply to me because I’m not in time. I just am.
So it would be very natural for someone like that to say something like, I am the first and the last. At the beginning, I was there. At the end, I will be there. I am outside of beginning and end. And that is exactly what God says about himself in these verses.
He says, I am the first and the last.
But then along comes Jesus who says both, I am, and he says, I am the first and the last. Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am. He doesn’t say, before Abraham was, I was. He says, before Abraham was, I am. So Jesus uses the name of God in reference to himself, and he uses it in the context of indicating that he is timeless.
He speaks of his own eternality without beginning, outside of time. And the religious leaders who heard Jesus say that, as we would expect, they immediately picked up stones and tried to kill him. But Jesus gets out of there, John 8:59. And then later Jesus says he is the first and the last, Revelation 22:13. He says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.
I am the first and the last. I am the beginning and the end. There is no question Jesus claims to be the timeless God who is without beginning and without end. Third claim about Jesus that should only be said of God Himself as it relates to our passage in Isaiah, it is He is the Creator. Jesus is the Creator.
Isaiah 45:18, God says, for thus says the Lord who created the heavens and the earth, who formed the earth and made it. Right? Obviously, God creates. Any minuscule belief in God is probably a belief that He is Creator. But God is actually the only one who truly creates.
Who makes something out of nothing. The rest of us frustratingly have to abide by the law of conservation of mass, right? We only take what is and then change it into something else, but God actually makes new material and only God can do that. But Jesus’ earliest followers said that of Jesus, they said He creates, like God creates. He makes new material.
John 1:3, all things were made through him, Jesus, and without him nothing was made that has been made. Or Paul in Colossians 1:16, for by him, Jesus, all things were created. All things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, all things were created by him, they say. So Jesus is the Creator. 4th claim about Jesus that should only be said of God himself as it relates to our passage in Isaiah Savior.
Jesus is Savior. Both Jesus and his— this might be the only thing that you knew about Jesus before you walked in here today. Welcome. We’re really glad you’re here. But both Jesus and his followers understood Jesus to be Savior.
But in our Isaiah verses, what does God say about that? Isaiah 45:18, he says, there’s no God beside me, a righteous God and Savior. There is none beside me. Verse 22, turn to me and be saved, God says, for I am God and there is no other. God says God is the Savior.
But then along comes Jesus and those who followed him. You can look at Peter in Acts 4:12. Peter says, speaking of Jesus, he says, salvation’s found in no one else, for there’s no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So God said in Isaiah, you look to me for salvation, there’s salvation in no one else. And then Peter comes along and says, you look to Christ for salvation, and there’s salvation in no one else.
And of course, Jesus Himself says that He has come to save the world. The Father sent Him to the world not to condemn the world but to save it through Him. If people would believe in Jesus, they would not be condemned. That is part of what salvation means, although not all of it. So, freedom from condemnation, freedom from guilt of our sins, salvation comes through Christ.
Christ brings salvation. It is very clear. Jesus says He is and who His disciples believed Him to be. They believed Jesus to be God incarnate, Immanuel, God with them. And they knew by saying those words they were at risk to be executed for blasphemy.
They all grew up good little Jewish boys. They all knew the Lord God is one, God alone, no one beside Him.
And then they started saying, someone beside Him, the Lord God and the Lord Jesus Christ. They put Jesus equal with God. They say He is God. And at the same time, just so you know I’m not a heretic, they keep a distinction between Jesus and God the Father. They say God the Father is fully, truly God, and then they say Jesus is fully, truly God.
Both are fully, truly God, and yet they are distinct from one another. They very early on articulate principles which would eventually be labeled as the doctrine of the Trinity. But you know what? Isaiah actually articulated those same principles in our passage right here. Isaiah says, 44:6, thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and His Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, Isaiah says the Lord, so Yahweh, is the King of Israel, but he also says Yahweh, King of Israel, has a Redeemer, but that Redeemer is also Yahweh.
Isaiah says the Redeemer is a distinct person who is yet also fully Yahweh. So, Isaiah is a Trinitarian. But nobody was really thinking about that in 35 AD-ish when the disciples realized who and what they were in the presence of when they were in the presence of Jesus. The religious community of the first century certainly believed any reference to Jesus as God was blasphemy of the first degree and punishable by death. And yet, the disciples were so sure that is who Jesus was, they were willing to risk their lives to say it.
So, what convinced them?
Why were they so certain that Jesus was God? And why would they risk saying that? Why not only say Jesus is a really good guy? Jesus is a good teacher. Jesus has some good ideas.
Why not just leave it at that? Because people probably wouldn’t have had too much of a problem with that. But they went further. They, they risk it. They said Jesus is God.
They thought it was worth it to tell the whole truth. And they weren’t initially on board, remember? They weren’t always so bold. Um, so something changed along the way. Jesus gets arrested, for example, and everybody bails, everybody hides.
After Jesus is crucified, they are afraid, they keep to themselves, they keep quiet, right? But then something happened to completely flip their mind because they started going out and telling the whole world, Jesus is God, Jesus is Creator, Jesus is Savior, Jesus died for our sins. So, what happened? Why were they so convinced?
It was the resurrection.
They saw the resurrection. They saw Jesus brutally executed. They knew He was dead. They were terrified. They were scared.
They were hiding. And Jesus comes back to life like He said He would. He appeared to them many times, and He appeared to many people, and they were like, okay, All right, yep, we’re in. He is God, he is Savior, we believe it now, we’re on board. But more astonishingly, more surprisingly than Jesus’ closest followers buying in, which is surprising enough, but more surprising than that is that thousands and thousands of Jewish people basically overnight switched from believing that the claims of the divinity of Christ were blasphemous and should be punished by death And they switched to saying those same claims themselves.
Like, one day they were saying, we should stone the guys who claim Jesus is God, and then basically the next day they were saying, Jesus is God, themselves. It was like basically overnight thousands and thousands of people completely dropped one of their most core ideologies. So, what happened? How do you make that big a switch that quickly? And not just a few people, right?
Thousands and thousands of people made that switch. So how does that happen? It’s the resurrection. They saw Jesus die, they knew he was dead, and then they saw him alive again. He appeared to so many of them.
He said, touch me, I’m real, I’m here. This is real. And they were like, all right, yep, okay. Just like the disciples, they’re like, we believe and we will go tell everyone, and I don’t care that they will accuse me of blasphemy. I don’t care if they’ll execute me because this is that monumental.
One last thing, these early Christians who bought in, They came to the very, very natural conclusion: if Jesus is God, if Jesus came to earth, died for our sins, and rose to life again, if all of that is legit, there is, there’s only one reasonable response, which is the same only reasonable response for us today. What does this mean for us today? It’s give Jesus our full allegiance. We give him our full allegiance. They actually took the last line of our Isaiah text here, Isaiah 45:23, where God says, to me every knee shall bow, every tongue swear allegiance.
Does that sound familiar? It should, right? Because the early Christians took that verse where God said every knee will bow to me, and they ascribed it to Jesus, and they made it part of an early hymn which Paul includes in his letter to the Philippians. It’s a picture of super early Christian theology, and it reads, at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Again, there was no question in their mind who Jesus was.
And given who He was, there was no question what the required response was from them.
It is not debatable in history that thousands and thousands of Jewish people suddenly switched from believing a man could never be God to believing that Jesus was God. That happened, not debatable. The only question for you is to determine whether they were insane, all of them, or whether they were right.
And if they were right, and I believe they were, then there’s only one response.
It’s give Him your full allegiance. Let’s pray.
Jesus, thank you for coming to the earth that you created to redeem us. Thank you that you didn’t stand far off and leave us abandoned, but thank you that you came to save. Lord, thank you for carrying all of our burdens Thank You for raising to life again, and thank You for giving us such impeccable records that we know exactly what people of Your day were thinking about who You were. May we join them in the confession that at Your name our knees will bow and our tongues will confess that You are Lord. It is in Your name that we pray.
Amen.
