WHO
DO YOU SAY I AM?
Luke
9:18-22
(see
also Matthew 16:13-20)
Luke
9:18 And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him:
and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?
Susan: It was
imperative to Jesus that He have intimate time with the Father, seeking His
face and receiving instruction in the execution of the Father’s plan.
Susie: It is
difficult for our finite minds to justify the fact that Jesus and the Father
are One God, yet Jesus as the incarnate Son placed Himself in a subservient
position to the Father. He modeled complete obedience to the will of God, an
example we are to follow.
Philippians
2:5-8 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in
the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself
of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Susan: Sometimes
Jesus was completely alone with the Father, but others, as in this passage, He
included His disciples in His prayer time to exemplify the importance of
communing with the Father. The disciples comprised Jesus’s life group, as we
would call it—a close group of friends praying together.
Susie: As
Jesus taught the crowds of people and performed miracles, His disciples would
be His ears among the crowds.
Susan: Therefore,
Jesus asked the disciples, “What is the word on the street about me?”
Luke
9:19 They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others
say, that one of the old prophets is risen again.
Susie: The
disciples answered that some people thought Jesus was John the Baptist, others
the prophet Elijah (Elias) and still others one of the other ancient prophets.
According to Matthew’s Gospel, they also specifically named Jeremiah.
Matthew
16:14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and
others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
Susan: The
majority of those who followed Jesus’s ministry did not yet realize that He was
the promised Messiah, the Son of the living God. They still thought of Him as
only a great prophet.
Luke
9:20 He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The
Christ of God.
Susie: We
must know that Jesus already was aware of the answers to these questions
because even though He was fully man, He was still completely all-knowing God.
However, for the benefit of the disciples, He asked them who He was in their
opinion.
Susan: Peter,
the most boisterous and vocal of the Twelve, spoke up and said, “You are the
Christ (The Anointed One), the Son of the Living God.”
Matthew
16:16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God.
Susie: Matthew
had Peter specifically calling Jesus the Son of the LIVING God. People believed
in various other gods, but all of them were immobile, impotent idols. He
identified Jesus as the Son of the True God that the Jewish people worshipped.
Jeremiah
10:3-5 (NIV) For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree
out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it
with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not
totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they
must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm
nor can they do any good.”
Jeremiah
10:11-13 (NIV) “Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and
the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’” But God
made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched
out the heavens by his understanding. When he thunders, the waters in the
heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends
lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
1
Chronicles 16:26 (NIV) For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord
made the heavens.
Luke
9:21-22 And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that
thing; Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the
elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third
day.
Susie: Although
the Father had revealed to Peter and the other apostles that He was indeed the
Messiah (Matthew 16:16), Jesus told them not to spread that specific news yet.
The time had not yet come for His deity to be fully revealed to the masses.
Susan: Some
people in the massive crowds would have wanted to divert Jesus from the cross,
crown Him as King, and have Him lead a coup against the Romans. That time was
not yet. During His incarnation, Jesus was to be the Suffering Servant
prophesied in Isaiah 53. The time of His earthly rule is yet to come.
Susie: From
this point on in His earthly ministry, Jesus began making His way to Jerusalem
to face the cross and conquer death and the grave; and He began preparing the
disciples by warning them in advance of all that must happen to Him. However,
as we will see in the later chapters of Luke’s gospel they were still caught
off guard when Jesus actually died.
Susan: Jesus
pursued His purpose with relentless abandon. The victory He won over sin and
death was not for Himself alone but for all who believe and entrust their lives
to Him, the forever family He sacrificed Himself to redeem as had been promised
Him by His Heavenly Father.
Ponder
this and Apply it: Who do you say that Jesus is? A great moral
man? A prophet sent by God? Or the Son of God? C.S. Lewis pondered those
questions in his book Mere Christianity:
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 sort of things 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. ... Now it
seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and
consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to
accept the view that He was and is God.
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