#1 JESUS THOUGHT HE WAS PERFECT.
How many of you have ever met someone who thinks they're perfect? You know the type: "I know everything. I know-it-all. You can't tell me anything..." Well, Jesus thought He was perfect. In fact some of the claims that He makes about Himself caused me to scratch my head. Take the so-called Lord's Prayer. Now what most people call the "Lord's Prayer" is actually the Disciples' Prayer. Remember, when Jesus spoke to His disciples, He said, "When YOU pray..." Jesus didn't pray that prayer. He couldn't, because He didn't need forgiveness. In fact, in one of the Gospels, He simply says, "I am the Christ." Now we're not talking about "I am Jesus," but "I am the Christ," which by interpretation would be the anointed one of God. It's a potent proclamation.

Jesus made some pretty staggering claims about Himself. Understand that only God can claim perfection. When we matriculate through the Old Testament, we read about the perfect sacrifice, we read about everything that must be in accordance with the Scriptures that are being fulfilled with the Christ, the Savior. And it requires Him to be perfect. Now I'm not telling you at this point that I think Jesus is perfect. I'm only going to tell you what He said. And He said He was perfect.

However, read your Bible and you'll see it doesn't show off a bunch perfect people. At the beginning, Abraham says, "I am not worthy of the least of thy mercies." You come to Moses, and he says, "Who am I?" And then David says, "Who I am and what is my life?" And then you get to Isaiah and he says, "Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips."

Go and read God's Book and you'll find that every single man and woman chosen by God had this "imperfect" mindset about them. In fact, most of those called by God were reluctant and didn't even want to step up to the plate because they knew their imperfections and saw themselves as flawed vessels. That God would deign to use any of these imperfect people gives us all hope.

So from the Old Testament frame of reference, you'll find that Jesus is the only one that makes that claim of perfection.

#2 JESUS PLACES ALL AUTHORITY IN HIMSELF.
If you read the Scriptures through the Old Testament you won't find anyone making these kinds of claims. Jesus said: "No one comes to the Father except by me." I mentally picture a bouncer guarding the door when I hear Him say that. "You aren't getting in here unless you come by me."

I want you see that taking that stance alone is radical. Someone claiming the authority to determine who makes it into heaven? Someone making the claim of: "I am the door and if you want to get in you'd better come in this way. If you want access to the Father, you come by me and if you come by any other way you're a thief and a robber." These are staggering claims, yet this is the Jesus we encounter in the Scriptures.

I don't have time here to itemize the abundant Scripture of everything Jesus declares about himself, but suffice it to say, if all these things He claims about himself are true, then we have an interesting dilemma.

#3 JESUS SPOKE OF ETERNITY FROM THE INSIDE OUT.
He spoke of Heaven as if He was there from the beginning. Now the King James messes up the translation when Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I was," it does NOT say, "I was." The actual translation is, "I am." This is important because the mistranslation "I was" makes it sound past tense. Jesus says, "I always was," essentially by saying, "I am." "Before Abraham was, I am." This is a declaration by someone claiming they had been there from the beginning. John's gospel captures this by saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and now the Living Word took up the tent of human flesh and dwelt among us."

So what about eternity? Well a few of the prophets had glimpses of eternity revealed to them, but none could make the claim, "I was there at the beginning." But in regards to eternity, the one I like is where Jesus says that He saw Satan fall. Now if any person in the present day came up to me and said, "I saw Satan cast out of Heaven..." I'd be thinking, "Ok, this person has gone off the deep end." In fact, if any of us met a person today making these claims about himself, we'd have to figure this person had gone off the deep-end. Yet Jesus made these claims about Himself and with certainty and boldness.

#4 JESUS SEATED HIMSELF AT THE CENTER OF THE RELIGIOUS UNIVERSE.
You'll find that in every claim He is at the epicenter. Every claim is "I am." "I am the light," "I am the truth," "I am the way," "I am the door." Have you ever chronicled all of these "I ams" in Scripture? I took the time this week to go through every time Jesus says, "I am."

The gospel record reveals that Jesus saw Himself through and through as "I am." When God revealed Himself to Moses and said, "I am," God was reviewing natures and dimensions of Himself through time that would be fully revealed in Christ from that "I am" statement in Exodus up until the Book of Revelation, which keeps categorizing and cataloging all the "I ams" of our Lord Jesus.

#5 JESUS SAID THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD THAT ONLY HIS DEATH COULD FIX.
There's a messiah complex for you. If you really follow this line of thinking that only by His death could He fix what was broken, the question becomes, what was broken?

I was trying to explain to somebody earlier in the week how we are not born in the image of God. We're born the image of Adam. It took the first Adam to plunge humanity into darkness and it took the last Adam, Jesus Christ, to remove that which hindered us is from our communion with God. We are now able to get close to God again. As Paul so aptly puts it in the book of Ephesians, "Only by His death could He fix a broken, dying world."

Now let me tell you something. The apostle Paul was right, "If Christ be not risen, then our faith is in vain."

#6 JESUS' DEATH WAS A RANSOM
Following through the line of the Old Testament, there's a picture being painted from the Kinsman Redeemer to the Paschal Lamb. There are concepts of redemption and ransom. It's as though something was being held, and the sufficient price needed to be paid to release the whole of humanity residing in captivity.

#7 THE SCRIPTURES MUST BE FULFILLED
I'm going to add one here. This claim is staggering: "The Scriptures must be fulfilled." And for the Scriptures to be fulfilled, He had to go to Jerusalem and die. It also requires that He be the perfect sacrifice.

If you take it time to analyze how many different fulfillments of Scripture must be met perfectly, not just a sort of, "ok that's close enough. No, the fulfillments must be met Perfectly. Not only must Jesus be who He said He is, but if we can't rest with certainty on the fulfillment of Scriptures, then it calls into question the rest of the Old Testament. Remember, these writers lived different intervals of hundreds of years while writing their messages. These messages became canonized as the Bible. How would these people writing at different intervals know that the Scripture must be fulfilled in Christ?

So He made this claim: "The Scriptures must be fulfilled."

#8 JESUS SAID HE WOULD RAISE FROM THE DEAD
Jesus said that on the third day He would raise up from the dead. Now that one is maybe the most difficult, but not so terrible to accept if you understand that all of these seven signs were a preparation for the eighth, leading a believer from beginning to end and then on to life eternal.

I love the passage where He talks about "This Temple will be destroyed and in three days be raised up," and they thought He was a lunatic because no one could understand that He was talking about Himself. Preposterous claims to make, ridiculous claims.

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