Episode 3: Who was Jesus?

Who was Jesus, really?

Not the softened Jesus people remake in their own image.

Not the cultural mascot.

Not the vague spiritual teacher.

This episode walks through the story of Jesus from the world He entered, to His birth, ministry, rejection, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascension, and lands on the question everything else hangs on: Who was Jesus, really?

History is not confused about everything. Jesus lived. He taught. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The real question is whether He was only a man men killed, or something far more.

In this episode, we trace the Biblical account carefully and honestly. We look at the pressures of Israel under Rome, the promises that shaped expectation, the authority Jesus carried in public, the opposition He faced, the reality of the cross, the evidence of the empty tomb, and the witness of those who saw Him alive again.

This is not a soft holiday story about memory.

This is a claim about reality.

And if it is true, no one gets to stay neutral.

Key passages:

Luke 1–2

Matthew 1–2

Matthew 3–4

Matthew 5–7

John 11

Matthew 21–28

John 18–21

Luke 24

Acts 1

1 Corinthians 15

If you are still searching, read the Gospels honestly.

If you already say Jesus is Lord, obey Him.

FOB Truth is a place where we slow down, read the Bible carefully, and work to understand what it’s actually saying.

Join us live every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern:

https://fobtruth.org

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A lot of people want a Jesus they can admire. Very few want the one who has the right to rule them. History's not confused about everything. Jesus lived, he taught, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The question is whether he was only a man man killed, or was he something more. I'm Drew. This is a place where we slow down, read the Bible carefully, and work to understand what it's actually saying. This episode is about one question, and it's the question everything else hangs on. Who was Jesus really? Not the softened Jesus people remake in their own image, or the cultural mascot, not the vague spiritual teacher, the Jesus the Bible actually gives us. Jesus stepped into a world already shaped by a long history. Israel had God's promises, his commands, his mercy and his judgment. They knew what it was to belong to him, and they knew what it was to turn away. Kings had risen and fallen, prophets had called them back. After conquests and exile, their temple was torn down, and their life as a nation shattered. In time they returned and rebuilt and kept living, but the story still didn't feel finished. The scriptures were still read, the people still called on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The old promises were still there, but they weren't free. Rome ruled over them in their own land, so they were waiting for more than just relief, they're waiting for God to act, save, and set things right. It was then that God spoke to a young Jewish woman named Mary. She was engaged to Joseph, and before they came together as husband and wife, she was told that she would conceive a son by the Holy Spirit. In a small, honor-shaped community like hers, a pregnancy before marriage could bring shame, suspicion, and the loss of the life people expected her to have. Mary didn't understand it all, but she did choose to trust God and bear the risk. Joseph faced the same shock, but from a different side. The woman he was pledged to marry was pregnant, and from the outside it looked like betrayal. Then God spoke to him too. Joseph listened, and he stayed with Mary and took her as his wife, and received this child as the one God had given. Jesus entered the world through the costly obedience of ordinary people. While Mary was pregnant, Caesar Augustus ordered a census, and Joseph took her with him to Bethlehem to be registered there because he belonged to the house and lineage of David. And that mattered because the prophets had already said the coming ruler, the Messiah, would come from David's line. Specifically Micah had named Bethlehem as the place from where that ruler would come. So while Rome was moving people around for its own reasons, God was still guiding this story where he meant it to go. Mary gave birth there, and the setting was humble and bare. She wrapped the baby and laid him in a manger. Then angels appeared to shepherds in the fields and announced that birth. You've heard the Christmas story. God wasn't making this known to rulers or priests or the powerful, he was telling the news to men that the world usually overlooked. But the news didn't just stay there. Signs appeared strong enough that men in the east started searching for the child. And they they came to Jerusalem asking, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? They had seen signs in the sky and understood enough to come searching. That question reached Herod the Great. He was a Roman backed king over Judea. That was the large region around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Now he didn't know where the child was, so he gathered the chief priests and the scribes and asked them where the Messiah was supposed to be born. They told him Bethlehem. Then Herod sent the wise men there, pretending he wanted to worship the child too, but he didn't. The wise men found Jesus later in a house, not on the night of his birth, and after they saw him, God warned them in a dream not to return to Herod. Joseph was also warned, and he took Mary and Jesus and went to Egypt. When Herod realized the wise men weren't coming back, he gave the order to kill all the boys in Bethlehem that were two years old and younger. And that's what men do when power matters more than truth or innocent life. So after Herod died, Joseph brought Mary and Jesus back from Egypt, but he didn't settle near Bethlehem. Herod's son was now ruling there, so the family went north, returning to Nazareth, the town they had already been living in. And that's where Jesus grew up. The Gospels don't tell us much about his childhood, but they do say that he grew and became strong and was filled with wisdom, and that God's favor was on him. For a long time before he ever stepped into public ministry, he lived real human life in an ordinary home in a small town. Passover was the great feast of remembrance in Israel. It looked back to the night God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt. Families traveled to Jerusalem for it, and Mary and Joseph did the same. When Jesus was twelve, they brought him with him. On the way home from Jerusalem with a large caravan, Mary and Joseph realized Jesus was missing. They went back and found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening, asking questions, giving answers that left people amazed. When Mary spoke to him, his answers showed the things of his heavenly father were already at the center of his life. Then he returned with them to Nazareth and remained obedient. Those years were quiet, but they weren't empty. Before the time came for Jesus' public life to begin, one of his relatives appeared first. John's birth had been marked out by God from the beginning. He'd been sent ahead to prepare people for the one who was coming after him. He lived in the wilderness and preached there, away from the center of power and comfort, calling people to repent. Crowds came out to the wilderness to hear him, and he warned that judgment was real and made it clear that he wasn't the Messiah they had been waiting for. Someone greater was coming after him, and John said he wasn't even worthy to untie his sandals. John came first to wake the people up before Jesus stepped into the open. John was baptizing people who were repenting and turning back to God, and then Jesus came to him. Now that can sound strange at first because Jesus had no sins to confess, but he came publicly to John anyway, and that moment marked the beginning of his ministry. John had been preparing the way, and now the one had been pointing to was stepping into view. Jesus stood in the water among the people, and the Spirit descended on him, and the Father spoke from heaven. This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy. From there, Jesus moved into the public work he had come to do. After his baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness. He was there for forty days, hungry and alone. That's where Satan came to tempt him. He offered Jesus the easy way, the use of power for himself, a path to glory without obedience, a way around the suffering that still lay ahead. Jesus answered every temptation with the word of God. This was true spiritual warfare. Satan spoke, and Jesus answered with scripture. He fought with truth and stayed faithful to the Father when no one was there to see it. Then he stepped into public life. He moved through towns and villages, teaching and calling men to follow him, and when he called they left their nets and their work, the shape of their old lives behind and went with him. From the beginning he carried an authority others could feel. His words had weight, and he spoke with the kind of clarity that made people stop and listen. As he moved from place to place, crowds gathered, attention fixed on him. Followers began to form around him, and the work he had come to do had begun. When people began to meet Jesus, they found someone who walked straight toward the outcasts of society. In that world, sickness could make a person unclean, sin could stain a reputation for life, and poverty often meant being ignored. Lepers were forced to live in colonies. Tax collectors were hated because they betrayed their fellow Jews and worked for Rome. Women and children held far less standing than men. If your life was broken in public, shame could follow you everywhere. Jesus crossed those lines again and again. He touched the sick, welcomed the children, spoke to the women with dignity, sat at the table with people nobody else wanted to be near, and he received those grieving and unwanted and desperate people. He said they were worth seeing, not burdens to avoid. And when he stepped into places marked by sickness, uncleanness, grief, and spiritual darkness, none of it stained him. The opposite happened, healing and restoration moved outward from him. What broke everyone else began to lose its power when it met him. As word about Jesus began to spread, he returned to Nazareth, the town where he'd grown up. The people there knew his family and had watched him come of age. One Sabbath he went into the synagogue and stood up to read. He was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and he read about the Spirit of the Lord being upon him, bringing good news to the poor, freedom to captives, sight to the blind, and release to the oppressed. Then he sat down and told him that those words were being fulfilled right there while they listened. At first they were amazed, but they couldn't get over the fact that he was so familiar. Isn't this Joseph's son? That was the question everybody seemed to be asking. They knew where he came from, and that made it hard for them to see him as anything other than the boy they thought they already knew. One of the first clear public responses to Jesus was rejection, and it came from his own hometown. What people saw in public was only part of his life. Again and again Jesus pulled away from the crowds to pray. He rose early while it was still dark. He withdrew into places of solitude. Before choosing the twelve disciples, he spent the night in prayer. Jesus didn't move from town to town living on attention, urgency, or activity. He kept turning to God in prayer. And when the disciples saw that, they asked him to teach them to pray too. He taught them to come to God as Father and to honor Him, to want more than just their own will, but to want God's, to trust Him for what they needed for just that day, to ask for forgiveness and to ask for help when temptation came. Jesus didn't just speak about prayer, he lived it and taught it to His followers. The same man who pulled away to pray also stood in front of crowds and taught with an authority they weren't used to hearing. God's kingdom was not a far off idea in his mouth. He spoke as though it was drawing near and demanding an answer now. In the Sermon on the Mount, he went straight to the center of life before God. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Do not practice righteousness just to be seen by other people. Trust God. Put his rule first in your life. Jesus didn't stop with the outward behavior, he went after the heart. Anger and lust, truthfulness, mercy, and love were not small things to him. This wasn't religion for show. This was the life that God had always wanted for his people. Jesus wasn't throwing away the law and the prophets, he was bringing them back to their true meaning. God had never wanted a people who looked clean and public while corruption stayed alive underneath. He'd always wanted truth, mercy, faithfulness, and love that reached all the way into the heart. So Jesus took what people had flattened into outward rule keeping and opened it back up. Murder wasn't only bloodshed, it began in hatred. Adultery wasn't only the act, it began in lust. Righteousness wasn't a public display. It was the secret faithfulness that you have before God. When Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God, he was speaking about God taking his rightful place as king, setting things right, judging evil, rescuing his people and bringing lives back under his rule. That idea carried real weight for the people hearing him. Jesus said this was beginning right now. You could hear it in what he taught and see in what he did. Many wanted relief from suffering and freedom from Rome and a deliverer strong enough to change the world around them, but they didn't want their own hearts exposed or their own lives brought under God's authority. But Jesus kept calling them deeper. He was calling them to turn and trust and live under God as king. So Jesus was not only a man of words. He healed people in front of them. He opened blind eyes and made men stand who hadn't walked in years. He stopped bleeding no one else had been able to stop. Diseased skin was made clean when he touched it. The deaf heard, the mute spoke. Before long, family and friends were carrying the suffering to him because they believed he could do what no one else could. They pushed through crowds and tore open roofs and laid broken people at his feet because they'd seen what happened when suffering was brought to Jesus. The gospels don't present evil as only something inside people or around them in society. They also show a spiritual darkness at work in the world, and Jesus treats it as real. Men and women came to him tormented, bound up and not in their right minds, and when that darkness met Jesus, it didn't act like it was dealing with an ordinary man. Unclean spirits recognized him and feared him. When he commanded them to leave, they left. He drove them out. And when some tried to explain his power by saying it came from Satan, Jesus cut that off directly. Because darkness doesn't drive out darkness. A kingdom divided against itself would fall. What they were seeing was not evil at work through him, but evil being driven back by someone much greater. And what happened around Jesus didn't stop with just sickness or spiritual darkness. It reached the natural world in miraculous ways. A storm strong enough to terrify seasoned fishermen, he silenced it with his voice. With only a few loaves and fish, he gave thanks, broke them, and fed a crowd of thousands. Later he walked on water. When Lazarus had been dead long enough for everyone to know it was final, Jesus called him out of the grave. One day, a paralyzed man was brought to Jesus because the people around him wanted him healed. Jesus looked at him, and before telling him to stand, told him his sins were forgiven. Now that stopped everyone cold. Healing a broken body was one thing, but forgiving sins, that was another one. In the minds of the men listening, that authority only belonged to God. And Jesus knew what they were thinking, but he didn't retract his words. No, instead he told the man to get up, take his mat, and go home. And that's what the man did. The healing didn't replace the claim, it just made it harder to ignore. By this point, the people around him were seeing more than compassion or wisdom. They were watching someone heal disease and drive out evil, command storms, provide food where there wasn't any, and call the dead back to life. And he was speaking authority over sin itself like it belonged to him. As people listened to Jesus and watched him, the usual labels started to feel too small. Teacher didn't cover it, prophet didn't fully explain him. I mean, prophets spoke for God. Jesus spoke and acted with an authority that seemed to reside within him. He spoke of the Sabbath as its Lord. He said something greater than the temple was here now, and he spoke about God as his father, with a closeness no one heard as casual. He used words about himself that a faithful Jew wouldn't hear as a small claim, things like the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life. And yet the man who said these things lived the full weight of an ordinary human life. He grew tired enough to sleep in a boat, weary enough to eat and stop at a well and ask for a drink. He felt grief and he wept. He knew deep sorrow, but he looked at hard hearted men with anger and grief at the same time. He rejoiced in God. He loved his friends. His humanity was not thin or distant. The one who healed, taught, and commanded also knew hunger, thirst, exhaustion, pressure, misunderstanding, and pain from the inside. Jesus didn't move through life surrounded by faceless crowds. He had deep relationships. Women followed him and helped him support the work. Mary and Martha welcomed him into the home. And Lazarus, he wasn't just one more person in the crowd, he was a cherished and loved friend. Children were brought to him, and he received them gladly. Even with friends and followers near him, larger crowds were gathering around, and they weren't all coming for the same reason. Some were desperate for healing, some were drawn by the signs and wonders, some followed because he fed them. Others hoped he might be the deliverer Israel had been waiting for, but being near Jesus was not the same as truly seeing him. Many welcomed what he could do for them until his words pressed deeper. They exposed their hearts and called them to change, and that's where the crowd started to divide. Some stayed and others left. The religious leaders were watching as well, and Jesus didn't leave them comfortable. He went after their hypocrisy in public. He spoke against the kind of religion that looks clean on the outside while corruption keeps living underneath. He wouldn't let human tradition stand above what God had said. Again and again he pointed out the very things they wanted to keep hidden, and men with that kind of standing don't usually welcome being exposed. But Jesus wasn't interested in winning shallow approval. He was calling people to follow him. Men walked away from all kinds of things so that they could follow him. But old loyalties had to loosen their grip. He taught these men in public and in private. He sent them out and brought them back. He corrected them when pride rose in them and kept showing them that life with him was not a path to comfort or status. To follow Jesus meant giving up the right to keep yourself at the center. It meant trust and endurance and the willingness to stay with him when the road became costly. And even the men closest to him didn't understand him quickly. They heard what the crowds didn't hear, and they got to see what the crowds didn't see, and yet they still argued about which of them was the greatest, and they reached for places of honor. Peter could say that Jesus was the Christ and then almost in the next breath resist him when Christ spoke about his suffering and his death to come. Jesus kept telling them where the road was going, and he spoke openly about rejection and suffering and death, but they were still measuring him against the kind of Messiah they they had been taught to expect. A ruler rising and visible victory, not a savior walking toward a cross. He was leading them somewhere larger, and it took time and failures and correction and humility before they began to see it. By the time Jesus turned toward Jerusalem, the conflict around him had already been building for a long time. Crowds were gathering and disciples following, his enemies watching more closely, because his words and his works had become too public and too weighty to dismiss. In Jerusalem, every pressure point would be brought together. The temple, Rome, Passover was happening, the leaders were there, the crowds were growing, and Jesus went there on purpose, knowing exactly what that combination would stir up and set in motion. But before they would travel there, some of the disciples were given one more glimpse of who Jesus really was. He took Peter, James, and John up on a mountain, and there his appearance was changed. They called it the transfiguration. Before them they saw Moses and Elijah with Jesus, and the men who had been walking beside him, they were overwhelmed by what they saw. Then the Father's voice came from heaven and told them to listen to his son. Even though the suffering still laid ahead, the disciples didn't understand the kind of Messiah Jesus would be. They weren't walking with an ordinary man. They'd seen enough to know that something was far greater, but they still couldn't understand. From there, Jesus then went to Jerusalem with purpose, setting his face towards the city like a man who Who knew exactly where that road was leading? He wasn't wandering into danger by accident. Along the way, he kept telling the disciples what waited for him there suffering, rejection, betrayal, and death. They heard the words, but they still couldn't make them fit the kind of Messiah they expected. They wanted victory without suffering. A kingdom that rose in visible power and never passed through a cross. Jesus kept walking towards the city anyway, knowing exactly what was coming. So Jerusalem, it was a weighty place. The temple was there, and with it all the sacrifices that people had to perform. It was the center of worship and the whole visible, like part of Jewish life before God. And during Passover, it was it was very busy, and people were looking into the past. The feast was celebrating the night that God had delivered his people from slavery in Egypt. Every year it reminded them God had rescued them once before. But now they were living under Rome, and that old memory just it had to stir up that fresh longing. So that they wanted to be delivered again. You put all that together, the temple, the feast, the crowds, the rulers, the Roman presence, and the pressure in the city was intense. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the moment was public and it was impossible to miss. People recognized him. People were throwing their cloaks on the road, some cut down palm branches and laid them down on the road, and they shouted words that were shaped by Israel's hope. They were welcoming in a way that carried a lot of weight, whether they realized it or not. The whole scene was just charged and the city was stirred up. The leaders certainly noticed, but Jesus didn't come into the city caught up in the excitement around him. As he approached Jerusalem, he saw more than a crowd welcoming him. He saw the blindness, the resistance, and judgment still ahead, and he wept over the city even as it received him. When Jesus entered the temple courts, he went straight to the center of worship and public life in Israel. This was the place of sacrifice, prayer, and meeting with God, and during Passover it was crowded with worshipers. Instead of quiet and reverence, Jesus found buyers and sellers, money changers, people using the courts like a shortcut for business. He made that whip and he overturned those tables. He stopped it and he called out what that place had become. He called it a den of robbers. God's house was meant to be a house of prayer, and they had made it something corrupt. Jesus didn't speak like a man asking for permission to criticize the system. He acted with authority. And so what Jesus did there forced that conflict into the open. The men whose standing was tied to that whole system, they weren't going to treat it like a small thing. But he kept teaching day after day, and when the leaders challenged him, asking by what authority he acted and spoke, Jesus didn't soften or retreat. He answered them with a wisdom that kept turning their traps back on them. And he did more than answer their questions. He exposed them. He warned the crowds about leaders who loved honor, appearance, status, and the praise of men while hiding decay underneath. He spoke against the kind of religion that looked clean and public while the inside was still full of pride and greed and corruption. Again and again they came trying to pin him down, but every time they left without mastering him. By this point the whole conflict was everywhere, and everyone could see it. When the evening came, Jesus sat down with his disciples for Passover, and in the middle of that meal he turned it toward himself. He took the bread and spoke of his body. He took the cup and spoke of his blood that would be poured out for many. He was telling them what was about to happen. It wasn't random, it was the story. Judas was there too, and Jesus made it plain that Judas was the one who was going to betray him. So even in that room with bread and covenant and friendship in front of them all, betrayal was already at the table. Then Jesus rose from the table, took a towel, and washed the feet of his disciples. The one they called Lord knelt and did the work of a servant with his own hands. Then he told them to love one another the same way. He told them not to let their hearts be troubled. He warned them that fear and sorrow and hatred from the world were close, and he told them to stay near, because life would only be found in him. Before they left, he prayed with the full weight of the hour on him, for the men in that room, for their protection, for their unity, and even for those who would believe later through their witness. After they left the meal, Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley with his disciples and came to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. There, away from the crowd but not yet beyond what was coming, the weight of the night came down. He told the men with him that his soul was crushed with grief, and he asked them to stay awake and pray with them. Then he went he went further into the garden and fell to the ground praying. When he asked for the cup to pass from him, he was speaking about the suffering now in front of him, the betrayals and the beatings, the humiliation, the cross, and the judgment that he was about to bear. He didn't pretend any of it was light. He felt the full horror of it, but feeling it and yielding to it, they weren't the same thing. Jesus brought his anguish fully before his father and still chose obedience. He said, Not my will, but yours be done. When he returned, he found the disciples asleep. He woke them up and told them to pray so they wouldn't give in to temptation when it came, and then he went back to pray again. The men closest to him could not stay awake through his grief, and as the night deepened, Jesus was left more and more alone. While he was still speaking, Judas arrived with the men who had come to arrest Jesus. They came armed with swords and clubs. They were sent under the authority of the priests, and they were ready to seize him in the dark. Judas came near enough to greet him with a kiss, the sign he had arranged beforehand. Jesus didn't run or hide or act surprised. He stepped forward and made himself known. For a moment even the armed crowd seemed shaken by him. One of the disciples struck with a sword and cut the ear of the high priest's servant, but Jesus stopped it at once, touched the man, and healed him. He didn't want to be defended that way. Even here, with betrayal in front and violence breaking out around, Jesus answered injury with mercy. He pointed out that it was cowardice what they were doing. They hadn't taken him when he was openly teaching during the day, but now they came in the darkness with weapons, as if they were arresting a violent rebel, and he still gave himself over. The disciples scattered. Jesus was bound and led away. They took Jesus to the house of the high priest, where the chief priests, elders, and the teachers of religious law had already gathered. The whole scene was charged from the start. Witnesses brought in their stories, they wouldn't hold up. So the accusation shifted. The pressure was rising, and the questions kept circling back to the same issue. Who did Jesus think he was? For long stretches he said very little. But then the high priest pressed him, and finally Jesus answered plainly enough for them to hear in his words a claim they regarded as blasphemy. From that point the hearing broke down into just contempt. He was spit on, struck, mocked, treated like a man who'd already been condemned. Bound, surrounded, and standing in the middle of a room turning against him, Jesus was still steadier than the men who were attempting to judge him. Outside in the courtyard below, Peter stayed close enough to see what was happening, but far enough back to avoid being counted with him. He stood in the firelight while the night wore on. This was the same Peter who had sworn he would never fall away, the same man who had spoken louder and more boldly than the rest, but when people around the fire began to recognize him and tie him to Jesus, fear took hold. He denied knowing him once, then again, then swearing it a third time. And when the rooster crowed, everything Jesus had warned him about came crashing down. Peter was left standing there with the truth of his weakness, fully exposed, and then he went out into the darkness and wept bitterly. By morning Jesus was led to Pilate because the men wanted him dead. They had already taken the case as far as they could on their own. They already decided that one man should die for the people, and now Rome had to authorize the sentence they wanted. That meant the charge had to be framed in a way a Roman governor would act on. Before their own council, the issue had been blasphemy, but before Pilate it had become kingship, public order and danger to Caesar's rule. Pilate questioned Jesus, and from the moment they stood face to face, the balance in the room wasn't as simple as it looked. By every outward measure, Pilate held the power. Jesus stood before him bound, bruised, and worn down from the night before. Yet Jesus had a way of changing the power dynamic of a moment simply by how he carried himself. He didn't beg for his life or try talking his way free. When he spoke, he spoke about truth and about a kingdom that didn't rise by the weapons of this world. When silence served better, he kept silent, and Pilate could see he wasn't a man pleading for his life like the other prisoners. So Pilate said he found no basis for the charges that they were bringing, but the chief priests kept pressing. Then word came from Pilate's wife, who had been shaken by a dream that warned her to tell her husband to have nothing to do with this righteous man. At the feast, there was a custom of releasing one prisoner. So Pilate put Jesus beside Barabbas. That was a man tied to violence and revolt, and he asked the people which one they wanted released. The crowd was stirred up by the chief priests, and they called for Barabbas. Pilate asked what they wanted him to do with the king of the Jews, and they said they wanted him crucified. Well, Pilate didn't want anything to do with this, and so he he washed his hands symbolically, as if he could make himself clean of this. But it didn't change anything because he still handed Jesus over to the soldiers. The soldiers took Jesus away and scourged him. Roman scourging was brutal. This flogging was meant to tear the body apart before execution, leaving a man bleeding, weakened, and struggling to keep going. Then the soldiers dressed him and mocked him. A robe was put over him, a crown of thorns was pressed into his head, a reed was put in his hand like a false scepter, and they struck him and spit on him, knelt before him in cruel laughter, mocking him as a king. Then they led him out to be crucified. By that point he was so weak that Simon of Serene was forced to carry the cross behind him as they moved along the road. Women followed, mourning and grieving loudly. Jesus turned and told them not to weep for him, but to weep for themselves and for what was coming. So they led Jesus outside the city to Golgotha, known as the place of the skull. It was close enough to Jerusalem that people passing by could see what Rome was doing. There they crucified him between two criminals. Before they nailed him up, he was offered mixed wine, but he refused it. Then the soldiers divided his clothes among themselves and cast lots for what was left, treating it like spoils. Above his head they fixed the charge. Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. The chief priests protested the wording. They wanted it changed, but Pilate refused. So the sign stayed where it was, fastened above the man that they meant to shame. Around the cross the voices kept coming. Religious leaders sneered, he saved others, but he can't save himself, and they dared him to come down from the cross. The soldiers joined in, and even one of the criminals hanging on a cross beside him hurled abuse. But the other criminal rebuked the first, and then confessed his guilt and asked Jesus to remember him. Jesus answered him with mercy. He looked down from the cross and he saw his mother and another disciple and made sure that she'd be cared for. Then darkness fell over the land in the middle of the day, and for hours the light was gone. Jesus hung there under that darkness while pain, shame, mockery, and the loneliness of that hour closed in around him. From the cross he cried out, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? These are the opening words of Psalm twenty two. He wasn't speaking at random, he was praying the language of Scripture, even in his anguish. Near the end he said, I'm thirsty, and sour wine was lifted up to him. Then came the word that carried the full weight of the moment. It is finished. And finally, with the last of his strength, he cried out, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And then he died. The veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. The Roman officer overseeing the execution was shaken by what he seen because he knew it wasn't an ordinary man that he had watched die. After Jesus had died, there wasn't much time. The Sabbath was close, and in that world the body needed to be buried quickly. So the soldiers came to make sure that the executions were finished. They broke the legs of the two criminals, but when they reached Jesus they had found he was already dead, but to make sure they stabbed him in his side. Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Jewish council, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. That was a bold move. Jesus had been condemned in public and executed by Rome. Now Joseph stepped forward and tied himself openly to him. Pilate confirmed Jesus was dead and then released his body. Nicodemus came as well, bringing a large amount of burial spices. Together they worked to take down the body from the cross, wrap it in linen with the spices according to the Jewish burial custom, and then they put him into a tomb, a new one cut into the rock that was near the garden, and then a stone was rolled across it. The women watched where he was laid and how the body was placed. They left knowing the burial had been done in haste, and they meant to return. The next day the Jewish leaders went to Pilate, and the tomb was sealed and guarded because they feared any claim that Jesus had risen. Then came a silence none of them could do anything about. Jesus was dead. His body was in the tomb placed there before the Sabbath began, and the women were left carrying the unfinished work of the burial in their minds until they could return. The disciples were left with a world that no longer made sense. The one they had followed was dead, and whatever hope they had had died with him. The first day of the week came. At first light, Mary Magdalene and the other women returned with the spices they had prepared, intending to finish honoring his body. But when they reached the tomb, the stone had been rolled away. The grave was open. Angels met them there and said, He isn't here. He's risen from the dead just as he said he would. Fear and confusion, astonishment hit all at once. The women ran to tell the disciples, but the men didn't receive the news like people had been expecting it. Peter ran to see for himself. He found the tomb open, and the barrel closed laying there, but the shock of it didn't settle anything. The grave was empty, and the meaning of that emptiness hadn't fully landed yet. The risen Jesus began to meet people, and then it started to make sense that same day. While the news of the empty tomb was still moving from one person to another with confusion and disbelief, two of his followers left Jerusalem and walked the road to Emmaus. They had heavy hearts. They were trying to make sense of the disaster. Jesus had been arrested, condemned, crucified, buried, and now there were reports that the tomb was empty. They hoped he would be the one that would redeem Israel, and now they were walking away from the city with that hope in pieces. Jesus came alongside and walked with them, but they didn't recognize him. He asked what they were discussing, and they poured it out, their disappointment and confusion, shattered expectations. All the while he listened, and then he began to explain the scriptures to him, showing them the story had always been moving towards suffering and glory together. By the time they reached Emmaus, they didn't know who he was, but something within them felt different. When he acted as though he was going to keep walking, they urged him to stay. So he went in, and together they sat down at the table and broke bread, and he blessed it. And in that moment their eyes were opened, and they knew it was Jesus. But just as suddenly he was gone. So they sat and they thought about the walk, and then they understood why their hearts were burning when he was speaking, and they got up and they went straight back to Jerusalem with the news. By the time they got back, the disciples were together, but they were behind locked doors because they were afraid. The women had come with their report, and the confusion of the day just it was still hanging there, and Jesus himself suddenly appeared in the middle of them and said, Peace be with you. Yeah, but they didn't calm everybody at once. They were kind of freaking out. They thought they were looking at a spirit. Jesus answered their fear directly. He told them to look at his hands and his feet and invited them to touch and see that he was truly there in the flesh. He stood before them as the same Jesus who had been crucified, but was now alive in the room and with them. They stood there full of joy and wonder, and even then they could hardly believe what they were seeing. So Jesus asked for something to eat, and they gave him some fish, and he ate it in front of them. But Thomas hadn't been with them in that first time, and when they told him what had happened, he wasn't ready to believe just because they said it. He wanted to see the wounds for himself. But Jesus didn't didn't punish him for that, didn't condemn him. So when he came again, he told Thomas to look at his wounds and to put his hand into his side and to stop doubting and believe. Thomas didn't argue anymore. He answered, My Lord and my God. After that, Jesus wasn't seen only in private rooms or by one or two people. He kept appearing to more and more, and at one point was seen alive by more than five hundred of them at one time. The resurrection claim wasn't built on one voice in the dark, it was tied to a crowd of witnesses. Peter had denied Jesus in the high priest courtyard. That wound didn't disappear just because the tomb was now empty. Later, by the Sea of Galilee, several of the disciples went out in a boat and fished through the night, but they didn't catch anything. At daybreak, Jesus stood on the shore, and they could see that somebody was there, but they didn't recognize him, and he called out and told them to cast their net on the other side of the boat. They did, and suddenly the net was so full of fish they could hardly bring it in, and that's when they figured it out. But Peter didn't wait for the boat to reach land. He jumped in the water and swam to Jesus. When they all came ashore, a charcoal fire was there, with fish on it and bread. Jesus fed them, and then he turned to Peter and brought his wound into the open. Do you love me? he asked. Once. Then again, then a third time. Peter felt the weight of it. By the third question he was grieved because Jesus was taking him back through that failure that he just wanted to forget. But he wasn't there to crush him. Jesus was restoring him. With every answer, he he gave him a charge. He said, Feed my lambs, shepherd my sheep. Feed those sheep. The man who had denied Jesus three times wasn't discarded. He was brought back and recommissioned and entrusted with the care of God's people. Jesus kept meeting with his disciples and teaching them what all of it had meant. He showed them that the scriptures had been pointing to this all along. The Messiah would have to suffer and rise from the dead and send out a message of repentance and forgiveness. Then he made their task explicit. Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching these new disciples to obey all the commands that have been given. He told them that they would be his witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem and moving outward. This wasn't a private faith that was to be hidden. It was a message for the world. Jesus had all the authority in heaven and on earth, and he was using that to send them out. Then he led them and blessed them, and as they watched, he was lifted up from the earth in a cloud and taken from their sight. This was the last time they saw Jesus standing before them in the flesh, and they were still staring into the sky when two men in white robes appeared and said that he would come again in the same way that they had seen him go. So who was this man? After everything the witnesses saw, the answers can't stay small. Jesus wasn't just a teacher with memorable sayings. He wasn't just a prophet calling people back to God, and he wasn't only a healer, a martyr, or a symbol of sacrificial love. He was a real man in flesh and blood, born into the world, tired, hungry, grieved, betrayed, beaten, crucified, and buried, and yet at the same time he spoke and acted with the kind of authority that belongs to God alone, because he was God, he forgave sins, he commanded the wind and the sea, he cast out demons, and he received worship. He claimed what no man has the right to claim. He died and then he rose again. The witness of Scripture doesn't leave us with a softened Jesus we can trim down to fit our modern tastes. It confronts us with Jesus as Lord. That matters because people are still trying to reshape him. They want a Jesus who blesses whatever they already wanted to do, a Jesus who speaks of love without holiness, or mercy without repentance, grace without obedience, compassion without truth. But that's not the Jesus we've just walked through. The Jesus of Scripture loved deeply and gave freely, showed mercy again and again, and yet still called people to obey and be made new. He did not lower God's standards, he fulfilled them. He didn't come to excuse sin, he came to deal with it, and he didn't come only to comfort the broken, he came to save and to rule and to call men and women to follow him with their whole lives. No one gets to stay neutral. If this account is false, it should be rejected. But if it's true, then Jesus isn't a man you can just admire from a distance while we go on ruling ourselves. He's the Son of God, and he calls for repentance, faith, obedience, and allegiance. He's not asking for a place in your life, he claims the right to rule it. And Scripture doesn't leave that call fuzzy. Acts sixteen thirty-one, it says, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Matthew ten thirty two, everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. That's pretty clear. That means the call doesn't end with a private belief. Jesus didn't rise from the grave and send his people into the world so they could sit on the truth and just admire it. He gave them a commission, make disciples, teach people to obey, help others see clearly and follow. If we're not doing that, then are we just playing with holy things and calling it faith? So here's the question What will you do with Jesus? If you're still searching, then search honestly. Read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, stop borrowing secondhand versions of Jesus from the culture around you and look at the text itself. And if you need help doing that, come with us. Read with us. Ask hard questions. Learn to follow Jesus with us. If you already say Jesus is Lord, then obey him. Turn from what you know is sin. Stop reshaping Jesus into your own image, follow him openly, and help someone else do the same. That is who Jesus was. That is what he did, and that is what he taught. And that's why Easter is not a soft holiday about memory. It's a declaration that Jesus Christ is risen and every one of us has to answer to him. If you want a place to read the Bible honestly, ask real questions, and learn what it means to follow Jesus, then join us at Fob Truth. We meet every single Wednesday on Zoom at 8 p.m. Eastern. You can find the link at Fobtruth.org. Jesus loves you.