IDEA: Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or the Son of God. TEXT: "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.' Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick or in prison, and come to You?' And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.' Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.' Then they also will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?' Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:31-46).

PURPOSE: That listeners realize the impact of what Jesus was saying about Himself.

There's a story about a man who was walking through a mental institution. He saw a patient standing there with his hand inside his coat. The visitor asked him, "Pardon me, Sir, who are you?" And the man responded indignantly, "I'm Napoleon." The visitor then asked, "Who told you that you were Napoleon?" The patient responded, "God told me I'm Napoleon." Another patient standing nearby whirled around and said, "I did not!"

Without for a moment wanting to reflect on people who are mentally ill, what makes that story a joke?

The mark of people who are mentally unbalanced is that they sometimes have delusions of grandeur. There will be numbers of people who will claim they are Jesus Christ.

I. When we listen to Jesus of Nazareth, He makes claims that on the lips of any other man would seem delusional or insane.

What does Jesus claim in Matthew 25:31-46?

He claims that He will come in glory. This is evidently a reference to the Shekinah glory of the Old Testament that showed the presence of God.

He claims that He will be the judge of all human beings.

He claims that the ultimate issue will be how people have treated Him by the way they've treated those He calls "the least of these."

II. What you cannot say about Jesus is what is often said about Him.

He was merely a good man. If what He says is not true, it is hard to believe that He was truly good.

People say that He was a great teacher. But if what He taught bordered on insanity, it's hard to come to that verdict.

III. He was a liar, a lunatic, or what He claimed to be: the Son of God.

Without the resurrection, Jesus can be dismissed as a madman. There is no reason to take His claims more seriously than the claims of other men and women who were delusional.

C. S. Lewis put it this way: "I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: '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 a level with the man who says he 's 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."