Nov. 16, 2025 - Who is this Jesus? Liar?

There's something profoundly simple yet deeply mysterious about the resurrection accounts in Scripture. We often focus on the empty tomb, the rolled-away stone, or the dramatic appearances of the risen Christ. But have you ever stopped to consider why Jesus ate fish with his disciples after rising from the dead?

This seemingly mundane detail—a meal shared on a lakeshore—holds within it a powerful cultural truth that first-century believers would have immediately recognized, but that we might easily miss today.
 
The Problem of Proof
Imagine being one of Jesus's followers in those chaotic days following the crucifixion. You've witnessed your teacher, your friend, your hope for Israel's redemption, brutally executed. Your world has collapsed. And then... he appears among you.

Would you immediately believe? Or would doubt creep in?

The disciples faced a unique challenge that we don't often consider. In their cultural context, there were ancient stories and beliefs about spirits called the Nephilim—mysterious beings mentioned only briefly in Genesis and Numbers. According to widely-known texts of that era (books that didn't make it into our Bible but were familiar to Jesus's contemporaries), these entities were said to inhabit the bodies of the recently deceased.

Think about that for a moment. When Jesus appeared after his death, some disciples had to grapple with an uncomfortable question: Is this really our Lord risen from the dead, or could this be something else entirely?

This wasn't paranoia or weak faith. This was the honest wrestling of people trying to make sense of an unprecedented event through the lens of their cultural understanding.

The Power of a Simple Meal
This is where the fish becomes significant.

According to the beliefs of that time, these spirits that supposedly inhabited dead bodies had one telltale weakness: they couldn't stand to be near food. They avoided eating at all costs because consuming food would reveal their true nature.

So when Jesus not only appeared to his disciples but actually prepared a meal, cooked fish over a fire, and ate with them—he was doing something far more profound than simply satisfying hunger. He was providing irrefutable proof of his genuine resurrection.

Without speaking a word about his nature, without defending himself against doubts, Jesus simply ate. And in that culture, at that moment, this simple act communicated volumes: "I am not a spirit inhabiting a corpse. I am not a phantom or a ghost. I am truly, physically risen from the dead. I have conquered death itself."

The recently deceased don't eat breakfast. But the resurrected Lord of life does.

Words and Actions in Perfect Harmony
This detail points to something larger about the nature of truth and authenticity. Throughout his ministry, Jesus made extraordinary claims about himself—claims that would sound like lunacy or lies if they weren't actually true.

He claimed to be God. He claimed authority over sin, sickness, and death. He promised he would rise again.

A liar's words and actions eventually diverge. Inconsistencies emerge. The facade cracks. But with Jesus, we find something different: perfect alignment between what he said and what he did, even in the smallest cultural details that we might not immediately recognize.

Consider how many obscure details in the Gospel accounts perfectly match the customs, concerns, and cultural context of first-century Judaism—details that wouldn't have been fabricated by later writers who didn't share that specific cultural knowledge. These small touches of authenticity scattered throughout Scripture suggest we're dealing with genuine eyewitness accounts, not carefully constructed fiction.

The Trilemma We Can't Escape
This brings us to a question that every person must eventually answer: Who is Jesus?

The evidence suggests only three possibilities:

He was delusional—a lunatic who genuinely believed he was God but was tragically mistaken.

He was deceptive—a liar who knew he wasn't God but made the claim anyway for personal gain or because he'd gotten in over his head.

He was exactly who he claimed to be—the Lord, God incarnate, the Savior of the world.

The eating of fish, along with countless other details in the resurrection accounts, argues powerfully against the first two options. A lunatic doesn't orchestrate such culturally precise demonstrations of authenticity. A liar doesn't maintain such perfect consistency between claims and actions, especially when facing torture and death.

If Jesus isn't crazy and isn't lying, then we're left with the most challenging option of all: He's telling the truth.

What This Means for Us
We live in an age that often treats faith as a blind leap, divorced from evidence or reason. But the resurrection accounts invite us to something different: a faith that engages both heart and mind, that welcomes questions and investigation.

We don't have to be experts in first-century Jewish culture to trust in Christ, but when we dig deeper into Scripture, we consistently find that the details hold up. The stories make sense in ways that go beyond surface reading. The cultural context enriches rather than undermines the accounts.

This should encourage us to keep exploring, keep questioning, keep digging into the depths of Scripture. There are layers of meaning waiting to be discovered, cultural cues we've never noticed, connections that suddenly make obscure passages come alive.

The God who created us with minds that question and seek is not afraid of our honest investigation. In fact, he invites it.

The Invitation
Jesus didn't just appear to his disciples and vanish. He stayed. He cooked. He ate. He invited them into fellowship and conversation. He met their doubts with patient, tangible proof.

He does the same for us today. The risen Christ invites us to the table, to share a meal, to bring our questions and our doubts, to investigate and discover that his claims are true.

The fish on that lakeshore wasn't just breakfast. It was an invitation to believe—not blindly, but with eyes wide open to the evidence of resurrection, transformation, and eternal life.

The question remains: Will we accept the invitation?