So I want to begin by teaching you
a word that you've never heard and never
used.
I want to ask for the show of
hands, who knows what the word diffident means?
To be diffident, or the noun diffidence, d
-i-f-f-i-d-e-n-c
-e.
Know what it means?
No?
No fair.
No fair to anybody who's been in other
schools.
I'll give you a brief definition.
Diffidence is where you believe yourself to be
wrong, even when you're right.
Diffidence is an attitude, that even when you're
right, you're wrong.
Can you understand that?
Would to God that that were a conspicuous
trait of the Church, rather than this bumptious
conceit, when we're right, we're wrong when we're
right, if that's the attitude with which we
express it.
But to be right and see yourself as
wrong is pleasing in the Lord's sight.
That's humility, that's diffidence, that's gracious, that's allowing
that however persuaded you are, you're willing to
consider that you might well be wrong, even
though you're right.
And even though you prayed and fasted, there's
no guarantee that what you're going to speak
or do is sanctioned or given of God.
I know because I've tried to twist God's
arm by fasting, as if to persuade him
to confirm what I think I need to
say or do.
So, file that word and rehearse it and
consider it and ask the Lord to give
you the grace to be diffident, that even
when you're persuaded you're right, you're also acknowledged
that you're wrong.
That's appropriate to our humanity.
And ironically, the subject this morning is the
mystery of incarnation.
The issue of Jesus being both God and
man.
The Council of Chalcedon, do I pronounce it
correctly, Roach?
About 400 AD, had to wrestle through the
issue of how could Jesus be both man
and God.
If he was not man, if you deny
his manhood, you take away from God the
sacrifice and the servant and the suffering servant
and the priestliness and the identification that Jesus
has with his people in his humanity.
But if you take away his deity, then
he's only merely man.
How could God allow himself to be crucified?
Can God die at the cross?
These were staggering questions that were coming to
the church as a great challenge and threat
of heresy.
Those who denied the humanity of God, I
think they were called D.O.C. Dossetists.
Dossetists.
Dossetism.
And those who denied the divinity of Christ
were guilty of the other side of the
same coin.
The Aryans.
Aryans.
So there was a remarkable thing that threatened
the church in its early history.
So the great church councils, the Council of
Nicaea that preceded it, the Council of Chalcedon,
defined and wrestled through these questions.
They gathered up the theologians and churchmen of
that time and heard them out and debate
and finally came up with a statement that
a lot of which is expressed now in
the confession.
What do we call it?
The Apostolic, the Apostles' Creed.
The creed is the summation of the findings
of many of these church councils and the
phrase very God, very man comes out of
the Council of Chalcedon.
Jesus was both very God and very man.
Well, who has ever heard of that?
It's unprecedented.
History has never provided an example of God
and man in the same person.
How important is that?
Could the messianic ministry of Jesus be fulfilled
if he were not a man?
Could it have been valid if he were
not God, if he were only man?
And so how can both function in the
same personality at the same time is a
staggering conundrum not only about Jesus but about
ourselves because the issue of incarnation is the
issue still.
What do we say?
Christ in us, the hope of glory.
If Christ is in us, that's deity and
us is humanity.
So we are faced with the same essential
issue in our own walk as is represented
by Jesus in his.
And is that not the reason why he's
called the patterned son?
That he's gone before us to show us
that there's a way in which deity and
humanity can be in union.
And in fact, if they are not, then
there's no true manhood.
It takes God to be a man.
Not just by shoring us up, but by
infusing us with those divine qualities that bring
us to a full humanity.
That man without God is bestial.
We've seen that in our modern history.
The most celebrated of civilizations was reduced to
bestiality without pity.
And we're told in the last days, a
whole generation is being raised up without natural
affection, without gratitude, disrespectful
to parents, ungodly.
Seek lovers of self rather than lovers of
God.
Without natural affection, without the capacity for pity
or compassion, cruel.
They have lost their human distinctive.
And a remarkable thing is when man loses
his human distinctive, he sinks below the level
of an animal.
He performs those things for which we would
never expect an animal to perform, and they
don't.
But man, robbed of his humanity, becomes a
grotesque.
Becomes less than a beast.
And to what degree then does manhood, real
manhood, require divinity?
Can you be a man without God?
I'm not talking about just wearing pants.
What does man mean to be human?
What are the qualities?
And how are they to be obtained?
How can God transmute what he is in
himself into an earthen vessel?
And is that unbecoming to God?
Is that an appropriate vessel for him to
be confined to a human body?
That we say Christ in us.
For me to live as Christ, Paul said.
Is he just a woofing?
Is he just mouthing a phrase?
Or is he speaking about the uttermost distinctive
that explains Paul as Paul, as the apostle.
If for him not to live as Christ,
would be not to have an apostle.
Because the chief apostle of our confession is
Jesus himself.
So you can't tell where Paul ends and
God begins.
There's a remarkable union.
And can you tell in the history of
Jesus what issued from his humanity and what
issued from his deity?
When he said this or he said that
or did this, from what source was he
drawing?
Of course if he's only exercising his deity,
we can admire that conduct and those miracles
and the great wisdom of the Sermon on
the Mount.
But of course we could never hope to
emulate or aspire to that standard.
He has an advantage over us.
He's both God and man and that's God
speaking.
Of course, what do you expect?
Who else can give the Sermon on the
Mount?
But and if he lay aside his deity
and is speaking out of his humanity, that
opens questions of another kind entirely.
If he has lay aside his deity and
everything that he's performing is by faith and
trust in the Father who imparts to him
spirit, words, and guidance, then we are in
a position relative to his.
What do we lack that is not available
to us of the inspiration of God, his
spirit, his example, his leadership, his guidance?
What prevents us from being perfected in our
humanity and acting and completing the messianic task
that remain in the same way by which
Jesus himself performed it?
Don't think that the issue is over.
It's still a very live issue.
John Murray, the Reformed theologian from who I
quoted in the first week of the school,
is dead against believing that Jesus forsook his
deity because God cannot cease from being God.
So how can he lay aside his deity?
Therefore, his wonders and miracles can only be
understood on the basis of that power uniquely
his as being God as well as man.
But let's take a look at Ephesians chapter
2 in the classic text that speaks about
laying aside.
Philippians, what did I say?
Oh, I meant Philippians.
I'm reading from the Phillips edition that came
out some years ago, J.B. Phillips, Letters
to the Young Churches, a kind of paraphrasing
of the scriptures in contemporary English.
And sometimes when you hear it that way,
you catch it in a way that is
unfamiliar and penetrates the more deeply.
My translation adds a significant phrase.
And having become man, he humbled himself by
living a life of utter obedience even to
the extent of dying.
And the death he died was the death
of a common criminal.
And having become man, he humbled himself.
Let me read the whole Phillips translation of
that statement.
Let Christ himself be your example as to
what your attitude should be.
See, why are we taking up the subject?
Is it just historical curiosity?
Or we want to learn of the early
controversies of the church that were resolved in
the great church crises and councils?
Or is there still an issue?
And how does it pertain to us?
It makes a world of difference if Jesus
had an advantage over us that we can't
employ.
And God cannot have an expectation that we
should walk as he walked.
But if he walked in his humanity, then
God has every right to expect a comparable
kind of walk from us.
So we have to wrestle through this question
for its remarkable implications.
And so here's Paul exhorting the church, let
Christ himself be your example as to what
your attitude should be.
For he who had always been God by
nature did not cling to his prerogatives as
God or as God's equal, but stripped himself
of all privileges.
I think some of your translations say he
emptied himself.
Raise your hand if yours says he emptied
himself.
Does anybody have some other word rather than
strip or empty in their version?
I kind of prefer stripped or emptied because
it's a very graphic picture of a man
who had every right in his deity to
have certain things intrinsic to his life, but
voided them and emptied himself.
Another author who I'll be bringing to our
table next week, P.T. Forstein said, that's
the very evidence of God.
Only God would have the power to empty
himself of his godness.
See what I mean?
A man could not do that, but God
can do that and that he did do
it in order to perform something of a
kind that would have a lasting significance into
the very present day into the end of
the age.
This is humility.
You know, it's humility for God to take
the form of a man.
Are you humbled by being a man?
How many times do you have to go
to the boys' room?
And when you reach my age, even having
gone, you still continue to dribble.
Excuse the reality.
It's embarrassing.
Wit to God, we had a glorified body
already where the valve shuts off when it
should.
A body is an embarrassment.
Paul could hardly bear it.
He wanted to shock off and be clothed
upon with a heavenly tent.
He was tired of the infirmity of the
body and its restrictions, its demands.
It's got to be fed and attended and
often it's in conflict with the things that
are spiritual.
It's a tension.
God submitted himself to that.
We don't appreciate the cross until we understand
that in order for the cross to have
its work, God had to come in the
form of a man.
And had to empty himself of his divine
prerogatives and privileges, even of his power, in
order to suffer what could only be inflicted
upon him in the weakness of a man.
Elsewhere it says he was crucified in weakness.
How can God be weak unless he has
forfeited his strength?
And that he would do it for us
is a remarkable statement of God.
That's why the cross is the revelation of
the righteousness of God.
Because he emptied himself.
Even coming down from heaven, the pre-incarnate
life of Christ is a neglected subject of
the church.
We think that he began with Mary.
No, he had an eternal existence with the
Father long before he took upon himself human
form.
And to forfeit that long experience and come
down into the earth and come out as
a baby dependent upon parents wholly weak and
all of the things which children are totally
dependent is an unbelievable humility for God himself
to perform.
But the benefits of his godness that he
emptied himself so that he would be wholly
cast upon the Father for every provision to
fulfill his earthly call.
He would have to be a man of
the spirit.
He would have to be a man of
faith.
He would have to pray.
He would have to go through the tensions
and struggles that we do discerning is it
God or is it me of the kind
that we experienced this morning.
That's a tension.
That's a conflict.
That's a humiliation.
When you lay aside divine prerogative that would
always be absolutely perfect and act out of
a humanity that is variable and questionable and
frail that you never know with certainty and
yet he had to perform certain things with
utter exactitude.
Overturning the money changes tables.
That word to the gentile woman about crumbs
from off the Lord's table.
There were significant moments.
Every moment in the life of Jesus is
significant.
What he said and did in any moment
can make or break his messianic claim.
As for example he went to his death
as a lamb to the slaughter silently.
If he but said one thing if he
allowed his human irritation to be vexed by
being mocked by his people in his suffering
when you're most vulnerable the whole testimony written
seven centuries before in Isaiah would be invalidated
and his claim as Messiah would be negated.
If he had said one word he went
to his death silently.
He had something to fulfill and he fulfilled
it perfectly.
But if he did all that in his
humanity what a remarkable testimony to the relationship
that he had with the Father to his
own dependence and trust of the Father even
for his own resurrection that he had to
live by faith that he had to be
up early praying to catch the sense of
the Father's heart and to trust for the
enablement to walk as he was required to
walk.
These are all issues for us but for
which reason we're taking it up.
So he emptied himself of all privilege by
consenting not only to be a man we
need to ask the question when the devils
were obedient unto him have you come before
the time when he was able to cast
out that which his disciples could not cast
out was he then employing his deity and
its authority or did he come to an
appropriation of an authority with God by his
walk that was effective in casting out those
demons got the idea?
because you remember when the woman with the
issue of blood walked behind him and she
had not been able to find a solution
with doctors and her whole substance and fortune
was spent in vain if I could but
touch his garment she said I'll be healed
and he was in the press of a
crowd and she touched his garment and was
healed but he knew in that moment someone
touched me they said what are you talking
about there are people crowding all over but
he said I felt the virtue go out
from me that virtue was the healing power
of God but if it was God how
could it go out it would always be
constant God cannot be subtracted from God but
if it was something cumulative and I'm raising
this as a question not as a verse
of the Lord that he obtained by successive
obediences so that what we call virtue is
the residue of God that exists as authority
in light of your history of faithfulness that
when she touched him that's the power that
went out from him it was a residue
of what one receives in obedience well how
do you mean that Cass because it says
the Holy Spirit is given to them that
obey him why because we need the power
for obedience God never calls us to an
obedience that we can perform out of ourselves
look my no hands every obedience which God
calls us is beyond our human ability and
therefore we're cast upon God and in our
sons determination to honor God by obeying he
grants his spirit and so I'm raising the
question that when the spirit is given in
obedience what else comes with the spirit that
is retained even after the power of the
spirit has been expended in the obedience these
are thoughts we need to consider that something
remains because the spirit of God is not
just an abstract energy the spirit of God
is God it's the Ruach HaKodesh it's the
spirit of holiness which is to say the
moral character of God is imbued in the
spirit so when he extends his spirit for
an obedience it performs it but the reality
the character of what came remains and so
successive obediences form something of a cumulative kind
that Jesus felt went out from him when
she touched him and the early English language
and some Bibles don't even say virtue but
in some of the others it's a virtue
went out from him well I love the
word virtue but you know the kind of
guy I am I like the word diffident
I like the word virtue I like all
words that have moral connotations I even like
the word moral because if you take the
word moral out of our vocabulary out of
our speech out of our consciousness and out
of our conduct we are no longer man
we're an animal that's exactly what makes man
man is the moral quotient no other creature
no other animal thinks in moral terms or
acts morally it's our privilege and it's the
distinction that makes us human is our moral
consideration so I'm saying that virtue has a
moral ring to it virtue is more than
just abstract power virtue is character something that
Jesus had not by virtue of his deity
but by virtue of his obedience as a
son in his humanity that's the point well
what's the point cats that if he had
a virtue that could be tapped as power
not because of his deity but because of
his obedient humanity what therefore is are we
capable of having by our obedience I would
prefer to think that power should be related
to character and not just be an entity
unto itself that anyone can perform independent of
what they really are in their moral character
before God because charismatically that's exactly what we
have been seeing in modern times the men
of faith and power but their lifestyle is
hardly moral they're living like barons in mansions
and private jets and all that kind of
stuff so contrary to the poverty of Paul
and of Jesus himself it raises significant questions
and yet they seem to express power so
many have heard this from me before one
of my most agonizing moments in my own
history in a platform at Jerusalem in the
1970's with a lady then who was the
most famed evangelist of her generation that brought
her catchers with her men who caught the
bodies that fell and the excitement when she
reached behind the person being prayed for to
touch the catcher and the catcher went down
and the flashbulbs were popping and the excitement
and I'm standing four or five feet away
from this action out of my skull, I'm
anguishing in my soul at the visible evidence
of power, bodies going down in the complete
absence of any sense of God's presence, the
failure to power without a sense of God,
that country I took Inga by the hand
and before 4,000 people I yanked her,
we were on the platform off the platform
and out the building I couldn't bear to
remain a moment longer so I much prefer
power in conjunction with character and I believe
that's what Jesus exhibited and that's what sons
are called to exhibit also power that is
independent of character seems like a formula for
deception and we have a power hungry church
that is not too scrupulous or concerned about
what is the source of the power so
long as they see the evidence of power,
they want excitement, they want titillation but they're
not concerned with where it's coming from and
through whom is it being expressed I love
therefore the episode of Jesus virtue has gone
out from me if it went out from
you dear Jesus, how did it come into
you if you lay aside your deity, your
prerogatives if you emptied yourself if you did
not exploit or employ your divine power by
what means then did it come into you
as a man this is why we're examining
this subject, what's the implication for us if
Jesus did it all by his deity well
we could admire that but we couldn't hope
to emulate that and yet he's the pattern
son bringing many sons to glory and the
word glory itself suggests God and his presence
bringing sons to glory is bringing them to
a place where they're in such union with
the power of God as to demonstrate the
glory of God but not in any way
to touch or misappropriate it for themselves they
can be trusted if we are undiscerning and
are not careful to ascertain the source of
the vessel through which it's coming, we will
be treated to demonic deception in fact we're
told lying signs and wonders characterize the last
days they are actual wonders but they're lying
because they do not come from the source
of God himself but his enemy who appears
to and presents himself as being from God
to the dupes who just want to enjoy
the exhilarating sense of power because they're bored
in fact can God be witnessed to and
his image be expressed except through a man
God has always required a tabernacle or a
temple it was filled with his glory the
priest could not minister they had to come
out because glory is diffused unless it's in
a structure created for its purpose that is
sanctified and cleansed that he might inhabit and
possess it, that's why Jesus was so jealous
with the money changes at the temple, they
were corrupting the house of God it's not
a house that God could occupy and in
fact it's not long after that it's going
to be actually destroyed and not one stone
would be left standing on the other but
the Jews died on the roof of the
temple in 70 AD because they thought the
building itself could not be destroyed, it was
God's temple but he had vacated it, it
was now an empty frame and the same
thing happens to us we are the temples
of God in our bodies but if we're
not living in a way that's compatible with
his holy presence we also will experience being
vacated or forfeited but he needs a temple
God doesn't need anything but in his own
wisdom his glory has got to fill the
temple to be seen, to be made manifest,
it requires a vessel, whether it's a building
or a human being and so I'm saying
not to say this, that the greatest revelation
of God as God must come through a
man whose vessel is totally possessed by God
and is wholly in obedience to that God
and in that obedience is expressing the very
character of God and that in fact in
laying aside his deity and his prerogatives he's
exhibiting God because God himself is humble that
when Jesus took that towel and girded himself
and took off his robe and drew water
and washed the feet of his disciples he
was not just performing a novelty he was
enacting decisively a statement of what God is
in himself in his character God is humble
folks he's so humble he's willing to occupy
us what do you think of that?
and so how would we have known it
if a man had not demonstrated it and
how shall the world know it if we
don't demonstrate it God doesn't need anything from
man except that he himself humbles himself to
require something for the showing forth of his
own glory he didn't need the world he
didn't need mankind all of this is God
acting out of his freedom as God and
what a revelation that is that a God
who is totally entire in himself because he's
perfect had no need of a world or
a universe or an earth or a humankind
created it for fellowship for relationship to show
forth his greater glory the reasons that he
has that are not even given us he
didn't have to he's not under any compulsion
he's entirely free as God he's voluntarily chose
to create in the beginning God created he
was not under obligation that he's willing to
do that and take the risk of his
creation that backfired on him so to speak
through Adam and has generated generations of sinners
who have mocked his name and blasphemed him
and gave rise to a nation whose track
record is altogether a pitiful thing as we
read yesterday in Psalm 78 and that he
foresaw and foreknew that this was going to
cost him an anguish of soul and yet
it did not deter him from creating and
bringing Israel into existence as a nation for
his name or the church how has the
church failed him so he's a sufferer moral
anguish maybe the greatest form of suffering even
eclipsing the physical God is a sufferer God
is humble God is gracious and generous he
didn't have to share himself he didn't have
to create anything he would still have been
God and perfect and completed himself everything that
he does exhibits him and when he sends
himself and his son that very sending is
the statement of God because Jesus was not
conscripted he voluntarily agreed with the father because
the father and the son are one that
there are purposes that need to be served
in the earth that cannot be served by
anyone else other than God himself it's not
enough for God to judge and let calves
and bulls suffer the consequence that's only a
type to illustrate something that will come ultimately
that eclipses the blood of calves and bulls
and that must be the blood of a
man who is also God if there's going
to be blood it's got to be a
man and a man therefore is free a
man acts voluntarily in agreement with the father
he's not compelled he exhibits what a man
is in his own freedom in agreeing to
serve the purposes of God the father even
at the expense of his own humiliation suffering
and death see we can't celebrate the cross
unless we configure the pre-incarnate history of
Jesus with the father before he came to
the earth because he emptied himself of that
relationship just to come and in coming he
takes upon himself the form of a man
what a pitiful thing with all of that
limitation hunger, thirst fear, anxiety opposition not only
that Paul tells us in Philippians but the
form of a Hebrew the most despised race
on the earth he should have been a
German at least Denmark would have been second
best but a Jew becomes a Jew and
there are many Christians today who will not
acknowledge that and taking that then he becomes
a slave what he did washing the feet
was not a little flim flam it was
a statement of what he ever and always
was even before he came to the earth
he was always a servant because he reveals
the father so the father is a servant
the father is humble the father is merciful
the father is love because how do we
know it?
the son exhibits and displays it all the
more in his humanity he's not flashing his
his credentials of deity that would only impress
us but he's exhibiting it in his humanity
for which we ourselves have the same prospect
and that is altogether another story now we
can become sons now becoming a son in
the form of that son is ultimate honor
to be conformed to the pattern of that
son equally living sacrificially bearing suffering reproach, all
the kinds of things that he bore in
his humanity in order to show forth the
glory of God the father as servants what
does it say in Psalm 102 when the
set time to favor Zion has come when
my servants shall have compassion on her stones
and pity on her dust it doesn't say
church of course it couldn't have said church
generations would have been bewildered by the word
but the word is significant servants, when my
servants servanthood is God it's not a put
on, it's not a something that he was
required to adopt, it's what he was and
is in himself because that's equally what the
father is can you believe that the great
God who is the creator of the heavens
and the earth and all that in them
is is by very nature a servant that's
his nature that by very nature he's humble
that he's love that he's a sufferer for
others here's what Carl Barth says on the
subject of Jesus man for other men Jesus
is the supreme man we don't know what
manhood is it's got nothing to do with
biceps or crushing empty beer cans in your
bare hand or winning tennis titles a man
mamma mia, a man is a supreme statement
have you ever drooled about it I'm not
talking about some romantic image of but man
what a creature made in God's image a
man is a supreme accomplishment a man is
a supreme piece of the ultimate expression of
God and his creativity God forbid we should
allow that image to suffer loss and become
a caricature or some drunken or some drug
afflicted character who can't even walk straight can't
speak a word straight or we're raising a
whole generation who can hardly do anything but
mumble can't speak their speech is not incisive
their minds are unclear they're limited in their
intention their ambitions are abysmal and low and
carnal they are deformed in their humanity and
are not reflecting the grandeur of God in
creating us in his image as man and
you know what Jesus in his eternal identity
retains his manhood he didn't drop it off
when he finished his functions in the earth
and go back again to being an abstract
entity as a son to the father at
the throne now he still retains his body,
he still retains his manhood and when he
comes he comes in that manhood and we
shall see him whom we have pierced, how
come?
because his body bears the scars and will
eternally man is in heaven you guys at
the very throne of God that's a statement
of God himself that he allows man to
be in the eternal presence of God the
father it's an honoring of man which puts
a little obligation upon us to walk as
men not as mere men why do you
walk as mere men?
which I spoke once in Denmark when they
came into the building I saw these guys
coming in and I said why do you
walk as mere men?
the meeting hadn't even begun yet but when
they came in I was impressed, that's all
they are is mere men there's something missing
from their manhood, namely the divine quotient they're
just believers of a kind, but not of
such a kind that their humanity reflects the
deity of God and until it becomes that
we're not really man man is not man
without God man is man with God, that's
what Jesus displayed and that's what we are
called to display, so listen to this statement
from one of my favorite theologians the humanity
of Jesus is not merely the repetition and
reflection of his divinity or of God's controlling
will, it is the repetition and reflection of
God himself, no more and no less, it
is the image of God, this is not
some inadvertent thing, it's the very expression of
God man in his perfected humanity, in his
obedience to God, through the provision of the
Holy Spirit which is God, comes into a
fullness that reveals God as God, that's what
Jesus did, and that perfect piece of humanity
was battered to a pulp and lost all
of its shape, it had no beauty that
any should desire him he was more than
any man they destroyed that humanity, but when
God raised him up, you can see the
other painting here, every place where he suffered
perforation in his flesh, beams of glory are
pouring out and when the disciples saw him
in his glorified resurrected body they recognized him
let me ask, when you receive your glorified
body, see you're not going to ever shut
this off you better learn to live with
it without a body you lose your human
distinctive, we mustn't be contemptuous of the body
as if it's non-spiritual the spiritual thing
is made manifest through it, but we mustn't
idolize it, and pamper it, but respect it
as a piece of God's creation and uniquely
different with each one, so when the Lord
comes and we shall see him as he
is, in a twinkling of an eye in
a moment, we shall be made like him,
we shall be given glorified bodies, what does
that mean?
we shall all be stamped off the same
production line?
we will be given a glorified body of
the body that we brought as a seed
into the earth look at 1st Corinthians 15
disputing with those who thought that the resurrection
was passed, but in verse 20, but now
is Christ risen from the dead, and became
the first fruits of them that slept for
since by man came death, by man came
also the resurrection of the dead you know
what I would do?
I would take my red pen and circle
the word man isn't that remarkable?
in the morning the Lord says develop a
mistrust of man, be suspicious of your own
man and yet God celebrates man, it's a
paradox for by man came death, but by
man also came the resurrection from the dead,
the supreme man, Jesus the new creation the
template and the paradigm of manhood for all
successive generations Jesus is the paradigm of what
manhood ought to be and will be in
all successive generations and our failure to conform
to that image by sloth, by laziness by
indifference, by careless living, by sin marring that
image is doing despite to the grace of
God we should be conformed to the image
of the sun the template of a perfect
humanity in relationship with deity by faith we
also should exhibit and grow in that but
every man in his own order Christ the
firstfruits, verse 23 afterwards lay there Christ that
is coming then comes the end when shall
the Lord of the king the God, even
the Father when shall put down all authority,
well he must reign he's put all enemies
on his feet, now in verse 35 some
will say how are the dead raised up,
with what body do they come do they
come in some kind of magical, classic form
all stamped off the same production line you
fool that which you sow is not made
alive except it die, and that which thou
sowest thou sowest not that body that shall
be but a bare grain, it may chance
wheat or some other grain but God giveth
it a body as it please him and
every seed its own body, what you sow
will affect what you reap, what we sow
as our body will affect the glorified form
of that body, that's as much as I
know and as I understand from these verses
but that we retain our humanity is clear,
but in what form we retain it has
a lot to do with what form it
goes into the ground and dies but we'll
recognize each other, in what form will you
see me in my 76, 77th year, or
the year of my death or will you
see me at the flush of my youth
or at the height of my young manhood
in my early 20s or my mellow years
through the 30s and 40s or 50s at
what age will you see me or each
other the scripture doesn't tell us but I
suspect it will be the statement of the
essence of what God has established and perfected
through our earthly tenure will be the eternal
statement in its glorified form and you'll recognize
this is regiment, that's art we'll know each
other because the essence of what we are
and what we have allowed God to perfect
and through our discipleship and consecration and even
our suffering will eternally be carried in that
glorified form wait till I read you I
have it in my briefcase now but I
don't think we're ready yet Spurgeon's statement that
when we have acquired the son we have
acquired everything through which the son has passed
his life experience, his maturity, the issues of
his life are not just spent and done
and fade with history they are communicated in
the son perfected through that and when we
acquire the son we acquire everything through which
the son has passed and it opens to
me some consideration like how is it that
Spurgeon saved at the age of 15 or
16 is within a year already a preacher
and before he's 20 or so he's preaching
to thousands in London in a building that
had to be made for him to accommodate
the crowds and when I read him even
now his insight his knowledge the knowledge of
God I can read you today as you'll
be floored where did he get that because
he was already talking and writing like this
in his 20s what I'm saying is his
wisdom and knowledge of God could not have
been the product of his experience he had
not lived long enough what then was he
expressing he was expressing the experience of the
Jesus who was his life just to come
consciously in an awareness like this and to
receive the benefit of all through which Jesus
has passed that maturity is not just cumulative
years, maturity is receiving the tested son of
obedience and making that incorporate and internalized and
part of our own and walking in that
we're living beneath the glory dear folks we're
living beneath our inheritance the experience of Jesus
is too precious to have been dissipated away
after it was performed it came into him
as character, as moral being the son being
perfected through obedience through which he suffered, should
not be lost to successive generations but be
part of their inheritance P.T. Forsyth says,
Jesus became what he already was yeah by
his obediences he came into his deity so
to speak into the character of God which
he lay aside, he then obtained humanly by
obedience became the God man not by the
supernatural thing that was his at the first
but by the acts of his humanity and
obedience so that the humility that he expresses
is a divine character but is yet attained
humanly through his experience now let me put
this out if we are at a place
where we can consciously inherit the experience of
Jesus and come into maturity that is beyond
our years what happens to our experience?
am I 75, 6 years spent and gone
and no one will receive the benefit and
it all dissipates through the air or does
the same principle pertain to us that as
the experience of Jesus is mediated and passed
on through inheritance as it were the same
thing is possible to us that my children,
not just biological but spiritual or the church
to whatever degree that it can draw from
and receive has the benefit of my experience
even that which is lost to my own
memory because it has settled somewhere in the
being and in the person so that what
is spoken and said carries a resonance and
a weight of a history that you can
inherit and we can do that for each
other that the church ought to be one
of the richest realities in the world if
we have the advantage of each other's history
as well as his it means that whatever
suffering we're bearing is not just for the
moment but for posterity that future generations should
the Lord tarry will receive the benefit of
that through which we have passed and therefore
we will have a greater disposition to bear
that suffering if it has a significance beyond
the moment as it affects us but will
affect all the future as I believe it
will both in heaven and in earth see
the implications of this?
awesome to know that this treasure is available
and that we have been ignorant and have
bypassed it so to speak and just acting
out of the limitations of our own lifetime
is a remarkable loss so imagine the whole
corporate body receiving this benefit and coming to
that great maturity for which the Lord has
invested himself, his investment is too great to
be dissipated away and to be lost to
successive generations or to the church in corporate
which the powers recognize Jesus we know and
Paul we know but who are you?
what do they know about Jesus and Paul?
and what could they know about Paul that
they know equally about Jesus?
Jesus they could know by virtue of his
divinity as the sent son but what could
they know about Paul who is a human
being?
but they know exactly the same for Paul
as they know for Jesus what do they
know?
that these men resonate God and resonate the
authority of God independent whether they were sent
from the father or they had a natural
birth and were converted but Paul's relationship with
the father through the son was of a
kind like the son himself and brought dimensions
into his life of authority that the powers
recognized and feared so when they mock us
and they say Jesus we know Paul we
know but who are you?
they say you lack what Paul exhibited and
Paul exhibited what Jesus exhibited and both of
them obtained it from the father who is
ultimate authority not by virtue of birth but
by virtue of acquisition through obedience so when
we mock you who are you?
those powers are saying you guys are living
beneath the standard you're not living in a
way as sons by which you would have
acquired the same resonance of God as both
Jesus and Paul exhibited which we fear just
to go back early in the life of
Jesus even as a boy one of the
first instances when they went up to the
temple for the Passover and left in the
crowd and thought Jesus was with them and
found out after a few days that he
was not and were panic stricken and they
went back and they found him and he
was both asking and hearing the doctors of
the Lord I love that statement he was
both speaking raising questions but also hearing isn't
that precious for a son already exercising his
humanity to obtain and they said where were
you and they were flustered and he said
don't you know I had to be about
my father's business already has this consciousness even
as a 12 year old and they understood
not it says in Luke chapter 2 verse
50 they understood not the saying which you
spoke unto them the next verse says and
he went down with them and came to
Nazareth and was subject unto them but his
mother kept all these sayings in her heart
this is a remarkable statement of the godly
disposition already in Jesus as a son and
as a boy that even though his parents
did not understand him nor his call he
submitted himself unto them to bear the indignation
the irritation of parents who don't understand have
you ever had to bear the humiliation of
a wife who doesn't understand doesn't know what
you're about and why can't you tell jokes
like other speakers and why do you embarrass
me with your strange behavior and yank me
off the platform before 4,000 people in
front of all those celebrities whom I admire
and I want to bless you're a strange
man never understood you even to this day
what does a man crave more in his
humanity than that recognition that's what Jesus suffered
the loss of by parents who didn't understand
him but it did not hinder him from
going down with them to Nazareth and it's
a literal going down not just because Jerusalem
is going up but Nazareth is the the
anus of the world it's the bottom of
the pile Nazareth can any good thing come
out of it so he's not only going
with parents who are dum-dums but he's
going down to a place that is spiritually
despicable he submitted himself and the next verse
says and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature
and in favor with God and man just
the words Jesus increased indicates that this is
not some full blown deity that can be
tapped at will but it is as human
as us in the prospect of growing and
increasing or falling back or being depleted he
increased in wisdom and in stature by God
and man and he never stopped increasing he
increased all the way through the 33 years
of his life right to the final obedience
in the garden of Gethsemane to the cross
he kept increasing in stature he grew into
his full deity so to speak through his
human submission and humiliation was the key to
increase if that was his mode of increase
what is ours?
why haven't we increased?
because we're unwilling to go down we're unwilling
to suffer indignity or lack of appreciation or
understanding or whatever our Nazareth is or whatever
our unbelieving parents or spouses are there's plenty
of opportunity if we will go down and
evidently that's the mode by which Jesus increased
in his humanity and it's the mode for
us as well you see why it's so
important to come to some understanding of this
mystery of incarnation of God in the flesh
there's got to be a flesh there's got
to be God and there's a dynamic and
a tension of relationship of discerning and being
obedient to that God in which he'll allow
you to trip and falter just to show
you how delicate a thing it is and
that you can't in the last analysis have
an absolute confidence even if you have a
41 year history the next time is as
perilous and tremulous as the very first time
you ever obeyed God it never gets familiar
it's every time again as a first time
of fear and trembling and yet when the
hour strikes you've got to go up you've
got to obey you can't cop out and
say I'm not sure you're as sure as
you're sure and even when you speak you're
diffident because even if you're right you're wrong
got the idea you guys that's sonship Jesus
demonstrated it why?
so that we would have a pattern as
Debbie said, a model and Paul himself offered
himself follow me as I follow Christ take
my example to yourself and my ways it's
not a man boasting in his vanity it's
a man who's the replica of Jesus and
his generation Jesus has not ended, he's continuing
in counsel and messianic value through a son
who has voided everything and counted it as
done, that he might win Christ he's in
the same relationship with the Father through Christ
as Jesus was in his own body that's
why he can say I don't receive this
by how does he say it?
I don't receive this as command I offer
you this as my opinion and two thousand
years later we are as fastidious and attentive
to what Paul gave as opinion as we
do to what Paul received as commandment that's
how close the man was to God that
his opinion is not some chance arbitrary thing
but has the same value as what he
received as commandment because he was in that
union with deity we avail ourselves of what
God makes available but we have the same
necessity to come to a wilderness place of
radical separation from everything and to have that
union with God by which we are instructed
Jesus had to have a thirty year history
in his humanity before his three year brief
tenure in ministry a thirty year investment for
a three year use what about us and
our generation we go to a three month
discipleship school and boom we're in ministry where
is our investment where are we willing to
be hidden and obscure and allow the Lord
to instruct us in another kind of school
before we ever take first steps in expressing
ourselves this is an instant generation and everybody
wants in three months to do, to do
and to be that's why believers thought that
I had died we haven't heard a thing
about Art Cassius, he was such a flash
in the pan this Jewish guy, he was
soaring and what a spokesman and anointed and
da da da and we haven't heard of
him anybody know, when did he die he
was in the boondocks ten years out here
without ministry and even after the ten years
there are seasons in which God has shut
me down for a year at a time
and there's no trip, no service no ministry,
no speaking fourteen months of sabbatical silence where
I was not allowed to speak anything before
the first message on the mystery of Israel
in the church so God has his ways
of training us if we're willing to submit
to death silence is death the flesh yearns
for activity why is it that when the
priests were consecrated and after much blood and
sprinkling and washings and all kinds of things
the last requirement for their ordination is seven
days waiting at the tenth of meeting just
twiddling their thumbs doing nothing and all Israel
is looking on on that patented activity why?
because they're young and there's an itch that
needs yet to be brought into death and
waiting is a form of dying a priest
that will not wait is not a priest
a priest who's impetuous and has got to
say and do because the thought comes to
him it must be God has not yet
been tempered so we're rushing such young men
into ministry youth for Christ youth with a
mission my brother said how can youth even
have a mission?
I admire there's not an organization that I
admire more but their very title indicates the
temper of our evangelical age youth with a
mission there's another there's teenagers for Christ because
kids are bored and need something to do
and go to exotic places but how are
they instructing others who have not been instructed
themselves how can they give beyond the level
of their own experience of maturity so it's
a marvel the good that has been done
and of course many come to maturity in
the very process but there's a tinge of
presumption that youth could have a mission why
even the priest the Aaronic priest could not
begin their ministries until the same age in
which Jesus began his 30 all those good
years listen at the age of 12 he
was stupefying the priest and the doctors of
the law he had such sagacity means wisdom
and confounded them in the remarkable understanding but
he had yet to wait 18 more years
before he could express it I want to
tell you dear saints that 18 years was
death Jesus didn't have to wait for the
cross to experience death his whole lifetime is
an experience of death even going down with
unbelieving parents to Nazareth is death but those
deaths were obediences that sprung to life so
even the Aaronic priest could not commence its
activity until the age of 30, until the
age of maturity and after 20 years they're
finished they retire at the age of 50
they gave the cream of their choices they
gave 60 years to their service the 30
years that preceded were preparation for the 20
years of activity and then retirement what a
mentality, so other than our own we're doing,
doing, doing, doing but it's sound and fury
that signifies little if nothing as Shakespeare said
so God can give you a wilderness behind
the shades and curtains of your own home
if you'll submit to it and welcome it
but there must be a wilderness there must
be a radical separation there must be a
dealing of God in which you shut out
those things that are distractions and God can
actually send you into a physical place he
brought us here to nowhere is where the
travel agents didn't even know where Laporte is
and so the one way or the other
we've got to find our way back even
to the pattern indicated by the Aaronic priesthood
because even in the Melchizedek priesthood it says
that Jesus being in the form of a
son of God was without father, mother, ancestry
beginning or ending of days what does it
mean?
He's separated from the most elementary natural soulish
connections that are congruent to the life of
men anywhere without father or mother, without ancestry
without beginning or ending of days and what
does it say?
if he were in the earth he would
not be a priest at all he was
heavenly while in the earth, Paul's citizenship was
in heaven while in the earth Jesus could
say to Nicodemus the son of man no
man ascends no man descends no man descends
who has not first ascended even the son
of man who is in heaven, speaking of
himself in Jerusalem, his feet on terra firma
to a man in that same city saying
the son of man who is in heaven
how can he be in heaven while he's
speaking to Nicodemus on earth if you don't
understand that you don't understand the subject at
hand, you don't understand the mystery of incarnation
that you can be physically in one place
but the actuality that forms you that governs
you, that inspires you that provides for you
is another place and it's above even while
you're here below and that this is God's
normative intention for every saint and Jesus demonstrated
that, Paul demonstrated that and we need to
demonstrate that Paul said it's death that works
in me but life in you there was
a necessary season of death before the first
expression of a holy message that has been
withheld from the church until this time the
mystery of Israel and the church, the key
of Paul's apostolic perception of the faith given
at the heart of his book of Romans
was lost to the church and to the
best leaders in it, men whom I knew
and would confess it's a complete mystery to
me, I never have understood it so where
does God bring me in the years in
which he shuts down Ben Israel to a
Lutheran seminary in St. Paul liberal, 65%
female student body of which 99% were
all witches or lesbians or both hating my
guts that when I took a visiting brother
into school with me into the classroom, he
said the moment you walked in Art, I
could feel the vibes coming out of these
women against you, he said the intense hatred
against you, they were everyday campaigning for my
ejection because I had the audacity to say
that God is he and him and that
the pronoun is masculine as against their belief
that it was an earth goddess that precedes
the father oh and there was a tension
everyday, I came home everyday from that school
battered and bruised from the spiritual onslaught of
these witches for two years so I mean
there's a whole history and in that time
at the seminary the Lord is beginning to
open to me by inadvertent means, by a
book that I stumble upon where I'm looking
for another required reading on the history of
Israel of Jews in Germany and begins to
factor things into my comprehension so that by
the end of the first quarter the thought
comes to me what are the implications for
the church of the last days what are
the implications for the church from the issue
of Israel for the church of the last
days and I'm in my 14th month of
a sabbatical silence which by the way is
not explained when God requires the sons of
Israel now look Art, I'm not allowing you
to speak publicly for 14 months you have
no other source of income by the way
and if you don't speak who are you
you're a mouthpiece and you're a dead man
you're a piece of cadaver if you don't
speak but I'm not allowing you to speak
publicly for 14 months well I didn't even
say how long and he doesn't explain why
you just know the requirement did God say
so?
well not in so many words but it
was clear but at the end of the
14 months at the school I'm coming to
the realization the Lord has shown me something
and what are the implications for the church
in the last days with regard to the
subject of Israel and boom the phone goes
off and some guy whom I don't know
from Sacramento Art my name is Pastor so
and so we're praying here we believe God
wants you to speak to us a seminar
on Israel and the church in the last
days I knew that the silence was over
we're on holy ground you dear guys and
we've not been on this ground before this
is a first I feel like I'm walking
a tight wire with a great precipice below
because as Reggie knows any undue emphasis of
the one thing or the other can bring
you into heresy by celebrating the humanity of
Jesus unduly or by celebrating the deity to
the disadvantage of its humanity can bring you
into heresy it's a remarkable walk and yet
if we forfeit the one or the other
we miss the great mystery that we are
called to exhibit in our humanity so much
prayer that's why we fasted and prayed before
the school began for several days sensing that
we were going to be called onto a
new ground that we had never before explored
and we're on that ground right now that
as Jesus now is eternally the man Christ
Jesus at the throne of the father and
will come again in his humanity and in
his scarred body we also will eternally live
with and continue in the humanity that is
ours that God is willing for that as
a remarkable statement of himself that he's not
embarrassed or offended that in fact he's glorified
many sons being brought to glory through the
sonship of the maturity in their humanity through
the availability of God by faith in the
spirit through the reality of resurrection it's a
remarkable thing but we have not been stupefied
and stunned and in awe over our calling
in our humanity and humanity itself has been
depreciated man is becoming a slop and a
slur and a caricature and the enemy loves
to mar man, he loves to make masculine
men effeminate and make women masculine, he wants
to destroy the image of God, he wants
to stupefy and ruin and corrupt the image
of man because the image of man is
the reflection of God and we need to
contend against it and that's why in Africa
the message to the church was stand for
what God has made in his image don't
allow these black people to be made merchandise
and to be subject to disease and ignorance,
go and present yourself before the legislature and
demand those things that are minimal and essential
to human dignity of man as man, whatever
the cost to yourself you have to stand
for what is made in man's image, that
was the message so it needs to be
our message also whether we're in Africa or
not and to esteem our own humanity as
the vehicle for God's revelation of his glory
so Lord precious God oh we're on new
ground my God and somehow the morning prayer
time has everything to do with the class
time, it somehow fits, there's something here, the
paradox of to be suspicious of what is
in man and the next breath to celebrate
the humanity of man as the very vehicle
for the revelation of God's glory what a
tension, what a contradiction what a paradox, is
this faith, but we're not shunning it for
that reason, we're embracing it for that reason,
and we know we'll not come to that
perfection of our humanity without a school of
obedience, without a school of humility without dealings
with God that we can't understand that perplex
us, whether it's a long silence or a
rebuke publicly that somehow it all fits in
and is given and comes from the hand
of God for the perfecting of sons in
your image so Lord, help us help us
Lord, we're just feeling our way here, and
we don't want to miss this remarkable issue
that has come with the advent of your
son, and our call to be sons in
his image thank you my God for bringing
us this far open our understanding, our appreciation
for ourselves in our humanity and not to
despise it but to esteem it as given
of God the creator and so we're blessed
Lord, thank you my God help us to
continue today and in these days and bring
us all the way through, and the things
that we've been saying to you again and
again in the prayer not just head knowledge
Lord, but life change we thank you and
give you praise, for a privileged time as
this, in Jesus name Amen