What is man whose breath is in his
own nostrils?
Here again is a terrible paradox that earthlings
celebrate, if not worship man, and yet God
would have us to celebrate man as the
epitome of his creation which the enemy is
desiring to mar and altogether despoil, so as
to discredit God.
And so homosexuality, tattooing as a brother came
up and shared with us, earrings, puncturing bodies,
all of the remarkable things that are happening
not just at the subculture level but are
becoming now prominent at the highest forms of
culture where a tattoo is, what's the word,
standard operating procedure.
There's a French de rigueur, something like that,
prescribed, is a remarkable statement of how active
the enemy is to despoil man and to
discredit God by marring as he did when
he had laid his hands on the Lord
himself.
So we need to be conscious of that,
that man is under attack and to be
reduced so as to reduce God and his
glory and that therefore we have an obligation
to uphold what God has made.
As I've said, that was the message in
Africa which is not a cheap message that
the church has got to be the guardian,
the steward of this mandate and take it
into places where it will not be appreciated
and might even evoke hostile reactions.
In the very nation where I'm commending this
to the church, journalists have already been evicted
or imprisoned or had to flee for their
lives who then even raise a criticism about
the powers that prevail in those countries.
So to tell the church to challenge those
powers in defense of what is made in
God's image is no small mandate.
It may cost them something but the image
of man is being so marred by disease
and ignorance, poverty that it's a pitiful thing
and a discredit to God.
So you can't believe the amount of attention
that this theologian gives to the word man.
I just want to read you certain portions.
There is obviously no distance between the human
definition and the divine.
His humanity is not of course his divinity.
In his divinity he is from and to
God.
In his humanity he is from and to
the cosmos.
But his humanity is in the closest correspondence
with his divinity.
When you read the Council of Chalcedon they
talk about made of the same substance there
is a Greek word for that but independent,
the divinity and the humanity two separate entities
but made of the same substance.
They don't know how to reconcile what seems
to be antithetical, God and man.
But here is Karl Barth saying his humanity
is in the closest correspondence with his divinity.
How to attain that correspondence of the closest
kind is the issue of being human of
being man in the image of God.
Because without the divine influence what is man?
He will fall into something less than an
animal he'll be bestial.
It's the issue of divinity that is the
issue of man.
It's the making of a man.
So the familiar saying it takes God to
be a man is more true than we
have understood.
But how do you tap that divinity?
How did Jesus do it?
How do you appropriate it?
So that it configures with the humanity to
be the image that God intends by which
his glory is revealed is the issue before
us.
And we'll not attain to it if we
not recognize it as an issue.
Because it mirrors and reflects it reflects God.
His divinity has its correspondence and image in
the humanity in which it is mirrored.
You can't talk about God rightly independent of
man.
Especially the man Christ Jesus.
The classic man the ultimate man, the true
man the new man, the pattern for the
new creation, the new mankind the second Adam.
I'm not reading anymore, I'm just blabbing.
So each is to be recognized in the
other.
Thus even the life of the man Jesus
stands under two-fold determination.
But there is harmony between the two.
As he is for God so is he
for man.
As he is for man so is he
for God.
Since the will of God is the basis
and man the object of the work in
which this man is engaged.
That the word was made flesh means first
and generally that he became man, true and
real man.
Participating in the same human essence and existence
the same human nature and form the same
historicity that we have.
God's revelation to us takes place in such
a way that everything ascribable to man is
creaturely existence as an individually unique unity of
body and soul in the time between birth
and death can now be predicated of God's
eternal son as well.
That God became man is an astounding phenomenon.
He took upon himself flesh and in birth
and death it had a creaturely existence in
everything that is ascribable to man.
It wasn't theoretical it was actual.
Everything miraculous about his being as a man
derives its meaning and force from the fact
that it concerns the true man, Jesus Christ,
as a man like ourselves.
We mustn't idealize the man that Jesus was.
We need to recognize a humanity like our
own or we miss the great point of
God.
That's the greater glory.
If he was an idealized humanity it would
not pass through the realities to which we
are called.
But he was man in every way like
as we as were also the prophets where
we're told they are flesh and blood like
as we.
Yet Elijah prayed and there was no rain.
So we need to be reminded of the
stubborn facticity of man as man or we
miss the issue of glory.
If we idealize Jesus as a kind of
unique manhood unlike our own, we miss the
point.
And I said to someone our embrace of
Jesus if we are embracing an idealized thing
in our own imagination, it's not a real
union with him.
But to embrace him as a marred piece
of humanity this blooded and battered Christ in
his abject humanity is the deep and the
true embrace.
And if we're incapable of that with Jesus
in this condition how shall we embrace Israel
when it shall come into this condition?
For they are not long from the place
where they shall be marred more than any
man and they will have no beauty that
any should desire them.
How will you embrace them and be to
them what you ought in love in their
marred humanity if you have avoided it in
Jesus and have idealized him and are embracing
him in your imagination?
How many of our marriages fail because we
have an idealized notion of the humanity of
our spouses and when we see them in
their BVDs and in their true humanity our
idyllic concept is shattered and we're disappointed and
disillusioned and often we can't go on.
It's important to understand the reality of man
as man and Jesus in that very manhood.
That's why the theologian has taken the pains
to make these statements that the word was
made flesh that he became man, true and
real man, participating in the same human essence
and existence the same human nature and form
that we ourselves have.
What in fact makes revelation revelation a miracle,
a miracle is that the word of God
had actually become a real man and that
therefore the life of this real man was
the object and theater of the acts of
God, the light of revelation entering the world.
And if you'll not see that light through
that revelation, you'll not see that light.
The most offensive thing for Jews to consider
is that God was made man.
How could that be?
It's an offense to their concept that God
is lofty, ethereal and high but to become
man seems to be an indignity to deity
itself.
Got the idea?
They cannot bite that bullet.
It's a contradiction of all that they think
that God is to be in separation from
what is human for God to become man
and grovel as a servant and die as
a man as a criminal in the vilest
form of that death is totally incompatible with
the lofty, ethereal and idealized notions of God
that Judaism has.
The only thing that we can say is
however lofty and idealized their view is it
is an error.
It's the project of their own imagining.
They're making God in their image and will
not receive him in the image in which
he has given himself which alone is the
light that lightens the world.
Got the picture?
There's a reason for God's madness.
There's a reason for God's foolishness.
He's chosen for himself the foolish and the
weak thing.
The weakest and the most foolish thing the
form of man himself as a servant.
Let's go back to what we said before.
What Paul says in the beginning.
This gospel is the power of God in
the salvation to everyone who believes.
To the Jew first.
How do you present this untenable view to
Jews who are established in another view of
God altogether?
Can you do it verbally?
Or must the gospel have a power even
to penetrate these Jewish categories that are so
obstinately opposed to the revelation of God in
man.
The man Christ Jesus.
And can we succeed in it unless we
ourselves are that very statement.
Not just that we're saying the right thing
but we ourselves are the right thing.
That's why Paul could say of himself in
1 Thessalonians you know what manner of man
I was with you.
That the word that you received was not
the word of man but the word of
God which performs the work in them that
believe.
That what I was as a man before
you had everything to do with the message
which I brought.
I was the message.
You could believe it because you could see
it.
I depicted the very mystery of incarnation because
for me to live is Christ.
Is not a little catch word but the
sum and substance of what I am as
apostolic man which is to say true man.
And this is I'll call you dear saints.
Paul is the paradigm of the true new
man in Christ.
And therefore the powers feared him.
Jesus we know and Paul we know no
question about it.
Because he exhibits what was in Jesus which
is to say what is in God which
we fear and despise and shrink from encountering.
But who are you?
You're just a carbon copper.
You're just a superficial similitude.
You don't have the awesome, recognizable and unquestionable
reality exhibited by both these men in their
humanity.
You don't have it in yours.
You're saying the right thing but we yawn
in your face.
You have not yet exhibited this awesome reality
which can only come through your union with
deity in every place where you have died
to yourself and are alive unto God.
You have not suffered sufficient deaths.
As you can say with Paul, it's death
that works in me but life in you.
Which life?
The life of Christ.
Because you have shrunk from these deaths.
Because you have safeguarded yourself and kept yourself
at a distance from any requirement to die.
You're unwilling for the embarrassment, for the humility.
You've kept your life shielded.
There's been no working of his death therefore
no exhibition of his life.
There's no virtue in you.
But I'll tell you what.
It's easier to suffer a bullet than the
moral dust which we're called as believers.
The anguish of soul.
The uncertainty.
The tension.
So Jesus was faithful in multiple deaths before
the ultimate death.
Every death was another reenactment of the cross
before he was required actually to be impaled
on it.
But with that death life goes forth.
Which life?
The life of God.
So the humanity of Christ alone is the
revelation of the eternal word.
Karl Barth is going out on a limb.
What a radical statement.
This exclusive and absolute reference that the humanity
of Christ alone is the revelation of the
eternal word.
That word not for that humanity.
The eternal word could not have been made
manifest.
That's why in John in the prologue it
says, whom we have felt and touched and
handled.
This flesh is the eternal word which we
have touched and handled and fondled.
This is stupefying.
The eternal word of God has become flesh
and lived and dwelt among us.
We've laid our head on his bosom.
We've seen him sweat.
We've seen him crucified.
This was known of him and desired by
him from before the foundations of the world.
Isn't that remarkable?
This is a capstone, a conclusion, a finale
that he knew would be required in point
of time in history and in place through
a sent son in his humanity in the
form of a man.
And the son has agreed to this.
So the son shares the father's humility and
love.
For God so loved the world he gave
his only begotten son, but the son was
willing to be given.
He was not reluctant or under obligation.
It was as free as the father's sending
was the son's willingness.
And what do we see in that?
God.
God so loved.
How would we know that God loves?
Because he tells us so.
We have scriptures that prove it.
We need to know that we know that
God loves and that we are loved.
And so his provision gives us that incisive
confidence that Paul says, who can contradict the
love of God?
Can suffering and persecutions and this and that?
Nothing in the world of persecution or opposition
because God has so amply demonstrated his love,
not just by an abstract word, but by
the reality in the demonstration of his son
as man, flesh and blood like his wing.
That's love.
That's God.
See what I mean?
Saves us from doubt and inferiority and loss
of identity.
This is when you are accepted in the
beloved of what shall you be afraid?
And why shall you tremble in some confusion
about who you are and what you are
about if you are accepted in the beloved?
God has got to make a vivid demonstration
and that's why Barth says the humanity of
Christ alone is the revelation of the eternal
word.
Thus the reality of Jesus Christ is that
God himself in person is actively present in
the flesh.
God himself in person is the subject of
a real human being and acting and just
because God is the subject of it, this
being and acting are real.
Whenever I see the word real boing!
Real is the root of the word reality.
Reality is God and the real and reality
have its foundations, its nexus, its origin, its
point in particular in God made flesh.
This is reality.
Isn't that remarkable?
The thing that the Jew most disparages and
says is impossible and contradicts God.
The theologian says is the very issue of
what is real.
The being and acting are real.
They are genuinely and truly human being and
acting.
Jesus Christ is not a demigod.
He's not an angel.
Nor is he an ideal man.
He's a man as we are, equal to
us as a creature, as a human individual,
but also equal to us in the state
and condition to which our disobedience has brought
us.
Son of Adam and in being what we
are, he is God's word.
Thus as one of us, yet the one
of us who is himself God's word in
person, he represents God to us and he
represents us to God as high priest.
In this way, he is God's revelation to
us and our reconciliation with God.
This is too much to take in.
That needs to be pondered and reflected on.
It's the mystery of incarnation.
Imagine reducing this to formula, to a glib
two or three statements.
This beggars the mind and the imagination.
This is at the heart of the mystery
of God.
This is the revelation of God as God
and it requires flesh.
It requires man and it still requires man.
We're stuck.
We have a calling and a destiny to
continue what Jesus set in motion in his
own humanity by the same means by which
he performed it.
Through faith, through relationship with the Father as
a son, through submission and obedience and everything
to which he was called.
He grew in stature.
That puts a different face on the whole
issue of what it means to be a
Christian.
How dare we be a slouch about this?
Because creation is groaning even now waiting to
escape the futility of its bondage by the
manifestation of the sons of God in the
flesh, in their humanity, in union with deity.
Boom!
The final fetter is broken and creation itself
claps its hands and the hills skip as
lambs and the trees clap.
I was just looking at Isaiah 53 and
the creation the wilderness will be glad for
them, which I always construe to mean the
presence of Jews in their bedraggled condition but
for the first time I'm considering it may
also mean or more likely mean that them
is the church that has come to sonship,
into its adoption, into its fullness and the
wilderness is glad for them because when it
sees that, its bondage is broken, the curse
is lifted.
We're seeing a marred not only marred humanity,
we're seeing a marred creation.
It's limping and barely making it through.
Its trees are suffering from disease and its
natural resources are being exploited and raped and
this is not the pristine and original condition.
It's only a glimmer but even that glimmer
is impressive but when it breaks the fetters
of bondage, you'll be staggered because you'll see
the beauty of God the Creator in its
creation full as it was at the first
before Adam's fall.
Now you're seeing only a very marred addition.
What's waiting for the release?
What's the key?
The coming forth of the sons of God
in their humanity, in union with the deity
of God through the resurrection of Christ and
the impartation of his spirit who are living
out from his life and not out from
their humanity and yet the remarkable thing, it
doesn't dismiss or blur the humanity, it amplifies
and glorifies it.
What will it take to attain this?
It'll take what Troy had to suffer this
morning.
Small kid stuff.
Much more, much more of confrontation, humiliation, contradiction,
stupefying disappointment in how we're treated and how
can that be God?
How can it require disobedience?
Much more that we might be conformed to
his image.
But it's all voluntary.
It was voluntary for Jesus and it's equally
voluntary for us.
At any moment we can throw up our
hands and say this far but no further
and that's what the church has done.
They want the form of it, not the
reality.
They don't want to suffer to obtain this
union and this witness.
They don't want to be sons.
They want to remain children, enjoy the benefit
of salvation without the requirement to be conformed
to this image.
How was it for Jesus?
How did he attain it?
By the things which he suffered through obedience
and if the son of God had to
come to it by such a means, by
what means shall we come?
What are we now king's kids and we
ride home free and have no requirement?
If we believe in him we're required also
to suffer with him that we might be
glorified with him, Paul says.
Suffering is the name of the game because
you can't be perfected in this mystery at
ease.
It costs something.
There's something to be borne.
He had to bear it, we also.
I don't know about the Greek where it
says that the life also of Jesus might
be manifest in our mortal flesh.
Maybe we can read through our mortal flesh,
through our humanity, through our manhood.
This has got to be made manifest or
it cannot glorify God.
It's not an abstract thing.
It requires flesh, it requires humanity and the
obedience to voluntary free, willing, obedience of a
man for that thing to be expressed to
us.
As Jesus expressed the father so we also
express the son.
But to express the son is to express
the father.
And is the son resident in us that
he's still obeying the father in our bodies?
Are we renewing our covenant that for us
to live as Christ we're covenantally joined with
him that we give up the rags of
our humanity and dependency upon it and trust
him for life.
And every time we take communion we're renewing
that covenant and strengthening the deity that is
in us in Christ by which we live
which is to say we die that that
life might go forth for us.
That's why I'm taking communion every morning.
How can I face the day without the
renewal of this covenantal blessing and the life
that God gives as his covenantal provision so
that we can live as sons.
It's an extraordinary requirement and so as we
have allowed that remarkable sacrament to be diminished
it's an indication that we have not understood
our call and what sonship requires and that
needs to be renewed in every eating and
drinking by faith of his body and of
his blood.
So it wouldn't be extreme to sum it
up by saying that we need to come
to a place of agreement with Paul where
we can say with equal integrity truth and
sincerity for me to live as Christ.
If that falls into a little cliche of
unreality that we don't really mean or intend
or have appropriated we have failed in the
intentions of God.
We have got to come to a place
where we believe and say and live by
that life for me to live as Christ
and the remarkable thing is that when Christ
is your life your humanity is distinguished and
amplified but if you seek to live out
of your humanity, independent of that life, your
humanity diminishes.
You lose your manhood, you lose your distinction
because it takes God to be a man.
When you're living by that life your humanity
comes into a fullness that is the witness
and it needs to be said before the
Jew because they are the most critical of
this phenomenon.
They could not believe it in Jesus.
Is not this Joseph's son?
He could do no great works in Nazareth
because they could not believe.
They saw only the man.
They could not see the deity in the
man.
Not because he lay it aside and emptied
himself but because he was in union with
the Father and therefore that union was the
source of deity, not the natural or the
supernatural thing that was his by virtue of
being God.
They could not see it.
And how about us now?
A final thought before the bell rings.
Are you seeing incarnation?
Are you seeing through the veil of the
flesh the truth of the life that really
animates and expresses itself?
Or are you seeing only the husk?
You are seeing only the man.
Can you recognize the mystery of incarnation presently
when it is set before you?
If it is set before you in the
rare instances that we might be privileged to
see it?
Or are we as much staggered by the
phenomenon we really cannot bring ourselves to believe
it and we can say, isn't that Joseph's
son?
Isn't that our cats from Brooklyn, New York?
We know his parents.
Are we staggered and offended by incarnation as
much as Jews?
And if we are instinctively, how then shall
we ourselves come to that reality and express
it?
There is something about God and man that
even Christians shrink from considering.
They want to give God a distant recognition
but to see him evident and working and
expressing himself through flesh offends us.
I'll tell you what, I wish I had
a buck for every time I experienced this.
There is nothing that infuriates Christians more than
to say to them, the words that I
speak are not my words but the words
that my father has given me.
They don't want to hear that.
You know why?
Because they want you on the same ground
that they occupy.
They want you to succeed as a Christian
and act in ministry the same basis by
which they do, out of their unaided humanity.
And here you're making a pretentious claim that
the words that you're speaking are not your
words but God's.
If that's true then you're blowing the whistle
on their inferior walk.
It's an indictment that they have fallen short
of the glory and they don't want to
hear it.
Therefore they have to say, come on cats,
don't give us that baloney, it's you.
Well I know better than you who it
is.
So let's face up guys.
There is a conscious, willful or unconscious resistance
against the mystery of incarnation.
We like Jews want to keep God distant
and we only want to see men as
men as we are so that no greater
requirement is made of us because they are
not exhibiting another standard.
That's why they said of Paul, he's not
fit to live.
They were more infuriated against Paul than they
were against Jesus because what he exemplified and
demonstrated in his apostolicity was an indictment against
Judaism itself that wants to succeed on the
base of its own humanity and its own
religiosity and here's a man exhibiting the righteousness
of God, the boldness of God, the courage
of God, the love of God, the faith
of God through his humanity in total obedience
and surrender death by death to that life
that it might go forth as life to
others.
He's not fit to live.
So we need to make our peace and
surrender to the great mystery.
Not just as it may be depicted by
others but that it would be depicted by
us and it's going to require much more
than our young brother experienced this morning and
if we're unwilling for that we will forfeit
the means by which sonship and union with
Christ comes because it comes in such sufferings
as that.
Got the idea?
So, how do we pray?
If we don't know how to speak if
this is too much like me who is
sufficient for these things?
How do we pray?
That true prayer in the last analysis is
God's prayer.
So the creation is groaning and travailing waiting
for the manifestation of God who in their
own spirit travail and cannot speak civil prayers
but only groanings that cannot be uttered.
So Lord, we are at a threshold of
something and we're just feeling away Lord.
It's crude and inadequate and yet we suspect
on time essential for the church of the
last days to consider and to apprehend for
we have lost the apostolic glory and indeed
the thing that Paul warned us has come
true.
We are only mere men acting out of
our mere humanity rather than the union with
divinity by which our humanity could be the
revelation of yourself.
So Lord, help us.
We don't know how to proceed.
In fact, it's a marvel that you brought
us through this morning.
We died multiple deaths just to introduce this
subject.
We brought Bibles and books not knowing which
way to go and turn or to employ.
That somehow you by your incarnate life in
us would bring it forth out of your
own wisdom and ability.
And even though you have demonstrated it to
whatever measure you have there's doubt and unbelief
in the class that thinks that it's art
and has not recognized the mystery and therefore
will fall short of it themselves.
So Lord help us, help us, help us,
help us, help us Lord.
Precious God that you might be glorified in
your sons who can say with Paul in
complete candor and without contradiction, for me to
live is Christ.
In him I live and move and have
my being.
Thank you Lord.
And how that we are dead and hid
with Christ in God until his life is
revealed in whatever form he chooses to reveal
it when he will.
And it will often and must always be
contrary to our desire.
It may even offend us when it comes
forth.
So it's much safer to live out of
ourselves.
Predictable and nice, acceptable, pleasant but short of
the glory.
So come my God bring us into this
ground we pray.
Break us up in the deeps through your
word and enlarge our faith.
Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word
of God.
We are called not just to acknowledge the
mystery of incarnation but to exhibit it to
the toughest audience of all, the Jew and
the world that we Jews have made that
is shot through with unbelief, cynicism, religiosity and
all of the things that are contrary to
your mystery.
What a calling, what a task my God.
Praise God there's a resurrection or we of
all men will be most to be pitied.
So come Lord and bring us day by
day into this reality concluding days, our week
is finished.
One week left Lord.
A brother asked, are you going to leave
us in this condition?
God forbid.
Come my God that we might leave this
place with rejoicing for the reality to which
we have been called and the great enablement
out of your life.
Thank you Lord.
Thank you my God.
To you be all praise, glory and honor.
Even for bringing us this far where has
the church in modern times ever even so
much has been confronted with these considerations let
alone have attained to them.
So we are privileged beyond speaking and we
just conclude by saying thank you Lord.
Whatever it takes however disappointing, however painful, however
confrontive, however disillusioning, whatever it takes to bring
us my God into this union with you
by which our humanity is fulfilled we are
willing.
Thank you for the privilege.
Come and don't spare us Lord and be
formed in us we pray as we agree
together in Jesus name.
Amen.