So, Lord bless this little examination.
I'm not going to read it entirely, just
I'll skip around and see where it leads
us.
Because that's my strongest inward conviction.
So even the issue of incarnation is involved
here.
How do we proceed?
You guys think I have all this nailed
down?
This is a first.
We have never gone this way here before.
It's a subject we have never before undertaken.
From John Murray and his statement on incarnation,
which is classic Reformation theology, which we need
to consider.
That is built on the creeds that were
given the church in the 4th and 5th
centuries, and that they uphold to the letter.
Or do I read from today's Tozer, that
is more or less of a devotional kind,
that touches the issue of the church in
its present condition and its need.
So I have to say, in the want
of any voice from heaven, my strongest disposition
is to read from Tozer.
So here's an example for you of how
to proceed.
By the operation of the life of God,
what is your strongest impulse?
And in the absence of anything that competes
with it, do it and believe that it's
God.
Which is not a presumption for the immature
or untested believers, who any stray thought in
their heads, they think is God's and they
will express.
It's a statement that is only consonant with
a life of God's dealing in the school
of maturity, in which a person would say
that my deepest inward sense is this from
God and I'll act on it.
A guy called me last night, Steve, he's
been hawking me on the internet.
Can I call you?
How do you bring judgment?
How do you exhort and rebuke?
And I went on to give him an
answer.
It's not for a novice to perform.
And you're not in a place yet where
you could know whether God is prompting it
or not.
And that the answer is not the technique
or method of how or when, but what
you need is a walk and a relationship
with God over a period of time, by
which in time you can have an assurance
whether something is from God or not.
But he was so American, he wanted to
know now, what do I need to, how
do I do?
So today's selection from Tozer is entitled The
Holy Spirit as Fire, and it begins with
a quotation from Samuel Chadwick, who I think
comes out of the Reformed Church, the pilgrim,
what do they call them?
The Puritans, he's a Puritan voice.
He writes, Spirit-filled souls are ablaze with
God.
They love with a love that glows.
They believe with a faith that kindles.
They serve with a devotion that consumes.
They hate sin with a fierceness that burns.
They rejoice with a joy that radiates.
Love is perfected in the fire of God.
It's enough to gulp to hear someone speak
like that, and we're made to feel instantly
like wow, this is so outside of our
own present experience.
Another source that he quotes, we do not
go deep to study God.
We go deep to meet his reality.
In such experience we cannot define God, for
he is not definable, but we do ultimately
define ourselves.
In the depths we meet our smallness, our
powerlessness, our need.
On the positive side, we discover the folly
of trying to find our satisfaction in surface
relationships.
We're learned to our credit that God hides
neither his greatness nor our self-understanding in
three unhurried minutes of Bible reading a day.
We suddenly know that the immensity of God
never comes wrapped in contrived public prayers where
many, either consciously or unconsciously, are prone to
approve themselves to their merely human creditors.
They are prone to approve themselves in the
hearing of those whose approval they seek.
So the shallow Christian who's satisfied with a
three minute Bible study or a quick devotional
is really not meeting God in the deeps.
What he's really wanting is the approval that
would come from others.
That's the difficulty of reading aloud, to follow
something when you don't have it in your
own hand.
If we would conceive of his greatness, he
would be less than the human mind which
could form the conceptions.
If we could think the greatness of God,
he would be less than his greatness.
Because if we could think it, our thinking
then defines him and brings him down to
the level of our thought.
So therefore the revelation of God has got
to be beyond our mind and beyond our
thought.
He is greater than all language and no
statement can express him.
Indeed, if any statement could express him, he
would be less than human speech and could
by such statements comprehend and gather up all
that he is.
To a certain point, of course, we can
have experience of him without language, but no
man can express in words all that he
is in himself.
Or suppose that one speaks of him as
power.
This too sets forth in words his attribute
of might rather than his being.
Or suppose one speaks of him as majesty.
Again, we have a declaration of the honor
which is his own rather than of him
himself.
He is just showing the absurdity of a
human attempt to appropriate God through language or
through thought.
Whatever our categories, whatever our concepts, however lofty,
they are always necessarily something less if not
something other than what God is in himself.
How then do we understand the majesty of
God or his holiness or his power?
It has to be by some kind of
givingness of God himself beyond what we out
of our humanity can conceive or contrive.
Why does God withhold that?
Maybe there are not enough asking him and
there are too many satisfied with what they
have humanly determined God to be.
Because so long as we can determine, we've
got him in a box and he's safe
and he's a utility to serve our purposes.
So there's a knowledge of God that is
yet outside us that must be found and
given if we should be asking.
To sum it up in a single sentence,
every possible statement that could be made about
God expresses some possession or virtue of God
rather than God himself.
What words or thoughts are worthy of him
who is above all language and thought?
The conception of God as he is can
only be grasped in one way and even
that is impossible for us.
Beyond our grasp and our understanding by thinking
of him as a being whose attributes and
greatness are beyond our powers of understanding even
in thought.
So not the least of the benefit of
God in sending his son is that it
makes deity visible.
How does it say in Hebrews chapter 1
that we behold in his face?
What a mercy that we're not left to
abstract theorizing and speculation that will always be
somehow less than what he is in himself.
But that in the sending of his son,
we can glimpse something of the magnitude of
God because Jesus is the exact representation.
Because God who in sundry times and in
different manners spoke in the past unto the
fathers by the prophets has in these last
days spoken unto us by his son whom
he has appointed heir of all things and
by whom also he made the worlds.
Who being the brightness of his glory and
the express image of his person and upholding
all things by the word of his power
when he had himself by himself purged our
sins sat down at the right hand of
the majesty on high.
So he's greater than the angels.
Of course in verse 6 all the angels
of God worship him and in verse 8
of the son it says thy throne oh
God is forever a scepter of righteousness is
the scepter of thy kingdom.
And so the remarkable commendations in Hebrews, Colossians
and John.
Let's take a look at the prologue to
the gospel of John that we have been
mentioning that I've not looked at myself in
the longest time and needs periodically to be
seen again.
Chapter 1 in the beginning was the word.
The word was with God the word was
God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
This is piling on paradox upon paradox and
all things were made by him and without
him was not anything made that was made
and him was life and the life was
the light of men and the light shines
in the darkness and the darkness comprehends it
not.
Verse 10 he was in the world the
world was made by him and the world
knew him not.
In verse 14 the word was made flesh
and dwelt among us and we beheld his
glory the glory as of the only begotten
of the father full of grace and truth.
And verse 18 no man hath seen God
at any time the only begotten son which
is in the bosom of the father he
hath declared him man.
So the study of Jesus his person his
speech his conduct his acts his suffering his
death his pre incarnate life is the revelation
of God the father.
If you see me you see the father.
Why do you ask show me the father?
Have you not seen him?
If you see me you see the father.
I and the father are one.
It's a great mercy that the son not
only brings our atonement but brings the revelation
of God and saves us from vain speculation.
But even with the coming of the Lord
there are dimensions that we're yet yearning in
our inward being that only the Lord himself
can bring because even Jesus if we're not
careful can become a matter of fact entity
familiarity.
And we see him in his humanity and
ironically lose the communication of God.
So as much as that is a provision
it's also a danger because even those who
walked with him is this the one who
we were told to expect or is there
another?
They had to send an envoy to John
the Baptist to validate Jesus even though that
he's there in their midst and someone has
wisely said that those who were contemporary with
Jesus and walked with him had a greater
difficulty to recognizing in him the son of
God and the father than we who have
come 2,000 years later and read of
the account.
That somehow the man in the flesh repels
the recognition because we're affronted by flesh or
distracted by the flesh and we cannot see
the glory revealed through the flesh but the
flesh itself constitutes a barrier to that seeing.
That's not only true for Jesus that's true
for the body of Christ that's why Paul
said I see no man after the flesh
even Jesus but we unfortunately see the man
in the flesh and miss the deity the
component of God that is working and expressing
himself through those vessels.
Here he talks about Pentecost and that which
came upon the disciples in the upper room
was nothing less than God himself.
Through their mortal eyes he appeared as fire
and may we not safely conclude that those
scripture short believers knew at once what it
meant that God the God who had appeared
to them as fire throughout all their long
history was now dwelling in them as fire.
He had moved from without to the interior
of their lives the shekinah that had once
blazed over the mercy seat now blazed on
their foreheads as an external emblem of the
fire that had invaded their natures.
This was deity giving himself to ransomed men
the flame was the seal of a new
union they were now men and women of
the fire.
I've never heard a single Pentecostal or charismatic
ever describe the infusion or the baptism of
the Holy Spirit in such words as these.
And because we don't see it as such
words as these we're receiving less than this.
As your faith is so be it unto
you.
If you're just receiving something like an endowment
from on high as power and have not
seen it as very God himself as fire
infusing the soul and must necessarily bring a
remarkable change then we don't see that change
we don't receive that.
If our faith limits us in what it
is that we're receiving this was deity himself
the spirit of God is the spirit of
the Lord is God.
Here is the whole message of the New
Testament through the atonement of Jesus' blood sinful
men may now become one with God.
So here it's touching the subject that's before
us of incarnation.
Deity indwelling men that is Christianity in its
fullest effectuation and even those greater glories of
the world to come will be in essence
but a greater and more perfect experience of
the soul's union with God.
Bringing many sons to glory is the very
same thing.
So deity indwelling men that I say is
Christianity and no man has experienced rightly the
power of Christian belief until he has known
this for himself as living reality.
Incarnation is not a doctrine to which we
need to become acquainted or agree it's a
reality that awaits appropriation or else it's vain.
How much more can we mock God than
just to celebrate incarnation as a doctrine to
which we give our approval and still live
outside that remarkable phenomenon.
Shall I read this little thing?
This is the last part.
Deity indwelling men that I say is Christianity
and no man has experienced rightly the power
of Christian belief until he has known this
for himself as a living reality.
Everything else is preliminary to this.
Atonement, justification, generation.
What are these but acts of God preparatory
to the work of invading and the act
of indwelling the redeemed human soul?
Men who moved out of the heart of
God by sin now move back into the
heart of God by redemption.
Because incarnation is the final expression of redemption.
Atonement is its beginning, incarnation is its end.
God who moved out of the heart of
man because of sin now enters again his
ancient dwelling to drive out his enemies and
once more make the place of his feet
glorious.
He'll have the whole temple consecrated for his
life.
The life will be in this temple radiating
its light and its glory and expressing itself
in the mundane and everyday walk that we
have.
That a word in season is life giving.
A piece of counsel, a prayer for a
brother or for a baby or a teaching
or an act of ministry or just a
little conversation walking in the way.
Our life giving activities when it issues out
of the life that is now rightly indwelling
the vessels for whom it was intended.
What is it that Paul says that through
their false salvation has come to the Gentiles
so as to move them to jealousy and
never explaining with an asterisk or footnote how
that is to be fulfilled.
Well we can only suppose being on this
subject it has got to be this.
They've seen pious Christians, they've seen religionists, they've
seen people who keep their nose clean and
keep their skirts up from the mud.
But have they seen God in the flesh?
Especially coming through a Gentile.
What could be more staggering to the Jew
that where he least expects to see deity
he sees it in a Gentile because it's
the light that lightens the Gentiles which is
the glory of the people Israel.
And when you read Ben Israel you'll see
how my salvation was set in motion by
the revealing of that light to a Gentile
girl for whom I had an instant contempt
because she came from Kansas or some place
in the Midwest she was a wasp, a
white Anglo-Saxon Protestant the kind that we
Jews are turned off by.
And yet far from being turned off there
was something communicated to this girl that pierced
me and I'm probing her motives because she's
willing to spend time with me and she's
not afraid.
She's sent to Europe and having graduated high
school I mean a little upstart.
I'm a sophisticated university graduate, world traveler and
what does this little girl mean to me?
And yet she's willing to spend time with
me.
We met accidentally and I'm probing her motives
as we're walking in the woods surrounding Zurich
in Switzerland and saying hey how is it
you're not afraid of me?
Oh it's the love of God.
How is it you're being kind?
That's the love of God.
This kid mentions God one more time and
she's finished.
I can't stand this God talk and I
have driven men into the ground who are
infinitely more sophisticated in their faith than she.
So what is this little thing?
She mentioned God one more time.
I said look kid you're a nice girl.
I appreciate it.
But listen I can't stand this God talk.
Answer me one question that no Christian has
ever been able to successfully answer me.
You have been talking about God.
How do you know that he is?
Lean back, scroll fine.
I got her now.
What is she going to say?
Some little brittle piece of Sunday school?
I'll demolish her.
I'm all revved up.
My rolling thing is ready to flatten her.
And she looks up with that little snub
nose, freckled face, gentile puss and she said
but Archie said I know that God lives.
He lives in me.
She might have said the incarnate God but
I would not have understood that language.
But that's what she's saying.
He lives in me.
You know what happened to me?
I went down.
I was felled like an ox with a
blow.
I went down by that little shattering statement
spoken in a little softer feminine voice.
And as I'm recovering like what hit me?
Where is the power of that statement?
It's not even philosophical let alone theological.
And then it occurred to me.
But it's true wise guy.
And she has the face to prove it.
You're in the darkness and she's in the
light.
For all of your Marxist background and your
university background and world travel, this little high
school kid is in the light and you're
in the darkness.
And you know what?
I was jealous for the light that shone
out of her.
That's how God started it.
Huh?
Classic.
So how's the light out of you?
The light that lightens the gentiles is the
glory of the people Israel.
And if we don't see that glory through
your light we don't see it.
But if you're just coming pharisaically and telling
us how and what's wrong with us or
whatever.
This little girl in her innocence and simplicity
shone and radiated the light of God.
The incarnate God was in that girl.
And I was in the darkness.
I'm the Jew.
And she's the gentile.
And yet she possessed something totally absent from
my life.
And for a single moment I was made
conscious of that absence.
It had never before occurred to me until
I saw the reality in her.
It's an invincible reality especially when it shines
through out from a gentile face.
That's the mystery of the gospel you guys.
That's to the Jew first.
If the incarnate God is dwelling in you.
If you receive the whole atonement, not only
the forgiveness of your sins but the impartation
of the life.
And you're walking consistently in it.
Why did this little girl be willing to
go with me?
I'm twice her age.
I'm a foreboding angry man that would scare
people at a distance.
And this little girl completely mindless and selfless
and innocent willing to walk with a stranger
and suffer my caustic remarks.
And she's the instrument of God.
Oh there's much there saints.
Incarnation is the issue of Israel's salvation and
as well as Greeks.
So few there are who without restraint will
open their whole heart to the blessed comforter.
He has been and is so widely misunderstood
that the very mention of his name in
some circles is enough to frighten many people
into resistance.
The source of this unreasoning fear may easily
be traced but it would be fruitless to
do it here.
Sufficient to say the fear is groundless.
Perhaps we may be, we may help to
destroy its power over us if we examine
that fire which is the symbol of the
Spirit's person and presence.
The Holy Spirit is first of all a
moral flame.
It is not an accident of language that
is called the Holy Spirit.
For whatever else the word holy may mean
it does undoubtedly carry with it the idea
of moral purity and the Spirit being God
must be absolutely and infinitely pure.
With him there are not, as with men,
grades and degrees of holiness.
His holiness itself is the sum and essence
of all that is unspeakably pure.
So whatever awakens you, that he quotes from
John Wesley's mother, Susanna Wesley.
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of
your conscience, obscures your sense of God and
takes off the relish of spiritual things, that
is your sin.
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of
your conscience, obscures the sense of God, takes
off the delight of spiritual things, that is
your sin.
It could be innocuous, in itself it's not
something to be despised or to be rejected,
the world approves it.
It's valid, it's natural, but if it serves
in any way to cloud your knowledge of
God or your delight or relish in the
things of God, that for you is sin.
So you don't measure it the way the
world measures.
That's a real nasty boo-boo, an infidelity,
a sexual sin.
No, it could be harmless, it could be
innocuous, it could be attested, valid and approved,
even through the church.
But if in you it serves to cloud
your reason and your knowledge of God and
rob you of the delight from the things
of God, that for you is sin and
needs to be feared and resisted and given
over as much as the most conspicuous and
blatant sin.
That's Wesley's mother.
I'll tell you, a mother like that, the
son has got to go far and did.
Both sons, John and Charles, the great hymnist,
no transgression.
Well let me say, the base of all
true Christian experience must lie a sound and
sane morality.
No joys of valor, no delights legitimate where
sin is allowed to live in life or
conduct, because it clouds that incarnation.
That little girl was sinless.
If she was given over to hanky-panky
and had a little boyfriend on her side
and was already indulging herself, her testimony to
me would have been invalidated.
Her face shone.
There was a radiance because her life was
clear and pure in God.
Praise God.
And you know what?
In 35 years in America, I never encountered
that phenomenon.
It had to take place overseas in a
rare encounter, because so rare are the vessels
that communicate that light, because their life is
clouded.
They've allowed sin and indulgence to rob them
of that purity, and therefore the life and
the light is concealed.
They would have no disposition to talk to
a stranger.
They would probably turn away out of fear
for themselves.
No transgression of pure righteousness dare excuse itself
on the ground of superior religious experience.
To seek high emotional states while living in
sin is to throw our whole life open
to self-deception and the judgment of God.
This is written in advance of the charismatic
movement, because Toza died in 1964, just as
it was beginning.
But how prophetic this is for a movement
that so celebrates experience, emotion, eyes, that you
run all the way to Toronto to experience
what you can't find in your own prayer
chamber.
Can you reread the last sentence?
And coming back with her husband in the
car, she freaked out.
He had to stop the car and pull
off to the side of the road.
She was shrieking at the top of her
lungs in such an emotional scare, because she
had lost the sense of herself as a
person.
She had lost her identity by going forward
and seeking an experience where people were cackling
like animals and barking like dogs.
And something happened in that environment that robbed
her of her own sense of herself.
And as she was driving and the atmosphere
had dissipated that had been provided there, she
became aware of this and she was thrown
into an alarm that the poor man had
to pull over to the side of the
road.
His wife was freaking out.
So there is a danger in seeking for
a high emotional experience as somehow to bring
the knowledge of God.
And we may be barking up the wrong
tree and opening ourselves to things of a
kind that he calls open to self-perception
and the judgment of God.
Being holy is not a mere motto to
be framed and hung on the wall.
It is a serious commandment from the Lord
of the whole earth.
The true Christian ideal is not to be
happy but to be holy.
The holy heart alone can be the habitation
of the Holy Ghost.
So quoting from James, cleanse your hands, you
sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be afflicted and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be heard in the morning
and your joy to heaviness.
Because the Holy Spirit is also a spiritual
flame.
He alone can raise our worship to true
spiritual levels.
God forbid that we should sync the hyphen
up by turning up the amplifiers as we
are prone to do.
We might as well know once and for
all that morality and ethics are everlasting as
though by Christianity.
The faith of Christ undertakes to raise the
soul to actual communion with God, to introduce
into our religious experiences a super-rational element
far above mere goodness as the heavens above
the earth.
The coming of the Spirit brought to the
Book of Acts this very quality of super
-mundaneness, this mysterious elevation of tone not found
in as high intensity even in the Gospels.
The key of the Book of Acts is
definitely the nature.
There is in it no trace of creature
sadness, no lingering disappointment, no quiver of uncertainty.
The mood is heavenly.
A victorious spirit is found there, a spirit
which could never be the result of mere
religious belief.
The joy of the first Christians was not
the joy of logic working on facts.
They did not reason.
Christ is risen from the dead, therefore we
ought to be glad.
Their gladness was as great a miracle as
the resurrection itself.
Indeed, these were and are organically related.
The moral happiness of the Creator had taken
residence in the breasts of redeemed creatures and
they could not but be glad.
This is incarnation and the evidence is gladness.
Not gladness predicated on events or your ship
coming in or feeling good or happy because
now you have received this inheritance or God
has given you a better car or your
wife is finally shaping up or the church.
This is something inward.
It's the joy of the Lord.
It's the gladness of God that comes with
his existence in the believer in an incarnate
way in our flesh.
And so it ends with a poem by
A.B. Simpson, the father of the Missionary
Alliance, which movement itself is far removed presently
from its founder's reality, who writes, O fire
of God, begin in me, burn out the
dross of self and sin, burn off my
fetters and set me free, and make my
heart a heaven within.
Baptize with fire this soul of mine, and
do me with thy spirit's might, and make
me by thy power divine, a burning and
a shining light.
Burn in, O fire of God, burn in,
till all my soul Christ's image bears, and
every power and pulse within his holy heavenly
nature wears.
Burn on, O fire of God, burn on,
till all my dross is burnt away, till
earth and sin and self are gone, and
I can stand the testing day.
Precious.
That next to last verse, burn in, O
fire of God, burn in, till all my
soul Christ's image bears, and every power and
pulse within his holy heavenly nature wears.
And if an innocent high school graduate, who
by every appearance is only a wasp, white
Anglo-Saxon Protestant, can display that image, then
in what vessel is that possibility denied?
And in what form will it take in
every vessel?
Will it be one standard thing, or will
it express itself in the uniqueness of the
earthen vessels for whom it is exhibited?
And how much is that witness being denied
by somehow our failure to appropriate that life
and live consistently in it, though we're told
to be witnesses unto thee?
There's much more than quoting a scripture or
citing John 3.16. It's evidence of him,
deity in humanity, God in the flesh, and
coming forth in speech and appearance and tone
in the way unique to that vessel.
This is the mystery.
This is Christianity.
This is the faith.
This is the consummation of atonement.
Anything less than this, just to be forgiven
your sins, and not to be walking in
this measure and this reality, is to be
doomed despite the grace of God, who intended
the full measure, which he himself exhibited for
the first time as God in the flesh,
and is bringing many sons to that very
glory.
But will it come if we do not
desire it?
Will it come if we do not seek
it?
Will it come if we are content with
the measure that we have, and are unwilling
to empty ourselves, not of our defects, but
our virtues?
It's not our defects that are the hindrance.
We're glad to put that over.
It's our virtue.
It's our ability, religiously, that stands in the
way of the full appropriation of the divine
life, because life only comes on the basis
of death.
As long as we're clinging to something and
want to succeed on the basis of that,
his life is yet withheld.
So, we need to empty ourselves of ourselves,
not at our worst, but at our best.
Then the life has opportunity.
Then the glory inhabits his temple.
Then it radiates and shines out, not just
in the great moments of requirement, but in
the everyday.
We had mentioned earlier in these days of
the difference between the raven who never came
back to the ark, and the dove who
came back because it did not find a
place for its feet.
There's something about the dove as the symbol
of the Holy Spirit that will not roost
in any old place.
A raven will, but a dove is, what's
the word, impeccable and holy and separate.
That's the unique nature of that bird, symbol
of the Spirit, that had to come back
because it found no place for its feet.
It will not roost anywhere.
Maybe that's why it is we're not experiencing
the fullness of that Spirit, because we have
not come to a place of repentance, because
the way that Chambers is using the word
repentance here is more than just the forsaking
of sin, it's the forsaking of self, emptying
out completely of all that is human, because
that's not a fit place for the dove.
And man is no good thing, even that
is best.
Why call this thou me good?
There's no man good, no not one, but
God.
So we have not understood repentance and the
depth of God's intention.
Of course sin needs to be repented for
that blatant activity against God, against thee only
have I sinned.
That was yesterday's thought.
But here is repentance in its fullest sense,
not just the giving up of sin, but
the root of sin which is self, and
that is the ground for the receiving of
the Holy Spirit.
Just think, if when I had asked that
girl 41 years ago, how do you know
that God is, and she would have quoted
me a scripture, or she would have quoted
John 3.16, or given me some conventional
Christian reply, I would be dead now.
No question.
But the one statement that bludgeoned me and
brought me down, and all my proud arrogance
was, I know that God lives because he
lives in me.
And my question to you is, how did
she know to say that?
How did she know that she was not
to use a John 3.16 or some
other scripture that would have turned me off
completely?
How did she know to avoid any truism
about the faith, the mechanical recitation that Christians
often speak when they're in a situation like
that?
How did she know to speak what she
spoke?
It was completely uncelebrated.
It was not something that came by, now
what should I say to this man?
This is a Jew.
He's a toughie, let's see.
No, it came out in the remarkable, effortless
spontaneity of the life of God in that
vessel.
And it was a life-saving word, a
life-turning word.
Because as young as she was, the life,
I think, was so consistent in her that
she always trusted it.
Whether before a school teacher or friends in
a church situation, or now on the road
encountering a hard-nosed Jewish atheist.
So, we need to dwell on that remarkable
testimony that effortlessly issues spontaneously by one who
lives by that life and will not trust
a scripture, will not trust a religious response.
Because, hey, this is a Jewish guy here,
I've got to really say the right thing.
She was as innocent, simple, trusting as could
be.
And she was the provision of God at
a critical juncture where a conventional religious answer
would have killed me.
Deity was incarnate in Christ, not because he
was born with it, but because he emptied
himself of it and obtained it by faith
in relationship with the Father, in devotion, in
the same way that is available to us.
And if I don't bring you to the
text of Mark chapter 9, before our days
are ended, remind me, and begin yourself to
look at the text of Mark 9, that
begins on top of the Mount of Transfiguration
where the glory of the Lord is revealed,
but ends by being brought into the valley
where a demon is rattling and shaking and
throwing the stuffings out of a young boy,
into the fire, into the water, and the
disciples could not cast him out.
And the Father says, if you could do
anything to help us, not recognizing who Jesus
is.
And Jesus is stern in his rebuke of
the disciples for their failure.
He assumed that they ought to be able
to express the authority that he had conferred
upon them and cast, but why could we
not, after he cast it out, they take
him aside, why could we not cast this
out?
Well, because this kind, this ultimate kind, that
is calculated to do in that son, who
is the symbol of Israel, because when he
asked the father, how long has the son
been suffering this?
And the answer is, since childhood, virtually since
his inception, the powers of darkness have been
out, not just to harass his life, but
to end it.
It's only a miracle that any vestige of
it yet remains, but these devils are not
satisfied that even when they're commanded to let
him go and come out of him, they
rattle this life one more time and lay
him down in the dust that the people
said he's dead.
But Jesus stretched forth his hand and raised
him up.
And so what the disciples could not do,
Jesus did.
And why could we not cast this out?
Because this kind, this ultimate kind, will not
come out except by prayer and fasting.
What is he commending to his disciples?
Some method, some technique, or something that's to
be obtained in the reality of God, that
the devils are required to acknowledge and to
loose their victim, that is not his by
possession of being God, but was his by
relationship with the father through prayer and through
fasting.
And that's the same means by which we
are to obtain it, or at the end
of the age we will fail in delivering
Israel from the powers of darkness that are
out to extinguish it.
Why?
Because if Israel is extinguished, there's no kingdom,
there's no Zion, there's no return to Zion.
And the only way in their wisdom is
by extinction, and we see it even now
in the Islamic theory.
So who can contend against this, in an
authority greater than what they carry through Satan?
How do we obtain that authority, who are
just dust ourselves?
And when we see something being thrown into
the fire and vomiting and puking out and
foaming at the mouth, when little faith we
have dwindles and becomes extinct, how then shall
we contend against those powers?
This kind cometh not out, but by fasting
and prayer.
Because only in those activities is the reality
of God to be obtained that is greater
than the reality of darkness.
And if you're not obtained it there, you'll
not succeed.
So that the issue of Israel in the
last analysis is not some heroic last days'
work by no hands, but is the result
of a lifelong devotional relationship with the Father
by which that reality that is divine is
imputed in communion.
So the issue in the last analysis is
devotion, not heroics.
Read that text because it sums up the
whole issue of incarnation.
But incarnation how?
Through fasting and through self-denial and through
communion.
Not prayer as petition, but the kind of
prayer that should begin after petition and not
be ended by petition.
This is a remarkable last days' statement that
we need to dwell upon and consider.
I wouldn't want to eternally myself carry a
disgrace that I would be grieved to eternally
consider that I failed in the crucial moment
to be Israel's deliverer because of sloth, laziness,
indifference and neglect.
And not seeking God at his source and
that I did not have the requisite authority
and presence to compel those demons to let
go of their victim.
Jesus could do it, not because he had
God as God, but because he had God
as communion.
The disciples could not do it because though
they had been on the mount of transfiguration
and had seen his glory, it was quickly
dissipated when they had to see the horror
and the ugliness of the demonic powers below.
We have to carry with us a greater
reality than that which is in the world.
Greater is he who is within us than
he who is in the world.
But is he in us in that degree?
And is it the same in every believer?
Do we have the same standard amount?
Or is it proportionate to the room that
we have made by our own emptying and
the giving of ourselves for the place of
communion with God?
When we're not seeking him for what we
can get from him, but seeking him and
spending time with him for what he is
in himself.
That's devotion, it's not commerce.
And so my earliest question as a Christian
was, Lord I see a lot of Christians,
but where are the disciples?
I thought they were another species.
Or maybe they are.
That's why Forsyth says that it took the
power of God for Jesus to empty himself
of God.
That's how powerful this thing is, it requires
a divine power.
So even emptying is something that requires the
grace of God.
But are we intent on emptying?
Do we desire to break that power and
open ourselves to God?
Will he not give the grace when he
sees the heart?
And if we're not experiencing it in one
fell swoop, will we receive and experience it
cumulatively over a period of time as the
result of our devotional giving of ourselves to
God?
Because is there anything more foolish and more
discouraging than to seek God?
Especially in the early morning hours while it's
yet dark, and it's so unrewarding, and you
feel like a jerk and a fool out
there, feeling the cold draft on the floor,
and nothing is happening, and we are an
event-oriented American people, utilitarian, there's no payoff,
then why the investment?
Why the sacrifice?
We're being tested to see if we'll persevere.
That it's not an issue of what we're
going to receive, because we're not in it
for payment, we're in it because he's God.
He deserves this consideration, that even if we
feel and sense nothing, and it is to
us unprofitable, we still, because he's God, owe
him that kind of devotion.
And I showed the people who visited my
upstairs place there, you see this chair?
This is the vectors where they meet.
This is where everything has its origin.
In the morning where I was this morning,
I can't remember, it was 2 a.m.
I'm always arguing with the Lord, couldn't you
have waited at least an hour?
I mean, wouldn't that have been just as
adequate as two?
But you don't argue, you're up when you're
up, and invariably, it's against your convenience and
against your rest.
And yet, so what came out of it?
I read this, I read all my devotional
material.
I had my scripture of the psalm for
today and the book of Proverbs for today.
I took communion for today, but I'm not
conscious that anything formidable has entered me by
that devotional time.
But I would suspect that we would be
having less this morning if it had not
first taken place.
So, whether or not there's a payoff, the
Lord deserves that attention, and he's getting it
from very few.
No one had ever commended to me the
need for a devotional time.
It came late in my Christian life.
Your experience with him at Ben Israel would
have been different if I had known it
then and was practicing it then.
So, this is where the mystery of incarnation
has its nexus in devotion.
Isn't that remarkable?
There is an impartation and a strengthening, the
baptism of the Holy Spirit, but they require,
again, a second baptism, and how many more,
we don't know.
So, we can't say that we have it
and lean back on our haunches and go
on with something where the stream has dried.
And the Jew will test it.
That's been their function historically.
To test the church and its presumptions and
what it says about itself and its knowledge
of God.
And if you can pass that test, then
there's no Greek who need intimidate you anywhere.
That's why it's to the Jew first.
This gospel, not as a little abracadabra formula,
but as the genius of God's redemptive plan
for all mankind.
It behooved him to empty himself.
We need to dwell on that text in
Philippians, where Paul so nails it.
And it says, have this mind in you,
which was in Christ Jesus, who being in
the form of God, and what, how does
it say?
Not counting it presumptuous, did not insist, but
forsook and emptied himself of that very thing.
Have that mind in you, which was in
Christ Jesus.
Have a mind that empties itself and humbled
himself.
What a humility for God to forsake himself
as God, to forsake his deity and leave
himself vulnerable and undefended with nothing more than
the frailty of his own humanity and whatever
could be added to it through faith in
God the Father through relationship and devotion.
He puts himself in a remarkably vulnerable, susceptible
place from his very infancy, dependent upon those
who would care for that defenseless little entity
called a child, an infant.
And yet he grew in grace.
Think on that.
Let's say that positionally, God can never forsake
being God, but he can forsake employing his
deity.
He can forsake employing his omnipotence and his
omniscience and make himself therefore as frail and
vulnerable as any other man.
That would be a remarkable sacrifice.
And in fact, that's where his birth began.
How did his life end?
In death at the cross, that if a
resurrection did not come to him from outside
himself, by the glory of God the Father,
he remains in death, the grave and in
hell.
So talk about emptying oneself and in complete
confidence in a life and source outside from
yourself was exhibited from his birth through to
and including his death.
And in that way, he is the complete
patterned son that never forsook this so great
principle of emptying.
So when I read you Forsythe, this is
all the climax of our days will come
through this remarkable English writer who had an
apprehension and a sense of the mystery of
incarnation beyond anything I've read from any other
source.
Just to compare these two, they're darling men,
both of them.
One is from Scotland.
And in fact, it may well be that
Forsythe is Scottish born also.
But one is out of the Reformation doctrinal
theology, which is classic, goes back to the
creeds of the church in the fourth and
fifth century unvaryingly.
And this man who says the issue is
not substance and persons, even that language is
too Greek and it limits God.
The mentality is not amenable to the mystery.
And then he goes on to show the
growth of Jesus in his humanity by the
same means by which it's available to us.
And it's a remarkable thing.
So we're being fitted for a climax that
is rare.
And how precarious is this little book?
I went to Columbia University to hear a
debate on the issue of Israel and the
Palestinians.
It was a dud.
And I went across the street to the
teacher's college.
What is it called?
The girls college.
They're right across from Columbia.
But they're a Jewish professor of theology who
has written a book on Paul, was lecturing
on life after death.
And that proved the dud.
And so I came all that way from
Brooklyn on the subway, an hour and a
half each way.
And many times I'm going home at night.
They change the route and you have to
change trains for this train, that train.
And it's just a drag.
And both things have failed that seemed so
promising.
So the thought came to me, from whence
I don't know, why don't you visit the
used bookstore just around the corner from Columbia
where you've been before?
So I walked over to the used bookstore.
I said, you have a theology department?
They pointed me to a section.
And I came to that section.
This book was lying on the top of
books.
I picked it up.
Oh, P.T. Forsythe.
Yes, the cruciality of the cross that I
had in a little booklet form.
The person and place of Jesus Christ.
I'm looking through.
15 bucks.
That's too extravagant.
Now you can't indulge yourself.
And I looked at another book and I
said, any discount for senior citizens?
He said, I'll give you both books for,
I don't know what, 15 or 20.
Sold.
And I took this book home.
And even on the subway, mamma mia, what
insight, what fidelity to the English language, what
remarkable conceptual power, what fresh way of perceiving
the ultimate reality of God.
As I will be reading to you tomorrow
if I'm here for class, but certainly Wednesday
and thereafter until we consider this remarkable statement.
So be prepared for a treat.
But you're not going to come to it
if you first don't labor through the issue
yourself.
That's why those questions were given.
To heighten your sensitivity and your own grappling
with the great mystery of incarnation so that
when we hear from this man who has
grappled, we will receive all the more of
the benefit because we've done some homework of
our own.
Can you take a little statement from John
Murray before we end today?
And this is a commendable man, but very
exacting.
He talks about the hypostatic union.
This is the word that the Greeks, the
theologian of the early church in their council
at Chalcedon in Icea came up with.
How do you reconcile the issue of the
deity of God and the humanity of man
in Christ?
They talked about a hypostatic union, the doctrine
of the two natures in one person, and
the formulation of Chalcedon, one and the same
son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect
in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, perfect
deity, perfect humanity, subsumed together in one person,
the Lord Jesus, truly God and truly man.
This is the classic formulation.
Consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead
and consubstantial with us according to the manhood.
One with God in deity, one with man
in his humanity.
To be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusably, unchangeably,
indivisibly, inseparably, the distinction of nature is not
being taken away by the union.
Can you get that formulation?
Two natures, two wills, how to be reconciled?
And from which of these is Jesus acting
as the God-man in his earthly tenure?
One person and one subsistence, not parted or
divided into two persons.
It's Jesus, the person, is made up of
the two natures in union, in deity and
humanity, perfect in both.
One and the same son, the only begotten
God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is admirably summed up in the Westminster
Confession.
And that's the more modern day translation of
these earlier church councils.
This is from Westminster.
And every true son of a reformed family
learned the Westminster Confession by heart.
Something that would never have required of us.
In which they would recite two whole, perfect
and distinct natures, that Godhead and the manhood
were inseparably joined together in one person, without
conversion, composition or confusion.
The divine is not changed into the human,
nor accommodated to the human, nor is the
human transmitted into the divine, no conversion.
East is east, west is west, never the
twins shall meet.
They can't meet, because they are by nature
inextricably opposed.
You can't mix God with man, oil with
water.
That's what they're saying in their formulation.
The divine and the human do not coalesce,
so as to form a third.
There's no third thing created by the union
of the two natures.
No composition, neither are the natures mixed.
No confusion.
The case is that of duality, with each
nature possessing and exercising its own attributes without
interference, curtailment or modification.
Duality in every respect, in which the created
is the antithesis of the uncreated.
What the person is in the virtue of
the one nature is in sharp contrast with
what he is in virtue of the other.
This contrast applies to the spheres of consciousness,
intelligence and will.
Cut and dry, this is it.
Two natures given, opposed, perfect in both, in
union somehow, but they cannot be mixed.
So each nature is possessing and exercising its
own attributes without interference, curtailment or modification.
The question is when are they exercising this?
Who is crying out, my God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?
Is it the deity of Jesus or the
humanity of Jesus?
Who is saying, if you see me, you
see the Father, I am the Father of
one?
The deity of Jesus or the humanity of
Jesus?
Who is drinking the cup in the garden
and will not allow it to pass?
Is it the humanity of the Son or
the deity of God?
Who is saying, if you see me, you
see the Father, I am the Father of
one?
The deity of Jesus or the humanity of
Jesus?
Who is drinking the cup in the garden
and will not allow it to pass?
Is it the humanity of the Son or
the deity of God?
See, it raises great questions.
If it's deity, well, good for him.
We could admire that, but can't hope ourselves
to emulate or to attain to it, because
we're not God.
But if it's his humanity, because he lay
aside drawing from his deity, then there's hope
for us in the deity from which we
can draw in our humanity.
So I wrote in the margin here, but
which was employed at any time?
Yes, you've given a correct doctrinal statement, but
you've not shown us from which source did
Jesus draw at any moment?
Did he draw from his deity or his
humanity, if they cannot be mixed?
I'm asking the question, which was employed at
any time?
Why do we assume that the miracles were
the result of divinity rather than faith?
Why do we assume that the raising of
the dead of Lazarus or the daughter who
died and that Jesus said, she's not dead,
she's asleep and brought her forth and the
various other miracles of the man who was
born blind to receive his sight.
Why do we assume that because they are
miracles, they are the expression of deity?
They are the expression of the power of
God that was accessible to Jesus, but not
to us.
Why can we not question what we saw
there, including the raising up of the young
man in Mark 9 who had been thrown
into the fire and foaming at the mouth
and left as one dead, was not that
he could perform what the disciples could not?
Why could we not cast him out?
Well, because I'm God and because I could
exercise a power not available to you.
That's why I could do what you couldn't.
Then why does he rebuke them?
How long do I have to suffer you?
Why does he give that rebuke as if
he had every right to expect that they
could have cast out that demon?
So, he's not saving that son out of
his deity, but out of his humanity by
faith in a relationship with the father by
which the reality of deity and its authority
is conferred to the son in and through
his humanity and works and succeeds in delivering
him and raising him up out of death.
When he extended his arm, the people there
said, this young man, he's dead.
He's not just been cast down, he's now
dead.
Jesus stretched forth his arm and he raised
him up.
There's an expression of resurrection power by which
Jesus himself later is to be raised, now
being expressed even before his death and his
resurrection.
And the question is, by what power was
that performed?
Through the person in the nature of his
deity or the perfect humanity?
If you lay aside the deity, it was
the humanity.
What was the humanity in which deity was
imputed and obtained through devotion and faith and
worship in relationship with the father, which evidently
the disciples lacked or they could have performed
that miracle themselves.
And he upgraded them for that lack because
he expected that they would have every reason
to be in the same relationship with the
father as he.
And what's his statement to us today?
What's his categorical rebuke to us?
Why could you not deliver?
Why are you not delivering?
Why are you failing to express my reality
and my power?
It's because you are as lazy and as
indifferent and you're sleeping when you should be
up.
And even at Garden of Gethsemane, they slept.
And he said, you could not watch for
an hour?
Watching is to prayer what fasting is to
the body.
You could not for an hour give up
your sleep?
Well, rest already because soon enough you'll be
betraying me.
You could not watch to indulge into your
flesh, into your bodily need, which Jesus, don't
you think he was exhausted?
You dear guys, the demands that were made
upon him, the thousands that crowded upon him,
the messages that he had to give out
of a boat to avoid the crush of
a crowd, the miracles that the daily responsibility
to represent the father and an environment that
was so inimical and hostile to God, though
it was religious.
And the powers of darkness that brooded over
this man were continually pressing upon him.
Don't you think he was exhausted that he
could not have enjoyed an undisturbed rest that
he had to be up while it's yet
dark and find a place alone to seek
the father.
If he and his humanity and his devotion
as a son could fight against the necessity
for the gratification of flesh, what then are
we not able?
So this is the mystery that waits for
fulfillment.
It was the person of the son and
he alone who took human nature to himself
into union with his divine nature in one
divine person.
Of this construction in Catholic, the universal doctrine
has been to the effect that the human
nature was not itself hypostatic, that is personal.
There was only one person and this person
was divine.
So his statement would be that Jesus wore
his miracles by the employment of his own
deity and his own, the power of God.
That was his ever with the father and
that though he may have emptied himself of
omniscience, he did not empty himself of power
and that was what is exercised in the
critical moment.
This is classic reform theology, very much at
odds with PT Forsyth which you'll hear later
because they cannot reconcile how the created thing
could be in union with the creator.
But if it can be and in fact
it's the intention of God and in fact
glorifies God and shows God forth that it
takes, not only does it take God for
us to be a man, it takes a
man for God to be God.
I know this sounds heretical, that without manhood
God could not show himself as God or
come into the fulfillment of God.
That there's a human thing necessary for God
as there's a divine thing necessary for our
humanity.
That this is the mystery, that though it
sounds scandalous and heretical that if you detach
the human from the divine, you have neither
the divine or the human.
The human is only human when the divine
is operative, appropriated and is the life force
because without God what is man but a
physical thing that is hardly better than animals
and without the moral character of God in
fact becomes bestial and worse than animals.
It takes God to be a man but
to what degree does God require man for
the showing forth of himself and the fullness
of what deity is and that in fact
that humanity so to speak in character and
morally as Forsyth suggests was available to God
in his pre-incarnate life.
That's why Christ in us is the hope
of glory.
The issue of the union of these natures
and their expression as God himself orders it
in his sovereignty and will by those who
are leaning and will not initiate out of
their own humanity something other or different from
his own will and desire.
So he can express that deity through the
yielded humanity that Jesus himself exemplified as a
son.
This is mystery but it's mystery that waits
on fulfillment and the hour is now.
So let's end this morning with a prayer
but not a prayer that we compose out
of our unaided humanity but out of our
humanity suffused with his deity so that he
is the source.
That's why Jesus said the father is greater
than I.
How can that be if they're both God?
What he means is greater as the source
of which I am the acting out but
the source is his word, his thought, his
act.
Let incarnation now be expressed in our prayers
and then in our worship and then in
our service, then in our testimony, then in
our ministry, then in our marriages, then in
our fatherhood and motherhood and brotherhood and the
church will be the church and God will
have obtained his glory.
Let's pray.