And so I'm jealous over the days that
remain to us, looking to the Lord earnestly,
that not one of those days should be
misspent, and not knowing one day from the
other, not knowing today what's tomorrow, not even
sure about today.
But it's been brought to my attention that
when I read something the last time, that
I kind of looked down, my voice was
muffled, and I mumbled or I read too
speedily.
So don't let me get away with that.
Throw spitballs.
Don't let me get away with that.
Hey, two fast cats, go slow.
What are you saying?
If it's worth reading, it's worth hearing, or
else don't read at all.
And I know that reading is usually deadly,
so it takes a special animation, a special
alertness.
And I'm going to begin by reading something
this morning from a source that, as you
know, speaks volumes to me, and it's Spurgeon
again.
And it's out of his devotional book, somewhere
in June or something like that, on the
humanity of Jesus.
It's a remarkable statement.
He's one of the rare souls that would
ever see something like this and express it
as beautifully as he does.
And it's right in on the subject of
the humanity of Jesus, the remarkable mystery of
the union of what the theologians have called
two persons, the Greek word, because they couldn't
find an appropriate vocabulary to encompass the mystery.
And so they talk about the two natures.
I'm sorry, did I say two persons?
Two natures in one person, because they had
to defend the deity of Jesus, while at
the same time not allowing his humanity to
lapse, because that is as important in the
issue of atonement as is his deity.
And the two great controversies and heresies of
that time, one is called Docetism, D-O
-C-E-T-I-S-M, denies the
humanity of Jesus, that God could not himself
take upon himself the form of a man.
It's totally incompatible with deity and actually dishonors
God.
And then the other tendency was to celebrate
the humanity at the expense of deity, that
Jesus was all man and that the only
deity that he acquired was a kind of
spirituality, an increase of spirituality that became like
God but was not in fact God.
So the early church was battling against these
two threats, one from the one side, one
from the other, that they saw as being
principal threat to their faith itself, that the
faith rests upon the union of the two
natures, both divine and human.
And though it's a mystery and unprecedented in
history, still it was a fact that though
they could not explain it, they were obliged
to defend it.
And so there were a series of church
councils, and one day if you have the
time and want to look them up, they
are of interest in the fourth and fifth
centuries, in a Greek environment, Hellenistic, Greek philosophical
environment.
So here's a Hebraic faith being defended by
Greek mindsets of a philosophical kind that are
rational, have to find terms that are appropriate
to a mystery.
And so they invented the two natures but
are unified in one person.
Jesus is one person, but how to explain
that union they did not know.
And in fact they said it's not to
be explained, it's in the realm of mystery.
So that's where we are.
But every writer that's worth his salt makes
this clear, that this issue begins with an
I.
Incarnation is the issue of the faith.
Lose this and you lose Christianity as Christianity.
Okay, so we're exploring, we're feeling our way
through something that greater minds than us have
allowed to rest in the realm of mystery.
And maybe it's not to be defined, but
to be appropriated.
So here's Spurgeon on the subject of the
humanity of Jesus from June 18th, where I
say that I've not heard nor read anything
like it, which so much encourages a line
of consideration in me that I think appropriate
to the church.
By the way, are you doing any writing
lately?
Are you being arrested by certain themes in
readings?
And that you'll sit down at your typewriter
or your computer and you'll compose something about
it?
Just a summary of your own thoughts as
it is provoked by what you're reading?
I recommend that highly.
We should all be reading, writing, and studying
to show ourselves approved.
Workmen not needing to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of God.
We need to benefit by others who have
given themselves to these great questions.
So I was moved by what I read,
and this is what I wrote because of
it.
So that what Spurgeon cites, and his theme
was from Isaiah 54.5, in extolling all
that we inherit through Christ, needs to be
brought to the level of consciousness and faith.
So here's Spurgeon, I'm quoting Spurgeon.
Jesus hath no dignity which he will not
employ for our exaltation, and no prerogative which
he will not exercise for our defense.
His fullness of Godhead is our unfailing, inexhaustible
treasure house.
His manhood also, which he took upon him
for us, is ours, and I put also
in a box, in all its perfection.
Jesus is an acquisition.
Jesus is a legacy.
Jesus is all in all.
In him is the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, but also in his humanity is a
remarkable resource because he has passed through the
gamut of anything and everything that pertains to
human existence and life.
Yes, he was never married, so how could
he know about the intricacies and the difficulties
of this most complex and demanding of all
relationships, and yet he speaks of it, because
though he had not that relationship, he was
in a knit of relationship in which the
constituent elements that make for marriage were experienced
by him.
He passed through everything in his humanity.
I'm very responsive to this because even as
an atheist, I wanted the same for myself.
I wanted to be man universal, and so
when the Korean War was on, I was
hoping that I would be drafted.
I did not want to be exempt from
that segment of human experience called military, and
though I had a heart murmur, and they
made me jump and prance and test it
and retest it, I finally made it with
a sigh of relief.
I wanted to be in, and indeed those
two years were a decisive turning point in
my life, all the more that I was
not sent to Korea but to Germany, where
as a Jew I bristled, and yet being
there, it proved an experience that was invaluable.
But I wanted to experience, what does it
mean to be in the military?
What does it mean to be under orders?
I wanted to taste all the universal experience
to be the complete man.
In fact, my frustration that broke me as
a humanist was the inability to do just
that.
I would hear conversations in the elevator going
up, and they would be talking about Van
Gogh, and the impressionist artists, or some composer
of some book, or I'd go to a
library, I'm staggered by the volumes.
I wanted to absorb it all.
Did you ever read that poem, is it
by Robert Frost, about two paths?
And the wilderness lay, and I had to
take the one or the other, and I
always wondered that as I took the one,
what's on the other?
I was chafed by finiteness.
I wanted both paths, and out of necessity,
being man, you're confined to one, but I
wanted all.
So, in a sense, we have all in
Jesus.
His experience, his life, brief though it was,
is all-encompassing, and he passed through every
essential issue that we will ever face in
a long lifetime.
He is the man, Christ Jesus.
His humanity is remarkable and as superb as
is his deity.
And what Spurgeon is saying is that we
should obtain the full benefit, not only what
has come to us through being the son
of God, but being also the son of
man, which title he used more frequently than
the other.
So he is the son of man.
What does that mean?
Well, in today's conversation, it means he is
essential man, that whatever man is in humanity,
Jesus was, and is, and remains.
He didn't drop off his humanity with his
resurrection.
He was resurrected in his humanity, and is
right now at the throne of heaven in
his human body.
And he will forever be in that status
of the God-man that's fixed eternally, which
is a statement from the Father that the
humanity of Jesus was not just a temporary
expedient to serve the purposes of atonement, though
it did that, but that it's an enduring
and eternal stature and condition that is pleasing
in God's sight and will continue forever.
That's how much God celebrates the humanity of
Jesus.
Because there's something about a man made in
God's image that is precious.
And can God really be known except that
he's manifested in man?
So, Jesus had no dignity which he will
not employ for our exaltation.
When he humbled himself and opened himself to
catch the full gamut through which all of
mankind passes, no matter what their race, their
background, their history, and he would suffer in
that and be accused in that, being a
wine-bibber and a glutton and all the
kinds of things that he suffered.
He opened himself because he knew that we
would receive the benefit and all of the
subsequent generations of that through which he has
passed.
It would not be lost.
This is a remarkable thought.
Not only for Jesus, but for us that
I mentioned sometime last week that our human
experience does not go down the drain.
Though we may forget it and we may
have moved on from it to something else.
The essential realities through which we have passed
have an ongoing consequence in some ways transmuted
and communicated to others, our own children, fellowship.
It becomes embodied in us.
It's not something that occurs and is dismissed
and forgotten.
I like that because I think life is
too valuable just to serve the purpose of
a moment and then lose its validity.
But that if it serves significant purposes it
has every right to continue in some way
to be effectual in the expression that is
pleasing to the Lord and who has given
us those experiences even before we were believers.
Our career, merchant seaman at the age of
16 with a bunch of toughs who would
just as soon cast me over the side
as have me there.
The drunken Swedish anti-Semite who was the
bosun's mate which was like master sergeant who
would have preferred me dead than alive and
would set me up for missions like tying
up the two ton block and tackle that
had broken loose in a great storm where
we were going back and forth like this
where water was coming into the smokestack.
Here's this kid from Brooklyn, naive, poetic, romantic,
you know, wanting life experience is being sent
up with a rope to fix that block
and tackle from swinging wildly and doing damage.
It was really intended for my destruction but
I survived it because the God whom I
did not know was there with me and
guarding and watching one whom he knew would
one day be brought into the faith and
into sonship.
So all of our experiences, the things which
we have passed, even in our stupidity even
in our foolishness there was some merit, some
value if nothing more than to warn others
that needs to be retained.
We need to cherish our experience, cherish our
human life and if our life is worth
cherishing and has value by virtue of the
diversity of our experience what shall we say
about Jesus' human life?
And that's what Spurgeon is saying here.
That he is an unfailing and inexhaustible treasure
house.
His fullness, his manhood also which he took
upon him for us is ours also in
all its perfection.
To us our gracious Lord communicates the spotless
virtue of a stainless character.
To us he gives the meritorious efficacy of
a devoted life.
On us he bestows the reward procured by
obedience, submission and incessant service.
His life our covering beauty, his character our
ornaments and jewels.
The superhuman meekness of his death I'll boast
in glory.
And more than that because Paul says, have
this mind in you which was in him.
So he's more than just an example the
what Spurgeon is saying is that that very
meekness by which he did not count himself
though equal with God but emptied himself of
the prerogatives is available to us.
That we don't become meek and humble by
principle we become it by acquisition.
Humility is God.
Jesus manifested that in his humanity and Spurgeon
is saying that there's a way in which
we can appropriate the meekness of the Lord
into our own being and to our own
character and that it's part of our inheritance
and part of our legacy though he expressed
it in his humanity.
Because God is always meek.
This is God's character.
What Jesus did was explicate and demonstrate what
was always true of God.
That's why he said, if you see me
you see the Father.
Why do you ask show me now the
Father?
Have I not been with you so long
that you don't see him?
All my conduct, all my actions my speaking
is the Father.
This is very God.
God is meek you guys.
Humility is divine and the only way we
can get it is by appropriation of taking
in and in union with this Lord who
made it manifest in his own life and
walk.
That's why anyone who attempts to affect a
humility that is not taken out from in
union with the one who is this is
immediately branded as phony.
Is there anything more fraudulent than a humanly
affected humility?
We had a brother who used to call
that salesman's humility.
That self-effacing well you know me I'm
just, don't expect me to speak publicly, I'm
just a that makes you dag.
It's an affectation, it's a put on for
avarice for gain.
But the humility of God is what he
is in himself.
This is his intrinsic nature and being and
we would not have known it or even
expected that God who is the creator of
the heavens and the earth and the universe
of universes is by nature humble.
That this is God's character maybe his essential
character and Jesus demonstrated that and Paul says
have this mind in you which was in
him.
We would not even be inspired to consider
it if he himself had not demonstrated it.
This is our legacy, our inheritance.
This is the language that Spurgeon uses of
course is flowery.
Our ornaments and jewels the superhuman meekness our
boast and glory all his thoughts, actions, emotions
utterances, miracles and intercessions were for us.
Isn't that a remarkable statement?
All his thoughts, emotions, actions utterances, miracles and
intercessions were for us.
He trod past tents of tread the road
of sorrow on our behalf and made over
to us as his heavenly legacy the full
results of all the labors of his Mamma
Mia!
Think of that.
Wouldn't you like to leave a legacy like
that?
To your children or to the church?
That all the labors of your life are
not in vain though you didn't see the
fruit of them while you were laboring.
In fact most often you will not see.
That's why Paul has to encourage us.
Be assured your labors are not in vain.
Why should we be assured?
Because we're not going to see the evidences
that they are taking hold, that something is
taking place.
More often there's people who look at you
like you're a freak or yawn or turn
away or be offended but be assured your
labors are not in vain and Spurgeon is
saying about Jesus that we receive and can
receive the full legacy of the results of
all the labors of his life.
That's remarkable.
It doesn't mean that we need to know
them in detail.
Most of them are not recorded because of
all the things that he said and did
were written, the world would not be great
enough to contain the book.
How then can we receive the legacy of
all his labors when we don't know of
them?
That's not the way you receive it by
that kind of knowing.
You receive it by impartation.
You receive it by union.
You receive it by oneness.
If he's in us to will it to
do of his good pleasure if we can
say for me to live as Christ when
that Christ that is living in you is
the one who performed all those labors and
said all those things.
He comes complete with the whole resonance of
a life fully lived in the totality of
his humanity as true man.
That's what these Greek councils said.
True man, true God.
This is man and he lived that full
human life and we are the beneficiaries by
faith to believe for this and to receive
this.
And you know for me one of the
most impressive testimonies that this is true, though
I can't find any scripture that says this,
is Spurgeon himself.
Think of the selections I read this morning
at the prayer time.
Last night's devotional and this morning's.
Anyone who could write two such statements like
that ought to retire.
He could put his pen down.
He said enough for the rest of his
life.
They were golden.
They were resplendent.
They were poetic.
They were deep.
They were encouraging.
They were a glimpse of eternity to come
that would encourage us in this life.
How did he know that?
And he knew it from his earliest believing
on.
So I'm saying that Spurgeon, what we read
in Spurgeon, is not the result of a
long life.
He died at 57.
It's the result of an appropriation of the
life of another who knew heaven because he
came down from it.
And something was infused and taken up into
the life and character of Spurgeon because of
the depth of his devotional union with that
God that is expressed in morning and evening
in the devotional statements.
There's no other way to explain him that
I can see.
And that's why we prayed, Lord if you
can do this with Spurgeon, how about us?
Maybe our union is not as deep with
that source.
Maybe we're not in the kind of constant
communion in which Spurgeon was in love and
therefore we have not his faith and we
have not thought that the Lord's human life
is a legacy that we can inherit through
the things through which he has passed and
therefore we have not appropriated it.
Faith is not some vague thing.
Faith is a belief for something in particular
which evidently he had and evidently he expresses.
I'm saying I'll just sum it up in
one way.
There's no way to understand Spurgeon as being
the result of a long life of experience
then expressed through his writings.
The way to really understand Spurgeon is that
he had a knowledge and an inward sense
of the deep things of God beyond his
years and independent of his actual experience by
the appropriation of one whose experience preceded him
and was communicated to him by faith.
Got that?
And that what was possible for Spurgeon was
possible for us.
So you don't have to wait a hundred
years to become mature that a young believer
can obtain a maturity by the appropriation of
that through which Jesus was tested and passed
through his life and be communicated as a
sense of things that would astonish us and
hear that young believer will be making statements
and observations and have a discernment and a
sense of things that you cannot explain in
terms of his years.
That the mystery of incarnation has hardly been
scratched.
And God is wanting us to more than
scratch but to appropriate this remarkable legacy of
what has come to us not only through
the deity of Jesus but now especially his
humanity.
The full result of all the labors of
his life.
Even his sorrows and his grief.
Have you known that?
Have you ever had a sense of inexplicable
sorrow?
Of an ache?
Of a grief that has nothing to do
with external events taking place in your life
or even in the world?
You just, you wake with it or it
comes upon you or in a time of
communion or prayer or you just find yourself
grieving.
Not despondent in that melancholy way that has
to do with sickly personality but the grief
and sorrow of God is clean.
It's pure and he's a man of sorrow
still and there's much for him to sorrow
over and to grieve but you know the
only fellowship that I have ever met in
41 years in the faith that thinks like
this are the sisters of Mary in Germany,
the Marie and Schwestern.
You know how they talk?
They commiserate with the Lord.
They share his griefs and his sorrows.
They don't want him to bear it alone.
I mean what is with these women that
somehow by their prayer and their empathetic relationship
they are entering his griefs and his sorrows
and bearing it with him.
You know I think they're right on and
you know a little grief and sorrow wouldn't
hurt any of us.
In fact that may be the Lord's divine
antidote to the lightness that pervades the church.
Our lightness is disgraceful all the more when
we know that the word glory in Hebrew
is the same word for weight.
That when I break my neck to go
out of my way to hear the so
called oracles of the hour, the prophets I
come away every time disappointed for the lightness
that pervades the places where they're speaking, the
atmosphere that they create and to which they
themselves contribute.
It doesn't hurt us, especially as Americans, to
have a sense of sorrow and grief.
And where's our sister from Bielefeld?
We'll remember as I have mentioned before either
this week or last week if you were
not here, that when I came to Germany
to this little fellowship from which he's come
of charismatic believers, university students who found me
on the website and said, you seem to
be the real thing.
You seem to be.
So, come and prove it.
And we found three days for them.
Sandwiched them in between Holland and other commitments.
And came into came late riding hours in
the back of a little car and all
cramped up and and heavy traffic and you
know how that affects you?
It's like a downer.
And you come in and the meeting has
already begun and you're late.
And you come right up and there are
these kids and they're singing their charismatic choruses
and they seem to have it together.
And then they look to me to say
something and I opened my mouth and I
said I perceive that you lack a tragic
sense of life.
Poor Reggie was with me.
Almost fell off of his seat.
My interpreter looked at me as if I'd
gone bonkers.
Is that how you begin?
And what does that mean?
And I couldn't tell you.
All I knew was that it came out
of my mouth.
It was not premeditated but it was the
choice divine beginning of confronting German young believers
with the fact that they don't even reflect
their own history.
It's as if the history had not taken
place and they are as impervious and as
unaffected as if they had come from any
country in the world and therefore have lost
the value of their own history which would
be a wonderful tempering thing for this present
generation.
We're not cut off from our fathers and
from their past.
We share the guilt and responsibility with them.
In fact in general the disposition of mankind
is to sweep history under the rug.
We don't want to remember history particularly painful
history.
We want to go on to the bright
future and not be affected by the errors
of the past when really we should benefit
by the past because some sage has said
that nation that will not learn its own
history is doomed to repeat it.
And indeed Germany I think will.
If you will forsake the gospel to the
Jew you forsake the gospel and if you
forsake the gospel you forsake the church and
you will again create the absence of the
presence that a true church of an apostolic
kind would have given to the nation in
the absence of which demons and dark demonic
spirits will occupy that vacuum because nature abhors
a vacuum.
If it will not be filled by God
it will be filled by the devil.
So the church has got to be the
church and the issue of the church for
the church of Germany today is the issue
of the Jew which is in their midst
not just a small trickle but a hundred
to three hundred thousand strong and increasing every
day.
So yes if they forfeit they could again
open the door to demonic infiltration of the
kind that Nazism was.
Okay are we Americans disposed to the things
that are tragic?
To sorrow?
Is there a place for grief?
Or am I just a freak?
Just a voice out of an earlier generation?
I ache for these missing components in our
present culture and especially in the church because
it leaves us shallow and frivolous and light
and in fact that's indeed the atmosphere that
prevails in our churches.
So I think that there's a place for
the things that are tragic for grief, for
sorrow and who passed through that?
Who's the man of sorrows?
Notice the phrase man of sorrows.
It wasn't of course God can and does
sorrow but Jesus in his humanity was the
man of sorrows.
He bore our griefs and what Spurgeon is
saying though he doesn't mention those two things
that there's a way to assimilate and take
in this valence this disposition this resonance from
the humanity of Jesus and his experience that
would do us good.
We don't have to be shallow or be
the necessary product of our civilization and our
time.
In fact God calls us to be transcendent.
The church has got to be other than
the product of its time.
It's got to bring eternity eternality with it
and values of a kind that celebrated invisible
God and anticipate his coming.
So there's a place for dimensions available to
us through union with Jesus not only in
his dignity but his humanity that we have
not tapped and Spurgeon is saying it's part
of our legacy.
There's something and God is wanting demonstrated by
the church in these last days out from
our humanity.
So for us to exhibit true men and
by the way I'm not talking about gender.
This is not limited to males true humankind
true humanity male or female would be a
grace for our age because all we're seeing
is deformed stunted paper mache characters who are
celebrated through public hype.
What do they call that?
PR They can take anyone and make an
overnight personality.
He doesn't have anything to commend them.
Trump, Donald Trump is a television star now.
A nothing a non-entity doesn't have a
thing to commend.
He's just a woman chaser.
He'll marry and take off and put on
wives.
He can afford them but what do they
are?
Sexual playthings and he's celebrated as a personality
and has his own TV programs and I
never would have watched it but I did
catch a glimpse of a commercial for a
credit card which Donald Trump is on top
of one of his buildings holding his card
and it falls out of his hand and
topples down and falls into a garbage dump
a bin and the next scene is he's
hoisted over the bin and all you see
are his buttocks and his legs and he's
fishing to retrieve the card What's the message?
If Donald Trump multi-millionaire who has everything
so covets this credit card as to leap
into the garbage bin so as to retrieve
it, you need to have one also.
But he's going to carry that image into
eternity that he's willing to go into a
garbage dump for a card but how far
has he been willing to go to find
out the truth of life, it's meaning and
the God who has given it.
This is our culture you guys and it's
crying out for true man.
Mensch Menschen.
See that T-shirt that I wear?
Mensch.
It's not a sign to the boys room.
It's a word that is so choice both
in the German language and Yiddish because Yiddish
is essentially German the word mensch means more
than just a male it means a man
who has come of age it means one
who's responsible, one who can be counted on,
one who's trustworthy one from whom you can
hear wise and sage things, a man who
has life experience, character integrity, a mensch Would
to God that this were a a model
for us, that we would desire to be
such, instead of the slipshod, casual get along
characters that we are and for which our
wives suffer and our children.
Let me ask you this question.
The sorrows and griefs characteristic of Jesus, was
it only the result of what he suffered
in himself and the pain and the things
that he bore?
Is that what he's grieving?
Is that what he's sorrowing?
It's not a personal self-pitying thing woe
is me he's grieving and sorrowing for the
condition of the world and of men, it's
godlessness and we would do well to grieve
and sorrow over exactly the same thing, but
like humility it must not be an affectation
it's got to issue out from the very
nature of the god man himself which Spurgeon
says is available to us as legacy and
he writes, oh to make a full appropriation
of this legacy, to bring it into our
humanity what was forged in his as part
also of the remarkable privilege which is ours
by faith.
You know, I don't think that's Spurgeon, that's
me.
Not there, cats.
Let's hear that again.
And where did I get it?
And where do I have such disposition of
the kind that you're hearing, which is utterly
unique, is it just accident of history and
time or is it that in the same
way by which Spurgeon acquired a certain depth
and incisiveness and intuition of things that are
rare, something like that is working in me.
It's taken 76 years to get there but
this is not bad.
This is me crying out after reading that
part from Spurgeon, oh to make a full
appropriation of this legacy, to bring it into
our humanity what was forged in his as
part also of the remarkable privilege which is
ours by faith.
We are falling short of the glory.
We had not thought that there's an appropriation
available to us of dimensions in God that
were wrought through the life of Jesus in
his humanity that can aid and benefit our
being, facilitate our maturity and bring us to
become men of full stature.
Oh how tragic I'm crying out if we
fail to make this appropriation by faith.
This is an issue of humanhood, of true
humanity which is as required and as becoming
to women as to men, in fact maybe
more becoming to women because remember when we
read about Romans where Paul says that even
women have given over the natural use of
their bodies to burnings and to illicit I'm
paraphrasing, that are disgraceful.
Why does he use that language?
He doesn't begin by talking about homosexuality with
men he begins by talking about lesbianism with
women.
Why?
Because he wants to shock us of what
is the consequence of godlessness and turning away
from the testimony of God and refusing to
believe.
And the consequence is that God abandons you
to your own propensity where you forsake the
natural use of your body and turn it
to that which will consume you in burnings
and the consequence of the sicknesses that follow.
But he begins with women where he says
even women will turn from the natural use
of their bodies.
Why does he say even?
Because women are thought to be, and I
think rightly more sensitive and more disposed to
holiness and purity than men so when a
woman will abandon herself or be abandoned to
the misuse of her own body, that's a
statement of how vile sin is and what
is its consequence.
So yes, there's I'm saying men, manhood but
don't think that that limits it to the
male species.
This is for all of us.
So what incalculable loss not to obtain the
value of what he passed through in his
own humanity as a man in suffering, obedience,
tested character death and resurrection and enthronement.
Is this not the fullness of the Godhead
bodily?
Ours forever and most richly to enjoy?
The Lord passed through all of this.
He's passed through rejection suffering, death burial, resurrection
ascension and enthronement in his humanity.
He didn't leave his body behind.
It came with him and was raised and
he possesses it even now.
It's one with him even now.
So he has passed through something in his
humanity in which we can receive some measure
of the benefit and if we do I
think we'll be less prone to be hypersensitive
about ourselves and sickly in our own concern
and so easy to be offended or hurt
because if we have passed through some measure
of his sufferings what place then for this
pouting, sickly defensiveness of our little humanity?
Just to share some measure of what he's
passed through serves to nullify what would otherwise
affect you.
We are much too prone to our own
suffering and it is exaggerated beyond its real
value because we're living so close to our
skin and we are so centered in ourselves
and so narrow in the scope of our
experience that we see ourselves at the center
of the universe.
Anything that happens is only as it affects
us.
But if we had some union with God
in his humanity who has passed through real
suffering it would inure us excuse my language
I-N-U-R-E to the kinds
of things that now disturb us and are
really just momentary and light.
We're missing something that God intended for our
benefit and therefore we're much too partial to
our own aches and pains and ailments and
insults and offenses than we have any right
to be.
If we had passed through any measure of
the sufferings of the Lord we would be
immune to these petty things and be much
braver and much more stalwart in what we're
able to bear in this life.
I've seen grown men just collapse in fear
military men as we went through the lines,
I've shared this a number of times, and
the needles were poised, we got injected in
both arms like pin cushions and I watched
men keel over fainting at the sight of
a needle that was going to prick their
flesh because they live so close to their
flesh that their flesh is their life.
But others of us, we could be pin
cushions and hardly blink.
Why?
Because we're inured against pain.
We're not living in ourselves.
There are other dimensions that occupy our soul
and it renders us relatively immune to what
makes others faint.
So how are we going to be good
soldiers in the last days?
This is part of the provision to take
his sufferings into ourselves in a way that
can be appropriated by faith.
You know what, guys?
First time I have said this anywhere.
Anywhere.
I've never shared this publicly.
This thing has been in my briefcase from
June, April of last year.
And this is the first time that I'm
having the courage to bring it out in
the subject of the mystery of incarnation.
The humanity as well as the deity of
Jesus that we mustn't miss it because we're
called to explicate and to demonstrate it.
What grief and sorrow through which Jesus passed
was in any way inadvertent or circumstantial?
Not an iota.
Everything was prescribed, intended in the sovereignty of
the Father through which Jesus must pass as
Son of Man.
And didn't Jesus know that when he was
with the Father in his pre-incarnate life
and they talked together about the calling of
the Son that had to be sent into
the world and suffer those things.
So doesn't this add a dimension of admiration
for the Son of God that who was
equal with the Father as deity knowing what
coming into the earth would mean and taking
upon himself the form of a man is
yet willing to agree to do it.
That he's going to be passing through griefs
and sorrows and experiences that never need have
been his experience if he chose not to
be sent.
He had to voluntarily be sent and he
was willing in that anticipation that could only
be experienced in a human body.
God is, there's a word for this in
theology, is impassable.
It means that he is unaffected by sin.
He cannot feel what we feel as humans
unless he takes upon himself the form of
a human and that's why he's become a
high priest because at every point he was
tempted like as we.
He's passed through our humanity.
He knows what it means and therefore he
can live to make intercessions for us as
his eternal calling because he has passed through
the reality of what we face being human.
Hey, you know, it's one thing for us
to bear that but for God to bear
it?
What kind of a God is this that
would allow his son to be sent and
to bear this experience and find it to
be eventuated in its vilest form which is
crucifixion.
The death for slaves, criminals, and rebels.
The most agonizing of deaths.
What kind of a father is it that
will send his son to suffer that and
what kind of a son is it who
is willing to bear it so that we
might receive the benefit not only of the
atonement but of the experience itself of the
suffering itself of the grief itself as a
necessary corrective to being the victims of a
blithe and superficial age in which nothing affects
us and we're totally blah.
Well, you know what?
For me, this heightens my appreciation.
My gratitude.
My love.
And if God keeps on showing us this,
I might even come to the place one
day where my love breaks through into the
transcendent form that is called adoration which we
have not yet obtained or attained and when
we will, with that depth of identification and
love that is called adoring, I think that
there will be a companion power and authority
released in us because anyone who adores God
like that is not going to misuse the
authority that God will invest in him for
his own glory.
Got that?
There's a payoff.
Where do you get this, cats?
Don't ask me.
I don't know.
And yet I'm speaking it like it's gospel
truth as if thus sayeth the Lord.
Well, there are a lot of things that
are not said and that are not written
as we read before, quoted if all the
things could be written which Jesus both said
and did, the world would not be greater
if it contained the book.
And what about the things that are that
were not explicitly said and yet are part
of the reality of his life?
So, if God keeps this up, we have
every reason to admire him the more that
he's willing to suffer the pangs of humanity.
Haven't you ever had an ache and a
pain because you're human all too human?
A stubborn thing that will not be released?
Haven't you suffered humiliations and misunderstandings and the
frustration of your own life and being finite
and limited where you want to choke and
spit it out and it's a grief and
a pain?
That's one thing for us to bear being
human but for God to bear it is
a remarkable condescension.
This is humility that God is willing to
bear what we of necessity have to bear
in our frailty.
He bore by taking upon himself the form
of a man.
But now how much spite are we doing
what he suffered if we don't avail ourselves
of what he has passed through?
It could come in some measure into our
own being not by copying him but by
assimilating by union with him because nothing through
which he has passed is lost.
A man is the sum of all his
moments.
Isn't that true of you?
A man is the sum of all his
experiences.
He may forget them as invariably he will
but the effect of what through which he
has passed is there.
Number one, do you desire to acquire something
of what he has passed through?
It would add dimensions to us that would
save us from being one-dimensional.
Is there anything duller than a saint that
has only two or three scriptures that are
favorite and once they've finished sharing that there's
nothing more to say?
You have more fun and more reality and
benefit with unbelievers who have rich life experiences
and are characters than you have with saints
that are predictable.
One-dimensional saints.
So aren't these dimensions valuable?
Do we desire them?
Number two, do we have the faith to
appropriate them?
That the life experience of Jesus and his
humanity is not something lost.
It's eternally registered, eternally available to those who
will have the faith in union with him
to appropriate the desire.
The briefest verse in all scripture is in
that context in John 11 two words, Jesus
wept.
Well you need to hear my message in
which I say he wept at their weeping.
He didn't weep in commiseration for the untimely
death of young Lazarus.
He wept because Israel was weeping in a
saccharine sentimental, slobbering way over the tragic premature
death of a young man.
He wept because of their lack of faith.
He wept because they did not know that
to be absent from the body is to
be present with the Lord.
He wept because they were making a ceremony.
They were getting esoteric psychological they were getting
a bang out of weeping.
This is Jewish as anyone who has ever
had a Jewish mother knows.
They love to wring their fingers and oy
vey and woe is me and gossip and
talk about the operations and Jesus wept because
their weeping was a statement of the ineptitude
of Israel.
It was a summation of how shallow that
nation was in its own comprehension of the
issue of death and resurrection.
And what are the real issues that celebrate
mortal life as if it's the thing in
itself rather than the gateway to preparation for
the life that's eternal.
He wept over their condition.
He wept over their weeping.
But he wept.
Jesus anguished plenty.
We're not given long and ample descriptions but
we can imagine the groanings and his own
prayers and what he saw even in his
own disciples.
How long must I suffer you?
The exasperation of men living with him day
in and day out and yet failing to
have registered the most elementary understanding and lacking
in faith.
The Lord suffered and there's an efficacy to
suffering and there's a dimension available to us
through his sufferings that will do us good.
It'll not make you morbid but it'll save
you from being shallow.
But the tempered life, the seasoned life, the
life that has passed through a remarkable depth
of experience, that's what he sends down from
the throne.
It's not just an abstract energy, it's himself
as he has passed through the things that
preceded his enthronement.
Namely, his suffering, his crucifixion, his burial, his
going down into hell.
How many people have had that experience and
been raised up by the power of God
to the throne of God?
He's had a history as a man that
is astonishing.
And when he sends down his life, the
spirit of his life, it is shaped and
affected and carries the valence, the resonance of
that through which he has passed.
But to see it only as a power,
now we have power, no?
And not to receive what is inherent, what
is intrinsic to that life is a tragic
loss.
And somehow it seems to be our experience
that we're only emphasizing the power but not
the character of that life.
God's life is not an abstraction.
Is your life an abstraction?
My life is unique and distinct.
No one else has ever lived my life.
I cherish it every day and every year
of it.
What a history.
And there's yet a future.
Life is an enormous thing.
It's not an abstraction.
It's particular.
It has history.
It has disposition.
It has mood.
It has the things that are unique to
it.
And you know, that's how we ought to
be appreciating each other.
Because there's no two alike.
There's no two snowflakes alike.
There's no two fingerprints alike.
How much more variable is the variety to
be found in the body of Christ?
And I want to meet and touch and
receive the benefit of the life of that
one different from my own.
And hear it and converse with it and
relate to it so that the body of
Christ should not be threadbare and barren and
malnourished but have the benefit of the richness
of the life of its members as it
is freely expressed.
For the want of that, the world is
rushing for entertainment and videos and games because
they're dull.
Because they have nothing to give and nothing
to express.
They have no opinion, no thought.
Their experience is vain.
So they have to fill the vacuum with
things that excite.
And if it grows dull then those who
create that stuff have got to be yet
more daring, yet more pornographic, yet more vile
in the murders, the deaths, the rapes, the
things that are depicted, even in video games.
Because people get bored and need yet more
innovative and exciting things because they have grown
dull to the last.
We are an entertainment-oriented civilization.
For the want of character, for the want
of the enjoyment of what God has made
in his image, man the supreme pinnacle, the
zenith of God's creation is flat as a
pancake, dull as a dodo, has nothing to
distinguish it and needs to be entertained.
For the church to be in that condition
is yet more tragic.
The reason for the sorrow and the grief
may pass but the resonance of having experienced
sorrow and grief remains.
It brings a dimension and a layer to
your person that serves you in good stead
and benefits many.
So we need to see like that.
When we will enjoy each other, even in
silence, we will come to a place of
reality where we don't have to be clever,
we don't have to be engaging, we don't
have to be amusing.
There are times when we will be that
and the best times are when such things
come spontaneously without self-conscious effort to be
amusing or attractive.
But even if you're sitting with other saints
and you're quiet, there's an enjoyment because their
life and the reality of what they represent
in God is somehow there.
And there's a fellowship even without speaking.
That's not to say that they should not
be speaking but when we come to this
enjoyment of each other in silence and quiet,
it shows that we're under, we've come to
a dimension.
The Spirit is given without measure unto him
and as many as are in him can
also receive the Spirit without measure, without fear
that it's going to go to their heads,
encourage their egotism or their vanity, or be
misappropriated for their human glory.
That's why the Spirit was given without measure
to him because he was a son.
He's not going to receive anything from the
Father that he will turn to his own
self-aggrandizement.
The Father can afford.
That's why Jesus said in John 13, the
foot washing, that I've come from the Father,
I'm going to the Father, and the Father
hath given me all things.
How can the Father afford that?
In fact, finally, the Father gives him the
name above all names.
That to him every knee should bow and
every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to
the glory of God the Father.
The Father is so giving he's extravagant in
what he gives the Son.
Do you know why?
There's never any fear that the Son will
utilize it for himself because everything that the
Son does, thinks, and is, is for the
Father.
It will redound to the glory of the
Father.
When we are sons like that, we will
have the Spirit in much greater measure than
we are now presently enjoying.
How does it say?
Our life is hid with Christ in God.
How about his life being hid in our
life?
If our life is hid with him, what
about his life hid with us?
Isn't that exactly what Spurgeon is saying?
That this is a two-way street.
If our life could be hid with him,
then by the same measure his life can
be hid with us.
How is our life hid with him?
In death and resurrection.
Because we're crucified.
We're dead and hid with Christ in God.
So that something can take place where he
becomes our life.
But by the same token, if our life
is hid in him, could his life then
be hid in us?
And is that the way in which we
can appropriate his grief, his sorrow, his character,
his tempering, the things through which he's passed?
And even though we can't identify or articulate
this, this, and this, and what consists of
the valence.
I don't have a word for it.
Somebody help me who has a little mastery
in the English language.
The sense, the valence, the sum, the resonance
of the reality of the life that Jesus
lived as man is transmuted and brought in
to us.
What was hid in him is imparted to
us to the measure of our faith and
appropriation.
That's not a bad thing.
That we would really be then a witness
unto him.
And there would be dimensions in our being
that would bless many.
That is not to be explained by what
we have attained by our own endeavor, or
by our length of life, or by our
experience.
All of those things are valuable.
But here's something additional that imbues and enhances
everything.
It's his life as it has been lived,
and the reality through which it's passed, is
now transmuted and conveyed in some measure to
us.
There'll not be a shallow believer in the
bunch.
And this is the mystery of incarnation that
goes so far beyond just the necessity for
a man to suffer and die for sin.
That's great!
But redemption is more than atonement.
The capstone of redemption is incarnation, and sons
brought to glory, and fullness.
And that's what we're talking about.
That's what we need to see.
The church has become, what's the word, stagnant
and fixed over the doctrinal dispute.
How many natures and how could Deity be
in union with humanity?
But that's that Greek mentality.
But the Hebraic, if I could put it
that way, the spiritual, the mentality that Spurgeon
is expressing here, goes beyond the issue of
doctrinal correctness.
It goes to the issue of assimilation, appropriation
of dimensions of reality that we would never
consider is available to us.
That is part of our legacy and the
humanity of Jesus as well as his Deity.
So on that note, we need to take
a break.
Stagger out of the room gasping.
Lord, who is sufficient for these things?
We can hardly understand it, let alone appropriate
it.
But if we do, you will be so
much more glorified.
Why should your precious experience be lost?
Why should it not be continued and conveyed
by those who are presently in union with
you?
Why should they be doomed to just the
narrowness of their own earthly humanity and the
circumstances by which they were born in Russia
or Brooklyn or any such thing?
Why can't they envelop and take in the
dimensions that come through you, that enhance and
deepen and make them so much more a
blessing to the church and to all men
everywhere and to themselves?
So Lord, teach us what these things mean.
Thank you for the privilege, my God, of
a first opening up of such a subject
as this that seems to threaten the prospect
of heresy.
We've not been this way here before.
This is a little different than what it
is.
And it could if we were immature and
run with this in the wrong way.
But Lord, watch over us.
Remember how we prayed, Lord, in the prayer
time?
Have we come to a place in time
where you can look upon us with such
favor that you can communicate to us some
of your secrets?
Some of those things that are hidden, that
you don't bandy about generally, but you wait
for an occasion where you know it will
be heard and received.
Is that what we're getting today?
If so, Lord, receive our gratitude and keep
on keeping on and we'll thank you and
give you praise.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.