A beautiful day, as our brother Woodhouse prophesied.
I was thinking of him this afternoon, went
out walking for a little while, and I
thought, now, if the rest of his prognostications
this week turn out the way today did,
well, we'll have to confer on him some
kind of a meteorological medal, won't we?
And if it doesn't turn out that way,
we won't say a word about it.
We begin tonight the studies which were suggested
to you this morning for our evening messages,
and that is some of the trilogies of
the life of the Lord Jesus.
These have to be chosen arbitrarily.
I take responsibility for that because we have
a good number of them which you can
easily remember as they group themselves together in
threes throughout our Lord's life and experience.
So tonight I wish to read with you,
first of all, in the Gospel by Luke,
chapter 1.
One of the interesting trilogies that we have
concern places, others concern people, others concern miracles,
and so on.
And the places we have a number of
these trilogies, I want to consider with you
this evening, as much as we may cover,
the three major areas or cities of the
life of our Lord, Bethlehem, his birth, Nazareth,
his boyhood days, his early manhood, his youth,
and then finally Jerusalem, his resurrection, his death
rather, and resurrection.
Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.
Then we have others of three cities.
As I've suggested, we have those three cities
in Galilee, and there you have the three
provinces as well.
We have Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.
And you have the cities of Bethsaida and
Chorazin and Capernaum, likened as our Lord did
them with the Old Testament cities of Tyre
and Sidon and Sodom.
These groups jump at us out from the
scriptures as we read them, and so I
do hope that they will be both interesting
and profitable in these evening gatherings.
Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, and reading from verse
26.
And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel
was sent from God unto a city of
Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin as opposed
to a man whose name was Joseph of
the house of David, and the virgin's name
was Mary.
And the angel came unto her and said,
Hail thou that art highly favoured, the Lord
is with thee, blest art thou among women.
When she saw him, she was troubled at
his saying, and cast in her mind what
manner of salutation this should be.
And the angel said unto her, Fear not,
Mary, for thou hast found favour with God,
and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb
and bring forth a son, and shalt call
his name Jesus.
He shall be great, and shall be called
the Son of the Highest, and the Lord
God shall give unto him the throne of
his father David, and he shall reign over
the house of Jacob for ever, and of
his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall
this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her,
The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
the power of the highest shall overshadow thee.
Therefore also that holy thing which shall be
born of thee shall be called the Son
of God.
Therefore also that which shall be born of
thee holy shall be called the Son of
God.
Chapter 2, verse 1, And it came to
pass in those days that there went out
a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the
world should be taxed.
And this taxing was first made when Sarinius
was governor of Syria.
And all went to be taxed, every one
into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out
of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, into
the city of David, which is called Bethlehem,
because he was of the house and lineage
of David, to be taxed with Mary, his
espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was that while they were
there, the days were accomplished that she should
be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him
in a manger, because there was no room
for them in the inn.
Now turn the page to chapter 4, if
you will, please.
Chapter 4, containing another of our trilogies which
we hope to look at, The Three Temptations
of the Wilderness.
And verse 14 says, And Jesus returned in
the power of the Spirit into Galilee.
And they went out of fame with him
through all the region about.
And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified
of all.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had
been brought up.
And as his custom was, he went to
the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood
up to read.
Now, there is a tremendous amount of material
in connection with this trilogy, Bethlehem, Nazareth and
Jerusalem.
Bethlehem is mentioned 38 times, I believe it
is, in the Scriptures, 30 times in the
Old Testament and 8 times in the New.
Nazareth is mentioned only 29 times, and that
is exclusively in the New Testament.
And then Jerusalem 764 times in all of
the Scriptures, 640 in the Old Testament, 624
in the Old Testament and 140 in the
New.
And I just remembered, somebody told me coming
into the meeting this evening, I must respect
the author of this statement, the source of
it, I speak too fast.
And my wife always adds, and don't mutter.
So I get instructions from one quarter and
I get them from the other and I
put them all together and I should be
able to do something along this line.
So if I'm speaking too quickly, please stand
up, hold up your hand and protest.
And I shall endeavor to put on my
verbal brakes.
Bethlehem.
Christmas is not even a month behind us,
and I know you had a special speaker
here at that time, and we were all
considering afresh the story of Bethlehem.
It begins with Nazareth, as we notice tonight,
in what is called the Annunciation, and then
moves to Bethlehem for the birth of our
Lord.
I don't know how you are, but when
these special seasons come around, special seasons of
the year, I always pause a little in
my activities, and I start to think about
the import of these special occasions.
And I expect that all of us had
heard some messages concerning the Christmas season and
the birth of our Lord as we celebrate
it around the world at this time.
The mystery of it never fades.
The marvel of it is never dimmed.
The wonder of what happened at Bethlehem, and
how it happened, and for what cause it
happened.
Bethlehem without which there could have been no
Calvary.
Bethlehem that defies an exhaustive scrutiny.
Bethlehem that presents dilemmas to us, along with
some of the other theological dilemmas of our
Bibles, and yet has a sweetness and a
richness and a comfort and a glow to
it that is undimmed with the passing of
the years.
It was, as you know, the place where
they buried Rachel.
It was the home of Ruth and Boaz.
It was the home of David the king.
It was the subject of the prophecy of
Micah, chapter 5, that we also recall at
the Christmas season.
Thou, Bethlehem, a frat, art not the least
among the thousands of Judah, for out of
thee shall come a ruler whose goings forth
have been from of old, from the days
of eternity.
Bethlehem, hallowed in memory and defiant in logic,
and yet so sweet to us.
It all started, of course, a way back
in the days of Micah.
Actually, it goes back to the days of
Isaiah some 700 years before, when you remember
King Asa was asked to charge God with
a sign, for he would send a message
of comfort to him.
Asa said, I will not tempt the Lord
my God.
Gone by the prophet, Isaiah said, wilt thou
weary thy God also?
Therefore, the Lord shall give thee a sign.
Then he went on to say, the virgin
shall conceive.
There is a definite article in the Hebrew,
and a definite article as well in the
Greek.
So there was a specific vessel chosen and
known by God 700 years before it happened
that the virgin should conceive and bear a
son.
The mystery of this lies, of course, in
the biological dilemma.
We know what happened as we're reading about
it tonight.
We know the words of Gabriel.
We have heard them year by year, as
the years come and the years go.
We have wondered at them, we have pondered
over them.
Sometimes we have left them and gone into
the rest of the activities of the subsequent
months of the year.
And then as December rolls around, we come
back to it again.
It has a fascination for us.
At least, I think it does.
I know it does for me.
It begins with Gabriel being sent by God
to the city of Nazareth in what is
known as the Annunciation.
The Annunciation of Gabriel has defied logic ever
since it was made.
We reason this way, we reason that way,
we come to no final conclusion about it.
There we are told that a virgin was
to conceive and bear a son.
The words are specific.
They're not to be glossed over.
They're not to be cast aside, simply because
we can't fully understand them.
You say, well, why can't we understand them?
Well, the best minds, theological minds of the
last thousand years, if not almost two, have
battled with this subject.
Because, you see, the virgin was chosen.
The virgin was a specific vessel God had
in mind 700 years before he came onto
the pages of history.
The words of Gabriel are very concise.
They're very direct.
They cannot be smoothed over.
They cannot be glossed away.
And so he came to Mary in Nazareth
and he made the Annunciation.
Thou art highly favored of God.
Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring
forth a son.
There it is.
And he goes on to say further, because
she questioned, she queried him, she said, How
can this be, for I know not a
man?
And Gabriel said to her, Well, the Holy
Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power
of the Most High shall overshadow thee.
There's the solution, rather.
Therefore, that which shall be born of thee
holy, or that which shall be begotten of
thee shall be called holy, the Son of
God.
John tells us, 114, you remember the word
became flesh.
Paul tells us in Galatians chapter 4 what
the law could not do, and that it
was weak through the flesh, God sending his
only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.
Not a mysterious word.
In the likeness of sinful flesh.
He was not sinful flesh, but he came
in the likeness of sinful flesh.
He was born of woman, says Paul.
Born under law.
He who in the early pages of history
in the book of the Genesis made the
woman in the first place, came of woman.
He was the Eternal.
The one whose words we were considering a
little this morning.
How shall we understand this?
Well, because of the biological difficulty, knowing that
the words of Scripture are true, who can
bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
Knowing that while Mary was of the house
and lineage of David, she was of the
royal line, and Joseph likewise was, we say,
but was she anything but human?
No.
Was she out of this sphere an unnatural
vessel?
No.
Well, what was going to happen?
She was going to have a firstborn son.
And who would the firstborn son be?
He'd be called the Son of God.
And then, as we noticed this morning, he
was to be the great and violet I
Am.
Mary said, how can this possibly be?
He was not to come of human generation,
as John chapter 1 again tells us.
He was not born of the will of
the flesh.
He was not born of blood's quarrel.
He came by supernatural intervention by the parts
of the Spirit of God, but through the
vessels of the Virgin.
Well, now, what are we going to do
with this problem?
Because Mary was human as we are.
She was flesh and blood as we are.
There's a verse in Hebrews chapter 2, which
you will recall, that says, because the children
were partakers of flesh and blood, speaking of
our Lord, he also in like manner partook
of the faith.
What does that mean?
Well, may I suggest to you what it
does not mean.
It does not mean that Mary was a
surrogate mother.
For she wasn't.
She was a natural mother.
She was a human mother.
It was her firstborn son that she brought
forth.
Yes, but.
I know.
The but derives with capital letters, underlines, in
red, fiery scripts.
But how can this be?
Well, I insist that she was not a
surrogate mother, because you know what a surrogate
mother is.
A surrogate mother does not conceive.
A surrogate mother has introduced into her womb
a fertilized ovum.
That did not Mary receive.
For the words are clear.
He was born of woman.
He was her firstborn son.
She conceived.
Now, later on, as you recall, when Joseph
discovered something of the mystery and was very
much perturbed about it, he didn't know what
to do.
He was a righteous man, and he wanted
to act in keeping with the law of
God, but he was a chosen vessel as
well.
And he was a man who loved his
betrothed virgin.
But she is with child.
So because of his righteousness, and because of
his love, combining the two things, he could
see the only solution was to just quietly
dismiss her.
He would not treat her as a fornicator.
And while he's in this dilemma, and he's
not the only person who's been in a
dilemma, as you know, about this matter, since
that time, while he was in this dilemma,
he didn't understand what this was all about.
The angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph
in a dream.
Now, you've noticed that when God would communicate
with Mary, he sent a personal angel.
When he wished to communicate with Joseph, on
four occasions, he did it in a dream.
And I think that's significant, isn't it?
Whether it was in Nazareth, whether it was
in Bethlehem, or whether it was in Egypt.
When Joseph received divine instructions as to what
he was to do concerning his betrothed virgin,
or his child, that was born in Bethlehem,
going down into Egypt, coming back up out
of Egypt.
And then when they came into the problem,
Archelaus, the son of Herod the Great, was
ruling in the stead of his father, who
had slain all the babes from two years
old and under in the area of Bethlehem.
Then they departed, being warned by God in
a dream, by another way, as the wise
men did before them, into Galilee, for he
was to be called a Nazarene.
That's a marvelous thing.
I hope we may have time to consider
that in some detail.
Now then, what is the problem?
The problem is this.
Our Lord was always and only and exclusively
God, whether it was pre-incarnation or post
-incarnation.
He did not cease to be who he
was, but by virtue of what he became.
He became what he was not, but he
shall always henceforth be what he became.
He was the son of man.
He was born of woman, as the Scripture
says.
But then you have this biological problem, and
some have sought to dismiss it by saying
that Mary was a surrogate mother.
I cannot believe it.
I cannot accept it.
I do not believe the Scripture allows us
to entertain the suggestion that Mary was a
surrogate mother, because she conceived, and no surrogate
mother conceived.
He was to be her son.
He was to partake of flesh and blood
in like manner as the children did.
And then, of course, you say, but he
was without sin.
Yes.
Peter said he did no sin.
John said in him was no sin.
Paul said he knew no sin.
Our Lord himself said to his adversaries, which
of you convince me of sin?
He was sinless in every aspect, in every
word.
He never said something he had to retract.
He never took a step he had to
retrace.
He never cherished or entertained a thought that
he had to repent of.
He was so unlike us, wasn't he?
But he was one with us.
And of the multiple mysteries of the New
Testament, there are only two that are called
great mysteries.
Just two.
And they have a very close affinity, the
one with the other.
1 Timothy 3 and 16, great is the
mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in flesh.
He became one with the children.
He became one in like manner as the
children.
He was born of an earthly mother.
But he was born without sin.
There's the problem.
And so, way back in the Council of
Chalcedon, was it?
I think of 420 BC, I think that's
correct, anyway, I know it was before my
time.
The fathers of the church came to the
conclusion, which never was to be revoked or
denied, that he was holy God.
And he was holy man.
Now, that being accepted, and never had been
revoked or refuted down through the ensuing centuries,
we have a problem.
How are we going to solve this problem?
How did the word become flesh?
How was he born sinless?
And you know, of course, that some have
sought to solve this problem by conceding the
immaculate conception of Mary, which will not stand
the test of Scripture.
For neither before nor afterwards were she in
herself immaculate.
Neither were her subsequent children, sons and daughters,
born of an immaculate conception.
Nevertheless, this one was born sinless.
So what we can say, we may say,
whether we feel we have an answer to
the problem or not, and I suggest to
you there has to be an answer, what
we may say, of course, that our Lord
was immaculately conceived.
But Mary was the one who conceived him.
And therein lies the mystery, doesn't it?
And yet we rejoice in the fact that
Bethlehem still, not only 700 years before, but
all these years and millennia afterwards, still is
the rock upon which we base our faith
in the sinless one.
What the law could not do, because it
was weak through the flesh, God turning his
only Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin.
I am daring enough to disagree with the
change of that expression, because we have, in
some of our versions, we have that instead
of for or concerning or surrounding the problem
of sin, some have added for a sin
offering.
Some of these changes sound very nice, but
they spoil the parallelism of the Scriptures at
times.
So he came in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and he came concerning sin, for he
was to be the great sin bearer, as
we know.
He was born in Bethlehem of Judea.
The mystery of it, the wonder of it,
remains with us still, doesn't it?
But I say to you, it is the
dead rock upon which we place our faith
in this sinless failure.
In this Son of Man, and he could
not have been, nor called himself so lovingly
as he did, the Son of Man.
If he were not, my brethren, of Mary,
for he was born of woman, as the
Scripture says, he could not have been the
Son of Man.
He would have been one who had been
inserted into the human family from without, but
he never could have been the Son of
Man.
And have you noticed that our Lord is
the only one that ever referred to himself
as the Son of Man?
Nobody ever addressed him as such.
Nobody ever spoke to him directly calling him
the Son of Man.
And yet, 25 times in the Gospel by
Luke, he called himself the Son of Man.
He delighted in it.
It was one of the favorite titles that
our Lord used about himself.
The only one that ever came close to
it was Stephen.
Do you remember when he was being accused
before the council and was being stoned to
death subsequently?
He looked up into heaven and he said,
I see Jesus.
I see the Son of Man standing at
the right hand of God.
And when he said that, you will understand
the reaction of the council, the Sanhedrin, because
you see, our Lord standing before Caiaphas at
an earlier time, when Caiaphas charged him and
said, Art thou the Son of the Blessed?
Art thou the Christ?
He said, Thou sayest that I am.
And there's the I am again.
And I say unto you, henceforth you shall
see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of power and coming in the
clouds of heaven.
And they knew he was referring back to
Daniel chapter 7.
They knew he was placing himself in the
category of the Messiah.
I guess I'm doing all right.
Nobody stood up and protested yet.
But I forgot.
You see, I get into overdrive every once
in a while.
Doesn't use up as much gas in overdrive.
At any rate, when our Lord said that,
that's when they condemned him to death, when
he claimed to be the Son of Man,
the Christ, the Son of the Blessed.
But he had to be born of a
virgin in order to take that title.
And he took it frequently, as I've already
suggested to you.
So Bethlehem is hallowed ground.
Bethlehem is the place upon which our faith
takes its initial step in the spotlessness, in
the immaculate conception and life of our glorious
Lord, and in his ability as the Son
of Man not only to make purgation for
sin, but also to come again in the
clouds of heaven.
Bethlehem, what a hallowed place it was.
What a mysterious place it is, isn't it,
as well?
Well, you see, I only have 12 minutes
left and I haven't even got to Nazareth
yet.
So I leave you at Bethlehem and we
step out into Nazareth.
I know what you're going to say to
me.
You're going to say to me, Brother Dave,
you never gave us the answer.
You didn't want the answer right away, though,
did you?
I've been puzzling over it for years and
spending hours at night thinking about it, and
it may be that I have come to
a conclusion in my mind, but I'm sure
you would rather think of it for a
while before I just throw it at you,
wouldn't you?
Yes, yes.
I try to be very understanding of my
audience, you understand, and not take away any
of their rights.
Now then, let's move from Bethlehem to Nazareth.
And I need not say to you that
this is another mystery.
Why should God have chosen when he gave
up his Son that he should be called
a Nazarene, as he was frequently?
Several times he is called the Nazarene.
And later on in the Acts, as you
know, it was called the sect of the
Nazarene at a later date.
And our Lord was raised, as Luke chapter
4 says, he was brought up at Nazareth.
And you remember where Nazareth was.
It was in Galilee.
And you remember what Galilee was, the province
of rusticity, of these rather rough-speaking and
crude laborers of the land and fishermen of
the sea.
Galilee was despised, as you know, by the
Jews who were in Judea.
So he became a Nazarene.
He passed his boyhood days in Nazareth.
He went through the period of his youth
in Nazareth.
He reached out into manhood in the full
blaze of his manhood in Nazareth.
And there was a marvel, there was a
wonder, that he should come to a virgin
in Bethlehem is certainly a very loving consideration.
That he should be called a Nazarene, that
he should be brought up in Nazareth is
a mystery to us.
Nathaniel put it right, you recall, when Philip
sought him out in John chapter 1 and
said, We have found him of whom the
Moses and the prophets did write, Jesus of
Nazareth.
Nathaniel said, Can any good thing come out
of Nazareth?
Not only was Galilee discredited as a province,
but in a discredited province, Nazareth was a
very much more discredited city, as it's called.
It's called their own city at times.
And he came back, as we read in
Luke chapter 4, back from the wilderness and
he came to the place where he was
brought up.
Now when you go through and look at
the 29 times in the New Testament that
Nazareth is mentioned, every time you see a
stigma attached to it, there is something unwelcome
about it.
Nathaniel couldn't understand at all how the prophet
of Moses and other prophets could possibly come
out of Nazareth.
Slum city?
Yes.
A town of disrepute?
Yes.
A town that was discredited in the minds
of the elite and the literate and the
faithful of the Pharisees.
Nazareth.
But our Lord delighted to call himself Jesus
of Nazareth.
I went through these 29 times that Nazareth
is mentioned in the New Testament, and I
was delighted with some of the things I
found.
I was delighted with those who called him
Jesus of Nazareth.
There's a demonic in the synagogue in Capernaum
early in the time of his ministry.
We know thee who thou art, Jesus of
Nazareth.
Art thou come to tremendous before the time?
We know those who spoke about him as
Jesus of Nazareth.
Some in a calling sort of way, and
others in a despising sort of way, denigrating
the fact that he was known as the
Nazarene.
Various ones, and then we read about them
using this expression, that he was Jesus of
Nazareth.
And when you follow through the whole story,
it adds up, it keeps mounting and getting
bigger and bigger and bigger, this fact that
he was to be called Jesus of Nazareth.
Even when he came in the triumphal entry
into the city of Jerusalem, you remember the
whole city was moved and said, Who is
this?
And they said, This is the prophet of
Nazareth.
This is Jesus of Nazareth.
Remember, Bartholomew is called in Jericho before he
got up to Jerusalem.
Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and it
comes up again.
When he's in the high priest's house, she
said to Peter, You also are with Jesus
of Nazareth.
Another man says, Anybody can tell that by
the way he talks.
Yes, that's right.
Still works with us now, doesn't it?
Your accent betrays you, doesn't it?
My father and mother came from London, England
many long years ago.
Oh, 80 plus years ago.
And my father was quite sure that after
being in Canada all these years, he had
lost all his English accent.
But he always said Canada and Africa and
China and some other things that betrayed him
immediately.
My Scottish mother-in-law came from Sterling.
She thought she had no accent whatsoever.
But it was Sterling was over everything she
said she could always tell.
We have our Newfoundlanders up in Canada.
You have your Georgia crackers, don't you?
Down here.
And you have your North Carolina Tar Heels
too.
Our accents, our intonations, my grandchildren make fun
of me because I say it again.
And I say, How?
And I say, Well, how's that?
My granddaughter says, Well, it's not again.
It's again.
You did it again.
There you go.
You said it again.
And I said, Tell me.
She's 17.
Tell me, how do you pronounce P-A
-I-N?
Pain, of course.
How do you pronounce G-A-I-N?
She says, Gain, of course.
Yes.
How do you pronounce R-A-I-N?
That's rain.
Oh, and G-I-N is gain?
Yes.
Well, how about A-G-A-I-N?
How do you pronounce that again?
I give up.
Well, now, when our Lord spoke, he spoke
as a Nazarene.
He spoke as someone from Galilee.
When Peter spoke in the court of the
high priest, they knew he was with Jesus
of Nazareth.
Thy speech betrayeth thee.
It's all right.
Nothing wrong with it, really, is it?
And you might as well hang on to
your accent, because you won't get rid of
it anyway.
You can hide it at times, but if
it bursts out somewhere, and I have to
say again, and I have to say about,
and I have to say how, and they
make fun of me for that, too.
Well, be it so.
Our Lord delighted to be called Jesus of
Nazareth.
He did.
He liked to call himself Jesus of Nazareth.
And you remember, of course, that when he
was in the house, the palace of the
high priest, that's exactly how he was accused.
And you recall when he was condemned to
death, and Pilate wrote a title and put
it on the cross.
What did he say?
This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of
the Jews.
And the chief priests and scribes were upset
about that, and they went to Pilate and
they said, don't say he is the King
of the Jews.
Never mind this is Jesus of Nazareth.
You can leave that if you like, because
that's the stigma he always carried.
But don't say the King of the Jews.
Put, he said, I am the King of
the Jews.
I hope to have more to say about
that when we come to consider the pillagy
of his judges at the close of his
life.
But even then, something I noticed with complete
delight not too long ago.
Peter talks about him as Jesus of Nazareth
to the people in Acts chapter 2.
He talks about him as Jesus of Nazareth
through the power of Jesus of Nazareth.
This man is made whole before you all.
And also when he's speaking to the Sanhedrin.
Peter speaks about Jesus of Nazareth frequently.
But here is something that interested me.
I noticed when Paul is recounting his conversion
in Acts chapter 26, or is it chapter
22?
No, 26 to Agrippa.
Paul is speaking and defending himself before Agrippa,
and he says he was on the road
to Damascus to call the believers to prison
and to death.
And he had also given his vote to
many of them when they were put to
death, being exceedingly mad against them, he said.
I pursued them even to strange cities.
And as I was going to Damascus with
letters from the high priest, suddenly there was
a bright light shone around me, and I
fell to the ground.
And I heard a voice saying to me,
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
Remember he says about the others, he saw
the light, heard a voice, but they saw
no man.
But Saul saw Jesus.
And he said as he looked up into
the brilliance of that light that blinded him
for the rest of his days personally and
for a few days physically, as he looked
up to the light he said, Who art
thou, Lord?
Who is this splendid one who appears amidst
the stars of heaven outshining the sun?
Who is this one who has gone past
the principalities and powers, who has been greeted
by God, who has been acclaimed by angels?
Who is this one to whom the Lord
says, I will sit in my right hand
until I make mine enemy's life what's due?
Who is this one that appears in the
light above the noonday sun?
Who is he?
Who art thou, Lord?
What did he say?
I'm Jesus.
What a marvel that is, isn't it?
The humility of this glorious person who is
supreme conqueror over life and death and the
power of the enemy, who is sovereign Lord
for all the ages to come, when all
nations shall bow in his presence.
Who is this one now?
Jesus of Nazareth.
His humility bows our hearts.
If we had been at all introduced to
a position of a little more elevation than
that which God has given to us now,
as the poet said, so truly, you dress
the man up with a little bit of
authority and he plays such mad pranks before
high heaven as would make the angels weep.
Isn't that true?
How unlike our Lord we are.
How lifted up we are by a little
bit of something or someone or some cause.
Here he is in the glory, having been
acclaimed sovereign of all for all the ages
to come.
Prince of Elders and Powers and Nations, an
angel shall worship at his feet.
Who is he?
Who art thou, Lord?
I am Jesus of Nazareth.
Praise God, our Lord is the ever changeless
I Am.
And as he was, he is.
And as we read of him here, so
we shall see him there.
His humility has not left him.
His manhood he retained.
His dignity is unlimited.
His sovereignty is universal.
And yet, he still calls himself Jesus of
Nazareth.
Shall we pray?
Our Father, we thank Thee for this glorious
person, great as the mystery of godliness, Godless
manifest in flesh.
We thank Thee for the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, He who took upon himself
the form of a servant was made in
the likeness of man, who became for us
and for nations yet unborn the Son of
Man, who shall sit upon the throne of
his glory and that of his fathers and
that of the holy angels, and as the
Son of Man he shall rule from the
river to the ends of the earth.
Enhance, O Lord, our vision and our appreciation
of this glorious Savior of ours as we
close our gathering this evening in his name.