11 - The Humanity of Jesus Christ, Part 1

Well, welcome back to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. Now we know that we had some time off, a couple of weeks of break.

But school is in session, so get your Bibles out and get ready for class.

I know some of you slackers who have been deciding to eat lots of food and sit and hang out and have lots of fellowship time, you guys putting away your books, well it's time to get your books out, it's time to get back to class.

So if you have your books, if you have a syllabus, there it is, grab your syllabus, we are going to be in lesson number seven, lesson number seven today in our syllabus and we will be discussing today in lesson seven, the humanity of Christ part one.

Now if you're an intelligent fellow, you quickly realize that if this is part one, that means that next week would be, very good class, part two.

That means that we're not going to finish discussing the humanity of Christ in one lesson. Glad some of you are paying attention there, that's very good.

So we have today that we are going to go over is the humanity of Christ. Now if you were with us in the last three lessons, we dealt with the topic of the deity of Jesus Christ in quite a lot of detail and the reason we did that is because there is much confusion on the deity of Jesus Christ.

Now one of the things that people would think is well, the humanity of Jesus Christ would be a much easier topic because there's nothing there that would be of disagreement.

Well, that's not exactly true and we're going to see that. So let's begin, if you have your syllabus, look in your syllabus there under lesson seven and you're going to see that we can start with the first of your fill in the blanks and that is that many are confused when they consider that Jesus Christ is both fully

God and fully man and while the deity of Christ is widely debated unfortunately, his humanity seems to be accepted as a matter of fact and it seems because we're going to look into some that don't, that have issues with that.

But in this lesson we are going to focus on Christ, the importance of his humanity, his existence before his humanity and then his entrance into humanity.

So those are going to be the three areas of discussion that we are going to look at tonight. Now when we look at this, there's one thing

I want to bring out and that is we have to understand when we look at the

New Testament and we understand the issues that were being discussed and debated and that were issues at the time of the writings of the

New Testament, it wasn't the deity of Christ that was debated.

It was actually his humanity. Unlike today, in our day and age, we are less likely to question the humanity of Christ and there are some who even question that, some who question whether Jesus actually ever was a real person.

So we're going to take that group and put it aside because the reality of Jesus Christ and the historical evidence of Jesus Christ is more than any other human being that ever lived as far as I could tell.

And so that one is really only debated by those who choose to ignore history, okay?

But we have a group in the time of the New Testament called the Gnostics.

Now let me explain the Gnostics and that's going to help you to understand why so much of the

Gospels and the writings of John and others were to prove that Jesus came in the flesh.

And it's for this reason. The Gnostics believed that anything physical, material was bad, but anything spiritual was good.

And so if you have anything material, it's evil and it's not a good thing.

But if Jesus Christ was purely good, therefore he must not be material.

He would have to have been deity, but not humanity, okay?

Now I want to explain again. We went through this on the deity of Christ, but now we're going to take the other side of the coin and say that one of the reasons that this is such an important issue is because if Jesus Christ was not

God, then he cannot pay an eternal fine. But the flip side, if Jesus Christ was not man, he cannot pay the fine for human beings.

And so Jesus Christ had to be fully God and fully man.

And this is a thing that wasn't delineated right out of the gate in the

New Testament time. It was something that people would see in the Scriptures and they had struggled with it to try to wrap their heads around this to say, how is it that Jesus could be

God and Jesus could be man? And many will argue today that the

Bible doesn't teach these things because it's not explaining it in 21st century language.

But the reality is that the Bible wasn't written in the 21st century. It was written in its time.

It progressed through time, okay? We had more Scripture that was revealed to us as time continued.

So, as we go through this, let's look first at the importance of Christ's humanity.

The importance of Christ's humanity. If you look in your syllabus there, the first blank is concerning his example.

And so your blank there is example. All right? Concerning his example, let's take a look at Jesus' life as a man provided a pattern for men.

Let's take a look at 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 21. 1

Peter 2 and verse 21. It says, for to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might follow in his steps.

So, he left for us an example. Now, some of you are going, oh yes, yes,

WWJD, what would Jesus do? Well, no. That's sort of, but maybe not exactly.

One of the things we have to remember is that Jesus wasn't just a man. He was fully man and fully God. So as God, Jesus could do things that you and I can't do.

Jesus could read the minds of people and he knew what was in the hearts of men. So, he can proclaim things that you and I really can't proclaim.

I mean, we wouldn't go to somebody and say to them like he did to the rich young ruler and say, oh, if you give up all of your money and, you know, follow after me, you'll be in heaven.

That's not how the rich young ruler would have gotten to heaven. It's not by his works, but Jesus knew his heart.

So, we have to keep in mind that when we talk about Jesus as an example, it doesn't mean we do everything that Jesus does exactly as he did it because there's things he could do that you and I can't.

But there are things he did as we see in 1 Peter as an example for you and I to follow.

And if you look specifically, let's put it up again, if you look specifically, look at the context there.

It is talking about suffering. It's talking about suffering. Now, have any of you ever suffered?

Well, the reality is that when we look at suffering and we see the suffering we may suffer, keep in mind that Jesus Christ suffered far greater than you and I ever could.

You and I suffer. Let's, you know, not beat around the bush.

We suffer and we think it's bad. But there's times where some of our suffering is brought on because of our own temptation and we give in to our temptation.

I want you to think about this for a moment. Jesus Christ having never sinned, every single time that he was tempted, just like when we're tempted, the temptation gets worse and worse and more and more until either we give in or we conquer it.

But those times when we give in, that temptation's over. Jesus never gave in. He suffered every temptation to the fullest.

He suffered in ways far more than we could ever understand. Jesus Christ took the weight of sin upon himself on that cross, something we cannot even begin to conceive, and he did that.

That is far worse suffering. And think about this. Jesus being God knew exactly when he wanted to enter into humanity.

You ever think about that? I mean, Jesus could have entered into humanity when lethal injection was the way of capital punishment.

Wouldn't that be easy? He didn't. He entered into humanity when the Romans perfected one of the most vile ways of killing a person, of torturing a person.

And then, at that point, he said, now's the time to enter humanity and be the sacrifice for sin.

And so he suffered far greater than us, and that's something to encourage us as well, so that when we do suffer, we can know that we can look to his example to follow.

Not only concerning his example is it important, but also, if you look at letter B there in your syllabus, concerning his everlasting priesthood, his everlasting priesthood.

Now, if we're going to look at his priesthood, where are we going to go? Let us go to Hebrews chapter 2.

Hebrews chapter 2 and verses 17 and 18, and we see here, the only a man could faithfully represent men to God.

That's what a priest's job was, was to represent men to God. And so it says here, therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Do you see that? The suffering that he suffered makes him that sympathetic high priest, that one that can mediate between us and God, that person who can go and take men before God.

And so his priesthood, it's important to understand his humanity concerning his everlasting priesthood.

Now, a third area, letter C there, that we see it is important to understand the humanity of Jesus Christ, and that is dealing with concerning his daily provision of grace.

His daily provision of grace. He understands our lives.

Because he lived a life of his own, coming to him, we can obtain mercy and find grace in that time of need.

This is why, if we look in Hebrews, we already saw Hebrews 2, let's look in Hebrews 4 now,

Hebrews 4, 15 and 16, we're going to see this is where he is called that sympathetic high priest.

A sympathetic high priest. If you see here, it says,

I hope that that verse is as much an encouragement to your heart as it is to mine.

It is greatly encouraging to me to know that Jesus Christ suffered, but his suffering was also part so that he can understand and be sympathetic to the struggles, to the temptations, to the trials, to the suffering of men.

There are times that we suffer and we think nobody can understand what

I'm going through. And in a sense, that's true. There is a sense where I can never fully understand the suffering you may suffer.

And you'll never understand the suffering that I suffer. But Christ does.

He understands it and he could be sympathetic. He's not like that critical parent that maybe some of us have that's always nagging at us.

That's why I love James 1, 5 where it says, If you lack in wisdom, ask of God and he will give it liberally and without criticizing.

I love that. I love to know that I can go to God and ask for wisdom, know that I'm suffering and I need his grace and he's not going to be critical of me.

He's not going to be on top of me and looking to nag at me and tell me how wrong I was.

And so we see that the importance of Christ's humanity.

Next, let's look at his pre -existence. Christ and his existence before humanity or his pre -existence.

And so what we have here, if you look in your syllabus there, let's first deal with the falsehoods. A false statement about Christ's pre -existence.

Christ was one false view. Okay, so this isn't a true view. This is a false view.

Is that Jesus Christ was merely a good man. He was merely a good man.

This would be explained by the Jews. Jewish people would say that he was a man.

But if he was just a man, as we saw in some of those verses, the scriptures claim him to be sinless.

So he can't be just a mere man. He was a sinless man.

But he was far more than just a mere man. So, what's the second one?

Well, if he wasn't just a mere man or a good man, the other thing that people claim, and you'd see this with Jehovah Witnesses and others, that Christ was an angel.

Now, if you follow Jehovah Witness teaching at all, you know that they would teach that Jesus Christ was the first created angel,

Michael the archangel. And he became Jesus and then returned to being an angel.

There's some issues with that that we could get into. So, we're going to look at some of them.

But let's first look at the correct statement about Christ's pre -existence.

Okay, the correct statement would be this, that Jesus Christ existed prior to his entrance, and that's your first blank, entrance.

Jesus Christ existed prior to his entrance into humanity. And from the previous lesson, we recognize that he existed not as an angel.

We saw three different, dealt with this in three different lessons to understand he wasn't just an angel, but was

God. Okay, so we're not going to reiterate all of the things on the deity of Christ, but it's there.

But let's take a look at one passage here, and that would be in John 8,

John 8, 56 to 59. John 8, 56 to 59.

Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen

Abraham? Jesus said to them, truly, truly,

I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. And I hope you remember that name,

I am, that's the name of God, specifically of Jehovah. So they picked up stones to throw at him, and Jesus moved himself out from the temple.

And if you remember, we've looked at this in the deity. They clearly understood what he was claiming there.

He wasn't just an ordinary man, but he's claiming a pre -existence.

You and I had no existence prior to conception. Now, this is something different with some world religions.

Some of the world religions, Mormonism would say that we are all pre -existed before creation.

Hinduism, Buddhism would say that we all exist and we just kind of recycle through life's reincarnation.

And so there are some that would hold to the idea that people have a pre -existence to the life they're living now on earth.

Some would hold it as a spirit. And those like Mormons would say that you pre -existed as a spirit, though you have no recollection of that, where reincarnation would teach that maybe you might have a recollection of that.

But have you ever noticed nobody says when they reincarnate and they have a recollection of their previous lives, no one said, yeah,

I was the cat that everybody kicked. No, they were always like, you know, Cleopatra or Caesar or somebody that they want to say was great.

Well, yeah, then what lessons did you learn as that great person that you came back as you?

I mean, in reincarnation, no one seems to come back and, you know, remember previous lives as an animal or something.

You know, I was a fruit fly. I got eaten by a spider, you know. But that's what makes

Jesus Christ different. Jesus Christ in his existence, he existed prior to his entrance into humanity.

All right, so let's take a look at now the third one and that is his entrance,

Christ and his entrance into humanity, his entrance into humanity.

Now, his entrance into humanity is called the incarnation, incarnation.

That's your blank there. His entrance into humanity is called the incarnation. That's a theological term.

And we note, we note or we will note that the preparation, the process and the purpose of his entrance into humanity as we look into this now.

But when we look at the incarnation, this is God becoming man.

This is the process or the explanation of how

God became a man. Now, if you're going to really press me on this,

I'm going to have to tell you, sorry, I cannot fully comprehend it.

OK, I'm sorry, but I'm not God. And if you get anybody that claims they can fully comprehend it, well, they're either lying to you or they're deceived.

It's one of the other. But we do take this because God has said this to be true.

And when we look at this, let's begin by looking at the preparation for his entrance into humanity.

Now, we see this preparation in the Old Testament. We see the prophecies of the

Old Testament early. I mean, as early back as right after Adam and Eve sinned.

In Genesis chapter three, we see in Genesis 315 that God said,

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So, right here, we're seeing that, we're seeing here that this is a prophecy of Jesus Christ all the way back.

So, when people say that this was like some, something that just happened through time, like God really didn't know, this is what would be open theism.

People that, really what open theism is people that have had an adverse feeling of a theological doctrine called

Calvinism that we'll deal with much later and they've gone so far the other way that to try to prove that God is so just, they actually claim that God doesn't know everything.

They say that God is learning as he goes. So, he's not really omniscient.

Big problem there. But what they're doing when they do that is they're doing that because they're trying to save God from somehow allowing sin in the world.

Well, he allowed it because he didn't want us to be puppets. But he also allowed it because he had a plan of salvation for us and we see that right as he's giving the curse to Adam and Eve, to man and woman, and to the serpent, the curse because of their sin, he's at that same time saying that there is a plan for a

Savior, for a man that would come, God Almighty. And so, we see that even in the

Old Testament prophecies, you want more? Well, we just got done with Christmastime so let's go to Isaiah 7 and 14.

Isaiah 7, 14. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.

Look, the young woman is with child and will bear a son and you shall call his name

Emmanuel. And also with this season, let's turn to Isaiah 9 and verse 6.

It is, for a child has been born for us, a son given to us.

Authority rests upon his shoulders and he is named Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.

So, what we see here is that Jesus Christ was prophesied to be coming, that he existed already.

We also see in preparation for his entrance, we see that there was a forerunner.

We could look at Malachi chapter 3. This is not

Malachi, okay? I've actually heard some people try to pronounce it and they pronounced it

Malachi. It's not Malachi 3 .1, it's Malachi 3 .1, okay?

Behold, I send to you, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.

Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Also in Malachi is chapter 4 verse 5 where we see,

Behold, I will send to you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the

Lord. So, we see that in the Old Testament it was also prophesied of this forerunner.

We're going to come and look at that passage about Elijah because that's going to become something we're going to need to discuss in a couple of minutes.

But this is something that every Jewish home would say on a

Passover. One of the things they do during the Passover in every Jewish home is that they will have a separate seat for Elijah.

And part of the Passover meal is a time where we open the door to look for Elijah or allow him in.

But there's a seat for him with a cup of wine and a plate waiting for Elijah because the

Jewish people know that Elijah will precede the

Messiah. That he would be the one, as it says there, let's put that back up for a moment, that he would be the prophet before the great and awesome day of the

Lord. I look forward to that day. I hope you do too, that day of the Lord.

But we experience that and we're going to look at that in a couple of minutes because there's an issue here.

But we see the New Testament fulfillment. We could look at Matthew 3, the first 12 verses, but that's a little bit long for class.

And so, let's turn to Luke 1 and verse 17.

Luke 1 and 17. And it says here, and if you look, let me just hold up one second with that.

Let me just mention, if you look at Matthew 3 and the first 12 verses and you're going to see a description of John the

Baptist as wearing a leather coat, having a leather belt around his waist and a camel hair coat.

In 2 Kings 1 .8 it says this, let me quote, let me read to you. It says, so they answered him a hairy man wearing a leather belt around his waist and they said it was

Elijah the Tishbite. This is one of the things that a description of Elijah and that description fits with John the

Baptist. Oops, I may be giving away something, but we're going to get to that in a moment. Luke 1 .17,

and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, make ready the way of the

Lord, a people prepared. This is speaking of John the Baptist. Now, you notice, hold that up there for another second there.

Do you notice in there it says in the beginning, and he will go before the people in the spirit and the power of Elijah.

Okay, all right, because now we have the problem. Here's our problem and you can see it there in your syllabus.

I laid it out for you. Some see a contradiction here because John the

Baptist answered in John 1 verse 21 that he is not

Elijah. The Jewish people came, the leaders came and said, are you

Elijah? Are you the prophet that Elijah who is going to precede the Messiah?

And so what you have here is that he answered no. Now, while Christ said that John was the forbearer, and you can see that in Matthew 11 .14,

17 verses 11 to 13, you see here a supposed problem.

Was John the Baptist actually Elijah? If he wasn't Elijah, then what was going on?

Now, let's keep in mind something. Before I look at the solution, those of you who have a syllabus already looked at the solution probably because I know some of you students and you like to look ahead.

I know that because you're not as chatty in the chat room tonight and so you must be following along in your notes.

But what we have here is we have to keep in mind, and I said I'd do this throughout the class, is show you the foundation we first set when we started the class on the attributes of God.

I keep going back to that because all of our theology is based and rooted in a understanding of the theology, the nature of God, the attributes of God.

So, when we have our theology proper, that's the studies of the

Godhead, when we have that right, then we get the rest of this right.

So, as we look at this now, we are seeing this here, and what we see here is we have to remember that God is omniscient.

He is all -knowing. So, when man sinned, it didn't catch him off guard.

When the Jewish people rejected Jesus as the Messiah, it did not catch

God off guard. He knew that because He knows everything.

Not that He had to see it in time to learn it. He knows it. So, having that as an understanding, what we have is to recognize that with Jesus Christ in His entrance,

God knew that John the Baptist, that He wasn't going to send

Elijah in the first coming of Jesus, but He was going to, as He saw in Luke, let's put that back up, that John would come in the spirit and the power of Elijah.

He would come in the spirit and the power of Elijah because He would be the forerunner of the

Messiah, but He wouldn't be the only time He would come for there is another day that He is coming in that great day that Luke speaks of.

But if we look here in your syllabus at the solution, it's John was one like Elijah, but he was not

Elijah. He was like him, and in order for Christ to present the kingdom to the

Jews sincerely, there needed to be a forerunner like Elijah, and John fulfilled that role.

And when asked whether he was Elijah, he rejected that he was the resurrected

Elijah, but he never denied that he wasn't in the power and the spirit of Elijah.

So, now let's look, letter B in your syllabus, at the process of His entrance into humanity.

We already looked at Isaiah 7, 14. You can look at Matthew 1 and 23, 21 to 23, and you can look there, but if you want to see your blank there, these texts emphasize the process, and that's your blank there, process.

These texts emphasize the process by which Christ was to enter into humanity, namely the virgin birth and conception by the

Holy Spirit. And so, let us take a look at some passages here.

We could look at the whole, really, if you look in your syllabus, I say

John 1, 1 to 14, because you really can look at all of that, but let's just look at verse 14, all right?

And verse 14 says, and the word, speaking of God, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen

His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

And what we see here, this passage explains the reality, that's your blank there, the reality that the word, which was eternal and coexisting with God the

Father, while possessing the very same essence, became

God -man, okay? John 1, 1, you'll see that.

And so, we can look at another passage, a great passage, Philippians 2, 5 to 8.

Philippians 2, verses 5 to 8. So, we saw that John 1 talks about the reality.

This verse talks, this verse focuses on the obedience, and that would be your blank there, the obedience, all right?

And so, let's look there in Philippians 2, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, that's what should be there, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Excuse me, that talks about, this verse talks about the focus on his, on the obedience, excuse me, on his obedience of Christ.

He voluntarily surrendered the use of his divine attributes and placed himself under the authority and will of the

Father. Now, that doesn't mean that he stopped being God. He was always

God, but he surrendered himself. And so, that is something that we have to understand.

Now, at this point, as we talk about his entrance, before we get to his purpose,

I want to deal with some, an issue that again comes up when talking about his humanity, because I want you to be prepared.

I want you to be ready to give an answer for the faith that you have.

I want you to be ready to give an answer when someone asks you or challenges you. Now, this is one of the things you don't often get.

You get this more from the liberal Christians, those that don't really believe in the supernatural. They profess to be

Christians. They usually teach in liberal seminaries and they teach these things. You don't get this from the atheists, okay?

Atheists don't actually read the Bible enough to study things like that. They actually just paste and quote, cut and paste from other atheists that do a little bit of understanding of the

Bible. But there is an issue with the doctrine of the virgin birth that has brought on some controversy between the evangelicals and the more liberal theologians.

Roman Catholics kind of add to this controversy because they put Mary up on a pedestal and they don't claim her to be

God, but they will claim that she was sinless because she had to give birth to a sinless being.

Anytime you get that, just ask, well, then didn't Mary's mother have to be sinless? This is a thing where sometimes you get into a question where people talk about the assumption,

I think it's the assumption of Christ, no, sorry, the immaculate conception, I'm sorry. When they talk about the immaculate conception, it's actually not talking about Jesus.

It is talking about Mary and her birth, that she somehow supernaturally was born without sin so she could give birth to God who is without sin.

So when we see that there, right off the bat, it's like, well, Mary's mother had to be sinless to give birth to a sinless being and so on and so on and so on.

Therefore, how do you get any woman that's sinless? I mean, you got to keep going back, right? I mean, somehow, you know, that's a problem that they have.

But we have an issue in Isaiah 4 .7. Let's look at Isaiah 4 .7 again and it says,

Therefore the Lord took himself, will give a sign, look to the young woman who is with child, some translations say the virgin, who is with child, and she will bear a son, you should call him named

Emmanuel. Okay, so let's look at this word young woman or the word for virgin, all right?

This is an issue that within the context of Isaiah's writing, remember we interpret within context,

Isaiah's writing and he is a prophet about 740

BC to somewhere around 680

BC. But this would have been written somewhere around 735 or so, 12 years before the fall of the

Northern Kingdom. And this was a prophecy to them at that time, okay?

And so this prophecy, we see that it was a prophecy that was fulfilled locally in that time, but not in the way that we're speaking of it when it speaks of Christ.

So yes, there was a young maid and the word that we see there that some will tell you, the word that is used there concerning the virgin,

Alma, could mean a young maiden or a virgin, someone who is not married.

And so what you have here is some would say that because in that sense there was a woman at the time of Isaiah who was a virgin, a young maiden who did have a child, that not that he was

God with us, but they would have called him that as a sign. But we understand, okay, from the

New Testament that the real fulfillment, the future fulfillment, and scripture often will give those prophecies of a near -term fulfillment and a further fulfillment so that when you see the near -term in your lifetime being fulfilled, that further one you know is true.

Because how would you know if you're in Isaiah's time that this prophecy is going to be true in the long -term because a prophet has to be 100 % accurate?

So they wouldn't know if he's accurate until after the fulfillment. So a lot of times prophecies would have a near -term and a long -term fulfillment so they can see that he's accurate in the near, he's also accurate in the far.

And so we know from the New Testament that the far -term fulfillment was that a virgin, someone who never had sexual relations with a man, would give birth to a man.

Why is that important? That's vitally important because, we don't have time to look into it, but in Romans 5 you see that sin is passed on from the father to the child, from Adam to his children, and so on.

And the reason that's important is because Jesus Christ did not have a human father.

Therefore, Jesus Christ did not have a sin nature because that's how it's passed on.

That is why he had to have been born without a human father, born of the

Spirit. And so that was how he was able to do that because he didn't have a sin nature like you and I.

I know some of you think you don't have a sin nature, we'll ask your spouse, we'll ask your parents, we'll even ask your children, they'll disagree.

Alright, so let's lastly look at the last part here, and that is the purpose of his entrance into humanity.

Why did Christ come? Why did Jesus Christ come?

These will be further discussed in the study of the ministry of Jesus Christ, and we're going to spend some time looking at the ministry of Christ and then specifically the doctrine of salvation, which is a great study.

I can't wait until we get there. But the first one that you see in your syllabus is to provide a sacrifice for sin.

To provide a sacrifice for sin. Second Corinthians 5 .21

says, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

Isn't that a great verse? He who knew no sin became sin, became that sacrifice for sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

That's beautiful. Let's look at the next one. We already looked at the verse here. But to be an example for believers.

To be an example. So not only to be a sacrifice for sin, but also to be an example for believers in Philippians 2 .5.

Third is to reveal God to man. John 1 .18.

John 1 .18 says, No one has ever seen

God, the only God who is at the Father's side.

He who's made him known. So Jesus Christ being

God and being man, revealed God to men.

When we look at Christ, we see God. Men who lived at the time could physically see

God. And we are going to see Christ one day. We are going to see him as God. And another one there.

Fourthly, so not only to provide a sacrifice for sin, to be an example for believers, to reveal

God to man. But fourthly, to establish a mediator between God and man.

To establish a mediator between God and man. 1 Timothy 2 .5.

For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. He is that mediator between God and man.

So not only did Christ enter into humanity to provide a sacrifice for sin, to be an example to believers, to reveal

God to man, to establish a mediator between God and man, that priesthood that we will talk about more later in later studies.

But also to be, and we looked at this, a sympathetic high priest. And we already looked at this verse.

But he came to be a sympathetic high priest. And he understands completely what we go through.

So we see here as we looked at the importance of his entrance into humanity, we looked at the process of his entrance into humanity.

We saw his pre -existence and then we saw his entrance. And in there we see how there is some confusion.

We're going to see in lesson two as we get into it. We're going to see the evidence for his humanity.

And we're going to see his exaltation of his humanity. And so those are going to be two things we're going to look at next week.

And I hope you're with us. Now if you have any questions, you can feel free to either, if you're in our

Facebook page, we have a Striving for Eternity group. And you can feel free to join that.

Lots of discussion that goes on. There's some thought questions that go on throughout the week based on the lesson that you can answer from there.

You can also email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org. academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

I do want to just give you a quick heads up that there is only a few weeks left before the

Super Bowl outreach. There is still a little bit of room. I have three more openings still on my team.

If you want to join, they are looking to be filled up very soon, like I believe this week.

So if you want to go to the Super Bowl, not to the actual Super Bowl, but outside, we go

Thursday to Sunday. A great time of fellowship. A great time of evangelism. Thousands and thousands of people.

If you go, well, I get too scared evangelizing, then you come to this. Because there's like 120 other believers with you.

And there's going to be some very experienced people on the team that will help you.

And if you're just handing out tracts, that's what you can do. There's plenty of tracts to be handed out.

We go through thousands of tracts. I want to encourage you to think about going to the

Super Bowl with us. Do that today, though, would be my encouragement. Now, one of the things that we do, that we always do, is we want to encourage you to encourage others.

And so here is who we're going to have you encourage this week. And it's not going to be anybody that I may know.

But I want you to encourage your pastor. Encourage your pastor this week.

You know, there's times when we go through life and we do this, we encourage you to encourage others because, quite frankly, what ends up happening is that we tend to not say really nice things about people until after they're dead.

You ever notice that? We say the nicest thing at funerals and memorials.

You know, we eulogize these people and say these wonderful things. You know, have you ever wondered what people are going to say on your tomb, your gravesite?

I mean, people are going to say the nicest things. Wouldn't you like to hear that now? Well, so would your pastor.

You know, pastors are a thankless job. People don't often understand the role of a pastor and what he does and what he has to really put up with sometimes.

It's not easy. Sometimes they're counseling some really difficult things that it just breaks their heart that they have to deal with.

And for many pastors that have a heart for the sheep, a heart for the flock, a care for the people that God has put them as shepherd over, it breaks their heart to have to counsel some people.

And they could use your encouragement this week. I don't even know your pastor possibly, but I know he can use your encouragement this week.

So I want to encourage you to go out this week and encourage your pastor, whoever he may be.

And if you have your pastor, if your pastor is on Facebook, invite him to the

Striving for Eternity Facebook group so that we can all encourage him with you.

All right? I want to encourage you to, if you are a, if you're not a student of the academy,

I would like to encourage you to think about becoming an academy, enrolling in the academy.

These classes are absolutely free online for everyone around the world, at least that knows English. But one of the things you get is you get a syllabus if you are a member of the academy, if you enrolled in the academy.

You'll get some of the notes that we have there. All right? And in that you get some extra things.

We are, we've changed some things this year. We have removed, we're not going to be doing the conference call after the class anymore.

But one thing we will be doing, hopefully early in this year, is opening up a student's portal on the website, strivingforeternity .org,

so that you would be able to, in there, have some ways of communicating with fellow students, of being able to share prayer requests, and do it in a private way.

All right? So that's going to be something that we're hopefully going to be rolling out very early in this year, if not hopefully before the summer, but it's going to be something that we're going to have available for students that enroll.

So I want to encourage you to do that this week.

And we thank you for being in class. Look forward to next week when we finish up this lesson on the humanity of Jesus Christ.

And I want to encourage you, as always, to remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.