The Man Christ Jesus (part 6)

Our Father in heaven, what a blessing it is to gather this morning to contemplate the

humanity, the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Father, we praise you for sending him.

We praise him for his obedience to you and coming to earth and

doing your will.

Lord, bless our time as we look to your word.

Encourage us really by the example of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And through your word, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, we have been, we took a couple of weeks off.

One was because I actually could not, I could talk, but every time I did, it was

a coughing storm.

So we took that week off.

Last week, Tao was here.

So this week we're back into a study called the man, Christ Jesus, after the book by Professor

Bruce Ware, who's down at Southern Seminary.

And I find this, this book, I found it very challenging to my thinking, but also very

encouraging.

I think it's encouraging for us to look at the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, to understand that he did

in fact suffer as we do.

He was tempted in every way as we are, yet he never sinned.

So we began talking about it several weeks ago.

And just to briefly review, we talked about the incarnate son having a beginning.

We know that Jesus in his divine nature has no beginning, will

have no end, but his humanity definitely had a beginning when he was

conceived by the work and power of the Holy Spirit.

He is one person with two natures.

He doesn't have two personalities.

He's got a split personality, doesn't need medication.

He just has two natures.

Difficult for us to fully grasp that, but it's difficult for us also to understand how God can be

three persons and yet one, one God, three persons.

We talked at some length about the kenosis.

And just to briefly summarize that, the kenosis is the concept that the Lord Jesus

Christ, descending to the earth, taking on an additional nature as a man,

set aside the exercise of some of his deity.

That is to say, and we'll see this this morning, even as we study some more, that Jesus

Christ, though he is God and he is in the flesh, he does not

exercise all the prerogatives, all the powers that he has as God.

If he did, as we'll see, some of the things that he does, we would think, well, that's not so amazing

because we wouldn't expect God to have any difficulty doing that.

We also talked about his empowerment by the Holy Spirit.

That is to say that the Spirit of God was upon him.

The Holy Spirit impelled him out of the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit kept him, really, from a lot of things.

But the Holy Spirit perfectly was with him.

We talked about why that would be, how it is that we are commanded to be filled with the Holy

Spirit, and yet Jesus Christ was filled with the Holy Spirit all the time.

Well, how was that?

Because he didn't push the Holy Spirit out of his life via sin.

We talked about the things that he did by

the power of the Holy Spirit.

And we've come to our study here where we were talking about how it is

Scripture, specifically in Luke chapter 2, and we might as well turn there because we'll be talking a

little bit about this this morning.

Luke chapter 2, how it is that Scripture says he increased in wisdom,

that he increased in wisdom.

And by the way, if you have questions this morning, please wave your arm around like you just don't care,

and hopefully I'll see that.

In fact, someone has suggested that I hand out flare guns at the beginning of class so that if anyone...

Becky, you're laughing too heartily.

It's like you recognize the truth in that statement.

Luke chapter 2, and I'll just read verses 41 to 52.

Luke chapter 2, 41 to 52.

Now, his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the

Passover.

And when he was 12 years old, they went up according to custom.

And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in

Jerusalem.

His parents did not know it.

But supposing him to be in the group, they went a day's journey, but then they began to

search for him among their relatives and acquaintances.

And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem searching for him.

And as I said before, and I'll make this brief, you know, it would be like if we were all

to go to Boston, everybody at Bethlehem Bible Church, it might be a while before you notice your child was gone.

I know that's shocking, but imagine it was even a bigger group.

Because let's say your child is 12 years old.

He or she would hang out with their friends and maybe other families in the group.

And it would be a while before you would notice him missing.

And that's exactly what happened here.

Just a big group of people from their village up in Galilee, and they all went down together.

And they're like, oh, Jesus is gone.

Verse 46, after three days, they found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and

asking them questions.

And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

And when his parents saw him, they were astonished.

And his mother said, son, why have you treated us so?

Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.

And he said to them, why were you looking for me?

Did you not know that I must be in my father's house?

And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.

And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.

And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

And again, the idea that God in the flesh would be submissive to his human parents,

pretty amazing thing.

Now, let's look back up at verse 40, just a little bit before where we were reading

before.

And the child, talking about Jesus, grew and became strong, filled with wisdom.

And the favor of God was upon him.

And then down to verse 52, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in

stature and in favor with God.

We read that and we go that that is an amazing thing.

How is that even possible that he could that this could happen to him?

And that's kind of what we're studying now, the idea that he would

increase in stature and favor with God and man.

Where it talks about his growth as a human being, and that's what we've been studying for the last few weeks,

the way God really worked, the Father worked in his life, really, I think

we'll see this morning, preparing him for what was to come.

And so, oh, there we are.

Okay, where says this, he says, he lived his life as one of us,

learning what he didn't previously know, and depending on the Spirit to grant him wisdom from on

high.

His dependence on the Spirit would have been as great as his devotion to the scriptures.

With diligence and joy, he poured over those inspired texts, and the Spirit gave him increasing

depth of understanding, increasing

depth of understanding and discernment into their meanings.

For three decades, as we look forward here, as he starts his ministry, the Spirit worked

within Jesus, instructing him and bringing him yet greater and greater insight, until finally the day

came when he was ready to face the devil, the Pharisees, the demons, his disciples, all with the Word

of God deeply enmeshed in his soul.

Now he goes on to suggest where it does, in order for Jesus to fulfill his mission, he had to learn the Word of God,

and to learn this Word well and rightly, he needed the Spirit to illumine his heart and mind.

Now, if this was true of Jesus, how much more is this true for us?

Again, think about it.

How do we fulfill what God has planned for us?

How do we learn the Word of God?

How do we learn it well and rightly?

We need the Holy Spirit, but we also need to be diligent to study, as certainly

Jesus was.

The inference here is, if it took Jesus without sin, without a sin nature, 30 years of

preparation to face Satan, what should we think about those who claim to bind him?

You know, we hear about the binding of Satan.

I, you know, I'm not going to do this, but you know, I bind Satan and then, you know, blah, blah, blah, all the stuff that they do on

TV.

This week, now I'm not, I'm not making light of this situation, but this week one of the TBN teachers, I don't know how many

of you saw this, but someone who was featured regularly on TBN died in a plane crash.

And I couldn't help but wonder, you know, because they teach that you can command anything.

And I couldn't help but wonder if the plane was going down, shouldn't he have just been able to say, plane, stop going down?

I mean, that's just a false, it's a false and potentially dangerous teaching.

We're not God.

We don't have the power over space, time and everything else.

We're not sovereign.

We can pray, we can ask for things, but ultimately God is in control.

And as we look at the life of Jesus, he submitted to the father, we should submit to the father.

Jesus was prepared to face Satan when he did.

We're not.

And this idea that we can bind him, I always, I always wonder, you know what, if you can bind Satan,

then how does he get loose?

If these men are up there and they can bind him, then how does he, how does he get loose?

How does he get bound again?

How does this whole process work?

And the answer is they don't really know because they're making it up.

Think of the humility of Jesus.

Consider how his parents took him back to Nazareth after finding him in the temple.

How did he respond?

Again, as we just read, he was submissive to them.

And it's amazing how we kind of, I don't know about you, but sometimes, and I'm sure none of you

struggle with it as I do, but I sometimes chafe about the idea of submitting myself to someone else.

I have no one in mind, but I don't have very many bosses around here.

Sorry.

It's difficult.

I don't care how wonderful your boss is.

It's difficult sometimes to submit to them.

So just imagine how much more, if you are aware, you wouldn't be aware, but let's say for

Jesus, knowing that he was God in the flesh, and yet he submits not only to God the

Father, but to his earthly parents as well.

Let's talk about Jesus growing in faith.

Him growing in faith.

You know, was Jesus' spiritual life always a ten, an unbroken, perfect relationship with the

Father?

Yes, because he never sinned.

So it was perfect in that sense.

But let's just say, I think it started at a ten and then went to a ten plus, and a ten plus plus, ten

plus plus plus.

It just kept getting better.

Why?

Because he grew in obedience and knowledge.

He kept growing in his knowledge of scripture.

He kept growing in his obedience.

Where it says this, his was the most dynamic and growing of all spiritual lives possible,

precisely because he lived from his heart this life of unbroken obedience and submission to

the Father's will.

Let's turn to Hebrews chapter five.

Hebrews chapter five, and we will be in Hebrews five, I think, for most of the

rest of our time here.

Again, these little passages where you can read through them very quickly.

Would somebody read verses eight and nine?

Read through them very quickly and not maybe catch all of it, or just kind of gloss over

some of the lesser unimportant details or seemingly unimportant details.

Hebrews chapter five, verses eight and nine.

Bruce, would you read that please?

Now, I happen to think there's a lot here.

Listen to what Ware says, if Christ lived his life fundamentally out of his divine nature, and again, as he has said

earlier, I think that's kind of our reflex.

We just think, well, how did he resist temptation?

You know, we, in our minds, we think some of these things are fairly simple.

I mean, Satan takes you up at the top of the pinnacle of the temple and you just, or you know, he shows you all the kingdoms of the

world and tells you that he's going to put you in charge of them if you'll just bow to him.

And you say, well, I would never do that.

I'm going to suggest to you, you probably would.

How do we know that?

Because these are the greatest temptations ever, and only the son of God, I would submit, could resist them.

But Ware says, if Christ lived his life fundamentally out of his divine nature, that is as primarily as

God, a nature that is infinitely perfect and incapable of learning anything.

Is that true?

God, does God learn anything?

No.

Then what does Hebrews mean here when it says he learned obedience?

He learned obedience, Charlie.

I'm only laughing.

Charlie said, is that the same way a doctor practices medicine?

I'm only laughing because, you know, what Lewis Brown always used to say, you know, when doctors would make mistakes and stuff

like that, and he'd say, well, that's why they call it practicing medicine.

I think that's true, right?

That he learned in a human body how to resist temptations

that overpower many of us in a way that

he wouldn't have just as eternally God, right?

God is not tempted, and he cannot sin.

He does not tempt anyone, all that from James 1.

But yeah, that's true.

And let me read what Kissmacher has to say, and then we'll get to some other questions or comments.

Would Jesus have to learn obedience?

The author introduces this subject by mentioning the divinity of Jesus first and stating this

fact concessively.

Although Jesus was the son of God, he does not say that because Jesus was divine, he had to learn

obedience.

Jesus did not have to learn anything concerning obedience, for his will was the same as God's will.

However, in his humanity, Jesus had to show full obedience.

He had to become obedient to death, even death on a cross.

As one version has it, son though he was, he learned

obedience in the school of suffering.

Other comments?

Yeah, Charlie.

He had to put into practice obedience.

Well, if I could modify what you said a little bit first, you know, he already knew how to submit

his will to another moral force because he was in submission to the Father when he came to the earth.

The difference is he had to learn to submit himself to a lesser moral

authority.

Right.

I mean, learning to say, okay, positionally, my mother and father are above me, even though,

you know, if I want to play the deity card, I'm above them.

But that's not my role here.

I am a son.

I am to submit myself to them because this is my position.

Could it be called learning?

Well, I don't know.

We're going to see.

What was that?

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, it was something he had to learn in the sense that he never experienced this kind

of growth or even like, you know, why do we have parents in the first place?

I often would ask my own children that.

Why do we have parents in the first place?

It's because they have some knowledge by just life

experience, some wisdom.

You know, I don't know how many 16, 17, 18, 19 year olds we have at the church,

but I venture to say that most of them at some point or another feel like they know more than their parents.

Okay.

All of them do.

And the truth is they don't.

That's why you have parents, right?

Jesus would not have suffered from their sinfulness, but there is a sense in which, and I think this is what Bob was

leading to, in which the wisdom of just having learned to live life, how to do things and all that,

those things had to be, he had to learn them.

They had to be passed on to him.

And I think that is definitely true.

And he had to learn to, in one sense, learn to obey a sinful

man or a woman.

I think that would have been difficult too.

Other thoughts?

Yeah, Bob.

Well, that's it.

Yeah, that's an interesting concept.

I'm still trying to wrap my arms around it.

I'm not disagreeing.

I'm just thinking it through.

The opposite of ignorance is obedience.

I kind of like that.

I mean, this is, I think that's true in a

lot of senses.

Yeah, I like that.

What was the obedience that Jesus had to learn?

And I think this is Kistemacher still, although I didn't mark it all that well.

Translations for reasons of style and diction speak of obedience.

In the original Greek, however, a definite article precedes the noun so that it reads the obedience.

That is the well -known obedience expected from the Lord.

He had to learn the obedience at this point.

When we interpret this verse, we are not to think of it in terms of contrast.

It is true that sinful man needs to correct his ways by listening to God's word and turning from

disobedience to obedience.

But Christ, the sinless one, did not learn by unlearning.

In other words, we have to put off unrighteousness, put on obedience, put on righteousness.

Rather, through his active and passive obedience, Christ provides eternal life for the

sinner and a discharge of a man's debt of sin.

How was Jesus made perfect?

Well, we'll skip over that.

No, we won't.

The question is legitimate.

For Jesus as the Son of God is perfect from eternity, but in his humanity, he grew in wisdom

and stature and a favor with God and men.

We see his development of the school of obedience as the burden becomes more taxing for Jesus.

So his willingness to assume the task, so his willingness to assume the task his

father has given him increases.

In other words, and this is true.

It's in a different manner, but let's just put it this way.

I like to tell parents that, you know, when your kids are young, what do you have to do?

You have to do basically everything for them, right?

I mean, you change their diapers, you do all these things.

But as they grow older, if you treat them exactly the same as you did when they're three, what do they say to you?

I'm not a baby, you know, you're smothering me, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, why is that?

Because they've learned, they've grown.

And by the time they reach, you know, their late teen years, it

really is.

Now you're still their parent.

You're still instructing them.

You're still correcting them.

You're still helping them.

But it's more of more of a discipleship relationship where you're correcting

them, right?

You're trying to keep them between the lines, but you're letting them walk between the lines.

Whereas before, you know, if it was, it was constricted like this, but over time they have more and more

autonomy.

Well, why is that?

Because what you want ultimately is for them to grow and be completely dependent upon you, 35 years old,

living in your basement, playing Xbox all night long.

No.

What you want is for them to eventually, ideally, you think, okay, I

don't want them to turn out exactly like me.

Maybe some of you think that.

I didn't personally want that.

What you want is for them to become better than you, if I can use that

phraseology.

You want them to have the benefit of your mistakes, not to repeat them.

And you want them to grow and to go past where you were, right?

And you do that by discipling them and then eventually realizing that they don't need

you in the same way anymore.

You know, there's going to be a constant kind of tension where you look and you examine and you

think, okay, I need to back off a little bit.

And then someday they're out on their own, Lord willing.

And with all apologies to any of you, a 40 year old still living in your basement,

that's what you want.

Now with Jesus, it's different because his parents wouldn't have to be

giving him, you know, the business end of the shepherd's crook, you know, every once in a while to correct him.

What they would do is just pass along the lessons of life

that they've taught him.

And he's going to grow.

He's going to absorb those lessons, filter out any sinful tendencies that they had and keep

growing.

But now we come to, uh, really a more obvious example here.

Well, let me, let me back up a little bit.

The different, one of the main differences is for Jesus is as he obeys and he

continues to obey, he gets more responsibility.

He gets more put on him.

And we would want to do this with our own children too.

But with him, it's more, not just responsibility, it's really more

suffering and more trial.

As he gets older, his life becomes more difficult.

That's the opposite of what we would want for our children.

I mean, they're going to have more responsibilities.

We want their life to become easier for him.

His life is going to become more difficult.

That was his mission.

His mission was to suffer, to be ridiculed and ultimately to die.

Um, we're going to get to the garden of Gethsemane.

So we don't need to go there just yet.

Where says this, he says, we understand that the experience Hebrews is describing here must be of the human Jesus

and would not be true.

Indeed could not be true of this son strictly in his divine nature.

He could not grow in the ways that the writer of Hebrews is talking about if it

was just talking about him as the second person of the Trinity.

Listen to what a couple of different men said about, well, I'm going to talk about

impeccability, but when you say what's impeccability, anybody know what impeccability is?

You're, if I say, sir, your, your tie is impeccable, you know, it means it's flawless.

It's perfect.

But if I talk about a person and I say, peccable or

impeccable, their peccability or the impeccability, what I'm talking about is their ability to

sin.

So when we talk about Jesus, we say that he's impeccable.

Well, why is that?

How could he be unable to sin and yet,

you know, be our substitutes.

Listen to what Hodge says.

The sinlessness of our Lord, however, does not amount to absolute impeccability.

If he was a true man, he must have been capable of sinning that he did not

sin under the greatest provocation is held up to us.

As an example, temptation implies the possibility of sin.

If from the constitution of his person, it was impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was

unreal and without effect.

And he cannot sympathize with his people.

That's one opinion.

Now here's another, this is from shed WGT shed

in his dogmatic theology.

It is objected to the doctrine of Christ's impeccability that is inconsistent with his

temptability.

A person who cannot sin and has said, cannot be tempted to sin.

In other words, again, as I've said before, you know, the bullets come at him, but they just bounce off of him.

He has no, he hasn't, it doesn't move him.

The temptation doesn't move him.

This is not correct any more than it would be correct to say that because an army cannot be conquered, it cannot be

attacked.

Temptability depends on the constitutional susceptibility while impeccability depends

upon the will.

Okay.

Let's think some more about that.

So far as his natural susceptibility, both physical and mental was concerned.

Jesus was open to all forms of human temptation, accepting those that spring out of

the corruption of human nature.

Those temptations were very strong, but at the self -determination of his Holy will was stronger

than they could not induce him to sin.

And here's all I would say about sheds

summary here is it's not just his self -determination

of his Holy will.

What else do we know that he was supported by

the spirit of God?

And that is, and it goes directly back to his not corrupted human nature

because he did not sin, did not have a sin nature because he was consistently filled by the

Holy spirit, his Holy will, yes, but his Holy will reinforced by

the third person of the Trinity.

Now, I think we're still in

Hebrews 5.

Bruce, would you read verse 7 if you're still there?

Now, whereas talking about this, he says, why offer supplications or requests

if you already know everything, including the answer to your own

prayers?

If you're omniscient, why cry out with loud cries and tears?

He says, clearly Jesus felt strongly his need for divine assistance.

He felt deeply his vulnerability, his weakness, his ignorance of some

aspects of the future and the need to look to another for guidance and

protection.

If we fail to grant the humanity of Jesus, then I think what we'd

find is a lot of his prayers and other things are shows.

The human nature of Jesus is one in which he learned, grew, suffered,

and prayed for divine help.

Where it says obedience per se was not new, rather this kind of obedience was indeed new, along the lines

of what Pastor Bob said.

Now, how did he learn through what he had suffered?

How did he do that?

Where it says this, he says, despite the suffering he knew he would receive, he resisted the

temptation to avoid suffering and to turn away from the Father's will and instead resolutely

obeyed the Father every step of the way, no matter how hard things were.

I think of just how it says he fixed his face toward Jerusalem.

He knew what was going to happen in the sense that, I don't know if he knew every step of the way, but he knew what the

end was and he didn't flinch.

In essence, the life of Jesus, these are my words, was a training program.

I was watching somebody the other day, I scan

through this show, I record every Saturday morning and then watch about six minutes of it.

It's a three -hour program and I watched six minutes.

But they showed this one guy who was in the military and he got out of the military and

he wanted to play college football.

And it showed, he just did, I don't even know if he'd actually played football before, but

he just decided that now he was out of the military, he wanted to do something.

And so what did he do to prepare himself to play football?

Read a bunch of football books?

Go out and play in a semi -pro football team or something else?

No.

Here's what he did.

He just worked himself to death physically.

He trained himself physically.

They showed him doing these one, I mean, it was like watching a Rocky movie, only this was real.

You know, he's doing all these one -arm pushups and then he jumped to the other arm and I'm going, well, this guy's pretty serious.

And he did it over and over.

Well, he sent this tape out to some colleges and this one coach saw that tape and

said, if he's willing to work like that, I'll find a place for him on my team.

And he walked on, for those of you not familiar with college football, that just means he got

the opportunity to come out and be a tackling dummy for the guys on scholarship.

You know, he's just one of those extra bodies that gets blasted out, but he worked and he worked and he worked and he gained the

respect of his coaches and the other players on the team.

And he actually became a starter on that team, the Clemson football team.

And I just found it interesting because I thought this is, in some small way,

this is exactly what Jesus was doing spiritually.

He was being trained.

He was not physically, but spiritually trained.

He was learning to obey.

This is where speaking, he learned to obey increasingly difficult divine demands

with their accompanying increasingly difficult opposition and affliction.

The whole of his life was planned by his father in order to prepare Jesus for the greater acts of

faith necessary to complete the father's mission for the son.

His whole life was dedicated to getting him in spiritual shape, as it were,

to withstand everything that was going to happen to him at the end.

It was not easy, but was done, as we just heard in verse seven, with loud cries and tears.

Where it says, does this not indicate that Jesus' trust in the father and his dependence on what the father

alone would provide him was hard fought and hard won?

It was difficult.

Again, if we just take this concept and just say, well, this is Jesus, second person of the trinity in the

flesh.

And he's just, as somebody said to me a few weeks ago, dragging around a human body for these

33 years.

This is just God dragging around a human body.

Then all these things, all these verses in Hebrews and other places where we see

this emotion, the struggle, then they're meaningless.

In fact, they're worse than meaningless.

I would say they're deceptive, but that's not the case.

Let's look at Luke chapter 22.

Luke chapter 22, verses 39 to 46.

We're going to go to the garden of Gethsemane and we'll close here.

And I think it's important for us always to keep in mind, yes, this is the second person of the trinity.

And the reason I say that is because I was just thinking yesterday, this is, as we

read things like this, this is one of the few passages I think that as a Mormon, I would ever study

or that we would ever hear much about.

But this was as the man, Christ Jesus, no deity involved.

I don't know exactly when they believe he became God, but they didn't believe he was God all along.

Listen to Luke chapter 22, verses 39 to 46.

And he came out and went as was his custom to the Mount of Olives and the disciples followed him.

And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation.

And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed saying, father, if

you are willing, remove this cup for me.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.

And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him

and being in an agony.

He prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling

down to the ground.

And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping,

sleeping for sorrow.

And he said to them, why are you sleeping?

Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

Where it says, it is simply impossible to think deeply about the accounts of the Garden of Gethsemane and draw the

conclusion that since Jesus was God and since it was impossible for him to sin, his obedience here in

the garden was both automatic and easy.

You just can't get there.

Why do you have an ad, an angel come and minister to him?

Why did he, you know, why was he sweating profusely?

He knew what was coming in his humanity.

He was not thinking this is going to be easy.

He was thinking this is going to be hard.

I need the strength of God to get me through this.

Listen to a different account, Matthew 26 verses

38 and 39.

I'm not going to read all of it, but just 38 and 39.

Then he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death.

Remain here and watch with me.

And going a little farther, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, my father,

if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

Difficult.

What does it mean that he fell on his face?

Listen, listen to Leon Morris.

He says, Jesus was a brave man and lesser people by far, including many who have owed their inspiration

to him, have faced death calmly.

It is impossible to hold that it was the fact of death that moved Jesus so deeply.

Rather, it was the kind of death that he would die that brought the anguish.

He fell face downward, an expression that means that Jesus adopted the lowliest

posture for this significant prayer.

In other words, he threw himself at the mercy of God.

He began with the warm and tender approach, my father, even in this time when it would

seem that he was abandoned to ignorant.

Yeah, that there's too many M's and N's in there for me and death.

Jesus knew that his father was near.

Only in Matthew and only here do we find the address, my father,

it mattered to this evangelist and to Matthew here.

It mattered to this evangelist that in this critical moment, Jesus warm relationship to the father was clear.

If it is possible, precedes the substance of the prayer and makes it clear that Jesus was not pressing, was not

insisting on anything that was against the will of the father.

The question at issue was not whether Jesus should do the father's will, but whether that necessarily

included the way of the cross.

That kind of death or the kind of death he faced was the kind of ordeal from which human nature

naturally shrinks.

Thus, we discern here the natural human desire to avoid it.

But we discern also Jesus firm determination that the father's will be done.

So we praise for the avoidance of the death he faced, but only if that accorded with a divine

plan, always willing to submit to the father's

plan.

And we'll talk next week about what it means that Jesus was made perfect back in Hebrews 5

and he was made perfect.

He became the source of eternal salvation.

How did Jesus become perfect?

How was he made perfect when he was perfect?

We'll talk about that next week.

Let's pray.

Father, these are weighty things.

And even as we think about Jesus

fully human in the garden of Gethsemane, praying that

some other way other than the cross might be possible, but ultimately

submitting to you.

Determined, knowing the cost, knowing the price he would have to pay

that he would nevertheless become obedient even to the point of death

on a cross.

What a great savior we have.

Fully human, fully God, fully obedience,

fully paying the price for us that we might enter into

your peace, that we might enter into heaven.

All of our sins fully paid and Lord, we thank you for these truths in Christ's name.

Amen.