12 The Humanity of Jesus Christ, Part 2

Well, welcome back to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology.

I am so glad that you guys are back with us this week. I welcome all of the new students that have enrolled as students.

I even welcome those of you atheists who have been subscribing to our

YouTube channel and watching our videos. I even read your comments and sometimes even reply myself.

But we welcome you and we thank you for joining us. Today we're going to turn in our syllabuses.

If you have a syllabus, that's one of the advantages of being a student of the academy.

You will get a syllabus and in your syllabus we are in lesson number eight.

Lesson eight, which is the Humanity for Christ part two.

There will be in the chat room, for those of you in the chat room watching live, you will have a pop test today.

So that will be there for those who are watching live. You will have questions throughout the class that will be in the chat room.

I expect to see answers and we may even give out rewards for those students who get the answers correct.

We'll see. But we are going to continue from where we looked at last week when we looked at the

Humanity of Jesus Christ in part one. We mentioned then but we'll mention it again this week in case you're one of those naughty students that missed a class and chose not to watch part one before part two.

That's not always the best thing to do. It's usually good to watch part one and then part two.

But yeah, well, I know how some of you are. So in case you missed that, we had said last week that though the deity of Jesus Christ is widely debated, most people nowadays accept his humanity as a fact.

I say most people because, you know, it's actually some people they talk about the fact that they think

Jesus never existed. Okay, you only have to like forget about much of history and like every way that we would know that somebody ever existed like eyewitness testimony and all of the historical accounts to come to that conclusion.

But what does that matter if you're really not going to want to believe in God anyway? I mean, they're just looking for an excuse.

But apart from those people, most people will accept that Jesus was a historical figure but his entrance into humanity and his exaltation in humanity, as we looked at last week, are often misunderstood.

The last week's lesson, we looked at the importance of his humility.

We looked at his existence before his humanity. And then we looked at his exaltation.

What we're going to look at this week. We're going to look at this week as two areas. One is the evidence of his humanity.

How do we know Jesus actually was a historical figure and was human and why is that important?

And then his exaltation. Now, when we look at this, I want to point this out because when we talk about his humanity,

I want you to remember that the time of the writing of the

New Testament, people did not question his deity.

They believed that Jesus Christ was God shortly after when people would start discussing these things.

There was a group of people called the Gnostics. The Gnostics were from the culture, from the

Roman mindset that they had, they believed that anything physical is bad.

So the chair that I'm sitting in, it's evil. The plaque behind my head, it's evil.

But anything spiritual is good. And so they would come up with these wacky theories and you have to understand these things when you read a book like 1

John, they would actually teach that they could go and be with a prostitute, but it really was not their spirit that went, just their physical body, therefore it's not a sin.

Yeah, hello. That's really justifying your sin way out there.

But this is the sort of stuff that men like John and Peter and many of the

New Testament writers had to deal with. And this is the issue they're confronting. So when we look at this, we have to understand they were arguing for the humanity of Jesus Christ.

And this is why John would say, if you don't believe that Christ came in the flesh, you're not saved.

We say, what's the big deal there? So what if we believe He came in the flesh?

Nowadays we say you must believe that He was God. In the time of the writing, it was

His humanity that was questioned, which is why the writers spend so much time trying to argue for His humanity.

This is one of those things that Jehovah Witnesses don't get. They see all the arguing for the humanity of Jesus Christ in the

New Testament and they think that He was just human. Well, you got to make sure you understand what they were arguing for at the time.

They were arguing against those that refused to believe that He was human.

They only believed He was God. So that's kind of something those Jehovah Witnesses would really have a hard time with because they don't think

He was God. Well, they do think He was human for a time, but they think He was an angel before and after.

Yeah, okay. So let's get into our lesson here. We're in lesson number eight, the humanity of Christ.

And we are going to start with the evidence for His humanity. The evidence for His humanity.

And when we look at this, there are at least three different ways that we can see the humanity of Christ evidenced.

All right? And again, this is typically not debated very much, but it's still very significant.

So let's first look that He possessed the necessities of humanity.

That's your blank there, necessities, in your syllabus for those who have a syllabus. Let's take a look at some passages of Scripture.

First off, if you're looking at your syllabus, He had a physical body. We are going to look at a lot of passages of Scripture tonight.

I hope that you have your Bible ready. We're going to do some sword drills and you're going to be digging through your

Bible. No, you're not. I know most of you students, you're lazy and you're just going to let me put it up there.

So here we go. John 1 .14, and the Word became flesh.

Well, that's all we really need to read right there. But the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen

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

The Word, who if you read in the context is God, you know, this Word who was with God and was

God became flesh. Okay, Hebrews 2 .14

says this, Since therefore the children share in the flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power over death, the power of death, that is the devil.

Okay, so you see in those two passages that it clearly explains that Jesus had a physical body.

Not only did He have a physical body, but we see that He had an immaterial body.

Let's take a look at a passage in Matthew 28, verse 6. Matthew 28 and verse 6.

He is not here, for He has risen, as He said, come to the place where He lay.

Now, you say, well, why is this one important? This one is important because of this.

It shows that He had a soul that was no longer there. This is important for two reasons.

If you read the context of Matthew 28 there, you'll see that it refers to His body and His spirit that are no longer there.

That's important if you talk to a Jehovah Witness. You say, why? Jehovah Witnesses don't believe that Jesus Christ rose bodily.

They believe only His spirit returned back to becoming the angel. If that's the case, a simple question, where's the body?

Remember that question. That question is going to come up later on tonight. It's going to be a key question that you're going to want to remember and want to use at different times.

Let's take a look at Luke 23. Luke 23, verse 46. Then Jesus called out with a loud voice, said,

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Having said this, He breathed His last. He's got a spirit.

He's got an immaterial part of Him. So He was fully human, 100 % man and 100 %

God. Now, I know some of you atheists or Muslims who are watching are saying, wait a minute, dude.

You claim to be smart and you can't even figure that 100 % plus 100 % equals 200%.

No, I'm saying that with God, all things are possible because He's God.

It doesn't make sense to us that He can create everything out of nothing. And for you atheists who say

He didn't, well, you believe nothing created everything. So that takes a lot more faith than believing that some great creator

God created everything. Okay. So, yeah. Let's look at the next one here.

He not only had the necessities of humanity, but He had the names of humanity.

And let's take a quick look here in Luke 19 and verse 10.

For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

Now, why is that one important? Jesus Christ referred to Himself as the Son of Man more than any other title while He walked the earth, emphasizing

His humanity. This was a popular title that He used for Himself.

Okay. And so He called Himself the Son of Man. Now, Son of God, we already explained when we looked at that, that that was a term identifying

Himself with deity. Okay. He has the identification of God.

Well, the Son of Man identifies Him as a man. But you'll also see in your syllabus that He was referred to as a man in John 8,

John 8 40. But now you seek to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

That is not what Abraham did. Also in 1

Timothy 2 5, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man,

Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. So what you have there is that He clearly claimed to be a man.

Okay. And so it is actually kind of interesting in John 8, because what did

Jesus say? Jesus was telling the reason you guys don't believe Me is because I tell you the truth.

Now, what's the inference there? If I lied to you, you'd believe Me. Does that sound like a group of people out there?

Yeah, a large number of people that you could tell anything that's not true about God and they'll believe it.

You could look at any atheist. They'll believe anything. They'll believe that frogs can become men.

Now, when I grew up, I was always taught that was a fairy tale. That frogs can become a prince, just not by a kiss, by millions of years.

I always thought that was a fairy tale. But a fairy tale makes sense if you don't want to believe the truth.

All right. Let's look at a third way. So not only did He have the necessities of humanity and the names of humanity, but He also had the nature of humanity.

And we see this a couple different ways. Let's take a look at these. If you look in your syllabus, you first see He had emotions such as anger.

Let's look at Mark 3, 5. Now, some of you are saying, wait a minute, dude,

Pastor Andrew, maybe you don't understand something. Anger is a sin. And therefore, if you say that Jesus never sinned, how could

He have been angry? I want you to think about something. Is anger a sin?

Now, think about that before you answer. Do you know that anger itself is not necessarily the sin?

The question is the motive, the object. Are you angry out of your pride?

That would be a sin. Jesus is angry over God's manner, because what these false religious leaders were doing in the name of God, that was the issue.

It was God's reputation that was at stake. Same thing with when He went through the temple and cleared the temple.

He was angry with a righteous anger. That is why it is in Psalms and in Ephesians, it says, and it's actually in Ephesians, it's a command, an imperative, be angry but sin not.

It's not a sin to be angry unless you have a sinful anger.

In other words, you're angry because out of your selfishness, okay? Let's look at what else.

He had some other emotions such as compassion. In John 13,

John 13 and 23, one of His disciples whom Jesus loved was reclining at the table at His side, and I believe that is the wrong one.

Did I give you guys the wrong one? Okay, well, maybe we could even have used

Mark 3 .5. Mark 3 .5 was where He does talk about the fact that He had compassion.

Maybe that was a translation. It may have been a translation one. The one whom Jesus loved. Okay, I'm just being told it's a translation.

So, the one whom Jesus loved is the showing of compassion that's there.

Jesus showed sorrow. Now, I gotta, before we go to this verse, this one is, you know, when

I was asked to memorize a verse, this was the one I turned to. If you ever want to, you know, make sure you got one verse memorized and you really struggle with memorization, this is the verse.

John 11 .35, let's see if you can memorize it. There you go.

Jesus wept. It's a long one. It's the shortest sentence in the Bible right there.

That, rejoice always. I can memorize those too. Even I can memorize those.

But Jesus wept, displays His sorrow. He also had fear.

In John 12 and 27, now is my soul troubled.

And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose

I have come to this hour. And so what you see here is you see

His, He, even Jesus knowing what He was about to do had some fear.

Okay, so fear is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's also look at the fact that Jesus had certain limitations.

You'll see that in your syllabus. You see, Jesus had limitations. He was hungry in Matthew 4 and 2.

And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, He was hungry.

Yeah, I would be hungry after 40 days of fasting. Who am I kidding?

I'd be hungry after an hour of fasting, right? Yeah, that's why we only show my head up, right?

You don't want to see the big belly. No, kidding. My wife would agree with that statement, though, probably.

All right, so He also thirsted. He was thirsty in Matthew, sorry, in John 28.

I threw you off, sorry. In John 19, 28. After this, Jesus knowing that all was finished said to fulfill the

Scriptures, I thirst. I thirst. So He had the limitation of being thirsty, of being hungry.

Did you ever think about the fact that Jesus had those same limitations? He had the limitation of time.

In your syllabus, you may have this one wrong. The right verse should be Matthew 24, 36.

Matthew 24, 36. But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, but even the angels in heaven, nor the

Son, but the Father only. Okay, so how is this a limitation of time? Jesus Christ, in His humanity,

He was limited by time and did not know everything in the same sense that we would argue for the limitation, okay, for knowing things.

So He can, in His humanity, make that claim. Being deity, He can know all things. Being a human,

He was limited in that sense, all right? This one just blows me away, though.

Jesus was limited by fatigue. Look at this in John 4.

Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, was sitting beside the well about the sixth hour.

And not only was He fatigued, but He had exhaustion in Luke 22, 43.

And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven strengthening Him.

Now, if He needed to be strengthened, it's because He was exhausted.

I mean, do you picture Jesus Christ being exhausted, being fatigued?

I mean, this is one of the things in my prayers every day. I pray and I thank God that He is a

God who never gets fatigued. But as a man, He did. As a man,

He was tired. You know, my theory has always been that I'll get plenty of rest at the day of rest, at that Sabbath when we're in heaven.

You know, so my wife always complains that I don't get enough sleep. My argument always, I get plenty of sleep at death.

I'll get the rest then. But now there's just time is short. You know, we got to redeem the time for it's short.

So, you know, hey, who needs more than three hours of sleep a night anyway? I mean, really, you're missing good time to be reading up on things.

And I'm not talking Facebook. You guys got to get off the Facebook stuff and get into the good book, all right?

The real book. All right. We even see that He suffered, the last one there in John 19, 30,

He suffered death. When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said,

It is finished and bowed His head and gave up His spirit. That one there,

I mean, think about that. Jesus gave up His spirit. Jesus chose when

He was going to die. He had the power over His own death and then rose

Himself up again from life. Amazing. But that is who He is.

Now, since Christ possessed the fullness of His humanity, here's a question

I want you to think about. Theologically, put your hats on.

If He was fully human, was He not able or able not to sin or was

He not able to sin? Was Jesus Christ, did

He have the ability to sin or not?

Was He able not to sin? In other words, did He have the freedom to choose not to sin or was

He not able to sin? Now, while you're thinking about that, I'm going to have to correct someone in the chat room since I just got a little message here.

I am not 220 pounds. I should come over there and get you.

I know where you live. I know who said that. And any one of you who thinks

I am over 200 pounds, you come run five miles a day with me and we'll see how you do. That's the minimum that I do.

So, just you remember that, miss. I know who you are. Anyway, while you're thinking about that, now

I hope you have the answer to the question. Here it is. Christ was not able to sin.

All right. The union of deity and humanity is a complete union in which neither nature loses anything to the other.

Both natures retain their attributes. So, as God, He cannot sin.

This was the importance of the virgin birth because He did not have a sin nature, but He fully understood every temptation much further than you and I.

See, you and I, when we sin, we get tempted, I mean, and there's times we give in to that temptation because you know what?

It's just easier. It's easier to give in sometimes. And the temptation goes away once we give in.

Jesus never gave in to a single temptation. In other words, He suffered every single temptation until its fullness.

And so, He suffered every temptation in a greater way than we. All right.

Now, let's look at the next section in your syllabus there. And this I'm really looking forward to discussing.

That is the exaltation after His humanity. Christ's exaltation consisted of five significant events in Christian history.

His crucifixion, His resurrection, His ascension,

His mediation, and His revelation. And we're going to look at those tonight. First, let's look at His crucifixion.

His crucifixion. Now, as we look at His crucifixion here, the crucifixion of Christ was accomplished voluntarily and obediently.

That's your blank if you have your syllabus. Obediently. The crucifixion of Christ was accomplished voluntarily and obediently by the second person of the

Godhead for the substitutionary atonement of the sins of the human race.

This will be covered in more detail when we look at the doctrine of salvation, okay, or doctrine of soteriology.

And now, some of you are already kind of trying to figure, hey, wait a minute, there's some language there,

Pastor Andrew. I don't know if I like. I'm not sure if I agree with. That's okay.

If you're not picking up on that, that's okay as well. We're going to look into it in much more detail when we look at the doctrine of salvation.

But I was very specific in what I said, and that is that the atonement of sins covered, okay, is covered, the atonement of sins for the human race.

Does that mean every single person is saved? No. It was not applied to everyone.

Is it sufficient for everyone? Yes. How do you reconcile those two?

Wait several months. We're going to get there. I don't want to put my cart before the horse. This is actually,

I want to say this at this point. This is a mistake many people have. They start studying their theology, and they start in the doctrine of soteriology.

They start in the doctrine of salvation, and they get into this whole argument over these little things.

Well, they're not really little things. They're big things. But they get into this understanding of these things, and they don't understand it fully because they haven't started like you and I have at the beginning with the attributes of God and built upon this theology, you know, point by point, category by category.

By the time we get to the doctrine of salvation, I hope it will be abundantly clear why

I hold the position I hold. And if you disagree with me, don't just tune out.

Stay tuned. My job as a teacher is to get you thinking.

If you disagree with me, that's fine. You can always contact us at the academy at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

Just shoot us an email. Let us know you disagree with me. Hey, you might teach me a thing or two.

I don't know at all. Well, maybe. No, I actually don't, but that's right.

So, the thing is, is that, you know, I do want to also mention that when we look at the crucifixion, we not only look at the purpose of it as we just did, we look at the picture of it.

Christ was introduced to us in John 1.

Do we have that? Okay, we don't. John 1 29, as the Lamb of God.

Now, think about the timing of when He died at Passover when He was the

Passover Lamb, the Lamb that was crucified. Throughout the

Old Testament, the sacrificial system pictures a future and complete work of Christ as the bodily, slain sacrifice that satisfies the wrath of God concerning the sins of man.

If men receive this offering, and so the issue here, and that you see, is that this is something that is pictured by this

Passover sacrificial Lamb. There would be two lambs sometimes that they'd have, depending on whether it was a sin offering or the

Yom Kippur Passover, you'd have different kinds of slain of goats or lambs.

You had the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat, all right?

The scapegoat would be on the Yom Kippur that would be, the sins would be laid upon him and he'd be able to escape.

But this is referring to this sacrificial lamb, okay?

This is the lamb that we have here is the lamb pictured that would die as a sin offering, okay?

To atone, to be that Passover, going back to the

Passover in Exodus when they had to kill a lamb, they'd celebrate the

Passover meal, and on the next day they had to put the blood over the doorpost so that death would pass over, okay, pass over those

Jewish homes. Now, clearly God would know which home was a

Jewish home, but it was a picture so that we would come to understand that.

All right, so as we saw that his crucifixion there, you have your fill in the blank, it was that he accomplished this voluntarily and obediently.

We see, secondly, not only his crucifixion, but we have his resurrection, his resurrection.

And here we want to take a look at a couple of passages. First is the foretelling of the resurrection.

I want to look at these just real quick. I put this up as, in his resurrection we have

Matthew 28 verses 8 -10, is that one right?

No. Okay, so let's skip that, that's later. Okay, first a foretelling of his resurrection in Acts 2, so we don't have that one.

Acts 2, 27. Oh, we do. Okay, all right, here we go.

Sorry about that, we're a little bit out of order here tonight. So, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your

Holy One see corruption. Now, you cross -reference this with Psalm 16 .10

and that says, for you will not abandon my soul in Sheol or let the

Holy One see corruption. So, you see here that this Psalm is referring to Christ and you see in referring to Christ that it says, that it was talking about the fact that he will not,

Jesus Christ will not remain in the tomb. We have, let's start in Jonah 1 in 17, and the

Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

And now in Matthew 12, well, we see this is a little bit longer, I don't want to take the time to read this, but Matthew 12, 38 -40, just for the sake of time, you see here that it says in verse 40, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the

Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So, Jesus is saying that the, just like Jonah was in the belly of the fish, he would be three days and three nights in the earth, but then he would rise again, okay?

Now, harmoneutical principle, for those of you who were faithful to the school of biblical harmoneutics when we went through those lessons, you know very well that there may be an issue here.

I would hope that you see a possible issue here. And you're saying to yourself, well, wait a minute, Jonah, if you read it in its context, is no way seeming in any way whatsoever to be a prophecy.

I would agree with you. If you're going to interpret it properly, it's not necessarily a prophecy, but Jesus chose to use it as an illustration to prophesy his own death, burial, and resurrection, okay?

Do you see that? So, why do I say this? Because this is a harmoneutical principle, just because we see that Jesus can lift off of the pages of Scripture what

Jonah did and apply it to himself, because he's God, he can do that. But notice what

Jesus was doing. He was using it as an illustration. He did not say, just as Jonah said, referring to me.

That would have been different. But you know what? Even if he did that, he being the author of Scripture has the right to do that.

You and I don't. I don't believe that you and I can just say, well, hey, we can make this say whatever we want it to mean.

That's not the right way to do things, all right? So, moving on, let's look at his, it was even foretold by Christ.

We can see that in John 2. Let's look at John 2. We see in verse 19,

Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, and verse 21 says, but he was speaking about the temple of his body.

The temple of his body, okay? So, you see there that he even prophesied about his own resurrection.

Now, if you want to look at the fact of his resurrection, if you want to take a good look at his resurrection as a fact, okay?

What you'll see there is with the, you can look at 1

Corinthians and chapter 15, and the whole chapter, and we're not going to take the time to read that here tonight.

I would love to, but you guys would never let me live it down, because you'd be telling me

I went over time. And some of you, I know, you set your clocks to make sure, is he done on time?

Is he done on time? You're probably that type of person who sets his clock at, like, exactly at noon, so that your pastor, when he knows that he's supposed to be done preaching, because you think so.

Just remember, Paul was preaching for three hours. Someone fell asleep, falls out of the window dead.

What does he do? He goes, wakes the guy back up from the dead, brings him back from the dead, and keeps preaching.

So, stop complaining. You didn't have a three -hour sermon to listen to.

You should be glad if you do. I would love that every week. Digging into the Scriptures for three, four hours, that's a good way of doing it.

But those of us who have American TV, you know, we just can't handle that. Shame on us.

All right, but moving on, we have, and I mentioned this already a little bit, and that is eyewitness testimony is one of the strongest ways,

I mean, it amazes me that people want to say that Jesus Christ wasn't actually a human being. How do you know

George Washington lived and was our first president? I mean, when people argue, prove to me scientifically that Jesus Christ was

God, or that he lived, you know, how do you know

George Washington lived and was our first president? I mean, prove it scientifically. You can't.

That's the wrong type of study. You use history. What is history based off of?

History is based off of eyewitness accounts and the recorded history, recordings of the time, either based on eyewitness counts or people who got it from someone that was an eyewitness account.

That is how history is developed, all right? You're never going to prove George Washington lived scientifically.

You're going to do it historically. How do we know Jesus Christ rose from the dead? The same way.

Because the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most attested to things in history than anything else.

We're going to look into this when we do the study of the Bible, and we're going to see why we know we can trust the

Bible. Now, one of the things people most often will do is when they start a systematic theology, they actually start with a study of the

Bible. And they do that because that's what we're basing everything on. So that's a really good place to start.

We put it later only because we want to develop our theology from the understanding.

We're going to already accept that it's accurate. It's God's Word. We're going to study that later, but we want to develop our theology off the attributes of God, and that's why we started there.

But when we look at the Scripture, we're going to look at what it says. So historically, we see

Jesus Christ was evidenced by eyewitnesses. Now, let me just give you the eyewitnesses that we have.

Matthew 28 in verses 8 to 10. We're not going to turn to there because we're going to just rip through these.

Mary Magdalene. We have Peter in Luke 24 and verse 34. We have the disciples.

Those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Mark 16, 12.

You have the disciples in the upper room, and there were several of them.

There may have been more than just the 11, okay? So it's not just the 11, but there were the disciples in the upper room in Luke 24 in verses 36 to 43.

You have the disciples at the Sea of Galilee after He rose from the dead, and they see

Him walking. They see Him on the shore, and they come to Him in John 21, the first 24 verses.

The apostles and the 500 eyewitnesses in 1

Corinthians 15, 6 and 7. And then the witnesses of His ascension in Acts 1, 3 to verse 12.

And so over 500 witnesses. That is not group hysteria.

That is not group hypnosis, okay? It's not everyone had some hallucinatory drugs, and they all thought they experienced the same thing.

When people take hallucinatory drugs, they do not experience the same thing.

So it's not that, and it's not some sort of, you know, it was not, you know, this is the extremes people go to to try to deny the truth, all right?

So let me deal with some things. I want to deal with the fallacies of the resurrection, because sometimes you may run into this.

And it's interesting. When I first, the very first night that I heard the gospel,

I'm a weird bird. Yeah, I heard you back there. I heard you. Yes, I am weird, and I admit it, okay?

But the reality is that when we look at, you know, at my life, I was one of those people that actually received the gospel the very first time

I heard it, okay? But I remember that night, and I remember the fact that I was trying to, after I was convinced the

New Testament was actually the Word of God, I didn't believe in Christ, but I believed in the New Testament. And then

I was being explained to me was the facts of the resurrection, and that's what actually converted me, was the fact that I, being from a

Jewish background, knowing nothing of Christ, okay? I did not know who Jesus Christ was. I didn't know anything about Him.

What I knew was that I, you know, I knew I was a sinner.

No problem there. If you knew me when I was growing up, whoo, yeah, problematic.

I was trouble with a capital T. I've gotten a little bit better at causing trouble, that is.

But when I was sitting there, I remember Chuck was explaining to me the resurrection, and I was arguing that, trying to argue away the resurrection, because I knew in my head if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then

He was God. And if He was God, I was accountable to Him. And if He was God and I was accountable to Him, I needed to repent of my sins and trust in Him and Him alone to get right with God.

So I, in my mind, I had to, my engineering type of scientific mind,

I was thinking through and processing through, how can I discount the resurrection? And, you know,

I didn't read Josh McDowell's Evidence Demands a Verdict, okay? Yet every one of the false arguments that he details in his book,

I thought of. I even have one that's original with me, okay? And that was the argument.

I actually had the disciples digging a hole underneath the tomb and stealing the body. And Chuck was like, in three days?

Andrew, really? Come on. Yeah, okay, that was my last argument. I was, I was like the typical unsaved believer, willing to believe anything but the truth.

I mean, I was grasping at straws because I just didn't want to believe.

But you know what? There was no other argument. But let's look at some of the false theories.

The first one in your syllabus there, the first false view is called the myth theory.

The myth theory. And that is a myth that the whole resurrection was there.

The myth of the resurrection was widespread and it was just treachery and error.

In other words, you hear this a lot, the Bible was written, you know, 300 years after Christ and they made him a god afterwards and they put the resurrection afterwards.

Or those that will be a little bit more honest and say, the Bible was written right after Christ's life, but they edited it to edit in the resurrection.

The early Christians didn't believe the resurrection. That came much later and they edited it and it was just a big myth.

And this is where they'll say, you Christians believe in fairy tales, men coming back from the dead.

I don't know any fairy tales that talk about men coming back from the dead.

But I do know one called the frog and the prince of a man that becomes a frog that becomes a prince.

That's a fairy tale. The only difference is a kiss versus millions of years. Just think about it.

And they can't deny that. And they'll go, well, we don't teach that frogs become a man. Yeah, but you don't deny that that would be possible.

And when they say they do, that frogs can't become men, how? Evolution says it's got to be possible.

Yeah. All right, let's look at the next one. The swoon theory. The swoon theory.

This is the theory that Christ did not die. He just on the cross, hanging there, he passed out and he was laid in the grave.

And in the cool of the tomb, he revived and he kind of woke up.

Now, if you know the accounts of the resurrection, you know that when they put him in the tomb, they rolled a stone in front of the tomb.

Now, if you know anything about the time, the tomb would have been a cave that they would have carved out and kind of an entrance of a cave and they would roll a two or three thousand pound stone in front of it.

But it's even more than that, because the Jews wanted to make sure that the body wasn't stolen. So what they do, they put an armed guard outside of it.

And the armed guard, what they would do is to make sure that nobody broke in.

They sealed the tomb. So now think about this. Jesus Christ, he's hanging on the tomb for several hours.

OK, all day, six hours, you know, that he you know, he's hanging up there. Right. He's on the on the cross, you know, for three hours before death.

They say he passed out. OK, so he passed out. He's been hanging up there for all that time, nails in his hand, nails in his feet after being whipped.

And then they lay him in the tomb and he gets up, unwraps himself from the 75 pounds of linen that they would have wrapped him in to prepare his body for the burial.

He unwraps all of that, lays it nice and neatly so that the disciples would find it there nice and neat and in order, and then rolled a two or three thousand pound stone uphill, locked it in place with the stone that would be the wedge, and then walked past the

Roman guard unseen. And you want to believe that?

I mean, really? Yeah, I mean, you got to really deny quite a bit to believe that one.

But hey, the third one is the hallucinatory theory. I mentioned this already.

The disciples were so anxious for his resurrection to take place that they saw things that didn't actually happen.

They were just hallucinating. Read the account of the Gospels and you'll notice that the disciples, they ran away.

They didn't believe that he was going to rise. It's kind of sad that the unbelievers understood what

Jesus said about his resurrection more than the believers, okay? His disciples didn't believe.

Now, that's actually kind of an interesting thing. In the time, people would never write negative things about themselves, kind of a pride.

What did the disciples write when they, the apostles write when they write the Gospels? They write about their failure, that they were so dumbheaded that they didn't see when

Christ taught about his resurrection. They weren't looking for it. So, why would they have a group, you know, hallucination besides the fact that you don't get a group hallucination, all right?

You can have an individual that can have change blindness, okay?

It's a test you can do. So, you can set up a case. There's a case where, you know, there's a video that I've seen, different ways you can do this, but there's one video where they have, you know, people like throwing balls up or something,

I forget what it was, and then they have a gorilla that walks in to the crowd, you know, walks in the circle and then walks out.

And I think he pulls his mask off or something. And the question is, does the person in the gorilla suit show himself?

And you don't see it because you're focused on the things around it and it's called change blindness.

And that's the argument that they're making. They just expected it so they kind of had this picture in their mind.

Change blindness works with visual things that you see. So, they wouldn't have seen anything there that they were expecting to see.

They weren't expecting to see Jesus on the side of the sea.

Remember, when Peter sees Jesus, they don't recognize who he is, okay?

Until he tells them to cast the net down. And then they realize that it is

Jesus. And Peter dives in the water and swims to him and they come back by boat, okay? He wasn't expecting to see the resurrected

Christ. He didn't recognize him. And that was the case over and over again. All right,

I'm running short on time. So, let's continue really quick. Letter C there in your syllabus, his ascension, his ascension, the anticipation of his ascension.

First, we see that it was anticipated. You have some passages there, but for those of you who are not students and don't have a syllabus,

I'll just rattle off some real quick. Matthew 24 -30, Matthew 26 -64,

Mark 13 -26, Mark 14 -62, Luke 21 -27, and John 6 -62 would all be passages where you see the ascension anticipated.

I don't have time to look at those. Let's look at the account of his ascension though. And we want to notice four things about his ascension, okay?

Four things. First, his ascension was gradual, all right?

They watched him ascend, okay? That's important so it wasn't just like an instantaneous thing.

They actually saw it happen. And it's prophesied that just like the disciples saw

Jesus rise, when his second coming, they're going to see him descend in the same way. It was gradual.

Second, it was visible. That's your blank there. It was gradual and it was visible.

They were able to see it and they saw it bodily. That's your third one. It was bodily. Again, that's important when you talk to Jehovah's Witnesses.

They saw his ascension. They can see it with their eyes. That's why it wasn't something that happened so fast that they couldn't recognize who he was.

The ascension was gradual, visible, bodily, and into the clouds.

That's important because that's how he's going to return. Oh, I told you that there was a question we're going to come to. Thank you. There's a question that we're going to come to.

And that was this. When it comes to the resurrection, when people try to argue the body was stolen, it was a myth story, it was a hallucination.

When they try to give these arguments, there's one question to ask. The question is this.

Where's the body? I mean, the Jews did not want to have this

Christianity. Remember, it was a sect of Judaism that was causing division. And the

Jewish leaders were not in control of it. And they did not like that politically. And so it was a problem.

They would have found the body. They knew which tomb it was. I can't even speak.

I'm trying to talk too fast. In Joseph's tomb. They just had to go to Joseph of Arimathea's tomb.

And they would have found the body. Go and look. All you had to do is find the body. Okay? If the disciples stole it, okay, would they die for a lie?

Go find the body. Oh, it was the wrong tomb. Really? You went to the wrong tomb? Then go to the right tomb and find the body.

It was a hallucination? Go find the body. Where's the body? If you cannot find the body of Jesus Christ, it's because He rose from the dead.

Bodily. Body and soul. Okay? That's why that question is important.

Because when they try to argue these false views, just go, where's the body then? Where's the body? With each one of those arguments, just, where's the body?

All right? All right. Next, we will look at letter D, is

His mediation. We've already looked at this passage, and that is that there is one man, one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. Okay? So, we don't have time to go into that here, but just suffice it to say, when you look at that,

Christ's ministry was at the right hand of the Father, the purpose is to be our mediator.

He mediates for us. Okay? Lastly, His revelation.

This is the second coming from heaven. In this lesson, we're going to look at it in a lot more detail when we look at the study of eschatology, which is the study of end times.

Okay? We're going to deal with that in more detail then. So, I'm going to save the time until then to look at it then.

All right? So, I hope that you do go to the

Facebook page, and we post some thought questions for you throughout the week. Answer those.

Now, we want to encourage you next week, we're going to be looking at the ministry of Christ, and we're going to look into that in detail, in more detail.

We saw some things already, but I want to say to you before we close, we always want to encourage you with different things, and that is to encourage people.

Now, I know some of you tune out at this point. Don't tune out, because this is going to be very important.

All right? There are some who we want to always be encouraging others.

You know that with this show, every week, we want to put a person for you to go and encourage.

This week, we have someone that I do not know personally. I cannot vouch for his theology.

I'm not super familiar with it, but from what I have gathered, he is a brother in Christ who needs our encouragement, but it is going to be hard for you to encourage him.

You may be able to encourage his family, but you can pray for him.

I may not pronounce his name right, but I'm going to try. It's Pastor Saeed Abini, I believe that's how to pronounce it.

This pastor, in the year 2000, he was an Iranian. He was,

I believe, born in Iran. He was born as a Muslim. In the year 2000, he converted to Christianity.

He had come to America. He had married an American and became an American citizen and became a pastor.

As a pastor, he had gone back and forth between America and Iran, but in his last trip this year, he was pulled off of a bus and held in a house arrest.

They have not released the charges. He is not being given legal counsel. They refuse to recognize his

American citizenship, even though he has gone from America to Iran and back and forth on an

American passport. He is being held with a sentence that he will be sentenced next week on January 21st, one week from the recording that we're doing.

And that is why he needs our prayer. Now, we take for granted, those of us in America, are very comfortable in our

Christianity, but here is a brother who is, as was most recently reported, as I was told, was that he was told by the guards that he is going to hang for his

Christianity next week. Now, would you be willing, knowing that you might hang for your faith, to encourage others at Christmas?

I believe that we have a link that will be on the Striving for Eternity group page on Facebook to his

Facebook page where his letter, his Christmas letter to his family was to almost encourage them.

What would you be thinking in his situation? Now, how to pray for this brother?

Now, we want to pray that he would be released and returned with his family. Clearly, that's what we'd all like to see.

I want to encourage you to be praying for God's will for him and his family.

I want you to be praying for them. They need your prayers this week. Go to their

Facebook page. It'll be linked in the Striving for Eternity Academy's Facebook page, and I want you to go there on their wall and encourage the family.

Let them know you are praying for them, okay? Let them know you're praying specifically for him this week.

Be an encouragement. Read through some of the things that are up there and find out about him, and I want you to do that.

I'm going to tell you why I want you to do that, because we don't often, many of us, have to suffer and be persecuted.

This guy is being beaten daily from what I saw in the reports for his faith.

He needs to be prayed for that he would be strengthened and bold for his faith like Paul, like Silas, like Timothy, like many others, like many martyrs of the faith who in the face of death stood up and faced it so that they would honor

Christ. I could only pray that you and I could do such things. So pray for this pastor.

He needs our prayer this week that he'd be strengthened in the faith so that those guards who are beating him and maybe even hang him would turn to Christ.

From what I'm understanding, that's his prayer. That was Paul's prayer. We may never have to suffer that, but I want to encourage you to think about it, praying for him this week in that way.

All right, and so we encourage you to come back next week. We'll look into the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. We're going to see some of the things there and want to encourage you also, lastly, one last thing is that the

Super Bowl outreach, it is coming up quick and I have two spots on my team left, only two from what

I'm told. You want to be on my team? This is your last chance. We have the team is formed and I don't know if they've actually closed it out yet.

I think we might have one more week, but go to the superbowloutreach .org and enroll.

Mention somewhere you want to be on my team and they'll put you on my team and then you can join us.

It's going to be a great outreach. I really want to encourage you. It's in New Orleans and we'll come back and give you some feedback from that.

So I want to encourage you to remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.