Hypostatic Union

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Again, I want to welcome everybody to our Wednesday night study as we continue in systematic theology.
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We are on the subject of Christology, and we are on the third part of this study, which is our study of kenosis and the hypostatic union.
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On your handout, you'll notice what the categories are that we have been looking at and are going to look at in this subsection of systematic theology, which is called Christology.
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Christology is, again, the study of Jesus Christ.
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Our categories are his preexistence and eternality, which we have already looked at.
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We are in the portion called truly God and truly man, and in that we are looking at his kenosis, which is the emptying of himself, and the hypostatic union.
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In the weeks ahead, we are going to look at peccability versus impeccability, his earthly life and ministry, his offices, and his present ministry and future work.
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Now, if you were not here last week, I just want to make it to where you don't go home with a handout that has a giant blank at the top.
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The word kenosis comes from the word in Philippians chapter 2, which is the word for emptying.
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The Bible says that though he was in the form of God, that he made himself nothing by taking on the form of a servant.
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And in that phrase, when it says he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, we talked about last week what that means, and by extension, what that does not mean.
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And what is it that we said that he did not empty himself of? He did not empty himself of deity.
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Jesus did not stop being God to become man, but he remained truly God and adopted or took on a human nature.
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You say, well, how do you know? I mean, there's a lot of guys out there would argue, and I didn't get to this last week, a lot of guys out there would argue, well, Jesus did give up some of his divinity to become human.
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What would you respond to them? I would respond to them simply by saying, has he still given up that divinity? Does he remain only partially divine? Because his humanity is still there.
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His humanity, he didn't stop being human at the resurrection.
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In fact, his hypostatic union, what we're going to talk about tonight, that the union of the divine and the human still exists today.
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Jesus is still the God-man right now.
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And so if he gave up divinity in coming to earth, is it still given up? If he took his divinity and did away with it, is it still done away with? You see where the issue is.
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If he couldn't be both God and man while here, can he be both God and man while there? I contend to you, he must be both, and he is both God and man here and there.
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And so that is the finalization of last week's look at the subject of kenosis.
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And tonight we're going to talk about how that operates in the sense of how the church has understood what we mean when we use the phrase, truly God and truly man.
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In our workbook, well not workbook, but our theology textbook that I'm using as the foundation of this class, the Moody Handbook of Theology by Paul Innes, he quotes the following in regard to the hypostatic union.
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He said the hypostatic union is the two natures of Christ, and they are inseparable, excuse me, let me start again, the two natures of Christ are inseparably united without mixture or loss of separate identity.
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Christ remains forever the God-man, fully God and fully man, two distinct natures in one person forever.
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So in your handout, I've given you a breakdown of the understanding of the hypostatic union.
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I've given you an A, B, and C.
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You all see that? Well I'm going to give you the answers now to the A, B, and C so that we can talk about them.
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Letter A, Christ has two distinct what? What was the answer? Natures, that's right.
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So you can put that down if you'd like.
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Christ has two distinct natures.
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Two distinct natures.
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You say, I tell you what, markers are at a premium in this place, brother.
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This one works.
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He has two distinct natures.
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You say, well prove that from the Bible.
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All right, I'm going to prove it from the Bible.
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You ready? Jesus is called God in several places in Scripture.
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Probably the most common that we would look at would be John chapter 1, verse 1, though our Jehovah Witness friends would take quite issue with us using John 1, 1.
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But we know that it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was what? A God? No, it doesn't say it was A God.
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That's what the Jehovah Witnesses Bible will say.
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If you ever see a Bible that says, New World Translation, that is a Jehovah Witness, and you know what I found out this week? The Seventh-day Adventists have their own Bible called the Clear Word Translation.
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And it includes things like Sabbath and stuff where it's part of a study I'm doing for something else.
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I don't know, they have a whole translation that's dedicated to the SDA.
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Now I'm not saying the SDA is like the JW, I don't mean to be all anachronistic on you, but it's interesting whenever you have a group that needs to re-translate to help reinforce what their teaching is.
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And so you've got with the Jehovah Witnesses an entire Bible that's translated to obscure the deity of Christ.
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And it says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was A God.
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And they say, Jesus is A God.
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I say, it's impossible, he can't be A God.
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They say, why can't he be A God? Because Isaiah says, before me there was no God formed, and after me will there be no God formed.
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There is no other God except Yahweh.
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And so if Jesus is A God, and he's not THE God, then he's not A God.
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Does that make sense? If he didn't make any before him, and if there's none before him and there's none after him, Jesus is not A God, he's THE God.
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And so Jesus is referred to as God.
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I mean, we've talked about that for several weeks.
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I don't want to reiterate all the points there.
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But the Bible also very clearly says Jesus was a man, son of man.
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That's right.
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But the one passage I have you turn in your Bibles today, turn to Luke chapter 2.
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Most of you know this verse, but I want you to see it, you know, fresh eyes and all.
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Sometimes it's good to look at them.
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Luke chapter 2 is early in the text, obviously, right after the birth of Jesus.
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It's after the situation with him in the temple.
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He's 12 years old in the temple.
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Luke chapter 2, verse 52, the very last verse of Luke chapter 2 says this, And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
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So there's four ways Jesus increased.
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He increased in wisdom and stature, favor.
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And we could say favor is then two parts with God and with man.
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So we have Jesus increasing four ways.
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He's increasing first in wisdom.
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He is increasing second in stature.
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He's increasing in favor with God and in favor with men.
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So having looked at that verse by itself, we could say that those four things cannot be talking about God.
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You say, well, are you saying Jesus isn't God? No.
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Hang with me.
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I said earlier, Jesus is fully God.
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And I believe we can prove that from the text, from several texts.
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But I'm also saying he's fully man.
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He's not just God in a shell.
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See, that was one of the early heresies.
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The idea that Christ was the God nature wrapped in flesh.
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You say, wait a minute, I've heard songs that kind of talk, I've even heard sermons.
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You know, the word became flesh.
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Yes, but it's not like you got God on the inside and the flesh on the outside.
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And that's all that is.
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There's more to you as a man or woman than flesh.
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Right.
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You're not just a meat sack.
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There's stuff on the inside, too.
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And the stuff on the inside is what? Soul.
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Now, I don't want to get too far into the tripartite distinction of man.
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And I know there are some who may argue one way or the other.
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There are some who believe in a division of man that is only two, that man is body and soul and the soul and spirit are the same.
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And there are some who take a tripartite distinction, which says his body, soul and spirit.
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And I think that we could discuss that further.
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But let me just let me simply break down what those three words are in the Bible, because Paul talks about the body, soul and spirit.
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And later in the Bible, the book of Hebrews talks about dividing soul and spirit.
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You know, the word of God is able to divide soul and spirit.
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Right.
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So there's this, you know, there's this there's there's words that are used.
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The word for body, the word soma.
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Right.
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That's the physical body.
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Greek word soma.
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Sometimes you'll see the word sark.
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Sarks is flesh.
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Flesh is bad.
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That's what we talk about, like dealing with flesh.
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Right.
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Sarks is when we're talking about the flesh, you know, battles against the spirit.
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That's not soma.
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That's the flesh.
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That's what the body is desiring.
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So there's the flesh.
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Right.
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Your body desire things.
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Right.
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You crave things.
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Right.
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That's that's sarks.
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That's flesh.
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Right.
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But the body is the body.
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Right.
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And then in the body, you've got the the the psyche or sukos in the Greek.
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The psyche is the mind.
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But then you've got the pneuma.
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Pneuma is the what? The breath.
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That's a word where we get the word air, pneumatic.
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The breath.
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Right.
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So I would say at least from a biblical linguistic standpoint, there are three different words referencing at least three different focal points.
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The body.
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The mind.
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Which let me ask you a question.
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Can the mind and the spirit be used interchangeably in scripture? There are times when we see mind or spirit and soul use interchangeably.
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Right.
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But is there a sense in which the mind can be distinct from the spirit? I think so.
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And here's my reasoning.
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I hope hopefully you're not all thinking I'm a heretic at this point.
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I have a reason for why I believe this.
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Your mind can get sick.
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And your soul still be completely whole.
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Christians get Alzheimer's disease.
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And your mind is sick.
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But your soul is still there.
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And you see the soul coming.
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People with Alzheimer's disease, oftentimes when they get a moment where the mind's working correctly, you'll see they're still their same self.
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They haven't changed personally.
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They're still them.
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Right.
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So it's not as if you're a body with a soul.
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You're a soul with a body.
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You know, it's sort of the other way around.
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Your soul has a body.
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Your soul has a mind.
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Your mind can get damaged.
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Somebody gets in a motorcycle accident, gets brain damage.
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It's still them.
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Their soul is still there.
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The soul's not damaged.
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But the brain can be damaged.
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Right.
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So that's why I do think that a distinction can be made, at least on the level of the physical.
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And somebody would say, well, OK, at that point, the mind is the soma.
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Because it's the physical.
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OK.
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All right.
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But at least we're making a distinction.
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We're starting to make a distinction now.
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Here's the part I'm trying to say.
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Jesus had soma.
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Jesus had pneuma.
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Jesus had psucca or psuche, psyche.
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Jesus had it all.
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Jesus didn't come without part that was necessary for being man.
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Right.
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And because Jesus had soma, body, he could grow in stature because that's all that means.
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He grew up.
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He didn't stay the baby in the manger.
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Right.
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He didn't stay an eternal infant.
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He grew up physically.
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So his soma increased.
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Right.
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But he didn't also stay with the mind of a baby either.
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So he grew in wisdom.
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He grew up in the sense of the psyche.
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His mind grew.
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He said, I can't understand that.
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He's the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient God.
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How can the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient God learn anything? By taking on a human nature.
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Thank you.
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You beat me by two seconds.
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By becoming a man.
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That's the only way.
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The only way the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient God can learn anything is if he takes on a nature that's human and doesn't know everything.
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Remember I told you last week there was the why, well questions? Or the well, why questions? If Jesus is God, well, why did he say he doesn't know when he's coming back? Well, here's the answer.
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Because in touching his human nature, he didn't know everything.
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Because he grew in wisdom.
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He said, now, oh brother, now you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
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No, I'm not.
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Were there times when Jesus' divine nature was on display? Remember when he met, who was it, Nathaniel? And he said, I saw you sitting under the tree.
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And I knew that here's an Israelite in which there's no guile.
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Remember that scenario? And he said, you are the Messiah.
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You have to, because you knew things that nobody else knows.
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When that woman came to him at the well, and she says, you know, I'm not, what is it, I'm not married.
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Yeah, yeah, the man you're with now is not your husband.
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And what did she say? You're the son of God.
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You know things.
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And she went and told the whole city, this man knows everything about me.
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So we see the divine nature making an expression through the veil.
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We talked about the veil last week, talked about being wrapped in clay, right? We talked about that.
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But we see the divine nature making expressions.
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And there was a sermon on the Mount of Transfiguration.
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Jesus there, Peter, James, and John.
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And for a moment, the veil is completely pulled back.
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And the light of His countenance is amazing and majestic.
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And to the point that they fell down.
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And Peter said, let me build three tents.
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One for you, one for Moses and Elijah.
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What does the text say? Because he didn't know what to say.
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What do you say to that? When you realize you're in the presence of God.
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You don't know what to say.
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Let me build you a house.
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Let me do something for you.
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I got to do something.
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You're God and I am not.
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And I'm here in your presence.
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I got to do something.
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All right.
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So that's, again, I look at Luke 2.52.
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I think it speaks so much to this as to what I'm trying to argue for here.
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Because I, again, just remind you.
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I am not arguing that Jesus did not have an omniscient nature.
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What I'm arguing is that Jesus had two natures.
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One that was fully God.
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And one that was fully man.
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And the fully man nature spoke as a man.
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Lived as a man.
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Learned as a man.
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Amazing.
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That's how you deal with the people who say, when they come to your house.
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And they say, well, Jesus couldn't be God.
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Because he prayed.
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Who would he pray to if he was God? Was he talking to himself? Well, you got to understand the Trinity for that.
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Because you say, no.
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Because Jesus is talking to the Father.
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And the Father is not the Son.
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The Son is not the Spirit.
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Right? So that answers that question.
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But it also lends to the idea, why would Jesus need to pray? Because men need to pray.
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And Jesus is a man.
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Men pray out of necessity to the God that is necessary.
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And God is necessary because Jesus is man.
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Fully.
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See, that's the part.
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Here's the word that kills us.
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Fully.
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Right? Because people say, yeah, Jesus is God-man.
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No, fully.
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Yeah, he's God-man.
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No, fully God.
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Fully man.
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Am I being overdramatic? Could you really be on this subject? I feel like maybe I start stomping, hitting the pulpit.
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I don't even have a pulpit.
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This, to me, is the highlight of studying Christology.
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Because when you think about Jesus as God, it eliminates some of the...
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You start thinking, like, well, maybe he didn't have the man things.
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But he did.
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He had all the man things, too.
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Except sin.
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But sin is not...
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Remember, sin is not essential to being human.
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How do we know that? Because Adam was made before sin entered the world.
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So if sin was necessary to being human, Adam couldn't have been fully human.
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And yet he was prior to sin.
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Right? So sin is not necessary to being human.
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So when the Bible says Jesus was every way like us except without sin, it doesn't mean that that takes away something of his humanity.
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It doesn't.
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Because sin is not necessary to humanity.
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Sin is necessary to humanity's destruction.
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Not the same thing.
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All right, so Christ has two distinct natures, right? Second thing on your list, there is no mixing or...
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And here's a kind of a strange word, intermingling.
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There is no intermingling or mixing of these natures.
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So why would you have to say that? Because when we say Christ is the God-man, we are not saying that some of the God part got mixed in with some of the man part, and we end up with a third being, a third type.
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In fact, this is an ancient heresy.
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I don't really remember the name of it, but I'll try to remember to bring it next week.
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There was an ancient heresy that said that Jesus had two natures, but they just got mixed up.
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So he becomes a third type of being.
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He's not really God.
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He's not really man.
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He's the God-man mix, right? It's like you take all those fruits and you put them in your blender and you make a smoothie.
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Jesus is the God-man smoothie.
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He's the mix.
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That's not what we're saying.
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God-man smoothie, that...
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Nestorian, thank you.
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I knew I just couldn't pull a Nestorian.
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The Nestorians taught that he was a single nature mixture of God and man.
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And the church rejected that because, again, it would have made him neither truly God or truly man.
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That's the issue.
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That's the defense, right? You say, well, why would you even need to defend against that? Because when you mix them up, you make a third type of being, like a theoanthropic being, neither theos nor anthropos, neither God nor man, but a third hybrid.
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He's not a hybrid.
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Not a hybrid.
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Third thing, although having two natures, he is one person.
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Although having two natures, he is one person.
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You say, well, okay, why does that matter? Let's go back to the Trinity.
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Yeah, you're ahead of me, I think.
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Because what does the Trinity say? The Trinity says God is one in essence and three in what? Three in person.
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He's one in essence or nature.
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I like the word stuff.
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I know it's so cheesy to use that word stuff.
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But when I say all the stuff that makes up God, there's only one stuff.
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There's not a bunch of stuff.
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In fact, there's an old doctrine, the simplicity of God, that God is not simply the sum of all these different parts, but God is a simple being, and not that he's simplistic, but that he is one being, not components.
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Like we're a complex being.
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I got all these components that are sort of mixed in, right? Your hand has several hundred different parts that sort of all fit together to do what the hand does.
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God is simple in that he is one in his essence.
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Not a component part, but one.
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And yet that oneness is shared.
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Love the word share as much as I love the word stuff.
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All the stuff is shared by three persons who are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct, meaning they can have relationship in the stuff.
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They can have relationship with one another.
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The father can love the son.
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You know, love, people say, well, the reason why God created men was because he was lonely.
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No.
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First of all, loneliness in and of itself wouldn't qualify to describe a being who in himself needs nothing.
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That's part of how we understand God, is that he is absolutely self-sustaining.
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Yeah, he didn't need anything.
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So if we say he's lonely, that means he's needy, right? And if he's needy, he's not God.
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But on the other half of that, he's not lonely because the father and the son and the spirit are forever in union with one another, able to relate to one another, and love one another.
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Love didn't come into existence when God created the world.
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Love, the Bible says God is love.
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Why? Because he's always been love, because he's always had a relationship of love in himself.
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And it's not just like me.
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I love myself with probably a very unhealthy, ungodly love, but God loves himself in a righteous way.
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Hey, I ain't the only one here.
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Don't be, sit there like a bunch of pious gasbags.
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I know, don't you, don't you do it.
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Yeah, we love ourselves with an ungodly love.
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Brother, you got those things for me? Yeah, they're sitting on your desk.
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I didn't want to interrupt you.
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It's good to see you.
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God bless you.
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This is Pastor of Vision Baptist Church.
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He dropping something off for me.
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My prayer is to God with sovereign grace.
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I understand that y'all lost a matriarch and that's always a hard thing, and Vision Baptist Church will be in prayer for you.
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I want to thank y'all real quick.
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I don't mean to interrupt, but what y'all did by donating to my sister, who was the owner of the trailer that burned to the ground, you made my sister cry because she didn't have the deductible and she lost, all the furniture did not belong to the family that was living there, belonged to her.
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So she lost everything.
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And when I told her that a church that I don't even go to, that I visited a couple times, gave a sizable donation, she literally was blown away.
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Bible says to the least of these is how you treat me most.
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So I want to thank you for being just God's divine inspiration and the body of Christ, and the words of St.
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Augustine, preach the gospel daily, use words if necessary.
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Thank you guys.
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Love you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Brother, I see you.
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Yeah, man.
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God bless you.
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Had to rethink where I'm at, just for a second.
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Christ has two natures, no mixing or intermingling of the natures.
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Though he has two natures, there's only one person.
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In the Trinity, there's only one son.
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It's not the son who's divine and the son who's human, but it's one son who is fully divine and fully man.
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I want to move on from that right now because there is an important distinction that we need to consider among the reformers.
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You say, why does this even matter? Well, it matters because among Luther and Calvin, there was a difference on this issue which led to a difference over the doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
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Here's the issue.
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Roman Catholics believe that when the Lord's Supper is consecrated by the priest, that it becomes the body of Christ physically, that it takes on the qualities of being truly blood and truly body, even though it maintains the look of bread and wine.
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They talk about that as a second miracle, that it maintains the look of bread and wine, but it truly becomes the body and blood of Christ.
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It's called transubstantiation.
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The belief that the substance changes while the accidents or the look of it stays the same.
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Now, before we even deal with that, here is what is necessary for that to be true.
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Jesus' body has to become omnipresent.
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What have we been talking about this whole time? Jesus, God, and man are two distinct natures.
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Here's the thing.
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I stand with Calvin, not just because I tend to do that, but I stand with Calvin because Calvin said, no, Jesus Christ as the man is at the right hand of the Father, and that his body is not omnipresent.
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Now, his nature as divine is omnipresent, which is why he could see Nathaniel under the tree, which is why he knew that woman had all those husbands, right? This is why he's able to know things, but yet his body had to walk through Samaria.
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His body had to walk up Golgotha with the cross on his shoulders.
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His body had to move from place to place.
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And I believe his body still exists.
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Is it glorified? Yes.
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Is it different than it was? Yes.
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Is it still a man? I would say yes.
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I would argue that he remains.
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I believe he is the glorified man in the sense that I believe as his body is now is how my body will be, glorified.
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How's that going to work? I don't know.
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Well, careful to use that language only because of...
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I don't believe it's like...
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I believe it's physical.
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I believe heaven is physical.
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I don't believe that it's any type of a ethereal thing, like a spirit.
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I believe it's physical body.
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I believe when we die and are resurrected, the Bible says we are resurrected as a new creation, a new body.
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1 Corinthians 15, I'm probably going to talk about this tomorrow when I preach the funeral.
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I'm going to talk about what's the blessing.
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The blessing is the resurrection.
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If there was nothing physical about heaven, there would be no need for resurrection because spiritually we're already there, right? Do we all believe that when you are absent from the body, you're present with the Lord spiritually? So what's the need of the resurrection? The need of the resurrection is that heaven is physical.
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I do not believe that we're all going to be sitting on clouds, strumming, you know, ethereal harps, like little cherubim, you know, that we see these little pictures of little angels.
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No, I believe there's a lot more...
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I believe that heaven forward is going to be a lot more like Eden backwards than we really understand in the sense that it's physical, in the sense that we will eat, and we will have a life that's different, but still human.
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I don't cease being human.
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Neither did Christ cease being human when he went to the right hand of the Father.
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He said, okay, now we're really...
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because I just broke into 15 areas of eschatology that we're not even due yet.
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But the idea though is this, Calvin and Luther differed because Luther believed, and Lutherans still believe, that the bread and the cup are the physical body and blood of Jesus.
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Even though Lutherans didn't hold to transubstantiation, they didn't hold to the view of the Catholics, they still held to what's called real presence.
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Jesus is really present in the bread.
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He's really present in the cup.
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If you hold to real presence, then what you have to then say is the body of Jesus, the body of Jesus, the Soma, is omnipresent.
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You see where the issue comes up.
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In fact, it was...
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I believe Calvin made reference to the Council of...
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What was the Council of Chalcedon? Let me look this up real quick.
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Yeah, no.
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Let's see.
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It was...
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Yes, Council of Chalcedon happened in 451.
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So the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
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When was the first major ecumenical church council? Anybody know? 325.
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Well, 325, you had the Council of Nicaea.
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Right? After the Council of Nicaea...
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And by the way, the reason for the Council of Nicaea was the question of whether or not Jesus was fully God.
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Because there was a man named Arius who was teaching that Jesus was not truly God or was not fully God, but that he was of a similar nature to God, but not of the same nature.
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That was the argument of Arius.
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So they had a council.
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Arianism was condemned.
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What we call Nicene Orthodoxy.
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You ever heard of the Nicene Creed? Churches will quote the Nicene Creed.
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That came out of the Council of Nicaea.
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After that, some other councils arose because there was what was called the Arian Ascendancy.
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The Arians, even though they were condemned, didn't just go away.
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They didn't say, oh, well, I lost.
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They throw a ball down and go home.
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No, they didn't stop.
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In fact, the son of Constantine became himself an Arian and tried to lead the whole group, the whole world in that direction.
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There was a point at which Athanasius is fighting against this.
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Athanasius is the Bishop of Alexandria and he's there fighting against it.
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And there became a Latin phrase, Athanasius Contramundum, which means Athanasius against the world because there was a point at which he was the only one, it seemed, who was actually standing for Nicene Orthodoxy.
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He was standing for Jesus as fully God and fully man.
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And he stood.
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That's why I say Athanasius is a hero of the faith because he stood for truth in the midst of the world going in the wrong direction.
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Well, after several councils, a council arose called the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
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I don't want to go through all the ones in between.
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But the Council of Chalcedon dealt not with the Trinity or the issue of was Jesus God, but the issue of how Jesus can be God and man at the same time.
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So what was the issue of Chalcedon was the hypostatic union.
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The issue of Chalcedon was the question of the hypostatic union.
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You say, and here's the thing, before I even go any further.
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Can you imagine if we cared enough about this today to actually be hosting councils on the issue? Doctrine has become, and now I don't want to chase a rabbit too far.
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Doctrine has become so unimportant.
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The people, they don't care what they sing.
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They don't care what's preached.
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All they care is I feel good and I don't have any accountability.
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Is that too hurtful? Am I being mean? That's what it is.
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I want to go somewhere that makes me feel good and I'm not accountable for anything.
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I can do what I want.
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Nobody's going to say anything.
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But when I go, I'm going to be told I'm great.
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Babylon Bee, which is a Christian humor site, put up a thing the other day.
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It said a 30-minute sermon about how great this woman is and now she doesn't understand why she needs Jesus.
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Well, of course, if I spend 30 minutes telling you how great you are and then I tell you you need Jesus, you're going to say, Why? I'm great.
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So the Council of Chalcedon produced a creed, the Chalcedonian Creed, and I want to read it to you.
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It's not long, but it deals with what we talked about tonight.
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It sort of brings into focus what I've been saying to demonstrate that this isn't just Keith Foskey's idea of what the Bible says about this.
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This is what the early church, having spent not decades, but centuries, dealing with heresy and dangerous false teaching.
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And by the way, they didn't make Jesus God, don't listen to Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code, garbage.
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They didn't change the Bible.
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Constantine didn't choose which books go in the Bible.
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That's all baloney.
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It is.
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It's garbage.
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You read the Da Vinci Code, it says in the very beginning, this book is based on historical facts.
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Hogwash.
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It's absolute hogwash.
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It's garbage, garbage.
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Is that good enough? Okay.
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Having said that, the church did have the responsibility of affirming orthodoxy.
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Remember what orthodoxy is? Straight teaching.
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The word orthos were the word orthodontics, right? Your teeth are all crooked and they go into orthodox.
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They straighten them out.
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Orthodontia is straightening your teeth out.
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Orthodoxy is straightening your teaching out.
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It's orthodox.
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It's straight.
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It's right.
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And so this is what the church affirmed is right about Jesus.
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The confession of the council is as such, Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father as regards His Godhead, and at one time of one substance with us as regards His manhood.
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Like us in all respects apart from sin, as regards His Godhead begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards His manhood begotten for us men, and for our salvation of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God, the Word, Lord Jesus Christ, even as the prophets from the earliest time spoke of Him, and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught us, and the creed of our fathers has handed down to us." Now, that's not Scripture, but that's truth, and all truth is God's truth.
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So we stand on the truth of who God is.
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We stand on the truth of who Jesus is.
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He is truly God and truly man.
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Not a mix, not a third category, but a perfect of both in one.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for this time to study.
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I pray that this has been an opportunity of genuine growth for all of us, moving closer in our understanding of who Christ is, moving closer in our understanding of His nature, both as truly God and truly man.
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Father, in the weeks ahead, as we look at His ministry, as we look at His sinlessness, as we look at Him as prophet, priest, and king, may we never veer, not even for a second, from the understanding that He is both God and man.
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And it's in His name we pray.