The Mystery of Incarnation (5 of 9) — Art Katz

The Value of Every Remaining Day

And so I'm jealous over the days that remain to us, looking to the Lord earnestly, that not one of those days should be misspent, and not knowing one day from the other, not knowing today what's tomorrow, not even sure about today.

But it's been brought to my attention that when I read something the last time, that I kind of looked down, my voice was muffled, and I mumbled or I read too speedily. So don't let me get away with that.

Throw spitballs. Don't let me get away, you know, let, hey, two fast cats, go slow. What are you saying? If it's worth reading, it's worth hearing, or else don't read at all. And I know that reading is usually deadly.

So it takes a special animation, a special alertness. And I'm going to begin by reading something this morning from a source that, as you know, speaks volumes to me, and it's Spurgeon again. And it's out of his devotional book somewhere in June or something like that on the humanity of Jesus.

The Mystery of Christ's Two Natures

It's a remarkable statement. He's one of the rare souls that would ever see something like this and express it as beautifully as he does. And it's right in on the subject of the humanity of Jesus, the remarkable mystery of the union of what the theologians have called two persons, the Greek word, because they couldn't find an appropriate vocabulary to encompass the mystery.

And so they talk about the two natures. I'm sorry, did I say two persons? Two natures in one person, because they had to defend the deity of Jesus while at the same time not allowing his humanity to lapse, because that is as important in the issue of atonement as is his deity.

And the two great controversies and heresies of that time, one is called Docetism, D-O-C-E-T-I-S-M, denies the humanity of Jesus, that God could not himself take upon himself the form of a man.

It's totally incompatible with deity. And actually dishonors God. And then the other tendency was to celebrate the humanity at the expense of deity, that Jesus was all man and that the only deity that he acquired was a kind of spirituality, an increase of spirituality that became like God, but was not in fact God.

So the early church was battling against these two threats, one from the one side, one from the other, that they saw as being principal threat to their faith itself, that the faith rests upon the union of the two natures, both divine and human.

And though it's a mystery and unprecedented in history, still it was a fact that though they could not explain it, they were obliged to defend it. And so there were a series of church councils. And one day, if you have the time and want to look them up, they are of interest in the fourth and fifth centuries in a Greek environment, Hellenistic, Greek philosophical environment.

So here's a Hebraic faith being defended by Greek mindsets of a philosophical kind that are rational, have to find terms that are appropriate to a mystery. And so they invented the two natures, but are unified in one person.

Jesus is one person. But how to explain that union, they did not know. And in fact, they said it's not to be explained. It's in the realm of mystery. So that's where we are. But every writer that's worth his salt makes this clear that this issue of begins with an I.

Incarnation is the issue of the faith. Lose this and you lose Christianity as Christianity. OK, so we're exploring, we're feeling our way through something that greater minds than us have allowed to rest in the realm of mystery.

And maybe it's not to be defined, but to be appropriated. So here's a spurge on the subject of the humanity of Jesus from June 18th, where I say that I've not heard nor read anything like it, which so much encourages a line of consideration in me that I think appropriate to the church.

By the way, are you doing any writing lately? Are you being arrested by certain themes and readings and that you'll sit down at your typewriter or your computer and you'll compose something about it, just a summary of your own thoughts as it have as it is provoked by what you're reading?

I recommend that highly. We should all be reading, writing and studying to show ourselves approved workmen not needing to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of God. We need to benefit by by others who have given themselves to these great questions.

So I was moved by what I read. And this is what I wrote because of it, so that what the Spurgeon cites and his theme was from Isaiah 54, 5, in extolling all that we inherit through Christ needs to be brought to the level of consciousness and faith.

Christ's Humanity as an Inexhaustible Treasure

So here's Spurgeon, I'm quoting Spurgeon. Jesus hath no dignity which he will not employ for our exaltation and no prerogative which he will not exercise for our defense. His fullness of Godhead is our unfailing, inexhaustible treasure house.

His manhood also, which he took upon him for us, is ours. And I put that also in a box in all its perfection. Jesus is an acquisition. Jesus is a legacy. Jesus is all in all. In him is the fullness of the Godhead bodily, but also in his humanity is a remarkable resource because he has passed through the gamut of anything and everything that pertains to human existence in life.

Yes, he was never married. So how could he know about the intricacies and the difficulties of this most complex and demanding of all relationships? And yet he speaks of it because though he had not that relationship, he was in a knit of relationship in which the constituent elements that make for marriage were experienced by him.

He passed through everything in his humanity. I'm very responsive to this because even as an atheist, I wanted the same for myself. I wanted to be man universal. And so when the Korean war was on, I was hoping that I would be drafted.

I did not want to be exempt from that segment of human experience called military. And though I had a heart murmur and they made me jump and prance and tested and retested, I finally made it with a sigh of relief.

I wanted to be in. And indeed, those two years were a decisive turning point in my life, all the more that I was not sent to Korea, but to Germany, where as a Jew, I bristled and yet being there, it proved an experience that invaluable.

But I wanted to, what does it mean to be in the military? What does it mean to be under orders? I wanted to taste all of universal experience to be the complete man. In fact, my frustration that broke me as a humanist was the inability to do just that.

I would hear conversations in the elevator going up and they would be talking about Van Gogh and the impressionist artists or some composer, some book, or I'd go to a library, I'm staggered by the volumes.

I wanted to absorb it all. Did you ever read that poem? Is it by Robert Frost about two paths in the wilderness lay and I had to take the one or the other. And I always wondered that as I took the one what's on the other.

I was chafed by finiteness. I wanted both paths and out of necessity being man, you're confined to one, but I wanted all. So in a sense, we have all in Jesus. His experience, his life, brief though it was, is all encompassing and he passed through every essential issue that we will ever face in a long lifetime.

He is the man, Christ Jesus. His humanity is remarkable and as superb as is his deity. And what Spurgeon is saying is that we should obtain the full benefit, not only what has come to us through being the son of God, but being also the son of man, which title he used more frequently than the other.

So he is not he's the son of man. What does that mean? Well, in today's conversation, it means he is essential man, that whatever man is in humanity, Jesus was and is and remains. He didn't drop off his humanity with his resurrection.

He was resurrected in his humanity and is right now at the throat of heaven in his human body. And he will forever be in that stature, status of the God-man that's fixed eternally, which is a statement from the father that the humanity of Jesus was not just a temporary expedient to serve the purposes of atonement, though it did that.

But that is an enduring and an eternal stature and condition that is pleasing in God's sight and will continue forever. That's how much God celebrates the humanity of Jesus, because there's something about a man made in God's image that is precious.

And can God really be known except that he's manifested in man? So Jesus had no dignity, which he will not employ for our exaltation when he humbled himself and opened himself to catch the full gamut through which all of mankind passes, no matter what their race, their background, their history.

And he would suffer in that and be accused in that being a wine bibber and a glutton and all the kinds of things that he suffered. He opened himself because he knew that we would receive the benefit and all of the subsequent generations of that through which he has passed.

It would not be lost. This is a remarkable thought, not only for Jesus, but for us that I mentioned sometime last week, that our human experience does not go down the drain. Though we may have we may forget it and we have may have moved on from it to something else.

The essential realities through which we have passed have an ongoing consequence, in some ways, transmuted and communicated to others, our own children, fellowship. It becomes embodied in us. It's not something that occurs and is dismissed and forgotten.

I like that because I think life is too valuable just to serve the purpose of a moment and then lose its validity. But that if it serves significant purposes, it has every right to continue in some way to be effectual in the in the expression that is pleasing to the Lord and who has given those given us those experiences, even before we were believers.

Human Experience as Preparation and Legacy

Our career, merchant seaman at the age of 16 with a bunch of toughs who were just as soon cast me over over the side as have me there. The drunken Swedish anti-Semite who was the bosun's mate, which was like master sergeant who would have preferred me dead than alive and would set me up for missions like tying up the two ton block and tackle that had broken loose in a great storm where we were going back and forth like this, where water was coming into the smokestack.

Here's this kid from Brooklyn, naive, poetic, romantic, you know, wanting life experience is being sent up with a rope to fix that block and tackle from swinging wildly doing damage. It was really intended for my destruction, but I survived it because the God whom I did not know was there with me and guarding and watching one whom he knew wouldn't one day be brought into the faith and into sonship.

So all of our experiences, the things which we have passed, even in our stupidity, even in our foolishness, there is some merit, some value, if nothing more than to warn others that needs to be retained.

We need to cherish our experience, cherish our human life. And if our life is worth cherishing and has value by virtue of the diversity of our experience, what shall we say about Jesus's human life? And that's what Spurgeon is saying here, that he is an unfailing and inexhaustible treasure house.

His fullness, his manhood also, which he took upon him for us is ours also in all its perfection. To us, our gracious Lord communicates the spotless virtue of a stainless character. To us, he gives the meritorious efficacy of a devoted life.

On us, he bestows the reward procured by obedience of mission and incessant service. His life, our covering beauty, his character, our ornaments and jewels, the superhuman meekness of his death, our boast and glory.

And more than that, because Paul says, have this mind in you, which was in him. So he's more than just an example. What Spurgeon is saying is that that very meekness by which he did not count himself, though equal with God, but emptied himself of the prerogatives is available to us.

That we don't become meek and humble by principle, we become it by acquisition. Humility is God. Jesus manifested that in his humanity. And Spurgeon is saying that there's a way in which we can appropriate the meekness of the Lord into our own being and to our own character.

And that is part of our inheritance, a part of our legacy, though he expressed it in his humanity. Because God is always meek, this is God's character. What Jesus did was explicate and demonstrate what was always true of God.

That's why he said, if you see me, you see the father. Why do you ask, show me now the father? Have I not been with you so long that you don't see him? All my conduct, all my actions, my speaking is the father.

This is this is very God. God is meek, you guys. Humility is divine. And the only way we can get it is by appropriation of taking in and in union with this Lord who made it manifest in his own life and walk.

That's why anyone who attempts to affect a humility that is not taken out from in union with the one who is this is immediately branded as phony. Is there anything more fraudulent than a humanly affected humility?

We had a brother who used to call that salesman's humility, that's selfie facing. Well, you know me, I'm just I don't expect me to speak publicly. I'm just that makes you gag. It's an affectation. It's a put on for avarice, for gain.

But the humility of God is what he is in himself. This is his intrinsic nature and being. And we would not have known it or even expected that God, who is the creator of the heavens and the earth and the universe of universes, is by nature humble.

That this is God's character, maybe his essential character. And Jesus demonstrated that. And Paul says, have this mind in you, which was in him. We would not even be inspired to consider it if he himself had not demonstrated it.

This is our legacy, our inheritance. This is the language that Spurgeon uses, of course, is flowery. Our ornaments and jewels, the superhuman meekness of both our boast and glory, all his thoughts, actions, emotions, utterances, miracles and intercessions were for us.

That remarkable statement, all his thoughts, emotions, actions, utterances, miracles and intercessions were for us. He trod past tents of tread, the road of sorrow on our behalf and made over to us as his heavenly legacy, the full results of all the labors of his life.

Think of that. Wouldn't you like to leave a legacy like that to your children or to the church, that all the labors of your life are not in vain, though you didn't see the fruit of them while you were laboring?

In fact, most often you will not see. That's why Paul has to encourage us to be assured your labors are not in vain. Why should we be assured? Because we're not going to see the evidences that they are taking hold, that something is taking place.

More often, there's people who look at you like you're a freak or yawn or turn away or be offended. But be assured your labors are not in vain. And Spurgeon is saying about Jesus that we receive and can receive the full legacy of the results of all the labors of his life.

That's remarkable. It doesn't mean that we need to know them in detail. Most of them are not recorded because of all the things that he said and did were written. The world would not be great enough to contain the book.

How then can we receive the legacy of all his labors when we don't know of them? That's not the way you receive it by that kind of knowing. You receive it by impartation. You receive it by union. You receive it by oneness.

If he's in us to will it to do of his good pleasure. If we can say for me to live as Christ, when that Christ that is living in you is the one who performed all those labors and said all those things.

He comes complete with the whole resonance of a life fully lived in the totality of his humanity as true man. That's what these Greek councils are true man, true God. This is man and he lived that full human life and we are the beneficiaries by faith to believe for this and to receive this.

And you know for me, one of the most impressive testimonies that this is true, but I can't find any scripture that says this, is Spurgeon himself. Think of the selections I read this morning at the prayer time, last night's devotional and this morning's.

Anyone who could write two such statements like that ought to retire. He can put his pen down. He said enough for the rest of his life. They were golden. They were resplendent. They were poetic. They were deep.

They were encouraging. They were a glimpse of eternity to come that would encourage us in this life. How did he know that? And he knew it from his earliest believing on. So I'm saying that Spurgeon, what we read in Spurgeon, is not the result of a long life.

He died at 57. It's the result of an appropriation of the life of another who knew heaven because he came down from it. And something was infused and taken up into the life and character of Spurgeon because of the depth of his devotional union with that God that is expressed in morning and evening in the devotional statements.

There's no other way to explain him that I can see. And that's why we prayed, Lord, if you could do this with Spurgeon, how about us? Maybe our union is not as deep with that source. Maybe we're not in the kind of constant communion in which Spurgeon was in love.

And therefore, we have not his faith. And we have not thought that the Lord's human life is a legacy that we can inherit through the things for which he has passed. And therefore, we have not appropriated it.

Faith is not some vague thing. Faith is a belief for something in particular, which evidently he had. And evidently he expresses. I'm saying, well, I'll just sum it up in one way. There's no way to understand Spurgeon as being the result of a long life of experience then expressed through his writings.

The way to really understand Spurgeon is that he had a knowledge and an inward sense of the deep things of God beyond his years and independent of his actual experience. By the appropriation of one whose experience preceded him and was communicated to him by faith, got that?

And that what was possible for Spurgeon is possible for us. So you don't have to wait a hundred years to become mature, that a young believer can obtain a maturity by the appropriation of that through which Jesus was tested and passed through his life and be communicated as a sense of things that would astonish us.

And here himself, here, that young believer will be making statements and observations and have a discernment and a sense of things that you cannot explain in terms of his years. That's the mystery of incarnation has hardly been scratched.

And God is wanting us to more than scratch, but to appropriate this remarkable legacy of what has come to us, not only for the deity of Jesus, but now especially his humanity. The full result of all the labors of his life, even his sorrows and his grief.

Sharing Christ's Sorrows and Depth of Character

Have you known that? Have you ever had a sense of inexplicable sorrow? Of an ache? Of a grief that has nothing to do with external events taking place in your life or even in the world? You just, you wake with it or it comes upon you or at a time of communion or prayer, or you just find yourself grieving, not despondent in that melancholy way that has to do with sickly personality, but the grief and sorrow of God is clean.

It's pure. And he's a man of sorrow still, and there's much for him to sorrow over and to grieve. But you know, the only fellowship that I have ever met in a 41 years in the faith that thinks like this are the sisters of Mary in Germany, the Marie and Schwestern, you know how they talk?

They commiserate with the Lord. They share his griefs and his sorrows. They don't want him to bear it alone. Can you, I mean, one of these with these women that somehow by their prayer and their empathetic relationship, they are entering his griefs and his sorrows and bearing it with him.

You know, I think they're right on. And you know, a little grief and sorrow wouldn't hurt any of us. In fact, that may be the Lord's divine antidote to the likeness that pervades the church. Our likeness is disgraceful.

All the more when we know that the word glory in Hebrew is the same word for weight, that when I break my neck to go out of my way to hear the so-called oracles of the hour, the prophets, I come away every time disappointed for the likeness that pervades the places where they're speaking, the atmosphere that they create and to which they themselves contribute.

It doesn't hurt us, especially as Americans, to have a sense of sorrow and grief. And where's our sister from Bielefeld? We'll remember, as I have mentioned before, either this week or last week, if you were not here, that when I came to Germany, to this little fellowship from which she's come, of charismatic believers, university students, who found me on the website and said, you seem to be the real thing.

You seem to be. So come and prove it. And we found three days for them, sandwiched them in between Holland and other commitments, and came late, riding hours in the back of a little car, and all cramped up, and heavy traffic.

And you know how that affects you? It's like a downer. And you come in, and the meeting has already begun, and you're late. And you come right up, and there are these kids, and they're singing their charismatic choruses, and they seem to have it together.

And then they look to me to say something. And I opened my mouth, and I said, I perceive that you lack a tragic sense of life. Poor Reggie was with me, almost fell off of his seat. My interpreter looked at me as if I'd gone bonkers.

Is that how you begin? And what does that mean? And I couldn't tell you. All I knew was that it came out of my mouth. It was not premeditated, but it was the choice, divine beginning, of confronting German young believers with the fact that they don't even reflect their own history.

It's as if the history had not taken place, and they are as impervious and as unaffected as if they had come from any country in the world, and therefore have lost the value of their own history, which would be a wonderful, tempering thing for this present generation.

We're not cut off from our fathers and from their past. We share the guilt and responsibility with them. In fact, in general, the disposition of mankind is to sweep history under the rug. We don't want to remember history, particularly painful history.

We want to go on to the bright future and not be affected by the errors of the past, when really we should benefit by the past, because some sage has said that nation that will not learn its own history is doomed to repeat it.

And indeed, Germany, I think, will. If you will forsake the gospel to the Jew, you forsake the gospel. And if you forsake the gospel, you forsake the church. And you will again create the absence of the presence that a true church of an apostolic kind would have given to the nation, in the absence of which demons and dark, demonic spirits will occupy that vacuum, because nature abhors a vacuum.

If it will not be filled by God, it will be filled by the devil. So the church has got to be the church. And the issue of the church, for the church of Germany today, is the issue of the Jew, which is in their midst.

Not just a small trickle, but a hundred to three hundred thousand strong and increasing every day. So yes, if they forfeit, they could again open the door to demonic infiltration of the kind that Nazism was.

The Church, Tragedy, and Historical Memory

Okay, are we Americans disposed to the things that are tragic? To sorrow? Is there a place for grief? Or am I just a freak? Just a voice out of an earlier generation? I ache for these missing components in our present culture, and especially in the church, because it leaves us shallow and frivolous and light.

And in fact, that's indeed the atmosphere that prevails in our churches. So I think that there's a place for the things that are tragic, for grief, for sorrow. And who passed through that? Who's the man of sorrows?

Notice the phrase, man of sorrows. It wasn't, of course, God can and does sorrow, but Jesus in his humanity was the man of sorrows. He bore our griefs. And what Spurgeon is saying, though he doesn't mention those two things, that there's a way to assimilate and take in this valence, this disposition, this resonance from the humanity of Jesus and his experience that would do us good.

We don't have to be shallow or be the necessary product of our civilization and our time. In fact, God calls us to be transcendent. The church has got to be other than the product of its time. It's got to bring eternity, eternality with it, and values of a kind that celebrate an invisible God and anticipate his coming.

So there's a place for dimensions available to us through union with Jesus, not only in his dignity, but his humanity that we have not tapped. And Spurgeon is saying it's part of our legacy. There's something God is wanting demonstrated by the church in these last days, out from our humanity.

So for us to exhibit true men, and by the way, I'm not talking about gender, this is not limited to males, true humankind, true humanity, male or female would be a grace for our age. Because all we're seeing is deformed, stunted, paper mache characters who are celebrated through public hype, what do they call that?

PR. They can take anyone and make an overnight personality. He doesn't have anything to commend them. Trump, Donald Trump, is a television star now. A nothing, a non-entity, doesn't have a thing to commend.

He's just a woman chaser. He'll marry and take off and put on wives. He can afford them, but what do they are? Sexual playthings. And he's celebrated as a personality and has his own TV programs, and I never would have watched it.

But I did catch a glimpse of a commercial for a credit card, which Donald Trump is on top of one of his buildings, holding his card, and it falls out of his hand, and topples down and falls into a garbage dump.

A bin. And the next scene is, he's hoisted over the bin, and all you see are his buttocks and his legs, and he's fishing to retrieve the card. What's the message? If Donald Trump, multi-millionaire who has everything, so covets this credit card, as to leap into the garbage bin so as to retrieve it, you need to have one also.

But he's going to carry that image into eternity. That he's willing to go into a garbage dump for a card, but how far has he been willing to go to find out the truth of life, its meaning, and the God who has given it.

This is our culture, you guys. And it's crying out for true men. Mensch, mention. See that t-shirt that I wear? Mensch. It's not a sign to the boys room. It's a word that is so choice, both in the German language and Yiddish, because Yiddish is essentially German.

The word Mensch means more than just a male. It means a man who has come of age. It means one who is responsible. One who can be counted on. One who is trustworthy. One from whom you can hear wise and sage things.

A man who has life experience, character, integrity. A mensch. Would to God that this were a model for us, that we would desire to be such, instead of the slipshod, casual, get along characters that we are and for which our wives suffer and our children.

Becoming Steadfast Through Christ's Sufferings

Let me ask you this question. The sorrows and griefs characteristic of Jesus, was it only the result of what he suffered in himself and the pain and the things that he bore? Is that what he's grieving?

Is that what he's sorrowing? It's not a personal, self-pitying thing, woe is me. He's grieving and sorrowing for the condition of the world and of men. It's godlessness. And we would do well to grieve and sorrow over exactly the same thing.

But like humility, it must not be an affectation. It's got to issue out from the very nature of the God-man himself, which Spurgeon says is available to us as legacy. And he writes, Oh, to make a full appropriation of this legacy, to bring it into our humanity, what was forged in his, as part also of the remarkable privilege which is ours by faith.

You know, I don't think that's Spurgeon. That's me. Not bad, cats. Let's hear that again. And where did I get it? And where do I have such disposition of the kind that you're hearing, which is utterly unique?

Is it just accident of history and time? Or is it that in the same way by which Spurgeon acquired a certain depth and incisiveness and intuition of things that are rare, something like that is working in me.

It's taken 76 years to get there. But this is not bad. This is me crying out after reading that part from Spurgeon. Oh, to make a full appropriation of this legacy, to bring it into our humanity, what was forged in his, as part also of the remarkable privilege which is ours by faith.

We are falling short of the glory. We had not thought that there's an appropriation available to us of dimensions in God that were wrought through the life of Jesus in his humanity that can aid and benefit our being, facilitate our maturity, and bring us to become men of full stature.

If we don't appropriate, oh how tragic, I'm crying out, if we fail to make this appropriation by faith. This is an issue of humanhood, of true humanity, which is as required and is becoming to women as to men.

In fact, maybe more becoming to women. Because remember when we read about Romans, where Paul says that even women have given over the natural use of their bodies to burnings and to illicit, I'm paraphrasing, that are disgraceful.

Why does he use that language? He doesn't begin by talking about homosexuality with men. He begins by talking about lesbianism with women. Why? Because he wants to shock us. What is the consequence of godlessness and turning away from the testimony of God and refusing to believe?

The consequence is that God abandons you to your own propensity where you forsake the natural use of your body and turn it to that which will consume you in burnings and the consequence of the sicknesses that follow.

But he begins with women, where he says even women will turn from the natural use of their bodies. Why does he say even? Because women are thought to be, and I think rightly, more sensitive and more disposed to holiness and purity than men.

So when a woman will abandon herself or be abandoned to the misuse of her own body, that's a statement of how vile sin is and what is its consequence. So yes, I'm saying men and manhood, but don't think that that limits it to the male species.

This is for all of us. So what incalculable loss, not to obtain the value of what he passed through in his own humanity as a man, in suffering, obedience, tested character, death and resurrection, and enthronement.

Is this not the fullness of the Godhead bodily, ours forever, and most richly to enjoy? The Lord passed through all of this. He's passed through rejection, suffering, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement in his humanity.

He didn't leave his body behind. It came with him and was raised and he possesses it even now. It's one with him even now. So he has passed through something in his humanity in which we can receive some measure of the benefit.

And if we do, I think we'll be less prone to be hypersensitive about ourselves and sickly in our own concern and so easy to be offended or hurt because if we have passed through some measure of his sufferings, what place then for this pouting, sickly defensiveness of our little humanity?

Just to share some measure of what he's passed through serves to nullify what would otherwise affect you. We are much too prone to our own suffering and it is exaggerated beyond its real value because we're living so close to our skin and we are so centered in ourselves and so narrow in the scope of our experience that we see ourselves at the center of the universe.

Anything that happens is only as it affects us. But if we had some union with God in his humanity who has passed through real suffering it would inure us, excuse my language, I-N-U-R-E to the kinds of things that now disturb us and are really just momentary and light.

We're missing something that God intended for our benefit and therefore we're much too partial to our own aches and pains and ailments and insults and offenses than we have any right to be. If we had passed through any measure of the sufferings of the Lord we would be immune to these petty things and be much braver and much more stalwart in what we're able to bear in this life.

Because I've seen grown men just collapse in fear military men, as we went through the lines I've shared this a number of times and the needles were poised, we got injected in both arms like pincushions and I watched men keel over fainting at the sight of a needle that was going to prick their flesh because they live so close to their flesh that their flesh is their life.

But others of us, we could be pincushions and hardly blink. Why? Because we're inured against pain we're not living in ourselves there are other dimensions that occupy our soul and it renders us relatively immune to what makes others faint.

So how are we going to be good soldiers in the last days? This is part of the provision to take his sufferings into ourselves in a way that can be appropriated by faith. You know what guys? This is the first time I have said this anywhere.

Anywhere! I've never shared this publicly. This thing has been in my briefcase from June, April of last year and this is the first time that I'm having the courage to bring it out in the subject of the mystery of incarnation the humanity as well as the deity of Jesus that we mustn't miss it because we're called to explicate and to demonstrate it.

The Father's Purpose in the Son's Suffering

What grief and sorrow through which Jesus passed was in any way inadvertent or circumstantial? Not an iota. Everything was prescribed and intended in the sovereignty of the Father through which Jesus must pass as Son of Man.

And didn't Jesus know that when he was with the Father in his pre-incarnate life and they talked together about the calling of the Son that had to be sent into the world and suffer those things. So doesn't this add a dimension of admiration for the Son of God that who was equal with the Father as deity knowing what coming into the earth would mean and taking upon himself the form of a man is yet willing to agree to do it.