Matt Slick Bible Study Phil. 2

Oh, that's right, I can turn that on, don't I?

And they can see me.

All right, here it goes.

Oh man, I don't know if that's any better or not.

Sparkle.

I was joking earlier about running for president.

President's slick.

Hey, I could do any worse than Biden is right now.

It could not.

It'd automatically be an improvement.

I blame White for the better than that idiot.

Yeah, he's, oh man, he is an idiot.

She's smart.

Yeah, she is.

My parent's border collie can do a better job.

Ooh, I see.

You're what, Ken?

Wait, what?

My parent's border collie can do a better job.

Border collie, okay.

Well, I got a cucumber plant that could do better than that.

Flopper could do a better job than Flopper.

Flopper.

Look at him over there.

Oh my God, at least he'd be a vice president.

He could be vice president.

Yeah, that's right.

We'd do any worse than Biden and Harris.

I don't know if Ken would be okay with that.

I think he'd be a total domination.

Oh, I left my hearing aids off.

Okay.

All right, we're ready.

We gotta get going.

All right, we've got 16 people in.

It's growing.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna pray.

I'm gonna go through Philippians chapter two.

And before I start, just gonna let you know, I went to open up my file on Philippians two and it was

corrupted.

So I'm like, what the heck?

And I did computer tricks, gone.

So I had to come up with something in like three minutes.

No, it was more like 30, but not very much.

But luckily or providentially, I will say that the topic we're gonna get into, I happen to know a lot about anyway, and

that's about Christology.

So we're gonna be getting into some Christology.

All right, so we'll go through that.

And so God is fortuitous for us, with us.

All right, let's pray.

Hopefully they can hear me in the room.

Brandon, God bless you.

Okay, good.

Let me know if you can hear me.

Okay, let's pray.

Lord Jesus, thank you for, just thank you Lord for tonight and for us being able to study,

still be able to gather and not be persecuted for studying your word.

And Lord, while that lasts, we give you thanks.

And we ask that you would anoint your word in our hearing, and that you would bless

us and that we'd have good time of fellowship here as we enjoy your word and each other.

We ask this Jesus, your precious name.

Amen.

Okay, there we go.

Got a phone call in while I was praying.

This guy wants to debate me on limited atonement.

He has a friend, he's been studying nothing but limited atonement to beat me.

Why don't we just have a discussion?

I don't wanna do it.

He wants to do a formal debate, I'm like.

Oh, and you're right.

Okay, Philippians two, one through 30.

We're not gonna get through the whole thing, of course.

So as I normally do, we'll just read one verse at a time and jump right in.

I was sideways and frozen, Laura, cause someone was calling me on my phone and I have the phone

is what allows me to have this microphone.

I hope you guys can hear me.

Just let me know if you can hear me.

I'm tapping, it should work.

And that's it.

All right, let's get into it.

Verse one, therefore, if there's any encouragement in Christ if there's any consolation of love, if there's any fellowship of the

spirit, if any affection and compassion, verse two, make my joy complete by being of the same

mind, maintaining the same love united in spirit and 10 on one purpose.

All right, now, so if there's any encouragement, so he's referring to something

that came before.

Now we could look back at chapter one, there's a lot there.

But, you know, mainly I think he's going through, he's referring to the immediate previous context Philippians 1, 27

through 30, which says only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ so that whether I

come and see you or remain absent I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, one mind striving

together for the faith of the gospel.

And so one spirit, one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.

He goes on, but I think this is what we have to keep in mind that he says, therefore, if

there's any encouragement in Christ.

Now that's an interesting statement, encouragement in Christ.

I'll tell you, because we go through lives and we have problems,

we have lots of problems.

And Nick and I were just talking about our son, Jacob, will be 28 in

a couple of weeks, basically.

And we lost him.

So, you know, we had a funeral and everything and the presence of the Lord in Christ, it was, he was just

there.

You're not gonna get all the details, but you know, you go through things and you say, he's there.

Any encouragement in Christ, we were actually encouraged even though it was very difficult.

Now that's a pretty severe example, but there are other examples of all kinds of things.

Losing a job, having a situation where you're not able to work right, think right, do right, got a health issue,

you got whatever.

But what he's talking about here is not just a thing of the physical situation, having one

spirit, one mind striving together.

There's a unity in the body of Christ.

And the reason it is and it exists is because the same Lord Jesus is in all of us.

You gotta think about that because we're indwelt, if you're really believers, we are indwelt by

God.

Now, in Exodus 25, eight, God says to the people, the children of Israel, build a

tabernacle among my people so I can dwell among them.

So that's the word to tabernacle.

And they built a tabernacle and I've gone over this before, how big it was and how it pointed to Christ.

And in John 1, 14, the word became flesh and tabernacled among us or dwelt among us.

So he dwelt among us by walking and he was with us that way.

But now in John 14, 23, that the father and he will come and make their abode in

you, in you.

So we're different, we're different people, different backgrounds.

And yet we're all indwelt by the one Lord Jesus, by the God, the father, by the Holy Spirit,

the Trinity, God, he's in us.

But I like to focus on Jesus, I just do.

So there's any encouragement in Christ.

Now in Christ could, we could stretch it a little bit and say it deals with the issue of federal

headship being in him.

But I really don't think that's what it's going for but it reminds me of that.

There's an encouragement in Jesus, in our relationship with Jesus and therefore with

one another, with one another.

So I'm reminded when Anik and I, I mean Anik's brother, 32

years ago, I don't know, we were living in Southern California and I worked

for him with a big company and we flew up to Spokane and we're gonna

do some assembly work.

He was an engineer, I was just some guy.

And he goes, hey, you want a job?

Yeah, sure, I'll take a job.

And so we flew up there and we had a problem with a part.

It was a big factory, excuse me, got something in my throat, big factory and so we needed to find

a certain machinist in this big factory in order to have a part manufactured,

modified slightly to make it fit so we can continue.

So we're looking and I still remember this, we're walking here, walking there, getting in this department and there's a

big pane glass window, maybe six foot high, eight foot wide.

And I see this man behind it and he's doing engineering mechanical stuff.

And I glance at him, he glances at me and I felt this draw, I still remember it.

Like this draw, I looked at him, he looked at me and I felt this something and I'm like, am I gay?

What happened here?

What's going on?

I'm a little nervous here, that was weird.

What's going on?

And I'm walking around and that's what I thought.

And so we're walking around and lo and behold, that was the guy we had to find.

And we're in there talking and I'm kind of nervous because he looked at me, and I look at his desk and

there's a Bible.

And I go, hey, you're a Christian.

He goes, oh yeah.

And instant fellowship.

And that's what that was, it was a spirit of God.

If you've ever been with someone, you just know there's something spiritual about them, there's something good about them.

Usually you can tell, usually with people.

But sometimes you can't, there's a few people you can't.

Or the Nephilim people, you can't.

That's another topic.

So, if there's any consolation of love, there's any fellowship of the spirit,

if any affection and compassion, and notice, a fellowship of the spirit.

If you were to go to 2 Corinthians 13, 14, that's the very last verse in the two books

of Corinthians.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, the Father, and the

fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

So, we have the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, that's the Father, and

the fellowship of the spirit.

Fellowship is intimate communion.

And there's different levels of fellowship, of course.

But as Christians, we have this fellowship because of the indwelling of the Lord Jesus Christ in us.

We have a communion, we have a fellowship, like that man I'd never seen before, and it was a draw, and it was because of the spirit of

God.

And we both realized it, because he, oh, I forgot to tell you, he said, he goes, I said, you know when I saw you?

He goes, yeah, I felt that too.

And it was the spirit, and her brother's not a believer, he's going, what the heck?

He was like clueless, and we fellowshiped.

What a great witness.

It was a great witness.

Because it just happens like that.

We have the fellowship with one another, and the spirit of God is living in all of us.

In fact, we are indwelt by the Trinity.

We're indwelt by the entire Trinity who lives in us.

Now, it's very comforting on one hand, and not on another.

It's very comforting to know that God loves us, cleanses us with his blood, and lives in us.

That he knows all our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes, and everything else that goes in and out, and oops.

But yet he still loves us, and he still indwells us, and we have fellowship.

His love for us is incredible.

That he's so holy, and so perfect, and so wonderful, and yet he lives in us.

And you know, this is a good point to make a joke, and point to somebody, and how could it be with you, but the fact is,

we're all vessels that should have been killed, should have been

destroyed, should be damned, and he's chosen to love us.

He's chosen to forgive us.

Oh, thank you.

Coffee, trough drops.

I had this post -nasal drip now for a few weeks.

Sorry.

COVID, let's go.

What's that?

What's that?

You got COVID, let's go.

Yeah, it's COVID, yeah.

The new variant, COVID -27.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yeah, COVID's slick, and apparently there's not much survival rate, except for me.

I'm a typhoid Mary, so it'd be typhoid slick.

It'd be COVID slick, I don't know.

Anyway, I'll just shut up and keep going.

So we had this fellowship with the Spirit.

We also have the fellowship with the Father, and you can go to 1 John chapter one for that, and we also have fellowship

with Jesus.

1 Corinthians 1 .9, our fellowship was with the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's fellowship with all members of the Godhead.

How do you have fellowship with someone you don't talk to, you don't spend time with, I don't enjoy their company?

You don't.

So he's in us, and the conviction, the awareness, reading the word,

as I say to people, you need CPR.

CPR will keep you alive, right?

Now confess, pray, read.

Confess your sins, pray to God, read the Bible.

In the prayer and the reading, you are in fellowship with God, but also you're in fellowship with God when you're in fellowship with

one another.

Notice, Jesus said in John 13, 34 and 35, he says,

they'll know you're my disciples, by the love you have for one another.

The reason we can have love for one another is not like the unbelievers who might help each other, but we can love

each other because we're first loved by Christ, and we're delivered, and we're in fellowship with

him.

The responsibility of living like that is very difficult.

It's quite a responsibility, because we fail.

We fail living a godly life, but yet we move forward, and God loves us.

Anyway, if any affection and compassion make my joy complete,

by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit and 10 on

one purpose.

Now, denominations pop into my mind when I think about this.

I don't think that our denominational fracturing in America

is good.

Yeah, I believe it's sinful for the most part.

Not talking heretical sin, lightning bolt, zap you sin, but we're

not in fellowship like we should be.

I believe that is the case because people take their eyes off of Christ and off of the love of Christ.

You see, as you guys know, I'm a hardcore five -point Calvinist,

amillennial, pedo -Baptist, and I can defend it, but I have people, friends, who don't

affirm that stuff.

I'm like, okay, it doesn't matter to me because that's not the issue.

The issue is my fellowship with them in Jesus and being united in spirit.

And I had a guy I was talking to on the web a few nights ago and he was saying, brother, he goes,

brother, he goes, you know, I don't agree with you in a lot of things that you teach, like reformed theology.

He says, I don't agree, but I'd go, there he goes, I love ya.

And they go, hey, same back at you, because he's an Arminian.

And I said, hey, I'd go out witnessing with you.

He goes, amen, brother.

And it was good to hear that and for others to see it.

And I would, I'd go out and witness with them.

It doesn't matter.

Calvinism isn't what saves you.

Arminianism isn't what saves you.

Jesus, he's the one who saves you.

And if we have our mind on Christ, we should be the same mind, maintain the same love.

When we start putting our minds on a little minutia, little details, well, you have to be, let

me put it this way.

I went to a Lutheran college and I still remember very clearly

sitting with one of the students there, not alone with her, but a lot of students.

And she informed me that because I was not of the

Wisconsin synod of Lutheranism, I was going to hell.

I said, well, wait a minute.

And she said, but I believe in Jesus.

I trust in Jesus.

And her boyfriend's sitting right there and he's going.

And she was white and he was black.

But she let him in if he, because he was mostly Wisconsin synodish,

but I wasn't.

So I was going to hell.

Now that is not fellowship in the spirit.

And I just say, you know, come on.

It has to be, Jesus has to be your focus, not a denomination and not a set of these doctrines

that are adiaphora, which means non -essential.

So maintaining the same love united in the spirit intended one purpose.

Now, what would that one purpose be?

It's like, you know, what do you think the one purpose is?

Glorify God.

That's a good, can't go wrong with that.

Pretty safe, glorify God.

My wife said that.

That's right.

So what's that?

You're high -fiving yourself?

Good.

So we want to have unity because there's united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

To glorify God, to promote Jesus, to preach the gospel.

All of these are the one thing in that it's all combined.

We glorify God while we had to preach Jesus Christ.

You know, we got to do that.

And we are created, Isaiah 43, seven, for God's glory.

So all of that comes together.

Now this is Ephesians 4, 11 through 13.

And he gave some of his apostles, incidentally, a little Greek lesson.

The definite article is the word the, and the indefinite article in English is the word a, like

a box, a cat.

So we have the definite and the indefinite article.

In Greek, they only have the definite article, the word the.

So literally what it says in the Greek is, and he gave some as the apostles and some as the

prophets and some as the evangelists and some as the pastors and teachers.

So the one definite article, the, covers both pastors and teachers because they're very

similar.

For the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building of the body of Christ until we

attain to the unity of the faith.

Paul is telling us that we need to be in unity in the faith.

In order to do that, we have to study the faith.

Have to know the difference between the non -essentials and the essentials of the faith.

And I teach on that, of course, but this is something we need.

And to have that one purpose, when people are one purpose, like, you know, there's a big,

a raft, a round raft, and a bunch of people are in it with paddles going, paddling different directions, no one gets it.

We don't get anywhere.

But they pick one direction and go, it gets accomplished.

And that's what I tell people.

Focus on one thing at a time.

That's for the ladies.

And get it done, get it accomplished.

Get it done, go to the next thing.

And that's what we need to do if we're united in spirit, intent on one purpose, move forward.

What is the one thing you wanna do?

Glorify God.

Preach Jesus, Him crucified.

Not make five pointers everywhere.

We're all millennialists.

Those things are worth discussing and going through as we study the word of God.

But the thing is that we're united in love for one another.

That is what makes us able to disagree lovingly.

And we can have that same unity in love.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but the next verse, verse three of Philippians two, I do not like.

Another verse I don't like.

Do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another more

important than yourselves.

Now, I don't like that.

And the reason I don't like it is because I like being selfish, I like being conceited, I don't like being humble,

and everybody else is not as good as me and everyone else is inferior.

And so when I'm confronted with the truth of God's word and those sins which indwell me

are confronted by the truth and the light of God's word, then I'm forced to realize what

I really am down deep as we all are.

Because we all have different degrees of selfishness and conceit and

lack of humility, and we don't regard others as more important than ourselves.

I mean, do we?

To a certain degree, sometimes, yes.

And I'm not knocking, we have to be perfect in all this.

We should, but anyway, the thing is, what he's saying here is, look, don't be so selfish.

Be other -centered.

Care about others, okay?

And the whole thing is, like Jesus says, the world will know you're my disciples by the love you have

for one another.

You love one another and you help each other out.

As I've said before, sitting in this chair, we should be so good at being Christians that the

unbelievers say, I'm gonna believe what you teach, but boy, I sure want what you do.

I wanna be with you on how you are.

But what we see is not always that kind of thing.

We don't see that too much in Christians.

We're guarded.

We keep ourselves private and quiet.

And when you do that, you can be safer,

but as I say to people, you know, take risks.

You know, I take risks all the time and fail a lot, but you take risks for Jesus.

You're trying, go forward, you know, trust and go, and try and live so

that others become more important.

And marriage is a good testing ground for this.

Work is another testing ground for this.

And just life, driving is a really good testing ground.

I grew up in Southern California.

We got it done here.

Hey, what is that?

It's a four -way stop.

What do we do?

I don't know, I don't know.

Okay, I'm past it.

All right.

Do not, verse four, merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

That summarizes it.

Now that's hard to do, but it's what we're called to do, and so we can practice it, and we should.

So he says these things, verse one, two, three, and four.

Don't really look out for your own interests.

Look for others.

Don't be selfish.

Don't be empty conceded.

Be humble.

Consider others more important.

It's an attitude of otherness, not selfishness, but otherness.

It's easy for me to sit here and teach it.

It's not so easy for me to do, and it's easier for you to hear it, but it's not so easy to do, and one of the

reasons is we get in our habits, our reactions.

My wife will do something, and I get upset, or I'll do something, she gets upset, or we're at work, and they do that same old

whatever it is, and you're like, brr, brr, brr, and we complain, and we murmur because things aren't how they're supposed

to be, but if we're other -centered, it forces us to break our

habits of selfishness, and it begins in our minds.

Be transformed by renewing of your mind, Romans says.

We're to be transformed.

We're to understand the truth and try and live it, and of course, we're gonna fail, but that's what we need to do.

All right, now, sorry, I clear my throat a lot.

I know.

So verse five and following is an interesting

set of scriptures.

We're gonna go through this.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which also is in Christ Jesus, who, I'll

read the whole thing, we'll go back and talk, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality

with the God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, being made in the likeness of men.

Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death

on a cross.

All right, Philippians 2, five through eight.

I have said the phrase Philippians 2, five through eight thousands of times in my

apologetics career.

We're gonna talk about Christ, who he is.

I'm just gonna take a step sideways.

I'm gonna teach a doctrine, because you need to know who Jesus is and what is going on.

I've taught this before, but we need to go through it.

Okay, Nick?

So the Trinity is the teaching that

there's one God in all eternity, in all places, in all time, who has

existed and always existed as three simultaneous and distinct persons.

The three persons interdwell each other.

This is called the perichoresis, the mutual interdwelling of their essence, their personhood.

So therefore, there's only one will.

This is the eternal nature of God.

And it can deal with what's called the one in the many issue, the minimalistic

necessity of Trinitarian essence.

I've gone through this before.

And so in the eternal nature of God, and go

to Hebrews 13, 20, it talks about the blood of the eternal covenant.

Now, I believe that the blood of the eternal covenant is the inter -Trinitarian covenant where the

Father would elect the people to be saved.

Jesus, the Word, the pre -incarnate, agreed to become one of

us, or to redeem the elect given by the Father to him.

The Holy Spirit would apply the redemptive work to the elect who then are justified by faith.

That's what I believe.

And this means that as you go to Ephesians 1, 4, he, the Father, chose us, the elect, in

him, Jesus, before the foundation of the world that we'd be holy and blameless.

So this means that the work of election is an inter -Trinitarian thing.

So Jesus came into existence 2 ,000 years ago.

What I mean by that is the person Jesus with two distinct natures that occurred

2 ,000 years ago at the inception.

The Word, second person of the Trinity, of course, is eternal.

But the union of the divine second person and the

human nature, that union occurred 2 ,000 years ago.

We call this one person who's in this union, we call that one person Jesus.

So when I say Jesus began 2 ,000 years ago, people say, that's heresy, he's

eternal.

No, he's not.

The union is not eternal.

The divine nature in that union is eternal.

And then you go, okay, that's what you're saying.

So what we have here in this union, what we call the hypostatic union, the essence and the nature

within the Godhead, the divine essence, and the essence of humanity, the divine, I mean, the human essence

are united in one person.

So if we're to say you have two natures, Eutychianism would say that

they're so intermixed that they're not distinguishable.

That's not the case.

That's an error.

Nestorianism would say the two natures are there in the one person so that it's not really one

person, it's two persons.

Well, it's a debatable thing about Nestorians in history, but we'll get into that.

It's become known now where the two persons, one person, one person

in Jesus.

So he's a functional, he's two persons.

That's heretical because we don't then have what we call the communicative idiomatum, which we'll get to.

Monophysitism is the teaching that the two natures became a new third thing,

the God -man thing.

It's neither just divine or just human, but now it's a third new created thing, the God -man thing.

That's called monophysitism, and that's an error.

Apollinarianism says that Jesus basically appeared out, let's do it this way.

I'll leave those alone.

We'll get to Docetism, Apollinarianism, Anticheanism.

We'll just leave it right there.

So what we're gonna see here is that with the nature of humanity and the

nature of divinity, there's some questions.

We're gonna get into something.

I'm gonna teach you a little bit of Greek.

Mono means one, and thaleo, thaleo means

to will.

It's the infinitive form, to do, to that, even though it's actually I will.

That's how they do it in Greek.

Anyway, to have a will.

Dicelitism, di means to, is that there's a will of the divine and a will of the

human in Christ.

That's correct.

The reason it's correct is because if the word is a person, as we know

in personhood, a person has to have a will.

And by necessity, humanity has to have a will, otherwise it's not human.

This lamp doesn't have a will.

It doesn't have personhood.

So dicelitism is the correct teaching that the one

person of Christ has two distinct wills.

One are corresponding to each nature.

Monothelitism would say that in the forming of the one person, now

there's only an underneath.

There's just one will.

But it became a third thing, monophysitism.

Mono, physis, form, one nature, one essence.

No, there's two natures, dicelitism.

However, what we see in these is that it's manifested as one will.

So the correct doctrine is the hypostatic union in the one person are two distinct

natures.

Dicelitism, hypostatic union.

But what we say is that the one person said, I'll be with you always, even to the end of

the earth, right, Matthew 28, 19, or 28, 18 and 20, 21.

And then he said, like on the cross, I thirst.

So he claimed the attributes of divinity as well as the attributes of humanity.

But the one person said, I, both times.

Not we, two persons.

I, so this is called the communication of the properties.

The communicatio idiomatum.

It sounds really great to say.

It's fun to say it, you know.

Communicatio idiomatum.

People think you're smart, you can say that.

But it's not a hoppix legomena, and you don't have to be sesquipedalian to know that either.

But at any rate.

So the communicatio idiomatum is the teaching that in the one

person are two distinct natures and the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the single person.

Now why is this important?

Because which nature died on the cross?

The human.

If only the human nature died on the cross, then how is the sacrifice of divine value?

Because don't forget, in Zechariah 12, 10, God says, look upon me whom they have pierced.

So it says that God is the one who's pierced.

How is that possible?

Since God can't be pierced.

He had to become one of us.

And he did this in the hypothetic union and the communication of the properties where the attributes of both natures are

ascribed to the single person.

And so we perceive the divine through the human.

We'll get into that again.

And I've taught you that guys this many times before, but you gotta hear it over and over and over.

Because this is a good one that we'll get in the text, you'll see why it's important.

At any rate.

So you'll see that when he died, it was a person who died on the cross and therefore the persons of divine

value.

Furthermore, we perceive the divine through the human.

We perceive the divine through the human.

We see Jesus walk on water.

That's the divine action manifested in the human.

We see him say to the storm, peace be still.

We see the divine action manifested in the human.

He perceived divinity through humanity.

All right, so these are technical terms and technical arrangements.

Now let's get a little more devotional -ish.

So in the inter -Trinitarian communion from forever ago, the son

said, not just dialogue went on, but said, yes,

I will enter into their world and bear the sins of the ones you've

given me as I submit to your will, Father, and I'll suffer

at their hands and bear their sin.

Before the universe was created, this was already arranged.

This means that since God does not learn and he knows all things eternally,

then that covenant actuality is eternal,

which means that the word eternally had agreed.

Now, I wanna introduce some ridiculous kind of concept at this point.

Was he dreading it for eternity?

Was he saying, oh no, when's this gonna happen for eternity?

These are kind of dumb questions, but I wanna introduce the idea of the

potential of apprehension, but I don't think that would be the case with God.

What was going on eternally in that?

I have no way to know, no capacity to understand it, but I think about that and I think,

what was that like?

Only God knows.

What would it be like to say, you know, and I'll bear sin?

Sin is contrary to the nature of God.

Now, God is holy, 1 Peter 1 .16.

He's perfect, okay, Matthew 5 .48.

He's eternal, okay, Psalm 90, verse two.

He doesn't change, Malachi 3 .6.

He's everywhere, Psalm 139.

This is who he is, and what's he gonna do?

Gonna enter into a womb, born through a birth canal,

suckle at a woman's breast, have his diapers

changed as he urinates and defecates, and then

out in the, as he grows, working with his father, the carpenter, out in the sun, he's sweating

and waiting and waiting and waiting, telling he's gonna be 30 when,

that's why he's baptized, to enter into the priesthood after he ordered Melchizedek according to Matthew 3 .15, Leviticus 8,

Numbers 4 and Exodus 29.

Okay, another topic.

And so he's walking around and saying, yes, mom, yes, dad,

God, yes, mom, yes, dad,

knowing what's gonna happen to him.

Now, we'll talk about crucifixion here, what it does in a bit.

Knowing what's gonna happen to him physically and spiritually,

and to be lied against, struck, mocked, hated

by the people he's gonna save or wants to save from

forever ago.

It's incredible if you think about it.

We're just used to the blonde -haired, blue -eyed Caucasian serpent Jesus, he died in the crossroads of the dead.

Now, if he tries to do it, you're okay.

We just skipped an eternity of things going on.

Now, let's talk about the crucifixion just a little bit.

What they would do, there's different ways of crucifying, but how it looks like it was done with Christ,

is they beat him and ripped his beard from his face.

I forgot the Old Testament reference for that.

His back was probably ripped open to the point where you could see the rib cage, because when they would take the cat of nine

tails, they would rip it on the back, and then they would pull so it would scrape the

flesh.

And Cavell, whatever his name was, when he did the Passion of the Christ, he had a real cat of nine tails.

He said one barb hit him on his naked back once.

And he said it was so searingly bad, he about passed out one strike once.

39 lashes is the number of mercy.

39's the number of mercy.

And so they would lash him 39 times, and most people, not most, but a lot of people just died right there.

It's just trauma, they died.

And he had to take the wooden cross on his shoulder.

Do you think maybe some of his shoulder area was ripped open, conceivably?

So he's going into shock, and blood's seeping out, not to mention

he's been beaten to the point where they couldn't even really recognize him.

And crown of thorns shoved, it was like three inch, two to three inch thorns between the scalp and

the skull.

Blood's coming down, and that's not even the worst of it.

What they would do is they would take him, a person who was crucified, on a

beam.

There wasn't the whole cross, they couldn't carry it.

So the cross, the vertical thing was in the ground.

And so what they did was they would take him, lay him down, and take

a nail and put it in the wrist.

It was not the hand, it was here, okay?

They put it right there, they would take it like that, and they would drill it in, and there's a nerve that goes right here, and it's exceedingly painful.

You keep saying, mm -hmm, I could keep going, okay, okay.

And so I hear these noises, I'm like, what is that?

So right here, there's a nerve.

I remember reading what it was, and when it's severed, it's the equivalent of your hand being on fire,

the pain level.

They would take that, and then they would take his other hand and pull it, and

stretch it, and do the same thing over there.

He's laying on the ground, on his back, with his back ripped open, on the rough wood,

and they pulled his arms.

Now, in Psalm 22, it says his bones are out of joint.

Now, what happens when you're on the ground, and your arms are stretched out, and then they lift you up?

Called vector forces in physics.

What happens is the weight of the body just caught, because you're so horizontal and stretched,

that pop, pop, they just start, your joints start ripping, they come apart.

Now, the way they do this, I did this once.

I went to a playground with some bars.

This happened to be that I could barely get my arms, and I could hold out.

I was just far enough, just perfect for this test I wanted to do.

I held my arms out.

I said, okay, and I'm standing on the ground, and I started to lower my legs, or bend my legs, so

that the weight would increase, and I could hardly do it at all,

because the pain was so bad.

I quit, like after three seconds, just by, done,

because if I was hanging up like this, that's okay, but when the further out it goes, in

physics, if you have a, in order to have a rope that won't break, and you have a

weight in the middle, in order to have the line stay straight, horizontal, the forces have to be infinite in each

direction in order to have it not be bent.

Anyway, vectors, I love that stuff.

So when they put him up on the cross, snap, snap, snap, these things would just rip out a joint, all right?

Now he's scraping his back on the wood with his bones out of joint,

and they would typically take the feet and put them over like this, the feet,

and they would drill a nail through a certain area without breaking the bones.

They'd go in between, and then they would do that on the wood, but you gotta understand

something.

In order to do that, because my hands can do this, my feet can't,

feet go like this, and you could maybe point them this way.

So what they would do is they would take the legs and bend them up so that the feet are flat and then drill like that.

So now your legs are bent slightly.

Now there's a problem.

Because your arms are out like this, and the tension is so hard, you have trouble breathing.

So in order to breathe, you have to push up on your legs on the nail to get your breaths.

So to breathe, you have to rub and scrape your raw back against the wood

while you're moving the joints in and out that are ripped and shredded

while blood is coming out of your hands, your scalp, your back, and your feet.

And as the blood leaves the body, the heart has to compensate by beating more and more

and more and more, and faster and faster, and harder and harder.

Because the oxygen level of the body is decreasing because the blood level's decreasing.

So it beats faster and faster and faster, right?

This goes on for a while.

Now you'll note that what they said was that after he died, we'll get back to this, they went to break the legs

of the other two.

That's why they would break the legs, because then they couldn't push themselves up to breathe.

That's why they would do that, they would suffocate.

They came to Jesus, and he'd already died.

So they took a spear up under here, there's a word for the area, and they pierced him, and blood and

water came out.

That's how they knew he was dead, because the heart had ruptured.

It just, no more blood flow.

So now you have the separation of the blood platelets of plasma, I read an article about it once, and it

talked about it.

And so it separates, so they poke, they cut it, and if it comes out as two colors,

clear and red, or whatever, he's gone.

There's no doubt.

People say, oh, he's swooned, there's swoon theory on the cross.

You know, he just kind of passed out for a little bit, and then the cold slab of the grave, you know, it revived him.

Wrong, because in Roman jurisprudence, if the person you were killing,

executing, escaped, you took his place.

Pull that sword out of his side, okay, he's gone.

It was an assured thing.

That's what Jesus went through physically, and there's more to that.

There's more, more pain.

But you get the idea.

What about bearing our sin in his body on the cross, first Peter 2 .24?

Now, I can't relate to that.

I can't relate.

What does it mean to have someone else's sin put on me?

Huh?

To me, it's a round square.

What?

But something happened where Jesus became sin, 2 Corinthians 5 .21.

He bore our sin in his body on the cross, first Peter 2 .24.

Somehow, some way, spiritually, Jesus experienced the

bearing of our sin in his body.

That's what it says.

If you think about it, what does it mean in his body?

Sin is a concept.

You don't weigh it.

You can't put it in a jar.

There's a spiritual reality, an abstract set of whatever's the universal,

blah, blah, blah, sin, evil, blah, blah, blah, and it goes in his body.

A spiritual something happened, and he experienced it.

I can't describe it any more than that.

I don't know.

But we don't have any capacity to understand what happened there.

So here's a question.

I don't think there's an answer that we can come up with.

Which do you think was worse for Jesus, the physical or the spiritual suffering?

It would think the spiritual.

I wanna go that way.

I don't know for sure, and I'm not there, it wasn't him, but I'm gonna lean towards that because it was a sin of

kabillions of people, an evil in contrast to holiness.

So most probably, it was the case, most probably.

I wouldn't say for sure, but I'm gonna lean that way.

I'd like to say what the scripture doesn't say.

From eternity, he said, I'll do that, so that

we could whine and bitch to each other about how things don't work right while we're saved,

complain about that pastor's sermon, and you didn't do this for me, and we're saved.

And we do this all the time.

And then we abuse the grace of God, and he knew it.

And he still did it.

He knew what we were gonna do, how we were gonna abuse his kindness and his love.

And then he says, okay, I'll go, I'll do it.

It's just an incredible thing, what Jesus did.

And it obligates us to live like that.

You know, Luke 9, 23, I think it is, keep your cross daily and follow after me.

Now it's like, whoa, okay.

And I'm gonna tell you, I've been studying for a long time.

I've grown a lot in my Christian walk.

That concept of picking up your cross daily and following after me, I don't know if I

even know what it means.

You know, I could say to my wife, hey, would you say I pick up my cross daily and follow after Christ?

Would you say, she'd probably go, yes, dear, whatever you say.

Because she knows, you know, I'm a sinner and fail.

What does it really mean like that?

I don't know.

I think we'll know in heaven when we get close to Christ.

I think we'll know a lot more things.

We need every new, that we never even knew we didn't know.

Okay.

But it was what God ordained for us, the redeemed.

Now, they said we're bought with the blood of Christ, Acts 20, 28.

Now, you gotta think about this.

You've been bought.

You're not your own.

You're not your own.

You belong to him.

We're bond slaves, douloi, bond slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ, who are supposed

to pick up our cross daily and follow after him.

Now, I'm gonna just tell you flat out.

I can teach this.

I could get even more in depth.

And when you're all gone, I'll immediately fail with my wife.

Not because I plan to, but because I'm a sinner.

And she will too, because she's a sinner.

And not pointing any fingers, here's the reality of what we are.

We're insufficient, we're incapable.

But yet, at the same time, it's called a now and a not yet.

You know, those who before knew, he also predestined.

And those who be predestined, he called.

Those who be called, he also justified.

Those who be justified, he also glorified.

Romans 8, 29, 30.

Glorification is future, yet it's spoken of in the past tense.

The now and the not yet.

He bore our sins in his body 2 ,000 years ago, even though we didn't even live.

And yet it was done.

The now for him, but the not yet for us.

We weren't even alive.

And he did this.

You gotta understand how great his love for you is.

You know, you heard the phrase, you know, you ask Jesus, how much do you

love me?

And he says, this much.

And he spread his arms and died.

And I like that.

You know, three nails, three days, one way to God from Undercover's great song,

Christian punk band from Southern California back in the day.

And we talk about it.

I like talking about it, even the doctrine part about Christ, hypostatic union, communicati, idiomatum, imputation, gentrification,

propitiation.

I love all that stuff.

But when I sit and talk about what it meant to him to do it, to love me, to

love us, to love you, so that you could be with him, as you

continue to repeatedly fail before him, continue to sin.

I'm not accusing everybody of wanton evil sin, but we know we've

sinned.

And he loved us anyway.

Now let's get to the text, okay?

Verse five, have this attitude in yourselves, which also is in Christ Jesus.

That's the attitude that we're to have in ourselves that he had.

This attitude of humility, of serving the Lord, the Father, of being willing to die

for others, to suffer for others, to be humble before others, to

be insulted, accosted for others so that they can benefit.

Have this attitude in yourselves.

It's also what's in Christ Jesus.

You imagine knowing this, let's just say that Jesus is here and he says,

okay, I'm gonna call some disciples to follow me.

I don't think I want to do, not if this Bible study.

Uh -uh, can't make it.

You imagine what it'd be like to follow him and see how he is so perfectly all the time and you're going,

every day I get up, I learn how bad I am.

Not because he makes me feel bad, but because he's so good.

And you keep following him because he is so good.

And then he just loves you anyway.

I just have trouble with that one.

The comprehension of it, I mean, he just knows the things that I've done.

Yeah, I love you.

You know, involved in the occult, going after demonic forces,

seances.

I deserve the holy lightning bolt.

Here, I'm gonna use you.

Okay, okay, that's it, okay.

Gonna use each and every one of us to do his will.

When he calls you.

That's the attitude we're to have in ourselves.

And verse six, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God and him to be

grasped.

Now, to exist here is the Greek word, huperkon, not a me.

A me is just simply to be.

But huperkon means existence as in identification, identity by nature.

Not just, so he says, who existed in the form of God, by nature was in God's form.

Some say, yeah, God's spirit, that's the form he was in, spirit form.

That's not what's going on here.

Did not regard equality with anything to be grasped.

Now, I'm gonna introduce a concept to you about this verse.

I've argued this with cultists for years.

And they'll say, see, Matt, this is proof Jesus is not God.

And I'll say, this is proof that Jesus is God.

And notice, who, although he existed in the form of God, see, it was a spirit form.

Didn't regard equality with anything to be grasped.

See, he wasn't equal, that's why he wouldn't grasp it.

The word grasp here is herpogmos, to seize with force.

So this equality with him wasn't something he had to seize.

It was his already.

That's what's going on in the language of the Bible.

Now, here's a question for you.

Do you think that maybe, this is a concept, I talked about this a few days ago with someone on the web, and one guy goes, I've been thinking the

same thing.

Do you think maybe that the word of God is written in such a way so that those who don't have

eyes to see won't see, and those who do will?

It seems to be written, like parables.

They can twist it to their own destruction.

Last night I was arguing, whatever, Mike was there for a little bit while I was talking about baptism with a guy,

and it was incredible, an example of something that I would, I would give specifics.

I'd say, well, this is what the verse says, and he goes, well, over here it says the contrary.

What are you gonna do about that, Matt?

I said, don't you understand what you're doing?

You are setting scripture against scripture.

You don't understand, one, so you disagree with what it says, so you find something to contradict what it says, so

now you're submitting God's word to your authority, and it's written in such a way that they can do that.

Here, now look at them.

Isn't that what the devil did with Jesus?

Satan did with Jesus and with scripture.

He tricked, he tried to trick him with scripture, right, yeah.

And I haven't got to brag on this one, but where he was on the temple,

where he said, took him up to the highest pillar of the temple, we went to that wall, and we were right there,

yeah, right there where it was.

We're like, the guy goes, this verse, blah, blah, blah, right there, that's where it was, because this is the one, this is

still the same wall, this is still the same.

I'm like, you got to go to, if you can

ever go to Israel.

What's that?

I already been, so.

Vaccine, vaccine, schmaccine, okay.

I can't wait for the real thing.

Wait for the real thing, okay, that's a bit better.

All right, yeah, it really was a great trip to be there and stuff, I benefited from it so much.

So anyway, although he, it's like saying he existed, he was existing in the form of God, did

not regard that something to be robbed or taken by force,

but he emptied himself, taken the form of a man, being made a laccus of men.

So some say there's a heresy called docetism from the Greek, doceo, which means to

seem, to appear.

So made in likeness of men, only appeared to be human, really it wasn't, it's just another heresy out

there.

He took a form of a bond servant, a douloi, a doulos, a willing slave, being made in the likeness

of men.

Now the word emptied there is the word kanao, and there's a heresy

that says, it's called the kenosis theory, in that Jesus

lessened himself to become man, that the word lessened himself to become man.

And no, the hypostatic union doesn't say that he lessened himself, but he added human nature.

So that's just a small thing, you guys won't ever probably hear about it again ever, unless I say it again to you, but that's what's going

on.

You know, there's a saying, I have a saying, if you wanna mess something up, you only need two things, what are they, just two things, what is it?

Right, people and time, okay?

That's what I say, I'm gonna mess something up, just need two things, people and time.

So given enough time, people are gonna come up with all kinds of heresies concerning Jesus.

Polynarianism, docetism, there's another one near that reminds me of

docetism, donatism, that has to do with people, but at any rate,

so you have hypostatic union, you have, well, the heresies of eutychianism, monophysitism,

Nestorianism, or polynarianism, there's a bunch more.

I'm like, who would have thought of that one?

I mean, I've read some of them, what?

Where'd they go with that?

It's like a bunch of guys sitting around a campfire, hey, I got one, I just thought of something,

let's make this up, you know?

And then they did this, okay, let's go with that.

So at any rate, and verse eight, being found in appearance as a man.

Now look, in verse seven, taking the form of bond servant, verse eight, being appearance as a

man.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Now, he humbled himself by becoming susceptible to being killed.

Now, do you think he was tempted at all, maybe, to say, I'm not

doing this?

And he didn't want to, Luke 22, 42, not my will, but your will be done.

Was he tempted to actually think about it?

Okay, we can get into some possibilities, but he knew what he could do.

He knew, he could utter the word, he is the word, the creator.

I don't want to do this, you're all dissolved.

He could have done it just like that, he could have.

And yet, for the thousands of years before the cross, and the thousands of years after the cross,

all of humanity whom he knew, that he bore the sins of his people in his body on the

cross, wow, it just.

But like that, it just makes his love all the more greater.

Yeah, uh -huh, I thought at the name of Jesus, every knee's gonna

bow, and we especially as Christians are gonna bow.

We're gonna recognize, I believe, I suspect, that all the more we're gonna recognize how great he is.

You go, oh my goodness, it's just wow, for

what?

I mean, pick yourself, and you know what you

are.

He's gonna save you, he's gonna do all that for you?

I wouldn't, so look at you.

And that's what he did.

To me, it's just, it's amazing.

And for this reason also, verse nine, God

highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.

Because Jesus humbled himself so much, allowed himself to be killed, murdered, and

in that, he bore our sin so that we could be made right by simply believing in what he did.

Boy, how easy is that?

And so therefore, because of what Christ did, God, as God the Father, exalted him, bestowed on him

the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in

heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So every knee will bow, every tongue will confess.

It's going to happen.

Now think about this also.

God, 1 Timothy 6, 16, God dwells in unapproachable light who no man has seen or can see.

And Isaiah, I think it's Isaiah six, Isaiah is in the presence of God,

and he says, be gone from me, I'm a man of unclean lips.

When people are in the presence of God, they're affected.

Moses in the presence of God, his face shined for days afterwards.

Isaiah, be gone from me.

His greatness is incredible.

And we couldn't see that in this man who would sweat as he's walking down the road with

30 feet, eventually walking to the cross.

And yet he was exalted, and this same person, every knee is gonna bow.

Now I believe that the unbelievers are gonna bow voluntarily,

not by force, because his glory is so ominously, intensely,

infinitely fantastic, that in his presence, they're going to voluntarily, naturally,

automatically drop and put their face to the ground.

That's what I believe is gonna happen.

And that every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.

Even the unbelievers are gonna confess it.

Now here's something that's terrifying.

We, when we get to heaven, we're gonna bow and confess he's Lord,

and we know that we're entering into his eternal presence.

What about the unbeliever?

Who has the weight of his sin upon him that

is magnified under the intensity of infinite purity that forces a person

to bow down in humility and brokenness,

knowing who he is, what he did, and how you rejected him, and

knowing what's coming?

Imagine the terror, this is what's coming for them.

It's immense.

It's all the more reason we need to witness and share that gospel with people.

Doesn't mean you have to be fanatic all the time, every second, but the idea is to try and live for the Lord

Jesus Christ.

And I would ask that you pray that

you ask for opportunities to share the gospel.

Now I share the gospel regularly because of what I do.

But if you have a job selling TVs, as some people do,

you may or may not be able to witness at certain times.

Or she's at home answering the phones and she goes out.

Monique doesn't witness that much, I don't think.

She's got her brothers who are witnesses too, she tries to.

It's no comparison of who more or less, that's not even the issue.

But we need to have those opportunities because if God says, Matt, I want you to witness a thousand times this year.

And I've got, you know, Nick, for example, I want you to witness once to this one person.

They're equal because of the will of God.

What he wants, that's it.

Not one's greater than the other.

We have to realize that we're serving God and that we want to be used of him to pick up the cross

daily.

The way he calls us to walk with him as we follow him, the way he's gifted us and the calling he's had with us.

So years ago, I used to work at a job where I couldn't witness for anybody because I couldn't do

it on a job.

Now I have a different job, different time, different seasons.

God calls us differently at different times.

And I just think that we should just ask God to use us.

Just give me the opportunity to share the gospel.

He goes, okay, got one three months coming up.

Three months, I'll arrange it for you.

Fine, that's fine.

But if we recognize how great Jesus is and what he's done, shouldn't it be that we want to serve him and honor him

while we're here?

One of the things that I thought of when I was younger is I don't want to go to heaven and say, I

wish I had, if only I had, I'm going to have those, but

now's the time for living for him as an adult.

Theoretically a mature man.

My wife's staring wide eyed off into the corner.

What did I just say?

Theoretically as a mature man of God,

that now I want to live for him more and more and not for myself.

And that's hard.

It's hard.

But I see these things now that I never saw when I was younger.

And the goals that I have are different.

And why?

Because I'm going to follow Jesus.

I'm going to be more like Jesus.

I want to be like what he is and do what he did.

That's what I want to do.

It's simple.

It's just simple.

I'm going to be more like him.

Yeah, it's hard, but that's the common goal that we could say we all want to have.

Be more like him.

It'd be fun to, you know, we do this, we come back in three months.

So how were you like Jesus for the past three months?

Well, I got one instance where I think I maybe did something right, but here's the ones I didn't do right on, you know.

That's how it would be, especially you.

Oh yeah.

Oh man, he just.

What's that?

That would be me though.

Oh yeah.

But we'd all be in the same boat though, trying to live for him and failing him.

The boat's sinking.

The boat's sinking.

Yeah, it is.

That's right.

That's right.

We are our own iceberg, aren't we?

But you know, I go back and forth about this stuff.

Doctrine to me, you know I love doctrine, I debate and teach, but I love doctrine because to me it's like a skeleton.

I put all the meat on it, and then I can see the finished product of what it all brings to.

And that's me.

I like that stuff.

And when I go through the doctrine of the incarnation, the trinitarian nature of God, I didn't get into the economic and

ontological trinity and too much of the perichoresis and the divine will of God, which I love just saying the words.

It's fun to teach.

But we got into the issue of the doctrine of Christ, the incarnation, the humiliation, and then it leads us to, well,

look what he was like.

He sweat.

He went to the bathroom.

He had to sleep so that he could eventually walk to the cross, be legged or dragged or

beaten on the way to the cross to redeem us in the future 2 ,000 years ago,

knowing what we're like and deciding to love us anyway.

Wow.

To me, that doesn't make sense if you don't know the rest of it.

You know the rest of it.

Oh, wow.

And you can get, you know, I just think knowing as much as we can about him and what he did is

good.

But at any rate, I'm kind of going in circles now.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna stop here.

And then next week, Lord willing, we'll start with verse 12

because it's a verse that cults like to use.

And we'll get into it.

Verse 12.

And so there you go.

So you have any comments or questions or things like that you wanna ask?

I think I might've faded out when you were in verse seven.

I'm not sure, but specifically just say again, whatever it is that you said about EMP himself.

Oh, it was too bad.

It was good.

I can only say it once.

It was so good only once and he faded out.

Oh, okay.

The emptying.

It can't be a lessening of his essence because that's

logically, theologically it's impossible.

Or it could not be a reduction of his essence.

Okay.

Otherwise he's not God.

So some theologians think that he divested himself of his glory.

Now there's a problem with that statement, but it depends on how it's meant.

His glorious shiningness is part of his nature.

Well, if he's gonna become one of us, could you imagine if his glory was shining out of every pore of his body, see this ethereal being walking,

you know, and his glory, you know, it's like a science fiction movie.

It's not, you know, yeah.

So something had to happen where he just became one of us.

So it was a, I'll use some wholly completely inadequate words, a

compression of his existence into one place.

That's not accurate.

A lessening of his super light and so you go into the body and, but you can

struggle with all kinds of descriptions of what this might mean.

Some have said though, oh, he gave up his glory.

No, I don't buy that.

He, I've had some say, he gave up his attributes of divinity.

I've heard that one.

Well, that's just not possible because the attributes are part of the essence.

They're one of the, not the one of the same, but attributes only exist because the essence is there.

So the essence necessitates attributes belong there.

So like this cup or this glass here, I drink my drinking glass.

It's attribute is transparency.

That's part of what this one is with volume and mass and things like that to say, it gave up this

particular thing, gave up its transparency.

Well, then it's not this thing anymore, is it?

Right?

The attributes are there because it's reflecting its nature.

So if they say he gave up his attributes of divinity, then he's no longer divine.

That's wrong.

So we can say there's certain things we know that's not what it is, but what is it?

And that I don't know.

I just don't know.

And I don't believe any theologian knows.

I believe all they can do is say, well, here's one theory.

Here's another theory.

Here's another theory.

Is any of them right?

We don't know.

The emptying.

Yeah.

I guess it means sort of that he's going along with God's

instructions, God's plan.

Submitting himself to God's will.

Yeah, to the Father's will.

To what he's supposed to do.

I mean, I think.

Yep.

Yeah.

So we could, within reverential reason, we'll list a bunch of stuff out

and we could, maybe some of us are nailing it without knowing it.

Maybe we're all right.

Maybe we're just, you know, God's chuckling, going, no, you guys are so far off, but that's okay.

Who knows?

Yes?

Did you figure out when you believed in the kenosis, did you figure out that it wasn't

right on your own?

I don't remember.

Did I figure out if the kenosis was right?

I think, I think what I did was I believed in the kenosis because it says kanao there, and then

later figured out that there was a kenosic theory.

Found out what that was.

Well, that can't be that.

I think that's what happened.

Just like subordinationism is different than subordination,

theologically in reference to Christ.

So subordination in Christ is that he became subordinate to the Father.

I didn't even get into some of the stuff I missed.

I could get into, I think I'll do that.

He said he was subordinate to the Father, but subordinationism means he was lesser than the Father in

nature.

But subordination means he was in a different position.

So he's made under the law, Galatians 4 .4, for a little while, lower than the angels, Hebrews 2 .9.

So I like to say the emptying is this, that he cooperated with the

limitations of being a man.

That's how I say it.

If someone said, can you defend that?

I'd say, no, except that he had to somehow, some way.

I mean, cause he's walking around.

And if you let his ethereal, infinite presence, you know, the Sea of Galilee's gone, bubbles up and it's gone.

He cooperated somehow, some way, did something so he could be one of us.

I don't know.

It's just not told to us.

And I don't think we should try and solve it.

So I've said to people before, I've warned them, don't try and solve too many issues about Jesus where the Bible

doesn't tell us what it is.

Because you can get into an error concerning him.

Now about predestination.

Okay, let's, we can go in and we can try some stuff.

Because if you get that wrong, you're not getting it wrong about Jesus.

You don't want to get it wrong about Jesus.

So I say to people, just be real careful of what you, how you are with him.

Just be careful to say, it's good to say, I don't know.

And I don't want to know.

I don't want to think I know.

I might get it wrong and I don't want to risk that regarding my Lord and my savior, Jesus Christ, God in flesh who died

for my sins and who did things I can't comprehend from all eternity.

I just don't know.

And so I just don't know.

And I say that.

So for that, we're okay to say that it doesn't make sense.

And then we don't.

Yeah, when we say it doesn't make sense, we want to make sure that we're not saying it's illogical.

It doesn't make sense.

That's not the case, but it's beyond us.

We can't comprehend it.

Yeah.

And so it's incomprehensible to us.

And that's okay.

Incomprehensibility with God is good.

If you can understand everything about your God, then he's a figment of your imagination.

What's that?

Yeah.

He's not your God, you're his God.

That's right.

Like Mormonism, God's an exalted man from another planet.

He has sex with his goddess wife, makes spirit babies.

Yeah, it makes sense.

Oh, you think God is everywhere all the time in three separate persons and one divine essence?

Yeah, that's stupid.

And then they reject God because they submit him to their level of understanding and

mind.

Goes along with the fancy underwear.

Goes along with the fancy underwear and the secret handshakes.

I used to know them all.

I think I got two or three remembered.

Almost all of the Sonic.

It is, he got it from the Masons.

Yeah, he did.

All right, Laura Anderson says, unfathomable, that's because your rope isn't long enough.

Let's see, Joanne, because you guys, you know why I said that joke?

It was a joke, you get it?

Unfathomable, because a fathom is six feet and you have a rope with a rope.

I'm sorry to say I got that.

You did get that?

All right, I didn't know.

Because when nobody makes a comment or even an eyebrow raised, and I don't know if they got it.

I have to explain it, but I probably didn't.

They were saying, that's so stupid.

That's right.

Sometimes I tell people that I, that could be, but I don't have enough facts to agree with you.

Okay, veritize above all.

Trying to figure out that, trying to figure that out is like trying to teach a one month

old trigonometry.

Yeah, exactly.

I once taught a guy trigonometry in 20 minutes at a job.

I said, I'll get you doing trig in 20 minutes.

He goes, I can't do it.

I said, bet you, you got 20 minutes.

I taught him, within 20 minutes he was doing trig.

You got a more powerful brain than I do.

No, it's easy.

It's easy.

All trigonometry is, is solving for A equals B over C.

That's all it is.

That's not all it is.

Once you do that, once you can solve for B and solve for C, you can do trigonometry, because trigonometry deals with sine, cosine, tangent,

opposite over hypotenuse, okay?

Adjacent over hypotenuse, and opposite over adjacent in a right triangle.

It's easy.

And he was a, well, I see, what, what, what?

I'm like Uncle Joe with politics on that trigonometry.

No, it's, it trigs you.

It's not hard, seriously.

It just sounds so big and stuff.

But I used to sit there, and for real, when I was bored at places, I

would write out trigonometry equations randomly, and then try and solve them to see if it would work.

For entertainment.

I got bored, I'd write a trig equation.

I'd write a trig equation out and see if it'll solve.

You have another question, too.

Oh, no, what?

So, when it says that Jesus doesn't know, like the, was it the day of his

coming, was that?

The what?

The day of his coming, is that?

The day, I forgot my hearing aids.

Dave?

I know, I'm trying to figure out another day that he's coming, only the Father.

Oh, it doesn't know the day nor the hour of his return, but only the Father in heaven, who knows him?

Does he truly not know, or is that something else that he's referencing?

In John 17, three, it says that Jesus, that the Father, Jesus says he's the only true God.

People say, that is so literal, that what it means is he's the only true God, therefore Jesus is not God either.

They would all, yeah.

And I say, well, if that logic is true, let's go to Jude four, where Jesus is called our only Lord and master.

If we use your logic there, it has to apply here.

So that means the Father is not our only Lord and master.

Wait a minute.

Are you saying then that the Jews would use exaggeration sometimes?

Yes, they would.

And so we have to understand the culture.

Furthermore, if Jesus is not God because he doesn't know the day nor the hour, I'll get to explain what it all means,

then when you go to Revelation 19, 12, Jesus has a name written on him that no one knows except

himself.

So if Jesus can't be God because he doesn't know the day nor the hour, then the Father can't be God because he doesn't know the name that Jesus has.

So people, they don't realize when they say these things, they're not getting it.

So that's a little bit of an apologetics.

Okay, now, it has to do with the wedding feast.

If you go to John 14, Jesus says, in my Father's house are many mansions.

And if we're not so, I'd tell you, but I go to prepare a place for you.

So you had a family and a family, a son and a daughter, and the parents

would get together, arrange marriage a year out.

They would send out invites to everybody.

The marriage was arranged.

Then what the job of the son was in the house was to build on a room

so that when the father said, now go get your bride, they'd go with the trumpeters, dee, dee, dee, dee, go get the bride, and then

come back with the bride to the house, have the wedding feast.

And then when they're married, they would enter into the wedding chamber, this place where

they were to consummate their marriage, et cetera, all right?

Now, the culture was that you had to know when this was gonna occur

because Aunt Martha or whatever her name would be, 100 miles away

in Israel, maybe 50 miles, because Israel, we drove in buses, we went all over, it

was great.

And some of the area is flat, some of it is desert, and some of it is rocky terrain.

We went to some places where, I'm telling you, you better be careful while you're walking.

When we walked up to the Qumran Cave, Qumran Cave One, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found,

you slip, you could slice yourself open.

We went to, in one area, it was desert.

There wasn't much out there, it was flat.

There was other areas where it was really, hey, look at those trees, this is really nice.

We go by the beach, and it's about as big as Southern California, okay?

So you send the invites out.

It takes days, maybe weeks, for the invites to get to your relatives out

there, and the other part, because generally the relatives stayed in the local area.

Generally they did, they wouldn't really go that far.

But sometimes you'd have some relatives outside that go five miles, 10 miles, 20 miles.

They had to have a warning, a preparation time to be able to lock up the

doors and seal the well and get the harvesters to do whatever, while they have so -and -so do whatever.

And if Aunt Martha can't make it because you gotta rent a mule, and you gotta have someone to take this,

it took time.

They'd have to know when the wedding was gonna be, okay?

And so they'd say, it'll be on this day, it'll be on January 1st.

Okay, everybody come on out, okay.

And so they would come out because you had to get the wine ready, you had to get the fatted calf ready, you had to get all this stuff ready.

And the trumpeters had to be ready, the wedding feast band, everything had to be ready.

It's a big deal.

And the friends of the son would say, so when's the father gonna tell you to go get your bride?

No man knows a day nor the hour but the father alone.

It was an idiomatic phrase of respect to the father.

Only he knows, because the father had to say, now, go get her.

Because basically everything was ready, they were waiting for the father to give the permission.

They were just waiting on him to do the official father stuff.

It's like, who gives this woman a way to marry this man?

I do, you know, the father does this.

There's this kind of authority thing.

And notice what happens.

He takes her hand and places it, I tell people when they do this, when I

talk to the fathers who give away their brides, you take her hand and you place it in the hand of the

man she's going to marry, signifying his headship and his protection over her.

You're transferring it from your hand to his.

That's where this comes from, right?

And so all this comes from this ancient culture stuff.

And so who knows the day nor the hour?

No one knows but the father.

And then he would go get his bride, it's the wedding feast stuff.

I've told this before to a few people.

And most people say, where is that?

I actually tried to find some documentation.

I started, I only spent a little bit of time, I haven't found it yet.

But I did find some allusions to it, and some writings with some ancient stuff.

But I remember once I was in Texas and I was teaching and it was in a

hotel lobby afterwards.

And this guy comes in who was at this conference, he had a big sword with him.

And he had his sword and he was really cool.

He had a long jacket on.

I'm looking and he kind of stood out a little bit and he sat down and he goes, hey, enjoyed what you did and all that.

Oh, thanks.

We just got talking, a bunch of us.

We started talking, people ask me questions, we're talking and I told him this.

And he's staring at me the whole time.

And I'm telling this about this wedding feast thing.

And he said, I can tell you something.

He says, look, I'm Jewish because I'm a Christian, I'm a Jew, grew up in this.

He said, you're the only Gentile I've ever known who knew that.

He goes, how'd you know that?

I said, I've known it for years.

I don't even know where I learned it.

I just don't remember.

He goes, no one knows that.

He goes, I'm impressed.

I go, okay.

And then another Jewish guy told me the same thing another time.

He goes, where'd you get, how do you know that?

I don't know.

I think it was Cracker Jack Box.

And he said, hey, I've been reading it.

So it's there.

And now someone said, where's the documentation for that?

I go, that's a good question.

So now I'm seeing if I can find it.

Okay, let's see.

Let's see, let's see.

Match radio show is like wine.

This Bible study is like fine wine.

I love it.

All right, Randall, I like you.

You just went up in my respect category a lot.

Did you hear, I want to read that again to you guys.

Cause you maybe didn't get that.

That was, I can read that again.

You know, it's important stuff.

No one's shaking their head.

I mean, they're going, hey, whatever, dude.

Didn't you just teach on humility?

What?

I was watching on YouTube.

I cut out around 1035 Eastern time.

And I got back just now.

I've already had my mind blown, cried, and just in awe.

All right, Noel.

Hey, Noel, what letter of the alphabets not there during Christmas?

You see my wife's got the best expression.

So you're just like, oh.

But she's like, oh, disgusting, stupidity.

You pulled that off.

Half of them just went, I'm out.

It was good until he started talking again.

I think a lot of us have cried as Joanne says, I need an intimate relationship with Jesus.

He is magnificent.

That is so true.

And we're all going to be able to have that at the same time forever.

Oh, can you imagine we meet in heaven?

Oh, isn't he great?

Yeah.

I'm gonna praise him right now.

Way to go.

Even that's ramblings are good.

That is saying something.

Laura said that.

What's that?

What'd you say?

What'd you say?

She goes, I'm saying something, my wife.

My wife's always got the little dagger.

She's like, I looked at what she goes, turn around and she's going, what?

My wife just said, it's all fun and games till you have to listen to it 24 seven.

I still keep her entertained though.

Right, hon?

She said, it's true.

That's one way to put it.

It was a say, let's see.

10 points of blood.

We can only donate one point.

Pint, it's supposed to be every eight weeks, but he is Jesus.

Okay, I like that.

I learn new things daily, being born again and reading the word daily since 2005.

Good for you, Laura.

God bless Matt, just joined.

What did I miss?

Everything.

Was it good?

Oh, it was great.

Oh man, he missed it.

Okay.

Hey Matt, nice shirt.

My wife just said, did you dress yourself?

Man, she's just throwing the daggers.

She's rare form, she's going for it.

All right.

Oh, Noel goes, Noel.

You should read all the comments, Matt, where we've all cried.

Let's see.

I think someone, let's see, what is that?

Oh, Nelson, have a very good study.

You will have to rewatch.

Okay.

Joanne says, cold chills.

Okay.

Oh, Noel says, oh, I had a question.

Are cold chills a sign of Jesus presence?

Probably not.

Joanne, tell it, Neek.

Tell it, Neek.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Noel, Mary Calvin, you might close the window.

Joanne says, awesome.

Matt, she's recommended a good shirt for your night.

Oh, you assumed she dressed me.

Oh, I dressed myself tonight.

She probably bought it though.

She does, she comes home with a shirt.

Here, you need to wear this, it's clean.

It's clean.

Doesn't have holes in it.

I've worn shirts that, I mean, threads are hanging down.

She goes, I got to throw that away.

Why?

I'm married, I don't depress anybody.

Then all of a sudden, there's this thing come flying in my direction.

So, and it wasn't a sandwich, like a brick.

Okay, so as you can see, we have fun and hope you guys enjoyed the study.

You got any more questions?

Anybody want to, Shane, I'll officially close it up.

Then we can just stay and talk if you want.

I have another question about the empty.

The empty?

Okay.

Yeah, he emptied himself in the form.

So, I was listening to what you're saying and for me to take it and read it,

he emptied himself and the man was there.

And we saw the man being crucified, but he emptied himself

from the man.

I don't know, I'm reading what it says.

It can't be emptied himself from humanity.

Not from humanity, but from being

the likeness of men.

So, emptied himself, I'm not sure I understand.

Emptied himself from being a man, the likeness of men?

The spirit of God, the body.

And the body was there to be crucified.

Oh, the spirit of God didn't leave the body.

I don't know, I'm just reading what it says.

No, no, it says he emptied himself and being found in the likeness of men.

Taking the form of men.

He emptied himself, taking the form of a man.

Yeah, of a form of service.

Being made in the likeness of men.

Right.

So, it's saying God became one of us and there was an emptying in the process.

We just don't know what that emptying is.

That's all.

Paul wrote it.

So, there was something that had to go on and we call it the emptying in order for that to occur.

But we gotta be careful that we don't reduce his divinity and saying he was less divine because it can't be possible.

So, at this point we say, we don't know.

And it's a good answer to say, we don't know.

I read a lot of theologians over the years on this and different commentaries and they go, it could be this, it could be that.

But, like, yeah, they don't know.

I mean, they don't say they know.

We don't go, we know for a fact what it is.

No, they don't do that.

It seems to be this, something to do with this and then they go on with that.

That's fine.

I think the reason why it sticks in my head is I wanna make sure that I'm not missing something or

like misunderstanding.

The emptying?

Yeah.

All right.

We have to be careful that we don't say there's a lessening of God's nature in essence in the incarnation.

We can say that there was an emptying because of the text says, kanao.

There was a sense in which God cooperated with limitations by an emptying himself of something.

But what does it mean to empty?

It means there's something in him that he took out?

What does it mean to empty?

You have a glass, you empty it.

There's something in it, you remove it.

Well, does that mean there's a quantity or a quality in God that was removed to become a man?

That doesn't work either.

This is why the heresy of the kenosis in the sense, the kenotic idea in that he lessened

himself to become one of us in his divinity.

Well, that can't be the case.

We started asking the question and started getting in.

He started realizing we can't answer it.

There cannot be a lessening of his divinity because that would mean he's no longer who he is.

He's no longer divine.

So that can't be the case.

But what does it mean to empty?

I think Paul used it because there was really no other word to kind of describe a

humility of lessening some of the,

like, you know, the TV monitor analogy.

You got it up on bright, right?

And you just go lessen it.

You empty the intensity a little bit.

It's still there, huh?

Tone it down.

Tone it down.

Yeah, I like that.

He toned down his glory a little bit to become one of us.

That's a good way of putting it.

It's still there.

You just put a filter on it, maybe, or is that the right way to say it?

I have no clue.

But we're theorizing, you know.

What does it mean to empty?

Cannot be a lessening of his quality and his essence.

That can't happen, okay?

More of a condescending?

Yeah, condescension to become one of us.

He had to do that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, yeah.

It's tricky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, how about this?

You know, and the word became flesh, and we beheld his glory.

That's John 1, 14.

He's walking.

He's beholding his glory.

What does that mean?

Well, maybe in the transfiguration in Matthew 17, when he shined, or

how about his glory in his relationship with the Father?

Or could it be in the crucifixion and his resurrection in the glorified

body?

We beheld his glory.

Could that be what it is back in John 1, 14?

There are things that the scriptures say about Christ, about God, we can't understand.

From everlasting to everlasting, he is God, Psalm 90, verse two.

What does that mean?

Yeah, it means without beginning, without end.

It's eternal, right?

I didn't think on that for a minute.

No.

Yeah, you've got to be worse than you are now.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm already at crayons.

That's right.

He's already at crayon level.

He's progressed.

Oh, he's progressed.

That's pretty good, Craylon.

Oh, you've progressed.

That's pretty good.

That's a good one.

You gotta admit that was a good one.

I feel good now.

You feel better.

That's right, that's right.

The insult club here.

All right, so anyway, does that help?

It doesn't help, but it helps.

Yeah, I'm just trying to get, you know, because I'm reading it, and it

says that he emptied himself in the form of a bond sermon.

No, he emptied himself taking the form of a bond sermon.

So the emptying was in the process of taking, becoming a man.

Yeah.

It was almost like he condescended himself, kind of like when he condescended to walk in his own creation.

So what happened on the spiritual level of the divine nature?

Don't know.

So it was a man,.

But he was with God.

Something changed.

Something changed, which could not be an ontological change.

It'd have to be a relational change.

And what kind of relation?

Not ontologically as in the economic trinity or the ontological trinity, but relation maybe in position?

Well, if God's everywhere all the time, how could it be a positional change?

Every solution has problems.

Yeah, because they would expect that God had a relationship with him.

So this is, we see, every solution that we come up with, we can risk a heresy here, a heresy there, a heresy there.

So that's why I say, I've thought about this over the years, I just say, he cooperated with the limitations of being

a man.

That's my out.

That's the best way to put it, really.

Yeah.

But it is a good question.

And people have wrestled over that exact verse and that exact word emptying for centuries,

for real.

That's why there's a heresy denoted with that one word emptying, the kenosis heresy.

But yet there was a kenosis in that he emptied himself, but he didn't become less.

The kenotic theory, the heresy says God minus something.

Hypothetic union is God plus something.

In that union of the plus, there was a filter put on,

toned down, as you said, that's a good way to put it.

So at this point, we just don't know.

And you're asking the right question and theologians have really wrestled with it for centuries

and there's no solution.

We just don't know.

But it's a good question.

I wish I had a good answer for you, but.

And then, although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard

equality.

What does that mean?

To be grasped, to be seized.

And the King James didn't consider it robbery.

This is another tech, okay, it's good, we'll go through this.

He's saying, he didn't consider it wrong to be God.

He didn't consider it robbery to be equal with him.

Did not consider it something to take by force.

It's mine, because he already was there.

That's the point.

It wasn't robbery to do that.

So it says, who, although

he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God anything to be grasped.

The word grasp is harpagmas, harpagmas, actually.

And it means to seize with force.

And I have the note from that, from Spiros Zadatiates in the Complete Word Study

Dictionary, New Testament Chattanooga Publishers, blah, blah, blah.

And so when I looked at scholarly references and it deals with the issue of taking

something by force, it's like a usurpation.

To usurp is to take the authority position of another by force.

And so the idea here is that that wasn't for Jesus to do.

He didn't take it by force.

Because notice what it says.

He existed in the form of God.

Our word exist isn't really quite carrying what the Greek says.

We could say he was in the form of God.

But what it's saying is he was by nature in his very form and essence.

That's what's going on there.

And he did not regard that equality to be something that's robbed.

It wasn't robbery for him to say that.

He wasn't wrong for saying it.

It wasn't something he just took and said, hey, I'm gonna claim this for myself.

That's what the text is getting at.

He was existing in the very nature and essence of God.

And in that state didn't regard equality with him, that relationship with him and that equality,

okay?

Not subordination, equality with him to be robbed.

This is actually a statement of his deity.

That help?

It helps a lot.

It's hard reading and then understanding that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, at the end, you can ask,.

It's the follow up.

Yeah, this is, this section of scripture is much debated,

much written about.

Yeah, it's tough to wrap my head around.

Mm -hmm.

It's a section of scripture.

That's why when my notes wouldn't print up, I don't know what happened.

I rebooted my computer, the file got corrupted.

I think it's because I had it from an old format.

I converted it to another one.

Whatever, it doesn't matter.

I wasn't worried because I've been in this scripture so many times, this pericope of scripture, so many times.

Over the years, I was like, okay.

So I know a lot what's going on.

Why?

Because I've read so much on it.

Why?

Because it's what it says.

The cults debate it.

Everybody asks, not everybody, but everybody asks about it.

The good questions.

What does it mean?

Well, it might mean this, but it can't mean this.

It could mean that.

It probably means that.

It might not mean that, but maybe it means this.

But then we look at the relationship.

He existed in the form of God.

What does it mean to exist in the form of God?

God is spirit, John 4, 24, and Luke 24, 39.

Spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.

So therefore, he was an angel in God's form as a spirit.

That's what some cults will say.

But that has to do with the issue of a me, just to be in that form.

But Huperkon deals with the issue of more of a nature of in that form.

Just like in Greek, there's akuo, and there's another word for hearing, and I forgot it.

There's two words for hearing.

One is to hear like a noise.

Another one is to hear with understanding.

And we don't have that, except maybe say, I heard him, or I comprehended him.

That's kind of like that thing.

And so if you don't know the meaning of certain words in Greek, it's not to say if you don't know Greek, you can't know this stuff, but

sometimes it helps.

That it's just necessary to get into these words.

So Huperkon and a me are both has to do with the nature of existing and being.

But Huperkon carries more of the issue of actual essence and nature.

Because it says, Huperkon number two, yeah, to see,

well, no.

Okay, where am I going?

I got lost in my notes here.

Hippocampus, to seize, existed.

Yeah, here we go.

Yeah, Huperkon, to be identical with, or as a state of being.

The actual note here is to be identical with.

This is from Johannes P. Lou and Eugene Albert Nida.

So it's called Lou and Nida, or Nida and Lou, I think it is.

The Greek English lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains.

And so it's a very well -respected lexicon.

A lexicon is like a dictionary.

A dictionary just has a definition of a word.

But a lexicon will give you a definition and it's used this way in these verses, this way in these

verses.

And with a genitive, it means this, but with a dative, it means that, preceded by a genitive absolute, you can't use it on

Tuesday because then you'll walk backwards.

They have all these rules.

That's what a lexicon does.

And so I'll go through, I'll look through lexicon.

What's the meaning here?

These are experts that have done this, right?

I don't know this stuff.

I'll go through and I'll find the verse in question and I'll say in this context, with this kind of structure, it means

this.

A lot of people don't know this, but we know the English language.

We speak it naturally.

They spoke Greek.

It is known so stinking well, so stinking well.

There is what's called the Granville Sharps rule

out of Titus 2 .13, our great God and Savior, Jesus.

God, the Father, and Jesus.

And so therefore the cults say it's two separate beings.

But that's not what the Granville Sharp rule says.

Our great God and Savior, Jesus.

The Granville Sharp rule says, and I don't know all the specifics, whenever the nominative

occurs with a subject of a primitive this or that, whenever it's by this, it

always means that the same object is covered by whatever.

That's the rule.

It's universal.

It's how it's looked.

These experts who have written up theses, like for a PhD thesis

on this one thing, stuff like this.

People do do this stuff.

They'll go, I'll tell you what, I'll write a 200 -page thesis on just how, when the dative of means is

used next to a genitive absolute and what that means when the object is nominative or whatever,

or indirect, or the accusative.

And you'll just go.

And they will go in and find every place in Greek where it occurs, go

in the Bible, and then they'll go to extra biblical literature in Greek.

And they'll find it and do research.

And they'll work it for two years.

Then they have to do their PhD dissertation where they defend the theory.

And then this kind of stuff is written up, the Granville Sharp rule kind of a thing.

I'm not saying it was done like that with these guys.

And they'll say, here it is.

And then it gets condemned down to a paragraph.

And then people like me could say, it's the Granville Sharp rule.

And I sound really smart because these guys have done their homework.

They know Greek so well.

They could almost say they know it better than the original speakers, but probably do.

There's some experts like that.

So Huprychon deals with existing as in the same identity with.

And this is by Lou Anita, okay?

To be identical.

I have it literally in quotes.

And I have the footnote reference who was identical with God, who existed in the

form of God.

Existed identically in that form of God.

You don't say that about an angel.

Did not regard equality with God.

It had to be grasped.

And that's Hupargmos, to seize upon with force.

And that's Spiros Zotiates who talked about that.

So it's like saying this, Jesus, he existed by the same

identity in the form of God in that form as the identity with God did not regard that equality that he had with

God something to be robbed or taken by force.

Now you go, oh, he's saying he's equal, equal to him.

And it was natural to him.

And then he emptied himself from that and became one of us.

But he doesn't tell us what it means by emptying himself.

And that's what it is.

And we're stuck with this.

Which how she described it being more like a what?

That's an adjective.

Empty is more of an adjective.

They're trying to describe himself.

Well, here's the thing.

The other thing we could say is he emptied himself.

He performed the action on himself.

So he, it's like, it's like, you know, I go to the beach,

strip down, put my spring suit on and go.

I did it to myself.

So he is in heaven everywhere

eternally.

And it's almost like, dare I use the analogy like this?

Okay, here I go.

Then into the womb.

It's happening now.

And he's there in a womb,

in a womb.

God.

What?

In a womb, growing.

And then contractions, birth, breastfeed,

bathroom.

There he is.

What's that?

Circumcised.

Circumcised, forgot about that.

Circumcised, bled.

He had to be cleaned by his mom and his dad.

Just looking at one point of view, our logic and understanding of what we think that it is,

it's hard to fathom that.

Exactly.

Trying to put it in to be a chance.

That's right.

Yeah, I try to think about how to process transmission.

Yeah.

So if we were writing something like this, what would be the right word we'd say?

Probably emptied.

Emptied.

I think that's pretty good.

Emptied.

What's it mean?

I'm not exactly sure, but it works.

Because it's like everything.

Because he's already in the form of God, then he became one of us.

He had to do something.

What else are we going to call it?

Lessened himself?

Well, what does that mean?

It doesn't quite do it.

I wonder how long it took Paul to come up with the right word.

Yeah, he probably is.

Yeah, I could see him going, okay.

You know, three days later, I'm going to just use the word empty.

You know, we could say.

God just said, use empty.

You know, he gives simple answers that work sometimes.

A lot of the more complicated stuff.

Think about three days.

He just wrote it.

He got it right.

Empty.

Now, you know, he was married, so I wonder if his wife could have said, you know what you just said?

Is that what I said?

Wow, I don't know.

You never know.

You know what, I've written a lot of stuff that's theologically difficult.

I've actually stuck, been stuck on stuff for hours or days.

And gone back to it and just said, I'm just writing this.

That's all.

I'm just going to write it because I can't find it anyway.

You know, I've had some conversations with Neek where what she'll let me do is she's patient with me in this.

I'll use her as a sounding board with a concept or an idea.

Usually she's going, just staring.

But I get to say it.

And she goes, yeah, that's right.

Whatever you said.

Thank you.

And I'm back, you know, because sometimes you just got to say it.

And a lot of times she does have some good input.

Happened once in 19.

What was that year?

And so, hey, she got me.

I can come back.

All right, let's see what else people say.

Jimmy Smith actually said the faith came from us.

That's Armenian theology.

Absolutely.

Going to finish the TV.

It's 1130.

I can't find.

So, Jesus felt pain and sickness because he would know if he did.

You can't say he felt sickness.

He did feel pain.

Because he was made and likeness of sinful flesh, but not a sinner.

He was not a sinner.

He did never sin, but you can't say he suffered sickness.

Because he may have, but we don't know.

Sickness is part of the fall.

So I would just say, it doesn't say he did.

Doesn't say he didn't.

So I wouldn't say he did.

That's all.

See you, DG.

How about if I pray right now, and then you guys can go.

I'll pray closing, okay?

All right.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your word and the difficulty even of this passage of scripture, because it

deals with you and what you did for us in incarnation.

I ask, Lord, that you would just bless our hearts as we

just very lightly try to understand more about what you did to become one of us.

I ask, Lord, that you would just comfort us in the understanding that you know, and we

don't, and that's okay.

We thank you, Lord, for the gathering of people, for the preaching and teaching of your word.

And I ask, Lord, for your blessing on everybody here.

And Lord Jesus, we give you thanks.

We ask it in your name.

Amen.

Okay.

All right, DG, God bless.

I saw you fading over there.

The wife might be home at 9 .30.

Okay, you call her, tell her.

Tell her she's got to come.

Tell her to come.

She's doing pretty good.

Jimmy Smith at the anointing of the Old Testament of the Holy Spirit was just upon them, not in dwelling.

Jesus said that they would dwell with us.

That's one of the theories that they have, Laura.

Amen.

You guys enjoy the study?

And you guys enjoy the study?

So she's making a can of them, right?

She's making a reasonable length.

And it's gonna take a lot of time.

Oh.

I had to throw those together.