The Reward For Endurance (Hebrews 12:1-3) | Worship Service

Good morning, and welcome to Kootenai Church. We're glad you're here today. Would you please stand as we sing, Sing We the Song of Emmanuel.

Sing we the song of Emmanuel. This the Christ who was long foretold. Low in the shadows of Bethlehem. Promise of dawn now our eyes behold. God most high in a manger lay. Lift your voices and announce love has come to us.

Join now with the host of heaven to welcome Blessed lay the Invincible Son of Man. Best of to save us all. Shepherds, sages, we voice and we come on bended knee. Adore spread the news of Emmanuel.

Joy and peace for the weary heart. Lift up your heads for your king has come. Sing for the light overwhelms the dark. Glory shining for all to see. Hope of life let the God of Jesus.

Glory shining for all to see. Hope of life let the God of Jesus A couple of announcements regarding some things.

That are coming up in the next couple of weeks. Since Christmas is on a Sunday morning, we're not going to have a Christmas Eve service on the night prior, nor will we have Sunday school on Christmas morning or Sunday school on New Year's day.

So Sunday school is canceled for those two Sundays, but our services will be at their normal time. And then I wanted to give just a quick reminder about parking because we're using up space with snow berms and plowing snow.

And I expect that that's gonna happen for the rest of the winter, that's my expectation. I should say my hope is that it'll happen for the rest of the winter. So when you come here, if you could just remember to park as close as you can to somebody else in the line, don't go down the line and just park wherever.

Because if everybody just parks between whichever the two cars are there, we'll never fill up the parking lot. And so just keep that in mind when you show up, please park as close as you can to somebody else.

And by close, I don't mean like you could drive a car through, I mean close, like you can barely get your door open. Then you'll know that you're, if you have to get a can opener to get yourself out of your car, then you'll know that you're close enough.

And then the last announcement is next Saturday is our first, certainly not our last, but our first churchwide men's breakfast. So this is open to all of the men in the church. If you'd like to come in at breakfast, there's some ladies who are gonna be making breakfast for us and show up at eight o 'clock, but here's the catch.

You have to sign up for that on the sheet that is out in the foyer because they need to know how much food to prepare. And most importantly, how much bacon to purchase. So if you don't sign up and you show up, you don't get any bacon.

That's the rule. That's not my rule. I didn't make it up. It's in the Bible. You don't get any bacon, but you have to sign up on that signup sheet. So there's, I think, almost 30 people signed up for that now.

It should be a great time. We're gonna be talking about men's ministry in the future, particularly the men's Bible study on Monday nights and what we're doing there. So please show up for that and sign up before you do.

I want you to show up. I also want you to sign up. Turn your Bibles now, please, to Psalm 16 for the scripture reading. Psalm 16. This is typically something that you would expect to have read on Resurrection Sunday, Psalm 16, since this is the psalm that Peter quotes in his sermon in Acts 2, showing that David was looking forward to and speaking of the Christ who would rise from the dead.

So you may not necessarily think that this is a Christmas psalm and kind of is, kind of isn't, but you'll see it's connected to the message a little bit later. Psalm 16, and will you stand with me as we read?

Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in you. I said to the Lord, you are my Lord. I have no good beside you. As for the saints who are in the earth, they are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who have bartered for another God will be multiplied. I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips. The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup.

You support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me. I will bless the Lord who has counseled me. Indeed, my mind instructs me in the night. I have set the Lord continually before me because he is at my right hand.

I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will dwell securely. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay.

You will make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. In your right hand, there are pleasures forever. Let's pray together. Our most merciful and gracious God, you are good to us.

Out of the infinite abundance of your goodness and mercy, you have lavished grace upon us in saving us and sending your Son into this world to live a perfect life in our place and then to die the death that we deserved in our stead.

So it is a great mercy to us that we get to gather here and to worship and to fellowship with one another and to gather around your word. And now we would just pray that as we do so, that you would unite our hearts together in love and in truth and in affection for Jesus Christ, that we may, by your grace, fix our eyes and our hearts upon him.

We have set him before our eyes and we pray that we may be blessed and that we may rejoice as a result of that. We thank you that you have given us eternal life and salvation in your Son, that you have made known to us the path of life and that you have drawn us out of darkness and into light.

All these are your graces and mercy to us. And we thank you, O God, our giver of all mercy and grace, that you have blessed us with these things and that we enjoy them only because of what Christ has done.

We pray your blessing upon our worship and our fellowship, our unity here, our oneness, our love for one another, our service to one another. May you be honored and glorified through that as we reflect upon Jesus Christ and what he has done.

We ask your blessing upon this time to that end. In Christ's name, amen.

Oh God

The Incarnation and Christ's Sympathy in Hebrews 2

Will you please turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, to chapter 12. Josh drank out of my water bottle, so now I have another up here. I hope you enjoy what I had this last week. Hebrews chapter 12, we're gonna read verses one to three here in a moment, but when you found your place, let's pray together.

Our gracious Father, we are thankful for your word. It is in your word that we have come to understand who you are and what you have done for us and your son. It is because of what is written in your word that we have been caused to believe upon Christ and to be born again and to place our faith in him.

So we thank you for that work that you have done in us. And now we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts to understand your word and that you would send your spirit to be our teacher and our guide.

That as we think about some things that are not commonly part of what we meditate on throughout the day, that you would be glorified and help us to understand your word and the implications of it. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.

We have two Sundays before Christmas Sunday, and we're gonna spend both of them here in Hebrews chapter 12. I'm not exactly sure what we're gonna do on Christmas day, but it is going to be somewhat connected to the things that we're gonna be talking about today and next week.

And as you're gonna see, the subject matter of Hebrews 12 is directly connected to the great miracle of the incarnation of the God that we worship in the person of Christ, that he was fully man. This is what we celebrate at this time of year.

This is what we have been singing about, God becoming man, God with us, Emmanuel. Like us, our Lord Jesus ran his race and like us, he faced opposition and hostility from sinners. He faced adversity and he endured in his race and he can sympathize with us because he was fully man.

Hebrews chapter two, verse nine, he says, he was made for a little while lower than the angels because of suffering and death, crowned with glory and honor so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

Hebrews two, verse 14, therefore, since the children that is you and I share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same so that through death, he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all of their lives.

So the great work of the incarnation is what makes him our high priest, it qualifies him to sympathize with us, it qualifies him to offer a sacrifice on our behalf and then to intercede for us. He does all of this because he was fully man, fully man and fully God, he knows our weaknesses and he can sympathize with them and in this way, he is an example for us.

Now, in the last couple of times together, we've been observing how it is that the author of Hebrews in chapter 12 describes the Lord Jesus, he is the object of our faith, we are to fix our eyes on him, that is a call to gaze upon him both savingly and in terms of our security, he is also the author of our faith, he is the one who initiates or originates the faith that we have placed in him and now today, we're gonna see that he is the example for our faith in what he has done, this is verse two and verse three, let's read it together, Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse one, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith and here's the example that he has set, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God for consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart, that last part of verse two and verse three described for us Jesus as our example, what he did, he endured the cross, despising the shame, did all of that for the joy that was set before him and has sat down at the father's right hand and this kind of endurance, this enduring of hostility is the very thing that the author has been encouraging us to have in our faith since way back in chapter 10.

He says at the end of chapter 10, you have need of endurance so that when you've done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. There is a reward for those who have endured and done the will of God and then every example in chapter 11 is an example of people who endured in the face of hostility and reasons for doubt and yet they received at the end of that, the promises, they obtained the promises that they were promised and some of them are yet waiting for promises to be fulfilled in the same way that we are.

Nobody suffered worse or more undeservedly than the Lord Jesus did at the hands of hostile sinners and so how did he preserve, how did he persevere? That's a better word to put there, isn't it? How did he persevere in the face of all of that hostility and affliction and suffering?

It is his perseverance, it is his endurance that is held out to us as an example. How did he do that? And really this raises two issues here in verses two and three. Did the Lord Jesus have faith and if so, what kind of faith did he have?

How is it the same or different than the faith that you and I have? And second, what was the joy that was set before him and how does that relate to us? Is there a joy that is set before us? What was the joy that was set before him and how did the Lord Jesus come to understand what that joy was?

What did he understand it to be and then how did that strengthen him to persevere through and endure the hostility at the hands of sinners? Now answering these questions will require us to give some thought, some mental energy into areas of theology that we don't typically spend our time thinking about.

I doubt if any of you this morning woke up and while you were getting ready and combing your hair or for those of you who don't have any hair, shaving and getting cleaned up and ready to come to church, I doubt if any of you were pondering the imponderables of the hypostatic union of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anybody here? I was because I have to preach on it but I understand that probably nobody else here was pondering those things this morning. Well, this is to answer the question, did Jesus have faith? What kind of faith was it is going to require us to spend some energy thinking about the implications of the hypostatic union or what we mean by the hypostatic union is the person of Christ that there is in that one singular person, two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.

And once we apprehend that, then we can understand what it means that he had faith and he endured in faith to the end of his life and we can begin to understand what he would have understood to be the joy that was set before him.

So these are the two questions, did Jesus of Nazareth have faith? Let's begin with that one. Did Jesus of Nazareth have faith? Depends on what you mean by that. Did Jesus of Nazareth have faith that resulted in him being justified, declared righteous, forgiven of sin and adopted into the family of God?

Did he have that kind of faith? No, he didn't because he didn't need forgiveness nor righteousness nor adoption into the family of God. Now faith results in that for you and for me but it did not result in that for the Lord Jesus.

So he would not have had what we would call saving faith or believing trust, justifying faith. He didn't have the faith that results in a personal imputed righteousness that you and I have. But if by faith we mean a trust in the Father, a belief that God is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him, did the Lord Jesus Christ have that kind of faith?

Did he trust the Father? If trusting the Father is what pleases him, if this is the definition of a faith that pleases God, those who come to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

Then I ask you, did the Lord Jesus Christ believe that God is? Yeah, he did. And did he then also believe that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him? He did. And this is the kind of faith that the man Christ Jesus would have had.

Not a saving, justifying faith, not a faith that gets us adopted into the family of God but a faith that trusts in the Father. And to fully apprehend this, you and I have to consider the nature of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we have in him one person, singular, but two separate and distinct natures, a divine nature and a human nature.

These two natures in the Lord Jesus Christ, they never mingle, they never overlap, they never are confounded with one another. They are two separate and distinct natures. They're never confused and they're never in conflict.

But the divine nature is always there and the human nature is always there so that we can say of the Lord Jesus Christ that he is fully man. And we can say of the Lord Jesus Christ that he is fully God.

For he had and possessed at all times both a divine nature as well as a human nature. This union of natures in the one person is what we refer to as the hypostatic union. So when I asked you, were you thinking about the hypostatic union this morning?

You probably weren't because you probably haven't even thought of the word hypostatic in the last six months. But we should give some thought and consideration to the reality of these two natures in the presence of the one person.

Jesus was never confused in his natures in the sense that his natures were at conflict with one another, that he had to choose which one to operate in and out of. In the Lord Jesus Christ, there was always present both a divine nature and a human nature.

He is God manifested in the flesh. Colossians 2 verse nine says, in him, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form. That is in the person of Jesus Christ, everything that is true of God in terms of his substance and his being was present in Jesus of Nazareth.

It is also true that he is fully man so that everything that is true of essential humanity was also present and real in the Lord Jesus Christ. They say, what about a proclivity to sin?

No.

What about sinful nature?

No.

Sinful thoughts?

No.

See, those are not essential to humanity. Those are things that are corruption. All right, there we go.

Are we ready?

Okay.

So in him dwells all the fullness of God in bodily form. Oh, I remember what I was saying now. So I could have used the 60 seconds to catch up, right? So sinful proclivities, sinful thoughts, and sinful tendencies, those things are not essential to humanity.

Those things are corruptions of our humanity. You can be fully human and be sinless. Adam was before he fell and we will be someday, fully human and completely sinless. So the Lord Jesus has everything that is true of essential humanity and everything that is true of essential deity because he is God manifested in the flesh.

So Jesus could say, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. That is everything that is true of the divine being, the divine essence resides in me. So that if you have seen me, you have looked upon the nature of the Father for he shared fully the nature of the Father.

So the second person of the eternal triune God took upon himself human flesh, united himself with humanity. And in the incarnation, he was born of a virgin so that the eternally existent God was veiled in human flesh.

We just sang this, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel, which means God with us. So that great hymn affirms both of those profound realities.

So while the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, fully possessed his divine nature and attributes and prerogatives, he did not fully express the divine nature, prerogatives, and attributes. Let me say it again.

He fully possessed them, but he did not fully express them. That divine nature was veiled by human flesh so that we could not see it all the time, but people who beheld him caught glimpses of that divine nature.

Fully equal with God and in no way inferior to him, he submitted himself to humanity and all that that entailed, including death on a cross so that we can say of the Lord Jesus Christ today, right now, he is fully God, he is fully man, he is the God-man, Christ Jesus, and he will be everlastingly.

This is what is true of our God forever and ever now. And there's a great book that I wanna recommend to you if you want to do some reading on this. It's a simple book, it's easy, it's thin, it's very accessible, well-written, but it's very profound.

It was one of my favorite books I read a couple of years ago. It's called The Man-Christ Jesus by Bruce Ware, W-A-R-E, Bruce Ware, W-A-R-E, The Man-Christ Jesus. It is a study of the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it will thrill your heart to read that book.

So without compromising the deity of Christ, we affirm also his full humanity, that he has all the essential attributes of humanity without any sin or without any propensity to sin. Now, humanness involves undergoing and not just encountering these things, but actually enduring certain things that are the expressions and realities of having a human nature and living in a human body.

Like during his life, Jesus experienced birth, growth, exhaustion, sleep, hunger, thirst, anger, sorrow, weeping, compassion, love, joy, temptation, prayer, development, learning, suffering, and death.

He was hated by his enemies, misunderstood and doubted by his family, abandoned by his friends. He knew what it meant to experience betrayal, to be disappointed, to be let down, to be lied about, to be slandered, to be falsely accused, to have people attribute to him evil motives, ignorance, scandal, and even an allegiance with the kingdom of darkness.

Jesus endured all of that. Hebrews 2 says, he had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

For since he himself was tempted in that which he suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. So Jesus had to learn in his humanity to submit, to grow, to develop. He had to practice things, study things, learn things.

He didn't come out of the womb knowing how to read. He wasn't able to recite the entire Old Testament at four weeks old. He had to learn to speak. He had to learn proper grammar and syntax. He had to learn vocabulary, how to add, how to make furniture, how to walk, how to crawl, how to chew his food.

He had to endure and learn all of those things. And if your idea of Jesus is that from the moment of his birth in Bethlehem that he knew everything in his humanity, had nothing to learn, nothing to develop, or nothing to grow through, then I ask you, how is it that he can sympathize with us having never gone through those things if those things are essential to humanity?

It's because those things are essential to humanity that he became a man so that he can endure all of those things which are essential elements of humanity. He did not come from the womb fully formed, understanding the Old Testament completely, able to recite it, able to do complex calculus, able to read, able to walk, none of that.

He had to endure and grow through all of those things in his humanity. And listen, the man Christ Jesus learned to trust the Word of God. And he learned what the Word of God said. This is essential to understanding whether or not he had proper faith.

How did it happen that Jesus learned all these things? We don't have a lot of information about his childhood, but we do have one glimpse. In Luke chapter two, when Mary and Joseph brought him back to the temple, and then they took off back home and thought he was with the family or among the baggage or in a different caravan or whatever it was, and they got a couple of days away, realized he wasn't there, went back to Jerusalem to find him, and they found him holding school in the temple with the scribes and the Pharisees and the religious leaders of his day.

Luke two, verse 47 says, all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. He's a 12-year-old boy conversing theologically with the leaders, the theological leaders of his day. So Luke two, verse 48 says, when they saw him, they were astonished.

And his mother said to him, son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I have been anxiously looking for you. And he said to them, why is it you were looking for me? Do you not know that I had to be in my father's house?

At 12 years old, he understood that he had a mission that was different than other men. He had a relationship with the Father in heaven that was different than other people. He understood this much, that he had come into the world for a certain purpose.

Adult Jesus, in John chapter five, said to those who doubted him, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it's they that testify of me. So in Luke chapter two, Jesus says, I have to be about my father's business.

This is my father's house. I have to be here in my father's house. I have a different mission than other people. I'm here for a specific purpose. And in John chapter five, adult Jesus was able to say, everything you're reading in the Old Testament, it was all written about me.

At some point between the age of 12 and the age of 30, he came to understand that everything in the Old Testament spoke of him. That is a profound observation. He had to have learned that at some point along the line.

John chapter five, do not think that I accuse you before the Father, the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.

Moses was writing about me. Jesus would read through the Old Testament and this is sanctified speculation, but there had to come some point in his reading and study and understanding of the Old Testament, where he looked at those passages and said, that passage is written about me.

I'm here to fulfill that. This describes me. This is my mission. This is what I'm here for. In the scroll of the book it is written of me, I have come to do your will. A body you have prepared for me.

The man Christ Jesus came to understand at some point that these words were written of him. Listen, he was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hid their face, he was despised and we did not esteem him.

Surely our griefs he himself bore and our sorrows he carried, yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the chastening for our wellbeing fell upon him and by his scourging we are healed.

All of us like sheep have gone astray, each one of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth, like a lamb that is led to slaughter and like a sheep that is silent before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet he was with a rich man in his death because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth, but the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief if he would render himself as a guilt offering.

At some point Jesus was reading Isaiah 53 and said, this describes me, this is what I am to do, to give myself as a guilt offering. And when he realized that, the man Christ Jesus realized that, it would have taken faith and trust and belief in the wisdom and the good confidence in the good providence of God who would have appointed that thing for Jesus of Nazareth.

But he also would have had faith and believe that the rest of Isaiah 53 was also written about him. He will see his offspring, he will prolong his days.

This is resurrection.

And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant will justify the many as he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great and he will divide the booty with the strong because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.

See. Isaiah 53 promised him that he would die as a guilt offering for his people. And Isaiah 53 promised him that he would rise again and see the path of life and receive this inheritance, this apportionment by God, all of his people whom he would justify because he had rendered himself as a guilt offering.

The man Christ Jesus would have had to believe that and to trust that when he understood that this was his role. There was a time when he reading Psalm 22 would have read the words of David. Yet you are he who brought me forth from the womb.

You made me trust upon my mother's breast. Upon you I was cast from birth. You have been my God from my mother's womb. David could write that. That's true of David. But guess who it's also true of? The Lord Jesus Christ.

Because at some point in reading through Psalm 22, the man Christ Jesus read Psalm 22 and said, this describes me, but not far from me for trouble is near for there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded me.

Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They open wide their mouth at me and as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue cleaves to my jaws. And you lay me in the dust of death for dogs have surrounded me. A band of evildoers has encompassed me. They pierced my hands and my feet.

I count all my bones. They look, they stare at me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. Jesus would have understood that that Psalm describes him. And Psalm 16. I've set the Lord continually before me because he is at my right hand.

I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will dwell securely for you will not abandon my soul to Sheol nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay. You will make known to me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy and in your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

In other words, Jesus would be reading through the Old Testament and see all of the passages that would describe his sacrificial suffering and his agony and the anguish of his soul. And he would also read in those same passages promises of resurrection and glory and exaltation.

And the man Christ Jesus would have believed what the word of God said concerning him and he would have set his face to go to Jerusalem and to endure what was before him. He also would have read Psalm 110.

The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will stretch forth your strong scepter from Zion saying rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will volunteer freely in the day of your power in holy array from the womb of the dawn your youth are to you as the dew.

The Lord has sworn and he will not change his mind. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter the Kings in the day of his wrath. He will judge among the nations.

He will fill them with corpses. He will shatter the chief men over the broad country. He will drink from the brook by the wayside. Therefore he will lift up his head. Jesus would have read that and said, that describes me.

You see by faith, he would have believed what God said in scripture concerning the suffering that was ahead of him and the results of that suffering which lay beyond the suffering. And he would have believed the written word of God which is why in Matthew 20, Jesus said, behold, we're going up to Jerusalem.

The son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles, mocking and scourging and crucifying him. And on the third day, he will be raised up.

Where did Jesus get that idea?

You know where he got it?

Read it in the Old Testament. Read it in the Old Testament. And at some point in his life, he said, those things are written of me. Moses wrote about me. The sacrifices point to me, the priesthood points to me, the feasts point to me, Israel points to me, creation points to me, everything in the Old Testament.

The guilt offering, the sacrifices, all of it. God has orchestrated all of these things because he has prepared for me a body so that I can sacrifice it for my people. And he would have believed that and then he would have by faith also believed that the Father would give him the strength to endure that suffering and that as a result of that suffering, his soul would be satisfied.

He did all of that for the joy that was set before him. So did Jesus have faith? If by faith you mean wishful thinking and things that are not necessarily true, you kind of hope them may be true, you want them to be true, but it's not necessarily based on fact, then no, he didn't have that kind of faith.

But scripture doesn't commend that kind of faith because that's not faith. But if by faith you mean that he read the scriptures and believed them and acted accordingly, then yes, he had faith. The man Christ Jesus had never seen himself raised from the dead.

He had never seen himself given the nations.

As his inheritance.

He had never seen himself exalted to the right hand of the Father. The man Christ Jesus had never seen those things, but by faith, those things were substantive to him and he was convinced that they were true.

Why?

Because they were revealed in the word of God. So by faith, the man Christ Jesus could set his face towards Jerusalem and say, I'm going there to suffer and I will give myself as a guilt offering for many and as a result of that, I will raise myself up again on the third day.

The Father will be pleased with that. He will exalt me to his right hand and at his right hand, there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. And for that joy that was set before him, he endured all of that.