Keep sharing good news without ads.
Sunday school from August 23rd, 2020
All right, let's pray, and we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, we recognize that we have nothing except for by your hand, including the very next breath that we draw. And so we come to you recognizing that we need your spirit to properly understand your word.
Send your spirit so that we may rightly understand, believe, confess, and do all according to what you have revealed in your holy word, we ask to the glory of your name, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, a question came in from a fellow.
It was sent to me privately, so I won't say his name, but the question was, in your sermon you mentioned piety. Could you expand on what is piety? Okay, so piety is really gonna relate to our good works, and oftentimes piety is in reference to our good works in relation to specifically religious activity.
So for instance, a pious practice is prayer. It is a good thing to pray. So prayer is part of our piety. You can say attending church, attending the divine service. That is a good and pious thing to do.
So reading your Bible on a daily basis, that is a good, pious thing to do. Now, piety becomes pietism, you have noticed the pietism, the last part, when you are trusting in your religious activity for the purpose of placating God's anger and wrath.
So when you're using your piety, your religious activity, for the purpose of saying, I'm a good boy, Jesus, I deserve to be saved, well now you're using your piety as a form of currency for the purpose of saving yourself from the wrath of God.
At that point, your piety ceases to be a good work and becomes something that will damn you. So that's kind of the idea here. So we as Christians, we recognize that we are to pray, we are to read God's word, we are to attend worship, we are to receive the sacraments, and these are all pious things that we do, but our faith is not in them.
Our faith is in Christ. And so we do these things not in order to be saved, we do them because we are saved. That's the idea. Okay, today I'm going to engage in a little bit of torture, my apologies. Oh no, Bruce has his hand up.
For those of you online, if you don't know what that means, just buckle up, we may not get to any topic today.
Okay.
This sermon touched on the office of the keys.
Indeed.
Previous, recent sermon, Bible study, you spoke about a congregation that expelled a penitent alcoholic.
Correct.
Now, how does the office of the keys play in when the church, which has been entrusted.
With the office of the keys,.
It binds what should not be bound, right?
It improperly executes the office of the keys.
Oh, that's a good question. That's a great question. So the question for those of you online, if you didn't hear, it has to do with, a few weeks ago in a sermon, I talked about the office of the keys and gave an illustration of a congregation in Minnesota somewhere who had expelled a penitent alcoholic.
And you're going to note here that that is an improper use of the office of the keys. If you want to understand how the office of the keys work, it's real simple. Anybody who is a penitent gets to be forgiven, straight up.
That's just how this goes. And you say, well, how many times are they allowed to screw up? I don't know. Is Christ's forgiveness limited? But when it comes to the binding key, the binding key and its use is found in Matthew 18.
And this is the important part here. And here's our bigger context. In Matthew 18, the binding key is discussed in terms of excommunication. And the keys are, again, explicitly invoked in Matthew 18. And here's what Jesus says.
This is your fuller context. See that you do not despise one of these little ones where I tell you that in heaven, their angel always sees the face of my Father who is in heaven. So what do you think?
If a man has 100 sheep, one of them goes astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go and search for the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over 99 that never went astray.
So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. That's your context here for church discipline. Just work with me on this. If you think church discipline starts at verse 15, you are woefully mistaken.
Because the question then comes up, how does Christ, what are the means by which Christ now today goes and searches after lost sheep? That's your context. All right, so when somebody goes astray and they sin, how does Christ go and seek for them?
Well, in this particular case then, in that immediate context, it then follows if your brother sins against you. Oh, does that happen here in church? Huh, little bit, just a smidge? I hate to say it, all of you are sinners including your pastor.
So yeah, this happens. So if your brother sins against you, you go to him, tell him his fault between you and him alone. So notice, this is not talking about a public sin, this is talking about a private sin.
This is a sin that's done not in the sight of everybody, but your brother has sinned against you. Private sins are dealt with privately, public sins are dealt with publicly. That's generally how this works.
So you go to him, and you can tell, the conversation goes something along the lines of this. Brother, you've sinned against me. I wanna be reconciled to you, repent. And your brother says, go pound sand.
That's not a good response, by the way. That's a bad, unchristian response. So if he doesn't listen to you, then you take two others along with you so that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
And you're gonna note here, charges have to be substantiated. Hate to say it, but the eighth commandment says you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, which means one of the ways in which people sin against each other is by straight-up slander.
If I seem impassioned about it, I've been on the receiving end of that far too much. So the idea here is that I've had all kinds of slanderous things said about me, and none of them can be substantiated.
There is no evidence for any of the slanderous charges, the reason being is because it was slander. So you'll note then that the possibility of slander is in play, and the idea here is is that you have to establish the charge by two or three witnesses.
So you do that. Brother, you sinned. Here's the proof, there's no way around it. This is what you did. This person saw it, here's what you did. You need to repent. If he refuses to listen to them, then you tell it to the church.
And telling it to the church is not for the purpose of gossip. It's so that now everybody in the congregation can make their impassioned appeal to that brother to repent. So if he refuses then to even listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector.
At that point, excommunication is in play, but the purpose of excommunication even then is still that they would repent. First Corinthians five comes into play here. You cast the wicked brother out from your midst so that you hand him over to Satan so the soul may be saved, right?
So truly I say to you, and now here it comes, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. So here's the binding key. So when a congregation has a member of their congregation who has slipped into a sin, maybe like alcoholism or whatever, and that person has been confronted with their sins and they've repented, are you to cast them out?
No, no. When somebody has repented, you don't cast them out, you forgive them. This is Christ going after his lost sheep. So again, I said it this way a few weeks ago that Christianity has this horrible habit, and the horrible habit is what?
Shooting your wounded.
It's terrible.
It's absolutely egregious, and it's contrary to the whole idea of binding and loosing of sins. You bind impenitent sinners to their sins, you loose penitent sinners from their sins. It's just, this is the category distinction.
So when somebody sins against you and they refuse to repent, you'll note there's escalation in the appeal for that person to repent and the establishing of the charges via evidence so that slander is ruled out as a possibility as far as what's motivating all of this.
And then when there is repentance,.
There's forgiveness. Straight up.
But Christianity in a lot of ways has lost track of the proper distinction of law and gospel, and as a result of losing track of the proper distinction of law and gospel, what ends up happening is that people who are Christians don't know what to do with sin.
There's a guy who was in my church and he was sinning.
Shock, no, really?
Never even heard of such a thing. I don't know, have you guys noticed that the divine service begins with a confession of sins? My assumption is that when y 'all show up to church, you've been out there being tempted by the devil, your sinful flesh, and the world, and I know for a fact that you have not lived the victorious Christian life and just got through the whole week unscathed, no sin at all.
The full expectation is, and the assumption is, you've walked into church in need of the forgiveness of sins. So we want that to be taken care of first. Does that make sense? Yes, sir.
Since the church in America has this, well, kind of in the West, has this.
Yeah.
Right.
That's the warning from 2 Corinthians.
Yeah, and that's the thing. When you get this wrong, you risk having that person despair, especially when a church is acting in the authority of Christ, and they have bound the sins of the penitent. That's a misuse.
That's gonna take some pastoral care, but if you want a presentation to go to, there is a wonderful presentation by Dr. Rod Rosenblatt. You can find it online, and just Google it. It's called The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church, and the reality is there's a lot of people who've been broken by the church, a lot.
That's a place that I would go to as a resource, at least to kind of get the foot in the door. There are a lot of people who still trust in Christ who stand outside of the church or stay at a distance because they've been shot when they've been penitent rather than forgiven.
It's not a good thing. So, all right, good questions. Thank you. Today we're gonna take a look at the incarnation of Christ and a proper understanding of it in light of current false teaching that is very popular.
I'm gonna show you a few sound bites, or video bites, of Todd White, and I forget the other guy's name. Is it Ron Muller? I forget his name. We'll figure it out in a minute, and I want you to hear some of these statements, and the reason I want you to hear some of these statements is because I then want you to know how, how, how, how do you answer statements like this?
How are we to understand the incarnation of Christ? Everybody knows Jesus is 100 God, 100 man. This is how people talk, right? Can Jesus lay aside his divinity? We're gonna talk about that, and how then, biblically, are you to understand the incarnation, especially in light of the claims coming out of the NAR that Jesus is the perfect example of what it means to perform miraculous signs and wonders while by being indwelt or anointed by the Holy Spirit?
You guys ready?
All right, here we go. Again, we're just gonna use a few of these bites.
Virgin Mary, she is born as a man.
I'm gonna back this up and listen in.
So Jesus is born.
So Jesus wasn't born as God. He was born as a man. Bruce, you look like you're in pain. Would you like some Tylenol?
Now I wanted to get anointed.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not sure what the bat has to do with correcting error,.
But okay.
Are you going all Saint Nicholas on us? What are you doing here?
Yes.
Okay, got it.
I'm in a Duking moment.
Okay, so here's the question. Is it true Jesus wasn't born as God?
No. No.
It's absolutely false. And so let's take a look at some biblical texts that will help us along these lines. So let me put this down here. My apologies. There we go. That's actually a little bit of a better space for me.
All right, we're gonna start by going to some Nativity texts. Matthew chapter one. Matthew chapter one, it begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and then we get into the account of the birth of Jesus.
And here's what it says in Matthew one. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
Her husband Joseph, being a just man, unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son and you shall call his name. And I'm gonna use the Hebrew here because it's appropriate given what his nickname means. Yeshua. For he will save his people from their sins. Yeshua means the Lord saves, Yahweh saves.
So all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. That's a fulfillment of Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14.
That's where the prophecy is. The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel. Well, it sounds to me like Jesus, at his birth, is declared to be what? God with us. So is it correct to say that Jesus was born as a man?
No.
Doesn't work that way.
As a man, yes.
As only a man?
No, yeah, right. So let's talk about what is a proper way to understand the incarnation. Let's take a look at a couple of passages that are super clear on this, and then we'll use a metaphor, which is what the Athanasian Creed does, to help explain how it works.
So let's go to Colossians chapter two. Colossians chapter two. And I'll start at verse eight, and it says this. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, not according to Christ.
For in him, in Christ, the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. That make sense? So Jesus, the whole fullness of the deity, dwells bodily. He is both God and man. Now let me ask you a trick question here.
How many Jesuses are there? There's one. There's one Jesus. There's only one. So there isn't Jesus, the divine nature, and there isn't Jesus, the human nature. There's only Jesus. And that's kind of the important part.
When you look at Romans one, Romans one helps us out tremendously in this regard. Romans one.
Here's what it says.
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. Now notice he says that he's a servant or a slave. He's a slave of Christ Jesus. Notice he's not talking about Jesus in the plural.
He's talking about Jesus in the singular. I know that seems like a weird point to make, but it's necessary, okay? Which he promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scripture concerning his son.
Now here in the Greek, son is singular. It does not say son's plural. It says son, singular, concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.
Jesus Christ, not Christs. Jesus Christ, our Lord, not Lords. He's saying why are you emphasizing the singular? That's the important part here. The idea then is this. There is one Messiah. There is one Jesus Christ.
So the way to understand it then is that Jesus' singular personhood contains two different natures that have come together and still have kind of uniqueness between them, yet share attributes of each other with each other.
Let me kind of put it this way. I'm gonna pick on Jason. You said, which one? Which one? Yes, all right. So there's two Jasons here. But Jason in the black shirt, all right. Do you have a soul?
You do?
I can't see it.
All right.
It's there.
It's there, okay. Generally, the way I know that your soul is there is because we're not having a funeral today. Okay, so you have a body. I see that. And you have a soul. The fact that you're talking with me and sitting there interacting, I can tell that you have a soul.
Now, if I were to ask you, I want you to go canoeing this afternoon on the Turtle River. But I only want you to canoe with your body.
Could you do it?
So everything you do, including sitting in a Bible study or canoeing on the Turtle River, you do body and soul. Everything you do. There's nothing that you do that doesn't involve both, right? Now, about the only thing you can do without your soul is sit in a casket while we have a funeral for you, okay?
That's about the only thing you can do. Because to separate the two is death. To separate the body from the soul is death. Now, consider this. This text says that the singular Jesus Christ, that's the person we're talking about, has two natures.
And we'll note that the divine nature, according to Matthew, is present at the birth of Christ. In fact, even in his conception, because Joseph was told this, that this was a fulfillment then of Isaiah 7, 14, while Mary was still pregnant.
So when, when did the person, Jesus Christ, come into existence in this time and space continuum? What was the moment at his conception? Absolutely at his conception. So from the moment that Jesus was conceived,.
Was a zygote,.
And the cells started doing their multiplication thing, Jesus has both a human and a divine nature. Which, when you think about it, is fascinating. Because that means that everything that Jesus did from being born, to nursing as an infant, to learning his alephs, baths, gimels, and daleths, right?
He even probably had to learn his alpha, betas, and omegas, and all that kind of stuff, too, because of where he lived at the time. Everything he did, he did as the God man. Now, one of the things that people do historically, and this is actually a heresy, have you heard of the Nestorian heresy?
Nestorius, he had this funny thing that he would do. So Nestorius, he claimed that the person of Jesus Christ, that there were two natures, divine and human, and they were like two wooden boards glued together, like that, okay?
And there was no communication of the attributes between the two. So if Jesus can read your mind, he'd say, ah, that's Jesus's divine nature that's reading somebody's mind. If Jesus heals somebody, notice that Jesus touches people when he heals them, right?
When Jesus heals, that's his divine nature doing that. Can you chop Jesus up like that? I would argue to chop Jesus up like that is to ask Jason to go canoeing with only his body. Okay, it's not gonna happen, right?
So everything Jesus does, he does with both natures. Now, does Jesus still have a body to this day? Yeah, okay, ah, yeah. Because remember, Jesus rose bodily from the grave, right? He rose bodily from the grave.
And so Jesus, the son who is the son of God and the son of David, he's still got both natures working together, right? And then you're gonna note then, because the human nature and the divine nature are united together in the one person of Jesus Christ, now you can say things about God that you normally cannot say.
The incarnation changes things a little bit. So let me ask you guys this. Is it true that God is spirit?
Do spirits bleed?
No, spirits don't bleed. They don't have anything to bleed with. Let me show you another text then here, okay? Acts chapter 20. In Acts chapter 20, the apostle Paul is giving some final admonitions. He's having his last time with the pastors of the congregations in the church of Ephesus.
And in verse 28, the apostle Paul says something weird to these pastors. Listen to what he says. So pay attention, careful attention, to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood.
Who bled there to obtain the church? Well, the text says God, right? God, so God bled to purchase the church? Well, no, actually just the Son, just the Son of God, right? So when we talk about the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it's only the Son who's incarnate.
The Father did not bleed and die for your sins, but the Son did. So you'll note here, this is a fascinating text because now we have God purchasing the church with his own blood, and I can only name one member of the Trinity that bled, God the Son, right?
Now, here's the other part of this. Then, so you know, you can say things about God that you normally can't say by virtue of the incarnation. In Luke chapter one, we have the account of the conception of John the Baptist as well as the conception of Jesus.
In John, sorry, Luke chapter one, that's what we have there. And there's a fascinating thing that happens. Now, if you remember, John the Baptist's father, his name is Zechariah, he's a Levite, and he was working in the temple, and he was taken by Lot to actually offer incense inside of the temple itself at the time of prayer.
And while he was serving, the angel Gabriel appeared to him, and keep in mind, his wife is really advanced in years at this point. We're talking like ready to be moved into the assisted living facility.
These two are ready to retire permanently. That's kind of what we're talking about here. The time of women has ended for her. And the angel Gabriel basically tells him, guess what, your wife's gonna get pregnant.
God has answered your prayer and said, yes, she's going to conceive. And Zechariah foolishly shows a little bit of cynicism towards what the angel says, which makes no sense. Okay, come on, you have the angel Gabriel talking to you inside the temple.
I'm pretty sure this is gonna be okay. But because of his cynicism and unbelief, the angel Gabriel silences him for nine months. I had to make dinner conversations a little bit easier. It's a one-sided affair.
But anyway, so Elizabeth conceives, and then in the sixth month, in the sixth month after her conception, she's now pregnant with John the Baptist, she's entered in just beginning her third trimester, the angel Gabriel then appears to the Virgin Mary, announces to her that she's going to give birth to the Messiah, and she believes.
She absolutely believes, and it's just wonderful. So after that, Mary rose and went with haste to the hill country to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. Now at this point, Mary is barely pregnant.
She would not be able to test positive on a store-bought pregnancy test at this point. That's how short of a time she's actually been pregnant. We're talking maybe a week, few days, couple weeks. Usually takes a month before you figure all this out.
She hasn't even had morning sickness yet. That's how, now imagine how tiny Jesus is at this point. You're gonna need a microscope to see him. That's what's gonna happen here. But watch what happens. So Elizabeth, when she heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "'Blessed are you among women, "'and blessed is the fruit of your womb, "'and why is it granted to me "'that the mother of my Lord should come to me?'.
When a Jewish woman, who is the wife of a Levite, says, Lord, who is she referring to?
Say it.
It'd be God.
That's right, God.
Is that Adam?
The Greek is to kurio, the mother of my Lord. Yeah, it's kurios, so it's gonna be.
Yeah, that's God.
That's God. Okay, let me translate this in a way that was gonna make everybody uncomfortable, especially since I'm wearing a collar. All right, why is it granted to me that the mother of my God should come to me?
Have I missed the point of the text? No, I haven't. And this is why, when the Nestorian heresy came up, the way that the ancient church smoked out the Nestorians is whether or not somebody could say, Mary is the mother of God, the Theotokos.
Now, here's the thing. Rome has totally taken that and gone beyond, beyond, beyond, beyond what is biblically justifiable and engaging in idolatry as it relates to Mary. But there is a sense, and a proper sense, in which you can say that Mary is the mother of your Lord, and that means God.
And note, Jesus at this point is microscopic, and yet, through the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth says this. So is Jesus God at his birth?
Is he man at his birth?
How many Jesuses are there?
One.
Again, the analogy is just like you have a body and a soul, and there's only one of you because the two together make the person that you are. The divine and the human natures of Jesus Christ come together in the one person, Jesus Christ.
Now, real quick, if I were to say, think off the top of your head, does Jesus have a soul? Yes or no? We know he has a body. Does he have a soul, a human soul? Yes or no?
Huh?
You have a soul, you're a human being. Would Jesus have a true human nature if he didn't have a soul? He has to have a soul. So what biblical text would you go to? You don't even have to know the chapter and verse, just the general statement that you would go to that proves that Jesus has a soul.
Okay, what's it say? My soul is, yeah, that's not a bad text. How about this one? Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Okay, Christ on the cross, right?
Body, soul.
Yes, sir.
Okay, I'm not trying to do a real Bible study today.
You are too.
I'm not.
So, having stated.
The study of Christian Christ.
For instance.
How we.
How we differ from Rome.
Okay, so for instance, okay, I'll just give you something really quick in the same context.
So, Rome teaches that she is, well, actually, Dogma, Roman Dogma now makes her the co-redemptrix with Christ by virtue of her anxious suffering she experienced while watching her son die on the cross.
I just threw up a little bit.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but that's what they say. So, we would absolutely disagree with that. Christ's sacrifice, it's only his. His is the once for all sacrifice. Mary had nothing to contribute to that. But I would point out to this, point you out in Luke 1, the magnificat begins with these words.
My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. Mary needed a Savior just like you and I did. Mary is a sinner, just like you and I are.
So, the idea here is that what Rome does in beatifying Mary the way they have is that they put her in a category that doesn't exist, you know, because they claim that she was worthy of bearing Christ by the immaculate conception.
And yet, here, even at the earliest days of her pregnancy, she recognizes that she needs a Savior.
So, and there's no example in scripture of anybody praying to any saint, including Mary. All right, yeah, I put a link up on my social media recently where apparently Rome has decided to get very serious about this COVID -19 thing.
And the Pope now has decided to invoke the Virgin Mary for the purpose of helping to end the pandemic, to which my comment was, so praying to Jesus isn't enough? We've now gotta get his mom involved? And which begs the question, is the Pope tattling on Jesus?
You know.
Mary, Jesus isn't doing his job, and.
Right, exactly.
And we're forbidden from communicating with the dead. Have you noticed that in the Old Testament? Strictly forbidden from communicating with the dead. And that woman, she's dead, she's dead. You know, just saying.
That is one of the things they talk about her. They talk about her, is it assumption into heaven?
I forget the exact.
Yeah, it's something.
Something to that.
It's trying to get around.
Yeah, but there is a problem, and that is that in Turkey, near Ephesus, there is a monument set up to Mary, and it's got bones in it, just saying. So, yeah, it's called the House of Mary. You can Google it.
I mean, don't let the facts move you.
Yeah, yeah.
Fight the narrative.
Yeah, and what we know from church history is this. The apostle John was the one tasked by Jesus to care for Mary after his death and resurrection, and church history tells us that Mary traveled to Ephesus with John.
He stayed with her. And so, the fact that within the past few decades, they've found what they believe to be the burial place of Mary near Ephesus kind of makes sense. You know what I'm saying, historically?
So, just saying. All right, that's not the topic. Let's keep going back at this, though.
Shall we?
We're talking about the incarnation. So, coming back to what Elizabeth said, Elizabeth is saying regarding the infant, the zygote inside the womb of the Virgin Mary, why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
Now, by the way, if you're just nervous of calling Mary the mother of God, and I totally get that because it's a weird thing to say, just say that Mary is the mother of your Lord. Just stick with the biblical text, and you're gonna be okay.
Understand that when you're saying that, that Lord here is not talking about your boss, okay? It's talking about something far greater than that. So, that, is Jesus God at his birth? Is Jesus God at his conception?
Yeah, okay? So, like I said, everything Jesus did, he did as God and man. From being hungry, to bleeding, to stubbing his toe, to getting his hair cut, to learning his father's carpentry trade in Nazareth, everything he did, he did as both God and man.
You cannot chop Jesus up. It just doesn't work that way. So, we gotta get rid of this tendency of ours to sit there and go, well, that's his human nature, and that's his divine nature. No, there's only one person, Jesus, and he's got two natures together.
So, you can say then, strangely enough, on a Friday afternoon, about the time of the Passover, at three in the afternoon, just outside the city gates of Jerusalem, 2 ,000 years ago, God died. You can say that.
I know it's a crazy statement, but the idea here is we're talking then in light of the incarnation. Now, we're not saying that God ceased to exist or something like that, but God himself experienced a human death.
Yet, God cannot die. So, you get the idea. So, the incarnation just makes all kinds of things possible to say about God that normally you can't say. Let's take a listen to a little bit more of this nonsense.
Here we go.
When he came in the flesh.
He came as God. He's already anointed. Now, by the way, this is not biblical theology. So, this is a Latin phrase that Lutherans like to point to. The Latin phrase is this. Quad non est biblicum, non est theologicum.
If it's not in the Bible, it's not theology. In order to establish a Christian doctrine, you need texts, all right? So, for instance, if I were to sit there, I'll show you how the game is played. It's played using logic, and these are kind of like word games that you play.
So, I can say, you know what? In my lifetime, I have experienced that the most exquisite sandwich ever made in all of humanity is a grilled cheese sandwich. It is practically food from heaven. And since it is the most exquisite of all sandwiches, that grilled cheese sandwich, that is, that it is absolutely unthinkable that God has not himself enjoyed a grilled cheese sandwich.
And therefore, it is unthinkable to think that God himself does not want you to have grilled cheese sandwiches. I know, the answer to his question, well, the thing is, he's not asking questions to actually get data.
He's asking questions for the purpose of deconstructing truth. There's a difference, okay? Yeah, so sometimes you can ask a question, and the question could be, you know, is it true that I'm gonna need a new carburetor for my vehicle?
You know, I just put a new one in it, you know, five months ago. Yes, it's true, you need a new carburetor. That's a question for the purpose of getting knowledge. There's deconstructing questions that are designed to tear down truth.
And you can see that first question in the Garden of Eden. Is it true that God said that you can't eat of any of the trees in the garden? Is it true? Was that for the purpose of gaining knowledge? No, there was a slanderous accusation inside that question.
And so you'll know, why would God have to anoint him if he came as God?
I don't know, so he could fulfill the prophecy that he would succeed to the throne of David.
That's how the Kings were chosen.
Yeah, okay, but you get the idea here. Okay, so notice, he's not really engaging for the purpose of getting at real biblical truth. He's asking a question for the purpose of deconstructing biblical truth.
All right, let's listen to some more quotes. Came as a man. Well, there it is. Jesus had to lay aside his, he's fully God, but he laid aside his divinity. How can you be fully God and lay aside your divinity?
Oh, he knows what he's saying. Yeah, he knows what he's saying.
Okay, so let, yes, Mike. Well, actually, Adam, Adam was good. I mean, had he not sinned, we would not have a sinful nature, okay? So you could argue that Adam, you know, had he resisted the temptations of the devil, he would have gone on without sinning.
But he did, and we're corrupted as a result of it. But here's the issue, okay? So you'll note, he's taking a text. It says in the Old Testament, God cannot be tempted,.
All right?
Now, I come back to what we've already looked at. God is spirit.
No, all right?
How, then, did God bleed to purchase his church? By virtue of the incarnation. Jesus, who is one person with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, he bled, all right? Now, was Jesus, the God-man, tempted in the wilderness by the devil?
Yep, Hebrews says that Christ was tempted in every way that you and I are tempted and yet is without sin. And by every way, it means every way, and yet was without sin.
Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah.
But you're gonna note here that they're not making careful distinctions. They're not starting with what is a proper understanding of the incarnation of the Son of God. They're not starting with that. What they're basically doing is engaging in some wordplay and making false distinctions because we know that Jesus has a human nature and he has a divine nature, but now they're claiming that Jesus left, he was fully God and yet his divinity left him or he got rid of it.
How do you do that, okay? So, again, God Cannot Be Tempted is an Old Testament text. In talking about God in his nature, you know, the very nature of God, this is one of his attributes, he cannot be tempted.
But again, God takes on human flesh, all right? So, again, going back to the fact that the incarnation makes it so we say weird statements, that Mary is the mother of my Lord. That makes no sense apart from the incarnation.
God bled, you cannot make sense of that apart from the incarnation. Jesus, who has two natures, he was tempted. Jesus was, you know, there's no way around it. So, to say that somehow Christ's deity left him because of a misquoting and a misuse of an Old Testament passage like this is to do violence to Christ.
And by the way, if you have a different Jesus, are you merely an error or are you no longer a Christian? It's the second, it's heresy. There's a difference between an error and a heresy, okay? A heresy puts you outside of the Christian faith.
And according to the New Testament, your heresies are gonna kind of fall into three major types. Different Jesus, different gospel, different spirit. Those are your, you know, everything kind of flows off of that.
So, for instance, you know, we recognize that there are Christians in denominations, different denominations in Lutherans all over the world. Not a problem with that, okay? And so you'll note that some denominations have a different understanding of the biblical text as it relates to the sacraments than we do.
Does that mean that they are heretics? No, all right? So, but what about Mormons? Mormons believe that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, all right? That's a different Jesus. So Mormons are not Christians.
Even, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. It's really gross when you think about it. You know, God the Father knocks on Mary's door and says, hey baby, how would you like to give birth to the Son of God?
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like, it is a lot like that, it is a lot like that. And then Jehovah's Witnesses, they deny that Jesus is God. They say that he is a supreme God-like being or creature, maybe Michael the archangel.
Yeah, yep, let's take a look at that John 1 text now. All right, so let's take a look at that John 1 text. Gospel of John chapter 1. And the Greek is gonna be helpful for us. In the beginning was the word.
N-R-K, in the beginning, was, halagos. So you've heard the phrase lagos before. By the way, if you know anybody who's pronouncing it logos, don't beat them with a baseball bat, but correct them and say, listen, these are two omicrons, these are not omegas.
Omega is the long O, the omicron is an ah, ah. So it's lagos, it's not logos, okay? I hate it when people do logos, it just drives me nuts.
It's like, ah.
Especially if it's like a pastor who's been to seminary,.
It's like, did you not pass Greek?
Anyway, so my apologies. So in the beginning was the word. N-R-K-N, halagos, was the word. Now here's, this next phrase is kind of fascinating. Kai halagos, so, and the lagos, ain, was, and then he got this phrase, pros ton theon.
This is almost, to me, this reads like a Hebraism. You ever heard of the phrase in Hebrew, pene el, pene el, the face of God? Pros, here, although I understand what we're doing grammatically with it, it gets translated as with, but the picture here in the Greek is almost like the lagos is face-to-face with God.
I've read scholars who've translated pros ton theon in that way, and I think they're rightly kind of getting the gist of pros here. So N-R-K-N, halagos, and Kai halagos, and pros ton theon, and then, last phase, so, Kai theos, and God, ain, was, ha lagos, and God was the word, all right?
So the lagos, the word, is God, and was with God, or you could even say kind of face-to-face with God. How many gods is that? It's one, okay. This is the weird part about the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, how many gods is that?
One, all right?
So you'll note that, and then verse 14, and the lagos became flesh and dwelt among us. Dwelt here, skenao, can be translated tabernacled. It kind of invokes tent, dwelling in tents, and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, kind of invoking the tabernacle of God of the wilderness from Exodus.
So God became flesh, that's the idea. So was there ever a time that Jesus had his divinity missing from him? Nope, all right. Let's take a look at another concept, then, here. Remember our gospel text from last week, Jesus walking on the water.
There's something fascinating going on here. Now I'm gonna ask Jason number two, this is what we do. You show up, you're gonna get picked on, but Jason number two in the red. Jason, I gotta admit, I'm very impressed with the canoe, and so I'm so impressed with the canoe that I've decided that I'm gonna worship you.
Is that appropriate?
You wouldn't let me? But you're a nice guy. You wouldn't let me worship you?
Ha ha ha ha ha!
You hadn't turned down money. Spirit-led, oh. Now we're, now we're.
I see what you did there.
I don't know.
You'll note that worshiping human beings is forbidden by scripture, it just really is. And what's fascinating is that in the book of Revelation, there is the angel that is taking the apostle John and giving him a tour of the vision of heaven, that particular angel had a very awkward thing happen to him.
And let's read about this. In Revelation 19, it says in verse nine, the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and he said to me, these are the true words of God.
Then I fell down at his feet to worship him. So John's gonna worship an angel. But the angel said to me, you must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus, worship God.
For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Is it ever okay to worship anything other than God? Never. You shall have no other gods, first commandment. All right? That being the case, we have some explaining to do here.
In Matthew 14, our gospel text for last week, Jesus is walking on the water, the disciples at this point, they're not apostles, are terrified, it's a ghost, they cried out in fear, and immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, take heart, ego eimi.
The Greek text says ego eimi. I am, that's the name of God that God gave to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3. Moses is being commissioned, Moses says, what's your name, who should I say sent me? And God says, I am.
Tell him I am has sent you. Jesus uses that name for himself, and then he says, may phobos the, do not be afraid. Peter is not quite sure if it's Jesus, and in a profound moment of doubt, challenges Jesus and says, if it's really you, tell me to come out to you on the water.
He says, come. We all know he ends up sinking, and then Jesus asks him after he rescues him, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped Jesus, saying, truly you are the son of God.
If Jesus emptied himself of his divinity, would that have been an appropriate thing to do to a mere man? To worship Jesus?
Hmm.
Seems to tell me that Jesus is still God. He was declared to be God with us at his birth, his conception. Elizabeth said that Mary is the mother of her Lord. Acts 20 says that God bled. Here, Jesus receives worship.
That's not appropriate if Jesus isn't God. Now, have you guys noticed something about Jesus? That he was not the kind of preacher who told everybody what they wanted to hear? Did you notice this about Jesus?
That from time to time, people may have become angry at some of the things he said? I'm just saying, okay? Let's take a look at some of the things that sent people sideways when Jesus would make statements.
In John chapter five, Jesus heals the guy who was, and we know this now because of the archeology. He was sitting in the temple of Asclepius. It's a pagan temple. This is an Asclepion, and he tells the fellow to get up and take up his mat and walk, and he healed the guy on the Sabbath.
And keep something in mind, Jesus never broke the Mosaic covenant rules regarding the Sabbath. He broke the rules of the Pharisees without any apology whatsoever, none. So he broke their rules regarding the Sabbath, but not the Mosaic covenant rules.
So in John 5, 18, after Jesus says, my father is working until now, and I am working, it says in John 5, 18, this is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
That phrase, son of God, that's a big deal phrase. And so Jesus, if he's laid aside his divinity, why does he keep talking like he's equal with God? In John 10, we have another account where the Jews pick up stones to stone Jesus, and so Jesus asks them this question.
John 10, 31, Jesus asked them, I've shown you many good works from the Father, for which of them are you gonna stone me? And the Jews answered, it's not for good works that we're gonna stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man, you make yourself God.
Yeah, you can say that Jesus had a God complex, but was it merely a complex? And then in John 8, in John 8, here Jesus, this is one of the clearest passages, and at the end of this, you can see then what we call the communication of the attributes.
Remember, in the one person Jesus Christ, he has a human nature and a divine nature, and there's a communication between the two natures in the one person, Jesus, all right? That's an important bit, because you'll see this at the end of this text.
John 8, 12 says, again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so, this is where the, we're off to the races at this point, because then the Pharisees say, well, you're bearing witness about yourself.
Your testimony's not true. Yeah, and they said it like surfer dudes from California. I'm positive that's how that went down. All right, that might be a little bit historically anachronistic. I'm not gonna give us the whole account here, but then the text will go on, and Jesus is going to talk to the Jews who believed in him in John 8, 31.
Again, this is one long back and forth. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Now, the unbelieving Jews chime in at this point, and they say, well, we're offspring of Abraham.
We've never been enslaved to anyone. How is it you say you will become free? And then Jesus says, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin, and there's our big category. See, that whole picture of being set free from slavery in Egypt is a picture of our salvation, because each and every one of us, we're born enslaved to sin, and Jesus is the one who redeems us, so you can start to see how the themes are coming together here, and Jesus says, the slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever, so if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Great text, but they're gonna go back and forth on this, and the Jews, the unbelieving Jews are just having none of it, and then we get to the punchline of this particular collision. John 8, 48, the Jews answered Jesus, are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and that you have a demon?
Now, let me help you out here. Just in your mind, you don't have to say it out loud. Please don't. Imagine if you would, wherever you are living, what is the strongest racial slur that you know? And if somebody used that word, you go, okay, that's what Samaritan is in a Jewish context.
Calling Jesus a Samaritan, that's a racial slur, all right? You're a half-breed, you're not even a real Jew. You know, the hatred that the Jews had for Samaritans, that's some strong language, and then just to punctuate that, to put the frosting on the cake, they say that Jesus is a Samaritan and he has a demon.
Well, there we go. All right, well, that's not the end of the fight. So Jesus answered, I don't have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me. And that was the whole point. They were dishonoring Jesus by that.
Said, yet I do not seek my own glory. There's one who seeks it, he's the judge. So truly, truly, amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. Let me ask you, do you believe that?
Because I've been at Kongsvinger now for six years. We've buried a few people. Those were real funerals, by the way, and they were real corpses. Do you believe that anyone who believes in Jesus will never see death, yes or no?
That's a quote from Christ. Yes, okay? Whatever our experience of death is, it is not the same experience of death as somebody who is an unbeliever. Those who trust in Jesus and keep in guard his word will never see death.
Jesus says this not only here, he even punctuates that thought in John 11 when he goes to visit Lazarus, who's in a tomb at the time, and Mary and Martha have their conversations with him. I am the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in me will never die, Jesus says.
Do you believe this?
Now, I believe it, and I've performed funerals for Christians, all right? So again, I don't know how this works out. I really just don't know. I just know that Jesus is telling the truth. Now, the Jews are at this point, they think they've got him.
Okay, you're out of your mind, Jesus. We knew that you had a demon, and this proves it. So here's what they say, now we know you have a demon. And here's kind of the point of this next part. Did Abraham hear the voice of God?
Did the prophets of the Old Testament.
Hear the voice of God?
Yep, okay? So that's kind of the gist of this. Now, we know you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets. Yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died?
You see, they are absolutely convinced. They've got this one sorted out. They've got Jesus in checkmate. There is no way for him to move at this point. We got it, we won. You might as well tip the king over, Jesus.
It's over at this point. Abraham died, the prophets died. Yeah, so who do you make yourself out to be?
Well, no. They seem to be each other.
Mm-hmm, yeah. So here Jesus says, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It's my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God. But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him, and I keep his word.
Now this next sentence is weird. Actually, the next two sentences are weird. And the reason why they're weird is because there is nothing in the Old Testament.
That says this.
Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. Chapter and verse, Jesus, there is no chapter and verse on that. There is no text in Genesis that says this. There's nothing in the Psalms that even adds to this.
There is no account in all of the Tanakh that says that Abraham saw the day of the Messiah and that he rejoiced and was glad when he saw it. Where's Jesus getting this info from? First-hand experience, and that's kind of the point.
Now, real quick, I have to ask the question. The physical body of Jesus Christ, his human nature, is it old enough at this point to have seen Abraham with his eyes?
Abraham was what, 1 ,500, 2 ,000-plus years earlier, right? Long time, or probably closer to 2 ,000 years prior to this. So Jesus isn't that old. His human nature isn't. But in the one person, Jesus Christ, how many natures are there?
Two.
Now, this is where you're gonna see the human nature and the divine nature of Jesus Christ working together, because Jesus has memories of things that his physical brain would have never experienced. So we can see something here of the mind of God sharing with the human nature in the one person Christ information that it could not have received any other way than through a communication between the two natures in the one Jesus, right?
So the Jews pick up on this. They say, you are not yet 50 years old. You've seen Abraham. Well, Jesus' physical eyes haven't seen Abraham. But Jesus, the person who has a divine nature and a human nature, that divine nature knows Abraham.
Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And down in Sheol, there's Abraham with dead Lazarus and that old rich guy sitting in the hot part, yeah.
Okay, so.
One and two also to those who go before.
Which kind of puts the cold storage theory of salvation to rest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're actively watching us. They're up on the stands cheering us on. All right, so your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old and you've seen Abraham.
Jesus said, amen, amen. I say to you, before Abraham was, ago, a me.
I am.
So they picked up stones to throw at him. They began singing, we will, we will rock you.
Sorry, it's.
Yes, our captain is also a sinner.
I'm working on John the musical. You know, no, I'm kidding. Yeah, and it's done terribly.
It's just, oh, so bad.
Yeah, so why did they pick up stones to throw at Jesus? He just said he was God. It's unmistakable. That's the only reason they would have done that. Because they thought he committed blasphemy.
So did Jesus, was Jesus born as a man or born as God and man? God and man. The one person, Jesus Christ, has a human nature and a divine nature. In the middle of his ministry, is Jesus both God and man?
Yes, he's receiving worship, even calling himself God, making himself equal with God. Did he lay aside his divinity?
Did the God man, the one man, Jesus Christ, who has two natures, human and divine, did he die on the cross for our sins? Does Paul say in Acts 20 that God purchased the church with God's blood?
Yep.
So you get the idea here, that when you hear statements of this kind, let's listen to some more of this stuff,.
Because it's just, and that's the point.
In the charismatic movement. They think Jesus is merely a model for us to follow, rather than the one who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. We'll end on two texts real quick for today.
Text number one is a text that shows up as an option for reading on the day of Christmas. So in the lectionary, I see this passage come up Christmas day all the time, and I usually go with a different text, but this one is one that comes up on Christmas.
Galatians 4 .4, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. So you'll note that Christ comes not for the purpose of setting an example for us of what it looks like to walk in signs and wonders and pray for the sick and have miracles happen.
By the way, I find it ironic that Todd White is the guy who's out there saying that, that Jesus is our model, then, for how to do all these signs and wonders, because the only sign or wonder I've ever seen him do is pull people's legs, and it's a parlor trick, you know?
I'm pretty sure he'd sell his mother into slavery in the Sudan if he could just perform a real miracle once, and yet he's just a cheap magician. But the other text, and this is the one that they claim is the one teaching that Jesus laid aside his deity.
In Philippians chapter two. In this portion of scripture, Paul admonishes us what our mindset should be as Christians toward each other. And he says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. You could say vainglorious conceit.
That's a perfectly good translation of that word in the Greek. But in humility, count others as more significant than yourselves. So the idea here, then, is that for us who are here, look around the room, everybody who's in the room.
As Christian, as a Christian, you are to look at everybody in the room and say, you are more significant than I am. And when we're all doing that, we're doing that, that's the right way to behave as a church.
You know, Becky, you're more significant than I am. Don, way more significant than I am. Jason and Jason, I'll have to just trust that you're more significant than I am.
But you get the idea, right?
So, and if we're all in a race to the bottom to serve each other, is there any place for pride and arrogance and things like this? Of course not, right? So let each one of you not only look to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
In other words, that question that Cain asked, am I my brother's keeper? The answer is yes, you are, right? And so then, here's the anchor for this. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, morphe, you can translate it roughly as nature, he was by nature God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, he emptied himself.
And this is where the Todd Whites of the world say, he emptied himself of his deity. No, he didn't, we just looked at all the text that makes it clear that in Christ, the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily.
The question is, what does it mean that he emptied himself, in what way? He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, a slave, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
So the emptied himself is not of his divinity, he emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, of a servant. If you remember the kid's story, the prince and the pauper, right? Crown princes apparently have a lot of time on their hands and they always wonder what it's like to be a commoner, it's a common theme in our literature.
So he finds some poor pauper kid who looks just like him, it's his doppelganger, so they trade clothes and so the crown prince is able to go and finally see what it's like to be a commoner. But the whole time that he was wearing the commoner's clothes, did he stop being the crown prince?
No, he just wasn't making use of it. You can say his royalty was hidden for a season, but he remained the prince the whole time, that's the point. So Christ was found in the form of a slave, in the form of a servant, he was still God, but for a time he chose not to make full access or to access fully his divine powers.
You know, Jesus, while he was walking the earth, wasn't glowing in the dark. It's not like the kids of Nazareth said, hey, where's Jesus, you know? And they said, oh yeah, he's the kid over there, you can't miss him, he's glowing.
Okay, that's not how that worked, right? So Jesus chose to hide, to cover up, if you would, to not make full use of his deity. This is why you can say of Jesus, the God-man, that he grew in stature and wisdom and his understanding before human beings.
Jesus learned his alphabets, he learned the same way we all learn, because he chose not to access, to make full access of everything that was available to him by virtue of his divine nature. That's the idea here.
And so that being the case, you know, Jesus never ceased to be God or did everything he did as a man. That's not true, the texts make that impossible to say. And you have a different Jesus when you have a Jesus that doesn't have a divine nature.
That's just the facts. So, yeah, Todd White and people in the NAR who are teaching this, I cannot emphasize this strongly, it sounds cruel, it sounds like I'm a meanie poopyhead, but this is heresy. These are not our brothers and sisters in Christ, these are rank heretics, these are wolves teaching a different Jesus.
All right, let me check questions real quick and then I've got to get going here. Let's, I'm never gonna catch up on these.
Oh, so, Lyris writes, why is there a difference between the genealogies of Matthew and Luke? There's a couple of explanations that have plausibility behind them. One is that Mary herself also is a descendant of David and the Lukan genealogy reflects those differences as it relates to Mary's genealogy.
That's one explanation. Eusebius emphasizes the fact that there were certain, that in the genealogy of Jesus it's not a clean thing because there were a couple of Leverite marriages that got into the mix, and necessarily so.
If you were to go to YouTube and Google Eusebius-Luke genealogy, you can see a video that was put together maybe about eight or 10 years on that that explained the differences between the two of them.
Elizabeth talks, yes, hypostatic union. When we talk about, hypostasis is just a fancy word for talking about the personal union. So in the one person, Jesus Christ, there's two natures, human and divine.
That's called a hypostatic union. Is it true that Jewish thought and tradition in the family unit, the father is exactly represented by the son? Example, if the son is sent to do family business instead of the father, it is the father is there making the decision.
This is actually dealing with rules regarding emissaries and apostles, and this is a true statement, but it's an insufficient one to draw conclusions regarding the hypostatic union. So I would say that I would use that in a different sense.
Okay, the Catholic Church also teaches that Mary was immaculately conceived. No, she wasn't. She needed a savior, as Jesus was, and she was conceived without sin. No, she wasn't either. I assure you, Mary was not.
So off topic, in our women's devotion yesterday, we had a question about taking communion online or privately. Is it permitted by the Lutheran Church, the American Association of Lutheran Churches? The answer is no.
The American Association of Lutheran Churches does not permit the consecration of the Lord's Supper using the internet. I would just merely say that I have a supreme difference of exegetical reasoning than they do and do not agree with their decision, but currently I am bound by it.
Let's see here. All right, there we go. Those are our questions, and now I gotta go or I'm gonna be late. So peace to you, brothers and sisters. We will see you next time.
