Merry Christological Christmas

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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
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On today's program, I'm going to be featuring a lesson I taught recently on the subject of the nature and attributes of Christ.
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As we look forward to Christmas, let us focus on our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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Enjoy the message.
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We are in the Christmas season.
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I'm looking forward to about ten days from now, I guess it is.
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Well, nine days.
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Today's the 16th.
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So nine days from now, celebrating the Incarnation with my family.
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And we have been in our church for the last several weeks celebrating Advent.
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Who knows what Advent is? What's Advent? Advent is the celebration of Christ's coming or arrival.
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There's two of them, right? Like Him coming and then what's that one? The word Advent means arrival.
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It's in Latin for arrival, but you're right, it means coming or arrival.
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And so the idea is Christ came once and He will come again.
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So the Advent season celebrates the four themes that accompany the arrival of the Messiah.
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Hope, peace, love and joy.
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And so each Sunday leading up to the Christmas day, we celebrate each of those themes.
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So we read Scripture about hope.
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We read Scripture about peace.
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We read Scripture about love.
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And some years I do sermons on those topics.
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This year I'm not.
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I'm trying to stick with Genesis because I'm trying to get through.
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I'm preaching verse by verse through Genesis.
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I'm taking time to do that.
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Give me a second.
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Let me finish my sentence and I'll answer your question.
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So we are looking at the season of Advent which celebrates the arrival of the Messiah.
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Okay, go.
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The guy was teaching one, I think, last month? No, this month, about the candles.
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Yeah, we have the four candles.
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I mean, it's just, no, it's tradition.
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There are four candles because there's four days.
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Hope, peace, love, joy.
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Each one has a candle.
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And then there's a center candle that's lit on Christmas Eve which celebrates the arrival of Christ.
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So the center candle is usually bigger, it's white, and it's called the Christ candle.
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Okay, the church does that? Our church does that.
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It's not every church.
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That's something, that's part of a liturgical tradition which simply means it's a tradition that's within some church tradition.
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You know, like, I think Lutherans probably do it.
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Episcopals probably do it.
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I've seen it done in many Baptist churches.
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It's not as if it's a denominational thing.
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It's sort of trans or cross denominational.
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But it's just, it helps to encourage during the season.
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Similar to, but not the same as, Lent.
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You know, the whole idea of Lent is preparing for the resurrection celebration which we celebrate at Easter, right? And so a lot of Christians celebrate that period before Easter, 40 days before Easter they celebrate the time of Lent.
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Now Catholics would have a time of fasting.
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Like, I think during Lent they give up something.
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You know, you hear people talk about, I'm going to give up diet soda, or I'm going to give up whatever for Lent.
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I tell people I gave up the Pope.
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But depending on your tradition, you know, it may be that you, I think they don't eat meat on Fridays during Lent.
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And so there's different traditions.
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And so Advent and Lent are both times of preparation.
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They're times to get ready for those times during the year where you're celebrating something particularly special.
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And the two things that we celebrate in the life of Christ is His birth and His death, burial, and resurrection.
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And it's interesting that neither one of those is commanded in the Bible.
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There's nowhere in the Bible that commands that we celebrate the resurrection except the fact that we meet on Sunday and it was Sunday that Jesus raised.
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So every Sunday is essentially Resurrection Sunday.
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Every Sunday is Easter in one sense because every Sunday we gather because of the resurrection.
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But one time a year celebrating the resurrection is actually an early church tradition but it's not something the Bible tells us we have to do.
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So if a church didn't celebrate Easter, it wouldn't necessarily be wrong any more than a church celebrating Easter would be right.
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It's just sort of indifferent.
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What's called Adiaphora, which means something that is not required.
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Yes, sir? I know there's like a big difference but I don't know exactly.
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What's the difference between like what the Jewish people do with their Hanukkah candles? The Hanukkah is a celebration of something that happened in the intertestamental period.
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That's the period between Malachi and Matthew.
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I'm going to try to give the history as best I remember.
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There was a lacking of oil for their candles but it lasted eight days when it should have only lasted one day.
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And so that was seen as a miracle from God and so now the Jewish people celebrate the festival of lights.
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They light candles every night, eight candles, eight days, and each one of those is representing God's provision.
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Now in the Bible it says Jesus went to the feast of dedication and that is another name for Hanukkah.
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So it's interesting that even during the time of Christ there was a celebration of that feast.
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And it was a feast that was introduced during the time of the Maccabees, which the Maccabees was during the intertestamental period, like I said, the 400 years between Malachi and Matthew there was the time of the Maccabees.
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But I just think it's interesting to know that Jesus actually participated in that feast.
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So it doesn't say that he necessarily engaged it and did it, but he was there.
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It was during the feast of dedication, which we believe would have been the feast of Hanukkah.
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So I mean what they're doing in that isn't like they still do that now.
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Yeah, it's not wrong.
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It's not wrong.
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I think the issue with Jewish tradition today is it's being done without Christ.
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And in that sense, if those lights represented anything, it was representing the light of the world, Christ who was to come.
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And by denying Christ, they've tarnished everything.
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Absolutely.
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But the feast itself, nothing wrong with a Christian.
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Like at our church, every few years we celebrate a Passover feast.
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We actually do a Passover feast at our church to show how it points to Christ.
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We don't do lamb.
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We normally do chicken, but that's because we're cheap.
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But we set out all of the items.
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If you remember the Passover, there was bitter herbs and unleavened bread and there was all these different things that were used to symbolize certain things that the unleavened bread represented the fact that they didn't have time for the bread to rise and the bitter herbs represented the bitterness of their slavery that they had while they were in bondage in Egypt.
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So each thing that you eat, we eat it and then we say why we eat it.
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And so that is a festival that's no longer required because it's under the Old Covenant, but there's no reason why we can't celebrate it and show how it's fulfilled in Christ.
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So every couple of years we do that.
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So that was a good question.
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So getting back to the doctrine of Christ, it is vital to say from the outset that Christology is a lifetime study.
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There's no way we're going to get through everything today.
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In fact, I would say we're not even going to get through much today in accord with all there is to study about Jesus' life and ministry, who He is, what He is in the sense of being the theanthropic being, meaning that He is the God-man.
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So we can address some of those things today.
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And I'm really thinking next week, I will be here next week, I won't be here the week after, I'll be out of town, but I will be here next week.
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So it'll be the Thursday before Christmas.
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I'm thinking of making this study, even though I know it's supposed to be 12 weeks, but that's sort of arbitrary.
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We can do whatever we want.
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I'm thinking of taking this into a second session next week to talk more about the virgin birth and why that's important.
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Because that's, of course, what we celebrate.
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So today we're going to talk about Christ's pre-existence, eternality, and we're going to talk about His hypostatic union.
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So that's the three things we're going to look at today.
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So if you can write this down.
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Alright, so the three things we're going to look at today are pre-existence, and I'm not going to explain all these, but if you're taking notes, these are major headaches.
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Pre-existence, eternality, and the hypostatic union.
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The hypostatic union.
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Now, many of you, if you've taken classes with Bobby or some of the other overseers, you may have heard these words before, or you may have been in my class when I did it last time.
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So if this is a rehearsal for you, meaning you know these things and it's just reminding you, that's great, because the key to learning is repetition.
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So it's nothing bad with hearing things over again.
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Also, maybe you had a question last time that I could answer, or maybe there's something that will jog your memory to a new way of understanding these things.
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Last week we talked about the doctrine of the Trinity, and we talked about the fact that God is one in essence and three in persons.
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Well, one of those persons is the second person of the Trinity, and not second in power or order or authority, just second in name, because we always say the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and so when we address the second person of the Trinity, we're referring to Jesus.
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We're referring to God the Son.
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We can say Jesus is the Son of God, but we can also say He is God the Son, referencing Him that way.
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And so when we talk about Jesus, we are talking about someone who is fully God and fully man.
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Someone who is, and some people will say 100% God and 100% man.
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Some of the teachers here may use that phrase.
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And I'm not saying that's wrong, but I don't use the term 100%, because when you deal with God, you are dealing with infinity, and there are no percentages in infinity.
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You can't say there's 10% of infinity, because you just can't have a percentage of infinity.
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So I don't say 100% God or 100% man.
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I say fully God and fully man.
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And the Latin term was vera homo vera Deus.
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Not homo like maybe some of you might be thinking.
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Homo means man in Latin.
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So vera homo, truly man.
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And vera Deus, truly God.
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Right? So when we talk about Jesus, that's the term that we use.
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Truly or fully God.
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Deus.
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I said Deus.
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Alright, so let's look first at preexistent.
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What does preexistent mean? To exist before.
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Okay, so the prefix pre- means before, and the word existence comes from the root exist.
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Okay, so when we say Jesus existed before, what are we talking about? He existed before what? Everything.
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Okay, I love it.
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You're right, but you're not the answer I was looking for.
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That was right, but that wasn't the answer.
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Most specifically, He existed before Bethlehem.
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That's the key that I'm getting to.
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He existed before the Incarnation, right? So we talk about Bethlehem, and next week we'll deal with this a little more clearly.
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What happened in Bethlehem, it's not just that Jesus was born of a virgin.
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That's miraculous enough.
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But what happened in Bethlehem was the joining of the divine and the human in the one person of Jesus Christ.
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It was that inseparable, yet unmingled union of divine and human, and so Bethlehem is what we call the Incarnation.
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What is Incarnation? The Latin there, the word carne means flesh.
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So to take on flesh, right? So the idea of flesh.
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So if you have your Bibles, turn to John 1.
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Well, that's a good verse.
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That's not the one I'm going to look at though.
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Go to 1.14.
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John 1, it does begin with that word flesh, and it says, that great expression of Jesus' deity, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.
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All things were made through Him, and nothing was made that wasn't made by Him, and all things were made through Him.
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But then you get to verse 14, and verse 14 gives us what we call the Incarnational passage.
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It tells us what? It says, and the Word, that's Jesus, we know that, became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we know that He was with us, and the Word dwelt there.
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It's interesting, you may remember from the Bible they had what were called tents or tabernacles, and there was actually what was called the Feast of Tabernacles, just since we talked about Feast earlier, the Tabernacle Feast was where they would go out and stay in tents, reminding themselves of when they were in Egypt and when they were during the Exodus, so it was a reminder of that time.
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And that word is the word that's used here, it says, and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.
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So the idea is He put on flesh like a man puts on a tent or a garment, Jesus put on flesh.
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Why? So He could dwell among us, so that He could dwell with us, and we have seen His glory, glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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And so we have this passage which tells us that Jesus became flesh.
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Now, here's something from this text that we must recognize.
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If the Word became flesh, that means the Word pre-existed that flesh.
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Because the becoming of flesh means it took on something, or He took on something, rather than, and the Word became existent.
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No, He already existed, He became flesh, He took on something that He didn't have before.
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God has always been God.
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God has always been a Trinity.
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God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have always existed in a relationship within Himself and is able to have that relationship throughout all eternity.
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But there has not always been a Jesus of Nazareth.
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What I mean by that is God the Son took on flesh, and Jesus of Nazareth, the man, was when He was not before.
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Does that make sense? That He was always God, but not always man.
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So the taking on of flesh creates this new union of the God-man.
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Right? And so that is the incarnation.
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So we have the pre-existence of Jesus means everything that happened before that.
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Yes? Yes, absolutely.
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No, He certainly was not always fully man.
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The receiving of the flesh, the taking on of flesh through the Virgin was something that was not before.
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So we could say God has always been God.
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Jesus has always been God in the sense that the Word has always been God, but it has not always been flesh.
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Yes? I see you, I'm sorry.
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I mean, when you say He's no longer part of that, I mean now He's back to His spirit form, so He's no longer flesh.
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No, He's still flesh.
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He, He, He, and this is important to recognize.
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He is still the man Christ Jesus, because 1 Peter 1 tells us, or 1 Peter 2 rather, maybe this time, I have to look back, but it says, it says there's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
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Christ is still man and mediator now.
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That is, He is by the, He is sitting at the right hand of the Father as the man Christ Jesus, and He will forever.
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I believe that incarnation will last forever.
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I don't think the God man ever ceases to be the God man.
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That taking on of flesh is something that lasts, that's why He has the glorified body, just like we will.
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Right.
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So yeah, I, still man.
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That's a hard one to wrap your mind around.
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Yeah, and this is sort of what we.
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Well, I mean, because when we die, we turn back to dust.
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But we will have a resurrected body.
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Your body that you're in now will go on forever.
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This body? Yes, that body will be reconstituted and you will receive a glorified version of what you now have.
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We don't get caught up.
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Yeah, but what does it say in 1 Thessalonians 4? It says that the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout and the voice of an archangel and the trump of God, and the dead will rise.
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The flesh rises.
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Is that where, I don't know if it's Catholics or who it is, but they don't believe in cremation? Yeah.
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Because they say that's destroying the temple or something like that? Okay, just for the sake of being really quick.
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Right, yeah.
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I don't think cremation is a sin, but I don't believe it's biblical either.
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The Bible never teaches cremation for believers.
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It teaches burial.
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Even Moses, when he died, God buried him.
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So that shows us God's method.
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So, I mean, is that enough though? I mean, we could argue all day.
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I'm saying it's not a sin, but the method of Bible is burial.
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And it always has been because of the promise of resurrection.
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We can talk more about it later.
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Your body goes back to dust anyhow.
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I'm not arguing with you, brother.
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I'm saying the biblical model is burial.
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I'm not saying it's a sin to be burned.
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I'm saying I personally don't want to be burned.
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That's me.
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But it's, again, are we going to talk about this? This is not what we're going to talk about.
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Sorry.
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Go ahead.
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Okay, let's talk about the pre-existence of Jesus.
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So therefore, God had his pain when Adam and Eve had it before Adam and Eve even had sin, right? Sure.
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I didn't, yeah, that's not, that's not a question.
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No, what I'm saying is we know that.
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The Bible tells us that Jesus was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, which means the plan was in place before it ever even happened.
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So, yeah, that's not even a question.
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Huh? Thank you.
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Yeah.
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And again, I wasn't trying to be rude, brother.
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I'm just saying, guys in here ask me questions and we'll go, and we'll never get back to this.
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So we can talk about it another time.
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But as I said, not a sin, just what the Bible teaches.
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Amen.
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Alright, so dealing with pre-existence, why do we believe in the pre-existence of Christ? There are direct statements and indirect statements which tell us that Christ pre-existed Bethlehem.
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I'm going to give you just a few.
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You can write them down.
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I'll read them to you.
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You don't have to go there because we'll be like just too many verses at one time.
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So here's a few.
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First one is John 1, 1-3.
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We already talked about it in the beginning was the Word.
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Well, if the Word was in the beginning, then He certainly pre-existed Bethlehem.
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So, absolutely, He was there.
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John 8, 58.
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My favorite.
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I would love to preach this one day.
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Maybe one day I'll come on a Thursday night and preach to you guys.
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John 8, 58 is one of my favorite sermons to preach.
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Jesus said to the Pharisees, Before Abraham was, I am.
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Not only does He say He existed before Abraham, but He also addresses Himself by the divine title, I Am.
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He didn't say, Before Abraham was, I was.
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He says, Before Abraham was, I am.
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So, again, we have that statement of Jesus.
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John 17, 5.
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One of my favorite.
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I mentioned this last week.
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It says, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory that I shared with you before the world existed.
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Jesus shared the glory of the Father before the existence of the world.
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That's John 17, 5.
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That should end any debate on pre-existence.
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Because He said, I had the glory with you before the world existed.
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So, right there, it's proof.
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Colossians 1, 16, 17.
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For by Him all things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers.
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All things were created through Him and for Him.
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And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
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I mean, again, it's not a debate.
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And then, again, if you're going to be biblical, you can debate it all day long.
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Philosophical.
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But I'm saying biblical.
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The Bible gives us these clearly.
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Hebrews 1, 8.
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Hebrews 1, 8 is an interesting passage because Hebrews 1, 8 is a quote from the Psalms.
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And it's a quote about Yahweh.
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But it says it is about Jesus in Hebrews.
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Hebrews 1, 8, it says, But of the Son, that's Jesus, it says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
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And the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
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So it says, But of the Son, it says, Your throne, O God.
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Isn't that interesting? That's the one I talk about when the Jehovah Witnesses come around.
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I pull out Hebrews 1, 8 because they're used to John 1.
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They want to talk about John 1.
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They spend their nights just waiting for somebody to pull out John 1 because they're going to talk to you about definite and indefinite articles and why the articular noun is necessary and why an anarthous noun has to have a lower case a.
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They're going to talk about all those things, which most people are not prepared to have that conversation.
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But when you pull out Hebrews 1, 8 and say, But of the Son, it says, Your throne, O God.
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And when you go back to the passage that's quoting in the Psalms, it says it's about Yahweh, which means Jesus is one with Yahweh.
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It's like, yeah, see, now you've got a problem.
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Yeah, so I mean, if you're a Jehovah Witness, you've got a problem.
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So that's some direct statements.
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Here's some indirect statements.
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There are many passages that say Jesus came down from heaven.
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John 3, 13, one good example, but there are many others.
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John 6 says, I came down from heaven like the manna that fell, I came from heaven.
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So these are statements that say He didn't just appear in Bethlehem, but He came down.
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And so that, again, referencing His preexistence.
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Christ is seen in His preexisting work in creation.
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And I already mentioned John 1, 3, Colossians 1, 16, but that's an indirect statement.
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If He was at creation, then certainly He preexisted Bethlehem.
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And then there are those things which we call Christophanies.
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A Christophany is a preexistent appearance of Jesus.
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And when we read through the Old Testament, we see Jesus appear at certain times.
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One of the most specific times was in Isaiah chapter 6.
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When Isaiah saw the Lord seated upon His throne, John tells us in John 12, he saw Jesus.
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Isn't that amazing? 700 years before Jesus was born, John saw Him seated upon His throne.
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And John 12 tells us that was, he saw the glory of Christ.
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Yes? Couldn't you also refer to the, you know, when Jesus says, if you think these are greater, I can't remember who He said it to, but He said, you'll see angels ascending and going back upon, which is a reference to Jacob's ladder, basically.
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I'm preaching that Sunday.
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I'm preaching that Sunday night.
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That's my Christmas message.
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It really is because Jesus makes the way.
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He is the ladder.
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He is the stairwell.
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I think it's a stairwell.
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But it says ladder in ESV.
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I prefer the term stairwell because I actually think it was a ziggurat.
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I think it was actually almost like a pyramid set of steps.
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And the idea was you have angels going up and down on this thing which represents Christ.
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And Christ is pictured there as being with Jacob and being the mediator between Jacob and the Father.
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So yeah, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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So all of those things, we see Christ in the Old Testament in three different ways.
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We see Christ in pre-incarnate appearances.
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We see Christ in types, which means things that point to Christ, like sacrifices, Jacob's ladder, things like that.
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And we see Christ also, what did I say? Appearances, types, and we see Christ in prophecy.
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He's prophesied.
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The Messiah will come, we're told in several passages.
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The Lord will come out of Bethlehem, things like that.
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Okay, so that is all examples of pre-existing Bethlehem.
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Now let's talk about eternality.
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Because just because Christ pre-existed Bethlehem doesn't mean He is eternal in the grand scheme because the Jehovah Witnesses would agree that Jesus pre-existed Bethlehem.
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If you ever talk to a finely trained Jehovah Witness, which they do train their people, even though they're training them in false doctrine, and it is a false teaching, they have studies where they train their people.
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So when the people come, the thing is that they train them on certain things.
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If you know how to get them off their game, it doesn't matter.
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If you know how to come at them, like I said, I go from Hebrews 1.8, they're not used to that.
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They're used to John 1.
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They're used to John 17.
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They're used to certain passages.
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If you can hit them from a different direction, a lot of times it spins their head.
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I had a Jehovah Witness come to my house one time, and he started talking to me about how bad things are in the world.
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They always want to use that as sort of an inroad.
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They have a weight magazine, which talks about how bad things are getting.
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And I just asked him, I said, look dude, if you came to my house today, and I was dying, I was laying on the ground, I had a knife in my back, I have two minutes to live, and you're going to share with me your gospel message in two minutes.
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You've got two minutes.
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Go.
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He said, what are you talking about? I said, listen, I said, you are preaching a false gospel, and I know it's false because you don't have a message that can save a dying man.
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You don't have a message that can save a man who is dying.
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I said, because your gospel relies upon works.
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The Bible says we are not saved by works.
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But you believe we are.
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Therefore, you have a false gospel.
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So I just got right to it.
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I just cut right to the chase.
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So we didn't talk about the nature of Jesus, because the problem is, not only do they have a false Jesus, they've got a false gospel.
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Again, I didn't come to talk about Jehovah's Witnesses, but they do study.
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So you've got to knock them off the perch sometimes.
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But one of the things they'll say, they'll say, yes, Jesus preexisted Bethlehem, but He was created by God.
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They say Jesus is the first creation of Yahweh.
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The first creation of what they say Jehovah.
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And what they end up doing is they end up becoming polytheists.
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Actually, what they call, what's called henotheists.
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They become, well, they believe in multiple gods.
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Because they say Jesus, they say in the beginning was the Word.
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Well, polytheism.
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And then there's, you're thinking of Trinitarianism versus.
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They're Unitarian.
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They're Unitarian, but they're henotheists.
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And henotheists means they believe in one God and then other lesser gods.
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Big G's and little g's.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And so they say Jesus is a little g God.
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Which the Bible tells us, and you can turn there if you'd like, Isaiah 43.10.
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This is the most important passage in regard to the eternality of Christ.
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Isaiah 43.10.
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I mentioned this one I think last week, but we should look at it again.
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Isaiah 43.10.
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Isaiah, writing on behalf of God who is speaking, You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.
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That means I am God.
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Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.
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So, Isaiah 43.10.
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And again, this is another passage that they're usually not typically ready to deal with.
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This is actually a great one for Mormons too because Mormons believe that God was once a man who became God.
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Mormons believe that man can become a god through adherence to Mormon teaching.
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So, this passage would say, No, it says, Before me there was no god formed, neither will there be any after me.
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There's only one God, and we believe that God is Trinitarian, which we talked about last week, but that one God has always existed.
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So the idea that Jesus became God or was created as God would violate the Scriptures.
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He is either God forever or He's not God at all.
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Say it again.
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He is either God forever or He's not God at all.
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You said last week, God can't make a god.
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That's right.
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People say, There's nothing God can't do.
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There's many things God can't do.
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God can't lie.
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God can't violate His nature.
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God can't make a round peg fit in a square hole.
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Because God doesn't violate the laws of logic.
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He is Himself eternally logical.
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Therefore, God cannot create a god.
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Because a god is by definition eternal.
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He can't create something that's eternal.
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So, Isaiah 43.10 addresses, I believe, the eternality of Christ.
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So we've got Christ pre-existent.
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Check.
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Christ eternal.
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Check.
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Now we're going to move to a very heady theological concept.
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One that I think is...
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I think every church should do a class on this every year.
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And our church basically does.
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But I don't think many people have ever even heard this term.
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And that is the term hypostatic union.
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Now the word hypostatic comes from the word hypostasis.
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Oh, missed the letter there.
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Which means essence or nature.
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So hypostasis means essence or nature.
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So the hypostatic union is the union of natures.
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And Christ has two natures.
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He has a divine nature and a human nature.
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So, for instance, here's a few questions people will ask that I think this answers.
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That's why I say every church should teach this at least once a year.
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People will say...
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And it's the well-if questions.
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And I hear these all the time.
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People say, Well, if Jesus was God, why did He pray? Or if Jesus was God, why did He say He wouldn't know when He would return? Or if Jesus was God, why would He say the Father is greater than He? These are all legitimate questions.
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I'm not making fun of them.
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I'm saying these are questions people ask.
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And in doing so, they are misunderstanding that the divine and human nature have united into one person of Christ.
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There is only one person, but He shares these two natures.
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And therefore, there are many times where we see Christ expressing His human nature.
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For instance, when He says, I thirst.
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Or I'm hungry.
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Or He's tired.
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He's asleep in the boat while everybody else is freaking out because the weather is all going.
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Christ exhibits human nature.
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And one of the funniest things is if you think about when Christ was a baby.
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When Christ was a baby, He nursed at the breast of Mary.
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He had soiled diapers.
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He cried.
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Crying is a natural thing that babies do because it expels and exercises their lungs and expels phlegm and mucus and all these different things.
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It's something that has to happen in the life of a baby for health reasons.
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Babies don't just cry because they're immature.
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They cry because it's healthy for them.
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And so, there's a song.
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We sing it every year.
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And I don't mind singing it, but it does have a little untruth in it.
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It's called Away in a Manger.
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So we sing, Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head.
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And then there's one part that says, No crying He makes.
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Remember Away in a Manger? It says, The little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.
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Probably not true.
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He was probably, Hey! Just like any other baby because babies cry.
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And Jesus was not inhuman.
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In fact, He was fully human.
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Isn't that what we affirmed earlier? We said He was fully divine and fully human.
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And therefore, the full humanity of Christ was expressed through human action.
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Eating, sleeping, all of the things that we go through as human beings.
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So Jesus has a human nature.
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What's interesting, in our world today, there is a big debate as to the divinity of Christ.
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People want to debate whether or not Jesus was fully divine.
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But in the early church, it wasn't about Jesus' divinity that was the argument.
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It was about His humanity.
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Read 2 John and 1 John.
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And what does it say? He who says Jesus has not come in the flesh is antichrist.
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Why does it stress Jesus coming in the flesh? Because there were people who believed Jesus was just spirit, that He was a spirit figure, but that He wasn't truly flesh.
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And John says if you deny Jesus has come in the flesh, you have the spirit of antichrist.
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Not big A antichrist world leader, but the idea of you have the spirit of being opposed to Christ if you deny He came in the flesh.
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That's in 2 John.
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I just finished preaching that at church.
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It's an important passage.
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Because it tells us we have to affirm both.
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We cannot affirm Jesus is fully divine to the expense of His humanity.
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Neither can we affirm He is fully human at the expense of His divinity.
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We must understand that both are true.
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In a minute, I'm going to read to you from the Council of Chalcedon, which was an early church council.
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It was in 451, so I would say within the first 500 years.
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Not super early.
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The early church would have been probably the first couple hundred years.
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So this is midway through the first millennium after Christ.
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But there's a wonderful thing that it expresses in regards to Christ, and I'm going to read it to you.
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But before we get there, let me just summarize again the hypostatic union.
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When we talk about Christ in the hypostatic union, we say there are two natures.
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Christ has two distinct natures.
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There is no mixing or intermingling of these natures, but there is a union of them in the one person who is Jesus.
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So let's think of it like this.
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When we talked about the Trinity last week, we said the Trinity is one God and three persons.
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Well, Jesus is one person with two natures.
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So the Trinity is one God and three persons.
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Jesus is one person with two natures.
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And I believe that as necessary as the Trinity is to believe, I believe the hypostatic union is just as necessary.
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This is not just an exercise in theological hair-splitting.
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There is something exceedingly necessary in Christ being both God and man.
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I'll quote Paul in.
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He wrote the moody handbook of theology, which I think is very good.
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He quotes this.
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He says both natures are necessary for redemption.
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As a man, Christ could represent man and die as a man.
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But as God, the death of Christ could have infinite value, sufficient to provide redemption for the sins of the world.
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You see, His death was a death of a man, but it also had a divine quality because He was God.
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This is why the Bible says God paid for our sins with His own blood.
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Isn't that amazing to think about the blood that was shed was the blood of a man, of course, but it was God in Christ doing that act.
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And I have a note here.
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And it answers something, brother, you asked earlier about is Jesus still a man? What's interesting is I actually have something here I want to read.
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The hypostatic union which occurred in the Incarnation is now permanent.
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Jesus did not stop being a man when He ascended into heaven.
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His humanity continues forever.
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And here's the passage to cite.
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Hebrews 7.23 Speaking of the former priesthood, it says the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in their office.
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But Jesus holds His priesthood permanently because He continues forever as a priest.
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Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him since He always lives to make intercession for them.
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So He continues as a priest forever.
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This is something I believe.
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I can't prove this, but I think the Bible bears this out.
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I believe when we get to heaven, we will see Christ and we will see the scars in His hands as the same way Thomas did.
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Remember what Thomas said? Remember he said, Show me your hand.
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Show me your side.
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And he said, My Lord and my God, right? So people ask me sometimes, What are we going to look like in heaven? I don't know.
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I hope it ain't like this.
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It's going to be a lot to go through in eternity.
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To be eternally like this is going to be a little rough.
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But Christ will have, I believe, an eternal form whereon we can be reminded of what He has done for us.
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Alright, so I'm going to draw to a close a little early today, but I'm going to draw to a close by reading the...
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This is the Council of Chalcedon statement which was made in 451.
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And let me say a word about church history.
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Most of us are shamefully ignorant of history anyway.
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But we are even more ignorant of church history.
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I talked about this at our church last night.
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There was so much powerful writing and scholarship that was happening 2,000 years ago.
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We think of people like that as like cavemen.
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They were not cavemen.
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These were men who thought in ways much deeper than we think about today.
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And really were putting things on paper that were so much more profound than the tripe things that we put out today.
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They didn't think in Twitter feeds and Facebook posts.
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They didn't think in 140 characters.
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They thought in deep, thoughtful, powerful thoughts.
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And so if you get a chance to read some of the things that the early fathers wrote, not everything they wrote was 100% correct because they were men like us.
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They made mistakes.
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But there were so many powerful things.
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Well, this is from the Council of Chalcedon, and this is what it says.
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Quote, Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father as regards His Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards His manhood.
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Like us in all respects apart from sin, as regards His Godhood, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards His manhood, begotten for us men and for our salvation of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer, one and the same Christ Son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved in coming together to form the one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Even as the prophets from the earliest times spoke of Him and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught us and the creeds of the fathers have handed them down to us.
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What a powerful statement.
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Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
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And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.