A Greater Sickness VII: The Cure is a Person | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Grazie, joined by Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and host of the

Behold Your God study series. In the last several weeks, as everybody has been discussing

COVID -19, the coronavirus, the lockdowns, everything that is associated with this virus,

John, you and I have spent several weeks discussing man's greater plague, our first plague, that of sin.

And we finally get to the session, the two sessions, that I think

I've been looking forward to the most. And that's where we get to talk about the cure. Yeah. When we talk about sin, we've kind of given a really simple definition because we do find that people who perhaps don't have a religious background might just off the cuff, just reject that whole term, you know, that moral category doesn't exist for them.

And then, but I'm really not that worried about that group. I'm more worried about the church group, like me who grew up in church.

And when you hear the word sin, it is just so easy to kind of shift into neutral with your brain and say, oh yeah,

I already know about sin. And I agree with whatever you're gonna say, cause it's Bible stuff. So, you know, from that point forward, then it just becomes weightless.

So if we think about sin, let's think about it this way. Sin is just waking up in the morning and living the rest of the day with this fundamental attitude.

And that is, you know, what's in it for me? What's in this life for me?

What am I gonna do with my day today? What am I gonna do with my time? It doesn't show up so much when somebody else is dictating to us.

So a boss, you know, I get up, I know what I gotta do today. The boss will tell me what I gotta do today.

But it's at those times where, you know, we have leisure time or maybe kind of extra money.

You know, things that where we feel like, okay, I have control over this small portion of my life. And then the question comes up, you know, what do

I wanna do with my life? So sin is living for myself. And it displays its real nature in the fact that it is ultimately against God.

Which probably we don't have a hard time accepting that statement. You know, David's statement when he was guilty of murder and adultery, and he says against thee and thee only have

I sinned. Not that he didn't also sin against other people, ultimately the whole nation. But that he was aware of the fact that he had sinned against God himself in his private hidden immoralities.

But sin is also against us. And that's what we talked about the last time we were together. Which is kind of shocking to us.

Because the one thing sin promises me is that if I follow it down this path, it will make me happy.

It may not say that this is the best path. You know, when temptation is there, we might admit to ourselves, this isn't really what

I'm supposed to do. So this probably isn't the best choice. It's not a choice that I'm really proud of, but it will make me happy.

It will at least do that. And so it is surprising to us to see that God describes sin as a thing that really is against our own happiness.

And I think in a way we do know that. We know that sin is gonna lie to us.

And that is, again, one of those things that we talked about. You know, the best news of it though is that there is indeed a cure.

I mean, you think about it. If news came out today that a cure was found for the coronavirus,

I mean, it would make everybody on the edge of their seats. It would make everybody happy.

And the fact that there is a cure for sin, that God has given us this cure, should have us ecstatic.

Yeah, it ought to. I mean, the Bible calls it the good news. The Greek words there were commonly used in that first century culture in different ways.

So, you know, obviously the Romans didn't talk about the good news, you know, talking about Jesus Christ.

But the biblical writers used that phrase and said, look, you know, we talk about good news, but we want to tell you about the good news, capital

G. The Romans used to use that phrase if someone brought you a message.

So, you know, they didn't have a post office then. So you have a courier and he brings you a message and you have to pay the courier.

So you go to pay the courier and you open up maybe the letter and whatever's in the letter is something that changes your life so wonderfully for the better that you say to the courier, you know, you say to your family, guys, it came, look, look.

And the courier is about to walk off and you say, wait, wait, wait, wait, look, this is the best news I've ever gotten.

Let me just tip you. And you give the courier this extravagant tip because the news is so good.

So really right off the bat, when we say something like this, there, sin is the problem, but now we're coming to the cure.

And the fact that we can say there is a cure that we can devote some time to talking about ought to make us happy.

Right off, we have a good test. What's the condition of my soul?

Whether it's the very first time I've heard that there was a problem and a cure, or whether it's the hundred thousandth time that I've heard, hey, there's a problem, but there's a cure.

The question of the condition of my soul can be clearly seen by my response to that. Does that put me on the edge of my seat?

Because it's the first time I've heard that there's a cure for this thing within me that is destroying every relationship, invading every event, tyrannizing every aspect of my being.

Does it fill me with happiness as a believer to hear about the cure again? We've been talking about this before the podcast.

There are two things that a person has to have if the message of the good news of Jesus Christ is really gonna affect you.

And it's really the same as for any message of good news regarding like a cure. So if someone said there's a cure for COVID, how happy would you be?

Well, it would be related to these two things. Number one, how much do you feel you need it? Well, COVID is a little different than sin in the fact that everybody that has

COVID doesn't die. Everyone that has the virus of sin, whose life is dominated by that me, me, what's in it for me, does die, will be destroyed.

Not just you, but everybody you know is being destroyed. It's universal, this plague.

So how much do you feel the need of it? Do you feel that you're a morally pretty good person?

So a little sickness, a few symptoms, but if I just take the right vitamins, get the right rest, do the right things,

I can fix myself. Then the statement that there is good news in Jesus Christ is a pretty small statement.

But then there's another thing that really helps us get a right response. So imagine if, you know, with this coronavirus, if we had, you know, a talk show host or even a pair of podcasters like us,

John, where we come up and we say, guess what, guys? I've got the cure. I know exactly what it is that's gonna cure you.

Or you hear a politician who says, here's the cure, and this is, you know, this is what we're gonna give everybody in the country and it's gonna cure.

There would be a lot of questions and there would be some skepticism, and I think rightly so. But if we heard from the experts, if we heard from the people who have been studying upper respiratory infections and coronaviruses for their entire career, that's gonna add some weight to it.

And here we have the only expert on sin. And we've talked about this in a previous episode where we think that because of our exposure to sin, we're experts on it, but we're the most deceived by sin.

There's only one who is an expert on sin and that's Jesus Christ himself, because he has no experience with it, and therefore his eyes are not veiled to the deceitfulness of sin.

Yeah, we talked about this. One of the aspects of sin that's fundamental to it is that it numbs and blinds and confuses and distorts our perception as it spreads.

So the only one who has had no experience of sin in that way is God himself. And God is the one that has told us that there is good news.

It is in fact a good news that was crafted from an infinite wisdom and an infinite love, amazingly so, and infinite power have combined to bring us hope of a real rescue.

And so, if you think of religion, of Christianity, of God as kind of the

Wizard of Oz, like the wizard behind the veil, then you're not gonna get too excited about it. And I wouldn't blame anyone.

I think that if God isn't who he says he is, then you would be a fool to entrust your life, to risk your life based on what a preacher says about him.

I mean, sadly in our culture, religion is, a church is kind of the last place that you expect someone to tell you the hard truth.

You expect that it's where you will be told nice things. And if you were, and if the preacher cared enough about your soul to say, you know, one -on -one, face -to -face, not from the pulpit, but face -to -face, as you're walking out of the church and you strike up a conversation, if he were to love you enough to tell you the truth, you'd be pretty shocked.

But in spite of the fact that, you know, that we're not too good at being realists,

God is the ultimate realist. Now, I think that one way we need to apply that is, I have noticed in my own soul, and certainly as a pastor in a church, that I am willing to believe the bad news, that when

God says, look, do you know how bad you can be? Do you know how far sin has penetrated? I look in the mirror and I think, he's told the truth.

And do you know what that deserves? I look in the mirror and I think, he's telling the truth. But when someone tells me the good news, when

I read some of the statements of Paul, or Peter, or John, or the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, or the Old Testament foreshadowings of the new covenant, and then

I look in the mirror, I am so tempted to think, that's for somebody else.

It can't be that good. And if it's that good, it can't be for a person like you. And if you remember

Paul's illustration of the life of faith in Romans chapter four, he mentions Abraham as kind of the archetype, you know, here's the believer.

Abraham trusted God, and he was justified by that faith.

Now, what about us? One of the things Abraham did not do is he did not stumble at the magnitude of the promise.

When we look in the mirror, and then we lay alongside the sad prospect of our own stumbling, struggling

Christianity, and we lay alongside that, the words of the Lord Jesus Christ about how good the good news is, how thorough the cure is, we are faced with a real dilemma.

Will I, by the help of God, believe Him all the way? Or will

I try to adjust it down to a more manageable, believable scale that I think, well, maybe that could be for me, but not that, you know?

And so we have to choose to believe God, and not what we think we deserve.

And I think when we're talking about this, we can't minimize it. Looking at how we have to understand the cure,

I think before we even get really into what the cure is, we need to decide and discuss what the cure is not.

There's a lot of counterfeits out there, even the counterfeits that we make, the lies that we tell ourselves.

So a good question for us to ask is, what is the cure not? The first thing the cure is not is a plan.

Look, in eternity past, before creation began, God established and covenanted with Himself the plan of salvation.

The fall of man, the flood of Noah, all of these things, none of these were outside the control of God.

They were a part of the overarching story of the good news, the coming of Christ, the redemption of man.

So there's always been a plan, but that is God's plan, not our plan that I think that often we look at.

But the thing is, so there is that plan, but it's not just a plan. In salvation, the cure, it's not that you're being told, okay, here's a set of biblical ideas that you have to one by one check off.

Okay, yes, I agree with this. Yes, I agree with this. It's not even a collection of scriptures that you say, okay, there's this verse and it says this, and that's a fact, and I believe this fact.

And then here's the next fact. Okay, yes, I can check that. I believe that fact. So it's not just a set of ideas.

It's not even a new philosophy, a set of rules. The second thing that it's not is a path.

And I think often, growing up particularly, I would hear about in evangelism training, the plan of salvation, the path of salvation.

There is a path to walk, and we need to know that. But again, like it's not just a plan, it's not just a path.

It's not something that you can choose. Okay, I'm gonna start on this path, and this is my cure, but I get to choose exactly how far down this path

I walk. And I get to choose how fast I go down this path. And ultimately, it's all dependent on me.

So if that's, John, if that's not what the path is, or if that's not what the cure is, what is the cure?

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because, I think everyone who has exposure to Christianity would say, well, obviously the cure isn't getting more sin, getting more, or even getting nice things, getting more money, getting more for me, making a better me.

But like you said, even the religious things that we tend to drift toward, well, there's a plan I embrace.

There's a path I walk. But that's not the cure. The cure is a person.

And we don't mean that to be trite. There is a unique, incomprehensibly glorious person whose measures of perfection can never be told by any theologian or even the angels which have surrounded the throne from the very beginning.

It is the eternal and infinitely precious God, the beauty of the

Holy One, reaching down to the ugly and deformed, distorted lives and rescuing us.

So it's a person, but a unique person, a person unlike any other person that we've ever heard about.

It's not just God in His bigness. It's God coming to us in the person of a mediator.

That is, it is a person who is divine, but also one of us.

And we'll talk about why in a minute, but think about that. There is one being who has two natures.

God has a divine nature. An angel has an angelic nature. You know, a man has a human nature, an animal has a nature matching its species.

But when we talk about the cure, the Lord Jesus Christ, He is God man. He alone has two natures, perfect divine nature.

So think about that. As one of the persons of the Trinity, one

God expressed in three persons, which is a mystery to us. But we do understand this, that as the eternal

Son who has been united to our humanity, He possesses equally and eternally with the

Father and the Spirit, all the fullness of the divine nature. That means the

God man is not one third God united to our humanity. God the

Father's one third, God the Spirit's one third, God the Son's one third. That's not what the Bible teaches. In fact, that's a heresy.

Yes, that would be a heresy. We cannot divide God up into three. One God, indivisible, expressed in three persons.

Now, also He's not a lesser God. So, and, you know, and with, for instance, with Jehovah's Witness teaching, we have

God, and then we have a kind of a whole line of lesser beings.

But the very next one, so here's we have God the Father, but then we have Jesus Christ, God the Son, and He's not quite as much

God as God the Father, but He's way above angels, and that's way above men. Sometimes we, people have come to that error by looking at the words of Jesus Christ and taking them out of context.

So where the Son of God constantly prefers His Father's will,

He is greater than I, kind of an expression. It's what we call the economy of redemption, or it is the practical outworking of redemption.

In order to rescue us, the Son must humble Himself and gladly from love, not from inferiority, but from love, embrace the lower station of servant so that He might do all the

Father's good pleasure. Later, we see the Father, from love, exalt the

Son above every other name so that at the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, every knee will bow, and He will receive the reward of His suffering.

We see that also in the way the Spirit works, coming not to draw attention to Himself, but to be a spotlight that constantly focuses on the work of the

Lord Jesus Christ. So, unique person, two natures. One of them is perfect divinity, but the other is humanity.

So like you were saying earlier, the only person with two natures in all of creation is

Jesus Christ our Lord. He has the divine nature, but He also has a fully human nature.

So what does this mean? It means that He is fully human in body and in soul.

So we see this throughout the New Testament Gospels, right? Jesus was born. He wasn't just appear.

He didn't just appear as a full -grown man. He was born of Mary. He grew in favor and stature and wisdom.

He had all of the experiences of humanity, which is incredibly important for us because if He's not fully man, then all of man has no hope, right?

Yeah, and that's the big point there is that it must be through a true humanity that the law is satisfied, that the penalty is paid, or else it can't be shared with us.

In other words, it's gonna have to be one of our kinsmen that does this, one of our family.

And Hebrews talks about this in chapter two, that He did not come and take the nature of the angels.

What He does in His perfect obedience and in His sacrificial death does not help out any fallen angel because it's not in an angelic nature that He does it.

But it does, He says, He does come in the nature of Abraham's children as one of us.

And so He says this in Hebrews two, verse 17. Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

So as one of us, what He does can be shared with us, can be done in our place or on our behalf as a representative.

Now, there is an ancient lie that we wanna go ahead and put to death. And we've talked about this in earlier podcasts.

And that is the lie called, well, it's the docetic lie. And that's just from a

Greek word that means to appear, docetism. The view that Jesus appeared to be really fully human, but wasn't actually fully human.

So that was just kind of a mask. So fully God, all right, but a mask of humanity.

Fully God, human body, not a human soul, all right? If we accept any of those alterations on the orthodox view that the scripture gives us, fully

God and fully man, wonderfully mysteriously united, two natures, united, indivisible, but not confused and intermingled, not a third kind of nature coming out suddenly.

If we step away from those things, then what we have is a man who, a divine savior who looks like a man, but not really a man.

So what he does cannot be shared with me because I'm just a man. And so I need a real man to stand in my place.

Or as Paul says it in Romans 5, that there is this other

Adam. First Adam, representative of all humanity, given commands, promises, warnings or threats, sanctions, and in the covenant, he fails.

And so his failure affects every person that he represents, all humanity. We're born sinful, guilty, bent towards self.

Christ is, Paul says, the last Adam. Another Adam. Why? Because he too is a representative that God chose.

And in the new covenant, what he did in perfectly obeying and dying that sacrificial death is then attributed to everyone that he represented.

So his perfect obedience affects everyone he represents, just like Adam's disobedience affects everyone he represented.

So if I'm attached to Jesus Christ by faith, if I am in Christ, then all that he does is attributed to me, not just because he's

God, but because he is a real man through and through with one exception, sin, which we know is not necessary.

To be truly human, you don't have to be sinful. Adam was human before he was sinful. Now, that leads us to the fact that this is a person and not just a plan that we accept, not just a path that we walk.

The cure being a person leads us to a couple implications. The first is this, that we don't get to pick and choose which parts of Christianity we want to keep or leave behind.

Now, you mentioned that with the path and the plan. If it's a plan, you could say, well, I like these things.

These really make sense to me, but I don't know why God put that in the plan. So I'm not sure I'm accepting that. If it's a path,

I'll go this far, but I draw the line here and I don't go any further. If it's a person, then to embrace the person, you get all of them.

I mean, we can't have part of TJ in the room. Well, you can't marry part of a person. Right, you can't be related to half of a person.

You can't say, well, I married the pleasant parts of her or the pretty parts or the patient parts.

I got all of her and she got all of me. So when it's a relationship with a person, it's just fundamental to the way things are.

And that is, you don't get a person in slices. All right, you get all of them. So all of Christ comes with this cure.

And we have a really great quote by a Puritan named Joseph Alain. And TJ, why don't you read that for us?

Yeah, Alain says, all of Christ is embraced by the sincere convert. He loves not only the wages, but the work of Christ, not only the benefits, but the burden of Christ.

He is willing not only to tread out the corn, but to draw under the yoke. He takes up the commands of Christ.

Yes, the cross of Christ. The unsound convert takes Christ by halves.

He is all for the salvation of Christ, but he is not for sanctification. He is for the privileges, but does not appropriate the person of Christ.

He divides the offices and benefits of Christ. So just such a great quote.

The unsound convert, the hypocrite, the fake Christian divides the offices, the claims of Christ from the benefits of Christ.

When we have our eyes opened by the Holy Spirit to see our need, and when we see the perfection of the cure in the person of Jesus Christ and all that he has done with that new awakened heart, with that newly born soul, we take all of him.

I mean, we could really describe conversion in a simple way. It's all of me embracing all of him, and there's this great transaction, all that I know about me, which is not everything.

I want it all to be his, and all that I read about him, I take for mine.

And really, that's the cure. Now, what we're gonna talk about next time we're together.

Okay, if the cure is a person, that's wonderful, but what does he do? How does a person become the cure?

And there are two great spheres of action. There is Christ for us, the objective work of Jesus Christ that occurred outside of us, and it's true whether we ever existed on the planet or not.

And then there is Christ in you, what he does within by the work of the

Spirit, and the wonderful changes that are worked there that are essential to the rescue, but they're secondary to the work of Christ for us.

Christ for me, objective, subjective, Christ in me, what I experience of Christ in the great process of saving me from sin.

But we'll talk about that next time we get together. There are many ideas about God in our culture today.

Many are not grounded in scripture, and some are actually the opposite of what scripture teaches and the best way to identify these ideas is to go back to the

Bible and allow God to speak for himself. Learn how God describes his character, his work in salvation, his definition of repentance, and much more through the 12 -week

Multimedia Bible Study, Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically. The heart of this study is its daily devotional workbook participants study at home in preparation for the small group session.

Each session is led by a video containing three segments. First, a biographical sketch of an individual from Christian history who was gripped by the reality of God you were studying that week.

Second is a sermon from Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany. Lastly, are interviews from contemporary

Christian pastors and authors who help apply the lessons from the week. To learn more or to see what others are saying about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, visit mediagracie .org

or click the link in the description of this episode. Well, we'll bring this to an end this week.

And we wanna do what we've been doing recently, and that is just to read a prayer from one of the famous saints from the past.

And today we're gonna read a prayer written by Isaac Watts. Most of us know him as the great hymn writer, hundreds and hundreds of really helpful hymns.

But he was also a real theologian and a soul shepherd. So we're gonna read that. But before we do,

TJ, you've got an announcement for us. Yeah, we've got a lot of new things coming at mediagracie .org.

But right now, what I wanna focus on is an outreach to pastors. We understand that during the season of coronavirus and isolation and lockdown, things are crazy and things are hectic and things are difficult.

So what we wanted to do as a team is to offer a way of encouragement for pastors particularly.

So if you are in leadership of a church, whatever position that may be, we wanna invite you to come and participate in a free study at mediagracie .org

online. Now, I'm not gonna tell you what study, they're all available for you. So if you would like some more information, you can let us know, info at mediagracie .org,

send us a note, or I'm gonna put a link to that to the signup sheet that you need in the description of this episode.

So be sure to scroll down and take a look. Okay, well, let me read this prayer from Isaac Watts.

Oh Lord, grant us your grace that we may not be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Give us true repentance and such a sense of our sinfulness as may lead us to despair of salvation by any works of our own and bring us humbled and penitent to the foot of the cross.

Help us to by faith, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Teach us to renounce our own righteousness and depend wholly on Jesus Christ.

May we be able to say and feel, in the Lord have

I righteousness and strength. We commend ourselves to your care. Let no evil come near us.

May our every thought be with you. And when we wake each morning, may we still be with you, amen.