Knowing Christ: Christ's Divinity (December 1, 2024)

First Baptist Church Travelers Rest

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:14

I'll do that in just a moment, but we're not just going to look at one passage this morning. We're going to look at a number of passages here in just a moment.

00:24

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the season of the year where we look with longing for the coming of Jesus.

00:32

So, each year in the four weeks leading up to Christmas, we anticipate the coming of Christ.

00:38

Now, of course, Christ has already come in history, right? The Messiah has already been born. So, what we anticipate is the celebration of the coming of Christ during Advent.

00:50

And in so doing, we also anticipate His second coming that will come in history.

00:56

And so, we're going to anticipate the celebration of the birth of Christ and anticipate His second coming by focusing in on the person of Jesus Christ over the next four

01:08

Sundays. This will be a continuation of our Advent series that we began last year.

01:14

And next year, at the same time, we'll pick it up again. This series of messages is entitled,

01:20

Knowing Christ. Knowing Christ, and again, I'm drawing heavily from the book by the same name,

01:26

Knowing Christ by Mark Jones. I highly recommend this book to you as a wonderful devotional read on the person and work of Jesus.

01:35

He draws heavily from the Puritans to exalt Christ in that book. And so,

01:40

I recommend it to you. Now, to be clear, I'm not just going to copy and paste this chapter so you can call that a sermon.

01:46

I'm going to brief call it a sermon. But I am going to use it as the outline for this series as we did last year and for the sermons within it.

01:53

So, it being a major source that I'm using, I'm going to give credit to that up front. Last year, we looked at Christ's declaration,

02:01

Christ's dignity, His covenant, His incarnation. And today,

02:07

I want us to look and focus our minds and our hearts on Christ's divinity.

02:14

Christ's divinity. The central truth of this message is what Christians for thousands of years have confessed in the

02:22

Nicene Creed. That Jesus Christ is very God of very God.

02:28

Jesus Christ is very God of very God. Jesus Christ is not a mere man. Nor is

02:33

Jesus Christ some sort of Superman, so to speak. Nor is Jesus Christ merely a

02:39

God. No, Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ is the true

02:45

God, the living God, very God of very God. So, I want to first demonstrate this from the

02:54

Bible. So, we're just going to run through a smattering of verses. If you're a note taker and you can't quite keep up, that's fine.

03:01

I'll be happy to send this list of verses to you after the service. But I want to read from several passages.

03:08

And I want you to hear the Bibles. God, the Holy Spirit, through the human writers, preserved for us in His world.

03:17

And I want you to hear the declaration of Jesus Christ as God. So, first we begin in John chapter 1, verse 1.

03:28

I read this just a few moments ago. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the

03:35

Word was God. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. And in the beginning,

03:42

He was God. And this Word, let's get down to verse 14.

03:50

This Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This Word, who was with God and was

03:55

God, took on human flesh and dwelt among us. This is Jesus Christ. Second, Matthew chapter 27, verse 54 says,

04:05

So when the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, this is right after the crucifixion of Christ, just for context, they feared greatly, saying,

04:19

Truly, this was the Son of God. The centurion saw the glory of God and the death of Jesus on the cross and confessed

04:28

Him as God. Third, John 20, verse 28.

04:33

And Thomas' secular resurrection. And Thomas answered and said to Him, My Lord and my

04:40

God. Having seen the risen Christ, Thomas confessed that Jesus is his

04:45

Lord and God. Fourth, Types 2 .13. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great

04:53

God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus is our great God and Savior.

05:00

Hebrews 1 .8. To the Son, He says, Your throne,

05:05

O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom.

05:12

And so here, again, we see Jesus Christ, the Son, addressed as God. Second, Peter, verse 1.

05:21

Chapter 1, verse 1. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our

05:31

God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Again, God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

05:38

Then we have Revelation 1 .17, where Jesus says, I am the first and the last. This is word and imagery that is drawn from Isaiah 41 .4,

05:47

where it says, I, the Lord, am the first and the last. I am He.

05:52

The Lord says, I am the first and the last. Jesus says, I am the first and the last.

05:57

Jesus Christ is the Lord God. Similarly, we have Revelation 22 .13. It says,

06:04

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

06:12

Then you go back to Isaiah 48 .12, where God says, listen to me, O Jacob and Israel, my call,

06:18

I am He. I am the first. I am also the last. Then one more,

06:25

John 12 .41. John writes, these things

06:31

Isaiah said when he saw His glory and spoke of Him. When Isaiah saw

06:37

His glory and spoke of Him, notice here, John says that Isaiah, when he saw the

06:43

King, when he saw the Lord of hosts, what we read about, Isaiah chapter 6, the throne room of God, he saw the glory of the

06:49

Son, Jesus Christ is God. So you take these last several verses and you put them together, what you see is that Jesus is

06:58

Yahweh of the Old Testament. Jesus is the Lord. He is God. Just one more moment to go back through one more.

07:08

John 17 .5. Jesus is high priest in prayer. He prays, and now,

07:14

O Father, glorify me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

07:22

He's saying, give me the glory that I had before the creation of the world. So we see there in John 17,

07:30

Jesus had the glory of the Father before the creation. But in Isaiah 42 .8, God says, I am the

07:35

Lord. That is my name, my glory. I will not give it to another. And so these verses seemingly present a problem.

07:43

God will not give his glory to another, yet Jesus had the glory of God before creation. What gives?

07:49

Well, the only way to solve this is with this great truth that we are talking about today, and that is Jesus is

07:55

God. He shared in that glory because he is God. So what

08:02

I hope is that going through this run of verses, where we see very clearly the

08:10

Bible, the clear that Jesus Christ has got, what I hope that you see is clear testimony of the divinity of Christ.

08:17

Jesus Christ is not a mere man. He's not a superman. He's not a God. He is the true

08:24

God. Jesus is the very God of every God. But what does that mean, the very

08:29

God of every God? Well, to answer that question, I'm looking at some of the attributes of God.

08:36

Now, the attributes of God are these characteristics that God possesses, things that describe who

08:44

God is. Now, if you read a theology book about God's attributes, you're going to come across two categories of attributes.

08:52

You have God's communicable attributes and his incommunicable attributes.

08:58

What that means, the two categories of things that describe the characteristics of God, the communicable attributes are those that are communicated or shared with others.

09:13

For example, God is loving, but we can also be loving. And as we become more like God, we become more loving.

09:20

God is gracious and merciful, and we too can be gracious and merciful. We can share in that.

09:25

It's an attribute of God that he shares with his people. But then there are some incommunicable attributes.

09:32

These are things about God that he does not share with us. They are true of God alone.

09:42

It's these attributes that are true of God alone that I want us to consider this morning as we see that Jesus possesses all of them because he is the very

09:52

God of every God. So the first one to consider of these incommunicable attributes is

09:58

Jesus' eternality. That Jesus is eternal.

10:04

God is eternal. If you go back to John 1 for just a moment, it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the

10:09

Word was with God, and the Word was God. In the beginning. Jesus Christ was in the beginning.

10:18

The Son of God was in the beginning. There's never a time when the Son was not. Jesus is eternal.

10:25

He is co -eternal and co -equal with the Father and the Spirit. This is where our

10:31

Trinitarian theology comes into play. God exists eternally.

10:40

One God in three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And they are all, those three persons are all the one true and living

10:50

God. I know this idea of being eternal is something that's really hard for us to wrap our minds around.

10:58

As far back as you can go, God was there. The Son was there.

11:06

And then before that, there. He's always there.

11:13

This is why God's name in the book of Moses was I Am. God always is.

11:21

No beginning, no end, no temporal succession. God is.

11:28

This is something that, again, is hard for us to wrap our minds around. But it ought to, as we just kind of turn it over in our minds the best that we can, it ought to lead us to worship.

11:37

It ought to lead us to all. It ought to lead us to recognizing the difference between Creator and created.

11:44

And we all know about uncle before him. Well, Jesus is everlasting God. Genesis 21 and Romans 16.

11:54

He is the eternal God, the everlasting God. Psalm 97, Jesus shall endure forever.

12:01

I love the way Mark Jones writes of Jesus' eternal nature here. I just want to read a quote from Jones' book.

12:08

It says, Since God needs nothing, he cannot pass out of existence. For him there is no past or future, but only a simple present, in which he sees all things past, present, and future at once.

12:21

He receives nothing as an addition to what he was before. He does not ever become something he was not before.

12:28

He was perfect before all ages and will be after all ages. He is what he always was.

12:35

He will be what he will always be. He inhabits billions of years in one moment.

12:43

And each moment to him, billions of years, in a manner of speaking. Jesus possesses this attribute of eternity.

12:52

He is, Names 7 and 9 says, the ancient. I love that description of the eternity that describes

13:04

God. Now you might ask about that line in there about receiving nothing in addition to what he was before.

13:11

Not becoming something that he was not before. How does that square with incarnation? I'll answer like this.

13:17

As to Jesus' divinity, this is true. He did not become more God in his incarnation.

13:23

And he did not lose any of his Godness. He is eternally, past and future,

13:30

God. In his incarnation, he took on human flesh. And what this does is it speaks to the two natures of Jesus.

13:38

That he has a divine nature and a human nature. But to his divine nature, he is eternal.

13:50

In the way that Mark Jones describes there. A little briefly in Psalm 90. And if you read the

13:58

Psalms like we read all the Bible like we should. We read it Christocentrically. That is, with Christ eccentrically.

14:05

All about Christ. The whole book is all about Christ. And so when we read this Psalm, we see that Jesus was always there and always

14:14

God. Psalm 90 says, Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth.

14:20

Wherever you have formed the earth and the world. Even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. From everlasting to everlasting,

14:28

Christ is God. And so when we say that Jesus is God. We shouldn't just skip over it and go, you know it's the right

14:34

Sunday School answer. And we've been taught that Jesus Christ is God. We ought to think about the fact that Jesus is the eternal

14:41

God. The everlasting God. Who was, and is, and is to come.

14:49

Jesus is eternal. The second characteristic, the second attribute is that Jesus is unchanging.

14:57

Jesus is unchanging. Psalm 102 verses 26 and 27 say, they will perish but you will endure.

15:05

Yes, they will all grow old like a garment, like a cloak. You will change them and they will be changed.

15:11

But you are the same and your years have no end. Theological word here is immutability.

15:21

That is, the unchangingness of God. And this immutability or this unchangingness of God is related to his his eternal nature.

15:33

As Joseph knows, for what endures eternity cannot change and what changes cannot endure.

15:41

God doesn't change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

15:47

God is not passionate like we are. That is, his joy does not change or diminish. His happiness is infinite and nothing can cause him to be less happy.

15:56

The same for his anger against sin, his blessedness, his knowledge. God doesn't change.

16:01

And since Jesus is God, Jesus doesn't change. And the good news for us is that Jesus doesn't change.

16:09

God doesn't change. And it's good news for us because that means we can trust God. We can trust his word.

16:16

He's not going to go back on anything that he said. Our salvation is secure because God has said that if you confess with your mouth the

16:25

Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. Romans 10, 9.

16:30

And God will never change that. Confess, believe, and be saved. That is the gospel message until the end of the age.

16:38

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And you have a sure foundation in him. Again, we might have questions about how this relates to his incarnation.

16:48

Luke says that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature in faith with God and man.

16:54

Hebrews says that he learned obedience and was made perfect. And again, I would point you to the fact that Jesus has two natures, a human one and a divine one.

17:02

In his humanity, he increased in wisdom. In his humanity,

17:07

Jesus was a man of sorrows, Isaiah 53 says. While in his divinity, Jesus possessed infinite joy.

17:14

When we say that Jesus is God, then we must remember that he is unchanging, immutable in his divinity.

17:28

Third thing, we see that Jesus is all -present. Jeremiah 23, 24 says that God fills heaven and earth.

17:35

James explains it like this. If eternality is God's perfection, whereby he is without beginning or end, and immutability is the perfection whereby he cannot increase or decrease in any way, then omnipresence, all -presence, is the attribute of God whereby he has no boundaries or limitations.

17:55

Jesus, then, is larger than all times, eternality, and larger than all places, omnipresence.

18:03

Jesus as God has filled the world since the beginning. He cannot be contained. And that means there's nowhere anyone can go to escape

18:11

Jesus. People like to imagine they can set themselves up in a world or society, in some corner of the earth, somewhere, that is secluded from God, and they can make their own way in the world without any reference to Christ.

18:24

But God upholds the universe by the word of his power. And he fills all things and all places and all times. He is everywhere, always.

18:33

He's omnipresent. He's all -present. There's nowhere anyone can escape from the presence of God.

18:40

And so when we say that Jesus Christ is God, we are saying that he is. He shares his attribute, the following spirit, of all -presence.

18:49

He's also all -knowing. Psalm 147 says, Great is our Lord and mighty in power.

18:56

His understanding is infinite. Jesus knows all things. He possesses full knowledge.

19:03

He knows things past, present, future. He knows what has happened, what is happening, what will happen.

19:09

And he knows what would have happened if something else had happened. He knows all things possible.

19:17

Again, if God could learn just one thing, he would not be God. But what it means to be

19:23

God is to be all -knowing. And so in his divinity, we see the omniscience of Jesus.

19:31

And seeing the omniscience of Jesus in his divinity, in his humanity, we can see his humility.

19:38

For he was taught by his Father, morning by morning, Isaiah 50, verse 4.

19:44

Increased in wisdom, Luke 2, verse 52. He who knew all things as God, he learned all he could.

19:57

And so when we say that Jesus is God, we must confess that he is all -knowing. This is what it means to be

20:03

God. He's also all -powerful. You see, God's power has no limit.

20:09

He can do anything he pleases. In fact, Psalm 115 says that God is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases.

20:16

Now to be sure, there are some things he could do that he chooses not to do. But all things are possible with God.

20:23

Nothing can thwart God's will. Now that's true that nothing can thwart the will of Christ, for he is

20:30

God. Job 42, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you.

20:37

That means Jesus is all -powerful. That means Jesus was more powerful than Herod. More powerful than Pontius Pilate.

20:46

More powerful than the Pharisees. Currently more powerful than the

20:51

Democrats. More powerful than the Republicans. More powerful than you. More powerful than me.

20:57

More powerful than Satan. More powerful than sin. More powerful than death. Jesus is all -power.

21:03

He has all -power. Now he took on human flesh and he dwelled among us.

21:09

He took on human weakness. He gave himself up to be murdered on the cross for our salvation. This is the glory of the cross.

21:17

You see, Jesus didn't find himself in a predicament that he couldn't get out of. He could have easily gotten out of it. Rather, he kept his power at bay, subjected himself willingly to suffering and death for our so that we could have everlasting joy.

21:32

So we could have everlasting life. And then he was raised. Then he ascended to the right hand of the

21:41

Father where he received the glory and the dominion. Where he currently rules and reigns over the world, exercising his power in all things.

21:49

Jesus is all. Lastly, we see that Jesus is majestic.

21:59

Psalm 104 says that God wraps himself in light. 1 Timothy 6 .16

22:05

says he dwells in unapproachable light. Psalm 72, he has dominion from the sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

22:19

Paraphrasing Psalm 8, applying it to Christ, we say, though for a little while he was made lower than the angels,

22:24

Jesus has now been crowned with glory and honor. He has dominion over the works of God's hands.

22:30

All things have been put under his feet. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name! This Advent season, this

22:41

Christmas season, I want you to focus on this glorious truth that Jesus is the majestic God.

22:52

Jesus is very God of very God. Jesus is eternal.

22:57

He is always there and he will always be. He is unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

23:03

He is all -knowing. He is all -present. He is all -powerful. He is majestic.

23:09

This God, this majestic God, took on human flesh and human nature.

23:20

He came and dwelt among us. He was tempted and tried in every way. He had never sinned.

23:26

He suffered hunger and heartache. He became weary and he became loose.

23:33

This God, this eternal, all -powerful God, suffered reproach. This God, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men.

23:55

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

24:03

Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is

24:21

Lord to the glory of the Lord.

24:27

Our Father, we praise you for the glory of your Son, our

24:33

Lord and our God, eternal, unchanging, all -knowing, all -present, all -powerful, all -majestic.

24:51

I pray that all here today, may they all believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths that Jesus Christ is

24:58

Lord and God, and may we hold fast to Christ in all things. We ask all of this in the name of Jesus, our