Systematic Theology (part 6)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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I believe it's 13, yes, 13, if time allows, and we'll go pretty quickly. And I'm going to be asking for some readers, so we'll get your

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Daylight Savings voices going here in a minute. So why is it important, this is sort of a huge question, but why is it important that we understand and we come to grasp that Christ was indeed

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God? Why is it important that Jesus was God? Excellent, yeah, yeah, exactly.

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That's probably the first, in order of importance, that's the first one.

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Now, think about active obedience. What's the, let's see, what's the other side of that?

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There's another aspect to that as well. So in terms of that merit, think about how did he accrue that merit?

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Yeah, so Christ came into the world with intrinsic righteousness because he was

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God. That's true. What about, think about the active obedience.

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So you mentioned how he had merit at his death, that he had infinite merit at his death.

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So how did he accrue that merit? Yeah, right, right, he fulfilled the law perfectly.

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So they're two sides of the same coin, if you will. So he had to be without sin to merit eternal life, and his death had to be worth more than just himself, right?

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Because it's appointed, man wants to die, and then the judgment. So when a mortal dies, there's a reconciling of the merit of his own life in regard to his own destiny.

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But if a human had somehow managed to obey the law perfectly and died, that human would have accrued, if you will, enough merit to gain himself into heaven.

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But because he had, he was 100 % God and 100 % man, his perfectly lived life had the merit that was applicable to many millions of Christians whom were chosen before the foundations of the world.

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So just a little bit, the act of obedience as well as the substitutionary death of Christ there.

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So God wouldn't necessarily have accepted, or he definitely wouldn't have accepted the death of a mere human being on behalf of other human beings, that's the point.

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The death of a human being, a righteous human being, only pays for that one human being. Yet he had to be human to be our high priest, and for him to have a life to trade natures with us with.

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So, all right, so let's start with some of the more common verses that everyone's likely to know about.

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So who would read the very famous John 1, 1 through 5? Any readers?

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Dan? And then at the end of that, so 1 through 5, and then, of course, the all -important verse 14.

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And then verse 14. Thank you. So, of course, this is the monumental verse that not only indicates that Christ was

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God, right? The term there, word, logos, it says the word was with God and the word was

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God. So, talking about the deity of Christ, whom in verse 14 we learn that he became flesh, but also that in some way he was different because he was with God and he was

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God. So, a real critical verse there in regard to the Trinity. Interestingly enough, in the, what's the, is it the

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New Age translation? I forget what the, the Jehovah's Witness version of the

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Bible, it says the word was with God and the word was a God, which is interesting, which that a is obviously not in the original

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Greek. So, that's a very powerful one. Let's see. Interestingly, too, that in those verses,

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John is, unlike all the other gospels, there's no mention of genealogy. So, John's actually telling us a lot by what he doesn't say.

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He's talking about the preexistence of the word, which is Christ. So, all right, here's number two.

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I need someone to look up Revelation 22, just a couple of verses, 12 and 13.

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Revelation 22. Any takers?

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Yeah. Thank you. Okay, so who is this speaking? Just to make it painfully clear.

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It's Jesus. He's coming back. He's coming quickly. Now, I need someone to read

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Isaiah 44, verse 6. Yeah, Haley.

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Okay, so, obviously, I mean, if you think about it logically, there can only be one first and there can only be one last.

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And in Isaiah, God the Father is speaking, God is speaking through Isaiah, and he refers to himself as the first and the last, and in Revelation, Christ also refers to himself as the first and the last.

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So, that's one, actually, that I hadn't learned until just a little while ago.

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All right, let's keep blasting through these. Here's the very famous... Actually, I need someone to read

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Exodus 3 .13 and 14, a couple of verses, Exodus 3 .13 and 14. It's like a sword drill in Iwana.

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Hold your Bibles up when you have them. Thank you. And then, of course, in the

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Gospel of John, you'll notice a lot of these come from the Gospel of John. His gospel, one of its primary missions is to convince the reader that Christ was, in fact,

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God in human form. And then, in John 8, verses 56 through 59, we read the famous declaration by Christ.

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Your father, Abraham, rejoiced to see my day. He's talking to the Pharisees. Your father,

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Abraham, rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. The Jews, therefore, said to him, You are not yet fifty years old, and you've seen

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Abraham. And Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born,

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I am. And people always say, well, that's, you know, the Jewish people say, you guys are stressing that.

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That's not really what Jesus was saying there. But the all -important verse 59, Therefore they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

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So the fact that they were trying to kill him on the spot means that they understood that he was equating himself with God the

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Father. Okay, and then still in the Book of John, if someone's still there.

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John 1, 3. Short little verse. Yes. Excellent.

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So there Jesus is identified as creator. Yeah, exactly.

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Genesis 1, 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And Isaiah 44, 24, we read,

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Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the one who formed you from the womb. I am the Lord. I am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

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Isn't that interesting? God the Father says, I made everything all by myself, all alone.

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And yet we read that Jesus is the creator. So you can imagine the church fathers, the early

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Christians, trying to come to terms, especially a couple of centuries out, trying to come to terms with what

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God made all alone. And yet Jesus is clearly said to be the creator. So it's obvious to us, even though we don't fully grasp the

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Trinity, but you can imagine the difficulty, the logical and intellectual difficulty that they had to go through at the early councils to try to identify precisely the nature of Christ.

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And it was a big debate, as you can imagine.

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Matter of fact, if you ever hear someone, a great little witnessing tool is if you hear somebody say, ah, it doesn't make one iota of difference whether we go to lunch here or whether we go to lunch there.

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That one iota of difference is from the debate about the nature of Christ. And I forget the exact words, but one of the words was like homostasis or homo and homostasias.

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It's something like that. I admit ignorance. But the difference between the one term to describe

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Christ that was like God and the other term to describe Christ where he was

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God, the difference in the spelling of those two words was an I or an iota in Greek. So people who thought the argument about Christ's nature was silly or not important, they said it doesn't make one iota of difference.

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And that's perpetrated all the way down through the centuries, and we still use that saying today. All right, so Jesus is identified as the creator, and we obviously know that God is identified as the creator.

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So let's look at if I asked you who raised Jesus from the dead.

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Let's look at that. First Thessalonians 1 verses 9 and 10. Who can read that for me?

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First Thessalonians. That's hard to say this early in the morning. 1, chapter 1, verses 9 and 10.

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Okay, so the he in that sentence who he raised from the dead is referring to God the

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Father in that instance. Now, if someone could read John 2 .20,

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if you get it, just start reading. Oh, and is it 20 or 21? Oh, maybe 19.

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There it is. All right, so Jesus said that he himself was going to raise it up, and he was, of course, as she read, referring to his own body after his death.

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So we have in First Thessalonians, God raised Christ from the dead. In John 2 .19,

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Jesus raises Jesus from the dead. And just for extra credit, someone read Romans 8 .11,

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if you would. So who does this verse say raised

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Jesus from the dead? The Holy Spirit. So that's kind of interesting that the

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Trinity was involved in the resurrection. That's a very powerful one.

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All right, moving right along. So this is the famous Great Commission Declaration.

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I'll read this one. It's Matthew 28 .19, very famous. Many of you probably know it.

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The verse says, this is Jesus talking, Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You think, oh, that's not very, there's nothing really special about that verse.

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But in the Greek, it says, baptizing them in the name, the singular name of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It doesn't say the names, but the name, which is very purposeful,

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I believe. So according to Matthew, there's some, in some way, those three nouns that he listed, he's bracketed them together by using a singular word, the name, to quantify them.

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All right, so number seven, example number seven. This one's kind of neat, because while this isn't a direct equation with God the

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Father, this is showing the pre -existence of Christ. So let's see,

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I need three readers. You can tell the people with the smartphones, because they get to the verse quickly.

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Hebrews 10 .5, if someone could look that up. Okay, thank you.

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I need someone to look up Galatians 4 .4, Caleb. And then

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John 6 .62. Is that right? Are there really that many verses in John 6?

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Wow. John 6 .62. Anybody? Carol?

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Thank you. All right, Hebrews 10 .5. Okay. So what was the beginning of that verse again?

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I'm sorry, the first clause? No, no, the very beginning of the verse, the first few words.

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When he came into the world. Okay. So a body was prepared for him when he came into the world, which is interesting.

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Okay, that sounds like something was given to him for his journey. And then we read

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Galatians 4 .4, whoever had that. Okay, so God sent forth his son.

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You can't send something necessarily unless it exists first. And if we read

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John 6 .62. So this is talking about Christ's origin being from heaven.

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So you think about angels, right?

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Angels were, you think about all the creatures, all the different types of entities discussed in the

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Bible. There's deity. There's God. There are angels. There are several different types of angels.

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Then there are living creatures. We don't know what the elders are.

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They might just be people, humans in heaven. And then there's man, right?

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And demons are also angels sort of thing. So when they would read these verses in trying to ascertain the nature of Christ, you have to say, well, into what category can this activity take place?

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I mean, what being existed before their birth, right?

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Humans didn't. Mormons teach that humans did, I believe. But Christ has so many unique characteristics about him that they had to wrestle with these things to determine, okay, is

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God's son a totally unique being or is he, in fact, a member of the Godhead?

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So it really must have been an amazingly difficult chore to come to grips with the

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Trinity. And I'm sure the Holy Spirit was obviously overseeing all of that discussion and trying to come to the truth.

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But somebody who was given a body so that he could come to earth, I mean, we know that angels are given bodies when they were created.

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So this is a very special human being, and surely it's

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God as a human being. All right, so number eight, when was

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Christ's birth planned? So in Micah 5 .2, I'll read this one here.

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Micah 5 .2 says, but as for you, Bethlehem Ephrata, too little to be among the clans of Judah.

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From you, one will go forth for me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity.

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So that could actually be in the previous section as well, that Christ's advent was planned long before the creation, before the foundations of the world.

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So we know from this verse in Micah that Jesus was going to be coming out of Bethlehem. And then, of course,

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Matthew 2 .1, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold,

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Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem. So we know that Christ came out of Bethlehem.

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It was prophesied in the Old Testament, it was described by Matthew, and also in Luke and many other places in the

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New Testament. And then, of course, the famous Isaiah 9 .6, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given us, and the government will rest upon his shoulders.

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His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

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So the baby that was born in Bethlehem is Mighty God. So that's a very famous one, many of you probably know that.

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And even very paradoxically refers to Christ as Eternal Father in that Isaiah 9 .6

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verse. So that's a pretty strong correlation there.

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Let's see if we can have somebody read Isaiah 42 .8. This one was entirely new to me, and maybe it will be new to you as well.

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I always love when I learn something, not new, but when I discover something that I've never heard before.

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So we need someone to read Isaiah 42 .8. Thank you. Okay, so God is a jealous

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God, right? God will not glorify. Imagine that, God glorifying somebody else. Or not only that, but God allowing somebody to be glorified instead of him, right?

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Something that would be inconceivable to the Old Testament Jews. But listen to Revelation 5, 11 through 13.

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This is John writing about the scene in heaven, remember, on the island of Patmos. He says,

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Now who's the lamb? It's Christ, obviously. So the one who sits on the throne is who?

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God the Father, right? And to the lamb, who's not on the royal throne, that's occupied only by God the

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Father. That's the lamb, that's Jesus Christ. And all of creation says glory to the lamb.

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But in Isaiah, God said he will not give his glory to another. So who is this lamb?

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Well, it has to be God. It has to be part of the Godhead. So that would be, you know, every time, like when the angel shows up, right?

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John's in Patmos. He's starting the book of Revelation. And the angel shows up and what does John do?

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He falls to the ground and begins to worship him. And what does the angel say? Get up.

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Don't do that. I'm just a messenger. But here, the whole world gives glory to the lamb.

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And God on the throne says it's great. So that's huge.

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That is a huge one. And that is in all of the sort of perverted translations of the

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Bible that people will use to, you know, dismiss the deity of Christ.

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Those verses are unaltered, which is great. All right. Number 10.

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This is an interesting one. The question is, who led the captives? So I need someone to read

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Psalm 4. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Ephesians 4, verses 7 and 8.

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Ephesians 4, 7 and 8. Thank you. So that verse says that when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts of men.

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And here, Paul is saying that Christ is the one who did that. Christ gave the gifts. Christ led the captives.

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And if we look at Psalm 68, 18. If someone would flip over to that.

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And of course, this is a psalm to God. So here, it's referring to God the Father or God in general.

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So the person who led the captives in both of these. And of course, Ephesians is an allusion to the psalm verse.

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But Paul is naming the person that led the captives as Jesus Christ, which is quite a revelation.

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Number 11. Back in the book of the Gospel of John. This one is a very short one.

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I'll read it here. This is Christ talking. And I will do.

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I'm sorry. It's John 14. I believe it. Yeah. Verse 13 and 14. And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the

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Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.

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Well, what do we call it when we ask God for something? What are we practicing?

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Prayer. So here, Christ is saying that he receives prayer. Now, this is not very shocking if you're from the

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Roman Catholic background. Because they believe that you can pray to saints. You can pray to Mary. You can pray to this and that and pray to everything.

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But, in fact, God is the only one who receives prayer. And here Christ himself says that he would receive prayer.

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And that he would hear it as well. All right. Let's look at.

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This is another new one to me that I found kind of interesting. If somebody would please look up 1

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Peter 2, verses 4 through 8.

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Thank you. So, here Peter is attributing the stone of stumbling.

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He's saying that that is Jesus Christ. And, of course, you can see it's probably in quotations in your scripture.

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And that's from Isaiah 8, 13 and 14. Where it says, but the Lord. That's Jehovah.

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The Lord of hosts. Him you shall honor as holy.

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Let him be your fear. And let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary.

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And a stone of offense. And a rock of stumbling. Both to the house of Israel. A trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

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So, Peter is saying that Christ is, in fact, that stumbling. Yet in Isaiah.

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Isaiah said it with the fact that it's just God in mind.

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So, it's another association of the deity of Christ. So, here are the ones that I like.

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And people say this. But does the Bible ever just come flat out and say that Jesus Christ is

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God? What would your answer be to that? Yes, it does.

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There are several. So, we'll look at some of those here. These are sort of the,

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I don't know, at the conclusion of the argument. If all of those 12 points have not convinced your, you know, should you get a knock on your door from Jehovah's Witness.

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This last group of verses here should be pretty powerful. So, I'd like someone to read

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John 20, verses 27 and 28. This is one of my favorite ones, actually.

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Thank you. So, what did Thomas call Christ there? My Lord and my

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God. Now, what did the angel say to John on Patmos when he fell down to worship them? Don't do that.

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Get up. I'm not God. What did Christ not say to Thomas? Don't say that.

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I'm not God. But Christ let Thomas call him God, unrebuked.

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All right. Romans 9, verse 5. This is the great

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Pauline declaration, I call it here. If someone looks that up, you can go ahead.

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Yeah, Linton. That's pretty, couldn't be much clearer, could it there? Paul refers to Christ as God.

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Hebrews 1 .8. Thank you. So, of the son, he says, your throne, oh

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God. So, there, that's a pretty clear declaration by the writer of Hebrews.

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Here's another one. The next one's much like the Romans, verse Titus 2, 13 and 14.

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And while you're turning there, the importance of this verse is in the Greek sentence structure too, because in English it appears to divide some, the nouns appear to be divided, but you'll see what

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I mean when we read it. Who has it? Titus 2, verses 13 and 14. Right, right.

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So, thank you. So, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

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So, that God and Savior, that is a couplet that points to the noun

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Jesus Christ. It's not, we're waiting for the appearing of our God and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

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It's the appearing of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. See? See? So, let's see.

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We actually have one more, 2 Peter, verses, chapter 1, verse 1.

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Very similar. Our God and Savior there. Peter refers to Christ as God. So, it's pretty, it's pretty ironclad.

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And it's amazing when the, you know, obviously when you get that knock on the door and the

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Seventh -day Adventist, not Seventh -day Adventist, I'm sorry, Jehovah's Witness, and the Jehovah's Witness are at your door, they basically know a script.

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They've been taught a script and they've been coached how to speak to people. And if you sit down, even with their

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Bible, most of these, with the exception of the John 1, 1, most of these verses are still intact.

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And you can argue from the scriptures quite convincingly about the deity of Christ. And once you get that chink in their armor, you can then go into what the true gospel is.

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So, one of the things I like to do, I always like to be armed for such occasions because no one's memory is perfect.

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So, before I pass these out, these are basically something to keep in the sleeve of your, the front of your

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Bible. And these are all the references that we just looked at about the deity of Christ.

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And I can set these up here if you want one, grab one on your way out. But my question to you is, surely with the breadth of knowledge that's here in this room, does anybody know of another reference that they had always had in mind that I didn't touch upon here?

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No? Were there any of these that were new to anybody?

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Like the Alpha and Omega one, the stumbling block, those sort of things?

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Come on. You knew that, Caleb? No. Oh, yeah, the sharing of glory.

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That is quite a powerful one because of how

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God is described as a jealous God and the fact that he would allow another person in heaven to be glorified standing next to him obviously speaks to the point that Christ is

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God. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. So, it's a very, the

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Trinity and the deity of Christ is a very, is a daunting subject. And even, you know,

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I have fear and trepidation even just trying to describe certain aspects of it because it's so nuanced and it's so easy to fall into incorrect teaching and heresy, like the heresy of modalism, or it used to be called

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Sibelianism. Does anybody, can anyone tell me what modalism is?

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That's actually, yeah. Right, right, right, right. He's the divine shapeshifter.

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Yeah, he goes from one manifestation. That's the word they like to use.

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He goes from one manifestation to another. So, when Jesus Christ was on earth, heaven was empty. There was no one in heaven, which actually would cease to make it heaven, wouldn't it?

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Yeah, who's, yeah, the divine schizophrenic, right? Me, myself, and I.

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There are some denominations that still believe in modalism. Oneness Pentecostal is one of them.

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They look a lot like Pentecostals. They're very charismatic. They're not secessionists.

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They believe in the gifts and everything, but they don't believe in the Trinity. And probably the most famous Oneness Pentecostal is

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T .D. Jakes on TBN. You know, the Potter's House or whatever. He does not believe in the

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Trinity when pressed, but he's learned to keep that part of his theology quiet so he can basically keep his job, keep his spot on TBN and make lots of money.

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Okay, any other thoughts? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let us make man in our own image.

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Yeah, and the spirit hovered over the water and they said, actually,

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I think in every instance of creation they said, let us do this, let us do that. And, of course, for eons, millennia, the

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Jews have said that that royal pronoun, the plural, is a way to show deference and high honor to God when

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God said, let us make man in our image. Of course, and many Christians say that too, that that's not necessarily a

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Trinitarian thing, but I think that the confusion over why

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God would refer to himself in a plurality was so troubling that they perhaps concocted that reason and it's been so entrenched in the thinking of Judaism that now

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Christians don't even go there. But I always like to test things and kick against the goads and I say, well, why, why would that be?

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Why would there be a plural pronoun in the act of creation? So in my mind, and there may be a good reason, and maybe

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I'll hear from Pastor Steve next week or Pradeep, but yeah, that definitely is a tip of the hat to the

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Trinity for sure. That's a good one. I need to jot that one down. Any other thoughts or questions?

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Yeah, that's right. That's right. You can see all the metaphoric elements of the

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Trinity. And I don't mean metaphoric, but the word of God, right? Christ is called the word of God.

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And the spirit hovered over the water. Yeah, exactly. That's very true.

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I always wondered in the feeding of the 5 ,000 with the fishes and the loaves, did

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Christ transport fish from the Mediterranean Sea to fill the baskets?

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Or did he create new fish when he filled the baskets? So we know that he probably transported.

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I know, I think about these weird things, right? Does anyone else think about these things? God rested on the seventh day.

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He rested from creation. So did Christ create new fish?

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He probably transported them from the Mediterranean to the baskets while they were feeding. I think about those things.

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But he certainly could have created them because he is the creator. That would break the first law of thermodynamics, but he's allowed to do that.

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But yeah, that's true. There's plenty of fish in the sea. Okay. Any other thoughts or questions?

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All right, great. So again, I put the little half -sheet cheat sheet on the corner here.

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If you want to grab one and stick it inside the leaf of your Bible, you'll be well -armed the next time you get a visit at your front door.

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So let's pray, and then we can be dismissed. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come to you and pray in the name of Christ.

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Lord, we thank you that you knew that there was only one person up for the task of living that perfect life, obeying your law, pleasing you every millisecond of his life.

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We thank you for sending the Son of God to earth to live a life that we could never live and die the death that we deserved.

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And Lord, the gospel is such a beautiful, beautiful orchestration, every detail covered, every plan laid out because you loved us and you sought to save us from our sin, and we thank you for that.

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Please bless this Lord's Day. Bless the service that follows,

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Lord, and we just thank you for a time to come together in freedom to worship you and to read your word.

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And Lord, we thank you for everything else that you give to us, the countless gifts that we could not even number if we tried.