Why must He be truly human and truly righteous? God's justice demands it. Man has sinned. Man must pay for his sin. But a sinner cannot pay for others. Why must he also be true God? So that by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God's anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life. And who is this mediator, true God, and at the same time, truly human and truly righteous? Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was given us to set us completely free and to make us right with God. How do you come to know this? The Holy Gospel tells me. God Himself began to reveal the Gospel already in Paradise. Later, he proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets and portrayed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law. Finally, he fulfilled it through his own dear son." Now, I know what I've got written there. And again, I'm changing it. I've got written Judges 13, but I want to look at Psalm 22 tonight. I want to read Psalm 22 tonight. Not the whole thing, but... Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me? And from the words of my groaning, O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear, and in the night season, and am not silent. But you are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted in you, delivered them. They cried to you and were delivered. They trusted in you and were not ashamed. But I am a worm and no man." A reproach of men and despised by the people, all those who see me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, he trusted in the Lord, let him rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him. But you are he who took me out of the womb. You made me trust while on my mother's breast. I was cast upon you from birth, from my mother's womb. You have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near. for there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths like a raging and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a pot's herd, and my tongue clings to my jaws. You have brought me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far from me. O my strength, hasten to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen. Thus ends our reading. Let's ask God's blessing on us. Dear Lord, again we come before you and as we get ready to contemplate this very deep and complex Theology. We pray that your Spirit would be upon us and in us. That you would bless me and strengthen me to speak clearly and simply and faithfully your word. And bless this congregation. That they might be built up in the knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ. All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ alone. Amen. I do want to preach on Judges 13. I want to preach on the life of Samson. And I think it dovetails with Lord's Day 6 very well. But again, I was working on it this week for quite a while, and the Lord is opening that text up to me, but I'm still not where I want to be. Preaching in a sermon is a lot like baking bread. You know, there comes a time you got to let it fully bake and all too often we get up here and preachers that is, and we have to give half baked bread, but I now try to do it by choice. But part of the issue that I've been having, Lord's Day 6 is a very difficult, to me, it's a very difficult Lord's Day. It speaks of a very complex problem. And I've been twisting. I had it the last time I preached it too. I've been twisting around trying to find a Scripture that you could bring out all the truth that's in Lord's Day 6. Because Lord's Day 6 is talking about the two-fold nature of Jesus Christ. Alright? He's a hundred percent God and he's a hundred percent man. And you may think to yourself, well that's not a big deal. Okay? But it is a big deal. It's a really big deal. And in fact, it's such a big deal that in the early church, it took them about four or five hundred years to get that worked out, the theology of that. Today, one of the issues is that everybody focuses on the human nature of Christ. And the reason that they do that is because most of the world is denying the divinity of Christ. So what they do is they focus on the humanity of Christ because they see Him as just being human. Rob Bell said this in one of his books. He said, you know, even if Jesus had a human Father. If we found the bones of His Father, let's just name this guy Larry, and let's just say, that's in the book, the name, so I'm not picking on anybody. But he said if we found the bones of this man named Larry and we found out definitively, without a doubt, without a shadow of a doubt, that these were the bones of the Father of Jesus Christ. He said, would that negate Him as the Christ? Would that negate? Would He no longer? Would we think differently of Jesus? And his answer was, no, of course we wouldn't think differently. But brothers and sisters, according to what we believe and what the Bible says, yes, we would think really differently of Him. Why? Because we believe he doesn't have a human father. That's what the Bible testifies. But in the early church, the first three, four hundred years, all the heresy was on the other side. All the heresy was coming from people that were saying, well, he's divine, but not human. And the reason that was is because back in those pagan days, they all believed in gods, right? They all had their gods. Every nation, every culture had their gods. And they were pretty much the same gods, they just had different names. You know, you had Zeus and Mars and Apollo, Minerva, Hercules, all these different gods. And so to believe when they heard about Jesus Christ, and they heard about Him walking on water and feeding 5,000 people or more with a couple of loaves of bread or five loaves of bread, a couple of fish. Well, yeah, that's a God. A God can do that. Well, he touched people and he healed people. Yeah, that's God. Yeah, he's God. So then they came up with all these ideas about how that would be. that really he was a phantasm. That he didn't have a real body. He just appeared to have a real body. So there were all these heresies in the first few hundred years that had to do with his divinity. Well, now you and I, for the most part here, have been raised with the Heidelberg Catechism. And so for a long time now, if anybody asks you, what is Jesus? You could say, well, he's God and he's man. And I said the same. But what bothers me about this is that I just discovered about three or four years ago that for most of my life, I've been a heretic. Not because I believe that he's 100% divine and 100% human, but because I didn't. Alright? I testified to that. If somebody asked me what I thought about Jesus Christ, I would say, well, He's 100% God. He's 100% man. But effectively, in my heart, in my mind, I believe that Jesus, I really thought He was 100% divine, but I really didn't think much of His humanity at all. I didn't. And I actually would ask you to think about it yourself. and the way that you've been thinking about Jesus. You see, I grew up in a very conservative Reformed background. And a lot of sovereignty of God, and election, predestination, the decrees of God. All of which I believe. But in the background I came up in, very much emphasized. Right? And so when you grow up in that background, and I think about Jesus as God, sovereign, all-powerful, almighty, knowing everything in advance, etc., etc., etc., now when I'm looking at Jesus and I'm thinking about Him walking through the world, what am I thinking? I'm not thinking that He really experiences life like we do. Right? I'm thinking that he knows what's coming around every corner ahead of him. He knows exactly what's going to happen next. He knows exactly what the result is going to be. And he doesn't really even have to have faith because he knows as God what's going to happen. And so, you know, when I started to preach, On the Gospel of Luke, or in the Gospel of Luke, I was really surprised to find out that Jesus actually was 100% human. That He actually experienced a lot of things like we do. Now, can I stand here tonight and after 20 or 30 minutes, will you walk out of here and say, wow, I really understand you know, this doctrine of the two-fold nature of Christ. No. You're not going to do it. I'm not going to sit here tonight and tell you how we believe that Jesus is 100% God and He's 100% man. They exist together. But yet they're not commingled, is the words. And you can go study. You can go check it all out. That's the Reformed doctrine. We believe that they exist perfectly together, but they're not confused and intermixed. We can't understand this. But tonight I wanted to spend a little bit of time looking at His humanity A while back, I heard a minister say that his favorite text in the Bible was in James 5. In James 5, it says this in verse 16, it says, Confess your trespasses to one another. Pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Now that's just the lead up to his favorite text. This is his favorite text. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And it did not rain on the land three years and six months. And he prayed again and the heaven gave rain and the earth produced fruit. So many times we read in the Bible and we get into the Bible and we read about these Old Testament saints and we think of men like Adam and Eve and women like Eve and we read about these people that lived hundreds and hundreds of years. We read about Noah and his three sons and their wives that all got on this boat and when they got off the boat they were the only humans left on earth. We read about Moses, and we read about Elijah and Elisha, and we read about David, and we don't really necessarily think of them as real people. We think of them as like special people that nobody else is like. But to this minister, and I just love how he said that, because he made me think about it like I hadn't thought about it before. And I love that when people do that, right? When they bring something to your mind and all of a sudden you look at the Scriptures and you go, wow, I never thought of it that way. But he's like, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. And you could say the same thing. You think about Daniel, right? Daniel was the same. He was a real human being that had a nature just like ours. And one day, he gets the word that he and all the other wise men in Babylon are going to be wiped out. Why? Because Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and he wants them to interpret the dream, right? Well, they're fine with that, but the thing is, is he forgot the dream. So now he's going to kill all the wise men unless they can tell him what the dream is as well as interpret it. So you know what Daniel did is he got down on his knees and he began to pray. He and his friends. And the Lord gave him the dream and the interpretation. And I thought about these things as I'm thinking about this text. This Lord's Day. Because when we think about Jesus Christ, we just don't think about Him being like us at all. We just don't. We just think about Him as totally not a real person, or He's the kind of person that He sees everything come and He knows everything before it happens, etc. So if somebody says to me, if somebody says to you, Well, yeah, okay, but then when it says that he increased in wisdom and in stature in Luke 2, what does that mean? And I just shake it off. Well, I don't know what it means, but I'm just going to keep rolling, right? Because I didn't want that to mess up my whole idea of Christ. But when I got into preaching, And I actually started preaching in Luke when I was up in Canada, just before I came here. And this may seem odd, but I started at Luke 9, verse 51. And I didn't get very far. You know me, right? But I'm in Luke chapter 10, and that's when I began to see something about Jesus Christ that I had never seen before. In Luke chapter 10, and I've said this before, but now I'm saying it in the context of Lord's Day 6. In verse 21 it says, In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. And I'll just stop there. When I started studying that text and I found out that's the only place in any of the Gospels where it speaks about Jesus rejoicing. I'm like, wow! That's the only place in the whole Bible that is talking about Jesus rejoicing. That's the only place in all the Gospel narratives, the whole life story of Jesus Christ where it says that's where He rejoiced. Right here. And if you remember, because I've said it many times, right? Because this is a really, this whole Luke 10 has been a mind blower for me, right? But Luke 10, it's talking about him sending out the 70. And he says, you need to pray to the Lord of the harvest, right? That he'd send more helpers into the harvest. And then he says, I want you to go out. And I don't want you to take money. I don't want you to take food. I don't want you to take a nap sack. I don't want you to take an extra blanket. I don't want you to take anything. Why? Because the whole point is I'm going to provide everything for you. I'm going to provide it all for you. And this really is the mission of the church, right? You've just got two things to do. And it takes quite a few verses, but if you actually put it all together and summarize it, He sends them out with the message of the Gospel. The message of peace. Alright? So they're to verbalize the Word of God about Jesus Christ. And that's both parts. They're to teach about the condemnation that's upon all men, as well as the good news in Jesus Christ. And then they're to do works of mercy. Those two things. And they did it. And it says that they came back, in verse 17, of this chapter, it says, in the 70 return with joy, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them, I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven. That's what he's rejoicing about. It's because God the Father gave him a preview of what the church was going to be able to do in the world. And how the church was going to be able to gather all these broken, dead people that were under the power of Satan. He was rejoicing because his whole life, he knows it. He knows what he's doing each step of the way. But yet, he's a human being like us. And he has to live in faith like us. And he needed to see that at that particular point. He needed to see the Father give him a preview of what he was going through or why he was going through all this. Right? He needed to be inspired. Jesus Christ needed to be inspired. And he needed to be inspired not because he was 100% God, but because he was 100% man. He needed to see a vision of the kingdom. And God the Father gave it to him. And when he saw it, it says, in that hour he rejoiced in the Spirit. Jesus Christ rejoiced in the Spirit. And we saw it again in chapter 12. 49, 50, I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am until it's accomplished." You know what? If he just knew that the Father was going to pop him back up, and everything being God, he didn't experience pain and suffering and grief and affliction, in the flesh like we do, why would He express Himself that way? Why would He say how I wish it were already kindled? How distressed I am? We read in John 11 when Mary and Martha grieving about their brother Lazarus. And first Martha comes, and then Mary comes, and all the people are just weeping uncontrollably, it sounds like. And he looks around and he's listening to the weeping and he's seeing all the pain and the grief of death. And it actually speaks about his soul being in turmoil at that moment. And he wept. He wept. I started to see these things, brothers and sisters, in a way that I'd never seen before. And why? Tonight, I don't have a lot for you. But why is this so important? Why is it so important for us to see Jesus Christ as 100% human? Why would that matter so much? Why is that doctrine so important to you and I? Because if you understand the humanity of Christ better, it helps you to understand the price that He paid for you. Alright? Because if He just was popping through it, we'd just take it for granted, wouldn't we? It's kind of like the difference when you need a loan. You go to a rich guy for a hundred dollars and you know he's got a million. He lends you a hundred bucks. Big deal. It's another thing when you see somebody that you find out later on, sold the most valuable thing they had, so that they could loan you that hundred dollars. That's the difference. On the one, you think, well, that rich guy, he's got plenty, it's not a big deal. You walk away with the money, you're thankful, but it's not the same as when you find out that this person, my friend, sold the most valuable thing they had because I needed $100. Except that $100 is your life. Now, I want to go to Psalm 22, and I just want to look at that again now. Because, you see, what you find out is that when Jesus makes certain quotes, what He's doing is He's bringing us back to the Old Testament, and He wants us to dive into that. Okay? He wants us to understand that that's where we're at. That's where He's at. And I told you something this morning, and I will remind you of it again. In 1 Peter 1, it speaks about It was the Spirit of Christ who spoke through the prophets. Now keep that in mind while we're reading this. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And you know where that's at, right? That's on the cross where Jesus says that. Why are you so far from helping me? And from the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but you don't hear. And in the night season, and I'm not silent. So here's Jesus. This is what He experienced for you, for me. That He cried out in all this pain and this distress, this suffering, this wrath of God being poured out on Him. And no one's around Him loving Him, caring for Him. And He's crying out to the Father. And He's not feeling any of the love coming back. But here's His faith. But you are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in you. They trusted in you, delivered them. They cried to you and were delivered. They trusted in you and were not ashamed. And so Jesus is on the cross as a human being and He's holding on to all the words of God in the Old Testament. All these faithful words and all these same things that all these brothers of His, that's what He calls us later on, right? And the ones who went before them. His brothers. All those words that they hung on to in faith when they went to the valley of the shadow of death, now here's Jesus. A hundred percent man hanging on to them himself. But I am a worm and no man. A reproach of men and despised by the people. All who see me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head saying, He trusted in the Lord. Let Him rescue Him. Let Him deliver Him since He delights in Him. Remember that? That's what happened on the cross, right? Well, if He's your God, if He's your Father, He can help you. If you're God, call yourself off that cross. Remember? This is what He's going through. This is what He's experiencing. This is why these words are given to us. This is the Spirit of Christ actually speaking through regular human beings to tell us what He Himself would experience. I mean, that's mind-boggling, right? But you are He who took me out of the womb, right? So I'm a worm, I'm not a man. Everybody's ridiculing me. Everybody's mocking me. But now here we got another word to hang on to. But you are He who took me out of the womb. You made me trust while on my mother's breast. I was cast upon you from birth, from my mother's womb. You have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Phaeacian have encircled me. They keep at me with their mouths like a raging and a roaring lion." And just think, the full power of Satan is there too. The wrath of God. Everything. And here's him on this cross, hanging on. I'm not speaking about his physical life. He's hanging on. Because even though he's 100% God, in some way that we don't understand, all the wrath of God is poured out and he's experiencing that and he's hanging on in the dark. It's pitch black. And he doesn't see any evidence of the love of God around him. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax, it has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue clings to my jaws. You have brought me to the dust of death." That's Jesus Christ speaking about what He's experiencing. For dogs have surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and they stare at me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far from me. O my strength, hasten to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen. He did that for you. He did it for me. He didn't need it. Right? He was righteous. He didn't need to experience all that. He didn't need to experience death. He went further than we can ever even imagine. And He did it. And He knows how we feel. Sin accepted. Sin accepted. He knows all our weaknesses. He knows all of those things. That's the first reason why we need to understand the humanity of Christ better. And the second reason, very briefly. Brothers and sisters, I think it's incredibly compelling that God came down here. And I want you just to think about this for a moment. God existed before all things. In the moment of His choosing, by the word of His mouth, by the word of His power, He called all things into being. Before God spoke, there were no stars. There were no planets. There were no moons. There were no comets. There were nothing. There were no humans. There were no animals. There were no fish, insects, plants, trees. There was no light. There was only God. And then in His perfection, He called forth the whole universe. Which even today, we're so wise and we're so smart and we're so brilliant. Our science far exceeds everyone else's of any age before us. We can see to the very edges the universe. But you ask anyone who actually has any knowledge and they'll tell you that we're only beginning to learn. Not just about the universe, but even about man and about his world. He called forth the whole universe, every last atom of Every last cell, every last planet, star, constellation, He called it forth from nothing. Even time didn't exist until He created it. So I think about the vastness of this whole creation which I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around. And I think, God did that. God did that. And then He decided, in all of His Godness, to come down as one of us. That blows my mind. And it should blow yours too. That Jesus thinks that we're so special. And it's actually... Him that makes us that special, right? The fact that He did that is what preserves the human race. I mean, I go too far now. I'm going to stop, right? But that's amazing that that God who created everything hung on that cross. and experienced pain like we'll never even understand. That matters. Brothers and sisters, every day, most of you, myself too, we go through valleys of doubts. Is God really there? Is He really coming? Is there really another kingdom? If I die, am I really going to wake up reborn? Putting away the things of this world worth it because I'm going to have way more in the Kingdom that is coming? Did Jesus really come and die on the cross for me? And my point to you is this. Jesus experienced all those same fears and doubts. He did. In fact, more than you can ever imagine. And he hung on for our sakes. I want to finish with this text and then we'll sing. Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Our Father who art in heaven, once again we come before you and we just thank you for this Word that is so awesome that in our humanity and in our sinful minds too, we cannot really come close to comprehending it. But it's not just that, Lord, but we're finite creatures trying to grasp the infiniteness of your greatness. that you who are beyond awesome, that you are beyond everything that we can possibly see and understand, that you came down as one of us. And you walked through this earth and you suffered all the things that we suffer. And you had doubts and fears and all these things also sin accepted. And He did it for our sakes. So that we might have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. So Lord, we come boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to the throne of grace. And we pray that You would bless this congregation. That You'd build us up in Your Word and Your Spirit. That as we go into this week, that each one of these, Your sons and daughters, would be given strength through this Word. That they would understand that they have a Savior that sees them, knows them, and understands all of our weaknesses. All these things, Lord, we ask in Jesus' name alone. Amen.