Well, good evening. It's good to be with you for the first time at this conference and be able to participate in this. I thank Brother Daniel for the invitation, and the feeling is mutual as far as getting to know him and the pleasure of that. I don't know about Weiser. I doubt it. Men? Younger, yes, I guess so. I just turned 50, and I'm glad to hear that's considered young. Don't necessarily feel that way when I wake up in bed, out of bed each morning, but anyway. How did I get called by God to salvation? Well, this is a brief synopsis of it, lest I wear you out tonight by this, followed by a sermon. I grew up in a family that went to church. My parents were professing Christians. My dad, I believe, was a genuine Christian. My mom, I don't think, was. The church that we went to was an American Baptist church. And they were somewhat involved with the denomination. But in those early years, they hadn't yet gone off the deep end into liberalism like they have now. that the denomination and what it did or what it believed wasn't really on the radar, as I recall, too much. The church was a typical program church, lots of activities, lots of stuff to do, youth groups all the whole nine yards, you know, Bible school and so forth. And the, you know, if you were going to teach a class in the church, it was You had a beating heart. You felt guilt tripped into it and didn't know how to talk your way out of it. That's how you became a teacher of a Sunday school class. There wasn't particularly solid teaching in the church at all. There was no governing doctrinal principle really that I could recall with the church. It was Arminian. It was flirting a bit, I suppose, with charismatic tendencies, not so much the gifts, so to speak, as much as just the emotional side of things. Not that emotions are bad, but just sort of like emotions disconnected from truth. So that's kind of what I grew up in. I remember us having an evangelist, that's what he called himself anyway, come to the church when I was maybe 12, 11 or 12 or so forth. He preached on hell. I became very scared. I knew that I was not a Christian because my parents did not allow me to take communion because I had not made a profession. And in our church in those days, we did what everybody did. You ask Jesus into your heart and then you walk down the aisle in front of everyone to declare yourself that you desire to be baptized. And so I had not done that and so I did not feel that I had arrived. And I wasn't allowed to take communion. So when the evangelist was preaching on hell, I became concerned for my soul. I talked to my mother about it. She did only what she had been taught to do and knew to do, which was to have me pray to ask Jesus in my heart. And then I came forward and was baptized in the church. then remained pretty much the same wretch I was before. A Pharisee, essentially. A good boy compared to the other wretches around me, but a wretch nonetheless. I went through high school pretty much unchanged, a Pharisee, better than everybody else, thought I was pretty special, thought a lot of myself, was very self-absorbed, self-consumed, and was just way up there on the chart, selfish. So I went off to college and drifted away from church attendance. I would attend church when I came back home and in the summers, but not while I was away in college. Got very worldly during that time, and then toward the last tail end of my senior year in college, I had an internship out in Nevada at a newspaper. I felt that I should leave a television behind. I was being convicted about the fact that I was not reading the Bible and I was not praying. I'm still thinking I'm a Christian at this point, even though I wasn't. So I left the TV behind. I was out there alone, and I started praying. And I started reading the scriptures. I started going to Christian bookstores and picking up books that today I would probably think belonged in the garbage can. But I started reading, and my mind started thinking and wrestling with some things. Then I returned home. asked by my church if I was interested in being the youth pastor. So I interviewed for the job and they hired me. So I was a youth pastor and I'm still unconverted, but I still think I'm converted. And one day, some literature came to the church sent out by Ligonier Ministries, and it was designed for youth. And as I started going through the material, I was confronted with a God I had never met and did not know, and it blew me away. And when you talk about the glory of God, some people's conversion, in fact, many start out, I suppose, with deep conviction of sin. As far as I can recall, Mine started out with being blown away by the glory of God. God was just new, amazing, completely different than the other God I had known or believed in. And this was a God I could admire and adore and be afraid of. respect and be concerned about offending and so forth. And so I just began to dive into the scriptures and I was extremely hungry for them and verses were sort of burned into my mind without me even trying to memorize them. And I didn't realize what was happening to me, and it took me years to put it together that I was saved. And I was so ignorant, and I had so much lost ground to catch up on, to learn the scriptures and learn who God was, and in the process began to believe that God was calling me into the ministry and so then went to seminary and began to address the ignorance problem and grow in the scriptures and in the knowledge of the truth and have been serving him gladly ever since. So that's kind of the brief Reader's Digest version of my conversion experience. Tonight I have been assigned the topic of the glory of Christ as God-man, and our text is John 1. As has been anticipated, we'll cover some familiar ground here and have some overlap. John 1.14, specifically. Here we see the Word, as you have already heard identified tonight, as the Son of God. We see him becoming flesh, being made flesh. That's the incarnation. And we see the word glory. We beheld his glory. So the text says, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. So this seems a fitting place from which to get started on the topic assigned to me, the word. was made flesh. You've already heard John 1, 1 through 4 tonight. And just to look at there again, just to cover the bases here, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. That is indeed one of the most poignant texts we have on the preexistent nature of Jesus Christ as a second person of the Trinity. We see here this reference to, we beheld his glory. So we are right there with our subject matter tonight, the glory of the God man. John 1.14 is not, of course, a systematic theology. on what theologians have called the hypostatic union. For that we have to look at a number of other passages. But let me start by a definition of what we mean by the hypostatic union. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is a God-man, but it doesn't give us a definition anywhere per se. So we can either come up with our own definition by studying all the various passages that speak on it, or we can just consider what our forefathers might have written on the subject and consider whether that's adequate. And I think it is. The 1689 Confession of Faith, I think, has a really good section where it talks about the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ. The definition that we'll read here is set in contrast with all the false heretical notions about Christ that came in like a flood in the early centuries of the Christian church. So the language that we'll see here has been specifically chosen to distinguish the biblical position from the various false teachings. So for instance, you have the false teaching of docetism, which denied the humanity of Christ. Christ only appeared to be a man, they said. Then there was adoptionism, which was also known as dynamic monarchism, which taught that Jesus was preexistent, or was not preexistent, and was then adopted as the son of God at his baptism. That was adoptionism. Then there was Arianism, which taught that Jesus existed before the world began, but was nevertheless created by God and did not have a divine nature. There was Apollinarianism, which taught that Jesus had a human body, but a divine mind. Therefore, he was neither fully God nor fully man. There was Nestorianism, which taught that there were two persons, not two natures, and the divine person controlled the human person. There was Eutychianism, which taught that there was a blending of the two natures so that, again, Jesus was neither fully God nor fully man. He had sort of a third kind of hybrid nature. You can see all the isms that were popping up right and left. So the definition here in the 1689 Confession is set over against all of those heretical teachings. And it says, to all those for whom Christ Excuse me. Make sure I'm in the right spot here. Here we go. The Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance and equal with Him, who made the world, who upholdeth and governeth all things He hath made, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin. being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, and so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the Scriptures. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person without conversion, composition, or confusion, which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and men." And then in the paragraph 7 of the same section, it says, Christ, in the work of mediation, acteth according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself. Yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature. So the hypostatic union is clarified in the phrase, Christ remained what he was and became what he was not. He remained what he was and became what he was not. The Word became flesh, which he was not before, but remains still the Word. He did not cease to be the Word when he became flesh. Rather, he took a human body and a human nature and united it to himself in one person. So let's first consider the fact of the hypostatic union, then the necessity of it, and finally the glory of it. Since I've chosen John 1, 14, it's safe for you to assume that I think the hypostatic union is taught in this verse, at least in part. And we've already looked at John 1, 1 through 4, noting that the word is God and was God. In him was life. The life was the light of men. So the word was God. He was divine, yet he became flesh. But the text doesn't answer all our questions. That's the case with many of the central doctrines of the Bible. The doctrine of the hypostatic union rests on a number of verses and rarely just on one. So if we're going to establish the hypostatic union as scriptural, then we have to find in the scripture that number one, Jesus is fully God. Number two, that he is fully man. Three, that he's one person, not two. And four, that he did not lose his divine nature in order to take human nature. So let's consider each of those propositions. The first is that Jesus is fully God. We've already seen John 1, 1 through 4, which made that clear. Colossians 1. 15 through 17 is also another passage. And by the way, just a little clue into my approach or style. I do read a lot of scriptures, just like Brother Lawrence did, and I move rather fast. So if you find that too frustrating to keep up with, it may be more worthwhile to just listen rather than to try to keep up with me, unless you're really fast. Colossians 1 15 through 7 says, speaking of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Christ there is called the image of the invisible God, the one by whom all things were created and the one in whom all things consist. Those are strong, clear indications of his divine nature. Hebrews 1.3, which you've heard tonight already as well. Speaking of Christ, it says, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Then a few verses later, in verses 7 through 8 of the same chapter, the Son is expressly called God. And of the angels, he saith, who maketh his angel spirits and his ministers a flame of fire? But unto the sun, he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thy throne, O God, referring to the sun. Then there are Christ's references to him existing before the world, as you've heard tonight, to coming down from heaven, as John 6 says in John 17. His statement in John 8, before Abraham was born, I am. We see that he has an ability to read people's minds and thoughts. He has a knowledge of future events. He does an unprecedented number of miracles in healing, in raising the dead and commanding the storms to cease, in feeding thousands and walking on water, et cetera. We see his willingness to be worshiped, the fact that he did not correct doubting Thomas when Thomas said, my Lord and my God. He doesn't say, oh, no, no, no, don't say that about me. He doesn't rebuke him at all. There is his designation, son of God. and the fact that he is said to be the only begotten son of God. It is self-evident that whatever you are begotten from, you partake the same nature of. So that if man begets, he begets, of course, man. And not to be crude, but if a dog begets, he begets a dog. And if God begets, he begets God. You beget of like nature, and he is the only begotten son of God. Second proposition is that Jesus is fully man. He is also fully man. He was born to the Virgin Mary, raised by her and Joseph. He grew in wisdom and stature. He had brothers and sisters. He became hungry and thirsty and tired. He ate and drank and slept. He bled and died. There were some things he didn't know, such as which woman touched him in the crowd. Unless perhaps he was just ferreting her out and did know, but he didn't know the day and hour of his return. He has spatial limitations being in one place at a time. And then there was his most common self designation, the son of man. There were stern warnings in the Scriptures about denying that He came in the flesh, such as in 1 John 4, verses 2-3, where it says, By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist of which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world. So the only logical and rational conclusion that can be drawn from this material is that Jesus is fully God and fully man. Some verses in scripture apply only to his divine nature. Some apply only to his human nature, but when we consider them all, when we interpret scripture with scripture, when we seek to affirm everything that is said about Christ without denying one side of things in order to weight more strongly the other side of things, we come to one conclusion. Jesus is a God man. 1 Timothy 3.16, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. The third proposition, Jesus is one person. That's fairly simple to establish. We never see him referring to himself as we, unless he's talking about he and the father. But there's not two sons or two people within the one thing called the son. It's not plural pronouns used there. You don't hear him referred to as they, it's he. And finally, the final proposition, he retained his deity when becoming flesh. When Jesus said before Abraham was born, I am, the clear implication is that this is an ongoing truth of him as he's speaking. This is not Before Abraham was born, I was God, and then I ceased to be in order to become a man. That is not the implications of I am. And again, when Thomas said, my Lord and my God, Jesus didn't correct him and say, oh, no, no, I was, but I'm not anymore. He didn't say that. So why is the hypostatic union necessary? It's not only a fact revealed in scripture, it's actually necessary for our salvation. If Jesus is not a God-man, you and I cannot be saved. Why? Number one, the Messiah had to be fully man or else he could not be a second Adam. Adam was our federal head and representative in the Garden of Eden. He failed. And by his disobedience, we all fell and were made sinners. We then stood in need of a new federal head who would obey God in all things and fulfill the law for our righteousness. But that second federal head has to be a man. It is man that is under obligation to render perfect obedience to the law of God. In order for Jesus to be our substitute and fulfill the law, a man is required to obey it. The son had to be a man. Galatians four, four through five, Paul says, but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son made of a woman made under the law to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 1 Corinthians 15, 22, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. See the parallel between Adam and Christ. Secondly, the Messiah had to be a man or he could not die. God is incapable of dying. I know that we sing hymns like, for instance, And Can It Be, perhaps. I don't know whether you sing that or not. But Charles Wesley says that thou, my God, shouldst die for me. Well, either that's bad theology. I do like the hymn, by the way. Either that's bad theology, or it's simply doing what the confession is talking about there, while certain things are attributed to one nature, denominated by the other. I'm not sure. We have to ask Charles Wesley, and we can't do that. But God can't die. He is life itself. Unless the eternal son of God becomes a man, he can't shed his blood and die for sinners. But without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, according to Hebrews chapter 9. So he must be a man. Thirdly, unless the Messiah died, he could not rise again and thereby conquer death and the evil one who had the power of death. Hebrews 2, 14 through 15, for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise partook of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Did you catch that? He had to be made like his brethren in order to die that He might destroy him who had the power of death. The Messiah has to be a man. Fourthly, unless the eternal Son of God had become a man, He could not sympathize with our infirmities. Now that sounds heretical, doesn't it? What do you mean He couldn't sympathize with our infirmities? He can do anything He wants to. He's God. Well, listen to the language of the text in Hebrews 2. Wherefore, in all things, it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself have suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted. He is able to because He had to be made like his brethren. By being made like his brethren, he experienced our infirmities. He experienced temptation. He is therefore then able to be a perfect high priest, succoring them that are tempted. Hebrews 4, 15 through 16 likewise says, for we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Fifthly, unless the son of God were divine, he has to be God as well. Unless he were divine, retaining his divine nature, he wouldn't be a proper object of worship. And he could not have been an effectual atonement for multitudes upon multitudes of sinners. How could a mere man, even a perfect one, satisfy the eternal wrath of God for myriads of sinners? How could he do that? How could he accomplish propitiation in just six hours unless there was the divine nature of infinite worth united to the human nature? What made Jesus's blood of infinite worth It was not just that he was a sinless man, but that in him was the fullness of deity and bodily form. And sixthly, finally, Jesus has a continued work in heaven. It is the work of intercession and mediation, if I might call it a work. On the other hand, we might say he's resting, but There's this work of intercession and mediation. He sits at the right hand of God as a constant reminder that the sins of God's elect have been propitiated. And his presence there is a perpetual sweet incense in the nostrils of God, which God smells and is soothed by it. Think of Noah when he got off the ark and he built an altar and God smelled the aroma of the altar and the sacrifice and he was soothed. Christ sits there at the right hand of God the Father as a perpetual incense reminder that the sins of God's elect have been satisfied by Him. He is the only suitable mediator between God and men because He is a God-man. He understands God's interests. He understands man's interests. He can represent God perfectly because He is God. He can represent man perfectly because He is man, fully man. And therefore, He is the perfect mediator between God and men. Why would we need Mary as another mediator when we have Jesus? I live in a community that's 90% Catholic, and whether this is official magisterium doctrine or not, many of the Catholics seem to believe that the reason we need Mary as someone to pray to is because Jesus is rather stern. And you've got to go through mama to get to daddy, is the idea. What could be further from the truth? We have here the perfect mediator, perfectly representing God, perfectly representing man, sympathizing with us. We come boldly to the throne of grace because he became a man, sympathizing with our infirmities. Well, let's consider, we already have really, but more deliberately consider the glory of the hypostatic union. I guess I'm ready for that part. Are you ever ready to describe the glory of God or the glory of Christ, the glory of the God man? I feel much like David when he said in Psalm 139, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. Or when he said in Psalm 131, Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty. Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me. And yet Daniel required me to come up here and try and try to say something worthwhile about things I don't truly understand. So here goes. You know, one of the difficulties for me is the word glory itself. And I appreciate Brother Justice's explanation of the six aspects. It was six, wasn't it? Of the glory of Christ and his preexistent glory. Glory has always been one of those hard words for me to get a handle on. My understanding of the loaded word is that it refers to what is praiseworthy in something or someone. So if we talk about the glory of the sun, meaning as opposed to the moon, the glory of that sun, we mean its size, its heat, and its brightness, that is, its glory. Those are the distinguishing praiseworthy characteristics of the sun. If we speak of the glory of, say, an athlete like Babe Ruth, we mean his ability to swing a bat and knock a ball over a fence. We're clearly not talking about his physique or his running ability. For those of you too young to know what Babe Ruth is or who he is, just Google it and you'll see what I'm talking about. YouTube it or something. No, it was his ability to hit home runs. That was his glory. So when we speak of the glory of God, the problem is we're talking about everything that distinguishes him, that makes him praiseworthy, which is everything there is that is true about him. So all we can do is take little bits and pieces and kind of break them up into subcategories and try to get out a micro magnifying glass here and look carefully at little things that we can handle. It's a broad and heavy subject. So the glory of Christ as God man, all I can hope to do is scratch the surface here briefly. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. So we, the disciples, I think John is referring to there, we saw this, we saw his glory. We saw the glory of the God man. We saw the glory as of the only begotten of the father full in grace and truth. So let's see if we can behold something of this glory as well. There is the glory, I think, of his humility that has to be acknowledged when you consider the God-man, when you consider the incarnation. Philippians 2, 6 through 8, I was told by a professor, never preach on this because you'll just probably botch it and end up saying something heretical. Well, we have to preach the full counsel of God and so tread where angels fear to, I suppose. It says, who being in the form of God, referring to Christ here, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. When a king leaves the palace and puts on a pair of dirty overalls and not only mingles with the peasants, but works with them and serves them, it is his glory that he does so. It is a praiseworthy and excellent thing, not only because it's so unusual, but because it's so unnecessary. I mean that there's no moral necessity that he do so. There's no law that says he must. It's voluntary, not obligatory. It's an act of infinite condescension and humility. If Christ's divine nature had not been concealed most of the time behind the veil of his flesh, no one would have been able to stand in his presence and look him in the eye. Everyone would have been collapsing and fainting everywhere. Everywhere he went, they would have been like Peter all the time in the boat. Depart from me, Lord. I'm a sinner. I'm a sinful man. Or as John in Revelation, who saw the unveiled glory of Christ and fell on his face as a dead man. That's what it would have been like for everyone that Jesus approached if his glory had not been concealed in some sense behind the veil of his flesh. Jesus became a man whose life was so apparently ordinary for the first 30 years that we hardly know anything about it. And people then were astonished at him at the inception of his ministry. It's like he came out of nowhere. So for 30 years, he's just living in relative obscurity. People are asking questions. Where did this man get this wisdom? How does he teach this way? Who gave him this authority? Isn't this Joseph and Mary's son? What humility must there be for people to not even realize who you are, not see your glory? The Pharisees and Sadducees, the lawyers and priests, and other antagonists were not afraid to follow him around and harass him continuously and argue with him all the time. because his glory is concealed. If he had unleashed it, so to speak, they would have been terrified to do that. The king of kings humbled himself. He gird himself with the towel and came to serve those who would send against him and who owed him absolute allegiance. Another aspect of this glory or excellence of humility is his restraint. The divine nature didn't overwhelm the human nature, rendering it a non-factor. Jesus didn't cheat in fulfilling the law for us. He didn't cheat in the wilderness, or in the Garden of Gethsemane, or on the cross. What do I mean? I mean that Jesus was not like Superman, someone who merely appears to be human, But if you peel apart the shirt, you see there's this uniform there and he's a man of steel. He's not really human. That's not Jesus. If it were Superman and Superman joins a human marathon and runs alongside the other runners, it's really no big deal if he wins the race, is it? He's not even breaking a sweat. He might be pretending to break a sweat, but not really. He's dressed up like a marathon man. He's pretending to exert himself, but it's really easy for him. This is not hard. He just slowed himself down enough to let the other runners think that he's an ordinary human and they're keeping up with him. That's not what the Son of God did. He became a real man. He was fully man, not a pretend man. When he obeyed the law perfectly and completely, it was not by being so overwhelmed by the divine nature that it wasn't real obedience. When he resisted the devil for 40 days in the wilderness, it wasn't Superman play acting. No, it was walking by faith. in reliance on the Holy Spirit, just as you and I are to walk. Not only he did it perfectly, when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he wasn't pretending to sweat drops of blood. He wasn't pretending to be in agony and dread the oncoming cross and bearing the sins of multitudes upon multitudes. He was genuinely in agony because he's a real man. The divine nature is not swallowing up the human nature, rendering it a non-factor. That's the excellency of his humility and restraint. That's what I mean when I say he didn't cheat. There is the glory of his uniqueness. And I'll close with this. John said in our text, the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. Glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. There's a uniqueness. being referenced in that statement. The eternal son of God, of course, was already unique and solitary in his position as the second person of the Trinity from all eternity. But when he took to himself a human nature and became a God-man, he became absolutely unique in another way. There's simply no one like him. Of what other person could the following statements be said and be rational Jesus Christ was not served by human hands as though he needed anything, and yet he needed parental care, food, clothing, and sleep. All of that's true of the same man. Jesus Christ created Mary and was born of Mary. As an aside, it's correct to say that Mary is the mother of Jesus, and it's right to say that Jesus is God. It is not right to say Mary is the mother of God. That may be logical, it's also false. Not everything that's logical is true. Jesus Christ was the one to whom Mary and Joseph owed their obedience, and yet Jesus obeyed Mary and Joseph. Jesus Christ was both omnipotent and helpless. Helpless as a baby there in the manger. He was infinite in power and yet grew weary. He formed the world and he needed his diapers changed. He was infinite in wisdom and knowledge and yet grew in wisdom and stature. He was perfect, and yet was made perfect by the things he suffered. He has life in himself, and yet he died. He was angry with sin, and yet was made to suffer the anger of God against sin. He upholds all things by the word of his power. And so we may say, that he was upholding the religious leaders as they quarreled with him and plotted against him. He was upholding Judas while Judas was betraying him. He upheld the Roman soldiers as they whipped him and even upheld and held together the whips that tore his back and caused him pain. He upheld by the word of his power the crown of thorns that was jammed on his head, the cross he was forced to carry and which became too heavy to carry, the nails that held his hands and his feet, he held them together in his hands and feet, the breath of those who mocked him as they went by and taunted him, the nerve endings that roiled in his flesh in response to the nails, Everything was held together in place exactly as it was so that he might suffer to the fullest and suffer to the end and swallow down the very last drop of the cup he was given to drink. He upheld all things by the word of his power as he's on the cross suffering for our sins. He's holding the cross together. He's holding some body together. He is upholding all his enemies together. This is Jesus Christ. This is the God man. He's worthy of worship. Let's pray. Father, we are amazed at your son, and I know I have not even begun to speak of him. know that there is so much that is over our heads, beyond our ability to even comprehend with our feeble minds, certainly beyond our abilities to express with our limited words and language. We know that in scripture you've condescended to us to even use our language to convey to us truths that we have trouble handling. Lord, we simply ask that you would like Moses, that you would show us more of your glory. Open our eyes. Enlighten us. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.