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Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bolling is a live call-in radio program providing doctrinal dialogue, cultural commentary, and insightful interviews with some of today's foremost Christian authors and leaders. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. The goal of the church and the radio program is to seek the glory of God in the salvation of sinners and the sanctification of the saints. by the Ministry of the Word. For more information, go to www.knowingthetruth.org. Here with today's edition of Knowing the Truth is Pastor Kevin Bolling. Hey, welcome into this edition of the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. This is Pastor Kevin Bowling, so glad that you joined us on the broadcast today. We're going far and wide on the broadcast today. We're going all the way across the pond to the UK in just a couple moments to talk about the incarnation in a book that's entitled Pleased to Dwell, A Biblical Introduction to the Incarnation with Peter Mead. We'll be speaking with Peter in just a moment, and then in the second half of the broadcast, we're going to go across the country, and we're going to go all the way to California and speak with Daniel Hyde. And Daniel Hyde is going to talk to us today about an interesting event that took place where his son received a card in the mail And when he opened up the card, he said, Christ is real, but this card is fake. And we'll tell you what he meant by that, and Daniel will explain what he meant by that, on the second half of the broadcast today, as we talk about the use of the images of Christ, the second commandment, and what the second commandment has to say about that subject. So there's where we're going on our broadcast today, and you're certainly welcome to join in. If you got a question or a comment about the subjects that we're talking about, I'd be happy to take your question or comment a couple of different ways. One, we have a toll-free number set up. It's 1-888-660-WLFJ. That's 1-888-660-9535. And you can also shoot me an email. The email is kttradio at gmail.com. That's kttradio at gmail.com. First up, Daniel Mead in his book, Pleased to Dwell, A Biblical Introduction to the Incarnation. It says this as part of the publisher's promotion of the book out on christianfocus.com. It says, at the center of heaven is Christ, lovingly adored as the forever Lord of all. At the center of Christmas is Christ, frail and cradled in a tender arms of a young mother. How can the two be put together, heavenly glory and human frailty? But that is the real wonder of Christmas. Pleased to Dwell is an energetic, biblical introduction to Christmas. It is an invitation to ponder the incarnation and the God who is pleased to dwell with us. That's an excellent summary, I think, of what we find here in this book, and I'm looking forward to speaking with Peter about all the nuance of what he's written about that subject. Peter is the director of Cordeo, a mentored ministry training program that's based in Chipping Hen, England. He is on the leadership team of a church plant and leads the Bible Teachers and Preachers Network at the European Leadership Forum. Peter, it's a pleasure to have you on the Knowing the Truth radio program today. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for having me on the show. Well, Peter, let's jump right in about what caused you to write about the Incarnation, and specifically in the way that you approach it here in your book. Well, I think what caused it was preaching the various sections of Matthew, Luke, and so on over several Christmases, and then just feeling that it's such a shame that for the rest of the year we don't think about the subject. It's as if it's just once a year subject, and the rest of the year we've got more important things to talk about. And so I really wanted to really chase the theme, not just through those two passages, Matthew and Luke, but really through the whole Bible, just to see how significant it is that God chose to become one of us, and came to be in our midst, pleased to dwell with us. It's such an overwhelming thought when we think about that, the incarnation and the coming of Christ into this world, taking to himself human flesh in order to come and do what we could not do for ourselves, and of course that being to earn a righteousness for us and then also to die the death of the cross on our behalf. glorious and overwhelming thought. Of course the title of your book comes from a Christmas hymn, right? That's right, yeah, Hark the Herald Angels Sing by Charles Wesley. Let's talk about the opening part of your book. It's broken up into four different sections, and the first section is really important because it goes back to the idea—I term it in a couple of the sermons that I've preached on this subject as well—that Christ was prophetically predicted. You put it in part one of your book as the anointed deliverer and the Old Testament anticipation. It wasn't that Christ just suddenly came on the scene, but he was spoken about and prophesied about and predicted in the Old Testament for a long period of time, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. He was not only predicted, but we also see pre-incarnate what we call Christophanies, it's a more technical word than I use in the book, but appearances of Christ through the Old Testament as well. I think it's one of those big themes that we do need to ponder, that God invites us to trust in the promise that He makes, and the promise begins right back in Genesis 3 and develops through the whole of the Old Testament. But He also asks us to trust Him, the Promiser, and so we see these appearances where The Lord, the God who walks on two legs, walks in the midst of his people, inviting them to trust him. So it becomes a really rich kind of tapestry of themes and anticipations, even before we get to the New Testament. In that first account, the Proto-Evangelion, Genesis 3, verse 15, of course, where Christ is spoken about, the first gospel message, even in that we see, in hindsight anyways, we can see a tremendous reference being made, not only to Christ, but to the virgin birth of Christ and the seed of the woman, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. In many ways, that is the main passage for the virgin birth. There's the obvious one later on in Isaiah 7. But that one, you look at it and you wonder, does this require, is this a prophecy? Does this require Mary to be a virgin to give birth to the Messiah? But I think when you go back to Genesis 3, it's much, much stronger even there, because God's solution is going to come through the seed of the woman, and that's an unusual way of putting it, even in the Hebrew. And then that language of the seed of the woman becomes kind of key language that God develops, as the promise develops. One of the things that I really enjoyed tracing through, and you see it in Genesis 3, but then you see it time and again, is that when humans made a mess of things, which we're pretty good at doing. Instead of dealing with us with kind of a harsh discipline or a rejection, at the times when you expect God to do that, instead he leans in and gives more details about the promise. And so with the promise to David and the promise to the New Covenant later on in the Prophets, the language of the seed becomes kind of a key theme that keeps coming up all the way through. And, of course, in the New Testament, then, the Apostle Paul arguing from the singular versus the plural of that word, right? Yeah, that's right. In Galatians, he's really making sure you get the point that what God was saying to Abraham was absolutely critical, and it was absolutely pointing towards Christ. In him, everything is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've been in a protracted study in the book of Hebrews. And of course in Hebrews, we see how everything was in a type and shadow. veiled in the Old Testament, but he was there, the message was there, Christ was there, but in the New Testament we have this full and final revelation of God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ as being the fulfillment of all of these promises. You break up three chapters under that first part as the prophet, the priest, and the king, which is the traditional Reformed way of looking at the mediatorial work of Christ. Let's just talk about those briefly, but Christ fulfilled what was said concerning the prophet, specifically in Deuteronomy chapter 18, in the words of Moses, right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, Moses was such a key figure for Israel. as the person who not only was their leader, but was their leader who represented God to them. So he had this unique access to God, not just on the mountain where he got the Ten Commandments, but in the tent of meeting where he would go in and meet with the Lord face-to-face. A man speaks to his friend, we read about that in Exodus 33. And so Moses was this phenomenal figure for the nation, and yet as he's coming towards the end of his life and career in this unique role, God says there's going to be another one, and it's going to be like Moses, and it's going to be an Israelite. It's going to be one of you. He's going to speak for God, and you need to listen to him. And so that created this expectation of a greater prophet than Moses. And we see that even in the New Testament, when people are looking at Jesus and scratching their heads. Several times they're saying, hey, is this the prophet? They're really anticipating that there was a greater figure than Moses coming, who had unique access to God and could speak for God. That is a big theme, although I think we tend to lose it, because perhaps our focus, in terms of the Incarnation, tends to be on the King, and the King passages, and Micah and Isaiah, but I think the prophet theme is an absolutely huge one. Who is this one who can fully represent God the Father to us? Mm. Amen. And, of course, Moses was also the mediator of the Old Covenant, as we learn in our study there in Hebrews as well. So here is the Old Covenant being replaced by the New Covenant with Christ as the mediator. And Moses himself, as the mediator of the Old Covenant, spoke about one coming who was greater than he was, a greater prophet. And for our listening audience, of course, when we speak about the word prophet, we're talking about someone who is representing God before men. He speaks the words of God. What he is told to say is what he says. And this is exactly, of course, what we find even with the Lord Jesus Christ, where he constantly says, something along the line of that he is not speaking his own words, but he is speaking the words of Him that has sent him. He's in this prophetic role in the New Testament Scripture. Next, though, our guest here today, Peter Mead, moves on to talk about the priest. Well, the priest is kind of just the opposite. He is the representative of men before God, and here we see, prophetically, that Christ was spoken about as being a priest as well in 1 Samuel 2. Peter, expound upon that, if you would, please. Sure. The 1 Samuel 2 passage is probably a little bit obscure to us. Certainly, we We may know the story of Hannah, this godly woman that wanted a son and prayed for a son and was given one. And then she promptly gave him back to the Lord by bringing him to the priest there. And yet in the midst, or near the end of that passage, there is this anticipation. Really, you've got another one of those stories where the human office of the priesthood is an absolute mess. And yet God says, OK, I'm going to do something about this. set up or establish a priesthood, and he seems to be talking about sort of a Messiah priest, a specially anointed priest who is going to be really the fulfillment of what the priesthood was intended to be. And so you get that prediction there towards the end of the chapter, and again, it's anticipating that ultimately, in the Incarnation, Jesus comes not only as prophet to speak God's words to us, but as our priest to represent us, in a unique and perfect way before God. And so the whole theme of priesthood that's established in many places in the Old Testament, then we'll find its fulfillment, like you say, in the book of Hebrews, where that emphasis is really brought out in the New Testament. The final of those three items that make up the mediatorial role of Christ, the prophet-priest, the final one is the king. And as you mentioned, this, at least on the surface, gets a lot of airtime or press time during Christmas, of course. Seems to be the one that we focus on the most, as you pointed out. Give us a little bit of, or expound a little bit on what you write in the book about this aspect of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sure. Well, once you get to the prophets, Isaiah and Micah, they're really building on something that's first revealed in a full sense in 2 Samuel 7. So where King David is wanting to build God a palace, a temple, to kind of match the palace that he's living in. He gets this message from Nathan the prophet, not so fast. You're not going to build me a house. I'm going to build you a household. I'm going to establish your dynasty to last forever. And so there's this promise that's given that goes way beyond what David's son Solomon could ever fulfill. And that idea, again, it's using the same language from Genesis again of the seed and even the name of the Lord that's used there. There's a lot of ties back into this great promise theme that's developing and growing. And once that's established, then it all lies on the Davidic throne, all the way through the Old Testament. Every new king is this him, is this the one, is this the greater son of David? And of course, none of them were. And ultimately, the greater son of David gets carried into the temple as a few days old, as a baby. in the arms of his mother. And so you get that fulfillment, but not in the way that people were expecting it. So I think that's a great thing to trace through the prophets. And as you get through the prophets, you get to the end of that, and then you get that blank page. And if you're not breathless with anticipation, then you probably should go back and read the Old Testament again, because it's been building the whole way through that the King is coming, the Messiah, the Anointed One. So it really is all setting up what we have after that blank page in the New Testament. Yeah, I totally relate and understand that anticipation that you're talking about. And as you read through those passages, it's hard to ignore. And it's hard not to enter in, in some way, even though we know the end of the story, but to enter in what it must have been like, to be thinking that one is coming and the one that is coming is going to be the King of Kings. He's going to be the fulfillment of all that was promised. And of course, there's no disappointment when the Lord Jesus Christ himself comes. He is the fulfillment of all of those things and beyond our wildest imaginations with the benefits and blessings that come as a result of the person and work of our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let me remind our listening audience we're speaking with Peter Mead about his book called Pleased to Dwell, a Biblical Introduction to the Incarnation. It's published by Christian Focus, and their website is www.christianfocus.com. Peter, in the second section of your book, it speaks about, it says Emmanuel, God with us, and then you focus specifically on the opening two chapters of Matthew, Matthew's Gospel. which, by the way, is the four Gospels, for our listening audience again, are broken up into four different views of Christ. And the first one, Matthew is tasked with writing about Christ as being the son of David. So here we were just talking about Christ being the fulfillment of the covenant promises that were made in the Old Testament, specifically, in this case, to the Davidic promises. And what do we find then in our New Testament Bibles? But the first book in our New Testament Bible is the book of Matthew that deals specifically with Christ as the Son of David. Mark Gospel then deals with Christ as the Servant of Jehovah, Luke's Gospel with Christ as the Son of God, John's Gospel with Christ as the, I'm sorry, with the Son of Man with Luke's Gospel, John's Gospel as the Son of God. So in all those different views of Christ, four different aspects of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ and his person and work and so forth, given to us in those four Gospels. But here, Peter, you talk about in Matthew chapter 1 and 2 specifically, tell us a couple of the themes that you look at in those opening two chapters. Well, I think one of the beautiful things about Matthew, almost in contrast to what I tried to do in my book, probably in just under 50, 60 pages, I tried to give an overview of the whole of the Old Testament, and I thought I was doing pretty good. You're a better man than I. This is high energy, you know, I'm giving people some access here to what really is a huge piece of Scripture, a huge part of it. And then you turn to Matthew 1, and in the first 17 verses, he gives an overview of the Old Testament. I took 50 pages to do that, Matthew's done it in 17 verses, and he does it with a genealogy. So he tells you right up front, this is the son of Abraham, the son of David, and he marks out the covenantal plan of God through the Old Testament. And yet one of the real surprises that people get when they stop to look at that is not just that you've got these key figures and these generations coming down through the years, but there are some women in that genealogy. And these women, you wouldn't expect women to be included in those days. Now, of course, they would. But in those days, women wouldn't be included. But you get these four women that are noted. And I go through and kind of look at their stories and say, hey, look, in every case, there's a big question mark over this person's integrity, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not appropriately. But, you know, there's a question mark nonetheless. And I think the reason, part of the reason for that is that it's all setting up the one woman who has to be in the genealogy, and that's Mary. There's no way to skip her because Joseph wasn't the father of Jesus, you know, he was the stepdad. And so you've got these four other women with question marks over their private lives, all setting up Mary, who of course had a huge question mark over her private life. And yet here was the mother who was given the privilege of bearing the Son of God, and so even just the introduction, just the genealogy, the bit we're tempted to skip over when we're reading it is so rich, and it's really an encouragement that, hey, God cares about people that maybe you wouldn't even care about. wouldn't get into the story if we were writing it. God puts them in because he cares about everyone, and it's an awesome launch into the New Testament. We're talking about Tamar and Rahab, Ruth, and so forth, right? Yeah, that's right, and Bathsheba, who's not even named, just the wife of Uriah. Yeah, a really great start. And that just sets up, then, Joseph and Mary. And it's easy to look at Joseph and Mary and say, oh, here were a couple that were destined to be on Christmas cards for the rest of history. But from their perspective, here were a young couple who were destined to have tongues wagging and people distrusting them for the rest of their lives. And so they're a fascinating couple when you kind of get into the humanity of their situation, and then just the total trust. Here's a message from God. It doesn't explain how we're going to cope with how people are going to talk about us, or whether people are ever going to trust us, or whether people are ever going to use the carpentry business and believe what I say, or any of that stuff. But God's given us an instruction. We're going to obey. We're going to trust Him. So they're incredibly inspiring as a couple, on a very human level. Yes, I agree. And there's so many different tributaries in the incarnation, in the story of the incarnation that's given to us in the gospel. And we certainly encourage people in the listening audience to follow some of those and meditate on those. Think about those things, especially during this season. and it'll give you a renewed appreciation for the gospel story as a whole and for the person and work of Christ in particular. Section three of the book, and we won't have time to go through these because our time is almost up, but section two I mentioned speaks about Immanuel, God with us, and that deals with Matthew's gospel in the opening two chapters. Section 3 deals with Luke's gospel in the opening couple of chapters, and it's referred to as the presence of peace in a person. And then part 4 of the book speaks about why did God become man, and a New Testament reflection upon that, which is very, very interesting. as to the, obviously, with the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, taking to himself human flesh. Many, many different thoughts there about how you can think about that. Personally, I think as we sing some of these Christmas hymns, I'm always kind of correcting some of the hymns theologically because sometimes they make a statement like no crying he made and it takes away for me from the humanity of Christ. He cried as a baby. So to try to impose upon him that he never made a whimper which is not sinful in and of itself. It's just a way of communication for infants. But we seem to sometimes in some of these hymns, I think just speak in a way that is not completely biblical. So we need to understand what the biblical account is, and then be focusing upon that and to be dwelling upon that. Pleased to dwell, we should be dwelling on the fact that Christ has come tabernacled here among us in human flesh. Let me give you the last word, Peter. Let me give you an opportunity to just encourage the listening audience about their thoughts here during this Christmas season. Sure. I love the way that when you get into the Gospels and then into the rest of the New Testament, you're looking at something so gritty and so human and so kind of down-to-earth, and yet, in the midst of it, we're looking at the Son of God, the One who fully who makes known to us the Father. So no one has ever seen God, but God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. And one of the quotes I included in the book was from Martin Luther, and he said, if we want to think about our salvation, if we want to think about God, we need to stop speculating about the majesty and sort of philosophical type of theological speculation, and we need to get to the manger, and we need to go to the Virgin's womb, and we need to look at this little baby. Because it's not just that He did this for us, as if it were kind of a step in a process, or something that was kind of a necessity in some way. This is the heart of God being revealed, the God who is willing to humble Himself, and to reveal His nature and His heart to us in the person of His Son. So I think if we can really tap into that, if we can really get to the manger and focus on the reality of who that baby is, that can really stir our hearts, not just for a sentimental Christmas season, but really for the whole year, for the whole of our lives, because it's really all about that. Who is our God? What is He like? And we find that in the person of Jesus, who came to dwell amongst us, and He was pleased to dwell, and that's the reason I wrote the book, to really get us to draw near and focus on Him and be changed in the process. Well, well said, Peter, well said just now and well said in the book. Thank you so much for joining us all the way from the UK. We really appreciate it. And thank you so much for writing this volume about the Incarnation. Thank you for having me, Kevin. It's been a pleasure. www.christianfocus.com that's www.christianfocus.com and the book is Pleased to Dwell a Biblical Introduction to the Incarnation. I wholeheartedly agree focusing on this topic and dwelling upon Christ during this time will reap benefits not just for this season but throughout your entire life. You're listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. For more information about today's program, the radio ministry, and the resources we offer, go to www.knowingthetruth.org.
Pleased to Dwell
At the centre of heaven is Christ, lovingly adored as the forever Lord of all. At the centre of Christmas is Christ, frail and cradled in the tender arms of a young mother. How can the two be put together? Heavenly glory and human frailty? That is the real wonder of Christmas. Pleased to Dwell is an energetic biblical introduction to Christmas. It is an invitation to ponder the Incarnation, and a God who was please to dwell with us.
My guest today will be Peter Mead is director of Cor Deo, a mentored ministry training programme based in Chippenham, England.
Sermon ID | 12161412636 |
Duration | 27:11 |
Date | |
Category | Radio Broadcast |
Bible Text | Matthew 1 |
Language | English |