We're continuing to work through a series on studying the topic of Christology and looking at the doctrine of the person of Christ. Somewhat the person and work, but our focus is primarily on the person of Christ. As Jesus famously and importantly asked his disciples, who do you say that I am? And as his people, we need a We need something more than just the Sunday school answer. We need a robustness to our answer for the sake of our own soul, for the sake of our doxology, our worship of God, our adoration of Him, but also for the sake, I think, of our witness, of our ability to communicate not only the basics of the gospel, but something more of the glory and the majesty of our Redeemer, of our mediator, of the second person of the Trinity, of our prophet, priest, and king. And so last week, as again, I'm giving to you what I'm, in a sense, referring to as the gleanings from Dr. Dolezal's lectures. And so I take no credit for, this is not original work, I have not been, Producing these things on my own, number one, when you're in the area of theology proper or Christology, don't trust anyone who's producing these things on their own. But secondly, I was so enriched by the way in which some of the material was presented that I'm even keeping the same order in many places as to how he presented the material. I think it was helpful to us. Now last week, we considered the Old Testament's witness to the mission of the Messiah. The Old Testament, not only was it not silent, but it was frequent in God's testimony about the coming Messiah, what He would accomplish, in what manner would He come. And here's a couple of passages, let me pray and ask for the Lord to help us as we think today about Christ's own witness to His mission. So we've seen, I think once again, the Spirit of God is helping us, our sermon text will overlap in significant ways here, where we have the witness of Moses and the prophets testifying about the Messiah who would come, the Christ who would come. And then we also have Christ's own witness to who he is and what he has been sent by his Father to accomplish. Let's pray together. Our gracious God and Father, we give you thanks in the name of your Son, our great Redeemer, our Lord, our King, the one to whom you have given the name that is above every name. You've given him the name Lord, God. We are grateful that you have displayed your infinite, perfect, everlasting abiding mercy to us as your people through him. And I pray that as we consider his own testimony this morning, that you will enrich our understanding of what our Lord has declared about himself. That we may be guarded from error, not being led astray by those who would either twist his words or ignore them. I pray that our hearts would be filled with a renewed love, devotion, affection, appreciation for what our Lord entered into this world to accomplish. Having clothed himself in human flesh, he testified about all that you had given to him to do and all that he willingly undertook to do for our benefit and for the glory of our triune God. And so we ask these things in his name. I want to look at just a reminder of a couple of passages from the New Testament, and then we'll look at how our Lord has spoken of His own mission. So in Galatians 4, beginning in verse 1, the Apostle Paul is testifying here. I mean that the heir, As long as he is a child is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way, so Paul's speaking here by way of analogy. So in the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. So here is the fullness of time. In other words, at this precise moment and place in history where God had ordained for the Redeemer to come, the Lord Jesus appears, born of a woman, born under the law. But what we need to think about, what does Jesus mean, or what does Paul mean, when God sent forth? What is this sending forth? This speaks about Christ's mission. And then if we turn over to 1 Timothy, in 1 Timothy 1, we looked at this text briefly last week. This is one of the trustworthy sayings from the Apostle Paul. In verse 15, we read this, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. What does it mean that Jesus came into the world? We have to understand this is more than just a positional relocation, as if He was in one place before and now He's in a new place. There's something far more significant about that. The uncreated One, the One who exists outside of time and space, entered into the very creation He had made. There's a mystery there. And God Himself clothed Himself. He took on the form of a servant. He clothed Himself with human flesh. So let's think about Christ's witness to His own mission. And the New Testament records this mission of Christ and the mindset of our Savior in a number of ways. And we have these kind of repeated purpose statements where Jesus will say things about why he has come. And they're important for us to work through some of those statements so that we can gain an understanding of what he understood to be his mission. And so, we're going to be covering a lot of ground today in a series of shorter passages, but looking at these in total. And so, if we had a big conference table, we could, in a sense, spread out these verses and put them all together and form a picture of what Christ is saying about His own mission. First of all, and again, kind of following Dr. Dolezal's order here, there are a number of descent passages where we have this language, this image of Christ descending. And how do we think about that language? How do we think about the language that He was in heaven and He descended to earth? Let's think about some of the passages. He descends in order to accomplish His redemptive mission. I'm quoting directly from Dolezal here. He says, This language seems to entail a heavenly preexistence that is prior to the earthly appearance. These passages should not be understood to suggest that the sun moves locomotively from heaven to earth. This coming down is not a spatial relocation or movement of the sun. To, quote, come down, then, does not mean to abandon heaven but rather indicates that this one who dwells among us in our nature is the eternally blessed God himself, heralding from a realm of being far above our own. So when we think about even the term descent, we don't think spatially. You know, if you're up on a taller building, And you say, I'm gonna take the stairs, or you take the elevator, and you descend. You go from one physical place to another. You cease to be on the fifth floor, and you become on the first floor, for example. And so, sometimes, if our thinking isn't clear, we can find ourselves thinking that way about the incarnation. That Jesus was positionally in heaven, and then for a time, 33 years approximately, he was positionally on earth, and that now he is positionally back in heaven. What's wrong with that idea? God is omnipresent. Does Jesus, while he's on earth, does he give up or surrender or veil the attribute of omnipresence? Kind of a trick question, isn't it? Does Jesus give up omnipresence? How would we answer that? Yes. Yes, we have to make a distinction between the natures. Our mediator, our Christ, is one person, one Christ, in two natures, human and divine. Truly human and truly divine. And those, as we've talked, those natures are not composed, they're not mixed together. They're always distinguished, and yet we have one Christ, one mediator. So according to his divinity, did he ever leave heaven? No, he did not leave heaven. I see some furrowed brows. It's deep water, isn't it? There's a mystery that remains. If you're thinking to yourself, I don't get this, you're tracking correctly. Because there is not just a measure, there is a true sense of incomprehensibility to the hypostatic union, the union of the Godhead, the second person of the Trinity, with our humanity. So let's think about some of these descent passages. In John 3.13, The Word of God, Jesus says here, no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. So again, if all we had was that one passage of Scripture, and we're going to interpret the descent of Christ based on one passage alone, it would be reasonable to think, well, he positionally, he was once on the hundredth floor penthouse suite, and now he's on the ground floor or the basement. but he doesn't move positionally, so how do we understand this passage that no one can ascend into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man? Then, in John 6, and there are several important passages here, I'm not gonna read the whole chapter, but I'm gonna read a few verses here. Verses 32 to 33, Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Then over in verse 38, For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Then down a little further in verse 41, So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, It is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know. How does he now say, I have come down from heaven?" And perhaps we might find ourselves thinking in a similar way. This is not a wholly unreasonable objection. Now, this comes from the hard hearts of those who did not want to believe. But it's not a wholly unreasonable question. We know his humanity. Wasn't this the son of Joseph? Don't we know this? We've seen him grow up. How is it that he came down from heaven? Well, they were not making the distinction between his humanity and his divinity because they denied his divinity altogether. You see. Then down in verse 50, a little bit further on, this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. That's verse 58. And give you one more here of these descent passages. There are others, but this is somewhat of a sample platter for you. In Ephesians 4, here's the apostle Paul talking about the one who gives gifts to his church. And he says, in saying he ascended, this is in verse nine of Ephesians four, he ascended, by in saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. So, when we think about these descent passages, as you're reading through on your own, you're going through these in your family devotions, and you come across these descent passages, or in our hymns, when we hear about descending, let us not think that God, according to his divinity, the second person of the Trinity, ceased to be omnipresent. That somehow, Jesus as God ceased to be in heaven. One of my favorite hymns. I want it sung at my funeral. And can it be? But one of the things we've seen is that Jesus left his Father's throne above. It's not entirely accurate. He descended, sure, but did the second person of the Trinity God of God, very God, light of light, did he leave heaven? No. He's infinite. There's no spatial constraint. In fact, there's no concept of space at all or time for the unbegotten or for the only begotten Son. So we think about the descent passages, sort of train yourself, train your mind to think in terms of it doesn't mean location change. And so this is where, when Paul says in 1 Timothy, that Christ came into the world. He didn't just leave the hundredth floor and come down to the first floor. He didn't change locations. Something significant happens in the Incarnation that's far beyond a change of location. Now let's think about the passages where Jesus has said, these are sort of purpose statements, where Jesus says in various ways, I have come. I have come. So in some ways he says, I have descended, and others, I have come. Quoting from Dolezal again, he said, in addition to the passages speaking of Christ's descent, there are numerous places where either he or others speak of his coming with the strong sense that he is from somewhere and that he exists in some profound sense prior to his coming. Like the descent passages, this coming does not mean he abandoned his heavenly glory or divine nature. So let's think about some of these passages, and I'm gonna quote several from the Gospel of John, beginning in John chapter seven and verse 28. Here, Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, you know me, and you know where I come from, but I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true. and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me." Again, if this is the only passage we have, and Jesus speaks about coming from, one of the ways we might think about interpreting that is, well, he came from Nazareth. He came from Galilee. He came from, with respect to his birth, from Bethlehem. But the Scriptures, Jesus means far more than that. His coming from, again, is not merely positional. It's not time-bound. So let's look further in John 8. In verse 14, Jesus answers, Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true. For I know where I came from and where I am going. but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. So here he's speaking to his accusers. He's speaking to the Jews who are making accusations to him or against him. And he said, I know where I've come from. I know where I'm going, but you don't know. You don't understand. You are disbelieving with respect to where I come from and where I'm going. The Jews were denying his heavenly origin. In fact, it's on occasions like this that they would often pick up stones to kill him, because he claimed to be from heaven, claimed to be of God, claimed to be God. Still there in John 8, skipping down to verse 42, Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me, for I came from God, and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. So here again, we have this language of coming or coming down. I came from God, and I'm here. John 13, verse three. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God. So he had come from God, and he was going back to God. Now, we had an extensive discussion in class about this particular passage, and some of the more technical translation issues that happened here. The King James Version actually gets this better, where it says Jesus went to God rather than he was going back to. And again, it makes it a little bit more precise where it doesn't imply a physical change in location. It was not just locomotion. It was something far more significant. When he went to God, it wasn't just a positional change. He was glorified. raised from the dead and glorified. Two more out of John. John 16. Let's consider verses 27 and 28. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father. And then just a couple of verses later in verse 30, Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you. This is why we believe that you came from God. And lastly, John 17, 8. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them, and have come to know in truth that I came from you. And they have believed that you sent me." Of course, that's his high priestly prayer, where he is praying, Jesus is praying here to his Father and saying, my disciples, those who you've given to me, they have received and have come to know in truth that I came from you. So these coming down passages we need to pair with and kind of set alongside the descent passages and see that this is not a change of place. It's not a change of location. Now in addition to these texts from John, and of the Gospel writers, John focuses more theologically and Christologically. It is not John's intention in his gospel to give, as Luke articulated, an orderly account of all that happened with Christ. John's focus is more theological. But John is not the only one who testifies about these things. In Mark's gospel, Mark chapter 1, 24, and we see this also in Luke. What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? And of course, these are demons speaking. What do you have to do with us? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. So even demons recognize that Jesus has entered into that which he has made. He's come in that sense. Matthew 8, verse 29, and behold, they cried out, what have you to do with us, O son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? So here's Matthew's account of a similar event. Then in Mark, back to Mark's gospel, Chapter one, verse 38, he said to them, let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby so that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for. Again, he's not speaking positionally. He's not saying, well, I came to this region so that I could preach. It means that he took on our human flesh. He was born of a virgin in the fullness of time. born of a woman, born under the law. And in that sense, he came. In Mark 2, we see parallel passages in Matthew 9 and Luke 5. In Mark 2, 17, and when Jesus heard it, he said to those, to them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but to those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Once again in Mark, Mark 10, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. So we have to ask ourselves, in what sense did He come? Is it positional? Is it location-derived or location-centered, or is there something far more significant, something deeper, something more mysterious that's happening here? Matthew. Matthew's Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says in chapter five, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Again, he's not speaking, he's not saying I came to this particular mountain on this particular day so that I could accomplish these things. He's saying I've entered into this world, I've taken on your own flesh for this purpose, to heal the sick, to seek sinners, Matthew 10, Matthew 10.35, I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. In Luke 12, verse 49, I came to cast fire on earth, and would that it were already kindled. And then two verses later, verse 51, do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. And then in Luke 19, 10, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. So we need to train our thinking, train our minds to think in terms of the coming of our Savior was a, I can put it this way, a cosmic coming into. This was a supernatural work. It was the one who entered into the very creation that he had made. He is not merely changing location. It's interesting to me in various languages how things are communicated. And even in the English language from various places. We've had two in our congregation who closed on homes yesterday and they began to move. And we often, as Texans or Southerners, we talk about, well, when did you move? And we mean by that, you've moved from one location to another. In the UK, it's more common to say, you changed houses. And so we can, there's different ways of articulating the same thing, but we know in either case, there is a, I was once in one location, That was my address. I no longer abide in that location. I'm no longer existing there. I now exist in another place. For some of you, you could say, well, I came to Conroe. Well, it's because you ceased to be in another place when you came here. Sometimes I feel like our hearts may still be in two places at once, but our bodies, they're only in one place. You can't live in Conroe and in Dallas at the same time. I mean, you can, well, never mind. I was gonna make a political reference there, a voting reference, but I won't do that. We are limited in our finitude. And it is certainly true that according to his humanity, our Lord could not be in two places at once. But according to divinity, his divinity, the whole world could not contain him. The whole world could not contain him. He's not bound by space. He's not bound by location. He's not bound by time. So I'm going to quote from Dolezal once again. He says, of the synoptic, meaning Matthew, Mark, and Luke statements, that I have come. The challenge of those statements is in determining whether Jesus has in mind his coming from heaven or coming from Nazareth. And so we have an interpretive question before us as we consider those passages. Again, think about, we have the conference table, and let's say we wrote each one of those verses on a three by five index card and we just laid them out, almost like a criminal investigator. We have our big board up here. We've got the red yarn to connect dots and things. We're putting this all up here. We're trying to make conclusions from all that we've read. We have an interpretive decision to make. Do we think about those passages as is Jesus speaking about him coming from heaven or is he speaking about I came from Nazareth or Galilee? There's good reason to see evidence of preexistence in those 10 statements examined. Specifically, they confirm the hypothesis that the grammatical form and the angelic parallels point toward preexistence. The grammatical form points toward a deliberate action in coming with a purpose. And the angelic parallels, mostly found in the Apocrypha, confirm that it is heavenly beings who make such statements in their reference to coming into the world. in terms of the specific content of the sayings of Jesus. Jesus is represented as coming to cast fire and division onto the earth and as standing over against the rest of humanity. There's also a possible hint in Mark 2, 17 of Jesus having come to invite sinners to the heavenly banquet. The statements in the mouths of demons echo this heavenly origin of Jesus in that they portray Jesus as one who has come into the world under the control, he's come into the world that is under the control of the servants of Satan. So we have this language that we have to wrestle with. And the conclusion that we must come to from the totality of the scripture, born witness to by the Old Testament, by Moses and the prophets, born witness to by the apostles, is that this coming into, this entering into, this descending to, is not positional. According to his divinity, Jesus does not surrender anything, not even temporarily. not for 33 years while he was on Earth, but nor does he do it occasionally or temporarily during his earthly ministry. According to his divinity, he never ceases to be God. And if we lose sight of that, not only does it give us the wrong interpretation of these passages we've considered, but it does really harm our dependence upon the word Jesus Christ. Now, here's the other thing. Let's think this through. If we think positionally, and we think that Jesus once existed in the place of heaven, he ceased to occupy that place and came instead to earth, then what are the consequences If we're consistent with that reasoning, then what are the consequences when we say, he was raised from the dead, he ascended to heaven, was glorified, and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father? What are the consequences with respect to our understanding of his presence with us? If we're going to be consistent, we say once he was in the position of heaven, then for a time he came to earth, gave up His position in heaven, moved positionally to earth, and then positionally He's moved back to heaven. He's no longer with us. But according to His divinity, He's everywhere. Is your brain at the red line yet? There is a wonderful mystery here, but it's also a great encouragement to us, a great comfort to us. And we'll see in today's sermon text, when Jesus makes this promise to his disciples, some of you will not see death until you see the power of the kingdom come. Kingdom come in glory and power. And I'm going to argue in the sermon that that happens at Pentecost. That's fulfilled at Pentecost, or begins to be fulfilled, I should say, at Pentecost. And in the person of the Spirit of Christ, Christ remains present with us. In fact, he is present with us in a far more substantial, far more real, far more powerful way than he ever was with Peter or James or John when they were eating with him face to face. Can we wrap our heads around that? Sometimes we think, well, if I could just sit with Jesus personally and touch Him, things would be more real. But according to the Scriptures, we actually experience Jesus in a more real way, a more profound way, a deeper way, because He dwells within us and among us in the person of His Spirit. Which is why In John 15 and 16, Jesus says things to his disciples like, it's better for you, it's to your advantage that I go away. And even on, let's say, this side of the cross, isn't that a statement that strikes you as odd? That it's to our advantage that bodily he left us? because we want, we're tempted to think positionally. And this sort of kind of, it's somewhat diagnostic, isn't it? It kind of roots out some lurking in the cobwebs of our minds, some of the wrong thinking that we have about Christ, or things that we've just not really examined or scrutinized in our own thinking. That Jesus was in heaven, but he left there. And we're thankful that he left heaven and he came to earth. But then he left earth and he went back to heaven. And at best, we're a little muddy about that sometimes, aren't we? And at worst, we can actually be somewhat heretical in our thinking and deny, it's a way of denying the divinity of Christ, His full divinity, His true divinity, because He gives up something of His divine nature in order for those things to be true. I think that's enough for today. Looking at some of your furrowed brows, I think that's plenty for today. We'll think some more next week still about some of the things that Jesus has said about his own mission. So that we can begin to put our full picture together and consider the full biblical witness. Thinking about the Old Testament, the law and the prophets, what they say about the mission of Jesus, what Jesus himself says about his mission, and then what the apostles say about the mission of Christ. So that we can, again, discipline ourselves to think in such a way that we don't do violence to the divinity of Christ. All right? Amen. Any questions? Yep. Yes. Yes. We will get there. It's the, the word there that Paul references in Philippians 2 is kenosis, that he emptied himself. And what does this emptying entail? And there's, In many cases, when we add that three little letters at the end of a word, ism, we end up in trouble sometimes, right? So we all have to believe, because the scriptures say so, in kenosis, that Jesus emptied himself. But kenoticism is a heresy. So yes, we need to spend some time with that passage. And I'm not sure we'll get to it next week, but we will get to that because Sadly, even in our reformed world, there's some troubling things with respect to that statement. It's an important one for us. Amen. The spoiler alert is this. Jesus doesn't empty himself of his divinity. He does not give up in that sense. But we do need to think through what does that mean according to the full witness, the full testimony of the Scriptures. Yeah, that's it in part. And what's... One of the mysteries and one of the profound aspects of the passage that we'll consider in our sermon today in Mark chapter nine, with respect to the transfiguration, is Jesus took three witnesses with him, Peter, James, and John, to behold his glory. As if his divinity just breaks through and shines through his humanity. He doesn't cease to be human, but they get a glimpse, they get a preview. of his divine glory. So that reminds us and informs us that the divine glory never left. It was there. But in God's wisdom and providence, those attributes were not on display to the world in every circumstance. Let me pray for us. Father, we are grateful We're grateful for your word. Holy Spirit, we pray that you will help us to think through these glorious truths. Lord, help us to diagnose the No doubt there are latent errors in our thinking. There are things that we have either just assumed to be true, or we've imbibed from other teachings, or we've just not given the time and the study to weigh out all that your word says about the person of our mediator. We pray Holy Spirit, that You will give us the grace to confess those things that Your Word says about our glorious Redeemer, that we might be led to worship Him faithfully, accurately, in spirit and in truth. We ask this in Christ. Amen.