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I'll give you a moment to turn
to the Galatians epistle, to chapter four. Book of Galatians
as well. I'll be making frequent reference,
in fact, we'll read through the entirety in the sermon itself
of article 19 of the Belgian Confession. You can find this
in the Thin Forms and Prayers book on page 172, 172. As you
turn there, I'll mention something else unrelated to the sermon. something of an expression of
gratitude, something of an exhortation. You know, in Exodus, I'm not
Moses, but I do empathize with something about Moses' life,
and maybe you do as well, that early on in his life, he has
this sense of calling that God wants to use him, but the way
that he goes about it is not the way that the Lord would have
him to go about it, and he proceeds to beat a man to death, and then
waits 40 more years before he really gets going in the ministry
that he had hoped for. And when I was 18, I already
had a sense that I felt called to ministry, and I had gone to
Bible college, and I didn't beat anyone to death, but the very
first sermon that I ever had the opportunity to give was over
an hour and a half long, and they brought me a stool partway
through, I think, to indicate this is getting long, and I took
that as an encouragement. And I am a couple sermons away
now from my 500th sermon at this church. And you've heard all
of them. And I have a certain affection,
particularly for the evening crowd, because in the first five
years, I was mostly preaching the evening. And you heard a
lot of the worst sermons, structurally and otherwise. And this church
has been so encouraging and has been patient and has been a church
of prayer. And when I think about our decision
to take on an associate with Reverend Smith and our desire
now to have a summer intern, pray and trust and endure. And I don't say that with respect
to Mike Luckman, I haven't heard him preach very much. but just
all interns and all pastors. Pray that God will bless it and
pray that he gives us the heart to be receptive and to benefit.
It's so exciting to me to be a part of a church that cares
about another generation of ministers. Now, that being said, I trust
that you're in Galatians 4. This morning, we had the opportunity
to see in a story something reflecting Christ's two natures, divine
and human. And we continue to see him this evening in Belgian
Confession 19, seeing what we as a reformed Christian church
have confessed for hundreds of years and really just part of
the broader historic Catholic church. Churches who all believe
essentially the same gospel throughout the ages, salvation by grace
alone through faith in Christ alone, and a Trinitarian God
and a Christ who is truly God and man. And this evening we
come to the question, how do we speak about the relationship
between Christ, humanity, and his deity? And are there things
that we should avoid both in our thinking and in our speaking?
And then what are some of the practical consequences of those
beliefs? Now, the place that we're starting
at this evening, we're not going to linger here the entire time,
but we're going to look at a number of passages related to this.
The place we begin is the Epistle to Galatians, where the apostle
is writing to a church that is tempted to fall away from a true
understanding of the gospel. They're being enticed to a view
that would tell them that they contribute through their works
something of their own salvation. And here, the apostle is laying
out to them in part that Christ's nature, or really I should say
natures, separates him from us in that only he can provide redemption. We cannot contribute to it because
we don't have the qualifications of being truly God and truly
man. So let's begin here at verse four and see what it says in
Galatians 4, verse four. 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 faith. Let's ask the Lord's special
blessing. Heavenly Father, please work by your spirit this evening.
Illumine us not only to have a factually correct understanding
of what you have revealed in the word and what you have guided
your churches to confess for millennia, but please grant us
to be illumined with a sense of, a spiritual sense of your
presence, your love, your power, in order that we would give back
to you a fresh fullness of gratitude, and also that our faith would
be strengthened, and that we would be eager for the inheritance
that is ours. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. The first three centuries of
the Christian church were characterized in a sense like all the centuries
of the Christian church, a time where there was almost constant
debate going on among those who professed to be Christians. That
has always been a part of being in this world, Christ warned
us, and we're told in Jude to contend for the faith delivered
once for all. Contending is a part of the Christian
life. But something that sets out those first three centuries
from everything that follows after, concerns the primary focus
of debate during that time. Now, all kinds of things are
being debated among people, but the focus of those debates was
not some of those things that maybe, if you're less familiar
with the early church, it's not the things that maybe you would
have thought were the issue. For instance, they were not having debates
over creation days. even though pagans believed radically
different things. That was not the primary focus
of the church at that time, or over the order of salvation,
or the ordination, for instance, of women. My point here is not
that none of those things matter. It's that all of those things
pale in significance to the question of who is Jesus Christ? Because on all those other issues,
if you get them exactly right, but you get Christ wrong, then
you don't know him and there is not salvation. How we understand
the relationship between Christ's human and divine natures goes
to the very core of whether or not he is worthy of worship and
whether or not he is able to save us. And that's why it's
so important to come back to this and to have something of
the tools to explain these things, especially to the young and to
the less mature. And so we have an opportunity
this evening to think about that and to be reformed in that, perhaps,
or to be renewed in it. Now, what I want to do is lay
this out under three main headings. First, we're going to look at
some pitfalls to avoid when we speak or think about Jesus. Some
pitfalls to avoid. And then secondly, I want to
present to you the scriptural understanding, which is also
our confessional understanding. What do we confess, the Bible
says, about Christ's two natures? And then I want to provide just
some of the practical responses. What does the Lord call us to
do in response to this? So let's start first, pitfalls to avoid.
Last week, Reverend Smith laid out one of those in greater detail
that I'm not going to focus on as much, which is to think of
Christ's divine and human natures as mixed. Like he's a kind of
amalgam. And certainly pagans believed
in that sort of thing. You have somebody like Hercules,
who's semi-divine. And so he's more than a man,
but he's less than God. And in the early church, especially
given the context of paganism, Greek and Roman paganism all
around them, many people who are first hearing about Christianity
and hearing about Jesus' miracles wondered if that's what he was.
And when they heard about the virgin birth and that God is
his father, they did, understandably, coming from that background,
think, yeah, maybe Jesus is some kind of mixture. Cuz I mean,
after all, he was able to die, and God can't die. This is not
what the Bible teaches. There is no mixture of the two
natures. Rather, they are united with
one person, always remaining distinct in their character,
as we'll come to see. But a different pitfall that
we need to avoid, and one that has cropped up, I think, more
in some modern circles, is thinking of the person of the son really
as two persons. as if there's God the Son and
then the man Jesus. Now, this has existed as an idea
since the early church. There was a group of people,
they went under a lot of different names based on whatever different
teacher was most influential at that time who taught that
view, but a basic view called adoptionism. In this view called
adoptionism, there was a man, Jesus, who was unusually good
and was a prophet. At the time of his baptism, The
Father adopted him and perhaps in some sense overshadowed him
by the second person of the Trinity. And so he's kind of being controlled.
And in this view, it's not that there's a personal union of these
natures, but a moral union. That Jesus is just, to put it
frankly, on the same page. He's on the same page, but he's
a different person. This is not at all what we believe. Now,
where does that come up in modern circles? Sometimes it's because
we're wrestling with parts of the Gospels where Jesus seems
to indicate a certain ignorance about facts. We go, well, isn't
he the son of God, so doesn't he know? So what would he mean
that he doesn't know the day or the hour of something? I confess
to you, I don't have a perfect handle. I just know other parts
of scripture that are clear enough that I can say that is not the
correct answer. To say that there are two persons rather than one,
Rather, the scriptures are uniform in their witness that there is
one person. And if I had to venture a way
of describing what's happening when Jesus expresses his not
knowing things, he's speaking according to his humanity. But
at the same time, he could, if he desired, speak according to
his deity, and they're both true, because they're different ways
of knowing. Hear what it says in Galatians 4, verse 4 again,
which demonstrates the unity of the person and the distinction
of the nature. But when the fullness of time
had come, God sent forth his son. Now, when it says the fullness
of time, you think that the promise that the son was coming was given
minutes, hours after the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. And
then they're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting and
they're waiting and ages are passing and sin is happening
and people are dying. And where is the promise of the
Messiah? The Lord has his own purposes.
When the fullness of time had come, or when it was complete,
God sent forth his Son. And the point here is to recognize
the pre-existence of the Son. He sent forth his Son, meaning
his Son already was. There was no, you know, that
in the birth the Son came into being, or the Son became his
Son when he was adopted at his baptism, or something like that.
God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive
adoption as sons. And because you are sons, note
in verse six, God has sent the spirit of his son, singular singular,
not plural plural, not the spirits of his sons as if according to
his humanity, he has a distinct personhood and his deity has
a distinct personhood. There's one identity that is
divine, but has taken to himself human nature. Now compare that
to 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9. Again, stressing the preexistence
of the divine son. 2 Corinthians 8, 9. For you know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet
for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might
become rich. When is that talking about? When
was Jesus rich? And at what point did he become
poor? Well, we know clearly from the Gospels, he wasn't born into
a rich family. He was born into an impoverished
family. So it's not like at some later
point he gave up all of his money so that we might get his money.
The riches here is talking about spiritual riches and the glory
of being in right standing with God on high. And Christ for a
time set aside the visible splendor that he was receiving from created
beings. When we talk about his emptying
himself, he lost none of his divine attributes. But he was
willing to, in that sense, go for a time without receiving
the kind of visible splendor that he enjoyed when he was manifesting
his glory in heaven. And among us, he suffered himself
to endure all kinds of poverty. All kinds, not just monetary.
All kinds of poverty. Poverty of anguish, of sorrow,
of being an outcast in many respects. in order that you might become
rich. Now, how does our Belgian Confession
deal with this? It underscores the pitfall. You
find this again on page 173 in Article 19, when it says this,
we believe that by being thus conceived, the person of the
Son has been inseparably united and joined together with human
nature in such a way that there are not two sons of God, nor
to persons. Without belaboring it, I want
you to know and understand. Maybe you're aware of this from
church history. You may say, I've never known anybody who
was really teaching this. It was extremely rampant in the
first 300 years, and why can we give thanks that it has largely
not reared its head, and it has in certain ways. Some of these
Christological errors manifest in, say, Mormonism, where Jesus
is a created being, likewise, Jehovah's Witnesses. But for
the most part, the Trinitarian heresies have stayed dead. Why
have they stayed dead? When you go, oh, this seems so
obvious. Because for 2,000 years, on a fairly regular basis, pastors
have been bringing this up again, and just making sure that nail
does not wiggle back out of the wood. That is what we're doing
here tonight, to make sure Trinitarian heresies stay dead. And in this,
what do we say then? It provides the correct way of
speaking, but two natures united in a single person, with each
nature retaining its own distinct properties. Now when it says
nature's here, that's talking about a kind of substance or
a kind of being, something that possesses attributes that we
can describe. But personhood is reflecting
identity, consciousness, and so there's one person, two natures,
not a mixture or a temporary union. This then brings us to
consider the biblical understanding. What does it mean doctrinally
and practically, as we read here, for each nature to retain its
own distinct properties? This brings us to our second
main division. What is the scriptural and confessional
understanding of Christ's union? Sometimes called the hypostatic
union. If you ever encounter that, it's
talking just Two natures, one person, inseparable. Look again,
Belgian Confession, Article 19, and then we'll see some Bible
passages that underscore this or really undergird it. Article
19, thus his divine nature has always remained uncreated, without
beginning of days or end of life, to quote Hebrews, filling heaven
and earth. And we saw that this morning,
didn't we? While Jesus, according to his human nature, is asleep
in the boat, According to his divine nature, he is the definition
of awake. As Jesus was a young infant learning
Aramaic and Hebrew. You ever picture that? Every
toddler is adorable, and I wish I could have met Jesus as a two-year-old
and heard some of his first words, but that's the irony. His first
words, he is the word. And he never, according to his
divine nature, was learning anything. This is a mystery beyond comprehension,
but it is something for adoration. And if I could wrap my head around
it, he would not be worthy of worship. But it is adorable. It's something, I don't mean
adorable in that two-year-old toddler sense anymore. I mean
something that incites love and admiration. When you think that
for God, this was the mystery hidden from eternity, his plan
from the ages to save sinners, was not that he would just send
in someone else, but he himself would come down and take to himself
what seems an unbridgeable thing. The infinite substance of the
divine can never become merged with that which is finite. But
personhood provides the nexus point where two can be united,
and this is the genius of God. And so, what do we read in scripture?
It says Colossians 1, verse 16, Colossians 1, 16, Christological
passages in the Bible, and there's much more there that we can't
mine tonight. By him, speaking of Jesus, all things were created,
which means Jesus was not created. That's one of the passages I
like to go to when speaking with the people who come to my door
to be evangelized. You know the people I'm talking
about. In God's providence, that's why they're there. If they're
at your door, I highly recommend don't hide from them. Don't be
too busy. Have a kind of rap sheet of a
few verses. If nothing else, have something
written down. You can ask me and I'll give
you something. And just put it in their hand and close the door
again. But you have an opportunity to speak with people. And this
is one of the passages I go to. By him all things were created
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through
him and for him. And so it's not just that he's
the demiurge that God used, you know, the first created thing
that God used to create other things. That's the Jehovah's
Witness view, by the way. That Jesus is a created thing
that God used to make other created things. No, all things are created
for him. And that is irreconcilable with
the fact that scripture says all things are created for God.
And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. I am not an astrophysicist or
the son of an astrophysicist. I have read people talk about
how they are confused, why particles ordinarily manifest in one place
and not another place. It is so far beyond my pay grade,
but I am so grateful that when those astrophysicists are climbing
the mountain of knowledge and understanding, and they're about
to pull themselves up over the precipice with all of their learning
to understand how exactly and why are the molecules where they
are right now, that at the very top, they'll find a gathering
of simple Christians having a picnic who have been there the whole
time because they believed this passage that told them Christ holds all
things together. How he does it, I don't know,
and I don't have to, but he is truly God, and he has never set
aside nor can he set aside his divine attributes. Belch Confession
Article 19 then identifies the properties of his human nature,
and stresses that these are never set aside either, before or after
his resurrection. Religion Confession 19, look
again, where it's speaking of following his resurrection. His
human nature has not lost its properties, because there were
those who were stating that after the resurrection, attributes
of Christ's humanity are divinized. And you'll find that in Aspects
of Lutheranism, where Christ's physical body is said to be ubiquitous
everywhere. And this is them trying to understand
the Lord's Supper. In what sense is Christ here?
And we would say he's sacramentally here. And spiritually, we are
taken up by the Spirit to Christ in order that we might receive
through faith. But this is what it's dealing with. So it says,
his human nature has not lost its properties, but continues
to have those of a creature. It has a beginning of days. It
is of a finite nature and retains all that belongs to a real body.
Do you remember the part, remember after Jesus is raised and the
disciples are looking up to heaven and the angels say to them, why
are you looking up? He's not here, but he'll be back. He's not here and they're not
talking about his divine nature, which is omnipresent. They're
talking about his humanity. And Jesus' humanity really is
truly circumscribed. It's not infinite because he
is God. Truly because he's also human,
he's in a place and it's not here. And that means our flesh
is somewhere. Someone with our nature has already
gone into the age to come. The age to come is not simply,
so often we think of the age to come as a point on a linear
time, The age to come, you know, that's 200 years from now, or
maybe that's 2,000 years from now, or 20,000 years from now.
The age to come is over there. Yes, in a sense, the age to come
is brought to its fullness at Christ's bodily return, but the
age to come is also a mode of being, and Christ is the first
fruits of that age to come. He's part of the, according to
his humanity, his humanity is participating in what the new
creation is like. and yet it is still human. And
we go on, even though he, by his resurrection, gave it immortality,
that nonetheless did not change the reality of his human nature,
for our salvation and resurrection depend also on the reality of
his body. This was the great argument in
the book of Hebrews, and Hebrews chapter seven in particular.
In order for you to have the confidence that we need when
we stand before God, we need a mediator who's truly God and
truly man. One who can represent us perfectly
at all times. Hebrews 7 verse 25, consequently,
he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through
him since he always lives to make intercession for them. And the intercession he's making
is not just according to his divine nature, but is a true
human being interceding for you. You ever think about that? Let's
put it that way. There is a man in glory who prays
for you. There is a man in glory who thinks
about you. That's not fictional language. That's the reality of the strange
but true world of scripture. And perhaps the greatest wonder
And the greatest mystery is that even through the gates of death,
Christ, according to his divine person, was never separated from
humanity. And that means that while his
body and soul were for a time separated, his human body and
his human spirit were separated from each other, just as all
human beings who die experience that for a time, nevertheless,
His divine person remained united with both his human body and
his human soul through death. Have you ever thought about that?
So that what happens to Jesus while his body is in the grave?
His spirit didn't just sleep for a few days in the body. His
spirit was doing the kind and having the kind of experience
that our spirits will have in the interim before the resurrection. Christ is experiencing spiritually
the grave, Hades. Sometimes you have wondered why
in our Apostles' Creed we say that Christ descended into hell.
The Greek term for hell can be used in multiple ways, and frequently
it's just the grave, Hades, grave. And Christ descended in a twofold
way. His body certainly went into the ground. But also his
spirit experienced what we would call a lower state, in the sense
that it's lower than what God's long-term and ideal plan is,
the union of body and soul. Christ, now not in a way where
he was suffering, he had finished, but he experienced that passage
into afterlife. This is why he's able to say
to the man on the cross, the thief next to him, today you
will be with me in paradise. And he doesn't just mean with
the second person according to his divine nature. He means your
spirit's headed there and my spirit is headed there. What
a comfort for the believer to know that in passing from this
life, we pass not merely, although it would be blessed, into the
glorious presence of the ways that God manifests his divine
nature in heaven that seems to terrify everyone who ever comes
into contact with it. You know, Isaiah coming into
the presence of the throne and falling on the ground, terrified.
Similarly, Daniel. But we pass from this life, and
the first thing that we'll be brought into presence with, as
I read in scripture, is the presence of the resurrected son, whose
own body is the assurance that our day of resurrection comes
to. And so this is deeply essential to us. Belgian Confession 19
again, and finally for the article. But these two natures are so
united, together in one person that they are not even separated
by his death. So then what he committed to his father when
he died was a real human spirit which left his body. But meanwhile,
his divine nature remained united with his human nature, even while
he was lying in the grave. And his deity never ceased to
be in him, just as it was in him when he was a little child,
though for a while it did not show itself as such. That's, I can't wrap my head
around that, but I believe it. Every other human being who has
died did not simultaneously experience death and experience a dead body,
their own body. Their spirit has departed, follow
that? By definition, your body has died, your spirit has left
to wherever's next. But God the Son has the experience
per se of both dead body and dead spirit. Spirit taken up
to him. What does that mean for us practically?
And by way of conclusion here, I just want to draw your mind
back to a few things here. Anything less than this doctrine,
as difficult as it may be in some sense, which you might say,
well, it seems pretty straightforward. That's because you haven't pondered
it deeply enough to run into the parts where you go, ah, how
does, ah, that's hard. I'm telling you, you'll reach
those limits if you spend the time. But anything less than this is
neither scriptural, it won't line up with the data of scripture,
nor does it present to us a Christ who is worthy of worship and
able to redeem. If Christ is just a good teacher,
then we are all doomed, because my sins are against an infinitely
worthy being who is beyond all time. I need an infinitely valuable
redeemer. Galatians 4, verse four through
seven, again, what we began with, 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're sons, God
has sent forth 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. Because of who and what he is,
you have, I can't make you receive it by
faith. You're going to, I speak to everyone who believes here,
you're going to live forever with a joy that doesn't compare
to anything you've ever known. What a gift. Let's close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you and we praise you for sending forth your son for our salvation,
to conquer death by his power, and to die for us in the weakness
of his flesh. We praise you and we thank you,
and we ask that you would help us to be in awe of you, but this
cannot come to pass unless you work by your spirit again and
again, and we ask it not for this night only, or only for
ourselves, but that throughout the world you would be always
renewing, always bringing back your people to confess and to
rejoice in our unique and perfect Savior. For in his name we pray,
amen.
He Sent Forth His Son
Series Belgic Confession
| Sermon ID | 43024034574527 |
| Duration | 31:26 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Galatians 4:4 |
| Language | English |
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