You may remain in your seats. It's just one verse. 1st Timothy 3.16. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Our lesson last Wednesday was entitled How God Became Man. I tried to explain the incarnation of God's Son in the child of Mary, the woman who was betrothed to Joseph. With more than a dozen verses, I endeavored to show that the Lord became man. Then Mary and Elizabeth and even the Lord's angel added that the Savior became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of the Lord Jesus. So we have the Lord and the Savior. I didn't try to explain the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. It defies explanation from me. I'll let Brother Fulton fix that. So I simply tried to say, there it is. The word of God says that the Lord came in human flesh and dwelt among us for about 33 years or so. Now I'd like to take that a step farther, examining how God was a man. He became a man, all right? And then for those 33 years there he was, how was he? God in man. In looking at Mary's son, at times we see a human being, similar to her other children, like billions of other people before and since. But Jesus Christ is not exactly like any of the other children that have been brought into this world. Unique. Jesus was God's own eternal son. sent into this world that we might receive the adoption of sons. We might join Christ in the family of God combined in a miraculous, inscrutable way were both Jesus' humanity and Jehovah's deity in one being, one person. So this morning, I have three points for you. I will skim over the first two, hoping that you already know them, and we'll spend a little more time on the third point. The Bible teaches that Christ Jesus, our Savior, is divine. The Bible teaches that Christ is God. He was God. He is God. There are verses like Titus 2.14, where Paul was looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. I know there are unbelievers who will argue that Paul is talking about the appearing of God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. But please keep in mind, God the Father will never appear to anyone. He is a spirit. Paul is not saying that. The apostle is saying that Christ, who is God, shall return, shall appear once again. Then the Apostle Thomas said to Jesus, without any rebuke, without any correction, my Lord and my God, he wasn't praying, he wasn't speaking to the Father, he was speaking to Christ Jesus, the Son, John 20 and verse number 18. And in speaking about Israel, Paul said, whose are the fathers and of whom is concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever, amen. Romans 9.5. Once again, we have a verse here that unbelievers will say, oh, it's separating God from Christ or Christ from deity. But it says that Christ is the blessed God, the God who is worthy of all praise. And from among Many other scriptures I could use, I'll just add one more. The writer of the Hebrews describes Christ as the brightness of God's glory. Christ is the express image of his person. Hebrews chapter 1 and verse number 3. So not only did good men like Thomas and Paul and others refer to the deity of Christ, but he himself expressed it and exposed it. He said, I and my father are one, John 10 30, referring to the shared divine nature. This takes us into the equally inscrutable doctrine of the Trinity. Inscrutable meaning, boy, it's tough to understand. It's really difficult to understand. Jesus later tells us, the Father is in me and I am in him. John 10, 38. And the Father dwelleth in me, John 14, 10. Now the Father didn't dwell in Christ in the same way that Christ or the Holy Spirit indwells us. It was a unique situation. As we see in Thomas, Jesus received worship. We are only supposed to worship God. And the Lord accepted Thomas' worship. And worship also came from unlikely sources, such as demons. There is one occasion, and it's repeated in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, where Jesus dealt with a possessed man who was an attendee in the synagogue. He was a churchgoer. The unclean devil cried out with a loud voice, let us alone. What have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? I know who thou art. Thou art the Holy One of God. So this demon who was apparently aware of more spiritual things than most human beings said, oh, You're the son of God. You are divine. Are you now going to judge us? Are you going to now judge me? Once again, I know believers will deny that this is a declaration of deity, but I respectfully disagree. Jesus, thou art God. Thou art the Holy One. I believe that Jesus' miracles prove his deity. Miracles like raising the dead in his own power, not like Elijah or Elisha. Paul claims that Christ created all things and maintains all things, Colossians chapter one. The same is suggested in a verse I've already referred to in Hebrews chapter one, verse number three, Christ Jesus upholding all things by the word of his power, when he himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. Christ created all things, maintains all things, and he can disrupt all things at the same time. For example, there is water. Christ who created water can say, water become wine, and it does. He is God. He displayed both divine omniscience and omnipotence by telling the disciples who had been out fishing, if you'd pull your nets in and throw on the other side of the boat, I will arrange for you to catch a multitude of fishes. They did, he did, the fish were caught. And on another occasion, the Lord ordained that a fish with a piece of money in its mouth be caught by Peter in order to pay some trumped up tax charges, some taxes. So the Lord has these abilities and we see his deity in his life from time to time. And this subject deserves a message all by itself, but I have to hurry on. There are those scriptures which remind us that Christ Jesus was thoroughly man. But I will add at the outset that he was thoroughly man without man's sin nature. That was possible through the miraculous birth which we looked at on Wednesday when Christ came into this world. Things changed. They were special. In the incarnation, the Son of God came into the world without inheriting the nature of Adam because Jesus' Father was God, the Holy Spirit, not Joseph or any other man. Mary supplied an egg and her womb, but the sinful DNA, which comes from the Father, was not there in Christ. Nevertheless, Jesus was thoroughly human. He had a human family. In Luke 3, we have more than a dozen verses describing Jesus' legal genealogy. Then in Matthew 1, we have 16 verses giving us the details of Jesus' literal ancestors to Mary. So he has a family, an extended family that goes all the way back to Abraham and beyond. And as we saw on Wednesday, he had a mother, like every other baby who was ever born. Did Jesus have a belly button? He most certainly did, just as his siblings did, all other children. The Bible clearly says that Jesus had flesh, being a human being, not flesh like an animal. He said to his disciples after his resurrection, behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me, see. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. He had flesh and bones even after his resurrection. He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. Romans chapter one. Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness that God was manifest in the flesh. That's scripture with which we began this morning. First Timothy 3.16. But in that regard, His soul was not left in hell, and his flesh did not see corruption. Acts chapter two, verse 31. And by the way, Christ possessed body, soul, and spirit as we do. His soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption. And this was after he said in prayer, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. body, soul, and spirit. As we have seen, the Son of God came into this world as a baby. Probably not as large as we have babies today, maybe six pounds at the most, I don't know. And he immediately started to grow. In physical size and strength, he was a true human baby. The child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Luke chapter two, verse number 40, in that context of talking about his birth. Christ Jesus had a physical body, which got physically tired, which required physical sleep. Why did Jesus send his disciples into that Samaritan community while he sat at the edge of Jacob's well? They were sent to buy food, to get meat, to feed the group. And when the woman came out, why did he say, give me some water? because he needed some water. Christ needed to eat, he needed to drink, the same way we need food and water. While on the cross, he said, I thirst. It was not simply to fulfill prophecy, even though it fulfilled prophecy. He really did thirst and they didn't help him. Christ also wept. That's not something I remember the Father doing. But there are a couple more aspects of Christ's humanity which I will save for the third point of this lesson and for the message which is coming up at 11. But here we have two immense continents divided by a massive ocean. We have Christ's eternal deity and his humanity. The humanity which began with his conception inside the womb of his mother Mary. By the way, there is no reason to believe that Christ has always been human. He became human at his birth. It began in time. So how do we bridge these two widely separated biblical facts? We have nothing else with which to compare this doctrine. We can't say, oh, there's a good illustration of it, or we've seen it elsewhere. We have no human or earthly analogies to use. This is unique. It is impossible to fully understand. It goes back to that word inscrutable that I used. It's like the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, it is a part of the doctrine of the Trinity. But the union of deity and humanity is not like the friendships that we have. Here we come from these vastly different backgrounds that Brother Berg just referred to and we join a church and we are one in a sense. It's not like that. And it's not that in Christ there were two separate beings. Every once in a while the deity being showed himself, and at other times the human being showed himself. That's not the way it was. Marriage comes as close as we can get to an illustration, or at least that I could find. But still there are irreparable differences between that illustration and what we see in Christ. While the Bible says two shall become one flesh in marriage, the fact remains that I can be in my study while my wife goes to the grocery store. And we may have the same heart, but sometimes my heart yearns for this while her heart yearns for this. It's not a good illustration. It's not a perfect illustration. These things were never true in the God man. Because of his very special incarnation, Christ became the one and only theanthropic person. The word is theological. It comes from the combination of two Greek words, which we find in our Bible, but not in the combination form, at least I don't think so. Theos, translated God. Anthropos, translated man. Beginning when he was here on earth, in Christ's teaching, in his miraculous supplying of the needs of others, and eventually dying on the cross, it was as the God-man, the theanthropic person, Another term which theologians sometimes use is the hypostatic union between Jesus' deity and his humanity. There was a union of those things. I suppose that those who are predisposed to shy away from theology are not going to use either one of those terms. They've made up their minds. They don't like them. But even though this word hypostatic sounds a little scary, it's really relatively simple. It is the anglicized form of hypostasis. which is the Greek word found in Hebrews chapter 1 verse number 3. Speaking of the Son of God, I think I've used this verse twice already. Speaking of God's Son, the writer says, who being in 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 in the right hand of the majesty on high." The word person is in Greek, hypostasis. According to Webster, it means distinctly personal or constituting a distinct substance. and another dictionary expresses it as the mode of being by which any substantial existence is given an independent and distinct individuality. In other words, when Christ became incarnate, there was created a single person who possessed these two natures. One, he bore all the attributes of deity, and in the other, the characteristics of a human being. That union was not simply theological. It wasn't mystical. It wasn't metaphorical. It wasn't theoretical. It wasn't abstract. It was real. In this person were both God and man. Jesus was the one and only God-man, and he continues to be theanthropic, continues to be. But if someone says he doesn't like the term hypostatic union, because it implies to him some sort of new creature, some sort of demigod like Hercules, then I'll agree and we just won't use that term. But most theologians take it to mean the miraculous unifying of 100% deity and 100% humanity in such a way that neither the deity nor the humanity were hurt in any way, limited in any way. It is to that I agree, and there I'll use the word hypostatic union. Now let me take you to several scriptures which I think unite those two natures. I'm not going to tell you they answer all the questions. I'm not gonna say that they check off all the boxes because you may have a lot more boxes than I have and I've been spending a whole week on this subject. I'm telling you that they illustrate or at least bring together the divine and the human in these scriptures. Please turn to John chapter one. I hope I'm not going too fast. One of the problems with Sunday school is I have a time limit. Austin has a time limit. And sometimes it's just hard to get it all done. So we hurry up and then hopefully have enough time as we go on. John chapter one, verse number one. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. Oh, and the word was God. I won't try to prove it, but the word in this verse refers to the eternal son of 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. I've already referred to the book of Colossians, which tells us that God's son, who is the image of the invisible God, created and maintains all things. Christ is the creator of all things, and he is the creator of life. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, his name was John, and the same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. John was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not. The world was not ready for the theanthropic person, not even the religious world of the Jews. It couldn't recognize him because like us in our study this morning, it requires some faith. It's not just about our ability to grasp all these points. Sometimes we're just going to have to say, oh, that's what John 1 says. And I believe what God says in his word. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. Those which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word was made flesh. and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The Word, the second person of the Godhead, the eternal Son of God, was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we see here in this scripture that the gap between the deity and the humanity were bridged. It's miraculous. It takes faith to receive, but that is what this scripture is saying. The two were united, bridged in the incarnation. and we can behold his theanthropic glory only when we receive by faith the testimony of the word and the revelation which Christ gives of himself. We looked at his birth on Wednesday. 12 years after those scriptures that we looked at the other day, Jesus went to Jerusalem with Mary and Joseph. Turn to Luke chapter two, verse 41. I'll have more to say about this particular scripture in a few minutes. 241, now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. When they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his mother knew it not. But they, supposing him to have been in the company that was traveling that day, went a day's journey and sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, and they found him not. So they turned back to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, after three days, They found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors, the learned theologians, the experts, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard Jesus were astonished at his understanding and answers. When his parents saw him, they were amazed. And his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye, didn't you know that I must be about my father's business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them, because all they could see clearly was his humanity. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. I cannot fully explain. I will explain a little more. in a few minutes, but I cannot explain all of this. I will point out two things, however. With divine knowledge, Jesus conversed with and confounded the greatest religious scholars in Israel with his questions as they asked him questions, his replies. It appears to me that Jesus had, for several years, been increasing in divine wisdom as well as stature. He'd been growing. He was, over time, accessing the infinite knowledge that was his by divine right. But why was it over time? Why wasn't Jesus born with infinite wisdom? I can't answer that. But I will tell you it was the will of God and it was quite natural in a human sense. In Jesus' access to infinite wisdom, there was a blending of the divine and the human. He said to his parents, how is it that you saw me? Wished you not I must be about my father's business? Jesus apparently knew at the age of 12, most likely before that, that there was a special relationship between him and the heavenly father. The others didn't possess this. He was aware of this. He had special responsibilities before his heavenly father. He came into this world in part to become a living revelation of all that God is. But then as soon as his earthly parents told him to return to Nazareth with them, he instantly obeyed. It was required in the law that children obey their parents. Jesus always did. Not to obey would have been sin. Christ never sinned. So as soon as they said to him, all right, you're out of here, he followed them, went to Nazareth. We see the divine son of God behaving like the human son of Mary, sinlessly. And again, there's a bridge between the divine and the human, between Christ's heavenly responsibilities and his earthly responsibilities. In John 8, Christ was in the midst of one of his many debates with the scribes and the Pharisees. He said at one point, ye are from beneath, I am from above. Ye are of this world, I am not of this world. Isn't that a bridge? Christ was not of this world, yet he was in the world when he said that. Eventually the subject turned to Abraham and they said, we be Abraham's seed. And he replied, I know that you're Abraham's seed, but you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my father and ye do that which you have seen with your father. Again, he pointed out that his father and in effect his home was not with these people, was not in this world. Back and forth the argument went for a little while until the Pharisees lost their temper. Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil? At that point, the conversation went back to Abraham, but it ended in attempted murder. When Jesus said, verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am. Jesus could have said, I was there and I talked to Abraham, but he didn't say that. What he said was, just as I was there with Abraham, I have always been. I am the I am. It's a profession of his divine timelessness, his eternality. It was a subtle declaration that he is God. If we had time to read Genesis 12, 13, 14, up to 25, we wouldn't find Jesus the man in any of those chapters. We wouldn't find anyone who was called Christ, but we would find the Lord, Yahweh. And we'd find the angel of the Lord, who I believe was Christ. In Genesis 18, Abraham entertained an angel with a meal and some conversation. But in verse 33, we're clearly told that the Lord was there with Abraham, Jehovah, Yahweh. And in our last lesson, we learned that it was the Lord that Mary brought into the world. Christ Jesus was before Abraham while at the time talking to some first century Pharisees. I am, and I am. Time is something to which God is not confined. God is superior to time. Christ is superior to time. He is both man and God. I probably not clarified the subject of the hypostatic union. I probably haven't even addressed it properly. But I'm convinced that I've shared with you scriptures which give evidence of Jesus' deity and evidence of his humanity and some scriptures which tie them together. I believe it's absolutely necessary that Christ be both God and man in order to be the perfect savior that I need. And that is the subject of the message, which will begin in about half an hour or so. I thank you for your ears.