Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the first epistle of Paul
to Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 5. 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 5
and it is particularly the four words the man Christ Jesus. I'll read verse 5 and verse 6
they go together For there is one God and one Mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for
all to be testified in due time. 1 Timothy 2 verse 5 The man Christ
Jesus There are some that would deny that the Lord Jesus Christ
is eternally God, that he has a divine nature, that he is one
with the Father. There are others that will say
that he wasn't truly and really a man. But the truth is set forth
in the scripture is that our Lord was eternally with the Father,
He is one with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. There was
never a time that He did not exist, there never will be a
time when He ceases to exist. The Jews here, in the passage
we read in John 5, they understood when He was claiming that God
was His Father, He was claiming to be God. What I want to specifically speak
on this evening is to highlight the humanity that he really did
take our flesh, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, the seed
of Abraham, sin accepted. in this just to briefly go over
this verse there is one god you must be clear on that there's
not a multitude of gods there's one god But there are three persons
in the Godhead. And we're told here there's one
mediator between God and man. We're told in another place,
no mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. So immediately, there must be
another party. And that other party is us, is
sinners. So the Lord Jesus Christ is the
mediator, one that speaks or bridges the gap between Almighty
God and between man. The eternal God is invisible. No man has seen God nor can see
Him at any time. The Son of God, He hath declared
Him. It is in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ that we truly see God, are able to worship Him
and to believe in Him, He hath exalted His dear Son, and given
Him a name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow. We are told here in verse 6 in
the context, Who gave Himself a ransom for all, not for every
individual of mankind, but for every one for whom the Father
gave to the Son to redeem. All that are saved are saved
because the Lord Jesus Christ has paid their ransom. He settled
the debt that they owed. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins. The Lord Jesus Christ shed His
blood. When I see the blood, I will
pass over you. We have a beautiful time in the
Passover. in Egypt. To be testified in
due time what the Lord Jesus Christ did upon Calvary's tree,
everyone for whom He died, He says, I lay down my life for
the sheep, I have power to lay it down, I have power to take
it again. Those must, in their time that
they are brought to be in this earth, they will be born naturally,
they will be born again. And it will be testified by the
Holy Spirit who are God's people by their being born again, by
their being given eternal life, given a new nature, and be brought
to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is in that way
that we know our election, not by some delving into the secret
counsels or knowledge of God, but by calling. Make known your
diligence to make your calling and election sure. Calling is
vital. Now in this is what we believe,
how we view, the Lord Jesus Christ, which makes our subject this
evening a very important one, is to how we view the Lord Jesus
Christ. And it is especially of comfort,
of great help for the people of God to view his sacred humanity. When we think of this, without
the Lord Jesus coming, there could be no salvation. However
powerful God is, He cannot save, He cannot justly save a sinner
without the Lord Jesus Christ coming and redeeming those sinners. And He could only do that as
He came. And so I want to look firstly
at His ability to save as a man. And secondly, His sufferings
as a man. And thirdly, His dependence on
His Father as a man. Voluntary dependence on His Father. Remembering all the time that
He truly is God, but in a very voluntary, willing way, He submitted
himself, became obedient as a real man. And it's very important
for us. We can almost subconsciously
lessen the Lord's sufferings, lessen how he felt and what he
went through here below as thinking, well, he can't have been like
us, he can't have felt or experience the things like us because he
was God as well. But scriptures assures us that
he did and that he is tempted in all points like as we yet
without sin. And if we are reminded with Elijah
that he was a man subject to like passions as we are, we're
reminded our Lord was as well. He who slept in the ship, he
who was at the well, he was weary at his well, he who needed the
sustenance as we do here below. His ability then to save as a
man. He must be a man to be able to
save his people. He must be in their place. God in his provision had provided
that there could be a substitute Now, if we went to the courts
of our land and we saw a person we liked and they were condemned
to prison, and we said, well, look, I like to stay, I'll go
to prison for you, you can get out. And the law of the land
would say, no, there's no provision in the law of the land for someone
else to take his place. But in God, there is that provision
that for sinful man, if there is one found that can take their
place, They cannot be found amongst mankind because all of them are
under the sentence of death. They must die. But in the Lord
Jesus Christ, we have one who is perfect and spotless, who
the law has no claim under to demand that he should die, so
he may, in a voluntary act of himself, lay down his life for
another and then take it again. He must needs be, and again the
provision was made in God in this, to be a near kinsman, to
be of a near elation, so that he is able to stand in the breach
and take the, or provide life for those that he is to die for. And we have a beautiful time
in the book of Ruth, as Boaz is a near kinsman. And so the
Lord Jesus Christ, He was made under the law and made of a woman. He was brought into a very near
kinsman relationship with men, with sinners. And that could
only be done as He was made truly a man. And so also He is to be
as a man, as we have in the context here, a mediator between God
and men. So in one person he is truly
God, in only one person he is truly man. He is in the position
that now in heaven we read that he appears in the presence of
God for us. And we have and advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And so to be able
to say He must be truly man. He must be truly man to be put
in the law place, or the old preachers used to say room place,
instead of His people, to really emphasise that He is taking our
place in every way. Throughout his life, his perfect
life and obedience, it had to be proved that he was that spotless
lamb as been foretold. When you think of our first parents,
had all the Garden of Eden at their disposal, but at Satan's
temptation, they took of the one forbidden fruit, and so sin
entered into the world and death by sin. Our Lord, when he began
his ministry after baptism, was driven of the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted of the devil. He went forty days without
food or water, and there in that time then Satan came tempting
him. And we only read of the three
as the last temptations, but the first one he brings, that
if thou art the Son of God, command these stones that they may be
made bread. What a temptation to exert his
sonship in that way, but he'd be a slave to Satan, to satisfy
his hunger in that way, but he quotes the word of God, man shall
not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God. Him writer rightly says, our
captain stood the fiery test, and we shall stand through him,
but he had to be a nail in a sure place, as we read in Isaiah,
if there was to hang upon him the sins of all of his dear people,
he must be able to bear that weight. And those of you here
who have known or know something of your sinnership and what that
has borne you down and weighed you down, has been as a heavy
burden, to realize what it must have been for the Lord as a real
man to bear that weight. And we have a little picture
of that in the Garden of Gethsemane, weighed down, sweating great,
drops of blood through the weight that was laid upon him. He had
laid upon him the iniquity of us all. So His ability to save
as a man is vital that we behold our text in this, the man Christ
Jesus. Without Him, there could be no
salvation. We're viewing the Lord Jesus
Christ as truly man. truly flesh of our flesh, bone
of our bone, and in that person of the Lord Jesus Christ, he
suffered, he bled, he died, he rose again, and is in heaven. But secondly, his sufferings
as a man. For this I want to primarily
go to Isaiah 54, sorry Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 sets forth the
sufferings of our Lord. Now throughout this chapter intermeshed with his sufferings
is the benefit and blessings that flow from those sufferings. Now I don't want, I haven't got
time to look at really fully depth both sides, but I found
it very profitable to go through this chapter and to, as it were,
pull out the sufferings so that you see in what ways he actually
suffered, and to know, just as an overall thing, that each of
these sufferings had a benefit, a blessing, to us. And so when
you look, if you look at verse 3, we see that he was despised
and rejected of men. So his sufferings, part of his
sufferings, was on account of his fellow men, how they despised
him, they rejected him, they tried to cast him down from the
hill, they all forsook him and fled. Remember that, the church
of God, you and I, we will also suffer from our fellow men. If they have done these things
in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? The Lord said,
if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you. And so his
sufferings, we can come alongside him, we can get this picture.
that what we endure in this world, this is what our Lord did. And
in Hebrews 12 we read that we are to consider him that endured
such contradiction of sin as against himself, lest ye be wearied
and faint in your mind. As a real man he endured that. Then we have, going from man,
what our Lord is now going to suffer, as what He is smitten
by God, His Father. And so you find in verse 4, So
we're going from man afflicting him to now God, his Father, afflicting
him. And of course on the cross, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And we think of those who
have walked this path, Joe, oh that I knew where I might find
him. We have the same hiding of the
face of God from His people as well, but we are to understand
here as a man that he should suffer in that way. Then we go
back to his body, as it were, in verse 5, and now he is being
wounded. Now he has had his stripes, like
the flowers in Psalm 129, the flowers are ploughed upon my
back. So now we have a picture, not
of men despising him, not of God smiting him, But now he's
being whipped. Now he's being nailed to the
tree. Now he's having the thorns pressed upon him. Now he is suffering
in that excruciating pain of body. And we're to remember this. As a real man, he suffered. And those of you that have had
broken limbs or puncture wounds or pains of body, you know what
it is to have agonizing pain. a real man. Then we go from his
body to that which was laid upon him as a in a spiritual nature,
we've already referred to it, verse 6. Our iniquities were
laid upon him, the Lord had laid on him the iniquity of us all. We know what it is, least those
quickened by grace, is to want to have our own iniquities put
on us so that we feel them. Remember not the sins of my youth.
Against thee, the only, have I sinned and done this evil in
thy sight. You read Psalm 51, but those
of us who know it, you know what we have felt in our own souls.
And the Lord Jesus Christ, pure, spotless. If we had a piece of
white paper and you put a black coal dust on it, you'd notice
it straight away. If it was a black piece of paper,
you'd never notice it. We're like that black bit of
paper, but our Lord is spotless. Some of us, where we've been
quickened by grace, if we were to go into the dens of iniquity
in London, it would pain our souls. I hope it would. We really
pain it. We want to get out of there.
We wouldn't want that sort of thing to be upon us. We wouldn't
want to hear those things. But we're sinners. And the Lord,
he came into that. How long shall I suffer you?
How long shall I be with you? That was part of his sufferings,
and to have it laid upon Him, His people's sins. Then we have
in verse 7, He was oppressed and He was afflicted, oppressed
and afflicted. Another thing that we can go
through, we can experience ourselves, oppressed from one another, and
be afflicted, and yet we read that he opened not his mouth. So he opened not his mouth. Then we read in verse 8 that
he was killed, he was stricken, he was cut off, and in Philippians
we read there that he was obedient even unto death, the death of
the cross. I think one of the most important
things to think of the Lord as a real man is him facing death. He had never walked that path
before. You and I have never walked that
path before. The Lord Jesus Christ had to
experience these things. By his divinity, he could know
about them. We can know about things, but
to experience them and actually enter into it and enter into
death just think on that what our lord suffered as a real man we have in verse 10 how it pleased
the lord to bruise him he hath put him to grief again the emphasizing,
here is our Lord as a real man. He is enduring the wrath of God
in the place of his people. He's enduring in himself, we
might say for his whole life, but especially coming to the
cross, what his people would endure for an eternity in hell
if he wasn't to redeem them. And yet all that he endured was
in his humanity as a real man. But our Lord, as a real man,
also had a soul, body and soul. He didn't take on him the nature
of angels, which is only spirit. He didn't take on him the nature
of bulls and goats, which is only flesh, but the seed of Abraham. And what needs to be redeemed
is the body and soul of the people of God. When the dying thief
died, the Lord just said to him, this day shalt thou be with me
in paradise. His body was still on the cross.
The body is laid in the tomb and at the last great day that
shall be raised when the Lord comes again and the soul and
body, new body, rejoined eternally with the Lord. A celestial body,
a terrestrial body. As we are born the image of the
earthly, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly. You might
think of a daffodil as it's born the image of the bulb that's
put in the ground and dies, so it shall bear the image of the
new daffodil that rises up nice and green and a beautiful flower
on it. They look very different, but they're both daffodil and
they both came from the same source. And he's a beautiful
type in springtime, the resurrection. And so, our Lord Jesus Christ. He had a soul, and we read in
verse 11, He shall see the travail of his soul, who are marked for
the people of God. They're brought to be a living
soul, quickened into divine life. They've got spiritual exercises,
spiritual eyes, spiritual ears. He that hath an ear, let him
hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. By nature we've
got a soul, but that's a dead soul. It doesn't hear the natural
man receive it, not the things of God. Neither can He know them
because they are spiritually discerned. And so the Lord suffered
in that way the same as in our souls as well. Every quickened
soul will know something of the sufferings of our Lord. Then
in verse 12, He was numbered with the transgressors, numbered
with sinners. And our Lord is with them as
well. And often, the world and Satan will cast us in as if we
were the same. Our name cast out as vile, rejected,
just as if it was just like a thief or a robber. And the Lord was
numbered amongst those thieves. And so in very many ways, the
sufferings of our Lord, the sufferings as a man, a real man, And don't
let us entertain the thought and say, well, he was God as
well, and so that lessened all of his sufferings and all of
his pain. No, that is to take away from
the Lord what he actually endured, and it is also to take away from
us the knowledge that he is a sympathising high priest. He knoweth our frame. remembereth that we are dust,
he feels for our distress, he feels for our pain, he knows
the path, he walked it before us. I want to look then lastly
at his dependence upon his father. Now this is one reason why we
read the portion that we did in John chapter 5, and in that
portion We have the statement there in verse 19 and 20. Then answered Jesus and said
unto them, verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing
of himself. But what he seeth the Father
do, for what things whoever he doeth, these also doeth the Son
likewise. For the Father loveth the Son,
and showeth him all things that himself doeth, and he will show
him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. Now this
is in no wise, taking away that our Lord is truly Eternal God. But this is his voluntary humanity. This is him putting himself in
the position of his people. And this is very clearly taught
by the Lord himself throughout these chapters. You go to John
chapter six and verse 57. As the living Father has sent
me and I live by the Father. So he that eateth me, even he
shall live by me. And later on, when they were
saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? He says,
the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are
life. Thy words were found, I did eat
them. Man shall not live by bread only,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Our
Lord Jesus Christ walked that way. His people have to walk
that way as well. And so, they walk together in
that. If we then go to John chapter
8, and we read there, in verse 28, Then said Jesus unto them,
When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that
I am He, and that I do nothing of myself. But as my Father hath
taught me, I speak these things. He that sent me is with me, the
Father hath not left me alone, for I do always those things
that please Him. And he is setting forth again
that willing dependence and need of the Father in chapter 12. And verse 49, 50, the last verses
in that chapter, I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which
sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say and what I
should speak. And I know that his commandment
is life everlasting. Whatsoever I speak, therefore,
even as the Father said unto me, so I speak. Obedient unto death, even bringing
the words of the Father, the words of God as a man. And when you think of us in the
ministry, the only authority that we have is the Word of God.
As a man, we bring the Word of God that is given to us in the
Holy Inspired Word. That is what we bring, and that's
our authority. If we go on then to John 14 and
verse 24. We read, He that loveth me not
keepeth not my sayings, and the word which ye hear is not mine,
but the Father's which sent me. All the time, there's the emphasis
here of his dependence upon his Father. And then we have, if
we go, there's many passages we could turn to in this, but
in Mark's Gospel and chapter one, verse 35, He read, In the morning, rising
up a great while before day, he went out and departed into
a solitary place and there prayed. Psalm 121, beautiful psalm, I
lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My
help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. He said
that that psalm is a beautiful psalm pointing to the Lord Jesus
Christ, his dependence upon his Father. When some would render
that, will I lift up my, or will my help come from the hills?
No, it comes from the Lord. But when you think, the Lord,
he worked the miracles, the loaves and the fishes, he sent away
the disciples, he went up into the mountain and ran about Galilee,
there's four mountains, he went up into the mountain, spent whole
nights in prayer unto the Lord. Well might the Lord say, My help,
I look to the mountains from whence cometh my help. This is
where I go to prayer. This is where I have communion
and fellowship with my father night after night. This is where
he speaks to me, gives me his word. This is where I get my
strength from. Making it very clear, my help
cometh from the Lord. And you read that, that's Jehovah,
the help of the Lord. was in his father. And we read,
of course, angels ministered to him, the helps that he had
through life. And this is not in any way diminishing
his Godhead, but a voluntary humbling, submitting himself,
putting himself in our place, in our position, and receiving
those benefits and blessings from his father. And this is
why And of course in Philippians, obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross, wherefore God hath highly exalted him,
given a name which is above every name. Obedient because the Father
gave him a command, what he should say, what he should do. He fulfilled
his Father's will. He walked that out. And in that
then, he wrought out the salvation for the people of God. He also
gives us a beautiful example as well, as an example of obedience,
following the Lord Jesus Christ in this way. being obedient,
and we think of the passage again that we read, and the Lord speaking
of that last day, and those that shall come forth, they shall,
that have done good unto the resurrection of life, they that
have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation, not salvation by
their works, but their works are a fruit of faith and a fruit
of what the Lord has wrought in, so that they imitate Christ
in the obedience to his word. In the beautiful intercessory
prayer in John 17, our Lord says, I have given them thy word and
the world hath hated them. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
incarnate and the eternal word, and with the people of God being
given that word, thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light
unto my path. That is how we are to walk, the
same as our Lord walked, as a man, depending upon the word, the
word of his Father. And may we be really encouraged
and strengthened in this, because our whole salvation is wrought
by the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou only hast wrought all our
works in us. The Lord told us so clearly in
John 15 with the type of the vine, I am the vine, ye are the
branches. The branch cannot bear fruit
of itself, neither can ye except ye abide in me. And so it's that
union with Christ. And may we view him as a union
with him, as the God-man. Come, take my yoke upon you.
Learn of me, I am meek and lowly in heart. You shall find rest
unto your souls. Well, may it be this evening
that we get a little light shone on this aspect of view the Lord
Jesus Christ as our elder brother born for adversity, as our near
kinsman, as one that was made flesh and dwelt among us to redeem
us, and one who can fully sympathise us, sympathising High Priest
over the house of God, for he knoweth our frame, he has walked
this earth before us, and he places us on it in his time away. call us forth and call us to
be with Him and then to see Him as He is. May the Lord bless
us with faith to view the Lord Jesus Christ in this way and
to worship Him, God and man, but remembering His sacred humanity. Amen.