Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayer for 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, every one 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. in his provision had provided
that there could be a substitute. 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, I'll go to prison for you, you can get out, 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 relation 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 save, 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
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 realise 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 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 three, 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 sinners
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 four,
surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet
we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 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 plowers in Psalm 129, the plowers have plowed 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 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 eight 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 that daffodil
and they both came from the same source. and is 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. He remembers 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 five. 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 he 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. You know 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 around 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 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, a 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, you
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.