Doctrine. Doctrine from the Scripture. Well, tonight I want to talk
about Christ's deity and His humanity. His deity and His humanity. Godhead and His humanity. And
here is what He said here in verse 2 of chapter 4, verse John. He said, Hereby I know you the
Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ, now Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Jesus Christ,
that Jesus is his humanity, Christ is his office. His come in the
flesh is of God. That the eternal Son of God came
in the flesh and understands that, believes that, sees the
necessity of that. He's of God. And every spirit
that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh
is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist. You say, well, everybody believes.
No, they don't. No, no. The very minute they
present Jesus as someone who depends on them, they do not
believe that He is who He says He is. Jesus Christ come in the
flesh. And then when we study the person
of our Lord Jesus Christ, Our first message about it, we saw
from Acts 10.43, that to Him all the prophets give witness.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, He opened the disciples' understanding
after His resurrection in Moses, in the prophets, in the Psalms,
all things concerning Himself. And so we saw that all the Old
Testament Promises and prophecies and pictures and types pointed
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Presented a garment that only
He Himself could wear. And then we also, last week or
week before last, studied His incarnation. Him coming into
flesh, His incarnation, where He was and how He came into this
world. The Word was made flesh and sent to dwell among us, tabernacle
among us. And we saw that in His virgin
birth, that that baby born in Bethlehem, that one born of the
virgin, was God, the Eternal Son. And always was the Eternal
Son and will always be the Eternal Son. But once He took upon Himself
flesh, He'll always, always be a man. And we saw the mystery
of it. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh. manifest in the flesh. And we
saw, and this is the thing of all that we got to see, and we
have seen the necessity of the virgin birth. Christ could not
be related to Adam in any way. That's why you have two generations
in the Bible. There's the book of the generation
of Adam. and the book of the generation
of Jesus Christ. When you go through Adams, born,
live, die. In Jesus Christ, no death in
that book of generation of Jesus Christ. None whatsoever. And
so let's look some more at this person who came into the world
as a baby, grew into a boy, attained to manhood, and then at 30 years
of age entered the public ministry. And we need to see clearly, and
we've preached this so many times, and some of you all have heard
this all your lives, and I'm not going to tell you nothing
new, but still yet, we need to see this clearly, who this person
is. If you were standing and saw
him being crucified, and heard him talk on that cross, and says,
you know, I thirst, and then he cried out, it is finished.
If you'd have stood there, you'd have to say, who is this person
that they're doing this to? Who is this person that they
mistreat so? Who is this person they ridicule?
Who is this person that cried out, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? Who is this person? And we need
to clearly see who this person is, the person of Christ, the
Son of God, and man, perfect man. Now the Bible tells us two
things about this person, two things clearly about him. First
of all, it proclaims that He is God, it proclaims His deity,
that He is God in flesh. It teaches us of His deity. And
I'll never forget, I'll remember vividly, I'll remember vividly
years and years ago when I saw and understood that Jesus of
Nazareth, that One that everyone presents that's standing begging
to let them be their Savior, I remember clearly when I saw
His deity, that He was actually God, that He was more than just
Jesus of Nazareth, that Jesus Christ was more than just a man
born into this world, even though He was a virgin born. When I
clearly saw that I am, this is God, and if He's God, He's got
all power and He's got all authority to do with us as He pleases.
And secondly, not only does it proclaim His deity, it also proclaims
His humanity, His sinless humanity, in His person. And those are
the two things we see clearly in God's blessed Word. First
of all, let me give you some evidence and proofs of His deity. First of all, let's take His
names, His titles. The names that's described to
Him, the titles that's described to Him. He's called the Son of
God forty times. Forty times in the New Testament.
He's called his son. He's called God's son. God himself
called out from heaven twice. It says, this is my beloved son,
in whom I am well pleased. This is my beloved son, hear
him. So we see that. And then five
times he's called the only begotten son of God. John 1.18 says this,
that no man hath seen the Father at any time, save the only begotten
Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him, or
told Him out. And when our Lord Jesus, when
He was on the earth, it says, you know, when He was, they talked
about Israel, you know, and the Jewish nation being the husband,
you know, had all the things ascribed to them. And God says,
you know, I've sent them prophets, I've sent them My servants, they
beat them, they stoned them, they run them off. He says, I'll
send them My Son, My beloved Son, and surely, surely they'll
reverence Him. But they said, this is the Son,
this is the heir. Let's kill Him and we won't have
to worry about it anymore. He says, surely they'll reverence
My Son. Now look with me over here in Revelation 1. Revelation
1A. talking about the names and the
titles given to him that proves his deity. And I, you know, I don't have
to prove to you that he's God. But yet, when we see the things
from all the scriptures that point to these, in short, look
what he says in Revelations 1-8. He said, I'm Alpha and I'm Omega.
That's the A and the Z. of the alphabet. And watch this,
the beginning and the ending. Well, there's nothing ever in
it, nothing ever before the beginning. And then he says the ending.
And there's nothing after the end. So Christ is before the
beginning, and he's the ending. And he says, saith the Lord which
is, which was, and which is to come. Watch this now, the Almighty. Look down here in verse 11. I am Alpha and Omega, the first
and the last. So, you see what it says about
him? This is the Almighty. And oh,
beloved, Peter, he preached to the Jews and he says, you know,
you took, you took the just and the holy one. and delivered him
to death and requested a murderer be given you in his place. You
denied the just and the holy one and would rather have a murderer
in his place. And when you go through the New
Testament, I could not tell you hundreds of times he is called
Lord. And the Lord in the New Testament is equivalent to Jehovah
of the Old Testament. And hundreds of times he's called
Lord. And how many times would people come and the first word
out of their mouth is Lord. They come down off the mountain,
Lord, Lord, if you would have been here, Lord have mercy on
me. And now everybody refers to him
as Jesus. You'd rather hear anybody call
him the Lord Jesus Christ. They don't want to acknowledge
him, the Lord with the authority as Jehovah of the Old Testament. And it wears me out. It's one
of my pet peeves for somebody just to refer to Him as Jesus
continually and constantly. That's His humanity. That's the
name of His humiliation. And Lord! If everybody had come
to Him and got anything from Him, the first word out of their
mouth was, Lord! And that's why Paul said, if
they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of
glory. And he was called God. That's
one of his names. They called him God, one of the
titles. Thomas said, Oh, listen, I'm not going to believe He raised
from the dead until I can see and touch myself. And about that
time he said that, the Lord stood before him and said, Reach in
the air. And Thomas fell down and says, My Lord and my God. And, oh, beloved, He's called
Immanuel, God with us. And Paul says, Jesus Christ,
God blessed over all things. Amen. And not only is His name
and His titles prove His deity, but what about the attributes
of God? All the attributes of God are ascribed to him, and
every attribute that God's God was manifested in the Lord Jesus
Christ. What is on this earth? Omnipotence,
having all power. The scripture says he upholds
the world by the word of his power. He must reign till every
enemy is put under his feet, and the last enemy destroyed
will be dead. He must reign till then. And
what about omniscience? omniscience. Our Lord says, nobody
knows the Father. I'm the only one that knows the
Father. And He says, and I'm the only
one that can make you know the Father. And not only that, but
our Lord Jesus Christ says, you may come to Him and say something
about man. He said He needed nobody to testify to Him of man
because He knew what's in man. He knew what's in man. Nobody
had to tell him a thing about anybody. You don't have to tell
him anything about you. You don't have to tell him anything
about what you think, what you feel, what your motives are.
We don't have to tell him a thing. He knows it. Oh, you remember when Philip
went to Nathaniel and said, He said, we found Him who's the
Messiah, the Christ. Who is it? Jesus of Nazareth. He said, can
any good thing come out of Nazareth? About that time the Lord Jesus
was there. And he says, and Israelite indeed
is whom is no God. I mean, whatever was in His mouth,
that's what come out. Whatever's in His head, that's
what come out of His mouth. And the Lord says, But Nathanael,
before Philip ever called you, I saw you sitting under that
fig tree. He said, Oh, now I'm surprised. You surely are surprised, the
king of Israel. And then his omnipresence. Not
only is he omnipotent and omniscient, but he's omnipresent. He says
wherever to, and this is when he was on the earth. He says,
wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, I'm going
to be in the middle of them. Whether they was in Galilee,
or whether it's in Nazareth, or whether it's in Jerusalem,
wherever, if there was two or three gathered, He said, I'll
be right down in the middle of them. You can't do that unless
you can be everywhere at the same time. And all I'm talking
about is deity. And He said, I'll go with you
all the way, even unto the end of the world. And look over here
in John 3.13. This is one of the most amazing
verses of Scripture to me in all the Word of God. Just absolutely
astounding. John 3.13. It just absolutely astounds me.
I don't know how to... I don't know how to... I just
believe it. John 3.13. Talking about our
Lord's deity. Scripture's proving it. That
He was God. The eternal Son of God. He says
in verse 13, John 3, And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but
he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is
in heaven, he came down, he is here, and he is there. Now how in the world does that
be? How can he come down, he's here,
and he's there at the same time? And that's what that's telling
us, unless I'm badly mistaken. And then what about these other
attributes? He's eternal. In the beginning was the Word,
the Word was with God, the Word was God. What about His immutability? Jesus Christ, the same today,
yesterday, and forever. Never changes. And He's preexistent. Before He ever came into this
world, He was preexistent. He says, you know, He's before
all things. He said, Father, glorify Thou
me with the glory which I had with you before the world ever
was. In fact, Paul says this, in Him,
in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily, bodily. So you see, His names prove His
deity. His attributes prove His deity.
And then the offices He holds and fills proves His deity. Oh,
all the offices that our Lord Jesus Christ, God gave to Him,
and He fulfilled those offices and filled those offices, and
they all prove it. What about creation? Say, God created. He created by Jesus Christ. Ain't
that right? All things that was made was
made by Him, was not anything made that was made without Him.
In Colossians, Colossians 1.16 says that by Him all things were
created by Him, whether you can see them or whether you can't,
whether they're a throne or whether they're a dominion, a principality
or a power. He said all things was made by
Him. And not only that, but He preserves His creation. He upholds
it. He upholds it. He upholds it
by the word of His power. And it says in Colossians 1,
it says by Him, by Him, all things consist. You know why things
go on the way they are? Because Christ controls them,
and they're posing. And what about the power to forgive
sins? There was a man who had the palsy. And our Lord Jesus Christ looked
at him and says, they brought him to the Lord to heal him.
Our Lord looked at that man, he couldn't move, paralyzed. He says, oh man, thy sins are
forgiven thee. And immediately they said, who
has power on earth to forgive sins but God alone? He said,
but that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth
to forgive sins, I say unto thee, take up thy bed, and arise, and
go home. That woman taken in adultery,
they was going to pick up stones and stone her. And everybody left, and he says,
woman, Who are thine accusers? No man, Lord. Where did your sin go? Where
did your sin go? Huh? And all beloved, power to
raise the dead. You know, people when they talk
and think about being raised from the dead, they talk about
the last days. But our Lord Jesus Christ says this, He says, you
know that This is the will of Him that sent me, that every
one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting
life, and I will raise him up at the last day. But He also
says, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God, and they that are dead shall
live. So not only does He give us life
from our spiritual death, But when we die and go to the grave,
he's going to be the one to raise us from the dead and change.
He's got the power to change this foul body and make it like
his own body. And I'll show you another law
which said he holds judgments committed unto him. The Father
judge, our Lord says, the Father judges no man that hath committed
all judgment into the hands of the Son. Paul says that God has
appointed a day, and this same Jesus Christ that people ridicule
and belittle and present as a beggar, as weak, as impotent, as nothing,
as nobody, who do not understand what it was for Him to come in
the flesh, and that He is God, they'll have to face the very
one that they've done this to, and He says, the Father, He says,
He hath committed all judgment to the Son, and the hour is coming,
and when Christ Himself then will face them, and they'll look
at Him and say, Oh my! All the things I said about you,
all the things I thought about you. I was talking to a man yesterday.
And this preacher was trying to have a Bible study in his
home. And he had some folks come from
a great big Baptist church. And they was meeting in his home.
He was talking about the atonement. Talking about substitution. They
asked him, these church members asked him, what is substitution?
What do you mean by substitution? They didn't know what it was.
Big members of a big Baptist church never heard of substitution. What have you heard? We've heard
that when Jesus died, he died for everybody. You think anybody's
in hell whom Jesus died for? They said, of course they are.
How do you come up with that? Because they didn't make the
right choice. They didn't exercise their free
will. And you say, do you think it means the fact that Jesus
Christ's blood and death is not sufficient to save whom he ordained
to save, his elect? They did not. That's what I'm
telling you, beloved. Now you think about that preacher
that just those people don't even know what substitution is. What place and judgment will
that man face than people that ignorant of Jesus Christ the
Lord of Glory? You think he knows that Christ
come in the flesh and why He come in the flesh? That's why Paul says, you know,
he says, Christ is the judge of the quick and the dead. And
here's the thing about us when we face Christ in judgment, and
preachers are all the time talking about, you know, we shall all
stand before the judgment of Christ to give an account of
the deeds done in this body, whether they be good or whether
they be evil. Here's the kicker on that. When we face God and
we face the judgment, the Lord Jesus Christ as the judge himself
will have to pronounce every single one of us righteous with
no sin. And the world will stand there
and say, how can that be? I knew them people. They trusted me. They believed
me. They looked to me. My righteousness,
my person, my word, my blood. And He'll clear us of everything.
Oh, my. And then He had power to give
eternal life. He said He'd give unto them eternal
life. God's given Him power over all
flesh that He should give eternal life to as many as... He's been
born. He's got the power to give us
life. Not only raise us from the dead,
but give us this life. And oh, I love this. One of that
proofs that He is deity is our Lord Jesus Christ is worshipped. He was worshipped while He was
on this earth. He was worshipped by His people.
It says how many times did it say they come and they worshipped
Him? Fell down before Him and worshipped Him? After our Lord
Jesus resurrected, they saw Him and they fell down at His feet
and worshipped Him? Oh, Paul said to everyone that
every place that calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus, that
name called on His name means we call on Him and worship. Oh, Stephen worshipped Him, looked
up and said, I see the Lord Jesus standing there. He worshipped
Him while He was stoning to death, while He was dying. And the time
is coming when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord. to the glory of God the Father.
And here's another thing showing our Lord's deity, not His attributes
and His names, not only them, but His offices and His works
and our Lord's own words about Himself. When you know He had
been missing for three days, His mother and daddy found Him,
and He was sitting around talking with all them doctors and lawyers
and all them smart fellows. Twelve years old. His mother
said, Will you be a... Wished you not that I be about
my father's business. Twelve years old. About my father's
business. He come to John. Wanted to be
baptized with John. John said, I indeed need to be
baptized with you. You're greater than I am. You're
glorious. You're God. You're before me.
I'm not worthy enough. Unless it's you. But our Lord
Jesus says, Suffer to be so now. He, beloved, he acknowledged
his superiority over John. And then in all of his temptations,
of all the four temptations he had when he was on the mountain
with the devil, every single time the devil said this, if
thou be the Son of God, if thou be the Son of God, if thou be
the Son of God, if thou be the Son of God. And our Lord Jesus
Christ never said he wasn't. Never said he wasn't. And didn't
let me hurry on. So we have proof of his deity.
Secondly, about his humanity. Talking about the person of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Of his virgin birth. Proves that
he was a man. You know, Paul said in 1 Timothy,
he says, you know that One mediated between God and men. Who is that?
The man. The man, Christ Jesus. And the
Word was made flesh. And when He was made flesh, when
He assumed human nature and took humanity unto Himself, there
was nothing extraordinary about His looks. Nothing extraordinary
about it all. I was reading yesterday, and
I forget where I was reading it at, but they were talking
about this making a painting. And they had Christ in his mother's
womb with a little halo on his head, even in his mother's womb. Some Catholic come up with that.
You can believe that. Nobody had any sense would do
that. But anyway, there was nothing extraordinary about his looks.
When he met the woman at the well, she says, you being a Jew,
just could have seen he was a Jew. Don't have nothing to do with
Samaritan. There was nothing extraordinary about him. How
many times did they look at him? And he was just Jesus of Nazareth.
He was of Galilee. We know his mother Mary. We know
his brothers and his sisters. We know all of them. What in
the world is this special about him? And also, he, beloved, was
made flesh. He became a man. He still had
his human body after his resurrection. Proves that he was human. Proves
that he is humanity. When Thomas said, he said, I'm
not going to believe it except I put my fingers in it. Our Lord
graced him forth and said, here Thomas, do that. Do that. I've got a body here. You see
me in my body. And he appeared one time to them
and they got afraid. He said, don't be afraid. A spirit has my flesh and bones
as you see me have. And when Stephen saw him, he
saw him standing in a human body. You can't see a spirit. And when
he saw Christ standing, he saw Christ as the man, Christ Jesus.
He saw him in that body that he's resurrected in. But let
me tell you something about in his humanity that these are things
that are so true. He and his humanity was subject
to growth, to developing, just like you and I do. The scripture
says that he grew in wisdom and stature. That means he grew in
wisdom and stature. He grew in age. You know, when
a baby is born, when a baby is born, they have everything, every
part they've got as a grown person. Only thing is, is that they develop.
They learned to walk, they learned to talk, they learned to eat,
they learned to think, they learned to learn. And our Lord Jesus
Christ and His humanity had to do that. And the Scripture says
that He grew in wisdom before God and man, and grew in grace
before God and man. And how in the world? That's
why I'm talking about His humanity. We've just proved His beauty,
but here's a man. In His humanity, He had to grow from a little
bitty tiny baby. to 2 years old, to 4 years old,
to 6 years old, to 12 years old, to 16 years old, to 18 years
old, to 24 years old, to 30 years old. And all that time he's developing
and learning and growing. That's physical. And his humanity was subject
to suffering. His Godhead wasn't subject to
suffering, but his humanity was. It says, in all things it became
him to be made like unto his brethren. And as the captain
of their salvation, he was made perfect through sufferings. Now,
in his humanity, he was made perfect through his sufferings.
As a son, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered.
And with strong cries and tears, he cried out to his father. And in his humanity, he had physical
limitations. He had limitations to his body,
to his endurance, and the things that he went through in that
humanity. He had physical limitations.
He was weary. When he met that woman, he sat
down on that well, he was weary. The Scripture said he was weary
with his journey. He was so tired one time, that
he went down to hold that ship, and he fell asleep. So tired,
so wore out. He was hungry one day, really
hungry, and he was going to eat some figs off of a tree, but
the fig tree didn't have any figs on it. And he was thirsty. He cried out from the cross,
I thirst! That woman at the well, get me
the drink! And he endured physical agony,
he endured And I don't want to sound too carnal here, but he knew
what it was to have emotional soul-suffering when he was in
the garden. When the Scripture says he became
so troubled and soul in such agony, that he began to pray
and his sweat became, as it were, great drops of blood. That was
suffering. That was agony. Oh, and another
thing that proved his humanity, he literally died. When Jesus
Christ was on that cross in his humanity, he literally died. When they took him off that cross,
they took down a dead man. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't
see, he couldn't hear, he couldn't feel. And death is as far as humanity
can go. When you get to the end of that,
you can't go no farther. And as a man, in his humanity,
he needed to pray. He needed to pray. How many times
did he say that he went off and prayed? How many times did he
pray? He went across to Brooks Seddon and prayed. One night he said
he prayed all night before he chose his disciples. And his
very last night, how many times did he stand and pray before
somebody? But the last night on this earth, before they crucified
him, at six o'clock the next morning, before they nailed him
to that tree and dropped that tree in the ground, His last
night, he prayed in the garden. Three times he prayed, and he
asked his disciples, pray with me. He needed to pray. That proves his humanity. He
was utterly and absolutely dependent on his Father for everything.
And the fact that he needed the Spirit to be given to him proves
his humanity. And that in all things he was
made like unto his brethren. In all things. And that's us.
We're his brethren. But here's the last thing I want
to say about it. Though he was a man, and yet
in his humanity, he never sinned. Never sinned. That's why the
Holy Ghost told Mary, Gabriel told Mary, said, that holy thing
which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Our
Lord Jesus Christ faced the Pharisees, the strictest of the law in His
day, and said, which of you, which of you can convince me
of sin? But God made him to be sin for
us, him who knew no sin. for the very reason that we could
be made the righteousness of God in Him. And to be our sin
offering, to be our substitute, to be our Passover, to be the
Lamb of God, to take away the sin of the world, He must be
without blemish. And in His humanity, He was without
blemish. And not only was He without it,
And theologians have been arguing over this since the beginning
of time, since Christ was on this earth, whether He was peccable
or impeccable. That's the dumbest argument ever
made. Can God sin? Well, Jesus Christ was God. He
would come in the flesh. You know how I know? The Spirit
of God told me that, taught me that. And if he is sinless in
the flesh, and as the man Christ Jesus at the right hand of God,
could there any sin enter into glory when the Scriptures tell
us that nothing with sin shall enter therein? He can't sin. Can't sin.