The Deity of Christ Manifested

Introduction: The Messianic King's Entry and the Passion Week's Second Day

0:04 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, October 18, 1987, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now may I urge you to turn with me in your own Bibles, please, to the 11th chapter of Mark's Gospel, the Gospel of Mark and chapter 11, and follow as I read verses 11 through 19. In this section of the narrative, Mark has just described our Lord's entry into Jerusalem, declaring himself to be the messianic king of Zechariah's prophecy. And immediately after entering, Mark tells us that he entered into Jerusalem, into the temple, and when he had looked round about upon all things, it being now eventide, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve. And on the morrow, when they were come out from Bethany, he hungered.

1:25 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if happily he might find anything thereon. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season of figs. And he answered and said unto it, No man eat figs. Fruit from you henceforth for ever.

1:50 And his disciples heard it. And they come to Jerusalem. And he entered into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and them that bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold the doves. And he would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel through the temple.

2:16 And he talked and said, And he said unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and the scribes heard it, and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, for all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.

2:45 And every evening he went forth. Out of the city.

2:52 Now as we have corporately prayed in the singing of our last hymn, so let us now again plead that God would send his spirit upon preacher and people, that we may know the liberating power of his presence, the convicting power of his presence, his presence taking the things of Christ and revealing them to our hearts. Let us pray.

3:23 Our Father, we have confessed. That it is indeed the ministry of the Spirit and his ministry alone to convince of sin, to reveal in a saving way the virtue of Jesus and his blood shed for sinners, that he alone can give life and quicken dead souls. He alone can make effectual the preaching of the word to our hearts. And as we have confessed these realities in the singing of this hymn, so Lord, we now confess again that without you and the grace of your Spirit, we can do nothing. We plead with you even now to wean every heart from every last vestige of creature confidence, and that as we do this, as we corporately confess our dependence upon you, as we corporately look only to you, O Lord, do not disappoint our eager and our needy hearts. We remind you of your promise. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

4:49 O Lord, we open our mouths to receive from you. Fill us, we pray, for the good of our souls, and for the glory of your name. We ask these mercies through the Lord Jesus Christ.

5:06 Amen. Now, in the regular course of our studies in the Gospel of Mark, we have come to the consideration of the two major incidents which occurred on the second day of what we have come to designate as the Passion Week. And as most of you know, know that week begins with what is often called the triumphal entry, the incident recorded in Mark 11, verses 1 through 10, in which we find our Lord Jesus deliberately orchestrating His entrance into Jerusalem in such a manner as to make it clear that He comes to Jerusalem on His way to the cross in no other identity than that of the Messianic King. Unlike previous attempts in which men sought to make Him a king and He hid Himself from them, on this occasion it is our Lord who directs two of His disciples to secure a donkey.

6:26 It is our Lord who deliberately sits upon that donkey. And allows the crowd to go before Him and follow behind Him, and another to come out of the gate of Jerusalem and to greet Him and to go with Him and His entourage into the city with cries of acclamation that ooze with Messianic connotation. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna!

6:58 Blessed be the kingdom of God! Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!

7:02 Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna! Hark!

7:06 Hark! Hark! Hark! Hark!

7:10 Hark! -"box." Hark! written.

7:14 Hark! All waning. The voted-in was Harris Pink. Who cried Bailey her mother, the judged one, were the three healthy princes, the hearsay was çok ne Neo.

7:19 Her mother cried Bailey her mother, and she cried that, but not me. Her mother cried Bailey her mother. à la Marie doctor capitalize après sonüyorum sois façade im regal. the very stones would cry out for he is determined that men will know that the things that transpire during the passion week transpire in the life history of God's appointed messianic king who came precisely as Zechariah had promised in Zechariah 9 and verse 9 and behold thy king comes unto thee meek riding upon an ass lowly upon a colt the foal of an ass and on that first day he concludes his activities as we read in verse 11 by making this very careful and comprehensive scrutiny of the temple area he looks round about upon all things and with the images of the temple of what he saw in the temple precincts, indelibly stamped upon his mind, he retires that night

8:37 to Bethany, some two miles away, in the company of his twelve disciples. And then, reading between the lines, there is much to commend to us the thesis that spending a restless night, perhaps a night on into the morning, even with prayer and fasting, the second day of that Passion Week is described by Mark, beginning with verse 12. And we have thus far in our expositions, on two occasions, examined this passage. And we have noted that on that second day of the Passion Week, Mark highlights two minutes major incidents, one on the way from Bethany into Jerusalem, and the other within Jerusalem in the very temple itself. The first of those activities is the cursing of the disappointing tree, and the second, verses 15 to 18, the cleansing of the defiled temple. And in the first of our expositions, we made no other effort than an attempt to grasp, the details as they are set forth in the narrative of Mark, as he was guided by the Holy Spirit

Review: Vivid Manifestations of Christ's Humanity

10:00 under the tutelage of Peter, in recounting those two central events of day two in the Passion Week, the cursing of the tree, and the cleansing of the temple. And we made but one very simple, but vital point of application after opening up the content of those two incidents, and that point of application was this. It came in the form of a question, and the question is, are you comfortable in the presence of a Jesus who curses and who cleanses? Many out of human sentiment feel very comfortable in the presence of a Jesus whose kingship is manifested in the context of the peace and the peace of God. And we have done that. We have done that. We have done that.

10:55 We have done that. And the lowliness of his entrance into Jerusalem upon a donkey, they feel quite comfortable in the presence of a king who comes meekly riding upon a donkey. But when they see that same Jesus, the very next day, a day closer to the cross, a day closer to the laying down of his life as a slave. What was the sacrifice for his people?

11:29 Cursing this barren fig tree, and then engaging what I do not believe it is irreverent to call sanctified, but wholly violent in cutting out, overthrowing, then placing himself as a sentinel in the temple. They begin to feel very skittish in the presence of this Jesus. Comfortable in the presence of a Jesus who rides. Right?

12:06 Right? Right? Right? very uncomfortable in the presence of a Jesus who curses barrenness, the show of fruit without substance,

12:18 and who takes professional religion, which at that time seemed to be at the pinnacle of its success with all of the bustling activity centering in that temple. And there he overturns and casts out and throws down everything, that is an offense to him. But I remind you that the cursing and the cleansing are sandwiched between the meek and lowly king riding upon a donkey and the laying down of his life upon the cross. And that's the only Jesus whom God has sent to save his people from their sins. Then we return to the passage last Lord's Day to begin to focus upon salvation. Some of the other very vital teaching contained in it. And all we had time to do was to consider in the passage and in these two incidents the vivid manifestations of our Lord's humanity in these two incidents.

13:30 And we noted the fact of his hunger, his method of acquiring knowledge by observation as we do, his judicious retreat from danger, recorded in verse 19, and sought to underscore the tremendous significance of a firm grasp upon this conviction that the Jesus who comes in his identity as the messianic king who is on his way to die upon the cross is indeed, and in every true sense of the word, a man. He is possessed of righteousness. He is a real, of true humanity. And we see the very vivid manifestations of it in these two incidents. And then we sought to draw out the implications of that for our salvation. And all I can say by way of concluding the review is that we must constantly remember this vital principle that Jesus Christ is able to do what he does in his saving work. Precisely because he is what he is in his person.

14:48 His person is the foundation upon which the efficacy of his work rests. And this is why early in the church and throughout the history of the church there have been constant attacks upon the biblical witness to the identity of Christ's person. The first attack, the first attack came upon the integrity and the reality of his humanity. For the devil knows if he can concoct a Christ in the minds of men other than the Christ who is and who is revealed in scripture he undermines and causes to crumble the very pillars of our salvation. Our Lord vividly demonstrated this when prior to the first, prior to the first, unmistakable annunciation of his death recorded in Matthew 16. He first of all establishes the identity of his person. Who do men say that I am?

Vivid Demonstrations of Christ's True Deity: The Cursing of the Fig Tree

15:57 Who do you say that I am? Thou art the son of the living God. And then he goes on from that point to teach them that he must suffer, he must die, he must be raised, from the dead. Now then we come this morning having considered together some of the vivid manifestations of our Lord's humanity in these two incidents to focus our attention in the second place upon the vivid demonstrations of our Lord's true in these same incidents.

16:40 They not only set before us vivid manifestations of his truth, true humanity, but they also contain vivid demonstrations of our Lord's true deity. Now when we use the word deity, what do we mean, especially when we use it with reference to Jesus of Nazareth? Well we mean simply this, that everything that is unique in God, which makes him the one and only God, whatever can be said of God, and all because he is God, only God, can be said of Jesus Christ. And when we assert deity, we are but not in the true sense speak of the one true and living God, and by that we mean all is as God,

18:05 all is himself to be as God. Jesus Christ shares, Jesus Christ shares, Jesus Christ shares, God is the only nächste holy being, as that is in the inner circle. In this fishing out, without that, and in this passage, in these two events there are two vivid demonstrations of our Lord's true deity. First of all, see that demonstration in the cursing of this barren tree. tree in this very human method of obtaining information, namely by first-hand observation. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves. There are unmistakable indications of humanity

19:17 laid out without any embarrassment, laid out without qualification. He hungered. He came to see, but when he saw, verse 14, he answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit from you henceforth forever. His disciples, and what they heard and what they saw the next day, according to verse 20, they regarded as nothing less than Jesus cursing that tree. Verse 20, and as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withering. Now let me ask you this very simple question. As our Lord beholds that tree, and we cannot go into all of the details that we went into when we expounded the passage, and for wise reasons to curse it, does he invoke the name of Jehovah, God of Israel?

20:36 No. He does not speak in the name of Jehovah, God of Israel. He does not invoke any name, any higher source of authority. He simply sees the tree, and every part of life is immediately drained from that tree by the word of Jesus of Nazareth. Now why was that so? Well, may I say very simply, the tree recognized both its creator, and its sustainer. And when its creator, and sustainer said, I do nothing, for the one who said these words is the one whom John describes in his opening words with these familiar words. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All by him and without him

21:51 was not anything made that hath been made. In Him was life.

21:59 All by Him, in Him was life. In Hebrews 1 we read that He upholds by the word of His power, so that He is not only the mighty Creator, that word whom John became flesh on 1.14. He is not only Lord but the Son of all that, and as the Creator and Sustainer for the tree to be drained of its life and to be dead from the root the moment.

22:56 Now most Bible students are careful to point out that this is the only unmingling found anywhere in the Gospel records. In conjunction with the casting out of the demons from the demoniac, which was the positive side of the miracle, there was a miracle of destruction. In the drowning of the 3,000 swine, as we studied that earlier in Mark's Gospel. But here is a miracle of destruction, pure, simple, unmixed destruction.

23:34 And though there is, as we shall see in subsequent studies, good, and there are compelling reasons to believe that this was a parabolic miracle of destruction, you see, it has no significance as a parable. Unless, first of all, it is rooted in the reality that when Jesus Christ speaks life away, there is nothing that can uphold that tree in life.

24:04 And if that is not an attestation of His true and essential deity, I don't know how God can make such attestations in ways that communicate to us vividly and clearly. Unconvincingly. And so we are to see in this passage not only the vivid manifestations of our Lord's humanity, but also the vivid demonstration of His true deity. First of all, in the cursing of the fig tree, but then secondly, in the cleansing of the defiled temple.

Vivid Demonstrations of Christ's True Deity: The Cleansing of the Temple

24:41 Once again, we notice that when our Lord comes into Jerusalem and enters the temple, He does not, in the name of Allah, begin to cast out and to overthrow and to place Himself as a sentinel.

25:00 And the rulers took notice of this, that He was not indicating that He was acting in the name and the authority of another. For later on in this chapter, verse 28, they say, by the way, if He had come and said, in the name of this or the name of that, He would have identified the authority under which He was acting, but He reacts as one self-appointed to this task of cleansing the temple and then appointing Himself as a sentinel to guard the now cleansed temple from any further defilement. And furthermore, when we compare this cleansing with the earlier cleansing that occurred on the front end of His Judean ministry, we notice a very striking difference. If you'll turn to John's Gospel, John's Gospel, chapter 2,

26:01 John's Gospel, chapter 2,

26:07 in that earlier cleansing, which had many similarities, but there is a marked contrast in terms of what He says in conjunction with the two different cleansings, one on the relative front end of His ministry and this other in the last week of His earthly ministry. We read in verse 15 of John 2, He made a scourge, He made cords and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen, poured out the changers' money over through their tables and then that sold the doves. He said, Take these things hence. Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise. He identifies the temple as His Father's house. He identifies the temple as His Father's house. He identifies the temple as His Father's house.

27:07 He identifies the temple as His Father's house. He does not quote any verses from the Old Testament. His disciples, remembering His actions, verse 17, had a passage out of Psalm 69 brought to their remembrance, zeal for Thy house shall eat me up. But you see, on that occasion, He says, this is My Father's house.

27:30 Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise. But in this cleansing that occurred, during the Passion Week, verse 17 of Mark 2 tells us, And He taught and said unto them, now appealing directly not to the three or four passages in the Old Testament in which the temple is called the house of prayer, the one passage in which it is called the house of prayer,

28:08 and He taught and said unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. When we turn back to that passage in Isaiah 56, we find that it is Jehovah's house that is envisioned. It is the house of Jehovah that shall be a house of prayer for all people. But now when He comes, He enters into that temple as though that He had every thing that was contrary to His will. That He had every right to post Himself as a sentinel as we read in verse 16 and not allow any man to carry an ordinary shopping bag through the temple precincts, particularly the court of the Gentiles, and use it merely as a shortcut on their way to some other business.

29:17 Well, you see, I'm convinced that the difference is to be found, the fact that as our Lord drew closer and closer to the cross, there is this increasing unveiling and even this open declaration of His identity so that at His very trial when He is asked or saying you be quotes from that passage which to every well-instructed Jewish mind identified Messiah deity so that when He says hereafter you shall see the Son of Man coming in power and glory, you remember what the response of the high priest was. What further need have we of witnesses? We have heard His blasphemy.

30:19 And so our Lord, though it is not an open declaration, surely on the very surface of the passage a demonstration of His asserting His own rights as God in that temple of Jehovah as Jehovah, the incarnate Himself comes to His own house to cleanse it. And so He does not say these things are contrary to the standards of My Father's house, but He takes to Himself a usage of those words out of Isaiah which could vary as though He were claiming as directly applicable to Himself. They were understood by any in that way it would open His eyes to the truth. And so He says hereafter, the words of those words He says hereafter, He says hereafter, He says he says he says he says he says he says he says he says he says he says he says he says he says it, it would open the world, Only he that to them was given a wonderful spiritual perception of who he really was. For as we saw last week as Pastor Nichols was expounding Isaiah 45, all of those passages that speak of every knee bowing to Jehovah are applied one-to-one to Jesus Christ in the book of Romans and in the epistle to the Philippians

31:43 because Jesus is Jehovah incarnate. And so in these incidents, we have set before us not only the vivid manifestations of his true humanity, but also these demonstrations of his essential deity. It is God who speaks a word and gives life and can remove life. It is Jehovah incarnate.

32:14 Who comes to Jehovah's temple and says, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all.

The Vital Importance of Christ's Deity for Salvation: Righteousness and Atonement

32:24 Now you may ask the question, and rightly so, why is it so vital for us to grasp and in the language of the previous hour to hold with a deaf grip to the truth that Jesus Christ is not only true and essential man but also true and essential God. That is, Christ our God is set before us. But God may answer that question by drawing in the threads of the answer I gave last week with regard to his humanity. Why do we need to hold tenaciously to the revealed doctrine of the reality of his humanity? And I answered by demonstrating, I trust, to the conviction of your judgment from the Scriptures that if he were not true man, then his being made under the law, born of a woman, his obedience rendered to the law would not be an obedience rendered in our human condition. It would not be a perfect obedience rendered in our realm and in our condition. But it's precisely because it was an obedience rendered in our realm and in our condition

33:51 that it can stand for God be pleased to our account. It is the righteousness of God. It is the righteousness of God. It is the righteousness of God.

34:00 One who took upon himself all of the limitations and all of even the weaknesses and dependantness of true humanity and in that humanity perfectly obeyed the law of God. And so we must cling with a death grip to the biblical doctrine of the reality of his humanity. But if he were only man, the perfect righteousness which he rendered to the law of God would have sufficed. It would have sufficed for Christ to constitute him the only perfect man who ever perfectly obeyed the law of God through his earthly pilgrimage.

34:39 And it would count for his own righteousness. But if it were only the righteousness of a man, there would be no worth for that righteousness to be imputed and to count for others. But because he is truly God, and it was as the God-man that he was made of a woman, and made under the law and perfectly obeyed the law, that there is in the very worth of glory which is infinite and universally accessible. And therefore we must cling with an equally tenacious death grip to the reality of our Lord's deity. Oh, we are left without a righteousness that answers to all of the demands of God's holy law. Likewise, with respect to his substitutionary death, if his death were only the death of a man, and he had to be man to die according to Hebrews 2, it would be the most tragic death that ever occurred on this sin-cursed world. But if the bloodletting of Jesus of Nazareth were only the bloodletting of a perfect man, what worth could there be in that death that can answer the question,

36:07 the great multitude whom no man can number, out of every kindred, tribe, and tongue, and nation? But the Scripture tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, 7, it was the Lord of glory who was crucified. And because it was the Lord of glory who was crucified, there is in the bloodletting of the Son of God an infinite worth that can be applied if God's Son of God is crucified. If God's Son of God is crucified, if God's Son of God is crucified, if God's Son of God is crucified, to an infinite number of needy sinners.

36:45 And therefore for us, belief in the death grip that we hold upon the reality of His deity is no theological abstraction. You see, there is not one luxury, one extra in the scheme of divinely provided salvation. The Savior is constituted precisely what He is constituted because He is the Savior. Because no other Savior could answer to our need.

The Vital Importance of Christ's Deity for Salvation: Intercession and Power

37:15 Christ is precisely who He is because only such a Savior could meet us in the reality of our need. Likewise, with reference to His intercession, we saw that if His humanity were not real according to Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4, His intercession would be a detached intercession. But it is not a detached intercession. As surely as He saves to the uttermost or to the consummation in the virtue of His intercessory work, so that intercessory work is empathetic, sympathetic.

37:54 It identifies. He Himself has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He has suffered being tempted and He has carried into the glory the reservoir of every felt human experience. Even the suffering of temptation, He has carried it with Him into the glory.

38:15 And as He intercedes for us, there is that bond of true humanity. So we feel in the midst of our weakness, in the midst of the torture of our own struggle with sin, that we can go to one who empathizes, who sympathizes, who can succor us, not mechanically, but empathetically and with all of His heart. If He were only a man, and could empathize, how in the world could He be universally accessible to all of His struggling saints around the globe? How could He be accessible in this very hour to that saint struggling behind the Iron Curtain, faced in the next hours with the decision of denying Christ, or being shut away from family and children perhaps for the rest of his life? How can He empathize? How can He secure the unfailing faith, the unfailing of that harassed and tested saint there in Rome, while at the same time minister to someone sitting here this morning, who, ministering to the needs of a little child, only got three or four hours sleep, and you're fighting sleep in this place this morning, and you're feeling weariness, and you're fighting it, and yet you're finding comfort that He was weary in His journey and rested upon a well.

39:42 He knew what it was to enter in and succor you, as though no other weary saint needed His succoring, while succoring, and that tempted saint there in the midst of Russia, and another there in the bush in the Balim Valley, and someone else in the jungle of Brazil. You see, His whole ministry as our intercessor is made glorious not only because He is true man, but He is High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, without beginning or end, eternal God, who has come among us, and taken to Himself not only our true, and real humanity, but He remains in all the undiluted integrity of what it means to be God, both our God and ourselves. And then even further, if He were not true God, that there be universal and unlimited power exercised to fulfill His own promise to call His sheep. Other sheep I have them also I must bring. We read in the 110th Psalm this morning, We read in the 110th Psalm this morning, We read in the 110th Psalm this morning, We read in the 110th Psalm this morning, this morning. His people are willing in the day of. Think of all the scripture says that Jesus

41:09 does right now to fellowship with himself, keeping them, guarding them, communing with them. And all of those things are impossible unless they come out of the fountainhead of the infinity of one who is God. But I want to touch upon one final point in this matter. If he were not God, then surely his demands of unrivaled religious trust, affection, and obedience are nothing short of a call to idolatry. If Jesus Christ were not God, this demand for unrivaled religious trust and obedience are a... What did Jesus say? He said in Luke 14, 25, following, If any man come to me

The Vital Importance of Christ's Deity: Unrivaled Trust and the Call to Unbelievers

42:14 and hate not father, mother, brother, sister, yea, and his family, he will not come to me. his own life also he cannot be my disciple I must have the place of unrivaled affection in your heart he concluded by saying whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot disciple religious he claims unrivaled religious trust he says you believe in God not with a belief of a different kind not with a belief they lesser esteem of the the phases you go out and make disciples you are to teach them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you you're to call them into a life of universal obedience to my word and my will well dear people if he's not God he has is the love I don't is never

43:25 rivaled but he is God and therefore it is right that he should demand and call from all who his followers for unrivaled religious affection unrivaled trust unrivaled obedience and my unconverted friends sitting here this morning may I say to you as plainly and lovingly as I know how no doubt you've heard all kinds of things about Jesus from various sources some of it you picked up maybe in Sunday school as a little child some of it you picked up on the radio some of it you picked up in school all different sources pouring in little bits and pieces of information and in your mind you have some kind of a dim indistinct notion of who Jesus is may I stated as plainly as I know how the Jesus whom mark describes in this past who came into Jerusalem declaring himself to be God's messianic king while on his way to the cross who stands speaks a word in a dog who goes into the

44:49 central place appointed for the worship of Jehovah and take over as his home and yet the Jesus who in the midst of those two activities experiences human hunger acquires human knowledge retreat in an act of judicious self defense as all human beings must do who are intent upon protecting themselves from their enemies that Jesus of the Bible my friend is none other than the gods But the sea, the eternal Bethlehem's mange, is manifested as and eternally and really by the activity of the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb.

45:47 And what she expelled from her womb, yet wonder of wonders just as much God, as though he were not man, essential to his deity in coming to her womb.

46:13 You see that? He voluntarily relinquished many of the activities and prerogatives and privileges of deity.

46:40 And so in the language of Philippians 2, he himself, in the form of a servant, and as one has said, this is action by addition. He ended tabernacling in flesh. Now, my sinner friend, why do I say that? For the simple reason that until you've seen yourself in such a...

The Sinner's Need for the God-Man Savior

47:17 ...condition, that all the Savior, who is both God and man, can meet your need, you have not begun to discover your true condition.

47:27 You see the mark of every sinner, man or woman, boy or girl, whether you've lived a nice, polite life or an openly sinful, wicked, rotten, low-life... ...stint, it matters not, once you begin to see what you are, as one part of Adam's fallen race, who has broken God's...

47:53 ...is lying...

47:53 ...the path of all...

47:56 ...come to this horrible...

48:01 ...and he is, and my conscience affirms that reality, and I can't suppress it...

48:07 ...I'm his creature, and I know I am, and I'm answerable and accountable to him.

48:15 And if I don't do what he has said and keep all commandments down to the slightest motions of my thoughts and desires of my heart... ...my heart, I'm condemned before him, and if the wages of sin is death, then I've had it.

48:32 I must be cut off. In the ravenous invulnerability as a creature, I must meet an infinite God. And before, as a guilty sinner, and when I begin to take seriously that the habit...

49:05 ...and in some area begin to understand what you are, a sinner worthy of death, you'll be in that dilemma where you say, if I'm ever going...

49:23 ...I need someone to stand in my stead, someone who can take the death and the wrath that I deserve, that he can break the chains that no human being can break.

49:37 And when you hear that God... ...send forth his Son, as we heard in Romans 1, and that Jesus Christ is Son of God, manifested so with correction from the dead, and that in Jesus crucified, God has punned the human condition in the Son, and yet that Son is the mighty God, the everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and all the other things said of him.

50:15 You see, my friend, then you realize that all of this concern of Christians... ...to maintain and hold in a death grip the doctrine that Jesus is both God and man.

50:27 He is man, he is God, and though I cannot explain how these two distinct, unmingled natures can dwell in and meet my need... ...and I'm prepared to go to him in all of my vulnerability and weakness and hell-deservingness, and throw the weight of my helpless soul...

50:54 ...upon him in the plenitude of his grace.

51:00 Jesus is just the Savior you need, my sinner friend, and God has provided no other. And if you get to him, you've gotten to the only Savior whom God has appointed for sinners. For thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he it is that shall save his people from their sins. And child of God, what is true of the sinner?

The Believer's Ongoing Need for the God-Man Savior

51:24 The first time sees his condition, and in repentance and faith runs to him, is true all along the way. And there are times when as his children, as the children of God, we need to focus the eye of faith more...

51:42 ...upon the reality of Christ's almightiness as God.

51:46 When in the midst of situations that we say, Oh, God! ...out, then draw consolation.

51:55 That he who is your elder brother is also your creator and sustainer of the universe, who was there at creation's first activity, and brings to his work of sustaining you and upholding you and untangling the messes into which we get ourselves. He does it with the wisdom and the power of omnipotence. But there are other times when our need is such that the eye of faith needs to focus...

52:25 ...concentrate more upon the reality of his humanity.

52:28 Not denying his deity, but the eye of faith fixing itself upon a wearied Christ. The eye of fixing itself upon a Christ who suffers being tempted. Upon a Christ who feels hunger and disappointment and loneliness. A man sorrows and acquainted with grief.

52:53 And we need as his people to feed... ...contention...

52:56 ... continually upon him, as he is revealed to us in the scriptures.

Intimations of Christ's Universal Accessibility: The Fig Tree and the Temple

53:00 Well then, very briefly, and in closing, may I just open up one further line for your reflection. In this passage, we must not only consider the vivid manifestations of our Lord's humanity, the demonstrations of his deity, but consider in these two events the powerful, I'm calling them intimations, they're intimations, of our Lord's universal accessibility. The intimations of our Lord's universal accessibility. And we see this both with regard to the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple.

53:44 Now, for our purposes this morning, I cannot demonstrate from the other passages, as I hope to do in our next study, that the cursing of the fig tree was indeed a parabolic action. The Lord was doing what so often the prophets did, when their message came in the form of an acted out parable. Or came to them in terms of a vision, that was parabolic, which they declared unto the people. And I know of no responsible bible believing commentators who do not agree that in this cursing of the fig tree our Lord is symbolically declaring...

54:29 ...that the nation...

54:30 Israel was indeed what this fig tree was. Full of the leaves, profession, as we read on in the temple description, but devoid of the fruit of true godliness. And our Lord is here symbolically indicating that at this point in redemptive history, the fig tree of Israel's peace in the history of redemption is being brought. The truth clearly is founded in Romans 9 through 11.

55:08 And then in the subsequent incident of the cleansing of the temple, it is Mark alone who quotes this section out of Isaiah. My house shall be called a house of prayer for all. Now do you see why I say the intimations of our Lord's universal accessibility? On his way to Jerusalem during the Passion Week, he curses the fig tree.

55:36 And as we shall see and see, in subsequent studies there is every reason to believe that the disciples subsequently came to understand what was here symbolically declared by this Israel that had been dunged and dug and nurtured and dressed for centuries.

55:59 Manifest her crowning act of unbelief when she crucifies her messianic king. And that God will now, in the language of another parable, take the kingdom from her and give it to others, bringing forth fruit. And the gospel is to go out unto all of the Gentile nations. And this is further intimated when he comes into the temple and says, Have you not read? It stands written.

56:24 My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. He was in the court of the Gentiles. That instead of being the place that would attest to Israel's missionary identity and function, had been cluttered up. Turned into a matter of mere mercenary enterprise.

56:46 And he says, My house from the very beginning was to be a house of prayer for all the nations. The promise to Abraham was this, In thee shall all of the earth be blessed. And Israel forgot that tremendous privilege that was hers to be a light unto the Gentiles. And instead of regarding herself as favored in sovereign grace, and being humbled, and fulfilling the purposes of that grace, in being a witness to the nations, she regarded herself as God's pet that could do no wrong, and could even carry out the most high-handed indifference to God's law, and yet be safe so long as she was found in the temple. You read it in the passage from which he quotes, when he says, You've made it a den of robbers. They kept saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, associated with the temple and its activities, we're safe. Jeremiah talked about Babylon coming, as long as the temple stands, and we're in it.

57:56 Jeremiah says, You've turned the temple into a cave of brigands. You carry out your immoral life, and the temple has become your cave, where you sit and gloat in the fruit of your spoils. It has ceased to be what it was intended to be, a house of prayer for all, and as Christ comes and cleanses the temple, the literal earthly temple, in the week of his passion, he's giving an intimation that as he goes on through the rest of that week and gives himself up to the hands of Gentiles, and is crucified and slain, it is that the newly constituted temple, not of granite, not of the stone quarried from some earthly quarry, but in the language of Peter, that temple made up of living stones, will be a temple constructed of all the nations. The cursing of the fig tree, the cleansing of the temple, the underscoring of the truth, that it was to be a house of prayer for all the nations. Our Lord is here intimating the universal accessibility of Jehovah. And what was only intimated in these acts of the Passion Week become clear when after his resurrection, it's time to give to his people their ongoing and standing task.

The Great Commission and Global Gospel Vision

59:22 He now says in language, that cannot be mistaken, make disciples of all Taethne, of all of the nations, what I have done and what I am and what I will do from the right hand of my Father when I send forth my Spirit in visions, all of the nations. And then we read the glorious conquest that we've just completed as we've read the book of Acts in our consecutive reading, how from Jerusalem, how from Jerusalem, the gospel goes out to Judea and Samaria. And now we've taken up the book of Romans where Paul says, I have fully preached the gospel in all of the parts of the Roman Empire. I hope to come by you people in Rome on my way to the tent, and your own reasonments, and your beatings, and your shipwrecks.

60:29 He says, no, there are frontiers where my Savior has a people, nations, and peoples, and tongues that have yet to hear. I know that they are of my Savior. This I know about them, though I've never seen them. I know they are of Adam's stock.

60:46 I know they died in Him. I know that they are under condemnation. I know that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. And you Romans, it's this gospel that I now spread out before you.

61:02 I long to be brought by you on my way as I go to Spain. Dear people, do you catch something of the Apostle's heart?

61:12 How much of that do we know? And the reason I felt constrained to underscore this principle in closing is the occasion of our gathering here on this first pastor's conference. Though we do not tailor-make the ministry because of it, it would be irresponsible not to make specific applications to it. Dear brethren, whatever God has been pleased to do for any one of us in revealing to us His truth, in making precious to us doctrines that long lay under the rubble of ignorance, whatever God has done to make precious to us not only biblical soteriology, who the Savior is, how He saves, why He saves, but He's made precious to us the doctrine of ecclesiology, that His church is what He came to redeem. His church is what He deigns to make glorious in the earth. His church is what He deigns to make glorious in the earth. His church is the pillar and ground.

62:14 And whatever He has done to make precious to us the truth of His word about His salvation and about His church. Dear people, there are nations, there are whole segments of our own country where there is so much acclamation of the full old tent about having something of that passion of the apostle no matter what our age may be, no matter however much energy we may have expended or prized, we've paid for our age in the gospel till now. Let us cry to God that even during these days what was intimated by our Lord on the way to the cross He could not lose sight of the fact He was going to that cross to redeem a innumerable number out of every kindred, tribe and tongue and nation and kindred and people. And He has given to us the unspeakable privilege that having the power of God and being known and tasted of that salvation and with the promise of His own presence and the abiding indwelling of the Spirit to go in His name, believing that there are yet others accounting that the long suffering of our God is solved. When men ask us why has He not returned,

63:44 the answer is simple. The role of His elect has not yet been those whom He has marked not yet all. We need never fear that we will preach and pray and labor beyond the bounds of His electing mercy. We may fear and ought to fear.

64:06 We don't pray as we don't witness as we ought or not as earnest as we ought to be but we need never fear that our hearts will be larger than God's purposes of grace and mercy. So may the Lord help us even during these days to pray that He will so come upon us and among us that we shall enter in more fully to the Spirit of our Lord who envisioning His own redemptive purposes in that Passion Week gives these affirmations of who He is by what He does and then this intimation of the universal accessibility of His grace and His salvation. Let us pray.

65:02 Our Father, we thank You that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Savior that He is.

65:12 While we continue to confess with shame that many of us for many years saw no beauty in Him that we should desire Him, we thank You that the Holy Spirit through the Word has brought us not only to see our desperate need of Him but has enabled us to behold Your glory reflected in His face. And we pray that You by the Spirit would continue to make Him exceedingly precious to us that we would be ruthless with everything and anyone that would rival His rightful place in our hearts. O Lord, forgive us. Forgive us, we pray, for the fickle nature of our love. Forgive us for our narrow-spirited unconcern for the nations. And we pray that You would so work in us and among us these days that we shall not only behold new dimensions of the glory of our Savior but that we shall be filled with new and holy longings that He shall be known among the nations and that His living temple made up of the living stones shall grow and increase in our generation to the praise and to the honor of the Lord Jesus Himself. Hear us in this our prayer

66:42 and may Your blessings continue to rest upon us throughout this day. We ask through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.