Jesus Christ's humanity is essential to Christian doctrine, countering heresies that deny his true human nature. The incarnation, the union of God and man in Christ, was eternally purposed and anticipated in Old Testament prophecies and types, such as those in Isaiah and the sacrificial system. This union is doctrinally stated in 1 Timothy 3:16 and historically demonstrated in Matthew 1:18-25, highlighting the virgin birth as foundational. Christ possessed a true human spirit, soul, and body, experiencing human emotions and suffering without sin, as evidenced by his prayer in Gethsemane and his sacrifice for humanity.
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My text for my part of the conference was Mark one and one. I want to read it again. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the fourth chapter, This chapter of First John, he tells us that those who believe that Jesus is the Christ are born of God, and that those who believe that he is the Son of God will overcome the world.
You need to know these two truths. Jesus is his human name. Beginning this morning, I would like to spend the rest of the time available to me talking about the humanity. of the Lord Jesus. We've had three sessions on his deity. I hope that it's established in your mind that he was and is and will be eternally God. Now, we want to think about him this morning from the Scriptures. I'm just going to go over a number of Scriptures that show conclusively that the Lord Jesus Christ was truly man.
Now the heresies deny this. There was a heresy in the first century known as Gnosticism. That starts with the letter G, G-N-O-S-T-I-C. The Gnostics, and this comes from the word knowledge, were the people who claimed they knew it all. They had far superior knowledge to mere Christianity. Today it's more popular to be an agnostic. The A primitive means not. I never could understand why anybody would be proud of being an agnostic, which is derived from the Greek, but they wouldn't admit that there were ignoramuses, which is derived from the Latin.
It's exactly the same word. That's all an agnostic is. He's an ignoramus. And yet ninety percent of our college young people today claim to be, this is a survey that's been taken, they claim to be agnostics. Now I don't mind the person saying that he doesn't know, but what gets me is when they say nobody knows. That's taking in too much territory because some of us do know. However, the Gnostics of the first century claimed that they had superior knowledge, and they taught that the Lord Jesus Christ was merely an emanation from God, but that he never was really a human being at all.
And this heresy spread until it required a church council to settle the thing. Of course, unbelievers, and this goes for religious unbelievers, first they call them higher critics, and then they call them modernists, and then they call them liberals, and now they call them neo-orthodoxy. They get little nicer names all the time, and they get a little rotten here all the time as they get older. They deny that the Lord Jesus was ever anything but him. They make him to be only a man and nothing more than the man.
Now, if he was nothing more than the man, he was an imposter, or he was a mental case. I say that reverently. If he was only a man, you can't believe anything that he says, because we have seen that he certainly claimed to be God. Now the third problem that we face is that unbelievers do not seem to understand the humanity of Christ. I have heard all kinds of extravagant statements made even from the platform about the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I won't go into that. I expect to show you what the Word of God teaches, and I hope that you will be clear on the meaning of this. Now, first of all, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus, his taking humanity, was anticipated, as you see in the book of the Revelation, chapter thirteen, from the very beginning. God was not caught by surprise when sin came into this world. decided that he would have to do something about it and what could be done now to straighten out this unexpected crisis.
Nothing of the kind. God being God did not have to think up anything. His purposes are called eternal purposes. The book of Ephesians especially deals with this. The eternal purposes of God included the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what he says in Revelation thirteen and verse eight. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose names, that is worship the Antichrist, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from AD thirty.
Oh no. From the foundation of the world. from the foundation of the world. This is why you have in the Old Testament all of the types, the sacrifices beginning with Abel's and going right on through to the close of the Old Testament. All of these sacrifices are anticipating the incarnation of the Lord Jesus and the coming of the true Lamb of God. This is why all of the prophecies concerning the Messiah included both his suffering and the glory to follow. The Jews missed this.
They were only interested in the glory and they couldn't understand the suffering. Even the disciples couldn't understand it. And Peter rebuked the Lord Jesus for talking about suffering. And yet the Old Testament scriptures plainly said that he must come and suffer and die. The fifty-third of Isaiah is enough to prove that if you didn't have anything else. Now the incarnation of the Lord Jesus is stated in two very wonderful ways. It is stated doctrinally in First Timothy chapter three and verse sixteen. Now you all know John three sixteen.
Let me suggest that you learn First Timothy three sixteen. This is a good verse for you to have by heart. Some of those who study the language in which the New Testament was given tell us that this is written in the form of a verse, a song, and that it may have been one of the songs of the early church, which is quoted here by the Holy Spirit's direction. in this statement. Let's read it anyway. First Timothy three sixteen, and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh. For three times I've been trying to establish that he is God. Now I want to occupy the balance of the time, showing that he is manifested in flesh. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on the world, received up into glory. That's the doctrinal statement of the Incarnation. Now let me read to you the historical statement of it in the first chapter of Matthew.
We're going to read from the eighteen verse because we'll have occasion to refer to this again. Matthew one, verse eighteen. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. When, as his mother Mary, was espoused or engaged to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privilege. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord, appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call his name Jesus. For he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophets, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child. It's very dishonest of the RSV and other translations to give this in the passage in the seventh of Isaiah as a young woman. Now, while it's perfectly true that in the Hebrew language, the same word can be translated, young woman or virgin.
Yet, that was quoted by the Spirit of God in the New Testament. And in the New Testament, in the language in which this was written, the Greek language, we have two distinct words. They could not possibly be confused. And the Spirit of God uses the one which means a virgin, one who has never known a man. So there is no excuse whatever for translating the Old Testament passage, a young woman. That's no sign. And he said, this was given. Isaiah said to the king, I'm giving you this for a sign. A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son.
Young women have been bringing forth sons ever since he brought forth her first son. There isn't anything unusual about that. But this is the remarkable thing. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted as God with us. Then Joseph, being raised and sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not, as she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus. The historical statement of the Incarnation is a child is born whose name is Emmanuel, God with us.
And that little baby lying in the manger was both God and man. In theology, They use big terms because just as every professional does, they like to use terms that make it sound like you're very intelligent. That's why doctors use Latin. It's just as easy to say that a person has a stomach ache as it is to use a Latin term for them. A man went to see his doctor said, I don't want any Latin terms.
I want you to tell me exactly what's wrong with them. So examining carefully and he said, well, you really don't have any reason to feel draggy as you are. He said that you wanted the honest truth. The truth of the matter is you're just lazy. Well, he says then. Thank you, Doctor. Now give me the Latin term so I can tell them why. But theologians feel that they have to have high-sounding titles for doctors.
And so they call the union of the two natures, God and man, in one person they call the hypostatic union. Now it really is a good term, because it's a term which means that they are equally balanced and one. and always will be from this point on. If you remember that the union of deity and humanity is permanent, you will appreciate the Lord Jesus more than you ever have before.
We'll come to that a little later. I'm indebted to our dear brother, Mr. Kirk, for a thought which he dropped in our conversation a day or two ago. He said, the deity and humanity of Christ is like the oil mingled with the meal in the offering in Leviticus. The meal stands for his humanity. The meal offering, of course, stands for the perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus. It was fine flour in which there was no unevenness as there is in our human nature.
And the oil stands for the Spirit of God. And once these two are mingled, you could never separate them again. They belong together from this point on. And so we're going to consider now a little bit about how this happened. The virgin birth of the Lord Jesus is foundational to Christianity. You cannot be a Christian and not believe in the virgin birth of Christ. And if you doubt that, I think I can show you very clearly how absolutely necessary this is. I want to go into this a little more in detail later also.
If you're making notes, put down two passages from the book of Isaiah, chapter seven and verse fourteen and chapter nine and verse six. In these passages, seven hundred years before the Lord Jesus came, we are clearly told what is going to happen. Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel. And then in nine in verse six, unto us a child is born, Undo us the Son is given.
Now, don't mix these things up. I have no objection at all to the use of revised versions, and I use a number of them in my own studies, but I object strenuously to the careless way that many of these modern so-called translations, most of them are just paraphrased. I object to the way that they mix up things, that they interchange words. And the Amplified, to me, seems to be almost the worst of all, because they only give you five or six choices and you can believe anything you want to. They're not synonyms. You can't have five or six synonyms.
They are different shades of meaning. They let you pick out anyone that you want to. This is dangerous. When he says, unto us a child is born, he's talking about the human birth of a person. But when he says the Son is given, he's telling us that the eternal Son of God came down in human form. Now, you see, there's no other way that you could have this apart from the virgin birth. The description that's given here in Matthew and the one in Luke chapter two, you might put that in your notes, beginning at verse twenty-six and going on to the verse thirty-eight, Luke two twenty-six to thirty-eight, you have another story of the birth of the Lord Jesus.
And here Mary said, how can this be? How can this be? She knew that this was an impossibility. a human impossibility. And the angel very carefully explained how it was to be. And then she said, Be it unto thy handmaiden, according as thou said. I wonder if you realize what Mary must have suffered. Here she is, a young woman engaged to be married.
And she's found to be expecting a child. Who's going to believe that an angel appeared unto her and told her that this is to be the Messiah? Who's going to believe that the power of the highest overshadowed her and that this child was conceived of the Holy Ghost when even Joseph himself had to have a special vision of an angel to convince him? This thing followed the Lord Jesus all of his life. That's what those ungodly Pharisees meant in the eighth chapter of John. And they said, we were not born of fornication.
They were showing in his teeth the common sayings of the day. And that a great deal for Mary. And I'm sure that the Lord has honored her and will honor her. We don't believe in worshiping her. We don't believe in praying to her. We don't give her any supernatural position. But we ought to honor her because she said all generations should call her blessed. And we ought to be thankful for the blessed Virgin Mary. That's as far as a believer can go.
We don't need her intercession. For even she herself needed a Savior. She said, I have rejoiced in God, my Savior. The Son which she brought forth died for her sins as well as for yours. Let's not forget that it cost her a great deal to go through this. Let me mention just one more thing. I mentioned it the other night and some people did not get it. I talked to them afterward about it. In the twenty-second chapter of Jeremiah, and we'll turn back to that, Jeremiah chapter twenty-two, and we'll begin to read at the twenty-fourth verse, as I live saith the Lord, Though Konaia, now this man is known variously as Jeconiah, Jeconias, and Konaia.
No, he's also called Konaidja. As I live, saith the Lord, though Konaia, the son of Jehorakim, king of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck him hence, pluck thee things. and I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou feared, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. And I will cast thee out, for thy mother that bear thee into another country, where you were not born, and there shall you die. Is this man, Corniah, a despised broken idol?
Is he a vessel wherein is no pleasure, that is no pleasure for God? Wherefore are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into a land which they knew not? Now this man only reigned for three months, but after he got down into Babylon, he joined with the Babylonians and misled the people of God by his idolatry. And so he says, earth, earth. Hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days.
For no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah. When you turn to Matthew chapter one, you find that he's in the genealogy. Now if the Lord Jesus Christ had been the actual son of Joseph, because the genealogy in Matthew one is Joseph's genealogy, the official one through whom the kingship passed down, if the Lord Jesus Christ was actually born by natural generation as a child of Joseph, he could never prosper sitting upon the throne of his father David.
That curse of Jeconiah stands. but the Lord Jesus was born of the seed of David, not through Solomon's line and down through the line of the kings, but through Nathan, his brother's line, and down through Mary. So actually the Lord Jesus was the child of Mary, miraculously born, the descendant of David. Legally, he was the descendant of Solomon and has a right to the throne because Joseph, took him as his son and registered him at Bethlehem when he was born. Now, don't you see how absolutely essential it is that the birth, the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ be held as the doctrine?
You cannot be a Christian and deny the virgin birth of Christ. I'd like to say a little bit about the human names and titles of our Savior. Not all of them, because we don't have time. We just read in Matthew chapter one, I shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. The eternal Son of God never had a beginning, but there was no Jesus until the birth recorded here. not this Jesus. There were some in the Old Testament who went by the same name.
In the Hebrew language, it's Joshua. In the Greek language, it's Jesus. The Mexican people still name their little boy Jesus. They pronounce it Jesus. The J is the native. They pronounce it Jesus, but they never call them Jesus. They always call them Chewy. That's the nickname. Every little boy who is among the Spanish-speaking people, the Mexicans or any of the Central Americans or South Americans, that are named Jesus, are always called Chewy.
Because even they seem to realize that that name is no longer available to ordinary human beings. That name has been appropriated by one. Now why is he called Jesus? Well, the name Jesus means Savior. It is Yeshua. Now Joshua was called Yehoshua, and this means Jehovah the Savior, while Yeshua means simply the Savior. Our Lord Jesus Christ, of course, is both.
He is Jehovah, the Savior, and He is the Savior. That's why it says in the fourth chapter of Acts in verse twelve, Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. What name? The name of Jesus. All Christians love that name. The name of Jesus is so sweet. I love its music to repeat. It makes my joy full and complete the precious name of Jesus. For eleven and a half years, my wife and I and those associated with us had a radio broadcast in Colorado Springs called The Children's Hour, and our theme song for all of those years was Jesus is the sweetest name I know, and he's just the same as his lovely name.
We love the name of the Lord Jesus. We're glad that he took that name. That's the mark of his humanity. Now, when you come to the second chapter of the Book of Philippians, We have the seven successive downward steps of the Lord Jesus all the way to the death of the cross. And the next verse says, Verse nine, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. In heaven he is still called Jesus.
I think this is wonderful. The humanity of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ is permanent. And when you get to heaven, you're going to see Jesus, the Lord Jesus face to face. Now he was also called the Son of Joseph. In the first chapter of John in verse forty-five, one of the men who had just met him went to tell another man we've met the man who was really the Messiah the son of Joseph was he the son of Joseph yes or no actually no legally yes adopted by Joseph registered by Joseph, given the right to the throne through the lineage of Joseph.
But he was not Joseph's true son. That's one of the names of our Savior in his incarnation, in his humiliation. He is also called the Son of David. Now... The Lord Jesus one time was questioned by three sets of people, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians. They all joined forces, though they hated each other. They joined forces to try to catch the Lord Jesus in his word so that they could have him executed.
And after he had answered their questions, closed their mouths, he said, no, I've got a question for you. In the Old Testament Scriptures, David called the Messiah Lord. In the Old Testament Scriptures, it said that David was to be the Father of the Messiah. Now, if the Messiah is David's son, why does David call him Lord? And there wasn't a soul in the bunch that knew how to answer the question.
Do you know how to answer it? The answer is given very plainly in the last chapter of our Bible. Our Savior himself said in the twenty-second, look at it. You ought to have it marked. The last chapter of the Revelation, Revelation twenty-two, here's the answer to this enigma Verse sixteen, I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. He began the book of the Revelation by saying, I want you to write letters to the seven churches. The book of the Revelation is given to the churches because it's a revelation of Jesus Christ in the glory.
The Incarnate God now glorifies. So he said, I sent these things to testify in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright and morning stock. Where did David come from? Our blessed Lord Jesus is the creator. He created all things. David owed his existence to God the Son.
But God the Son, in the marvelous purposes of God, chose to come to this planet. People say, do you think there'll ever be an invasion from outer space? And I love to tell them there already has been. Thank God someone came from heaven itself to this earth. God came down among men and lived among men, and he chose to come of the lineage of David. The Old Testament scriptures explicitly said that he would be of the seat of Abraham, of the house of David.
And so the Lord Jesus came into this world. of the lineage of David, and in that sense he is the offspring, as well as the root of David. Then he's called the Son of Man. He was never called the Son of Man previous to his incarnation. You'd be surprised at how many times you find the title Son of Man in the Old Testament that it always refers to a man, to a human being. Now the Lord Jesus became the Son of Man, not Son of Amen, but the Son of Man. Why did he become the Son of Man?
Because this was necessary if he was to do for us what needed to be done. Listen to his own words. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of God, no. Even so must the eternal Creator? No, He is all of this. Even so must the Son of Man be listed up. The title Son of Man is a humiliating title. Now, you think it's great to be a human being, don't you?
That's because you never saw anything else better. You're better than animals. I resent the evolutionists calling us the higher order of animals. Maybe they are, but I'm not an animal. God made me in his own likeness. He made the first man and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life. But he made some far higher beings than us. When God wanted the Assyrian army destroyed, in one night. He didn't send a general or an army.
He sent one angel. And the next morning there was a hundred and eighty-five thousand carcasses lying in that field. Angels are so far superior to us. The only because you never saw anything but a human being that you think that we're great. Actually, human beings are lower than the angels. The second chapter of Hebrews says so. We're lower in many ways. We're lower in intellect. Our children come to the home or give them tests, the I or Benet test usually, tests for IQ, tests for mentality.
We need to know what this child is capable of doing. And we have adopted one hundred as the norm, as the standard, and occasionally we find children that run up above that, and then we find some that run under that, and we say, now if they go down as low as seventy-five, that's the borderline, and from there under they're morons. But a hundred is normal, and if you've got an IQ of a hundred and fifty, you're really a whiz. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that when God made Adam, his IQ might have been a thousand. And we're all morons. Because look at what's happened to our physical beings.
If our physical beings are degenerated to the place they're in now, think what our minds must have done all these years. And don't trust your intellect too far. You trust the Word of God rather than trying to rationalize and reason out everything. People are bowing down to the sacred God of education today, the sacred cow of science. Let's not do any such foolish things as this. You and I are far lower than the other beings. There are many families in heaven, and we're told of whom every family in heaven and earth is made.
Think of all the cherubim. Think of the seraphim. Think of the archangels. Think of even the lower angels. These are all greater than we are. And so you and I are low in the scale of spiritual beings. Think of our Lord Jesus Christ. The great creator, the God of the universe, the eternal one, coming down past the archangel, past the seraphim and the cherubim and all the other angels, and made for a little while lower than the angels for the suffering of death.
And then you've got a little idea of what it meant for our Lord Jesus Christ to come down to become the Son of Man. One of these days he's going to be given the highest honors, and he's going to be given them under the same title. John chapter five, we read it the other night. John chapter five says that the Father has committed all judgment into the hands of the Son for as much. That is because he is the Son of man. Because our Lord Jesus Christ took that low place, in incarnation, because He came down to become man, God is going to honor Him as the Son of Man, sitting on the throne of judgment.
There's a great deal more to this, but now let me say just a few words before I stop about the true human nature of our Lord Jesus. He was not sinful, but let me read you a verse that guards this while at the same time telling us what he is. Romans chapter eight. This is one of the verses that you should be thoroughly acquainted with when you're going to discuss the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans eight and verse three. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending His own Son, this is His title as Son of God, the Eternal One, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.
Now if you leave out that word likeness, you're a heresy. He did not send His own son. in sinful flesh. And it is wicked to say that the Lord Jesus sinned or could sinned. He merely came in the likeness of sinful flesh. The Lord Jesus therefore has true humanity, true human nature without sin. And he's the only one who has You and I are sinful, even after we're saved.
We ought to be blameless, but we'll never be sinless until the Lord changes us. He's going to take us home to heaven one of these days, and the old nature will be eradicated. And don't waste your time trying to eradicate it until then. Because anybody who believes that his old nature is eradicated is in real danger. However, I live, out in the western prairies and the lower parts of Colorado. After you get above six thousand feet, you don't have to worry about them. But the rest of the country is filled with prairie rattlesnakes. I don't know how big they get. I personally killed one that I held by the tail higher than my head and his head touching the ground.
I know he was over six feet long. And they're terribly dangerous things. And the most dangerous thing that you can do is to think that all the rattlesnakes have been eradicated from their western prairies. The minute you think that all the rattlesnakes are gone, you are in direct danger. But if you keep in mind, wherever you go, not far from us is a little place called Rattlesnake Hill. And the men who own that put a fence around that hill because they don't even want their cattle to wander up to that hill. They've never been able to clean them out.
Now, if you don't believe in rattlesnakes and you go over on that hill to have a picnic, that'll be your last picnic. And if you think that there's no such thing as evil in your nature, you're in for trouble. Just forget this higher lifestyle. God wants you to live in the power of that endless life of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He wants you to do what you do by the energy of the Holy Spirit and never get the idea that you're a sinless, but our blessed Lord was. He had no sin. He became man.
He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. He had true human nature. Now, there are three parts to the human being. We always get them backwards. You always hear people say, body, soul, and spirit. I don't know why, because in Scripture it's always spirit, soul, and body. And that's the order in which they belong. The trouble with us in the United States is that we spend ninety percent of our time feeding, clothing, housing, entertaining, and adorning our carcasses. And this is a mistake. The body should be taken care of.
and the body certainly should be given to the Lord without reservation with all of your faculties. But the body is certainly not important compared to the Spirit. The Spirit comes first. Did our Lord Jesus have a true human spirit? Or was he merely a body inhabited by the Holy Spirit? I've heard many people say, that God crowded his personality into a human body and walked here among men looking like a man. That isn't the teaching of Scripture at all. He became just as truly man as you are, except for seeing.
He had a human spirit. What's that about his spirit? Well, there are at least three locations where it's mentioned. Let me read one of them and give you the other two. Luke chapter twenty-three twenty-third chapter of Luke you know the setting I'm sure when I mention the chapter And verse forty-six.
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And having said thus, he gave up the ghost. Now in Mark eight and thirteen, And in John, thirteen and twenty-one, if you're putting those down, let me repeat them. Mark eight, thirteen, and John, thirteen and twenty-one. In these two passages, the Lord Jesus speaks about being troubled in spirit.
Let me just define these three parts of humanity so that we may understand what we're talking about. The Spirit is the part of man with which we have God consciousness, and this animals do not have. I saw a chimpanzee roller skate one time, and it gave me a terrible inferiority complex because I've never been able to stand up on roller skates. But I'll tell you what, I never saw a chimpanzee do. I never saw one pray, and neither did you. The lowest of the human being The pygmies, any of the Aborigines, they all pray.
They all have God consciousness. But, of course, sin has caused the death of the human spirit. And the new birth takes place in the human spirit. When you are born of God, the life enters into the human spirit. And you are born from above. Now, only a human being. of all the creation on this earth has a spirit. The spirit is the part with which we have God consciousness. You are able to enjoy fellowship with God in the spirit. And you ought to cultivate spiritual life.
There are certain things which feed the spirit. And then the soul is the part of man with which we have self-consciousness. The soul is the part of man with which we feel. I am able to enjoy the love of a mother. I'm able to enjoy a good steak. I'm able to enjoy a beautiful sunset. All of these things I enjoy with a soul. Unsaved people can enjoy them the same as Christians, though without Thanksgiving. A man said to my father one time, I must be a Christian because every time I go to church and hear the organ play and the choir sing, I get cold chills that run up and down my spine.
He thought this was worship. And my dad said, does the same thing happen when you listen to the band play? We lived in an Iowa town with a square and always had a band concert on Saturday night. And it's the same thing happened when you hear the band play. Well, he said, come to think of it, it does. Well, my dad said that is merely the enjoyment that you get in the human soul. It doesn't make any difference whether it's the band or the choir. You're enjoying what you enjoy because you have a soul. Now, the human soul is the part with which we love, human love, and with which we hate.
And any person who is capable of love is also capable of hatred. The human soul is the part of which we feel. We know loneliness. We know all of these different feelings of human beings because we are human. We have a soul. Now the soul is lost until the new birth takes place in the spirit. And only then is the soul turned Godward. Before that time it's turned downward. And we're interested only in ourselves. When we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, the soul is redeemed.
And we are now capable of loving God instead of hating Him. Now the body is the part with which we have world consciousness. I can touch and see and hear and know all that's going on because I have a body. And when death takes place, the spirit and soul leave the body, and the body is not the person, the body is just the vehicle that we use while we're here on this earth. God, because Satan has ruined the body as well as the soul is going to triumph ultimately in the resurrection of the body and the changing into a new body.
This is wonderful, I think, that one of these days even our bodies are going to be redeemed. Now the Lord Jesus had a spirit. He also had a soul. He said, Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. You find that in John ten, twenty-seven and twenty-eight. Our Lord Jesus knew soul trouble. Do you remember the soul trouble you went through before you were saved?
Or maybe you went through it afterward. I got most of mine afterwards. You know what soul trouble is, don't you? You know what a terrible thing it is when you're face to face with sin. Our Savior, who had no sin, was face to face with all the sin of all believers of all times. No wonder, he said, my soul is troubled. Three times in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, you have reference to the holy soul of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me suggest that you go over the last part of Isaiah fifty-three, a little more thoroughly.
Most of us learned the chapter when we were children, and because you begin in verse one and go through and then you go back to verse one, you get so you know the first six verses pretty well. But you don't know the last six verses. And the last three verses each mention the soul of the Lord Jesus. It tells us about the travail of his soul, was necessary for him to suffer in order to give us life. I remember how I loved my mother when I found out that she went down into the valley of the shadow of death to give me my being. But our blessed Lord Jesus knew the travail that's far beyond that. We read of the soul of the Lord Jesus being poured out unto death, just as the drink offering was poured out, and only God could fully appreciate this.
It says that He made His soul an offering for sin. You think of the body of the Lord Jesus, sometimes in our meetings for worship, on Sunday morning great details gone into regarding the sufferings of the body of the Lord Jesus, his hands were pierced. I don't mean to de-emphasize this. I think we ought to think about his physical sufferings, but don't forget that the real suffering of the Lord Jesus took place in the last three dark hours when nobody saw him. And he cried out in the agony of his soul, My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
That's the soul trouble of our blessed Lord. And he had a true body. In the first chapter of Luke, the angel said to Mary, That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. That holy thing was His body, and of course incorporating His soul and spirit. That holy thing should be called the Son of God. Not that He was the Son of God and He ceased to be the Son of God and became the Son of Man and then left the realm of the Son of Man and went back to be the Son of God.
Not that. Because when He became the Son of Man, He did not cease to be the Son of God, and He never will cease to be the Son of Man. He is eternally the Son of God and the Son of Man. That holy thing, brother and sister, do you realize that that holy thing that was born of Mary was nailed to the cross and still bears the mark of Calvary and always will. You realize that the only person in heaven that will have the marks of sin upon you is the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
You won't have any of the marks of sin. You get plenty of them now, so will I. When you get to heaven, they'll all be erased. Don't ever call the wounds of the Lord Jesus scars. In the fourth chapter of the book of the Revelation, John saw him as the lamb that was newly slain in the midst of the throne. And those wounds will be fresh to all eternity. And we'll kiss those hands. I'm sure we will. And tell him that we love him because he was nailed to the cross for us. In the tenth chapter of Hebrews, Quoting from the Old Testament, he says, Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire.
Then said I, lo, I come to do thy will, my God. A body hast thou prepared me. In order to do the will of God, there must be a body prepared for our Savior, and there was. So our Lord Jesus Christ was truly man. as well as truly God. Let's pray.