Jesus of Nazareth: God and Man

A couple of weeks ago, Carl was asked during his teaching on man and woman to define Gnosticism. Unfortunately Carl’s teaching on the doctrine of man and woman went longer than expected and with the baptism scheduled directly afterwards he did not have time to give a clear definition.  So for completeness I will state the definition here before I start since it fits rather well with today’s topic of Jesus being fully God and fully man.

Gnosticism was a second century heresy claiming that salvation could be gained through secret knowledge. Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "to know." Gnostics also believed that the material world (matter) was evil and that only the spirit is good. They constructed an evil God and the Old Testament to explain the creation of the world (matter), and they considered Jesus Christ a wholly spiritual God.

Gnostics were divided on Jesus. One view held that Jesus only appeared to have human form but that He was actually spirit only. The other view contended that Jesus’ divine spirit came upon His human body at baptism and departed before the crucifixion. Christianity, on the other hand, holds that Jesus was fully man and fully God and that His human and divine natures were both present and necessary to provide a suitable sacrifice for humanity's sin.

Humanity: Male and Female

 

Welcome! Today we continue our series on Sound Doctrine, this time is the second of three messages on humanity. Last week, John talked about the nature of man, “Soul and Spirit, Flesh and Bone.” This week we venture into an area that is controversial in the sense that our society has changed dramatically in what it believes to be true and right – the area of humanity as male and female. Now, I am the pastor among the three of us that generally develops sermon series and assigns teaching assignments. Fred has pointed out that in the past that I tend to give him the most controversial or difficult assignments. Fred is, by and large, right about this, although I have some good excuses – Fred is the one among us with significant training and experience as a counselor, and a lot of these difficult topics fall along these lines. This week’s topic is one I would consider controversial, so I would like to ask Fred to come up here and finish today’s message. Just kidding! Fred, this is an early Christmas present to you – stay in your seat! 

Humanity: Soul and Spirit, Flesh and Bone

We enter a new chapter today on this series on doctrine.  We began the series talking about the Bible: how it is unique, and how it is the basis of our understanding about God and the things of God (and really everything).  Then, we spent a couple of weeks talking about God and what He is like.  Most recently, we have been talking about God’s creation including last week’s topic, the spiritual creatures God made: angels.  Both the audio and transcripts for those messages are posted on the church website.  Just go to clemsoncc.org and look for the “Message Archive” on the left side.  Click there, and you can find whichever message you are interested in.  If you have trouble, let us know, and we will help you get what you need.

This week, we are beginning a three-week chapter about another spiritual creature God made.  We are going to talk about us.  … Humanity … Humankind … Man.

I started thinking about humanity and whence man came.  As is usual, when I wax philosophical, my mind usually wanders not to deep and hidden things but rather to the simple, so I naturally ended up at the familiar nursery rhyme.

“What are little boys made of? Slugs [or snips] and snails and puppy-dog tails; that's what little boys are made of.  What are little girls made of?  Sugar and spice and everything nice; that's what little girls are made of.”

God's Creation: A Little Higher than Us

This summer, Stephen Hawking, the wheelchair-bound physicist, helped launch a major new effort to search for signs of intelligent alien life. “The new initiative is scheduled to operate for 10 years and will search for signs of non-naturally occurring communications in both radio frequencies and laser transmissions. The initiative will scan the 1 million stars closest to earth in the Milky Way, as well as the 100 closest galaxies.”  At a media event for this project, explaining why he thought it was important and why he was personally supporting it, Hawking said, “We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know.”

Well, we do know. We are not the only intelligent beings in Creation. Apart from God Himself, there are also angelic beings. And so today we are going to look at what Scripture tells us about these beings.  

There is a lot we don’t know about angels. We do know that they are spiritual beings, whose purposes include helping us:

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? – Heb. 1:14