Download God Revealed Himself In Reality, Nov 4 2012

The Revelation of God
Lesson 10
Lesson Text—Matthew 1:23; II
Corinthians 5:19
Matthew 1:23
Behold, a virgin shall be with child,
and shall bring forth a son, and they
shall call his name Emmanuel, which
being interpreted is, God with us.
Lesson Text—Matthew 1:23; II
Corinthians 5:19
II Corinthians 5:19
To wit, that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto
them; and hath committed unto us
the word of reconciliation.
Lesson Text—Colossians 1:15;
Colossians 2:9
Colossians 1:15
Who is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn of every
creature.
Colossians 2:9
For in him dwelleth all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily.
Lesson Text—I Timothy 3:16; John
1:1-2
I Timothy 3:16
And without controversy great is
the mystery of godliness: God
was manifest in the flesh, justified
in the Spirit, seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world, received
up into glory.
Lesson Text—I Timothy 3:16; John
1:1-2
John 1:1-2
1 In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning
with God.
Lesson Text—John 1:14
John 1:14
And the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us, (and we beheld his
glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace
and truth.
Focus Verses—John 14:9-10
John 14:9-10
Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so
long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known me, Philip? he that hath seen me
hath seen the Father; and how sayest
thou then, Shew us the Father?
Focus Verses—John 14:9-10
Believest thou not that I am in the
Father, and the Father in me? the words
that I speak unto you I speak not of
myself: but the Father that dwelleth in
me, he doeth the works.
Focus Thought
Jesus is the full revelation of the
one,
true, supreme God.
Culture Connection
Jesus—The Ultimate Reality Star
I. One God
My younger grandchildren like to
pretend. They have a box of dress-up
clothes in the basement. Sometimes
they are beautiful princesses and a
handsome knight. Sometimes they are
actors and put on plays for my wife
and me, their captive audience.
Sometimes they play house or school
or church. The other day they took
playing Barbie to a new level.
Using masking tape, they marked out
designated
living
areas on the
I. One
God
basement carpet, including stalls for
their ponies and parking spaces for
the cars.
Psychologists tell us that
pretending is healthy for children. The
danger arises when the child cannot
separate pretend from reality. It
becomes worse when an adult
continues to live in an imaginary
world filled with phony dreams and a
warped concept of life.
Christians should not live in the
make-believe world promoted by glitz
I.
One
God
and glamour of the media or the
popular theories espoused by modern
social scientists or theologians. We
need to face reality—life as it really is
with its good and bad. The best
starting point is to face the reality that
almighty God took on the form of man
and provided atonement for sins
through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
When our view of Jesus Christ is real,
then our vision of other aspects of life
becomes clearer.
Contemplating the Topic
I.
One
God
Like exploring for buried treasure or
digging diamonds in a mine, the
revelation of the Oneness of God is a
truth to be desired and sought after by
all mankind. God revealed Himself
progressively in the Scriptures to each
generation in various ways; for
instance, we know Him as the Father
in creation, the Son in redemption, and
the Holy Spirit in regeneration—
spiritually infilling and empowering
believers.
Hebrews 1:1-2
“God, who at sundry times and in
divers manners spake in time past
unto the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken
unto us by his Son, whom he hath
appointed heir of all things, by
whom also he made the worlds;
Hebrews 1:3
“Who being the brightness of his
glory, and the express image of
his person, and upholding all
things by the word of his power,
when he had by himself purged
our sins, sat down on the right
hand of the Majesty on high”
(Hebrews 1:1-3).
I. One God
This lesson will explore the
biblical basis for belief in one God
and in His relationship to His
creation as the Son of God.
Searching the Scriptures
I. OneOne
God
God
Polytheism is the belief in more
than one god. Monotheism is the belief
in one God. Of the world’s religions,
only Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
are monotheistic. Further, all three of
them trace their roots back to
Abraham. Trinitarianism, which
confesses that the Godhead is
comprised of three persons, God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, pushes at the boundaries of
monotheism.
God called Abraham to separate
himself
from the
idolatrous religions
I.
One
God
of the world. He announced to
Abraham, “I am the Almighty God;
walk before me” (Genesis 17:1). God
desired to use Abraham and his family
to declare to the world there is but
one God. This revelation to Abraham
of the one true God is the historic
position of Judaism found in
Deuteronomy 6:4: “Sh’ma, Yisra’el!
ADONAI Eloheinu, ADONAI echad
[Hear, Isra’el! Adonai our God, Adonai
is one]” (Complete Jewish Bible).
Transparency 1
Oneness believers’ view of God
agrees with the exclusive, strictly
I.
One
God
monotheistic interpretation of passages
in the Old Testament. Several passages
in Isaiah accentuate this position and
firmly refute any multiplicity of deity:
“Before me there was no God formed,
neither shall there be after me. I, even I,
am the Lord; and beside me there is no
saviour” (Isaiah 43:10-11). “Is there a
God beside me? yea, there is no God; I
know not any” (Isaiah 44:8). “I am God,
and there is none else; I am God,
and there is none like me”
(Isaiah 46:9).
David Bernard, in his book
Essentials
of Oneness
I. One
God Theology,
states, “No Old Testament passage
explicitly enunciates trinitarian
doctrine; one cannot derive it from an
exegesis of Old Testament texts alone.
If threeness is an essential part of
God’s nature, He did not reveal it to
His chosen people. If correct,
trinitarianism stands alone as a key
aspect of God’s nature totally
unknown in the Old Testament but
revealed in the New Testament.
If God is a trinity, then Abraham, the
father of the faithful of all ages, did not
I.
One
God
comprehend the nature of the deity he
worshiped.”
At no time does the scriptural
record refer to God as “they” or
“them.” God declared from the
beginning, “I am he” (Deuteronomy
32:39, et. al.). What God did in creation
He did alone. Further, God said He did
it by Himself (Isaiah 44:24). The
Scriptures refer to God as the holy
One forty-eight times and never as the
holy Persons or the holy Trinity.
Trinitarians often challenge
believers
of theGod
Oneness view and use
I.
One
scriptural texts such as Genesis 1:26
to try to substantiate their position that
God is more than one. However, the
plural pronoun “us” in the text “Let us
make man” is “the Hebrew idiomatic
way of expressing deliberation . . .; or
it is the plural of Majesty, royal
commands being conveyed in the first
person plural, as in Ezra 4:18”. The
next verse in Genesis uses the
singular pronoun exclusively.
“So God created man in his own
image,
inOne
the image
of God created he
I.
God
him; male and female created he them”
(Genesis 1:27). Verse 26 is the creative
thought and verse 27 is the creative
act. God did it by Himself (Genesis
2:7).
The Old Testament prophet Micaiah
saw the Lord sitting on His throne,
surrounded by the heavenly host. A
careful reading of I Kings 22:19 reveals
no mention of any other divine
person(s) sitting with Him.
On the Isle of Patmos the apostle John
wroteI.
of One
his vision
of the Lord. He also
God
saw one sitting on the throne
(Revelation 4:2) surrounded by the
elders and worshiped by four living
creatures who said, “Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty, which was, and is,
and is to come” (Revelation 4:8).
God Manifested in Flesh
II. God Manifested in Flesh
The Gospel of John was the last of
the four Gospels to be written. Unlike
the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark,
Luke), which were written to document
the birth, ministry, death, and
resurrection of Jesus, John wrote in
defense of the absolute deity of the
Son of God.
At the close of the first century,
numerous false doctrines had begun
I.
One
God
to invade the church. One such
doctrine taught that Jesus was human
and not divine. In John’s introduction
to his Gospel, he emphatically stated,
“In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. . . . And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father,) full of
grace and truth” (John 1: 1, 14). (See
also I Timothy 3:16; I John 4:2-3;
II John 7.)
The expression “only begotten Son”
I. One
God
reminds
us that
if there is a begotten
one, there must be a begetter. Jesus
was begotten in time, not in eternity.
The writer of Hebrews, quoting from
Psalm 2:7, noted that a Son was
begotten by God on a certain day. “For
unto which of the angels said he at any
time, Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten thee? And again, I will be to
him a Father, and he shall be to me a
Son?” (Hebrews 1:5).
The Scriptures declare that the Holy
Spirit I.
overshadowed
One God Mary, and she
gave birth to the Son of God. It was
not until this significant moment that
God became “the Father.” And at this
moment God incarnated Himself in the
child forming in Mary’s womb. “God
the Father” did not send forth “God
the Son.”
Paul said, “Great is the mystery of
godliness: God was manifest in the
flesh” (I Timothy 3:16).
The mystery of God in human flesh
should
andGod
cannot be found in
I.not
One
“persons.” It is found in how God
became a man; how Jesus could be
wholly and completely human, yet still
be wholly and completely God. We
believe it, but we cannot really
comprehend it.
The apostle Paul explained the
mediatorial role of the sonship when
he declared, “For there is one God,
and one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus”
(I Timothy 2:5).
The flesh of the Son of God sacrificed
on Calvary
paid
the debt for the sins
I. One
God
of all humanity. In the Old Testament
the Spirit did not have blood to offer to
satisfy the conditions of a sinless
substitute demanded by the Law.
Therefore, the writer of Hebrews
quoted the passage in Psalm 40:6-8 in
reference to God’s purpose in the
sonship: “Wherefore when he cometh
into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and
offering thou wouldest not, but a body
hast thou prepared me”
(Hebrews 10:5).
Paul said that God purchased the New
Testament
church
with His own blood
I. One
God
(Acts 20:28). The only place this
sinless blood could be obtained was
by and through the virgin-born son of
Mary.
The gospel of Jesus Christ cannot
exist without the deity of the Son of
God. He is both fully human and fully
God. He is not, as some have
assumed, a man who became God, but
God who became man.
The very God of glory created the Son
of God
as God
one microscopic cell
I.first
One
implanted in the virgin womb of Mary,
in whom He would dwell for the
purpose of redeeming the human race
from eternal death. This everlasting
Father willingly became the Son of
whom Isaiah prophesied: “For unto us
a child is born, unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his
shoulder: and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty
God, The everlasting Father, The
Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
Yet, God did not vacate His place of
I.
One
God
Sovereignty and oversight of the
entire universe. This wonderful truth is
beautifully illustrated in William E.
Booth-Clibborn’s song “Down from
His Glory.”
Down from His glory,
Down
fromstory,
His Glory
ever living
My God and Saviour came,
and Jesus was His Name.
Born in a manger,
to His own a stranger,
A Man of sorrows, tears and agony.
O how I love Him! How I adore Him!
My breath, my sunshine, my all in all.
The great Creator became my Saviour,
And all God’s fullness dwelleth in Him.
Down from His Glory
What condescension,
bringing us redemption;
That in the dead of night,
not one faint hope in sight,
God, gracious, tender,
laid aside His splendour,
Stooping to woo, to win, to save my
soul.
The dual nature of Jesus Christ
means He could be limited as a man
I.
One
God
and unlimited as God at the same
time. As man He felt tired and slept,
was hungry and ate food. He had
limited knowledge, for He said, “But of
that day and that hour knoweth no
man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father” (Mark 13:32). He was subject
to death, but the Father—the Spirit of
God within Him—was unlimited and
eternal. God did not die at Calvary.
“And when Jesus had cried with a
I. One
loud voice,
he God
said, Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit: and
having said thus, he gave up the
ghost” (Luke 23:46). God experienced
death only by way of the flesh of
Jesus Christ.
As a man, Jesus Christ did not do
the miraculous works; it was the Spirit
in Him that did the works (John 14:10;
Matthew 9:6; Mark 13:32).
Therefore, the term “Son of God” as
God
used I.
in One
Scripture
relates to the works
of the Spirit accomplished through the
flesh of Jesus Christ. The work of the
Son in the earth was as John the
Baptist declared it to be, “the Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sin of the
world” (John 1:29).
The doctrine of the Trinity rests on
the term “God the Son” or the eternal
sonship.
Trinitarians believe God the Son
existed in eternity with God the Father
I.
One
God
before His birth in Bethlehem, and it
was this Son whom God sent to earth
to be manifested in the flesh of Jesus
Christ. These terms and these
concepts do not exist in either the Old
Testament or the New Testament. In
reality, the sonship existed only in the
mind of God before Bethlehem. He
knew His fallen human creation would
need a Savior, and He planned to
manifest Himself in flesh to become
the sacrificial Lamb.
Thus the Bible says the Lamb of God
was slain “from the foundation of the
I.
One
God
world” (Revelation 13:8). (See also
Hebrews 4:3; I Peter 1:20.) If Christ
were literally crucified in eternity, His
physical body would have had to exist
before His birth in Bethlehem, and
even Trinitarian theologians do not
hold to this view.
When God formed Adam out of the
dust of the ground, the first man Adam
was a “figure of him that was to come”
(Romans 5:14).
Paul used the contrast between Adam
and Jesus Christ to explain that Adam
I.
One
God
brought death to all mankind, but
Christ brought life to all mankind. “For
as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive” (I Corinthians
15:22). Paul wrote, “God [sent] his
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh” (Romans 8:3).
The sonship began in time, not in
eternity, and the mediatorial work and
reign of the Son will end in time (I
Corinthians 15:28).
God is not a prisoner of time; He is the
I. of
One
creator
time.God
As God, He stands
outside of time and sees the end from
the beginning as a continuum (Isaiah
46:10). He proactively prepared for our
propitiation by way of Calvary in
eternity before the foundation of the
world. But only in Bethlehem was the
plan finally activated. God provided for
the Son of God to be born to enact His
pre-existing plan at the most
advantageous time in human history.
I. One
“But when
the God
fulness of the time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of
a woman, made under the law”
(Galatians 4:4).
Philippians
2:5-8
“Let this
mind be in you,
which was
also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the
form of God, thought it not robbery to
be equal with God: but made himself of
no reputation, and took upon him the
form of a servant, and was made in the
likeness of men: and being found in
fashion as a man, he humbled himself,
and became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross.
Philippians 2:9-11
“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,
of things in heaven, and things in earth,
and things under the earth; and that
every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of
God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11).
The humiliation and death of the
Son of God brought glory to the
I.
One
God
Father. During the Last Supper Jesus
told the disciples, “Now the Son of
Man is glorified and God is glorified in
him. If God is glorified in him, God will
glorify the Son in himself, and will
glorify him at once” (John 13:31-32,
NIV). Therefore, God has highly
exalted Him, giving Him a name
(“Jehovah is salvation”) before which
all mankind will bow and confess He
alone is Lord.
God said
in Isaiah
I. One
God45:21-23 that every
knee will bow and every tongue shall
swear that He alone is the Savior. The
Spirit of God was glorified when Jesus
manifested God’s fundamental nature
of love, truth, and righteousness to the
world. The Son was glorified when His
death and resurrection revealed to the
world that He was their Savior.
Hebrews 1:3
“Who being the brightness of his
glory, and the express image of
his person, and upholding all
things by the word of his power,
when he had by himself purged
our sins, sat down on the right
hand of the Majesty on high”
(Hebrews 1:3).
God is a Spirit and therefore is
invisible (John 4:24; Luke 24:39).
I.
One
God
Since He is God’s image, Jesus could
say, “He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father” (John 14:9). “Who is the
image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of every creature”
(Colossians 1:15). (See Colossians
2:9.) In Heaven, we will only see
Jesus. The resurrected, glorified body
of Jesus Christ will always be the final
visible image of the invisible God.
John saw only one on the throne in
Heaven (Revelation 4:2).
III. God
God Revealed Himself
Revealed
Himself
to
to Humanity
Humanity
The name of Jesus was first spoken
by the angel Gabriel: “Thou shalt call
his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus
is the English equivalent of the Greek
transliteration of Yehoshua, or later
Yeshua in Hebrew. In the Septuagint
(Greek Old Testament), the word
Yehoshua is rendered as “Jesus,” the
closest Greek pronunciation of the
Aramaic Yeshua (3443 Strong’s Old
Testament).
Jesus is what His name means,
“Jehovah
is salvation.”
I. One
God The term
Christ is a descriptive title for the
mission of Jesus on earth. Christos is
the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew
word Messiah, meaning the “anointed
one.”
John declared, “No man hath seen
God at any time; the only begotten
Son, which is in the bosom of the
Father, he hath declared him” (John
1:18). The mission of the Son was to
reveal the Father to the world.
Jesus pointed to the Father as the
source
all ofGod
His power and work.
I. ofOne
He received no glory personally from
men but deferred it all to His heavenly
Father (John 14:7-11).
Jesus identified Himself as the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He claimed, “Before Abraham was, I
am” (John 8:56-59). A Trinitarian
might apply this to the argument that
the Son preexisted with the Father;
however, one must understand the
statement in view of the Jewish
perspective.
They saw His statement as a claim to
be God,
and they
took up stones to
I. One
God
execute Jesus for blasphemy.
In Matthew 22:41-46, Jesus asked
the Pharisees what they thought
about the Messiah. They all knew the
Christ would be the son of David but
they could not answer Jesus’ quote in
verse 44 from Psalm 110:1. Jesus
wanted them to explain how the
Christ could be David’s son and yet
David addressed Him as his Lord.
“The Lord [Jehovah] said unto my
Lord I.
[David’s
One son,
GodChrist in His
humanity], Sit thou at my right hand,
until I make thine enemies thy
footstool” (Psalm 110:1). Christ in His
deity was David’s God, but in
humanity He was David’s son as He
was born to his lineage. Jesus was
the Father of David and also the son
of David. Jesus Christ is Jehovah
God in flesh.
When the Pharisees heard Jesus
I.
One
God
tell a man who was sick with palsy that
his sins were forgiven, they reasoned
among themselves, “Who can forgive
sins but God only?” (Mark 2:7). Jesus
knew their thoughts, exposed them,
and said, “Whether is it easier to say
to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be
forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and
take up thy bed, and walk?
But that ye may know that the Son of
man hath power on earth to forgive
I.
One
God
sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,)
I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy
bed, and go thy way into thine house”
(Mark 2:9-11).
The Pharisees were more than
willing to accept the healing work of
Jesus’ ministry, but He crossed a line
in their minds when He forgave sin.
They could not see Jesus as anything
more than a man. Jesus was dealing
with sin, the root cause of the illness.
Three times Jesus forgave sins in His
I. One
ministry.
Each God
time He addressed the
real issue in the person—forgiveness
of sin—not healing, although the
people had not asked to be forgiven
(Matthew 9:2; Luke 7:47-48; John 8:1011). This was a true picture of why He
came to earth—to seek and to save
that which was lost.
Internalizing the Message
I. One
God
Jesus
said in
John 8:56 that
Abraham rejoiced to see His day, and
he saw it and was glad. What did
Abraham see? He rejoiced at the
promise of God that through his family
all nations of the world would be
blessed. He rejoiced at the miraculous
birth of his son Isaac and saw the birth
of the Messiah. He rejoiced at the
symbolic death and rebirth of Isaac
after he in faith sacrificed him and saw
in it the sacrifice of the Son of God
(Hebrews 11:17-19).
In the same way God gave him a
vision of the future city; by faith
I.
One
God
Abraham embraced the vision, and
also by faith he saw the day of the
Messiah (Hebrews 11:10, 13-16). The
statement of Jesus found in John 8:58
can be translated, “Before Abraham
came into being, I AM.” This was
another affirmation of His divinity, and
the Jewish leaders received it as such.
He had once again made Himself equal
with God (John 5:18), and they thought
this was the sin of blasphemy, worthy
of death (Leviticus 24:16).
I. One God
Jesus was divinely protected and
walked away.
W. A. Criswell, in his book
Expository Sermons on Revelation,
volume one (page 145-146),
commented on Revelation 1:12:
One God
“I oftenI.wonder
at people who think
that in heaven they are going to see
three Gods. If you ever see three Gods,
then what the Mohammedan says
about you is true and what the Jewish
neighbor says about you is true. You
are not a monotheist, you are a
polytheist. . . . The true Christian is a
monotheist. There is one God.”