The Messiah: boyhood, temptations, impeccability

Let's turn to Luke chapter 1 or 2, excuse me, we've already dealt with Luke 1. Just while we're getting the word opened and preparing to talk about it, I was just thinking about something I mentioned in prayer. It's very important when we think about the word of truth and how it is that we know what we know about the Lord Jesus Christ. A lot of people say, you know, doctrine is fine, but I just want to know the Lord personally.

I just want a personal friendship and relationship with him. And there's a certain level at which that is a very admirable thing to say because we don't simply want to know him scholastically or as some sort of list of doctrinal statements without any reality to it, without any relationship involved with it. On the other hand, you understand the danger of that kind of thinking because if you say, I only want to feel good about Christ, I want to feel my relationship with him, the question is, can you really know him? Can you really enjoy him? Can you really understand him unless you have the word of God to teach you? So let me put it this way, it is really impossible to know Christ personally unless you first know him propositionally.

Or putting it more simply, the only way to know Christ is through his word. Now there is a subjective sense in which he's in our hearts and we communicate with him. I'm fine with that, but the basis of what we know about him is from the word.

So the word is essential. There are an unsaved people who have become quite expert at what they think is Bible doctrine, although without the illumination of the spirit, I doubt they're really getting the real message, but they have no love for the Savior. So the love is not optional either, but the love is based on the facts that we learn about him from the word of God.

So let us come to love his word. That's where we'll come to know him and love him. I also think it's important to cultivate a relationship with Christ himself.

Now this is an interesting situation because people will come to you and sometimes they'll say, well, who do you admire most or is Christ your friend? And you say, he's my best friend, I love him, he gave himself for me. And then what if they were to say to you, when's the last time you talked to him? You're saying, I don't talk to him, I'm not allowed to talk to him. I only pray to the Father through the mediation of the Son and the power of the Spirit.

And I'm hitting a provocative note here because I want to say what I think about this and what I think the word says. There are no examples in the New Testament of people praying to the Lord Jesus directly unless he was physically present. You say, are you sure about that? I'm sure.

I look, because this has been an interesting subject for me to think about based on a discussion I had with somebody a few months ago. The way Christ came to bring us to God, he came to show us the Father. And our relationship with the Father is something that is very precious.

And that we come to him with our petitions, we come to him with our thanksgiving. Having said that, I think it is a reasonable thing to talk to your best friend. And I think maybe if you haven't done this before, you should cultivate a daily habit of thanking the Lord Jesus for dying for your sins, and for being your Savior, and for being your Lord.

I don't think you would go to the Lord Jesus with requests, because those requests are to be made known to God, the Father. Christ made it possible for us to have that relationship with the Father, and it is to the Father we address our requests. And Christ taught us to pray that way.

And I'm sticking with the biblical pattern. What I'm saying is I don't think you have to do an either-or here, or say it's only this or it's only that. I think publicly we address God the Father.

We have no examples of scripture of doing otherwise. But in your heart, are you developing a close personal friendship with the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you talk to him? After all, what do friends do? They talk to each other. If you're not talking to each other, there's something wrong, right? So just something to chew on and think about as we move on.

I want to talk about the boyhood of Christ, which we know very little about, but we're going to read the section that tells us the most. And then about his temptations in the wilderness. And then after that, I want to discuss a little bit about his impeccability and his sinlessness.

So let's begin in Luke chapter 2 and verse 39. So when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. Now here's an interesting gap here.

Luke is not interested in what Matthew was interested in. Matthew was interested in the flight to Egypt and the escape from Herod and the return. Matthew sees Christ as the true Israelite coming out of Egypt.

Out of Egypt, I have called my son. And so he recapitulates the history of the nation of Israel, but he does it right. They did it wrong.

But Luke's interest is different. He's going to talk about the humanity of Christ now and he's going to emphasize some truths about his growth and the great experience that we understand, the account, rather, of the temple experience when he was lost to his parents for about three days. So verse 39, so when they had performed all the, I read that already, and verse 40, and the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

We might think of just the different pieces of that verse. The child grew physically, normal physical development. He became strong in spirit, so that's normal spiritual development, again, the human spirit of Christ developing.

Filled with wisdom, intellectual development, even though he is wisdom personified and in him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge as the son of God, still, as a man, he's growing in wisdom, the application of knowledge to life experience, and the grace of God was upon him. He was socially growing as well. So this is a normal, although perfect, perfectly normal and normally perfect, now scratch that last piece, is this is a perfect normal development of a perfect man, a perfect boy.

Then it says, his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was 12 years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. This is normally for a Jewish boy a very important Passover because the next year would be the Bar Mitzvah, when he became a son of the covenant, 13 years old.

And so this is the year preceding that, and this is the year that most young boys became interested in the ritual of Passover. And of course, Christ is our Passover sacrifice for us, so it's interesting that he's partaking of the feast as a Jew that he ultimately will fulfill on the cross as our Savior. And when they had finished the days, that is the days that they spent, the days of unleavened bread, of course, that follow the Passover, as they returned, the boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his mother did not know it.

But supposing him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey and sought him among their relatives and acquaintances. And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem seeking him. And so it was that after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.

And all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. So when they saw him, they were amazed, and his mother said to him, son, why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I have sought you anxiously. And he said to them, why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my father's business? But they did not understand the statement which he spoke to them.

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them. But his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.

So when Christ came into manhood, he entered into the womb of Mary conceived by the Holy Ghost as obviously a one-celled organism at the beginning, saying, well, you shouldn't be talking about those things that's delving into areas. No, the scripture talks about his conception, and I think we can understand that. We don't understand the mysteries of it, but we understand that this was a human being.

And I will be very firm on that score, that conception is the moment when humans begin. And even as a one-celled zygote, a human is possessed of a one-celled body and a spirit and soul. And all that matters from that point on is merely growth and development.

Everything is there for personhood at the beginning. And no size doesn't matter. Small people are not less human than big people.

Young people are not less human than old people. So conception is the moment when Christ enters into manhood. He obviously doesn't even have a human brain at that point.

So through the embryonic development, all the organs function and develop normally through his birth. He is a normal human being. Now, he's a perfect human being.

He's an ideal human being. But let's make him a normal human being, you understand. There is something very abnormal about him in the sense that he is also God, manifest in flesh.

But in his humanity, it is perfectly normal and intact, and it develops at a normal rate. So you read, you sing the Christmas carol, The Little Lord Jesus, No Crying He Makes. Now, apparently the author of that Christmas carol did not think the Lord Jesus ever cried.

I suppose he thought kids who cried were brats. And he thought the Lord would never be like that. Well, the Lord did not cry because he was angry, but the Lord cried when he was hungry.

Right? That's normal human development. And so this infant that Mary held in her arms, as she was told by Simeon, this was an amazing thing to hold in her hands the one who upheld the universe by the word of his power. It must have been an amazing thing for her to watch him as he developed.

And yet what she saw developing was normal human boyhood all the way up to this point when we finally get a glimpse of these 30 silent years. Those years of obscurity are full of rich delight to God the Father. There is so much about the Lord Jesus that we don't understand.

There's so much that God reserves to himself. Just an illustration. If you go back to the Levitical offerings and you think about the burnt offering, God says, all the offering is mine.

This is my offering. Now, the human being who offered it, you know, was able to achieve the atonement that it provided. But at the same time, it was for God.

The second offering, the meal offering, God says, all the frankincense is mine. Not for you. It's for me.

The third offering is called the peace or fellowship offering. God says, all the fat is mine. You're not to touch any of it.

It's mine. And for the sin and the trespass offerings, particularly mentioned in this case of the sin offering, God said, all the blood is mine. Now, why is God being so possessive? He's letting us know that in these offerings, there is so much that only his heart can appreciate.

Only he can delight in it. The Father only, glorious claim, the Son can comprehend. No man knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.

There's a sense in which we can know the Father through the Son. But no man knoweth the Son save the Father. And period, full stop.

There's no sense in which we can understand the hypostatic union of who Christ is as God and man. Only the Father fully appreciates that. And so, in general, in these years of silence, when he was growing up, it was for the Father's delight.

And yet, here's a glimpse at the Feast of Passover when Christ, the dutiful Israelite, going up with his parents to the feast as he needed to do three times a year. And so, suppose he's with the relatives. Clearly, it was their mistake.

Christ was not being disobedient or mischievous in any way here. He was actually going to the place where he should have been as a devoted Jew to the temple. And so, they take off and they go a day's journey.

And then, they take a day's journey back because they have gone a day's journey that way. You've got to go a day's journey that way to get back where you started from. And then, they take another day or so to find him.

So, that's for three days. Your father and I have sought you for three days anxiously. And there's an interesting correction the Lord makes here.

Your father and I, meaning Joseph. He says, no, I must be about my father's business. As if to say, although I'm subservient to Joseph and I respect him as my human paternal authority, yet my first priority is to my real father, my father in heaven.

And yet, when we see him working with the doctors or the teachers in the temple, it's very age appropriate. He's asking them questions that would be appropriate for a boy. And he's hearing them.

And he was giving answers because, obviously, they asked him questions back. And they were astonished at his understanding. But I suggest that the understanding that he had and what he was saying to them was not because he was bringing all of his... He had all the omniscience of God.

But we're looking here at the development of a studious boy who is developing normally and devoted to the Word of God. And, of course, with his very agile human mind, because it was not affected by the fall, he must have been an astonishing student. And speaking on the human level, this is always a very difficult balance, right? Because we're never going to exclude... Remember, Christ has only one center of consciousness.

There's not two eyes. There's one eye. There's one person.

There's one personality. The same eye who said before Abraham was, I am, that eye, is the same eye that he expresses when he says, for example, as a man, I am the Father, are one. That eye never changed.

And yet there's a mystery about his humanity and his deity and how they interrelate. So, here we have this normal, wonderful development. And then it says, he went down to Nazareth with them and was subject to them.

And he increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. Now, again, people look at that and they say, well, I can get the increase in stature because he's growing up. But how could the omniscient one increase in wisdom? How could the all-wise God increase in wisdom? Because as a man, he was applying his understanding, using principles from God's Word to illuminate his path and to make proper decisions.

That is what wisdom is. It's the application of divine truth to real-life situations. And he did it perfectly.

And when people saw that, they appreciated it more and more. It's not that God said, I'm getting to like this man more and more. God loved him fully at the beginning.

That's not what we understand when it says he increased in favor. It's that God was able to appreciate day by day the development of this man and his cutting forward, one of the expressions that's used, in the will of God, always doing the things that pleased him. Morning by morning, wakening to hear as the learned.

We heard about that in Isaiah 50, giving a word in season to the weary. He was the perfectly developing young man. Subject to his parents.

In favor with God and men. Then Luke tells us about the ministry of John the Baptist, which we're going to skip. And then the baptism of Christ.

We'll start there. Verse 21 of Luke chapter 3. When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized. And while he prayed, the heaven was opened.

And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon him. And a voice came from heaven which said, you are my beloved son. And you, I am well pleased.

This is a wonderful, beautiful glimpse of the Trinity now. All involved in this earthly life of Christ. The Father's voice from heaven.

The spirit coming down like a dove to light upon him. And, of course, the Christ himself in the water coming up out of his baptism. As the true Israelite.

As the man who would represent the nation as well as ultimately stand in the place of all men. He took that place of going, identifying himself with the remnant. And going through the rite of baptism.

Even though he had nothing himself to repent of. He was leading the way for others to follow. And the Father again exclaims from heaven.

My beloved son. I am well pleased. In him is all my delight.

Then we have the genealogy of Christ through Mary. I've already discussed that. How this is actually the line that makes him the royal blood.

And then we have the section I want to dwell on next. Which is the beginning of chapter 4. Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. And was led by the spirit into the wilderness being tempted for 40 days by the devil.

And in those days he ate nothing. And afterward, when they had ended, he was hungry. And the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.

But Jesus answered him saying, it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word of God. Then the devil taking him up on a high mountain showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to him, all this authority I will give you and their glory.

For this has been delivered to me. And I give it to whomsoever or to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you will worship before me, all will be yours.

And Jesus answered and said to him, get behind me, Satan. For it is written you shall worship the Lord your God. And him only shall you serve.

Then he brought him to Jerusalem. Set him on a pinnacle, the pinnacle of the temple. And said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here.

Which is about 450 feet, by the way. Throw yourself down from here. For it is written, now Satan is quoting scripture.

He will give his angels charge over you to keep you. And in their hands they shall bear you up. Lest you dash your foot against a stone.

And Jesus answered and said to him, it has been said you shall not tempt the Lord your God. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. So here we have the wonderful wilderness testing.

Wonderful in the sense that it was so strongly affirming that the Lord Jesus could not fail and would not fail. The temptation of Christ in the wilderness is what I want to dwell on for a few minutes. And then I want to talk about some principles that relate to his person as the impeccable Christ.

Which means he could not sin. You might ask, why would the Father want him to go into the wilderness to be tempted? Why would the Holy Spirit lead him? In fact, Mark says the Holy Spirit drove him. It's not that he was resistant, but there was an urgency.

There was a compelling need to have this test performed before he would embark on his earthly ministry. The principle that Christ follows in his life is a very good one. First of all, he's going to walk the walk before he talks the talk.

All that Jesus began to do and to teach. He demonstrated what he taught before he taught it. Therefore, when he taught it, it had weight.

It had power. They saw it lived out and they saw it taught. And the most important thing was for him to show his sinlessness and his absolute loyalty to God right from the get-go.

So that's what we have. As soon as the baptism has been done, he goes into the wilderness. What's ringing in his ears? Ringing in his ears is the last thing that he heard when he was in the water of baptism.

You were my beloved son. What's the first thing Satan says to him in the wilderness? If you are the son of God. This is a classic.

The devil loves to question the word of God. He's actually questioning what God has just said. God has just affirmed, you are my son.

And I'm well pleased is how Luke puts it. The devil says, are you the son of God? Are you sure? If you're the son of God, then you would be able to do some things. And I'm going to ask you to do that and demonstrate this to me because I'm doubting it.

Later on, he will get Christ to attempt to disobey scripture. Then in the third paragraph, he will start to twist the scripture. The devil is very dangerous when he has a Bible under his arm, as they say.

And the worst errors are half-truths many times, right? So we need to be very careful that we don't misuse scripture, as the devil did, to try to get Christ to walk outside, to move outside the will of God. When you have something that you want to test, there are two potential reasons for that. One is more on the research and development side, and that's to find out if it will fail or if it will perform up to the specs that you have set for it.

Then there's more the marketing public relations side, and that is to stick something and test it to show that it cannot fail. Now, actually, both things were going on simultaneously here because the devil's purpose was to make him trip and fall. But God's overriding purpose in this temptation and testing was to prove that he cannot fail.

And it's interesting how the devil outsmarts himself sometimes. He was actually the tool, if you will. Although his intentions were very nefarious, he was the actual tool that brought about the temptations that accomplished God's purposes, which were to show that he can't fail.

And so this is very similar to what you have with the Book of Job. And it's also true of the testings that come into your life and mine, so we might as well get practical for a moment. God does not tempt people and does not solicit people to sin.

That's the devil's business. And so when people are tempted, they're drawn after their own lust, and lust, when it is conceived, brings forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. James tells us this is the natural progression of temptation with fallen beings.

But who started everything in the case of the Book of Job? It wasn't Satan. It was God. He said, Have you considered my servant Job? So God had designs to show through Job the power of faith and loyalty to God, even in the face of adversity.

The devil wanted to destroy him. God wanted to take him through a difficult time to make him a better man at the other end and to bring increased glory to God. And remember, when life is smooth sailing for you and for me, God does not get as much out of our lives.

His glory is not magnified as it is when things are difficult and dark. And yet, with confidence in Him and faith, like Job, sometimes questioning, sometimes not being sure, sometimes wondering, those are okay emotions to have, but ultimately saying, Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him. And so in the end, if we triumph, God is so much more glorified than if the temptation or trial had never come.

I think also God knows whom to select for these trials. And if you've had a very easy life like I have, you might wonder whether God can really trust you, or I should ask myself, Why is it that I haven't had more trials than I have? Other than bronchitis at the moment. Not to trivialize it.

I think that's a very valid question. God does not send illness in general to punish people. There are cases.

Many are weak and sickly among you. Many sleep. Special situation, they're abusing the Lord's Supper.

That can occur. The government of God is a real thing. But in general, I would say the Scripture says that God selects His best people to take them through their trials, not that they will fail, but so that they will succeed.

Now, that was His intention with Christ. Obviously, He wanted Him to succeed, and He knew He would succeed. In fact, He told us He would succeed.

So the cat was out of the bag before this ever started. Because in Isaiah 42, He said, He shall not fail. He shall not be discouraged.

Behold My servant, whom I uphold, Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth. I put My Spirit upon him. He shall not fail.

He shall not be discouraged. God knew the outcome ahead of time. So, there are cases where people or products or whatever are sent through testing to prove their value.

There's a couple of stories my dad used to tell me, so I'll just relate them to you. One was that my grandfather was a joiner or a carpenter, and they emigrated from Scotland. My dad was 16, 18 years old, and my 16 years old, I think he was, and my grandfather was probably in his 40s, and he needed to get work.

Now, as a carpenter, in those days, you did not have power saws, and you did not have hammer drills and things like that. You had crosscut saws and rip saws and back saws and miter boxes. So we had to pick up this equipment.

And he went to a hardware store, and he said, I would like to buy a saw. And I'm a professional carpenter, so I need your best saw. Well, the man had shown him some saws that were of less quality, but when he heard that he wanted his best saw, he pulled out a Henry Diston.

Henry Diston is the Cadillac of spring steel saws. And taking it out of the case, he took the butt of the saw in the end and bent it like that, and he let it pop open. And he made this comment, I wouldn't dare to do that with any other saw.

Do you think he thought that thing would kink? It would lose the sail. He knew it wouldn't kink. Perfectly supple spring steel.

It was going to come right back to its original shape. It would not fail. That was his purpose in testing it.

Not to find out if it would fail, but to prove that it wouldn't. Another story that he tells is of the railway bridge across the Forth River, which was a marvelous engineering feat completed in the 30s, where the trains could fly across that rail bridge at full speed. Normally bridges, you had to slow down and take it really easy over them.

This was a major, between Scapa Flow, which was a big British naval institution, so this bridge was bombed by the Luftwaffe. They never got it, though. But it turns out that on the day the bridge opened, they sent a train through loaded with passengers at full speed.

Now, if there was any realistic question whether that bridge would succeed or not, they would never have done that. But they knew it wouldn't fail. They knew that it was built to the right specifications, and so they were confident in putting it through that test.

And that is exactly how God looks at the wilderness experience of Christ. He will not fail. I'll show you.

Now, what Satan does is he uses his usual repertoire of, I don't want to trivialize and call it tricks, but he is a standard operating procedure. He's going to use the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Comes in threes.

He did that with Eve. She saw that the fruit was pleasant to the eye, it was good for food, it was desired to make one wise. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, the pride of life.

This is the list we get from 1 John 2, right? So we're getting the same three here. Let's look at these just briefly together. He says, I want you to make these stones into bread.

This is, of course, the lust of the flesh. This is a physical appetite, which in itself isn't evil. But the body must always be subject to the soul, and the soul to the spirit in the divine hierarchy.

And so while the body may have cravings and needs that are legitimate enough, it is very important that we control those with our minds. We do what is right, rather than what feels good to us, right? And so that is exactly the kind of temptation Satan will bring into your life as well. He'll say, you deserve it, you need it.

He'll emphasize the material. He'll minimize the spiritual. He'll say, you know, getting positioned in life, having a good job, having a respectable home, and doing all the things that's normal for people to do in the Western world.

Those are things you ought to be doing. They're right, they're your priorities, material things. And Christ says, wait a minute.

What does the Word say? And this is a great principle. He's using the Word. Deuteronomy, as you know, to refute and defeat Satan at each of these points.

Man shall not live by bread alone. Now man needs bread. God knows that.

But he must not live by bread alone. The priority is every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So unless God is instructing him, he's not going to operate outside the will of God and go for material things and what his body craves, but rather he's going to make that subservient to God's desires.

So the lust of the flesh doesn't work for him. Please yourself. Christ says, no, I'm going to be dependent on God.

The second one in Luke's order, Luke and Matthew reverse these last two, which doesn't really matter, they have different emphases. He says, I want you to cast yourself down from the temple. He takes them up.

This is interesting because Christ was literally transported up there by the devil. I don't think he operated outside his powers as a man. We don't know the details, but we know that he was up on top.

And Satan says, jump. It's not going to be a problem because the Bible promises he's going to give his angels command and immediately they're going to swoop down and you're not going to have a bump from this. But what's going to happen is everyone's going to see this and they're going to go, wow.

He's incredible. This is a stunt to beat all stunts. We've never seen anybody who could do this before.

And so the idea is exhibit yourself, show yourself. Assume on God, on the one hand, but also display yourself. This is what we would call the lust of the eye.

Sorry, the pride of life. You've got to get your outline straight. Matthew has the other way around.

This is the temptation of the soul. The soul, hedonism. Showing yourself, being something, promoting yourself.

And the devil is trying to do that with you and me as well. Well, he tried it with Christ and it didn't work. The third one, in Luke's order, is the temptation not of the body, the bread, not of the soul to exhibit oneself, but it is in the area of worship.

It's the temptation of the spirit. And in this case, it has to do with the lust of the eyes because he shows him all the kingdoms of the world and he reminds him that he got this from Adam. These are his.

He can give them to whomever he wishes. And so all Christ has to do is just a little genuflection, a little momentary worship, and they're all his with no cross. He gets the kingdoms of the world with no cross.

And that's a sore temptation, I suppose, for you and I at times because very often if we can take a shortcut or we can say the end justifies the means, we'll do something that's not right because we are trying to avoid some pain or because maybe we think the object is worth having but it's not worth paying for, right? Well, Christ wouldn't take that temptation. He's not going to get the kingdoms of the world in this way. He's going to defeat the devil and he's going to wrest them from him rightfully in a combat at the cross.

And he's going to win those legitimately and he's going to do it at a great personal expense and cost to himself. So this is a very important thing, the lust of the eyes. Christ could look at these things and they did not tempt him because they were outside the will of God.

Now, I want to expand on this a little bit and talk for a while about the nature of Christ's impeccability or his perfect sinlessness. I'm improving slightly, that's a good sign. Okay.

Your temptations, where do they come from? Well, we have another triplet in the Bible, the world, the flesh and the devil, right? Two of those are external to yourself, the world and the devil. One of those is internal to yourself, the flesh. Christ did not have sinful flesh.

He was in the likeness of sinful flesh, Romans 8, verse 3. Whenever the scripture is saying Christ is identifying with us or partaking of our manhood, it's talking about sinless humanity. When it makes a distinction, as it does in Romans 8, 3, it is making the moral distinction that Christ does not have a fallen nature. He does not have the fallen flesh, that selfish principle within us that always tries to put itself on the throne and push God off.

And Christ had none of that. Therefore, your temptations not only come from outside yourself but from within. The lust of the evil lusts.

Not good appetites now, but evil lusts from within. Christ did not have any of that. His temptations were all external.

The world and the devil, if you will. And they assaulted Him from outside, but inside He was pure and holy and impeccable. Now, this is a very, very, very big deal, I think, to me and it should be to you as well.

There are some Christians who are quite comfortable with this idea that Christ could have sinned but He didn't. And they think that somehow that makes Him the person the Bible portrays as the Son of God and the perfect man. And it doesn't.

It can't. Incidentally, if that were ever true, it must always be true. Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

So if He could have sinned yesterday, He could sin today. And if He can sin today, He can sin tomorrow. And you can see where this goes.

After He has put so much effort into bringing a kingdom to deliver to the Father and to deliver sinners from their sins, could the whole thing detonate someday? Could everything come crashing down in a horrendous meltdown because suddenly He chose to sin? Even to mention it is blasphemous. But it's a perspective that shows how wrong-headed that kind of thinking must be. Now there are objections that people will raise.

They'll say, well, wait a minute. If He couldn't sin, there are three things that come to mind that may seem problematic. First of all, is it not true that humans, by definition, will err to err as human to forgive divine? Alexander Pope, right? So is it not true that humanity inherently has the capability of sinning? Question mark.

The second has to do with the nature of the temptations. If He can't fail, is it not a charade? Isn't it just going through the motions? Could there be legitimate distress in a temptation if a person could not fail in that temptation? That's a fair question. The third has to do with a subject that I do want to touch on probably at one or two meetings from now, and that's the priesthood of Christ.

Hebrews portrays Him as a sympathetic priest, someone who has gone through the trials that we go through. He was tempted or tested at all points, like as we are, sin apart, right? Hebrews 4.15. So in what sense could He really relate to the struggles that I go through if He couldn't fail? Because I do fail, and how can He relate to me? How can He sympathize with me? Well, I'm going to answer those three questions, but those are the three I want to raise in order to refute them. First of all, there is nothing in the definition of humanity that demands that it be capable of sin.

But beyond that, even if you were to dispute that with me, the nature of who Christ is as God manifests in flesh makes that impossible. He can't have His humanity operating here and His deity operating here. His humanity rebelling against His deity.

His humanity breaking laws that His own deity has set as eternal commandments. What do you have here? This is schizoid. This is not the portrayal of the Bible.

He has one will. He has one mind. He has one eye.

One center of consciousness. He is not going to do anything, and this is where we get into dangerous territory, saying, as man He did this and as God He did that. There's only one thing I think the Scripture would teach that He did strictly as man, and that is die.

Because only composite beings can die. Death is separation, right? God's Spirit, He can't be separated, He cannot die. He's deathless.

But the one who died is God. Even here we must be very careful. So, to say He slept in the boat as man, and He stands up and stills the storm as God, is walking on very, very thin ice.

It is true that it is His deity that allows Him to still the storm. It is true that as a man He slept and God does not sleep. But we stick with what the Scripture says and refuse to be this divisive with His person.

So, again, coming back to our subject of the temptation, it's very important that we understand that the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ in that wonderful union makes Him holy. He's the holy God. So His humanity is not able to sin.

When Adam was in the garden, he was able to sin and he was able not to sin. He chose, though, to sin. Once a person has fallen in Adam, and Adam himself, this became true of him, it was possible for him to sin, but it was not possible for him not to sin.

You say, that sounds a little confusing. Well, I'm playing a little game here. The order of these words, and I got in trouble when I was using foreign languages this morning, but I think I'm a little bit more with it right now, is there's three Latin words that you need to know.

Posse, peccara, and the little negating word known. All right? So this is how it was historically couched. This is probably dangerous to be doing this at this time in the afternoon after lunch, I can see.

But here's what the people who teach peccability... By the way, what's pecca? Peccadillo? Peccadillo? Peccara means to sin. That's where that comes from, from that Latin word I just mentioned. Okay, so posse, known, peccara means possible not to sin.

Okay? And that is the condition that Adam was in, although it was also posse peccara. He could sin. He had either way.

He had no holy humanity. He had innocent humanity. Now, without playing the whole game and running through the entire matrix that you can make up with these words, I will say this.

The Bible teaches that when a person has fallen in Adam, it is really not possible for that person not to sin. That's what the fallen nature is. It sins.

Even its best works cannot be acceptable to God. They fall short. The wonderful thing is that in Christ, although it is possible for you as a believer to sin, it is actually possible for you not to sin.

But we're leaving ourselves and you to think about that, and we're coming back to the statement that we need to emphasize with Christ. The word order is known posse peccara, not possible to sin. So the humanity of Christ, I suggest, is holy humanity, and in addition, it is inseparably joined with holy deity.

The second point is, would not the temptations be a sham and a charade if the person couldn't fail? And the answer to that is no. In fact, it's actually the opposite. The stronger you are, the more resistant you are to temptation, the worse you feel it.

And a good way to explain that is to think about a chain. Or if you're a fisherman, you fish here in Wisconsin, right? You have a lot of lakes. Test on a fishing line.

Let's stick with my chain though, okay? So if my chain can maintain a weight of 50 pounds, that's fine, it knows what 50 pounds feels like. But I put 60 on it and it's only got a 50 test and it breaks. It'll never know what 70, 100, 200, 7,000, 24 million pounds is because it can't go there, right? It's already failed.

The temptation came, it fell, story's over, another day. But imagine a chain that can't break. You can put 24 billion pounds on it, it'd be ridiculous, and it still knows what that feels like.

But it can't break. So in other words, a person who cannot sin actually can be taken farther into the heat of temptation than a person who succumbs. Now, that being so, it raises the question of the third thing.

What about Christ's sympathies with us as a high priest? And there are people who misunderstand this. They say, well, Christ must have gone through every kind of feeling, every kind of inclination, every kind of external temptation that I go through. And the answer to that is there is not a one-to-one correspondence with everything he went through and you go through.

There are things in the modern world that he would not have experienced, for example. Moreover, the internal lusts that are such a problem to us were not a problem for him. His temptations were coming from the devil.

They're coming from without. Now, just because a fortress is impregnable, that doesn't make the assault on it any less real. And the agony that he experienced in being seduced to sin, which he could not succumb to, was far more painful to him than it would ever be to you and me because we are not holy beings.

We are not affronted by sin. We are not upset by it, as Christ would be in his holiness. So, he went through far more in what he did pass through than we will ever experience in what we pass through.

And therefore, his ability to succor and help and sympathize those who are being tested cannot be questioned. His pain, his distress, his difficulty in trial is far more than you will experience. And he really does understand many of the things that you go through.

I say he understands all of them, but I mean he has personally experienced many of these things himself. There's something about a person who has gone through a trial that is very comforting if you're going through one yourself, right? Just a story that comes to mind from my life. I had a niece who died at the age of six, a Tetralogy of Fallot.

Her operation ultimately didn't work and she died. So, I got called to the hospital and went into the room and I met my brother and my sister-in-law there. And here's this beautiful six-year-old girl dead.

So, we held her in our arms. It's quite an experience for a couple of hours. And then I took my brother and sister-in-law to the funeral directors so that we could make arrangements.

Then, the first night came for a visitation. You know how that is, right? It's like, what do I say? What do I do? By the way, you don't need to say anything. Just be there.

Don't have the words of wisdom. But everybody came in and they tried to do their part. And then suddenly, I saw coming through the door, Don and Chris Venema.

Don and Chris Venema lost a six-year-old girl in a car accident two years before. When they walked into that room and went over to the casket, you could feel something happening. Sympathy.

That's kind of, obviously, a very emotional, difficult situation. But it's a good illustration. Because when Christ sympathizes with us, he knows what the pain is like, of being assaulted by the world and the devil.

And it does not depend on a one-to-one correspondence with everything that we feel on our inside. Understand? So he's a sympathetic high priest. He really feels what we feel.

Not only that, it's not just about our feeling. He's able to help. We come to him for help.

That's called succor in the old English word. But help in time of need. So this is a wonderful subject because it really helps us to understand one of the purposes that God had in bringing Christ into the world.

There are many such purposes. He came, obviously, to be our Savior. He came to deal with the problem of sin.

He came to destroy the works of the devil. He came, obviously, to reclaim everything that had been lost and to bring back a reconciled creation to God. But for one of the things that he did was to be able to be our sympathetic, faithful, compassionate high priest.

And this allows that because he went through these sore temptations. And many others, of course, that we're not told about. These are just the examples that are given in the Gospel according to Luke.

One of the amazing things about the life of Christ is how he was able to display the full range of human emotion without sin. There's such a thing as righteous anger. Remember those professional religious hypocrites in Mark chapter 2? I think it's 2 or 3. It says Jesus looking at them with anger.

They were keeping people from coming into the kingdom. They wouldn't go in and they'd block others from coming. They were accusing him.

They were censorious. And he was righteously angry. There's times in the Gospel of Mark when, at least one occasion, where we read he marveled.

He marveled at their unbelief. He also marveled at the faith of a Syrophoenician woman. So that's a human emotion.

You wouldn't think God would never marvel at anything. He knows everything. This is the humanity of Christ being displayed.

He rejoiced. We never read of Jesus laughing. I'm not saying he didn't.

That's not a scriptural emphasis. Perhaps there was too much serious business to attend to to make time for frivolity, if I can say it that way. And certainly he would never have a foolish thought or be frivolous.

I shouldn't use that word even of him. But we know he rejoiced. He rejoiced when he saw people coming to him.

Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said to his Father, You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babies or young people, young people in the sense of childlike faith. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. So we have the full range of emotion.

What about weeping? It's coming back to my sympathetic high priest. At the grave of Lazarus, he weeps. He's just told Martha, You have nothing to cry about, in a sense, right? I'll take care of it.

He'll rise again. Yet, when he comes to the tomb, and he's not crying because he doesn't know what's going to happen with Lazarus. He knows right well what's happening with him.

I think what he's seeing is the grief of the people around him and he's touched by it. The sisters mourning the death of their only brother. So we see this wonderful range of flawless human emotion in Christ.

And all of that reminds us that he is a real man. He's a holy man. He's God manifest in flesh, but he's a real man.

There are a number of places in the New Testament where the Lord Jesus Christ is directly stated to be God and different translations, different textual traditions will sometimes have more or less. But there's one I just wanted to touch on as I close this session. What are my times? I'm way over time, am I not? Are we going to skip this break or are we going to shorten it? Okay.

And that is in 2 Timothy chapter 3. Excuse me, 1 Timothy chapter 3. Without controversy, verse 16. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh.

There are a lot of newer translations that put he who was manifested in the flesh and they strike that word out. And I'm not a textus receptus defender, okay? So I'm not making that point or saying that King James is always right. But in this case, it is right.

This is a very classic situation that developed and it requires a little technical knowledge, okay? The scribes who wrote down our New Testament using pen and ink, right? Use certain conventional shorthand. The names of God, the nomina sacra they're called, were all shortened. And they had a line over it.

So to put theos, God, you would put a theta and a sigma and then you put a line over it. You know what the Greek letter theta looks like? It looks like a circle with a little line through the middle, right? Take the line off. And you have the relative pronoun he.

So, clearly, someone who was copying in the very early days missed the fact that this was a shorthand for theos, God, and assumed it was a relative pronoun, he. Now, if that turned out to be right, the deity of Christ is not called into question by one verse. But I happen to think this is a very precious verse and I think there's a very logical reason why that error has crept in.

And so in this case, I'm going to stick with the textus receptus King James tradition and say I think this verse is worth retaining as it is. God is manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory.