Contend for the faith

Contend for the Faith

Scripture: Jude 1:1-4

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

The Believer's Assurance: the God Who Keeps

Jude's letter begins and ends with very comforting words to Christians. In verse 1 it describes us as "those who are called, loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ." All three verbs are passive. They stress the action of God. God calls, God loves, and God keeps. We are called, are loved, and are kept. Jude is very eager to begin by stressing the security of the believer in God's electing and preserving love.

Then at the end of his letter in verse 24 he says, "Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God . . . be glory." Notice, in verse 1 we are kept by God for Jesus Christ. And in verse 24 God is able to keep us from falling. Jude begins and ends the letter by assuring believers that God exerts his omnipotence to keep them from falling away from the faith.

So what should you answer when someone questions how you can be so sure you will keep the faith to the end and so be saved at the judgment? You should say something like this: "God has called me out of unbelief. Therefore I know that he loves me with a particular electing love. Therefore I know that he will keep me from falling. He will work in me that which is pleasing in his sight (Hebrews 13:21), and present me with rejoicing before the throne of his glory."

The Believer's Call: Fight for the Faith

That's the way Jude begins and ends his letter. But in the middle his concern is different. It is not to help believers feel content, but to help them feel vigilant. Having shown them the electing love of God and the unsurpassed power of God (vv. 2–5) to keep them safe, Jude now shows them the danger that surrounds them. And he tells them to fight for the faith.

Verse 3: "Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." In other words the assured victory of the believing church does not mean that we don't have to fight to win.

Just because the brilliant Commander in Chief promises victory on the beaches doesn't mean the troops can throw their weapons overboard. The promise of victory assumes valor in battle. When God promises that his church will be kept from defeat, his purpose is not that we lay down our sword and go to lunch, but that we pick up the sword of the Spirit and look confidently to God for the strength to fight and win. Wherever the promised security of God is used to justify going AWOL, we may suspect there is a traitor in the ranks.

So God's way, as we see it in Jude, is to give his people confidence that their faith will be victorious in the end (in verses 1 and 24) and then to send them out to fight for it.

Four Aspects of the Main Point of Jude

The main point of this little book of Jude is verse 3. And so I want to make it the main point of my message, namely, it is the duty of every genuine believer to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. I will try to unfold the meaning of this doctrine under four headings.

There is a faith once for all delivered to the saints.
This faith is worth contending for.
This faith is repeatedly threatened from within the church.
Every genuine believer should contend for the faith.

1. There Is a Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints

Sometimes the word faith is used for the feeling of trust in Christ. Other times, as here, it is used for the truths we believe about the one we trust.

A Personal Relationship with Jesus

Sometimes it is necessary to stress that Christianity is primarily a relationship with Jesus rather than a set of ideas about Jesus. The reason we do this is because no one is saved by believing a set of ideas. The devil believes most of the truths of Christianity. We need to stress that unless a person has a living trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, all the orthodoxy in the world will not get him into heaven.

Objective Truth

But if our stress on the personal relationship with Jesus leads us to deny that there is a set of truths essential to Christianity, we make a grave mistake. There are truths about God and Christ and man and the church and the world which are essential to the life of Christianity. If they are lost or distorted, the result will not be merely wrong ideas but misplaced trust. The inner life of faith is not independent from the doctrinal statement of faith. When doctrine goes bad, so do hearts. There is a body of doctrine which must be preserved.

The main evidence for this in verse 3 is that this faith is said to be "delivered to the saints." This means that it was passed down from the apostles. It was not thought up by the church. It was revealed by God to his apostles and their close associates and then taught to the churches as the "whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27) or the "standard of teaching" (Romans 6:17).


"Once for All"

For us one of the most important phrases in verse 3 is "once for all." Here we are 2,000 years after the faith was first delivered to the church, and we are surrounded with hundreds of people and sects and cults who claim to have a new word of revelation that now completes God's word to mankind. Mohammed offered his Koran. Joseph Smith his Book of Mormon. Sun Moon his Divine Principle. And you meet people every day who consider every contemporary intellectual trend as a suitable replacement for the Bible.

But please notice very carefully. Jude taught that the faith has been once for all delivered to the saints. God's revelation concerning the doctrinal content of our faith is finished. The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20). Anyone who comes along and claims to have a new word from God to add to the faith once for all delivered to the saints is against Scripture.

The reason we have a Bible is that the church of the third and fourth century recognized that God had spoken once for all in these writings. The canon was closed, and every other claim to truth is now measured by the standard of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

The Unity of Apostolic Faith

One other thing before we leave this first point. When we say there is a faith once for all delivered to the saints, we mean faith and not faiths. Today it is fashionable to speak of many theologies in the New Testament. Scholars love to stress the diversity of viewpoints among the New Testament writers, and the difficulty of bringing them all into a single coherent understanding of reality.

Well, there is indeed some diversity from one inspired writer to another. But I would plead for a new generation of students to think long and hard about the implications of Jude 3: "the faith once for all delivered to the saints." Whatever diversity there is in the way we view this faith, the emphasis here falls on unity. There is an apostolic faith. There is a body of doctrine that hangs together and is called the faith. We should not add to it or take from it. It has been once for all delivered to the saints.

2. This Faith Is Worth Contending For

In Romans 14 we read that one person regards one day better than another and one person regards all days alike. Each should be convinced in his own mind and not despise or condemn the other. Now here we are in Jude being told to contend for what we believe.

Truths Worth Dying For

What I infer from this is that there is a body of doctrine worth contending for, and there are secondary applications of those doctrines which we should not contend with each other about.

But mark it down in your mind: there is truth worth contending for. There is truth worth dying for. That is hard for our relativistic culture to understand. We might be able to imagine dying for people, but not many today consider any truths so precious they will contend for them or even die for them.



The Blood of the Martyrs

It wasn't always this way. The faith that we cherish was preserved for us with the blood of hundreds of reformers. From 1555 to 1558 Queen Mary, the Catholic ruler in England, had 288 Protestant reformers burned at the stake—men like John Rogers, John Hooper, Rowland Taylor, Robert Ferrar, John Bradford, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Cranmer. And why were they burned? Because they stood by a truth—the truth that the real presence of Jesus' body is not in the eucharist but in heaven at the Father's right hand. For that truth they endured the excruciating pain of being burned alive.

The blood of the martyrs is a powerful testimony that the faith once for all delivered to the saints is worth contending for. But there is evidence of this right here in verse 3. Jude says that what he is really writing about is our common salvation. "Since I am eager to write about our common salvation, it is necessary to urge you to contend for the faith." When the faith is at stake, our salvation is at stake. If the truth is lost, salvation is lost. The apostles and reformers were willing to die for the sake of the faith because they cared about whether the message of salvation would be preserved—they cared about people and about the glory of God.

We need to gain a whole new sense of the preciousness of biblical doctrine. We need to know as a church the depth and beauty and value of the doctrinal truth.

3. This Faith Is Repeatedly Threatened from Within the Church

The worst enemies of Christian doctrine are professing Christians who do not hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.  I don’t want to offend anyone or hurt their feelings but, I would be very careful about advocating any author or book or for that matter any speaker, evangelist or preacher whose words do not line up with Biblical truth.

The Warnings of Paul and Jude

In his last message to the pastors of the church of Ephesus in Acts 20 Paul warned them that after his departure "fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (vv. 29–30). The wolves who pervert the faith are professing Christians. They are pastors and church leaders and seminary teachers and missionaries.

In Jude the reason the church needed to gird itself to contend for the faith is given in verse 4. "For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."

So the threat to the faith is coming from among some who are now inside. They are probably saying something like this: If we are saved by grace, then it doesn't matter what we do morally. In fact when a Christian sins, it only serves to magnify the grace of God. So they turned the grace of God against the commandments of Christ and in effect denied the lordship of Jesus.

And that's the way it's been ever since the first century. Paul said it would happen. Jude saw it happening. He saw it as a fulfillment of the apostles' predictions. Verses 17–19: "But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; they said to you, 'In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.' It is these who set up divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit."

Contentions with Professing Christians

As many tears as it may have cost Paul (Philippians 3:18), virtually all his letters have to do with contentions that he was having with professing Christians. So it should not surprise us if today much of our contending for the faith will be with professing Christians who teach and write things which (at least from our perspective) are contrary to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

The plain New Testament teaching is that the faith will be repeatedly threatened from within.

Which leads finally to the admonition . . .

4. Every Genuine Believer Should Contend for the Faith

This letter of Jude is not written to a pastor but to "those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ" (v. 1). The duty to contend for the faith is, therefore, not just the duty of the ordained ministers of the Word, though they do have a special responsibility. It is the duty of every genuine believer.

Verses 20–21 tell some of the things we should do to prepare ourselves to contend for the faith. And verses 22–23 tell some of the ways to contend for the faith.

Preparing to Contend for the Faith

Verses 20–21: "But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep, yourselves in the love of God, wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."

The best thing we can do to become a church that is effective in contending for the faith is to become a church well built on the faith. "Build yourselves up on your most holy faith." Study! Meditate! Build! Grow! There is so much wonderful truth about God to learn. And the best defense of the faith is to know it and love it.

Prayer is an indispensable part of contending for the faith. "Pray in the Holy Spirit." Unless we seek the mind of the Holy Spirit in prayer, we will not grow in our grasp of the faith and we will be weak contenders.

Contending for the Faith

When it comes to the actual contending Jude says in verses 22–23, "And convince some, who doubt; save some, by snatching them out of the fire; on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh."

At least two things are evident here. One is that contending sometimes involves an intellectual effort to change the way a person thinks: "Convince some, who doubt." The other is that contending sometimes involves moral reclamation: go after them into the mess where their perverse ideas have taken them, and snatch them back to safety even while you hate what they are doing.

In reality these things always go together: an effort to change the mind and an effort to change the morals. Contending for the faith is never merely an academic exercise. It is never merely mental. Because the source of all false doctrine is the pride of the man's heart not the weakness of his mind.

This is why Jude tells us to grow and pray and stay in the love of God and depend on his mercy before he says anything about how we should contend for the faith. The best argument for the faith is when the saints live it. That's why Peter says, "Be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15). The way you contend is as important as the content of your arguments. You can win with your logic and lose with your life.

Summary

There is a faith once for all delivered to the saints.
This faith is worth contending for.
The faith is repeatedly threatened from within the church by professing Christians.
It is the duty of every believer to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

By John Piper. ©2013 Desiring God Foundation. Website: desiringGod.org

10 Plagues

Ten Egyptian Plagues For Ten Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

Moses, called of God to be the Deliverer.

The God of Israel is greater than all other Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.

Moses was a great prophet, called by God with a very important job to do. As an instrument in the Lord's hand he performed many signs, or "wonders", attempting to convince Pharaoh to allow the Israelites freedom from their bondage of slavery to the Egyptians. These "wonders" are more commonly referred to as "plagues" sent from the God of Israel, as a proof that the "one true God" was far greater than all of the multiple Gods of the Egyptians.

These Egyptian Plagues were harsh and varied to correspond to the ancient egyptian gods and goddesses that were prevelant during Moses time in Egypt.

The number ten is a significant number in biblical numerology. It represents a fullness of quantity. Ten Egyptian Plagues Means Completely Plagued.

Just as the "Ten Commandments" become symbolic of the fullness of the moral law of God, the ten ancient plagues of Egypt represent the fullness of God's expression of justice and judgments, upon those who refuse to repent.

Ten times God, through Moses, allows Pharaoh to change his mind, repent, and turn to the one true God, each time increasing the severity of the consequence of the plagues suffered for disobedience to His request. Ten times Pharaoh, because of pride, refuses to be taught by the Lord, and receives "judgments" through the plagues, pronounced upon his head from Moses, the deliverer.

Jesus Christ…Savior and Redeemer of the world.

The Ten Egyptian Plagues testify of Jesus Christ and His power to save.

Moses and Aaron are sent as messengers of the Lord, to Pharaoh, to instruct him to let the children of Israel go "so that they may serve the Lord." It is further stipulated that they must be allowed to travel a three days journey so that they may offer their sacrifices as a means of worship.

Pharaoh responds simply, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go." Soon however, Pharaoh will find out who this God is, and why he should obey His voice. He will understand His power over all the other Egyptian gods and goddesses.

These ten Egyptian plagues not only demonstrated the power of God to Moses, the children of Israel, the Egyptians, and Pharaoh, but they were of such magnitude that they would be remembered for all generations, throughout the entire world. They again testify, as does both the Old and New Testament alike that salvation, from beginning to end, is only accomplished through Jesus Christ, "the author and finisher of our faith." (Heb 12:2)

Corresponding Egyptian God and Goddess to the type of plague:

Type of plague that God pronounced upon Egypt:

Hapi- Egyptian God of the Nile

Egyptian Plague- Water Turned to Blood

The first plague that was given to the Egyptians from God was that of turning the water to blood. As Aaron, the spokesman for Moses, touched the "rod" of the Lord to the Nile River it immediately turned to blood, all the fish died, and the river stank. Partially able to duplicate this miracle, the magicians of Pharaoh also turn water into blood, leaving Pharaoh unimpressed with this great wonder from God.

Seven days the water throughout all the land of Egypt remained in this state, unsuitable for drinking, the perfect length of time to demonstrate that the Lord was superior to all the other Gods of Egypt.

Heket- Egyptian Goddess of Fertility, Water, Renewal

Egyptian Plague- Frogs coming from the Nile River

Still, Pharaoh refused to let the children of Israel go from the presence of Egypt.

The second plague that was extended upon Egypt, from the "rod" by Aaron, was that of frogs. The frogs came up from the river and were in their houses, in their food, in their clothing, in every place possible. From the greatest to the least, no one in Egypt escaped the plague of frogs. Pharaoh's magicians were able to bring more frogs in their attempt to imitate the power of God, but only Moses was able to make the frogs go away. This was another attack on a famous Egyptian Goddess, Heket.

Geb- Egyptian God of the Earth

Egyptian Plague- Lice from the dust of the earth

Still Pharaoh would not concede, even after this display of power from the Lord, or magnificent plague, he would not let them go.

At the command of the Lord to Moses, Aaron was told to stretch forth his rod and smite the dust of the earth. When he did the dust became lice throughout all the land, on both people and beasts. The very dust that was referred to in the creation process of man is now used to plague men, as a reminder of his mortality and sin which both lead to death.

Finally, the magicians of Pharaoh are humiliated, being unable to compete with this power that was so much greater than themselves and the powers that they had from their Egyptian gods and goddesses, and they profess, "this is the finger of God." This was the last plague that required Aaron's involvement, as the next set of three plagues are issued by the word of Moses himself.



Khepri- Egyptian God of creation, movement of the Sun, rebirth

Egyptian Plague- Swarms of Flies

With the fourth Egyptian plague, which consisted of flies, begins the great miracle of separation or differentiation. Moses met Pharaoh at the Nile River in the morning and made the demand, speaking on behalf of the Lord, "Let My peole go, that they may serve Me." Again, Pharaoh hardened his heart and disregarded the request, resulting in a pronouncement of swarms of flies.

This time, however, only the Egyptians are affected by the judgement, or plague, and the children of Israel remain unscathed. This wonder also moves the Egyptian plagues to a different level, adding destruction as well as discomfort to the consequence of their decisions.

Plagued by flies, Pharaoh tried a new tactic and begins bargaining with the Lord, showing his desire to maintain power and authority over God. He tries to dictate the terms and conditions of the offer, telling them they may sacrifice but only "in the land" clearly not complying with the requested "three days journey" that the Lord required. Moses wouldn't budge, and Pharaoh relented allowing them to leave, but telling them not to "go very far."

This temporary allowance is made solely to have Moses "intreat the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart", at this point Pharaoh has learned in part who the Lord is and asks for His assistance over the Egyptian gods and goddesses. As soon as the request is granted by the Lord, Pharaoh reneges on his promise and will not let them go, and continues to worship his Egyptian Gods.

Hathor-Egyptian Goddess of Love and Protection


Egyptian Plague- Death of Cattle and Livestock

Moses once again demanded of Pharaoh, "Let my people go, that they may serve me", revealing also the next Egytian plague to occur on the condition of continued disobedience to the request. This plague was given with an advanced warning, allowing a period of repentance to occur, which goes unheeded.

"Tomorrow" the hand of the Lord would be felt upon all the cattle and livestock, of only the Egyptians, as"grievous murrain." This means that disease and pestilence would fall upon their livestock with so severe a consequence as to cause them to die. This plague affected the Egyptian by creating a huge economic disaster, in areas of food, transportation, military supplies, farming, and economic goods that were produced by these livestock. Still Pharaohs heart remained hard and he would not listen to the Lord but remained faith to the Egytian gods and goddesses.

Isis- Egyptian Goddess of Medicine and Peace


Egyptian Plague- Ashes turned to Boils and Sores

Unannounced the sixth Egyptian plague is given, for the first time, directly attacking the Egyptian people themselves. Being instructed by the Lord, Moses took ashes from the furnace of affliction, and threw them into the air. As the dust from the ashes blew all over Egypt, it settled on man and beast alike in the form of boils and sores.

As with the previous two, throughout the remaining Egyptian plagues the division is drawn between the Egyptians and the children of Israel, as God gives protection to his covenant people. The severity of the judgment of God has now become personal, as it is actually felt by the people themselves.

Cleanliness being paramount in the Egyptian society, this plague pronounces the people "unclean." The magicians who have been seen throughout the previous plagues are unable to perform ceremonially rituals to their Egyptian Gods and Goddesses in this unclean state, not allowing them to even stand before Pharaoh; they are seen in the scriptural account no more. It is great to notice the contrast shown as Moses and Aaron are the only ones left standing in front of Pharaoh, with the "One True God" as their support.

Nut- Egyptian Goddess of the Sky


Egyptian Plague- Hail rained down in the form of fire

Again warning is given before the enactment of the plague takes place. Pharaoh is warned of the impending doom that will be faced if he does not listen to the Lord, and forget his own Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Hail of unspeakable size and ability to destroy, would rain down from the sky and turn to fire as it hit the ground. The Lord, in showing Pharaoh that "there is none like Him in the Earth", allows those who are willing to hear His word, and do as He commands, to be saved.

A division is now felt between the Egyptians in the form of those "converted" to the Lord, as shown by their obedience and willingness to escape to the protection of their "houses." Similarly we are warned to make our houses a place of refuge from the world today, we have been warned.

Interestingly enough, the crops that were destroyed by the hail consisted of flax and barley, which were ripening in the fields. These two particular crops were not the mainstay of their diet, but were used more specifically for their clothing and libations. This destruction would make their life uncomfortable, but as far as effecting their food supply , the wheat still survived. This gave the Egyptians still another chance to turn to "the One True God", and forsake their own Egyptian gods and goddesses, thus showing His mercy and grace even yet.

Seth- Egyptian God of Storms and Disorder


Egyptian Plague- Locusts sent from the sky

Still Pharaoh would not listen to the message of the Lord, still he relys on his own Egyptian gods and goddesses.

The eighth plague issued by the Lord had an even greater purpose than all the others, it was to be felt so that Pharaoh would tell even "his sons and son's sons" the mighty things of the Lord, thus teaching even future generations of the power of the "strong hand of God" over all the other Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Moses and Aaron approached Pharaoh with the same request, "Let my people go so that they may serve me", and pronounced the judgment of locusts if not heeded. This is the second wave of destruction to follow the hail, and whatever crops were left in tact after that display, were now completely consumed by the swarms of locusts that were unleashed from the sky. This wonder definitely affected their life source. By hitting them in their food supply, the Lord displayed the possibility of eminent death if a change of heart did not occur. Yet still, Pharaoh would not listen.

Ra- The Sun God


Egyptian Plague- Three Days of Complete Darkness

Darkness now fell upon Egypt, unannounced, as a prelude to the future fate to be felt by the Egyptian empire when the message of the Lord was not heeded, and they still turned to their own Egyptian gods and goddesses. Three days of palpable darkness, that was so immense it could be physically felt, covered the land of Egypt.

The sun, the most worshipped God in Egypt other than Pharaoh himself, gave no light. The Lord showed that he had control over the sun as a witness that the God of Israel had ultimate power over life and death. The psychological and religious impact would have had a profound influence on the Egyptians at this point. Darkness was a representation of death, judgment and hopelessness. Darkness was a complete absence of light.

Pharaoh- The Ultimate Power of Egypt


Egyptian Plague- Death of the Firstborn

Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, was worshipped by the Egyptians because he was considered to be the greatest Egyptian God of all. It was believed that he was actually the son of Ra himself, manifest in the flesh.

After the plague of darkness felt throughout the land was lifted, Pharaoh resumed his position of "bargaining with the Lord" and offered Moses another "deal." Since virtually all of the Egyptian animals had been consumed by the judgments of the Lord, Pharaoh now consented to the request made, to let the people go, but they must leave their animals behind.

This was a totally unacceptable offer, as the animals were to be used as the actual sacrifice to the Lord. The Lord is uncompromising when He has set the terms.

Enraged by the refusal, Pharaoh pronounced the last deadly plague to be unleashed upon the land from his very own lips as he warns Moses, "Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more; for in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die."

And Moses said, "Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts. And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more."

At this point the passive obedience that the children of Israel have shown is now moved to a level of active obedience. They are given strict instructions to follow so that they do not also feel the judgment of this last plague sent by the Lord. These instructions are known as "The Feast of Passover", "The Feast of Unleavened Bread", and "The Law of the Firstborn." In these rituals are displayed the law of sacrifice, the law of the gospel, and the law of consecration, all necessary requirements to receive ultimate salvation from spiritual death.

"Let My people go that they may serve Me"

As God's children today we have learned through this great show of power that ultimately it will require "active obedience" to receive salvation from the "One True God."

Looking back over the instructions that were given to Pharaoh to "let my people go that they may serve me", this principle is manifest throughout. Service to the Lord is the requirement of His people, and the blessing for this show of obedience and sacrifice is the ultimate salvation not only from physical death but from spiritual death as well.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Ten-Plagues-For-Ten-Gods

Presence of God

Present: (Dictionary) -“Being, existinga or occurring at this time; to furnish or endow with a gift; to formally introduce a person to another.”
Present: (Bible) “To stand by; to present; the present time; to be at hand.”
The English language must seem a bit odd in places as people study to learn English. The words “present” or “presents” can mean different things but are spelled exactly the same way. The word “presence” sound like “presents” but is spelled differently.
The Jews were well acquainted with the presence of God. They had seen His glory at the tabernacle many times in the wilderness and at Mount Sinai. They understood that God was not only very real, but was in the midst of them and abundantly available for help. He provided food and water and protected them in their journeys and often against great odds. People who study God’s word know that God’s heart is to give:
James 1: 16-18:  ” 16 Don’t be deceived, my dearly loved brothers. 17Every generous act and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights; with Him there is no variation or shadow cast by turning. 18By His own choice, He gave us a new birth by the message of truth so that we would be the firstfruits of His creatures.”  (HCSB)
Our Father provides all we need and gifts us in many ways. However, some people want or seek His “presents” rather than His “presence”. God desires to have an intimate relationship with us and one of the things that happens within that fellowship is God’s release of gifting into our lives and into the church of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:4-7:  ” 4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. 6There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. 7But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” (NASB)
God will gift each believer with the gifts that are best for us- whatever they may be. He desires to see His children walking in Spirit and truth and seeking Him and His kingdom. Out of that relationship will flow all the gifts (presents) that our God releases in our life.
The Scriptures are filled with amazing promises and reveal the heart of our heavenly Father. But we also need to have a clear understanding of what it means to be in God’s presence. King David knew what it meant to be in God’s presence and he also knew what it was like to leave that presence to pursue his own path. David’s sin with Bathsheba led him to cry out to God in Psalm 51.
Psalm 51:10-12:  ” 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.  11 Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.   12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.” (NKJV)
David had seen what had happened to King Saul when God removed His presence and David did not want to lose his relationship with the Lord. He knew it would result in a disaster. The Lords presence is seen and felt in His creation, in praise, in worship and in prayer. The creator of the universe seeks to have a relationship with us and invites us into His presence so we can be washed in His grace. All through the Psalms we see a focus on God’s presence.
 Psalm 16:11:  ”You reveal the path of life to me; in Your presence is abundant joy; in Your right hand are eternal pleasures.” (HCSB)
Psalm 100:1-2:  ”Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands!2 Serve the Lord with gladness;  Come before His presence with singing.” (NKJV)
The writer of the book of Hebrews called attention to the need to seek God’s presence:
Hebrews 4: 16:  ” 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (NIV)
Jesus also wanted us to know the power of being in God’s presence and experience that intimacy:
Matthew 6:6:  ” 6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (NKJV)
Matthew 14:23:  ” 23 After dismissing the crowds, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone.” (HCSB)
Jesus would often pray alone. He went away from distractions and focused on His prayer time.
As followers of Jesus we should be students of His word and seeking the truths that are there. Being in the presence of God means there will be peace-even when the things around us are in chaos. Being in His presence means having joy in the midst of trials. Being in His presence means singing “Amazing Grace” when your life situation is painful. In His presence there is peace and joy. We need to find that place so we can truly be lights in this world. If our spirit is hurt or we have not been seeking God, we need to change direction and cry out to our Lord:
Acts 3:19:  ” 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,” (NIV)
Our majestic, loving Lord is there, waiting for us. Let us cast aside all restraints and take action. Let us seek Him in prayer, praise and worship. We all know that we have one life to live. The best way to walk out our salvation is abiding in His presence! Thank you Father for hearing our prayer-help us enter into your presence and to abide there.  Amen
http://sevenminutesermons.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/presents-and-presence/
How to Practice God's Presence
By Rick Warden, eHow Contributor
Practicing God's presence has to do with developing an awareness, by faith, that God is with us each moment of the day. A revered 17th Century French monk, Brother Lawrence, coined the phrase in his writings. He laid hold of powerful truths in the New Testament and his posthumous book, "The Practice of the Presence of God," is widely read to this day. The following seven steps include Lawrence's main principles and additional scriptural doctrines.
Instructions
Things You'll Need
⦁ Bible
⦁ Daily devotionals
The first step sets us free to enjoy the others. Receive Jesus Christ as savior and lord. Jesus taught in John 3:3 that we need to be born again spiritually to establish a connection with God.
2.  Recognize your body has become a temple of the Holy Spirit. When we become children of God, our whole perspective on life should change. We are to no longer live just for ourselves, but with an attitude of surrender and submission to God. See 1 Corinthians 6:19. This outlook leads to a closer sense of communion with God.
3.  Relate with God throughout the day, every day. The essence of the new covenant is the ability to have a personal and intimate relationship with the living God. See Jeremiah 31:31-34. This ability has been promised by God, but we have a conscious choice regarding our mindset. The Apostle Paul wrote: "Be joyful always; pray continually." (1 Thessalonians 5.16-17). There's real joy in God's presence and this can be increased by developing a continuous sense of thankfulness to God.
4.  Renew your mind with the word of God. Romans 12:2a says "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Meditating on scripture and daily devotionals, asking God questions and putting your knowledge into daily use are all helpful towards practicing God's presence.
5.  Resolve to love God in all you think and do. The minute we recognize anything in our minds and in our lives that will hinder our close relationship with God, we are to turn away from it completely. This is perhaps the most difficult step, requiring the most self-discipline.
6.  Repent sincerely when needed. We all sin and sin separates us from fellowship with God. Ideally, we will repent quickly and turn from our sin when we slip up. But we also need to recognize there may be deeper issues that may require a longer process of healing along with repentance.
7.  Run the race of life as an adventure. In a dynamic, living relationship with God, each day truly is a new adventure. The more we are able to practice the presence of God, the more we will be in awe at the things we see God doing in us and through us.
Tips & Warnings
Plug into a church and community of other Christians who also desire to grow spiritually. Growing in knowledge and experience will help you practice the presence of God for the long haul.
Be cautious of living only for the sake of experience. Seeking God's presence is a good thing, but the main goal for the Christian is to glorify and please Him.
Don't be discouraged if you find this practice difficult. Brother Lawrence, for example, wrote, "This proved to be an exercise frequently painful, yet I persisted through all difficulties."
http://utmost.org/
http://www.ehow.com/print/how_7241240_practice-god_s-presence.html

A Closer Look at The Nativity

A Closer Look at The Nativity: by Romans

I would like to ask all of you, What images come to mind when you think of a Nativity Scene?

Only two of the four Gospels, namely Matthew and Luke, shed light on the details of the birth of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John begins at the beginning, the same beginning that is recorded in Genesis 1:1. We are going to touch on Jesus before His human incarnation a little later, but for right now we are going to focus on Matthew's and Luke's Gospels, and some of the things that can easily be glossed over and missed in their Accounts of Jesus' birth.

Let's focus on the opening of the first book of the New Testament in general, and its author in particular: Matthew. Critics and doubters of the Bible like to claim that the New Testament was not written by anyone who was an original follower of Jesus, or even alive when Christ was alive. They try to assign a 2nd Century authorship to the New Testament in an effort to undermine the trustworthiness of what is written, as well as maximize the implication of both fabrication and embellishment. In two hundred years, a whole lot can be added to accomplishments and personal details of any individual, especially if the main source has been verbally handed down. Under such circumstances, embellishments and exaggerations are likely to fly like fireworks on the 4th of July.

But this is not the case, here. There are many remarkable things about the Gospel According to Matthew that I think are not given enough consideration by the average person. Matthew is identified
in Matthew 9:9 as a tax collector. While we in America have no great affection for the IRS or its employees, the situation was radically different in Roman-era Israel. Allow me this brief aside: I make a point to call it Israel because that is where all of these events take place. I hear so many preachers talk about Christ walking the dusty streets of Palestine but, from all that I have ever read, Jesus could not have, and did not do walk any streets in Palestine, dusty or otherwise!  When Jesus walked the earth, there was no Palestine. Consider Herod's official title: the Procurator of Judea. Similarly, Pontius Pilate's official title was the Governor of Judea. And what happened that it became the name for the area?  In 70 AD, the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire. They were mercilessly crushed. Jerusalem was invaded and destroyed, the Temple was destroyed, and the Jews were dispersed from Israel. To add insult to injury, the Romans said, in effect, “Now that the Jews are out of here, we are not going to continue call this land by the same name that they used. What nation was their worst enemies?” They did some research and found out that the Philistines were the Jews' worst enemies, so the Romans  renamed the land after them. Hence, we get “Palestine,” the Latinized version of Philistine. The name Palestine appears nowhere in the New Testament. It does, however, appear once in the Old Testament: We find it in Joel 3:4: “Yea, and what have ye to do with me, O Tyre, and Zidon, and all the coasts of Palestine?” Here, however, it refers to the areas (Tyre and Zidon) in Syria where the Philistines were actually living. When the translators called that area Palestine, they were correct. But Palestine was not the name for the land of Israel  until almost four decades after Jesus returned to Heaven. “Palestine” was applied to the land of Israel beginning around 72 AD, after Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Jewish nation was defeated and deported. Jesus, as a man, was never in Palestine.

But this brings us to another point about the entirety of the New Testament which helps to better establish that it was written within decades of the events they describe for us. Nowhere in any Gospel Account, nowhere in the Book of Acts, nowhere in any epistle, and not even in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is there any reference to Jerusalem having been destroyed. It is absolutely impossible, and beyond anyone's rational imagination, that Jerusalem could have been reduced to an smoldering ashtray, the Jewish population deported, and the Temple destroyed by Roman Legions, while none of the seven authors of the New Testament referred to such a cataclysmic event, with such monumental importance to the Jewish people, as having happened. But none of them do in a historic context. Matthew, Mark and Luke each discuss the destruction of Jerusalem in Jesus' Olivet Prophecy regarding the signs of His return. But Jerusalem and the Temple are both untouched and in full operation when the New Testament was written, which tells me with in no uncertain terms, that the entirety of the New Testament was written prior to 70 AD.

But, as I was saying before I took these several detours, Matthew was a tax collector. And the Jewish people hated tax collectors for two reasons: First, they sat in receipt of custom for the Roman Empire. It wasn't bad enough that Israel was a conquered and occupied land, its conquerors also demanded the payment of tribute to them. And sitting at the tax collection booths were fellow Jews collecting the money. And if that wasn't bad enough, the Romans allowed the tax collectors to add extra to what they collected for themselves, above and beyond what the Romans required. Matthew, then, was a one such tax collector, or publican. His very presence, as one of the original disciples, and then as one of the original apostles, and then as one of the original four authors of the Gospels is a clear signal to everyone who knew about Matthew's background that this Messiah was a Messiah of forgiveness, a Messiah of inclusion, a Messiah who was not a respecter of persons or position, nor did He exclude anyone because of their current or former position, or sinful behavior or ungodly lifestyle. In John 8:11, He told the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more” This was a Messiah where there was neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free. Matthew closes his Gospel Account with Jesus' commissioning His Church with the words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations...” But He was more specific to His disciples in Acts 1:8, to make sure they excluded no one in their preaching: “... ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria {the land of the Samaritans}, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

This was a Messiah who was a friend of sinners. In His first public sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, found in Luke 4:18 He quoted the prophecy found in Isaiah 61:1 and applied it to Himself and His ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

Of the original prophecy found in Isaiah, Matthew Henry has the following to say: "The prophets had the Holy Spirit of God at times, teaching them what to say, and causing them to say it; but Christ had the Spirit always, without measure, to qualify him, as man, for the work to which he was appointed. The poor are commonly best disposed to receive the gospel, (James 2:5); and it is only likely to profit us when received with meekness. To such as are poor in spirit, Christ preached good tidings when he said, Blessed are the meek. Christ's satisfaction is accepted. By the dominion of sin in us, we are bound under the power of Satan; but the Son is ready, by his Spirit, to make us free; and then we shall be free indeed. Sin and Satan were to be destroyed; and Christ triumphed over them on his cross. But the children of men, who stand out against these offers, shall be dealt with as enemies. Christ was to be a Comforter, and so he is; he is sent to comfort all who mourn, and who seek to him, and not to the world, for comfort. He will do all this for his people, that they may abound in the fruits of righteousness, as the branches of God's planting. Neither the mercy of God, the atonement of Christ, nor the gospel of grace, profit the self-sufficient and proud. They must be humbled, and led to know their own character and wants, by the Holy Spirit, that they may see and feel their need of the sinner's Friend and Saviour. His doctrine contains glad tidings indeed to those who are humbled before God.”

But I'd also like to look more closely at one specific reference Jesus made to preaching “deliverance to the captives.” That deliverance was not then, and is not now limited to captivity behind physical bars. All of us have been, and may yet be imprisoned in one fashion or another. Many are imprisoned behind the bars or various prejudices: racial, political, national, cultural, and even denominational. There is also sexism, ageism, elitism, and class warfare. There is no category where man will not find an excuse to ostracize and look down on a fellow human being for whom Christ shed His blood. In every situation of both literal and figurative captivity, Jesus delivers both the jailor and the inmate from any and all captivity. Colossians 1:13 puts it this way concerning the ministry of Jesus Christ: Colossians 1:13: “who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and  hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.”

Far and above the mere presence of a publican among the originals of Jesus' followers, the very first thing we read in Matthew's Gospel Account is Jesus' genealogy. Taking a step away from both tradition and the male-dominated culture of his day which devalued women, Matthew includes four women in the lineage of Christ: And each of the four women he included were also those whose names were linked to scandal in some way, yet their names appear in spite of their origins and their scandalous histories. There was Tamar, the patriarch Judah's widowed daughter-in-law who dressed as a prostitute and was impregnated by Judah; there was Rachab, a Canaanite prostitute who helped hide the spies who came as an advance scouting team before the Israelites invaded Canaan; there was the non-Israelite Ruth. She was a Moabite who, after her husband died, declared her allegiance not only to her mother-in-law Naomi, but also to Naomi's people and her God; and then there was Uriah's wife Bathsheba with whom King David committed adultery. These are the four women from Matthew's genealogy. But the New Testament includes a fifth woman in Jesus' lineage whose reputation was questioned. Any guesses as to who that woman might be?

If you guessed Jesus' mother Mary as woman #5, you would be correct. Matthew's genealogy of Jesus is through Joseph, so Mary is not included in his genealogy. She does appear in Luke's genealogy. As with the four women Matthew includes in Christ's lineage, Mary is a woman whose character came under close public scrutiny and widespread disapproval. As believers we routinely overlook the scandal that surrounded her because we know that her pregnancy was the result of her being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. But all her neighbors and the community knew was that Mary was found to be pregnant before her wedding day. In that culture, such a thing was an abomination. I don't think we have sufficiently considered the inescapable reproach, the public ostracism and the grave    condemnation that Mary knowingly and willingly accepted when she responded as she did to the angel who told her that she was chosen to give birth to the Messiah. We read in Luke 1:38: “And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord;  be it unto me according to thy word.” Her response to the angel was one that reflected a level of maturity that was far beyond her years. Most scholars say she was a woman in her middle teens, but her response to God was a beautiful and an inspiring picture of humility and selfless obedience.

Her fiance` Joseph was, in his own right, also a godly man. He discovered that his bride-to-be was pregnant. He knew that was not his child, yet he did not respond to this information with what some might say was justifiable vindictiveness at having been betrayed, or even any desire to publicly condemn her, himself. Instead, with respect and compassion, he intended to put her away privately. In a dream, an angel encouraged Joseph to go through with their planned marriage, explaining to Joseph that Mary had not been unfaithful to him.

She was a virgin, as another prophecy indicated that the Messiah's mother would be. The prophecy is found in Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the virgin shall  conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” Critics and doubters of the Bible correctly claim that the original word in Hebrew, “almah`,” that is translated “virgin,” can also be translated “young woman.” In pointing this out, they attempt to undermine the miraculous participation of God and the Holy Spirit in Mary's pregnancy. Let's see if their doubt has any merit. Alexander the Great conquered the known world, and Greek became the official international language of the all the nations he ruled. A request was made from Jews living in Alexandria, that a translation be made of the Old Testament be made from Hebrew in Greek, so that the Scriptures could be read and used by a wider range of people. Seventy Hebrew scholars were assembled to accomplish this task. The translation they made is called the “Septuagint,” meaning “the seventy.” Why is this important to our study? It is important because when these translators came to Isaiah 7:14, they had to make a decision about how to translate the Hebrew “almah,” which could mean both “virgin”  or “young woman.” They chose the Greek word, “parthenos,” which has only one meaning: “virgin.” The verse reads “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son...” And this can be the only correct way to translate this verse.

Why do I say that?

Consider: The very first words of Isaiah 7:14 indicate that this was going to be a sign... a specific way to identify the Messiah. If “almah” is translated as “young woman,” how could that have been a sign of anything to anyone? Would it have been a sufficient sign to mere identify the mother of the Messiah as being a “young woman,” as opposed to a woman who was older? No. But how many children have ever been born to a woman who could honestly say that she was a virgin both before and after she became pregnant? Only one in all of history. And her name was Mary, the wife of Joseph, the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth. And she made that very claim to the angel who told her she would be the mother of the Messiah: We read her response in Luke 1:34, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” Mary was the virgin that Isaiah prophesied some 700 years before she was born, who would be the mother of the Messiah.    

Mary went to live with her cousin Elizabeth for three months,  but her scandalous pregnancy and ruined reputation was the hot gossip of the day. We can know that because Jesus was confronted with it during His ministry over three decades later! During one of the many altercations Jesus had with the Pharisees and His Jewish opponents, the scandal of His being born to a woman out of wedlock was thrown in Jesus' face. Notice: Jesus is speaking first, here, in John 8:41: “Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.”

Among the many accusations Jesus endured, illegitimacy was one of them. But, besides boldly listing women with questionable reputations, Matthew also provided for us a genealogy that included both Abraham and David, to solidify Jesus' rightful place as both Heir of the Promises of God, and ascendancy to the Throne of David. One prophecy that attests to Jesus' being the Heir having a rightful place as the ruling Son of David is one that is most familiar in a partially quoted form. It is found in Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder...” Jesus acknowledged His kingship to Pilate when He said “My kingdom is not of this world,” in John 18:36. Who, but a King, refers to any kingdom as “My Kingdom”?

The wise men who came to King Herod, they were aware of the kingly aspect of the Messiah. When they inquired of Herod regarding the Messiah's birthplace, they asked in Matthew 2:2, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” Have you ever given thought to how the wise men were answered? They didn't go to the Social Page of that morning's newspapers. They went to written prophecies that foretold where the Messiah was to be born. The Prophet was the Prophet Micah. And this is an amazing thing about the Micah writings. How old were Micah's prophecies? At the time they were consulted, they were 700 years old! The scrolls that were researched were of writings that were over three times older than our Constitution is to us today! And they were consulted to determine where a particular baby was going to be born! The wise men had traveled thousands of miles fully expecting to find one newborn. And their impossible quest was successful because a 700 year old prophecy directed them to the city where He was born! Can such a thing be said of any other human being on this planet?

Allow me one more aside as we look at the arrival of the Wise Men: In the average Nativity Scene, they are usually represented as being present at the birth of Christ. Scripture indicates a much later appearance. Remember, Jesus was born in a stable setting; His first crib was a manger, a feeding trough. The angel gave the shepherds a distinct sign to find the Messiah in Luke 2:12: “And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” But it was not the same for the Wise Men. We read of them in Matthew 2:11: “And when they were come into [u]the house[/u], they saw [u]the young child[/u] with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (emphasis mine). The Wise Men did not find a babe in a stable in a manger, they saw Him as but a young child in a house. This is why Herod had his soldiers target young boys as old as two years old.

But there is yet more here that we can learn from this story: The prophecy that answered the Wise Mens' inquiry was recorded in Micah 5:2: Matthew tells us what Herod did to answer the wise mens' unsettling question: “And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.” Herod did not merely inquire of the scribes where Christ was to be born. He “demanded” an answer from them. This is in keeping with the paranoid and maniacal reputation Herod has been given. Herod had bought and paid for his position as “King of the Jews” from the Roman  rulers. The Wise Men inquiring after a rival King of the Jews was a direct threat to his position. But he had to feign calmness to not alert the Wise Men to the threat that Christ posed to him. The scribes found the prophecy of where the Christ was to be born, and they responded in Matthew 2:5: “In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.” But Matthew shared only the first portion of the prophecy with us. If you limit your familiarity with Jesus being born in Bethlehem to Matthew's quotation, you miss a critically important characteristic of the Messiah's pre-human identity. The rest of the verse reads: “... whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”

Critics and doubters of the Bible claim that the Deity of Christ was one of the embellishments added by the 2nd Century authors of the New Testament. But 700 years before Christ was born, Micah identified the Messiah as having a past history that had been “from of old, from everlasting.”

Is there any merit to the critics' claim that the Deity of Jesus is nothing but an embellishment added by overzealous believers who lived and wrote the New Testament centuries after Jesus walked the earth? The Christ Child was to be named “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us.” Who besides God can be described as having an everlasting existence? No one. This includes angels. Angels are created beings, and, as such, each they had a beginning. This prophecy can only have been fulfilled by God, Himself.

As John wrote in the opening of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Here is something else to consider: If a prophet in Israel made the statement, “Thus saith the Lord,” Who would the prophet be quoting? Who was the only One Who anyone in Israel would understanding  the Lord to be? The Lord was God Almighty. In Greek, the word translated “Lord” is the word, “kurios.”  In the wilderness, Jesus countered Satan's temptation with the words, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God (Gk. kurios), and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).  In Mark 12:28, Jesus was asked, “Which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered in verse 29, “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord,” the Greek word for Lord is the word kurios. Now let's go to the night Jesus was born. Beginning in Luke 2:8: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (kurios). The angels' use of the word “kurios” clearly identified, beyond any shadow of a doubt,  Who that babe in the manger was... it was “Christ the Lord.” Many names in Israel had “God” as a part of the name with the suffix “el:” Samuel, Daniel, Gabriel, Gamaliel. But where the Name Emmanuel is concerned, which means “God With Us,” it was more than a Name. It was an expression of a literal manifestation, an actual incarnation of God taking on human flesh and blood. John identified the Word as being God. In verse 14 of the first chapter of his Gospel, “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.”

We know why the Word became flesh. When He came to John the Baptist in the wilderness, John announced Him with the words in John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” He came to die for our sins. But He also came, as we read early, to “dwell among us.” When the enraged Herod sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the male children two years old and younger, could the goal of the Plan of Salvation, having Jesus die for our sins, have been accomplished if Joseph had not been warned to flee from Herod's men? If Jesus were slain as a toddler, would His death at that age have been able to be applied to our sins that we might be forgiven? Personally, without being able to cite any Scripture to defend my opinion, I think God could have accepted the death of that innocent child to accomplish His Plan.

But He was not to die as a toddler. We read Paul's words in Philippians 2:6-8: “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.” But as important as it was for Jesus being sacrificed for us, He had so many other things to accomplish. Yes! Jesus came to die in our place, but to do so as an adult, after having experienced being with, living with, and eating with the creation He so loved. For the first time, by His experiencing firsthand the human condition, God was able to He was able to know hunger and thirst, and fatigue. At the end of a long day, He was able to close His eyes and sleep at night... and wake up the next morning to the sound of a rooster crowing. To our original parents in the beginning in Eden, He assigned which trees could be eaten, and which one to avoid. Now, as a carpenter He was choosing which lumber He was use to build a new home for a new family, their tables and chairs or a door for the house. He had blessed Adam and Even with the words, “Be fruitful and multiply,” (Genesis 1:28). Now as a man, He could hear with human ears the sound of children playing in the streets coming through the windows of His home as He grew up in Nazareth. As an adult, when speaking of abiding in the love of the Father, Jesus said in John 15:10: “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” But also as an adult, He could now pick up the children who came to Him and expressed their love for Him. He could sit down with them, and not only sense their innocence and love. For the first time since Creation, He could feel the weight and warmth of a child sitting in His lap. He could feel the tenderness in their hugs. He could feel their hot breath on His cheek as they moved in closer to whisper  a secret to Him. It was a sensation that He clearly enjoyed, telling His disciples to not shew away the children that thronged Him. I believe that for years, the sound of joyous children running and playing in the streets of Nazareth included the sound of Jesus' laughter when He was a boy.

As God, Jesus was omnipresent throughout the Universe He created. But as a human being, and an itinerant preacher, having set aside His power and Glory, He could now only visit various towns, one at a time, at the speed of walking, or on the back of the fastest borrowed donkey. As the Creator God, He had spoken and a Universe full of billions of galaxies appeared (Genesis 1:1). As the Creator, He had named all the stars (Psalm 147:4), but now as a human being, at sunset He could watch those same stars become visible against the ink-black night sky bled to the horizon. As He looked heavenward, I imagine Him  reflecting on their stellar majesty, but now from an earthbound perspective, as fellow-humans saw them, and marveled.

We read in 1 Timothy 2:5-6, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” Having been God in the flesh, only Jesus could have qualified to be the Mediator between God and men. And as that Mediator, only Jesus could speak to the Father on behalf of those He created, and for whom He died. He experienced the ongoing warfare between our spirits and our flesh. He said in Mark 14:38: “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.” Jesus was God... feeling what we feel, and experiencing, firsthand, what we go through in the flesh. We read in Hebrews 4:15, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” He lived and experienced being a human into adulthood so that He could be a far more effectual High Priest (Hebrews 4:15) and Advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1).

Besides all of the above, as that itinerant preacher, Jesus had many things to impart to us, none of which He could have done had Herod's soldiers killed Him at the age of two. The wise men gave gifts to Jesus: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These were expensive gifts... gifts worthy of a king. But very soon after  their visit, Jesus' family was warned to escape into Egypt as Herod sought to kill Him. Those gifts took on new meaning and purpose as they enabled the family to travel to a foreign country, and secure lodging and food until it was safe for them to return to Israel. The scribes had told Herod that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. I wonder if the scribes read, or Herod listened to the prophecy long enough to hear that the Messiah had an “everlasting” pre-Existence. I wonder if Herod would have realized the utter futility in attempting to defy the Will of God, or somehow thwart a 700 year old prophecy that accurately foretold the Messiah's birthplace.

As I said earlier, I believe that the Father could have applied the shed blood of Christ to cover our sins, had Herod's men killed Him when He was two years old. But the Father had bigger Plans for His only begotten Son. Joseph, Jesus' foster-father, was warned by God to flee with his family to Egypt. That ensured that Jesus would survive into adulthood, and, because He did, He was able to have a ministry the lasted over three years. He was able to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the many Parables, the many healings of the blind, the lame, the deaf and the leprous. There were the raising of the dead back to life. There were the many examples He left for us to follow, expressions of mercy, and compassion, and generosity and forgiveness. There were the repudiations of the cultural prejudices by having shepherds who were social outcasts be the first to hear that the Messiah had come. Jesus chose a hated tax collector to be a disciple, He traveled through Samaria, an area which Jews routinely went miles out of their way to avoid. He preached to a Samaritan woman at the well, she calls her others to hear Him and He stayed and preached to them for two more days, He made a despised Samaritan to be the hero of a Parable, and He selected women, second class citizens in that culture whose testimony was disallowed in court, to be the first witnesses to His Resurrection. And after His resurrection He was able to establish and empower His Church, to go into all the world, spread His Gospel, preach His Word, heal the sick, raise the dead, and write down the words the made it possible for us also to come to the knowledge of the Truth.

Yes, we celebrate the birth of Christ at this time of year. But there is much we can still learn from the details of that birth with which we thought we were so familiar. The next time you see a Nativity Scene displayed in a Church Yard, or on a Christmas Card, look at each of the individuals and groups in the Scene: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Wise Men, end even the lambs who would one day serve, themselves, as sacrifices.  As you do look at them, think of each one with a deeper and fuller understanding of them than you had, yesterday.

I have found that researching and writing this for you has been greatly inspiring and edifying to me. I sincerely hope that it also had the same impact on you.

This concludes this evening's Discussion, “A Closer Look at The Nativity”
This was originally delivered “live” on December 19th, 2013.

Jesus...God and man

Equally amazing to the doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine of the Incarnation--that Jesus Christ is God and man, yet one person, forever. As J.I. Packer has said: "Here are two mysteries for the price of one--the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. ...Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation," writes contemporary theologian J.I. Packer.1

The early church considered the Incarnation to be one of the most important truths of our faith. Because of this, they formulated what has come to be called the Chalcedonean Creed, a statement which sets forth very what we are to believe and what we are not to believe about the Incarnation. This creed was the fruit of a large council that took place from October 8 to November 1, 451, in the city of Chalcedon and "has been taken as the standard, orthodox definition of the biblical teaching on the person of Christ since that day by" all the major branches of Christianity.2 There are five main truths with which the creed of Chalcedon summarized the biblical teaching on the Incarnation.

1. Jesus has two natures -- He is God and man.
 2. Each nature is full and complete -- He is fully God and fully man.
 3. Each nature remains distinct.
 4. Christ is only one Person.
 5. Things that are true of only one nature are nonetheless true of the Person of Christ.

A proper understanding of these truths clears up much confusion and many difficulties we may have in our mind. How can Jesus be both God and man? Why doesn't this make Him two people? How does His Incarnation relate to the Trinity? How could Jesus have hungered (Matthew 4:2) and died (Mark 15:37) when He was on earth, and yet still be God? Did Jesus give up any of His divine attributes in the Incarnation? Why is it inaccurate to say that Jesus is a "part" of God? Is Jesus still human now, and does He still have His human body?

Jesus has two natures -- God and man

The first truth we need to understand is that Jesus is one Person who has two natures a divine nature and a human nature. In other words, Jesus is both God and man. We will look at each nature accordingly.

Jesus is God

The Bible teaches that Jesus is not merely someone who is a lot like God, or someone who has a very close walk with God. Rather, Jesus is the Most High God Himself. Titus 2:13 says that as Christians we are "looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Upon seeing the resurrected Christ, Thomas cried out, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). Likewise, the book of Hebrews gives us God the Father's direct testimony about Christ: "But of the Son He says, 'Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever" and the gospel of John calls Jesus "the only begotten God" (John 1:18).

 Another way the Bible teaches that Jesus is God is by showing that He has all of the attributes of God. He knows everything (Mt 16:21; Luke 11:17; John 4:29), is everywhere (Matthew 18:20; 28:20; Acts 18:10), has all power (Mt 8:26, 27; 28:18; Jn 11:38-44; Lk 7:14-15; Revelation 1:8), depends on nothing outside of Himself for life (Jn 1:4; 14:6; 8:58), rules over everything (Mt 28:18; Rev 19:16; 1:5) never began to exist and never will cease to exist (John 1:1; 8:58), and is our Creator (Colossians 1:16). In other words, everything that God is, Jesus is. For Jesus is God.

Specifically, Jesus is God the Son

In order to have a more complete grasp of Christ's incarnation, it is necessary to have some sort of understanding of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity states that God is one being, and this one God exists as three distinct Persons. This means, first of all, that we must distinguish each Person of the Trinity from the other two. The Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit, the Son is not the Holy Spirit or the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are each a distinct center of consciousness, a distinct form of personal existence. Yet, they all share the exact same divine nature/essence. Thus, the three persons are one being. The divine being/essence is not something that is divided between the Persons, each Person receiving one-third. Rather, the divine being is fully and equally possessed by all three Persons such that all three Persons are each fully and equally God.

 How does the fact that God is three Persons in one Being relate to the incarnation? To answer this, let's consider another question. Which Person became incarnate in Jesus Christ? All three? Or just one? Which one? The Biblical answer is that only God the Son became incarnate. The Father did not become incarnate in Jesus, and neither did the Holy Spirit. Thus, Jesus is God, but He is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. Jesus is God the Son.

 The truth that it is only God the Son who became incarnate is taught, for example, in John 1:14, which says "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." In context, the word is God the Son (cf. vv. 1, 18, and 3:16). Thus, it wasn't the Father or the Holy Spirit who became man, but God the Son.

 Likewise, at Jesus' baptism we see the Father affirming "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased" (Luke 3:22). He did not say, "You are me, and with myself I am well-pleased." Rather, the Father affirmed that Jesus is the Son, His Son, and that Jesus is well-pleasing to Him. In this same verse we also see that the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son, for the Holy Spirit is present in "bodily form like a dove."

 Why is it important to know that Jesus is specifically God the Son? For one thing, if we do not understand this we will be mistaken about the very identity of our savior. Further, it greatly affects how we relate to our triune God. If we think that Jesus is the Father and/or the Holy Spirit, we will be greatly misguided and confused in our prayers. Last, it is considered heresy to believe that the Father became incarnate in Jesus.

Jesus is man

It should be obvious that if Jesus is God, then He has always been God. There was a never a time when He became God, for God is eternal. But Jesus has not always been man. The fantastic miracle is that this eternal God became man at the Incarnation approximately 2,000 years ago. That's what the Incarnation was--God the Son becoming man. And its this great even that we celebrate at Christmas.

 But what exactly do we mean when we say that God the Son became man? We certainly do not mean that He turned into a man, in the sense that He stopped being God and started being man. Jesus did not give up any of His divinity in the Incarnation, as is evident from the verses we saw earlier. Rather, as one early theologian put it, "Remaining what He was, He became what He was not." Christ "was not now God minus some elements of His deity, but God plus all that He had made His own by taking manhood to Himself."3 Thus, Jesus did not give up any of His divine attributes at the Incarnation. He remained in full possession of all of them. For if He were to ever give up any of His divine attributes, He would cease being God.

 The truth of Jesus' humanity is just as important to hold to as the truth of His deity. The apostle John speaks strongly anyone that denying that Jesus is man is of the spirit of the anti-Christ (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7). Jesus' humanity is displayed in the fact that He was born as a baby from a human mother (Luke 2:7; Galatians 4:4), that He became weary (John 4:6), thirsty (John 19:28), and hungry (Matthew 4:2), and that He experienced the full range of human emotions such as marvel (Matt. 8:10), weeping, and sorrow (John 11:35). He lived on earth just as we do.

Jesus is a sinless man

It is also essential to know that Christ does not have a sinful nature, and neither did He ever commit sin -- even though He was tempted in all ways (Hebrews 4:15). Thus, Jesus is fully and perfectly man, and has also experienced the full range of human experience. We have a Savior who can truly identify with us because He is man, and who can also truly help us in temptation because He has never sinned. This is an awesome truth to cherish, and sets Christianity apart from all other religions.



Each nature is full and complete

Having seen the biblical basis that Jesus is both God and man, the second truth that we must recognize is that each of Christ's natures is full and complete. In other words, Jesus is fully God and fully man. Another helpful way to say it is that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man.

Jesus is fully God

We saw earlier that each Person of the Trinity is fully God. The three Persons of the Trinity are not each one-third of God, but are each all of God. Thus, Jesus is fully God since He is God the Son incarnate. This means that everything that is essential to being God is true of Jesus. Jesus is not part of God, or one-third of God. Rather, He is fully God. "For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9).

Jesus is fully man

It is also important to recognize that when we say that Jesus is man, we do not simply mean that He is partially man. We mean that He is fully human -- everything that belongs to the essence of true humanity is true of Him. He is just as truly human as the rest of us.

 The fact that Jesus is truly and fully human is clear from the fact that He has a human body (Luke 24:39), a human mind (Luke 2:52), and a human soul (Matthew 26:38). Jesus does not just look like a man, He does not just have some aspects of what is essential for true humanity but not others, but possess full humanity.

 It is helpful to be aware of the false views concerning Christ. For if we have a grasp of what we are not to believe, it will give us a fuller picture of what we are to believe. One of the false views that was rejected at the council of Chalcedon taught that "the one person of Christ had a human body but not a human mind or spirit, and that the mind and spirit of Christ were from the divine nature of the Son of God."4 Since this view did not believe that Jesus has a human mind and spirit, it in effect denied that Christ is fully and truly man. Rather, it presented Christ as a sort of half-man who has a human body, but whose human mind and soul were replaced by the divine nature. But as we saw earlier, Jesus is just as fully human as the rest of us, for just as He has all of the essential elements of Godhead, He has all the essential elements of human nature a human body, a human soul, a human mind, a human will, and human emotions. His human mind was not replaced by His divine mind. Rather, He has both a human and divine mind. For these reasons, it can be misleading to use phrases such as "Jesus is God in a body" or "Jesus is God with skin on."

Jesus will be fully God and fully man forever

For most people it is obvious that Jesus will be God forever. But for some reason it escapes a lot of us that Jesus will also be man forever. He is still man right now as you read this and will be forever. The Bible is clear that Jesus rose physically from the dead in the same body that had died (Luke 24:39) and then ascended into heaven as a man, in His physical body (Acts 1:9; Luke 24:50-51). It would make no sense for Him to have done this if He was simply going to ditch His body and stop being man when He arrived in heaven.

 That Christ continued being man, with a physical body, after His ascension is confirmed by the fact that when He returns, it will be as man, in His body. He will return physically. Philippians 3:21 says that at His Second Coming, Christ "will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory." This verse is clear that Jesus still has His body. It is a glorified body, which Paul calls "the body of His glory." And when Christ returns, He will still have it because this verse says that He will transform our bodies to be like His. Both Jesus and all Christians will then continue living together in their bodies forever, because the resurrection body cannot die (1 Corinthians 15:42) because it is eternal (2 Corinthians 5:1).

 Why did Jesus become man, and why will He be man forever? The book of Hebrews says that it was so that Christ could be an adequate Savior who has all that we need. "He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (2:17). First, notice that Jesus became man so that He could die for our sins. He had to be human in order to pay the penalty for humans. Second, this verse says that because Jesus is human like us, He is able to be a merciful and faithful high priest. His humanity enables Him to more fully sympathize with us and identify with us. I cannot help but believe that it is very destructive to our comfort and faith to not know that Jesus is still man and in His body. For if He is not still man in heaven, how could we have comfort knowing that He can fully sympathize with us? He can sympathize and be a faithful high priest and know what we are going through not just because He was once on earth as a man, but because He continues forever as that same man.



Each nature remains distinct

The truths of Christ's two natures full manhood and full Godhood are pretty well understood and known by Christians. But for a right understanding of the Incarnation we must go even further. We must understand that the two natures of Christ remain distinct and retain their own properties. What does this mean? Two things: (1) They do not alter one another's essential properties, and (2) neither do they mix together into a mysterious third kind of nature.

 First, it would be wrong to think that Christ's two natures mix together to form a third kind of nature. This is one of the heresies that the early church had to fight. This heresy taught that "the human nature of Christ was taken up and absorbed into the divine nature, so that both natures were changed somewhat and a third kind of nature resulted. An analogy to [this] can be seen if we put a drop of ink in a glass of water: the mixture resulting is neither pure ink nor pure water, but some kind of third substance, a mixture of the two in which both the ink and the water are changed. Similarly, [this view] taught that Jesus was a mixture of divine and human elements in which both were somewhat modified to form one new nature."5 This view is unbiblical because it demolishes both Christ's deity and humanity. For if Christ's two natures mixed together, then He is no longer truly and fully God and truly and fully man, but is some entirely different kind of being that resulted from a mixture of the two natures.

 Second, even if we acknowledge that the natures do not mix together into a third kind of nature, it would also be wrong to think that the two natures changed one another. For example, it would be wrong to conclude that Jesus' human nature became divine in some ways, or that His divine nature became human in some ways. Rather, each nature remains distinct, and thereby retains its own individual properties and does not change. As the council of Chalcedon stated it, "...the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved..."6 Jesus' human nature is human, and human only. His divine nature is divine, and divine only. For example, Jesus' human nature did not become all knowing through its union with God the Son, and neither did His divine nature become ignorant of anything. If any of the natures underwent a change in its essential nature, then Christ is no longer truly and fully human, or truly and fully divine.



Christ is only one Person

What we have seen so far about the deity and humanity of Christ shows us that Christ has two natures -- a divine nature and a human nature -- , that each nature is full and complete, that they remain distinct and do not mix together to form a third kind of nature, and that Christ will be both God and man forever.

 But if Christ has two natures, does this mean that He is also two people? No, it does not. Christ remains one person. There is only one Christ. The church has historically stated this truth in this way: Christ is two natures united in one person forever.

 At this point we find another heretical view to beware of. This view, while acknowledging that Jesus is fully God and fully man, denies that He is only one Person. According to this view, there are two separate persons in Christ as well as two natures. In contrast to this, the Bible is very clear that, while Jesus has two natures, He is only one Person. In other words, what this means is that there are not two Jesus Christ's. In spite of the fact that He has a duality of natures, He is not two Christs, but One. While remaining distinct, the two natures are united together in such a way so as to be one Person.

 To put it simply, there is a certain sense in which Christ is two, and a different sense in which Christ is one. He is two in that He has two real, full natures one divine and one human. He is one in that, while remaining distinct, these two natures exist together in such a way as that they constitute "one thing." In other words, the two natures are both the same Jesus, and thus are one Person. As the Chalcedonean creed says, Christ is "to be acknowledged in two natures...concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ..."

Evidence that Christ is Only One Person

We will look at three pieces of the biblical teaching that while Christ has two distinct and unchanged, He nonetheless remains one Person.

1. Both natures are represented in Scripture as constituting "one thing," that is, as united in one Person. We read in John 1:14, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us." Here we see the two natures: the Word (His deity) and flesh (humanity). Yet we also see that there is one Person, for we read that the Word became flesh. "Became" requires that we acknowledge a unity of the two natures such that they are one thing--that is, one Person. For in what sense could John write that the word became flesh if they do not constitute one Person? It surely cannot mean "turned into" flesh, for that is against the Scriptural teaching on the distinctness of the natures. Additional Scriptures relating to this line of evidence are Romans 8:3, Galatians 4:4, 1 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 2:11-14, 1 John 4:2,3.

2. Jesus never speaks of Himself as "We," but always as "I"

3. Many passages refer to both natures of Christ, but it is clear that only one person is intended It is impossible to read the following passages, which clearly affirm Christ's two natures, and yet conclude that Christ is two Persons. "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh..." (Romans 8:3). "But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law..." (Galatians 4:4). "...who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped [that is, exploited to His own advantage], but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:6-7).

 Having seen that Christ is two natures in one person, and having also seen what is involved in this, we will now examine one of the major implications of this, which should help us to complete the picture and our understanding.

Implication: Things that are true of one nature but not the other are nonetheless true of the Person of Christ

As we have seen earlier, the fact that Christ is two natures means that there are things that are true of His human nature that are not true of His divine nature. And there are things true of His divine nature that are not true of His human nature. For example, His human nature hungered, but His divine nature could never be hungry. So when Christ hungered on earth, it was His humanity that hungered, not His divine nature.

 But the truth that we are now in a position to understand, is that by virtue of the union of the natures in one Person, the things that are true of and done by only one of Christ's natures, are nonetheless true of and done by the Person of Christ. In other words, things which only one nature does can be considered to have been done by Christ Himself. Likewise, things that are true of one nature but not the other are true of the Person of Christ as a whole. What this means, in simple terms, is that if there is something that only one of Christ's natures did, He can still say, "I did it."

 We have many instances in Scripture which demonstrate this. For example, Jesus says in John 8:58, "...before Abraham was born, I am." Now, Christ's human nature did not exist before Abraham. It is Christ's divine nature that eternally exists before Abraham. But since Christ is one Person, He could say that before Abraham was, He is.

 Another example is Christ's death. God cannot die. We should never speak of Christ's death as the death of God. But humans can die, and Jesus' human nature did die. Thus, even though Jesus' divine nature did not die, we can still say that the Person of Christ experienced death because of the union of the two natures in the one Person of Christ. Because of this, Grudem says, "by virtue of union with Jesus' human nature, his divine nature somehow tasted something of what it was like to go through death. The person of Christ experienced death."7

 Have you ever wondered how Jesus could say that He did not know the day or hour of His return (Matthew 24:36) even though He is omniscient (John 21:17). If Jesus is God, why didn't He know the day of His return? This is solved by our understanding that Christ is one Person with two natures. The answer is that in regards to His human nature, Jesus does not have all knowledge. Thus, in His human nature He really did not know the day or hour of His return. But in His divine nature, He does have all knowledge and thus in His divine nature He did know when He would return.

 Here comes the most fascinating part. Since the two natures are united in one Person, the fact that Christ's human nature didn't know when He would return means that the Person of Christ did not know when He would return. Thus, Jesus the Person could truly say, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone" (Matthew 24:36). At the same time, by virtue of His divine nature, we can also say that the Person of Christ did know when He would return. Knowledge and ignorance of the time of His return are both true of the Christ, but in different ways. In His human nature, the Person of Christ was ignorant of when He would return. In His divine nature, the Person of Christ did know when He would return. Thus, Christ Himself both knew and did not know when He would return.



Conclusion

We have seen the biblical evidence for the fact that Christ is God the Son, He has both a divine and human nature, that each nature is full and complete, that each nature remains distinct, that Christ is nonetheless one Person, and that things which are true of one nature are true of the Person.

 The relevance of these truths to us should go without saying. For they go to the very heart of who Christ is. Knowing these truths will greatly affect the way you view Christ and will make the gospel accounts of His life come more alive. As such, this understanding will deepen our devotion to Christ.

 Second, having this richer understanding of the Incarnation of God the Son should greatly enhance our worship. We will have great marvel and gladness at the fact that the eternal Person of God the Son became man forever. Our recognition of Christ's worth will be heightened. And our faith in Him will be strengthened by having this deeper understanding of who He is.

 The union of Christ's deity and humanity in one Person makes it such that we have all that we need in the same Savior. How glorious. Because Jesus is God, He is all-powerful and He cannot be defeated. Because He is God, He is the only adequate Savior. Because He is God, believers are safe and can never perish; we have security. Because He is God, we can have confidence that He will empower us for the task that He commands us for. And because He is God, all people will be accountable to Him when He returns to judge the world.

 Because Jesus is man, He has experienced the same things that we do. Because He is man, He can identify with us more intimately. Because He is man, He can come to our aid as our sympathetic High Priest when we reach the limits of our human weaknesses. Because He is man, we can relate to Him--He is not far off and uninvolved. Because He is man, we cannot complain that God does not know what we are going through. He experienced it first-hand.

 Finally, we need to be ready to defend the truth of Jesus' deity, Jesus' humanity, and their joining inconfusedly in one Person . Therefore, consider committing to memory many of the verses which teach that Jesus is both God and man, and be able to explain the relationship between Christ's two natures to others.

 May we look forward to the day when we see Him face to face, and until then may the joyful hope of this day inspire in us a great diligence in serving and worshiping Him.

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/how-can-jesus-be-god-and-man