SIGNAL CHURCH CAPE TOWN
Julia Day:-Jesus: The humanity Of Jesus ; A Person For People. Pt23
As Terrence said, my name is Julia and it's such a joy to be with you this morning. I love the church and I love Jesus Christ even more. And every time I have the privilege of sharing, I just feel the privilege, the weighty privilege of speaking freely. So thank you for having me and for hearing my words. So yeah, we've been in a series called Build, we've been looking at the church for six weeks and I am taking us back into our super series on Jesus. If you look behind me, that is a picture of the Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo painted the ceiling of and he painted it in panels, you can see that it's divided into sections. And we've been sort of using this as this metaphor to look at the life of Jesus. And we've gone through three panels and I have the privilege of starting panel number four, which Terrence called for us a person for people. And I specifically am talking about the humanity of Jesus this morning, which is just such a privilege and honor and a joy. So I'm just going to pray for myself because I need Jesus. Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Lord, for who you are. Can we all just take a big inhale and an exhale? Sometimes we have to remember to breathe. Do you know that Jesus took breaths, he had to breathe on the earth, he was embodied. Just like we depend on our breath to live, he depended on his breath. So as we breathe this morning, Lord, we think of you, we remember you. Holy Spirit, would you open our eyes to see Jesus rightly? This morning, would you reveal the sun to us this morning? Amen. Oh, sorry, I sound so stuffy, I am fine. Okay, good, great. So I wonder if you've been in church for a long time, you might be super comfortable with the reality of Jesus being both God and man. You also might not be. You might feel much more comfortable with the divinity of God, that might be something you connect with more easily, some of us might be much more comfortable with the humanity of God. But for a moment, I would just love you to think about that. In your heart, where do you lean, where do you feel more comfortable? Is it something that you've wrestled with? Have you considered this quite unbelievable reality, this truth that our King Jesus is both fully God and fully man? There is a mysterious element to that. I don't want to deny that this morning. To be honest, I've been a Christian for 12, I mean, yeah, I've followed the Lord actively for 20 years this year. And I have spoken many times, actually, in my young life, which is amazing. But I sat with this topic this week and I opened the text and I was f muckled, like my brain was fried. And I just want to be super honest with you, because I sometimes think when we come to church and we sit and we listen to people speak, we can feel a little bit like they've got it all down. And they've always known it and they must always know it and just feel totally comfortable with it. But in all truth, I sat at the table on Tuesday night talking to my wonderful husband about this talk in the floods of tears saying, "Do I even understand the incarnation? Do I understand the reality of my Jesus, this one who I feel like I know so intimately, being both God and man, what does that even mean? What does it mean that God would put on flesh? What does it mean that he would take on the full fallenness of humanity and go to the cross and die for me and now I walk free?" Like, what even is going on there? And I'm saying this to you, to be honest and to be vulnerable, that the walk of faith and life is full of quite unbelievable, mysterious, complex things, and full of unbelievably simple, beautiful things, all at the same time. And there is freedom and room to wrestle the stuff through. And I felt quite uncomfortable in the moment because I was just like, "I should give this. I speak about this stuff. I use these words all the time." And in that moment as I went a bit, then I felt the Lord say to me, "Julia, I want to take you another layer deeper. This is an invitation. Discomfort is in something that should put you off. It's something that should draw you in." My mum is an Amargo therapist, if you've ever heard of that term, some of you might have done it. It's sort of a specialised form of marriage or couples counselling. And she has this line where she says, "Conflict is growth trying to happen." You know, it's like in a relationship when you're hitting up against each other, sometimes you can want to withdraw from the discomfort. But actually, if we learn how to find each other, it's a moment for growth trying to happen. And I felt that with the Lord this week, it was like, don't pull away, like lean in. This is growth trying to happen in you. All of that to say, "I come super humbly, I don't have it all down." But this is the God I have discovered over my journey with the Lord and this week in all honesty. And so we're going to look at the humanity of Jesus today. I'm going to read first from Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4, and then we're going to jump in. It should come up on the screen, yep. So Hebrews 2, verse 14 says, "Since therefore the children share flesh and blood, he himself, likewise, shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it's clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore, he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people, because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested, oh, it's power. I've got it in the message paraphrase as well. And I just want to read the end, but there. It was for people like us, children of Abraham, that's why he had to enter into every detail of human life, then, when he came before God as high priests to get rid of the people's sin, he would have already experienced it all himself, all the pain, all the testing, and would be able to help where help was needed. This is our Jesus. You see, Jesus existed in the Godhead before all time in total perfection. And at a certain point, God determined that he would send his son, he would send of himself to the earth, and the way that he came was as a man, as a human. And you see, in the early church, what happened quite quickly, Jesus had been on the earth, he administered for 33 years, he died, he rose again, he ascended to heaven, and the church was birthed, we've been learning about that, Acts 2. But quite quickly afterwards, the humanity of Jesus actually came under severe attack, and people started questioning and undermining this humanity, saying that he must have been other, he must have been the sort of super spirit, this heavenly being that came to earth, and very quickly disconnected from the very earthly reality that God came as a man. And so throughout the New Testament, there are these letters where the writers are impressing upon it, they're, no, no, no, no, it is true. He came with flesh and bone, and when he ascended to heaven, he ascended as a man. And he is still the king of glory, in human form, ruling and reigning over the cosmos. But if we miss the humanity of Jesus, we miss the point, we miss ourselves as well. And that is why it is so important that we understand this humanity of Jesus. Do you know that he experienced the full range of emotion? He was as we are, he came just like us. I've been thinking about my most human experience, and I gave birth last year. And I would say that so far in my life, that is the most human thing I have ever experienced. I do not even begin to assume a likeness to Mary in this way. But we were in London at the time, and we were part of the NHS, which is the National Health System, you know, pay for it, which is amazing, but it also is overrun and creaking. And I arrived in labor at the hospital to be told that there are no beds available for you. There is no room for you. And so I labored to the end, basically, in an open ward in front of five other couples. And if you have experienced birth, or witness birth, you know that it is all things wild and wonderful. But it was totally, totally vulnerable. It is so exposing, but there was nothing to cover over the reality of what I was going through. In a sense, my body absolutely took over. I had no say this baby was going to be born, and I could not control the environment that was happening in. And as I was reflecting upon that and upon the story of Jesus being birthed through a woman, I was just undone, that God would empty himself of himself and grow in the womb of a teenage peasant girl in first century Palestine and be birthed out of a body. God, in a girl, just let it hit you, the humility of God, to enter into our story through the birth canal, it is unbelievable, and we must not miss it. And the story tells us that there was no room for him to be born. And so we find this infant child, this god in infancy lying in a manger, lying essentially in an animal trough, surrounded by maybe animals and straw. The god of the universe would yield himself so fully to humanity that he would come as an infant utterly dependent on the care of his parents. Two-borns can't do anything for themselves, they have to depend. God came as an infant willingly that we might know him. Power. So why is it so important? It's important for three key reasons, I might say more than that but I want to hit the three. Number one, I think I've got a slide. Jesus came as a human to redeem our humanity. We read about this in Hebrews 2 now. He could only take on all of our sin and brokenness, the full weight of fallen humanity. We backtrack right to the beginning of time. God creates man in his image, man and woman, Genesis 1 to 3. He places them in the garden and gives us mandate to rule over creation, expand it, multiply it, grow it. And essentially, man was created in the likeness of God. We were set up to represent God beautifully and perfectly. Man gets that wrong, I'm saying man, man, a woman, mankind. They make a mistake, they disobedient, they don't listen and that starts the cycle of sin and brokenness. God in his kindness and his mercy, clothes them over and covers them over but basically puts in this consequence the reality of sin becomes death, that there's this crack between our intended way which we were designed for intimacy with God. We were designed to live in this perfect union oneness where they walk together in the garden. That is severed and now from that point on in history, you see the cycle of brokenness between God and man and then he looks to the nation of Israel, this people that he identifies. Okay, well, it's not going to just be Adam and Eve anymore, I'm going to use this nation and I'm going to mark them as my own and through them they're going to bless the world and I'm going to redeem things through them and then you see again, right through the Old Testament, Israel falls and gets it wrong many, many times, of course there are moments where they do get it right, they follow God and then they trip up again and they fall into cycles of sin and then from the point of Isaiah we start to hear this whisper of one who will come, again Jesus, I mean God, father focuses his attention on one person, this Messiah, the Savior figure who will be born of a woman who will come from a virgin carrying this essence of God to redeem all creation back to himself so there's these prophetic promises right through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, all this time God longing to restore what was broken at the beginning, you see he always intended for us to live in proximity to him, he longs for intimacy, he longs for closeness, he longs to stand face to face with us but for all of that time there were all these things that the people of Israel had to do, essentially the law that they had to fulfill in order to stay right with God and there were these rituals and hundreds and hundreds of laws to keep and it was burdensome and it was hard but there was this promise of someone who would come who would open the way for us to know God again and the intended promise at the beginning and suddenly first century Palestine, an angel comes to a peasant girl and says you have found favor with God and the spirit of God is going to overshadow you and fill your womb with a very person of God and he will be birthed and you will call him Jesus and he will lead a life on the earth that will be unbelievable and this happens and it actually happened and there was a man who came to the earth and his name is Jesus he is a true historical fugue, he prophesy becomes reality in Jesus, power and why do we need to understand his humanity because for him to make us right with God, to undo what was done, all those moments of separation that I have just spoken about, he had to become like us, he could only take on all of humanity's sin and brokenness and fallenness if he was of us and so he came as a human being to the earth and he assumes all of our mess into his physical body and when he goes to the cross he takes the full weight of our brokenness and he does what we could never do, he pays the price for sin which is death but he pays it once and for all that if you are in Jesus Christ today you are promised eternal life, it is radical that God himself would come in the form of a baby through a peasant girl's womb out of her body into the earth would live a real life and would go and die the most brutal Roman death, do you know the Romans were masters of pain and death and they came up with this thing called crucifixion in order to inflict the highest level of pain that a human could endure before they would die, oh Jesus went through that, the worst kind of death you can ever die, so that you and I don't have to, so number one, humanity is important because in order to redeem us and redeem our humanity to make us right with God and reconcile us he had to assume it to assume it he had to be like us, this is what I was schmuckling my brain this week, I hope this is making sense, number two, he can truly comfort us in our pain because he knows it, you see there's been this wrestle, this attack on this man-god Jesus for 2,000 years, some people will say he's just a moral leader, he's a really great human teacher, he just had some amazing insights and lessons, a lot of the other religions of the world will say that, others will say no, he's this supernatural being this spirit man who is disconnected from the reality of our lives and so he could in a sense make it through those 33 years on the earth, but if we lean on either side of that we miss this precious truth right in the middle, that he is truly both, he is the truest human that ever was because he actually images the Father to us, that was the intended way for us to be image bearers of God, if you look at Jesus he's a perfect image of the Father, everything you need to know about the Father is in Jesus, he's the truest human in that form and he's also truly human in that he came as flesh and blood to be like us the brothers and sisters in order to image us humanity back to the Father and in his time on the earth he lived the full reality of human life. A few years ago Mike and I, it was at the beginning of COVID, we were supposed to be married in the April of 2020 and we'd heard whispers of this thing called COVID-19, didn't really think it was legit to be very frank with you, anyway about two weeks before the lockdown things started to get very real and we were three weeks away from our wedding at that point and there was this rumor you know they might lock us down, they might stop you from moving around, they might limit you from moving from province to province and we were living in Cape Town but getting married and cased in that's where I'm from and the one morning we just woke up and I just said to Mike I think this thing is actually maybe real and we need to go, we need to get to cased in because we've got to get married and so in two hours we packed up his flat, I'd already packed up, we got in the car with Steph and we all high-tailed it to cased it in and half way through we drove through the night and we stopped at KFC in the middle of the night and on the radio they announced that the government had decided to put South Africa into lockdown and that the duration of the lockdown was three weeks and it would go over our wedding and my world just fell apart to be honest. We had a whole lot of plans that were hinging on our marriage as one does and we were meant to be moving overseas and we were meant to be studying further and we had all these things in place that hinged on us being married at the time we were supposed to be married, I had a business, I just closed it, Mike had just resigned, he was part of a sort of apologetic think tank at the time and we're going like oh my gosh, what does this mean? Anyway we get to cased it in and we think of K will three weeks and then we'll get married and slowly but surely after those Friday night or Sunday night announcements we start realizing this is going to be longer than we thought and grief just starts to hit me in a way that I had never experienced before and to you it might just sound like the loss of a wedding and if you've been married you know how precious that moment is but to be honest we were losing everything we knew, it touched everything and the one day I was sitting in the piano and I was worshiping the Lord in my sort of desperate way and I was like what are you doing Jesus what are you doing and I just heard the Lord say to me does this lie and it hit me he said Julia you want to know me as you want to know me I was like what? I just heard it again I was like Lord surely he said again you want to know me as you want to know me I want you to know me as I want to be known and I said Lord what does that even mean and he said I am the man of sorrows acquainted with grief he said you have not allowed yourself to look at my grieving side it's too uncomfortable for you but I am one well acquainted with grief with suffering with sorrow I lost everything and I want you to know me in that way from now on and it was a moment to be honest of brokenness as I sat before the Lord and realized I had become so comfortable with my version of Jesus my clean version of Jesus that felt comfortable my friend who was always let's go type thing that I didn't know how to look at a man who truly understood suffering and pain and grief I didn't know how to grieve I didn't know how to deal with loss and here he was saying I know grief let me teach you to grieve let me meet you in grief this is our Jesus who comes fully to identify with us at every level of pain he did not separate himself from that moment of grief of you look at the moment in the garden of Gethsemane hours before he is about to be betrayed by his closest one of his closest confidants he's had the twelve they're his best friends they've been walking with him for three years he knows what's coming he is fully God he knows what must happen yet there he is in his humanity lying on the ground it says he went a stone throw away from his disciples and knelt down he's in the soil and he's weeping and he's crying out to the father saying if you can take this cup take it is that not a desperately beautiful human moment if ever they was our God in the soil crying out to his father who he knows saying I think I think I probably have to go through this but if you're willing to take this cup of suffering please do it says he was so full of anguish that he began to sweat blood have any of us been to that point you see the entire weight of human brokenness was descending on to him he knew what had to happen in order to truly pay the price and in his utter anguish he cries and he bleeds sweat drops of blood says after you finish he comes back to his friends who have fallen asleep on him imagine that moment your most desperate moment you turn around and the people who are supposed to be with you are asleep imagine how he felt could you not be awake with me for this moment see Jesus felt deep deep deep levels of emotion he is not separate from our sense of loneliness there are moments in our lives it can feel like absolutely nobody gets it the anguish could be so intense that you think oh my gosh I might I might explode there is one who understands that there is one who understands that you see he so enters into us story and identifies with who he who we are he goes to the full extent that we might never again walk alone regardless of what you are going to I can promise you now there is one who will get it who will get it a few weeks later in the same period of time in 2020 we now don't know what to do a lot of people are saying to us just get married on the lawn wait with my parents and my brothers everyone saying to us just get married on the lawn just do it you can be together you can live you know as a married couple and it'll just just do it have a celebration later and some people did that I have absolutely no judgment towards it but in our spirits we just couldn't settle this thing it just didn't feel right for us at the time by chance the chosen if any of you watch the chosen it's this retelling of the story of Jesus on the earth it's amazing it's really historically accurate the first season comes out and we're watching this Mike and I and in the first two or three episodes they tell the story of the wedding at Kano and we see Jesus go to our wedding in a series on on our TV and it absolutely undoes us we see this man who we love who is our God going to a wedding and celebrating with his friends and dancing and feasting and smiling and laughing and in that moment we just started to weep and we sensed the Lord saying there is permission to wait to celebrate if I the God of the universe will go and celebrate at a wedding so can you and that's not everybody's story but it was this incredible moment for Mike and I we literally made our decisions based on the reality that Jesus went to the wedding in Kano and he he lived it up and it was this freeing human incredible moment do we get that or have we disconnected so far from have we set ourselves so far from God that we can't imagine him stepping into celebration and feasting and joy just like grief and suffering and disappointment and loneliness you see he comforts us he comes close to us we can truly draw strength from him in our darkest deepest moments because he has been there truly truly truly it's very likely that he lost a parent we don't hear any mention of his dad Joseph his earthly father his adopted father on the earth during his ministry it's very very likely we can assume that that he passed away he knows what it means to lose a parent he knows what it means to lose a friend does he wept when Lazarus died didn't cut himself off from emotion he didn't shove it down he didn't say no I'm God I don't go there he goes there what happens when he turns the tables when he responds to what's happening in the temple he comes in he sees their people selling things trading in the house of God it was a holy holy place to the people of Israel they believe this was where our God is he is dwelling in this temple this is where we come in to meet with him and and things had gone astray and it had become like a marketplace what does Jesus do it says he makes a whip that would have taken some time and I think we need to get that he's not just reacting in anger here but he is responding he's taking the time to go and make this whip to drive out the animals from this place this holy place to respond to the injustice the hypocrisy and the unrighteousness that he sees it's the zealous indignation for his father's house that rises up in him but it is not void of passion you can see something there you know my whole life people have told me I'm not too much I draw a great strength from a Jesus who responds with passion you know what I'm saying from one who feels the full range of emotion who will dance and delight and grovel in grief one who will stand at the tomb of a friend and weep one who will draw aside when the crowds get too much and he needs to recuperate you know what's crazy this week we've been if you've been doing our nightclubs we've been doing the fueled book that Taren wrote which is amazing this week was on the physical tank we didn't line this up and today we're speaking about this embodied Jesus the humanity of God he had to withdraw to refuel to hear the voice of the Father to rest he had to eat he had to sleep he sleeps on the boat he goes and sits and breaks real bread with his disciples and drinks real wine it talks about Jesus being fasting in the in the days in the wilderness after his baptizing goes for 40 days and he fasts and it says he was famished he needed food he felt what it means to be without food this is our God and lastly he can help us with stand temptation because he has overcome it he was for says since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens Jesus the son of God let us hold fast to our confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are yet without sin let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need we do not come to a God who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses he does not look upon us and say oh you pathetic why do you keep falling he does not come to us and say why are you so weak why do you keep getting this wrong he comes and says I know what it means I know what it feels like to find yourself tested and trialled and tempted I know what it feels like to hear the twisted lies of the enemy casting doubt at every turn he goes into the wilderness after this incredible moment where the father shines down at his baptism and affirms him as son that is incredibly powerful moment of identity as the son of God and then he is led it says immediately by the spirit into the wilderness woo hoo and for 40 days he fasts strengthening his spirit but weakening inflation then the enemy comes and it says it the enemy tests him he tempts him we hear of these three accounts where he sows this doubt if you are the son of God if if if he knows what it means to be tempted he knows what it means to feel weak and he knows what it means to overcome it you see this is where he is not like us the Bible tells us he was fully human he was took on the form of man but with he remained without sin it s not that he didn t experience the intensity of temptation the intensity of suffering the intensity of betrayal and disappointment he responded to it perfectly he responded to it in the way that we were intended and he gives us a map for response and when we come to him in our own weakness it s seasons of wilderness when we are being tempted when we don t know where to turn when we are stuck in cycles of sin and brokenness and we can t not quite shake it we are coming to one who gets it he gets it. I m going to tell one more tiny thing and then I m going to read a summary that I wrote when I didn t know if I knew what I was talking about last little story into my early 20s I s super vulnerable but I developed adult acne and I hadn t ever had any troubles with my skin as a teenager and it absolutely finished me I was so I was just broken by it to be honest it at the time I had a business as a clothing business I was in this fashion world so much of my life was around appearance and I experienced so much shame in my skin not being what I felt to be beautiful and to be marked and to feel scarred and there was nothing really I could do about it it s just hormones it happens when it happens and it was a very painful time for me and the one day I was just spending some time with the Lord and I was being very honest with him about my pain in this area and my shame and I remember just hearing this whisper and I felt him say to me you know I have skin too and you know that my skin is marked and it will be forever marked you know at the end of the Gospels Jesus has been resurrected and he s appearing to his people to his disciples in different moments and there s this moment of doubt where some of his disciples are unsure is this a ghost who is this man I m not going to read it but you can go and read it for yourself the end of John s Gospel and he holds out and it s not the end of Luke he holds out his hands and he says come and touch me touch my skin does a ghost have skin and bone touch the marks on my hands see we do not come to one who does not understand we come to one who has skin and bone skin that is forever marked you know the relief I felt in that moment my Savior my King my God the glorious lifter of my head has skin that s marked just changed the dynamic for me you know I m going to read this and then we are going to worship so in my confusion this week I wrote this I wrote this reflection I said I was writing to the Lord I said so what does it mean that you came as a human because you are like us in every way you could take into yourself all of our failings and brokenness the full fallenness of humanity when you went to the cross all of that went with you you stood as our representative obedient to God even unto death the worst kind of death so that the price that none of us could pay would be paid once and for all you entered into our story totally emptying yourself of yourself to be made as we are truly human you are the truest human in that you are the perfect image of God imaging the father to us and in turn imaging us as we were originally intended to be to the father thus you are our mediator our great connector the one who draws us back into direct contact closeness and intimacy with God you grew in a teenage girl's womb were birthed in vulnerability depended upon the love and care of earthly parents you needed food water warmth shelter and love you worked in a trade you felt the pressure of lack the squeeze of poverty you made friends and you needed them you celebrated and feasted you went to weddings you wept at the sudden loss of a friend you experienced anger and injustice and hypocrisy you responded passionately full of emotion you slept you bladed you suffered you were marked ostrich sized you endured people's ridicule you were betrayed you yielded completely to the will of the father you lived in constant communion with him you attempted you heard the twisted lies of the enemy attempting to cast out at every turn you fasted and were famished you were weak in body you resisted the devil you overcame him you received the care of angels you know what it means to lose a parent to lose friends and to lose a dear cousin you know what it means to be rejected and scorned you know what it means to live without a permanent home you know what it means to have skin and bone skin that is now marked forever bones that ached under the weight of that heavy cross you are not far off you are not disconnected from our reality you have come in close this is our Jesus lion and lamb son of god and son of man Emmanuel god with us he is the only one who could ever truly see you do you need to be seen are you longing to be known there is one who will see you truly and know you as no other human will ever know you he has endured it all he actually sympathizes with you he knows pain disappointment loneliness despair he knows fear let him see you let him see you as you are he does away with the need for pretense he gives total permission for our humanity all of it he places value on our bodies he dignifies our humanity he deals with any obstacle opens the door wide and says come on in he wants you as you are so therefore let us approach the throne of grace with a boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need we come to one who understands fully god and fully man would you find him this morning can invite the band up amen [BLANK_AUDIO]