Gospel—C. Hendricks
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Please turn with me to a verse in First Timothy chapter 3.
One Timothy 3.
Verse 16.
One Timothy 316.
And without controversy.
Great is the mystery of godliness.
There are six things now that are mentioned. God was manifest.
In the flesh.
Justified in the spirit.
Scene of angels.
Preached unto the Gentiles.
Believed on in the world.
Received up into glory.
You notice the verse?
This mystery of godliness which is great.
Begins with the.
Tremendous statement.
A statement that.
Transcends our puny, finite minds to grasp.
God.
The infinite.
The inscrutable.
The holy, the righteous.
The Majestic God.
Was manifest in the flesh.
It is a truth that transcends our intellect.
It is a truth that it goes beyond anyone's ability to really fathom.
This wondrous truth.
That God, the creator, the sustainer.
The upholder of the universe.
Became flesh.
He was manifest in the flesh. God come down.
That's the gospel of the grace of God.
For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich.
Rich in glory, rich in that Godhead oneness that he had with the Father.
And the Spirit.
For God is a Trinity.
We learned that.
I was talking to a brother recently and he gave me these. Very simple.
But.
Profound thoughts on the 1St 3 numbers.
Of our numerical system.
I'd like to pass it on to you. It's something that the youngest here can grasp.
The number one.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 11.
The number one brings before us that he is.
The number one brings before us that God is.
In the beginning, God.
And then it tells us that he created.
The heavens and the earth.
The number 2.
Brings before us what he who he.
What he is, what he is.
Number one is that he is, #2 is what he is.
And we were singing that in our hymn. What is he?
God is light.
And God is love.
That's what he is. You know, there are millions of people in this world that don't know those truths.
Some deny that he is.
And they don't know what He is as light and love as light. He is infinite holiness. He is absolute purity, for there is nothing purer than light.
He is truth and righteousness.
Is light.
He is of pure eyes than to behold evil, and he cannot look at iniquity.
He is light and darkness, cannot abide in his presence.
And the state of man is that he is in darkness.
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The two are as incompatible as you could conceive of.
Man is darkness and God is light.
But he is also love.
And because he is love.
We have that verse that I began with this afternoon. God was manifest in the flesh.
Because he is love.
He dwells. We'll look at that verse in First Timothy 6.
He dwells in light, unapproachable.
As light he is beyond the creatures Ken.
Beyond the creatures understanding.
Unapproachable light.
And so, in order for him to manifest himself to man, he had to.
Come out of that light, that essential essence in which the deity dwells. No creature can dwell in that light.
He dwells in unapproachable light.
In order for the creature to know him, he had to come out, and so he who is love as well.
Came down into his own creation. God was manifest.
In the flesh.
He became a man.
That we might know him. You know, there are many people. They think that God is like the old grandfather sitting in his rocking chair on the porch and looking down at the anthill and watching those busy ants doing their activity of the day, but totally apart from them and disassociated from them just with interest, looking at them but not taking any active part in their affairs.
And that's the concept that there are 1,000,000 in this world have of God.
But this book doesn't tell me that. This book tells me that this being who is?
Essentially, light in love and dwells in the unapproachable light.
But he came out of that in order to reveal himself to man because he is love and he wants to bring us.
Into fellowship with himself.
He wants to save your precious soul. He made you.
You are his because he created you. He owns you, everyone of you in this room. He owns everyone.
Of His creatures you are His by creation.
And only if you receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior will you be His by redemption.
By redemption.
To be brought back, I like to tell the story of the little boy that built this.
Sailing boat. And he took it out. It was his he had bought, He had bought it, and he had assembled it. He had made it. He was its creator. And he sailed it on the lake, and the wind was stronger than he calculated, and the string broke, and it was taken away, and he lost it.
And one day, some weeks later, he was walking down the street and he was looking into this.
Window of the shop, the pawn shop. He saw his little ship, his little boat there.
And he immediately went inside and he said, you've got my boat in your window.
And the pawn shop owner said, that's not your boat now. It may have been before, but you lost it in its mind now.
If you want it, you'll have to buy it back.
How much? And he gave them the price and he didn't have that money S he went home and told his father, and his father said, well son, I have some chores for you and I'll put you to work and you can earn the money. And he did that and he went back.
And he bought his boat back.
He wanted it so much, so he owned it doubly. He was its creator, He was its maker, and he was also its Redeemer.
That's what God has done. That's the simple gospel God made you.
He created you and he loves you so much that he wants you to be.
In fellowship with himself, he wants you by his side for all eternity.
So God is love?
Two profound statements. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
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So all the evil that is in the world is darkness.
The world is characterized by darkness. This is a scene where darkness covers the land.
Darkness, man's evil deeds, they are all darkness. We were once darkness, but now are we light in the Lord, and as children of God, we're to walk as children of light.
As those that belong to him who is light.
And also to walk in love.
For we belong to him Who is love?
The number three brings before us who he is.
The number one is that he is the #2.
Is what he is, light and love, and the number three is who he is. And for that we need the New Testament Revelation.
That.
You get it in the very formula for baptism going into all the world.
And make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name.
Not names, but the name of the Father and of the Son.
Now the Holy Ghost, that's who he is. Blessed Trinity.
Three persons, one God.
One in purpose thought will motive action.
1.
One has put it this way, the Lord Jesus did not have.
One will with the Father, he had the same will with the Father, for they were.
One the same.
And the Spirit of God.
Three persons, you say. I don't understand that. Neither do I.
The essential persons of the Trinity.
It's hidden, the very first.
Chapters in Genesis when God was going to make man, he counsels.
The Persons of the Trinity are found consulting among themselves and.
It is written, they said, God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.
God speaking and He is 1.
One God, Light and Love.
Yet He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Now the Father didn't come into the world to save sinners.
The Spirit didn't come into the world and become a man.
But the son did.
The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
The Son said to God the Father. Here am I. Send me.
He sent him for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For the Father sent the son not to condemn the world.
But that the world through him might be saved.
He sent him, He gave him. These are expressions that the Word of God uses.
To describe that act of God the Father in sending.
Giving his son into this world and then we're told later.
After the Son accomplished the work that was given him of the Father to do.
By dying on the cross for our sins.
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and he rose again the 3rd day according to the scriptures. That's the gospel.
The death burial in the resurrection of Christ, That's the gospel God sent him for that purpose. That was the ultimate purpose for which he came.
He came to die for our sins. Can you say that your sins are gone?
You can only say that if you have received him as your savior.
So the number one is brings before us that God is the #2 brings before us what he is light and love, and the number three brings before us who he is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
In the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the first verse of the Bible brings that truth out.
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It's hidden there. It says in the beginning, God, and that's the Hebrew word Elohim.
The plural.
Literally, you would say gods, but the verb created.
Is in the singular.
And you can't say gods because it's a singular verb. It's God in the three persons.
And it's unique in the Hebrew tongue.
They have a singular form.
For Justice One.
They have a dual form for two, and they have the plural form for three or more, and in English it's either singular or plural, and plural means two or more, but in Hebrew the plural means three or more. It excludes one and two, and Elohim is in the plural excluding one or two.
So the Old Testament says that that God had the deity. God consists of at least three persons.
Could be more as far as that's revealed, but the New Testament makes it very clear.
It is 3 The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
That's who God is. You know, there are millions of people that don't know that.
They don't know that. The whole Moslem world denies that.
The whole Hindu world has a multiplicity of gods.
They don't know the true and living God three persons.
In one divine essence.
So that they are one.
And the same.
But only one of those persons came down here and assumed flesh.
He's the one we normally think of as the second person of the Trinity. I don't like to speak of first, second and third persons as though that's that's rank because there's no such thing. They're Co equal.
Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Father is not superior to the Son, and the Father is not superior to the Spirit. They are all one. They are all the same in the Godhead.
But as soon as the Lord Jesus came down.
And left that essential glory, left the form of God.
He assumed a different form. Let's read it. Let's turn to Philippians 2.
Philippians chapter 2.
It's again another very, very profound.
Passage of Scripture.
The passage begins with.
Verse five, let this mind be in you. He's writing to believers at Philippi.
Which was also in Christ Jesus.
What was his mind?
Who being in the form of God.
Now no creature can be in the form of God. Only God can be in God's form.
So this expression without any question proves.
That this person of whom we are reading was God, and he existed in the very form of God.
No creature can exist in the form of God.
All creatures exist in the form of a servant.
Every creature is a servant.
To do the will of his Creator.
And when this creature does his own will independent of the Creator, that is called sin.
Sin is lawlessness. It's independence of the Creator. It is asserting one's own will.
Independent of God, who made me.
That's sin. That's the very principle, the root principle, of sin, lawlessness.
Independence of God.
Well, here was a being who being in the form of God, Christ Jesus, It's talking about him.
He was in the eternal past before anything was brought into existence. He was in the form of God.
And only in that form He existed, in no other form but the form of deity.
And as being in the form of God, he acted of and from himself, and from his own will.
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He didn't have to give account to anyone else because.
He was God.
All the angels that were created by him were at his bidding.
They were servants. All creatures are servants.
Through this infinite being who was there in the form of God and nothing else.
All his actions proceeded from himself.
He was not subject to anything outside of himself.
They were, that was all subject to him.
Because he was in the form of God.
Says it thought it not robbery to be equal with God. Another translation puts it this way.
And I like it very much.
He thought it. He thought it not something to be grasped, and held tenaciously to.
That is his attitude. His thought was not I am God.
And nothing less. And I will never assume anything less. I will never become anything less than God.
I am God and I.
Will retain the form of God only, and never take up anything that would be lower than that. That wasn't his thought. He thought it not robbery. He thought it not something to be grasped and held onto to tenaciously. This is mine. The being in the form of God is mine, and I'll never relinquish it, nor give it up and become anything less. He did not think that way. In fact, it was the opposite.
He laid it aside. He laid aside his glory.
He thought it not robbery. He thought it not a thing to be grasped to be on equality with God. He was God.
He was, in the form of God, equal with the Father in the Spirit, in that inscrutable light, that essence of Godhead glory that no creature can approach to.
Dwelling in the unapproachable light the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but here.
This descent begins with his thought, his mind.
Was to relinquish that outward form of deity.
And take upon himself the form of a servant, a slave. The word is slave.
So it says, but made himself of no reputation. Literally. In the original it is he emptied himself.
And what did he empty himself out? The outward form of deity?
He didn't empty himself of deity, He couldn't cease to be God, but he emptied himself of the outward form of it.
By taking upon himself the form of a servant.
That's what it says.
And he took upon him the form of a servant.
Now he could have done that and become an Angel, because angels are servants.
But he didn't become an Angel.
It says.
He was made in the likeness of men.
So he went lower than the angels, for the angels are of a higher creatorial order than man.
He went below the angels. God was manifest in flesh. The angels are not flesh, they are spirits.
God came down to where we are.
To where you and I are.
Can you grasp that? Can I grasp that? Stupendous.
Infinite truth. God was manifest in the flesh. The Word was made flesh.
The word was made something that he had never been before. He assumed manhood, He assumed humanity. He became a servant.
He who had never obeyed, he who only gave commands.
He who acted oven from himself, because there was nothing outside of himself that he was subject to.
He was God, and he was in the form of God. Now he takes upon himself.
It was his mind to lay aside that outward form and to come down.
This grandfather leaves his chair and he becomes one of those ants so that he could mingle with them and help them in their problems. That's the picture.
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God has come into this, his own creation.
He's come into his own creation. He's the first born when he came. He has to be. He has to be the preeminent 1.
The Creator become a man.
This is the most stupendous truth.
I think this is November 25th. In one month the world will celebrate the birth of Christ. Christian world.
But very, very few. I don't believe he was born on that day, but that doesn't change what I'm going to say.
The truth of Scripture is that God was manifest in the flesh. He did become a man.
And he didn't enter this world as a full grown man like Adam. The first created man was created complete and full and grown. And Eve too was absolutely necessary that that be so. The first pair had to be fully complete. Everything that God created had to be in its full complete state at the time he created it, or wouldn't have functioned.
But the Lord Jesus, He came and he was the Son of Man, something Adam never was. He wasn't the Son of Man, He was the Son of God by creation.
But he wasn't the Son of Man. He had no earthly parents, but the Lord Jesus had an earthly mother.
He didn't have an earthly father, for he was begotten of the Holy Spirit.
By divine power.
A different order of man, but true man, spirit, soul, and body.
Perfect man, every bit as much a man as Adam was.
But holy.
And in Christ we see holy humanity, in Adam we see.
Innocent humanity. And he lost it. He fell.
But holiness is abhorrence of evil, and delight in what is good and the Holy Son of God.
Could not sin.
It's not enough to say he did not sin, but he was impeccable. He was absolutely beyond sin. He was holy.
Holy, Holy, you know why do the seraphim in Isaiah 6 cry? Holy, holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. There you get 2 trinities, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord, God, Almighty, All intimations of the three persons that we have been speaking about and we know them as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
He was in the form of God. He thought it not something to be grasped and held on to tenaciously.
But he emptied himself, made himself of no reputation.
And he took upon him the form of a servant, and from that moment.
When he became a man.
Obedience was proper to him.
Obedience. He took the subject place. He took the place where obedience was proper to him. He learned obedience by the things which he suffered. Though he was son, he learned obedience.
Obedience was not something that was proper to him in Godhead glory, but it was when he became a servant.
Think of it. God was here.
On this earth.
A lowly man, Jesus of Nazareth.
Born in Bethlehem's Manger. Born in the stable. Laid in a Manger.
No room for him in the end. Think of it. The creator of the universe came into his own creation. They didn't know him. They didn't recognize him. They didn't want him. There was no room for him.
That's the condition the world was in.
That's the condition the world is in today.
He's been cast out.
You notice that verse I read at the beginning, God was manifest in the flesh ends with.
Received up into glory.
There is a man in the glory tonight.
God was here on earth in flesh.
He became a man.
And now, as man, he's ascended up to the highest place in heaven.
Above every principality and power and authority, in every name that is named not only in this world, but in that which is to come, and everything has been placed under the feet of that man.
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That one who was God over all, blessed forever He became a man, and as man he walked through this world in perfect obedience to his Father who sent him.
Do you know him tonight, this afternoon? Do you know that one whom to know is life eternal? Listen to this. The sum and substance of all blessedness, both in this life and in that which is to come, is to know God, and he can only be known in the person of his Son who came here to reveal Him.
He came here.
To where we were to reveal the heart of God.
The holiness of God and the love of God.
He came to reveal it to us.
God is so holy.
That in order to put our sins away, it required that Blessed One to go to the cross of ignominy and shame, and to suffer the infinite suffering that it required from the hands of a holy sin. Hating God against your sins and mine, He bore them in his body on the tree. He exhausted divine wrath against sin, and He cried out. At the end of those three hours of darkness. It is finished.
The work of redemption, the work of atonement, is finished. We present to you this afternoon a finished work.
Done by the God man.
The only one that could lay his hand upon God, because he was God and he could lay his hand upon man because he became a man.
He has brought you and me to God.
If you know him as your savior. If you've received him as your savior.
And your Lord.
You know, when I think of.
Sometimes how we get so occupied with our problems, the trials, the difficulties of life.
And we dare to say, how could God do that to me?
We dare to say words like that.
Do we realize when we speak thus?
Of whom we are speaking.
He doesn't have to give account of any of his matters.
He doesn't have to explain to us why he is doing what he is doing in our lives.
But he's shown us in a way that breaks the hardest heart down.
His love for us. Where do you see it? Look at the cross. God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son. He could not give more and He would not give less.
To win this poor, wretched heart of mine and yours, Has he won your heart?
Have you seen him in infinite love, coming all the way from Yonder glory to this world, an outcast from the very birth?
An outcast at his death, given a criminal's death. The most ignominious, shameful, wretched death that man has ever contrived.
To give to one of his mortal fellows.
And he gave it to the Creator.
The death of crucifixion.
Surely there would have been some expression?
From that holy sufferer.
That would call upon God to judge.
That wicked rabble crowd that surrounded Golgotha's Hill.
No, father, forgive them.
For they know not what they do.
Those were his words.
That won the heart of one of the thieves on the cross, for there were two crucified with him.
And he said finally to the Lord.
Remember Me when thou comest into thy Kingdom.
The Lord says, you don't have to wait for that today. Thou shalt be with me in paradise.
For he died for his sins.
But there was only one of the two that were saved. The other one still died in unbelief.
So that we can't presume upon his love.
We can't deny it.
He has proven it by the greatest expression of love.
He is exhausted, His own resources God has in expressing His love for the likes of us.
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God was manifest in the flesh.
It's striking that that first Timothy 316 doesn't have the cross in it.
Says He was justified in the Spirit. Everything that he did when he was here below was in the power of the Holy Spirit.
His final act of obedience was the cross, and it says that he offered himself by the eternal spirit without spot to God everything that he did.
Was in the power of the Holy Spirit justified in the Spirit declared to be the only righteous man that ever was here?
By the power of the Spirit of God.
And even in the act of putting our sins away, it was in the power of the Spirit.
Scene of Angels. We mentioned that when he became a man, he bypassed the angels. They had never seen their creator.
For he dwells in unapproachable light, but now he came out of that light and becomes a servant, just like they were.
He even took a lower place than the angels.
They saw him at his birth. They announced his birth.
His name shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins in the Garden of Gethsemane.
An Angel appeared to him, strengthening him when he was.
Considering what it would cost him.
To go to the cross and put our sins away, and he sweat, as it were great drops of blood. Oh, my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass for me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.
There you see the perfection of his humanity expressing the horror of his soul at being separated from his God.
When he was forsaken.
That was necessary in order to accomplish our redemption.
That boy that lost his little sailing ship? He paid a finite sum to get it back.
God, in order to get you back, to get me back, has paid an infinite sum.
An infinite cost, An infinite price.
Cost of our redemption.
Paul says it this way. The Son of God. He doesn't say The Son of Man. There of Galatians 220.
The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
The one who was the Son of man hanging on that cross was none other, none less than the Son of God.
Co equal with the father.
And yet his man, he died.
He suffered. He paid the penalty for sin. Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
That's how low he went.
He could not go lower.
He went to the very bottom.
And God has highly exalted him now.
Giving him a name which is above every name. Do you know this person? Do you know him personally? Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace thereby good shall come unto thee, oh to know him.
This is life eternal. He said. That they might know thee, Father, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
God has now come out and revealed himself to us.
God the Son became a man to reach us.
To lay his hand upon us. John says it this way. First, John One says that which was from the beginning, which we've heard, they had heard him, which we've seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of life he did was not just some phantom. It was not just a voice from heaven. It was not just a vision seen for a moment, but they had heard him, they had contemplated him, they had handled him.
They had eaten and drunk with him.
Yet how close he came to us.
He wasn't aloof from man like the mighty kings.
You can't even enter their presence unless you have permission, He the Creator came down.
He who knows everything became a man, and it says in Luke two he as a boy of 12, he increased in wisdom and stature, both in favor with God and man he learned.
Every morning he awoke and he his ears were open to hear as the instructed, and he gathered fresh instruction from his father. You say, well how could he know everything and need to be taught and need to learn? Because he was God, he knew everything. Because he was man he learned.
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In Luke, in John Four, he sat wearied on his journey as he was.
But Isaiah tells us of that same one. It says. Let me read it to you in Isaiah 40. Such a precious.
Verse. I can't quote it properly, so I'll have to read it. It says Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understanding from the foundations of the earth?
It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the inhabitants thereof.
Are as grasshoppers.
Says the nations are as a drop of a bucket and counted as the small dust of the balance. He taketh it up as a very little thing. All nations before him are as nothing. They are countered to him less than nothing in vanity.
But in verse 28 it says, Hast thou not known, Hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth?
Fainteth not, neither is weary. There is no searching of his understanding.
And yet he learned.
And yet he was a wearied man in John 4 the very gospel that presents him in his essential deity.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He who was in the beginning with God.
He became flesh, you say. I don't grasp that. I don't grasp it. None of us can. It's beyond us. It's if we could understand the person of Christ.
In fact, the Word of God tells us we can't understand it. Turn to Matthew 11.
Turn to Matthew 11.
I must close, you know. Just a moment. Just a moment, brethren. Matthew 11, This one verse.
Verse 27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father.
Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
You see, the sun reveals to us the father, so we know the father. Even the youngest child in the family knows the father. That's.
Characteristic knowledge to know the Father. But it says only the Father knows the Son. Why does it say that?
Because he's God and man in one person, so there's a sense in which we can't fully fathom him.
And yet I ask you, as we close this gospel meaning, do you know him?
As your Lord and Savior, do you know him in a personal way? Have you come?
To become acquainted with him, acquaint now thyself with him, be at peace.
Do you know the one that came?
And became a man.
You know Jesus.
Jesus means Jehovah the Savior.
The one who saves his people from their sins. Do you know Jesus? Do you know the Lord Jesus?
Do you know the Son of God who became the Son of Man?
To save your precious soul, you've died on the cross for your precious soul who rose again, that you might be justified and cleared of every charge of guilt, who lives in the glory now? And he's preaching the gospel from the glory through this servant and other servants all over the land. He's preaching the gospel, He says. Come unto me.
I'll give you rest. Do you know him?
His person is inscrutable. We cannot fathom, we cannot put together, we cannot grasp. It exceeds the puniness of our intellect, God and man and one person, but it's a revelation from God. This is the most glorious person in the universe. The Son of God who loved me, gave himself from me. Make that your own. Make that your own this afternoon.
And you'll come into the greatest blessing that's possible for a creature to have.
You'll know God.
The only way he can be known.
As revealed to us in the person of his son.
I've gone over, so let's just close in prayer.