Address—Steve Stewart
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Like to sing the 1St 2 verses of #27?
Lamb of God.
Our souls, our Lord.
And swinging.
There the Father's love and glory, joy.
In all.
We pray.
I'd like to start with a verse in Proverbs Few verses, chapter 30, Proverbs 30 and verse 2.
Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man neither learned. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy. Who hath ascended up into heaven or descended, Who had gathered the wind in his fists, Who had found the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name?
If thou canst tell, every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them.
That put their trust in him.
The Lord's help. Tonight I'd like to look into the subject of the eternal sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ. The backdrop.
Of this talk tonight is that the enemy, from the very beginning of the manifestation of the Son of God in this world, sought to bring that truth into question, The very first words we hear.
From Satan, who were quoted earlier, If thou be the Son of God, taken up an unholy lips at the cross. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross and taken up in a coming day by one who is called the Antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son.
The Lord's Jesus sonship is something that is eternal. It always was.
The error that has come in and been taught in Christianity is that his sonship was only temporal and in time, that he only became the sun upon incarnation, that he was not the Son before he was born in Bethlehem. And so I would like to.
Look at the scriptures that support that. Show us the truth of the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ in His sonship. What is the importance of it? What is to be gained? What is to be lost if we do not hold?
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The truth of His eternal sonship.
Well, men reason from their own minds. And you know, brother, years ago took a twist on that little song. Wonderful things in the Bible, I see things that were put there by you and by me. But we don't want to come and put the impress of our thoughts on God's Word. We want God's Word to make its impress upon us. We want to glean our thoughts, gather our thoughts from God's Word, not the other way around. And so many reason from their own thoughts.
And they say.
Well, we know in natural relationships that the Father has a superior place in authority and dignity and so on than the sun. The sun is an inferior position. Therefore he, the Lord Jesus, could not have been Son in the past eternity, because He would have been inferior to God. And we know none of the persons in the Godhead are inferior to one another, are all equal. Therefore He could not have been the Son. But the reasoning is just human reasoning, the Lord Jesus said.
In Matthew, in John's Gospel chapter 5, my father worketh hitherto, and I work.
The Jews sought to kill him because he said God was, and you read in the new translation, Darby translation, his own father. He was exclaiming exclusive relationship to God the Father, and they were going to kill him because he said God was his own father, making himself equal.
With God.
He claimed equality with a father here in this earth.
In John chapter 10 he said I am the father are one and again they took up stones to stone him.
And he says, do you say I'm a blasphemer because I said I am the Son of God? They took up stones to stone him because they said he's making himself equal with God.
Yes, he claimed equality with God the Father.
Here on this earth as the Son of God.
No, you can't come and reason from a human understanding of Father and Son. We have to take our thoughts from the word of God. He was always equal with the Father. They reason that it says in Luke when the Angel spoke to Mary, That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Oh, you see its future shall be called. He wasn't the Son of God till he was born.
Well, that's to miss the subject. That holy thing that shall be born of thee is the subject of the angel's pronouncement that was future.
And when that holy thing was born, the Incarnate Son of God, for the first time a man in this world could look up and call God his own father.
And the heavens could open and say, This is my beloved Son. Yes, it was. He shall be called for the first time. A man would be called the Son of God. But that does not take away from the fact that he was Son of God from all eternity. And so they reason from the pronouncements of Him being Son in his manhood, that he could not have been Son from a past eternity.
They reason from the term begotten. God gave his only begotten Son.
Begotten, what does that mean? Was be getting and we read in the genealogy so and so begets so and so begets so and so. So only begotten means born. Therefore he wasn't born until his incarnation. So he wasn't the only begotten Son until incarnation. But that's to miss the force of only begotten.
In John chapter one and verse 18, it says the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, the eternal present. He always is in the bosom of the Father, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father. He always was in the bosom of the Father as the only begotten Son of God. If we look at Abraham we see a beautiful example of the use of that expression, Only begotten.
When God called him to offer up his son, he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.
But it was that his only son. No, he had Ishnail. If you read in the new translations, take thine only Isaac. There was only one Isaac. He had more than one son, but there was only one Isaac. Only begotten is an expression that tells us of the place that the Son had in the heart of the Father. He's the only one that has that place. He's the only.
Begotten and by faith we read in Hebrews Chapter 11, Abraham.
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The heir of the promises offered up his only begotten Son. If begotten is nothing but birth, then that's not true because he had another son, Ishmael. Only begotten has nothing to do with birth. It has everything to do with the place and the affections of the heart of the Father.
At the Lord's baptism at the river Jordan, the heavens open as he came up out of the water.
This is my beloved son, This is my beloved son. And John Baptist as he saw him, he said, I saw and bear record that this is the Son of God. And a little later in John chapter one, the Lord Jesus finds Andrew and he calls him. Andrew goes and finds Phillip and they too find Nathaniel and they bring him to the Lord and he's doubtful.
The Lord sees them and says, Behold, an Israelite in whom is no guile, how did thou know me? I saw thee when thou is under the fig tree, Rabbi.
Thou art the Son of God. Thou art the King of Israel.
Matthew, Chapter 16.
In Caesarea Philippi and the far north parts of the country, the Lord Jesus asked the disciples the question, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, AM? And there are all kinds of reasons and answers. You know, man cannot by nature perceive the truth of who the Son of God is. And that's why I read in Proverbs. I am more brutish than any man, and I have not the knowledge of the holy. And that's what we would have to say about ourselves.
By nature, outside of divine revelation, we could never know the truth.
Of the persons in the Godhead, who they are, and their relationship to one another, Father and Son.
And so the Lord turns to the disciples there in Caesarea Philippi, and he says, Whom say ye that I am? Peter says, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Oh. Immediately the Savior responds with a peculiar blessing. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven.
Outside of divine revelations, we could never know the truth as to the person of the Son of God. And he could say in Matthew, No man knoweth the Son but the Father. Matthew 1127 No man knoweth the Son but the Father, and no man knoweth the Father but the Son and he to whom He will reveal Him. He claimed exclusive knowledge.
As to the persons of the father and the son and the relationship and the relationship to one another.
None other knew it except he revealed it. It takes a divine person.
To reveal a divine person. And outside of that revelation, we could never know.
As we go on, I'm sorry, I'm not turning to all the verses. I'd rather have you not turn and just listen. If I get stuck, I'll turn.
As we go on in the Gospel of John, we come to Chapter 11 and the Lord presents himself as the resurrection and the life to Martha.
And he says, Believeth thou this? She didn't know what he meant. And so like we do at times when we get in places where we feel we have to say something, but we don't know what to say, she out of her mouth tumbles the common confession, I believe at that point of his disciples.
Yeah, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. This was by now the common confession of the disciples, not just reserve accessory of Philippi, not just a mountain top experience that so impressed Peter.
When they heard that voice from heaven on the Mount of Transfiguration, No, this was the confession of his disciples.
After the Lord died and rose again, and was received up into heaven, and the Holy Spirit came down, and the gospel went out. What are the gospel? Oh, there was a man.
Purposed in his hatred purpose to stamp out the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Arrested on the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus. He was converted, He was saved.
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And upon this salvation we read that straightway he was in the synagogues preaching that Jesus is the Son of God. And he could say to the Galatians, when it pleased God to separate me from my mother's womb, and call me by his grace that He sent me, and to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.
All was part of the gospel message, and when he wrote to the Romans, in the book of Romans, he said the gospel of God concerning his Son, declared to be the Son of God, with power by the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead.
He was presented as a Son of God in the Gospel message, and still is and always will be, till that time where that message comes to an end as an object of faith, saving faith as the Son of God. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, the only begotten Son hath, shall not perish, but hath everlasting.
Life.
John, Chapter 20.
John chapter 20 and verse 31. But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
And that believing he might have life through his name.
In one John chapter 3, it's the subject of the command of the Father.
For the obedience of faith.
John chapter 3 and verse 23 and this is his commandment that we should believe on the name.
Of this of his son Jesus Christ.
And what of the life of faith?
The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
Who loved me, and gave himself for me. And as to maturity and spiritual growth, Ephesians 4 and verse 13. Until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the fullness of the stature of the Christ.
Want you to get this?
Faith in Jesus.
Is faith in him, in his identity as the Son of God?
Saving faith in Jesus's faith in him and who he is as the Son of God.
The question is, is his sonship just in time, just from when he was born? Is it from all eternity? Turn to Hebrews. Well, again, I am telling you not to turn because I'd rather have you hear the message, but I'm going to turn to Hebrews.
Chapter One.
Where we read, God put sundry times, and in divers manner spake in time.
Passed unto the Fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom He made the world's.
Enough for faith to rest on.
The Son made the world. He must have been the Son before incarnation, if as the Son, he made the world's.
Turn over to Colossians, where we find that. Repeat it again, Colossians, chapter one, verse 13 who have delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.
Verse.
16 For by him who's the Him, his dear Son, were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be Thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
Or subsist, or have their very existence in virtue of him.
Who is the dear Son of God? He created all as Son.
He must have been Son before he came into this world as the Incarnate Son of God.
The terms father and son are Co relative.
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That is, they are mutually inclusive. They are dependent upon one another. You can't have a son and not have a father. You can't have a Father and not have a son. And now we begin to see the bearing of the denial of the eternal sonship of the Lord Jesus is to deny eternal fatherhood of God the Father. Because if you don't have one.
You do not have the other John 16.
The Lord Jesus speaking in the Upper Room ministry to the disciples, he says to them, I came.
Out from God.
There's a special pronouncement of love.
The Father's part, therefore the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me and believed.
That I came out from God, I came forth from the Father. Same word I came out from the Father.
They believed in the Father's love was upon them because they believed the truth that the Son came forth, came out from God, came out from the Father. And this links the eternal sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ with God as God as well as God the Father. He is the Son of God as well as the Son of God the Father. I came out from God. He had to came out from the Father.
Again, those correlative terms than it was the son who came out.
What's the next thing?
And them come into the world.
He came out from the Father as the Son, and then he came into the world, His incarnation again. I leave the world by way of the cross resurrection.
And go to the Father Ascension glorification.
There's the pathway in John chapter one and verse 14. The apostle says and we beheld his glory. What kind of glory? The glory, and I'll read it quoted as in the new translation, the glory as of an only begotten with a Father full of grace and truth.
Why is it worded that way? Because the question is, what kind of glory did the apostle see?
The glory that they saw was the glory of the One of One who was the complete absorbing object of the Father's heart and His love and affection, walking with the Father. More than that, the Father, in Him walking through this world we beheld His glory, the glories of an only begotten with a Father.
And then it goes on in verse 18 to say, no man has seen God at anytime. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared him. All the glory that they saw was the glory that he had with the Father before the world began.
He was the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father from a past eternity, the object of His Father's delight and heart and perfect communion and fellowship. And when He came into this world, Incarnate Son of God, faith could look upon that man and see in Him that glory which He had had with the Father before the world began, and in John 17 and verse five, looking up to the Father.
Heading back to heaven, leaving this world, going back to the Father, He says, Glorify me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world began. Why had he had it been taken away from Him? No, it had been veiled in human flesh, and only the eye of faith could see it. But now He was going back to the glory as a man what He had not been before. And he's asking the Father to glorify Him with the same glory that he had had before.
Now that he was going back and to be there as a glorified man, and there he is today with that same glory.
Want to look at 2 words?
Words sent and the word given.
You find them throughout the Gospel of John, her brother said. It's a good gospel for a new convert to read it. It's establishing to the soul is to the person of our Lord Jesus.
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In John's Gospel, we get those words sent and given.
And so turn back to John chapter 3 at well known verse again.
Just referring by the way to Galatians, when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son. He had to be a son already if he was going to send him as the son.
He must be the son if he was going to send the son, and he must be the father.
If it was a son that he was going to send, the terms are Co relative. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
Verse 17 For God sent not his Son into the world.
All that word sent into the world is so important.
His sonship was not temporal. It was not that this person in the Godhead became Incarnate, then became the Son, and then God sent him on a messianic mission and onto the cross. Now he sent him from outside this world into the world. He was sent as the Son before incarnation.
John chapter 5. I just want to trace some of these.
Words find them over and over again.
Verse 30. End of the verse I seek, not mine own will.
With the will of the Father which hath sent me. Chapter 6, verse 29. Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he hath sent. Chapter 8, verse 16.
Yet if I judge my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am the Father that sent me. Verse 18. I am one that bear witness of myself, the Father that sent me, birth witness of me. John chapter 10 and verse 36 say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemous, because I said I am the Son of God.
Chapter 12. Verse 49.
For I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me. He gave me commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. We've only touched on a few of the references in the Gospel of John with that word sent in connection with the Son and the Father, but there's a whole chapter devoted to it, and that is the 9th chapter of the Gospel of John, an exceeding precious chapter.
To my soul there was a blind man, blind from birth.
The Lord Jesus came, He spat on the ground, He made clay of that spittle, and he anointed the eyes of that blind man. You know that making of the clay is a picture of incarnations taking what was from himself and the earth and making clay.
A body was prepared him the Son of God took manhood into union with himself and dissoluble union. You could not separate the spittle from the dust again made clay.
But that's all that man saw when they looked on the Son of God. They just saw that human form and they didn't believe that he was a sent Son of God.
He puts that clay on that blind man's eyes. You know, if you put clay on a blind man's eyes, does it make it any better? It just makes it worse.
And so the Lord, the Son of God coming into this world, the Incarnate Son of God, only made man's sad condition worse all the less.
He had any possibility of seeing him for who he was. He had not the knowledge of the holy more brutish than any man. And what does he tell that man? He says, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which being by interpretation is sent.
And he washed in that pool called scent, and he came seeing. And the rest of the chapter is a series of things that take place in that man's life that bring him closer and closer to the knowledge of who he who the Lord Jesus is.
Until the Lord finds him, having been cast out by the Pharisees. He finds him. And what does he ask him? Dost thou believe in the Son of God? What is involved in that question? What is involved is that He's the same Son of God, sent into the world that He was. Son from all eternity, and scent of the Father into the world. Dost thou believe?
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In the Son of God.
That man looked into the face of the Savior, face he had never seen before, but he knew the voice. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life.
Oh, he knew that voice.
And he said, Who is the Lord, that I might believe? The Lord says, Thou hast both seen him, seen him, and here it is that talketh with thee.
Said Lord I believe, and he worshiped him. Oh the truth of the person.
Of the eternal Son of God, send into this world the Incarnate Son, gone to Calvary's cross.
To bear our load of sin, to save our souls and give us eternal life. It makes us bow at His feet as worshippers.
Dost thou believe in the Son of God?
Oh, we rejoice to say.
I believe and worship him the rest did not see.
They did not believe he was a sent son of God and they say are we blind?
Yes, John chapter 5, verse 23.
Read there that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son on earth, not the Father which hath sent him, We deny the eternal Son of God in His identity as the eternal Son of God, then we dishonor Him. And if we dishonor him, we dishonor the Father that sent Him because.
You cannot have one without the other.
In John's first epistle in chapter 2, we read verse 23. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. If we deny the Son as to who He is and his person, we don't have the Father. We cannot claim to know and worship God the Father if we deny.
Eternal Son, as to who He is, John chapter.
First John, chapter 4.
Verse nine And this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
Here in His love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Verse 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Verse nine. God sent his only begotten Son into the world.
The sending of the begotten, only begotten Son of God was prior to His incarnation and into the world where He became the Incarnate Son of God. He had to be Son from a past eternity.
The sending of the sun is the very measure of the love of God.
God so loved the world, so is a is a measure. How much did he love that he sent his son? If he didn't send his son, then we have no measure of his love. It was a son who was sent to be the propitiation for our sins, to render a satisfaction to God in respect of our sins. It doesn't say he was sent to make propitiation. That's true.
It says He was the propitiation He in his person, His eternal Son of God, sent into this world to Calvary's cross. Whatever it took to satisfy the throne of God as the respect of our sins, whatever was required, He was that satisfaction.
To God he offered himself without spot by the eternal Spirit on Calvary's cross.
He is the propitiation for our sins. Oh, think of it.
Think of those scenes leading up to the cross.
Thing of the Garden of Gethsemane who was the interchange between that holy scene was the Father and the Son.
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The scent Son of God going on to that cross.
Think of Calvary in all his darkness. Who was it there who was suffering on that cross?
It was the given Son of God.
Hear that cry from the depths of that darkness. My God, my God.
Why yourself forsaken me? Who was forsaken? It was the Son of God who was forsaken on that cross.
Though He were Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which he suffered. All the depth of the perfection of his obedience is connected with the fact that He is the Son of God, and the fact that He is the Son of God is that He is the eternal Son of God, the manifestation of persons in the Godhead.
Is dependent on the fact that it was the son who came to reveal him.
It was a son who created all things. What do we lose?
If we give up the truth of the eternal Son of God, we give up the truth of the Person who made all things. We give up the expression of the perfection of his obedience. We give up the measure of the love of God to us.
We give up the beauty of those scenes leading to Calvary. Oh, another is said. This sweat of Gethsemane, the agony of Calvary, the abandonment of the cross, are all bound up with the truth that He is the eternal Son of God. What have we lost?
Oh, and John first, John one. We've been brought into a circle of fellowship.
Of the Father and the Son this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom now has sent the circle of fellowship that we have been brought into the life we have been given to enjoy is eternal life. It's a life that was manifested here in this world when the eternal Son came a life that had ever been a life that was expressed in the relationship between the father and the son from the past eternity that's.
Eternal life, we've been brought into that truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. What have we lost if we've lost the eternal Son? We've lost that relationship of Son and Father in the past eternity, the very essence of eternal life. We don't have eternal life if we don't have the eternal Son.
And we align ourselves with the enemy of all that's good.
Who said if thou be the Son of God?
We align ourselves with Mormonism, with Jehovah's Witness, with 7th day Adventism, with Christian Science, who all deny that he's the eternal Son of God. John chapter 5 as we close the very summing up and others put it the precipitate of all of John's ministries in verse 21St, John 5 and verse 20.
And we know.
This is Christian knowledge. This is knowledge we could only have by divine revelation. This is knowledge we could only have from his precious word. And we know that the Son of God has come. Oh, what is embodied in that is all the summing up of everything that John has presented in his gospel and his epistles, that this is the eternal Son. We know the Son of God has come into this world.
And hath given us an understanding He's open to us, revealed the Father to us, those divine relationships in the Godhead, and all their beauty, and that we might know him, that is true, that we might be brought into that circle of fellowship and the enjoyment of life eternal.
And we are in him. That is true even in his Son Jesus Christ.
Oh, listen to the words of the apostle. This is the true God and nothing else.
This is the true God.
And eternal life, little children.
Keep yourselves from idols. Anything other than the full manifestation, the full revelation of the Father and the Person of the eternal Son of God.
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Is an idol. Behold the bad, which is Solomon's son of Solomon chapter 3. Song of Solomon chapter 3.
Verse 7 Behold his bed, which is Solomon's three score of valiant men are about it.
Of the valiant of Israel.
They all hold swords, being expert in war. Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night. Does our Solomon rest safely among us? Does the truth of the person of our Solomon rest safely among us?
Do we have the sword of the Spirit firmly grasping our hands, ready to the defense of the person of the eternal Son of God? We among the valiant? There's fear in the night.
Is the sword of the Spirit firmly bound upon our thigh, wrapped with a girdle of truth?
Just want to close with one more verse first John chapter 2.
Verse 26. These things have I written unto you, concerning them that seduce you.
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you all things in His truth, and is no lie, even at as it taught you, ye shall abide in Him. Now, little children, abide in him all we have the indwelling Spirit of God.
Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world, and He'll give you the spiritual instinct.
A natural, spiritually natural, recoiling from anything that would dishonor.
The son all The lesson of the man at the Pool of Siloam is this.
That the simplest faith in Jesus is saving faith. And there may need to be growth in the soul as to the truth of the person. And we need patience. And we need, if we can be a help to any of our brethren who have not grown up into that knowledge of who He is as eternal Son of God, we need patience.
And grace to be a help. They have an unction from the Holy One.
To know the truth of God and as that man came along in his soul.
Step at a time, he finally came to the truth of the knowledge that Jesus Christ.
Is.
The scent Son of God, and he worshipped him. It's very.