1st Sunday of Advent - Nathan Whitbread

Venue – S3 Café Bar
This talk was about a difficult truth, an easy truth and some good news.
Christ Came to die for our sins, so he wasn’t a cute baby he was and is the saviour of this world (he might have been a cute baby as well..)

Christ was fully God and fully man

Christ was given gifts that portrayed who he was and what he was going to do

Christ came to die for our sins

1 Christ was both fully human and fully god,

Some reasons why Jesus was fully god and fully man
God - Jesus was fully god because he was born of a virgin
Man – Jesus was fully man because he learnt things and God already knows everything
Man – Because he resisted temptation and God can’t be tempted
Man – Because the people that knew him thought he was a man.
God – He experienced temptation in order to help us through temptation
Man – Jesus had to be fully man to die for our sins.
The biblical evidence begins:-

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matt 1:18)

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:35)

A virgin birth is indicative of true humanity with no inherited sin from an earthly father.

This also means that Jesus is the first and only person not to be directly descended from Adam.

Jesus had a human mind
And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men (Luke2:52) because of the fact that he increased his wisdom

Jesus had a human soul and emotions
"Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. (John 12:27)

So Does this means that he was temptable and ultimately could have failed?
Well no because Jesus was both fully god and fully man and God cannot be tempted by evil

When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone (James1:13)

Now what was important about Jesus being tempted is that he lasted to the end experiencing the full weight of the temptation in his human nature and still coming through.

Example of staying the course: Staying the course in a race across mountains

So is it important that we accept Jesus was fully man YES

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world (1John 4:2-3)

Jesus also came as a man to get some on the job experience

Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted (Heb 2:18)

to help those i.e. us who are tempted

2 Because Christ was a baby and born at Christmas he received a number of gifts of these were three from wise men or Magi from the east.

All these gifts were from Arabia the Magi’s home area

Question One – What were the gifts?
Question Two – What do the gifts represent?

Gold – Kingly office.
Fire resistant
Rare and of the earth
Soft in pure form but can be made very strong as an alloy

Frankincense (expensive herb equal value to gold) – His divinity
Frankincense is a very costly and fragrant gum distilled from a tree that is found in Persia, India and Arabia, as well as the East Indies.

White resin or gum, and is obtained by slitting the bark of the "Arbor Thurisfrom", and allowing the gum to flow out.

The word actually means "whiteness", referring to the white colored juice which flows out of the wound in the tree.

This gum hardens for three months, and is gathered at the end of the summer, and sold in the form of "tears", or clumps of hardened resin.

History of its use in the bible

Aaron must burn fragrant incense on the altar every morning when he tends the lamps. 8 He must burn incense again when he lights the lamps at twilight so incense will burn regularly before the LORD for the generations to come (Exodus 30:7-8)

He is to take a censer full of burning coals from the altar before the LORD and two handfuls of finely ground fragrant incense and take them behind the curtain (Leviticus 16:12)

Myrrh (expensive herb equal value to gold) – His suffering and death

Myrrh is an aromatic gum produced from a thorn-bush that grew in Arabia and Ethiopia, and was obtained from a tree in the same manner as frankincense.

This thorny tree, called "balsamodendron myrrha", is similar to the acacia.

When it oozes from the wounded shrub, myrrh is a pale yellow colour at first, but as it hardens, it changes to dark red or even black colour.

However, if frankincense represents sweetness, myrrh represents bitterness, at least to the taste. In fact, the name itself was given to it on account of its great bitterness.

Used at Jesus burial

He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. (John 19:39)

Myrrh was also a perfume

I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon (Proverbs 7:17)

We bring gold to honour Him as King, and to yield to the purification process of the fiery trials.
We bring frankincense to worship Him even in the midst of our brokenness.
And we bring myrrh to recognize that He has identified with us in our pain and sorrow.

Question Three which of the three characteristics of god/Jesus do we focus in on and why?

Question Four Do we need to balance out our focus and if so how?
3 Jesus was born to die as a substitute sacrifice for our sins much like the sacrifices of the Old Testament.

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God." (1 Peter 3:18)

"But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead. . ." (1 Corinthians 15:20)

Jesus is still fully man and fully god because

"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." (Acts1:11)

"Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." (Acts 7:56)

and among the lampstands was someone "like a son of man,"dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. (Rev 1:13)

Summary

Christ was fully God and fully man

Christ was given gifts that portrayed who he was and what he was going to do

Christ came to die for our sins

Nathan Whitbread, 11/12/2006