Christ's Person - Mike Berry - Session 2 - 2. His heart in action, 3. The happiness of Christ

Just by way of review, our theme for equipment school this year is Christ in your weakness based on 2 Corinthians 12, just understanding that, it's our weakness where Christ is pleased to display His power. And so that's part of our focus. And by the way, our, our equipping school, one of the reasons why we encourage people to participate. In our equipping school is because a long time ago we just realized that we can't really get out the full content of, of, of the gospel and all of the things we'd love our people to learn about and grow in merely through the pulpit ministry and so it's, it's partially through Sunday school that we're trying to get out a broader sense of the whole counsel of God.

And so in this class, we're hitting Christology. A lot of times we might, last year we hit bibliology and, and we'll hit theology proper, but this year we're putting a big focus on Christ's person and work and using the three different texts that we've laid out for you guys this year. Last week, we said the big idea of the lesson is really this, that Jesus is not harsh. or unapproachable, even when we are wearied by our own sins or burdened by the circumstances or sins of others.

And we got that from Matthew, chapter 1128 to 30, as we spend a lot of time in that where Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and weighed down, and, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. And you'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And as we unpack that passage through our text, Dean Ortland, we determined last week that Gentle leads this idea that he's the most understanding person in the universe.

For Christ to be gentle is the idea of him being meek, and he's very understanding towards sufferers and sinners. And then when we think of him as being lowly, the idea is that he's accessible. the idea is he's, he's taken on a low estate. He's, he's not, he doesn't pull away from the cringy.

no one in human history, Ortland says, has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ. And the idea that my yoke is easy and burden is light as he says, take those things upon you. Really, my yoke is a non-yoke and my burden is a non-burden. And if you come to me, you'll have rest for your souls.

It doesn't mean that we're always going to have a sense of rest for our bodies. I just feel like I can't get enough rest. I'm just yawning all the time, but rest for our souls to bring our burdens to him. That brings us to the two chapters that we're going to talk about today.

We're going to talk about chapter 2, his heart in action, and the main text is, and when he went out, he saw a great multitude, and he was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick. Let's go ahead and pray and we'll jump into this morning's lesson. Lord, we thank you so much for your compassion for us and all of your people, and we thank you for being our mediator, and we thank you for drawing near us, not being repulsed by us. We ask, Lord, that You would correct our thinking about you, for a correct thinking of Christ our Savior is essential for healthy living.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. I want us to first consider the context of the verse that we just read. In chapter 14, what you have is a pretty lengthy description of the beheading of Christ's cousin, John the Baptist.

and we won't go into all the details, but basically, John the Baptist is beheaded. And then in verse 13, Jesus heard it. He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by himself. you get the sense that obviously a family member dying in that horrible fashion, Jesus, as a man, 100% man, wants to get off and spend some time by himself to mourn.

And just think of maybe some of the most difficult times you've been in or things that you've been through. I can remember when my grand got the call that my grandfather passed away or even when I got the call in May that Danielle, one of our sisters in Christ, had passed away. These were very, very traumatic events, and I'm sure that you could think of some in your own life. And how prepared and disposed would you be to jump into ministry?

You think of Christ trying to get away from the crowds, and he puts his feet on the shore and there's multitudes there. And what is Christ's attitude when the multitudes had found him and when Jesus went out, he saw the multitudes and said, I was trying to get away from you people. I need some time alone to mourn the death of my cousin. No, it says he was moved with compassion for them and healed.

They're sick. That's the savior that's revealed to us on the pages of Scripture. We saw last week that how his heart, what is in his very soul, is that he's gentle and lowly, and this morning what we're going to see is, is what he says he is, he does. His life proves his heart, and this word compassion is a very interesting word.

I, I cut and pasted a section from Bible Hub about this, this long Greek word that's hard to pronounce, splagdzomi. Everybody say splagdzomi. It's just a weird word, but it's a very interesting word because it focuses in on the innards. Like the idea would be the, the noble entrails, the heart, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys.

It's almost like gut-wrenching love is the idea here. is that Christ lands on the shores after John the Baptist has been beheaded and he's trying to get away to mourn, and he sees the crowds and what comes out of him is gut-wrenching love for the masses. That's the heart of Christ. And then he begins.

This isn't just a Feeling, he begins to do things out of this gut-wrenching love, and what he does is he heals their sick. So let's focus on 4 highlights from the chapter that, that you were able to read this week or, or perhaps if you weren't able to read it yet, you could read it this week. Let's first of all talk about the gravitational pull of Christ's heart. That there's a pull that Christ's heart has towards certain individuals, including us.

Ortland says on page 27, time and again, it is the morally disgusting, the socially reviled, the inexcusable and undeserving who do not simply receive Christ's mercy, but to whom Christ most naturally gravitates. He is by his enemy's testimony, the friend of sinners, and when he's called the friend of sinners by his enemies, this is not a term of endearment. This is an accusation. That how could you, the Holy One, the supposed Christ the Messiah, be hanging out with the cringy of society.

But that's what we see on the page of Scripture and Ortland lists several different examples where this book of Christ's compassion, you see it, even in the, the Good Samaritan passage that we talked about several weeks ago, that, that there's this heart of compassion that flows out of Christ. It flows from the Father. Ortland goes on to say the most dominant note in the Gospels is the way the Holy Son of God moves toward, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it and yet truly desire it.

none of these people deserve Christ's compassion, but if they merely hint at the fact that they desire it, they get it, and that's just a consistent tale all throughout the scriptures.

We see it clearly upon Christ's true children and upon the body, but you even see His heart towards people who don't ultimately. get saved, as it were. I think of Ahab in the Old Testament. I believe it's Elijah comes and pronounces a prophecy of his doom, and at one point Ahab actually puts on sackcloth and ashes and begins to at least go about the motions of repentance, and God stops Elijah in his tracks and say, Did you just see what he did?

Go back and tell him, I'm going to give him more time. That's a. the worst of the worst in in the Old Testament, and yet just the hint that Ahab would be ready to repent causes God to move towards Ahab and be disposed to mercy. Richard Sibbs, who lived in, from 151777 to 1635, 1 of what we would describe as a Puritan, said this, Christ's works of grace and mercy were done inwardly from his very bowels.

And so the idea of Christ's heart and then his bowels is this is coming from within Him. This is not just him holding his nose to reach out to sinners. This is something that wells up from his, his own person. It's his own desires that are being expressed when he moves towards sinners, not away from them.

So that's one highlight. A second highlight though is, is the danger of half truths. When we talk about Christ in this way, are we, as Ortland describes, are we in danger? Of falling off one side of the donkey or the other.

That's actually a Martin Lutherism is Martin Luther says we're always like drunk monks, monks falling off of one side of the donkey or the other. we're either over here on the side of God's grace, we completely forget about His justice. We're falling over on the side of justice and forgetting about His grace. And we talk about Christ as having this heart and gravitational pull towards sinners.

Are we falling off of the donkey, as it were? Are we in danger of extracting one side of Christ to the neglect of others? Ortland does a really good job in a mini survey of church history, how the church at times has struggled with the humanity and the deity of Christ and how we even with our own Background, depending on how we were raised, sometimes we might unwittingly put one emphasis or a certain type of emphasis. If you were abused, then, then maybe you have a certain viewpoint of the Father and of Christ that could be dictated by your background.

But he has 3 responses to this, which I think are very, very helpful that will actually guide us throughout the rest of the book because we are going to talk about the wrath of Christ at times, and we're going to talk about the harsher side of the Trinity at times in our study, but these are 3, I guess, guiding points as we think about this, this concept of, of being careful about falling off one side or the other. Ortland's first point is that the wrath of Christ and mercy of Christ are not at odds with one another.

It's not like a seesaw where it's like mercy goes up, wrath goes down, wrath goes up, mercy goes down. Really they move together and when we have an appropriate appreciation for his just wrath.

That also will cause us to have an appropriate appreciation for His mercy. If I understand what I deserve outside of Christ, then he comes towards me and treats me with kindness that just increases the whole character of Christ. Does this make sense? And so, They're not really polar opposites.

They're really both aspects of Christ's character. But secondly, and I think this is helpful too, is we're not really on the wrath mercy spectrum when we speak of Christ's heart. We're talking about who He most deeply is. We're talking about His heart.

We're talking about his slagna. We're talking about his bowels. in Old Testament terms, we're talking about the very name of God. Who is he most essentially?

And I want to point out Jonah as, as an example and then Exodus here. as we think of the wrath of God or the wrath of Christ and the mercy of God, Jonah actually had an accurate theology. But based upon his accurate theology of the mercy of God being primary, he actually chose to apply it wrongly. He's like, I know how merciful you are.

That's why I'm not going to Nineveh. Good theology, bad application. Look what he says in verse 2 at the end of the book, chapter 4. And he prayed to the Lord and said, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country?

Therefore, I fled previously to Tarsus, for I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, one who relents from doing harm. So if you asked Jonah, where's the tipping point with Yahweh, where does he tend to default, Jonah knew it wasn't even a question, and that's why he ran the other way, is that his default is towards mercy. The idea of slow to anger is very interesting in the Hebrew because it literally means long of nose. The idea of being like, a nose would be like when you're getting angry or if God, had body parts to get angry would blow out of your nose and to be long of nose means that it takes a long time for the wrath to come.

And that's really the disposition that we see of of God and Christ. Moses gets the same flavor in Exodus 34. When Yahweh goes by him and proclaims his name. Now we know for God to speak forth his name is to speak forth his character and what is most essential to him.

And so what does the Lord proclaim before Moses? Look at verse 6, and the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious and long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. That's look at all of those descriptors before you ever get to by no means clearing the guilty. So he's just visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon children and children's children, the 3rd and 4th generation.

There are consequences for sin, not just for you, but also for people in your orbit, but he has mercy to thousands of generations is the implied in between the words thousands is almost certainly generations. But consequences will have their impact for the 3rd and 4th generation. And so his default is towards mercy. Ortland finally says it's better to be biblical than artificially balanced.

If the Bible weighs on the side of mercy, then we need to make sure that we're not trying to be a good monk, a good sober monk, and just stand upright on the, on the donkey. Does that make sense? If, if God defaults, if Christ defaults in a certain direction, then let's default that way as well, rather than say, hey, let's be balanced. I want to read you a little text exchange I had a few weeks back.

A friend of mine. A very good friend of mine. had some responses to a verse that I had sent him that had something to do with the mercy of the Lord. But here's what my friend said.

Yes, the wages of sin is death, meaning separation from God. Jesus wasn't crucified for us. It was because of us. Vicarious salvation is meaningless.

To many Christians, many Christians accept Jesus only by name and not by action, faith without works. Jesus turned over tables, rebuked authorities. Do you really think he would allow the type of world we're living in? The Holy Spirit was made available to us in order for us to continue his work.

How do you think we're doing? And just so, I think part of what's behind my friend's thoughts is, is, Jesus is tick because we're not practicing social justice and, and so he is just ticked off at everybody, especially Christians. Is that, is that balance? Is that really the way Christ thinks about us and His bride?

Here's my reply. You can take it for what it's worth. Yeah, thanks for your clear thoughts. We've been doing very, very poorly since about the time of Adam.

Jesus was hardest on those who thought they were just and righteous, but He was gentle and lowly with those who were humbled by their own sins and despair. His harshest words were for people in my line of work, especially if they made people feel burdened that God would not provide forgiveness for their sins through Christ. If I believed my salvation was based upon how well I have been doing, I would be hopeless. Even my best deeds don't cut it.

My worst sins don't even want to talk about that. All my hope is in the fact that Jesus didn't come for the righteous, but the unrighteous. He who knew no sin became sin for me. He didn't come for those who think they are nailing it, but for the poor in spirit who know they are blowing it.

Then he says to us, come to me, all you are weary and weighed down, and I will give you rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. He saved me not, not when I loved him and loved others. He scooped me up when I was abused by others who should have protected me, when I lashed out at others and made excuses for my sins, when I was walking home from school kicking a can, saying to myself, there is no God.

He put a little old lady from Buffalo in my home to be my nanny and tell me that Jesus died for my sins, to make me his own, and that my war against God could be over. Nothing produces humble, rightly motivated deeds for humanity like knowing you are loved absolutely by a Father who sent His Son to die in your place. He does all the works for us and through us, knowing we will always do the opposite without His loving influence. Human history, I think, proves how poorly we have done time after time.

Thankfully, Jesus hasn't just set an example for us to do as he did. He compassionately reminds us he has done what we could not do. God's loving plan through His Son is not a do, but a done. Thanks for your thoughts.

By the way, have you ever read through Romans? And he says, yes, he did, but it's a long time ago. And I just so, I didn't send this long text to him like in my very first response. We've known each other for years.

We've had lots of different interchanges. So, but this is one of my responses to, to his interchange and And I, but I, I, I don't think my friend is unique in his view of Christ. I've seen this on the internet quite a bit on Facebook, people talking about Christ turning over tables and, and that being a justification for some of the ways that we're going about our justice program here in the United States. And truth be told, I think all of us probably have a tendency one way or the other to, to try to put the emphasis or the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

the emphasis of scripture. In Christ's heart, it seems to me, and you can, as we move through this book, I'd, I'd like to at least challenge you to consider that the emphasis is love. And patience and grace, that's the way he is towards us. And even when we are not that way towards one another, he's still inclined to be that way towards us.

God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. But what trips me out about that verse is even when I've been proud, He comes towards me and breaks down my pride. And then when he gets me humble, then he draws near to me. It's not like I suddenly say, all right, OK, God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble.

I'm going to work really hard to be humble. Just doesn't work that way. I don't know about you, but I am not inclined towards humility. But God, the, the ultimate discipler orchestrates suffering in my life and gets me down.

And then when he gets me where he wants me, he starts loving me. And then I'm like, what is wrong with this equation? I do not deserve this. So let's, let's look at a third highlight.

When Jesus touches sinners. So again, this is all along the idea that Christ, he actually acts out what he says he is. He says, I'm gentle and lonely in heart, and then he goes out and he does that very compassionately treating us in ways that we don't deserve. And if we're going to fall off one side of the donkey or the other, it should be towards mercy.

He gravitates towards us. And an example of this is just what happens when Christ draws near to sinners. Ortland uses the Old Testament law in Leviticus as an example. When an unclean person comes into contact with a morally pure person, what happens?

What happens if you're a priest in the Old Testament and you touch a dead body? Well, no, not necessarily. You become unclean. The body doesn't become clean.

You become unclean. Right? You touch a leper, you become unclean, and you have to go through all these sacrifices and so on and so forth. so moral dirtiness is contagious, we find out from the Old Testament, and we see that in the New Testament as well.

so moral dirtiness, that's why when you, when you put a bunch of kids together and you have quote unquote good kids with a bunch of quote unquote bad kids, what happens? They all become bad. They all misbehave is the default setting. The good kids normally don't influence the bad kids.

In fact, truth be told, in their hearts, they're all bad kids, and they just, they, they cause this contagion to spread. But when Jesus comes into contact, Mr. Clean, it's the opposite. What happens when Jesus, the clean one, comes into contact with an unclean sinner?

The sinner becomes clean. And that's what you have. Jesus is turning Leviticus upside down all throughout the New Testament. He goes towards the sinners and he touches them, and he heals them, and, and they become clean.

Ortland says on page 32, so wherever he went, whenever he was confronted with pain, longing, he spread the good contagion, contagion of his cleansing mercy. Thomas Goodwin, 1600, 1680 said Christ is love covered over in flesh. Picture it, pull back the flesh of the Stepford Wives or Terminator and you find machine, pull back the flesh of Christ and you find love. That's his default setting.

That's his disposition is to move towards the sinners. You guys remember John 8, right? The woman found caught in adultery, Pharisees Bringer. And throw her down in front of Christ and Christ's attitude is to move towards her and to talk about forgiveness of sins.

Same thing when he's just meeting the, the lepers and so on. 1/4 highlight would be this, that, we could, we could say, well, that's great, that Christ was like that. It would have been great to live in those times, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be great if we all lived back then and we could be like John and James and the, and the apostles.

And man, if we could just hang out with Christ, like the 12 apostles, we'd just be so mature and godly, just like they were throughout, throughout their lives, right? but the fact is, the Bible indicates that you and I are in a better spot than the disciples. Why is that? How is it possible that Jesus Christ is closer to you today than he was to the sinners and sufferers he spoke with and touched his earthly ministry?

Well, first of all, it's because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He's always the same. But the other thing is, is we have the Holy Spirit, which is a big, big deal on the pages of Scripture. John 16 says this, Nevertheless, I tell you it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come, but if I depart, I'll send him.

I, if I was one of the disciples, I'd be like, just, I don't, how in the world is it better that you leave us? But Jesus says, no, it's better because now I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. I'm not going to be limited to one location at one time in the humanity of my flesh. Now the Holy Spirit's going to be in all y'all.

And ministering the same comfort and drawing near in the same way to us that I that Christ was doing on the earth. So Ortlund says on page 33, Through the Spirit Christ's own heart envelopes His people with an embrace nearer and tighter than any physical embrace could ever achieve. His actions on earth in a body reflected his heart. The same heart now acts in the same way towards us, for we are now His body.

That's why the Holy Spirit, it talks about Paul talks about the Holy Spirit's always pouring in us the love of Christ. And so these things that we're reading about, they're not just things in the past, they're things in the present. And, but it's very important for us to be constantly corrected in our view of Christ. I, I, I, my theory from both scripture and from being a pastor for a number of years is that we all tend to fall off the donkey and throughout our lives and we constantly need to be renewed in our minds.

We constantly need to be corrected in our view of Christ and In my experience, the counseling I've done, there are exceptions, but the vast majority of the people that I counsel with, they fall off the side of the donkey that says Christ is angry with me, or whenever I sin, he withdraws from me. He is not wanting to draw near me in my sin. Maybe in my obedience he'll draw near me, but when I stumble, he withdraws. I think that's the vast majority of the people that I talked to.

There are some who like, mostly I've run into this with unbelievers where they just have no concept of their own sin. They don't understand God's grace, and so they just feel like, yeah, God's a good guy and my sin's not a big deal, and he's just loving. Well, I don't think we're really talking about that category. This book is largely written, almost entirely written to people who know Christ already, who know their sin, and how is Christ disposed towards his body, his bride.

And that's, that's where we need to make sure we're, we're keeping good, we're distinguishing his just wrath and his mercy. Let's, let's hit the, the third chapter and then we'll be done. so we've talked about, his heart. We've talked about his heart in action.

And I'm gonna argue from the text that what Christ says he is, he does, what he does brings him joy. That's the, the logical progression here, that as Christ draws near you and I, wait, Christ draws near you and me, he gets happy, right? He gets happy. Let's look at Hebrews 12:2 at the top of, I don't know what page you guys are on, but It's in there, in your notes.

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, Endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the of the throne of God. So for the joy that was set before him, that word for is this little word that gives us like a contrast. It's actually the word anti. So there's joy that's set before him.

Which he puts on hold and does something else in order to get to that joy. What is it that he puts on hold is he endures the cross and despises the shame to get to some joy. And we look at the the context, remember how that this chapter starts. Yeah, it's like one of my.

Favorite verses. Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us. So let's set aside the sin that we, it's just easy for us to get ensnared by it, but let's run with endurance, grace that's set before us. How are we gonna run?

Looking to Jesus. We're gonna run look to Him. Who, by the way, is the author and finisher of our faith, so he started it. He's going to finish it.

He's not starting something he doesn't finish. And let's be reminded that there's joy involved here on his behalf. He has joy and he did certain things that we would not think of as being joyful to get to the joy. He does things on our behalf to get to the joy, and what we're going to be asking is what is he so happy about.

So let's make 3 observations or 3 highlights. First of all, going with the flow. How would you finish this sentence that Goodwin has in, in his book on Christ's heart? Christ's own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory are increased and enlarged by How do we finish that?

Lots of ways you could finish that. His own joys increased and enlarged by my obedience. When I evangelize, if I go out and do some open-air preaching, does that make him happy? If I get up and I have my quiet time every day, sure, I think that makes him happy.

But then I have my quiet time everywhere, every day, like Catholics do the rosary. Am I getting up and, OK, I'm gonna read my Bible, do my beads. If I don't read my Bible, he's gonna get pretty ticked. Gotta make sure I do my beads so that I keep God off my back.

I know. How would you finish this? Own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory increased and enlarged by his showing grace and mercy in pardoning, relieving, comforting his members on the earth. Translation, he gets happy.

He gets filled with joy by relieving his members on the earth because we are his body. We're going on to say in the chapter, Christ doesn't get flustered and frustrated with us when we come to Him for fresh forgiveness, pardon, or when we come to Him with our distresses. That's what he wants. That's what He commands.

Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. That's what he wants. And so we don't come to Him. He's like, Why are you coming to me?

No, we come to him and he's like, that's what I'm talking about. I want you to come to me. Orlan goes on to say verse chapter page 38, when you come to Christ for mercy and love, and help in anguish, perplexity, and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them. We think it's the opposite.

When we operate according to the old man, when we fall into despair or depression or sins, our default setting is, is that Christ must want us to stay away for a while because honestly, that's the way we tend to be. If someone sins against us, if someone sins against me, I'm not immediately inclined to want to interface with them and show mercy. I might withdraw or if they withdraw, I'm very happy for some space while we let cooler heads prevail. But is that the way Christ is?

We think, oh, you are all together like us. And we'll talk about this later, but he says, no, my ways are not like your ways. My ways are very, very different. And so to, to actually come to Christ with our despair, suffering, and sin is to go with the flow of his heart.

A second highlight in this chapter is, is to ask the question, are you draining Christ with all of your needs? Like, do you ever get drained by the needs of people? I, I, just ask moms with kids in the house. This is like, do you ever get drained by kids?

Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. Yeah, I think any mother here could relate with, yes, you get drained. who was it? Susannah Wesley used to put her apron over her, her head periodically in the middle of the day and say, leave me alone.

I am spending time with Jesus right now. we get drained. people come to us with needs. A lot of times they're just good needs, right?

And, but we do not have an infinite capacity to minister to people's needs. But does Christ get drained by us coming to Him? And Ortland says, no, his heart is filled up all the more by our coming to him. We ask, what, what is the joy that Jesus is waiting for on the other side of the cross, the joy of seeing his people forgiven.

Remember the context here, we're trying to, we're being exhorted to lay aside every sin that so easily entangles us. Why? Because the author and finisher of our faith has already suffered on the cross for the joy that was set before him. And so he, it's, it brings him happiness to express forgiveness.

When the disciples came to Jesus said, teach us, Lord, how to pray, one of the things that Jesus taught him to do is, Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive those who sinned against us. That's meant to be a daily, even more than a daily prayer, to be asking the Lord for forgiveness. You can compare this to what the angels do in heaven when a sinner repents, they rejoice. And then I love what Ortland says.

He doesn't just want us to be forgiven. He wants us. It's not just that he wants to like wipe our slate clean and send us off. He actually wants us, like in, in Christ's high priestly prayer in 17:24, Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me.

He wants his disciples to be with Him. That's the goal. is, is for us all to be together. We're together through the Spirit right now, but Christ is looking forward to the day that we'll all be together in the, the eternal state.

And then the last highlight that we could make from this chapter is, is just ask the question, is Christ offended by your presumption of his affection? Is it presumptuous to, to come to Christ with our sins? And shortcomings. does Christ want us to be measured and careful in how we draw upon His mercy?

I think it's a way to ask it. I think, I think the answer is no, but we can get that way if we have a wrong reading of the Bible. Let me show you an example of how we can wrongly read the Bible. Nadab and Abayou come into the tabernacle with strange fire and get whacked.

And Aaron is told, don't even mourn for those guys. And we read that and we lift it completely out of the context of redemptive history and we say, Lord, I, I don't want to come and worship with a strange fire. If I come before you with my sins and I'm too presumptuous about coming into your presence, maybe you're gonna whack me like native in a bayou. I better keep my distance.

Is that what he wants us to do? You see you can take all kinds of passage in scripture and basically flip it around to make us think that really God's intent is that you stay away, that you don't draw near. And just to give you the short, the Cliff Notes version of the response to that is Nadab and Abayo had had a lot of opportunities. God was very long of notes.

They had seen a ton. And they decided they wanted to come into the tabernacle drunk, probably because they were drunkards in the context, and bring in strange fire, which probably means fire from a false god. So they were trying to bring Yahweh into basically making Yahweh worship pluralistic is almost certainly what was going on because we can come into Yahweh's presence without Christ. And bring any old fire we want.

Because I don't know that we buy into this Yahweh exclusion thing and, and from the context right afterwards, it said God goes into all these instructions about how white priests should not come in drunk. Contrast that with Aaron who makes a golden calf for heaven's sake. And yet doesn't get whacked. Why doesn't Aaron get whacked?

Because Aaron was a man of faith who had stumbled into his sins, Moses is a type of Christ was interceding for him, and Aaron got chastised, but he survives because God is disposed. He is long suffering and merciful, ever willing to forgive sins. So we have his Jesus, we have his wrath. Ortland asked this question.

What would a, would a father with a suffocating child want his child to draw on an oxygen tank in a measured, reasonable way? Is that, is that the way our Father was? Yeah, I know the gospel is, is what you need. I know that mercy is what you need, but be very reasonable in how you draw upon it.

No, that doesn't seem to be the testimony of Scripture, and the chapter ends this way. Our trouble is that we do not take Scripture seriously when it speaks of us as Christ's body. Christ is the head. We are His body parts.

How does the head feel about his own flesh? Well, he nourishes and cherishes it. Ephesians 5:29. And, and when, by the way, when Paul was persecuting the bride, Jesus shows up and says, Why are you persecuting me?

You're messing with me. And then the very guy that's persecuting his body, Jesus knocks him down and saves him and brings him into the body. Jesus Christ is comforted when you draw from the riches of his atoning work because his own body is getting healed, Ortland says. And so I don't, you guys may at this point have questions you're trying to figure out.

I don't know if I really buy into this. I want you to hang in with us throughout the whole book because Ortland, I think, does a really good treatment systematically in developing the idea of the disposition of Christ towards his people. We're not saying that Christ isn't going to come back like in chapter 19 of Revelation with flaming fire taking vengeance upon his enemies and all those who do not believe the gospel. But if you believe the gospel by faith, you do not get Nadabbayo treatment.

You get Aaron treatment. You get Moses treatment. You get Christ is disposed towards you because for the joy set before Him, He suffered for your sins, and he wants you to come to Him with your sins. The next week, Chris Kidder is going to take us into a wonderful chapter.

I'm jealous that he gets to teach it, able to sympathize. There's some study questions there. so I encourage you guys to read that chapter, come back. It's gonna be a great lesson.

Chris is a great teacher. I think you guys will be blessed. I've got 50 seconds for questions. I was hoping to leave more time, but.

Sorry. Any questions at all? I can also take questions up here. All right, well, let's go ahead and pray.

Lord, we do thank you so much for your disposition, this gut-wrenching love that you have for your bride and your body. And we pray, Father, that You would help us through your spirit that you would correct our view of Christ. Lord, help us to see that you act kindly towards us and it flows out of your heart, and you are happy to forgive sins and to come and draw near to sinners. And we pray, Father, that You would grant us the ability to quickly repent, to quickly come to you with our sins, and that that would have the effect of helping us to quickly forgive others.

Help us to be those that would grow in our gentleness, and our kindness. And that we would be able to put the gospel on display, knowing that we will never display it like you. But help people to get a taste of you through us. We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.