- ManEpisode 241 – Jesus – Man and God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 6, verse 35, New Living Translation “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verse 12, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time pastry consultant. He buys the cookies we keep in the kitchen. Though to be fair I’m the one who makes sure we don’t run out of animal crackers. Anyway, today on Anchored by Truth, as we start to celebrate the Christmas season, we want to continue our series where we focus on Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Today we’re coming to part four of the poem where we now hear about the seemingly unsolvable quandary that is confronting our bears. So do you want to tell us where we are in the story, RD? RD: I’d love to. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last few episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It’s the third of the Golden Tree series. The first segment is called The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and the second part was called The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. Both of these earlier parts of the saga were also written using the model of the old-time movie serials that they used to play when I was a kid and you went to the theater on Saturday afternoons. Before the movie they’d give you the latest installment of an ongoing saga. Each episode would end with the heroes and heroines left in a precarious position so next week you’d come back and plunk down another quarter or two. So, to get ready for part four listeners need to know that the epic is all about a group of small koala bears who live in the arctic. Even though they are in the arctic they live near a Golden Tree that creates a peaceful and fertile valley. The bears’ ancestors discovered the Golden Tree after they had left their homes down under and went searching for their Creator that they called the Great White Koala Bear. The bears have lived near the Golden Tree for generations. In all that time they had never met another bear from the land their ancestors left – but that has now changed. A new, strange bear named Roleb was rescued by a pair of young bears, Koest and Kopaul, and brought to Koest’s home. Once there, Roleb told the bears he had friend who was traveling with him but that friend is now lost in the arctic wasteland. Two of village elders, Kodan and Kojon are trying to figure out if there is a way to save Roleb’s lost friend before it is too late … which it might already be. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part four of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion – part four. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 4 VK: Wow. So, the bears figured out how to summon an ice eagle … but can this ice eagle help them? Will this ice eagle help them? It doesn’t seem like this ice eagle is all that friendly at this point.

RD: I guess folks will just have to tune in next week and see what happens... VK: I’m starting to see why the movies played those serial episodes before they played the main feature. RD: Well, as a kid the trick was not to not eat all your popcorn during the serial. Otherwise, you didn’t have any left to enjoy during the feature. It helped if you had enough money to buy a large bag. No buckets in those days. VK: Today I think some of us need to worry about waistlines more than money… RD: No comment. VK: Anyway, maybe one of the lessons we can learn from the bears is that we need to understand that challenges to our faith can come to us at any time. We need to be prepared to intelligently respond to them. And Ephesians 6:17 does tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the Bible, the Word of God. That’s one of the big reasons we try to encourage people to develop the habit of staying in the Word. It’s the best way for us to cope with our own ice eagles. So, where do you want to go today as we resume our study of Jesus’ earthly life? RD: Well, in our last couple of episode on Anchored by Truth we talked about some examples of extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real person who lived and died in Judea during the early part of the first century AD. But, naturally, the only thing that the secular writers could write about was the human dimension of Jesus. If secular writers were our only source about the life of Jesus we could know some important details about him, but we would completely miss the most important fact about Jesus: that Jesus was not only fully human but that he was also fully divine. VK: And here is where a lot of headaches begin. How can one person be both God and man? I think it’s safe to say that many Christians – even serious and devout ones – have trouble with that concept. So, let’s go over some of the basics of historical, orthodox Christian theology – the Trinitarian nature of God and the dual nature of Jesus. A lot of confusion arises because people don’t understand what Christians mean when they refer to the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ. So, let’s start there. RD: Well, let’s acknowledge right at the start the limitations of human language and the incomprehensibility of God. Humans are finite. God is infinite. So, there is no way any human or group of humans is every going to be capable of exhaustively understanding or explaining the nature of the God or the mystery of the incarnation of Christ. That doesn’t mean we can’t know some true things about God and develop an awareness of the miracle of the incarnation, but it does mean that mysteries will always remain. But that the fact that mysteries will always remain doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t apply ourselves to develop a full-orbed understanding of God insofar as we are able. VK: And it also means that we should always approach these subjects in a spirit of reverence and prayer, right? I mean the one Person who can help us grow in our understanding is the very Person we’re seeking to understand. So, what does the doctrine of the Trinity refer to? RD: Orthodox, Christian theology believes that the Bible refers to one God, but acknowledges that God exists eternally as three divine Subsistences or Persons. The classic proof text for the Trinitarian view of the Godhead is Matthew 28:18 and 19 which says: “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” A slightly different way of explaining this is that God is singular in nature but three in person. By contrast, Jesus, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, is singular in person but has two natures. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. And the classic formulation of this that came out of the Council of Chalcedon is : ” Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, having two natures inseparably united in one divine person without confusion, mixture, separation, or division. Each nature retains its own attributes.” VK: So, those views explain why Christians still believe in one God – we’re monotheistic – but we also believe that within the Godhead there are three distinct Persons who have a relationship with each other. Grappling with these concepts is challenging to say the least. RD: And that’s the reason we have to always be willing to acknowledge that even though the church has classic formulations like the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds that help amplify the basics, these doctrines will always contain a certain amount of mystery for men. We’re back to the plain fact that finite man cannot fully understand or explain an infinite, Triune God. VK: So, how do our opening scriptures relate to this who discussion? At least on the surface, while Jesus is certainly providing some really comforting assurances to his disciples – such as that he will provide for them and protect them like a shepherd does his sheep – how do these verses demonstrate that Jesus was claiming to be God? RD: In English, the claim is not as obvious as it was in the language in which John originally recorded his Gospel, Greek. You see the Greek words that are translated as “I am,” in “I am the bread of life,” and in the other scriptures we heard are two Greek words: ego and eimi. And these are exactly the same words that God used when He made declarations about himself in the Old Testament. VK: As in the declaration that God made to Moses when Moses was standing before the burning bush recorded in Exodus 3:14? Let me read that part. But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.” God also said that Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.” RD: Exactly. The Septuagint translators when they translated the Hebrew “Yahweh” which came from the word for “I am” translated it by a combination of two different Greek words used for the verb “to be:” ego and eimi. So in Jesus’ time the phrase ego eimi came to be synonymous with the name for God. In Hebrew, Yahweh. In Greek, Jehovah. So, when the Apostle John recorded what Jesus said about Jesus being the bread of life or the light of the world, John used the phrase “ego eimi” for the words “I am.” Many scholars think that when Jesus identified himself with the “I am,” He was directly proclaiming to his followers that he was the same as the one who appeared to be Moses. But there are other references in the Old Testament to which Jesus may have been pointing to make the same point. Michael J. Krueger, who is a New Testament scholar and President of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, has shown that there are number of “I am” references in chapters 40 – 55 of the book of Isaiah that unmistakably point to God. Let’s listen to a couple of examples, Isaiah 41: 4 and 43:10: Isaiah 41:4 Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he (ego eimi). Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he (ego eimi). Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. The “I am he” in these passages is translated in Greek by ego eimi. VK: So, when Jesus said he was the bread of life or the light of the world he was going beyond simply giving metaphors for the provisions that he was making for his people? He was saying that one of the reasons his followers could have confidence in the promises that he was giving was because he was God. And as God whatever he promised he had the irresistible power to fulfill. I’m starting to get another headache when I think about that. Imagine, listening to someone standing before you who was saying “I am the light of the world,” - meaning he would give you all the light and wisdom you would ever need – and then realizing that the one making the promise was the who made light to begin with. That’s a staggering thought. RD: And it gets even more staggering. Remember that on Anchored by Truth we have often talked about the fact that logic and empirical observations demonstrate that the universe was created by a self-existent Being. We call that Being God. We can arrive at the need for a self-existent Being to explain the existence of the universe and everything in it, just by making some informed observations. In other words, as people we have the ability to deduce the existence of a self-existent Being or God just by exercising our reason and intelligence. Well, when God said to Moses that his name, God’s name, was “I am” he was identifying himself by using the attribute of self-existence. God was simultaneously exalting Moses by saying “you’re standing in the presence of the One who made everything,” and God was condescending to the level of man by communicating to Moses in a way Moses could understand. God was also pointing out that Moses should be aware of His existence because Moses own intellect and intelligence would have revealed the need for God even God had never chosen to communicate with him directly. VK: And the same thing would have been true of the people listening to Jesus, wouldn’t it? Only now, rather than the people listening to a voice out of a burning bush, they’re hearing those words from a man standing in front of them. And many, if not most, of them would have seen Jesus perform miracles so they would have known that when Jesus spoke, he was speaking the truth. But I think you have one more point that you’re making with the line of reasoning aren’t you? RD: Exacatamundo… VK: Exactamundo, again ... RD: Ok. Precisely, if you prefer. Think about it. By making empirical observations and exercising a little logic and reason we can arrive at the conclusion that the universe was created by a self-existent Being – God. But where did we derive the ability to make those observations? Where did we get eyesight that could see the sun and stars? Where did we get the intellect and reasoning ability to design instruments that could amplify our own observational capabilities like telescopes or microscopes? Where did we get the reasoning ability to understand that an effect demands a cause and that the law of non-contradiction is an essential element in reasoning correctly? Where did we get the ability to write and use language and make and retain records so we could pass words and observations down over thousands of years? And not just the records of the Bible but the other records that we examined on Anchored by Truth the last couple of times by secular observers who affirmed that Jesus was a real man who lived in Judea at a particular time in history. VK: So the point you’re making is that the same God who designed and created the universe with all its marvelous complexity and order also created us in such a way that we could perceive Him. And you’re saying that that same God came to various men at different points in history – to Moses and Isaiah in the Old Testament, to Matthew, John and others in the New Testament – to leave us a record of His appearances in this world. So, you’re saying that God designed man so that man could recognize not only the design in nature but also the design in God’s plan for human history. The plan that we call the plan of creation, fall, and redemption. Oh, all that is either super scary or super exciting. RD: Rather like the disciples in the boat when Jesus calmed the storm or Moses when he was in front of the burning bush, an immediate confrontation with the undeniable presence of the Almighty is simultaneously terrifying and thrilling. Unfortunately, today too many people deny themselves that experience of reverential awe that comes from truly grappling with the authentic nature of God. VK: And only the Bible gives us what we need to understand that nature. And we all need to have a better understanding of that nature. Because when we gain it we will find out that God is not only an awesome and mighty God but He is also a loving and merciful God who has made provisions for us to have eternal fellowship with him by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior. So let’s close with prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for the first person of the Trinity, our heavenly Father. ---- PRAYER OF ADORATION OF THE FATHER VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Bible Quotes from the English Revised Version) The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44 through 47, English Revised Version

(Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://www.ligonier.org/about/who-we-are/what-we-believe/ https://www.michaeljkruger.com/why-does-jesus-use-the-phrase-i-am/ https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means