00:00Third point is that the Son of Man title enforces Jesus' status as a divine person.
00:07Going back to that passage I read to you from Ezekiel.
00:11Ezekiel may have been a Son of Man, but Jesus is the Son of Man.
00:16And you read when you look in the New Testament, you find that it's always the Son of Man.
00:20He's not a Son of Man. He defines himself as the Son of Man.
00:24And as such, the Son of Man means that he is the supreme example of all that God intended humanity to be.
00:32The embodiment of truth and grace.
00:35What human beings should have been before the fall.
00:39In communication with God.
00:41In total obedience and submission to God while here on the earth.
00:50And that was what Jesus was. He was totally in obedience and submission to God.
00:54He was totally in communication with God all the time that he was here on the earth.
01:00And he was the supreme example of all that God intended the human race to be.
01:05He was the embodiment of God's truth, God's truth.
01:09And a couple of scriptures will tell you about this.
01:11One we've already read.
01:12The Word became flesh.
01:13John chapter 1.
01:15The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.
01:17We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.
01:20Full of grace and truth.
01:24Colossians chapter 2.
01:25In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form.
01:29That's an absolutely clear statement.
01:32It means that when Jesus appeared in bodily form, all the fullness of God was in him.
01:37He was fully God all the time that he was appearing in human form.
01:41We looked last week at the passage in Mark's Gospel where it says,
01:46The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.
01:50Remember that story where they bring a paralytic into Jesus and he says to the paralytic,
01:57Man, Son, your sins are forgiven.
02:02And the scribes who were sitting there said in their hearts,
02:04Why does this man speak blasphemies?
02:06Who can forgive sins but God alone?
02:08They're correcting that.
02:10Who can forgive sins but God alone?
02:12Only God can forgive sins.
02:13So Jesus says, Your sins are forgiven you.
02:17Either he's telling the truth or he's ascribing to himself something which is untrue.
02:22So Jesus perceived in his spirit their reason thus within themselves.
02:27And he said to them, Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?
02:30Which is easier to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven you?
02:34Or to say, Arise and take up your bed and walk?
02:38So which is the easier thing to say?
02:40To say, not to do.
02:41To say.
02:42Which one's the easier thing to say?
02:45The easier thing to say is, Your sins are forgiven you.
02:48Because if your sins are not forgiven you, you don't know any of the difference, do you?
02:52The harder thing to say is to the paralytic, Rise up and walk.
02:56If he doesn't rise up and walk, then you know that the other one is not true either.
03:01Okay?
03:02So Jesus says the harder thing to the paralytic, he says, Rise up and walk.
03:06So he says that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.
03:10He said to the paralytic, I say to you, Take up your bed, go to your house.
03:14Immediately he rose, took up his bed, and went out in the presence of them all,
03:19so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, We never saw anything like this.
03:24So you see, the second thing there, the harder thing to say, Rise up and walk,
03:28confirms the first thing, Your sins are forgiven you.
03:31If your sins are not forgiven you, then the paralytic's going to lie there on the ground.
03:36So Jesus demonstrates clearly that he has the power of God to forgive sins.
03:44Notice he says, The Son of Man has the power of God to forgive sins.
03:48So he's using there the Son of Man title, but he's using it in a way which affirms his divinity.
03:54And if you look through many of the use of the word Son of Man by the Lord Jesus,
03:59it's actually somehow affirming his divinity.
04:01It says he's the Lord of the Sabbath.
04:04According to Judaism, God gave the Sabbath, so if he's the Lord of the Sabbath,
04:07he's God who gave the Sabbath.
04:10He came to save lives, not to destroy them.
04:13The Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.
04:16How can he save them?
04:18Only if he has the power of God to save them.
04:25And in John chapter 5, verse 27, we read,
04:31I say to you, the hour is now coming, now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.
04:36Those who hear will live.
04:39For the Father has life in himself,
04:41so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.
04:47He's given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.
04:51Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear his voice.
04:57Come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life,
05:00those who have done evil to the resurrection of damnation.
05:03Can you see in that scripture it uses the two phrases, the Son of God and the Son of Man.
05:07First of all, the dead are going to hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.
05:13In other words, there's going to be a general resurrection.
05:16And there will be a general resurrection of both the wicked and the saved.
05:20The wicked will go to the wrong place, the hell, the righteous will go to the right place.
05:25But there will be a general resurrection and they will hear the voice of the Son of God.
05:28So everyone's going to hear the voice of the Son of God and live.
05:32At that point, there will be no more atheists.
05:37But he says that the Father has given the Son the right to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.
05:45Okay, so you've got the two phrases there, Son of God, Son of Man.
05:48And he executes judgment, which only God can do in his role as the Son of Man.
05:54So why has he got the right to do that?
05:57He's got the right to do that because he has lived as a man on the earth.
06:00He's faced all the temptations, all the difficulties which we've faced and overcome them.
06:05And he has laid down his life as a sacrifice for the sin of the world and risen from the dead.
06:09Therefore, he has the right now to judge people on the basis of truth of the Word of God
06:16and to cause those who are saved to go to the right place, those who are not saved to go to the wrong place.
06:23That's why we have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and he's the only one who can open up the door of heaven to us.
06:28So this scripture, particularly this one in John, is the absolute proof that the Son of Man title is equal to the Son of God.
06:38It's not saying he's lesser, he's just some kind of glorified human being.
06:42It's saying that the Son of Man is also the same person as the Son of God.
06:47In other words, Jesus is both Son of Man and Son of God and they are both divine titles.
06:52The Son of Man just emphasizes his humanity, but it doesn't take away from his divinity.
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