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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

It's Time Someone Finally Told You the Truth About...

Mark Howard

The Last Generation

Revisionist Adventist History

The Human Nature of Christ - Part 1

The Human Nature of Christ - Part 2

Father in heaven, Father again we are approaching a subject that is holy ground and we approach it reverently.

And Father I ask that your spirit would guide us away from those areas of speculation and into those areas that are important practical truths for your people living in the last moments of earth's history.

And so guide us now we ask and pray in Jesus name, Amen.

I want to say again this is not, this presentation is not intended to be a hard rigid you've got to look at this the way I do when we leave here, etc.

You want to think, you see things differently, that's fine.

I just encourage, this is a subject that has been unstudied by our people and I think there's an important aspect of studying it and that aspect is understanding, here's the thing.

I mentioned it already going into this, that the final test is a test of character and character is formed by our choices that we make every day.

And let's just be real clear, without the grace of God we would never make a right choice.

When we're looking at the nature of Christ, let's make this clear as well.

The Bible tells us that when Adam and Eve sinned, they brought upon themselves a condition, their nature was perverted into a carnal nature.

The Bible says the carnal mind in Romans 8 is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

In other words, a carnal person can never, ever come in harmony with the law of God.

If it wasn't for Christ saying, I will put enmity between thee and the woman serpent, if it wasn't for Christ promising to come and take our humanity and bring his divinity in and lift up humanity, we wouldn't be making any right choices.

And so it's because of Jesus taking our humanity that gives us the ability today to make the kind of choices that will develop characters for heaven.

Sometimes we talk about that and people say, oh, you're talking about how you're going to make yourself righteous.

No, It's never making ourselves righteous.

In fact, that was gonna be our last presentation.

But we'll never make ourselves righteous.

We wouldn't make the first righteous action or have the first righteous thought if it wasn't for the grace of Christ.

And Jesus' sacrifice wasn't just on Calvary.

It was an infinite sacrifice to take humanity.

And I praise God for the humanity of Jesus.

Revelation 3 in verse 21, and we're on page 6 if you have the handout.

If you've just come in, this URL, if you put that in your smartphone that will bring up for you the handout, the document file that I am going off of, and I'm on page 6.

In the middle of the page, number 5 says, overcoming as Christ overcame.

Now this is the language of Revelation chapter 3 and verse 21.

Jesus tells us that we are to overcome as He overcame.

Now again, just me asking questions as I'm reading the scripture, I'm trying to understand this.

The question in my mind is this, how could we overcome as he overcame, if he didn't overcome as we have to overcome?

How could we overcome as he overcame if he didn't overcome as we have to overcome?

He says, overcome as I overcame, and then we say, we can't.

The implication is when he says, you need to overcome as I overcame, means it's possible.

Okay, It means that the way he overcame is a way that I am able to follow.

Now once again that implies to me that there was that he experiences something similar to me when I am in that valley of temptation.

And what we're going to explore is the relation of what the Bible calls the flesh and the mind.

Now we're going to look at a few passages here together.

You'll notice that when the Bible speaks about human nature, it speaks of it in these terms, the flesh and the mind as separate components.

And just to throw a wrench in it for you, if you've never studied this, the flesh and the mind both refer to the mind.

And so we'll get to that in just a minute.

The flesh, when the Bible talks about flesh, it's not talking about this.

Look at this in Ephesians 2, notice verse...

Ephesians 2, 1 says, "...and you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, notice, fulfilling the desires of the what?

We're going to talk about that here in a minute.

And we're by nature children of wrath just as the others.

Our nature is made up of those things, the flesh and the mind.

I mentioned to you Romans 8, 7, the carnal mind.

The carnal mind is not subject to God's law.

But the Bible also tells us about the mind of Christ.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.16, we have the mind of Christ.

Adam didn't have the mind of Christ after the fall.

The mind of Christ is something that comes in conversion.

We're just going to look at the difference here between the flesh and the mind.

But, no pun intended, but Romans chapter 7 does flesh this out.

Romans 7, If you go with me to verse 18, I want you to notice the language of the Apostle Paul here.

Now most Christians are familiar with Romans 7.

This is a chapter that I think everybody in the world, in fact, when I preach in a place that has a lot of non-evidence or what have you, I mean this is a great chapter because everybody relates to the struggle Paul describes here of wanting to do the right thing and finding yourself doing the wrong thing.

The internal battle between the flesh and the mind.

Verse 18 says, for I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells, for to will is present with me.

Now to will is another way of saying to choose.

It's not just to want, it's to choose, to will something.

That's where we make decisions and reason and that's where it's seated there.

And so notice he says, in my flesh dwells no good thing because to will is present with me.

In other words, to will to do right is present.

But how to perform what is good I do not find.

For the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.

Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

I find then a law, now this is a principle kind of law here, you'll see that in a minute.

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It's Time Someone Finally Told You the Truth About...

The Human Nature of Christ - Part 2

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