Son of Man | A King Like No Other - Daniel 7 | December 08

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I'm reading from Daniel 7 today. In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon,

Daniel had a dream with visions in his mind as he was laying in his bed.

He wrote down the dream, and here is the summary of his account.

It was raised up on one side, with three ribs in its mouth, between its teeth.

It was told, get up, gorge yourself on flesh.

After this, while I was watching, suddenly another beast appeared.

It was like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back.

It had four heads, and it was given dominion.

After this, while I was watching in the night visions, suddenly a fourth beast

appeared, frightening and dreadful, and incredibly strong, with large iron teeth.

It devoured and crushed and it trampled with

its feet whatever was left it was different

from all the beasts before it and it had ten horns while i

was considering the horns suddenly another horn a little

one came up among them and three of

the first horns were uprooted before it and suddenly

in this horn there were eyes like the eyes of a human and a

mouth that was speaking arrogantly as i

kept watching thrones were set in place and the ancient

of days took his seat his clothing was white like

snow and the hair of his head like whitest wool his

throne was flaming fire its wheels were blazing fire a river of fire was flowing

coming out from his presence thousands upon thousands served him thousands times

ten thousands ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him the court was

convened and the books were opened.

I watched then because of the sound of the arrogant words the horn was speaking.

As I continued watching, the beast was killed and its body destroyed and given

over to the burning fire.

As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was removed, but an extension

of life was granted to them for a certain period of time.

I continued watching in the night visions, and suddenly one like a son of man

was coming with the clouds of heaven.

He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before him.

He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom so that those of every people,

nation, and language should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away,

and his kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.

As for me, Daniel, my spirit was deeply distressed within me,

and the visions in my mind terrified me.

I approached one of those who were standing by and asked him to clarify all this.

So he let me know the interpretation of these things. these huge beasts four

in number are four kings who will rise from the earth but the holy ones of the

most high will receive the kingdom and possess it forever yes forever and ever

then i wanted to be clear about the fourth beast the one different from all the others,

extremely terrifying with iron teeth and bronze claws devouring crushing and

trampling with its feet whatever was left i also wanted to know about the ten

horns on its head and about the other horn that came up before which three fell,

the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly and that looked bigger than the others.

As I was watching, this horn waged war against the holy ones and was prevailing

over them until the Ancient of Days arrived and a judgment was given in favor

of the holy ones of the Most High.

For the time had come and the holy ones took possession of the kingdom.

This is what he said. The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth,

different from all the other kingdoms, it will devour the whole earth,

trample it down, and crush it.

The ten horns are ten kings who will rise from this kingdom.

Another king, different from the previous ones, will rise after them and subdue three kings.

He will speak words against the Most High and oppress the Holy Ones of the Most High.

He will intend to change religious festivals and laws, and the Holy Ones will

be handed over to him for a time, times, and half a time.

But the court will convene, and his dominion will be taken away to be completely destroyed forever.

The kingdom, dominion, and greatness of the kingdoms under all of heaven will

be given to the people, the holy ones of the most high.

His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom and all rulers will serve and obey him.

This is the end of the account. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts terrified me

greatly and my face turned pale, but I kept the matter to myself. Thanks, Sarah.

Morning, everybody. I'm Eric. If you don't like the sermon, the other guy is

usually better and you probably won't see me for like six months.

So, you know, don't worry about it.

So yeah, we just read Daniel seven. Obviously we were in Daniel for,

I guess, 11 weeks before last week. Right.

And we're jumping back to Daniel seven a little bit for the son of man series.

I'm going to talk about the biblical theme of the son of man and how it relates

to the importance of the incarnation.

And I actually want a little bit of audience participation. So we're going to

do something different this week.

So I'm going to read from Proverbs 17, eight, a bribe seems like a magic stone

to its owner, Wherever he turns, he succeeds.

I would bet that this is probably not a top 100 preached on passage in scripture.

I'm also not going to preach on it. Instead, I'm going to bribe you guys to

answer questions. Okay.

So I'm badly misinterpreting this verse and taking it out of context.

Don't take this as an example of good scriptural exegesis.

Most verbs, most verbs, most verses in Proverbs or the Bible about bribery talk

about the wicked taking bribes.

It's wicked to take a bribe. The righteous don't take bribes or there are like

examples of wicked people taking bribes.

So this is a proverb that talks about how the world is, not how the world should be. All right.

Moving on from that. Oh, and also for my bribery, I'm using peppermints of some kind. And what's that?

They're the melty ones, Sam says. And I think they're like gluten-free and everything.

All the things, they're basically just sugar. So if you're not allergic to sugar,

you should be able to eat them.

And I will give preference to under 18s for my question and answer time.

But, you know, adults, you can jump in there too.

First question is a pretty easy one. Who is the son of man? Raise your hands.

Jesus. Awesome. Here you go.

So how do we know that the son of man is Jesus? What are some bits of evidence that we have?

He gives miracles. Okay.

Oh, you can have candy for that. It's not what I had in mind.

Okay, the Bible says it. How does the Bible say it?

You don't know? All right, whatever. Here you go.

So, yeah, a son of man is a way to say a human one. So you're right about that.

And I was actually going to mention that in a minute. So I'll give you candy.

I have lots of candy, so I can afford to be generous.

There we go. Double candy. Jesus refers to himself as the son of man more often

than any other title that's used that he uses for himself, right?

Elsewhere in the New Testament, he's largely referred to as the Christ,

which is another word for the Hebrew word, the Messiah, but he himself refers

to himself as the son of man more than any other title.

Job description for the son of man given in Daniel 7, and he kind of matches

the description among other things.

He rides in a cloud to be seated at the right hand of the Ancient of Days,

which is something that we see describing Jesus in the Gospels as well.

Jesus is the son of man referred to in Daniel 7.

As he refers to himself, he matches the job description. He rides on the cloud.

I just want to establish that because it's basic. kind of foundational thing

for what we're going to talk about.

Zach talked about this some last week as well. And like Cole mentioned,

son of man is in one sense, just a way of saying a human one. Okay.

So son of is like of the kind of, it's like a set Hebrew phrase for of the kind of.

So an example of a verse where son of man doesn't refer to Jesus is like numbers 23, 19.

It says, God is not a man that he should lie or son of man that he should change his mind.

So there, that's just an example of how son of man can often be used just to mean a human person,

you know but in this case this son of man is obviously special because he's

going to go be seated at the right hand of God and to rule with him so I'm gonna

jump around a bit with my questions but I'm going somewhere with it so just

trust me first next question is

what does God first say that he's creating man to do way back in Genesis,

To steward it. Okay. Yeah. That's pretty, pretty close. Steward is a good word.

Grownups, anybody? To rule.

So yeah, Genesis 1, 26, God says,

let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness and let them rule

over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock

and over all the earth and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.

So what kind of rulership is this talking about?

That wasn't a question for Candy, unless somebody has a, you know, answer.

No, I would say that we're not being called here to lord it over the animals, right?

To, you know, beat our dogs and throw darts at the elephants and put tigers in little cages.

And I don't know if anyone actually throws darts at elephants. That's just an example.

We're not supposed to rule them with an iron fist, right? And the reason I say this, it is important.

It's also not, well, yeah, I'll get to that. It's also not about like eating

meat, although perhaps that sort of flows out of it later. But really in this

passage, everyone's a vegetarian, right?

Later in the passage, it talks about the food for the animals and the humans.

The humans are given the plants yielding seed and the fruits from the trees

yielding seed, whereas the animals are given every green plant for food.

And I actually think that implies that the humans in their rulership have a

responsibility to provide for all the animals as well and to rule benevolently,

to steward, as Cole said. I think stewardship is an excellent word.

Another reason I don't think it's an iron-fisted rule. I just want to,

I'm getting somewhere with this. Go ahead and go to Deuteronomy 17, 16 through 20.

This is talking about, this is instructions for the kings of Israel. Okay.

And so this is before they even had kings, but God provided for that when he gave them the law.

So it says, in any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself,

nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses.

Since the Lord has said to you, you shall never again return that way.

And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not

turn away, nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.

Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom,

that he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence

of the Levitical priests.

And it shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life so that

he will learn to fear the Lord his God by carefully following all the words

of this law and these statutes so that his heart will not be haughty toward

his countrymen and that he will not turn away from the commandment to the right

or the left so that he and his sons may live long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.

This passage again shows this king is supposed to be a Bible nerd,

basically a Bible scholar, right?

And, and study the word, but also he's not supposed to gather horses for himself.

And this isn't because God has something against people with a lot of horses.

Horses at this time, when this was written, we're kind of like the height or,

you know, one of the main representations of military technology and military power.

So to gather horses to yourself is actually to amass a great and powerful army.

Okay. So he's not supposed to be a, you know, conquering war-making king who

gathers a big standing army and takes over other countries.

He's not supposed to gather a bunch of women to himself and, you know, do that.

He's not supposed to, he's not supposed to gather riches to himself.

He's not supposed to be running towards these human idols really of money, sex, and power, right?

He's, he's supposed to be a scholar of the word and to rule benevolently.

And then of course we have the example of Jesus who speaking of the son of man

said, the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Or in another passage says the greatest among you shall be your servant.

So I wanna highlight the style of rulership and we'll come back to this in a

little bit but it's gonna be important later as we examine the son of man's

victory over the beast that we read about just now in Daniel seven.

So God makes the humans to rule.

How does that go? Poorly. You didn't raise your hand, but do you want a candy? Okay.

It goes pretty bad, right? Right away, basically, at least in the storyline,

right away, a snake convinces them that they should rule on their own terms, right?

Or the terms that he convinces them are in their favor, that they should see

what is good in their own eyes, this fruit, right? And take it.

And that they should learn good and evil, or they should have the knowledge

of good and evil, right? Without being taught it by God, they should take it for themselves.

And so instead of ruling the beasts, they're tricked by a beast.

And this beastly way of ruling, if you will, is introduced to humanity.

And Genesis 3.15 is a passage from the, or as part of the passage that we typically

call the curse that comes after Adam and Eve take the fruit.

Sure, you're probably all familiar with it, but part of what God says to the

snake is, I will make enemies of you and the woman and of your offspring and her descendant.

He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel.

So God's giving this promise of an eventual descendant of the woman who will

crush the head of the snake, right?

Or it says, this translation says bruise. Others say crush.

I think also strike is sometimes used. And they all basically kind of give this

picture of like, he stomps the head, but he gets bitten in the process. Right.

And if you've ever, you know, So if you lived in a place with poisonous snakes,

which we technically do, but if that was something that was maybe a more everyday

part of your life, you might recognize this as like, oh, getting bitten in the

heel by a snake. That's like a way people die.

So there's maybe a hint of his, of his death in this, in this promise as well.

But this pattern starts over the course of scripture now where the seed of the

snake, which is like, you could look at it kind of like evil in humanity is,

is fighting against the seed of the woman, which fighting against humanity itself really.

And people start to rule in the way of the snake or the way of the beast.

They see what they want and they take it. And pretty quickly this turns into

not just, you know, picking fruit that they're not supposed to pick,

but doing what they have to do to take from other people what they want from them. Right.

And so kids, how quickly does somebody kill somebody after,

after this passage with Cain and Abel, right, right away, that basically the

next chapter Cain kills his brother Abel because of jealousy,

because he doesn't get what he wants.

And, and that, that pattern just continues. And, you know, Cain's,

Cain's descendants, It's one in particular, Lamech, is even worse than Cain.

He brags about killing multiple people. He takes multiple wives.

So even though this is before Deuteronomy, we're starting to see this way of

kings of killing and taking what you want, women and countries and riches.

And you start to wonder, when is this snake crusher going to come?

And you realize God would be entirely justified in destroying the whole human race.

And starting over and he almost does that right pretty quickly after this uh

we have we have an a near destruction of the human race what's what's that kids the flood yeah exactly.

God destroys almost the whole human race, but he is completely committed to his promise.

He has decided that he's going to rule the world with a beautiful benevolent

rulership and he's going to do it through humans.

And so he preserves Noah and his family through the flood.

And he's made this other promise too, that he's going to send a snake crusher.

He's going to send a seed of the woman who's going to stomp out the snake.

And so if you were, we all are of course, probably familiar with these stories from childhood, right?

And so we're, we're, we're incredibly blessed to, I think most of us have,

have grown up with the stories about Jesus and known,

you know, for a long time who Jesus was and, you know, his, the message of,

of salvation that we get through him.

But if you were reading this for the first time and just starting from Genesis,

going all the way through, you might start to think like, who's this,

who's the snake crusher going to be?

Right. And so you, you start to encounter characters that you're like,

oh, maybe, right. Maybe Noah, and Noah doesn't cut it.

He gets drunk and something weird happens in a tent.

And so we'll move on. But how about Moses?

God uses him to do these great deeds, right? He leads the people out of Israel.

He performs these signs and wonders that God empowers him to do.

God parts the Red Sea by Moses' arm or staff, arm, I think.

But so is Moses the one?

No. Okay. Why not? What, what's wrong with Moses?

Yeah. But he's supposed to speak to it, right? He murders a dude,

right? Yeah. That's not cool.

So yeah, you're right though. The things I was particularly thinking of are

Moses strikes the rock when God tells him to speak to it.

And Moses, Moses murders a guy, which, you know, are both not, not great.

Murdering the guy is kind of a beastly way of, of trying to accomplish what

God actually did want him to accomplish, which was to free the people of Israel, right?

Okay. So it's not Moses. What about David?

David gets a lot of screen time and he's like, but okay, hear me out though.

He's God's anointed King of Israel.

Okay. Israel like really prospers under him. He's super righteous in the way

he waits for his taking the kingship.

He doesn't kill Saul when he has the opportunity, which he could have totally done.

Pretty cool. What does he do?

Well, yeah, you're right. He didn't take too many wives. That's one. What about what else?

Not just essentially he just straight up committed adultery yeah

yeah and then he murders the

girl's husband right yeah really woman's husband okay well we don't know that

for sure but you're probably right yeah anyway yeah really really uncool beastly

way of ruling right murder taking women for yourself seeing what is good seeing

something that's beautiful which that passage uses that same,

phrasing that, you know, Eve saw that the fruit was, was good to see and took it.

Well, David sees that Bathsheba is, you know, pleasing to the site and takes her. Right.

And so, so he's doing that same, he's falling in that same pattern.

Okay. So David doesn't make it. How about Solomon? He is the richest man, the wisest man.

He builds the temple, a place for God's, for God to dwell among his people.

Does he do something wrong? Lots of wives.

Multiple wives thing is really killing these kings. I tell you what,

anything else that he does wrong?

His wives make him turn away from God and not, okay, go ahead.

Yeah. He erects idols for those other gods. Here you go.

And not only that, but he gathers a bunch of chariots and horses.

He actually does basically the exact inverse of that passage in Deuteronomy that we read.

He builds this huge army and chariots were, you know, like military technology had evolved.

And so now chariots are, you know, better than just horses. So he has a bunch

of chariots. He has horses for the chariots. He has stables for the chariots.

And he amasses a bunch of wealth for himself, which it also mentions in Deuteronomy.

And of course, lots of wives and concubines.

And he worships other gods. He really screws it up.

So Solomon doesn't do so great. Then there's a whole line of kings after him.

Some are better, some are worse. None of them cut it.

So we're now in Daniel. Daniel is actually pretty awesome.

He doesn't eat the king's food.

He presumably doesn't bow down to the big idol that the king erects.

It doesn't really talk about him in that passage, but I think it's safe to say

he didn't worship the idol.

He continues to worship the Lord and to pray to him when that's outlawed and

survives a trip to a lion's den because of it.

What about Daniel? And, oh, and we know from the first chapter that he's of the royal line.

He's like, I skipped over a promise, but there was now a promise to David as well, right?

That the line of David will continue into forever, basically.

Anyone think of anything that's wrong with Daniel?

Daniel's an unusual character. He has no apparent moral failings,

but ultimately Daniel gets old, gets sick, gets weak, and dies.

He doesn't overcome death. It's candies for me. No, I'm just kidding.

Daniel's not the snake crusher, even though he's, he's pretty great,

but ultimately he has the same human weaknesses and failings that the rest of us do.

So none of them are the guy. We're left wondering who's going to fulfill God's

Genesis one mandate to rule.

Who's going to crush the snake? Who's going to rule as God intended.

Now that was a rhetorical question. You can ask your mind what that means if you don't know.

So, and Daniel's wondering himself, actually. And so we come back to Daniel

seven and we actually see God's promise repeated in Daniel's night vision.

And I would say kind of with the volume turned way up. So we've gone from a

snake, which admittedly snakes are scary.

I've almost been bitten by a poisonous snake along with Canaan,

Cole, Asher and Jack. Yeah.

It was scary, right boys? Did I scream boys run away? Yeah.

Oh, you were a different time. Okay, so you weren't with me.

Anyway, snakes are terrifying.

These things in Daniel's dream are a lot worse than snakes, right?

We've got like these hybrid monsters coming out of the chaos waters.

They've got like heads that don't match their bodies. So one of them's got multiple heads.

One of them has a horn with eyes, which is weird.

One of them has 10 horns, which is like, I don't know of any creature with 10

horns, but they've got wings, but there are land animals coming from the sea.

They're like hybrid monster creatures right and

we're told these these beasts as

is the term that's used they represent earthly kingdoms that's the the interpretation

is given to us which is super helpful because if i had this dream and didn't

get an interpretation i'd be like whoa that was that was weird right but it's

gone from just like again gone from just taking a fruit and eating it,

to like empires that stomp out whole cities and peoples to get what they want.

And we see these snakes or these beasts slash snakes in a way are devouring and crushing, right?

And so this lust for power of human kingdoms has just gotten way out of control.

But the promise of the snake crusher is also repeated.

And we start to find out more about him. He's going to be the king of an everlasting

dominion which will not pass away, and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

And when the beastly kingdom of the seed of the snake is destroyed,

then the sovereignty, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under

the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the highest one.

His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the empires will serve and

obey him. So in other words, he's going to take that rulership.

He's going to take that seat beside God's throne to rule as humanity was originally intended to rule.

And apparently from this passage, it seems there's going to be other kingdoms under him.

All the empires will serve and obey him. All the greatness of all the kingdoms

will be given to the people of the saints of the highest one.

So humanity, he's going to restore humanity to rule in the way that they were intended to as well.

It's not going to be just him. He's going to bring other people to life with him.

And man, this is an awesome hope. For Daniel, he's seen this vision,

which is scary, but he's also seen the interpretation of the vision in real life.

Like one of these empires, I don't know if Babylon was one of the four that

are mentioned, but that's not really the point.

An empire has come and taken his city and killed his people and taken him into

exile. He has lived this firsthand.

And frankly, it's probably not that unfamiliar to us in the 21st century either.

We still see this happening all around the world if we're paying attention.

And yeah, this hope is amazing. To quote part of the passage from the Advent reading last week.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.

On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.

Daniel's seeing a vision of this dawning of the light and it brings amazing hope.

So I want to switch gears a little bit here and bring it kind of into the Christmas

season, if you will, the Advent season, because I think the way God fulfills

this prophecy is super surprising even to this day.

And so I want to remind you, of how shocking it is, because I think we need

to be reminded of that repeatedly.

So if the sermon was a clickbait article on the internet, it would be titled

something like, good and loving God gives a beautiful world to humanity to steward

and care for, but they trash the place.

You'll be shocked by what God does next. Okay.

So, cause what do we, what do we expect? Like, how do we think that beasts will be overthrown.

Basically, we think like, when we think of an empire being destroyed,

we think of a conquering, right?

We think of an overthrowing, usually by violence.

Andrew Peterson has a song called So Long Moses, where he imagines the Israelites

saying, we want a king on a throne full of power with a sword in his fist, right?

And that's what we're, I think that's what we are also guilty of imagining.

That's exactly what we want a lot of the time we want someone who will by strength

take power over our adversaries and and destroy them right.

And I think a lot of people who claim to be the Messiah, because other people

claim to be the Messiah, claim to be the Christ besides Jesus,

who kind of didn't exactly claim to be the Messiah, but instead use the term son of man.

But he does affirm when other people say he's the Messiah. Just,

I don't want to preach any heresy here accidentally, but other people claim

to be the Messiah and they did just that, right?

They got swords for themselves and their followers and they tried to overthrow

Rome or whoever the ruling empire was.

And even some of the disciples seem to expect that based off of what we read

in the gospels, based off some of the stories.

But amazingly, God actually doesn't overthrow these beastly kingdoms by violence,

at least not by violence against them.

The son of man comes not as a king on a throne full of power with a sword in

his fist, but he comes and submits himself.

He comes as a baby, which we'll talk about, but he submits himself to the violence of the empire, right?

Of one of these beastly empires that's described in Daniel seven and submits to the point of death.

And he rejects the violence option. He rejects the violent overthrowing and

he could have an army of angels at his command.

In Matthew 26, it talks about when he was taken in the garden of Gethsemane

to go to the cross. And it says, and behold, one of those who were with Jesus

reached and drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear.

Then Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place for all those who

take up the sword will perish by the sword.

Or do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once put at

my disposal more than 12 legions of angels?

How then would the scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must happen this way?

And so he rejects kind of two violent options here. One was Peter trying to take a sword and like,

Peter's plan wasn't good, okay? So, like, even just from common sense,

Jesus probably would have rejected that one.

But, you know, like, Peter was about to get, Peter was about to get stabbed.

But Jesus steps in, fixes the guy's ear, right?

And tells Peter, hey, that's not how we're doing things. But not only does he not go with the, like,

little band of guys with swords against, you know, contingent of Roman soldiers,

he also points out, like, hey, Peter, I could have 12 legions of angels,

which I looked this up, a Roman legion was 6,000 men.

So if we're assuming it's the same kind of legion, that's 72,000 angels,

which I think would have done the trick.

But he didn't take that, right? He renounced that right.

In Philippians 2, 6 through 11, it says about Jesus, as he already existed in

the form of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but emptied himself by taking the form of a bondservant and being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient

to the point of death, death on a cross.

For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which

is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those

who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue will

confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So of course, again, I mentioned this, but we benefit from this hindsight, right?

We know the end of the story and maybe even sometimes we look down a little

bit on the disciples and other people who thought like that he was going to

come, you know, with a sword in his fist because we know what actually happened.

But really like, if you look at their situation, why wouldn't they think that

they knew as well as we do today, God would have been totally within his rights

to just wipe the slate clean, destroy humanity, start over, right?

Humanity was full of violence. That's why he destroyed it in the flood,

but he preserved Noah, right?

That's, he could have done the same thing in the era of the Romans.

I'm sure humanity was full of plenty of violence back then too.

I know it was. But he didn't.

And I don't think our hindsight is really quite 20-20. I think we often,

again, can be just as prone, sometimes more so to believe in the power of redemptive

violence, the myth of redemptive violence, as other people can.

But God was so devoted to his plan to rule the earth through humans that the

son of God, the second person of the Trinity, right?

Who was in the beginning with God, the father, by whom all things were created,

right? In heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

We have all these passages that describe him. he became a man.

He became the son of man, right?

A son of man, a human one. He came as a baby.

And like, imagine in this baby, according to another verse, all the fullness

of God was pleased to dwell.

He came and made himself helpless and innocent. Of course he was innocent.

I guess God is innocent of sin.

Anyway, but he became this helpless baby. he

wasn't even a royal baby right he wasn't he was but

like he wasn't right he wasn't a pampered palace baby born to

a king right he he had a he had

a hard life and i'm sure like none

of us in here probably have had as hard of a life as

jesus had and i'm not even talking about like that

we've got refrigerators and flush toilets and stuff okay he

like immediately became a refugee went to

egypt for a while came back grew up in this

like backwater town in our like roman colony

on the edge of the empire where there was like a bunch of rebels hanging

out because nazareth was kind of like a hub for for rebel uh rebel activity

and then ultimately you know walked around israel for a few years and then died

a humiliating death on a public torture device like a criminal,

and that was counter to all our intuition.

That was his enthronement, right? That's when he said, just prior to that,

from now on, you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the father.

So this, it's the moment, the crucifixion is the moment basically where this

Daniel seven prophecy is fulfilled of the son of man riding on the cloud,

seated at the right hand of the father.

And instead of using violence and force to overcome the violent kingdoms of

the world, the light of the world submitted to their very violence.

And somehow, and this is kind of a mystery, like I can't even explain this really

in words, but somehow by doing that,

the light and life of God overcame the darkness and death, which is why like

by God's, by God's power, by the spirit, how,

however it happened, he rose from the dead. Right.

And the defeat of the, the beast was not by.

A king on a throne full power with a sword in his fist, but by like a submission,

a death of, of a, of an innocent man.

I don't have like more of a wrap up than that. Like now that,

now that man, the son of man, one of us.

And yet, of course, also God is seated on a throne ruling forever with the kingdom

of peace of which there shall be no end.

So I'm gonna finish by reading one of my favorite Psalms and it meditates on

God's design for mankind, but it also looks forward to the arrival of the son

of man who now rules the world. Psalm 8.

Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You have set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because

of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the

son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things

under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Thank you for listening to Mountainside Church's podcast. We hope you found

inspiration and encouragement in today's teaching.

To learn more about our church, stay connected or partner with us, visit mcboon.com.

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