The Humanity of Jesus

We're gonna start a new series.

Uh today it's gonna be a four-week series, and the series is called O the Humanity.

And uh we're gonna talk about humanity in all of its forms.

We're gonna talk about several different areas of humanity, how we are to live and interact with those around us.

And uh and so we're we're talking about what the role of humanity is and and what our calling is, how we can fulfill that calling as humans.

And so uh to start off this week, we're gonna talk about the humanity of Jesus.

And that's the title of the message today.

And uh I just want to pause for just a minute.

The the humanity of Jesus is not something that's talked about often.

Uh dad has shared several messages about it, and they're great.

If you want to go back to the website and look at those, and I'm using those to inform how I go into this series.

Uh, but it's something that we we talk often about the divinity of Jesus, but we don't talk very often about the humanity of Jesus.

And uh and this week uh I uh have been going into this message um feeling uh quite a bit of anxiety, if I could say that, about um taking on such a difficult topic.

And uh so I I want you to hear my heart.

Uh Jesus is fully divine, he is fully God.

Um, but I have uh uh a thing that God has put on my heart about why we need to really understand that he became human for us and what his humanity really means.

And so we always close the the message with prayer.

Uh but for me uh today, I I would I'd really like to start this one with prayer if we could do that.

So at every gathering online, wherever you are at every campus, let's just bow our heads right now.

Lord, we want to know you better today.

God, we need you in our lives.

God, we need to remember and know that you were fully God and fully human.

And Lord, today we want to hear your voice clearly.

So God, let nothing stop us.

God, I pray that uh every word I say would be your words and your words only.

And Lord, I ask that you would give us open hearts to hear and to see exactly what it is that you want to say to us today.

So, Lord, may your blessing be on this moment as we share it together as a church in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Um so as I said, it's a it's a difficult topic.

Um uh today might not be um I in this series, I promise we're gonna have so much fun.

I have so many things that I think are fun and hilarious that we're gonna go through.

Um and today might be a touch more serious, uh, but I want to treat this topic with absolute uh reverence and and be as cautious as I possibly can.

Um, but we're we're gonna start off by talking about what what humanity is for us as people.

Uh my my niece uh on on Hannah's side, uh it's her brother's daughter.

Obviously, that's what a niece is.

Uh, you guys know that.

Um I don't know why I needed to explain that.

Uh and so her name is Ada, and when she was like two or three years old, uh she would call everybody a human.

Uh she was like, she couldn't say it right.

She's like, that's a human, you know.

But the first time it happened, we were riding in the car, she was sitting in the back seat, and she goes, Is that guy over there human?

And everyone just laughed and thought it was cute.

I take everything seriously.

So I was like, Does she see something that we don't see?

Like, so I started asking a lot of questions because I got real curious.

I was like, what about him?

Is not human like?

I would like to know.

Like, uh, what are we talking about here?

Is he extraterrestrial?

Is he angelic?

Like, what's going on with this guy?

And uh then I got a little bit worried, so I asked her a really serious question.

I was like, is everybody in this car a human?

I wouldn't I've been living with these people for a long time.

I would like to know.

And uh so that's what we're gonna talk about is humanity, okay?

Uh and so uh this week we'll talk about the humanity of Jesus.

That's the title of the message.

This week, the humanity of Jesus.

And uh and and so we'll we'll start off by sort of defining humanity.

And uh, you know, I think the temptation is, I want to define it for us because I was talking to dad earlier this week, and uh he said maybe a lot of people might define humanity as being mortal.

Um, but that's not really what the definition of humanity is, because uh when God created man, he created mankind.

That's humanity, mankind, both man and woman.

And uh and that was prior to the fall.

So their nature of being human did not change after the fall.

Death was brought into the world because of their sin, but humanity simply means the form that we are, the type of being that we are.

We are humanity.

And so that's how we define humanity.

And I think oftentimes because of the evil that we see in the world, uh we we tend to blame humanity.

And the reality is that this is the forces of evil working through humanity, but when God created humanity, he called it good.

And evil is what humanity uses to violate the humanity of someone else, and that's how we know it is evil.

And so oftentimes we get into the pattern of thinking, well, humanity is evil, and this world is evil.

So we say things, uh, you know, misreading passages of scripture, thinking the world as if all of this is wrong or bad or evil.

God's original intention and design for us is good, and we, through the power of the Holy Spirit and through the death and resurrection of Jesus, have the opportunity to step into the original design for humanity.

So the the the I I'm gonna put I'm gonna use points.

Um, this is solely to make my dad proud of me.

He he he's so good at making points, and I sent them to him.

I was like, these are bad, help me, I don't know how to do points.

But I think of it as a story.

So as we go through the points, I want you to think of it.

This is as act one, because like I do, almost every single time we start a series, I take it back to Genesis because it all starts there.

Uh, and so I think we want to establish what was originally intended for humanity.

So this is act one, and the first point that we're gonna look at is our humanity, okay?

So I'm gonna go to a scripture in just a moment, but I want you to notice how many times the author wants us to remember that we are made in the image of God.

Just notice how many times the author reminds us that we are made in the image of God.

This is Genesis chapter one, starting in verse 26.

It says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

We were created in his image.

And I used to wonder what that meant.

I used to wonder if, like, if we could see God, would he have the same shape or form as us?

Like, does that mean that he carries some some type of similar bodily form to us?

I I've read that people believe that being made in his image uh refers to consciousness, that uh no other being in creation has consciousness.

And so because we are aware of ourselves and aware of being here for a purpose, then that's what makes us like God.

But you whenever you read a passage like that, you have to stop for just a moment and think about what is it saying and why is it saying it?

And Genesis 1, 26 and 27 pairs these two things together, which says that we are made in his image and that therefore we have dominion over the earth.

We have dominion over the earth.

So in the in the Old Testament times, it there's uh there was a common practice that would happen and uh a couple different things that that would take place.

For one, uh kings would often put a statue of their image, their likeness, into a statue, and they would place it at different intervals within their kingdom, or maybe at the border of their kingdom, so that when you saw that statue, you would know you were entering into the kingdom that was reigned and ruled by the person who that statue bore his image.

Okay?

So as you enter that place, you knew someone owns and has dominion over this place, and who?

It is the person whose image I can see in those statues.

That's one of the ways that they would do that.

Same thing with the gods, Greek gods, they would have bronze or gold statues, statues made out of different substances, and the statue would carry the image of God, and when people would bow down to it, they knew that they weren't actually worshiping the God right in front of them, that in seeing the image, they were then worshiping the God that they intended to worship.

In fact, you can even, that extended on even into Jesus' day, where uh uh the the emperor of the time, uh Augustus, he was, his name was, he would all he was often called Son of God.

His father, even though he was adopted, uh his father was Julius Caesar, and he carried a sort of divine status with the people.

And so uh as then Augustus took over, they would call him the son of God.

The son of God would simply mean that what was happening was that this person bore the likeness.

The son bears the likeness of his father, and so they bear the likeness and they act on the behalf of the father.

So when Genesis says that we bear his image, and that therefore we have dominion over the earth, what he was saying is, I'm putting my image into man, and I'm giving you the authority to have dominion over the earth.

Treat it well.

Do the right thing in this.

This is your responsibility is to bear my image well, to lord over this world that I have given you, and to do it in the right way.

That's what we were called to do, that we were called to share in the dominion that God has, and as we shared in that, that would be the way that we would bear his image.

And so, how how will we do that?

We will uh be image bearers, we will have dominion over the land, not in the way that we would rule it by our own authority, but that we would rule it under the authority of God, and that's how we would bear his image.

So he gave us that image, and he allows us to share in his reigning and his ruling over the earth.

So, sin came into the world, and that's why Jesus ended up coming into his own creation, and sin came into the world, and so if we say, well, our intention then was to bear the image of God, we should ask ourselves and and try to define what sin is.

The Greek word for sin is hamartia.

Hamartia means uh missing the mark.

Okay, well, if sin is missing the mark, what is the mark?

The mark is to bear the image of God.

Every time we step outside of the rule or the reign of God, we fail to bear his image.

We take authority out of his hands and put it into our own hands.

For instance, that's exactly what happened with Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve sinned because they were supposed to bear the image of God and to act on his behalf and reign and rule over the world.

And not only did they do something that they weren't supposed to do, they did something that he specifically told them not to do.

And worse than that is that the thing that they did was they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which meant that they took the authority out of God's hands and placed it into their own hands.

That is how they failed to bear the image of God.

They removed authority from God, unplugged themselves from the tree of life, and plugged themselves into the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And here's how crafty Satan is He says, If you eat of this tree, you will not surely die.

What does he say?

You will be like God.

But Genesis 1 already told us that they were like God.

They were born in his likeness.

And so he tempted them with something that they already had.

They already bore the image of God, they were already in his likeness, and Satan comes along and says, Don't you want to be like God?

They were sharing in his reign and rule, and the only thing that interrupted that, and the only thing that broke that, is that they stepped outside of that and failed to bear the image of God.

Humankind was designed to be that image-bearer, and we must remember that humanity is good.

We often think of our humanity as something bad or negative, but this is the way that God created us, and we should not resent our weaknesses, but instead rely on the power of the Holy Spirit and operate only under the authority of God.

So uh God thinks pretty highly of humans.

I don't know if you know that or not, but I'm gonna read you a passage in Psalm uh eight.

It starts in verse four.

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.

That is glory and honor is typically reserved in description of God, but we have been crowned with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands and put all things under his feet.

That's how highly God thought of his partnership with us on this earth.

That's the role that we ought to carry.

And we're tempted maybe in this to think of Psalm 8 as not even describing us.

We're tempted maybe to think that this somehow isn't speaking about man, but that when it says man, literally means mankind, man and woman, humanity.

This is what God chose.

Who who is man?

Who is humanity for God to think so highly that he would create this amazing creation and then say, I trust you to take care of it.

I trust you to reign and rule, but with my heart and my uh my my passion behind these things.

And so we might also see the word son of man in that verse and think that that's talking about Jesus, but it's not talking about Jesus.

That's a New Testament term.

And when Jesus is referred to as Son of Man, it is simply referring to his humanity.

So Psalm 8 clearly describes what the role of humanity is, that we would continue to be the image bearers of God's goodness, that we would continue to walk that out.

And so it says we've been given dominion over the work of God's hands.

That takes us right back to Genesis.

We were given that dominion.

So there is nothing greater in all of creation than humanity.

There's a level of respect that we ought to have for the people sitting around us.

There's a level of respect that we ought to have for the world around us that maybe doesn't see things the way that we do or or understand or have the same beliefs that we have.

There's nothing greater in all of creation than humanity.

And this is the respect that we ought to have because we bear his image.

So this is the role that man is supposed to have.

Uh we fail in this, and so Jesus comes along.

So the second act of this story is that we want to talk about Jesus' humanity.

I'm gonna be so careful with this topic, but Jesus was fully God and fully man.

Uh nearly every uh conservative Christian group or church or anybody, this is the way that we would describe it, is that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

So hear me out.

Jesus is fully God.

All right, let's just acknowledge that.

Jesus is fully God.

He is fully God, all right?

Did you hear me?

He is fully God, okay?

He is fully God, all right?

But he is also fully human.

And it might it might make us feel a little bit uncomfortable to think about that for a moment because we spend a lot of time defending his divinity.

We I've got a group of uh 30 or 40 people that we just uh get together and start talking about the series months before we get here, and and and and it really develops a burden for these things.

And and my friend Nick in the group said something that just really struck us, and he was talking about how Jews often have a hard time, they they have an easy time accepting the humanity of Jesus, but a really hard time accepting the divinity of Jesus.

But we as Christians, always defending his divinity, seem to have an easy time accepting his divinity, but a really hard time accepting his humanity.

A really hard time just seeing him as a human.

And there's a reason.

You might be thinking, like, but yeah, why?

Why would this matter?

There is a reason why this should become very important to us.

To to stop and think about the humanity of Jesus for for this moment will be crucial for us to understand why he did what he did, why he made the choice to become a human being.

And so this is the accepted belief that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

But the reality is when Jesus walked here on the earth, he was walking in and operating in his humanity, and he had laid down his divinity.

He was fully God and fully man, but he was operating in humanity.

Uh if you're like a programmer or something, it's like he's a supercomputer that has all the data and all the information in the world, and for just a little while he uploaded Windows 98 for a little while, okay?

So he just like he just reverted back for a little while, okay?

That that's what he did, all right?

And I'll show it to you in scripture.

It's found in Philippians chapter 2, verse 5.

Philippians 2:5

It says, You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges.

He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.

When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.

He gave up his divine privileges.

He laid down his divine privileges.

The best way that I've heard this described is that, you know, when you walk up to a faucet, a sink in a faucet, um, a lot of times you have a cold on the right side and hot on the left side.

So both of those, uh though both of those faucets are available to you, okay?

You can turn on the cold side, you can turn on the hot side.

Jesus was able to be fully man and fully God, but he left the God side turned off for the time that he was a human.

That he left that part turned off.

And Jesus uh chose to to leave that and lay down that privilege.

And we can see that pretty clearly, actually.

If you just look at uh the the way that he operated, it's pretty easy to see or see that there was a dramatic difference between the way that he walked on the earth before the crucifixion and then after the resurrection.

You'll remember that before the crucifixion, of course, he did unbelievable miracles, and he did those through the power of the Holy Spirit.

When he was baptized, the Holy Spirit came down upon him and he operated in the power of the Holy Spirit, and he did amazing miracles, and he walked on water, and he did all of these things.

But after he was in his resurrected body, then we see him showing up on one side of town, then on the other side of town, we see him popping through walls, but see, he still has this human form, but he he eats with the disciples.

We see that he can he's operating on a completely different level after the resurrection.

That is because he had laid down his divinity uh so that he could come to the world.

So uh I I I'm not gonna spend very much time on this at all.

I I this is in no way intended to degrade his divinity, but just for a moment.

There are things that are common to all human beings, okay?

When Jesus was a baby, he had dirty diapers, okay?

All right, no disrespect.

He just did.

He he just became a man, all right?

When he was a toddler, he drove his parents crazy.

He did.

He was he was probably running around, he had a lot of energy, he had all the human things that are attributes there within that.

Uh when he was a teenager, um his parents lost him once.

I mean, who hasn't lost a teenager every once in a while?

It happens, you know?

That that happens sometimes.

When he was a teenager, he went through hormonal changes.

And that part's just for me, because I have teenagers and I needed to hear that today, okay?

He went through some hormonal changes, okay?

That happens to teenagers, okay?

He went through all of these things.

The Bible even talks about him growing in wisdom and stature.

He had laid down his divinity so that he could become a man.

And he was tempted.

He was tempted in every way that we are.

So for men and women uh who have, for all of us who have felt temptation, if you've felt even sexual temptation, remember, Jesus was tempted in every way that we are tempted.

He understands the temptation that we feel.

He didn't sin, but he was tempted in all of these things.

One of the best places to see this is in Hebrews chapter 4, starting in verse 15, it says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.

Please remember this part.

It's going to become very important in just a moment.

Because he was tempted in just the way that we are, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

That we may draw closer to him because he understands our temptation.

I know that it might be difficult to think about that Jesus was tempted in this way, but what it should be is extremely an over.

Overwhelmingly comfortable to us.

It should be comforting.

It should be comforting that our King put himself through the types of struggles that we feel every day so that he could understand, so that he could sympathize with what we go through.

Here's another passage that lays this out for us.

Hebrews chapter 2, starting in verse 17.

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

He was tempted and it causes him to be merciful towards us.

Part of God's mercy towards us is that he knows and understands what we go through.

If you're being judgmental towards someone and having a hard time having mercy on them, you should stop and remember your temptation.

Even if you get self-righteous and go, at least I've never done that.

Don't dare say I've never been tempted of doing that.

Because Jesus, in his temptation, then is able to be merciful upon us.

And if we ever have trouble being merciful to those around us, let us remember that we also are tempted.

Those things are important.

This is, we have also been tempted.

And so uh we we we talk about Jesus having never sinned, and and and and that's absolutely true.

He did not sin, he never failed to bear the image of God.

But remember to the to many of the Jewish people, especially the Pharisees, who ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they saw Jesus break what they believed were the things that they were supposed to follow all the time.

They he was accused of being a drunkard, he was violating the Sabbath, he was doing a lot of things that the Jewish people would have called a sin.

And so I want you to stop and just think for a minute.

We are called to bear the image of God.

But if Jesus was walking the earth today, it's possible that many of us, including myself, would look at the way that he acts or the things that he does, and we would say, that's not the type of Christian that I think he should be.

It's possible that I would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that I would continue to decide for myself what is right and wrong, and that I would see Jesus in person in the flesh, and that I would judge him too, just like I do those around me.

That I would have this temptation to be like, that's not the way Jesus is supposed to act, just like the Pharisees did.

That is the curse of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and yet Jesus comes and he brings life and he brings it more abundantly than we have ever had before.

And so that is uh uh what we we deal with in this case.

He never missed the mark because he never failed to bear the image of God.

But many people around him would have accused him of all of those things.

So we must remember our job, our goal is to bear the image of God.

I'll tell you a story really quick.

When I was a kid, I do not fault um my my church for doing this.

This was this was in, it was Hannah, my wife, she lived in Amarillo.

They did it at her church.

This was something that was happening, and so maybe some of you have heard of this.

Anybody ever heard of Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames?

Anybody ever heard of that?

Uh-huh.

You remember, yeah.

Anybody anybody get saved at Heaven's Gates, Hells Flames?

Anybody?

So, I mean, but there's some, I'm sure.

All right.

I would thought more people would be like, yeah.

Uh I got saved every year at Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames.

I was so convicted.

Uh, and so it was this play that churches would do, and uh, and and it was the model of evangelism for that time.

But I was in my small group, and some of the people in my small group have been a part of uh uh of the church since we we we were all there since we were kids.

I started going there when I was two years old.

Uh there was a Christian school attached to it, and I went there from kindergarten until I graduated high school.

So we've been friends for a really long time, and we got to talking about Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames, and uh in in that play, there's uh there's the devil, and he he like he like drags people to hell and stuff like that.

I was 14 and I played the devil.

I don't know what they thought about me at that time, but uh I was typecast, I think.

And so uh I played the devil and we were just talking about all these things, and we were like, remember Jim Morton, man?

He we love Jim Morton, he was his pastor at Shady Grove, and we love Jim Morton, he's he's got this big deep voice, you know.

And we were just thinking about the the play, the scenario that played out was that Jim Morton was a construction worker and he's eating lunch, he's got a little lunch pail, and he's eating lunch with his friend, and his friend's trying to witness to him, and he was like, Man, yeah, you know, sometimes I I uh socially have a little uh drink of alcohol, and uh, you know, sometimes that's what I do.

Well, then the building they were working on collapses and they died.

And he went straight to hell for drinking socially.

That's the that's what was happening in that.

That's the temptation that we have as Christians to be like, uh-uh, that's wrong.

Straight to hell, uh-uh.

That's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that's what the Pharisees were doing to Jesus.

Uh-uh, you can't do that.

You can't do that.

And Jesus operated in his humanity without violating the image of God.

That is what sin truly is.

So he perfectly reflected the image of God.

And so we can uh uh say, we can see Jesus over and over in scripture say that he does nothing without the Father telling him.

He was operating under that authority of God.

That's how he operated here on earth, that's how he lived.

So I want to tell you something that's really important.

Jesus was the most human of any human that ever lived.

Jesus was the most human of any human that ever lived.

And the reason is because the definition of being human is to bear the likeness of God.

Jesus fulfilled exactly every single thing that he was supposed to fulfill as a human.

Because every time someone looked at him, they saw the image of God.

And everything that he did was under the authority of God, and in bearing the image of God perfectly, he made a way for us to be connected to God.

He builds this path.

He is the mediator.

Jesus is the ultimate human and the standard by which we should strive for in every single thing that we do.

The third act is Jesus' suffering.

We need to remember that Jesus suffered uh immensely.

He endured an overwhelmingly and exceedingly painful beating before uh and torture before being nailed to the cross.

He suffered through the pain of being human and endured all things even unto death.

And the truth of being human is that we will all experience suffering.

But because he was tempted and suffered, he can now be our mediator.

We can't go directly to God.

You'll remember that even in the Old Testament, they couldn't even look at the face of God or else it would kill them.

And so now we get to go to God through Jesus because he became our mediator.

It says this in 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 5.

1 Timothy 2:5

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men.

And what does it say?

The man, Christ Jesus.

Christ Jesus can be our mediator because he became the man.

Because he became human.

That is how Jesus becomes our mediator.

So through his suffering, he became the man.

It's so important to distinguish that because it is only because he became a man and walked out humanity perfectly, and only for that reason uh can we have our restitution with God through the mediator, Jesus Christ.

Jesus never scorned a sinner, but instead offered grace at all times and showed us how to properly live in humanity by bearing the image of God.

And this means that when you mess up or when you're suffering, when you're going through a difficult time, you should run to Jesus.

He's your only mediator.

Ever felt lonely?

Jesus was the most lonely of all humans to have ever lived.

Jesus was the loneliest human being to have ever lived.

No one else loved every single person unconditionally and was continually turned their back towards over and over again.

Even the closest of his followers, so many of them, turned their back on him at the moment of his death.

Ever felt anxiety or fear or sadness, grief, loss, emotionally hurt, physically hurt.

Jesus understands all these things.

Charles Spurgeon said that if you have the choice, it's a weird scenario, but just listen, listen to it for just a minute.

If you ever had the choice to choose whether you'd rather have an angel live in your house or you'd rather have Jesus live in your house, he says you should immediately, without delay, choose Jesus because an angel could resent you because of his unsuffering.

He doesn't know what you go through.

He could begin to resent your weakness because he doesn't know what you go through.

Jesus knows exactly what you go through.

He has felt every feeling that you have ever felt, he has felt every temptation that you have ever felt, and he has suffered far more than any of us will ever suffer in our lives.

And because of that, he is the only person that should live in your house.

If you have a choice, go to Jesus.

And so many times we're afraid to go to him because of that.

It said that King Alexander, whenever the troops would be uh marching on to their next battle, it didn't matter how hot it was outside or how miserable the conditions were, he would never ride on a horse or a carriage.

He would walk with his men, and no matter how long they walked, he walked every single step with them.

And then when they would stop to take a break, because he was the king, they would bring him water first, and he turned it down every time.

And he said, As long as my men are thirsty, I will not have a drink yet.

And it was because of that that they had the strength to go into battle.

We're still in a battle.

But because Jesus walked every walk that we've ever walked and stepped in every footstep that we've ever stepped, we are able to have strength to face the things that we must face in life.

And it is only because he has experienced what we have experienced.

This morning I was trying to sum all of this up, and uh I wrote something.

And I wanted to just be able to tell it to you, but uh I I wrote it out, and I don't know, I don't know, I if I was less human, maybe I could just memorize it all, but uh I can't.

So uh forgive me for looking down for just a moment, but please listen to these words carefully.

God just showed up as I was praying, and I felt the compassion of God, and there's some people watching today, there's some people at campuses, there's some people in this room who have experienced immense suffering that need to hear this today.

So listen to the words carefully.

Jesus, the man, Christ Jesus, understands what you are going through today.

If you messed up this week, run to him.

Don't be afraid to go to him.

He is the only one that gets you and understands what you are going through.

He came here and endured all things, including his temptations and his suffering, because he is madly in love with you.

When you've been through many difficult relationships, he finds you at the well, even though you are laying low out of shame, and he tells you, even though the love you experienced in your life has failed you over and over, he loves you unconditionally.

When you have fallen sexually and the world throws you to the ground in judgment, he dispenses with all of your accusers and writes you a love note in the sand.

When you're hurting physically and your health is not good, and you make your way through the crowds to be here today, and you barely touch the hem of his garment, he notices you and he sees you and he heals you.

When you have a disability or a physical limitation, he finds you on the outskirts of the city and he tells you that he came here for you, and he helps you see what he sees.

When you feel short and you're hated by those around you, and you climb the limbs of the tree of life to find him, he sees you there and he calls you out by your name and he says, I'm coming to your house today.

When we suffer, he sees us.

When life is so painful that you feel that you are bound by chains and destined to suffer, and everyone who passes by avoids your pain and looks down on the torment that you feel.

When self-harm feels right to you because you hate who you are and who you have become, and you have no community because you are an outcast, he takes away the spirits that torment you and shows you that they belong in pigs and not in you, and he casts them into the sea.

When death comes to someone you love, he cries with you.

He reminds you that eternal life is found in him.

And when you seem calm on the outside, so no one notices what's really going on, but on the inside, you're churning like the sea, and the storms are rocking your boat and your life.

He calms them with just a word.

And when you don't have enough food to feed your family, he sees your need and multiplies it in your hands.

And when you doubt him, he shows up in your discouragement and shows you the nail marks in his hands and restores your faith.

And even when you hurt him and he suffers on your behalf, he still cries out, Father, forgive him, forgive her, for they know not what they do.

He is for you, his love for you never fails, it never fades, and it is never held from you, no matter what you have done or how much you have suffered.

He's for you.

I think we'd I think we've done a good job of knowing the divinity of Jesus, but if we don't know the humanity of Jesus, then we don't understand what he did for us.

We're gonna do something a little bit different today.

We're gonna go back into a song of worship, but I uh I want to ask you after the song of worship at every campus, and maybe you're at a gathering, maybe you don't have a prayer team at a gathering, you have a community of people that are right around you that are ready to pray for you.

So, in just a moment, we're gonna go back into a song of worship, but I want to ask you, run to Jesus.

If you need prayer today, where two or three are gathered together, he is in their midst.

Run to Jesus today.

So I'm gonna ask you at every campus here, will you stand to your feet?

And then we're gonna bow our heads and close our eyes.

As we sing this song, we're gonna worship not just the divinity of Jesus, but the humanity of Jesus.

We're gonna thank him for the sacrifice that he paid for us.

So bow your heads and close your eyes with me, Lord.

Today we run to you.

God, I can't tell you how thankful I am for the price you paid, and that you know exactly what I'm going through at all times.

I'm not gonna avoid you anymore, God, when I mess up, when I'm in pain.

I'm not gonna only think of you as divine, I'm gonna think of you as someone who has experienced what I'm experiencing, and I'm gonna run to you.

I know you stand at the door and knock.

You passionately pursue me everywhere I go.

And so, Lord, in my suffering and in my pain today, I run to you.

Lord, we run to you today.

And Lord, I ask and I pray that every single person who needs prayer today, who needs an experience with you, would run to you today and receive prayer.

And as we sing this song together, Lord, may we see your divinity and your humanity.

And God, we worship you today.

We pray all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.