this is David Parson's Ministry, and you are listening to Jesus: the seven wonders of his story. This talk in 10 parts covers what the Bible says about Jesus, who he was, why he came, and what we can expect when he returns. Based on the middle section of the Apostles' Creed, David covers the fundamental facts on which the Christian faith is based. Part one: his conception, the first wonder of his story. The real miracle of our Lord's birth occurred 9 months earlier, and ironically, it therefore means that his conception happened during December, and probably December 25th. So, ironically, we may be celebrating his birth when we should be celebrating his conception, because that's what really began it all. And I want to ask first, the question: what exactly happened in Mary's womb? Of course, no one could see it happening, but we now know so much about the beginning of life. We have so many facts available on our computers that we can begin to ask, what really happened in Mary's body at the time of

the conception was it a miracle. I Define a miracle as a natural event with a supernatural cause. That covers every miracle I know a natural event with a supernatural cause so let's ask could there have been could there be a natural virgin birth and the answer is yes. I was discussing this with uh a professor of Gynecology in London University and he said yes there could be. We know that there are instances in nature of a virgin birth among plants and even animals. One animal is the now what's the big dragon called yes that dragon has had has had virgin births and what happens in such a to birth is that the female egg is somehow stimulated to begin dividing without being fertilized and it just goes UND dividing until it's produced another individual that's it. I've got it written down kodo dragons and uh they have virgin birds and this professor of Gynecology told me also that he knew of six human cases which were possible virgin births where in a woman's body the

female o oam had spontaneously without fertilization begun to divide, and then the professor told me a most interesting thing. He said, But in every case, it produced a baby girl, and that's because every egg in a woman's body is female. It has to be the male who changes that female egg into a male fetus. And so, even though it is possible that other women have had virgin births, it cannot ever produce a little boy, whereas Mary had a little boy. That puts it in a category by itself. It is absolutely impossible for a female to produce male offspring by herself, and therefore, Mary does stand unique. God made her pregnant, and she produced a boy. So, what exactly did God do? There are three possibilities which we now know from our amazing new knowledge of the beginnings of life, and they are these. First, that God created within her womb a fully fertilized egg from nothing. And God creates from nothing; he could easily do that. Did he create a complete fertilized egg in her? If that was what he did, then Mary

would not be the mother of Jesus. She would be a surrogate mother, no more than an incubator nursing that created egg. It would mean that Christ was not fully hers. It would mean that he was not son of David, not son of Abraham, not son of Adam, but a totally new creature. And yet some people I meet believe that. But it would make Jesus more Divine than human, so I'm ruling that out. The second possibility is that God took one of Mary's eggs and did some genetic modification to it. And this theory says that all he needed to do was change the ex chromosome into a y chromosome, and that would have produced a baby boy. And it's a very minor modification that was needed. However, if that's what he did, there is now too much of Mary in the baby. The baby is virtually a clone of his mother, except that his sex is different. Jesus would be an identical twin of Mary and would be more human than Divine, more son of man than Son of God. So I rule that out as

well, we're left with the only remaining possibility that God created within her womb a male sperm with all the DNA of the Son of God in it, and that that fertilized Mary's egg and produced Jesus. In which case, Jesus would be equally Divine and human. He would be son of Mary and Son of God, son of man as well as Son of God, having a human mother and a Divine father, both fully both. And it's interesting that over the centuries of church history, most heresies have denied one or the other of those facts, or both. There is one heresy called docetism that believed Jesus was fully Divine but not fully human, only appeared as a human. And the very word docetism means a mask or to appear to be something you're not. And so there are those who feel that he's fully Divine and only appeared to be human. At the opposite side, there is another Christian heresy which believes he was fully human but never fully Divine. But it seems to me that right

from the very beginning, the way he was conceived meant that Jesus was both fully human and fully Divine. And that's the full Christian truth. As a human, he had a beginning. As a Divine person, he had no beginning. Now, I know this is getting into quite deep thinking, but this is my attempt to face the facts and to see what actually happened. It means that Jesus was both Creator and creature. And if you deny either of those two truths, you miss the essential truth about our Lord Jesus Christ. He was the creator at the beginning and became a creature within his own creation. What an amazing thing to say! Before he ever made chairs and tables as a carpenter, he made the trees from which he got the wood. Before he ever preached The Sermon on the Mount, he made the mount so that he could have a Pulpit. I'm just spelling it out so that you begin to realize what an incredible claim we are making for the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Creator and creature. Therefore, we have a problem when we want to tell someone the story.

of Jesus. Where on Earth are we going to begin? Mark's gospel begins his story when Jesus was 30 years old with his baptism. Then came Matthew, who traced the story of Jesus back to Abraham and said he was the son of Abraham. That's on the very first page of Matthew. Then came Luke, and he said to tell the story of Jesus, you've got to begin with Adam. He traced the story back to Adam. And finally, Along Came John and said, You're all wrong. I'm going to begin at the proper beginning. In the beginning, he was already there. So that we've got a problem telling people the story of Jesus. It's right not to overload people with the whole truth at the beginning. And you can tell the story of Jesus from his birth onwards or from his maturity onwards from 30 onwards. But the real story of Jesus begins right back. And John is consciously echoing Genesis: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And he picks out that phrase in the beginning, and he doesn't say

in the beginning, he was. But in the beginning, he was already there. Our brains can't go back beyond the beginning of the universe. We just can't imagine nothing. And so, our brains can only go back to the beginning. And all the big debate about the Big Bang is about the beginning. No scientists are discussing beyond that because our brain won't take in when there was nothing, not even space. And so, we have to go back to the beginning of the universe, and there he is already there. Now, when John wrote his gospel after knowing Jesus for 60 years, he had a problem. What do you call Jesus before he was born? And he thought up a brilliant answer. And he called him in Greek ho logos. Now, logos, among other meanings, means word. And so, he called him the word. In the beginning was the word hos and the Word was with God face to face and the Word was God. It's no wonder that Jehovah's Witnesses have had to change that wording in their Bible. Did you know they

had they can't accept that he was God, and in fact, Jehovah's Witnesses are just one group that deny the full Divinity of Jesus. They believe he was a creature of God, never the Creator, and that heresy has come up in many different sects and groups. But we know better now. What does it mean to call Jesus the Word? He was only called Jesus after he began a son of man. So what should you call him before? Now John wrote his gospel in a town called Ephesus, and Ephesus still is there. It's one of the most impressive ruins in Western Turkey. You must go and see it someday. There's still a magnificent public library, and they are now excavating the wealthiest homes on the hillside around it. It's a marvelous place to visit. And when we went, I was making a film about the seven churches of Asia, and I got the cameraman to hire a small aeroplane to take film of Ephesus from above. And he duly took off and was flying over the ruins of Ephesus.

there was nobody there except one person, a lady, and around the edge of Ephesus were men with guns all the way around. It was Hillary Clinton, and all guards were closing devices off to everybody. And my cameraman flew down over that with people ready with their guns, but we got, he got some good shots. But the one thing I wanted to see in Ephesus was the Tomb of the Apostle John. It's there, it's genuine, and I remember standing at the Tomb of the man who wrote the fourth gospel. And I thank the Lord for him and for all he wrote for us, wonderful stuff. He knew Jesus better than ever, and Jesus loved him more than anybody, and so he was in a position to tell us the Inside Story. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us the outside story, but John tells you the Inside Story. It's amazing. I'm sure you've realized that John is so different from the other three gospels. Well, there he is. So he's writing, In the beginning was the word, holos. Now why did he choose that because

there was in Ephesus a Greek scientist called heroclitus, and he was the man who invented science. He taught his students to observe and to analyze, and he said, Try and find the reason why nature behaves as it does. Study the weather, study the animals, observe everything in nature, and try and find the reason why it all happens as it does. He called the reason why hos, and every branch of science is therefore called anology. Whether it's zoology, psychology, sociology, every branch of science is trying to find the reason why things work as they do. So science itself is dedicated to finding H logos, and in choosing that word as the name of the pre-existent Jesus, John is saying he is the Supreme reason why. Why is it all here? What scientists do is investigate part of the world around us. Astrology looks at the stars, geology looks at the Earth, but science becomes more and more specialized. It knows more and more about less and less. It's homing in on things, but

scientists don't stop to ask, what's the reason why the whole of nature operates as it does? Why is it all here? And what John is saying is, Jesus is why it's all here. God made it all for Jesus. He's going to inherit it all, and we in Christ will inherit it with him. The meek shall inherit the earth. He's the reason why. I love that title for Jesus. But holos was taken from Ephesus across the Mediterranean to a town in Egypt, a city in Egypt called Alexandria, where there was the greatest University after Athens in the ancient world. And that University was basically Greek, based on Greek thinking, Greek philosophy. But to that University, just before Jesus' day, came a Jewish philosopher called Philo. And Philo in Alexandria took up this idea of holos, took up the idea that holos was involved in the creation and tended to make holos the agent of God in creation and said that God created the world by the

word again h came in so the word has a very interesting story. But it's saying that Jesus is the reason why everything happens as it does. He's saying that Jesus was there at creation, but he wasn't called Jesus then. That was only the name given to him for his Supreme task on Earth, which was to deliver his people from their sins. So he should be called Jesus because that means God Saves. In our little village where we live, there's a post office, and the postman is called Mr. Godsave. And we go and see Mr. Godsave the postman regularly. But that little name God save is an exact English equivalent of Yesus in Greek or Yeshua in Hebrew, God Saves. Well, now when he was creating the universe, God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were not aiming to redeem the world from sin. That came later. But when it came, Hogus was a very good word to use. What John is saying is that Jesus existed long before he was born, but he was not known by that name.

that's the name of the Son of Man who did begin at his conception. But it's not the name of the Son of God who was always there. Again, I hope your mind is beginning to burst because these are amazing truths. But they're at the heart of Scripture, and if we once lose the faith that Jesus is fully God and fully man, something will go terribly wrong with our faith. It means, to put it as simply as I can, Jesus was and still is the only human being who chose to be born. I didn't choose to be born. You didn't choose to be born. You didn't choose your parents. You choose the social status into which you would be brought up. You didn't choose any of that. You had no choice in the matter. Whether you like it or not, you have to accept that you were born of your parents, and that was their choice, not yours, whereas Jesus chose to be born. Isn't that amazing? No one ever has done that. Who would ever do it? But he chose to be born, chose his own

parents and chose very humble parents. He could have chosen to be born in the most expensive Palace in the world, but he didn't chose to be born of a working man, a carpenter. The humility of it. Philippians 2 describes his choices as humble all the way. He was equal with God, and he chose to be a man. He was equal to men, but he chose to be a servant. And then the ultimate Choice was he chose to die at the age of 33. Very few people do that deliberately. Even soldiers who know they can be killed, they hope not to be. They don't deliberately go to Afghanistan to be killed. They know they may be, and that's quite a choice. But the ultimate choice to know to choose certain death, that's unusual. And we shall talk about that tomorrow. So Jesus chose to be born. I once tried with my three children to get this across to them, and we had a fish tank of tropical fish, and there was one fish that spoiled the whole tank.

was always attacking the others and eating, and the poor children had to watch this. And I took them to the front of the fish tank, and I said, uh, supposing you could stop all that happening in the fish tank if you were willing to become a fish. And I popped you in there in the fish tank to stop all the fighting, knowing that they might turn on you and kill you. Would you be willing to do that? And my three little children were horrified. Never, but I said, and if you did that and I picked you out of the fish tank and brought you back, you had to stay a fish for the rest of your life. And that horrified them even more. You know, Jesus didn't become a man for 33 years and then go back to being God. He became a man forever. He is still a man. He became one of us for the rest of Eternity. I was talking to a dear Catholic lady, and I said to her, why do you pray to Mary? And she said straight

away because she's human. She understands us. And I said, But Jesus is human. Oh, no, no, he's not. He was human, but he's now Divine again in heaven. I said, No, he's not. He's still a man. And I took her through the letter to the Hebrews, which keeps emphasizing he's a high priest in heaven who understands us because he's still a man who was tempted like we are, and he still remembers that. And he's a man in heaven. We have a human being in heaven at the right hand of God who's running the universe now and who is above all the Angels. That's all it says, all that in Hebrews. And he is therefore described as our Pioneer. He is the first human being ever to get that high and to get above the angels and seat at the right hand of God. And he's only done that so that one day we can do the same. So he's called our Pioneer, our Trailblazer, the one who's gone ahead to

prepare the way for us, and our destiny is above the Angels. That's where God has decided to place us after he's redeemed us. We will sit with Christ in Heavenly places and run the universe with Jesus. That's your future hope. You're getting ready for it. Hope you realize that and that you're beginning to behave like kings, not by lording it over others, but by gaining the dignity and the Majesty of those who are going to reign with Christ. That's a very different thing. Well, now in John chapter 1, in the beginning was the word. That tells us about his eternity. And the Word was face to face with God. That tells us about his deity or rather his personality. The word is literally face to face with God, a personal relationship. So we have his eternity, his personality. The next thing that said, and the Word was God. And that tells us of his deity, his full div. And then a little further down the chapter, the word comes up again. And now John says, and the word became

flesh and tabernacled Among Us or translating it and pitched his tent Among Us. That's the most incredible statement of all. The word was eternal, the word was personal, the word was divine, and the word became flesh. The word for flesh, I'm sure you know, the word carnal, that means fleshly. And Incarnation means to come into flesh. And we must take the reality of that word seriously. What kind of Flesh did Jesus enter? I give you five answers. Number one, it was physical flesh. It wasn't an appearance of Flesh, it was physical flesh. You could touch it, you could feel it, it was flesh like ours. Now the next thing I say, some of you may feel it's irreverent, but I want to make my point. Jesus had to empty his bladder and bowels every day, just like me. We never think about such things, do we? Somehow we like him in a stained glass window above such Earthly things. Jesus adopted our flesh. It would mean that he would be hungry and thirsty

tired, and all the things we experience really get a hold of this. The word became flesh, physical flesh just like us. I don't know if you know the Christmas carol Away in a Manger, you do. There's a line in that that I, I refused to sing. In fact, whenever I'm in worship and they're singing something I don't believe, I don't sing, and I wish everybody else would do the same to all go quiet now and again. It teach the songwriter something and the song Away in a Manger it says no crying he makes. How utterly ridiculous. There's only one way a baby can tell the mother I'm hungry, and that's to cry, and he's not supposed to. And you know all the Christmas cards show Jesus as a six-month-old baby. Have you ever noticed he's always puffed out and fully formed? And when I first saw my first daughter, I was horrified. She looked like a skin rabbit, and I thought did we produce that? But you never see a Christmas

card with a newborn baby lying in the manger. Do you and it would he would have to be washed and fed, and his umbilical cord would have to be tied off, and it's physical flesh that he became one of us, not in a stained glass window, but in real life. Thank God that his son became one of us. Secondly, it wasn't just physical flesh, it was Jewish flesh. And alas, the Western world has forgotten that Jesus was, was, is, and always will be a Jew, and he was circumcised The Eighth Day like every Jewish baby boy. It was Jewish flesh, and the church that forgets that Jesus is a Jew is going to get into difficulties. But I've seen so many Sun Bible School take-home papers for children which seem to think that Jesus is Scandinavian, flowing fair hair, blue eyes, handsome baseball player, you know, these pictures, but he was a Middle Eastern Jew, dark, and we forget that we tend to make Jesus in our image because we like to.

think he's one of us. Well, he was, but it was Jewish flesh. He had a Jewish nose. He was circumcised. Jewish flesh. And therefore, any anti-Semitism in the church is a gigantic denial of his Jewish flesh. I'll let you think that through for yourself. Thirdly, it was male flesh. I'm afraid the popular thing nowadays is to say that he was either bisexual or homosexual, and that's a liable on our Jesus. He was born a man. He remained a man. Pontius Pilate said, Behold the man. And even though feminism may try hard, there is in this country a large Christian Church in which there's a crucifix above the Altar, and the figure of Jesus on the cross is totally naked and totally female. And I'm ashamed to say that that sculpture was produced by Winston Churchill's granddaughter. And some of you may know the church where it is. That's a liable. He was a man. Male flesh. And we can never forget that because God is a

father, not a mother. He is the king of the universe, not a queen. And when Jesus came to show us what God is like, it had to be male flesh. I'm spelling all this out because so often we get the wrong idea. It was physical flesh, it was Jewish flesh, it was male flesh, and it was sexual flesh. He was a normal male. Now, there have been some abuses of that, for example, Scorsese's film The Temptation Of Christ was abusing that, but it's still true. Jesus was a sexual being, bound to me, and I thank him that he had the temptations I have as a male, and that he brought up. He didn't give way to temptation, but he was brought up a boy and then a man, but he knew sexual temptation among other temptations. That's part of belief in the word become flesh. The Da Vinci Code has made out that he married Mary Magdalene, had a family. That's not true, but it's perfectly true that he could have married, and he could.

have had a family, but chose not to, and finally, and this may be the biggest shock to you of all, his flesh was sinful flesh. The Bible says that. Now that's something we can't bear to think. And so, the Catholics have invented a Doctrine called the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and believe that Mary was born without sinful flesh. Now, there's nothing of that in the Bible, but most Protestants that IAL to actually believe in the Immaculate Conception of Jesus, that he wasn't born with sinful flesh, but Paul says he was in Romans 8 born. He says in the likeness of sinful flesh, as someone only in the likeness. Just a minute. In Philippians 2, Paul says he was born in the likeness of man, and it doesn't just mean the appearance, it means the exact reproduction. So, in Romans 8, he said he was born in the likeness of sinful flesh. That means that Jesus was tempted not just from the outside by the world

the devil, but from the inside by his flesh, and I I'm thankful for that, and I say it re rently, but it means that Jesus has fought all my battles and has been through it all himself, yet without sin. He's done it all, and if he can conquer the World, the Flesh, and the devil, then by his strength and Grace I can to. That's the good news, but people think he was born with no trace of sinful flesh. He inherited that from Mary. She was a sinful woman like all of us. It was the grace of God that made her what she was, and her son was born in the likeness of sinful flesh and gained a victory even over that. Thank you, Jesus, thank you for doing all that for me. Well, he chose to be born, he chose to be flesh. It was a voluntary act and a very humbling act, and to do it not just for a short period but forever. And now we must grasp the deepest truth of all in his conception. What was it? Well, it was that he was not just

bringing Divinity into Humanity that's wonderful enough because then he can say to people, If you've seen me, you've seen the father. If you want to know what God is like, then look at Jesus. He's a chip off the old block. He really looks like his father. And so he brought Divinity into Humanity. That's one side of it that we have little difficulty believing and which we often think about, but the other side of it we tend to neglect. And the other side is this: that he took Human ity into Divinity. For the first time, part of God was human. That is the revolution that happened when Jesus was conceived. Our Humanity was taken into Divinity. I find that almost too much to imagine. It's breathtaking. But God, God is now partly human. One of the three persons of the godhead is human now, just like me. Isn't that an incredible truth? If you've never thought about it before, go on thinking about it. It's just there. And so finally I ask, why did he do

all this. Why was he willing to do it voluntarily? Doing it for me, and for you, and for the whole world, even for the whole universe. Why was the creator willing to become a creature? And the answer is very simple. There are two answers: one, to bring God to us, and two, to bring us to God. It's as simple as that. And the Bible talks about both things. He did it to bring God to us, so that we would know that God was one of us, and to bring us to God, that we might be his sons, adopted Sons. Jesus is the only begotten son, but all of us are adopted Sons and Daughters into his family forever and ever. Well, that's the Apostles Creed. It jumps straight from his birth to his death. It's an extraordinary jump, and yet it was his death more than anything else that brings us back to God, makes it all possible. Not long after his birth, they took him two miles away to the temple to be dedicated and to be circumcised. And it was then that they

met two lovely people: a woman called Mary and another man called Simeon. And it was Simeon who prophesied to Mary, This child of yours will be the means of saving Israel, but it will pierce your own heart with a spear. And then he said a wonderful thing. He said, Lord, I can die happy. I've seen him. And he is a man who's waited all his life but knew God had told him, Before you die, you'll see the king, you'll see my son. And now Simeon, Lord, now let your servant depart in peace. I can die happy. And all he seen was a little baby, but such was his faith that he could see what that baby would become for Israel and for the Gentile world, for all of us. I'm going to read a hymn to you now. There are plenty of Christmas carols, and some of them are pretty mushy, but I want to read you a really good hymn. I was hoping that we might sing it, but we weren't able to get it done in

time to get the music and so on. It's a hymn of Charles Wesley who in my judgment is the greatest hymn writer there's ever been. He wrote 6,000 hymns. Alas, only a few are sung today. One is And Can It Be That I Should Gain and the other is O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing. Those two have survived out of 6,000 hymns. And every hymn is packed with the most amazing thoughts about the Lord. So let me read this hymn to you if I can, because I'm afraid I get emotional when I read this. Glory be to God on high, and peace on Earth descend. God comes down, He bows the sky, and shows Himself our friend. God the invisible appears, God the bless the Great I Am, Ss in this veil of tears, and Jesus is His name. Him the angels all adored, their Maker and their King. Tidings of their humbled Lord, they now to shepherds bring. Emptied of His Majesty, of His dazzling Glory.

Shor being Source begins to be, and God himself is born. See the Eternal Son of God, a mortal son of man, dwelling in an Earthly CLA whom Heaven cannot contain. Stand amazed, ye Heavens, at this. See the Lord of Earth and skies humbl to the dust he is, and in a Manger Lies. We, we the sons of men, Rejoice, the prince of pre peace Proclaim. With Heaven's host we lift our voice and Shout Emmanuel's name. Knees and hearts to him we bow of our flesh and of our bone. Jesus is our brother now, and God is all our own. Isn't that a wonderful himy? I hope someday you'll be able to. I hope someday you'll be able to sing it when you don't observe Christmas again. Thank you for [Music] listening. You have been listening to David porson. Other Talks by David porson can be downloaded free of charge from his websites david.org or davidson. co.uk.

JESUS: The 7 Wonders of HIStory Part 1 of 10

JESUS: The 7 Wonders of HIStory Part 1 of 10