The Humanity of Christ

Now we would like to turn to Hebrews chapter 1. Hebrews chapter 1 would of course be in some respects a complementary chapter to John chapter 1. We'll see the same idea of who he is as the son of God. We'll see his condescension, where he purged our sins, and then of course his exaltation, where he sits down at the right hand of the majesty on high. And although we're moving to now consider more the humanity of the Lord Jesus in this section, I'd like to do so by first considering some things in Hebrews 1 and then in Hebrews 2, and we'll branch off from that and look at the incarnation and the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus in other sections as well.

So let's read beginning at verse 1 of Hebrews chapter 1. Sorry, Hebrews chapter 1. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory, and the expressed image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as he by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. If we want to think about the deity of the Lord Jesus, we would turn as we already have to John chapter 1, then we would turn to Hebrews chapter 1, and we won't have time to do this, but we would also turn to Colossians chapter 1, and of course Revelation chapter 1 would be another great choice. Hebrews chapter 1 tells us of the one who is sent from the Father as the Son, and who is the one who has given the full and final revelation.

The parallels to John chapter 1 are right on the surface. They're quite easy to see here. First of all, the fact that he is the one who came from the Father as the full final spokesman.

We read in John chapter 1, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has fully told him out. Here we have that God has revealed all that he can reveal of himself. He reveals his own person in the person of his Son.

As you know, this has been much discussed as to how we should translate verse number 2. In these last days, here we're not talking about the last days of judgment, we're talking about the last days of revelation. This is where the piecemeal and incomplete and imperfect revelation, imperfect in the sense that it was not complete in the Old Testament, comes to its full final form. There can be no other revelation now.

There can be nothing added to it, because all has been revealed, because God himself has revealed himself in the person of his beloved Son. Now, we have these messengers, we have these prophets, we have these people coming with the words of the Lord. But when we get to verse 2, there's a difference.

The one who speaks is the one who is the Son. So he's not now a middleman. The prophets were middlemen.

The Son is not the middleman. He is the spokesman. And not only is he the messenger, God himself, he's the message.

So it says, he has spoken unto us literally in Son, as you know. And some people like to leave it that way in English, because it helps them to think about it. Although we have to admit, in Son does not sound like very good English.

But if we do it, it kind of gets our minds around the idea of what's being conveyed here. That the revelation that God has for us, fully and finally, is nothing more and nothing less than the person of the Lord Jesus himself. He is the one who has spoken, and he is the one who is Son.

Because he is Son, he is also the heir of all things. And then we have this wonderful expression, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. I want you to think of the ways in which God describes his Son with these words, that we've already considered one of, logos, the word.

Here we have this idea of charakter in Greek, which means, as you probably have heard, like a die stamp image. Then in Colossians chapter 1, we're not going to read that, but you understand that we have the word eikon, or sometimes pronounced icon. It is the image of the invisible God.

And we want to think about how these terms are similar, and how they may be slightly different. And there's another one, of course, in Philippians chapter 2, and that is the form of God, but we're going to take that up separately. Now, the one who is the word, is the one who is the very mind of God, the one who has the very cognition of God, and can convey that in revelation that is flawless and full and complete.

He is the one who fully tells God out as the word. When we have him as the one who is the, it says the brightness of his glory, and then it explains the die stamp image of his being, we understand that there is a correspondence between the father and the son, such that when we see the son, we see the father also, as he tells us in John. That I and the father are one, in essence.

And therefore, the image that's being used here has been, because the word was used this way, is like a die stamp. So you have the obverse and the reverse, and you have the two exactly corresponding to each other, and answering to each other. They're different, but they're the same.

They're the same image, but they're two persons in the Godhead. It's a wonderful truth. When we have Colossians chapter 1, we have the visibility of Christ as the one who came into the world.

He's the image of the invisible God. So whenever you see God manifesting himself, you're seeing it through the person of his son. The father reveals himself through his son.

He who has seen me, Christ says about himself, has seen the father also. Just when I'm thinking of it, that expression, I and the father are one, is very, very important grammatically. Because again, we're talking about this difficult, but important concept of the trinity, and how these inter-trinitarian relations actually work.

And we don't understand it very well, and I'm not pretending that I do. But if the expression that Christ had used is, I and the father are one, and he had used a masculine form of the word one. Remember, this is a language that has genders, unlike English, right? So you're used to that if you've learned any other language but English.

So if he said, I and the father are, the word in Greek would be heis, that would be a masculine singular. What he would have been saying is, I and the father are the same person. But that's not true.

That's not true. So that's not what the word of God says. It says, I and the father are hen.

Hen is neuter. It's speaking not of the persons, but of the essence. And again, we have the perfection of the word of God, as it shows that the deity is threefold in person, but one in essence and will.

And so, I and the father are one, a very important expression. And here we have the son as the one who has been the full and final message from God. Now, we will not spend too much more time with these wonderful first few verses.

What you next have in the Epistle to the Hebrews here is a sevenfold affirmation from the Old Testament quoting the scriptures that show that the one who is the son is eternal and far above angels. Far above angels in rank, but not only that, the one who created angels and receives worship from angels. And we'll just read this section quickly and then we'll move on to chapter 2, where we have the humanity of Christ emphasized.

This is verse 5. For to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And again, I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. And when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let the angels, all the angels of God worship him.

And to the angels, he said, who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire. But to the son, he says, this is a very important expression because here we have the father calling the son God directly. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever a scepter of righteousness, a scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions. And now the father calls him Jehovah, Lord, the I am.

You, Lord, and that expression, of course, in the original is the word Jehovah. You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain.

And they will all grow old like a garment, like a cloak. You will fold them up, and they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will not fail.

But to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? So just for a minute or two, I want to encapsulate this first chapter. Christ is the son. He is higher than angels.

He is infinitely higher than angels because he is of a different order altogether. He is deity. He is the creator of angels, and he is the one who receives worship and shall receive worship forever from angels.

He has this unique position of son. And since I probably won't get back to the topic, let me just take this idea of the eternal sonship of Christ up for a moment. There are people who are good Christians, I think, and I wouldn't doubt that, but they've fallen into the era of what's called incarnational sonship.

And one of those was actually John MacArthur, although in 1998 he recanted that position. He said, I'm sorry, I've written a lot of books. Before 1998, I can't rewrite them.

But you ignore that part about the sonship of Christ being incarnational because I now know that that isn't true. And what he came to understand is a very, very important concept, that son is not a title. Son is a name.

That is a true identity. It is who Christ is from all eternity. Again, we've already dealt with this, but I'll mention it again.

When we have father-son relationships, we're not talking about inferiority-superiority, and we're not talking about origin when we're talking about the Godhead. We're talking about relationship, we're talking about likeness of character, and we're talking about inheritance, that the father has given everything into the hands of his son. That's what sonship means.

And that is eternally true. So God the father has always been a father. He's an eternal father.

And God the son has always been the son. That has never been different. That is not what he is.

It's who he is. A name in the Bible is who you are. A title is what you are.

And Christ is a lot of things. He's got a lot of titles. But son isn't one of them.

Because son is who he is in his very being. So there's an eternal father and an eternal son, and they are, according to John 1.1, face-to-face with each other. The word was with God.

My mind wasn't working at that point in the meeting, so I forgot to tell you that this was a wonderful way of expressing intra-Trinitarian fellowship, of the fact that the father found in the son, eternally, all of his joy, all of his satisfaction, everything his heart could desire. They were interacting face-to-face, is how we would think of it in human terms. And so this is an eternal truth.

So the son of God was sent as the son of God. Therefore, John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He didn't become the son when he gave him.

He gave him as the son. We go back to Isaiah chapter 9. Unto us a child is born. That's his humanity.

Unto us a son is given as his deity, and he's already the son. He's given as son. So the son of God is the one whom we call sometimes the second person of the Trinity, which is not a biblical expression, but I think we can all agree that that's a reasonable way to describe him.

But maybe we should just stick with what the Bible calls him, the son. And he is the one who is heir of all things. Now, the word son of is another idiom that we need to understand.

It means likeness of character. We have the sons of thunder. Presumably they thundered.

We have the son of peace or sons of peace. These are people who are known for being peacemakers or delighting in peace. We have the sons of Belial.

Not such a good group, those people, because they're worthless people. There are sons of no name. There are sons of oil.

There is a son of consolation. His name is Barnabas. This is a common expression throughout the Bible.

It's a Hebraism. It's an idiom, as I said. It means these people have that character.

If you're a son of thunder, you've got the character of thundering. And if you're the son of God, you've got the very character of God. If you're the son of man, you've got the essence of what manhood is.

You've got that character, that perfection. That's why Christ takes that title and prefers it when he describes himself the son of man. So the expression, the eternal sonship of Christ is something we vigorously want to uphold and defend.

If you change that, you misunderstand the father-son relationship and you actually are misconstruing who God is. The very definition of who God is, you've got it wrong. And that's got to be serious.

So we want to very strongly defend that. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the humanity and the virgin birth of Christ for the next section. So just to set the stage, I want to read in Hebrews 2. We're going to skip the first warning section and we're just going to break in at verse 5. For he has not put the world to come of which we speak in subjection to angels.

Again, we're having the sun shown to be superior to angels. But now it's very interesting because the one who is higher than angels in chapter 1 is now going to be lower for a time than angels. And the one who is the sun and the creator of all things and the sustainer of all things and the heir of all things is going to come into humanity and he's going to taste death for everything.

So we have a vivid contrast between Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 2. Higher than angels, lower than angels. Deity, humanity. And we're to take these together and put them as the Bible does next to each other and hold them in a beautiful tension.

So let's see how the incarnation of Christ is described in the following verses. One testified in a certain place, What is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you take care of him? You have made him a little lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor and set him over the works of your hands.

You have put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not see all things put under him but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels or for a little while lower than the angels, some people prefer.

For the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor that he by the grace of God should taste death for perhaps everything or everyone. It may be broader than just speaking of persons here. He tasted death to completely reverse everything that sin had brought into the universe not only speaking of the salvation of individual people.

Now this is a quote of course from Psalm chapter 8 and I think it's very important that we understand what the psalmist is doing in chapter 8 because there's a spin in the middle of the chapter and if we're not careful we might miss the emphasis that's actually being made because he starts out saying what is man that you are mindful of him? Here I am, I'm sitting or standing now on this planet and it's not a very big planet and our sun is not a very big sun and our galaxy is not a very notable galaxy maybe. Of course it is, I'm speaking just in terms of the vastness of the cosmos and the smallness of us as humans. I'm going to defend or clarify something this is the theater of the universe, this very planet.

I'm not saying that this isn't God's focal point. It is, but nevertheless we're small, we're paltry when we look into the heavens and so we say what is man after all? It's probably not very much. But then the psalmist turns and he says and we don't have to read Psalm 8 because we can read the quotation here.

You have made him a little lower than the angels but then you've crowned him with glory and honor you put him over the works of your hands including all those galaxies out there. Not only the things that we have on earth that are made by your hands but everything in the universe is going to be under a man. But I thought these men were lower than angels.

I thought they were of no consequence. I thought they stood on the earth and looked up into the sky and said who am I? Well we're right to do that because we could rightly ask who am I? But what God is teaching us is that he has a man in mind who will be the ruler of the universe and that man is the incarnate son. So rather than making man small as he appears to be at the beginning of Psalm 8 Psalm 8 magnifies man to the place that God intended him to be but it doesn't magnify all men it magnifies one man, the son of man.

He's going to come in and he's going to be not only the savior of this world but he is going to be the ruler of God's entire creation. Not as the son of God alone but as the word made flesh. As a human with flesh and bones he's going to rule everything.

So this is the wonderful backdrop. We don't see that happening yet. We don't see all things under our feet for sure.

We've lost that dominion. And Christ of course has the right and he showed that right that he had the right when he was on earth he had complete control over nature he had complete control over everything. And he gave us little glimpses of the fact of the way things are going to be when he is finally ruler and everything is set to rights and he presents the kingdom and its perfection to the Father.

So we have glimpses of that in Christ. But first, before that end comes there's some very necessary business to attend to. And that comes in these next verses of the bringing many sons to glory.

This is what the incarnation of Christ did for us. For it was fitting for him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren saying I will declare your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to you and again I will put my trust in him and again here am I and the children whom God has given me.

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood he himself likewise shared in the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed he does not give aid to angels but he does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore in all things he had to be made like his brethren that he might be a faithful and merciful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people for in that he himself has suffered being tempted he is able to help those or aid those who were tempted.

I just want to say a few things about these verses in Hebrews 2 and then we're going to talk in more general terms about the humanity of the Lord Jesus. We find here that he is the one who is the captain of salvation. If we went all the way back to the part I didn't read you would have him as the one who the word spoken through angels is referring to the law given to Moses so clearly Christ is greater than Moses because he is the one who is actually the law giver and then we have the quotation from Psalm number 8 and then we have this bringing many sons to glory there's an image of Joshua bringing the people into their salvation as the pioneer or the archegos as he's called the one who breaks through enemy ranks and wins the territory for his people who follow behind him and we even see an image of the valley of Eli here with David fighting Goliath destroying him who had the power of death that is the devil and we have one who is greater than Aaron at the end of the chapter a merciful and faithful high priest and things pertaining to God so these are all things that Christ is because he became a man and I want to talk a little bit about this concept of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus the first thing we need to understand is that the virgin birth was the way the incarnation occurred but the virgin birth only occurred for a short period of time when Mary brought forth her firstborn son but the incarnation began at the conception of Christ and shall continue forever and ever it will never change when Christ became man he took on him something that he was not before human nature but he relinquished nothing that he is as God so he remains fully God and he remains fully human he is both God and man he is not part God and part man that's why I object personally to using the expression God man even though a lot of good writers may use it I think they know what they mean but it's very important when we're talking about the person of Christ that we stick with Bible vocabulary in my opinion because that's where you're going to go off the beam if you start to use your own explanations rather than the ones the scripture provides so we know that he is fully God and fully man as God he is everything that the second person, the son, is as man he has all the components of humanity spirit soul and body some people have said well he said a body hast thou prepared me so the body was simply some kind of vehicle and the deity came in and was the spiritual component of the person and the body was human and the spirit was divine and I'm saying that's wrong that's wrong his spirit was a human spirit his soul was a human soul his body was a human body and yet it was inextricably linked and forever united with the perfect deity God is spirit as such the second person of the Godhead is spirit he is omnipresent he is omniscient he is omnipotent he is everything God is but the one who is God in that sense became flesh and that doesn't just refer to flesh and bones physical material flesh it's referring to everything a human being is spirit soul and body now the way that happened was through the virgin birth although to be technical and I want to be technical in this regard the incarnation did not occur in Bethlehem on the night that the shepherds witnessed the wonderful fact that the babe was wrapped in swaddling bands lying in a feeding trough the incarnation occurred nine months before that nine months before that and Luke tells us about it Mary says how can this possibly be since I do not know a man and God says the power of the highest shall over the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee the power of the highest shall overshadow thee so that the one who is born will be called the Son of God the Holy Thing the King James Version says the Holy One who shall be born from you shall be called the Son of God so we understand that this was a conception in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit and it was overseen in a way that ensured that he was perfectly human and yet perfectly holy he the Lord Jesus is the Holy Thing again we don't use the word thing so we would only change that to something with a person so he's the Holy One who is born from you shall be called the Son of God now it was very important that the humanity of Christ be sinless and we're going to talk in the next section about the fact that it be impeccable right if Christ had been the progeny of Adam if he had been the seed of the man we would have had big trouble because Romans 5.12 says as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin so death has passed upon all men for all have sinned essentially sinned in their forebear Adam so any man who has links with Adam is going to have a sinful nature by definition the race fell in Adam the only way that this can be rectified is if a new race that is still fully human but is not through the seed of the man so now we go back to Genesis 3.15 and perhaps we'll just turn to that briefly and I'll spend the rest of this session on the virgin birth and I will not make you late for lunch because you've more than deserved it listening to me already this is called the prot evangelium by some people it's just a fancy way of saying the first gospel preached in the Bible and it is God's own words to the serpent of all things Genesis chapter 3.15 maybe we'll read 14 for context so the Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field on your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed he shall bruise your head you shall bruise his heel now we understand this to be a very interesting expression the Bible normally doesn't speak about the seed of women it speaks of the seed of men the progeny the generation of people from one generation to the next is seen to be the son of the son of is typically in the entire book of Genesis so there's something very special and unique about the fact that this is said to be the seed of a woman and the one who is going to come is going to be in a combat and a contest between the powers of darkness and himself so this is going to be one who is going to come to be a deliverer and to reverse what has just happened in this dreadful situation in the garden and the one who comes is not going to be the seed of Adam who is responsible ultimately for what just happened but he's going to be through the seed of a woman still fully human but not under Adam's headship this is very important this is the first fact that we need to face so Christ comes as the seed of the woman now you say I thought the Lord was bruised far more than in his heel it says his heel is bruised here but I think he was you know Isaiah 53 describes something very graphically different from that it describes one who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and who had the stripes laid upon him and the stroke not only of men but of divine wrath upon him why does it say his heel? because this is looking at the final end this is looking at the final analysis this is looking at the end game if you will Satan along the pathway will appear to have minor victories and to get the upper hand and there certainly during the time of Christ's rejection trial, crucifixion and suffering it appeared that he was being defeated but if you look at the final analysis you will understand that the wound that Satan received was fatal it was a head wound and the wound that Christ received although it is expanded later in the Bible to be understood as a tremendously traumatic experience that he went through suffering for our sins but in the end he is the one victorious save for one mark of course with Christ it's not a mark on the heel it's marks on his hands and his feet and his side he will bear those wounds forever you and I and our glorified bodies we're going to talk about what glorified bodies look like later on this afternoon will be flawless Christ I would say is flawless too but we must remember that the only evidence of sin in heaven will be on the hands feet and side of the Savior so that wounding I think is being depicted here now just for your interest I don't have time to develop this there's another issue that requires Christ to be virgin born and that is the fact that he could not inherit the sin nature of Adam and he must come through Mary alone and not through Joseph because of a curse in Jeremiah chapter 22 and I'm just going to glance at this because we don't have time to develop it but you remember in this late day of Judah's history there was a wicked king called Coniah Jeconiah or Jehoiachin he has all three names that's pretty impressive having three names if you only rule three months which is what he did but he was cursed by the Lord and God said write this man childless he says in this man Coniah a despised broken idol he says write this man as childless a man who shall not prosper in his days for none of his descendants shall prosper sitting on the throne of David but then in the next chapter he says behold days are coming says the Lord that I will raise to David a branch of righteousness a king shall reign and prosper and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth in his days Judah shall be saved so in chapter 22 the king that comes from Jeconiah will be cursed in chapter 23 the king that comes from David will be blessed how is this going to work out how does the math work out in this here we have the two genealogies of Christ Matthew giving the legal line Luke giving the regal line that's kind of a cute way of saying it but I think it makes the point there were David had a number of sons the kingship went through Solomon Solomon went all the way down through those generations that are recorded by Matthew all the way to Joseph so Joseph's legal son would be the one to sit on the throne of David and have the legal right to be not only the king of the Jews but of course king of kings and lord of lords but then how could he be David's relative without being exposed to the curse of Jeremiah 22 and the answer is if your mother is also David's heir in the sense of being a relative in David's line she traces her line all the way back to Nathan so two of David's sons many generations down had relatives that married one had the legal right to the throne the other had a regal connection that is royal blood so Christ fulfills that and yet bypasses this curse as well as the curse of Genesis chapter 3 so that's the wonderful truth of how Christ came into the world virgin born the language could not be clearer in the New Testament I already pointed out the fact that actually in Matthew chapter 1 we won't turn to that we're actually going to turn to Luke chapter 3 but I'll mention what Matthew says when it goes all the way down to the bottom it says that he gave that the Lord Jesus came from Mary and the pronoun that is used is feminine singular showing that Matthew is strongly teaching that the Lord Jesus is actually a physical heir I think I need to pace myself here because we need to close up quarter to is that not right? Actually when you said does anyone need a schedule I think I misplaced the one you have so I better grab one before I start transgressing this after pardon? Okay then I want to tackle it.

Let's go to Isaiah chapter 7. We'll get back to Luke later. I want to rebudget what I want to do. I want to take a very interesting prophecy from Isaiah chapter 7. I think you all know what it is.

Therefore, let's read in chapter 10. Moreover, the Lord spake again to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God. Ask it either in the depth or in the height above.

So he's saying, You can ask anything you want as a sign that I am going to be your protector and your deliverer if you will have me. You see, Ahaz, a wicked king, of course, is dealing with a political problem. He's got Rezan and Pekah.

He's got the king of Aram and the king of the northern kingdom of Israel in cahoots with each other, and they are determined to destroy the southern kingdom and to take it over and to depose him. So the question is, will Ahaz rely on the Lord to deliver him, or will he look for human help from, say, Egypt? Well, Ahaz, of course, is hoping as well for Assyria to help him. He's looking here, he's looking there, east and west, but he's not going to look to the Lord because Ahaz is a wicked man.

So he comes up with this false piety here. He says, I will not ask, verse 12, I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord, far be it from me to test the Lord. He's acting like a very pious religious person, and he's not at all.

He's a man of no faith, and he's a man ultimately who will be cursed. But the Lord says, I'm going to give a sign anyway, but not to you now, Ahaz, I'm going to give a sign to the house of David. He said, here now, house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you, plural, he's not talking to Ahaz anymore, you, plural, the house of David, a sign.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel, meaning God with us, as we know from the New Testament. Curds and honey shall he eat, that he may know how to refuse the evil and choose the good. Now, this is a very enigmatic section, but there are some things that we can prove that it does mean.

Number one, the use of this in the New Testament shows us that this is referring to the virgin birth of Christ. Now, some people will say, well, this is referring to Isaiah's son, Meher Shalal Hashbaz, who's born in the next chapter. But then you've got a bunch of difficulties, you've got some problems with that.

Isaiah's already had a son, Shear Yashub, by his wife, so you have to have that wife die, he's got to marry a new wife who's a virgin, and then that wife has to have Meher Shalal Hashbaz. So that doesn't seem to fit. Besides the fact that a woman conceiving after she gets married is not a particularly notable event.

This happens all the time. This is not hardly a sign. So this sign I suggest is, I will grant there are good people, and probably some in my audience who believe in the double fulfillment theory, that there is both an immediate fulfillment, although we're not told what it is.

Some people say it's Hezekiah, Isaiah's own son, that he has married a virgin. But this is all construction. What we know is that it's enigmatic who the short-term fulfillment would apply to, but the main point is that that isn't the main point.

The main point is that through the house of David, God will get a sign that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. This is a little problem with Meher Shalal Hashbaz in the next chapter. It's also a problem with Hezekiah, because neither of them is Emmanuel, right? So who's Emmanuel? God with us, when the New Testament tells us who it is.

It's the Lord Jesus. The sign is that the virgin would conceive and bear a son, not that the married woman. This word Alma in Hebrew means a woman of marriageable age, but there are no cases in the Old Testament where that person is not a virgin.

And it's very important when we interpret this sort of thing that we understand how the contemporaries would have understood it. And when the Greeks translated this, they used the word Parthenos, which is explicitly and exclusively a word for a virgin. So this is the sign.

We've already discussed the importance of it. I thought I would at least amplify that with Isaiah 7.14. So back to what I was saying in Matthew and Luke, Matthew says, from whom was born Jesus who was called the Christ? And that word from whom means from a woman alone. And then in Luke, we understand that Christ came to Mary who knew not a man.

I think the importance of the true humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, I can amplify in the next session as we start to talk about his life and his impeccability and his temptations. And so I think this is actually a natural break for me and it happens to be right at the time that I'm supposed to stop.