WEBVTT

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 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scriptures,

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 I thirst.

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 Hollywood in our culture has a great fascination with machines becoming people.

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 Not people, but humans.

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 Well, not humans, but almost exactly like humans.

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 Whether it's movies like Blade Runner, where in many ways the machines become better than humans,

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 that by the end of the movie you sort of admire their nobility, their breadth of experience.

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 Whether it be movies and novels like iRobot, where some of the robots are evil,

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 but there is another robot that's actually sort of more noble and more sacrificial

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 and just far better than the humans in the movie.

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 Or whether it's the Terminator movies, where the machines become evil and take over human beings.

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 The Matrix machines become more evil than humans and take over.

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 Ex Machina, Makina, I should say.

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 We're all the way through the movie.

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 You can't figure out what on earth is going on with the robot.

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 But our culture has a profound fascination with this idea that things that are just made out of wire and electrical circuits,

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 that they will somehow develop consciousness, that they will develop a mind,

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 that they will be basically a person.

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 And whether they're worse than us or better than us,

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 that it seems almost inevitable to many in our culture that a machine will become a person.

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 It's a very, very curious thing about our culture that it's so easy for us to think about that.

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 But our culture also has a profound objection to God becoming human.

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 Like, why is that?

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 It actually sort of doesn't make any sense, if you think about it,

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 that stuff like this and this, that this mic could start having consciousness and speak back to me.

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 But that if there is a God who does exist, who's created all things,

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 that he can't take into himself our human nature.

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 Why is it that our culture thinks that?

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 It's in some ways part of a rebellion against God.

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 When Jesus says on the cross, I thirst,

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 there's two things happening with these simple two words.

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 The first thing is, is really revealing to us that he's human,

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 that he has a body, that he's human.

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 He's not a ghost.

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 He's not a spirit.

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 He's not an angel.

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 He's not pure mind.

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 He's human with a body.

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 And as a human being with a body, he gets thirsty.

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 Movies like The Da Vinci Code and books like that try to make it look as if

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 there was some profound attempt by early Christians to make it look like Jesus,

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 that Jesus wasn't human.

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 Sorry, that these books try to make it look as if Jesus wasn't God,

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 that he just claimed to be human,

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 and that that was some great thing that the early church,

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 that evil group, manipulated and tried to erase from history.

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 But for the first three centuries of the Christian faith,

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 the hard thing that Christians had was to believe that Jesus was human,

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 that he was, they felt so much that he was God,

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 they had a hard time believing that he could actually be a human being.

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 That was the great, profound thing that they had a hard time with.

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 And so texts like this were very, very important.

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 And Jesus is human.

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 He thirsts.

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 The other thing that's going on in this text is that Jesus is more than human,

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 that he is in fact God,

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 and that in a very, very simple, symbolic way,

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 he's illustrating that the separation between God and him is occurring.

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 God the Father and him is occurring.

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 If you go back and read the Gospel of John,

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 you'll see that John in several places connects the Holy Spirit

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 to being like a stream of living water that will well up within us.

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 And so when Jesus says that he thirsts,

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 he's not only revealing that he's human,

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 but he reveals that what Karen just talked about,

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 that is recorded in Mark,

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 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

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 That that forsakenness of Jesus is occurring.

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 That Jesus, who would have experienced the unending presence of the Holy Spirit in his life,

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 that Holy Spirit is now, in a sense,

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 just as God, he's being separated from God because he's bearing the sins of the world,

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 he's experiencing a thirst because the Holy Spirit is also separating from him

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 as he bears our sins in his person.

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 Throughout history, Jesus has always been viewed as a bit of a contradiction

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 and a barrier to us understanding who God is.

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 He's someone who gets in the way.

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 But when we hear Jesus say that he thirsts,

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 and when we realize that it's both expressing his full humanity

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 and also that as God, he is now experiencing the abandonment,

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 as God the Son, he's experiencing the abandonment of the Father,

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 we see that Jesus isn't a barrier,

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 but he is the one true and only bridge between human beings and God.

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 He's not a barrier.

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 He's a bridge.

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 And his death upon the cross is God's provision to make that bridge

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 between fallen, bent human beings like ourselves in rebellion against him

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 and God himself so that we can be his children by adoption and grace.

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 Jesus is not a barrier.

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 He is a bridge.

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 I invite you to stand.

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 And let's pray.

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 Father, we ask that you would make us disciples of Jesus

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 who are gripped by the gospel and who are learning to live for your glory.

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 Father, thank you for Jesus.

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 Thank you, Father, that he, as your son, remained 100% human,

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 but that he took into himself our human nature

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 and that he was 100% human.

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 We thank you, Father, that he's both 100% God and 100% human,

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 but he's just one person, Jesus.

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 And we thank you, Father, that he is your great provision for us.

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 Father, we thank you that Jesus, being human,

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 knows the trials and temptations that we do,

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 only without sin.

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 Father, draw our hearts to Jesus.

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 Father, we confess before you that we can turn to all sorts of things.

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 We can turn to pornography, to gambling, to television,

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 all sorts of things to comfort us in our weakness

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 and in our distress, in our anxiety.

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 But, Father, turn our hearts to Jesus when we are most anxious,

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 when we are most in distress.

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 Turn our hearts to him.

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 This we ask in Jesus' name.

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 Amen.