1080. Jesus Christ: The Son of Man

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from The University Chapel Platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're concluding a study series entitled, Looking unto Jesus, which has been a study of Christ in the Old Testament.

Today's message will be preached by Dr. Nathan Crockett, Director of Ministry Training at Bob Jones University. Please turn to Daniel 7. Daniel 7. And as you turn, I want to remind you of the theme of the book of Daniel, that God is sovereign over all nations and all world empires. And remind you that the structure of the book is such that the first half of it focuses on true historical narratives. You probably remember hearing many of those stories, the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, Daniel in the lion's den as a child.

But we've turned to a section in Daniel 7 that begins the last half of the book, six chapters of prophetic visions. Before we dive into that context, I want to ask you this question. How important is a name?

How important is a name? My wife and I have three children. Shepherd is four. Lillian is two and a half.

And Christian just turned one. And being young children, they have favorite little names and pet names for each other. And it's common to overhear a conversation like this where Lillian will say to Shepherd, I'm faster than you are, pop-ups. And Shepherd will say, no, I'm faster than you chicken nuggets. And she'll say, I'm faster than you gootlies.

And he'll say, I'm faster than you ice cream sandwich. He likes using food items as his name. And she just makes up random words. And her favorite word that she makes up, at least the past few months, has been this word pop-ups. We don't know what it means.

She doesn't know what it means. But she'll say, I love you so much, pop-ups, to me or Abigail. We have been very thrilled that Abigail's grandmother has moved to the Greenville area.

And she is a godly, godly lady. And we are so excited that our kids get to know their great grandmother. It's really been an exciting time for us. And one of the things that has been interesting is to watch how Lillian responds to her great grandmother. Because of our three kids, she takes the longest to warm up to new people.

And so we've just kind of been watching this. And she's kind of been a little bit shy here at first. And a couple weeks ago, Lillian was over at the Minnix. I went over there to pick her up. And I was going to put her jacket on her. And great grandma said, I can do that for you. And so Lillian walked over there kind of sheepishly. And great grandma helped put the jacket on her. And Lillian just kind of walked back to me and grabbed my leg. And I said, Lillian, great grandma just helped you with your jacket.

What do you say? She kind of paused a long time and looked up like she was thinking about this. And looked over and said, thank you.

Pop-ops. And then she looked over at Shepherd and said, I just called great grandma pop-ops. So I guess that was a really good thing that she was welcoming her with a term of endearment. I don't know if you have a favorite name or nickname that you call other people or maybe even a favorite name for yourself. What if we asked what was Jesus's favorite name or title for himself? If you looked through the gospels, the answer would be very, very clear.

It is this title, the Son of Man. In fact, 31 times, Matthew uses, Christ uses that title in Matthew. In Mark, it's 15 times. In Luke, 25 times. In John, 12 times.

So I'd like to preach to you this morning on this topic that Dr. Pettit has asked me to preach to you about. And that is Jesus Christ, the Son of Man from Daniel chapter 7. Our text will be verses 13 and 14. I saw in the night visions and behold one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days and they brought him near before him. We read earlier in the chapter about God the Father, the Ancient of Days. And there was given him, given to the Son of Man, dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away in his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. Now what does this title, Son of Man, mean? You might just at the outset think, well, probably Son of God is referring to Christ's deity, so Son of Man must refer to his humanity.

And you might almost picture these two again against each other. Well, when he's talking about Son of Man, he's thinking about humanity. When he talks about Son of God, he's thinking about deity. In fact, some liberal theologians have tried to push that and they've tried to argue against the deity of Christ and say, see, look, every time he refers to himself, he's calling himself the Son of Man.

He keeps trying to tell people that he's human. If you had that picture in your mind even as you read the gospels and over 80 different times Christ calls himself Son of Man, if you thought, well, that's referring to his humanity, you would actually be completely wrong. Son of Man means something far, far more than merely humanity.

Let me give you some evidence of that. As you look at these verses on the screen, just ask yourself, is this merely referring to humanity? Mark 13, 26, and then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. In Luke 22, hereafter shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of the power of God.

Does that sound like merely humanity? But about Matthew 24, immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And it talks about him sending his angels.

This is something far more than mere humanity. Maybe Mark 14, 61 and 62 is the clearest. On trial we read this of Christ, but he held his peace and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him and said unto him, art thou the Christ? Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. Son of Man means something far more than humanity.

And maybe you're asking, well, what does it mean? Well, as theologians and commentators study this, what they realize is that when Christ uses this title, he's referring people back to Daniel 7, 13 and 14. This famous messianic vision and prediction. So let's read those verses again. And what I want us to do this time, just yesterday in hermeneutics class, I was telling students to interview the text, to ask the interrogatives, who's this about? What's it here for?

Why, when, where, how? Let's do that with this passage. Who are these verses about? I saw in the night visions and behold, here's the who, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven. He approaches the ancient of days and what is given to him, verse 14, what there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom. And why is that given to him? Why is that so important that he inherits this dominion and glory and a kingdom for this purpose so that all people, nations and languages should serve him? Now, if you're thinking this through, you might think, how could all people who ever lived serve one Son of Man?

How's that possible? Well, the how is this, his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed, his dominion would be eternal. So in the next few minutes, what I want to look at with you in this passage would be this, the who, what, why, how. The who, we could call this the person of the Son of Man. And you see this in verse 13. Who is the person? The what would be the power, this power that's given to him. The why that we'll see is the purpose. Why did he, as this person, this Son of Man, receive all this power?

And the how, you could say this way, the permanence, the permanence. I heard one pastor speak on this text and he referred to the identity and the authority and the eternality of the Son of Man. So who is this verse about? We already read this but let's read it again, that one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven. He is like the Son of Man, other translations will say like a son of man. There's something human about him, but he also comes with the clouds of heaven. And if you study this out in the Old Testament, you will see that this phrase consistently refers to deity, that he was the God-man.

The Daniel 7 predicts someone who's going to be fully God and fully man. The other day, Shepherd and Lillian had helped me with a project so I wanted to take them to the store and give them a certain price limit, let them buy something. The very first store we were at, Shepherd found a little toy he really liked. I brought it with me today, it's a dinosaur, a little Brachiosaurus.

Lillian didn't find anything at that store, she said the toys weren't girly enough so we were in the car, they were in the back seat and we're headed to another store where Lillian would ultimately buy some pink princess sunglasses and a little Elsa water squirter, those were girly enough. But while we're on our way, I mean they're in the back seat and they're both in their car seats and Shepherd is just playing with his dinosaur and he's talking to his dinosaur and he's thanking me for getting him the dinosaur and he leans over to Lillian and he's like, don't you like my new dinosaur? And she looks at him and she says, no, it's too scaly. And he says, Lillian, this is not, it's not scary, these kind of dinosaurs eat leaves, I just told him that in the store.

They don't eat people, you don't have to be scared of it. And she said, well if it were a wheeled dinosaur, it'd be so big its tail would just smash our car and we would all die. And he says, don't worry Lillian, it's just pretend, it's not going to grow really big, it's not going to smash our car, you're not going to die, so now do you like it? And she says, no, it's not pink. I only like dinosaurs if they're pink.

She says, in fact, it has brown on it and it looks yucky. At this point Shepherd calls up to the front seat and he's like, Daddy, my feelings are hurt right now because Lillian just said my dinosaur looks yucky. And then he turns to her and he says, Lillian, you're being mean and that doesn't please God. And she says, I am pleasing God. And he says, no you're not, it doesn't please God if a sister tells her brother that their dinosaur looks yucky, that doesn't please God. And she says, I am. And he says, no, Lillian, I don't think you know very much about God, you probably don't even know where God lives.

Where does God live? And she said, oh, I forget. And he said, well, I'll tell you. God was up in heaven and he came down to do lots of really good things and he went back up, down then up. And as he went back up, he went up through the clouds and past the sky and up into, Daddy, what do you call it with all those big balls hanging in the sky?

And I'm like, the solar system? And he's like, uh, no, no, outer space. Uh, God went up past outer space into heaven. And meanwhile, the whole time he's saying this, Lillian had picked on the down then up and she's saying down then up, down then up, down then up, down then up.

And he finally realized that and he said, Lillian, are you even listening to me? Down then up, down then up, down then up. Lillian, you're not pleasing God, it doesn't please God if a sister doesn't listen to her older brother talk about heaven.

Down then up, down then up. And then she says, I am pleasing God, pop-ups. Well, my whole point with that is even Shepherd as a four-year-old recognized if someone's coming from heaven, there must be deity involved. That this one would be like the Son of Man. But he comes in the clouds of heaven because he is the God-man. Fully God, fully man.

And what do we read about him? Like, well, he will be given power. There was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom. He has this incredible authority. That word dominion in Aramaic refers to rule or authority that you would give a king or prince. The glory is the honor that rightfully accompanies that authority. The kingdom is the area over which he would rule. In our day, perhaps you think of a monarchy and maybe you think of a king or a queen and they have all this pomp and circumstance but they have very little real power.

Maybe all that resides with parliament. That's not like Jesus. Jesus is a true king with true authority. And why is he given all this incredible authority? Well, the text says so that all people, nations, and languages should serve him.

And again, Daniel 2, 4 through 9, 28 is this Aramaic section in your Hebrew Old Testament. But the Aramaic word there translated serve has the idea of worshipful service. That the Son of Man would receive universal worship.

And I asked this question before, but how would that happen? How could all people of all times worship one person? Well, because his dominion is an everlasting thing.

There's a permanence to it. Which shall not pass away in his kingdom is that which shall not be destroyed. That this Son of Man would have an eternal rule. And if we had time to read through the book of Daniel, if you're tracking with the context here, what you're going to find is that this is completely different than every other empire mentioned. I'm going to show you a chart here that shows four world empires.

And Daniel has these visions and particularly in chapter 2 and chapter 7, we see Babylon and Medo-Persia and we see Greece and we see Rome. And each of those empires end. When you think about Babylon, the magnificent head of gold, it had numerous temples, it had a majestic bridge spanning the Euphrates River, it had the famous hanging gardens that were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, but Babylon with all of its beauty was destroyed. The Medo-Persian empire was united by Cyrus the Great. After destroying Babylon, this empire became the greatest power the world had ever known up until that point. At one time it extended from Egypt all the way up to Thrace, all the way over to India, but the Medo-Persian empire with all of its power, it was destroyed. You know about Greece, right? As a young man, Alexander the Great famously conquered nearly all the Medo-Persian empire in just 12 years and supposedly wept because there were no more worlds left to conquer. He died at the age of 33 and his kingdom was divided to his four generals, but that Greek empire with all of its power and all of its military prowess, it was destroyed. And you're very familiar of course with Rome. The largest empire of the classical antiquity period at its height under Trajan, it occupied nearly 2 million square miles and controlled 70 million people. That was 21% of the world's population at that time. Who can deny the glory that was Rome, but the Roman empire was destroyed. And God promised that this son of man would have a kingdom that would never end and would never be destroyed, that he would rule eternally.

And almost certainly Christ's followers, his apostles, the disciples who met around him and who heard him so many times call himself the son of man, they must have been shocked when he was crucified. How could a murdered Messiah rule eternally? I remember when my kids were just born and very, very little when I would tell them something would happen, either negative if they did something bad or positive if they did something good. When I was fulfilling that promise, I would oftentimes say, Daddy always keeps his promises. And I find myself now saying this, Daddy tries to always keep his promises.

Why? Because I found that no matter how hard I try, I'm finite, I'm fallen, I'm flawed, but the reality is God always keeps his promises. And he promised that the son of man would rule eternally, so what happens with the crucifixion? Here's a dead Messiah. Well, Peter talks about this after healing the lame man in Acts chapter 3. I don't have time to read the whole passage, but he talks to this Jewish audience. He says, why are you so surprised that we healed this person? He says, we did this through the power of the murdered Messiah. Look at this. You killed the prince of life.

Notice the irony there. Do you really think you can kill the author of life? You killed the prince of life whom God has raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses. And he's saying, that's the power that we used to heal this lame man. It was the power of the risen crucified Messiah. And we just celebrated Easter, Resurrection Sunday. And to fully understand the beauty of Easter, we need to understand the brutality of Good Friday. Dr. Talbert just recently preached on this from Isaiah 53.

And I have gone back and forth on whether I should read these next two paragraphs to you from Russell Moore's book, Tempted and Tried, because they talk about that brutality. But I think we need to notice the horror of the crucifixion to adequately appreciate the beauty of the resurrection. Moore writes this, part of the curse Jesus would bear for us on Golgotha was the taunting and testing by God's enemies. As he drowned in his own blood, the spectators yelled words quite similar to those of Satan in the desert, let the Christ, the King of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. But he didn't jump down.

He didn't ascend to the skies, he just writhed there. And after it all the bloated corpse of Jesus hit the ground as he was pulled off the stake, spattering warm blood and water on the faces of the crowd. That night the religious leaders probably read Deuteronomy 21 to their families, warning them about the curse of God and those who are hanged on a tree. Fathers probably told their sons, watch out that you don't ever wind up like him. Those Roman soldiers probably went home and washed the blood of Jesus from under their fingernails and played with their children in front of the fire before dozing off.

This was just one more insurrection as they pulled off a cross, one of them in a line dotting the roadside. That corpse of Jesus just lay there in the silences of that cave. By all appearances, it had been tested and tried and found wanting. If you'd been there to pull open his bruised eyelids matted together with mottled blood, you would have looked into blank holes. If you had lifted his arm, you would have felt no resistance.

You would have heard only the thud as it hit the table when you let it go. You might have walked away from that morbid scene, muttering to yourself, the wages of sin is death. But sometime before dawn on a Sunday morning, a spike torn hand twitched, a blood crusted eyelid opened. The breath of God came blowing into that cave and a new creation flashed into reality. Men and women, God always keeps his promises. And he took the murdered Messiah and he raised him up from the dead. And Revelation 14 tells us this about him. And I looked and behold a white cloud and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. He's coming to rule and to reign.

Do you know him? Your eternal salvation depends on your view of Christ, the Son of Man. If Jesus were not fully God, then his death would be no more sufficient than if any other man had died. We needed an infinite God to pay an infinite sacrifice. And if Jesus were not fully man, then he could not have been your substitute and my substitute in all of our fallen humanity.

You needed someone who was fully man to step in where you and I have failed. And Paul writes this about the Son of Man in Philippians 2. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. If you pay much attention to the world around you, you recognize that late night comedians mock this Son of Man, that fickle politicians avoid this Son of Man, that secular atheists hate this Son of Man.

And in our day, in some Middle East countries, the water runs red with the blood of decapitated Christians because ISIS terrorists despise this Son of Man. But there is coming a day, there is coming a day when every foul-mouthed comedian will bow the knee. There's coming a day when every cowardly politician will bow the knee. There's coming a day when every raging atheist will bow the knee. And there's coming a day when every ISIS assassin will bow the knee. And you will bow, and I will bow before this Son of Man, this God-Man, this eternal King. Does that thought scare you?

Or is it cause for great rejoicing? A year and a half ago I preached the most difficult sermon of my life and that was at my father's funeral. He pastored for almost 30 years and in the months following that my son, Shepherd, talked to us a lot about death and granddaddy dying.

He was not quite three at the time. A few weeks after my dad's funeral I was rocking Shepherd to sleep at night and we were singing and I just finished singing Give Me Jesus. You can have all this world, give me Jesus. And I sang that last verse and Shepherd tried to sing with me, and when I come to die, and when I come to die, give me Jesus. You can have all this world, give me Jesus. And Shepherd looked up at me, not quite three years old, and he said, Daddy, I was talking to Mommy about this, and she told me that everybody dies.

Is that true? And I said, yes, Shepherd, Mommy's right. Unless the Lord comes back, everybody dies. And he said, does that mean that Mommy's going to die? And I said, yes, Shepherd, you have a wonderful Mommy.

We all love her very much, but unless the Lord comes back, someday Mommy's going to die. He said, Daddy, does that mean you're going to die? And I said, yes, Shepherd, unless the Lord comes back, Daddy's going to die. He said, who's going to take me swimming then?

I said, well, I guess Mommy will have to do that. And then he thought for a while and he said, is Shepherd going to die? And I said, yes, Shepherd, I love you very, very much, and I hope I never see this day, but unless the Lord comes back someday, you're going to die. And he said, so everybody dies?

And I said, yes, everybody dies. And then he looked up at me and maybe in a moment of brilliance or maybe having no clue what he was saying, he said, but Daddy, God can't die because then who would save us? And I said, Shepherd, you're right, we have an undying God. But then I told him about the Son of Man, that God, still fully God, became fully man for the very purpose of dying so that he could save us.

What are you going to do with this Son of Man? Let's pray. Father, we approach your word and we're overwhelmed by your grace and your love and your mercy that would condescend to us. And we thank you that you are a God who always keeps your promises. And that though we murdered your son, you raised him from the dead. And one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that this Son of Man is the Messiah and it will glorify you. Father, help us respond appropriately to your word that we have examined this morning. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached at Bob Jones University by Dr. Nathan Crockett.

And this concludes our study series about Christ in the Old Testament. I'm Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. If you're looking for a regionally accredited Christian liberal arts university, I invite you to consider BJU, which is purposefully designed to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning, loving, and leading. For more information about Bob Jones University, visit bju.edu or call 800-252-6363. Thanks again for listening. Join us again next week as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.