JOHN090 - It Would Seem Jesus is Both "son of man" and "THE Son of Man"

John 1:51

Matt's book, The Lightning-Fast Field Guide to the Bible is available NOW! - here's a link that gets TMBH a little kickback: https://amzn.to/4pEYSS9

Thanks to everyone who supports TMBH at patreon.com/thetmbhpodcast

You're the reason we can all do this together!

Discuss the episode here

Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And for the second pair of days in a row, we're doing a double episode. Because for the second pair of days in a row, I got all excited about reading you a big chunk of Old Testament Bible stuff. And it just takes a minute. So a few days ago, I was reading you the Daniel 7, a really challenging passage with a whole bunch of vivid imagery. But the thing crystallizes into something that makes a ton of sense when you get to verses 13 and 14, and we meet the son of man, and we discover this is the second person of the Trinity. This is God, and he receives worship and he reigns forever. And it looks like Jesus is calling himself in John 1:51, the final verse of the Gospel of John, he's calling himself the Son of Man. But yesterday we started exploring the reality that there's another place where the title son of man gets used a lot. And it's another Old Testament prophet. And that prophet was a contemporary of Daniel. And that prophet's name is Ezekiel, but in Ezekiel, Son of Man is very lowercase. It's a title meant to remind Ezekiel of his status before God, of his vulnerability, his breakability, his frailty. It's a humbling title that uses the exact same words. So today we're going to finish what we started yesterday, which is unpacking the double meaning of son of man in the two places in the Old Testament where it was most prominently used, Daniel and Ezekiel. We're going to cobble that together to try to figure out more of what Jesus means when he uses the title the Son of Man, both in this final verse of John chapter one and in all the gospels. It was his favorite title for himself. So, with that said, I'm going to have my friend Jeffrey play some music, and then I'm going to read you some Ezekiel 37. Here we go. And this is a passage I've read you, I don't know how many times, several times over the years. I'm probably not going to read you the whole thing right now, but this is the one where they go to this valley and it's just all death. And in this passage, God is talking to Ezekiel, who he calls again son of man. He's like, prophesy to these dry bones. You know, God makes them come to life. I can't help it. I'm going to read you some of this. The hand of the Lord was upon me. This is Ezekiel talking. And he brought me up with the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley, and it was full of bones. I mean, it almost kind of echoes the Matthew 4 account of the spirit leading Jesus into the desert to be tempted. It's not analogous, but echoes. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry, and he asked me, Son of man, can these bones live? I said, Oh, sovereign Lord, you alone know. Then he said to me, Prophesy to these bones and say to them, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones. I will make breath enter you and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. Jeff, do you still have the sound? Do you remember the sound we did? It's like the you made the little sound from Super Mario with the little bone turtles where they come back to life. If you still have that sound, you should be playing it here. It would be appropriate. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and I as I was prophesying, there was a noise and the rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them, and the skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to it, This is what the sovereign Lord says Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them. They came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast army. Then he said to me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up, and our hope is gone, we are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them, This is what the sovereign Lord says, O my people. I'm going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I would hope they would know. I will put my spirit in you, and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord. And then right after that, there's another prophecy that starts with Son of Man and it fleshes out, no pun intended, what we were talking about there. How much stuff is going on in that passage, right? Son of man, son of man, son of man, son of man, prophesy this, and by the power of God, life and light are brought back to this valley that is dead. My spirit, not just any spirit or life, my spirit is imparted to these who were dead. The bones did nothing. They were completely dead, completely hopeless. And then God says to this son of man, emphasizing the humility of the son of man here in his conversation with Ezekiel, prophesy to them life, and God gives them life, that which seems dead, life. Okay. So now we've got the Daniel, the Son of Man image in our head. And now we have the imagery of the Son of Man image from Daniel's contemporary, Ezekiel, in our heads. And now we're back to John chapter one, and we're asking the question well, which son of man are we talking about here when Jesus uses this term and he says in John 1.51, the final verse of the very dramatic theology-pact first chapter of the Gospel of John, which Son of Man should we have in view here when Jesus says, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man? Is it the negative one from Ezekiel repeatedly used to remind Ezekiel of his frailty, his fragility, his breakability, his humanity? Or is it the semantic inversion of that used in Daniel meant to tell the reader to give us a peek at the Messiah, the Christ, who is God from time eternal, and who we will know as the Son, God in the flesh? Which one is it? Well, I think pretty clearly the answer is both. By the way, is not a specific, it's not a definite capital S, capital M, the Son of Man. It's just a title to do what I just said, to remind the character, to remind people of their frailty, of their mortality, of their breakability. Son of Man in Daniel, capital S, capital M, the Son of Man, singular, proper title is meant to point us to the Messiah, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. But I think Jesus is invoking and referencing back to both. Why? Well, the larger context of John, obviously, but also let's just go back to the prologue at the beginning of John. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Well, that sounds exactly like the Daniel 7:13 through 14 prophecy, where the word Jesus is in the presence of the ancient of days. The ancient of days is right there, and so is the Son of Man. In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the ancient of days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed, and he shall reign forever and ever. Okay, so clearly Daniel there, he's seeing somebody who looks like a man, a son of man, but this isn't any son of man. This is the son of man. So we go back to the prologue. In the beginning was the word, who's the word? Jesus, who is Jesus, the Son of Man, the Son of Man of Daniel 7. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. Also, in him was life, and that life was the light of men. Well, now that's evocative, Ezekiel 37, and the term God keeps using in that scene in the valley of dry bones for Ezekiel himself. So what's going on here? Well, that one who looked to Daniel like a son of man who received glory from all the nations and dominion and authority from the ancient of days, that son of man, quoting now from John 1 14, became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus is God, the Capital S, Son of, Capital M man. Jesus is also fully human, Son of Man. Lowercase. In the incarnation, as he makes his dwelling among us, he is made vulnerable. He's demonstrating a humility that on paper just doesn't make sense for the God of all things to demonstrate, but by simultaneously being the Son of Man and the Son of Man, He not only is positioned to deliver on all the promises we've already seen so far in John, all the promises made by the prophets, all the promises and all the resolutions hinted at and made necessary by all the stuff that's broken in the Old Testament, the law of the Old Testament, the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, by being both the Son of Man and the Son of Man, He's positioned to do all of that. But also because of that, he's positioned to model for us what it looks like to follow in his footsteps, to live like Jesus, to live like the Son of Man in this body. Paul says it brilliantly in Philippians chapter 2. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, this is a parenthetical here, the Son of Man, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing. This is another parenthetical, Son of Man, Ezekiel style. Taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Just picture the letter V. That's how this passage is shaped. At the top left side of the letter V, we're talking about celestial things, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. But then as we get into the passage, we descend down to the bottom point of the V, talking about not just him taking on flesh and being humbled, but being humbled all the way to death. Then we accelerate back up the right side of the V, back up to the top, back up to the God stuff, and it rhymes with everything that we heard in Daniel 7, 13 and 14 about he shall reign forever and ever. All the nations are going to exalt him. So here's the deal with this son of man thing, and why I think it so neatly rounds out John chapter 1. It is setting up for us something that is difficult to understand. That is, Jesus is God in the flesh, but also he is in the flesh. It's raising big questions, but it also points to how Jesus is perfectly positioned to solve the human problem, to do all the things that need to be done that nobody else can do. And it's okay if you as a reader, if I as a reader, if the disciples who are just learning about him don't understand all the implications of that just yet, or how that would all fit together or work, that's okay. We have a whole lot of Bible left. There's a whole lot more things to come. But John 1 has done a magnificent job of setting this all up. And this little semantic inversion that simultaneously means son of man, humbled, vulnerable, in the sense of Ezekiel, but also the son of man, glorious deity in the sense of Daniel. This little semantic inversion, this little if you know, wink ding title that Jesus uses here at the end of John 1, says so much and sets up so much. Hopefully, now moving forward, we're a little better positioned to get some of the layers of meaning that are present when Jesus uses the title for himself, the Son of Man. Final thought. Did you hear what Jeff did with the Hallelujah chorus two days ago? That was ridiculous. It's, I mean, it's so once you hear it, you hear it. It's so obviously the hallelujah chorus. It's so recognizable, but he had so much fun with it that you kind of got to listen for a minute to get it. I think I'm gonna make that my ringtone. Also, if you're a patron, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna post that one for all of you who support the program anyway at any level over there on Patreon. You might enjoy having that one for a ringtone as well. Pretty cool. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.