Welcome and Announcements

Welcome back. It’s good to have you here. A few announcements, then we’re going to jump into a little Ask Pastor Jake, and then today we’re going to break. We’ll be done early in here to break and do a breakout session where you get to read the Bible together, fill in the blanks, and see with your own eyes what the Bible says about the work of Christ. If you remember last week, we learned about Jesus our substitute. You’re going to get to see more of what Jesus accomplished and exactly what God’s word says. So, let’s hand out those handouts. They’re front and back. You will be filling these out in your discussion group, so no need to do anything with them yet—I just wanted to make sure you have them.

As we move on to a few announcements, just a quick reminder of the Christmas party. We have only one more week left of student ministries in 2025. One more week here in this room in 2025, and then we have the Christmas party. Are you able to jump to the slide? Christmas party! You guys are going to have three weeks—three weeks of student ministries deprivation—and then you’ll come, and we’ll have all kinds of fun December 20th at Josh’s house. I found out yesterday that a lot of you didn’t tell your parents until five minutes before the park day that park day existed. So, I want you guys right now to resolve in your hearts, and maybe do whatever else you have to do, to tell your parents tonight that December 20th is the Christmas party. All right, what day is the Christmas party? December 20th. And what are you going to do tonight? All right. Good.

Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl

Next slide. For those who want to do it, we’re guaranteed to have injuries and a lot of fun on Thursday—Thanksgiving morning turkey bowl. This is not a student ministries event, but it’s something we do every year for those who want to show up. You don’t have to go, but you can if you want. This is going to be between us, Grace Bible Church, and Gilbert Bible Church. Show up—football in the morning. It’s a rare Thanksgiving Day that somebody doesn’t get seriously hurt. So, come, plan to have fun, cheer each other on, and especially you high school boys—be there. It goes until the games are done. I think it’s usually about two or three hours. So, 7 o’clock at Food Park. I’ll send an email out to your parents.

Ask Pastor Jake: Why Did God Make Mosquitoes?

Next slide: Ask Pastor Jake. That’s AI—we have to use AI for some good. You’ve been doing a great job with questions; I’m falling further and further behind. So, I got a question: Why did God make mosquitoes? As if pigeons weren’t enough. I think this will probably be the last “Why did God make an animal?” question, but this is a good one.

Why did God make mosquitoes? I don’t know exactly why, but if we think about God’s word, we can get some hints. God made everything for His glory. So, how do mosquitoes glorify God?

Well, we have to go back to the beginning. When did God make mosquitoes? I don’t know which day—creeping thing probably, maybe a thing with wings. But what He did was He made mosquitoes different than they are today. When He made mosquitoes, He said that He saw it and it was good. There was no sin. There was no death in the world yet, because death entered the world when sin did. Now, why do we hate mosquitoes?

I hate mosquitoes because mosquitoes love me. If I’m in a room, people in that room are almost guaranteed not to get bit because all the mosquitoes are on me. Like in Mexico—Kiki grew up in Mexico. We’d go to Mexico, and we were married, sleeping in the same room. Kiki would wake up without a single bite and I’d be covered. I attracted every mosquito to me.

The problem is, mosquitoes drink our blood, make us itch, and transmit diseases. They kill a lot of people through that. So, mosquitoes today are definitely different than when God made them and said, “That’s good.” Back then, they probably didn’t drink blood, or if they did, it didn’t transmit disease for sure, and it probably didn’t make you miserable and itchy. That’s part of the fall.

It’s interesting: only female mosquitoes bite us. Did you know the males don’t bite? I learned something about mosquitoes doing this. All mosquitoes drink nectar. I didn’t know that. Mosquitoes drink nectar—crazy, huh? Nectar is sugar—carbohydrate. But baby mosquitoes and larvae need protein, so they eat us to get the protein. Female mosquitoes, to lay eggs and give the babies protein, they eat us.

That gives us a hint that before the fall, they likely were just really good pollinators, helping spread seeds. We don’t know for sure, but something dramatic changed at the fall—with mosquitoes and many other animals—where everything was an herbivore, eating plants. They didn’t eat each other or kill things, because death hadn’t entered the world yet. Then sin entered the world, and death through sin, and mosquitoes changed and lions changed and T. rexes changed and all the animals changed. Death entered the world, and suddenly animals started killing each other—and killing us. Mosquitoes were no exception.

So now, when I get bit by a mosquito and you get bit, and we see all the problems they cause, we should remember that this was the consequence of sin and the curse. And it should cause us, in the words of Romans 8:22, to groan along with the rest of creation.

We should know it won’t be forever that we get eaten by mosquitoes, get itchy, and get diseases. That’s part of the fall. It says, “For creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope that creation itself…” One day, creation will be set free from bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know the whole creation has been groaning together, and not only creation but Christians are groaning—and this is what mosquitoes should remind us of: that we groan, eagerly awaiting adoption as sons.

Mosquitoes should make you look forward to the new heavens and new earth—a time when mosquitoes will no longer bite you, make you itchy, or miserable. Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe away…” This is new heavens, new earth. This is after Jesus comes back, judges, wipes out all His enemies. We’ve already spent a thousand years in the millennial kingdom. Everything’s gone. He makes all things new. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain.” Which I think has to mean there won’t be blood-sucking, disease-distributing, itch-initiating mosquitoes anymore, for the former things have passed. Maybe there will be no more mosquitoes in the new heavens, new earth. I suspect they’ll be there and be good—probably pollinators, but certainly not acting like they do now.

Hope that was helpful. All things are created for God’s glory. When things make us miserable as an effect of the fall, we should look forward to adoption as sons when all things are made new. That means you shouldn’t live for this world now. Mosquitoes should be a reminder that this world and all its pleasures (that are passing away) and its miseries (that don’t seem right) should point us to the new heavens and new earth, when God will make all things right. And the only way He could make all things right, and have us sinners be there with Him, was the work of Christ on the cross—which is what we’re studying today. Let mosquitoes remind you of the cross and God’s love for us.

Ask Pastor Jake: Did Jesus Set Aside His Divine Attributes?

So, what’s our next question? Did Jesus set aside any of His attributes, like omnipresence, when He became a man? It’s a really good question. We learned that Jesus—this was in our breakout session a few weeks ago—Jesus is fully God and became fully man. He didn’t become half man, half God. He was fully God and fully man. When He became man, did Jesus stop being God? No. He didn’t stop being God. Colossians 2:9 says, “In Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Even Jesus, while He was a man, upheld everything by the word of His power. All of creation that existed—even the cross on which He was dying—was held together by His power. When Jesus died in the body, His power as God did not cease to exist.

And yet in Philippians 2—this might be what you’re referring to—did He set aside? Philippians 2:6 says He was in the form of God but emptied Himself and was born as a man. That almost sounds like He set aside His Godness to become man—like He emptied Himself, stopped being God. The Bible is clear: He did not stop being God.

While He was truly God and omniscient (knowing everything), He was also a man and had to learn. He had a divine nature that was omniscient, and a human nature that had to grow in wisdom. Luke 2:52: “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” We learned that He was hungry and tired. Yet the Bible teaches that God never sleeps, and Jesus, who is God, slept. He was tired, hungry, and really tempted. Hebrews 4:15: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses”—this is talking of Jesus—”but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Yet if you read James, it says God is not tempted by evil. What’s going on here?

So, when Jesus emptied Himself, there’s a mystery where the Bible clearly teaches things that in our mind appear incompatible—just like it seems incompatible that God could be three and one. There’s a lot of mystery to God, and we have to humbly say, “I believe everything God’s word says, even when I don’t know exactly how it fits together.”

One way of saying it: He emptied Himself of the rights and privileges of His Godness, but not of being God. He veiled His glory. Do you remember on the mountain He was unveiled for a second? It wasn’t like He stopped being man and then became transfigured back into God—He was always God and always truly man, and His veiled glory was shown. Jesus was truly omnipotent; He had all power, and still said, like in John 5:30, “I can do nothing on my own.” He gave up His omniscience—He set aside the exercise of that—when He said, “Even the Son of Man doesn’t know the hour of the return.” How does that make sense? How does Jesus, who’s God and knows everything, not know? And the disciples rightly said, “We know that You know everything.” Jesus knew everything about the Samaritan woman. He knew the disciple under the tree—was that Nathaniel? I forget which one it was. Jesus knew things that a human can’t know. He had ability to exercise His Godness. He could speak, and the waves listened. He could make things out of nothing. He could take fish that never existed, make new fish without having them go through the process of being born, growing up, developing. He made matter out of nothing—fish and bread by just His power.

So, was He God or was He man? Yes. He was both. Always truly God, always truly man. I don’t know how that works. Which means in His divine nature He was omnipresent—everywhere at once—and in His human nature, He was in a body: in Jerusalem at times, Bethlehem at times, around the Sea of Galilee, on a boat, and still upholding everything by the word of His power. Martin Lloyd-Jones said it like this, and this is helpful: “There was no change in His deity, but He took human nature to Himself. He chose to live in this world as a man, and He deliberately put limits upon Himself in order that He might live as a man. He did not exercise certain qualities of His Godhead, and there were times when He needed to be given the Holy Spirit without measure. We don’t know how He did it. We cannot understand it, but we know that it’s true. Even though we don’t know how He did it, we know why He did it.”

That’s what we’re going to go break up into our groups to look at in God’s word. Jesus became man. The Bible gives us lots of reasons: not to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many, as we learned last week; so that we might not live to sin, but live to righteousness; so that we could be with God. We’re going to go through lots of verses—three pages, lots of fill-in-the-blanks. What I want you to do is not do this assignment like a school assignment when you don’t really care about it—”Hey, I just need to fill in every blank, get through it.” As you read God’s word, realize this is truly God who truly became man to do this for all who would believe.

You have to say this: More than almost anything else in the world, this must affect you. You can’t read what you’re going to read today and go away like it doesn’t change everything.

Prayer and Group Discussion

So, let’s pray that God would give us hearts not just to listen, not just to understand what we read—you’re going to be reading God’s word. Every time we read God’s word, we pray. We need to pray that God would help us believe, trust, and live obediently in light of what we read today. So, everybody, pray with me. Listen to my words and pray them to God with me.

God, your word is true. And it is amazing that you, Jesus, would become man, humble yourself in love for us, to reconcile us to God—to you. I pray as we read your word that you would help us understand the words. There are things that are hard to understand. Help us pay attention even late at night on a Sunday. Help us to understand and ask questions when we don’t. God, give us soft hearts to believe your word, to trust that it is true, to obey you. God, grant us faith. Strengthen our faith. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

All right, let’s go to our groups.