The master gives us mountain peaks, visions, but then hides us in valleys, in dark places, and lonely places and frustrated places. And we can’t be so intent on our comfort that we forget our calling. And when the angel came to Gideon, he found him in the wine press. The wine press is a strip club of grapes. It is a place where grapes disrobe and uncover themselves.
For it is not the skin of the grape that is the most important thing. It’s what’s behind the skin that makes it important. >> We know that about grapes. I wish we would learn that about people. In the wine press, the grape strips itself and becomes vulnerable down to its soft parts >> so that it might become wine.
Imagine what it must have been like to be an angel in heaven and suddenly hear God say that he’s going to strip himself of his glory and his honor and his pre-existent glory and his omnipotence and his omnipresence and his omniscience and that he would humble himself down to his soft parts and find a virgin and become a man.
>> Wow. See, you think that the real crushing was the cross, but the crushing started when God became man. >> That’s right. >> When God became man, he crushed himself from all of the benefits of being God. >> And for the first time in all of the ages and all of the eons and all of time itself, for the first time, God took a nap.
As God, he neither sleeps nor slumbers. >> But as Jesus, he will sleep in the bow of the ship. >> As God, he’s in all places and at all times. >> But as Jesus, he says, “Let us cross over to the other side.” God never has to journey. >> He’s already there. Yes. >> All of these benefits of being God, Jesus surrendered that he might be encapsulated, incarcerated in human flesh. God incarnate.
Incarnate. The staggering amazing reality that God would put himself in the jail of flesh. The very thing he hated, the very thing he despised, the very thing that Paul says is an enmity against God, Jesus wrapped himself up in it. >> Wow. >> Come on. >> And it was a crushing experience because it meant that he would have to be hungry.
>> That’s right. >> And so after he fasted, the Bible said Jesus hungered. >> But as God the Father, he’d never hungered. >> And now he knows what hunger is. And now he knows what tired is. And now he knows what betrayal is. >> So that whenever you get ready to pray, you can’t bring up a feeling that he doesn’t understand.
He can be touched by the feeling of our infirmity. Tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin. He couldn’t have done that before because he didn’t know what it felt like >> to be human. >> When Adam fell into sin, God asked his first question. Adam, where art thou? That was the day the teacher went back to school because what Adam had fallen into, God had never fallen into.
Adam had fallen into sin and God had never sinned. So when he says, “Adam, where art thou?” It is not just merely a geographical location. He’s trying to to feel him. So Jesus comes to find Adam. In the sight of God, there really only two men. The first man, Adam, and the last man, Adam. >> And everybody else was born in one or the other.
