THE VITAL GROUPS

MESSAGE TEN

CHERISHING PEOPLE IN THE HUMANITY OF JESUS

OUTLINE

1. The humanity of Jesus is His human life in resurrection.
2. The humanity of the new man of the believers in God's new creation is also in resurrection—Eph. 4:23-24.
3. The first way of the members of the vital group to contact people is by cherishing them.
4. To cherish people is to make them happy, to comfort them, to make them feel that you are pleasant to them, easy to be contacted in everything and in every way.
5. Not by your natural man, but by your regenerated man that has been conformed to the death of Christ.
6. The model of Jesus in cherishing people in His humanity:
   1. In the Gospel of Matthew:
      1. As the King of the kingdom of the heavens in His humanity, Christ came to cherish people by shining over them as the great light and by preaching the kingdom of the heavens as the gospel by charging them to repent—4:12-17.
      2. As the human King of the kingdom of the heavens, Christ cherished the kingdom-seekers by blessing them with a ninefold blessing—5:1-12.
      3. When the disciples asked Him to dismiss the crowd to buy food for themselves, He, being moved with compassion for the crowd, told the disciples to give what they had to the people for them to eat that He might nourish the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, having a leftover of twelve baskets—14:14-21.
      4. He did the same thing in 15:32-38.
      5. When His disciples rejected people bringing their children to Him, He stopped their preventing and asked them to bring the children to Him, and He cherished the parents by laying His hands on their children—19:13-15.
   2. In the Gospel of Luke:
      1. Christ as the Man-Savior came to a synagogue in Nazareth and read a portion from Isaiah that says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to announce the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to send away in release those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of jubilee," to cherish people with the words of grace proceeding out of His mouth—4:16-22.
      2. Christ as the Son of Man came to eat and drink with the tax collectors and sinners, even as their friend, to cherish them that they might be nourished by Him with His redemption and salvation—7:34.
      3. Christ as the Son of Man went to Jericho, passed by the tree from which Zaccheus was expecting to see Him, and looked up and said to him, "Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay in your house," in order to cherish him that He might nourish him with His salvation—19:1-10.
   3. In the Gospel of John:
      1. When Christ as the God-Savior was recognized by Nathanael as the Son of God, He answered him that he would see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on Him as the Son of Man, like the heavenly ladder seen by Jacob in his dream, as a kind of cherishing to encourage Nathanael to follow Him that he might participate in His nourishment with all the divine benefits as revealed in the entire Gospel of John—1:45-51.
      2. When Christ as the God-Savior wanted to save an immoral woman of Samaria, He had to travel from Judea to Galilee through Samaria and detoured from the main way of Samaria to the city of Sychar, and He waited at the well of Jacob, near Sychar, for His object to come that He might cherish her by asking her to give Him something to drink so that He might nourish her with the water of life, which is the flowing Triune God Himself—4:1-14.
      3. When none of the accusing Pharisees could condemn the adulterous woman, Christ as the God-Savior, in His humanity, said to her, "Neither do I condemn you," to cherish her that He, as the great I Am, might nourish her with the freedom from sin and enable her to "sin no more"—8:3-11, 24, 34-36.