The first two verses of Psalm 69 not only represent Jesus Christ’s personal description of the horrors of His death on the Cross, they offer a vivid picture of what death is like for a lost man.

The passage reads, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.
[2] I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.”

As Jordan explains, “He’s saying, ‘I’m sinking down into the mud. It’s like quicksand; just sucking me down and I can’t get out. There’s no standing; there’s nowhere to get a footing to stop. Down I’m going, right off into being consumed like stubble.’

“If you want to see why death is such a horrible thing for lost people, this is describing what it is. It’s not a delightful, peaceful, restful—‘I’m going home.’

“In our day, with the use of narcotics, people don’t die violent deaths anymore because they drug them up. But for most of human history, people didn’t have those kinds of (escapes) to get around the consciousness of dying.

“There was a book put out some years ago giving the testimonies of famous lost people on their death bed. And one lady attended the death of Nietzsche, the famous French atheist and protagonist of Christianity. After his death, she said, ‘I’ll never again attend the death of a godless man it was so horrible—the crying, and the wailing, and the fear.’

“I remember not too long ago hearing on the radio Gore Vidal describing his philosophy of death, and he said, ‘I’m not worried about dying because when you die you’re just gone. You’re not there anymore. You’re dead like a dog.’

“He said, ‘I’m not going to worry about where I am 200 years from now any more than I worry about where I was 200 years ago.’ I listened to this guy and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s big talk now, buddy. You know you’re healthy and you’ve got plenty of money and you just had a nice meal and you’re sitting and philosophizing in front of a bunch of people who think you’re next to God.’

“It’s okay to talk like that then but, you know, when you’re facing death as a reality, and it’s not just something thrust upon you like in a car wreck . . . Christ is over here looking at experiencing that and He’s describing it. He’s waiting on God to deliver Him but, boy, when He looks at what He’s got to go through, it’s traumatic; it wears on you.”

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Psalm 69 is also where one is informed that Mary had other children besides Jesus and she was not a perpetual virgin as the Catholic Church would have everyone believe. Specifically, Christ cries in verse 8, “I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children.”

From Mark 6:3, we know Christ was the first of at least seven children Mary had. The verse says, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.”

Jordan says, “With the new bibles—meaning the Catholic bibles—what they say is ‘the cousin of James, etc.,’ but you know how I know it’s not cousin? I know it’s not cousin because Psalm 69:8 says they’re ‘my mother’s children.’

“That’s an interesting side verse that kind of protects you from some of the effects of the new bibles when they want to re-translate something. They can argue you down about the meaning of the Greek word for brother there and say, ‘Well, we can find so-and-so and it was cousin,’ and they’ll be right, but they’ll be wrong in making it cousin in that verse because the cross-reference calls them ‘my mother’s children.’ You see that?”

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Another thing the new versions do is change Philippians 2:7 from saying Christ “made himself of no reputation,” to saying “he emptied himself.” Obviously the latter phrase doesn’t lend the same comprehension.

As Jordan explains, “When you make yourself of reputation you stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m so-and-so; you better recognize it!’ and you strut your stuff. Christ didn’t make who He was an issue to be promoted.

“He was the original grace thinker, going by the thinking process of verses 3 and 4 (in Phil. 2): ‘Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
[4] Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.’ ”

As the man Christ Jesus, He voluntarily of His own free choice made the decision to put aside the independent exercise of His deity attributes and put Himself under the complete authority of His Father’s will so that He could say, “I’m trusting you; I’m depending on your Word. And that plan we made back before the foundation of the world—I’m trusting you to do it. I’ll become man and depend upon you to do that.”

Jordan explains, “That’s how much the Lord Jesus Christ gave up. As Paul writes, ‘Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.’ He literally laid aside all of the independent use of his deity.

“In His earthly life, when He did things that demonstrated Him to be God He didn’t do it just because, ‘Oh, I think I’ll zing them over here today.’ He did it because they were instructions from the Father to Him and He was walking in obedience. There were many times in His earthly ministry when He did not demonstrate Himself to be the deity who He is.

“As Hebrews 5:8 says, ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered,’ and He suffered those things in His flesh.

“Now, people sometimes get upset when you talk about this and they misunderstand. They think, ‘Well, you’re denying the deity of Christ.’ But that’s because they don’t understand, or perhaps don’t believe, in the ramifications and the meaning of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“If Jesus Christ did not become completely and fully identified with your humanity to the same extent that He is identified with God’s deity, He’d be of no help to you. He’d be limited to be your Saviour to only (some) ways.

“To be fully your Saviour He had to be fully a man, and there are places in Scripture like Psalm 16 and Hebrews 5 where you see Him come into view as the dependent, trusting man.

“Look at John 5. The book that demonstrates the deity of Christ more than any of the others, and is designed to show Him as God incarnate, is also the book that fascinatingly demonstrates His dependence upon God as the dependent man.

“John 5:19 reads, ‘Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.’

“Christ is not less than God because He became a man; He’s something more or other than God. He’s man.”