The Word Became Flesh

(The Incarnation: Part One)

John 1:14 “And the Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father) full of Grace and Truth.”

Introduction:

If we consider the question, “What we are to offer to the world around us?” our first answer might be, “The Gospel!” And that is completely correct. But what sort of things are we presenting as part of the Good News of Christ? If people know nothing about who God is, or why we needed a Savior, then why would the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus be good news at all? I would like to present a series of messages regarding the message itself.

The theme today is the Incarnation. Without the incarnation (that is, the real God becoming a real Man, fully human, and living a physically limiting, sometimes painful and often demeaning life on planet Earth) we would have no savior. All the attributes of God become meaningless to us if that God did not also become human, taking on the nature of a servant, and sacrificing Himself in the place of the condemned human race.

The Concept of the Incarnation: Back to Genesis

We can trace the concept of the incarnation back to Genesis, though it is not spelled out there, as such. It is there, but illuminated under a rather dim light, if you will. Genesis 3:8 gives us a tiny glimpse of something unique in the living God: He walked in the Garden in the cool of the day. And, He spoke as he walked, evidently calling to Adam and Eve, the intelligent representatives of His earthly creation. As it is phrased, it seems that His presence there was a normal thing…the guilty couple were not afraid because He was doing something new…it was because they had done something new. They had sinned.

God’s presence in the Garden was normal. His speaking was normal. Sin is NOT normal. And yet, the sin they committed was no surprise. I don’t have to guess about this…I can say it with absolute certainty, because far away in the other end of the Bible, Revelation 13:8 states that Jesus was the “Lamb slain from the Foundation of the Earth”—not “from the Fall of Man”. He knew exactly what they would do, before they did it, and had already moved to correct the damage. The promise of a Savior is first made in Genesis 3:15, concerning a person called “The Seed of Woman.” And Jesus is the only one who could fulfill this as He was the only one who only possessed a human mother…His Father was God.

In Genesis 7:1, which is part of the account of the worldwide flood, a small point is raised that when God instructed Noah and his family to embark, he specifically called them to “come” into the Ark. Not “go”, but “come” (the Hebrew word is “bo” and this is its first use in scripture, though it is used hundreds of times in later passages, and it is usually translated “come.”) The implication was that God was already aboard. In physical form? No… I don’t think so. But He was there.

In Genesis 14:18-20 an interesting character appears: Melchizedek. He was at least a picture of the Christ, and I think there is ample scriptural evidence to hint that he may have actually been the pre-incarnate Christ, already acting as the mediator between God and man…the Priest of the Most High God. (See Psalm 110 and Hebrews 7 for more information.) Most commentators would probably disagree with me on that point. That is OK. I could be wrong, and I would be happy to discover that I am wrong from the scripture, but, in the meantime, I have to preach it the way I see it.

In Genesis 18 God appears to Abram, at Mamre. Initially, Abram did not recognize him as Deity, but thought that he (Abram) was simply exercising hospitality toward a fellow man. He was corrected when God made the promise of a child, a son, to be born the following year. From that point forward, Abram approached Him in a different way, though still with remarkable boldness, as he “dickered” for the life of Lot, trying to dissuade God from destroying Sodom, where his nephew Lot still lived. An interesting point is that Abram addressed Him as “the Judge of all the Earth.” John 5:22 tells me that had to be Jesus.

In these instances, and others, the Lord appeared in either human form or at least a physical form such that no one questioned his presence. He wrestled with Jacob, as we mentioned a few weeks ago; he confronted Balaam, the wayward prophet, and threatened to kill him because of disobedience. In Daniel’s account, He joined Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace, thus shielding them from the deadly flames; and he was seen there by Nebuchadnezzar, and many others.

The Fact of the Incarnation: The Word Became Flesh

So, if God has been appearing on planet Earth since the beginning… what is so different about the incarnation? The answer is simple: He had to be able to die. Hebrews 10:1-10 (read it).

This is primarily a quote from Psalm 40:6, 7 (read it) —with a minor change thrown in. Remember that God is the author of both, and He has inserted a parenthetical remark (“a body thou hast prepared me”) into his earlier statement, thus making it clear what was meant. David was inspired to write Psalm 40. Probably Paul was the human agent used to write the book of Hebrews. But Psalm 40 mentioned nothing about the body prepared for the sacrifice. It only stated that the sacrifices of the animals did not solve anything…those covered by that blood were still possessed of their sins, though the sins were covered. The speaker recognized that the animal sacrifices could not remove sin, and in contrast stated, “Lo, I come! In the volume of the book it is written of me”. It was absolutely not talking about David, or any other son of Adam: it could only refer to “the Seed of Woman”…The promised Messiah…The Promise of the Ages.

The only way that particular promise could be fulfilled was for the Messiah to become a complete human…Gestation and childbirth, physical mortality and all: Flesh and blood. Hebrews 10:9 reiterates the contrast, and states the divine upgrade from figure to reality.

The countless animals throughout the ages that have been sacrificed as substitutes for fallen Man, while their deaths were not “in vain,” were woefully inadequate to complete the job of salvation. The animals only fulfilled a portion of the “law of the substitute;” the law of the Kinsman-Redeemer. They were innocent, all right, but were unrelated to the sinners, and certainly did not voluntarily substitute themselves for the guilty party.

The only true substitute had to be human. He had to be free from sin. He had to have a physical life to offer, and he had to be willing—intelligently willing— to take the place of the rest of the fallen world. Before the Incarnation, the God of the universe had proven himself willing, according to Revelation 13:8. He was certainly sin-free, but (a) he was not yet human, and (b) He had no body—no physical life—to offer. So, the last two pieces of the puzzle came together in the Incarnation. “A body thou hast prepared for me”…and “Lo! I come! In the volume of the book it is written of me!” The prophecies had been there for hundreds of years…some for thousands of years. Abel’s sacrifice was called a prophecy, according to Hebrews 11:4 (“…and by it, he yet speaks”). That was about 4000 years before Christ. All the prophecies of the Savior were fulfilled in the Incarnation of Christ.

The birth had to be there, and it had to be a virgin birth. There is only One person in history who is truly the “Seed of Woman”…all the rest of us have a human father. His birthplace, his poverty, his travels to Egypt, his growing up in Nazareth, his miracles, the outpouring of wisdom when He taught, the affliction of his soul because of the sins of the Human race, and, of course, his eventual crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection were ALL prophesied in detail, and all had to be fulfilled. The casting of lots for his undergarment was specified. The vinegar they offered him to drink, and the fact that he would die with the wicked, but be buried with the wealthy (now there’s a paradox!) all had to be fulfilled in the same man. You see, the wicked were usually disposed of like garbage: thrown into the city dump to be eaten by scavengers. The wealthy (even the wicked wealthy) were carefully entombed in rock. But crucifixion labelled him as accursed, and he would not usually have been buried at all, let alone in a brand-new hand-carved stone tomb.

“In the volume of the Book it is written of me!”

The Credentials of Christ were in the scriptures he was fulfilling. The Credentials of God and the Pedigree of the Messiah are the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible. Either they are completely true, or we have no hope! God presents the fulfillment of prophecy as being his primary credential, throughout the book of Isaiah. Look at some of the claims he makes: Isaiah 41:4, 46:5-10; 48:16, etc. “I am He who tells the end from the beginning. Who else is like me?”

This is a unique attribute of the God of the Bible. Others may claim 60% accuracy, or even 90%, but God said that His prophets had to be 100% accurate, or they were to be stoned as a false prophet. Ironically, virtually all the true prophets were ultimately killed by the people to whom they were sent, and the false ones were revered, as a rule. Why? Because God’s prophets brought an unpopular message (the truth) and the false prophets simply told people what they wanted to hear.

Jesus addressed this issue (John 3:19) “And this is the Judgment, that light has come into the world, and Men loved Darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil!” Many false prophets have claimed 100% accuracy, but history (immediately subsequent to their prophecies) has proven them liars, and hopelessly wrong. God’s prophets were accurate to the smallest details… and the Incarnation brought all the promises of God to a focal point. The Kingdom was actually offered to Israel while Jesus was on Earth; had they received Jesus as their Messiah, I have no idea how God would have worked out the rest of the fulfillment of prophecy. But there was no danger of that, as their rejection was also predicted. God knew exactly what they would do when offered the Kingdom. The offer was genuine and sincere. He mourned their rejection even back in Isaiah (Isaiah 48:18). So, the fulfilled Incarnation included the rejection by His people the Jews. It included the beatings, the scourging, the piercing of the hands and feet, and all that was involved in His death. It included the three days and three nights in Sheol—the place of the Dead. But what else did it include? The Incarnation also included the positive side of the story, of course:

It included the resurrection. It included the promise of Salvation by Faith alone. And included the full portrait of his character, his Grace and Mercy and Truth.

The Result of The Incarnation:

He…Dwelt among us… Full of Grace and Truth (John 1:14)

“…and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth” Jesus’ life was full of Grace and Truth. We can still read the Bible and see how his life reflected the truth at all times and in every sense, and that Grace was the heartbeat of the incarnate God. But He didn’t do it off by Himself somewhere, or in a monastery, or a desert island. He dwelt among us. He had to live with the same sorts of smelly, rude, frustrating, self-centered, short-sighted idiots as we do (and are). He was with people who had no idea of him being anything special and treated him pretty disrespectfully. He was with those who had already broken his laws too many times to count…and/or those who were actively mistreating others. He lived in the presence of his friends and his enemies…and the friends were unreliable at best.

We can see His Grace extended to the Woman at the Well, a lost, sinful, half-breed Samaritan, seriously confused about God, and seriously soaked in sin, rejected even by her own people.

We can see His Grace extended to the Thief on the Cross, as He responded with encouragement and promise to someone who, a short time earlier, had joined with the crowd in reviling him, but who also, just a moment before, had sought his forgiveness and Mercy.

We can see His Grace, a few years later (I’m not sure of the time frame) on the road to Damascus, when a young man named Saul of Tarsus was recruited. Saul had been severely persecuting the church. If I had been a believer at that time, I am sure I would have been praying for God’s vengeance on Saul, and God’s protection for the believers.

But Jesus went a step further: He made Saul of Tarsus (later known as the apostle Paul) a child of God, and a powerful tool in His hand. Wasn’t that a better solution? Of course! But what about Paul’s sins; shouldn’t they be dealt with? They were! Those sins were purged at the same time as yours; at the Cross. That is one of the results of the incarnation. And we can rejoice in that result in our own lives and the lives of those around us.

Next week we will talk about the Resource that the Incarnation provides in our lives, as well as the Rebuke and the Exhortation, in the Incarnation of Christ.

Jesus, make us alive to you and remind us that we are dead to the world, both as a result of your ministry as God in the Flesh.

December 16, 2018December 17, 2018

Why We Celebrate Christmas

(Explication of a Hymn) Luke 1, 2; Matthew 1, 2

The Christmas Song

by Don Francisco

The center of the ages, and the Lord talks with a girl
And by the words He speaks He gives a Savior to the world
The fullness of the time has come, and Mary’s Son is born;
The promise’s fulfillment lies asleep now in her arms.

He didn’t come to terrify, to judge or condescend–
To call us all His servants, but to lift us as His friends
To save us all from Satan’s power, to reign at His right hand
In the little town of Bethlehem, when God became a man.

Today the God of Majesty has given to the Earth
A gift of such magnificence we could never plumb its worth
And the rudeness of the setting just ignites the jewel’s fire
A pearl beyond the greatest price, the joy of man’s desire.

He didn’t come to terrify, to judge or condescend
To call us all His servants but to lift us as His friends
To save us all from certain death, to reign at His right hand
When, once for all eternity, God became a man.

Introduction:

In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke we read the account of the birth of our Savior, and there is little question why we celebrate that birth, as it was the fulfillment of promises dating back thousands of years, all the way to the Fall of Man…and a plan from before the Creation.

We have all watched Christmas pageants, heard sermons, sung songs, and have read the scriptures, until we may become complacent about the facts of the Gospel. So, let’s review:

The Center of the Ages, and the Lord Talked with a Girl;

God actually could have chosen to carry out the crucifixion prior to the Creation, but it would have made no sense from our perspective, as we are locked in the sequence of time, though He himself is not. In fact, one of the pedigrees of the Gospel, in the Old Testament, is that God tells us the end from the beginning. No one else can do this. He let us know where, when and how, and by whom, the Savior was to be born, as well as what would characterize His life. The determination was made before the Creation, but the fulfillment had to wait.

So the first promise of the Savior was actually made the day the Human race fell into sin, in Genesis 3:15. And the fulfillment of that promise, along with hundreds of other, later promises regarding the Messiah, came about in the “Center of the Ages”, as the song says.

But the fulfillment began with a conversation between God (via the angel Gabriel) and Mary, a young girl in Nazareth; a small town in Galilee. It is interesting to read through the scriptures, looking to see how the spoken Word of God has affected our lives and our History. As it turns out, the creation itself was by the Word…the world was spoken into existence. All that we see around us was initially the creative act of the Word of God. So, it seems fitting that the spoken promise should give way to the Person called the Word of God, who would later assure His disciples that they were already cleansed through the Word He had spoken to them. By the Word of God, the Savior was given.

Mary was betrothed to a man (apparently much older, as was common) named Joseph. But when Gabriel appeared to Mary, announcing that she had been chosen by God to bear the Savior, she was initially shocked and probably a little dismayed, as to how it was going to affect her betrothal. As it turned out, she would have been right to be worried, but she had quickly recovered, and blessed God for the privilege. She accepted the assignment with joy, looking forward by faith to the fulfillment of the Promise.

Mary went to stay with her cousin Elizabeth for a while, as she, too, was bearing her firstborn, but in her old age (another miracle-child: John the Baptist), and the angel Gabriel had told Mary about it. Elizabeth was already six months into her pregnancy. When Mary arrived at the home of Elizabeth, she herself was evidently only a few weeks pregnant by the Holy Spirit, but Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, blessed her, and recognized that she was the mother of her Lord, and revealed that as soon as she had heard Mary’s voice, the baby in her own womb had leaped for joy.

When Joseph discovered that his fiancée was pregnant, he had sadly determined to quietly divorce her, not wanting any public disgrace to come on her. It did require a divorce to break a betrothal, in that culture and time, and he thought she had been unfaithful, so he was planning to break the betrothal. But the angel Gabriel appeared to him, as well, in a dream, and assured him that Mary had been completely chaste, and faithful, and that the child she bore was literally the Son of God. Joseph was instructed to carry on with the marriage. He arose in the morning, and did as he was told, but did not consummate the marriage until after her firstborn son was born.

In the Little Town of Bethlehem

Joseph was required by Caesar Augustus to register for a census, along with all the other inhabitants of the Roman world. Bethlehem was his ancestral home, so he had to return there for the census. He took Mary with him to Bethlehem. Remember that Nazareth was home to both Joseph and Mary. That is where they would have expected their child to be born. But the prophecy of Micah 5:2 said that the Savior was to be born in Bethlehem. Caesar “just happened” to make a decision that would force them to temporarily relocate to Bethlehem, about 80 miles away. (Now, that was a strange “coincidence,” wasn’t it?)

The Fullness of Time

But, Mary was far along in her pregnancy by that time, so when they arrived in Bethlehem, along with the crowds of other people in the same circumstances, she was in critical need of a place to lie down and give birth. The only inn was full, and so they found shelter in a stable where animals were fed. The fullness of Mary’s time had come, as well as the fullness of God’s timing. Daniel’s prophecies had spelled out when the Messiah would come. (And here he was!) She gave birth there, in the humblest of circumstances, without a midwife, without her mother or aunts or older sisters to help her. So far as we know, only Joseph and she were there. God was in control. There was no need for other help. The baby was soon safe in her arms, and was subsequently wrapped in cloths, called “swaddling clothes.”

We always make nativity scenes with a variety of animals and the shepherds, and angels, and wise men. But at that moment, it was just Mary, Joseph, and the infant they would call Jesus, in obedience to the angelic messenger who had spoken to each of them separately. Animals very well could have been there, as the manger would indicate that animals were fed there; but the rest is all speculation on our part. Tradition has it that she rode there on a donkey, too, but we don’t even know that, for sure. It would make sense, but it is still just supposition and speculation. The wise men showed up perhaps a year or two later…not that night, for sure.

However, there were shepherds, in the surrounding fields, guarding their flocks by night. They got an astonishing announcement from God, via one angel, initially, soon joined by a multitude of angels, who appeared, telling them about the Savior’s birth, and praising and glorifying God. The shepherds were told to go and see the baby, and that they would find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Then the angels disappeared into the sky. (By the way; every single time angels appear in scripture, they appear as men… fearsome men at times: not dainty little lady-angels…sorry.)

But why these particular signs? Swaddling clothes were a rather archaic way of clothing an infant, in which the baby was simply wrapped in strips of cloth. It was similar to the way they prepared a body for burial, and it was not terribly common, even in that time, so that was part of the sign, along with the fact that they would find Him lying in a manger—an animal food trough—not a common bed for a child, at any time in history. It was just a plain, elevated food trough, made so that the animals would not step in their food. But it served well as a baby crib, in this case. So, when the shepherds came to look, they found him there, exactly as promised. They told everyone who would listen, and went back to their flocks excited, and praising God for the fulfillment of His promise. In Luke 2:10, it says that the “good tidings” (also called the gospel– that’s what “gospel” means: good tidings–good news) would bring great joy. That was the immediate response of the Shepherds. They didn’t have the day off because it was Christmas; no turkey, no tree, no “stockings, hung by the chimney with care:” just…great joy, because the Lord, the God of Israel, was finally fulfilling the Promise of the Ages. It seems to me that we all could use a dose of that kind of faith and the resulting joy. Remember, these were not parishoners, pumped up by a good sermon. They were common, lowly shepherds, who had just experienced God’s Grace.

**But, why did He Come?**

Skip forward thirty years in time: Joseph, Mary’s husband, has evidently already passed away, so that the rest of the family (Mary, four half-brothers and at least two half-sisters) now look to Jesus as the head of the household. Jesus begins his earthly ministry, and it is not at all what the Jews were hoping for. They wanted a King, who would destroy the Romans, and elevate Israel to supremacy, as the prophecies in Isaiah seemed to indicate would happen.

They were not at all impressed with a poor, itinerant preacher who persisted in preaching Grace, and Righteousness, and Peace. He healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, and, in general, proved that he was, in fact, the Son of God. But they rejected Him…He wasn’t what they wanted!

“He didn’t come to terrify,” as the song says: He didn’t come as a conquering emperor: He came “not to condemn the World, but that the World through Him might be saved.” He did not come to judge, but to offer salvation. He did not call us to be his slaves, but to free us from our slavery to sin, and to elevate us to be on friendly speaking terms with God: He even said “I do not call you my servants, but my friends.” He said of Himself, in Matthew 20:28, “…the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” He has already done what He came to do. He died in our place. And we who believe have already received the gift of eternal life. We have already been raised by Him, to sit with Him in the heavenlies. God says that we believers are already there, even while we are still in our lives here on earth. We have already been resurrected and ascended with Him to sit with him at the right hand of the Father.

The Rudeness of the Setting

Why do we find the story so compelling? Precisely because the setting was so completely plain. Jesus could have been born a royal heir, and lived in luxury, as do the heads of most of the world’s religions, but he chose to come as the son of a very poor girl, with a poor man for his adopted father. He emptied himself of all the trappings of deity and royalty, to become a man, living as a servant, not a king, owning nothing but the clothes he wore, and walking the roads of the tiny nation of Israel, reaching out one last time to a people who had mostly rejected his advances for almost 2,000 years.

His name was “Jesus”, meaning “Jehovah is Savior.” The angel Gabriel told Joseph that they would name the child “Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” His name is “Jehovah is Savior” because He shall save us from our sins! The deity of Christ is made clear, in the scriptures. John 1:1-14 says he is The Word, and that he is the Creator, as well as being God the Son. We can’t hope to understand such things. But all of them are facts!

And the gift God gave to us truly was magnificent beyond our comprehension. The cost was beyond our understanding, too, as we cannot even begin to imagine what it cost the God of Eternity to bind himself in time and space, specifically so that He could be tortured to death by his own creation, and to become sin for them, so as to endure for them the curse of His own wrath toward sin, and save them from certain destruction. 2^nd Corinthians 5:21 says that “he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” It boggles my mind to consider such a thing. We have been saved from our sins, saved from wrath, and delivered from Satan’s dominion over us. We could ask for no greater gift. We are now sons of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, for eternity.

God became a Man

Philippians 2:5-8 tells us of the “kenosis”—the self-emptying of Christ. He set aside all his prerogatives as God, and chose to be born a human child, in harsh circumstances. He came for a single purpose: to die for our sins. He taught and demonstrated His Grace and Wisdom on the way to the Cross, but he was headed for the Cross from before the World began. Revelation 13:8 says that He was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the Earth.”

And it could only happen when and if…once, for all eternity, God became a Man. And that is the heart of the Christmas story!

Lord Jesus, help us to grasp and value the gift you have given, and to share that gift with those around us. Awaken our hearts to the need, and allow us to be your hands and feet and mouth, so that you will be free to love the World through us.