The Mystery of Christmas

Transcript

JRS 58
12/22/2024
The Majesty of Christmas, Part 3: The Mystery of Christmas
Selected Verses
Jesse Randolph


Well, as some of you know in my family we are big fans of the Green Bay Packers. Go Pack Go! We are all in on the green and gold and one of the quarterbacks that cheeseheads like us have been most connected to in recent years is Aaron Rodgers, in the past decade or so. And Aaron Rodgers is this fascinating character, I would actually say he is a sad character because over the years he has proven himself, of course, to be a man of undeniable football talent but he is also a man who has been on this undeniable spiritual slide for as long as the spotlight has been on him. Though he was raised in a Christian home in Chico, California, up in northern California, Rodgers has since renounced any earlier expression of his Christian faith, opting instead for a form of New Age religion, one which is involving him centering in on his own consciousness, as he explains it; one which involves him continually looking within for answers; one which involves him, as he has said it, learning how to love himself again; one which involves him, as he has expressed it, calling on the divine feminine; and one which involves him taking these trips down to South America tripped out on psychedelic drugs as a way to enhance the experience of whatever spiritual journey he is on.

Now this New Age nonsense to which Aaron Rodgers has fallen prey is the fruit of what Peter Jones, an English theologian, has called “one-ism,” which would be contrasted with “two-ism.” “Two-ism” is Peter Jones' way of expressing the biblical approach to reality, that which runs parallel to what the Scripture reveals, as it recognizes one of the most fundamental teachings of the Bible, namely the existence of what is known as the Creator/creature distinction. In the “two-ist” way of looking at the world, God fundamentally stands apart from His creation. He is the Creator, we are the creatures; He is the ruler, we are the subjects; He is the potter, we are the clay. We are made in His image, living under His divine authority, living in accordance with His divine rules. That's “two-ism.”

“One-ism,” by contrast flattens out that distinction between God and man, it eviscerates the Creator/creature distinction. And the result is, as Peter Jones himself notes, that “there are no real distinctions. Everything is made of the same stuff. Matter is eternal and all has the spark of divinity within it.” Jones then goes on to say that “'one-ism' is the basis of nature worship. There is no category for sin because think of a circle, everything is within the circle—rocks, trees, good, evil, man, God—everything is one and so in that circle we can do whatever we want to.” Now Peter Jones' description of “one-ism” aptly describes the perspective of New Age types like Aaron Rodgers who start placing rocks and trees in the same category of sanctity and deity as God Himself, those folks who never tire of looking inward to discover the best version of themselves and those who constantly downplay the existence or the possibility of absolute truth, even though ironically they absolutely deny the possibility of absolute truth.

But there is another consequence to this “one-ist” way of thinking that goes beyond the navel-gazing New Age types like Aaron Rodgers. And that is this, with this sort of flattened out perspective on life and reality, the event that we are celebrating right now at Christmas, the incarnation of Christ, the birth of Jesus, the arrival of the Son of God into this world, that moment at which the Eternal entered the temporal, the moment at which the Divine entered that which was corrupt and fallen and flawed, when heaven, as some will say, invaded earth, that whole experience, that whole holiday loses some of its significance and its luster, its meaning, its transcendence.

I mean, think about it, let's put ourselves in the shoes of one of these “one-ists” for a moment. Let's say that for argument's sake we are all part of this grand circle of life and every plant and animal and every rock and tree, every inanimate object on the earth shares some sort of spark of divinity, to use Jones' word, with God Himself. Let's say that you really can find God in the first snowfall of winter or the baby's giggle or the perfectly executed orchestral piece. Or let's say, like Aaron Rodgers does, that you can find God by climbing to the top of Machu Pichu in a drug-infused trance. If God and humanity are truly capable of coming together in those moments, then why would the Christmas story matter at all? Why would the Bible's account of God coming into this world as a baby in Bethlehem matter? Why would we sing songs about Immanuel coming? Or herald angels giving Him glory? Or mountains echoing their joyous strains? Or joy supposedly coming into the world? Why would we think of the Christmas storyline of God now being with us through Christ is anything to celebrate or commend, if we already think God is with us in some experiential, magical, mystical way?

And praise the Lord, God has Himself spoken on these matters. And this morning as we sit here just a couple of days away from Christmas, we're going to consider what the Scriptures teach about the incarnation of Christ. And in doing so, Lord willing, we're going to come away not merely with a commitment to “two-ism,” more importantly we'll have a true appreciation for the incredible, miraculous event that the incarnation of Jesus Christ truly was, as the One who as God eternal made men, Himself became a man.

This is installment #3 of our December sermon series, titled “The Majesty of Christmas.” In our first sermon we looked at “The Mythology of Christmas,” you'll recall we looked at some of these extra-biblical stories, myths we call them, which have attached themselves in church history like barnacles to the actual biblical account of what happened in Bethlehem. This includes myths about Jesus being less than fully human, a weightless phantom baby, you might remember that one. This includes the myth about the presence of cattle and oxen in the manger. Myths about the magi, the wisemen from the East who brought Jesus gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. In the second sermon we looked at “The Misunderstanding of Christmas,” where we explored the topic of extra-biblical traditions. And we started, of course, with the trajectory of Nicholas of Myra, the heretic-punching early church father who became somehow Santa Claus. We looked at the origin of the Christmas tree, and then we filtered those two Christmas traditions through what Scripture, Old Testament and New, has to say about the topic of tradition, broadly speaking. This morning's sermon is titled “The Mystery of Christmas,” and the mystery we'll be exploring specifically is the Bible's teaching that God Himself came down in the person of His Son, taking on flesh in this event known as the incarnation, which really is at the heart of Christianity.

As we take up our subject this morning on the incarnation of Christ, we're going to consider five key incarnational truths which are revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. We'll be doing kind of a scattershot sermon, jumping all over the place, but we have five key incarnational truths. First we'll look at “What Christ Left,” second we'll look at “What Christ Entered,” third we'll look at What Christ Assumed,” fourth we'll look at What Christ Became,” and then fifth we'll look at “What Christ Accomplished.” So it's what He left, what He entered, what He assumed, what He became, what He accomplished.

Let's start with what Christ left. We often tend to think of the Christmas story this time of year in terms of the immediate context of a handful of passages, Gospel passages specifically. We think of Matthew 1, we think of Luke 1, we think of Luke 2. And we tend to, if we're not careful, go straight to the human characters in the story. We go straight to Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the magi. And we do so, I think, because as humans, humanity and humankind is really all we know, that's what we relate to. Not only that, we have this natural tendency and this natural proclivity as humans to inject ourselves into the storyline of Scripture. And so we think as we read some of those Gospel accounts, that's the Christmas story and that's the entirety of the Christmas story. It's about those people mentioned in the birth account, and then beyond that it's about how I figure out which of these characters, which of these figures I most closely relate to.

But there is a massive backstory to the Bethlehem account. There is so much going on, around and under the nativity scene, leading up to the birth account in the Gospels, including the fact that as He came to earth, Christ left something behind, namely His eternal dwelling place in the heavens. Did you ever sit and think about that, just meditate and chew on the fact that Jesus is God? “In Him,” Colossians 2:9, “all the fullness of deity dwells,” and as God He is eternal, meaning before you existed, before I existed, He was there. Before your parents existed He was there. Before your grandparents existed He was there. Before your grandparents' grandparents existed He was there. Before the days of the apostles He was there. Before His own birth in a manger He was there. Before the days of the prophets who God sent to Israel He was there. Before the days of King David and the days of King Solomon He was there. Before the days of Isaac and Jacob He was there. Before the days of Abraham He was there. In fact He said that, John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Before Noah He was there. Before Adam and Eve He was there. Before the creation of the world He was there. John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Colossians 1:17, “He is before all things.” Before God even issued His eternal decree, the one by which He declared all that would ever come to pass, that's Ephesians 1:11, that God “works all things according to the counsel of His will.” Before that decree was issued Christ was there. He was there for all of it. He was there existing in perfect triune fellowship with the other two members of the Godhead, God the Father and God the Spirit.

You know, I think one of the reasons we can tend to end up having an embarrassingly dim view of the Christmas holiday is that we accept a view, we accept a perspective that reduces the holiday, reduces what we celebrate to the manger scene itself in Bethlehem. Or worse yet we reduce it to the story it tells us about our personal salvation. We make it again about us. Or worse yet, we take a perspective on Christmas that elbows that story out entirely for the sake of our man-made traditions where Christmas suddenly becomes about Christmas cookies and Santa and gingerbread houses. And Christmas suddenly becomes about our busyness and our presents and needing to race from this party and this celebration to the next one. We ignore truths like these, though, when we allow those traditions, when we allow those perspectives to supplant what is actually being revealed. And what is actually being revealed is that Christmas, this whole holiday, this time we are celebrating this time of year is about this eternal God and His accomplishment of His eternal purposes through His eternally begotten Son.

I mean, reality check time, how many of you in the midst of your fretting and buying and wrapping of gifts, how many of you in the midst of watching Christmas movies (nothing wrong with that), and listening to Christmas songs and simultaneously complaining to anybody who will listen about how crazy your Christmas season is this year have actually reflected over the past few weeks on what the Scriptures teach about the grandeur of God? About the transcendence of God? About the majesty of God, the very God who set in motion each of the events that undergird what we now know as Christmas? How many thoughts have you had this Christmas season that have led you to contemplate, like it says in Psalm 115:3, that our God is the God “who sits on high?” How many of your thoughts have gone the direction of, as it says in Psalm 99:23, “holy is our God?” How many of your thoughts have gone in the direction of Psalm 145:3, that our God is great “and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable?” How many of your thoughts this Christmas season have gone in the direction of Isaiah 40? Isaiah 40 speaks of God effortlessly exercising His sovereignty over all His creation. Isaiah 40:12, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and encompassed the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales.” How many of your thoughts have gone in the direction of God's sovereignty over the nations? Isaiah 40:15, “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are counted as a speck of dust on the scales.” Or how many of your Christmas devotions this year have taken you in the direction of Isaiah 40:22 which speaks of God's sovereignty over all of the earth's inhabitants. “It is He who inhabits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.”

One man who got this right, one man who had a clear grasp, no matter what time of year it was, on the transcendence and majesty of God and by comparison how small and insignificant we are was Jonathan Edwards, the great 18th century American preacher who once said this, “God sees over all this world: every man, woman and child; every beast on earth, every bird in the air, every fish in the sea. There is not so much as a fly or worm or gnat that is unknown to God. He knows every tree, every leaf, every spire of grass; every drop of rain or dew; every single dust mite in the world. God sees in darkness and underground. A thousand miles underground is not hidden from His view. God sees all that men do or say, sees their hearts and thoughts. God knows everything past, even things a thousand years ago. He also knows everything to come, even a thousand years to come. He knows all the men that will be and all that they will do, say, or think.”

God, in other words, is jaw-droppingly sovereign. He is all powerful, all seeing, all wise, all knowing. And not only that, God is triune. He is one in essence, yet eternally existing in three persons—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And going all the way back to eternity past, all three members of the eternity enjoyed perfect divine fellowship with one another and expressed love perfectly to one another, before the second person of the trinity, God the Son, Jesus, was sent into the world. In fact, in His high priestly prayer to God the Father during His earthly ministry Jesus gives us this glimpse of what He enjoyed with God the Father before He was sent into the world. Specifically in John 17:5, addressing God the Father, Jesus spoke of “the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

I've given you already one Jonathan Edwards' quote, I'm going to give you another. Want to take a guess as to who I was reading this week in my free time? Jonathan Edwards. But he preached a sermon in the early 1700s titled “Heaven is a World of Love,” and in this sermon we get this picture from Edwards of this glorious divine fellowship that exists between the persons of the trinity today, but also this glorious divine fellowship and love which existed between the persons of the Godhead before the Son of God was sent into the world. Here is Edwards, this is a long one so buckle your seatbelt. He says, “The apostle tells us that ‘God is love,’” he’s referring there to 1 John 4:8 and then here comes the exposition, “and therefore, seeing he is an infinite being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love. Seeing he is an all-sufficient being, it follows that he is a full and overflowing, and inexhaustible fountain of love. And in that he is an unchangeable and eternal being, he is an unchangeable and eternal fountain of love.

“There, even in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is, or ever was, proceeds.
There dwells God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, united as one, in infinitely dear, and incomprehensible, and mutual, and eternal love.

“There dwells God the Father, who is the Father of mercies, and so the Father of love, who so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son to die for it.

“There dwells Christ, the Lamb of God, the Prince of peace and of love, who so loved the world that he shed his blood, and poured out his soul unto death for men…

“And there dwells the Holy Spirit -- the Spirit of divine love, in whom the very essence of God as it were flows out, and is breathed forth in love, and by whose immediate influence all holy love is shed abroad in the hearts of all the saints on earth and in heaven.

“There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love -- this eternal Three in One, is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows for ever. There this glorious God is manifested, and shines forth, in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain for ever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!

Now I know that Edwards has taken some liberties, some artistic and literary liberties here with his 18th century flowery language. Even he says as it were, he's cautioning and couching what he is saying. But the point to take away from this is that when Christ came to earth, when He left His glorious eternal abode where He had been experiencing perfect love and fellowship with the other members of the Godhead going back to eternity past, He did so as an act of love, an overflowing of His love. And as He did so, we know from Scripture, that He was sent by God the Father. John 16:28, He says, “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.” We know He was sent to accomplish the Father's will. John 6:38, our Lord says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” We know He was sent as a bearer of light and truth. John 12:46, our Lord says, “I have come as Light into the world so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” And then He says in John 18:37, “For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” What I pray you are grabbing onto here (I know there are a lot of quotes and theologians and such) is that we can't have such a tunnel-visioned view of the Christmas holiday, one that is so focused on us and focused on our traditions, or even on one that is focused on the immediacy of the manger scene that we lose sight of the broader teaching of the Bible which is that Jesus was sent by God the Father and He was sent from a place, namely heaven, the eternal abode of God, where He had been enjoying perfect love and fellowship with the other members of the trinity.

So that's a bit about “What Christ Left,” that was our first point. Now we're going to look at “What Christ Entered,” that's our second point this morning. So, given that He, Christ, left from these realms of glory, when He came to this earth, when He entered into His own creation, when Immanuel truly became ‘God with us,’ certainly He was well received. Right? Universally received. No. Go to John 1 with me, this was part of our Scripture reading this morning. Turn with me to the Gospel of John and I'm just going to highlight a few aspects of it here. Look at John 1:10, here the apostle whom Jesus loved says, “He was in the world and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to what was His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”

Now to understand the importance of those words, “the world did not know Him,” “His own did not receive Him,” there is so much Old Testament history layered into John's words there that we need to do a bit of an Old Testament Bible survey course in like 5 minutes here. I mean, going all the way back to the beginning beginning. We know that the Word teaches us “In the beginning,” Genesis 1:1, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Several thousand, not millions and billions, of years ago God created the world and everything in it. He created our world all around us in six literal 24-hour periods. That's what the Bible teaches. He created the heavenlies, the sun and the moon and the stars. He created the terrestrial, the earth, the land, the seas. He created the plants around us and vegetation, animals on the land, animals in the sky, animals in the sea.

And then as the crown of His creation He created us, mankind in His image, Genesis 1:26. And as part of that He created us male and female, two genders, revolutionary concept, in Genesis 1:27. And then Genesis 1:31 says, He “saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” God did His part in His creative act. Man, however, did not. Man disobeyed. Man early on in the Genesis account did the one thing that God told him not to do and man sinned. It's in the whole Adam and Eve account of Genesis 2-3. Now through that episode, through that one man's disobedience we know that sin entered the world. That's Romans 5:12, “through one man sin entered the world.” And the sin of man brought a curse on the world with humanity, now coming under God's judgment. The sin of man resulted immediately in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, then it resulted in Cain's slaying of his brother Abel and then it culminated in a flood during Noah's day which is recorded in Genesis 6-9. However once the waters of that flood receded and the ground began to dry and the world began to repopulate, as that happened those inhabitants at that time began to stumble into the same patterns of sin and selfishness which had gotten them into trouble in the first place. We see that in the whole tower of Babel incident in Genesis 11.

Now up to this point in the Old Testament narrative, we're only up to Genesis 11 so far, we can already see what John is driving at here in John 1:10 when he says that though “the world was made through Him,” Christ is the Creator, “the world did not know Him.” The world being full of sinful, self-willed, self-interested insurgents wasn't about to receive this message about submitting oneself to this itinerant Jewish teacher out of Nazareth and dying to self and leaving everything behind to follow Him.

Well, maybe the world wouldn't accept the incarnate Christ as the world, but surely His people would. Right? So maybe all the far out peoples, they wouldn't follow Jesus but surely His people would receive Him. Wrong. John 1:11, “He came to what was His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.” Now for context there we need to keep digging back into this progress of Old Testament history and we need to understand who the people of Israel up to this point had proved themselves to be. The history lesson continues. After the flood you have the tower of Babel incident and then in Genesis 12 God calls this man named Abram the Hebrew, later Abraham, to be the father of nations. Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob later called Israel had twelve sons which became the twelve tribes of Israel. Following a lead of Joseph, Israel the nation, the people end up in Egypt for 400 years. Initially they are favored in Egypt but later they are oppressed in Egypt. Pharaoh turns on them and then he enslaves them and this man named Moses leads them out of Egypt. And then under Moses' successor, Joshua, the people eventually enter the promised land, Canaan, where they are first ruled by judges. But that's not good enough for them, they want a king, so later they get kings. The greatest of the kings was David who, despite his obvious flaws, was still a man after God's own heart.

David's son Solomon then followed him, succeeded him, and though Solomon was the wisest man outside of Christ who has ever been known in the world, he was still a deeply human man, still a deeply flawed man. And eventually his wisdom was overridden by his love for women and wealth and worldly philosophy. So he starts off strong but he eventually compromises. He is succeeded by his son Rehoboam, Rehoboam is eventually opposed by Jeroboam, the nation splits, the twelve tribes go their own ways and this once unified kingdom becomes this divided kingdom where you have ten tribes in the north, Israel, Ephraim, led by Jeroboam and you have these two tribes in the south, Judah, led by Rehoboam. And much of the history of the divided kingdom era between the northern and southern kingdoms is marked by bloodshed as one king after the other seeks to supplant the one before him. And then all of the people in both sides of the border, they are engrossed in false pagan worship of idols. Then we know eventually as their punishment for their disobedience and their idolatry the people of Israel were eventually conquered and captured and hauled into captivity. The Assyrians hauled off the people in the north and then the Babylonians hauled off the people in the south. And we do know that while certain Israelites came back from captivity to the land during the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, even after their return it was clear they had not learned their lesson because by the time we get to the book of Malachi, the final book in the Old Testament, we find that Israel is yet again committing many of the same sins that had gotten them in trouble to begin with.

All that to say, Israel up to this point had shown itself over and over and over to be a rebellious people, a stubborn people. God Himself flagged them as a stiff-necked people over and over in the Old Testament. Even then, though, there was yet hope for them because God is rich in mercy, He's always been, and He had been exceedingly patient with them, promising them in the last two chapters of Malachi, Malachi 3-4, that a day of redemption and salvation was coming and their Messiah would one day come. Now it took a while, give or take 400 years, but that Messiah did come in the person of Jesus. And when He came what happened? Well, back to John 1:11, “His own did not receive Him.” Instead, having revealed Himself to them as their promised Messiah, Jesus was doubted, He was questioned, He was challenged, He was eventually arrested, He was flogged and we know murdered. So what Christ left in His incarnation was glory and what Christ entered in His incarnation was a sin-cursed world with hostile people, His own people, who would ultimately reject His message and not only that, would see that He was put to death.

That takes us to our third point and the third dimension of the incarnation which is “What Christ Assumed.” Now with this one what I'm going to do is zoom in on what I suppose we could call the mechanics of the incarnation of Christ when Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God took on a human nature and in doing so took on flesh as He entered His own creation. And one of the places in Scripture where we see the incarnation described in great detail is right where we are, here in John 1. I read the whole section in the Scripture reading this morning, I won't do that again, but let's do a very quick overview of some of the things we see here in John 1 and specifically verses 1-14. First of all this text points us to the focus of the incarnation, namely the eternally divine Word of God, the eternal Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So it wasn't God the Father who was sent to earth or who came to earth in the incarnation, it wasn't God the Spirit. No, it was God the Son. That's what is being said here in John 1:1. Second, this text points to the material of the incarnation. That's down in John 1:14 where it says “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” With those words, “became flesh,” John here is saying that the eternal Son of God assumed complete humanity, albeit in perfect form without sin. Third, he identifies the location of the incarnation. That's also in verse 14 where he says, “and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” That word “dwelt” can be translated literally, “pitch a tent.” John here is borrowing from Old Testament tabernacle imagery, he's saying much like God, much like Yahweh dwelt in the midst of the Israelites in the ancient tabernacle times, in His incarnation the Son of God tabernacled among His people. And fourth, John records here the witness to the incarnation. Still in verse 14, he says, “and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So God the Son's visitation to earth, in other words, was no secret operation. It wasn't done behind closed doors. No, His incarnation, Christ in His humanity was out there for all to see. “We beheld His glory,” John says.

Now this is a fundamental incarnational text, there are many more. But as we read through some of the others, the other incarnational New Testament passages, it is interesting because you see that the New Testament authors there are clearly bound by the limitations of ordinary human language to describe what is otherwise an extraordinary really miraculous event of the eternal Son of God entering into human existence. So sometimes we'll see the authors use different language to describe the same thing, they are being inventive, they are being resourceful in the words they chose to describe somehow how God came to earth, how He assumed a human form, how in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Word of God, the eternal Son of God was revealed in flesh. Like Paul to Timothy in I Timothy 3:16 says, “Great is the mystery of godliness, He who was manifested in the flesh.” Here is John in I John 3:5, he says, “And you know that He was manifested,” that's incarnational language, “in order to take away sins.” Here is the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 2:14, “since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same.” Note they are not using the same exact language across the board, but they're describing the same event, using human language, guided by the Spirit, of course, to testify to the realities, the glories, the wonder of the incarnation. Each is testifying to the fact that Christ who is God, Christ who is the Creator, became one of us. The very God who made everything and the very God who has sustained everything and upholds everything came down from heaven to earth, took on flesh and entered into history as a baby born in Bethlehem.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The birth of Jesus is the grandest light of history, the sun in the seasons of all time. It is the pole star of human destiny, the hinge of chronology, the meeting place of the waters of the past and the future.” And as beautiful and profound and flowery and Victorian as Spurgeon's words are there, they really pale in comparison to the Apostle Paul's divinely inspired words in Galatians 4:4 where he says, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba Father. Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” Amen.

Well, so far we've looked at what Christ left, we've looked at what Christ entered, we've just looked at what Christ assumed. Next, #4, we're going to look at “What Christ Became.” We're going to consider one specific aspect of the incarnation, namely the humiliation of Christ. By humiliation I don't mean embarrassment, not like when we get humiliated or are humiliated when we humiliate ourselves by some foolish choice or decision, but humiliated as in humbling. Christ humbled Himself in His incarnation by taking the form of a slave. Now when we refer to the humiliation of Christ in His taking the form of a slave, many of you are already thinking of the passage I'm going to. Turn with me over to Philippians 2, and this is what is known as the “kenosis”. Kenosis comes from a Greek verb that means emptying. And this then leads to the natural question, whenever we get to Philippians 2 we scratch our heads and wonder what does this mean. The question we ask is, He emptied Himself of what? Of what did Christ empty Himself? And to get to the bottom of that question we want to do a little bit of a survey here of what's happening in Philippians 2. We're going to really focus in on verses 5-8, but there is a little bit of a backstory.

Let me read first Philippians 2:5. It says, “Have this way of thinking in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” Now that ties back to Philippians 1:27 where Paul is exhorting the Philippians to act with humility and sacrifice, “standing firm in one spirit,” he says, “with one mind, contending for the faith of the gospel.” And then right before our passage, in Philippians 2:3-4 Paul is exhorting the Philippians to show a general concern and esteem for others. He says, “Doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind, regarding one another as more important than yourselves, not merely looking out for your own personal interests but also for the interests of others.” Apparently there was some sort of contention, division, something like that happening in the church body in Philippi. It might have been the disagreement between Euodia and Syntyche that Paul has in mind from Philippians 4 but what he is doing here in Philippians 2:5 is using Christ's self-emptying as the model for the right type of behavior and the right attitudes that ought to be demonstrated in the church. This is a church letter, a church epistle. So that's a little bit of the backstory behind what he says in verse 5.

Now in verse 6, referring to Christ, Paul says that He was existing in the form of God, “who although existing in the form of God.” That word “form” is the Greek word “morphe” and it means a real essential characteristic of something or someone. In the context here the form of God means the very nature of God. In other words he is saying Christ is God. And then he says, “existing.” Look at that participle there, “although existing in the form of God.” That's a present tense form, meaning it is referring to a continuing condition, so that what Paul is saying here is that Jesus Christ not only is God but He has always been God. He is and was and will forever be God, He is eternally God. Then still in verse 6 speaking of Christ, Paul says, “He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.”

We'll break that in two, first with that word “equality,” that's speaking of the relationship of Jesus to God the Father and what is being highlighted is in this relationship between God the Father and God the Son it is one of equivalence, so that Christ has not only existed eternally in the form of God, but there is an eternal equality of essence between the two, between God the Father and God the Son. And although He exists eternally as God and equally with God the Father, the rest of verse 6 tells us that He did not regard this equality as a thing to be grasped. Now that word there, that verb there about being grasped, that suggests that it is something He already possessed, not something He was clutching to get but rather something He already had. And what this is saying then in context is that as He prepared to enter the world in accordance with the will of God the Father, God the Son did not clutch or cling to His eternal quality with God the Father as a reason to forego going into the world. He didn't cite His eternal deity as a reason not to be sent, rather this was a demonstration here of His posture of humility. That's what we see in verse 7, instead He emptied Himself, “ekenosen”. That's our word, our concept for humiliation, this speaks of His self-emptying. He emptied Himself.

And then we get the explanation for what that means right after verse 7. “He emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.” Those two clauses are really the Holy Spirit-inspired commentary on what it means that Christ emptied Himself. Let's start with the first one, He emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave. Now that word there, “form,” where it says “form of a slave” is again the word “morphe,” and just as Christ is eternally in the form of God as we saw back in verse 6, in His incarnation He took on the characteristics of a slave as an aspect of His humanity. Now to take the form of a slave does not mean that He was no longer in the form of God. It's not like He exchanged the form of God for the form of a slave. If that were the case He would no longer be in the form of God and He would cease to be God. Rather, to take the form of a slave means that that form was taken in addition to the form of God that He has eternally always had. So He really is the God/Man, fully God, fully man. Truly God, truly man. Now as for the second clause here in verse 7 where it says He not only took the form of a slave but He was “made in the likeness of men”, that's not describing Him being created, it's not saying He was any less than God or a lesser God. This is just describing His humanity, it's an expression to testify to His genuine humanity. He was not only fully God, He was fully man.

So the One who was and who is by nature God, became man. That's what is being described here by Paul in Philippians 2. And that marries up perfectly with what we've already seen in John 1:14 that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” It also links directly to what Paul would say elsewhere in Colossians 2:9 that “in Him,” meaning in Christ, “all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

Next we learn, verse 8 here, that He was found in appearance as a man, “being found in appearance as a man.” That's referring to His external outward appearance. That's how He appeared to others. In other words, people who would have encountered Christ in His humanity during His earthly ministry would not have been confused as to whether that was truly a man or whether that was actually a human being. No, it was evident to all. And then these words, still in verse 8, it says, “He humbled Himself.” The self-emptying One, the God/Man, the servant humbled Himself. And it says how He did so in verse 8, “by becoming obedient to the point of death.” And not only that, death of the worst kind in these days, “even death on a cross.” So as a direct outcome of His incarnation Christ was later bruised and beaten and bloodied and tortured and murdered on a Roman cross so that our sins might be laid on His shoulders and forgiven. It is not lost on me that behind me [on the stage where he is standing] is a manger right next to a cross. That is quite fitting because that really tells the story of the one leading to the other. So what our Lord became in His incarnation, in His humiliation, was a humble servant, a slave who was willing to, as we see in Hebrews 12:2, endure the cross and to despise the shame on behalf of us undeserving sinners. That's what He became.

That brings us now to our fifth and last point where we're going to look briefly at “What Christ Accomplished.” So we've seen what Christ left; we've seen what He entered; we've seen what He assumed, humanity, flesh; we've seen what He became, a servant, a slave. Now we're going to look at what Christ accomplished. We're going to move now from the “what” of the incarnation, that's what we just saw in John 1 and Philippians 2 and other places, and now we want to consider the “why” of the incarnation. Why did Christ the eternal Son of God come as a man? Why did He enter into His own creation? Why did He encase Himself in human flesh? There are a number of different reasons that are laid out for us in the pages of Scripture. We'll do a brief run through of just a few.

First the eternal Son of God became Christ incarnate to confirm God's promises. At various places in the Old Testament God had promised to send a divine Son into the world. We think of perhaps two of the most well-known Christmas Old Testament prophecies, Isaiah 9:6 and Isaiah 7:14. Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us.” Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.” And what these Old Testament prophecies reveal is that this one who was to come, this son, would come both as a Savior from sin and as one who was offering a kingdom. His saving purposes are mentioned in places like Isaiah 53:6, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Sin falls on His shoulders.

And then His kingship, the kingship of the future coming one is foretold in places like II Samuel 7 where we find the Davidic Covenant. 2 Samuel 7:12 says, “I will raise up one of your seed after you, who will come forth from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” Meaning when He came, when Christ came in His incarnation He came in this double role of Savior and King. Thinking back to our Sunday morning sermon series in the Gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel spoke of both of those. Think about what he said to Mary, that the One that she was carrying would one day be given the throne of His father David, which speaks of His kingship. Luke 1:32, this is Gabriel speaking to Mary, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.” Kingly language. Well, that same angel, Gabriel, would tell shepherds out in the field in Luke 2:11 that “Today in the city of David there has born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” That same angel, Gabriel, would go to Joseph in Matthew 1:21 and say to him that “she will bear [you] a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” So one of the reasons for the incarnation, the “why” of the incarnation was to confirm God's promises that God would send His own Son into the world, He would be offered as Savior and King and He would enter this world through a virgin's womb.

Here is another reason for the incarnation, #2, is to reveal the Father, In the Old Testament God is revealed by various names, identified by various names – Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, El-Shaddai, El-Elyon – all these different names. And through them we learn many different characteristics and traits and attributes of God – His holiness, His power, His patience. But interestingly we never hear of God referred to as Father in the Old Testament, rather it is through the incarnation that Jesus completes the revelation previously made of God by now identifying Him and referring to Him as Father. John 1:18, the Apostle John says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” Christ has explained, “exegeted” Him. John 14:7, Jesus Himself says, “If you have come to Know Me, you will know My Father also; from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” So it was through Christ's incarnation that God was revealed as Father.

Here is a third one, third reason for the incarnation. It was so that Christ could serve as a faithful high priest. Christ came in His incarnation so that He could go through every human experience, apart of course from sin, and in doing so be qualified to serve as a faithful high priest. This is how it is described in Hebrews 2:17, “He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to help those who are tempted.” And as a result, Hebrews 4:15 says, “We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin.” And what that means then is that the very fact that our incarnate Lord felt the pangs of hunger and felt a lack of sympathy from others and experienced sleepless nights, the fact that He grew weary from the toils of life and experienced various types of temptation that come to man, the fact that He was misunderstood and forsaken and persecuted and delivered up to death, it all rendered Him this perfect and sympathetic high priest.

Here is another reason for the incarnation, it was so that Christ could serve as our example. Christ is the believer's Savior but He is also our example, and the example He set for us, He set for us in His incarnate life on this planet. 1 Peter 2:21, “For to this you have been called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.” 1 John 2:6, “The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.” So Christ in His earthly life modeled what a godly, obedient life to God the Father looks like. He said something to that effect in John 8:29 where He said, “I always do the things that are pleasing to Him,” meaning God the Father. And of course we are to strive with the Spirit's help in following His example to do the same.

Last one, and this is the crowning purpose of the incarnation, and I was so grateful for Pastor Andrew's choice of that last song after all the Christmas hymns. The crowning purpose of the incarnation is to deal with sin. Stating it simply, Christ came to this earth to die. The manger was always designed to lead to the cross. That's a truth that is referenced in various different places in the New Testament, that Christ the eternal Son of God needed to be man in order to die for the sins of man. He needed to assume humanity to die for the sins of humanity. He was as the forerunner as John the Baptist said, the One who would come to take away the sins of the world. And because God cannot die, what He needed to do was take on flesh, take on humanity to die in the flesh, which is what He did. He was, as Hebrews 2:9 says, “crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.” Or 1 John 3:5 says “He was manifested,” that's incarnational language, “in order to take away sins.” Or “He was manifested, as Hebrews 9:26 says, “to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” So while Christ came to offer the kingdom to Israel, while He did come to teach, while He did come to set this holy example, ultimately He came to save. He came to die, He came to die for man's sins. He came, as Hebrews 2:15 says, to “free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” The sin which alienated man from God was dealt with forever by the self-sacrifice of our incarnate Lord. 1 Timothy 1:15 says, “It is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Look at that link, He “came into the world,” incarnational, “to save sinners.”

That's a good place for us to stop this morning, it's actually going to lead right into where we'll go on Christmas Eve, two nights from now. But before I close, and recognizing that we do have visitors among us today on account of the upcoming Christmas holiday, and knowing that there are a variety of different deceived people out there, deceived people who confuse attending church right around the Christmas-time holiday as being the equivalent of being right with God, because of those confusing ideas that are out there I'm compelled to throw a few questions your way. Question 1, do you understand who God is? Do you understand that He is your Creator, that there is a God in the heavens who does all that He pleases and He has exclusive rights to and dominion over your life and mine? Do you understand that this God that is in the heavens, He is a holy God.

He is a perfect God, the embodiment of perfection and righteousness and purity and He demands perfection and obedience by every single image bearer, that means you and me, all of us, whom He has created? And do you understand that this God is revealed in the Bible as being a jealous God, meaning He does not contend well with idols, things that rival worship of Him and He is also described in the Bible as being a consuming fire? Do you understand that that is who God is? Do you understand that you are a sinner, no matter what your background is, no matter what your pedigree is, no matter what your last name is, no matter what you tried to do in an earthly sense to keep your nose clean in this life by just being a good person? The reality is you have been racking up a rap sheet of sin that has started from the moment you took your first breath. We all have. So question 1, do you know who God is? Question 2, do you know that you are a sinner?

Question 3, do you understand who Christ is? Now, I've been talking about Him for like an hour so you've been given a little bit of insight over the last hour over who Christ is. Do you understand that He came into this world? Remember the first point, He was enjoying that heavenly, eternal abode, living in a state of perfect fellowship and love with the other two persons of the trinity. He didn't need to come into the world, He certainly didn't need to etch out a plan by which He would save any, but He did. And then in this unparalleled and inexplicable act of love and sacrifice He not only came into this world, but He went all the way to the cross so that your sins might be forgiven, so you might have an opportunity to have your sins forgiven and be restored to the God whom you've sinned against.

This is my last question, have you received the free gift of salvation that has been offered to you by the One who before He hung on that cross lay in that manger? If you don't know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, I sincerely beg of you that you embrace who He is, that you come to understand who He is and that you submit your life to Him. I beg of you that you would repent of your sins, that the cesspool of wickedness that you are swimming in, whatever that looks like, it's all dark, it's all black, it's all wicked, and turn to Him instead in saving faith. I pray that you would renounce all of the sin that is causing you to stumble and getting in the way and blinding your eyes to the beauty of what it means to be made right with a holy God through Christ, that you would renounce all the wickedness, all the evil, all the sin, all the darkness, and instead trust in His death and resurrection.

And if you do, Romans 10:9 says, if you believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and believe that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. You will have your sins forgiven, you will have right now eternal life. You will know that when your eyes close, when that machine that is by your bedside when you are about to breathe your last breath and the beeps are getting slower and slower, you will know exactly where you will be. You will be in the presence of your Savior rather than groaning in the fires of hell, which is where all who reject Christ as Savior end up going.

So I pray, I ask, I implore that if you are hearing this and understanding what I am saying that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and nobody comes to the Father but through Him, that you believe that His death and His resurrection is the only means, trusting in those events by which you might be saved, I pray that today you would receive the greatest gift that has ever been given—salvation from sin and eternal life.

Let's pray. Father, thank You for this chance to be together this morning. Thank You for the majesty, the glory, the beauty of the Christmas season. God, we are undeserving of the grace You have shown us, the goodness You've shown us, the kindness You've shown us, even in the breath that we breathe, the water that we drink, the fellowship we experience, the friendships and family You bless us with. And until we come to Christ we just thumb our nose at it, we turn away from it, we reject it in our foolishness. So God, thank You for turning the hearts of so many here to You who have already received that gift of faith. And I pray that this morning if there is anyone here who has not received that gift, if they've not bent the knee to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord that today would be the day that they do so and they would worship and revel this Christmas season in a way they have been unable to heretofore. God, we love You, we thank You for what You are doing in our midst. May You be honored and glorified this Christmas season. In Christ's name, amen.