John 1 - Incarnation and God Comes
Tom Shrader explores the miracle of the incarnation from John 1, examining how Jesus Christ—the eternal Word who was with God and was God—became flesh and dwelt among us. He emphasizes that this doctrine is central to Christianity: Jesus emptied Himself of divine privileges while retaining His deity, becoming fully human to serve as the perfect sacrifice for sin. Shrader stresses that salvation comes not through good works but through believing in Christ's finished work on the cross.
“The word became flesh and dwelt among us for a specific purpose, a part of God's grand plan.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Doctrine
Recorded: 2011
Duration: 56 min
Themes: incarnation, salvation, grace, faith, deity, sacrifice, works, belief, new believer, struggling with doubt, questioning salvation, seeking assurance, pastor, bible study leader, young adult, feeling unworthy
Scripture: John 1:1-18, John 10:24-30, Philippians 2:5-8, Matthew 1:18-25, Colossians 1:16-17, 1 John 1:1-4, Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 6, Luke 2:52, Genesis 3:15, Hebrews 10:4, 1 John 3:8, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 2:14
Theological Themes: christology, incarnation doctrine, hypostatic union, kenosis, soteriology, salvation by faith, substitutionary atonement, divine nature
Full Transcript
If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and the guys will bring you a copy. When you get that, please open to page 576. That is the Gospel of John, the first chapter, and that's where we're going to be today.
Let me explain what we're going to do. We're in the seventh week of a 13-week series titled Doctrine, and we're fashioning it off the book that Mark Driscoll wrote. You'll see the topics are in this wheel around the cover of the bulletin. We talked about the Trinity - three persons, one God. We're monotheists, but we believe in one God who expresses Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We covered Revelation, talking about how we know about God through Scripture. We discussed Creation, how God created this earth. Then we examined the Image of Man, man being made in the image of God. We talked about the Fall, which is absolutely crucial, and we come back to all this today. Last week Tim spoke about Covenants.
So we're taking some time to talk about doctrine. I confess this to you - each week I appreciate this series even more. I begin to see the biblical thrust of it and the logical sequential thrust of it.
John Piper on the Importance of Doctrine
We had an opportunity a couple of weeks ago when John Piper was in town with part of the Southern Baptist Convention. Some of the guys were down talking to him and some other people and said, "Let's turn on a camera." Piper knows what we're doing this summer, and it was very interesting to hear some of his comments. Take a look at this:
"I just want to say a brief word to you at Redemption Church to congratulate you and pray for you, that you're going to tackle doctrine in the church, in the ministry, in the preaching this summer. This really matters. Let me tell you why doctrine is a positive word for me. It's not a boring word. It's not an oppressive word. It's a very life-giving and hope-giving word. Jesus said, 'You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.' I really want to be free - free from sin in particular, which is the context of Jesus' word.
"Jesus has appointed it that to know things about Him that are true and deep are a means of freeing us. The way it works is from 2 Corinthians 3:18: 'Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed from one degree of glory to the next.' So if you want to be changed, if you want to be set free, you see the glory of the Lord. The Lord has contours. If you see Jesus or God the Father or the Holy Spirit in vague ways - they just don't have any edges, you don't see them clearly - therefore they're not thrilling to you, and therefore they don't have the transforming power that they would have if you saw them clearly. Doctrine is an effort to blow the fog away from the truth and the reality of Jesus Christ.
"One more illustration that has meant a lot to me: If I'm carrying $10,000 down the street in a bag, cash, and I go up to somebody and say, 'Would you take this and deposit it at Wells Fargo for me?' And they say, 'I don't even know you. Why would you trust me with this?' And I say, 'Oh, I just do.' They would not feel honored. They'd feel like, 'You're stupid, man.' But if you hand them the money and say, 'Would you go deposit this for me? It's $10,000 in cash,' they say, 'Whoa, have we met? Why would you trust me with this?' And I say, 'You don't know it, but we work at the same place down the street. I've watched you for a year. I know you. I've watched your character. I know you. I can trust you.' That person would feel unbelievably honored, wouldn't they?
"Therefore, if God is that person, and you say, 'Oh, I trust Him,' and He says, 'Why?' and you say, 'Oh, no particular reason. I don't have any doctrinal basis. I don't know anything about Him. I don't know the contours of His character. I don't know the way He's traditionally acted in history. I just trust Him.' He's not honored. But if you know Him, if you've watched Him act in the Bible, if you have drawn conclusions from the kinds of things He does and the way He is, and then you say, 'I know you, God. I can trust my life with you' - that's what doctrine is for. We want to know Him so that we can throw our lives into His cause, and then He gets glory that way. So God bless you as you tackle doctrine. It is a life-giving, freedom-providing, God-honoring enterprise that you're about."
That's encouraging. I think sometimes we get into this and we may lose or need an outside perspective like Piper brings to us there. This is - and again, that happens almost always as you teach something more and more - you get more, not just familiar with it, but you start to see the importance of it. It really is a matter of life and death. This is really serious stuff. We don't approach it lightly.
A Testament to Living Doctrine
I was here yesterday afternoon standing right here at 2:13. We did a funeral for Tom Flavin, and it was just an amazing time. It was a testimony to him, but it was also a testimony to his wife Susan, Andrew, Daniel, Jennifer, Elizabeth - to the family. It was such a powerful testimony to see the kids talk and then to hear different people, especially young people. I was really struck by that. There was probably a half a dozen men and women who, maybe the oldest was mid-20s, talking about the influence that Tom had had in their life.
There were a couple of lessons in there. One of them was you can almost fly under the radar but have a huge influence, especially to the next generation. I said, and I meant it, I was so happy that my Susan wasn't there to find out how a man's really supposed to live. It would have been very disappointing to me.
And I meant it. I meant that totally seriously. But I did have to come back at the end in one sense and clear something up, and it was this. He was such a good man and the testimony of his goodness was universal that we have to make sure we understand that, though I'm confident he's in heaven, there's not a question about that, but it's based on God's testimony, His proclamation. It's not based on him being a good guy.
See, that's the one thing that can happen at a memorial service like that or can happen in your life where people go, "Oh, he's just a good guy, he's just a terrific man, she's a wonderful woman, obviously they're in heaven." There's no one who's in heaven because they were a good guy, good gal, good student, good person. I'm in heaven because of the finished work of Christ. That's what's so important. That's why this doctrine is so important.
What We Believe vs. How We Behave
When we talk about the Christian faith, it's about what we believe. This is really important now because it could be misunderstood, though I doubt you would. It's about what we believe, not how we necessarily behave. So you have secular humanists and Buddhists and all sorts of different faith people, Hindus, whatever it might be, who would feed hungry people or build a shelter for homeless people. They have all sorts of people who would do, at least in terms of earthly things, what we would call good works.
But in fact, it's not a good work that earns my salvation. What I believe is what makes me a Christian. The second part of that is Elizabeth ironically chose James 2, verse 14 to begin her passage yesterday, which I thought was just a wonderful expression of it. It's not just how I behave. It's what I believe, but what I believe affects how I behave. So that's a really important truth.
At the Heart of the Christian Faith
And today we're right at the heart of the Christian faith. In fact, I did something really unusual for me today. I actually have a close. I rarely have one of those. But I had a close in which I'm just reading three or four quotes from different men that I think the majority of you would say I respect and consider him to be not just a brother in the faith, but somebody who would open my eyes to it. So just driving home this point of how important it is.
So we're going to tackle this. It's the idea of the incarnation. In his book Doctrine, Mark Driscoll has this quote. He writes this: "J.I. Packer describes the incarnation as the supreme mystery associated with the gospel. The incarnation is more of a miracle than the resurrection because in it somehow a holy God and sinful humanity are joined together, yet without the presence of sin. Nothing in fiction is more fantastic as this truth of incarnation. In Jesus, God enters the human realm. He walks on water. He calms the storm. He heals the sick. He feeds the hungry. He raises the dead. He conquers the grave."
So that's what we're looking at, is how this God, eternal, pre-existing God, the God that we spoke about week one of this series, that is in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that second person, that Son, takes on human flesh. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. We're going to see today, the word "dwelt" means literally pitched a tent with us. He became one of us.
The Uniqueness of John's Gospel
Now we have four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Matthew is writing primarily to a Jewish audience with the idea of portraying for us Jesus as the Messiah. Mark writes portraying Jesus as a servant, the servant king, God's servant. Luke writes primarily thinking like a Greek, in great logic terms, but his emphasis is on the humanity of Christ. Those are the synoptic Gospels.
Along comes John in his Gospel. And I'm doing this from memory from years past, but it seems to me something like 66%, 70% of John's Gospel is unique to his Gospel, not present in Matthew, Mark, Luke. And John's very clear in his Gospel why he's writing. He tells us that at the end of the book.
In chapter 20, verse 30, he says this: "Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, not written in this book, but these have been written so that you might believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in Him." This is the whole reason I'm writing this book, is that I'm demonstrating these miracles, this teaching, all that. So at the end of the day, you will believe that Jesus is who He says He is, and who the Scripture says He is.
The Word Made Flesh
John is concerned, and we get it right away in chapter 1, verse 1. John is concerned about portraying Jesus as eternal, as preexisting. He's the Son of God. He's revealing the Father to us. So there's a sense in which this is like a three-week series, because we're going to talk today about the life of Christ. We're going to talk next week about the cross, and the following week about the resurrection. So this is like phase one of three phases of this series.
So here you go. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Now, this gets a little confusing, so let's be clear here. The Word that's translated Word, Logos. So you'll see it in your Bible. You'll see that there's a capital W there. He's speaking of Jesus.
To the Greeks, they would have some sense of Logos as being that that brought order to the universe, reason to the universe. Even the layman in Greek would have some sense of it, something that's transcendent. The Jew would have gotten this idea, even from the Old Testament expression, that speaking of one of divine power, divine wisdom. So when John writes of the incarnation, all of the readers would get it was something that was grand. It was something that was beyond them.
Now, I find it interesting. I hope it is to you. Keep your finger right there and go almost to the back of the Bible. If you've got a Bible from us, it's page 660. So it's 1 John. And you'll see—
The Beginning: Two Different Starting Points
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. You see that emphasis about beginning. In 1 John, same author, by the way. This is John that writes the Gospel. He writes 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and the book of Revelation. This is not John the Baptist. This is John, that disciple whom Jesus loved.
In that letter, 1 John, he begins this way: "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we've seen with our eyes, that we've looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life. And the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and manifests to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, with His Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete."
Both of them look similar. Both of them talk about "in the beginning," but from two different points of reference. When John is writing in 1 John, and he talks about "in the beginning," he's talking about the beginning of Jesus' ministry. If we wanted to get a little more casual with that, at least Jesus' earthly life, with His birth, life, death, and resurrection.
When John is writing in the gospel that we have before us, and he says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," he's not talking about the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry. He's talking about Genesis 1:1. In the beginning. And he's actually going back before that.
The Eternal Pre-existence of Christ
Take the beginning of the creation of all creation. In that, and preceding that was Jesus. See what he's saying at the very beginning? At the very beginning, here is this eternal preexistence. This is God. Manifest, as we've said, one God, three persons.
Now, you don't need a whole lot of Greek to figure out what's going on here. In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus is God. So when you're running into somebody, you're at Starbucks, and you're having one of these conversations about life and the meaning of life and where we come from, and then they say to you, "Jesus never claimed to be God," we can come back and say two things. Number one, right here, the Scripture makes that claim for Him. The Holy Spirit, moving the apostle John, makes the declaration that Jesus was God.
Jesus' Own Claim to Deity
But again, keep your finger right there and turn to the right to chapter 10, John chapter 10, and we'll see that Jesus Himself makes that claim, and it's really clear. To me, it has just a great expression in it of almost the irony. As you thumb through the Gospel of John, you can see Jesus speaking and teaching.
When you get to John 10:24, it says the Jews then gathered around Him, and they said, "How long will You keep us in suspense? If You're the Christ, tell us plainly." Now, if you just stay within this chapter, you will see that that's exactly the teaching that Jesus has been sharing with them. In chapter 10 that we're in, He says in verse 9, "I am the door. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved." In verse 11, "I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." In verse 17, "For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it up again. No one takes My life from Me. I do this voluntarily. I lay down My life on My own authority."
Now, they just say in chapter 10, verse 24, "If You're the Christ, the Messiah, tell us." And He says, and to me it's a little bit, that's what I've been saying. Verse 25, "I told you that, but you don't believe it. The works that I do, I do in My Father's name, and they testify of Me." Then He makes the claim of deity yet again. "You don't believe it. Why? You aren't My sheep, because here's how you know if you're My sheep. My sheep will hear My voice. I know them, and they follow Me, and I give eternal life to them, and they'll never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father who's given them to Me is greater than all, and no one's able to snatch them out of My Father's hand."
Here's the declarative statement, John 10:30: "I and the Father are one."
The Jewish Response Confirms His Claim
What was He saying? We don't have to speculate. The Jews picked up stones to stone Him, and Jesus said, "I showed you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you stoning Me?" And they said, "For a good work we don't stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God."
So when somebody says to you, "Jesus never claimed to be God," we can go down a couple rows and look at John 10, and here's Jesus' claim. John chapter 1, here's what the scripture claims. So here is this eternal preexistence. Non-created being God who is there from the very beginning of time and who is instrumental in the creation we see around us.
Jesus as Creator
So go back to John chapter 1, verse 1: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word is with God, the Word was God. In the beginning He was with God, and all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that's come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness doesn't comprehend it."
He says in the very beginning it was Jesus who was part of the creation, meaning the creator who created when He said "Let there be light." It's Jesus who was there. Colossians chapter 1, verse 16: "For by Him, speaking of Jesus, all things were created, in heaven on earth, visible, invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him." Colossians 1:17: "And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."
There's a story before - there's a guy that I met years ago and his name was Bob Hage, and this was a fascinating guy. It was something about him. You just wanted to talk to him, and then once you started to talk to him you wanted to continue to listen to him.
In 1960 when John Kennedy said we're going to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade, there were a whole bunch of people - scientists, people in government - who said, "How are we going to do this? We don't have a rocket. We don't have anything other than this dream." Bob worked for McDonnell Douglas who was part of the group that developed the capsule, the Gemini capsule. Bob's job - this sounds to me like a great job - was as a liaison between McDonnell Douglas and interfacing with the seven original astronauts.
So he was this brilliant mind. He sent me a book probably four or five years ago now on the first hundred years of flight from the Wright brothers to the space shuttle. In the midst of all of this, he internally personally is having his angst about life and the meaning of life and the purpose of life. Why am I here and all the stuff that goes with it?
The Search for Meaning
So he did what customarily really smart people do: he read a lot of books by other smart people. He talked to smart people. He went and sat with Francis Schaeffer in LaBrie. He was in Oxford, Cambridge. He did what smart people do. Came back totally unconvinced.
He was one day sitting in his home office and on a conference call with other scientists as they're calculating how they're going to take this spaceship, send it up, put it in orbit. They're trying to figure out what they can do with John Glenn, and from there they'll expand. But they have this thing that they can absolutely rely on working. They count on it working, but they're having this kind of sidebar conversation about this thing called gravity and how can it work? So it's going back and forth, and he gets off the phone.
His maid was there cleaning, and she said, "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. I can explain gravity to you." And he said, "Really?" And she said, "Yes," and she had a Bible. She said, "Let me get my Bible," and she read to him Colossians chapter 1 verse 17: "And Jesus is before all things and in Him all things hold together." This brilliant scientist - that day God used not Francis Schaeffer, but his maid to lead him to salvation.
I love that story. That's what we're saying here: here's this spectacular mystery that I can't necessarily understand. I can kind of inadequately explain, but I'm absolutely certain that it's true. Why? Because God says it's true.
The Eternal Word
In the beginning was Jesus. He has no beginning or end. He precedes Genesis 1:1, and He was the one who spoke this into existence. And in Him, chapter 1 verse 4, was life and the light of men. The idea of life here is really the spiritual life. In Him is true life.
So when John Piper talks about "I want to be free," it's the truth that sets me free. It's that spiritual bondage and death that we're all born with and born into. So we come into the family of spiritually dead - the human family. Maybe 98.6, 120 over 70, all the signs show I'm - my vital physical signs are good. But my spiritual condition is dead. Jesus is the antidote to that. He's the life and He's the light. It's the idea of truth and of boldness.
If I were to go back to that John 10, Jesus is saying, "Hey boys, I explained it to you, but you don't get it because the Holy Spirit's not in you." It's 1 Corinthians 2:14 - natural man can't understand spiritual things. See it there in John chapter 1 verse 5: "The light shines in darkness, but the darkness doesn't get it." Creation is all around us. That's Romans 1. That's what we've looked at again.
See the beauty of that series? See how this just begins and begins to build on this? We saw it in creation. We see God's power. We talked about revelation. We saw God's general revelation, all of this, and yet He speaks to us through His word.
The Central Point
So in these first five verses, what John is telling us is that Jesus is God. He's eternal. He has creative power. He's self-existent.
I was listening to a tape the other day - or CD or iPod or something - from a guy teaching, and he must have said 15 times in that 45-minute message, which would be once every three minutes, "This is a huge point," and I found it extraordinarily distracting. I mean, how many huge points can you have? Here you go. This is a huge point. I probably have a bunch of them, but this is a huge point: chapter 1 verse 14.
It's the whole center point: "And the word" - Jesus - "became flesh and dwelt among us." Set up camp among us. It's that Old Testament picture of God's dwelling place. It's a place of revelation. It's a place of sacrifice, a place of worship. It's the place where the Lord's house is. It's that tabernacle. He tabernacled. He dwelt among us. And we saw His glory, and it's the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and full of mercy.
That's the whole point - singular point, huge point, bunch of subsets - but that's the huge point today: that God in the person of Jesus Christ, without ceasing to be God, becomes man as well. Limitations that He puts on Himself - we get some of that - but He never ceases to be God.
The Ultimate Undercover Boss
We have now the collective that we study - we all study together in preparation for the Sunday message. So today I think Tyler's teaching in Arcadia, Ricardo's teaching in Tempe, Luke is teaching at Gateway, I'm teaching here. So we all - the deal is this: we all get together, and then before we meet together we talk, we plan it, and then we send our notes to each other as they're prepared. I'm always - I don't do that - I'm the last one in. But when Luke sent his notes today, he was talking about John 1:14, and he made this comment. He said, "This is the ultimate episode of undercover boss." That's really...
That's a great point. That is an amazing point. Ricardo was here this morning looking for some stuff and I was over in a little work area. We were talking—he had Noah with him. I had not seen Noah. I would have thought it had been months, but he's like a little human now. He's two and a half, and that's just a reminder. So I said you're teaching today. He said yeah, and we were talking about it.
He said I was talking to some friends the other day, and I'm not going to give you the story. But they said we don't like to go to that store because the people that go there are so skanky and dirty and kind of scum of earth. And he paused and he said, "I'm so glad Jesus didn't have that attitude toward us." That's a really great line.
The Most Concise Statement of the Incarnation
So do you see what's happening here? God is going to become man. John chapter 1 verse 14, John MacArthur writes, is the most concise biblical statement of the incarnation and it's therefore one of Scripture's most magnificent and significant verses. We may or may not come back to that, but turn to the right to the book of Philippians.
It's page 636 in the Bible we gave you. Philippians chapter 2, and we're going to look at—let's begin in verse 5. Philippians chapter 2, verse 5, Paul writes, "Have the attitude in yourself which is also in Christ Jesus."
So at this point, Jesus is our role model and this is about humility. He's been talking prior to this, verse 3: "Do nothing from selfishness, empty conceit, but with humility regard one another as more important than yourselves, do not merely look out for your own personal interest."
The True Nature of Christ's Humility
There is a tendency here, I think, to say, "Okay, Jesus is my role model and the humility I model is the humility He modeled here on earth." Yes, but that's not where he goes as the role model. He doesn't go, "Jesus, who was a man who in homeowner associations never argued, who never said you're crossing my property line." That's not the illustration that he gives you.
He said, "Have this attitude in you that was also in Christ Jesus who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of man." Have this attitude, this humble attitude, this come, learn, and serve attitude.
During the memorial service yesterday, I was listening to the kids talk. I was listening to other people talk, and I thought there's no way realistically that you can have the effect and in essence serve the way Tom served unless you have a spirit of humility, because serving other people is inconvenient.
The Foundation of True Service
I had the chance afterwards just to have a moment with his wife Susan to say, "Though that was a powerful testimony to him, I'm smart enough to know he can't live that way if you're not there serving him and supporting him and encouraging him along the way." It's just a powerful testimony of her. And in a funny way, maybe more testimony of humility because at her service when that comes, and it will because we all die, there'll be those moments, but they may not have the flash that Tom's had. Isn't that interesting?
He said, "Don't be worried about the people, what they're going to say." Listen, you came—Jesus says, "I came not to be served but to serve," and you lived the same way. You don't have this attitude in yourself that was also in Christ Jesus, although He existed in the form of God.
Understanding the Greek Words for "Form"
There's two Greek words that could be translated "form." One speaks of an outward form that's changing, so like I mentioned Noah. I remember when Noah was born. I remember when Noah was a week or two old, and Holly brought him to church, and he was out in his little car seat. Then I remember when he got out of that car seat. I remember when he could kind of move around, and I'm telling you now, he's like a human now. That's one word that's translated "form."
The other word that's translated "form" doesn't have change in it. It speaks of essentially the matter that never is altered. That's the word that's used here. "Although He existed in the form of God," the essence of God, "He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped." The idea there is to seize on it, to carry it off.
But—in that conjunction in verse 7, "but" is a clear contrast. But He emptied Himself. He emptied Himself of that advantage, that privilege of God. Not the existence of God.
Five Ways Christ Emptied Himself
So John MacArthur lists five things. Let me give them to you really quickly, and they all kind of come back. You'll see them tied together real quickly. When he talks about He emptied Himself of divine rights, five of them:
One, temporarily divesting Himself from His divine glory. Two, independent of divine authority. He's operating now dependent upon God. Three, He empties Himself of the exercise of some divine attributes. Though not the essence of deity, there is some limitations that He places voluntarily. He emptied Himself of His divine riches. "For your sake, Jesus became poor," Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9. And lastly, He temporarily emptied Himself of His unique, intimate, face-to-face relationship with God.
So think—for me this is always helpful. Think Isaiah 6. "Holy, holy, holy," and that picture in Isaiah 6. He empties Himself of that position, not of His deity. And He takes on the form—same word—takes on the form, not just an outward appearance of man. He becomes human.
The Mystery We Cannot Fully Comprehend
Martin Lloyd-Jones writes this: "What then does all this mean? It means that there is no change in His deity, but that He took on human nature to Himself, and He chose to live in this world as a man. He humbled Himself in every way. He deliberately limits Himself. Now, we cannot go further." I like that.
Here's what he's saying. This is a mystery. We've pushed as far as we can. If we push any further, we're into speculation, which inevitably will end up in heresy or some false teaching or take us beyond what we can know. So that's enough. We don't know.
The Mystery of Emptying
How he did it, we can't understand it in a sense. We believe this in order that he might live the life of man while he was on earth. He did not exercise certain qualities of the Godhead. That is why He needed to be given the gift of the Holy Spirit without measure.
One of the things that I was reminded of, I can't say that I learned, but I was certainly reminded of it this week, is how dependent the Son is on the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, driven by the Spirit, guided by the Spirit. How He voluntarily yields to the Father. That's what He says: "Not my will, but your will be done."
See how this all, again, it's the third time I've said it, see how it all ties together back into the first week? How we look at how God works? And this is part of God's plan from beginning to end.
The Bond Servant
He emptied Himself. He took the form on this earth of a bond servant. It's the lowest of servants. It's the servant that owned nothing, including his life. Every resource that he had was actually the ownership of his master, and anything that he needed pertaining to life, or mission in life, or purpose in life, was given to him by the master.
There is a section, this is how you end up in real trouble, there's a section at the end of Luke's gospel. Luke chapter 2, you don't need to turn there, remember Jesus has disappeared, they find Him, they present Him, they bring Him back, and it says this in Luke chapter 2, verse 52: "Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, in favor with men and God."
Now, one author writes this, this is to me really great. Look at Jesus, that amazing Jesus. He's helping His father make a yoke in that little carpenter shop in Nazareth. This is the one who apart from self-emptying could have far more easily made the solar system of the galaxies.
Growing Up Human
And sometimes we just forget that about Jesus, that He was this boy and He grew, that this Jesus who created all this and holds it together, has one day in His shop, has His father showing Him, "No, you don't nail it like that." I think this will be the greatest antique roadshow of all, when they go live from Nazareth, and that guy goes, "We have this table, it's been in our family forever, and for some reason, it says Jesus." They got to be around, right?
He was human, right? Like us in every way except sin. So God sets aside His glory, not His deity, and becomes a man like us. Why? Not just to show us how to live, that's fine. Not just to be a role model, that's good. Not to be a teacher, but it's part of this grand story that we're looking at. It's part of God's grand plan.
The Promise in the Garden
Remember a couple weeks ago when we looked at creation and then we looked at you and I being made in the image of God, but we said there was a problem: we sinned. And in the middle of that sin, God becomes our prosecuting attorney and He says to Adam and to Eve, "What is it you did?" But once they confess, here's what happens. The prosecuting attorney becomes the defense attorney in the sense that He now begins to proclaim the curses on man and on the earth, but He says to Satan, to the serpent, "I'll put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed."
And we said at the time, it's the proto evangelum. It's the first preaching of the gospel. It was at that moment that God gives us this promise, probably not totally clear there. Martin Luther says in Genesis chapter 3 verse 15: "This text embraces and comprehends within itself everything noble and glorious that's found anywhere in the scripture."
Sin's Omnipresence
Let me digress here for a second. I've been on vacation, so on vacation I read and I do a little bit. Had a chance to hang out and watch a good chunk of television and movies. We're down and then we came home and right before I left the spring on my garage door opener broke. The garbage disposal broke and right now it's 92 degrees in my house, the air conditioner is broken. Last night it's 92 degrees in there. Get it fixed would be the idea, but the part they need, they don't open till sometime Monday. That's okay, go to a hotel. I got all this, please don't feel like you need to fix this. You don't need to tell me this, I got it.
Here's what I was struck by in my time away: by the air conditioner, by the spring, by the garbage disposal, I'm struck by the omnipresence of sin. So you can go big like Casey Anthony trial, that OJ. I never watched a minute of OJ trial, I didn't watch a minute of that. I don't know enough to know, I can't even say anything, but apparently the only 12 people in the world who think she's innocent were the jury.
But everybody talks about, I don't care about that. Here's what I care about: 48 days from today football starts for the University of Iowa. That's what I care about.
Headlines of Corruption
So on my phone I have different apps. I have Drudge, I get Drudge and I get Fox News and I get USA Today, and USA Today has a subset of NCAA football. Let me read you the headlines. These are headlines from USA Today sports NCAA football. NCAA interviews LSU coaches concerning involvement in a fraud deal. Georgia Tech stripped of the 2009 ACC title win due to NCAA violations. These are all in sequence, I'm not skipping, these are all in sequence. NCAA tells Auburn, Cheswick, that's their coach, that they have an ongoing investigation. Former Georgia football coach accused of Ponzi scheme, records show. Tressel, this is Ohio State, God bless them, Ohio State had a history of compliance issues. Here's the next one: records show Tressel rated poorly in reporting violations.
These are all, you know what that is? All I want to do is watch the game. You know what this is? Sin. 178 students, teachers, and principals in the city of Atlanta are cheating on their version of the Iowa test. Ten million of the greatest generation are double dipping.
The Cost of Sin and the Need for a Perfect Solution
On Medicare and Medicaid, 30% of your health care costs in Medicare is fraud—stealing, cheating. See how expensive sin is in just a pragmatic way? Look how expensive sin is. You cannot get away from it.
You want to miss the NCAA? They got rule books that's this thick. They don't need another rule. They don't need more rules. Tax code—we got a tax code this thick. You don't need to test these kids. Give them a voucher and let them go. Every test you come up with, all they're going to do is teach. All it's going to expose is the sinfulness of man.
That's our problem. Our problem is sin. We can't solve it. That's why the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, so we could live and so He could die in our place. That's why Jesus came to this earth, born of a virgin.
The Birth of Jesus Christ
This is almost the kind of stuff that we'll talk about six months from now at Christmas, but let's look at this. Take about eight minutes and tie this together. Let's look at the Gospel of Matthew, page 523. Very familiar—when you get to Christmas, most of the time that story is going to flow from Matthew chapter 1, chapter 2, Luke chapter 1, chapter 2.
This is a passage that I would say out of 10 Christmases, nine of them it seems like we're going to go to and read this. Matthew chapter 1, verse 18: "The birth of the Lord Jesus is as follows"—page 523 in our Bible. "Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Before they'd come together, she was found to be with child."
Let's make sure we understand: there's been no intimacy between the two of them, and yet she's pregnant. "Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly." So Joseph doesn't want to humiliate her, but he's going to break off the engagement.
At that moment, while he was considering this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child"—now in my translation that word "child" is capitalized, speaking of Jesus here—"the child has been conceived in her of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus." Here's the whole point of the incarnation: "For He will save His people from their sins."
Fulfillment of Prophecy
"All this now took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and you shall call Him Emmanuel,' which translated means 'God with us.'" Word became flesh and dwelt among us—tented, tabernacled, dwelt among us.
"Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel said and commanded. He took Mary as his wife and kept her as a virgin until she'd given birth, and he called His son Jesus."
We know in Luke's Gospel this virgin birth comes along, and the very first person to question the virgin birth is Mary herself. Because the angel appears to Mary and says, "You will have this child," and she's going, "Hold on here. I grasp the big concepts—there's no way I'm going to have a baby. I've never been intimate."
The Incarnation: Fully God, Fully Man
Jesus is born of a virgin. Jesus fully God, fully man, like us in every way except sin. There's no sin nature in Him. Why is this incarnation important? Because if I don't have the incarnation, I don't have the crucifixion or the resurrection.
As part of God's divine plan in creation, knowing that we would sin, at that moment in time—we can isolate it this way, which I'm sure we can't—God had an opportunity where He said, "You know what? I'm justified in sending everyone to hell. I can send everyone to heaven, or I can save some." We can tell by the outcropping of God's plan that He decided to save some. But He also was really limited in the way He could save them, because the only way He could save them was to have a perfect sacrifice, a perfect atonement.
In reality, the incarnation is about the atonement. I can't pay the price for my own sins, let alone yours.
A Personal Reflection on Christmas Music
Yesterday I said the air conditioner wasn't working. One of the good things about Susan being sick is she's always cold, so it's 85 in there and she's going, "Well, this doesn't feel bad." I'm going, "Really?"
Yesterday morning it was 91, so I said, "I'm going to go over to church to study. I have the funeral in the afternoon. I want to get my study in the morning." But the air conditioning's not on over in the office. I knew it would be here because we had the funeral.
So I go over, and if I'm working out of five, six, seven books, I don't like the books around—it's too cumbersome. So I just xerox the pages, so I got the pages around me. I'm sitting back here. The chair's a little low for me, so I'm boosting the chair up. I'm sitting, and I knock over the coffee.
You know how your reflex is? You knock it over, and then what do you do? You grab it. I'm so apathetic, apparently, that I knocked it over and then I just observed it. It was a strange moment. At the time it seemed so odd. I knocked it over and I literally just watched it flow over all of these sheets of paper.
I'm really picky, because if somebody dumped coffee back there and it wasn't me, that would bother me a lot. You get it on the carpet, you clean it up. So I spent 20 minutes cleaning it up, went over and copied everything again. I'm sitting back there, and it's quiet, so I have my phone. I thought, "Well, I want some music."
I'm sitting back there, punching in, and I end up with Jim Brickman, and I end up with Christmas music. I decided I want to listen to holiday music. The first song they played, here's what it said:
"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."
That's the incarnation. That is the real reason. Now, the reason for that incarnation is the atonement. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 4.
It's impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to take away our sin. There's nothing I can do. That's so important. Again, I'm just telling you, the funeral yesterday really impacted me a lot. And again, it was just this great model, clearly, of an amazing human being. But as amazing a human being as he was, it's not good enough to get me to heaven. There's not enough church.
So right now in this room, you got two groups of people, real simple. You got those who know Christ and those who don't. Some don't and don't care. Some don't and it's really clear. Some, this is every Sunday, some are just steeped in your sin. I'd say, you're a sinner. And you'd say, I got the legal bills to prove it.
Two Types of People
Some of you are like that, but others of you, frankly, you're the easy ones. The ones that are harder ones are going, no, I'm really a good guy. I pay my taxes. I drive 55. I'm a good mom. I'm a good dad. I go to church. Look at this. I've endured you now for almost 45 minutes. I'm a good person. I'm bound to go to heaven. And you go, no. If it were possible, Jesus would have never come.
The Central Nature of the Incarnation
So I said it was going to end in kind of a strange way. Let me just read you here some quotes in succession. And my whole point in this is I want you to see how big this is. And listen for words like essential and central.
Ray Steadman writes, "John's gospel begins with these 18 verses as an introduction. It's the theme question. Who is Jesus, really? Where did He come from? What is represented in the remarkable manifestation that was the life of Jesus of Nazareth? This prologue, so these 18 verses, at the heart of them, verse 14, this prologue contains a summary of John's most profound convictions about our Lord. It focuses on the central fact of the Christian faith. Christianity is not a philosophy. It's about a person. And that person is central to the Christian faith. Take Jesus out of Christianity, and it'd be like taking the numbers out of mathematics."
R.C. Sproul: "Faith in the deity of Christ is necessary to begin to be a Christian. It is essential, this aspect in teaching of the New Testament. In church history, there have been four centuries in which confession of deity of Christ has been crucial or stormy inside the church, not outside, inside. Those centuries are the fourth, fifth, 19th, and 20th." And I think if he was writing, this is an older book, and he's writing now, he'd say 21st. "Since we are living in one of those centuries where that heresy assaults the church, it's urgent that we safeguard the church's confession of Christ's deity."
John MacArthur: "The incarnation is the central miracle of Christianity, the most grand and wonderful of all the things God has ever done."
J.I. Packer: "The incarnation, this mysterious miracle, is at the heart of historic Christianity. It's central to the New Testament witness."
This Is What We Divide Over
Man, you can't say it any stronger than that. We're talking about the answer. We got things we disagree about. Whatever. We can talk about them, debate, maybe argue. Maybe it's fun. Maybe we kid. Maybe we get bent out of shape. But at the end of the day, we go, you know, whatever. We'll agree to disagree. It doesn't really matter. It's a nuance. It's out there. We're not going to divide over this.
We divide over this. This is the heart of the Christian faith, that God, eternal God, becomes man for a specific purpose, to save His people from their sin. John, same author, says it this way in 1 John 3:8: "The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil." And that's what Jesus did, we'll look at it next week, on the cross. And subsequently, God's amen to Jesus, it is finished, the resurrection.
But this is the core of Christianity. Take this away. And whatever you got, you can call it whatever you want. But whatever you got, it isn't Christian. The word became flesh and dwelt among us for a specific purpose, a part of God's grand plan. And that purpose is ultimately to die, to die for our sin.
Our Response
Now, if you're over in the conference center, may I be there in just a minute to close that time. For us here, this is a time now where we respond. We go, we're thrust now to the cross, as we come to the time of communion. And then we'll close our time worshiping through song. And then with the idea that we leave this place and our worship continues all through the week until we gather here again next week.
Let's pray as the guys come. Father, thank You for the amazing truth. Words like central, essential, necessary. God, we're reminded over and over again that this truth is at the core of the Christian faith. God, if we take away the fact that Jesus becomes man, dwells among us, we have no Christian faith. We have no sacrifice. There is no redemption. God, thank You for Your love that's manifest in the cross. God, thank You that we as Your people can see and understand that truth, because You open our eyes to see that. Father, we thank You, praise You, worship You. In Christ's name, amen.