Jesus, the Incarnation of God

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Transcript:

John chapter 1. Many of you have not been with us before today. And so just to bring you up to speed very quickly, we’ve been talking about Christmas for the last few weeks, but we haven’t been talking about it as we would traditionally where we spend several weeks just talking about the manger and recounting the story.

And it’s not that it’s not important, and it’s not that it didn’t really happen. Folks, I believe what the Bible says. There are a lot of people in a lot of pulpits who don’t believe what the Bible says.

And they’ll tell you, well, it didn’t really happen this way. Call me naive. I believe in the virgin birth.

And I believe that what happened in the manger when Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary was the second most important thing that’s ever happened in history, second only to when He was crucified and died and rose again on the third day. I would put that as the most important. But the second most important was what happened in the manger.

And so the choice not to dwell too much on it this Christmas was not because it wasn’t important or because we don’t want people to think about it. We do. But knowing that a lot of people, when they think about Christ, that’s all they ever think of is the baby in the manger.

They’re only getting part of the story. And so in order to talk about the first time He came when He was born, and I say the first time because we believe also that He is coming again. He will return one day to judge mankind and to bring an end to things and to make a right of all that’s wrong.

but the first time He came, the Bible talks about it in several different places. The book of John gives us a unique perspective because while Matthew and Luke talk about the Christmas story with the manger, as important as that is, and tells us that He came, and tells us how He came, that He was born in the stable, He was laid in a manger, there’s no room in the inn, all of that, John tells us why He came. And this morning we are going to talk about the manger, we are going to talk about the fact that He was born, and how He was born, but more importantly, ladies and gentlemen, And even people that don’t go to church at all in our society know the story of the manger, by and large, because it’s become a cultural value that we all share.

But a lot of people don’t know why He came. And that’s why we’re studying out of the book of John this morning. And we’re going to talk about verse 14 this morning and why He came.

He came to be the incarnation of God. And if you don’t know what that word means, think about the term reincarnation. We hear that a lot in Eastern religions, reincarnation.

People believe that they die and they come back as something else. They die, and if they were nice in this life, they’re born again as a rock star or somebody rich or famous. And if they’re not nice, they die, and they’re born again as a slug or a snail or something.

Reincarnation means rebirth. And so when we say that he was the incarnation of God, when the Bible talks about him being the incarnation of God, that means that God was literally born as a person. So we are going to talk about the manger today, but not so much the mechanics of how it happened, but why and why it was so important.

We’re going to read through the entire passage we’ve been studying over today, just so we get the context and know what the whole thing is talking about. But then today we’re going to focus in on verse 14. It says in John chapter 1, verse 1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake. He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.

And of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

And over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about Jesus Christ being one with His Father, that Jesus wasn’t just a baby born in a manger, but He was God born into that manger, that as the Father is eternal, as God the Father has existed from eternity past, and will exist to eternity future, Jesus Christ is eternal with Him. That the power by which God the Father created the universe, spoke the universe into existence, Jesus Christ shares that same power. That the Bible actually says that He was there and He was creating as the Father created.

And so we’ve talked about how Jesus Christ is God. We’ve talked about how Jesus came to bring what mankind needed most, where we were in darkness, He brought us light, where we were like spiritual dead men. He brought life to us.

We’ve talked about last week how he was the message of the prophets, that if you go back and you read the whole Old Testament, it would be hard to turn too many pages without finding some kind of reference to Jesus Christ, where God, for thousands of years before Christ was born, was preparing his people for the fact that Jesus Christ would come and be born and die for their sins, that everything in the Bible is about Jesus Christ. It’s not to say that the stories of the Old Testament didn’t happen. Again, I believe they did. But they also, our God is so incredible and sovereign that He could orchestrate history, real things and real people in such a way that they point unmistakably to the coming of His Son.

And this morning we talk about Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God. Not just God, but God being born in human flesh. And I want to pose a question for you.

It’s a question that I’ve thought about over the last few weeks. As we’ve been here over a year now, I’ve gotten to be in some of your homes and gotten to know your families And some of you have gotten to know your dogs and gotten to be friends with your dogs. And I’m a dog person.

I’ve enjoyed that. Some of you all have gotten to know my dogs. I love my dogs.

I have two rat terriers, Max and Sophie. I love my dogs, and I would do just about anything for my dogs. Most people love dogs.

If you’re cat people this morning, we’ll pick back up with you in a minute. Now, think about your cats then. But they call dogs man’s best friend, and I love my dogs.

And so when I say I’d be willing to do almost anything to help my dogs, you know, if my dogs had a serious problem, if all the dogs of the world had a serious problem, and I could fix it by giving up my humanity and becoming a dog and dwelling among them, would I do it? If that was the only way to ease their suffering, to fix their problem, would I do it? Probably not.

As a matter of fact, we can X out the word probably. I wouldn’t do it. I don’t want to be a dog.

I’ve seen the food they get to eat. It’s not worth it, people. And I pose the same question to you.

As much as you love your dog or your cat, if you’re a cat person, would you give up your humanity? Would you give up your life now? Would you give up the wonderful world around you, the environment you live in, your comforts?

Would you give up all of this to condescend and become a dog or a cat if that was what it took to ease all their suffering? Would you do it? If you say yes, I’m just going to lay it out on the table.

You’re crazy. It’s not worth it as much as we love them. When you think about it, okay, that’s essentially what Jesus Christ did.

Because the way that we are masters over the dogs and we care for them and love for them, but yet they’re less than us. Folks, so is God a master over us who takes care of us and loves us and provides for us, and yet He is so much better than we are. So much greater in worth, in value, in character, in strength.

In every conceivable way, He’s greater than we are. And yet where we would not give up the trappings of our lives to become dogs, to take care of the dogs we love, Jesus Christ, ladies and gentlemen, gave up heaven. He gave up His time of fellowship with His Father.

He gave up for a little while some of His power and certainly some of His prestige to come and be born in a feeding trough. Are you kidding me? To solve the greatest problem that we had, which was sin.

When you think about it in those terms, it makes it even more incredible what happened in the manger. Because it wasn’t just any other baby. It was God giving up some of the trappings of being God and becoming like us so that He could solve the problem that we have.

John 1, verse 14 says, The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. I shared with you two weeks ago, some of you weren’t here, some of you may have forgotten, that throughout John 1, when John writes the Word, when he says the Word, it doesn’t just mean the written Word. That’s a reference to Jesus Christ, but it’s a Greek word, logos.

And he chose the word on purpose because the people who would be reading it, the Jewish background people and the Greek background people who would be reading it, each would have understood this to mean something specific, this Greek word. The Greeks would have understood it to be a creative force. That when they talked about their gods and when they talked about the creation of the world, when they talked about being able to accomplish and create as people, the word logos didn’t just convey the meaning word that we see.

It conveyed something that had power, that had force behind it. And when the Jews read this word, they understood it to mean not just a word, but a word from God, a revelation from God. And so he picked it on purpose to describe Jesus Christ as saying he’s not just the word, but he’s a revelation from God with all this power behind him.

They would have understood that. And so the word he describes in verse 14 is the same as the word we’ve discussed these weeks before, who is God, who did all this creating, who the prophets have spoken of for all this time. And it says, the Word became flesh.

God became flesh. That word there means human skin. When Jesus Christ was born, it was the first time, as far as I know, the first time that God put on human skin.

God is, the Bible says God is a spirit. Contrary to what some groups and churches teach, God the Father does not have a physical body. God is a spirit.

He can also create. He created all that is, but God is not someone we can feel and touch and look at. And yet for the first time in history, in a unique way, God became someone we could see and feel and touch and look at.

Not that God wasn’t real before. God has always been and will always be. But God made Himself real to us in a way that we had not perceived before.

God literally stepped out of heaven and took on human skin. So at Jesus’ birth, God entered human flesh. Think about the miracle of that.

The God who created the entire universe. And as I’ve told you before, it’s not that God had to sit down in His workshop and figure out how to build the universe and all the specs and how it all fits together and get out His hammer and His screwdriver and all this and put the universe together. God spoke a word and it leapt into existence.

The God with that much power, with that much authority that even the atoms and molecules bend and obey Him, became a tiny egg as we all started out, and divided, and divided, and divided some more, and cells, and God became that, and God grew as we grow, and God was born as we’re born, and God was raised as a child. If you stop and think about that too hard, that’s one of those things that will give you a headache, but the miracle of God becoming a tiny baby, God becoming like us, there’s a reason for that. As I’ve said before, God came because we needed someone to save us.

God came. Jesus Christ came as God in the flesh to provide what we most needed, and that was somebody to deal with the problem of sin. When I say that throughout God’s Word, throughout the Old Testament, God had been revealing that Jesus Christ would come, it’s because He talked about the redemption of His people.

There’s a single theme, a single thread that goes throughout the whole Bible, and it’s redemption that God would purchase back His people. He would buy back His people. He’d redeem them from their sins.

That points to Jesus Christ. He came to pay for our sins and to give us peace with God. And He had to come in the flesh to do that. Because if He’s just a spirit without a body, He couldn’t have been crucified for us, couldn’t have died for us.

So in Jesus’ birth, God entered in human flesh when it says the Word was made flesh. But it also said the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And that’s easy to skip over and say, yeah, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

I’d never given it much thought until I was digging into this for this very message. And we think, yeah, He dwelt among us. He was there.

He wandered around with us. He was near us and by us. It doesn’t just mean, ladies and gentlemen, that He was near us, that He was among us.

It means He was with us. That word dwelt is the word that they would have used for somebody who pitched their tents with somebody. He camped with us.

In their culture, in the Middle East, you camped in close quarters with one another. And as you’re wandering the desert and things, wherever and whoever you pitched your tents with, those were the people you relied on. That was your community.

And so the idea that God had dwelt with us, that God had pitched His tent with us, so to speak, that God had made His camp where we are, when it says that, God was casting His lot with us. It was a reminder to us that God had not forgotten about us. They had in the Old Testament the tabernacle.

Some of you may remember the tabernacle that Moses built. And until they built the temple, that’s where God lived, so to speak. That’s where the Spirit of God came down and communed with the priest, and they did sacrifices, and they did offerings, and they went in and talked to God.

And that tabernacle where God dwelt, it was made out of regular materials, but inside was the Spirit of God. And that was a reminder, as long as they had that tabernacle, it was a reminder to God’s people that wherever they wandered in the desert, whatever war they went through, however bleak things looked, that God had not forgotten about them. And so to say that Jesus Christ dwelt among us, I believe, is a picture of that tabernacle.

And if you look, and I’d encourage some of you to do it sometime, to look in the book of Hebrews, it talks about Him being the high priest and talks about the tabernacle. It’s a picture of that tabernacle. And for Jesus Christ to be God in the flesh and to dwell among us is a picture of that tabernacle.

That yes, it looks like regular human ingredients on the outside, but within dwells the Spirit of God. And He was a very real fulfillment of God’s promise that He would never leave us or forsake us. He’s a very real picture to us that God had not forgotten about us.

Imagine what that meant to these people. We can go to the Bible anytime we want to and hear from God. We can pray and listen to the Spirit, and we can hear from God on any topic.

We can seek God’s will. We can seek God’s wisdom. But for centuries, these people had been led by the Spirit of God through the prophets.

They’d been told where to go, what to do, and all of a sudden, through the prophets at least, God just quit speaking. And for about 400 years, God hadn’t said much of anything. And it could have seemed very bleak to these people that, hey, God’s forgotten about us.

And here they were in the 400 years since the prophets had stopped speaking, they’d been overthrown and taken over and oppressed and abused by all these other countries around them by the first the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans. And as a people and as a religion, they were barely hanging on and it would have seemed like God had forgotten about them until this tabernacle came and God came into human flesh and dwelt among them. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus Christ being born the way He was, was a promise to us that God is still with His people, that God has not forgotten or given up on His people.

And no, we don’t have that tabernacle anymore, but when He came, He was the tabernacle. And ladies and gentlemen, for that matter, He still hasn’t forgotten about us. Though we don’t have Jesus as the tabernacle anymore, the Holy Spirit, the Bible teaches, indwells all those who believe in Jesus Christ. And so in a sense, we’ve become the tabernacle because the regular ingredients on the outside, regular materials on the outside, but the Spirit of God dwelling within.

Folks, God has not forgotten His people and He never will. And Jesus Christ to them and to us is a reminder that God does not forget His people. It’s a reminder they desperately need it.

So Jesus’ birth, in Jesus’ birth, God made His home among His people. And finally this morning, in Jesus’ birth, God displayed the fullness of His glory. And we’ll talk about this a little more at length tonight.

I hope some of you will be back. I know some of you will be back. I hope all of you will be back.

We’ll talk about that some more tonight. But it says, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. That God has always, folks, God has always been full of grace and truth.

And yet, for all that mankind knew about God, all this that they thought they knew about God, they only saw Him in part. The Jews had in the Old Testament about this much of their Bible. They didn’t call it that exactly, but they had that much writing about God.

And they had all the laws that God expected of them. They had the Psalms singing His praises and telling about how great He was. They had the message of the prophets telling them what they needed to do and where they needed to go, and yet they still didn’t understand God completely.

Because there still was this idea among people, and still is this idea today, that God is somehow pleased if we just do good things. And they still were under the impression, hey, if we can just follow the law, if we can just be good enough, that’s enough to make God happy. And ladies and gentlemen, that is not the God of the Bible.

They only understood in part. Yes, God does want us to do the right thing, but that in and of itself is not enough to make God pleased with us. That in and of itself is not enough to make God happy with us.

They only had a partial understanding of God. But when Jesus came, when Jesus came, and the Bible even says that no man has seen God at any time, meaning God the Father. Nobody had ever seen the fullness of God’s glory, but that it says Jesus Christ had declared Him.

What they only saw in part, what they only saw in shadows, what Moses only saw the back of as God walked by, man knew in its fullness for the first time when Christ was born. And I can’t describe to you, I wish I could, but I can’t describe to you the glory of God. We can see things that would remind us of the glory of God.

I think of some of the things I’ve seen on television where Queen Elizabeth goes on trips and they’ve got gold in this and pearl that, and she’s got fancy outfits and two for each event and morning clothes and costs something like $20 million for her in all her splendor to visit the United States for a few days. I heard that on the radio the other day. $20 million for her to visit.

And she’s got all these gowns and crowns and jewels. And I’ve watched some of the people that go to meet her, and even people that think the monarchy is just stupid, and why do we have that anymore? And they get in front of her, and they’re just awestruck by the glory of this queen, as probably we would be too.

I’m not suggesting we go to a monarchy here, but if I stand in front of the Queen of England, I’m going to be a little awestruck. Ladies and gentlemen, the most glorious people that we can look at on this planet, The ones who command the most awe and exude the most majesty of anybody on this planet do not even begin to compare with the glory of God. Do not even begin to compare with the majesty of God.

And they had only seen that in part. Kind of like looking at an eclipse through that little pinhole thing that you look at so you don’t go blind. That’s what they’d been doing.

They’d seen a shadow of God. They’d seen Him in part. And when Jesus Christ came, the Bible says that we saw God for who He really is.

We saw the whole picture. And what we thought we knew about God was corrected. What we thought we knew about God was expanded on.

And when it says that He came with grace and truth, He came to tell us about the need for grace. And He came to bring the truth about God’s grace. See, as I said a minute ago, one of the wrong ideas, one of the incorrect or partially correct ideas they had about God was that if they just followed the law and did enough good things, that God would be happy with them, that that would be enough.

And one of the things that Jesus came teaching was that they could not keep God’s law, period. They couldn’t keep it. And that was one of the reasons for God’s law, was to show us how sinful we are in comparison to how holy and how perfect He is.

And people began to see for themselves how wicked we are compared to God and see the need for His grace. And Jesus Christ came to bring that grace. Again, we’ll talk about this more at length tonight, but it says that we witness the fullness of His grace, the fullness of His glory.

Ladies and gentlemen, all of that talks about the reason why He came, the reason why God was born into human skin, the reason that God came and made His home among us and said, I’ve not forgotten you. And the reason God revealed His glory was to bring us grace and truth.