The Word Made Flesh

There's an amazing piece of work, it's a piece of art done by a Korean artist

by the name of Elder Rhee.

What this picture is, if you were to look at this, the artist meticulously drew

the picture of Jesus by hand with a very fine-tipped pen.

And it wasn't a painting, as I said, but it was a picture created by writing

thousands of words with shaded or darkened letters.

The author, or the composer, or the artist in this case, Elder Reed,

did this entire picture with words.

It is the entire New Testament written out in hand from the top to the bottom.

And if you were to look at that close-up, you would see the words written in

hand in this picture, depicting all of the different things with the images

along the outside as well.

There are about a hundred and 85,000 words on this scroll with an average of

a thousand words per line.

The letters are drawn some thick and some thin so that they will bring out this picture of Christ.

There are 27 angels surrounding Christ and looking to him, representing the

27 books of the New Testament.

The original work was six feet long by four feet wide, and the figure of Christ

is not imposed onto the words.

The words of the New Testament make up the picture of Christ.

So he didn't draw the picture over the words, he drew the picture with the words.

And they're inked together light and dark to bring out the portrait of Jesus.

So literally, the word has become flesh, a person.

If you would magnify a portion of the Word such as his hand,

you would actually read the words.

The message of the artist is that the New Testament reveals one thing,

and one thing only, and that is the person of Jesus Christ.

The entire New Testament tells us about Jesus Christ, even as the Old Testament

foretold it, this one is the telling of the historical sense of it.

So out of the Word arises the Word.

Out of the Word, written Word, arises the Word, who then becomes flesh.

As E. Stanley Jones writes, out of the Gospels arises the Gospel.

Jesus is the Gospel. The Gospel lies in His person.

He didn't come to bring the good news. He is the good news.

Someone else has written, a great wind blew across the Bible and lo it stood up a man.

We're going to read this morning from John chapter 1 verses 1 through 14.

John 1:1–14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through Him all things were made, without Him nothing was made that has been

made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify

concerning that light, so that through Him all might believe.

He Himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him,

the world did not recognize Him.

He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.

Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name,

He gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent,

nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.

We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the

Father, full of grace and truth.

Thank you. So I believe that verse John 1, 14 is probably the hinge-pinned word

of all of the scriptures, and that is this, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

They're exciting words, but they're also daunting words. They're exciting words

that God became flesh and is living here among us to know what we're going through,

but in a sense they're also daunting

the fact that God is with us in his holiness and his righteousness.

Most important words in the entire Bible are these themselves.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

Now how many of you would like a judge living in your home?

Probably not, right? Can't get away with anything.

But you know there's this sense that God came and dwelled among us and as I

said He's living here with us.

He became a man. The Creator assumed a created form.

The One who spoke everything into existence came to live in His very creation.

The one who was always out there is now right here.

In previous times in Hebrew history, God dwelt in the Ark of the Covenant and

then came to live in the Tent of Meeting or in a pillar of fire.

But in this case, we understand that it is impossible to overemphasize how important

God's arrival on earth was.

I heard somebody mention, it seems like this world is getting filled with such decay.

And we understand that the world was like that before Noah, and it became darkened

after Noah to the point where we had to have a Savior, we had to have a bright light.

Prophecy in Isaiah says that a light has shone in the darkness.

And so it is impossible to overemphasize how important God's arrival on earth was.

Not only did it give us a season to celebrate, but especially it gave us the

fact that God is living right here with us.

That can be daunting, but it can be exciting.

I know when I did things wrong I didn't want to be in the presence of my father, or my mother.

And the worst thing I could hear mom say is, Timothy?

If I heard Timothy, I knew it was not going to be kind.

Tim, they call me Tim, that's fine, but if they called me Timothy I knew I was in trouble.

So when God comes to live with us, we kind of wonder, there's this kind of apprehension,

do we really want God to be in here and dwelling with us? Do we really want his presence here?

There's so much more that could be said and so many points that could be made,

but first of all let me say this, God's coming in human form is important because

it reveals the heart of God.

Now in the beginning we look at the creation and when God created man it says

he created man in his own image, kind of like Jesus was the exact representation

of the Father, we didn't look like God in person necessarily,

but we looked like God in attributes and character.

In the beginning we were like God in the creation, but then man fell.

And so it also reveals the heart of God that he created us in his own image.

And then even after man fell and walked away from God, God is in the business of recreating us.

God's appearance in human form on the earth speaks volumes about God's love for us.

Only in the very beginning of creation did it say that God came and walked with

man in the cool of the evening, but now God has taken on human form and come to live in our tents.

We don't know in the Garden of Eden if God actually was a physical being walking

there, but it's said that God walked in the cool of the evening and talked with Adam and Eve.

This is the great truth that sets Christianity apart from all other religions.

Our God has not remained remote and unapproachable, but he has come to us in person.

God didn't just write us a letter. He didn't just send a representative,

although there were many representatives, prophets and teachers.

He didn't just speak his law from a mount and leave it there.

He came to us as one of us. John 1 tells us that He came, according to the message,

came to live on our streets, came to live and deal with everything that we go through.

And yet He was without sin. The infinite became an infant. The eternal one became a little one.

The one who created the woman came as a baby of the woman who was totally dependent

on the woman that he had made. Get that.

In the book of Philippians, the Bible describes the miracle of what God has done.

It says, speaking about Christ, it says, who being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself

nothing. Okay, so let's pause there.

Jesus is part of the Trinity. He is God.

But He didn't hold that over us. He put that aside so He could come and become one of us.

It says, He became, made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man,

He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.

So Jesus, God, came to make His dwelling among us, to live like we do,

and try to make ends meet so to speak, like we do, and yet he didn't have to.

Why did he do it? Because of love. It reveals the heart of God.

Probably every child who has ever attended church has memorized the following verses.

John chapter three, verses 16 and 17. In fact, say this with me.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son,

that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,

but to save the world through him." I think probably this is the best news of all.

Not only did God become flesh and made his dwelling among us,

but God became flesh because God so loved the world that he sent his Son to

come into the world to save those of us who are lost.

Since the very beginning of creation, and even before creation,

God knew that he was what he was going to have to do. He knew what we had in mind.

And on the sixth day of creation, after all else had been created by a spoken

word, and God had declared that it was very good, the Bible tells us that God says,

let us make man in our own image, and God lovingly and carefully,

with absolute precision and artistic ability,

molded man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of

life, and man became a being according to Scripture.

God gave His choice, creation, man, a free will with which to choose to either

obey God's love or reject it.

To become a part of God's life, or even choose to become God of His own life.

We have this choice, I've told you before, from the very beginning of creation,

and soon after beginning of creation, man began to choose whether he was going

to worship created things or the Creator.

And that's all of religion, all down through history, is the choice of either

choosing to worship created things—sometimes it's even us and our own desires,

the root of all in his self,

or we choose to worship the Creator, the one who made all things and has love

in mind in his heart for each one of us.

The Bible tells us that before the beginning of creation, God knew that man

would reject him and that ultimately he would need to be purchased back from the evil one.

God made a plan to save us from our sins.

He wants to change our lives and give us life worth living that will ultimately result in eternal life.

This is the kind of God we serve, and this is the kind of God we see coming at Christmas time,

the one who came for the purpose of living and dwelling in our streets and becoming

like us, but for the ultimate purpose of giving Himself up so that we might be redeemed.

God saw that we would walk away, He knew that we'd walk away,

He knew that man was going to disobey Him and turn away from the blessings of

God, and yet God wanted to provide all kinds of ways for man to come through.

In fact, the very first one was, when Adam and Eve sinned, what did God do?

Did he cover them with fig leaves? Whose idea was that? It was Adam's,

right? What did God cover them with?

Sacrificed an animal, and took the coverings of the skin of the animal to cover

them and make clothing for them.

So even from that very beginning, the sacrifice of blood of somebody,

an animal, to cover the sin of that person, and everything has been created

on that sacrifice idea until the time of Jesus when he became the perfect Lamb

of God that takes away the sin of the world. This is the kind of God we serve.

He loves us more than we will ever know. and he has not come to take the fun

out of life, but has made to make life more enjoyable in ways that we never imagined.

God has come and brought himself into this world to be a part of it with us.

How much easier would it have been?

Just think, okay, if I were God, if you were God, and Adam and Eve sinned,

what would you do? If your child sinned, what would you do?

Punish them. If they sinned enough, You might tell him to find another home.

You know, we're like that as humans, but this is the kind of God we serve.

He loves us more than we will ever know, and He's not come to take the fun of life.

How much easier would it have been for Him to leave us to our own devices,

or even zap us with the heavenly taser when we screwed up,

or rain fire down from heaven and destroy us for our sin, like He did Sodom and Gomorrah.

But God's not hostile toward us. Neither did He remain distant.

He never was and never intended to be so. He came into the world,

He created, and disturbed our equilibrium.

God came into the world, He created, He created us, we walked away from Him,

and God came back in to dwell with us.

God didn't have to. He's this ultimate creator of all things.

He could have spun everything into orbit, let everything go,

and just stand back and watch man do what man does to man's self.

But God is dwelling with us.

People are comfortable with a God who keeps His distance.

People like a God who doesn't interfere with the world and leaves us alone.

I mean, as I said, you know, it's both exciting and daunting to think that God

came into this world, made His dwelling among us.

We think that's an exciting thing, but then, in a sense, we don't want Him here.

Man doesn't want God interfering with what man wants to do. The root of all sin is self.

But when God came, even though He knew the consequences, He was willing to come

even if it meant that the Almighty and eternal God had to experience pain and death.

He came so that He might share the human condition and take our burdens on himself.

In the beginning covenant with Moses, he walked through the ravine and took the covenant.

He said Moses had to cut the animals apart and lay one part on each side of

the ravine, and then God told Moses that they were to walk through this blood,

this valley of blood, to take this covenant.

A covenant was a binding thing on people.

When you took the blood or walked through the blood, it was a signal that if

I violate that my part of the covenant, it will be death for me.

And we see in that scripture that what appeared to be a holy pot of fire walked through that ravine,

through the blood, and basically God was walking through that and saying,

I will take your part of the covenant as well. And what did he do with Jesus.

Jesus took our punishment. When we violated the covenant with God,

Jesus took us on and he took the pain and the suffering and the struggles and

all of that with us. Booker T.

Washington was born a slave and later became one of the great educators of our

country after the emancipation.

He headed up the Tuskegee Institute, which flourished under his leadership.

In his autobiography titled Up From Slavery, he tells a story about his brother.

The most trying ordeal, he says, was that I was enforced to endure as a slave

boy was the wearing of a flax shirt.

In the portion of Virginia where I lived, it was common to use flax as a part

of the clothing for slaves.

That part of the flax from which our clothing was made was largely the refuse,

which was, of course, the cheapest and the roughest parts, usually the holes and the stems.

I can barely imagine any torture except perhaps the pulling of teeth that is

equal to that caused by putting on a new flak shirt for the first time.

It is almost equal to the feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen

or more chestnut burrs or a hundred small pinpoints in contact with his flesh.

Can you imagine that feeling?

And you would have to use that, wear that all day long. You had no choice.

I had to wear the flax shirt or none at all.

And he says, my brother John, who was several years older than I am,

performed one of the most generous acts that I ever heard of,

one slave relative doing for another.

On several occasions, when I was being forced to wear a new flax shirt,

my brother generously agreed to put on my flax shirt and wear it for several

days until it was broken in.

My brother took on the pain for me.",

Jesus Christ is our elder brother, who has come alongside us to take on the

roughness of the world on our behalf.

He has put on our shirt, experienced what we experienced, walked where we have

walked, and eased the pain of life.

God's entrance into this world reveals the heart of man.

But secondly, God's coming in human form is important because it reveals the need of people.

On March 5th, 1994, Deputy Sheriff Lloyd Prescott was teaching a class for police

officers in the Salt Lake City Library.

During a break he stepped out into the hallway and as he did he saw a gunman

forcing 16 hostages into a nearby room.

Prescott, who was dressed in civilian clothes, fell in line with the group and

voluntarily became the 17th hostage.

The gunman had not noticed him and Prescott followed him into the room and shut the door.

The gunman announced the order in which the hostages would be executed,

and then it was that Prescott revealed himself as a police officer,

a fight ensued, and Prescott, in self-defense, shot the gunman.

All of the hostages were released unharmed, and the officer placed himself at

great risk, not because he was thinking about himself, but he was thinking about

the dangers to those hostages, the dangers that they were in.

Now like him, God dressed Himself as one of us and entered our world,

and He joined us because we are being held hostage to sin and in danger of spiritual death,

and yet God has rescued us from eternal danger.

Imagine that! God who could have crushed us, who could have crushed the world,

could have destroyed everything that He had created and started all over.

But because of sin, he came into the world to be crushed by our sin.

The Bible says, you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless,

Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone

might possibly dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

It's an incredible mystery, if you think about it, an incredible story of love.

God's appearance in the world revealed his heart, and he reveals the need of people.

But thirdly, God's coming into human form is important because it reveals the mystery of God's plan.

The Bible speaks of the mystery of God's plan with these words.

1st Timothy 3.16 says, beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great.

He appeared in a was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by the angels,

was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world,

and was taken up in glory.

For over 2,000 years this world has observed this life of Christ.

Some choose not to recognize it, some choose to defy it. We choose to honor and obey.

Here's the mystery. The Creator of the universe comes to the people He created

in love, who immediately and selfishly rejected him,

and he doesn't come as a king or a president does, who comes out of touch,

comes in out of touch in his three or four thousand dollars per night hotel rooms.

God became one of us, lives in our streets and in our poverty.

He avoids nothing, hunger, sleeplessness, thirst, pain, suffering, or even death.

God comes to die in the place of those who deserve to die. Jesus didn't deserve

to die on that cross. He chose to.

He suffers for us. The Bible practically chokes on this mystery when it says

in John 1 verses 10 and 11, he was in the world and though the world was made

John 1:10

through him the world did not recognize him.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Now I don't know about you, but if I came to my family and they didn't receive

me, I probably wouldn't come back.

But God came and He stayed, even though we rejected Him. Why on earth would God come in our place?

Well, it's summed up in this, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.

God created man in His own image, in love, but man walked away,

and God has been seeking to bring man back into relationship with Him from the

very fall of Adam in Genesis.

The story of the New Testament with the coming of Christ tells us that God has

never given up on coming to find us.

He won't stop looking for you. He won't stop seeking for you.

He won't stop searching for you because He wants you to know that He's God,

and He can do this for you.

There are many people in this world that need a fresh sense of what it is to

know who Jesus is, and we have this as our mission statement.

I want you to say this with me. God is on a mission to relieve a lost world

to Himself, and He chooses to use us, His chosen people, to accomplish His mission.

God has chosen you, God has come for this purpose for this time.

This is the mystery which God had kept hidden until the world was ready.

The world deserved to be destroyed because of sin, but God would come incarnated

as an ordinary man and die in the place of the world's people in order to take away their sin.

God would fulfill both sides of the covenant.

God had allowed animals to die as substitutes and sacrifices under the old covenant,

but that was only temporary, because animals could not come for the sins of human beings.

They could only die as a covering for them, not a forgiveness.

But it would have to be a man who would die in our place as our representative.

But not just any man, not even a priest. It had to be a perfect man.

There was only one such man and that man had the name Jesus.

A real man, for the Bible says, that which was from the beginning,

which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked

on in our hands of touch, this is the one we proclaim concerning the word of

life." So here is the word made flesh.

God becoming a real man so that he would experience what it was to be human.

He was God, for the Bible says, in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

So here's the mystery, the world deserved to be destroyed because of sin,

but God became incarnated as an ordinary man.

For it was also fully human, for the Bible says, for we do not have a high priest

who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been

tempted in every way just as we are, yet he was without sin.

When John says in his gospel, the Word became flesh, he used the Greek word

logos to say that this divine power became real flesh and real blood.

If the Word became Word, then we would have Scripture and nothing else,

but not a real person who could make the Scripture come to life.

Have you ever read the scripture and begin to realize how much that is coming

to life in the stories of those?

It says, but the word became flesh. He came out of the words of scripture so

that we would have more than a prophecy or a moral code.

We would have God living with us, Emmanuel, God with us.

Bible says for this reason, he had to be made like his brothers in every way

in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service

to God, that he might make the atonement for our sins of all the people.

John Maxwell writes it this way, he literally had to come in the flesh to satisfy God.

He had to die for our sins to satisfy the Father.

It's why he says, Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass for me.

God said it's not possible, you have to satisfy me, you must.

The sinless Son of God must die for the world on the cross.

It's part of the covenant. It's what God did. Why?

Because God loves us. Buddha didn't claim to be God, nor did he claim to have

come from God. He was in search of a divine principle.

He was word become word.

Neither did Muhammad claim to be God, only a prophet of God and author of the Quran.

In all other world religions, we have the word become word, a verbal representation,

writings, injunctions, moral codes, and oral traditions.

Only in Christianity does the Word become flesh.

It is the only one of the world's religions where the Word of God,

where God himself, becomes flesh and dwells among us.

In Jesus Christ, God did not just reveal his will or his laws, he revealed himself.

If the Word only became Word, then our contact with God would only be intellectual,

but the Word became flesh, and now he's personal.

As we read the Bible, we're not just acquiring knowledge.

Jesus begins to emerge from the Scripture, much like the writings on that drawing,

the words on that drawing, became a picture and an image of Christ with 27 angels around him.

When we begin to read the Word of God, we begin to experience Christ in His personality.

When we talk with God, we begin to experience Christ in His personality.

When we are transformed by the renewing of our mind, we begin to reveal and

experience the love of Christ, the love of God.

More than our thinking is affected, we're being touched and changed.

You know, someday, we may just have to have a 24-7 testimony service.

Where we just tell the stories of how God has revealed Himself to us,

and we have experienced Him, and He has transformed our lives.

Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian from another century,

tells the story of a prince who was running an errand for his father one day in the local village.

As he did so, he passed through a poor section of the town, looking through

the window of his carriage, He saw a very beautiful young peasant girl walking along the street,

and he could not get her off his heart.

He continued to come into town day after day just to see her and to feel as

though he was near this young peasant girl.

His heart longed for her, but there was a problem. How could he develop a relationship with her?

How could he come among her? He could order her to marry him,

it was in his power to do so, But he wanted this girl to love him from her heart, willingly.

He could put on his royal garments and impress her with his regal entourage,

and drive up to her front door with soldiers in a carriage that used to be a pumpkin.

No, that's not in there. In a carriage drawn by six horses.

But if he did this, he would never be certain that the girl loved him,

or was simply overwhelmed with his power, position, and wealth.

Kierkegaard goes on to say, so the prince came up with another solution.

As you might have guessed, he gave up his kingly robe and symbols of power and privilege.

He moved into the village dressed only as a peasant.

He lived among the people, shared their interests and their concerns,

worked with them where they work, and talked their language.

And in time, the young peasant girl began to know him and then to love him.

This is what Jesus has done for us, but the Word became flesh.

The King of heaven put aside his heavenly robes and divine prerogatives. He came to be as one of us.

He lived among us, ate with us, drank with us, felt with us, all to win us by his love.

He could have forced us. He made us, after all.

He could have overwhelmed us with his beauty and his righteousness righteousness

and his power and made us bow to him and become his.

He could have taken over our lives and just dictated that we serve him,

but he chose another avenue.

The God of the universe became one of us, dwelt on our streets so he could romance us.

He stands here today with a smile of love and arms extended.

He's the God who became real so that we could experience his transforming love.

Jesus is not just a truth to believe in, he is a person to be experienced.

We understand that during this time of the season we begin to know what it is

like for God to come and dwell among us.

I wonder if we would take that to heart this season and really dwell on that

fact that God has come to be among us.

God has come to be among us.

Emmanuel, God, is with us.

That's exciting, but it's also daunting.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this beginning of seasons,

even though it's not technically Advent season yet.

We understand that Advent is a celebration of your coming, and we know that

the reason that you came into this world as one of us, you came to dwell on our streets,

you came to live among us, you came to experience life with us so that we could experience you in us.

Father, I pray that during this season we might be awakened and that we might

be a source of awakening to others.

In Jesus' name, amen.