God Humbled Himself to be with Us

Reading this morning is taken from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

I will be reading verses 1 through 7.

Encourage you to turn there.

And if you are here this morning and you didn't uh bring your Bible with you, there should be a Pew Bible located in front of you, and you can find the scripture passage on page 857.

And so I would encourage you to turn there.

And if you are here this morning and you don't happen to own a Bible of your own, that you have one that you can read and study, I want to encourage you at the close of this service, that pew Bible that's there, if you would take that home with you as our gift to you, we want you to have a copy of God's Word for yourself, and uh we'll replace it for next week.

So please take that home and use it and read it.

And if you're in the area, uh come back each week and we'll study it together.

Luke chapter 2, beginning in verse 1.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

This was the first registration when Corinius was governor of Syria, and all went to be registered, each to his own town.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered, and with Mary his betrothed, who was with child.

And when they were there, the time came for her to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere, turning very slowly on its axis.

It looked as dull as a dirty tennis ball to the angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.

I want you to watch that one particularly, said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me, said the little angel.

What's special about that one?

To the little angel, Earth did not seem so impressive.

He listened in stunned disbelief as the senior angel told him that this planet, small and insignificant and not overly clean, was the renowned visited planet.

Do you mean that our great and glorious prince went down in person to this fifth-rate little ball?

Why should he do a thing like that?

The little angel's face wrinkled in disgust.

Do you mean to tell me that he stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?

I do, and I don't think he would like you to call them creeping, crawling creatures in that tone of voice.

For strange as it may seem, he loves them.

He went down to visit them to lift them up so that he could be with them and they with him.

The little angel looked blank.

Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

This morning I want us to consider the most profound reality that we find in the pages of the New Testament in the Christmas account.

And it is truly a miracle, and it is one that is so difficult for us to comprehend and consider.

I'm a bit nervous in even trying to unpack it before you this morning.

Over these last three weeks, we've talked about the glory of God.

We've looked at the glory of God in creation, and we've seen in the Old Testament of the glory of God.

We saw the glory of Jesus Christ as God, the eternal Son, the second person of the Trinity.

Well, each year we pause along with the rest of the world to consider the miracle of the incarnation.

The word incarnation comes from a Latin phrase that means in flesh or the enfleshment of God Himself.

The passage that we've based our discussions on and the phrase comes from Matthew's gospel, so I want to read that account as well, and then explain where we're going this morning.

In Matthew chapter 1, we also read the birth account beginning in verse 18.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

It says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

We've been considering this phrase, Emmanuel, God with us.

And over the last several weeks we've looked at the glory of God.

We have looked at the reality of this person, Jesus, and recognized, even as we looked last week, that Jesus Christ is God himself.

He is very God of very God, the ancient creeds remind us.

But this morning I want us to look at the other aspect of the person of Jesus Christ, and that is that Jesus Christ is fully man.

And this is a mystery, and even as we talk about it this morning, we're going to leave today wrestling with this reality of what the Bible teaches concerning the person of Jesus Christ.

What does it mean that Jesus Christ is fully God, having a divine nature, existing from all time as God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, and that Jesus Christ is fully man, having a human nature just like us in every way, except without sin.

And both of these are true in the one person of Jesus Christ, even as he walked this planet.

How can this be?

Why did God choose to rescue us in this way?

And so this morning, I we're gonna have to think together, and you probably didn't plan on coming to church to think.

No, just kidding.

Hopefully you did in some way.

But as we wrestle with what the Bible says about Jesus, and this morning, even as I, and honestly, I have to tell you, I sat down and read through two systematic theology books about the person of Jesus just to make sure there wasn't something that I was missing.

And then even this morning, I sat down and listened to another sermon by a theologian on the history of Jesus and the heresies and the errors of Jesus in the first five centuries.

That's how nervous I am about trying to explain this to us this morning.

And so as we unpack it, I want us to look at what the Bible says about Jesus because he is Emmanuel, God with us.

Jesus Christ is fully God.

The Bible reminds us he possesses all of the attributes of deity.

We looked last week and in the week before of that well-known, well-read passage in John chapter 1, verse 1.

John 1:1

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

And that passage reminds us that the Word, and later we find out who the Word is in verse 14, because it says, and the Word became flesh.

So the word in verse 1 is Jesus, and it says that Jesus Christ is God, and he was with God, and so there is a distinction to be made, and yet Jesus Christ is God, and verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

That God himself took upon himself human flesh and dwelt among us, it says, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus claimed equality with God.

He said that I and the Father are one in John 10, 29.

In John 17, 4 and 5, and we looked at this last week.

He says, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had before the world existed.

And so that the person of Jesus Christ, he says that he pre-existed even before the creation of the world.

The Bible says that he is God, that he has the nature of God and all of the attributes of God as the second person of the Trinity.

And what we need to recognize when we look at the Jesus in the New Testament is that he did not give up or lay aside or diminish in any way any of his attributes when he became a man or when he took upon himself human flesh.

If he had done so, that would mean that when Jesus was on earth, he was less than God.

If Jesus in any way divested himself of any of his attributes, if he laid aside any of the characteristics of deity while he was on earth, that would mean that he was no longer fully God while he was on earth.

So that means, and this is where we're going to start to blow our minds a little bit, that while on earth, Jesus continued to hold the world together.

It says in Colossians 1.17, and he is before all things, and in him, in Jesus, all things hold together.

So that Jesus, even while he was on earth, was holding all things together.

That he possessed all authority.

In fact, even after his resurrection, he says, All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me.

He claimed the name of God.

He claimed to be eternal.

He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

And he claimed the name of God, the eternally existent one.

He demonstrated being all-powerful, calming the sea, turning water into wine, multiplying the loaves and fishes.

And we saw last time that his glory was veiled when he came to earth.

Even though he reveals who God is, yet his glory is veiled so that we don't behold in the person of Jesus Christ during his earthly life the full glory that he always possessed.

It was hidden from us, covered as it were, clothed in humanity.

The full radiance of his glory, which he possessed from all of eternity, was veiled during his earthly ministry.

Yet we learn that the glory of Christ during his earthly ministry was the glory of the cross.

And after the resurrection, he was taken up in glory, and when he returns, it will be with power and great glory.

So, what are the implications of this so far as we think about the person of Jesus?

It means that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, has always existed as God, all of the attributes of God.

There was never a time when he was not.

And the reason why I say that is because over the course of church history, there were errors that came up that said that Jesus was not God.

There was one error that came up that said that Jesus was just a man and that he lived his life, and then sometime after conception, God came and in a special way came upon him and dwelt upon him, and he was adopted as the Son of God.

And most of these early errors said it was at the baptism when that he uh that God came and rested on the human Jesus, but prior to that he was just a man.

We saw several months ago when we were looking at uh during Reformation Sunday and looking at uh the man Athanasius, that there was an error that was around during that time, that's uh Arianism was its name, that said that Jesus was a created being, that he did not exist, that God the Son, uh the second person of the Trinity, that there, that it was not, uh, that Jesus is not and was not God, that the word was created at a time prior to his birth, but that he is not God himself.

And so there is this uh the error that is still around today that says Jesus Christ is not God, that he was a created being, and uh maybe a special created being, but that he is not God.

The Bible reminds us that Jesus Christ is fully God, having all of the attributes of deity, and that in his deity he has existed from all eternity.

But what is the most difficult to comprehend is that this same Son of God, who is glorious and sovereign and all-powerful, took upon himself a human nature at the incarnation, so that a human nature was joined with, although not mingled together, that he took upon himself a human nature and at the incarnation he is fully God and fully man in the one person, Jesus Christ, and that even now, we're gonna talk about this, uh, he is fully God and fully man and will be for all of eternity.

So let's look at what the Bible says about Jesus being fully human.

We read the passages in Matthew and in Luke that he was born through by Mary by means of the Holy Spirit.

And this is a profound mystery.

The Bible doesn't go into detail of how exactly this happened.

And it's a danger for us to try to speculate beyond what the text says that he was, uh that it was through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

But this reminds us that Jesus was a baby in every form of that term, that Jesus Christ had all of the natural characteristics of any baby.

If you were to gaze at the manger that night, you would have seen what every parent sees and knows.

That that child, that newborn baby, needs comfort, feeding, and being changed.

I was thinking about that while we were doing the dedications and uh Danny and Andrea up here, and Andrea trying to calm down their little baby, and then we we sing that song, and it says, Um, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.

Any parents can can any parent testify to that?

That your child I that that's not Jesus was a baby in every sense of the word.

A helpless, needy, crying baby that needed to be changed, that needed his diapers changed, or whatever they use for diapers back then.

I didn't research that.

But that he was a baby in every sense of the word.

There was nothing.

If you would have looked at that child at that birth, you would have looked and you would have seen there was no halo.

He didn't glow, he didn't hover, he was a baby, a baby baby.

And sometimes when we think about Jesus, we lose sight of the real humanity of the person of Jesus Christ.

He possessed all of the attributes of humanity, the Bible says, except without sin.

And that was the one characteristic that Jesus did not possess a sinful nature like we do.

Paul is careful to say that Jesus was only in the likeness of sinful flesh, Romans 8.3.

That's to say that Jesus was, that's not to say that he wasn't fully human.

And sometimes we struggle with that and say, well, wait a second, if Jesus didn't have a sinful nature, how could he be fully human?

We have a sinful nature.

By birth, uh, we are born with this tendency and this propensity toward sin.

And so how could Jesus be fully human if he didn't have a sinful nature?

Well, uh, we don't know exactly how God did it through the agency of the Holy Spirit during the conception, and yet we know that the Bible teaches that he did not have a sinful nature, he did not sin, and that was through the work of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, kept sin from tainting Jesus.

But we shouldn't think it's impossible for a human being to be fully human without sin, because the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were created without sin before they fell.

In fact, I would submit to you that Jesus is more fully human than you and I are, because the sin in our lives has tainted us and keeps us from being fully the people that God has created us to be in the creation.

And so far from Jesus being less than human, he is truly the epitome of humanity.

So, what does it mean when we say that Jesus is fully human?

And I want to explain this and expand on it so that we get the full grasp and weight of what the Bible teaches about the person of Jesus.

He had a human body, mind, will, and emotions.

He had all of the characteristics of humanity.

He had a human mind and a human will and a human emotions.

The Bible tells us that he learned and grew.

Think about that.

Luke chapter 2, verse 40.

Luke 2:40

Just a few uh pages uh past our scripture reading this morning, it reminds us, and it says very succinctly, and this child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.

So this child grew, became strong and filled with wisdom.

He, in his humanity, there was a learning curve.

There were things that Jesus learned.

And so it says he grew and became strong.

Think about that, even in the physical sense, that there was a maturation process in the person of Jesus Christ.

At age 12, he and his parents went to the temple where Jesus carried on a discussion with the religious leaders.

We see that later in Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

And then it says in verse 52, and Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

If we were to read through the gospel accounts and look for the humanity of Jesus Christ, we would see that Jesus Christ was tired.

There were times when he was tired.

There were times when he got thirsty.

We even see that on the cross when he says, I thirst.

A very normal characteristic of humanity.

He needed rest and he slept.

We remember the story when he was sleeping in the back of the boat and the storm arose and they woke him up.

That he was asleep.

He needed Food.

He was tempted, the Bible says, in every way, as us.

He expressed the full range of emotions, that he was human in his emotions.

He wrestled in prayer over the weight of his mission in the Garden of Gethsemane, and ultimately he died physically, and his soul, his spirit went to the Father.

He experienced all of the reality of being fully human.

From the moment of his conception and birth to growing and being raised and learning, being hungry and tired and weak, he was fully human.

That God himself had taken upon himself a human nature so that in this one person, Christ, he is fully God in reference to his deity with all of the attributes and characteristics of God, and he is fully man in all of the characteristics of his humanity.

And I'm not sure if you've thought deeply about this, but I have been trying to wrap my mind around this for my entire Christian experience.

And there is a level of mystery that goes beyond our ability to fully comprehend.

It doesn't, it is not contrary to logic, but it goes beyond our ability to fully understand the realities of it.

And let me give you some uh some of the tension there, and then some of the boundaries that have been set up uh historically in our explanation of it, and then I'll leave you to go home and to consider it even as we celebrate Christmas.

And consider some of these seeming paradoxes that I've already alluded to earlier.

In reference to his divine nature, Jesus, the person, continually upholds the universe and he holds it together even while lying helplessly in the manger.

Think about that.

Does that boggle your mind?

It boggles my mind.

I mean, I sit there and I try to think through that.

Uh, in in reference to his divine nature, he possesses all knowledge because he is fully God.

And yet, as a boy, he was growing in wisdom and stature, he was learning.

The Bible says he even learned obedience in reference to his human nature.

As he grew up in his divine nature, he never lost one ounce of energy.

There was never an expenditure, just like God in creation, when he created out of nothing by calling it into existence, and it in no way drained him or took away from any of the of who God is, that God is all-powerful, and he doesn't lose or diminish any of his power, regardless of what he does, in reference to Jesus.

In his deity, as he held all the universe together in not one way, in what ounce did he diminish in power, and yet, even as a man, he was tired and he slept.

In reference to his divine nature, he could not be tempted.

God cannot be tempted in any way, and yet, in regards to his humanity, we see that he was tempted in every way, like us, except without ever sinning.

In his divine nature, he knows the end from the beginning.

He knows everything that is, he knows everything that was, he knows everything that would be, he knows all possibilities, even the ones that will never happen.

And yet, Jesus Christ, during his earthly life, said in regards to his second coming, the Mayans were wrong.

Oh, no, that's not what he said.

Just had to throw that in there for.

I knew they were wrong the first time I heard it, but apparently some people didn't get the memo.

Um but the but listen to what Jesus says here, because this is shocking.

And this is we we wrestle with how do we fit this together?

Jesus Christ is God, He possesses all the attributes of God.

God is omniscient, he knows everything.

And yet Jesus says, in regarding to his time of his second coming, Mark chapter 13, verse 32, he says, But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Mark 13:32

In reference to his divine nature, he is unchanging.

And yet the writer to Hebrews could say of Jesus, although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

Hebrews 5, 8.

Do you see the tension?

Are you wrestling?

Do you do you see?

I mean, as we think about, as we celebrate Christmas, this is the profound mystery of the incarnation.

That God Himself took upon Himself a human nature, human flesh.

Well, how do we understand these two truths?

That Jesus Christ, that in the one person, uh, that he possesses all of the attributes of deity, that he is in that sense fully God, and yet in that one person he possesses all of the attributes of humanity that he is fully man.

Well, let me share some wrong ideas to give you some boundaries and then uh close with sharing uh how it does work together and what are some of the implications of it.

Well, here historically are some of the wrong ideas.

And through the first five centuries of the church, the person of Jesus Christ, of who he was, is central.

And if you were to go back and to do a history of the ancient church, what you would find is that they continued to wrestle with who is this one Jesus?

And some of the early errors denied the deity of Jesus, as I mentioned already.

They said that Jesus Christ was not God, that he was either a man, that God came upon, or that he was a created being, in some ways less than God.

And so some denied uh the deity of Christ.

And oftentimes when there is error, uh the pendulum will swing to the other side.

And so after that period of time in the 200s and the 300s, uh some other errors in relationship to his uh to his humanity began to come into the forefront.

And I'll just share three of them and try to explain why they're wrong.

One of them says that Jesus was part God and part man.

Um, that Jesus was part God and part man, and and that he was not fully God, uh possessing all the attributes of deity.

He was not fully man.

And what they said was that Jesus was a human body, so he was one part humanity, but that his mind and his spirit were divine.

And so it's uh uh almost in the terms of uh just the the shell, the human physical shell of Jesus.

He didn't have all the attributes of being a human, he didn't have a human mind, he didn't have a human spirit, he was uh one-third man, if you will, and two-thirds God.

And so that was one of the errors that uh that came up.

And uh the name for that, by the way, for the the 50 cent word is Apollinarianism.

If you can remember all of these and tell me after the service, I'll find a treat for you or something.

Umpollinarianism was the name for this, but he was part God and part man.

That is not what the Bible is teaching.

Jesus Christ, in reference to his humanity, is fully human, and he is fully God in reference to his deity.

Now there was a second error that came up.

If the first one said he was part God and part man, the other one uh goes in the other direction.

And they said, well, Jesus has a divine nature and he has a human nature, and when they came together, they were blended into a third new nature.

Well, the problem with that is that means that he is neither God in reference to his deity or he was man, he is something different.

He is a composite of the two.

And to simplify it, and I thought of this in college and I can't think of anything else, so I'll just I'll share with you what I thought.

When I first learned this, um, I thought about Kool-Aid.

Um, if you take red Kool-Aid and you take blue Kool-Aid and you pour them together, you have purple, right?

And what they said was basically that: that you took the divine nature and the human nature and they blended together into some third type of nature.

So you could not say that he's he's fully God and fully man, he's some other nature.

Uh, that, by the way, was called uh monophysitism or tickenism.

I can't even pronounce it if you can say it afterward.

But that the natures would blend together in a third.

Well, there was another one that went, instead of blending them together, they went the other direction and said that, yes, Jesus is fully God and fully man, but he has it was almost almost split personalities, that there were two separate, uh, separate natures, um, so that they were in competition to one another.

And in some, in some ways, that the divine nature just overrode the human nature, but they were at odds with one another, that they were two separate persons completely in one body.

And so you had this kind of schizophrenic type of existence.

Okay, so if you're not confused yet, let me go on.

How does it work together?

What is um we we would say that there is that in the one person of Christ, uh, that he possesses a divine nature that in reference to that is fully God, and a human nature that in reference to that is fully human.

They are distinct, but they're not separate.

They are distinct from one another, but they're not separate.

And let me give you a good analogy that comes from R.

C.

Sproul.

He says it's the prerogative of a theologian to make distinctions.

Now, I can distinguish your body from your soul, from the immaterial part of you, right?

You know, when when a person dies, their body goes into their grave, uh, their soul goes to be with God in heaven.

Now, that makes me a good theologian if I distinguish between your body and your soul.

If I divide your body and soul, what does that make me?

A murderer.

You see, I can distinguish between the two, and that makes me a scholar.

If I divide the two, that means I've killed you.

So we can distinguish between the two natures of Christ, his divine nature and his human nature.

We cannot mingle them together, but nor can we separate them to make Jesus this schizophrenic type of personality that these two natures are separate into two persons in one body.

So, and again, this is this is a mystery.

We can't go, we can try to explain it, and it is not a logical contradiction, and yet it goes beyond the ability for our minds, our feeble minds to truly comprehend.

But we can make a distinction, and so that we can say there are some things that were true in regards to his human nature that are true in regards to his divine nature.

We can make those distinctions.

And uh in regards to his human nature, Jesus was born.

He took upon himself human flesh.

Uh, in regards to his human nature, uh, he grew.

Uh, in regards to his divine nature, he never changed.

In regards to his human nature, we could give him an age and say that he was 30 years old at the beginning of his ministry, and yet uh in regards to his divine nature, he is eternal.

In regards to his human nature, he was a helpless baby.

In regards to his deity, he never stopped sustaining the universe.

Uh in his humanity on earth, he grew in wisdom and knowledge, and there were things that he did not know while in his earthly existence, and but in regards to his deity, he is omniscient.

In his humanity, he is only one place at one time, and in regards to his deity, he is omnipresent.

Now think about that even now.

Jesus Christ, he took upon himself a human flesh, lived this life, he died, he was buried, he rose again in a glorified body, he still has that glorified body.

In reference to his human nature, Jesus' body even now is in one location.

And we know that same Jesus who died and rose and ascended, that same Jesus, the Bible says, is going to come again.

So in reference to his humanity, Jesus still, now and forever will have a human body, a human nature.

And yet, even now, Jesus says that, lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.

Well, I'm done.

Do you have a headache yet?

Now there are a few practical implications for this, and I'll share these from uh author Wayne Grudham.

Now, think about this in reference to how does this apply to us?

Well, in regards to our salvation, Jesus Christ is fully God.

So when Jesus died on the cross, his sacrifice was an infinite sacrifice able to forgive all of our sins for all of eternity.

It is an infinite sacrifice because of the reality that Jesus Christ is fully God.

But the fact that Jesus Christ is fully man in regards to his humanity, that means that Jesus Christ could identify with us, and as a man, he could take our place and die on our behalf.

And so that Jesus Christ could do what we could not do, he could be a substitute sacrifice for us because he is fully human.

He could identify with us.

He did what Adam could not do.

Adam failed as our representative and he sinned.

Jesus, as the Bible says, the second Adam was our representative for obedience.

The Bible tells us that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Jesus Christ, the Bible says, is our mediator, able to mediate between us as our high priest, it says in Hebrews.

That Jesus as a man was able to fulfill God's original purpose for man to rule over creation and to be our example and our pattern for life.

And then the Bible reminds us that Jesus Christ endured everything that we endure.

So that he can sympathize with us in our lives.

When we go to Christ in prayer, we know that he experienced the same pressures in life and temptations, and he understands sorrow.

And he saw all that went on.

And he sympathizes with us, the Bible says, as our high priest.

Well, this morning, as I as I conclude, it may be as you sit here this morning, there are more questions now than answers.

And that may be a good thing.

So often when we come to Christmas, we we say these realities, and yet we don't think about the profound mystery of what it is that we say when we say that Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God with us, and all that that entails.

And it ought to cause us to stand in awe of the mystery of the reality that God himself visited this planet and that God himself took upon himself a human nature so that from that moment of the incarnation, even now and throughout all eternity, that he is fully God in reference to his deity and fully man in reference to his humanity.

We're gonna sing, uh, but let me close this in a moment of prayer.

Father, I don't even have the words to explain what is perhaps, with the exception of the Trinity itself, the most profound mystery that we will ever encounter in the pages of the New Testament.

And Lord, I am hesitant even to speak, knowing how easy it is to fall into error in explaining these things.

And yet you call us to consider the person of Jesus Christ, one person possessing two natures, not mingled together, and yet not separate.

Father, this is a mystery, and yet it is how you have worked out our forgiveness and eternal life, and we stand in awe of you.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.