Advent: Fully Saved and Fully His

Morning, Merry Christmas.

We're just a few days away.

We're in Advent Sunday 4.

These four weeks, four Sundays of Advent leading up to Christmas.

And Advent Sunday 4, we take time to ponder the love and the incarnation of Jesus.

Let's read again our passage, Matthew 1.

Let's read verses 18 through 21.

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 shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Point number one is that in Jesus you are fully saved from your sins.

You do not have to save yourself.

Author David Zall explains it this way: some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they're told, maintaining the standards, and so on.

I call this front door legalism.

Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on.

Backdoor legalism.

Either way, you're trying to save yourself.

Which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects.

And that's the good news of Jesus that we are saved from all of our self-salvation projects, which we can see in all of our religious and moralistic endeavors that we think we're going to be good enough to be loved by God.

Or you can see it in all of your rebellious and my rebellious worldly endeavors that I think if I build enough, achieve enough, perform enough, maybe get enough pleasure, then I will be whole.

Verse 21 uses this word saved, which is the word sozo, meaning rescuing one from great peril.

It includes the idea of to protect, keep alive, preserve life, deliver, heal, be made whole.

That Jesus gives that to us, what we have in God's grace to us is forgiveness from God outside of us, just given.

Righteousness from outside of us, just given.

Theologian John Calvin, hundreds of years ago, said, as long as Christ remains outside of us and we're separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.

Therefore, he had to become ours and dwell within us.

Calvin's saying that the finished work of Christ is historic, it's there, it's real, it's reality, but we have to make it ours.

It has to come into us, into our inner core being.

The Bible would say, our hearts.

And as we move from being performers for saving to receivers of salvation, we come alive to God's love for us in this Jesus.

The forgiveness of Jesus for our sins, all of our mistakes, motive behaviors, thoughts, all of it, is sort of like a massive wave of tide stain remover, just washing over us.

The other morning we're all getting ready for school in our house, and the girls are all getting ready and we're getting out the door, and one of the girls spots a little spot on her sweatshirt just as you're about to go out the door.

This can ruin a day, ruin a morning.

Especially if it's a park sweatshirt.

If it's a park sweatshirt, I mean that's even worse.

So we're walking out and then the stain.

But we have tide pins in our house.

A tide pin will save the day.

Hand the tide pin over.

She applies the power of the tide pin.

She blots over the stain.

She washes it back and forth a few times.

Magic, the stain is gone.

The day is saved.

Right?

The shirt had done nothing.

The shirt did nothing.

All the shirt had was a stain.

It had no ability to get the stain out by its own.

It didn't have the life to do that, didn't have the power.

The stain remover does the powerful work.

And that's the good news that our stain is the very qualification we have to come before Jesus.

Our burden is the thing that God says, bring that to me.

And Jesus is sufficient for that.

In Jesus, we're absolved, we're pure, we're free, we're made whole again.

We're saved.

Let me just hammer the point home.

Verse 21, she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

For he will save his people from their sins.

Call his name Jesus.

That name, Jesus is the Jewish name for the Hebrew name Joshua, Yeshua, which means to save.

So kind of twice in the same verse, the same point being made.

In Jesus, we're fully saved.

Or fully forgiven.

The tide stain remover just washes over us as a gift.

You don't have to work your way out of your sin or your mistake.

You don't have to go and find a self-salvation project in religion or a self-salvation project in the world to feel justified or worthy.

In this Jesus, we have a secure identity as God's sons and daughters.

Jesus has this power.

Because he wasn't just a teacher.

He wasn't just an example for us to live up to.

He was actually what we would say: He is our advocate.

That word is in 1 John 2, 1 and 2, my little children, that's you and I.

I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

He is the propitiation for our sins.

And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

That word advocate's the word paraclete.

It means to represent in a legal manner.

It's an official binding relationship where whatever the advocate achieves, you achieve.

So the billionaire dies in Monaco in his penthouse compound in Monaco.

He's murdered.

Maybe the wife did it.

We don't know.

I'm a little suspicious of the wife.

Maybe the Russians did it.

Maybe Ted the nurse did it.

Well, Ted the nurse ends up getting arrested.

Ted from America, he gets hired, he goes up, Ted the nurse is arrested.

So he gets arrested.

Ted is there being tried.

An American loyal lawyer, Michael Griffith, he goes over, flies over there to be Ted's lawyer.

Griffith comes to Ted in his need.

Griffith is the advocate in court for him.

Ted says nothing.

Griffith works on behalf of Ted.

No matter how guilty, Griffith will work for Ted.

Because he's the advocate.

And whatever he achieves, Ted achieves.

It's not a great example because Ted goes to jail.

Alright, so it's not a good, it's not really all that great of a sermon.

But I got right.

I was like, I want to use it.

So work with me here.

Alright, so work with me.

Work with me.

Imagine Griffith was such a good advocate, such a good lawyer that Ted became a free man.

Imagine that the work of the advocate is so good, so sufficient, that you are set free.

Theologian Charles Hodge wrote this the relationship of Christ to his people, that's the relationship of Jesus to you.

Is that of a legal advocate to a client.

The former personates the latter.

The lawyer stands in the client's place.

It is, while at last the most intimate of relationships, you may not even have to appear in court.

You are not heard.

You are not regarded.

You are lost in your advocate, who for the time being is your representative.

The advocate, not you, is seen.

The advocate not you is heard.

The advocate not you is regarded.

And that's good news because what it means is it means your record, resume, and scorecard is not what God uses to determine whether He loves you, forgives you, cherishes you.

And if you're wondering what God thinks of you, how he feels about you this morning, or like on a lousy Tuesday morning, or just after that huge mistake that you make again, what does God actually think of me?

Well, we know what he thinks about you because that's already been secured in Jesus.

And he loves you and he cherishes you just like he loves and cherishes Jesus.

That's the power of this advocate that we have.

Verse 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the 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.

Emmanuel, that name it means God with us.

That's point number two.

And Jesus, you have forever belonging with God.

So you're never alone.

A few months ago I went down to Emory to have an MRI of my heart, nothing major.

They were checking on a few things.

And so they put me in that little gown, a real manly moment.

They put me on a table.

The nurse gets me on the table, and the table, if you ever had an MRI, it slides into this tube, huge machine, and it slides in, and you're just in this kind of tube, a very tight space.

Once I'm in, she says, I'm gonna leave the room.

There'll be nobody in this room with you.

And then the machine begins to make loud noises while you're in this enclosed space.

It kind of feels like it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

And then some medicine rushed through the IV and rushed through my heart to allow them to see certain things.

And when that happened, I got incredibly lightheaded.

I felt like I was gonna throw up.

And my heart started racing, and I was this far from passing out, and just where I think I'm not gonna be able to hold on to this.

I hear a voice say, Are you okay?

I say, Yeah, uh yeah.

And she says, You'll be fine.

This will pass.

She was always with me, this nurse.

I could have called out at any moment.

I just forgot.

I forgot that she could hear me at any moment.

I forgot that.

And it felt like I was alone.

And I really didn't understand what was going on.

I didn't understand how the medicine was affecting.

I didn't understand everything about the situation.

All right, you get my point.

God's promise to us in Christ is I'm always with you.

You may not feel like it and you may not understand everything, but the promise is still there.

The word Emmanuel occurs three times in the Bible, here in Matthew, twice in the book of Isaiah, that Old Testament book, 800 years before this event.

Isaiah 7.14, the prophet prophesies that Emmanuel will come to a virgin.

It's prophesied 800 years before.

Isaiah 8.8, the prophet prophesies that the people of God belonged to this Emmanuel.

Two Christmas contemplative questions for us, thinking about this name Jesus, that we don't have to save ourselves to be forgiven or whole.

We could ponder what peace might you know as you draw near to Jesus, for limitless forgiveness, righteous standing with God, and a wholeness of heart.

What if you didn't have to go anywhere else for that?

That you could just rest all the more in Jesus.

The name Emmanuel, God promises to be with us always, even if you don't feel it or understand.

What peace might you know as you trust in Emmanuel that you are never alone and God will never leave you?

The last word for us to ponder this morning is the word behold.

Verse 23, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.

I love that word, behold.

It means to pause, to gaze, to not just move on, not just to get to work for God, but to cherish him and treasure him.

Point number three is this we behold and glorify Jesus as we linger longer and treasure more God's grace to us, the grace of God.

Almost 20 years ago, I can still remember the audition of Paul Potts on Britain's Got Talent.

Some of you probably remember it if you're my age.

His audition went viral.

It's become one of the most watched YouTube videos in history, all time.

Paul was a cell phone salesman in Britain.

He doesn't have much confidence.

He's really a nobody compared to these celebrities that he's in front of, in front of this crowd.

And then we hear him sing.

We're gonna watch about two.

Paul, what are you here for today, Paul?

To sing opera.

I've always wanted to sing as a career.

Confidence, it's it's always been difficult to think for me.

I've always tried to be completely confident in myself.

Okay.

It's pretty amazing.

You don't expect it when you just see him walking on the stage.

But think about the fact that that that's become one of the most all time in history of the world videos watched by the entire world.

I mean, that's incredible.

Part of it is Paul singing.

For me, part of it is watching the people watching.

Watching them be amazed.

At one point, Simon's jaws just open.

I mean, at one point, Amanda, uh, the lady with the brown hair, she's just in tears, right?

The only reaction by them is to listen to this goodness.

We could say they're beholding Paul.

They're caught up in the goodness.

It got me thinking about what the prodigal son might have been thinking about at the party.

Right?

After he was welcomed back, freely welcomed back by the father, lavishly loved, held, so a party for you, and he's at the party, and he's looking at all the goodness.

The welcome, the love.

My guess is the prodigal felt something like these people in the crowd where you're just seeing something so good that you're beholding it.

You're overwhelmed by the goodness.

My point is, is as we come alive to God's love for us, we'll love and live for Him more.

And that's why the calling is to behold, to be astonished by how good Jesus is, to linger longer, to treasure more.

In the coming days, you might have some family gatherings, probably have some presents, might have a few other things to go to, and in the midst of that, behold.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.

That's pretty good.

Heavenly Father, we're so grateful you don't just put us to work for you.

You pursue us in our mass.

You know all about our sains and sins, and in the blood of Jesus you have forgiven it all.

Jesus is enough for us.

You call us your sons and you call us your daughters.

You cherish us like you cherish Jesus.

You lavishly welcome us home like the prodigal and throw a party.

May we be astonished more of how good you are for us.

May we understand more the secure identity we have as your children.

May we learn to behold you amidst all the demands of life, amidst the good and the bad.

May we trust all the more in the goodness of Jesus for us.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.