1:1-4 God shown in the flesh

Good morning, Merry Christmas to everybody. Merry Christmas Eve, I guess. Roger says, well, you get to do the Christmas message. Okay. What do you do? Where do you go? Because you have the general idea of what Christmas is all about, and then you have the biblical view of what Christmas is really about.

And so, the first verses that hit me were these verses in Hebrew that God, after he spoke a long time ago to the fathers and the prophets, and in many portions and in many ways, that's how he spoke to mankind from the Garden of Eden up until The nativity in these last days has spoken to us in his son whom he appointed heir of all things to whom also he made the world.

So God has been speaking forever since the creation to his creation. The creation itself expresses his thoughts in all of his providential government where if you have eyes to see it, He gives witness to his eternal power, his Godhead, so that men don't have an excuse.

I exist, I'm the creator, I'm the one. So if you look at verse two, what he did was is he changed the methodology in which he is communicating with us now, and he communicates to us not through creatures, but through the creator himself. God himself presents his son to us to communicate information to us.

And I got to thinking, you know, I'm not sure that we really understand that this baby in a manger is the God of the universe. He's the one that created everything, holds it all in place. He's God. And yet, here he comes, and he's born as a baby. The Son himself has come and is speaking to us in these last days.

That expression that signifies a change in God's formal method of appealing to man, as well as a declaration that no further unfolding remains to be revealed. God isn't gonna send somebody else later. He's spoken to us in his Son. Or if you want to look at it literally, it says in a son, which means that it doesn't suggest that there's a couple. What it suggests is that there's only one. There's only one, and he's been designated in an exclusive way. He is the son, and he's God too. So who is this one? that's come.

In John's epistle, John names him Jesus Christ and expresses and implies his deity, that he is God. The Holy Spirit so filled the mind of John with the truth that the word which had been manifest in the flesh was God. That's who it was, who it is. Though he speaks of him by name, which formally expresses the Son as a man and the office of Savior slash Messiah, with John that didn't really matter. The name didn't really matter because what was the real issue with John?

That this The person is full of power. He's God. He's that which is from the beginning. He is the son of the glory of the Godhead, according to Samuel Rideout. It's a good way to express it. So if you look at John's first epistle, you see, and you can see how John felt that way. how he tried to express who the Lord Jesus really is. He said in the first chapter, and I'll just read up here the red parts. Well, maybe I'll read more than that. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you. Also, that you may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. In the second chapter, he says, the Lord Jesus is an advocate with the Father, and the Lord Jesus is righteous. He's right.

In the third chapter, he says, the name of his Son, Jesus Christ. You see, he's connecting over and over and over again the idea of God and Christ are the same. Christ is God. In the fourth chapter he says, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And in the last chapter he says, and we know that the Son of God has come, has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true and that we are in him. You could spend the whole day talking about in him who is true, in his son Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. So Jesus Christ is a true God.

When you start looking through his epistle and his gospel, he refers to he and him, and the argument in the first epistle that he and him always keeps before us the one who is God, the Lord Jesus Christ. the announcement that it was God who was manifest and who had come in the flesh. John's epistle, we can take a look at it, and it says Jesus Christ is God, his name is Jesus Christ, and it's concluded that the true God is not known if he who was in the flesh, Jesus Christ, is not understood as God. And all this simply because, simple, he is God. any other God who is received as such as an idol. And I mean anybody. So starting up where it says the soul that does not believe in this doctrine has not God, but he who abides in him has both the Father and the Son, 2 John 9. when we speak of God under the name of Jesus Christ, and it is therefore the demand of an acknowledgement to the great mystery that God is manifested in the flesh. This important statement of required belief that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, that's part of our doctrine, it's part of what we believe, that this person, this human being, is God. This come in the flesh strongly shows the deity of Christ because if he were merely a man, or anything short of what he really is, it would be no such wonder that he should come in the flesh. Big deal, every other man came that way. So if you go back and look at verses two and three, that the Lord Jesus Christ is eternal life.

You know, we think of eternal life as something in a jar in your kitchen, or that it's, well, I'm alive, eternal means forever. But there's the uniqueness of eternal life in John 17. He wrote that eternal life was what? It's to know the Father and to know the Son. That's what eternal life is because that's who they are. If you want eternal life, which isn't that you get to live forever, but you get to share his life, that's where it is. It's the only place you can find it. So the Lord Jesus is the one from the beginning. When the beginning was happening, he had already been there. He was standing there creating the beginning.

I read this week that I never had this thought before. You know, we talk a lot about the world and how it influences everything we think and we breathe. You know when it began? When did the world begin? It began when Adam sinned. It wasn't there before then and it won't be there later. This whole, this fallen environment that we all live in started at the Garden of Eden.

So the father sent the son so that we could have life outside of that world. It's eternal life with the father, it was the person he declared to them, the son. The words with the father are important, making it evident that the son was the eternal one also. The name of the eternal son is Jesus Christ. It's interesting to compare the work of John. If you look at the very first verse, life was manifested and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you eternal life.

In 1.5.20, which is the last verse of the epistle, he says in his son, Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. He starts with eternal life and he ends with it.

So, The Lord Jesus comes to the earth, and God has been looking for a man to satisfy himself in everything that he intended man to be before the fall, and then some. So the Lord Jesus comes, he's a born one, he's holy, which means he's separate, and he fits into God's mind perfectly in terms of what God intended humanity to be. That's who he is. And then the Lord Jesus is circumcised. What does that do?

It puts him under the law system perfectly, and it meets God's mind about the law. And then, at 30 years old, he gets baptized. to be prepared for the ministry God sent him to do, but that was in God's mind also, so that he could carry out the stewardship of righteousness that he was about to embark on. And he's the anointed one, meeting God's mind in his image and his representation. Everything about him always satisfied God, always. He's a devoted one. He meets God's mind in the offering of grace to a sinning world's sinners. It's interesting right here. You know, and you remember when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, and what's the first thing he did?

He went and hid, right? He wasn't looking for anything. He wasn't even looking for, well, what do I do now? So who came and did the looking? It was the Lord himself. He sought man out. But what does that tell us about God's character? It tells us that he is always the pursuer. It's his desire that we be with him. Way more than it's our desire to be with him.

That's why he sent the Lord Jesus. That's why the Lord Jesus went through the cross, he was buried, he was raised, and he ascended back to heaven. Why? Because it fit what God wanted to get mankind in a position where they could be with him for eternity. He wanted that.

So while in his person he was manifested, God in the flesh, In the succession of his stages through the earth, he was accomplishing all the divine purposes and every delight for the Father and glory in man. He was the man. He does meet all of the mind of God while providing for us at the same time. He was amplified in him and by him, and everything he did was honorable. God proposed delight in man or glory by him has been richly answered in the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing unworthy of God was in the man Jesus Christ.

In his person, in his experiences, in his ways, nothing. So the object of sharing these truths of the word is that we may be turned from all that God condemned, that world I was talking about, the sin nature, everything is not like God, that we would be turned from that into a deep personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice how it's personal with him. He wants us to know him.

We've seen foreshadows of this marvelous fact in the incarnation from the very beginning of time. There can be little doubt that the creation itself and every succeeding step in the revelation of God to his intelligent creatures had in view the incarnation. All inspiration, every appearance of an angel of Jehovah in the Old Testament throughout, every ordinance, every sacrifice point to the fact now revealed that God proposed to link himself with his creation. in a way of amazing condescension and intimacy which never would have entered man's mind, never, but which interpreted and met the yearning of man's soul. He intended to link us with him and to make us suitable to be with him. He did that, and he's constantly working on that all the time.

We're all about being religious and following the rules. He's not about that. He's about intimacy. He's about knowing him. That's what he wants. And you know, in our souls, every one of our souls, we have a longing to know God. Well, here he is, and he's knowable.

It's been said on the other side of the coin, though, that all error has some truth in it. The degree of truth contained in error appeals to man. We like that kind of thing. Man's will is unbroken. Man's pride dictates to him. Man is led on and away from the truth to link deceptiveness and error together. Men love that kind of thing.

But guess who the author of that is? It's satanic work in line with the great deceiver of mankind. The first thing was, you shall be as God and knowing good and evil. Oh boy. Something more than God himself. In one form or another, it still holds out as an allurement to poor man who, despite the knowledge of his son necessarily keeps him out of the presence of God, he unsuccessfully intrudes himself, unforgiven, into the holy presence of God. That's what religion does. That's what all the denominations do. They wanna barge in anyway. Whenever this is done, man tramples upon the very first principle of the relationship of God. When's the last time you thought about this?

There's a distinction between the creature and the creator. The sense of responsibility gets lost. The sense, too, of the infiniteness of God is gone. Man has not been lifted up into the infinite, but the thought of the infinite has been degraded and dragged down to the petty limits of poor, fallen, mortal, sinful creature.

Read the Old Testament. You wonder sometimes, how did they do that? And well, then after you get done that, turn on the news, it's still going on. But the fact that a great truth has been perverted and misused by Satan and fallen man must not make us close our eyes to the glorious fact that it is still the truth and it is that which the incarnation, which is God taking flesh form, the incarnation sets forth. So how does God protect us? from the intrusion of errors.

On Monday nights that we have this young man's Bible study, which has been going on for over a year, and J.D. McCauley's done a really great job, but we were, over the last couple of weeks, I'm gonna share with what we've been doing because it had such a impact in terms of intimacy with Christ. And it comes from Myles Stanford's book, The Ground of Growth, in the 10th chapter. Myles says, truth can be very impersonal, ineffective if its ultimate purpose is not realized.

What we need is the Spirit's application of the full Lord work of the cross. This will enable us to avoid the sin within and without and to give our complete attention and love to the Lord Jesus. Anything short of this won't satisfy either him nor our hungry heart.

Keep in mind that it is by the coming to know the Lord Jesus that we know our Father. And he quotes John 14, nine. I've been with you such a long time and you have not known me. How that he has seen me has seen the Father. Believe in me that I am in the Father and the Father in me.

We're not to know the Lord Jesus in order to emulate him or to, you know, the WWJD bracelet. Rather, we're to behold him. in his word and allow the spirit of God to conform us to his image. Not imitation, but confirmation. The Lord Jesus in Matthew 11 said, learn of me. It isn't learn of me, it's learn of me. Not simply the doctrine of Christ, but Christ himself. a process not merely of getting to know the person, but of so applying the knowledge as to walk differently from the rest of the Gentiles.

How cool would that be? His infinite glory must not discourage us from pursuing our privilege of knowing him intimately. His divine majesty is unfolded in order to display his divine mercy and his divine grace. So the fruit, and this is still, working through Miles' stuff that we were studying. The fruit of the Spirit is developed in us as we behold him and as earthly walk and work. And this is the part that got me. For actual growth, there has to be an entering into his life via the word. feeding upon him, appropriating him. Now watch in the blue letters how Miles puts this. I think that this is the thing that got me.

He says, consider the Lord Jesus, just consider him, as he lovingly shares his life with the up and out religious leader Nicodemus and the down and out woman of Samaria. Listen closely to him, observe his tender concern, for those individuals who represent the extremities of the spectrum of human need. Note how faithfully and effectively he applies the truth to their hungry hearts, not by method, but by nature, a ministry of life. And in every one of these now he's gonna say, he points to the verses, he points to the verses. Then he says, pay close attention to him as he calls his first four disciples and especially note the way he ministers to Peter.

Spend time with him as he shares and applies his wonderful parables by the sea. Enter into his restful attitude as he in turn gives rest to the tossing tempest and the tempest tossed. Stand with him as he commissions the 12. Observe him, listen to what he shares with them. Feed upon him as he feeds the 4,000.

And hear him reveal himself as the bread of life. How touchingly his character is depicted in his parable of the Good Samaritan. And nowhere is he more explicitly manifested to us than in his fellowship with the Bethany home, the home of Martha and Mary. And what of his humble yet majestic service of the 12 during the Last Supper? how our love is drawn out to him there.

And if you want a copy of the verses, you can just ask me and you can have them. And he sums it up by saying, these are just a few of the specific instances in the word by which you can come to know him more intimately. Thus we realize something of the life of the Holy Spirit is developing in our hungry hearts. We see him and we don't emulate him. The Holy Spirit conforms us to what we see that life to be, who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

William Kelly says, it all depends upon this, the simplicity with which I receive the great truth that as to all that I am, it was judged on the cross. All that you think you are in Adam, judged at the cross, and now there is a new man before the Father, and a new man before me and you.

Christ risen from the dead, and I'm entitled to say God has spoken in the Son. I can say he has spoken, we may say as Son, God was in Christ, He himself had drawn near, not merely now with some specific message, but he drew near in a person and as a person. It was God himself who was here. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and it dwelt among us. And when you look at this word Emmanuel, it means God with us.

Not merely as he's omnipresent, filling heaven and earth and transcending all of his vast universe, but an amazing thought in the person of the one who emptied himself and took a servant's form and was made in the likeness of man, of one who is a perfect man in the fullest sense, of the word spirit, soul, and body, the man, Christ Jesus. The wisdom of the world, which confessedly knows not God and doesn't want to know him, closes its eyes to the only way in which he could be known and stumbles at the baby of Bethlehem. where all the eternal majesty of the Godhead was veiled in human form. Grace has taught us, through the very knowledge of our need, to become, with adoring hearts, this glorious, wondrous fact that God is with us. It's the center around which revolves all truth, past, present, and future, even the cross. the amazing mystery of the suffering of God incarnate, with all its blessed consequences for eternity, reaching out to the eternal reconciliation of all things on earth and in heaven. It gains its significance from the great fact that God was in Christ.

If you don't have the incarnation, you don't have the nativity, what do you miss? You miss redemption, there's no resurrection, there's no forgiveness, there's no gift of the Holy Spirit, there's no formation of the church, there's no kingdom of the Son of Man, there's no laying a ransom creation at the feet of God eternally bound to him. So if he didn't show up at Bethlehem, none of these things are true. Sin made the cross, this is quotes from Samuel Riteout, sin made the cross necessary.

It brought out the sweetest proof of what divine love is, both in the objects upon which it rested and in the gift which it bestowed. But the cross was a means, awful and necessary, for what? To bring man to God. removing all the barriers which neither justice nor love could ignore. That's always been an enigma in my mind. Why can't we as believers recognize that God tore down all the barriers?

We can go. There's nothing to keep us from going in with Him, sitting down with Him. The incarnation, God with us, shows the purpose of God's heart, not only to have man with him, but for him to be with man. The Lord God, walking in the trees of the Garden of Eden, tells us of the yearning of a heart that could not rest content were it not, if he were not with his creatures.

The very presence of God in the world only accentuated the awful fact of man's moral distance from him. Man was no nearer to God at Bethlehem as he was outside the Garden of Eden. I have to say that again. Man wasn't any nearer to God at Bethlehem than he was outside the Garden of Eden. But God had drawn near to man with a purpose of love to remove the great barrier to true moral union.

To sum up, a couple of quotes. The resurrection and ascension, the present display of divine grace in connection with the gospel preached by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, forming a new and wondrous fact. in which a man who is also God is seen on high upon a very throne of God, linking with himself as man by the Holy Spirit an innumerable company of sinners saved through the blood of his cross, that's you and me, by the power of his grace. to share with him in the glory which have been given to him as man. We get to do that. His headship over all things to enjoy companionship with him, we get to do that. To be the object of his affections, wow. Close by his side forevermore. And all of this is a glorious result of the fact that he became a man.

Finally, it was for this that he came, and for this that he died. I'm like a core damn Irish. His cross can never be forgotten throughout eternity. but for our eternal blessing rests on, but that he might have us for himself as sharers of his glory was what brought him here and took him back to heaven.

We gotta close. Father, I thank you simply for who you are. Excuse me, and the character. You loved us so much that you made us, through your son, acceptable to be with you forever. We're so thankful for that, Father. We pray in your son's precious name, amen.