God Came
The Incarnation • Sermon • Submitted
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We grow comfortable singing our Christmas songs… hymns that draw out a peace and images of a sweet baby laying in a manger, mother smiling, shepherds kneeling, even manger scenes show the animals sweetly resting by the sleeping baby.
These images and the nostalgia wrapped up in Christmas time has contributed to many not fully grasping the power and impact of what occured when God came as man!
Theologians call His coming...
The Incarnation:
The Incarnation:
(Webster) :the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form
(Webster) :the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form
1a(1): the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form
(Easton) :that act of grace whereby Christ took our human nature into union with his Divine Person, became man. Christ is both God and man. … the two natures are not mixed or confounded, and it is perpetual.
Scripture refers to this as “IN THE FLESH” is one example of this...
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
“IN THE FLESH” Jesus Christ has secured our salvation. Theology calls His coming the INCARNATION and His dying the ATONEMENT.
TODAY… as we approach Christmas I want us to focus on His Incarnation… His coming. For this purpose I want us to allow the passage in guide our thought process...
Easton, M. G. (1893). In Easton’s Bible dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
“He existed in the form of GOD”
“He existed in the form of GOD”
FORM: the true exact nature… the ULTIMATE image of God… possessing all the same characteristics and qualities, GOD!
The Son of God is and always has been God! Consider this with me for a moment…
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Before TIME, SPACE, MATTER ever existed… there is GOD!!!
He is eternal (no beginning nor end)
He is all powerful, all knowing
He is self sufficient!!!
He is all knowing
“God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made,” wrote A.W. Tozer, “but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself.” God needs nothing, neither the material universe nor the human race, and yet He created both.
A.W. Tozer would make the statement that you can narrow everything in existence into two categories 1) That which is GOD 2) those things that are not GOD
Only God is God
God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas Day Five: God Became a Child
Where is the divinity, where is the might of the child? In the divine love in which he became like us. His poverty in the manger is his might. In the might of love he overcomes the chasm between God and humankind, he overcomes sin and death, he forgives sin and awakens from the dead. Kneel down before this miserable manger, before this child of poor people, and repeat in faith the stammering words of the prophet: “Mighty God!” And he will be your God and your might.
Everything else He created is NOT God!
God created man
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
You and I are the creation, we are not God… nor can we become a god… Only God is God everything else is created by God… and sustained by him …
“The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;
He “Emptied Himself”
He “Emptied Himself”
This God , Creator, Sustainer… came as His creation
Emptied= He did not cease to be God, nor at any time was He less God. He willingly was eliminating all privileges or prerogatives associated with such status or rank!
The one who created the law of gravity now puts Himself under it.
The One who gave limitations of hunger, fatigue, and understanding, now allows Himself to be limited.
The One outside of time, creator of time is now constrained by it!
Frederick Buechner describes the Incarnation as “a kind of vast joke whereby the creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers.” He concludes, “Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken.”
Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains (electronic ed. of the 2nd edition., Vol. 1, p. 739). New York: United Bible Societies.
Frederick Buechner describes the Incarnation as “a kind of vast joke whereby the creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers.” He concludes, “Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken.”
Consider what the prophet says about this baby in a manger
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
NOTICE: He is NOT “a” mighty god… He IS Mighty God!!! He came!
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Where is the divinity, where is the might of the child? In the divine love in which he became like us. His poverty in the manger is his might. In the might of love he overcomes the chasm between God and humankind, he overcomes sin and death, he forgives sin and awakens from the dead. Kneel down before this miserable manger, before this child of poor people, and repeat in faith the stammering words of the prophet: “Mighty God!”...
God becoming man (100% man YET 100% God)
“Jesus Christ is Lord”
“Jesus Christ is Lord”
declares...
I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him.
Have you ever considered that what God the Son did when He came as a man was forever?
He is our ATONEMENT… His death, burial, and resurrection…
When He rose, His glorified body was still that of the man Jesus
The love of God the creator stepping into His creation to save His creation was a forever decision!!!
What an amazing LOVE
What an extreme HUMILITY
Oh what a priceless GIFT!
A God who would do all this, who would come down for mankind, sinners each one of us… when I consider the Incarnation I gladly fall to my knees, and boldly declare this Jesus Christ as LORD!!!