Apostles' Creed Sermon - 4
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Apostles’ Creed – Conceived and Born
Isaiah 7:14
1. Introduction – Quick survey this morning… Who here has ever experienced pain and suffering?
a. I mean, heart-breaking, heart-wrenching, gut-busting pain? Like confidence shaking, leaving you perplexed kinda pain? Hands up.
i. Look around. Look at this…just know you are not alone in your grief, your pain and your suffering.
1. We’ve all had different experiences, but no one on earth is exempt from pain and suffering.
b. And with good reason. We live in a fallen and broken world that has been corrupted by the curse of sin.
i. Pain and suffering weren’t part of God’s creations, but entered the world when Adam and Eve disobeyed God.
1. The Bible tells us that we’ve all been affected and corrupted by sin. We’ve all fallen prey to sin’s deception; we’ve all experienced the pain and the suffering and the chaos it causes.
c. But here, with these two lines of the Apostles’ Creed, we begin to see God’s answer and God’s solution to the problem of sin. We begin to see the nature and character of the God this Creed professes.
i. From these two lines, we learn that God the Father does not leave us alone in the chaos – we learn that God himself actually reaches into the chaos and takes on the flesh and bones of a human being.
d. What we’re looking at this week, continues what we started last week, and will continue for a few more weeks – Jesus Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed, God’s only Son, our Lord…eternally begotten of the Father, very God of very God – came to this earth, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
2. The Virgin had a What? – And so, we come to our statements this morning and we ask ourselves the question, “The who had a what?”
a. The virgin birth is only mentioned in 3 passages. Isaiah 7:14 is a prophecy, Matthew 1 records Joseph’s perspective, and Luke 1 is Mary’s story. We’re going to read Luke 1 in a bit.
b. Many people have said and done many different things with the concept of the virgin birth.
i. Some have simple denied it and said that Jesus was conceived by natural human methods.
1. A man named Marcion said Jesus was so heavenly that he wasn’t actually born, he just appeared on the scene. He thought it was beneath God to become a man. It was out of this controversy that the Nicene Creed was written.
a. A man named Valentinus said that Jesus just passed through Mary’s body like water through a pipe.
i. Some liberal Christians, even in today’s world, don’t think believing in a literal virgin birth is necessary to living a Christian life.
ii. The virgin birth is either glibly dismissed, seen as a doctrinal latecomer, and it is even disputed by those professing to be Christians.
c. But we shouldn’t be so arrogant and prideful to think that we can dismiss this part, or attempt to reinterpret it to fit our modern thinking.
i. We shouldn’t think we’re at liberty to highlight this portion of the Bible and hit the delete button.
d. A passage that is familiar to us, fresh in our minds from Christmas, is Luke 1. Listen to these amazing words and then we’ll talk about a few things.
3. What’s Happening Here – There are a few things happening in this chapter. First, this chapter is a culmination of a great biblical theme.
a. All throughout the Bible, we see God opening the wombs of supposedly barren woman. Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Zorah (Samson’s mom), and Hannah, and Elizabeth.
i. All of these women longed to have children, and for the longest time, couldn’t…until God intervened.
1. I know a lot of you here this morning can relate to these stories.
b. And as incredible and as touching as these stories are, they are not out of the realm of possibility.
i. It is well within the realm of possibility that a woman who is enjoying her husband to become pregnant. That’s the way God designed it to be.
1. But what we just read in Luke is impossible. Biologically, physically, scientifically…impossible. And Mary knows it.
c. Think of the scene. Gabriel is going on about God’s plan – who this child is going to be and how great this is all going to be.
i. And Mary, who is probably a 14 or 15-year-old teeny-bopper at this time, interrupts Gabriel.
1. “Um, like, how?” And that’s a totally legit question.
a. Mary pipes up, “Um, I’m betrothed, about to be married. My parents just sat me down and had ‘the talk’ with me. It was awkward for everyone, but they told me how babies are born…and what you’re saying… that’s not how it works!”
i. “Gabriel, what you’re saying is impossible! Tell me how this is going to happen!”
d. So, Gabriel explains to Mary that the Holy Spirit is going to conceive a child in her. We aren’t told if she was given any more details than that. We certainly aren’t, but that explanation seems to be good enough for her.
e. So, Mary’s response and her pregnancy is the culmination of the barren woman conceiving theme.
i. Each child that was born to a supposedly barren woman was set apart by God for a special task.
1. Sarah had Isaac, the child of promise. Rebekah had Jacob, the father of Israel.
2. Rachel had Joseph, who saved his family from a famine. Zorah had Samson, who was a judge in Israel.
a. Hannah had Samuel who was a great prophet and priest in Israel.
i. Elizabeth had John the Baptist – who was the forerunner to Jesus.
ii. And Mary’s Son is also set part, but he takes set-aparness to a whole other level. He is the Son of the Most High, the king of his kingdom. He is the Saviour of the world.
f. And secondly, in Luke 1, we see what has been referred to as the dance of the Trinity.
i. What we see are all 3 members of the Godhead moving and working and dancing together in order to work out God’s plan of salvation.
ii. God the Father initiates by sending Gabriel to Mary. God the Spirit moves and works in Mary’s body to cause he to conceive. And God the Son is born to Mary in human form to be God’s Messiah.
4. Veiled in Flesh – But there’s something we have to understand about these two lives of the Apostles’ Creed.
a. These 2 lines speak to the uniqueness of Jesus conception, but also to the reality of his birth.
i. You see, while the conception of Jesus in Mary’s body was miraculous and unique, his birth was normal.
1. He didn’t pass through Mary’s body like water through a pipe, he passed through a birth canal, like most humans did.
b. We’re tempted to believe “little Lord Jesus no crying he made.” And “Silent Night, holy night, all is calm…”
i. But, like any other birth that has ever happened, and like all of them in those days, there was pain, screaming, pushing, blood and bodily fluids. His birth was just like any other human birth.
c. In fact, in the early church and in the early centuries of Christianity, the virgin birth was used a proof, not of Jesus’ divinity, but his humanity.
i. Today, we kinda use it the other way around. We cite the virgin birth was proof that Jesus wasn’t conceived through natural human methods and so he is without the inherent sin that all humans are born with. He’s perfect; he is God.
1. But I like the idea of the virgin birth proving Jesus’ humanity because it supports what the writer of Hebrews says…
a. Jesus is like us in every way. Right down to the way he came into this world.
i. He was born like us; he was cuddled, nursed, rocked; he played, fell and scraped his knee. He cried, felt pain, was betrayed, and he even experienced the pain and agony of death.
1. And even though Jesus experienced all of these things… he is without sin.
a. Because he is God incarnate – God in the flesh.
i. And this is what the incarnation means for us.
d. The reason I started with a question about hard times, not to dredge up bad memories or cause you any pain. It was done to show you how God works.
i. And there’s something amazing about how God works, something amazing about the incarnation for Christians.
1. Notice that God didn’t clean the world up first and then send his Messiah.
a. God didn’t sort out the problem and brokenness of sin, he didn’t rid the world of evil, of pain and suffering…and then send his Son into a perfect world.
ii. Not, it was into a world full of sin – it was into the chaos, it was into the mess, into the brokenness, into the hurt and pain and suffering of life on this earth that God sent his Son.
e. I wanted a public show of hands so that we would all realize we are not alone in our suffering. We are family, and we are to minister to each other here.
i. But know that God is also with you in your grief, in your pain, suffering; he is with you in the impossible situation that you feel you are in.
f. Know that God doesn’t passively sit by and watch us suffering. No, he is a God who leans in and get his hands dirty.
i. When we suffer, or find ourselves in hard times, God hasn’t abandoned you, he doesn’t lean back on his throne and sit idly by.
1. God gets up close and personal. He even became human to solve our sin problem.
g. He is a God who gets down in the mud and muck of life and picks us up.
i. It’s like David writes in Psalm 40. I waited patiently for the Lord, he heard me, and he didn’t wait for me to come to him… God reached down into the mud and mire and picked me up.
1. David writes that God didn’t waited for him to pick himself up and clean himself off; No, God reached into his pain, into his chaos and into his brokenness and picked him up out of it.
a. And that’s what God does for each one of us. He doesn’t wait for you to get your life together. He doesn’t wait for you to clean yourself off. He doesn’t wait for you to clean yourself up and find your own way out of the mess you’re in.
i. No, God reaches out, he reaches down and he get his holy hands dirty in order to help you.
1. God did it in the incarnation, the birth of Jesus – sending his Son into a broken world.
a. And he does it for us. Reaching into our lives with his love and grace.
h. When I was a toddler, my brother and sister used to call me “Mucker,” because I liked to play in the mud and I liked to get dirty. They didn’t, as you can tell by the look on my brother’s face. I really don’t like getting dirty anymore.
i. And really, God plays in the mud too. He gets his holy hands dirty. He took on flesh, fully dwelt in a human body, so that he could heal the pain and brokenness that we experience in this life.
5. Application – But don’t be mistaken, the incarnation of Jesus, these 2 lines of the Apostles’ Creed, they aren’t simply heady theological statements. They are imminently practical for us as Christians.
a. If our God doesn’t shy away from getting his hands dirty, neither should we.
i. If God doesn’t run from the chaos and brokenness of this world, neither should we.
b. We are to live incarnational lives, being God’s hands and feet – bringing God’s message to a broken world.
i. You don’t have to be a keen observer of our world to see that something is wrong with it. We live in a broken and hurting world.
1. But as Christians, we hold a message of good news that can bring healing and restoration.
c. We can’t run from the brokenness, we can’t hide behind our walls and look out our windows or call from our windows, beckoning people to find Jesus.
i. No, we are to get our hands dirty and bring the message of Jesus to our world that so desperately needs it.
d. And not only is this the way we minister to the world around us…this is the way we minister to each other in this church – through the ministry of presence.
i. I remember when I was diagnosed with cancer, at first I was given a bleak diagnosis – that I wasn’t going to make it.
1. And I remember living with that diagnosis for a couple weeks, until I saw my oncologist. In this time, I had many encounters with my dad in the middle of the night. Neither of us slept very well those weeks.
ii. He would be up watching TV, I’d join him, it was like 3 or 4 in the morning, and we’d just sit there. Neither of us said anything – we just sat there watching a replay of the news
1. But somehow, after a half hour or an hour, we’d both feel better, and we’d both go back to bed.
a. I remember the day of my diagnosis, my brother and his wife came over to my parents’ house, and just sat there.
e. And some of the most meaningful times for me over the past 7 years I’ve been here have been those times when no words were needed.
i. As a pastor, I sometimes live my life on the frontlines; Dave Morris often says to me that my line of work is not for the faint of heart.
ii. But I remember going to see Jerry when he had his surgery, he was in the ICU hooked up to all kinds of machines.
1. Jerry had a breathing tube in the first time I went, and because of that, we didn’t say a word to each other. We just sat there, I could see in his eyes that he was glad I was there, but we just sat there, for like 40 minutes, not talking.
a. And then I got a front row seat of God working. Next time I went, no breathing tube, time after that, he was sitting in a chair, time after that, out of the ICU, and while he is not without problems, here he is.
iii. Or sitting with Louise and Jean and holding Lorne’s hand as he slowly slipped from life on earth to life in God’s presence. Not much was said, but it was sorrowful and beautiful – all at the same time.
iv. Or going to see Ralph after he had a heart attack, and seeing God give him his strength back. And then going to see him after his surgeries.
v. I remember getting to the hospital just after Norma died – she was surrounded by family and there was this amazing moment when time and eternity intersected. And again, there was this ministry of presence that didn’t require a lot to be said.
vi. Or last year, I remember seeing Madeline the day before she died. I was with Pam, and there wasn’t really anything to say. I just held Madeline hand and prayed for God to take her home.
1. I remember going to the hospice in Guelph, when Lorrie was in her last days.
a. And I remember with tears and snot sitting with Greg and Richard and Cobi – we just sat together, not really saying anything, but still ministering to each other.
f. And that’s what these two lines of the Apostles’ Creed teach us – that just as God reached down into the chaos, pain, suffering, brokenness and mess of this world and ministered to us, as God’s people, we are to live incarnate lives and minister to one another.
i. We are to show God’s presence to the world around us, and minister to our church family members in their pain and brokenness.
1. And again, this isn’t to dredge up painful memories for you, but to show you that God is with you in your suffering, and sometimes God shows up in the form of a quiet friend, who just sits there with you in your pain.
6. Conclusion – The Christian faith is a Christmas faith, celebrating the fact that God became one of us through the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary’s body.
a. The Christian faith is a glorious story about God’s Spirit, Mary’s womb, God’s Word made flesh, and angels singing, “Peace on earth!”
i. It’s a faith that believes God comes to us and get his hands dirty, in order to reconcile and restore our relationship with him.
1. I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived and born. Next week we’re going to begin a 3 week journey that looks at the most important weekend in all of history.