Missed all of you, and not to
sound prejudiced, but I've missed some of you more than I've missed
the rest of you. Just because our relationship's a little long. But it's good to be back. Me
turning, if you will, to John chapter one. Now Rupert told me I could preach
as many messages as I wanted to and be as long as it took.
But I won't do that. We'll be fairly brief. John chapter 1. And let's read verses 14 and 15. And the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father. full of grace
and truth. And John bore witness of him
and cried saying, this was he of whom I spoke. He who comes
after me is preferred before me for he was before me. Let's pray. Father, how we thank
you that you gather your people together and that you've made
that not only our practice, but that you've made that our desire
and that you've granted us, Lord, to be able to find our best moments,
our best moments when we're here assembled together in your presence
and you assembled with us. And Lord, we pray that you would
do that today, that you might be assembled with us and that
you would oversee the whole matter that you would bless us in our
singing, that you would bless, Lord, the message, bless us in
our hearing, and blessed Lord, bless us, Lord, in our understanding.
And how we ask that you would grant us that though we be many,
that we may worship together as one at the feet of your Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray these things in his name,
and Lord, may all the glory be his. For Christ's sake, amen. The word became flesh. Such a
very simple statement for the greatest, most self-denying act
of condescension this world has ever witnessed. The eternal word
of God, who never had a beginning and will never have an end, the
eternal word of God, the second person of the divine trinity,
the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty, actually became flesh, just like
ours. No welcoming parade, no pomp
and circumstance, no write-up in the newspaper. Just a man named Joseph and a
young woman named Mary and a host of angels who marveled how such
a thing could even happen. God the Son, who had been miraculously
implanted in Mary's womb and by God the Holy Spirit, and for
nine months had been becoming as human as any of us, was about
to be born the God-Man, the first and only one this world has ever
seen. The eternal God in every divine attribute, not a lesser
God, God Almighty, in His full glory, became the only perfect
man who has ever walked among us. I don't know about you, but that's
a wonder that goes way off my scale. Even preparing this message,
I am overwhelmed with the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. What
a wonder. What absolute grace. The word
actually became flesh. That's the literal rendering
of that verse. What a self-denying feat of sovereign mercy. Let's study this thought for
just a few moments here this morning. May we be reminded of
our internal indebtedness to the self-sacrificing grace of
our God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The word became
flesh. What a simple statement for such
an incomprehensible act of grace. But it's really not the technical
details. I've heard many messages on this
passage. A lot of them I heard in religion. And many of them talked about
how, as a matter of fact, they brought in a doctor one time
to talk about this passage and try to describe how that God,
the Holy Spirit, implanted the Lord Jesus Christ in the womb
of Mary. And it was really interesting to most of them. But it wasn't
that interesting to me. It is a marvel, and it's a marvel
that's so much out of our reach that there's no use to explore
that, no use to go into science to try to add something to your
message or to make the message a little more appealing. It's not necessary that we understand
how the immaterial divine king of glory became a flesh and blood
man in every way that we are with the exception of sin. The
more important question is not how, Why? Why would he do that? What was his purpose? He certainly
owed no debt to our sinful race. And what could he possibly stand
to gain from fallen worms of the dust like you and me? Grace
like this, however, must surely, surely have a motive. Now, for
most folks, you know the motive. Most folks just think of the
incarnation, and it reminds them of Christmas. That sweet little
baby in the manger, the exchanging of gifts. False religionists
go a little further and mistakenly surmise from his birth that the
Lord Jesus came to make it possible, possible for everyone to be saved. That's what most folks get out
of this text. That is, they could be saved should they so choose
to do so. But this is nothing All of this
is nothing more than just religious fables that do nothing but pervert
the indescribable glory of the Lord's incarnation. They do nothing
but obscure the real reason why he stooped so low as to be made
in the image of Adam's fallen race. Giving a spiritually dead
sinner a choice about a salvation which he understands nothing
It's not grace. It's going on around us everywhere
you look. Churches all around here are
talking about grace and there's not an ounce of grace in anything
they say or anything they do. It's the worst act of cruelty
that could be perpetrated. I was raised under that foolishness.
I thought for a long time, as long as I kept my prayers up,
my Bible reading up, and didn't do too many bad things in the
ones I did, if I got forgiveness for them, that's the way religion
operates, I thought I'd be okay. But if eternal salvation is merely
a moral decision, followed by an act of baptism, then joining
a religious fraternity, then Christ need not have died at
all because we can do that. We can do that. We don't need
him for that. If you think that that's saving
grace, then all you have to do is just make up your mind to
become a Christian. People are doing it all over
town today. Get yourself dumped in a water hole and have them
put your name on the membership roll. That's all you need to
do. Who needs Christ for that? Don't need Christ for that. It
happens all the time. And God has nothing to do with it. but
to let you believe what you will and die and be lost in hell forever,
lost and ignorant. The father need not have sent
his son among us if the ground of salvation is a simple act
of a lost sinner's will. Nobody needs Christ for that.
But the scriptures give us at least three clear reasons why
the incarnation of Christ was absolutely essential. First of
all, Redemption of lost men is impossible without it. Had the
Lord Jesus not become a real live flesh and blood man, he
would not have obtained the right to represent the redeemed sinner
before the Father. We needed a representative that
could represent us. Only a man can represent us.
We needed one of our kind, someone to stand up for us and to take
our plea to God Almighty. We needed the lord jesus christ
not only as god we needed a man second great things paul wrote
to the to correct the is a second read his five twenty one states
this eternal maxim very clearly the one who knew no sin had never
been acquainted he made for us in order that we become the very
righteousness of god in him. As God Almighty, the Lord Jesus
Christ, could not even look upon the hideous reality of sin, much
less be made sin in behalf of his people, the essential element
required for him to bear the sins of his people was that he
had to become as human as we are. God's eternal law of representation
demands that our Redeemer must be one of us. I don't know about
you, but that helps me in my prayers. I'm speaking to, not to sound as though I'm in
any way minimizing the glory of the Lord Jesus, but I'm speaking
to someone like me, someone who knows what it's like to be like
me, someone who, wrestled with, struggled with. Oh, and he knows
about sin. He carried all the sins of all
of God's people. He knows about sin. He knows
the ugliness of that burden. I'm so thankful, so thankful. God's eternal law of representation
demands that our Redeemer be one of us, and surely he is,
partaking of the flesh and blood of Adam's race. It took, then,
a God-man to save sinful men and women. And nothing short of that will
God accept. He must be God, of very God,
as the old writers used to put it. He must be as truly God as
God can be in order to meet the righteous demands of the Holy
Father. And he must be a real man, born of a woman, born under
the law, in order to represent fallen men and women before God. The sacrifices of the law in
the Old Testament times pictured the reality of this substitution
in many ways, but perhaps none of those ways were so vivid as
when that sinful Israelite brought that innocent lamb to the priest
before the tabernacle, and he placed his hands, his guilty
hands, upon that innocent victim's head, saying by that, my sins
are now your sins. and your goodness and righteousness
is now my righteousness. And the priest would then slip
the throat of that innocent emblem of Christ and in figure, the
guilty Israelite sins were taken away. But when Christ saves sinners,
we bring nothing. We bring nothing but a sinful
human being loaded down with sins. It's in everything we do. I don't know about you, but the
older I get, the more I'm becoming aware. I literally do. I'm ashamed
to say it and ashamed to be it. I sin all the time. My thoughts
are all sinful. They're all tainted by sin. My
very best things I do, well, I can't stand up here and preach
without sinning. Sin's so much a part of this creature that
I am. I can't get away from it. Can't get out from under it.
And every time I think I'm doing a little better, I look behind
me and I've done much worse. No. No. We don't lay our hands
on the sacrifice, nor does he merely lay his hands on us. Instead,
he joins himself to us in perfect spiritual union. And he tells
us, your sins became my sins on Golgotha, and my righteousness
is now your righteousness, because I put them all away." That's
God's word to his elect. The path of all true believers
is exactly the reverse of the one our Lord traveled. When he
united himself with us, he became a man of flesh. But when we,
through the power of the Holy Spirit, were united together
with Christ, we became a new man. Totally different man. Something we had never been before.
A spiritual man just like him. His was a pathway that led from
light unto darkness, from life unto death. And ours, on the
other hand, is a royal highway out of darkness, into light,
out of death, and into life, through union with our, into
light, through union with our Savior and Redeemer, the Lord
Jesus Christ. If Christ had not become a flesh
and blood man, there would have been no redemption. But thank
God, we have even at this very moment this morning, we have
one of us. We have a man in glory who is
representing us before the Father. And I believe, I've heard that
story many times, I've heard many people say that Christ sits
at the right hand of God and every time one of us does a boo-boo,
something we shouldn't do, says something we shouldn't say, that
the Lord quickly rushes His hand over and puts it on the Father's
hand and say, it's okay, I've taken care of that. Oh, I think His offering was
so eternally and so wonderfully and so completely and so perfectly
and absolutely satisfactory with the Father that He need not say
a word. Just His presence, just His presence at the right hand
of the Father, is what keeps us, what keeps us in Christ,
what keeps us safe, what keeps us out from under the wrath of
God that we truly deserve. So then we come to the conclusion
that the satisfaction of God's law is impossible without Christ's
incarnation. It could not have been done.
we needed a representative like us, and the representative had
to be like God. The primary purpose of redemption
is not, as people are preaching this morning all over town, the
primary purpose of redemption is not to make it possible for
everyone to be saved. The purpose of redemption is
to satisfy God's just wrath against the sins of His elect. The issue
in redemption is not getting sinners to be sorry for their
sins. That's not why we're preaching this message. We're not trying
to help them curb their appetite for sinning and try to sin a
little less. Churches I grew up in, that's what they work
on the most. They're trying to tell you what to watch out for
and don't do this and don't do that and I've got a long list
of them. That's not what redemption is for. Those are just what I
call the cold compresses of religion. Here, just do this and you'll
feel better. They aimed at putting the issues
of sin and judgment out of our minds. I've taken care of that.
I'm good for now. Redemption is not about how we
feel about our sin. It's about how God regards our
sin. That's where redemption, the rubber hits the road in redemption.
The problem with sin is that it offends God and he will not
be pleased and he cannot be pleased until the offense is satisfied.
Satisfaction then addresses this issue. What will it take? What will it take to satisfy
God's just wrath against me because of my sin? Now that's the question
I need to know the answer for because sinning is about all
I do. Now before we rush to the conclusion that God is being
unreasonable, I know you guys have heard the message of grace
many times, but doesn't your flesh still rebel against it?
The conclusion we reach by nature is that we are not that bad. But now, we rush to that conclusion
that God's being unreasonable, that we really didn't do that
bad. But let us remember that we are, in every way, all day
long, all the time, we're offensive to our Father. And the satisfaction
against sins is in the hands totally of our God. It's His divine right. Matter of fact, it's more than
His right. It's His divine nature that sin must be punished. The
flames of hell will burn forever. The wrath of God against those
people will burn forever because He's God Almighty. He's so perfectly,
pristinely holy. He cannot even, He can't be in
the presence of a single sin. He must punish sin. He cannot
do otherwise. He didn't create us this way.
We're this way not by his, not by his fault. The problem's not
with God, the problem's obviously then with us. Obviously then
there's only one who can satisfy God's just wrath against sin. The writer of Hebrew, in Hebrews
chapter 10, verses four through 10, speaks of what it takes to
satisfy God. He says in verse four of that
chapter, for it's impossible Impossible for the blood of bulls
and goats, animal sacrifices, it's impossible for them to take
away sins. No tellin' how many of those
little critters were slain during the Old Testament time. No tellin'
how many of them were, but bulls and goats and all the animals
that were allowed under the Mosaic Law, no tellin' how many of them
were slain. But the writer of Hebrews says it is impossible
They did nothing at all. It's impossible for the blood
of bulls and goats to take away sins. It's just blood. It's just
blood. It had a representative purpose.
It had a pictorial purpose. They served to picture what was
going to take place on Golgotha's Hill centuries later. But they
didn't take away any sin. They only foreshadowed it. It
only gave a notion a faint idea of how sinful sin is and how
it must be atoned for. It's impossible for the blood
of bulls and goats then to take away sin. Wherefore, entering
into the world, the Lord Jesus says, sacrifice an offering you
did not will. You did not want it, you did
not will it, nor purpose it, nor take delight in it. You found
nothing that put anyone's sin away in all those sacrifices.
And the Lord Jesus says, but a body, a body, one like ours,
not bulls and goats, a real live man, a flesh and blood man, in
every way just like us, except deity was included. in that body. A body you prepared for me, he
said. You have made a provision to
take care of this problem. Burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not well pleased with. None of those satisfied you.
Then I said, the Lord Jesus, behold I have come in a heading
of a scroll that's been written about me. Not to present a sacrifice
of a lamb or a goat, which is written about me, he said, to
do, to do, to accomplish, to fulfill, to put away sin, to
do thy will. Oh God, what was the will of
God? What is God's will? Perfect holiness is certainly
part of his will. Absolute righteousness is certainly
a part of his will. Sinlessness is part of his will.
And all of those things and many more, the Lord Jesus came to
do his will. I'm looking, I believe, at some
people, although we are as fleshly as we've ever been. Our old man
and our old nature still thrives within us. I think things I would
not think, but isn't that a blessing? I used to think things and enjoyed
what I thought. And now I think things that I
wish I would not think. And I want things that I really
don't want. And I crave things that I really
do not have the least taste for. He came to do God's will and
to put those things away. Isn't it a wonderful thing to
look forward? I despise myself. I really don't
want to be this way. And probably, no probably about
it, the greatest benefit of Christ's death is that he is going to
make me like I ought to be. So much like I ought to be that
I'll look just like him. I'll think like him. I'll desire
like him. I'll be perfect like him. And
you may not recognize me, from this vile flesh. But that's what
he came to do. I came to do thy will, O God. I came to set those people free.
I came to make them just like me. I came to make them acceptable
in your sight. By the which will, he says, we
are having been sanctified through the offering and sacrifice of
the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Oh my, it just, when
I think back of the number of messages I preached, told people
how that Christ the Lord gave himself to make it possible for
you to do something. For you to take care of your
business and get yourself straightened up. Preached that for a long,
many years as a free will Baptist. And it was a lie every time I
preached it, and it's a lie today. Christ didn't do anything to
make anything possible. Christ took care of some sinners.
A great host, the Bible says, that no man can number. Everywhere
I go and visit among people preaching the gospel, it's usually a small
number, a small number, but don't be deceived by that. We're a
small number here, and we're a small number up the road, and
we're a small number over yonder, but there is a great number which
no man can number. that are the beneficiaries of
this shed blood of Christ. Those people cannot be lost.
They cannot be lost because the blood of Christ has already taken
care of their sins. If the Lord Jesus then had not
become a man, there would have been no one capable of satisfying
God's wrath against our sins, not among the sons of men. But
because of Christ's sinless perfection in thought, desire, word, and
deed, He is able to fully satisfy God's just wrath against the
sins of all of His elect. He calls us His people. He calls this sinner His people. There isn't the smallest possibility
that anyone found in Christ will ever suffer at the hands of an
angry God. He's satisfied with Christ. And
everyone found in Him, He's satisfied with them. But now, how can we
be sure that God will remain satisfied? Let me read you again
a gracious passage out of Hebrews chapter 7. Verses 21, latter
part of verse 21 through verse 28. I find this a place where
I can just rest. The Lord swore, He promised,
He set His own being behind it. The Lord swore, He irrevocably
promised, And he will not change his mind. You are, he looked
at Christ and he said, you are a priest unto the age. You are a priest forever. And
indeed, Jesus has become a surety of a so much better covenant.
And on one hand, many are having become priests because of being
prevented by death from continuing. Those guys died off and they
had to get another one. He, the Lord Jesus, on the other
hand, Because he abides forever, he lives forever, he has the
priestly office intransmissibly. It'll never be passed because
there's no need to pass it off. We have a permanent great high
priest, the best one that's ever been, the only good one that
ever could be. It will never pass on to someone
else. Wherefore, he is indeed able to save unto perfection,
perfection both in terms of quality Oh, don't we have? Don't we have
a perfect salvation? Everything is taken care of.
Every element that I need to be covered in is taken care of.
You talk about an insurance policy, everything's covered. Everything's
covered. Now, he is able to save unto
perfection. both in terms of the quality
of his salvation and the duration of his salvation. Perfect. If
it ceased, it would not be perfect, but it will endure through the
ages. It's a perfect salvation. He's able to save into perfection
those approaching God through him, ever living to intercede
on their behalf. For such a high priest was indeed
suitable for us. I'd say that's the only kind
that can do anything for this center. He's holy, I'm not. He's blameless, I'm not. He's
undefiled, I'm nothing but defiled. He's set apart from sinners,
I am one, and becoming higher than the heavens, and I'm flat-footed
down here on this earth and can do nothing for myself. He, on
the other hand, needs not daily to offer up sacrifices, as the
high priest did, first for his own sins and then for the sins
of the people. That's not the Lord's Jesus.
He didn't need to do that. For all of this he did, once
for all, offering up himself. Isn't it funny how time, just
the concept of time messes us up on that? You know, I don't
know about you, it's probably my false religious background
that makes me do that, but if there's something about growing
up in a religion where every time you did something wrong
you needed to say something, Lord forgive me, Lord, I'm sorry,
I remember as somewhere 11, 12 years old and supposedly got
saved at some free will revival, and I remember trying to carry
the load of that thing. I remember trying to live like
that, and every time a bad thought would come to mind or anger or
something like that would come up, you know, I would automatically,
Lord, forgive me, Lord, forgive me. And it got so bad, I remember
I was somewhere in 10, 11 years old. It got so bad, my mom and
dad thought there was something wrong with me. I just went around
mumbling all the time, and I would just say, Lord, forgive me. I
spent my whole day long, Lord, forgive me, Lord, forgive me,
Lord, forgive me. And Christ the Lord forgave me. And I'm
satisfied. And my heart is at rest. God
Almighty, if God Almighty can find no fault in Him, and if
I am found in that same Christ, then I can rest and I can be
satisfied. Let me finish up here with just
one more thought. Let's talk just a minute about
adoption. Adoption is impossible without Christ's incarnation
as well. Paul records the New Testament reality pictured in
this Old Testament type in Galatians chapter 4 verses 4 through 7.
Let me read that to you. But when the fullness of the
time came, God sent forth his Son, coming to be of a woman,
coming to be under law, in order that he redeemed those under
law. And in order that we receive
the adoption of sons. Now that word adoption in the
Bible literally translates into son placing. It's the adoption
process. It's taking someone with whom
you have no blood ties, someone who is not related to you, and
it's making them your son or your daughter. It's making someone
your son that could not be otherwise. It means to take someone with
whom you have no relationship whatsoever and place that person
in your family, a full-fledged son or daughter. God, however,
cannot have such a relationship with any son or daughter of Adam,
not in our carnal state. All of God's children are perfect.
All God's children are holy. They're all righteous. They're
all good, and they can be no better. He cannot and will not
adopt us, however, as we are by nature, but he has, thank
God, and he is adopting a great multitude which no man can number. of all nations and kindreds and
people and tongues. That's what Revelation 7, 9 teaches
us. I don't know about you. I see
all the false religions going strong and I see these cathedral-sized
buildings going up all over the place everywhere I go. And I'm
thinking, boy, there's going to be only a few of us who are
not according to the Bible. God has adopted a great number
of sinners just like us. He's going to have a big family.
We're gonna be members of a big family. We'll just wait and see
when we all get together, there'll be a bunch of us. And we'll look
just like the Lord Jesus Christ. Every one of us will be a child
of God by union with our Savior. If Christ then had not been made
a man, he would have no right to redeem any son of Adam. Had
our Savior not been born of Mary, had he not been willing to submit
himself to the weakness of flesh and blood like us, had he refused
to dwell with sinners can't be around them father nasty had
he not done that we would have been no we would have had no
representative on the right hand of god we would get beyond in
in our sins and god the father and his lawyers perfection would
feel nothing but eternal anger and wrath well thankful we ought to be
that our lord would submit to being made like this, made like
us, made in our likeness, sin excluded. Otherwise we'd still
be living out, had he not chosen to do that, we would be living
out Ephesians 2.12. We'd still be without Christ. Aliens, not
family. Aliens from the Commonwealth
of Israel. Strangers from the covenants of promise. Having
no hope in without God in the world. But, when the fullness of time
was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under
the law, just like me, that we might receive the adoption of
sons. And because you are sons, God
has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying,
Abba, Dad. Papa, I'm so thankful for the
inspired words in that passage. They speak of the closeness,
the closeness between a father and his son. Dad, he looks at
us as his children in that same way. Abba, Father, so may God
bless us today. Oh, may the Lord give us the
spiritual enlightenment to live as sons and daughters of God
Almighty. We cannot keep from being descendants
of Adam. It shows on us in everything
we say, everything we do, and every thought we think. But the
Lord Jesus suffered and died as the sinners we are by nature. that we might know him in the
beauty of his own holiness through union with him. He's all my righteousness. Let's pray. Lord, we're so incapable, so
absolutely deficit and bankrupt to pray, to to have a good, a
fresh and full and clear thought of you. We thank you for your
son, for his coming. The Lord certainly showed so
many, showed us so many things. He is the image of the invisible
God, and we understand the Father so much better when we read and
see you in the scriptures. But Lord, even at that, you are
so far above us. Lord, we're just worms of the
dust. How we pray. Lord, may it be that if we have
nothing else in this world, if we have no place to live, nothing
to eat, and not a friend, may we be found in the Lord Jesus
Christ and all will be well. For it's in his name we pray,
amen.