Turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy
chapter 3. Anyone who knows anything in
the Bible knows that we are not instructed anywhere in this book
to regard any particular special day to commemorate the birth
of Jesus Christ. We have no mention of anything
called Christmas. We know that it was simply developed
by men from basic pagan traditions, and we certainly know the error
of any kind of mass which is where that word comes from, Christ's
Mass, wherein there is a continual supposes regarding of the body
and blood of Christ again and again when the Bible says that
Christ once suffered for sins. And on the other hand, I know
also that there are those who so stand against such things
as Christmas and all that surrounds it. They fight against it so
much that being against things like Christmas, that becomes
their gospel. But you see, even if men and
women do not practice such traditions, even if they know that Christmas
is not something that we're instructed to regard from the Bible, even
though they may be against such things, that does not mean that
they know and believe the truth. You can be lost being right about
a lot of things. But these things both being true,
we know that essential to the gospel that we preach, essential
to our salvation, is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, for just a moment this
morning, I want us to look here in 1 Timothy, the 3rd chapter
and the 16th verse. in which the apostle Paul is
led by the Spirit of God to reaffirm what I would call a basic and
essential truth. You see, we do not simply worship
Christ in some generic sense or in some mystical sense. But we worship Him according
to the way that He is revealed in Scripture to be. And that is a verse here in 1
Timothy 3 that tells us something about how Jesus Christ is. And so the Apostle says, and
without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."
Now, there is in that one verse enough to preach a lifetime. But I want you to notice this
morning where the Apostle Paul begins as he unfolds in just
a few statements what he calls this mystery of godliness. And the very first thing that
he states is that God was manifest in the flesh. I remember hearing
where an old preacher said concerning that one statement, He said,
nobody but a fool or a Christian could believe such a thing. And that is exactly what we're
talking about when we're talking about the incarnation of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul describes what is revealed
in these truths as a mystery. And a mystery in the New Testament
most often has to do with that which heretofore was not so clearly
and plainly made manifest. Sometimes it has to do with this,
that which isn't revealed to any but a specific group. And sometimes it says that a
mystery is that which cannot be learned by natural means,
but which must be divinely revealed. And I believe that all three
of those definitions will fit what Paul calls here the mystery
of godliness. He says, now to him that is of
power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching
of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery
which was kept secret since the world began. In other words,
the whole of salvation in this crucified Christ is a mystery. It has to do with this mystery
of how God can be at the same time a just God and a Savior. And this mystery of godliness
is set in contrast to what we find called the mystery of iniquity. That is, God's way of salvation,
or God's way of righteousness, which is equity. It is in exact
contrast and opposition to Satan's way or man's way, which is in
every part inequity. That's what iniquity is. Inequity, that which is not equal
to what God requires. And what God requires is made
manifest and revealed in Christ crucified. It is the mystery
of godliness, that which Paul called the hidden wisdom of God. He says to the Corinthians, but
we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom
which God ordained before the world unto our glory. He says again, even the mystery
which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now
is made manifest to His saints." And right at the heart of this
now revealed mystery, Now, right in the beginning, the foundation
of what he calls this mystery of godliness, all depends on
this, that God was manifest in the flesh. You see, all our salvation, in
every part depends upon what the man Christ Jesus did in his
life and death. Do we not know that? In other
words, everything that we depend on, have hope in and rest in,
and not only us, but God Himself, everything hangs and depends
on what one man, Jesus Christ, did when He came into this world. But I'd say this also. And that
is, what he did and what he actually accomplished depended on who
he was and is. In other words, if what he did,
he did as one such as you are and such as I am, we're in big
trouble. if what He did, living in this
world and dying on that cross, is no more than a mortal, a sinner,
just like you and I, sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, if
that's all He is, it's a sad time. But Paul says, that the
very first and essential thing for us to be assured of, for
us to remember, for us to rejoice in, is that this baby, this one
that men and women with such unholy familiarity refer to as
simply Baby Jesus, He is nothing less than God manifest in the
flesh. And this is one reason, now think
about this, this is one reason why the deity of Christ, is always
under assault by men. They would simply love to reduce
him as merely a baby born, a mortal laying there on a pile of straw,
something like that. But Paul says, even at that hour,
this infant is none other than the Infinite One. He is God manifest
in the flesh. In other words, it is so far
beyond our minds' ability to comprehend. The only way that
anyone would ever be able to believe such a thing is if God
convinced us in our heart by His Spirit and enabled us by
the faith He gives to believe it. He says, without controversy. We're not kidding around here.
We're not saying this is not radical. We're not saying this
isn't impossible to believe apart from God's grace. We're not talking
about something that is explainable or definable. We're talking about
Almighty God walking on this earth. But you see, this very mystery
was the subject of the prophecies, of many of the prophecies, and
Isaiah himself was one of them. He says in Isaiah 7, Therefore
the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
I wonder how many people in the next week will read such verses
as that. will read the accounts in the
Gospel of Luke and Matthew and a host of other places. They'll
read this with such steeled hearts and blinded eyes and confess
in their heads and with their tongues the very deity of the
man Christ Jesus. But it won't mean anything to
them. They'll never stop. for a moment and consider the
ramifications of this. They'll never stop for a minute
and think about the mystery of this thing. But the angel of
the Lord that spoke to Joseph in that dream, he said virtually
the same thing, quoting Isaiah, "...Behold, a virgin shall be
with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his
name Immanuel." And here's one scholar over here will say, well,
Immanuel means this, and another one over here says Immanuel will
mean this, and we need to translate. No, he says, which being interpreted
is God with us. God with us. In other words,
the eternal God. God, the infinite Spirit. God who describes Himself as
invisible, the preexistent Son, God the Son, is made manifest
in the flesh, took upon Himself our humanity and became a man. You mean to tell me now, that
this God, that everything is described by the Apostle Paul
as being in Him, in Him we live and move and have our being,
this God that every solar system, all the universe, all the creation,
all the world, everyone in it, angel, devil, everything, everything
is in Him, and yet, He came into this world, confined Himself
to space, confined Himself to time, confined Himself to a body. Just like yours, just like mine,
sin excluded. Isaiah again says it like this,
he says, "...for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,
and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall
be called Wonderful, Counselor..." What does that say? "...the Mighty."
You know, either he's that, or Isaiah and a host of others were
blasphemers? He's the mighty God, He's the
everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, and of the increase
of His government and peace, there shall be no end upon the
throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish
it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever,
the zeal of the Lord of hosts. will perform it." In other words,
and our Lord said this when He spoke to the Pharisees and He
asked these fellows who seemed to think they knew everything
about God, He said, let me ask you just this now, how is it
that David's Lord would be sitting on David's throne? How is it
that David's Lord would be found to be in the lineage of David. If you can figure that out, you'll
know something about the Christ of God. Turn over to John chapter
1. John chapter 1. You see, who
He is, depends upon what confidence we can have and trust that we
ought to have in what He actually did for His people. Now listen
in John chapter 1 and verse 1. He says, "...in the beginning
was the Word..." Now you notice that's in capital letters, I
hope. "...in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, And the Word was God. He was God. Nothing less than
God Himself. But look down in verse 14. 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." That Word that in the beginning was with God and
was God, the One by whom all things were made that were made,
He was made flesh and dwelt among us. Look down at verse 18. He says, "...no man hath seen
God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of
the Father, He hath declared Him." I'm told that that word
declared there means He has told him out. He has revealed all
of God that sinners such as you and I will ever know about God. The only God we'll ever see,
the only God we'll ever have revealed to us, if He reveals
Himself to us, is in the man, Christ Jesus. Paul, in Colossians
2 and verse 9, he expresses it like this. Listen to this. He
says, "...for in Him," In this man, Jesus Christ, in him dwells
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We don't have somebody
who was just sent like an angel to help us out. We don't have
somebody who's just like us that we lean on him a little bit and
he falls down or disappoints or fails or something like that. He is God who cannot fail. In Him dwells all the fullness,
the immeasurable fullness, which includes also the fullness of
His people bodily. You should reach out and touch
Him. Reach out and shake His hand. Reach out and hug Him. Kiss Him on the cheek like Judas
did bodily. The fullness of all the power
of the Godhead, of all the authority, of all the holiness, of all the
grace, of all the love, of all the mercy, the fullness of all
that God has to give to His people, the fullness of all spiritual
blessings in Him. That's why Paul said, He's all.
I have Christ. I not only have all the blessings
that God has to give a sinner in grace, I have God Himself."
That's what the bride says concerning the bridegroom in the Song of
Solomon. She says, I am my Beloved's and He is mine. He is mine. Paul says, for God who commanded
the light, to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
or in the person of Jesus Christ." Here are all these people talking
about their beloved holy men, They talk about such as Mohammed
and Buddha and other figures, great in their eyes, who came
and who lived and who were really no more than you and I as sinners
and showed themselves to be such. Here is the sinless, infinitely
pure and holy God. But here's what it all boils
down to. Why did He come? Why did He manifest Himself in
human flesh? And what good is there to talk
about simply a little baby lying in a manger somewhere if that's
the end of it right there? But do you know? And you will
know at least in your head if you stay here long. If you've
been here very long, there's one thing you're going to know,
and that's that verse in Matthew 1.21. Sometimes I just, in conversation
with people, when they begin to discuss religion, I say, well,
just go and read Matthew 1.21, and you tell me why He's called
Jesus and what He came to do. That messenger from God, when
Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, and he was about to
do what would have been an honorable thing in a sense. He was about
to put her away, not make a big deal about it, not embarrass
her before the world. The angel said, do not do what
you're about to do because that holy thing in her, that baby,
that child, His name is to be called Jesus. Four. Jesus being the name of His humanity. The man Christ Jesus. Jesus, Jehovah the Savior. Thou shalt call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. And if He doesn't,
if He didn't, He's got to take another name, save His people
from their sins. And the only way He can do that,
if you stop and think, and I've told you this so much, all the
things that He could do and that He did from heaven as God, everything
imaginable, everything glorious and wonderful, except the one
thing that God in justice requires if we are to be saved from our
sins, and that is for a perfect man to die in our place. You see, that's why we don't
dwell on His birth. Because if He'd come into this
world now, as He did, lived a perfect, sinless, holy life as He did,
teach glorious things as He did, walk before man and prove Himself
for what He was as He did. If He had then ascended into
heaven without going that way of death and the cross, we still
would have died in our sins, because the only way for him
to come into this world and be our Savior, was to come, and
as Paul says in Philippians 2, to humble himself. This one who's
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, he came and humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. We drove down the road this morning. My wife wanted to stop down here
and get some milk for the kids to have some Hot chocolate. He's in there and there's a band
sitting there, somebody inside, and on the back of that band
it said, Jesus does not require that we be successful, just obedient. Oh, is that right? That's just
another sneaky slogan. You hear what I say? A sneaky
slogan promoting what men always promote of themselves, and that
is salvation by human works and obedience. When the Bible says
that what God required was for Christ to be successful, and
it is His obedience unto death which is our righteousness. because
the wages of sin is death. The soul that sinneth surely
dieth. And in order for it to be our
sacrifice, that one's sacrifice for sin is forever. In order
to redeem us, redemption was always by blood, perfect blood. In order to be God's Lamb, that
Lamb without spot and without blemish, That life had to be
laid down. He had to lay down His life for
the sheep. Oh, we have a great difficulty
with this thing. We get, if we're not careful,
all wound up in what men twist and turn about this mystical
view of Jesus Christ being God manifest in the flesh. We're
going to try to contemplate and explain the eternal God in a
human body. We're going to talk about natures
and things like that, the nature of God. What do you know about
the nature of God? You see, our problem is twofold.
We have no concept of the infinite, immutable holiness and perfection
of God, nor can we imagine sinless human flesh, because we've never
seen it. You ever stop and think about
that? Especially when we look in the mirror. We've never seen
sinless human flesh. And not only that, but those
that did. They didn't recognize it. Old
John Gill said, "...for though Christ is certainly and really
God as well as man, yet I'm afraid there are abstracted ideas of
Him as God, of His generation and Sonship distinct from Him
as Mediator." You can just stop and think around, sit around
and think about God, O God in human flesh, Christ the God-man."
You can sit around and try to think about that all you want
to, your boat won't float very high. And that's why God has
revealed Him as the Mediator. He says, "...desync from Him
as Mediator, often lead us into labyrinths or mazes, and draw
our minds from the principal things we have in view." God
having set bounds around His inscrutable and incomprehensible
deity, as He ordered to be set about Mount Sinai when He descended
on it, that we might not too curiously gaze upon it and perish
it. It seems to be His will that
our saving knowledge of Him and converse with Him should be in
all and through Christ the glorious Mediator. How are we going to
look at it? What are we going to think about
God manifest in human flesh? It's as our Redeemer, as the
Mediator, as the fact that there is one Mediator between God and
men. Who is that? The Man, Christ
Jesus. He became a man to redeem His
people by the shedding of His blood. Paul says, when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,
that they might receive the adoption of sons. In Hebrews he says that
he suffered once, for then must he often have suffered since
the foundation of the world, but now once in the end of the
world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself. Do you think God accepted his
sacrifice? God can only accept what God
does, but you can count on it. He did accept what the Son of
God did on the behalf of His people. And the evidence of that
is He raised Him up. And He raised Him up as a man.
And the Bible says that He ascended up into glory. And that He sat
down at the right hand of God. Now God, the Spirit, As we find him spoken of in the
Old Testament oftentimes, to say he sat down is impossible. But the God-man, when he finished
that work, he sat down in the place of acceptance and approval. He sat down as a man. And he sat down as the representative
man, so that right now, there is on the throne of glory a man. But not just a man. The man,
Christ Jesus. The man. And that's where He
is now. That's where He is now. So Paul
says as he closes out the book of Romans in chapter 16, He says,
"...now to him that is of power to establish you according to
my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world
began, but now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the
prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made
known to all nations for the obedience of faith. To God only
wise be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. The glory of God
is bound up in one man. who is in our nature, and at
the same time, God. Not half God and half man. 100% God, 100% man. You say, how do you explain that?
If I could, I'd be His equal, and I'm not. We believe it because
that's what He says that He is. Great is. It doesn't matter when you read
that verse, what day it is, whether it's the day after Paul was moved
by the Spirit of God to write it, or right now. Great is this
mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh,
came in this flesh to lay down His life, save His people from
their sins.