Alright, if you'll now turn to
1 Corinthians chapter 1. I want to preach a message that
while it is not directly about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ,
it involves that and it was inspired by some thoughts concerning the
incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God.
Incarnation simply means to be made flesh. The scriptures say
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 9,
it says, God, who has called you into fellowship with His
Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. Fellowship is a sweet thing.
We all want fellowship. Man is in his very nature, his
very essence, a social creature. Some of us may be more so than
others, but there's very few that can be happy alone. In fact, most of those who live
alone, and I mean just cut themselves off from any other human contact,
Most, if not all of them, would find that they're in some ways
disturbed and that they are not happy people. We are a creature
designed for fellowship. We enjoy associating with those
who have something in common. And that's what the word fellowship
means. That's what the Greek word translated fellowship means,
to have in common. Even if that's something we have
in common is unpleasant. You've heard the phrase misery
loves company. Have you ever noticed that, say
you have some affliction and you bear it with a reasonable
amount of grace, you don't complain a whole lot. Because for the
most part, you realize it wouldn't be worth your while to complain
to people that never have had that. But if you meet someone,
they've got the same thing you do. There's a connection, isn't
there? There's a connection. We cannot fellowship or commune
with those that have nothing in common with us. Not only because
that's what the word means, but simply we don't connect with
people that don't have something in common with us. A common language? Have you ever tried to communicate
with someone that doesn't speak your language and you don't speak
theirs? It's virtually impossible. Common experiences, good or bad. I've been through that. Yeah,
I did that. Common affections, you like the same things. You
know, I have many acquaintances, for instance, which like sports
a lot. And that's fine that they like
sports, but it's not the direction I was turned, so to sit down
And to carry on a long conversation with them, if sports is all that
they're about, well, before long, we don't really have much of
a porn fellowship. Now, you find somebody maybe
that's pretty big on music, I can sit down and talk a long time
with them because they've got something in common. Some point of commonality is
necessary if there is to be any fellowship at all. Now, you and
I, We gather like this each week. Why? We've got a point of commonality. We have what the Scriptures call
a common faith. We believe the same thing. We've
been called by the same God to the same Lord, by the same Spirit
to the same hope. We have that in common. That
is our fellowship. Now, we're going to frustrate
ourselves Go from there and say, well,
Christians ought to have everything in common. They all like the
same things. Well, they just don't. They don't
all do the same thing. They don't. Our fellowship is in Christ. And on every other matter. We may be different and it's
perfectly OK. perfectly fine. It is not necessary,
Christian fellowship, to have what the scriptures call fellowship
in Christ. It is not necessary that we be buddies, for lack of a better
way to put it. It need not be that every day
of our lives we spend together doing the same things. Our commonality
is Christ. Now, I like it when I have Brethren
in the Lord, we have not only the commonness of the gospel
and the commonness of Christ, but we find other areas of commonality. But every believer has this in
common with every other believer, even if he has nothing else in
common. He has this, Christ. And on that point of fellowship,
every believer can meet. And also noticing that there
is that commonality among all believers, Paul in another place
says we must be careful that in our worship we don't associate
with unbelievers. By that I don't mean that we
don't allow unbelievers to listen to us preach and we don't be
nice to them. He's talking about joining with
them in their worship because he said this, what fellowship,
what commonality does light have with darkness, error with truth,
Life with death. Righteousness with unrighteousness.
There is no point of commonality. And probably you've experienced
that sometimes. Some of our brethren who associate
with us from long distance have experienced this because they
have gone to other churches and they have sat there and they've
not been able to find a point of commonality with them. Or
they use the same words. But they redefine the words to
mean something else. They talk about Jesus, but it's
not the same Jesus. They talk about grace. It's not
the same kind of grace. They talk about salvation, but
at the end, it's not really salvation at all. And they come away terribly
disappointed because for all of their efforts, they found
no fellowship. Now, this is not a matter of
judging people. This is not a matter of saying
we're better than others or anything like that. It's just an honest
admission that When there's no point of commonality, there's
no fellowship. Now, man was created to have
fellowship with God. We were made for that. That was
the purpose of our creation. Now, everything has its purpose
in God's creation. We don't know the purpose of
everything, but we do know the purpose of man. God made man
to have a creature with whom to fellowship. In fact, I believe it's stated
in these words in some of the old creeds that the purpose of
man is to love God and enjoy Him forever. Now, in order for that to happen,
in order for you and me To have fellowship with God, there's
got to be some point of commonality between us and God. Something
that God and us have in common. Now look over here at Genesis
chapter 1 and we'll discover what that is. Now the subject this morning
is fellowship. When he was created, had fellowship
with God, and the reason he had fellowship with God is because
he had something in common with God. Genesis chapter 1, verse
26, it says, Then God said, Now, five and a half days of creation
have passed. This is the sixth day of creation. And God made all the beasts on
that day, that is, the ground dwelling beasts. He made that,
I suppose, in the morning of the fifth day. But after He made
everything else, then God said, verse 26, Let us make man in
our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of
the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over
all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the
ground. So God created man in His own image. In the image of
God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. Now, there's a lot of debate
For I've read of a lot of debate, what is the image of God? And
I've heard people say, well, the image of God is man's ability
at language. Because God speaks and so does
man. And man's reasoning capabilities. And yet they have learned over
the years that animals, while they don't have a level of language
that you and I have, they still have language. Some of them do.
And that they do have a rudimentary level of reason like you and
me. And yet it's never said of them
that they were made in the image of God. I've heard some argue
that maleness is the image of God. And that's why women are to be
held in a lower position. And yet it says here, in the
image of God, created he them, male and female, created he them.
Eve was made every bit as much in the image of God as Adam was. In fact, the image of God has
absolutely nothing to do with the flesh. So far as our bodies
are concerned, and this is the truth of it, I believe anyway,
so far as our bodies are concerned, we are simply at the top of the
heap when it comes to land-dwelling animals. We're smarter than them most
of the time. And we can do some things intellectually
that they can't do most of the time. But so far as our bodies are
concerned, that's not where the image of God is. That's not what
distinguishes us from the animals. Here's what it is. It says we're
created in God's likeness. And the Lord Jesus Christ said
to that woman at the well, God is spirit, and they who worship
Him must worship Him in spirit. The image of God that was created
in man was the spiritual nature of man. Animals don't have it to a lesser
degree. They don't have it at all. Just like so far as we know,
plants have no intellectual nature at all. But the animal kingdom
does. Well, the man creature, the human
creature, has a nature about him that none of the other creatures
of this earth have. It's called spirit. And it's
the point of commonality between man and God. It's the point on
which they can fellowship. But sin destroyed that image. Whether it utterly annihilated
it or simply so corrupted it that it no longer functions,
I don't know. And it's really not even important to figure
that one out. But sin did destroy it to such a degree that it was
written that Adam died. God told Adam, He says, in the
day that you eat, you're going to die. Well, Adam's body didn't
die for another 900 or so years. But something about Adam died
that day. What died that day was spirit.
Adam lost the capacity to fellowship with God. Now, intellectually,
he could know there is a God. He could know things about God,
but he could not know God. He could not know God any more
than an eye can hear. Eyes are good for what they do. Eyes are good for seeing, but
they're totally useless when it comes to hearing. And the
flesh is profitable for coming to the knowledge of facts and
to be able to reason and have emotional responses. But when
it comes to the knowledge of God, the flesh is utterly useless. It simply can't do it. They that are in the flesh, it
says, cannot please God. It says the natural man, which
is the man of the flesh, he can't receive the things of the Spirit
of God. Neither can he know them, for
they are foolishness to him, because they are spiritually
discerned and spiritually understood. Man, when he is reduced to a
beast, could not fellowship with God
any more than any other beast could fellowship with God. I suppose Adam remained just
as intelligent as he was. But as intelligent as Adam was,
even after he sinned, he could not fellowship with God. He had
no more capacity to do that than one of the cattle in a cattle
yard around here. Because he simply did not possess
a nature that has the capacity to do that. Now it seems that
there is some remnant of that image left, enough at least for
men to know that there is a God and to have a kind of a striving
after Him, but not enough of that nature that it can really
even understand God, or ever please Him, or ever submit
to Him. Now look over here at Romans
chapter 8. Salvation, one way to describe salvation is this,
that that fellowship lost in the garden is restored. There was a commonality between
Adam and God when God created him, but that commonality, that
common ground they shared, in their spiritual nature, was lost
when Adam died spiritually. But notice what salvation does
here. Romans chapter 8, verse 29. It says, For those God foreknew,
He also predestined to be what? Conformed to the likeness. That's
that word image. Conformed to the image of His
Son. Now His Son is God in human flesh. Now remember, The image of God
in man is that spiritual image. It's lost in the fall. And God
in His grace has predestined that for His chosen ones, that
image will be restored. That what was lost would be given
back. That what was destroyed would
be remade. That what was corrupted would
be put right again. David said, in response to his
great sin, restore to me, or create in me, a right spirit. A right spirit. Here's our point
of contact with God. And without it, we have no contact
with God. It must be restored. Now what
I wanted to note this morning is the process by which God brings
this about. It's a wondrous process of how
God restored this place of fellowship in his people. Now look over
here at Hebrews chapter 2. You know, this is what God ordained
us for. This is what the believer longs
for. Paul said that I may know him. Whatever
else that may mean, it includes this. He wants to fellowship
with God. He wants to be united to God,
to have things in common with God. Now, it says in Hebrews
chapter two, verse 14, since the children have flesh and blood,
that word they've translated, have, is the word fellowship.
The children of God fellowship in flesh and blood. He, speaking
there of the Lord Jesus, he too shared. in their humanity, so
that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death,
that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were
held in slavery by their fear of death. What is it saying here? Well, the children, who are God's
children, that's all he chose. They're all of God's elect. They're
his children. Now, all these children have
this point of fellowship among them, this point of commonality.
All of them are flesh and blood. All of God's people, they're
just natural flesh and blood people. We're born into this
world like everybody else. Just like the non-elect, we came
into this world, we were no different than them. Nothing special about
God's elect. They are in common with flesh
and blood. But having that commonality only,
we have no basis of fellowship with God. Well, what did God
do? The first thing He did was become common with us. He shared in flesh and blood. We down here, as flesh and blood
only, cannot reach up to the God through His Spirit only. And the God who is Spirit only
cannot reach down and have fellowship with us who are flesh only. So what did He do? He took on
flesh. He created by Himself a point
of commonality with us. He came to us and fellowshiped
with us in our nature. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. So the Lord Jesus Christ came
here and was born of the flesh. Now this flesh encompasses our
bodies and all that's associated with them, our intellect, our
emotions, our feelings, all that. The Lord Jesus Christ came and
had all that in common with us. Jesus Christ took on that nature
and thus He established this point of commonality and fellowship. Look at verse 17 of Hebrews 2. For this reason, He had to be
made like His brothers in every way. in order that he might become
a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, that
he might make atonement for the sins of the people. If the Lord
Jesus Christ is going to come here and take our place, he's
got to be like us. If he's going to bring us to
himself and make us like himself, he must first make himself like
us. This is the wonder of the so-called
Christmas story. Yes, there's a wonder in the
grace that purposed it. There's a wonder to be seen in
the providential power of God that arranged all the details
to bring it about. But the greatest wonder of all
in the Christmas story is this, that God took on flesh. The uncreated God took on a created
form. The infinite God became a definite
Which by the way, definite is the opposite of infinite. The
infinite God took on a definite body. As someone put it this way, he
who spans the heavens became an infant of a span. That's more than you and I can
understand. We may believe it, but we haven't got a clue how
it was done. But it was done nonetheless. He fellowshiped
with us in our bodily form. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh. It's miracle enough that He could
inhabit the body of a grown man, even a baby. But I keep thinking
there was a time when God was in the form of a single cell
within the womb of Mary. Dare I say, a single unconscious
cell. Were you conscious in your mother's
womb? When you were but one cell, did
you know you were there? Our Lord was just like us. He
was one cell, then two, and four, and eight, and sixteen. He keeps
on going. Begins to differentiate. Went
through that entire process of gestation, just like you and
me. And that's the Lord of glory.
He did that. He has that in common with us. The body of the Lord Jesus began
in the same condition as ours did, but this isn't all. He fellowshiped
with us in the maturing and learning process. Now, think about this. Though he was the wisdom of God,
he was born ignorant. Now, we think of ignorant as
an insult. It's not necessarily an insult. It's just a fact. We're all ignorant of some things,
but when we came into this world, we were pretty much ignorant
of everything. I suppose by the time our Lord was twelve, He
knew that two and two equals four. How did He find that out?
Was He born knowing that? Somebody taught Him. He wore
sandals, but somebody had to teach Him how to put them on. Though He was the sum and substance
of the Scriptures, He had to learn the Scriptures. Now, He learned them a lot faster
than you and I. would learn them because he did so without the
hindrance of a sinful nature, but he learned them nonetheless. Though he was the Word of God,
he had to learn how to speak. He did not come forth from Mary's
womb preaching. Our Lord grew up in a very human
way. He went through all the various
stages of life. And Mary and Joseph taught him
like they would have taught any of their other children. Taught
him to count on his fingers. His father taught him how to
saw wood. That blows me away. I can kind
of think of him as the perfect man. But to think of him as growing
up, to think of him as learning,
to think of him as his body matured as he goes through the childhood
and adolescence on to full manhood. And yet the Lord fellowshiped
with us in all that. I see these young children come
here week by week, and it startles me to think that at one time,
a rabbi stood in front of a synagogue, a gathering of people, and there
the Lord Jesus Christ sat in that silence, learning, being taught. He fellowshiped with us in these
things. He fellowshiped with us in servitude. Look over at
Philippians chapter 2. Verse 5, your attitude should
be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature
God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing. Well, there's a point of fellowship
with us, isn't there? Nothing. We've got that in common, don't
we? We're nothing. Taking on the very nature of
a servant. being made in human likeness and being found in appearance
as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death,
even death on a cross. Our Lord came here and fellowshiped
with us in our servitude. And what's the nature of that
servitude? It says, in due time, God sent His Son into the world,
born of a woman, made under the law. You and I came into this
world servants of the law. slaves of the law. We were under
its jurisdiction. We were under its liabilities,
under its power to condemn. We were required by the law to
serve it, to do what it says. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
into this world in exactly the same condition. Now, we came
into the world in that condition and immediately failed, immediately
proved ourselves unprofitable and unworthy servants of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ never failed, but He was still a servant. He
who made the law subjected Himself to it. Here's an amazing condescension,
that the King became a servant. In every way that you and I were
an obligation to the law of God, so the Lord Jesus Christ was
under its obligation. He fellowshiped with us in the
suffering. that's common to this life. Back again to Hebrews chapter
2. Oh, the Lord came and established
so much commonality with us. In verse 10 of Hebrews chapter
2, in bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for
whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author
of their salvation perfect through suffering. You say, well, wasn't
Jesus Christ perfect? Remember perfect? doesn't mean
what we normally think it means. We think, well, once something's
without flaw, it's perfect. The word perfect actually means
to be mature and complete. You know, that babe in the manger,
though he were the mighty God in human flesh, he could not
save us in that condition. Why? Well, he's got to go through
some things first. He's got to go through a life,
a perfect life before he can be the perfect savior. He's got
to endure suffering. He's got to endure temptation.
He's got to demonstrate obedience even when it hurts to obey. He was the perfect baby, but
we can't be saved by a baby. He was a perfect child, but that's
not enough. Perfect adolescent. He had to
be a perfect grown man. Perfect, complete. tried and
tested. And God made the author of our
salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ, made Him into the perfect Savior
by a process of suffering. And it wasn't just the suffering
of the cross. Friends, He was known as the man of sorrow and
acquainted with grief. Everything about His life involved
suffering. Have you ever had to be around
I won't say around filthy animals, but this is a farming territory.
Everybody's been around filthy animals. You don't want to be
around them all the time, do you? I mean, you walk in a hulk
confinement, it's stressful. You just really don't want to
be in there any longer than you have to, to do the job you have
to do. When you come out, you want to clean up. For 33 years,
the Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless, spotless, perfect human, suffered
just by being among us. who are filthy and corrupt. He waited, as it were, through
the filth of our existence and suffered there. He suffered betrayal. He suffered sorrow. He suffered misunderstanding.
He suffered persecution. He suffered it all. It says in verse 18, because
he himself suffered. When he was tempted, he is able
to help those who are being tempted. I think of our Lord, when for
40 days he didn't eat anything. I can't remember the last time
I went 40 hours without eating something. And there's a lot
of days, sometimes I don't go 40 minutes, I find a little something
to nibble on. But you know, it says he went
40 days without food and he was hungry. He got just as hungry as you
and I would if we went 40 days without food. And then he was tempted. When
he's in his weakened state, the devil plies him with deceptive
temptations, plies him to do things that he
could do and that really In and of themselves,
they weren't wrong, except until he got to the end and said, fall
down and worship me. Other than that? Turn these stones into bread?
What was sinful in that? Simply this. If he had turned
those stones into bread, he could not have been our Savior, because
we can't do that. When I get hungry, I can't go
out in the driveway and pick up a few pieces of gravel and
turn them into biscuits. And if I can't do that, then
my Savior must not do that in His own behalf. He did it for
others, but never did it for Himself. He must go through life
to be the perfect Savior. He must face life with nothing
more than what you and I have to face life with. He fellowshiped with us in our
suffering. He learned obedience by suffering, it says in Hebrews
chapter 5, verse 8. You say, well, didn't the Lord
know how to obey right away? Yeah. But you don't know what obedience
is until you have to obey at your own expense. Let me try
to give you an example. If my parents had told me when
I was 10 years old, you walk down the road, you go to the
pool and you have a good time. Well, if I did that, would you call
that obedience? Well, no, there's no suffering in that. That's
what I wanted to do. It was my joy to do that. And
this often happens. You mow the grass today. I didn't
want to do that. I usually would. But when I mowed, I suffered.
A little bit. Not much. But you know, I mean,
it's work. You sweat. And you learn what obedience
is when you do the things that you Might not otherwise do if
it wasn't simply that somebody told you to. And our Lord Jesus
Christ, why, He was under no obligation, naturally speaking,
to be under that law that He had created. And yet He learned
how to walk. Even walk according to God's
ways. And do everything His Father
said to do. Even though it was work and labor
and suffering to get it done. Friends, that's obedience. That's real obedience. And of
course, it was all summed up in those last words in the garden.
Father, if there's any way that this can be accomplished, that
this cup can be drained, a cup of your wrath can be drained
by some other method than me drinking it. Nevertheless, not
my will. but yours. Do you realize that
it would have been no sin on the part of the Lord Jesus Christ
to get up from the garden of Gethsemane and say, all right,
I've changed my mind. I'm not going to do this. So
where do you find that in Scripture? Well, when the disciples tried
to defend him, pulled out a sword and hacked off one man's ear
and were ready to fight those guards to the death, the Lord
said, put away your swords. Don't you realize that all I'd
have to do is ask my father and he'd send legions of angels here?
and deliver me from this. And if it had been a sin for
Him to do it, I guarantee you the Father wouldn't have had any
part in it. No, our Lord obeyed His Father's will at the expense
of His own life. He learned obedience by suffering. He fellowshiped with us in guilt. He did not fellowship with us
in sin. Let me explain what I mean. Our Lord Jesus Christ never sinned
at any point ever. He never desired sin. He never
rolled it over in his mind. He never devised a way to carry
it out. He never carried it out. In Him is no sin, says the Scriptures. But when He died, when He suffered, our sin was laid on Him. Our guilt was transferred to
Him. Our nature wasn't transferred to Him. It didn't have to be. It was not required. Simply the
guilt of it. I don't know how our Lord felt
at that time. I don't know whether He experienced
the shame that you and I might experience over sin. I would
think not, simply because he knew all along he was not truly
guilty in the sense of having ever committed those things. But I know that because my guilt
was transferred to him, he did experience this. He experienced
what it was to be a sinner. He experienced what it was to
be a sinner in the hands of an angry God. He experienced what
it was to lose fellowship with God. Now we lost, in Adam, we
lost fellowship with God because we simply lost the capacity to
have it with Jesus Christ. While he remained still spiritually
alive in all of this, he lost fellowship with God because God
shut the door on him. He still had a nature in common
with God, but he knocked on the door and God wouldn't open it.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He found out, found out is not
the right word. He experienced what it is to
be a sinner under the wrath of God. We were born that way. Here's the interesting thing,
even though we were born that way, nobody here has ever experienced
it yet. reading some responses to a column,
and this fellow gets on there, and there's people there that
like to get on this particular site and express their rebellion
and unbelief and rattle the cages of Christians. And this one guy,
I'll tell you, he did a good job of it. I've never seen anybody
express their unbelief and rebellion so explicitly and blasphemously
as God, and he blasphemed God, and he said, if your God exists,
I dare Him. I dare Him. to strike me down
now. Why didn't he do it? Because
he doesn't exist. And I'm just, I'm reading that and I'm shaking
my head. I said, you fool. You fool. God said he's going to destroy
the earth with a flood and waited 120 years to do it. You and I
have not experienced that wrath, have we? It lay upon us, it was
rightly assigned to us, but we never experienced it. Our Lord
Jesus Christ actually experienced it. It was laid upon him. And he went through it. He fellowshiped with us in our
nature, in our experiences, in our sorrows, in our guilt, and
in our death. Why? Here's a scripture. Let's turn to 2 Peter chapter
1. Here's a scripture that baffled me for some time. I say baffled.
I mean, not terribly so, like I was all anxious about it or
anything, but I really just didn't quite understand what it meant. But I think maybe I understand
something of it now. 2 Peter 1, verse 3. His divine
power has given us everything we need for life and godliness
through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory
and goodness. Through these, He has given us
His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may
participate. Fellowship is the word. You may
fellowship in the divine nature. Does that mean we become God? No. But once again, through Jesus
Christ, we have been given a nature like God's. that provides a foundation,
a place of commonality with Him. And we can know Him. We can communicate
with Him. We can love Him and enjoy Him
forever. Jesus Christ took on my nature
so that I could take on His. He became flesh so that once
again I might become spirit. The divine nature is what? God
is spirit. And through Jesus Christ, I have
that in common with God. I'm not just this flesh you see
before you. There's something more to me.
There's spirit. There's a divine nature. And it is because Christ was
born and grew up and suffered and died in my fleshly nature
that I am able to love, know, and believe God in His nature. That's the wonder of the gospel. It is so much more, friends,
than just escaping hell. Though that's a good part. I
mean, I like that. I'm not discounting. I'm just saying that's just the
beginning. It's not just a house and address in heaven. Though
that's good. Don't want to miss it. It's being made of a nature like
God's that can fellowship with Him. Now, right now, that nature
is trapped inside this nature. And this nature is still laboring
under the corruptions of this life. And that's why it's so
frustrating. That's why Paul, though he had that spiritual
nature, could still say that I may know him. I sort of do. But I'm such a mess. Such a mess, he said. One of
these days, the corruption of this nature will be removed.
And it will no longer prove a hindrance to that new nature that's already
been created in us. And we will, like our Lord Jesus
Christ at this present time, we will in body and spirit know
God, and love Him, and worship Him, and enjoy Him forever. Heavenly Father, Thank you for
your Son, whom you sent among us to be like us, that in due
time we might be like you, as spiritual creatures who know
you and love you. Lord, may we, by your grace,
learn to put on that new man, to bring out that new nature
that you've created. And to subdue this old one until
such time as you kill it and then make it alive again in the
likeness of Christ. Thank you for the light we have,
Lord. Give us grace to walk in it. In Jesus' name, Amen.