Well, it's so wonderful to see all of you. Glad that you're here. I know for many of you, there's lots of stuff going on because of travel difficulties. My middle daughter, Megan, and her family were supposed to be here, and their flight got canceled today. And so they're not coming today, but they jumped in their truck and are driving here from Florida. Huh? Oh, okay. So they got a ways to go. Won't see him tonight. Maybe Monday night. But what I wanted to do tonight was just focus your attention and fasten your attention on one verse. It's in the book of Second Corinthians, chapter eight and verse nine, which is really one of my favorite verses regarding the incarnation and birth, virgin birth. Actually, virginal conception is preferred of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's the verse 2nd Corinthians 8 9 hear the word of the Lord for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ That though he was rich Yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich now this verse is in context in 2 Corinthians 8, one of Paul's major ways to motivate the church at Corinth to participate in an offering going to Jerusalem where people are suffering and being persecuted severely. And Paul includes this verse sort of as the ultimate motivational reason for them to get out of themselves and give toward others. There is no more powerful evidence of the power of the gospel than the radical generosity that more Christians give money to God and others, the more people will be experiencing the reality of Jesus Christ. Now tonight, we're not gonna focus on an offering or money. As a matter of fact, we're not even going to take an offer. But what we are going to do is look at this verse and sort of dive into it for just a few quick moments. Notice what he was, that is Jesus. He was rich. Notice also that he became poor. He was rich, that has to do with his preexistence. He became poor, that has to do with his incarnation. What we were, were poor, helpless, and bankrupt in our situation in life. What we become is rich in righteousness. And finally, why he did it? He did it for our sakes. But notice that Paul begins this verse with a little phrase saying, you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what makes a person a Christian. Being a Christian is not being morally better than other people. Being a Christian is not working hard to get God's acceptance, approval, to achieve a certain level or standard that we think he's okay with. Being a Christian is not mastering anything, it's not succeeding at anything. Being a Christian is knowing the grace of God. Do you know what the grace of God is? Do you understand the grace? Because I want to tell you something, being a Christian is not being religious. Religious is an attempt to raise to a level of virtue on our own, to be acceptable for God, and it's us ascending toward God. Grace is God coming down to where we are. because there is a great gulf between us and the holiness of God. And so it's God coming to us where we are, and that is precisely what Jesus Christ did. Some people have said the most five important words that have ever been written or read are found in John 1 14, and the word became flesh. We know from John 1.13 that the true identity of the Word is the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. He took upon himself flesh, that is, our human nature. And he did so through the virginal conception of Mary. therefore guarding him from Adamic sin. And because of that, he took upon himself flesh, that is human nature. He became what he was not in order that we could become what we can never be apart from him. The Westminster Confession of Faith is one of the best things you can ever study regarding this, and it talks about Jesus' state of humiliation, that is, leaving glory where he enjoyed the deepest, richest life possible. The life in glory with the other two people of the Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Father, existed from eternity. There never has been a time when they were not. They are uncreated, as it were. They are eternal. And Jesus volunteered and sacrificed himself to come and accomplish something for us, for our sakes. He came to redeem us. He came to save us. Not to condemn us, but to save us. And so he left the glory of heaven. He humbled himself. And so the incarnation means the enfleshment of the second person of the Trinity and it is a stupendous movement as big or bigger than the creation of the universe by which God became man. The very fact infinite God should have come down into finite creaturely conditions by which he was limited at least to some degree surely constitutes a condescension and humiliation in itself without even regarding the fallenness of the nature he took. God's becoming man in and of itself may not have been a humiliation, but the larger catechism says we are right in suggesting that for God to become man was a tremendous humbling. humbling beyond anything we can imagine. How did Christ humble himself in his conception and his birth? Christ humbled himself in his conception and birth, in that being from all eternity the Son of God in the bosom of his Father, he was pleased in the fullness of time to become the son of man, made of a woman of low estate, to be subject to the law, to be born of her, with the various circumstances, is certainly more than an ordinary abasement." You all know the story. He's born in a cattle stall. He was not born into a family of royalty. He was born to a 14 to 16-year-old virgin who was engaged to or betrothed to Joseph, who was a carpenter, and he was born of them. Apparently, when it came time for sacrifice, for Jesus at the presentation of the temple, they could only afford two turtle doves. They couldn't even afford the proper sacrificial animal. He had nowhere to lay his head, the scripture tells us. Birds have nests, foxes have holes, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. C.S. Lewis, in one of his writings, draws the analogy somewhere of man becoming a slug. Now, if you've been here before, you've heard me tell this story. What is a slug? It's a slimy, grubby, gross, I don't even know what to call it. But it just, it exists. You don't have them around here, but I will tell you in Louisiana, we had so many. But my wife came home with a six pack of beer one time. And I said, you don't drink beer. Why are you bringing home? I don't drink beer. Why are you bringing beer home? She said, watch. She goes out and she pours the beer on the slugs and immediately they dissolve. They are despicable. I said, we're in a Baptist church and these people, I don't know, we weren't at that time, we were Presbyterians, but a lot of people were kind of funny about that. Lo and behold, C.S. Lewis compared the humbling of Jesus to you and I becoming a grubby, gross slug. Wow, that's kind of profound, isn't it? We've already talked about the union of Christ, that is, with our human nature, but in John 1 and 14 and 18, he takes human nature into union with the eternal word so that he is at the same time genuinely and absolutely God and genuinely man, united together, never to be separated. But not only was he humbled by becoming a man, but he comes into the fallen race, which is indicated by the term flesh. And so understanding what Christ has done in the incarnation should move your soul. It should make you fall on your knees and want to give him worship, to adore him. It makes the hymns of Christmas and the carols of Christmas come alive for us. Why? because of the great act of his stooping, his laying aside the glory that he had known forever, veiling it as it were by his flesh, coming into this world and occupying the position of a servant who ultimately will become obedient even to the death of the cross. He did that for your sake. He didn't do it for himself. He didn't do it for anything other than your sake. Because if he hadn't done that, you and I would be lost for all eternity. We'd be better off trying our luck at the casinos tonight than being here if Jesus had not done that. But he did do that. And so, He stepped down in his humiliation and this humbling of himself comes into further humiliation that only an entirely holy and sinless personality could feel all of its painful implications. And so he submitted himself to the law of God. he offered himself as an atonement for our sins. And so when Paul mentions to the Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians, he who was rich in the delight and joy he knew in all eternity with the Father and the Spirit, left the glory of heaven, came to this gory fallen earth to take upon himself our nature and to do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves. And this is the remarkable thing regarding the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He was rich in his preexistent glory, but a glory that he longed in the Gospel of John to have reinstated to him. but he was the God-man. Why is it so important to maintain and insist upon and have deep convictions about the deity of Jesus Christ? He is God, very God of God. He is God in human flesh. The human nature of Jesus was united with the second person of the Trinity. He is the God-man. Let me explain to you why that's so significant and important. Jesus, as we know, took our responsibility under the covenant to obey the law of God on our behalf. If he's just a man, then what he did was only for himself. But if he was God, then infinite was the value of that obedience. Jesus also suffered at the cross the judgment and the wrath of God being poured out upon him because he bore our sins in his body. And if Jesus was just a man and not God, then what he did would only apply to himself. But since he is the God-man, everything he did is of limitless value. There's no way you can put any limitations upon the work of Jesus Christ. He has done everything necessary to bring us, fallen people, into a right relationship with God. If your acceptance as a sinner is based upon any other righteousness, then the righteousness Jesus Christ, you are lost for all of eternity. A created Savior is a finite Savior. Cover your mouth. Perish the thought. Jesus is the God-man, and he loves us from all eternity. He loves us with an everlasting love. He said, if you believe not that I am, you shall die in your sins. And so to deny the deity of Christ is to deny the validity of the whole atonement, and you have no hope. Jesus lived the life. I was required to live. I can't do it. I cannot keep God's law. Why? Because I'm a sinner. I rebel against it. I don't want to do it. There's a side of my nature, the sinful side of my nature, that resists God, that rebels against God. Where does a person like that get the righteousness God demands? Somebody else has to do it. Somebody else has to do it for you or you are forever lost. And Jesus fulfilled all righteousness for us so that when you look outside of yourselves and you lay hold of Christ himself, God declares you to be as righteous as Jesus was. God declares you to have your sins removed, your guilt taken away. There's no condemnation for those who are in union with Jesus Christ by faith. That's the gospel, that's the good news. Why is it good news? Because all you do is stick forward an empty hand and receive a pure gift. That's why I get excited about Christmas. I mean, I love all the schmaltzy stuff. I'll probably go home and watch a movie tonight. I think we're watching Elf. I used to watch It's a Wonderful Night, but I think tonight we're gonna watch Elf, because, you know, we're getting on the edge here. But the point, I've seen it like 10 times, but the point I'm making is this, what is it about Jesus that makes him unique, different than any other religious leader. No other religious leader was God dwelling in all of eternity, descended and took upon himself our fallen human nature, rendered an obedience of perfect sterling righteousness, died a substitutionary death to take away our sin. And so this whole verse tells us that Jesus was greatly impoverished order to make us rich how rich are we now I know most of you hear the word rich wealthy you start thinking immediately of your bank account or the lack thereof or your investments or your worth your net worth but the riches that Jesus is talking about is being joint heirs with him he will inherit for All of us, we will share in the inheritance of the Son's life. We have eternal life. That's life not only of duration, it never stops, but that's life of quality, a life of enjoyment, a life of being with Him forever. And once you know Him, once you see His grace, once you're attracted to Him, once you run to Him, once you lay hold of Him, You want to be with him forever. How could you not want to be for someone who did that for you forever? What a glorious thing it is. And so we, through his poverty, become rich. His condescension, he stoops. And in doing so, he does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He brings us into a rich and amazing relationship that we will live for all eternity. Right now, Christ came the first time to accomplish this redemption. He will come the second time, ushering in the consummation of all things. And so as a result of that, everything that's wrong with the world, everything that's the way it's not supposed to be is going to get the big fix. It's all going to be changed. And we will experience, we're not going to be floating around on a cloud, playing a harp, singing songs. We're not going to be eating grapes. we rejoice over God in heaven no we will live in a new heavens and a new earth we will have life abundantly with him forever no limitations on his promises at the time all fulfillment And so what I wanted to tell you is what Paul told the Corinthian church. Why did he do this? Why did he do it? Because he loves you. He did it for your sake, not for himself. He did it to save you. You and I need to be saved. We need to be saved from who? God and His judgment and His righteousness. We need to be saved from ourselves and our sin that is a path toward ultra-self-destruction. And we need life in the midst of our spiritual death. We need our blinded eyes open. We need our ears unstopped so we can hear God speak to us. We need a relationship with Him. He's the only person we can count on forever. You can't count on anybody else. Now I would love to tell you, and I would do all I could for my wife and family, but ultimately, they can't count on me. Why? Because I'm a man, I'm limited. Jesus is Lord of all. And He's your place to go. When you're happy, when you're delightful, when you're filled with adoration and worship, He's your place to go. When you're broken, when you're depressed, when you're hurting, when no one seems to care, no one knows who you are, He is our Savior. He's our Savior. Do you know the grace of God? Have you experienced it? You know, there's a lot of difference between knowing the words to the song and knowing the tune. Many people go to church all their life. They know all of the right words to say, but they haven't heard the music yet. Jesus, and knowing Him by grace, gives you the music. and you know the grace of God. Let us pray. Gracious God and Father, we thank you for this verse of scripture. That's just one verse, but it's pregnant with meaning. It is filled to the full. with the wonderful gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Nothing else is good news but this. And so we thank you for your mercies that are tender to us. And we pray that as we leave this place, we will leave this place different because we know the grace of God in Jesus Christ. For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you, by his poverty, might be forever rich and wealthy in what really matters. Now, Father, bless us as we continue to worship and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.