In these hymns that we've been singing, we've sung about the person of Christ and his work. And that's what I want to preach on this morning is the incarnation. When we think about the birth of Christ, we have a lot of things that we think about. We think about the story. We see pictures in our mind of manger scenes and animals and shepherds and wise men and all these various things that come to mind. And all these are things that are real history that we consider and that we think about. It's also important for us to consider what God was doing here in the person of Christ, what was actually happening here. in understanding why it was that God had to become man, and how it was that this happened, and why it was that Christ had to be both God and man, and why this is so important for us to believe. If this is not true, all these things that Stuart prayed about our redemption, all these things that we have sung about, Our redemption and the forgiveness of sins and all these other things. If this is not true as to understanding that Christ is both God and man, then all of that is vain. All of that has no meaning. We read from Genesis 3 about what happened with Adam. Adam sinned in the garden. You and I are the natural descendants of Adam and Eve. And we inherit from them their sinful nature. Adam and Eve were separated from God after they had sinned. They had broken that right relationship with God, that fellowship, that acceptability. All of that was now broken. And so, God speaks to the remedy that He will send and someone who would come later. In fact, and I've mentioned this many times before, if you look at when Eve has her child, the name means a man from the Lord. It's like she was already looking for the Savior in the child that she names and in the child that God gave to her. So people were looking for The Messiah, the Lord's Anointed, they were looking for the One who was going to come to correct all these problems about sin that had entered into the world and separated God from man. The same thing is said, I think it was, in the case of Noah's birth. Maybe Noah will be the One. Noah's dead, he says. Maybe He will be the One. who will give us relief from sin. So people in Genesis are looking for a Savior. They were a few years early in when God was going to do this, but God in time did do it in the sending of Christ. The second Adam, Christ as Christ is referred to as the second Adam, the perfect man, he must come into the world. He must be able to bear our sin. He must be able to fulfill all righteousness as a person in our place. He must be able to be that perfect sacrifice, to be that perfect substitute for us. He must be God so that He can forgive sins. So that in Him there is forgiveness. And in Him there is salvation. So that He can withstand the wrath of God and that He can be a successful Savior unto us. The doctrine of the Incarnation then is really important for us. There's a quote on page 6. I'll give it to you by B.B. Warfield. And Warfield writes, The doctrine of the Incarnation is the hinge on which the Christian system turns. No two natures. In other words, both God and man. No two natures. No incarnation, no Christianity in any distinctive sense. The truth of the incarnation has been historically maintained by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. However, many times there have been heresies, all kinds of different types of heresies that have arisen. I'll give you a couple of examples of this. You remember last week I said there are some people today who look upon technology as being evil. And I said it reminds me of how people looked upon television sets in the fifties as though somehow they were evil unto themselves. What the Bible teaches is that there is no object, that evil does not possess in objects. The Apostle Paul dealt with this in relationship to alcoholic beverages. It's the abuse of technology or television or alcoholic beverages or whatever. It's the abuse of the things in God's creation when sin occurs. And Jesus says that sin is not in the objects, it's in the heart of man. But there are a lot of people who still believe this. And they believe that people and that the body itself, physical bodies are evil because they're material or they're not good. The Bible teaches that they are good. We're created in God's image. Bodies are a part of His creation. But you see, some people believe that Christ could never come and dwell in a person or God could never come as a person. because the body itself is evil. So there's one type of heresy that I'm trying to break down to understand throughout history. So some people reject it and they would say that God was really not dwelling within the body or that Christ was not fully God and fully man. Another idea might be Christ is not truly God, but He's simply a man. Because, of course, that doesn't agree with science, right? As to how babies are made. What the Bible says about how Christ came into the world. So what people would say is that Christ was a good man who is a reflection of God. That the Holy Spirit assisted Him. That maybe He came in a special way at His baptism. And so Christ was not fully God. He was just a reflection of God. So all of these views do not do justice to what the Bible says or to what we need and to what we are to understand. What we're to understand is that Christ is both God and man. And that all these other views are an attempt to explain away what the Scriptures clearly teach. A lot of times our problem as people who are not God, we think that because we cannot understand things to our satisfaction, therefore they cannot be. But there are all kinds of things that we don't understand to our satisfaction or that we could never understand that we appreciate and that we operate upon. Now, some people might say, well, if we accept that Jesus Christ is both God and man, this is sort of like what people would say is blind faith. It's just like believing anything because it's there. And this is blind faith. And that's what Christianity is all about. Christianity is not about blind faith. Blind faith is when you walk in the dark, when you believe anything just for the sake of believing it. Christianity is a believing of the revelation that God has given. That is not blind faith. That is believing things where we have facts and where we have knowledge. Jesus professes to be fully man and fully God. We take His testimony. We believe Him. And so we believe these things, we believe these truths by faith. It's not blind faith. It is faith based upon facts, based upon truth. An elder comes into my office this morning for prayer. And his response is, as he reflects upon Christmas, he says, I cannot understand. It's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. The message of Christ coming into this world and loving us. It is unbelievable. The wonder of it all. He can't explain it. You can't explain it. You don't know the depths of it. We believe it because it is true. It is the message that God has given to us. And we accept His revelation. If everything depends upon you understanding every minutia of the Christian faith before you become a Christian, you will never become a Christian. Because in becoming a Christian, you first have to acknowledge that God is smarter than you and you accept Him and you acknowledge Him and you come to Him. And there are certain things that you will never understand maybe to your satisfaction that you believe by faith. That God is one God in three persons. That He would love you. Now I know a lot of times we think, hey, I'm a pretty worthy person. But not when we understand the great gulf of separation between us and God. Not when we understand how many times we have broken His laws and we have lived for ourselves. And so we come to this doctrine and we accept this doctrine and we accept this truth by faith. Well, let's look at what the Scriptures give to us, and I'm going to try to make some real practical applications to this for us. The Scriptures teach that Christ is both God and man. In Isaiah 9, we read this a couple of weeks ago. In Isaiah 9, we have the announcement of a child who will be born. But what is said about this child are things that are attributed to God. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. You don't say those things about a mere human being. Jeremiah's prophecy, in his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called the Lord our righteousness. The prophet Daniel, I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the cloud of heaven, like the Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days, and was presented before Him, and to Him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away. And His kingdom is one that will not be destroyed." This is speaking of Christ as the eternal Son of God, the King, who in Psalm 2, the kings of this earth are to bow down to. Or from what we've seen in John's Gospel. In the beginning was the Word, meaning that the word here means Jesus Christ. He is eternal. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him and apart from Him. Nothing came into being that has come into being. Christ is the Creator, as we confess in the Nicene Creed. Through Him the world was made. And then John writes, And the Word, Christ, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. And in His flesh on earth, Jesus says, I and the Father are one. He doesn't mean we simply agree, but I am one. He claims to be God and that's exactly what His enemies knew He was claiming when He said that. The deity of Christ and His humanity was understood and taught by the apostles. A while ago, we read these verses from Philippians 2. who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men." So Christ gives up the blessings, or the existence of heaven, and he denies himself some of his divine nature so that he might take upon himself this humanity and humble himself by becoming man and taking upon himself the nature of man. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Some Scriptures emphasize His humanity. Some emphasize His deity. And some Scriptures emphasize both. But from Scripture itself comes a clear testimony that Christ was and is both God and man. And today, Christ is God. He is ruling and governing this earth. And He has a resurrected body. A body that we will see, a person, we will see Him in His person in eternity. The second thing we see besides the Scripture plainly teaching this about the nature of Christ is that the virgin birth was God's instrument for Christ to come as God and man. The virgin birth. Christ became man as no one else has in history and as no one else will. We become the result of a union of a man and a woman. And just as we are descendant from Adam, we inherit that human nature, that sinful nature. Christ came into the world in a different way. He was not conceived by the sexual union of a man and a woman. In Matthew 1, verse 18, where Matthew starts talking about the birth of Christ. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows, when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. She's pregnant. Before they had sex. And she's pregnant. And not only that, but the next couple of verses show that Joseph realizes this because she's a few months along and she's starting to show. And he's about ready to somehow, in a gracious way, put her away nicely. Hide her, okay? We use that phrase a little bit different today. But anyway, his idea was not to cause her embarrassment because he knew he wasn't the father. And so God comes to Joseph and says, here's what's going on. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has done this thing. The angel comes to Mary. Mary, you're going to have a baby. You're going to have a baby, Mary. Mary says, how can I have a baby? I haven't had sex. She didn't say, oh, you found me out. No, she didn't. I mean, if an angel comes to us and appears to us and tells us something, we're not going to be trying to defend ourselves. First of all, our mind's going to be going crazy because there's an angel in front of us. And secondly, we're not going to probably be trying to hide things or anything else. So she's saying, how is this going to happen? Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the Holy Offspring shall be called the Son of God. Mary is pregnant as any other woman is pregnant. She goes her nine months. She maybe has her morning sickness and all the other things that go with that pregnancy. And the child grows within her. But the pregnancy began as a result of the Holy Spirit coming and causing Christ to be conceived in her, the second person of the Trinity. The eternal Son of God comes to earth And He takes upon Himself a real human body and soul, but not conceived as other humans are conceived so as to be born without sin in a supernatural way. Christ is born without a sinful nature. Everyone else descended from Adam inherit the sinful nature of Adam. But Christ as God is without sin. The virgin birth is of no small significance. People today debate as to whether it's even important to believe it. If you don't believe it, then Christ is not God. Thirdly, the relationship of Christ's two natures as God and man. How does this work? Well, it's not like multiple personalities. He is one person. The various qualities or aspects or properties of the human and the divine nature were retained and maintained in Christ. He is 100% man without sin. He is 100% God, yet willingly submitting to the limitations of being a creature, a person on this earth. Christ as God in His divine nature was not capable of death or suffering. He was free from ignorance. He was unable to be weak or powerless as God. But in taking on human nature, Christ could suffer. He could be weak and tempted, even without knowledge on some occasions. The Scriptures teach about how He learned things and how He grew in knowledge. Both the human and the divine are seen in him in his life. He is almighty, all-knowing, ever-present. He walks on the water. He stills the sea that is raging. He knows people's thoughts before they speak. But he is also human. He is a man of sorrows. He is acquainted with grief. He experiences great temptation. He experiences rejection of family and friends and of people. He knows suffering and misery. He knows what it's like to be hungry and all these other things. These are real things in regard to Christ and His life. Now let me draw some applications for us. And the first two that I'll draw maybe are not typical type of Christmas, well maybe one of them is, application, but I'll still draw them. Because we need to have the Word be made practical to us. We need the Word of God to be very practical. The doctrine of Christ being both God and man and the virgin birth and all these things have very practical implications for us as we live from day into day. The Incarnation, Christ being both God and man, reinforces teaching that we find elsewhere in Scripture. I'll give two of these. The first one is that humanity has a higher dignity than the remainder of creation. People have a higher dignity than the rest of creation. Now, a lot of times we come across people in the news and in other ways that attribute almost everything in creation as equals. I don't know if this was a – it seems to be a consistent result of evolutionary thought. I don't know how everybody traces how they arrived to that conclusion. But animals and people and trees and rocks and everything are sort of put on a same level, as though it's all the same. And yet, this is not what the Scriptures teach. It's not what it teaches in many places, and it's not what is taught as a result of what we have going on at the time of Christ. Christ comes, and what Christ does, what God does, is He takes on human flesh, and in doing so, He raises the dignity of people, because that's where He comes to dwell. God in flesh, God with us in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ being God and man ascribes dignity to people, to the human body. This is reinforced in other places in Scripture. Genesis 1, where God tells people that they are to exercise dominion over creation. Acts, the book of Acts, where the Holy Spirit comes to indwell what? Rocks and trees? No, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell people who have come to know Jesus Christ, whose hearts have been changed. So what this teaches is that people are the highest form, have the greatest dignity in God's creation. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of the earth. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't show kindness to animals and things like that. But animals are still a source for food and clothing and dominion by man. That means it's okay to eat fried chicken and wear a fur coat and go horseback riding. People are unique. They have souls. They are made in the image of God. They know God. They are the crown of God's creation and God's power. And they are called to reflect Him in exercising power and dominion over His creation. They can do righteousness. They are accountable to God to keep His law. And at this time of year when we think about the birth of Christ, We can also think about the dignity to which Christ has given people in His creation. People made in His image. That's why you have laws about murder and anger and commandments against sinful anger because people have dignity and people are made in God's image. Well, there's a second application, and that has to do with a very hot topic that has been a big topic for 30 or 40 years, and that has to do with abortion. And what we're taught from the virgin birth and what we're taught at Christmas is that what is in the womb is a person. All the rationalization that we can come up with in any way we want to try to come up with it can never take away the fact That the Scriptures teach that what is in the womb is a person. It's not simply tissue. The Scriptures say, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. So, God is calling what is in the womb a child. Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel." Which translated means God with us. Well, someone says maybe this was just a special occasion. Jesus is the exception. Other people just have tissue that they're carrying until a certain month or until the child's been out for a week or two. But no, at the same time, you remember, Elizabeth gets pregnant. And Elizabeth's baby is spoken of in the same way that Christ is spoken of. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age. And she, who was called barren, is now in her sixth month. She has a child as well, just like you have a child. Christ was unique. And that is true. But He was flesh and blood like us. He had to be. He had to be in order to bear our sin, in order to fulfill all righteousness, in order to be a substitute for us. In these creeds like the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, we confess the virgin birth. The implication of the virgin birth of Christ at Christmas speaks to the whole issue today of life in the womb, that that is a person. Now, how do we take that as true? It's not a matter of bringing up all of our reasonings, our exceptions, and all these other things. We just accept that fact. And for those people who have had abortions, The gospel of Jesus Christ is that there is forgiveness of sin, just like there is forgiveness for any sin. There is forgiveness for lying and for greed and for pride. There is forgiveness in Christ. That's the message of the gospel. That's the message of Christmas. It's not just that there is a child in the womb, but there is forgiveness for all of our sins through the child, the Lord Jesus Christ. The biggest mistake we can make is to try to rationalize and explain away things that are real and true. And the easiest thing is, or the best thing to do, is simply to confess our sin and to know that God holds no sin against us. And that we are clean and we are loved and we go in the knowledge of that truth. There is forgiveness in Christ for all of our sins. Some of you, abortion is not what's bugging you this morning. What's bugging you is an instance of adultery, an instance of lying, an instance of something else. There is forgiveness in Christ for all of our sins. Secondly, the incarnation, Christ being both God and man, He is uniquely able to understand us and help us. I know there are times that we think no one understands what we're going through or what it is that we're having to deal with and things like that. And yet Christ understands us because of His coming and becoming a person just like us. No one has experienced more rejection than Jesus, greater rejection than Christ. No one has experienced greater grief or greater suffering than Christ. Maybe He didn't suffer in the same way that you have or you do right now. But Christ is one who can come alongside you even if no one else in your family or in this room can come alongside you to understand. Christ understands. No one is to face greater temptation to disobey In Him is understanding. In Him there is comfort. In Him there is encouragement. Because Christ doesn't just come to us and say, yeah, I understand what you're going through and you're a loser. Okay? That's not what He does. No, He understands so as to be our help. So as to give us encouragement. So as to put out of our mind all the negative people we have to have around us all the time, or the negativity that comes from within ourselves saying it's no use, and He speaks to us hope, and love, and forgiveness, and tomorrow's a new day, and my mercies are new every morning. That's what He speaks. I am with you in this. In this thing, you'll grow in grace. He will perfect you until that day, as Stuart prayed. The writer of Hebrews says, since he himself was tempted in that which he suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in our time of need. Sometimes Christmas is a time for people to escape the problems that they have that are going on in their life. They get so caught up in it, they can escape the problems. Let me tell you, Christmas is a time when God says, you don't have to escape. You bring them to Me. I have answered you. I have come to be a Savior. Remember the words? For unto you is born a Savior. That's what the shepherds were told. A Savior has been born unto you who is Christ the Lord. And now is not the time to escape. Now is the time to run to the Savior who has come into this world for you. Thirdly, the Incarnation, Christ being both God and man, shows that He is totally successful in accomplishing the salvation of His people. And to Him is due our worship and our devotion. The first Adam failed. The second Adam succeeded. For as through the first one's man disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. Jesus Christ is like us except for our sin. And he perfectly obeys God as that one and only person who ever has or ever will. Christ is like us as a person that he might suffer as a person, as a substitute for us. A substitute who was perfectly acceptable to an infinitely holy God. And no other substitute would do. Christ is therefore due from us our humble submission to His Lordship in our lives. And we are to be thankful to Him, giving Him praise and worship. Having a zeal for His glory. Having a joy in the announcement and the reality of His birth and all it means, but carrying that over into the living out of our lives. And then finally, in Christ as becoming man, we are taught to imitate His incarnation. And this is what Philippians 2 taught a while ago. We are to imitate His incarnation. We are to have self-denying love for one another. When Paul wrote to the Christians at Philippi, he wrote to them about how they were to behave themselves with each other. You see, even after we become Christians, we have a lot of baggage, okay? And you may not think you have any, but the rest of us know that you do, okay? We bring a lot of baggage with us and we carry a lot of baggage around. And so, the message of Christ coming to earth reminds us that there's a mentality that we need to cultivate to deal with ourselves and to deal with our relationship with others. And so, Philippians says this, Paul talking to these people, he says, make my joy complete by being of the same mind. Okay, so he's saying, I want you folks to be united there in the church at Philippi. Maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose, doesn't mean they have to adopt somebody else's personality, that they have to give up their own weird sense of humor. It doesn't mean they all need to look like and be copycat, cookie cutter Christians. That's not what it means at all. There is union in the whole diversity of the church. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit. It's not about you. But with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. That doesn't mean that the elders defer to the nursery as to what the next decision is going to be. But what it means is that God, it does mean, though, that the elders should certainly show humility toward any child of love and kindness, just like Jesus would show that humility. So you have to understand that the idea is that we treat others as being important, more important than ourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interest. which is what the world teaches us, right? It's about us. What's in it for me? Don't merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interest of others. Now, the way that Paul enforces, or the way he emphasizes this mentality of how you and I are to live with each other, in which we all fail and we all need help and all that, and we go to Christ for that as well. We look to His Spirit for all that. But the way he emphasizes this is to tell us to think about the birth of Christ. To think about Christ coming to earth. And so he continues. He says, "...have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made like in the likeness of men and being found in the appearance of men. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And so the message of Christ coming to earth and the message of Christ dying on the cross is the picture of how you and I are to think about loving each other. in our relationships with one another. We're not to be nursing old wounds. We're not to be carrying grudges. We're not to be running around with our feelings hurt all the time. We're not to be worrying about everybody noticing us. Paying attention to us. We're not to be cutting each other down. One of the greatest enemies in the church is the church itself. And Jesus says, if you want to understand Christmas, and you want to understand love, and you want to understand my death, then one of the ways that you live it out is in your relationship to one another, especially in the body of Christ. Christ becomes man for you and me. And He teaches us to humble ourselves with each other. And not to do so is to oppose the will of Christ and the work of Christ. Let's pray. Our God and our Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your salvation and for Your love. And we thank You, Jesus, came to earth and even though you maintained your deity, nevertheless, you took upon yourself the likeness unto us as people, that you became a person and a body, likened to us with a nature and a soul, likened to us except for our sin. And we thank you this morning that you understand us. We thank you that you have accomplished our salvation. We thank You that someday we can see You and enjoy being with You together with others for all eternity. We thank You that as we reflect upon Your birth at this time of year, that we see so many ways that it practically applies to all kinds of other things in our lives. Issues that go on in culture and how we treat one another and the dignity that You have given to us and the calling You've given to us and all these wonderful things. And so, Jesus, we pray that by Your Holy Spirit You would have Your way with us, that You would unleash Your resurrection power and flood our souls with the knowledge of Your love and fill us with great joy in believing the Gospel. And Father, we pray those who don't believe. We pray for those who don't understand or don't believe. We pray that You would open up the eyes of their heart to see the glory of Christ and that they would come to Him for the forgiveness of their sins and take great delight in Him. And Lord, help us to have a zeal that the earth would be more and more filled with the knowledge of You. We pray in the name of Christ, Amen.