Trinitas, we've been expounding Romans chapter 5, and last week we, or rather two weeks ago, we saw that all of mankind fell into sin in Adam. And this is the setup that Paul has to point out the fact and to expound the fact that all who believe in Christ are renewed again unto the image of God and to life. This concept of all mankind either being in Adam or in Christ is at the very heart of the gospel. And it's also an excellent springboard for discussing the mystery and the miracle of the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ for a short Advent series. You know, when you consider this concept of original sin that we inherit guilt and a sinful nature from our first father, Adam, raises the question how Jesus, who is a son of Adam, can be wholly pure through and through, and without any taint of sin whatsoever. This will be the beginning, therefore, of a sermon series that we're calling The Shape of the Incarnation, where we'll be expounding this grand mystery of what God accomplished in becoming man. Now, I'm going to read a scripture passage in just a moment. I'm going to mention for the younger people in the room, I did not even realize the verses chosen for this passage because it's such a classic Advent text. So you can get your chuckles out of the way now so we can read the word of God with reverence. If you don't know what I'm talking about when I mentioned those numbers, You're better off for it. And with that said, I am going to pray and ask the Lord to give us understanding in his word. Bow your heads with me. Living God, so many things strike us as newsworthy in a world where information is passed around so quickly. It's easy to forget that the biggest news is at this point some of the oldest news. the awesome news that in Jesus Christ, God became man and began to work for our redemption, something that no mere man could. Lord, I pray that we would have this renewed sense that the most important thing that has ever happened in human history is not something that happened last week, is not a war that's on the verge of occurring, it is the miracle of the incarnation. Pray that you'd give us understanding in your word. We pray that we would leave your word knowing and understanding ourselves more as sinners in need of a savior, and that we would find ourselves once again at the foot of Christ's cross. We ask these things, Father, in the name of your son, Jesus, and by your spirit, amen. All right, if you've got your Bibles, go ahead and open them to Isaiah chapter nine. We're gonna read verses six and seven. 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. There will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness. From then on and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. This is God's Word. Trinitas, as we jump into this passage, the point I'm really going to stand on today is this concept. that the Savior was always to be one born from us, one born from humanity. It's right there in the opening lines. Unto us a son is born, is given from God Almighty. As we jump into this topic, I want to point something out. I think most Christians today have a very shallow theological knowledge of our anthropology. I think many of us would not even think of anthropology as among the loci of theology, things that theologians would study. In fact, I would ask you right now, which details of your faith, which doctrines of your faith do you think you know best, know the most Bible verses about? Imagine ideas like Jesus dying for our sins, the substitutionary atonement, maybe the concept that God made us, maybe certain ethical principles. I actually find that among evangelicals, it's their eschatology, their expectations for the last days, that's the most developed area of their theology. Well, it turns out that I was prepping for the Nicene Creed event that we had to celebrate the 1700 year anniversary of the Nicene Creed just a month ago. I read an ancient work in theology. It was written by John of Damascus who wrote this in about 743 AD. The work was called An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. It's interesting, if you looked at the chapter divisions for this work, the distribution of focus is radically different than what you'd find today. 14 chapters are just about the doctrine of the Trinity, that area of theology. There was so much controversy in the first three or four centuries of the church. The next 30 chapters are about creation and particularly about the nature of man. The next 29 chapters are about the mystery of the incarnation that one person of the Trinity became a human person like you and I. And then there are 27 chapters about everything else. It's as if the Orthodox faith in the mind of John of Damascus is really about who God is, what man is, and how there is this grand union of the two in the man Jesus Christ. the utter significance of the incarnation, it takes center stage. Well, to discuss this topic of the incarnation, we are going to have to relearn some things about ourselves. And I will begin that meditation with this question. Have you ever asked yourself where you and I came from? I'm not talking about the creation of man back on day six, I'm asking where you think your soul came from. St. Augustine said it this way in his work concerning the teacher, to know God and to know myself. He says it is all his desire. When you ask this question about where you came from, the materialism of our day resides somewhere in your perspective. You know, for example, that you came from your mom and dad. You probably have a pretty robust idea of how they had a certain set of genes, each of them. Those things got combined and has a lot to do with your physical characteristics. Happened to be a Christian scientist, Francis Collins, who headed up the Human Genome Project. So much of this information was discovered and expounded. What I want to ask is where your soul came from. As it happens, there have been broadly two views in the history of the church. One is called tradutionism. It is the idea that as with your body, which was made by a sort of combination of a material element from your mom and your dad, so with your soul. Your soul is a sort of combination. of sort of soulish material, part of which came from your mom, part of which came from your dad. The other view, however, is that unlike your body, each individual soul is created immediately by God. I'd ask you to consider which of those two intuitively you think to be correct. What I'll do in the course of this sermon is I'll discuss the origin of the soul, And then I will talk about the miracle of the incarnation, because Jesus became a man. And however our souls originate as men, the same is true of Him. So let's begin by discussing the origin of your soul. Traducianism says, well, it comes from a Latin noun, tradux, which means vine or branch or sprout. And the concept is that your soul sprouts out of the combination of two other souls combined one way or another. It means that parallel to the production of your body, so is the production of your soul from two different sources. Now, the alternative view is called creationism with respect to the human soul. It's that idea that it's not generated by parents. This has been the dominant view, by the way, in the history of the Christian church. In fact, Reformed theologians, even Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians all affirm creationism. In fact, today, only Lutherans, curiously, you'd have to know more about Lutheran theology, veer in the direction of tradutionism. But let's consider why it is that the Reformed, why it is that our theological tradition has embraced creationism pretty well all the way through. The first reason is from rational reflection itself about the origin of the soul. There would seem to be countless contradictions that arise when you have the idea that your soul is somehow germinated by the combination of something from your mother and your father. What this would mean is that when a new person is conceived by mother and father, this will sound very strange, but it would literally mean that mother and father lost some portion of their soul to create this new soul. Now that would be a very problematic idea. Would we wanna say that Tim and Hilary Marston have diminished souls in this church? The Matsons of recent have more diminished souls than the rest of us? Are those in this room without children, those who have kept their souls in a way that those with children have not? All of these things seem rather ridiculous. The material element that a mother and father produce to create a human body in conception, well, it's a material element that they produce from their bodies and that they have their bodies replenished all the time by obviously nourishment of various kinds. Well, if souls literally somehow produce some element of themselves to produce another thing, does the soul get replenished somehow? I mean, you've all heard of soul food, and I have it every General Assembly when I go to the South. But nobody has this idea that what's transpiring with that food is that somehow the soul itself is being replenished as if it lost something of itself. There's also the issue of the concept of a new soul being the product of something. See, the way we really are forced to think about our souls is that they're simple. And that's a particular word that means that they're without parts, which is as much as to say there isn't part of your soul here or there in your brain such that you could divide your soul in two. Instead, your reason, your volition, your memory, it's all one simple entity without parts. There's not more or less of you, again, in different parts of your body or your brain. And yes, the soul is joined to your body and you perceive things through bodily organs, sure. One thing about the soul is the concept that there's some part of you that stays the same no matter how your body is altered. Which is to say, if you lost an arm or a leg, your soul, your inner man would still be one continuous substance, not altered at all. That's normally how the soul has been thought of. is being consistent, where everything else can grow, diminish, get taller, shorter in old age. Well, once you believe that about the soul, you'd ask the question, how can something simple be constructed out of two things coming together? That would mean it had parts from the very beginning. And that, again, would seem to be a contradiction beyond what our minds can tolerate. You know, I'll mention in passing a practical piece of good news for you all. It is important for everyone in this room to know that those of us who have radically harmed our own bodies, whether by cutting, or transgender surgeries, or STDs, or by awful diets, all of these things have their negative effects, but I want you to know something, you are still you, no matter the condition of your body. And most importantly, the condition of your body does not place your soul beyond the possibility of redemption. In the New Testament, there were those who were eunuchs. Eunuchs were kind of the original sorts of people in the course of human history who had their bodies radically altered. They were men who were castrated so that they could function as servants, usually to women in high positions, without having any natural lust toward them. And Jesus is quite clear that those sorts of individuals can be saved in Matthew 19, 12. And in fact, you have the Ethiopian eunuch, one of the first converts in Africa in Acts chapter eight. Part of the reason for this is to understand that what you've done in your body cannot do anything to make your soul something fundamentally different than what it was before. And the savior of souls can still save you. Some have therefore, in light of the contradictions mentioned, some have suggested that perhaps all souls existed whole and complete within either their mother or father, and typically their father. This is one way to get around all the contradictions of souls being a product of things coming together. But this would mean, of course, that Adam had, what, billions of souls within his body. And this seems rather strange. It was the Gerasian demon who said, my name is Legion, for we are many, not Adam. So this idea, this idea has not sat well with Christian theologians generally. Moreover, the Lord takes direct credit He takes direct credit for the production of souls. In Jeremiah chapter one, Jeremiah recounts what the Lord said to him in his call, I formed you in the womb. He has a definite beginning in the womb. He didn't pre-exist as a soul in his father Adam. Likewise, David says in Psalm 139, you wove me in my mother's womb, I was made in secret. Your beginning is at conception. not a long-lived, pre-existent life being passed down as a soul, whole and complete, from one father to another. As you would, therefore, not be surprised to hear, creationism has been not only the predominant view among Christian theologians about the origin of your soul, but is actually the widest-held view across human societies. When you're reading Greek authors of various different philosophical persuasions, or whether you are talking about tribal peoples, the concept that our soul came from a different place than our mere bodies is about as universal as any belief you could come across. As Christians, we have much more even though to go on. We can look back to the original creation of Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter two, the way it's put is this, then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. The picture from the beginning is that man has two different origins. On a material level, man has something in common with the earth and all of the created sphere. but an entirely different source is credited for man's life. And a particular word is used here when it says, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. It's a word that could be translated breath, but the word is neshama. It more often speaks to a spiritual rational intellect. The rational component of man associated with the soul comes directly from God. It doesn't arise from the mere material element. Again, when Eve is created, it's noteworthy that she is obviously not the product of two parental souls coming together and producing hers. Her body is the product from Adam's side, but there are not two parents coming together to make a soul. Picture is that God implants something unique in each and every single human person. Something unique that reflects his own nature so that man can be called a sort of being made in God's image. But of course, beyond this, we have numerous scriptures that speak to creationism as well. Solomon writing in Ecclesiastes, it's a book that has kind of a pessimistic perspective. He is intentionally thinking of the world and looking at the world through the eyes of men. But he puts it this way, the dust of man will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. Picture is that God is the one who gives the human soul. You know, again, this sort of message is also conveyed by Moses. There's an occasion while the people were wandering in the wilderness and God threatens to wipe out all the people entirely for the sins of Korah and a few other associates who were rebelling against Moses' leadership. Moses puts it this way when he intercedes. Oh God, God of the spirits of all flesh, when one man sins, will you be angry with the whole congregation? The logic of his argument goes like this. Lord, although we relate to you as one people, united in our flesh, you are the God of all spirits individually. You created each man individually. There's an individual element here. Don't overlook that when you consider judgment. And the appeal is to the fact that God has a unique creative relationship to each and every single one of us. And of course, the Lord responds to that intercession by having a more measured judgment than he otherwise could. The prophet Zechariah puts it this way, thus declares the Lord who stretches out the heavens and forms the spirit of man within him. That's pretty clear. God is the one who created your soul. And in Hebrews chapter 12, it's put this way in verse nine. We had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more rather be subject to the father of spirits? One of God's titles is father of spirits. He is the source of the spirits of all men. Now with all of that biblical evidence and we could go on. One might ask, why in the world would anyone ever doubt creationism as the explanation of the origin of your soul? Well, here are the sorts of arguments that those traditions make. The first one goes like this. God said on day seven of creation that he ceased from all of his labors. But if God were creating each individual soul in the course of time, it would seem that God has not ceased from his creative labors. Therefore, all souls or the substance of souls must have been created on day six and never again. That's how the argument goes. But to this, we must respond in a variety of ways. First, God's creative power manifestly did not cease entirely on day seven of creation. It's manifested in so many ways throughout redemptive history. When God multiplies oil and bread and fish, that's an obvious expression of his creative power, no less than the other days of creation. Just the same when he restores in men who are born blind the power of sight or hearing. or heals a person from leprosy by his mere word. This is an expression of creative power. So we begin by pointing out that God's cessation of creative labor was not absolute. But really, we would point this out as most important. In Genesis 1 through 6, God ceased to create new species, wholly distinct types of beings. That cessation is absolute. There's no reason to doubt from that that the Lord, by a law he's implanted in humanity itself, committed himself to being the author of each and every human soul who would subsequently come into being. You know, the incarnation itself is among those things that God calls a new thing that he has created in the earth. What this means practically for all of you, I wonder moms, aunts, fathers as well, but particularly ladies, I want you to know something. It is natural to be in awe when a new life is conceived in you. It's natural to be. It is actually incredible to consider that God has committed himself to the creation of a new soul and person when humans decide to act and conceive one, that he's committed. I am in that. I am going to perform my role as I have been doing since Adam. You know, it's natural, even if imprecise. to call it a miracle when a baby is born. Because something more is there than matter in motion. A new soul is before you. It's also important for every one of you to know this. You are God's individual creation. I don't mean to diminish in the least the incredible hand that your parents had in making you. I don't mean to diminish in the least that you have an identity and you even have a lot of things you have inherited from those who preceded you in your culture, your society, your family line. But it is important for you to know that God has a direct relation to you as the author of the soul who you are. This is important for a variety of reasons because you can't make excuses about your responsibility to that father of yours. You can't make excuses for why you're veering in sinful directions and saying, oh, I inherited this appetite from my parents. Oh, I have this guilt from those who preceded me. You do have an individual responsibility before God. And it can never be diminished. These things are true at once. We relate to God as a people and as individuals. But the second reason why some people would take issue with creationism of the soul is that some passages actually say things like men were inside of their fathers before they were born. Men are said to exist within their fathers. We saw in Romans 5 verse 12, not only did Adam fall when he sinned, but we all sinned in him and with him, says Romans 5, 12. But of course, the main proof text for this concept is Hebrews 7, 9 to 10. where it says that Levi, who is of course one of the grandsons of Abraham, paid tithes to another man for he was still in the loins of his father. It's really several fathers back. There, the passage would seem to suggest that people literally exist in those ancestors who precede them. Well, to begin, Hebrews chapter seven says, and so to speak, Levi paid tithes and was in the loins of his father. We must maintain that it's speaking to the material continuity between Levi and those who preceded him. Your material origins precede you. That's why you look like the people who preceded you. That is true. But it doesn't suggest that your soul existed or pre-existed prior to your conception. All right, I know, you guys have taken in just about as much of the debate between creationists and traditions as you can. But I got one more. And it's really important when we think about the incarnation. The main argument of traditions, is that men's souls must have existed in their parents beforehand one way or another. Because the alternative is to say that when you were born or conceived, God created your soul sinful. Because the Bible universally teaches that we inherit sin from our parents. That's a bit problematic because the Bible is emphatic that God is the rock. Deuteronomy 32, four says, his work is perfect for all his ways are just. And so the argument goes, how could a good, perfect God whose work is always perfect create your soul with an appetite for evil and corruption at its core? This is the main objection to creationism. Well, here is the reply that theologians have consistently given. God doesn't create sinful souls. He does create each soul without the natural inclination to good as Adam had. But what he does is he creates souls in a condition where they don't have an appetite for evil yet, Because they are united to a sinful human race, to sinful human flesh, the moment they come to be, not by God's making, but by man's, they have a sense of guilt for the sin of their race and evil inclinations inherited from the fleshly origins that they have as well. Let me put it this way for an analogy. You could create a white patch of cloth that as for your creating it, it's white through and through. But if you could imagine instantaneously creating that white patch of cloth in the darkest vat of black ink, the moment it came to be, it would be stained by the sin of that entity into which it is created. And not by virtue of anything that God himself did to that patch of cloth. I'll give you another analogy. If you could imagine instantaneously creating a perfectly good piece of wood without any charcoal on it, but creating that perfectly good piece of wood in the context of the hottest flaming fire. The moment that piece of wood that you made good through and through, it would immediately be charcoaled. The second it came into being, not from what you did to it, but from that entity into which it was made so it is with man. You were not created by God with an inclination to evil. Instead, you were created within a human race who is in part responsible for your fleshly origins. And the moment you appear there in that context of fallen humanity, you inherit the guilt and corruption of your parents. This is an important concept for you all. We've talked about original sin. I'm just gonna challenge you with it again. Although we are all sinful because of Adam's sin, every parent in this room You pass on sinful dispositions to those raised in your home, as we do in our church, and we must be vigilant for them. We must be repentant for them. It's why we have a confession of sin here. I hope this is not the only time of the week that you speak one. I just challenge you all to consider. whether by being born in your house, mom and dad, there are certain inclinations and dispositions your kids have just because of that vat of ink that you've made in your home. Take the third commandment. Do you dishonor God in your speech? Speak his name in vain as a curse word, or maybe even just speak it with little reverence, or maybe don't ever speak it at all. but for one day a week maybe. Do not deceive yourselves. Your young people will inherit those same habits, lest we take a different course. Consider the fourth commandment. Is there any rest for you on the Lord's day? Is all of life just nonstop labor? Your kids, they will inherit those habits. if you do not repent of them and rectify them. Take the fifth commandment, no regard for authority. Are you only and constantly ranting and raving about how terrible every leader you have is, from your boss, to your political leaders, to anyone who has authority over you, and then you're surprised that your kids don't honor their mother and father? This is something you're creating in your own home. These souls made by God himself. and yet born to sinful men, inheriting all their sins. We turn finally to the generation of Jesus Christ. And we can really understand something of what a miracle the incarnation was. To begin, Jesus is fully man, which means that the origins of his body and the origins of his soul are fundamentally alike, yours and mine. Jesus's flesh, the Bible could not be more clear, is entirely from his mother, Mary. I don't know how you thought about the incarnation in the past. Maybe you thought that the Lord just put, just placed within Mary, out of nowhere, ex nihilo, the beginnings of what would be a baby to be born. Such is not the case. The Bible is actually clear that Jesus' humanity is taken from his mother. He is called the fruit of Mary's womb. Even more, he's called the seed of David according to the flesh. Seed in the Bible is a material element that exists first within a parent, is planted in another parent, and grows into that person's descendants. And that word seed, both in the Old and New Testament, can either mean that material element before it's planted, or the descendant who grows out of it. Jesus is the fruit of Mary, the seed of David. He's called the branch of the family tree of Jesse. That's David's father. If you thought of humanity as a family tree, and you guys have seen family trees, maybe artistically represented with your grandparents on both side, with you coming out of it. Jesus comes from a family tree. He's not only the seed of David and the branch of David's father, Jesse, but he's the seed of Israel, we are told in Romans 9.3. He's also the seed of Abraham. And it goes back to this incredible prophecy in Genesis chapter three, that the Savior would be the unique seed of a woman. Normally women don't have seed. The planting comes about through some sort of husband or man. Planting that seed, Jesus is the unique seed of the woman, arising from her flesh. Jesus, therefore, is a child who was born to us, born after the manner of children, with his human nature from his parents. Jesus, we are told in his genealogy in Luke, was the supposed son of Joseph. That's its way of saying he was not the natural son of Joseph. But Jesus was, in fact, the son of Adam through his mother, going all the way back, says Luke 3.38. And therefore, one of the names you'll encounter Jesus using for himself throughout the gospels is son of man. Jesus really is a son of man. Jesus can be called with credulity our brother. Some of the classic Christmas hymns you sing celebrate him as our brother. In Hebrews 2 says, he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will proclaim your name to my brethren. Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in all things. Well, one of the things that ought to perplex us all is the question of how Jesus could be born a man, a son of Adam, and not inherit corruption and sin. Well, the answer is that although Mary was the material cause of Jesus' body, God, the Holy Spirit, was the efficient cause, working a miracle in her that has never been worked on anyone else. For told in Luke chapter one, Mary said to the angel, how can this be? How can I conceive 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, for nothing is impossible with God. In the formation of Jesus' flesh, within the womb of the Virgin Mary from her flesh, was the formation of a human person united to a God-given soul without any inclination to sin or corruption whatsoever. There are multiple miracles that happen here, and I really wanna emphasize these miracles. I think some of you have probably heard the song by Faith Hill. It's a Christmas song called, A Baby Changes Everything. I think faith kind of missed the point of the incarnation there. You'd hear the song thinking that it's just about the wonderful difficulties of, well, conceiving and having a child grow inside of you. Yes, a lot of difficulty there. I understand you're trying to make a connection with everybody else. The point of the incarnation is not that a baby changes everything. The burden borne by Mary was not just the burden that a baby changes everything. The burden borne by Mary is that God incarnate was in her womb. That she was carrying the most important person in human history. That she could hardly conceive what was going on. A miracle transpired. we have the conception of a person solely from a mother without any human father. Theologians have observed that one time, way back at the beginning, God created a woman totally from a man in the case of Adam and Eve. In the course of human history, he produces men by the combination of a man and a woman. And now to complete the options, we have a man solely from a mother. This is the miracle of the virgin birth. But as noted, there's another miracle. It's the conception of a body soul entirely free from the corruption and guilt of original sin. And in fact, the miracle is even more wonderful. It is the union of humanity with God himself. This is the truest, most incomprehensible miracle in all of Scripture. You might ask the question, how can it be that Jesus wouldn't inherit the sin of Adam, though born a son of Adam? The answer resides in part in this fact, that the Son of God existed before Adam did and before Adam sinned. unlike you and me who are born into this world within this vat of sin and confusion. Jesus preexisted the sinner himself as the eternal son of God and comes into human flesh with a resume, not just of righteousness, but of divine infinite holiness. He enters this world as the superior to all who preceded him. Jesus brings his righteousness into a condition sullied by sin and rebellion. Jesus was not generated by the will of any man. It's one of the reasons he doesn't have a father. He entered this world, therefore, with a righteousness of his own. You could say a sort of sin resistance. He is like a pure garment created in that vat of black ink, yet entirely without stain because of the deity and dignity he brought to it. Wood created in a raging fire, yet not at all charcoaled because of the inherent dignity he had as the God-man. Jesus therefore is the head of the covenant of grace as we call it in our theology. He willingly assumes, he willingly assumes our original responsibility to obey God the Father without deviation and he does it on our behalf as the righteous one in our stead. And he willingly assumes man's fallen penalty. Not as a natural inheritance. but is something he does gratuitously and bears the infinite wrath of God away. When you understand all of this, you can actually kind of appreciate John of Damascus, who I mentioned at the beginning, whose exposition of the Orthodox faith had God, then man, then the incarnation. I don't mean to suggest for a moment there wasn't more theology to be done. expounding the mechanics of the atonement and justification by faith alone. But John had this right. To know the incarnation, to know the identity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the identity of Jesus Christ as the God-man, is to understand right then and there that it is all over for the enemy. To understand this is not going to go well for the enemies of Christ and his people. that his victory is absolutely certain. We gotta have a little bit of sympathy, therefore, with the church fathers who preoccupied themselves so utterly with the person and dual nature of Jesus Christ, who did so almost to the neglect of all the other parts of theology. Who suffered death, exile, and scorn to defend the identity of Jesus Christ, and they did. The miraculous person of the Son of God incarnate is worthy of our total adoration and worship. It turns out that when Mary got on the other side of this grand news, the first thing she did was not write a systematic theology, which might not have been a bad idea, but what she did is she composed a song. And the song celebrated the reality that it is over for the enemies of God. She puts it this way in her Magnificat, for the mighty one has done great things for me, and holy is his name. He has brought down rulers from their thrones and exalted those who are humble. It is over for the rulers, she says. At the moment of conception, Jesus surpassed in dignity every single ruler in the world at that time or had ever been. Jesus reduced them to nothing, comparatively speaking. He did so from the moment of conception. When we see Jesus, therefore, in the Gospels, demons are terrified of him. They don't manifest any confidence whatsoever in the face of Jesus. They're the first ones to call him the Son of God and to beg him not to end their reign and rule prematurely. Many of us know that Jesus said on the cross, it is finished. But demons knew they were finished from the moment they encountered the God-man. Let us not therefore be distracted. If we're going to celebrate a civil holiday called Christmas, let us not be distracted. Let us be in constant awe and wonder at the God who became man, at the Savior who was born a virgin, but the Savior who could say it was finished. Bow your heads with me. Lord God, to know ourselves and to know you, there's no more blessed thing than for us to know ourselves truly and to know you in Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray. We pray that you would give us the energy and the appetite to commit our meditations to you. this December. Lord, I lift up to you the young people in this room, I pray that they would crack their Bibles open and read the chapters of Matthew and Luke and John, that they would read about your incarnation, the mysterious, wonderful, even incomprehensible events that occurred Pray that parents would crack their Bibles open with their children and with one another. Lord, that we would wonder together at what you have accomplished. Lord, there are so many good things that we can preoccupy ourselves with, but none so grand as your means of grace. God, I pray that we would have an appetite for fellowship and prayer for the Word of God. for songs of praises to be on our lips and confessions of sin. All to your glory and to the good of those who love you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.