Well, I invite you to turn with me in the word of God to the gospel according to John chapter one. John chapter one, we'll be looking at a number of different passages this evening as we consider the reality and the wonder of the incarnation of our Lord. We'll begin in John chapter one, verses one through five, and then also jumping down to verse 14. I'm sure a very familiar passage to many of us who've grown up in the church and in Christian homes and have read through the Bibles on our own. We come to these and we just know them in some ways. We recognize the wonder that's presented here, the glorious doctrine of the fact that Jesus is God, that God the Son and God the Father are equal, and yet God the Son came and took on flesh and lived among us, and his light shone even in the darkness. And so I'll begin reading in John chapter one and verse one down to verse five, and then verse 14. 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 were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And then verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. This is the reading of God's holy word. May he bless it to us. Let's go to him and ask for his aid once again this evening. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the fact that you have given us your word, that by your spirit you inspired these men to write these things thousands of years ago. We thank you of the Christ about whom they wrote that he did come, that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We ask, Lord, that your spirit would illumine us to understand more of your word tonight, to see more of the glories of our Savior, and to respond appropriately in praise and gratitude. We pray all these things in the name of our incarnate Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. I invite you also to turn in the either Forms and Prayers or Trinity Psalter Hymnal to Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 18, as we'll be considering that in different portions of the sermon this evening. That's found on the Forms and Prayers, that thin little book on page 171, or if you're using the Trinity Psalter Hymnal, it's 861, 171 and 861. Now, of course, we have been going through the Belgian Confession of Faith on Lord's Day evenings, most of the time for quite a bit of time, for several months at this point. We've come all the way to Article 18. We've seen all sorts of things. We've seen, at the beginning, who God is, the God who exists, and some of the things about him, his nature and his attributes. We've seen how he has revealed himself to us, how he has even created all things, and how mankind fell into sin, that original sin is something that affects all of us in depravity, is total all throughout us, and yet God did not leave us there. That God has planned a redemption for us in Jesus Christ. And in Article 18, we come really to this idea of He has not only elected us, as we saw previously in Article 16, He's not only promised to send the seed of the woman, as we saw in Article 17, but in Article 18, Christ actually came. In Article 18, God, the Son, Himself, the second person of the blessed, unbelievably wonderful Trinity, truly took on flesh and came to earth. And that is what we are confessing, that is what we are considering this evening from passages like John 1. Of course, we recognize if we look at the articles of the confession in a row that we've been dealing with a lot of God's work recently. We saw what man's work was. Man's work was to fall in the garden. Man's work through Adam was to plunge all of humanity into sin. And we see God's work of grace and mercy as a response to these things that he not only judged, But he elected, he promises, and he sends and saves. This is the God who acts, this is the God who exists, this is the God who is our Father in Jesus Christ. And in John 1, there are many things going on. I probably don't need to tell you that. It's somewhat strange to me, but also I understand it, that we often have new converts and we tell them, go and read the Gospel of John. Imagine this. You don't grow up in a Christian church or in a Christian home, and your first encounter with the Bible is these words. What on earth are you thinking? How are you considering these things? These are some of the things that have filled up the great minds of the Christian church down through the ages because they are so wonderful and they are so strange in some way and that they are so profound. What John 1 is saying, what John the Apostle is saying here in this first chapter of his gospel is that the same Yahweh who promised the seed to the woman in Genesis 3.15 exists as Father and Son and Spirit, The focus, especially here, is on Father and Son. And the Son himself came as the seed who was promised. And so Christ came. An important thing for us to remember, not only at Christmas, but all throughout the year, because this is the reason that any of this salvation has even happened in the first place. And so we'll consider three headings this evening, all of them in term, all of them having to do with the fact that Christ came. First of all, we'll see that Christ came in fulfillment. Christ came in fulfillment. Look there at Article 18 in the Belgian Confession. We confess that God fulfilled the promise which he had made to the early fathers by the mouth of his holy prophets when he sent his only and eternal son into the world and at the time set by him. And so Christ's coming in the flesh was many things, but in one sense, what it was was the fulfillment of the plan of God. Fulfillment of a plan that had existed from eternity past from before the foundation of the earth. There's a plan, a promise that there would be a prophet, a priest, and a king who would come, and in order to be that prophet, priest, and king, Christ, Jesus, God, the Son, had to come in the flesh, and that's what he did. We read in Hebrews 2 in verse 11, for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. See, Christ and us have the same source as far as our humanity is concerned, and he sanctifies us and we are sanctified. and he came as man to do this. He took on a true human nature. He took on flesh to do this. That's a shocking thing. Consider the God that we thought about for probably months, really, as we considered it in Article One. Now, as we've gone through the Belgian Confession of Faith, there are different ways to do it and different ways to break it down. Generally, though, we're not spending any more than two weeks on any one article, except for the first one, because there is so much about who God is. There is so much about this God who created and sustains and redeems, that this is the glorious God, the great God, the God who is far above even our own imagination, that we cannot come up with these things on our own unless God had revealed himself to us in these ways. And so God, right at the beginning of the Belgic Confession, right at the beginning of the Bible, even in Genesis 1-1, with the fact that he is the creator of all things, is set up as this wonderfully sovereign, powerful, glorious one. the one beyond our comprehension, the one beyond our ability to truly see all that he is and all that he has done. And now we confess that this same God took on flesh. That this same God, God the Son, took on a true human nature and walked the earth alongside us. Not us in particular, but humanity like us. That's a shocking thing. But God keeps promises and he kept this promise as well. He kept the promise to Adam and Eve that there would be a seed of the woman who would come and crush the head of the serpent even as his own heel was bruised. He kept the promise to Abraham that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He kept the promise to David that he would always have one of his descendants sitting on the throne forever and we could continue listing all the promises that God had made to his people in the Old Testament. Christ fulfilled them. God fulfilled them in Christ. It helps us to remember that even as we're here in the meantime, we're here in between the first and second comings of Christ, and sometimes, if you're like me, you can be tempted to doubt and to wonder. This world as it is, after Christ's ascension to heaven, has continued on much the same for quite some time. Millennia, centuries upon centuries, generation after generation after generation, and things seem to be much the same in some ways. There's still sinful people, there's still the effects of the fall that we're dealing with, people are still dying, all these different sorts of things. Can we trust God to fulfill his promises? The incarnation does many things, brothers and sisters. One of the things it does is it reminds us that God is the God who keeps the promises that he makes. Even in spite of what the odds seem to be, even as strange maybe as those promises may be, may seem to us in our human minds, God keeps his promises. He kept his promises that he would come born of a virgin and save a people for his great name and he will keep the promise that he will come at the All these things are kept by our God. He will keep his promises for you. It's a wonderfully comforting thing to know. It's a wonderfully comforting thing to remember. And this all happened not only to fulfill God's plan, but in God's timing, that God was not on our schedule, not on humanity's schedule when he sent Christ into the world. And that he did it just the same. He isn't on our schedule now either. That hasn't changed. He did these things in the fullness of time when he had determined that these things would happen. And looking back, we see that there are a lot of reasons that could have been, humanly speaking, that there was one empire that in the Mediterranean world had really solidified peace, and there were wonderful Roman roads for this gospel to go forth, and there was a language that was spoken on all corners of the Roman Empire, and all these different sorts of things. It's not as if God was looking down the halls of time wondering, when is this all going to come together? He wasn't like us, waiting for the right time, waiting to strike while the iron is hot. He was planning it. He was ordaining things. He was fulfilling his promise through the little things until the fullness of time came and Christ came into the world. And his timing truly is the best timing. And so we have to remember that God's plan, that God's time is best no matter what our plans are. And so Christ came in fulfillment. But secondly, Christ came in the flesh. He is true man. Look again with me at article 18. The son took the form of a servant. and was made in the likeness of man, truly assuming a real human nature, with all its weaknesses except for sin, being conceived in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit without male participation. And he not only assumed human nature as far as the body is concerned, but also a real human soul, in order that he might be a real human being. Since the soul had been lost as well as the body, he had to assume them both, to save them both together. And so the confession summarizes for us what scripture truly teaches, that Christ did assume a human nature. Sometimes we almost try to get God off the hook, as it were, of this point. To say, well yeah, Christ was human, but he wasn't human like us. He wasn't quite the same human, he didn't have quite the same humanity that we have, and that is just strictly not true, brothers and sisters. Perhaps it's helpful to consider idea that Christ is related to his mother, humanly speaking, in the same way that we're related to our mothers. He's a true man. He's a true human. These are the things that God's word teaches to us and these are things that we must remember because if he were not a true man, he could not save us. He has the same faculties. He has the same things like will and emotions and desires and all these different things that we have. He has growth He grew, not only mentally, but also physically. We see that record given to us in the Gospels. He suffered. He died, even as we all will if he does not return first. In all these things, he was the same as us, and he had a human body and a human soul. In other words, he was like us in being true human. But he was unlike us in being the only true human who had fully obeyed God's will. the only true human who had fully done what God's will was as he was on earth. In all his 33 years on this earth, he never once sinned. He was not born with original sin. Now there are different examples of things that theologians have said of why that is the case. We can all basically boil it down in some ways to saying that he was born of a virgin, he was born without male participation, as the article 18 tells us that is the case. That that was something that was meant to be shocking and unusual and miraculous and meant to point ahead to the fact that this was a different person. And this was, even though a true man, something special was going on here. And so he comes into the world without original sin, without the guilt and the corruption of that sin that we already experienced even from the moment of our coming into this world, and he had no actual sins either. Sometimes it's difficult for us to even fathom what that means, isn't it? Because I don't even have days without actual sins. I don't even have hours without actual sins. And even my best deeds are still tainted by the sinfulness that still remains in me. Think about this, boys and girls. Jesus never disobeyed or threw a tantrum or any of these things against his parents, trying to get his own way, unless it was something that God's will was for him. Jesus never had these spouts of bad attitudes that we often have. Jesus was never violent in a way that was sinful. He was never angry in a way that was sinful. Think of that, of how difficult that would have been as we consider it. He is the only one in this world who is sinless and he's dealing with the full brunt of the effects of sin. And yet his anger is only ever righteous. It's only ever true, it's only ever according to God's will. So he is like us and he is unlike us. But in order for him to represent us, as the one who never sinned, as the perfect human, to be a substitute for us, to be a trailblazer for us into heaven, as it were. He had to be like us. And so let's turn now to the book of Hebrews, chapter two. The book of Hebrews, chapter two, verses 14 through 18. We've been going through in the men's study on Thursday nights, the book of Leviticus, and really seeing how this lays the framework, the foundation for much of what happens in the New Testament, especially in the book of Hebrews. And it's amazing if you know the Old Testament to come to Hebrews and see what it's saying about Christ. I think what Hebrews 2, 14 through 18 says about Jesus is some of the most shocking things as you really consider who it is that it's talking about and what it is saying. And so Hebrews chapter two and starting in verse 14. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil. and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. I'm sure to many of us this is a familiar passage. It's a wonderful passage. It really shows us who our Savior is, as true man, as the incarnate one, as God the Son taking on flesh. Perhaps sometimes it's so familiar that we sort of miss the thrust of what's being said, though. And so perhaps there's a way here to make it a little less familiar and to see really what it is that the author of Hebrews, whoever he was, is really saying to us. And so I'm going to reread this, but I'm going to reread it out of order. Because if you look at verses 14 through 18, there are really two sections that each have four movements, and then it starts over in the next section. And so listen to this as I combine these things together, that the first step is that Christ came to save humans. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, for surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Isn't it amazing that he helps the offspring of Abraham, that he helps humans? Now, I recognize that there are wonderful things about all the things that God has created, about all of God's creation, all of his creatures. I contrast it with angels. Really? He helps humans, he helps the sons and the daughters of Adam, he helps the children, the offspring of Abraham. Christ came to save humans. And the second step, because Christ came to save humans, he had to become incarnate. He himself likewise partook of the same things, Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect. So he had to be like us in order to save us. And the third step, the purpose of the incarnation, why did this happen? Well, scripture tells us that through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. In order to redeem people, lead them out of bondage in order to be their savior and their sacrifice, in order to make propitiation and turn away God's wrath and to satisfy it. And then the fourth step, the effect of the incarnation on Christ's people. If this is what he came and this is what he did and this is why he did it, what effect does it have on people like you and me, those who are trusting in him for our salvation? Scripture tells us, to deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted. And so I hope you can see the argument there. What this author to the Hebrews is really saying is that in order for Christ to redeem these people, he had to become incarnate and take on the same human nature that they had. That all the blessings of our salvation, all the things that Christ did for us, even the power he gives us to be there for us when we are being tempted in the same ways that he was tempted, exist because he came in the flesh, because God the Son became incarnate, because he took on a true human nature and was born in all ways like us except for sin. It's helpful for us to consider these things, that Christ had human weakness but no sin, that he became tired, he wept, he died, he had all these things that we deal with and recognize as part of the effects of the sin that Adam plunged our race into. He was tempted. in many ways far beyond what we are tempted. I don't know all of your stories in great detail at this point as far as what you've all done with every 40 day period of your life, but I'm guessing that no one here has gone 40 days and 40 nights without food in the wilderness, meaning in the desert, and then come and been tempted by the devil himself three times. all the weaknesses that that brought forth, and yet Christ did not succumb. He knows what it is like to be tempted, and he is with us as we are tempted. He went through life on this fallen planet, even as we do, except he did not deserve it. He had human weaknesses, but no sin, no original sin, no actual sins. We read in 1 Peter 2.22, he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. Or the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.21, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And so people of God, as God has called you into his presence, as he has given you his greeting in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, he's given you that greeting, he's welcomed you and called you into his presence through the God man, through this one who is the perfect, spotless, sinless Savior. The one who is true God and became true man for the sake of his people. To save a people for his great name. Finally we see this evening that Christ came for you. He is the true savior of men. Notice with me again the very end of article 18 where it begins to really put together all these different texts and all these different quotations from scripture. Therefore we confess against the heresy of the Anabaptists who deny that Christ assumed human flesh from his mother. I should probably stop at that point because I'm sure not all of us know the exact same things about the Anabaptists as we're here tonight. Now, the Anabaptists are often seen as radical reformers or as part of the Reformation. I'm not sure that's exactly the best way to think of them because they had some very, very strange beliefs, at least the first couple of generations of Anabaptists. and they denied things like scripture alone and faith alone and all these different sorts of things. One of the things that was very well known by people in those days is that many different Anabaptists taught that Christ was not true man, or at least not true man in the same way that we are. There were some who say that Christ came through his mother without actually touching her. We're not gonna think about that too much. I'll leave that to you. There are some who say that he received a celestial human flesh like a heavenly flesh that he didn't really come as a man who was a man like us, but there was something else that was coming into the Virgin Mary at that point in time when he was conceived. And so this was seen as heresy, as something that denies a core, central, fundamental belief of the Christian church, and if the heretics are right and this comes into play, then we lose what Christianity is. And so what they're saying is we confess against the heresy of the Anabaptists, who deny that Christ assumed human flesh from his mother, that he shared the very flesh and blood of children, that he is fruits of the loins of David according to the flesh, born of the seed of David according to the flesh, fruit of the womb of the Virgin Mary, born of a woman, the seed of David, a shoot from the root of Jesse, the offspring of Judah, having descended from the Jews according to the flesh, from the seed of Abraham, for he assumed Abraham's seed and was made like his brothers except for sin. In this way, he's truly our Emmanuel, that is, God with us. And so you see what Guy de Bray did as he's writing this confession. He knows scripture, and he knows that the Anabaptists are teaching is not faithful and biblical, and he wants to just show, okay, they're saying this, this is what scripture says. And of course he adds, according to the flesh at different points in time in here as he's giving these quotations, because he wants to make it clear that he's not saying that Christ had no preexistence. That would be into another heresy. But according to his humanity, according to his flesh, according to his true humanity, his true human nature, he received his humanity from his mother Mary. He was born as a Jewish man in a particular time and place. He became incarnate, truly incarnate, and the reason he's incarnate is to be Savior. Emmanuel isn't just God with us, it's also the promise that God will always be with us. I remember where I was when I first began to understand this. Somehow or another as a young boy growing up in a Christian family and in a Christian church, I had known that Christ had become incarnate. That at one point he did not have a human nature and then he took on a human nature. Apparently I had been catechized up to that point. But there was some sort of disconnect in my mind and I was thinking, well, he'll return, and my ideas of the return were a little bit odd, I'll give you that. But he'll return and he'll do these things and he'll usher in the new creation And then I guess the human nature of Christ just goes away. He almost took it up as like a rag to clean up something and once that mess is all cleaned up, once the orange juice is all off the counter, they can throw the rag away. That's not what we see in scripture. That's not what Christ has done with his human nature. He is God with us and he will always be God with us. He will be incarnate forever. And because of the incarnation, we know we will be glorified having the same resurrected bodies that Christ has according to the flesh. He has gone ahead of us, and we are going where he is. As one of my former pastors said, Jesus is God with us so that we can be us with God. The purpose of the incarnation was to bring us back, to save a people for his name, to do what needed to be done as prophet, priest, and king, and to bring us with him. As one old church father from the first few centuries of the church said, he who gives riches becomes poor. For he assumes the poverty of my flesh that I may assume the riches of his Godhead. That he that is full empties himself. For he empties himself of his glory for a short while that I may have a share in his fullness. Now that father is not saying, that old church theologian is not saying that we become gods because Christ became man. What he's saying is Christ was humiliated, Christ in humility came to earth and took on flesh and suffered. He lived and died for us so that we may receive the wonderful blessings from God himself. That he lowered himself in this way in the incarnation and came on this earth. He suffered all these things, he did all these things for us so that we could be raised. Not just raised from the dead, but raised into actual newness of life. But that is what the incarnation ultimately leads us to. So the reason he's incarnate is to be savior, and the reason he became incarnate is to be your savior. If you're trusting in Christ this evening, if you've repented of your sins and thrown yourself on his mercy and grace, the incarnation is not just some doctrine that's out there. It's not just something that you know and you can go along with your day now that you've kind of checked that box. It affects you deeply. It is the reason that you are a person who is in covenant with your God, who's been brought into this relationship with your Father, who has had a salvation earned and given to you. Christ became flesh for you. You see, that's the logic of this part of the Belgic Confession. All sinned in Adam. All are corrupt and guilty because of him, God in eternity past chose a people out of this fallen mass of humanity for his own great name. He promised that Christ would come and Christ did come in order to save them. Let me phrase that, in order to save you. The incarnation is a part of your salvation. So believe in this savior, trust in him alone. Remember that true faith, as we would define it as reformed people, We would say as a biblical definition of true faith is to know that these things have been said, to agree that they are true, and to trust that these things are true for you. Christ became incarnate for you. The second person of the Holy Trinity took on flesh, took on a true human nature, was born of a virgin, lived a life on this fallen earth, dealing with all these different things. He suffered and died horribly, and he rose again, and even now that human nature has ascended into heaven, and sits down at the right hand of God and intercedes for you. These are the glories of the incarnation. And so look for salvation in no one and nothing else. Because Christ is a complete savior. Who has saved you completely if you are trusting in him. We think about the cross and the resurrection a lot and it's good to do so. I wonder if we think about the incarnation enough. Do we truly, often enough, consider and praise God for the fact that Christ took on flesh? Of course, church history changes, cultures change. In the early church, oftentimes, it was hard to say that Christ was man, because how could God become man? Today, it's hard to say that Christ is God in our culture around us, that he was a good man, we might say. We're called to say both, brothers and sisters. Christ is true God, Christ is true man, and because of that, Christ is our true Savior. If we lose the doctrine of Christ, we lose Christianity. We lose everything. We lose salvation, we lose the church, we lose all these things that God has done for us. We can be thankful for a Savior like this. We can be thankful we have such a Savior to confess. So let's confess Him together, let's look to Him together, let's trust Him together, and let's praise Him together, amen. Our Father in heaven, we come to you this evening, recognizing that we are not coming in our own strength, but in the strength and the power and the beauty and the glory of the name of Jesus Christ, the one who is your son, who took on flesh, who was born of a virgin, who grew and suffered and was tempted, even as we are, and yet died for us, lived for us, rose from the dead for us, ascended to us, is even now interceding and ruling for us. We ask that you, by your spirit, would convict us of the times that we seem to downplay this doctrine of the incarnation, that you would assure us that this is our Savior who has saved us, that you would enable us to live in gratitude following even the pattern that he has lived himself in obedience to you. We thank you, Lord, for all these things, and we pray them in the precious name of our Savior, amen.