It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Of course, in L.A. that doesn't mean that snow is in the forecast, but at Grace Church it does mean that the family center is decorated for fellowship group Christmas parties. And again, I want to say thanks to those who made that happen for us on Friday. It really was a wonderful time. It means that you can take your family Christmas picture in front of the snowy trees out on the patio and the poinsettias and all the nice decorations. And it means that the famed Grace Church Christmas concerts are just right around the corner. And I love the Christmas season. It is, as the famous song says, the most wonderful time of the year. And that's not just because of the decorations and the traditions and the gifts, or even the vacation and family time, which are, of course, wonderful and great blessings for which we thank God. But I love the Christmas season preeminently because of the nearly month-long reminder that it is to us about the birth of Jesus our Savior, about the incarnation of God the Son. And I love reflecting on and meditating upon the miracle of all miracles, that is the incarnation. The Lord has often used the glorious mystery of this truth to bow my heart in wonder, to evoke worship and praise for His wisdom and love and kindness and goodness. Think of it. eternal, self-existent, self-sufficient, almighty God takes on the nature of finite, temporal, dependent, mortal humanity into personal union with His divine nature, all without changing or shedding His divine nature. The unchangeable God becomes what He wasn't while never ceasing to be what He was. Sinful man had ruined ourselves by disobedience to God's law. And our transgression against infinite holiness required an infinite punishment. Eternity in hell under the wrath of omnipotent vengeance. No man could ever pay that infinite penalty. And yet no one but man could ever righteously offer an atonement on behalf of man. Only God himself could ever atone for sin. And yet only man's sacrifice would be accepted on behalf of man. No one ought to pay but man. No one can pay but God. And so to reconcile man to God, God becomes man. Jesus Christ is fully and truly man, and therefore He is able to stand in man's place, both to bear man's punishment and accomplish man's righteousness. And at the same time, He is fully and truly God, and therefore He's able to bear the infinite wrath of God against our sins without perishing as we would. It's the height of divine wisdom. It is the very heart of the gospel. It is the most glorious of all of God's works. It is the miracle of all miracles. And because of that, the incarnation is a unique fount for our worship to God in this Christmas season. And that is what we're after, worship to God, not the quaint sentimentality of eggnog and gingerbread cookies or Christmas carols sung for the sake of nostalgia and tradition, but the genuine passion of adoration of the triune God grounded upon a clear-eyed faith in and confession of the truth. Christmas is not about pacifying our emotions by giving us a false sense of comfort through what is familiar. It is about ravishing our hearts with the all-satisfying vision of the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. And friends, that doesn't just happen. I've said it before, but the heights of our worship will never exceed the depths of our theology. Doxology is grounded in theology. Our praise to God for the incarnation of Christ soars only so high as our understanding of that great mystery is rooted in the truth. And because it is a great mystery, there is often great confusion surrounding it as well. And sometimes in trying to wrap our heads around an incomprehensible truth. We let unsound theology seep into our thinking, often by trying to shrink-wrap infinite truths into bite-sized catchphrases. Perhaps the most famous error is Wesley's line from And Can It Be, emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race. The son did not empty himself of all but love. He did not empty Himself of His deity, or of His divine attributes, or of the exercise of His divine attributes, or even of His divine prerogatives. And I hope to show you why. But the great Puritan John Flavel was right when he said of the Incarnation, great is the interest of words in this doctrine of the Incarnation. He says, we walk on the brink of danger. The least tread awry may engulf us in the bogs of error. And one of the most common bogs of error is so emphasizing the condescension of the Son that you speak of the incarnation as the Son divesting Himself of some aspects of His deity for the sake of becoming truly human, as if in order to become truly human, God the Son has to become less God. I understand why that's a popular thought, but deity cannot be circumscribed by humanity. The infinite cannot be contained by the finite. And you see, already that sounds like too much for some of you. Already you're tempted to check out. Oh, I thought I was going to get a nice feel-good Christmas message, and here goes Riccardi with all the theology. But that's my point. You can have frothy sentimentality grounded in heretical catchphrases, or you can have genuine, heart-thrilling worship grounded in the truth. And while we surely can't turn these truths into artifacts for dry and academic speculation, neither can we cut our doxology off at the knees by refusing to give ourselves to properly understanding the truth of the great mystery of godliness, as Paul calls it in 1 Timothy 3. And so, to root ourselves in the truth this Christmas season, I want to spend two sermons, both today and two Sundays from now, mining out the treasures of a single verse, the verse that James Montgomery Boyce said was the great sentence for which the gospel of John was written. And that's John chapter 1 and verse 14. 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." What a wealth of truth is packed into that single sentence. Every one of those twenty-three Greek words were carefully chosen by the Apostle John, and almost every one of them is bursting with theological significance. And so we'll spend two sermons working through seven facets of the incarnation as we seek to let the light of truth pass through this multifaceted gem of this great text in the hopes of being dazzled by its brilliance, the brilliance of the incarnation of God the Son. We'll cover the first three facets this morning and hope to get to the final four next time. And I'll give them to all of you, all of them to you right up front so you have them. We're going to see, number one, the subject of the incarnation, the Word. Two, the substance of the incarnation became flesh. Three, the sweetness of the incarnation dwelt among us. Four, the splendor of the incarnation and we beheld His glory. Five, the Son of the incarnation, the only begotten from the Father. 6, the savor of the incarnation, full of grace and truth. And then for number 7, we'll reach into verse 16 and find the supply of the incarnation, for of His fullness we have all received and grace upon grace. Well, in the first place then, let us consider the subject of the incarnation, the subject. John says, and the Word became flesh. Who is this Word who became flesh? Well, look back to the opening verse of John's gospel. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And I hope the magnitude of that verse can land on you this morning and bring you to the adoration that it was designed to bring you to. There is no bottom to the riches of that sentence. In the first place, the Word is eternal. In the beginning was the Word. That is to say, the Word was. The Word was existing in the very beginning of all things. In our verse, verse 14, we learn that the Word became flesh at a point in time, but the Word never became the Word. The text doesn't say, in the beginning the Word came into being. It says, in the beginning was the Word, and everything that did come into being came into being through that One that was in the beginning. From all eternity before there was a beginning, the Word was existing. And there's no doubt that the Apostle John begins his account of the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth with the words, in the beginning, precisely in order to call the reader's attention to the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God means that God was there before the beginning. So also, in the beginning was the Word means that the Word existed even before the creation of time or the creation of anything. He is eternal. Second, this word is distinct from the Father. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was prostantheon, before the face of God, a phrase signifying intimate fellowship and relationship. Even as the phrase in chapter 1 verse 18 underscores, this word is in the bosom of the Father. Well, you don't have fellowship with or a relationship with yourself. These terms imply personal distinction. To be with someone is also to be not that someone. The Word was with God the Father. But then, third, we learn that this Word is God. The Word was with God and the Word was God, and that is designed to throw you for a loop. How can the Word be with God and therefore distinct from God if He is God? Well, only if there are several persons who are God, but only one essence that is God. John dives into the deep end here, doesn't he? He wastes no time as he starts talking about Jesus of Nazareth and the details of the gospel. In his first sentence, he introduces his readers to the mystery of the Trinity. that both the God who is with the Word and the Word Himself are God, and yet there's only one God. There are two persons subsisting in a single nature, two whos subsisting in a single what? In verse 14, we learn that this Word who is God is the begotten Son of the Father who is God. And, of course, we learn later that the Holy Spirit is also a divine person. And so the word's distinction from the Father, along with His eternality and His being identified as God, shuts us up to confess what the church has always confessed. As the Athanasian Creed puts it, that the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit is still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal." The creed goes on, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet there are not three gods, but there is one God. And that we deduce from the first verse of the gospel of John, if we had no other texts. But we have the rest of the Scriptures that throw light and illumine the doctrine of the Trinity. So, John is telling us that this Word from the Father before He ever became flesh was eternally existing as God in fellowship with the Father. He tells us the same thing Paul tells us in Philippians 2.6, that Christ Jesus was existing in the form or nature of God and in a state of equality with God. And in Colossians 2.9, all the fullness of deity dwells in the Son. Hebrews 1.3 says that He is the radiance of the Father's glory and the exact representation of His nature. This Word is the supreme revelation of God. Throughout the Old Testament when God would reveal Himself to His prophets, the text describes that by saying the Word of Yahweh came to the prophet. But then, in Hebrews 1 and 2, we're told that God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days, has spoken to us in His Son, whom John calls the Word. In fact, in John 1.18, John says no one has seen God at any time, but this Word has explained Him. Literally, this Word has exegeted Him to the world. so that Paul calls Him, Colossians 115, the image of the invisible God. The Word is the supreme revelation of God. Second, this Word is the divine Creator of all things. Psalm 33 6 says, by the Word of Yahweh, the heavens were made. And as God creates the world in Genesis 1, how does He do it? Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. God spoke the universe into existence by His Word, this Word that was in the beginning with God. John 1, 3, all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. This Word, number three, is the sustainer of all creation. Revelation, Creator, Sustainer, Hebrews 1.3, He upholds all things by the word of His power. And fourth, this word is the Savior of God's people. In Psalm 107 verses 19 and 20, it says there, they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble. He saved them out of their distresses. How? He sent His Word and healed them and delivered them from their destructions. And so the Apostle John means for you to read that opening sentence of his gospel, to hear about the eternal, divine Word from the Father. And he means for all of those glorious truths about the Word of God, revelation, creator, sustainer, Savior, to come flooding into your mind. This Word is none other than God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, the eternally glorious One, the One equal with the Father who is existing in the bosom of the Father for all eternity, delighting in the Father and in the Holy Spirit and basking in the glory which He had with Him before the world was, Jesus would say in John 17 5. John Flavel calls that a state of matchless happiness. He says, to be wrapped up in the soul and bosom of all delights, as Christ was, is a state transcending apprehension. To have the fountain of love and delight letting out itself so immediately and fully and everlastingly upon this only begotten darling of His soul, judge what a state of transcendent felicity this must be. This one, friends, the Word from the Father, this eternal Creator and Sustainer and Savior, this one is the subject of the incarnation. And that brings us to the second facet of the incarnation we'll address. Number two, the substance of the incarnation. The substance. Back to John 1.14. became flesh. And that, after all we've heard so far about the Word, after all that we can recall about the Word from our years of devotion to Bible reading and walking with Christ, that is an unthinkable sentence. The one eternally existing in the very nature and glory of God. equal with the Father, ruling creation in majesty, receiving the worship of the saints and angels in heaven, the person of God the Son, in all the riches of His divine being and divine possessions and divine relations, became flesh. Became flesh? Really? How can God become anything? God is pure being. His very nature is opposed to all becoming, which is to say nothing other than He is immutable. He does not change from one state of being to another state of being. He is not in process. He just is. I am who I am. In the beginning the Word was, and then of all things to say He became. God is a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions. How is it anything but sacrilegious, anything but blasphemy to suggest, to say that the eternal Word became flesh? Well, that, friends, is the scandal of the incarnation. Flesh is not an innocent term, and John uses it purposely to show the magnificent condescension and the great-hearted humility of Christ in this great miracle. It won't be long in John's gospel before Jesus Himself tells us, chapter 6, verse 63, that the flesh profits nothing. Paul will tell us in 2 Corinthians 117 that the Christian minister does not purpose according to the flesh. He says in Romans 8, 7 that the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God. And in Galatians 5, 16 and 21 that the flesh and the Spirit are in opposition to one another, and those who practice the deeds of the flesh won't inherit the kingdom of God. Most often when we see the term flesh in the Scriptures, it's a reference to our indwelling sin. Now, of course, John does not mean to take up that connotation here in John 114. Jesus came, Romans 8, 3, in the likeness of sinful flesh. Nothing about Christ was sinful, body or soul. But the term flesh is meant to jar you. It's meant to speak of the weakness and frailty and mortality of human nature, something that must be overcome by the renewing work of the Spirit of God. Which makes it all the more stupefying to say that the Word became flesh. God the Son did not regard the dignity of His station, His equality with God, as a thing to be grasped, Philippians 2.6, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men. And here, it's easy to become heretics without realizing it. Remember what Flavel said, great is the interest of words in this doctrine. It's easy to become well-meaning, or it's easy to be, sorry, well-meaning and yet to say something that technically, if you truly believed it, would make a false Christ out of Christ and a heretic out of you. When the text says that the Word became flesh, that cannot mean that the divine person of the Son changed Himself into a human being. It cannot mean that the divine nature transmuted into a human nature. It cannot mean that the Son exchanged His deity for humanity, or that He divested Himself of the divine nature. That would be to introduce change where there could only be immutability. He is God of very God, even as He dwells on the earth. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Again, Colossians 2.9, in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. John 8.58, Jesus Himself will say it, before Abraham was, I am. So it cannot mean that the Son diluted His divine nature by mixing humanity with it or diminished His Godhead in any way. No, the Word became flesh means that the person of the Son. who had always subsisted in the divine nature, now without ceasing to subsist in that divine nature, began subsisting in a human nature as well. The person of that human nature, the subject which acted in and through Christ's human nature, was the same person who had acted in and through the divine nature from all eternity, God the Son. Said another way, the eternal Son who always existed in the undivided divine nature assumed a full and true human nature into personal union right alongside His full and true and unchanging divine nature. I cannot stress how important it is that those truths burrow their way into your minds and eventually into your hearts. That is Christianity right there. There's almost no other way to say it than what I just said, because the least tread awry will sink us into bogs of error. We have to be scrupulous about this. This is our Savior we're talking about. There's no salvation without the real Savior. And so we need to be sure that when we say God and man, we know what we mean and know what we don't mean. Well, as the Chalcedonian Creed of 451 puts it, it's always safe to go with the old creeds, he is one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten. to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. The distinction of the natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person." Which is to say what? That the two natures in the single person don't mix into each other, and they don't separate out into two persons, but two whole, perfect, and distinct natures are concurring in the single person without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation. All that is to say is that He is God and man. He is immutable according to His deity. increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men," Luke 252, according to His humanity. He's omnipotent according to His deity, the One who makes the winds and the sea obey Him, the One who forgives sins, the One who raises the dead, the One who grants spiritual life, and yet, wearied from a day's journey, and tired enough to sleep in the midst of a storm according to his humanity. Omniscient according to his deity, the one who knew all men, who knew it was in man and didn't entrust himself to men because he knew all men, the one who read the Pharisees' minds, the one who knew Nathanael by the fig tree before he came, the one of whom Peter confessed, you know all things, John 16.30. and yet ignorant of the day and hour of His return," Mark 13, 32, according to His humanity The one who said, I and the Father are one, according to His deity, and yet confess the Father is greater than I, according to His humanity." You see, you can't take one and leave the other. You can't say He wasn't omniscient because He didn't know the time of His return. Because the same person who didn't know the hour of His return by virtue of His human nature did know the hour of His return by virtue of His divine nature. He is God and man, the human nature existing right alongside the divine nature in the ineffable personal union of God the Son incarnate. You say, wait a second, Philippians 2.7 says the Son emptied Himself. That must mean for the sake of becoming truly human, He emptied Himself of at least some of His divine attributes or His divine prerogatives or His divine something. But no, first of all, the verb kenao, He emptied Himself, does not mean to pour out. There's another Greek word for that. Kenao means to make void, or to nullify, or to make of no effect, number one. And number two, the text doesn't say that the Son emptied Himself of something, but that He emptied Himself. that He nullified Himself. He made Himself of no effect. The Son Himself is the object of this emptying, not the form of God, not His divine attributes, not His divine prerogatives. The King James Version captures Paul's meaning very well. It says, Christ made Himself of no reputation. And the NIV also gets the idea. It says, He made Himself nothing. And then the very next word in Philippians 2, 7 tells us how He made Himself nothing. Verse 7, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave and being made in the likeness of men. Christ made Himself of no effect by taking on a human nature in His incarnation. He nullified Himself, not by subtracting anything from Himself. but by taking on what he was not into union with what he always was and continued to be. So then, what was his self-emptying, if not being deprived of his deity in some way? It's just this, that though he had every right to know nothing but manifest power and authority, to radiate the very essence and glory of deity unencumbered, to receive nothing but the most exalted worship of the host of heaven, immune from poverty, immune from pain and humiliation. Nevertheless, He took on a human existence wherein He would become capable of experiencing hunger and weariness and sorrow and pain and shame and even death. You don't have to stop being God to do those things. You have to start being man to do them. One commentator said, he surrendered all the insignia of divine majesty and assumed all the frailty and vicissitudes of the human condition. And that's right. He didn't surrender the divine majesty itself, but he surrendered the insignia of divine majesty in the eyes of men. In other words, Jesus didn't come on a golden train from heaven on a red carpet with a halo hovering three feet above the ground. He was truly man. Herman Boving said the same, he starts to say, he laid aside the divine majesty and glory in which he existed before the incarnation. And then he corrects himself, or rather, he concealed it behind the form of a servant in which he went about on earth. And that concept of concealment or veiling, that becomes a key word in understanding the incarnation. John Owen put it plainly when he said, what did the Lord Christ do in this condescension with respect unto His divine nature? He veiled the glory of His divine nature in ours. He veiled the glory of His divine nature in ours. And perhaps Calvin put it best when he wrote, Christ indeed could not divest Himself of Godhead, of the divine nature, but He kept it concealed for a time that it might not be seen under the weakness of the flesh. Hence, He laid aside His glory in the view of men, not by lessening it, but by concealing it. He concealed the riches of His divine majesty of the Lord of glory behind the veil of the poverty of a slave. So, instead of thinking about the incarnation as a kenosis, as an emptying. We ought to understand it as a crypsis, a concealment, a veiling of the glory that is the external manifestation of His nature. Christ fully possessed His divine nature, attributes, and prerogatives, but for the sake of becoming truly human, He did not always fully express the glories of His majesty, which alone was an infinite condescension. He was free from all weakness and infirmity and decay and sorrow. And the eternal Son contemplated the riches of His pre-incarnate glory and humbly chose, in the language of 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, to become poor, to veil His glory by taking on a human nature and the weakness of human flesh in order that He might live and die as the slave of all. This is what it means that the Word became flesh, and as hard and as mightily as I strain to convey it accurately. There's just this great acknowledgment and blinking neon light in my mind that says, your words are not enough. Human language will fail always. What can I do but press you into these things as best as the Word reveals them to us and call you to the kind of communion with Christ that illumines them to you in lifelong study? The Word became flesh. In the third place, having considered the subject of the incarnation and the substance of the incarnation, let's consider number three, the sweetness of the incarnation, the sweetness. In the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The unfathomable sweetness of the incarnation is that the eternal, omnipresent God, whom heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain, dwells on the earth. In unspeakable mystery, the Creator enters into His creation, and the Holy One dwells with sinful man. The sweetness of the incarnation is Immanuel, is God with us. But the specific way that the Apostle John signals this to us is just astounding. The word dwelt in that verse. In the original language, it's the term skenao, and a skene in Greek is a tent. So, we have the verb form of the noun skene. Skenao literally means to pitch a tent. John tells us that this Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us. That's a curious way to speak, isn't it? Why say it that way? Well, he uses this Word because he wants his readers to recall the tabernacle. the tent of meeting, where God met with the Israelites in the Old Testament. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses the term skene, tent, to refer to the tabernacle. And more than that, skena'o is very similar to the Hebrew word for to dwell, which is the word shakan. You can hear it actually, shakan, skana'o, they actually have the same consonants, shakan, S-K-N, skana'o, S-K-N, both mean to dwell. And the Hebrew word for tabernacle is mishkan, which is just the word shakan with an M in front of it. And sometimes when Hebrew wants to denote place, it puts an M in front of words. So, if shakan is to dwell, mishkan is dwelling place. So the Apostle John is telling us that there is an inseparable connection between the incarnation of the eternal Word and the concept of God dwelling with His people in the tabernacle of Israel. And since he's undoubtedly pointing us there to help us understand the sweetness of the incarnation, let's follow his intent. Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 29. Exodus 29 is amid that section where God is instructing Israel about how to build the tabernacle, and here He's talking about what the significance is of it, that this is what the tabernacle will be to the children of Israel. Exodus 29, starting in verse 42, He speaks of the doorway of the tent of meeting before Yahweh. He says, I will meet with you to speak to you there. I will meet there with the sons of Israel and it shall be consecrated by my glory. I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. I will also consecrate Aaron and his sons to minister as priests to me. I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. They shall know that I am Yahweh their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. I am Yahweh their God." So, from this passage we learn that the tabernacle will be, number one, a place of fellowship. It is in the presence of Yahweh where I will meet with you, verse 42. It will be a place, second, of revelation. God will speak to them there. It will be a place, third, that is consecrated by His glory so that Yahweh will condescend in His glory and His presence will sanctify His people. Verse 44 says that it will be the place of priestly ministry, so it's also the place of propitiation where God's wrath against Israel's sin will be temporarily appeased by the sacrifices offered by the priests. And in verses 45 and 46, he says, the reason he brought them out of Egypt, the aim for his redemption of Israel out of slavery was so that Yahweh would dwell among his people and be their God. And then, at the end of the book of Exodus, you turn to chapter 40, when the construction of the tabernacle is complete with all of Israel watching. God takes up residence with His people as He promised He would do. Exodus 40 and verse 34, then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle. Now, Yahweh descends upon His dwelling place, upon His tabernacle. The glory descends in such a way that not even Moses, who had gone into the cloud before at Sinai in chapter 33 and 34, the one who had seen Yahweh's glory, or at least His back, so much so that His face shone among the people and He had to veil it, not even that one could enter into this tent. What an amazing scene. This is God declaring, I am with my people. I now dwell among them. And then verse 36, throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the sons of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day when it was taken up. For throughout all their journeys the cloud of Yahweh was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel." See, the cloud of God's glory residing on God's dwelling place would lead God's people wherever they would go. Almighty God, whom the heavens cannot contain, dwells with His people in glory in His tent. But the nature of tents is that they're temporary, and so eventually God takes up residence in the temple that Solomon builds. And the glory of the Lord fills the temple in 1 Kings 8, just as it does the tabernacle in Exodus 40. And all that was true of the tabernacle becomes true of the temple. I'll dwell with you, I'll speak to you there, propitiation and so on. This is the way that God fulfills the promise of Leviticus 26, 11, and 12, where He says, I will make My dwelling among you. and my soul will not reject you. I will also walk among you and be your God." Overtures of Eden, right? And you shall be my people. It's glorious. There's just one problem. Israel is a faithless people. Israel so profanes the sanctuary of God by their idolatry, by their covenant disobedience, their law-breaking, that after centuries of patient pleading, God determines to bring judgment upon them by giving them into the hands of their enemies. We don't have time to rehearse all the history, but it all comes to a climax in Ezekiel chapters 8 through 11 where the people literally bring idols into the temple of God to worship them. to commit spiritual adultery with them, as it were, right before Yahweh's face, right into that place of fellowship and revelation and consecration and atonement, into the place where His glory dwells. And we'll speak in more detail about that next time, but the result of that is that the glory of God's presence departs from His temple. He delivers Israel into exile. and the temple is burned to the ground by the Babylonians. But at the very same time, He sends His prophets to promise them that there will be a new covenant that He will make with them, and by virtue of that new covenant, He will rescue Israel from their exile, save them, and once again dwell with them. Jeremiah 31-33 says, but this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days. I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be My children. people, Leviticus 26, Exodus 25, Ezekiel 37, 23, also a new covenant prophecy. He says, they will no longer defile themselves with their idols or with their detestable things or with any of their transgressions, but I will deliver them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned and will cleanse them. And they will be my people and I will be their God." And then Ezekiel 37, 26, I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant with them and I will place them and multiply them and will set my sanctuary in their midst forever. My dwelling place, Mishkan, also will be with them and I will be their God and they will be my people." Through this new covenant God will once again set His sanctuary in the midst of His people. He will make His dwelling place, again His Mishkan, to be among them. And from the moment those promises were made, Israel anxiously hoped in their fulfillment, longing for the temple to be built again. And after seventy years, God does regather them out of exile, and He puts them in their land, and He has them rebuild the temple. But Zerubbabel's temple pales in comparison to Solomon's. Ezra 3 tells us that the old men who remember the first temple before the exile look at this new temple and they weep while everybody else is celebrating. And we have no record of God's glory filling Zerubbabel's temple the way that it had in the tabernacle in Exodus 40 or in the temple in 1 Kings 8. And after the last prophet Malachi, there were 400 years of silence from God. God did not speak to His people for four centuries. And then, after all that time and all that waiting, wondering when the Lord would return and speak and dwell among His people once again, a baby is born to a virgin in a manger, and the Apostle John comments on that birth and says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The eternal God, God the Son, the ultimate self-disclosure and perfect revelation of God, the creator of all things, tabernacled among us. In the birth of Jesus, in the incarnation of God the Son, what Christmas is all about is that Yahweh Himself is descending from heaven and pitching His tent to dwell among His people, just like He said He was going to do. Do you see it? Jesus is the fulfillment of the tabernacle and the temple. Just as the glory of God filled the temple and tabernacle, so now the fullest expression of God's glory is in Jesus. Just as everyone who sought God had to go to the tent of meeting, so now everyone who seeks God must go to Jesus. Just as the tabernacle was the place of condescension where God met man, so now Jesus is where God condescends and meets man. Just as the tabernacle was the place where God's people were consecrated for service, so now Jesus is where God's people are consecrated and sanctified. Just as the tabernacle was the place where God spoke to His people, so now in these last days God has spoken to us in His Son, Jesus. Just as the tabernacle was the place where atonement for sin was made and God's wrath was satisfied, so now Jesus is where atonement is made and where God's anger against sin is satisfied. Just as the tabernacle was the place where Israel worshiped God, so now the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth because they're going to worship Him in Jesus and in Jesus alone. You see, to meet God, to talk with God, to worship God, you no longer go to a building made with human hands. You come to Jesus. Jesus is God's dwelling place. And so behold your King, before Him lowly bend. O come, let us adore Him." I pray that this causes you to worship God for His infinite wisdom. I pray that you are moved to awe and adoration at the thought that the Word, the Eternal One, with God, God Himself, the agent of the creation of all things, the life and light of the world became flesh. and tabernacled among sinners. This, I say, is the sweetness of the incarnation. God come near, God with us. And if you're in Christ, if you have a drop of the divine life animating your souls this morning, isn't that the bottom of your joy? Isn't it the heaven of heavens for you to have God with you? Don't you sing with eager longing? And on that day, the great I Am, the faithful and the true, the Lamb who was for sinners slain, is making all things new. Behold, our God shall live with us and be our steadfast light, and we shall err His people be. All glory be to Christ." Is that not the song of your heart, believer? You know, that's nothing but a paraphrase of Revelation 21, verses 1 to 5, where we read about the new heavens and the new earth, where the one who sits on the throne says, behold, I am making all things new. And it says, and I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, and listen to this, behold, The tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them. And they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them. And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no longer any death. There will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain." Friends, that is heaven. That is paradise itself. Why? Because God Himself will be among us. He will dwell among us and we'll be His people in perfect love, in perfect joy, in perfect fellowship for eternity, ages upon ages without end. And if that is the bottom of your joy, if that is your paradise, well lay hold, dear believer, of the heaven you may enjoy now. because of Christmas, because of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, because even now He dwells in us. Ephesians 3, 17, He dwells in our hearts through faith, Paul says. Lay hold of the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Because all the fullness of deity dwells in Christ the Word, and because Christ dwells in us as his people, he has birthed a little new Jerusalem in each one of our hearts. Through the veil of his flesh, he has brought us in to the most holy place, into the very presence of God himself, and the ineffable God dwells with us. And dear sinner, you the unbeliever among us who is yet a stranger to God's grace, what more lovely a thought is there with which I could entice you to come to Christ this very morning? What greater measure of staggering blessings could you require to hear before your heart leaps out of your chest to lay hold of the riches of such a Savior? He is God Almighty. clothed in the weakness and frailty of your humanity, the nature in which you sinned, so that He could stand in your place and bear your curse and conquer the sin and death that you this moment are enslaved to. since the children share in flesh and blood. He himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives." Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of his people. And propitiation he made when he bore in himself the fullness of the divine wrath on the cross, the very wrath that your sins deserve. The wrath that will break over your head, you understand, for eternity in hell unless you turn from your sins, renounce confidence in your own goodness to take you to heaven, and put all your trust in this glorious Savior for forgiveness, for the righteousness you need to dwell with this holy God. Don't miss Christmas, dear sinner. Turn from your sins. trust in Christ and be saved and sing with the Christmas carol, O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to me, I pray. Cast out my sin and enter in. Be born in me today. Let's pray. Father, I pray that You would accomplish that great miracle in the hearts of the people who are here, those who don't know You, those who hear, some of them week in and week out of the riches of the gospel and remain hardened in their heart of stone. I pray that You would break it. I pray that the feeble words that I can put together would reflect something of the holy Word of truth that is in Your Scriptures, and that the eternal Word would come in power and grant this miracle of the new birth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he's born again. Would you grant that miracle of the new birth this morning? And would you just ravish the hearts of your people? Would you flood our consciousness with the glory of this time of year that we set aside to remember the birth of our Savior, to remember the miracle of all miracles, to press ourselves into what it means that the one subsisting in a divine nature began subsisting in a human, and all those difficult terms that we strain to accurately describe. I pray that You would make those things clear in the minds of Your people, that You would give them conviction about them, that it would be the natural language of their heart and mind to speak biblically and accurately about the God-man, so that rooted in such a safe foundation, we could grow up into the worshipers that we must be as those who've received grace like this. Oh, would you captivate the minds of your people of Grace Church this Christmas season and set us on to new avenues of communion with Christ the God-man, our Savior. For His sake that He would be lifted up, that His glory would be exalted, that His grace would be put on display and savored. And Father, we thank You for Your love that delivers such a glorious one over to the ignominy of death. for sinners like us. I wouldn't have parted with Christ, but You did. You sent Him. I wouldn't have come if You told me, but He did. Lord Jesus, You did. And I pray that You would bow our hearts in wonder and then conform us to the image of Christ have this attitude in yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn't regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of the slave, being made in the likeness of man. If He can go from that to this, teach us to be humble and the servant of all, unto the glory of Christ our Savior, in His name. Amen. For more information about the ministry of the Grace Life Pulpit, visit at www.thegracelifepulpit.com. Copyright by The Grace Life Pulpit. 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