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East Ridge SDA Church

Incarnation

Steven Grabiner

Incarnation: The Reality

We've been looking at different aspects of the incarnation.

Because when we come to Bethlehem, really Bethlehem is an inexhaustible theme.

In other words, we can keep coming back there and keep gaining lessons and keep learning.

So a couple of weeks ago we looked at incarnation, the risk.

That was the risk that the God had took in the incarnation.

And last Sabbath we looked at incarnation, the revealing, what it shows us about God.

And of course it shows us that God's willing to go to any lengths for us because he loves us and reveals who God is.

And we talked last Sabbath also about how often people have different concepts.

You say the word God and it will mean different things to different people.

But the clearest picture of God is in the incarnation.

That needs to be our kind of our touchstone or our benchmark for understanding who God is.

This morning I'd like to study with you the incarnation, the reality, and kind of consider what it was like for Christ to become man.

And I want to say in the very beginning that this is deep water, what I mean by that.

During Sabbath school we were talking about a passage in Job and Ben brought out a good point that the passage really didn't say certain details that we tried to read into it.

It's the same thing with the incarnation.

There's a lot in the incarnation that's not explicit in scripture.

But the incarnation has brought about controversy from the very beginning.

Almost, well, from the very beginning, from the writings of the Gospels, the writings of the New Testament, there were questions about what this meant.

And of course you can understand this naturally.

You know, to try to visualize it, the disciples saw Jesus simply up until the crucifixion.

There were some nights he prayed all night, but most nights, what did he do?

And then when he got up and somebody made breakfast, what did he do?

And, you know, the sun was out, he would perspire.

And so the disciples, they look and All they see is this human form.

And so to begin to think that this man who they've been walking with for these 3 and a half years was something more than just a man, It didn't come that quickly or easily.

So let's turn to the Gospel, excuse me, to the first letter of John.

John chapter 1, we're going to come back to Philippians momentarily.

But in first John, chapter 1 in verse 4, start in verse 1, it says, beloved do not believe every spirit, pardon me, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

And so John's writing before the end of the first century, and he's telling us that even in his day, there are false prophets.

There were people that were perverting the gospel of Christ, even within the first century, few decades after the death of Jesus.

Then in verse 2, he tells us, by this, you know the spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has what?

And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus, excuse me, that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now already is in the world.

So even in John's day, there's this spirit of Antichrist, someone wanting to replace Christ, And part of that teaching is that Christ really didn't come in the flesh, the incarnation.

So the incarnation is a controversial topic.

It's been controversial since it took place.

It's controversial today in different aspects.

And the reason is, the incarnation is the mystery of all mysteries.

And so if we find ourselves in a conversation with someone, we're here this morning, and we're on opposite sides of a controversy, our attitude, our posture should be 1 of humility, rather than 1 of arrogance.

It's like the incarnation is the mystery of all mysteries, but it's vital for us to understand as far as we can as well.

So what did it mean for Christ to walk into humanity?

Well, let's turn back to Philippians chapter 2, which is our scripture reading this morning.

And I'm going to kind of go through this bit by bit a little bit here.

Philippians chapter 2, read it again or read the context for us and then asks a couple questions.

First thing I want you to notice is in this passage this is really what we could call an ethical passage of scripture.

Paul's writing what he does so that it'll change your life.

Paul's writing what he is so that it will change your life.

Philippians 2 verse 5, let this mind, let this attitude, which was in Christ Jesus, where should that attitude be?

So this is a very practical portion of scripture.

It's telling us, you and me, how we should live.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

And if we read the context, we read back up to verses 1 through 4, the problem in the church of Philippi is that There was a bit of strife taking place in the church.

There was a bit of jostling for position.

There was a bit of striving for supremacy in the church.

And so Paul points to the incarnation as a practical way of changing our lives.

Verse 6, verse 5, we'll have this attitude in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

Verse 6, who although he existed in the form of God or the King James says who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking upon him the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and of things on earth, and of things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And then he repeats in verses 12 and 13 this practical aspect, work out the salvation that God is working in you.

So again, first thing we want to see is that this is a very practical concept.

So let's look at the passage a little bit more and see what it teaches us about the incarnation and some of the questions that it might raise.

First of all, verse 6, let's go back to verse 6.

Again, the King James says, who being in the form of God, the New American Standard from which I read says, who, although he existed in the form of God, a better translation would be this, who because he is in the form of God, there's a causal aspect here.

In other words, Christ is in the form of God and therefore what did he do?

Who being in the form of God, what's the rest of the verse say?

Thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

It starts here, he is in the form of God, but where does he end?

The form of a servant, being found in likeness of a man, ultimately emptying himself, humbling himself and dying on the cross.

But it's because he is in the form of God that he lets go of the outward form of God and takes the form of a man.

So the first thing we want to see here is that, again, it's part of God to give.

Being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God.

This translation, the New American Standard says that he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

The word here where we're translating, where it's translated in the King James, Thought it not robbery to be equal God, that word robbery is only used 1 time in the whole New Testament and it's used right here.

And it simply means a snatching or a grabbing.

It could mean robbery, but It means this kind of grasping.

Incarnation: The Revealing

It's our privilege this morning to once again turn to the Word of God.

For those of you that were here last week, you remember that we started a series on the Incarnation.

Last week we looked at Incarnation, the Risk, and this morning I want to look at Incarnation, the Revealing.

I'd like to start by reading a tweet that a friend of mine wrote yesterday.

And he said this, God became a babe in arms because he wanted to be held by us, so we would be willing to be held by him." Ingenious relational move.

It's a really important point that God was willing to become a babe to be held by a person, to be held by us, metaphorically, in order that we might be willing to be held by Him.

And again, the incarnation is, or Bethlehem is really an inexhaustible theme.

And this morning as we talk about the incarnation, the revealing, part of my thought here is that it's very easy for us to misunderstand each other.

You're talking to somebody and you say something and you're saying it's so clear.

I was just like, she's like so into that.

So I was really thinking of Matt and Giselle.

You know, we think we're communicating so clearly and just tension sometimes builds because you're miscommunicating.

And so I want to give an illustration of that.

It has to do with Bernard Levin, who was a British journalist for many years, very well known.

When he was a child, he was at a private school.

1 day there was a celebrity that came to the school to visit.

And there was a whole congregation and Levin was very precocious as a child, very bright.

And so the headmaster called him up front to meet the celebrity.

And the celebrity, wanting to be nice, asked the question, what did you have for breakfast?

At which point the celebrity looked like you do.

And so the celebrity asked again, what did you have for breakfast?

And you could tell that there was palpable tension in the room and he was getting very nervous at this point in time.

And so again, the headmaster was like, what did you have for breakfast?

And then finally the headmaster simply said, why don't you go sit down?

Except for my mother, who is in the back.

And so matzo brie is a very typical Jewish dish where you take matzo and egg and you mix it and bake it together and put cinnamon in it.

And for him it was totally plain what he was saying.

Because the person listening didn't know the word, didn't have any comprehension about what that was.

I know that you wanna find the recipe, but do it after church.

But it's just an illustration of how something very simple can communicate something very different.

And so there's another word that I'd like to talk about this morning with you that you might have a mental picture of but somebody else may have a very different picture of and that's the word God.

If we were to communicate about God or talk to people about God, our understandings, our perceptions of what that word means can be very different.

And individuals, as we begin to talk to them about God, about faith, about who God is or what God has done.

If we have a misunderstanding or if we have a perception of what God is, and we're trying to communicate something very different, there can be a breakdown in communication.

So just a couple of weeks ago on the December 15th, this Dr.

Hawkins, Larisa Hawkins, who teaches at Wheaton University, Wheaton College in the Midwest, she decided that she was going to wear a hijab to show solidarity with Muslims.

But she made a statement on her Facebook page.

She said that Muslims, like me, a Christian, she's the Christian, are people of the book.

As Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.

So she put this on her Facebook post, her page, and she has been suspended from her University of Wheaton, Wheaton College.

Now, let's leave that aside just for a moment, or for today at least, but ask the question about our concepts of God.

Certainly there is a huge theological difference between the God of the New Testament, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Muslim God.

But of course, the Pope said that we worship the same God.

The real question is what is, who is the God that we worship?

Do we even here this morning worship the same God?

Or are our perceptions of God so vastly different that even though we're here worshipping together and we think we're worshipping the same God, maybe our concepts of God are very different.

At another time, we'll explore the issue with the Muslims.

But let me move on to another quotation here.

And he said, I don't understand the idea of a God who says, you have to acknowledge me.

You have to say that I'm the best and then I'll give you eternal happiness.

That God is some kind of a cosmic egotist.

I can't see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.

Is that all God wants is for you to acknowledge Him as if God's ego is on the line.

Now if we're talking to somebody and we're trying to communicate with somebody and we're talking about God, whether it's a Muslim concept or any kind of concept, whatever concept of God, somebody that doesn't believe in God, it would be really important to be talking about the same thing, don't you think?

To be talking about or at least clarifying what we mean when we say we believe in God.

And that is really the purpose of the incarnation.

So that all the confusion about God that has come through our human situation and misunderstandings and wrong philosophies and different perspectives, all that confusion can be exposed or blown away when we look at the incarnation.

Because the incarnation is trying to tell us who God is and what God is like.

So if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to John chapter 1 where we read earlier, John chapter 1 in verses 1 through 3.

So John writes, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

It might be perplexing to us, we're going to come back and look at it in a little bit more detail.

Verse 2, He was in the beginning with God, verse 3.

All things came into being through him and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being.

John opens his gospel with a prologue of 18 verses.

John 1 verse 1 to verse 18 is the introduction to the entire gospel of John.

And it's different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke, very different, completely.

John starts from a very different perspective.

But he starts, he takes us back in time to a place that John calls the beginning.

He describes this mysterious, at this point in time at least, word.

And then he tells us that this word has brought everything into existence.

Incarnation: The Reunion

My title this morning is Incarnation, the Reunion.

And most of you know that for my work, I travel occasionally.

And there are times when you go to some place, and someone's supposed to pick you up at the air, you come to a different country, and you go to the airport, and someone's supposed to pick you up and then they're not there.

It happened on my recent trip to Cuba, it's happened different times.

And so my rule is walk out of, where you have to get your luggage, walk out and stop and just stay there.

And so sometimes, you know, it's 05:10 minutes, whatever it is.

Sometimes it's longer, and so then I sit on my luggage or I find a place to sit, and in those odd occasions where an hour or 2 or 3 has passed where I've been waiting for somebody, I start watching.

And of course at that juncture, it's a great place to watch people because there's people streaming out, either coming back home or coming on vacation.

And then there are those people meeting them.

And sometimes there's balloons and sometimes there's flowers and sometimes there's really, you know, excited extrovert signs and occasionally singing, happiness, occasionally tears, but watching reunions is an interesting event at an airport, because people are really happy to be reunited.

And do we have the same kind of anticipation and hunger for being reunited with our Creator as He has for being reunited with us.

All heaven is kind of standing outside the luggage counter waiting for us to arrive.

And when that happens, it's going to be an amazing reunion.

Over the past couple of weeks, again, as I said, we've looked at the Incarnation, and we started by looking at the risk, how real the risk was, that all heaven was imperiled in the Incarnation.

That although from our point of view it looks like how could this have failed from a heavenly perspective There was a real risk.

It was not a given that Jesus would succeed in the incarnation and of course what that means for us.

We will be studying throughout eternity Then the week after that we looked at the idea of the incarnation and how it reveals God to us.

Great heart of the incarnation is showing us God's great desire which is to be with us throughout eternity.

And then last week we looked at the reality of the incarnation and what that means for Jesus in his humanity in terms of temptations.

And that he was tempted, that he did in reality unite our offending nature with his sinless nature.

We looked at these different aspects and again this morning, I want to look at the reunion.

So If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Hebrews 10, and verse 19, Hebrews 10, starting in verse 19.

And I'm gonna be reading from the New American Standard.

For those of you that have the King James, it'll read slightly differently, but again, in verse 19, therefore brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, I believe the King James says, having confidence, and then skipping down a little bit into verse 21, and since We have a great high priest, or again the King James, and we have our high priest, or having a great high priest, over the house of God.

So in verse 19, there's a statement, because we have this, or since we have this, or having this.

Well, what is it that we have, back in verse 19?

Confidence, or boldness, assurance to do something, to enter into the holy place, to enter into God's presence by the blood of Jesus.

Just as the song was sung earlier, you know, being washed as white as snow.

But we should really, in our Christian experience, have confidence.

Having confidence because of the blood of Jesus, we can enter into the presence of God.

Then skipping verse 20 for a moment, then into verse 21.

And since we have something else here, and what's that?

We have someone that's living and interceding for us.

Many months ago we talked about 2 truths that Satan hates more than any others.

And those 2 truths that come out in scripture are an Atoning sacrifice and an all-powerful mediator.

And Satan knows that everything depends on taking your attention and mine away from those 2 truths.

We have the blood of Jesus, the atoning sacrifice, and we have an all-powerful mediator.

Since we have an atoning sacrifice, since your sins have been washed away through the blood of Christ, have boldness, have assurance, have confidence to come into the presence of God.

Of course, there is a natural timidity because we see ourselves, but where are we looking?

Having confidence because of the blood of Jesus.

And also because we have this great high priest over the house of God.

And this theme runs all the way through the book of Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 16.

You know, we're told to draw near to the throne of grace.

Hebrews 7.25, we have a high priest who's able to save completely those who draw near unto God.

Hebrews 10 in verse 1, it tells us that the blood of sacrifices aren't going to change those who draw near, but the blood of Christ will change those who draw near.

We have the blood of Jesus Christ and we have an all-powerful mediator.

That really should be our decision for this year, amen?

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Incarnation

Incarnation: The Regeneration

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