SERMON BRIEF
Date Written: August 9, 2010
Date Preached: August 15, 2010
Church: OPBC (AM)
FOUNDATIONAL ELEMENTS
Series: Recognizing and Responding to the Living Word
Title: The God Who Came to Us
Text: John 1:1-14 [Read passage here… put on screen when I start!]
ETS: John wanted his readers to fully understand that Jesus was God in the flesh.
ESS: John message to us today is the same, we can come to know God through coming to know this person Jesus Christ…God with us!
INTRODUCTION:
There was once a young boy who was very excited. His mother was going to have a baby and his parents had carefully told him how God was sending them a little brother or sister for them to love and care for.
Finally, the great day arrived. His parents brought home his new little sister to live with them. They took her to her room and put her in her bed. The little brother stayed behind when the parents left the room and whispered to his newborn little sister, “Quick, little sister, tell me, before you forget, what does God look like?”
Who among us can answer that question? “What does God look like?” So many of us have a picture in our minds about what God is like, but the NT, specifically the Gospel of John reveals to the reader what God is really like… That is one of the main reasons for Jesus coming to earth… He revealed truly what the Father looked like!
In fact Jesus said “He who has seen Me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9) So I want us to see look into Scripture and catch a glimpse of God thru the person of Jesus Christ!
There was once a pastor, who after a lifetime of preaching and teaching the Bible said that the 5 most important words in the Bible are “…and the Word became flesh…”
Without Jesus being willing to take on the cloak of flesh and human form, there would be no Sermon on the Mount, no atoning death on the Cross, no victory in the resurrection…no without God being willing to wrap Himself in flesh we would have no way to intimately know God…we would be forever doomed to be separated from Him.
This morning, we are going to take a look at the incarnation… God wrapping Himself in flesh and coming to earth in human form… we are going to look at what it means, what was its purpose and what is its relationship to the church today!
First let’s look at the meaning of the incarnation – v.14:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The word incarnation is the word that we use to communicate the truth about how God chose to become human! He wrapped flesh around His heavenly being and came to dwell among His creation! He did this thru the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
In the dictionary the word incarnation means the ‘infleshment’ of something or someone. God took on human flesh and revealed Himself to this world in the person of Jesus Christ. We can find Paul writing about this very subject in Phil 2:6-11. [put verses on screen now…read verses from screen]
In viewing this one passage we can see that it is pointing us to the greatest mystery of the Christian faith and that was that Jesus Christ who was fully God, yet He was fully human as well. A principal that is hard to understand but one we must come to grips with…
John Calvin, a preacher in the early 1600’s in Geneva, Switzerland said that if Jesus was not fully God…He could not have saved us. And Calvin went on to say that if Jesus was not fully human…He could NOT have reached us.
The incarnate God has come to us in the flesh, not just in spirit…as many have claimed! If Jesus was but a Spirit or an apparition, how could John write in 1 John 1:1
“…the One we have seen and heard, we saw Him with our own eyes and we touched Him with our own hands…”
And John goes on in v. 3 of that same chapter, “…we are telling you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard [and touched]…”
Matthew and Luke tell us that God became flesh thru the willing obedience of the Virgin Mary. They tell us of Mary’s faith, of Joseph’s fears, of the angel’s songs, and of the shepherds’ worship.
Throughout the Christmas story, there is a great & powerful truth that rings out and that in John’s Gospel it is trumpeted loudly that “…in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!”
I am here to tell you that the truth is this…Jesus’ birth is not simply a baby boy snuggled to his mother’s breast in view here…this babe in the manger WAS the Lord God incarnate who calls us to believe and follow Him! This babe will be the conquering hero of the last days when Satan is defeated and sin and death are destroyed! This babe will be the One who comes to gather His followers to usher them into a Heavenly eternity with the Creator God of the universe! This babe is the One who will judge us on the great day of the Lord!
John says it so wonderfully in John 3:18 [NLT], “…There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only Son…”
So what does the incarnation mean? It means that God has come to His creation by making Himself one of us… clothing Himself in flesh to dwell among us and give us the example of Jesus Christ that we have today.
He came in the flesh to die a fleshly death! That death would be the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world… He chose to come in the flesh so that after His death, He could rise from the dead to bring us eternal life with God the Father!
Without the incarnation… without God’s willingness to clothe Himself in the flesh of humanity, NONE of this would be possible! So, now that we have explored the meaning of the incarnation, I want us to look at the purpose of the incarnation.
Let’s look at the purpose of the incarnation – v.4-5:
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.
The reason for the incarnation is really very simple. It was to bring LIFE to a spiritually lifeless world! All of God’s creation has fallen into sin… because of Adam we are ALL born with a sinful nature and a selfish heart that seeks only our desires! Jesus came to bring life to the lifeless… to bring hope to the hopeless… to bring light into a darkened and sinful world! Let’s look at v.4 “…In Him was life and the life was the light of men…”
We can see this again reflected clearly later in chapter 10 where Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly…”
The writer of this Gospel also shares with us the purpose of the incarnation when he writes in John 20:31 [ESV] that he has written these things so that “…you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name…”
God’s purpose for the incarnation was to bring eternal life to us through the life of His Son… Jesus Christ, who IS the light of the world! Thru Jesus the light of life shines into every dark corner of our hearts… it shines into the nooks and crannies of our lonliness, brokenness, and emptiness. It shines to bring sin into the light and to expose our sin so that we can and will repent of that sin and follow God!
When we look at the eternal life that Jesus has promised us we can see that it comes in 2 dimensions. Eternal life comes in both length and depth. In Jesus we are saved and will have eternal life FOREVER with Him in glory. That is the length of our eternal life…FOREVER!
However, eternal life with God is also in the present moment, it is abundant, it is meaningful, it is a life filled with courage and joy…that is what I would call the ‘depth’ of our eternal life in Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the incarnate God, has come with a purpose of delivering all who are in darkness into the light of His love! And God does not deliver us from darkness to merely exist and survive…God delivers us from darkness to have a rich and full life in Him!
We have looked at the meaning of the incarnation and the purpose of the incarnation…now I want us to look at the incarnation and its relationship with the church.
The task or duty of the church is previewed in the incarnation! Let me explain what I mean here…God sent His Son into the world to minister and redeem, this is the mission of the church as well. Jesus said this in John 20:21[ESV] when He said,
“Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you…”
Jesus did not shy away from or remain distant from our need! Jesus came into the desperate situation that was this world and began to minister to needs, bring them to a saving knowledge of God.
Whenever missionaries go on behalf of a church or a denomination to preach the gospel and minister to human and spiritual needs, they are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who came to minister to our needs and redeem us to God.
Every time a church goes out to care for those who are in need physically or spiritually, we go as a continuation of the ministry of Jesus. He is the God who traveled from the security of Heaven’s glory to the risk and threat of human existence in order to minister to us and redeem us!
When the church shares the good news that God loves them and they do not have to face eternity without God, the message comes straight from God himself.
When we share with people that we no longer have to fear death, but we shall live forever, that message comes straight from the open tomb where the incarnate God Himself conquered death, so that we might live!
Every time a church bows in worship of God, it knows and realizes that God has come to earth, God refused to remain distant, and that God wanted to and did make His presence known here on this world.
Knowing this we praise Him for being so close to us and loving us so much! It is Jesus who taught us to call God “Father” and know of His love for His children. Because of the incarnation the church has a purpose and a plan and that is to carry on the mission that is specific to the ministry of Jesus.
We cannot remain distant from this world…we have to ‘go ye therefore…’ and preach and teach the gospel, so that disciples are brought into the kingdom by the hearing of the Gospel!
The incarnation was the pattern for the church to follow. God came and dwelt in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and now He has come and dwells within each and every one of us here this morning who has accepted Him as Lord and Savior! God came in the form of Jesus and because of what God has done we can never be the same again.
He invites you and me to believe in Him and to move out of the darkness into the light. To move from death into life, to go from wandering aimlessly to having a purposeful walk in Christ!
The journey can and may be long, but it begins with one simple decision…you must believe and then you can live. Believe on the God who has come to live with us and now IN us!
Believe and He will give you eternal life…in both length and depth, both quantity and quality! Won’t you come as Ms. Louise comes and begins to play our hymn of invitation!
What does this mean for me? The incarnation of Christ is a picture of what salvation is for the believer! Just as Christ was cloaked in flesh and guided by the Father and submissive to the will of the Father…
Believers are also a picture of that incarnation… this means that when we are saved by the gracious mercy of God… we are then indwelled with His Holy Spirit! This means that we are then cloaked in the righteousness of Christ and guided by the Father and submissive to His will…
The incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ was God’s plan from the beginning and it is the perfect plan of God and it is the ONLY way we can come to know God on an intimate and eternal basis! Without the incarnation… we would be hopeless! But praise be to God the Father for His wisdom, grace, and mercy in that He chose to reach out to His creation thru the person of Jesus!
Praise be to God for the life of Christ… praise be to God for what Jesus did on the Cross of Calvary for MY sin, for YOUR sin, for the SIN of the world! Praise be to God that He raised Jesus from the dead on the 3rd day to conquer sin, death and Satan!
This morning I call on you to listen to the word of God… to surrender to His today! He has reached out to you in the person of Jesus… He has done what it takes to forgive your sin in the act of Jesus on the Cross… He has done what it takes to provide you with victory over Satan, sin and death, and give you eternal life in the resurrection of Jesus from the grave! He has done it ALL… and today He is calling you to surrender to Him! Step out today and come as Bro Steven comes to lead us in our hymn of invitation…
