Advent 2019 (Part 4)
Text: Isaiah 9:2-7, Galatians 4:4-7
This is our 4th and final Advent sermon of 2019… and let me just remind you that Advent season is not just about the first coming of Christ. It’s about His 2nd Coming as well… and I closed us out last week by saying that; and by reminding you all that just as sure as God kept His promises to Send the Savior for the 1st Advent, He’s going to keep His promise and send Jesus again for the 2nd Advent. And I said to you all, that we have to ask ourselves a question: Did Christmas happen, or didn’t it? Did God become a man? Did Jesus – God the Son – the Second Person of the Trinity, come as a flesh and blood human being? Was He born of a virgin? You see; there’s a lot of folks and religions out there that like to say that man became a god… but that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that God became a man. So if that happened – IT MATTERS!
You don’t get to take a few days off from work, and buy presents, and have family and friends over to celebrate the fact that it’s cold outside. And it’s not a holiday to celebrate a calorically challenged “jolly old elf”, even though that has been incorporated by some people into the holiday. Christmas is about Jesus – it’s about His birth some 2000 years ago.
So let’s take our Bibles and open them up to Isaiah 9 once more (READ text)… now if you’ll turn with me over to the Book of Galatians and let’s look at Galatians 4:4-7 (READ).
Now I just said to you all, that if Christmas DID happen, THEN IT MATTERS! And I want to zero in on WHY it matters. But before I get into that, let me ask you a question… Do you have a favorite Christmas show you like to watch every year? I actually got to watch my 3 favorite Christmas shows this holiday season. Christmas Vacation… a Christmas Story… and Die Hard. And I can watch those shows, and I’m good for an entire year. Now MJ is a different story. She has a gift. She can watch a movie on Monday night, and on Tuesday, watch the exact same movie again, and still enjoy it just as much. I think she watched Christmas with the Kranks 2 or 3 times in the last week. Now I can’t do that. I’ve seen it already. I’m good for at least a little while, and depending on the movie, I might be good for a year or two before having any kind of desire to watch it again. Of course there are some exceptions. I can watch and re-watch Raiders of the Lost Ark multiple times… but for the most part, once I’ve seen it, I’m good for a good long while. And if I do sit down and watch it again… it’s so familiar to me, I’m just kind of bored with it. Now the reason I bring this up is because sometimes, when we become so familiar with something, we can sort of lose interest in it. We feel like, we’ve seen it before, we know it, there’s nothing new or exciting about it… and I wonder how many of us can get to feeling the same way about Advent and story of Christ’s birth? Because the truth is, in todays’ world, Christmas seems to have become more of a family holiday than a religious holiday. Sure; Jesus is mentioned, and you might have a nativity up… but it’s really just more about family getting together, and presents… and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we can’t lose focus of Christ. And that’s why I wanted us to see what the Apostle Paul had to say about the incarnation in Galatians 4. When Isaiah prophesied about the birth of Jesus, he was pointing to Christ’s coming… but Paul was writing after the event. Paul was writing from our perspective, in that Christ had already come, and he’s telling us what that means, and why it matters.
And here’s what Paul says… the birth of Jesus matters because God the Son has entered into our world, in human flesh. Look again at Galatians 4:4 – “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…”. Now; birth is a normal thing. It’s how human beings enter this world. It’s where we all started. To be human is to be born. But that’s what makes this so amazing. Because in the incarnation we see God the Son… the Second Person of the Trinity, become a baby, and be born into this world.
Jesus didn’t just manifest in physical form in this world. He didn’t just suddenly appear fully grown. He was born, just like you and I were. He is going to fully experience humanity, from birth, to growth, to adulthood, all the way to death. So just think about that for a second.
As a baby – Jesus was fully dependent upon His earthly mother and father; - Mary and Joseph. He relied upon them to feed Him, and change Him, and teach Him, and protect Him. He had to grow, just like you and I… He was hungry, He grew tired, and experienced the different trials and tests of life. So what that means is that Jesus knows exactly what it is to be human. He knows what it’s like to live in a broken world, surrounded by darkness.
Now Paul goes on in verse 4 and says that Jesus was “born under the Law.” And Paul’s talking about what we call the Mosaic Law. The Law that God gave to Moses during the Exodus. And that’s important, because the Law reflects the holiness and character of God. It was helpful and good in that is showed the people what God was like, and what God required for people to walk in fellowship with Him. But the problem with that, was that since the Law came from God, who is perfect in every way… perfectly righteous, perfectly holy, perfectly moral and good… that His Law set such high standards, that NO HUMAN BEING could ever live it out. NO HUMAN BEING could ever meet those standards of perfection. And so to live under that Law meant that you were continually seeing how far you fell short, and you were continually – year after year, having to offer up sacrifices for your sin, and your failure to meet God’s standards of righteousness and holiness, and goodness. So this is what Jesus is born into – this impossibly perfect standard.
Now Paul tells us the reason for that in verse 5… it’s so that Jesus can… “redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Now that word “redeem” means to buy back. When I was a kid we used to pick up aluminum cans because we could take them in and the recycling company would redeem the cans… in other words, they would buy them back from us. And the Bible tells us that if you are a Christian, you were bought with a price… that you are not your own. So Jesus came under the Law, in order to redeem us, or buy us back. Romans 6:20 tells us that all of humanity – all of mankind; are slaves to sin. Sin is our master. It owns us. You’ll sometimes hear people say dumb things like, “Oh man… I sold my soul to the devil.” Nope… it belonged to the devil the minute you were born. Our soul is never ours to sell. But Paul is saying that the reason that Jesus was born… born of a woman… and born under the Law, was so that He could buy you away from the devil, buy you away from sin.
And here’s how that works…
Jesus is born, just like you and me. He comes into this world, under the Law… this perfect standard of righteousness and holiness from God… and Jesus experiences all the effects of sin in this world. He sees the storms and natural disasters. He sees the suffering and injustice in the world. He sees the effects that sin has on people, and it breaks His heart. So He’s in this same world that we’re in – and this world is full of sin and darkness. And not only that, He also gets tempted just like you and I do. Right at the beginning of His adult ministry, Matthew 4:1 tells us that Jesus was led out by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil… Luke 4:2 actually tells us that this particular instance of temptation went on for 40 days… And Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who in every respect has been tempted as we are… yet without sin.” So Jesus gets tempted in His humanity… But the difference is – JESUS NEVER SINS! Instead; Jesus comes as a man, and does as a man, what we could never do. He fulfills the Law… He perfectly obeys it, and meet’s God’s perfect standards. And Jesus does that for our sake, and on our behalf… because later on what’s going to happen is that He is going to go to the cross.
So get the big picture here. Jesus meet’s God’s standards of perfect holiness, but none of us ever have, or ever could… So all of us stand guilty before God and we have to face that punishment for our guilt. Jesus isn’t guilty – He’s without sin, and perfectly righteous before God… but He goes to the cross because He is going to take the punishment for our sin. He’s going to pay for them… and in doing that, He takes the wrath of God in our place. He endures the punishment for our sin. And so when we come to Him, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone… we receive that forgiveness for our sin, because Jesus has already paid for it, IN FULL…
So that takes care of our sin, but there’s still the matter of us not being righteous or holy in ourselves… So what God does then is He takes all of Christ’s righteousness, and holiness, and His perfect obedience to the Law and He places that in our account, and He says, “All of Jesus’ righteousness is now yours. All of His obedience and holiness is now yours. You have become God’s own righteousness if you are in Christ.” And because we are now righteous and holy and perfect in Christ; look what God does – He adopts us into His own family.
Look at Galatians 4:6-7 (READ).
This is what Christmas is about – God’s plan of redemption. God’s plan to buy us back. It’s about Jesus, coming and doing what we could never do, and then paying for our sin in our place, and buying us – or redeeming us – back to Himself. It’s about Jesus doing everything that needs to be done, to not only take people who were slaves to sin, and slaves to unrighteousness, and buying them away from sin and Satan… but also doing everything that needed to be done in order to make them stand before God the Father as if they had never sinned. As if they were the ones who had perfectly obeyed His Law.
It’s about God the Son, coming as a man, in order to be tempted as a man, so that He could overcome sin and temptation as a man, and obey God’s Law perfectly as a man, and then dying as a man, in order to redeem, forgive, justify, and save man.
IT should shock us! It should cause us to fall down and worship. It should amaze us, and fill us with wonder and awe. It should mess with us, and humble us, and overwhelm us.
Amazing love – how can it be? That you my King should die for me? Not just my King, but the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The God who created the heavens and the earth, and who sustains all things, and holds all things together… that the One who is the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace… that He would come and die for you and me. That He would come and be tempted at all points just as we are. That He would come into the darkness… and then take upon Himself my darkness and then die for it.
I told you all a few weeks ago that Christmas was like God turning the light switch on in a dark room… but for Jesus… as those nails were being driven into His hands and He was being lifted up on the cross… that’s when Jesus was saying Merry Christmas to you and me. The gift that He gave to us wasn’t wrapped up in paper and put under a tree, it was covered in blood and hung on one. Instead of a ribbon, there were nails… instead of a bow, there was a crown of thorns.
That’s what we celebrated a few days ago – THE GREATEST GIFT EVER GIVEN!
And because of all that, Paul says that we are now, no longer slaves… but sons. We are children of God. A one-year subscription to the “Jelly of the Month Club” might be the gift that gives all year round… but to be a child of God – that’s indescribable. It’s incomparable. To be in Christ means that I am forgiven. It means that I can stand before God justified, and righteous, and holy, because I am the righteousness of God Himself, because I am in Christ. It means that I have eternal life, and that I am an heir to all the promises of God. It means when the Lord Jesus comes again, I will meet Him in the air, and I will be with Him forever and ever. And it means that I am no longer in darkness, stumbling around, thinking wrongly, hiding from God, living in slavery to sin and shame. I’ve been set free! The light of Christ shines all around me. It shines upon me… it shines in me… and it should be shining through me.
What about you?
CLOSING
