HoHum:
Oak Ridge Boys sang a song written by Kyle David Matthew called Inconvenient Christmas some years back: Among the bills that I'd received was a postcard marked “Apologies, The Christmas gifts you ordered aren't in stock” So I packed up the kids for Grandpa's house Then a blizzard blew in and the car broke down So, we shared a quart of eggnog at a truck stop And I said, "Kids, this is unfortunate You think it's bad? Well it's inconvenient” But the most inconvenient Christmas ever was, Was the first one, when God came so far to give himself to us
So when the stress hits each December How it helps me to remember , God is with us most when things just can't get worse The most inconvenient Christmas ever was, was the first
WBTU:
When we talk about being inconvenienced, the one most inconvenienced, is the Son of God. Lord willing we will look at the details from the Christmas story over the next few weeks and see many that were inconvenienced, but by far the Son of God is more than inconvenienced, he is incarnated. What is the incarnation? The Zondervan Bible Dictionary says, “The doctrine of the incarnation teaches that the eternal Son of God became human, and that He did so without in any manner or degree diminishing His divine nature.” We could talk about John 1:14 that says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us..” I believe a fuller treatment comes from Hebrews 2 and I am especially thinking of vs. 17 where it says, “He had to be made like his brothers in every way (in every aspect).”
Thesis: Use this as a starting point to highlight 3 stages of our Savior’s life and ministry
For instances:
I. The Incarnation
God’s Son had to become a man in order to rescue mankind. Vs. 14- Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity… God’s Son partook of “flesh and blood.” Many of us are familiar with the phrase “born to die”- meaning that God’s Son was born into this world as a man so that He could die as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20), placed in the womb of the virgin Mary, and was born in the normal way (Matthew 1:23- The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).). Even so, Hebrews 2 shows that His experience of humanness, temptation and suffering leading up to his sacrificial death is very important. The Bible says that Jesus after the age of 12, “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Think of what the Son of God went through. C.S. Lewis said this of the incarnation: “The Second Person in God, the Son, became human, was born into the world as an actual man- a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular color, speaking a particular language, weighing so many pounds. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and created the universe, became not only a man but before that a baby and before that a fetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.” My Epic (a heavy metal Christian band, not fond of the music but love the lyrics) wrote “Lower Still.”: Look, he’s covered in dirt, the blood of his mother has mixed with the earth, and she’s just a child who’s throbbing in pain, from the terror of birth by the light of a cave, now they’ve laid that small baby where creatures come eat, like a meal for the swine who have no clue that he is still holding together the world that they see, they don’t know just how low he has to go, Lower still.
II. Human suffering and temptation
To begin, we see this in vs. 10: In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. “Perfect through what he suffered”. In the infinite wisdom of God, it would not have been fitting for the Savior of mankind to be unfamiliar with suffering. After all, life in this fallen world is so much suffering in the trenches, and we needed Someone to join us in the trenches. We need a “Man of sorrows” who is “acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3. We needed a man who would walk the path of faithful obedience, not just in “the world to come (heaven),” but in the messiness of this fallen world where obedience to God’s will is costly. We need a man who would be perfected by “learning obedience from what he suffered” Hebrews 5:8. Don’t trip over the language that Jesus learned and was perfected. In no way did Jesus have moral flaws that needed to be patched up. The point rather is that the sinless Jesus had to be “tested and tried” so that His true moral perfection and moral worth would increasingly shine forth against the backdrop of temptation and suffering. Jesus is unlike some who parachute down from the heavens into the stadium and think they have done something. The players are the ones who do something. Jesus was definitely on the playing field. He had to live the life of a man and build a human resume with moral capital related to actual and ordinary human experience: trusting the Father, loving people, speaking truth, enduring hardship, and bearing the cost. Then, as the perfect and perfected Man who passed every test and was completely surrendered to the Father’s will, He offered Himself upon the cross as the pure and spotless Lamb. Now, as Hebrews mentions in chapter 2, if the mission of God’s Son had been to bring salvation to angels, then He would not have come as a man. But look at vs. 16. Abraham’s offspring are those who live by faith. In order to help Abraham’s family, look at vs. 17. We need someone like us, a man and a brother, to help us, intercede for us, and make things right between us and God. After telling us that Jesus is a merciful and faithful high priest, the next verse tells us vs. 18.
Now it is important to say that the man Jesus is not like us in one crucial aspect: He was and is without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Now being human and being sinful are 2 different things. The familiar quote, “to err is human” is not quite right. In reality, to err is humanity in rebellion against God- which means that to err is actually sub human. By contrast, to do rightly is humanity in submission to God. Hebrews 4:15- we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are —yet he did not sin. It is possible to be a human and not sin. Even so, Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God save one and that one is Jesus Christ. Because He is without sin, He is able to help those who are slaves to sin and death. Because He is “a merciful and faithful High Priest” he had no need to be saved from his own sins, He is able to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. Apart from sin, God’s Son was “made like his brothers in every respect” (vs. 17).
My Epic, Lower Still: Look now he’s kneeling he’s washing their feet, though they’re all filthy fishermen, traitors and thieves, now he’s pouring his heart out and they’re falling asleep, but he has to go lower still, there is great love to show, hands to the plow, further down now, blood must flow, all these steps are personal, all his shame is ransom
III. The Suffering of Death
First stage, God’s Son became a man. Second stage, the man Jesus experienced suffering and temptation like we do. In this stage, the man Jesus- tested and tried, perfected and proved- had to die for us. He became like us so that He could so something for us: Vs. 14-15. Once again we come face to face with the incomparable wisdom of God. In God’s wisdom, it is a man who had to destroy the devil and deliver humanity from the devil’s grip by dying. See this?! It is “through death” (vs. 14) that the devil is destroyed and the people are delivered. Good’s wisdom is contrary to our expectation: we would have expected God to decree victory from His heavenly palace, and not enter into the battlefield of earth. And yet, if people had read their Bible rightly, they would have known: as early as Genesis 3 the Lord God said that a future male descendent of Eve would crush the serpent (Genesis 3:15). So Jesus, as the Savior who was perfected and fitted for His merciful and faithful High priestly role through suffering, died for our salvation. See Jesus’ death woven through this passage? Vs. 17- make atonement- really he made propitiation- a gift that turns away wrath- Jesus took the wrath of God for us so that we might be forgiven- Jesus satisfied God’s justice by standing in our place and suffering the judgment that we deserve. He bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we do not have to bear the guilt and punishment. Back to vs. 14-15, Jesus disarmed the devil and turned the devil’s enslaved subjects into the Father’s son and daughters. 1 John 3:1: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! Vs. 9- he tasted death for everyone. He tasted death does not mean just a little taste but drank it to the dregs. “Because he suffered death”- and what he accomplished by it- that the Man Jesus is now risen from the dead and is “crowned with glory and honor.” Hebrews 1:3: After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.. Jesus conquered sin and death and reclaimed for humanity the crown of glory, not by a power play from heaven or by leading an army against the Roman Empire. Instead He did it by slipping into a manger, riding a donkey into Jerusalem, and being crucified by the soldiers of Rome.
My Epic, Lower Still: Do you see, do you see just how low, he has come, do you see it now? No one takes from him, what he freely give away, beat in his face, tear the skin off his back, lower still, lower still. Strip off his clothes, make him crawl through the streets, lower still, lower still. Hang him like meat on a criminal’s tree, lower still, lower still. Bury his corpse in the earth like a seed, like a seed, lower still, lower still. The earth explodes, she cannot hold Him! And all therein is played beneath Him, and death itself no longer reigns, it cannot keep the ones he gave himself to save, and as the universe shatters, the darkness dissolves, he alone will be honored, we will bathe in his splendor, as all heads bow lower still.
Psalm 22:9-10: Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
