First Baptist Church Litchfield
cha[el 4/2
  • Lord I Lift Your Name On High
  • His Mercy Is More
  • Small as a Mustard Seed (Matthew 17:20)
  • Your Life Is Hidden Colossians 3:2-3
  • Grace (La-De-Da) (Ephesians 2:8)
  • Give Us Clean Hands

  • God created all that is. Therefore, all that is is His (Genesis 1-2).

    Adam and Eve wanted to be their own; Rebellion in their hearts was sown (Genesis 3:1-3).

    Judgment to the snake God spoke, And hope in Adam’s heart awoke (Genesis 3:9; 14-19).

    So, “mother of the living,” he named his wife, For her seed is the source of life (Genesis 3:20-24).

    People never did do good, but God saved Noah at the flood (Genesis 6-9)

    Land, Seed, and Blessing God promised to Abram, and the nations, also would be blessed in him (Genesis 12: 2-3; 15:5-6)

    From Egypt God His People saved, and at Sinai, the Law He gave (Exodus 7-14; 20:1-3)

    Then by God’s power the land they took, but then, their good God they forsook (Joshua 11:23; 21:43-45; 1 Samuel 8:7-8)

    God raised up David as their King, God’s rich mercy, he did sing (1 Samuel 17:49; 2 Samuel 22:50-51)

    David’s Sons Forsook the Lord and Did not Keep His Holy Word 1 Kings 11:4

    The people kept not God’s commands and He drove them from the land (2 Kings 23:27)

    Then From Exile They Returned and for Messiah they did yearn (Jeremiah 23:5)

    And so at last God’s Son was sent, on an unexpected path he went (Matthew 1:18-21; Luke 1:26-38)

    The angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will conceive a child by the Holy Spirit, who will be called Jesus, highlighting both His divine and human nature as God's Son sent into the world to redeem humanity. I want to focus on the path Jesus took, specifically incarnation and crucifixion. Or in other words, the unexpected path he went was through the womb and to the cross.

    The unexpected path of Jesus’ Incarnation: Jesus became a man (Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:35)

    Matthew 1:18 ESV
    18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
    Luke says,
    Luke 1:35 ESV
    35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
    Luke reveals that Mary is a virgin (Luke 1:26), meaning she had never been sexually intimate with a man. The prophet Isaiah foretold that the Messiah would come through a virgin.
    Isaiah 7:14 ESV
    14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
    The virgin birth is important because it reveals that God’s salvation of man can only come through His divine work. God would ultimatley be responsible for bearing the seed of the woman who would defeat the seed of the serpent. You cannot save yourself. Salvation is a supernatural work of God which the virgin birth makes evident.
    Another reason the virgin birth is important is that it is the means God connects the divine to humanity. The child in Mary’s womb was Joseph’s child legally, but not biologically. Both Luke and Matthew say the child was conceived when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary with power. Wayne Grudem explains the significance of the virgin birth connecting Jesus’ divinity to humanity. Grudem says,
    “God, in his wisdom, ordained a combination of human and divine influence in the birth of Christ, so that his full humanity would be evident to us from the fact of his ordinary human birth from a human mother, and his full deity would be evident from the fact of his conception in Mary’s womb by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.” (Wayne Grudem “Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Second Edition. pg 664)
    The consequence of The power of the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary to conceive the child is that the child would be born fully human but without a fallen nature. Jesus was not a son of Adam. The line of inherited sin was interrupted. Jesus would be born a full human being, and yet would also be born with God’s nature. Jesus was fully man and fully God, the God-man.
    This does bring up a problem. Mary was still sinful. How did Jesus not inherit any of Mary’s guilt? The Catholic Church contends that Mary was free from sin. The problem there is the Bible is clear; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Mary was not sinless, nor was she made sinless. The better answer, in my humble opinion, is that the power of the Holy Spirit protected Jesus. Luke says
    Luke 1:35 (ESV)
    35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
    The Holy Spirit came upon Mary with power, therefore the child will be called Holy! The power of the Holy Spirit prevented Mary’s sin corrupting Jesus’ divine nature, and therefore He is called the Son of God.

    The unexpected path of the crucifixion: God demonstrates his love by sending his son to die for us.

    Some of you may be a bit perplexed at such a notion.

    Where is the love of God in this? How does the incarnation which leads to crucifixion, demonstrate the love of God?

    God’s love for his image bearers knew without a doubt that we could never come to Him, that he must come to us. His love so moved him to shake the very foundations of heaven and earth by taking on the very flesh he created. He voluntarily sent his Son to become us so that we can know and enjoy Him.
    The incarnation demonstrates the love through weakness.
    The writer of Hebrews says,
    Hebrews 4:15 ESV
    15 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.
    Taking on flesh he was able to sympathize with our weaknesses. Jesus, the living God, had to endure a human body, with a human mind, and human emotions, all of them. He got tired. He suffered hunger. He wept when Lazarus died. Jesus endured the hardship of being human in a fallen world. When his image bearers saw Him, the did no see Him as God, as the One who deserves all their worship. They saw him as a man, and many saw him as a lunatic and liar. His own brothers and sisters thought he was crazy. He entered our world the same way we do, weak and vulnerable, and we leave the world weak and vulnerable through death. Its because the broken world often proves us helpless; helpless to fight sin and helpless to conquer death. Jesus knew our humanity well, even the pains of death, and yet he knew it without sin.
    The writer of Hebrews double down on Jesus’s holiness. He says,
    Hebrews 7:26 ESV
    26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
    The writer of Hebrews holds the incarnation tension beautifully. Jesus was very much us, and yet he was separate from us.
    I grew up watching Saturday Night Live when it was actually funny. Adam Sandler, Christ Farley, David Spade, and later Norm McDonald. Norm McDonald could make just about anything funny. Later in his life, as I read interviews of him, I learned that he had a another side of him that thought deeply on life and religion. It's interesting to hear about Norm Macdonald's perspective on Christian doctrine and his thoughts on the paradox of humanity. It's clear that he saw both the beauty and complexity of human nature. He acknowledge that human beings had the potential for both goodness and wickedness within us. He said he marveled at how humanity can both at the same time create amazing aesthetically rich art, and then turn around and create weapons of mass destruction.
    McDonald at some level knew we were marred image bearers of God. So to say that a human being was sinless was insane to Norm McDonald, and I would agree with him until we looked at Jesus. Jesus’s life was marked by holiness. The child in Mary’s womb was going to be a special human being with two full natures; one human and one divine. The child born would be the God-man. Very much us, and yet separate from us.
    This is vital to demonstrating God’s love. Remember the scripture we started with;
    Romans 5:8 ESV
    8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
    Jesus being very much us and yet separate from us is going to put God’s love on display for heaven and earth and everything in between to awe struck.
    The incarnation reveals to love of God in many ways, but one in particular raises our attention. James Montgomery Boice once said,
    The atonement is the real reason for the Incarnation.
    James Montgomery Boice
    The atonement is proof of God’s love!

    God proves His love Through Atonement (Matthew 1:21)

    Matthew 1:21 ESV
    21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
    The God man who is very much us, and yet separate from us, incarnated so that he could save His people from their sins. His life and death with atone for the sins of His people, making Him the Savior of the World.

    God’s love substitutes himself for us

    The angel reveals to Jospeh that the child in Mary’s womb is the promised Messiah. The angels commands Joseph to call the child Jesus-for he will save his people from their sins. How will this child save his people from their sins? He will be an atoning sacrifice.
    The atonement is as Gregg Allison defines it
    “ is the death of the God-man, Jesus Christ, on the cross and what it accomplished. Because of human sinfulness, a sacrifice for sin is necessary to avert condemnation and restore people to God. Old covenant sacrifices made provisional atonement, looking forward to the work of Christ to accomplish atonement fully and forever.” Gregg Allison
    The Bible says
    Hebrews 9:22 ESV
    22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
    In the Old Testament God required animals to be slaughtered on the alter for atonement. However, their sacrifice was never enough to completely satisfy God’s holy justice. The penalty for sin needed to be paid in full if God was going to save His people and live with them forever.
    For the penalty to be paid in full, God would have to do something radical and special. No sacrifice on earth was perfect enough to satisfy his holiness and remove his wrath. All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). We need someone to be our propitiation, someone who could turn away the wrath of God with a perfect offering.
    The Holy conception and the virgin birth of Christ was necessary. Jesus must be fully human if he is going to shed his blood to purify your sin. God must take on flesh and unite himself to the human race if he is going to save his people. At the same time, he cannot be merely human. He needs to be divine in order to be the righteous sacrifice that is able to: remove the wrath of God from sinners: remove our guilt by cleansing us from sin and giving us complete forgiveness, redeem us from the power of sin, reconcile us to God so that we are now sons and daughters and not his enemies, and provide cosmic victory over sin and death so as to restore all of creation so that we can live with God forever. A perfect offering can only come from heaven. Needing the blood and the perfection to be our substitute, the incarnation was settled for Christ.
    J.I Packer wonderfully notes,
    It is in the word “propitiation” that “we reach the real heart—the heart of the heart, we may say—of Christianity; for if the incarnation is its shrine, the Atonement is certainly its holy of holies.”
    J. I. Packer
    Andreas Kostenburger says
    Thus the purpose of the incarnation is Jesus’s substitutionary atonement.
    Andreas J. Köstenberger
    The substitutionary atonement is the way God demonstrates his love for you. The child in Mary’s womb was Jesus, the incarnate God, the Savior of the world. This child was fully a human being with blood flowing through his veins. He is also God, fully divine, holy, and without sin. Because of his two natures, the child would one day grow up and offer himself as the atoning sacrifice on a cross. He would take the place of sinners and receive the wrath he did not deserve and die. God would accept his sacrifice as perfect and would raise him from the dead. Jesus would ascend into heaven from where he came as a resurrected God man, and he now sits at his Father’s right hand.
    Romans 5:8 ESV
    8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
    Romans 6:23 ESV
    23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
    Romans 10:9–10 ESV
    9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
    Romans 8:1 ESV
    1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
    Romans 8:33–39 ESV
    33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
  • Empowered by the Spirit, Guided by the Word
First Baptist Church Litchfield
pastorjason.fbcl@gmail.com
217-324-4232
http://www.firstbaptistlitchfield.org/
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