Mar 20, 2018
By Pastor Philip Lawton
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
— John 1
The title of this sermon is “Incarnation: God with Us.” You might say Emmanuel. What’s unique about Christianity is that our God became like us. This is what John tells us in the first chapter of his gospel. When he’s telling us, “This is the story of Jesus,” he tells us that the Word is God. It’s the very first verse. Then in verse 14 he says the Word became Flesh. All the Greek gods, all the Roman gods, all the other gods are separate, distant, apart from humanity. But our God became like us. He dwelt among us. That is the miracle of Christmas. This tiny baby is the creator of the heavens and the earth.
John tells us that, too. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” All that you see around you, the people next to you, the trees and the stars, and everything that we know, came into being through Jesus Christ. At Christmas this amazingly powerful being is encapsulated in a tiny baby. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12:23, tells us that this concept of God becoming like us is foreign to everyone. He says it’s foolishness to the Greeks. It’s foolishness to the Gentiles. It’s foolishness to those who don’t know Christ. Why would an all-powerful God who can do anything — a God who created the world — why would this God become weak, lowly, fragile, and broken? Why would this God come and do these things? It makes no sense. Certainly God could fix the problems of the world in another way. The thing is He can’t.
But what’s more, this incarnate God, this God in flesh, this God-man understands us.
Christmastime for me is a wonderful, joyous time. There’s a little bit of a joke in my family that I tend to be a Scrooge until Christmas morning and then I’m up at 3:00 a.m. But I love Christmas because I have memories of joy. I have memories of hope and fun and family. But there are many people for whom Christmas is the worst time of year because it reminds them that they have no family. It reminds them that they are alone. It reminds them that they are suffering. And that is the message that they get from the world because the world says look at all this stuff. If you had all this stuff you would be happy. Look, here are these happy families. Here’s this Hallmark movie about somebody picking that country guy over the city guy. There’s all this stuff that happens at Christmas, and for those people who don’t have the memories that I do, it’s sad. It’spain. It’s mourning. But that is not the message of Christmas.
John tells us the message of Christmas is that you are not alone. The message of Christmas is your suffering is understood by the One who created you. The God who made you has been in your shoes. The God who made you came to this earth, suffered, died and — praise God — He rose again. Our God understands. This is the same message that the writer of Hebrews tells us in chapter four: “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” We have a high priest who understands. We know what it is to be human and so does our God. The One who stands before and judges us says, “I know what you’ve been through. I know where you are. I have been rejected by my family. I have been cursed and beaten and suffered. I have died. I know what you’re going through.”God with us at the Incarnation — that is what this means. This means that we do not have a God who we have to be perfect for. We do not have a God who doesn’t understand what we are. We do not have a God who sits up on high and lords over us all the power that He has. No! We have a God who is just like us and yet so much more than we are. That is the message of the incarnation.
That is the promise of a tiny baby. That is the joy of a priest at a temple when he sees this baby coming to be circumcised. He says, I can die now because I know that my God lives with me. He spent years anticipating the coming of the Savior. He sees the Savior and he understands this is something different. This is not a God who will conquer the whole world with fire and sword. Rome said that. Rome had a god who was human. That god was brutal and ruthless and his peace was at the end of a sword. But the true God is a God who came and brought peace through His suffering; through His sacrifice.
God with us means that I can come to God and say “God, life sucks,” and God will say, “yeah, I know. I’ve been there.” We have a God who mourns with us. We have a God who weeps with us. We have a God who suffers with us. This is the message of the Incarnation. It is a message of hope. It is a message of God coming and being like us. Living like us. Suffering like us. Dying like us. And being raised unlike us so that we can be raised like Him. Because of that we read in Revelation 21 that there is a day coming when there is no more pain. A day when there is no more suffering. A day when He will wipe every tear from our eye.
This is the promise of Christmas. Jesus comes in the form of a babe. God comes to us to live with us, to dwell among us, to save us from ourselves. God becomes like us so that we can become like Him. We have, by adoption into God’s family, what Jesus had by birth. That is the message of the Incarnation.
