Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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The Incarnate Word

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

A Lesson in Listening

Good morning. How are you? I’m surrounded by nature up here. I feel hemmed in. I feel trapped. So this morning I drove through Burger King. I was hungry. I got up early around 7 o’clock and by 9 o’clock I was getting hungry so I took off for the Burger King and here is my order. You ready? You listening? It’s important. It’s important, not theologically, but it’s important. I said give me a biscuit, sausage only, and a small diet Coke. Can anybody stand up and repeat that? No, no, no. Raise your hand, stand up and repeat that. Is that what I said? No, you got it wrong. [audio unclear] Sit down. Close but not quite. Next, someone else. [audio unclear] I said a biscuit, sausage only, and a small diet Coke. No, you said small biscuit. You added a word. You said only sausage, not sausage only. Now here’s what the cashier said. So here’s what she said. She said, I’ll repeat your order. Croissant with egg and cheese and a Coke. So there was no relationship between my order and that order, except for the word Coke, but a diet Coke isn’t a Coke. There are different drinks, right? And an egg isn’t sausage, right? And a croissant’s not a biscuit. But basically the whole order was wrong. So I chuckled, and it really is a great sermon illustration, about listening. [audio unclear] Because what I said, and what she said that I said, were not even close. And I’m sure you’ve had that experience at work, or maybe even with the spouse or a friend, where you say something and then they say something back to you as if you said something else, right? And for people who have to speak in public like myself, it’s uncanny how many times somebody says, well, you said this, when I didn’t say that at all. By the time it went through their brain, it came back to me, it was a totally different thing than what I said. Listen to the Word, listen to the Word. And so it’s a good exhortation to us this morning because we’re going to talk a little bit about some theology and when people start to think about theology, they get a big glazed look over their eyes, like it’s not relevant to life, not important, but it’s profoundly important. So this morning we’re going to talk about the convergence of Christmas and communion. As we break bread this morning, the question we want to ask ourselves is, what is the connection between communion and Christmas? Now, on the surface, it might seem like there isn’t much. Matter of fact, you could argue, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, the communion’s about the death of Jesus, as if they’re two very different things, but in fact, they’re intimately related. How are they related? They’re related because at the heart of both this ordinance and the celebration of the Lord’s coming is what we call the incarnation.

What the Incarnation Means

The incarnation. So I want to talk to you briefly about the incarnation and then talk about some why it’s important. When we use the word incarnation we don’t mean the virgin birth. They’re different things. They’re different doctrines. The virgin birth means that Jesus was born of a virgin. That’s all that it means. That His mother was a virgin. When He was conceived and brought forth she had not known any man at that time, and she was a virgin. Well a virgin birth, that’s pretty miraculous, right? But the incarnation is clearly related, but it’s different. What does the incarnation really mean? It means that Jesus was truly a man, truly human. That is, He had a perfect or complete human nature and He also had a human body. But the incarnation also tells us that Jesus was truly God or He had a perfect divine nature. Therefore, therefore everything true of God was also true of Jesus. And the third thing the incarnation means is that the Scripture tells us that Jesus was one person. One person, and that same person had two natures. That same person could say, I thirst, and then He could also say, before Abraham was, I AM. We’re thinking, how can this be? And the answer is very simple. We don’t know. I was talking to someone about the Lord and they said to me, I can’t believe a God or worship a God that I can’t understand. And I said then you want a God that you can control. I mean when you look at Scripture there are things in Scripture we cannot understand. But this is just a small taste of the revelation we’re going to get in heaven. When we go to heaven we are going to get our minds blown. We are going to be exposed to so much reality that it is going to be like wow. It’s going to be beyond our comprehension. We don’t know how two natures inhere in one person. We don’t understand the union of the divine and the human in Jesus. We do not understand it, but we believe it because the Scripture reveals it. The Scripture reveals it.

Truly Human

So Jesus in His humanity had a true body and He had a rational soul. Now when I say a true body I mean it was real. You can walk up to Jesus, smack Him, okay. He was a real body. Now in the early church there was a heresy called Docetism, and this was the heresy that Jesus looked like a human, but in fact, His body was actually, it was spirit. It was a form of spirit. It was not truly material. It was not truly flesh, muscle, ligaments, bone, but it appeared that way. That’s what the word Docetism means. It means appearance or seem, it seems. He seemed to be human, but He wasn’t truly human. But Jesus was human, He had a physical body, He bled, He sweat, He got tired, He got thirsty, He slept. It was a human body. But He also had a human soul, a rational soul. Now, often when I’ve talked to people about the incarnation, they’ll say things which implies, I’m not sure they believe this, but it implies that the incarnation for them means that Jesus, the Son of God, just took on a human body, but not a human soul. But that’s not what the Scripture teaches. He was truly human in every regard, not just the physical part, but He was truly human in that He had a rational human soul. In other words, He thought, He felt, He willed, just as we do. He was just like us in His humanity except for one thing. That thing was sin. That’s why the virgin birth is important, because Jesus was truly human, but because He was conceived through the Holy Spirit, He did not inherit our sinful nature. So He’s human in every regard, excepting sin.

Luke 24:39, we’re going to, this is what the Lord says to His disciples, and I love this. This is actually the resurrection. He appears and they’re like, wow, this can’t really be Jesus because we saw Jesus die. This must be a ghost. In Luke 24:36 it says, “Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, ‘Peace to you.’ But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit,” or the King James says, a ghost. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” So He’s saying, reach out and touch Me just to make sure. It’s a real body, but just to throw the clincher in there for them, He says this. So He shows them His hands and His feet, and then in verse 41 it says, “But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled,” so Jesus is standing there, here’s My hands, touch Me, grab Me, feel My body, it’s real. They still didn’t believe. He says, “Have you any food here?” So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb and He took it and He ate it in their presence. Why? To demonstrate that this was a real human body, okay, real humanity. I guess they got His order right. So Jesus also has a soul, and by that we mean He reasoned with the scribes. He submitted His will to the Father. He wept when in Gethsemane. He experienced all of the thoughts and emotions and challenges of a normal human being except for sin.

Truly God: The Word Became Flesh

But of course, we also know that Jesus was truly God. Let’s look at some of the well-known texts on the birth of Jesus, and we’ll just start in Matthew. Go to Matthew chapter 2. Actually go to Matthew chapter 1. In Matthew 1, we have the annunciation of the birth of Jesus. Verse 18, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.” I’m reading the New King James Version. “Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.” So Mary is pregnant and Joseph’s like, yo, I know we’re betrothed, but we haven’t been sleeping together. How did this happen? And he’s obviously not thinking the Holy Ghost did it. Okay. So he’s assuming that she was unfaithful, and he was going to put her away. He was going to divorce her privately. “But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.’” So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” [audio unclear] Matthew, Mark, Luke. In verse 26 of chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke, “Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, ‘Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!’ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.’ Then Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’ And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.’” The Son of God. Jesus has many names and titles in Scripture, many of which point to His deity. Here we see He’s called the Son of God. Now you might say, well, I’m called the son of God. Actually we’re called the children of God. And I would never say, I am the Son of God, right? I might say I am a son of God. Jesus is referred to in Scripture as the only begotten of the Father, even though we are begotten of the Father through the new birth. Well, how can He be the only begotten if we’re also begotten? Because He is a unique Son, because He was not only the Son of God, but He was God the Son. We are not gods in the sense that we are part of the Trinity, if you will, or the Godhead. We are made like God morally as He transforms us into the image of Jesus. So Jesus is the Son, the Son of God. In Titus He’s called the great God and Savior. In Romans 9:5 He is called the God over all. In Isaiah 9:6 He’s called the Mighty God. And in addition to all of these titles, Jesus displays various attributes or attributes are ascribed to Him, if you will. He’s referred to as being eternal. I referred earlier to the fact that Jesus said before Abraham was, I AM. Well, I AM was actually a divine title of Jehovah in the Old Testament. So it was not only a divine name, but it expressed a divine attribute of eternality. To say I AM meant that I always have been, I am now, I always will be. I am the eternal now. That’s what Jesus was saying when He said I AM.

Jesus also is recognized in Scripture as the Creator. Let’s go to John 1 because this text is important to the remainder of our sermon. In the Gospel of John chapter 1, we have a pre-incarnation account. Whereas Matthew and Luke tell us about the childhood of Jesus, the birth and the childhood of Jesus, John’s account of Jesus begins even before His birth in eternity past. He says, here’s John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” By the way, if you ever talk to a Jehovah’s Witness, or maybe even a Mormon, they’ll tell you what this Scripture says is this. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god, small g. This Scripture was sent to numerous Greek scholars of no religious affiliation, and they were asked to translate it, and they all translated it the way it is here. Jesus was not a god, Jesus was God. In the beginning was God because God is eternal and with this God was another person called the Logos or the Word and He also was God. Meaning He also was eternal. He was in the beginning with God. The phrase in the beginning means not only the beginning of time but in the beginning meaning the time before time, the eternal past. Did you ever try to think of nothing? No, really? Did you ever try to think of nothing? You’re probably like, yeah, every time you preach I try to think of nothing. But you can’t think of nothing, right? Just like you can’t really think of infinity. It’s like our minds can’t go. But I remember when I was a kid, I was thinking about God, like, okay, God always was, and I was laying in bed, I always was, I’d go back and I’d go back in my mind in history, a little bit of history, and then I’d go back and I’d make the earth vanish out of my head. Okay, there’s no earth. Okay, now there’s no stars. There’s just nothing. There wasn’t even space. Now, how can you grasp that? Before time, there wasn’t time. How do you grasp that? I mean, we can’t, I mean, it’s like we’re dealing with a being far beyond us, right? Far beyond. This Logos was in that beginning with that God because He was that God. So what you have here is both identity and diversity. Jesus, it doesn’t say only that the Logos was God, but it says the Logos was God. That’s the unity or identity, but He was with God. There’s the diversity. So one in their divine being, but different in their personhood. Verse 2, He was in the beginning, eternity past. Now look at this. “All things were made through Him.” All things were made. Now He’s the Creator. Now this Logos is the Creator. The Creator, of course, the creation is a prerogative and an attribute of deity. That’s what God does. God creates out of nothing. We create out of things, materials we have, but God creates out of nothing. Not [audio unclear] that God made things and then Jesus grabbed it and then kind of reworked it. He was the origin of all things. “In Him,” verse 4, “was life, and the life was the light of men.” So here we see that this Logos person was God. He was eternal. He was the Creator. And verse 4, in Him was life. He’s the fountain of life. He has eternal life as an attribute of His nature. Now we have eternal life if we’re Christians, how? As a gift, right? It is given to us, but it is not natural to us. To Jesus it’s natural because He’s divine. He is eternal life. What does He say when He’s going to raise Lazarus from the dead? He says, I am the resurrection and the life. He doesn’t say I resurrect and I give life. I am the resurrection and the life. He is the fountain of life. So when we talk about the gift of eternal life, which Scripture refers to in Romans 6 and other places, it’s not like you receive the gift of eternal life and you don’t get Jesus or you get Jesus and not eternal life. They’re inseparable because eternal life is inherent in who Jesus is. So to receive Christ you receive eternal life because He is the way, the truth, and the life. The life.

Verse 5, “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it,” or overcome it. “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light,” John was not the Light. Later in this book Jesus refers to John as a lamp, different Greek word, meaning he had light but he’s a lamp. He’s reflecting light. He wasn’t the source of light. “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right” or the authority “to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, ‘This was He of whom I said, “He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.”’” When he said He came after he means in His earthly ministry. John was the forerunner of Jesus. John’s public ministry began before Jesus and he was to announce the way, so he was before Jesus. So Jesus came after him, but He’s to be preferred before John because He was before him, because He was there in the beginning. “And of His fullness we have all received,” meaning we who believe, “and grace for grace,” grace upon grace. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son,” or some versions say, the only begotten God, “who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” This text alone demonstrates what we call the deity of Christ, Jesus, who the Logos here is Jesus, right? Truly is, has a divine nature, but also He has humanity because this being that was in the beginning, this being who’s the fountain of life, this being who’s the Creator, now becomes the one who takes upon Himself flesh, which is shorthand for human nature. Not just the fleshly body, but the human body and soul. In theology, this is called the hypostatic union. You’re going to be able to remember that? And next week we’ll have a quiz at the beginning, the hypostatic union. It just means that the union of Christ is a personal union. Christ is one person, and the key word is person. Just as the union of the soul and body constitutes one person in us, so the union of the Son of God with humanity constitutes Him one person. He’s only one person, but He has two natures, the divine and the human. Is this a mystery? The Bible even tells us it’s a mystery. 1 Timothy chapter 3. Here’s what Paul says. 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh.” Now your version may say He was manifested or who was manifested. “God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” Clearly, this is talking about Jesus, right? Jesus was the one seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world and received up into glory, as we know, from His ascension. So we will never really comprehend this hypostatic union.

The Lord’s Supper and an Earthen Faith

[audio unclear] or the Lord’s Supper. The elements that we take are physical elements, right? But they represent, in a way, as I’ve said many times, we’re kind of doing a drama, if you will. We’re doing a play, a passion play. We’re demonstrating with objects the death of Jesus. Bread is His broken body, the wine is poured out. This is shed blood. And so these are like object lessons. And they’re physical object lessons so that we can just see them, we can touch them, we can taste them, right, Jesus said to the disciples, handle Me, touch Me, feel Me. Well we can’t physically touch Jesus because that was many years ago. He gives us these physical object lessons, if you will. But the point to understand is that the physical elements do not represent a spirit Savior. [audio unclear] The physical elements represent a physical Savior. We have physical elements and they’re important and they’re given to us and Jesus said, take, eat this because this is My body. Drink this because this is My blood. Now there’s been dispute in the church for centuries whether He meant this is literally or this is figuratively. I believe it’s figurative, no less significant because the elements represent a very real physical historical person who died on the cross whose body was broken whose blood was shed who was buried and then who rose again from the dead, amen. The birth of Jesus was important for many, many reasons. You could say foundational to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus never lived as a man, He could not die and shed His blood. Right? A spirit doesn’t have flesh and blood. He had to become a man. We had [audio unclear] We kind of have this, the Bible, [audio unclear] Does God work miracles? Well, all over? I mean, really. Not just in the Old Covenant, or not during the time of Christ, or not just in the time of Christ, or not just in the time of the Old Covenant, God is [audio unclear] whole Christian life and they [audio unclear] relational reality of what we are professing. Jesus was incarnate, meaning He was truly human as well as truly divine. His death was real blood. His body was real flesh that was torn. His resurrection was real. He was in a glorified body, but it was still a human body, but it was glorified. He wasn’t resurrected as a ghost. It’s all very earthy, if you will. Our faith is in not only a heavenly Savior but an earthly Savior, an earthy Savior. And so God wants us to incarnate our faith. You hear me? Our faith should be incarnated in our lives and how we live and what we believe. And so the supper should remind us, it should actually kind of jolt us a little bit, to the reality of what we profess when we say things about the gospel, when we say that God so loved the world, and we say that Jesus redeemed us from sin, or that we say that Jesus gave us eternal life. We are talking about miraculous events. Miraculous events. They occur in space-time history. Jesus is truly a Savior, truly a Savior in every sense of the word. He doesn’t just give you rules to live by in this life and then when you die He’ll save you later. He saves you now. He changes your life now. He transforms you now. He is life. He gives life. He transforms life. He works miracles in your life. He hears your prayers. You can know Him. You can commune. Get it? Communion. Get it? You can commune with Him because He is a real person. Yes, He’s not here physically, but He’s here spiritually. And He’s just as real spiritually in this age as those elements are physical. He’s just as real. Remember when Thomas doubted? And what did Jesus say to him? He said, it’s more blessed to believe having not seen than to believe having seen. Even though He condescended to Thomas’s weakness and said, go ahead, come on, put your fingers in the holes, thrust your hand into My side, so you believe, anything so you believe. But it is more blessed for those to believe who have not seen Jesus physically. Well, we’ve not seen Him. This is not His body, this is not His blood, but it represents it. And these physical elements represent a physical body, a physical human being that truly lived on the earth, both God and man. That same person died on a cross for our sins, was buried, was resurrected, He was ascended into heaven and from heaven, He grants His Holy Spirit to those who believe. And then they receive eternal life because they received Him. And He comes and He lives in their heart and He transforms them from the inside out. It’s called the new birth. Amen. It’s a gift of God.

Let’s stand. Lord, we thank You for Your body and blood broken for us, Your poured-out blood. We thank You for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. I pray that we, Your people, Lord, would grow in our knowledge of You, our faith in You and our love for You. And finally, Lord, as we conclude our service I do ask that this time of year we would joyfully take the good news to those around us, our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers. That Christ the Savior is born. That You have good will toward men and You can produce peace on earth. We ask this, Lord, for Your glory alone, in Jesus’ name. Amen.