Why Must God Become Flesh?

Good morning, everybody, and Merry Christmas as well. If you'd like to turn with me to John chapter one, the gospel of John chapter one, that's where we will begin today. And we have a few places we'll go, but we're going to start there to kind of set the tone a little bit.

It is, of course, a great honor to get to fill the pulpit today. So I thank Dad for giving me that opportunity. And I'm looking forward to sharing.

A few things with y 'all today.

The Word in the Beginning and the Meaning of Christmas

Let's start with John chapter one, verse one. We're gonna read a good portion of the prologue of the opening of this gospel, and then go from there. It begins and says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe. He was not the light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.

That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, and the glory is the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us together this morning, for giving us an opportunity once more to open up the pages of scripture, to be edified by your word, to allow it to help us grow in your name, in your truth, in your word.

And we thank you particularly for a day such as this, where we commemorate the birth of your son, and we consider the implications of such a thing, where we consider what it means for us, not only with regard to our salvation, but what it means for our day-to-day lives as well, how something so miraculous can be practically applied to our lives as we live it out in a way that we pray is pleasing in your sight.

We just ask that the words of this message, and certainly the words of scripture, are a blessing to everyone today, and we ask these things in your name, amen. Now, I believe that because of just the pervasive nature of Christmas as a holiday, its themes, even the fact that we as Christians focus on Christ's birth, while that is a very good thing, something we should do, believers are often left with kind of a satisfaction in understanding kind of what exactly happened.

Again, that in and of itself is a good thing. But while we understand what happened historically, it's another thing to perhaps consider why it had to happen this particular way. So we just read in the opening of the gospel here in verse 14, the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

And if you think about it, the more you think about it, it seems certainly on the surface level to be a very odd way of doing things for God to have entered his own creation in this way. And so while we celebrate the birth of Christ, we understand that it happened, we understand kind of what happened with regard to the scene, the historical context and things like that.

It's another question to ask, why did it have to happen this way? Why must God become flesh? What is the necessity of the incarnation as it were? In other words, we understand that Christmas is, or at least should be, all about Christ's birth, but how often do we consider deeply why God had to be made flesh in the first place?

And we know that was, of course, within his all powerful abilities to appear before men in a multitude of ways. And so why Christmas? Why the Christmas story? Why did it play out in the way that it did?

Why again, did the word become flesh? So that's what I wanna ponder this morning as we celebrate again, commemorating the birth of our Lord. And as we go through this, I'm going to attempt to bring out a number of reasons for why the incarnation was a necessity, not simply a way that God did things, but rather the necessary way that he did it.

It wasn't merely an option. It was really the only way it could have happened. And so first to begin, I wanna start with going back really to the beginning and talk about the reality of humanity, why it was created, how it was created, the purpose of Adam on earth.

And so it's worth remembering how the oldest story plays out and how it plays into all of this, all the way up through the Christmas story and even to present day. When man was created and named Adam, he was created to be the glory of God on earth.

Now we know that in 1 Corinthians, Paul tells us that man still is that. Man is the glory of God. Woman is the glory of man. And so we still fulfill that in a particular way, but it was certainly why Adam was created and why he was brought here in the first place.

One of the greatest reasons was to be the glory of God on earth. And what was he to do? He was to take dominion of the entire earth. He was to be king over all else that God had created and quite literally hold the title deed to earth itself.

This is why Adam was brought forth. And this was one of the great purposes why humanity was born at creation. But as we know, when temptation and deception came to his wife, Adam failed in his kingly role.

And he had the opportunity to look at God after Eve committed her transgression. He had the opportunity to look at God after the sin of his wife. And at that moment to offer himself as a sinless substitute on her behalf, essentially absorbing the sin that she had committed.

Adam was still sinless. It was still his role to protect her and to do what he needed to do to protect God's creation as it was given to him. But rather what he did was he partook in the sin with her.

And so a complete failure on the part of man, of course, being given the dominion of the whole earth and from the human viewpoint, quite literally destined to be king over the entire earth. Adam instead failed and he likewise fell for the devil's trap.

And essentially at that moment, he forfeited his rights as the king of the earth.

In that moment.

And so we all know the story from that point moving forward. But the thing is, is that humanity was still God's good creation. Even at that moment, we still bore his image. Mankind was still holding on to an innate value that no other part of God's creation had, including the cherubim, including the seraphim, including all of the spirits of the heavens.

None of them could attain that which humanity attained and that being made in his image. And so rather than destroying our first parents and their state of rebellion at that time, God began the unwinding of a vast redemption story that would include the birth of the last Adam.

The apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, which is just an amazing chapter for so many reasons, of course, talking about the resurrection of our future, excuse me, our future resurrection of our bodies.

Near the end of that chapter in verse 45, the apostle Paul says this, and so it is written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul and the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. And so Christ came as the last Adam, but this time as a result of the sin of his bride, rather than partaking in the sin with her, he bore her sin to redeem her rather than indulging in the same temptations.

And so flesh and blood through Adam caused the problem in the garden. And so what God did was he took on flesh and he took on blood himself to fix it. When the first king of the earth failed to take total dominion, the last king came to fulfill the original mandate that was given.

And we know that if we just kind of just peruse the Old Testament, certainly in the minor prophets, I'll turn over to one of them just really quickly to give you a quick taste of it, we see that Jesus quite literally does fulfill this original mandate for total dominion, total kingship, total lordship.

He already has the right to all of it, but what we have to understand is that while it was in fact inaugurated at his first coming and that he holds this authority now, it was some of his parting words that he left us with at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, there will come a day when it is fulfilled in its consummate form, if you want to put it in that way.

And there's one example of it in the prophecy of Micah, which is otherwise a very, well, Micah is essentially the prophet of doom and he is preaching doom upon God's people, the Israelites, the nation of Israel.

And of course, we know that you get to chapter five and you see the prophecy of the birth of Jesus, the birth of Messiah in Bethlehem, but before that in chapter four, the opening couple of verses says this, but in the last days, it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains and it shall be exalted above the hills and people shall flow unto it.

And many nations shall come and say, come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord into the house of the God of Jacob and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths for the law shall go forth of Zion in the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

That's Micah chapter four, the first couple of verses there. And so the last Adam came to fulfill, again, in its consummate form, all that was originally given to the first Adam. So this is the first reason why God had to come in this way, why God was made flesh, why he had to become incarnate and not just appear in any given number of ways that he could have within his power.

He came to fulfill the original mandate to protect his bride and to take total dominion over the earth as the last Adam. He came to redeem Adam in the flesh. Now, the second reason that I believe the incarnation was a necessity, why God must have become flesh and not merely an option was because it was the fulfillment of the first gospel.

And we're all familiar with it all the way back, again, at the beginning in Genesis three, chapter 15, where it says, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman talking to Satan. I will put enmity between you, the devil and the woman and between your seed, the devil's and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.

And of course, we note the singular of the seed in this particular context. He's talking about a very specific, God himself is talking about a very specific descendant of the woman. And we know this was the, this is kind of the first view of the gospel, at least in the written form that we have all the way back just after the fall in the garden.

And so following the downfall of the first Adam, and while still kind of judging or adjudicating the situation that is now involving Adam himself, Eve, the devil, you have God just presiding over all of this that had just taken place.

And we see that God gives us again, the first gospel message ever recorded in scripture. And that being of course, that there is a plan of redemption for Adam and Eve and all of their offspring. And in fact, that this very redemption would come through them in the form of a singular offspring that would act as their savior.

Again, the second Adam coming to restore that which they had failed to uphold. And so one question that may pop up in one's mind when you're thinking about, number one, the incarnation in general, but secondly, the parallel, the very specific parallel between the first Adam and the last Adam.

One question that you may consider is why wasn't Jesus's body formed from the dust of the ground like the first Adam's was? If you're looking at kind of the typological picture there and you're thinking of the parallels and the fact that Jesus did in fact come to restore that which Adam failed to do, why was it there a parallel in that particular way?

And the answer to that is essentially, not to oversimplify things here, the answer to that is grace. Because when you go to Luke chapter three, it's one of the two places you can go to see the genealogy of Jesus.

We see Christ's genealogy in Luke three, and it shows that he was the descendant of Adam in that specific genealogy there. But in the first gospel proclamation back in Genesis 3 .15 that we just read, God shows grace to Eve, the singular woman, by saying that the savior would be her seed specifically.

Again, this is grace and it's grace because it was Eve who fell for the trap of the devil's deception. It was Eve whom Adam blamed for the transgressions of both of them, if you recall. And of course, it was her that transgressed first.

And so you have these multiple blunders that took place, quite literally spiraling humanity into a fallen state. And yet, God shows his grace by stating that it will be her seed that shall bear the promised descendant.

And so God must have become flesh by childbirth in the most natural way that you could possibly come into existence, so as to redeem the woman and humanity itself in the fulfillment of the first gospel promise.

And as the apostle Paul said, in alluding to this very Genesis passage in 1 Timothy two, he said, the woman shall be saved by childbearing. It was all part of the plan. It was essentially God's way of redeeming Eve as well by allowing her to be the mother of all living, including becoming Messiah.

So the second reason why God must become flesh is the fulfillment of the first gospel that we ever received, all the way back in Genesis. Now, the third reason is the historical reality.

Of the thing.

The reality of God becoming a historical man who had a mother, who had a legal father, he had siblings, he had disciples, he had a hometown, and he had what we would now consider just a regular blue-collar day job in his carpentry.

He was an historical man. And because of that, because of that reality, it's not only a matter of fulfillment, which of course it was, but it was also a matter of verifiability. And not to try to make this very technical historical survey or anything like that.

This is actually a grace in and of itself because we know that Christianity is the only true religion, is a religion based upon faith. And what is faith? It's evidence of things that are not seen, at least in its consummate form, to use that term again.

Remember, we do see God in everything. We see God every day. We see his works every day. We see him all the time. But we don't yet see it in the fullness of the glorified son. Yet, it is coming. We're promised it's coming.

Philippians chapter three, as he comes, he will turn our vile bodies into the similitude, essentially, of his glorious body. And so we know that these things are coming, but we don't see it just yet. Now, Peter tells us in 1 Peter chapter one, let me just read this really quick.

He says, whom, talking about Jesus, having not seen, you love. And whom though you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

That's 1 Peter one, eight through nine. And so we love the Lord, though we don't see him yet. We love him, though we don't see him, we believe in him. And because of these things, the Lord in his grace, because of this reality, the Lord in his grace gave us an extremely verifiable historical record in order to look back and to show the world, look, you have absolutely no excuse to be overlooking the majesty of what happened on the first Christmas day.

And so, because again, this is true, the fact that we don't yet see the glorified sun raining on earth yet, though that is not a manifest reality at the moment. We do have faith. It is evidence of things not seen.

God in his grace gave us history and he gave it to us in such a way that can be verifiable. It can be tested. It can be seen and recorded. That was the life and the reality of Jesus, God incarnate. And by entering into this history as a man, it made it possible for us to look back and see how Jesus, the God man, tied all of the prophetic strings together into a very consistent picture, very consistent tapestry, if you will.

You have all of these quite literally crazy prophecies throughout the Old Testament. You have the men of God writing them down and Peter tells us at some point in one of his epistles that they wrote it down and they knew that it was scripture and they knew where it came from, but they didn't quite understand what was going on or how on earth this would all be tied together.

You have prophecies of a reigning king coming to conquer the world on one hand and on the other, you have a man of sorrows, a man of loneliness, a man that would be beaten and eventually pierced and crucified.

How do you reconcile these two things? How on earth could all of that be harmonized? You have him being the son of David and yet he's the seed of the woman when the woman doesn't carry seed. How do all of these things work?

You have all of these interesting different flickers of these prophecies of the coming Messiah that seemingly couldn't be harmonized at the time, maybe. Certainly some confusion, certainly some clarity that needed to be had and of course we received it in the revelation of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, incoming in the flesh as a man to fulfill these things and weave together this consistent picture.

Now, it would have been extremely difficult for us to trace all of this with the appearing of a Gnostic Jesus, one that many people in the first century, many heretics of the first century wanted to believe that we received.

Basically a virtuous God, one of many, that kind of sort of came, but not really. He came in this odd kind of spiritual manifestation, but certainly not as a man. He couldn't have taken on flesh because that is simply an impossibility for a God to do and remain perfect.

That was kind of the Gnostic idea and why they had to rewrite the history that we were given immediately following Jesus ascending back into heaven because they couldn't harmonize these things. If he were truly God, he couldn't have been flesh.

That would have been a very difficult thing for us to follow kind of the picture of the disciple in Jesus walking down the beach or something and you look back and you only see one set of footprints because Jesus wasn't actually there as a man.

He was there kind of as this ethereal spirit and him being on the cross was more of just an allegory of things and all of these wild ideas that again were attacking and plaguing the church right out of the gate in the first century.

This is what the Gnostics brought to the table and if that had been in the reality, if that had actually been true, it would have been very difficult for us to follow that and to record it and to test it and to understand in any kind of way in a way that humans could actually resonate with but God in his goodness gave us nothing of the sort.

He gave us an historical man, flesh and blood who came to fulfill these things but also to walk them out in a life, in a singular life that we could see, that we could feel as the Apostle John tells us at the beginning of his first epistle.

So instead of all that, instead of the Gnostic idea, instead of this idea of God, it being an impossibility for God to take on flesh because flesh is inherently bad. Of course, we know that's not the case.

Adam was created perfect and Jesus came into the world with an uncorrupted body. They believed all of that but instead of that being true, God came in the form of a child born of a woman, an actual woman named Mary under the watch care of a good man named Joseph and fulfilled things that the righteous prophets of old could not have begun to understand before the first Christmas day.

And of course, the moment that that took place, the moment that Christ entered creation, the moment that the word became flesh, all of it started to make perfect sense. Of course, the years that would follow would just add on to that more and more as he lived out his life, as he entered into his ministry.

In history, a baby named Jesus was born in Bethlehem which fulfilled the prophecy of Micah. And because of a real historical figure who detested the idea of losing his power, the foe King Herod ordered the massacre of baby boys to thwart the new king that he was told was coming to displace him.

And because of that reality, it provoked the good man, Joseph, to lead his family to Egypt for a time. So now we already have the incredibly unlikely scenario of a young boy born in Bethlehem, thus fulfilling one prophecy, now coming out of Egypt when it was time, which now fulfills two centuries old prophecies, of course, this time from the words of Hosea.

Out of Egypt have I called my son. But as if that wasn't enough, the evil Herod, who was a genuine historical figure placed into power by the Romans, in kind of a last ditch effort to continue his legacy, he put his son Archelaus on the throne, another historical figure.

And that, of course, further complicated the very strenuous endeavor on the part of the good man, Joseph, because now he has the next generation of this evil to worry about. But in a dream, he was warned of God who directed him to take the young Jesus to Galilee, where Joseph just so happened to lead his family into a very specific city called Nazareth, thus fulfilling really a whole host of Old Testament allusions to the coming Nazarene Messiah.

So again, you think about the prophets of old writing all of this down, thinking how on earth is this supposed to work? He's coming from Bethlehem, he's coming from Egypt, he's gonna be a Nazarene, which is it?

And yet Jesus comes and he fulfills it to a T while doing so as a human being. Again, weaving all of these things together into a very consistent whole. And so all of these things, everything we just described, these historical realities, these real life figures, these real life places, the geography, the families, everyone involved, all of it was made possible because God was made flesh.

He was born as a historical figure. Being born as a man, the world, of course, has no excuse to ignore his historical existence and significance, such as fulfilling an impossible number of prophecies from centuries before his birth.

How do you do that? How do you do that? He showed us how it could be done and he did it. And it all began with the incarnation, with the birth of the child. So in orchestrating the story of our redemption in this way, it gave us the reality that Christ's life, his ministry, his death, and even his resurrection, it can all be verified using the exact same standards of historiography that we've used for millennia.

And you look at Luke's account, for example, in the Gospel of Luke, you look at his historical records of the book of Acts, and you can actually see that he was using the contemporary and kind of the gold standard methods of historical biography, if you want to put it in those terms, of historical record.

Thucydides, who was a very ancient historian some four centuries before Jesus was even born, a Greek historian who, again, kind of set the gold standard for how to do history at that particular time. And of course, you have Luke coming into the gospel very meticulously laying out what he did.

He interviewed eyewitnesses. He had a very orderly historical narrative that he pieced together. And so you have Jesus's life, his coming happen in such a way as to give us the opportunity and the ability to do that.

And that's a grace once more in and of itself, because while our religion is one of faith, it is also one of reason. It's one of veracity. It is one that can be demonstrated in a multitude of ways. And this is just one more example of that.

The historical reality of the man, Jesus, that is the third reason why God must become flesh. And the fourth reason and the final reason that we'll look at for today is the atoning work of God. Most importantly, perhaps, with regard to the necessity of the incarnation, God becoming flesh, it all culminates in the atoning work of the last Adam, Jesus Christ.

God became flesh, a fully human body, so that he could be tempted at all points, so that he could live a perfect life, so that he could bleed, so that he could die as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, not his own, but for ours.

And we know that the wages of sin is death. And what that means is that blood is necessary for the final payment of those sins. Now, whether that final payment is made by the sinner or someone else, it doesn't change the fact a blood price must be paid when transgression is committed against God's commandments, against his law.

The apostle Paul in Ephesians 1 .7 says, in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace. And in the chapter right after that, in verse 13, he says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

If y 'all want to turn with me to Hebrews 9 for a second, we'll end in this passage. Just to give you one more example of why this had to happen the way that it did. Why must God become flesh? And like I said a second ago, because of the transgressions of humanity, a blood price must be paid.

It cannot be overlooked. It can't be sidestepped. It can't be brushed off. Blood must be presented. In this particular chapter, we're given a really good kind of succinct reminder of how all of this worked even from the days of old, when animal sacrifices were made necessary because the perfect man, the last Adam, had not yet been born to live a life sinless in perfect obedience to God's law.

God in his grace allowed for these animals of all things to atone for the sins of his people, to essentially roll them forward year after year so that history could play out without the necessary destruction of mankind himself.

Because God in his holiness can't just let that go by. Something has to be done. And so once more in his grace, he allowed for meager animal sacrifices for millennia to satiate his need for justice, knowing that someday that perfect man, that perfect substitute would come.

And so right here in Hebrews chapter nine, we're given a little taste of that as it then rolls in to the new and better covenant that was brought to us by Jesus himself. So look at Hebrews nine. Let's start in verse six, excuse me, verse six.

Hebrews nine, verse six. Now, when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle accomplishing the service of God, but into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood.

It's an impossibility to do this work without blood. It is a necessary price for the payment of sin, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the heirs of the people. The Holy Ghost thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while as the first tabernacle was yet standing, which was a figure for the time then present, excuse me, for the time then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience, which stood only in meats and drinks and diverse washings and carnal ordinances imposed on them until the day of reformation.

But Christ being come, and high priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made without hands, that is to say not of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption for us.

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctify through the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

For this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament that by means of the death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first Testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

We were in the loins of Adam when he sinned. And remember, sin requires a blood price. The wages of sin is death. Blood must be paid. We were in the loins of Adam when he transgressed, when he sinned, and therefore we came into this world as fallen creatures in need of a savior, as sinners in need of a savior.

But what Christ did as the last Adam was he brought our sins into his loins on the cross, even killed those sins, and then presented his blood as that final payment. And none of this would have been possible without God becoming flesh.

You can't offer blood unless you become flesh. And that is why by nature of the atoning work itself, this is why the incarnation was a necessity. Now, if you were to give any person the opportunity to plan out the incarnation of the creator, in other words, the creator appearing, a great appearing of the creator of the universe, and to then inaugurate his kingdom, nobody would ever plan to do it by means of the birth of a child.

No one would come up with that. No one would think to do it that way. They may think of some kind of cataclysmic event. They may think of the radiant light of deity appearing on earth, which of course, as it so happens, will take place at the second coming of our Lord, but they never would have planned the beginning of this work out in this way, the birth of a baby.

And that's because again, far too few, I believe, understand the stakes, the incompatibility of a holy God in the sin of man. We know that our sins are covered in the grace of God, that we have received undeserved favor despite our violations of God's law, but that grace needed, if I could put them in these terms, a mechanism, that grace needed a channel to flow through.

It needed a channel to be delivered by because sin couldn't just be brushed aside. Like I said before, it had to be conquered. It had to be utterly defeated. And the only way that could be conquered was for a child to be born and to then live a sinless life in perfect obedience to God's law and to offer himself as the substitute for every person that recognizes what they've done and then calls upon his name.

And so in conclusion here, what does it look like to live our lives in such a way as to demonstrate that we believe these things are true? It's a beautiful story and not very many people would disagree with it.

Very few people, whether they believe in the legitimate incarnation, whether they believe that God took on flesh or whether Jesus was just kind of a magnificent historical figure and there's a lot of mythology around his name and life because of that, regardless of where a person stands, no one disagrees that the story itself is beautiful.

But when you're a believer, when you are a Christian that has the faith that these things are so and believe that the historical records we've been given are as accurate as they are, as consistent as they have been given and all these things, what does it look like to live your life in a way that demonstrates that we believe these things are true?

That the story of Christmas is something that can actually give us motivation for each individual day of our lives well into the next year, well past the actual holiday season itself. What does that look like?

Last week, we did the Thomas Watts hymn, Joy to the World, one of my favorites, one of everybody's favorites, I suppose. And the lyrics in it are amazing, go figure. We're talking about high Puritan time, writing these hymns, writing these songs at a time with a very deep understanding of what it was to serve the Lord King, to serve the one that had already ascended and was already sitting at the right hand of power.

And though they were totally immersed in the mire of sin and the fallen world with their family members dying, their children dying in childbirth and their loved ones coming down with various plagues and sicknesses and diseases and the hardships of that particular time of the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, it was in that time that songs like Joy to the World were written.

And when you think about the words to it, I'm gonna read just a couple lines at the beginning of the song, of course, Joy to the World, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king. And it's hard for us to think in kingly terms sometimes, as individualistic Americans, it's particularly hard for us to grapple with the idea that we do live under a monarch and that we do serve a king as slaves to that king, as the apostles clearly tell us throughout the New Testament.