The Perfection of the Christ

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I want to invite you to remain standing.
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And if you have a Bible, I know it's a little dark and it's okay if you can't see and don't want to open your Bible, but if you can see and would like to, I'd like to invite you to open your Bibles to the 4th chapter of the book of Hebrews.
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In the 4th chapter of the book of Hebrews, we're going to look at verse 15.
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Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 15, just one singular verse speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ as our High Priest.
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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.
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Let's pray.
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Father of mercies, it is in the stillness and quiet of this time that we come to you to ask that you would be with us over the next few minutes as I seek to give an exposition of this text and also, Lord, to proclaim the wonders of the incarnation and this being one of those wonders.
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The fact that the God-man Jesus Christ never once sinned, not in thought, word or deed.
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And Father, as we consider the magnitude of the reality of His sinless nature and His sinless acts on this earth, His perfect acts on this earth, I pray that you would just impress upon our heart how much that reminds us of how much we need to be saved because, Lord, we have not lived a day where we have not failed in some way to meet the standard of righteousness that Christ met every minute of every day.
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And I pray, Lord, for the anointing of your Holy Spirit as I preach.
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For, Lord, I would be nothing without Him.
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And, Lord, there would be no power in the preaching if it were not for the Spirit.
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So I pray that your Holy Spirit would not only anoint the preaching, but would open the hearts of the people, allow the scales to fall from our eyes, the plugs to fall from our ears, and, Lord God, minister to us now through your Word.
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And, Lord, as we all look forward to the anticipation of tonight's festivities and the festivities of tomorrow, Lord, let us for this moment take a meditative time to focus on what your Word has to say.
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I pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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This series that we have been in for the last few weeks is entitled Jesus the Christ.
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As I've said before, Christ is not some type of surname for Jesus of Nazareth, but it is a title.
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Christ is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew word Messiah.
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So when we talk about Jesus the Christ, we're talking about Jesus the Messiah.
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And Advent is a time when we look backward to His first coming, when the Messiah came into the world.
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And we also look ahead to the fact that He is coming again.
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And that's the faith of the universal church.
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The faith of all believers is this, Christ came once to save, and Christ will come again to judge.
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And so every year we have four themes that go along with His coming.
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Four themes that go along with His Advent.
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Hope.
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Hope in the fact that He has come and will come again.
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Peace.
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Not peace man to man.
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We know that.
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We look forward to that.
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We look forward to the time when, as we know the Bible teaches, the lion will lay down with the lamb.
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But the peace that He brought in His first coming was not peace man to man.
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In fact, He said Himself, I didn't come to bring peace but a sword.
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And I will divide even families.
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But the peace He brought was peace between God and men.
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And the joy that accompanied His coming.
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The joy of knowing God truly and in a relationship.
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Being able to identify God as Abba, Father.
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We talked about that this morning.
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The fact that we can identify Him in an intimate relationship.
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Fatherhood, not in the grand sense of being our creator.
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But Father in the intimate sense of being our Dad.
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And of course, love.
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The final of those Advent celebrations, we celebrate the love of God.
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Which was the reason that He sent Christ to begin with.
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The Bible says, for God so loved the world.
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And another way of saying that is, in this way, God loved the world.
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That He sent His Son.
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This was the demonstration of love.
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While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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And so this evening, we move on from the celebration of Advent.
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To the celebration of Christ's birth.
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Which is marked by all of these candles.
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And all of the things that we have done.
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We had the family come earlier, the Belchers.
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And light the middle candle, which represents a movement.
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Lighting the middle candle says, Advent is over, Christmas has begun.
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It's a breaking point.
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It's moving forward.
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And we're no longer looking with expectation.
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We're celebrating an arrival.
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And Luke captures the events of that arrival so well.
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And Chris read them so well for us earlier.
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From the perspective of Mary.
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Luke gives us those events.
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Luke says that an angel came to Mary.
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And he says that she was going to bear a son.
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And she says, how can this be? I do not know a man.
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And he says that the power of God will overshadow you.
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And the Holy Spirit will come upon you.
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And you will have a child.
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And you will bear a son.
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And you will call him Jesus.
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Because he will save his people from their sins.
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That's what Jesus means.
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God saves.
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In Matthew's Gospel, there's a different story.
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Not different in the sense that it's contradictory.
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But in Matthew's Gospel, we get the perspective of Joseph.
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The father figure of Jesus in the world.
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The earthly father, as it were.
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Some have defined him as stepfather.
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Because we know he didn't have a real physical attribution to Jesus' birth.
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But he was the father that Jesus knew on earth.
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And it says that when Matthew tells the story.
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He says that when Joseph heard that Mary was pregnant.
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He sought to divorce her quietly.
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And some people take issue with that.
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And they say, oh, what a mean person.
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But the fact that he wanted to do it quietly.
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And not publicly.
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And have her shamed.
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Demonstrates his nobility and his care for her.
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And his love for her.
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But then the angel came to him.
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And said, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.
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For that which is to be born of her is the very son of God.
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So both of these narratives center on the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin.
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He was born in the city of David.
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Which is called Bethlehem.
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And Bethlehem in Hebrew means house of bread.
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And it is so interesting that that is true.
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Because Jesus would later say that he himself is the bread come down from heaven.
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And he says, whoever eats of my body and drinks of my blood.
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Not in the physical sense.
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Not in the crass literalism of Rome.
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But the spiritual taking in of Christ.
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It is he who has place with him.
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Every year the Christian world shares in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
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And as such the themes and narratives of this event become very common place in our thinking.
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I have enjoyed this year getting to read to Hope.
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She is finally old enough at least a little bit.
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To get an idea of all of the people involved with the story.
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So every night we lay down with a picture book.
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It has a picture of Mary.
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A picture of Joseph.
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And a picture of the angel Gabriel.
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And she always remembers who Joseph is.
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She always remembers who Mary is.
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But I have to coax her into remembering to say who Gabriel is.
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She tends to forget that.
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And if you think about the power of the narrative.
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If you think about the reality of what it is saying.
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That God who created all things.
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Chose to be born as a man.
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And he chose not to be born in a palace.
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He chose not to be born in the setting of even what we would call sanitized situation.
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A sanitized situation.
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But he chose to be born among the beasts.
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And then to be laid where they eat.
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When babies are born today everything is sterile.
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Those of you who have had children know that there is a huge deal made about making the perfect climate in the room.
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And there is even a device that heats the child to the perfect temperature after the child has been born.
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To ensure that it is safe and comfortable.
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The nurses are on hand.
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And there are several of them on hand at any moment to help with any care that is needed.
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Any danger that might arise.
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An elevation in blood pressure or a reduction in blood pressure or loss of blood or anything.
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There are people standing there with all kinds of utensils ready to go.
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At a moments notice to solve any problem that would come up.
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But when Jesus was born.
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He was born to a traveling family in an animals den.
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And laid to rest.
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Not under the heat of a lamp.
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But under the breath of animals.
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And the sound of their noises.
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No one would ever claim that these are perfect conditions.
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In fact they are not even ideal.
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They weren't even ideal in the day.
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They weren't good conditions even then.
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And as I said to our modern minds.
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Especially those of us who might be a little germophobic.
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And some of us I know are.
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It's almost horrible.
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And horrid the conditions.
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Yet it was in that imperfection.
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That the perfect son of God was born.
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And it's his perfection.
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That I want to make the focus of tonight's sermon.
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It's so easy to forget this aspect of his life.
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Or to simply gloss over it as just a ho-hum aspect of the life of Christ.
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But one of the most foundational and universal tenets of Christianity.
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Is that Jesus Christ is the sinless son of God.
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He is the perfect lamb of God.
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His whole life.
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Even in the manger.
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There was no sin.
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Only the most gross of liberal theologians.
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Have proposed that Jesus was a sinner.
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Some have even tried to spin the Jesus narrative.
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Saying it would be more virtuous to worship a Savior with some faults.
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Than it is to worship a Savior who is faultless.
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One man even went so far.
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In one of the publications that I read.
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Arguing that Jesus was a sinner.
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By arguing that well he died.
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And the Bible says the wages of sin is death.
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And so Jesus must have sinned because he died.
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But the Bible is clear.
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The Bible tells us Jesus knew not sin.
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Christ's death was not a punishment for his own sin.
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It was not the result of his own failure.
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Christ's death was a voluntary giving up of himself.
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On our behalf.
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Not dying because of his own sin.
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But dying because of ours.
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He said no man takes my life from me.
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But I give it up on my own accord.
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That means simply.
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I am not dying because someone is taking my life.
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I am giving my life a ransom.
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For many.
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The Bible tells us so clearly.
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That he was not a sinner.
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2 Corinthians 5.21.
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Which you have probably heard me quote more than any other Bible verse.
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Maybe outside of some of the standards like John 3.16.
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Or something like that.
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But 2 Corinthians 5.21.
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I quote periodically as we do communion.
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God made him who knew no sin.
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To become sin for us.
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That we might in him become the righteousness of God.
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That text tells us that he knew no sin.
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But he became sin for us.
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It doesn't say he became a sinner.
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The Bible says our sins were nailed to the tree.
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Christ took the imputed guilt.
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Of all our collective sin.
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In himself.
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When he was nailed to the tree.
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But he himself never once sinned.
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One of the most explicit passages regarding Christ's sinlessness.
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Is the text that we read tonight.
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Hebrews 4.
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It says we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.
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But one who in every respect has been tempted as we are.
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Yet without sin.
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There is no more place more explicitly teaching that Christ is without sin than that verse.
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It says clearly.
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Not only was he sinless.
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He was tempted to sin.
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And still was sinless.
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It says he sympathizes with our weaknesses.
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The word pathos means feeling.
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And some pathos is where we get the word sympathy.
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It means to have a fellow feeling.
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It means Christ felt the temptations that we feel.
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He felt the problems that we feel in the sense of the outside world pressuring him to sin.
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You remember what happened right after he was baptized.
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He goes out into the wilderness.
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And he's hungry for 40 days.
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And what does Satan do? He says here take this stone and turn it into bread.
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And Jesus says man shall not live by bread alone.
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But by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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And he tempts him again.
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And he tempts him a third time.
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The sympathy that Christ feels with us is the sympathy of knowing what it's like to be placed in front of him the opportunity for failure.
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And yet not failing.
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It says here he was tempted as we are.
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And the word tempted there means put to the test.
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He was put to the test by Satan.
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He was put to the test by the world around him.
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And by the people around him.
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And yet he was without sin.
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And one of the great theological questions.
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And some of you have probably heard this before.
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The debate between whether or not Christ is peccable or impeccable.
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And that debate doesn't center around whether or not Christ did sin.
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But the question of whether he could sin.
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See to say Christ is impeccable is not to say that he could or couldn't sin.
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Or rather that he did or didn't sin.
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Everybody who reads the Bible and it's truth knows that Jesus didn't sin.
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So the question is not whether or not did he sin.
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The question is whether or not he could.
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And this is a very serious question because it gets to the heart of who Jesus is.
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Could Jesus have sinned? Those who say that he could sin say that he must have been able to.
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Because he couldn't truly be tempted if he couldn't give in to it.
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And those who say that he couldn't sin answer like this.
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They say just because a sin is proposed does not mean a sin is considered.
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Just because something is put before you doesn't mean you consider taking it.
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And that's a question regarding Christ.
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And I would argue that Christ never even considered sin.
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That even though every opportunity for sin was placed before him.
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I don't believe he even considered for a moment accepting it.
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And somebody says well if Jesus is that impeccable.
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How can we say he's tempted as badly as we are? How can he really say he sympathizes with us? Might I say this.
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It is exactly because Jesus couldn't sin that we could say that he's actually tempted worse than we are.
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Because Jesus never gave in.
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His temptation went to the max.
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Our temptation rarely gets to go to the max because we normally give in at some point.
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But his temptation was pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.
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And yet he never even considered giving in to the temptation.
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Only those who do not yield to sin know the full intensity of temptation.
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And Jesus knew the full intensity of it.
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The Believers Bible Commentary says this and I like this.
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It says to argue that his temptation was not meaningful if he could not sin is fallacious.
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One purpose of the temptation was to demonstrate conclusively that he could not sin.
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If you put gold to the test.
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The test is not less valid if the gold produces no dross.
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If you put the gold in the fire, it doesn't produce any impurities.
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It doesn't do anything except prove how pure it is in the first place.
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Yes, he was tempted as we are.
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But he demonstrated his perfection in his sinlessness by not ever giving in.
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Not even considering it.
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It's wrong to argue that if he could not sin, he was not perfectly human either.
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I've heard people say that.
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Well, if Jesus can't sin, he's not human.
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I say, so you have to be a sinner to be human? People say yes.
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I say, well, what was Adam before he sinned? Was he less than human? Adam was fully human.
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In fact, he was better human before he sinned.
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And that's why Jesus is called the last Adam.
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Because Jesus is the only one who like Adam before the fall was sinless from his very birth.
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He was the perfect man.
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He is the perfect man and is the perfect Savior.
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This text reminds us that Jesus is our great high priest.
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And that's how he's our high priest.
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He came to live among us, to be a man and live perfectly so that he could perfectly represent us to God.
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He lived as one who lives as we live.
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He liked us.
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He breathed air.
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He drank water.
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He ate food.
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He was faced with the onslaught of temptation.
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And yet, he was never moved by it and never yielded to it.
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And somebody says, Pastor, it's Christmas Eve.
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What's with all the stress about impeccability, impeccability and the perfection of Christ? Because I believe, and this is why.
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Why did I choose this message? Why for this night? Because his perfection is what makes his atonement possible and it's what makes his birth so powerful.
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You see, his perfection in life, his perfection unto death and his perfection in his atonement demonstrates the power of who he is.
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Jesus Christ is the only figure in history to have a perfect score.
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It's so interesting because I'll hear people say this.
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I'll hear people say this.
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Even unbelievers will say this.
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They'll say, nobody's perfect.
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But then they'll say, well, maybe one.
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Because even the unbeliever knows what is claimed about Jesus.
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That there's one man who got a perfect score.
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That there's one man who never sinned.
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From the moment he was born to the moment he went to the cross and even to the day because he lives to today.
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He has never sinned once in thought, word or deed.
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He is the perfect Savior from birth to the cross and beyond.
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And it's what makes the birth so precious.
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He wasn't just another baby.
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He wasn't just another boy born to obscurity in an obscure land in an obscure family.
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But that was a perfect baby who would go on to be a perfect man.
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Who would go on even further to be a perfect Savior.
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Beloved, we're here tonight because we have a perfect Savior.
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And you know why that's so valuable to us tonight? Because every one of you came in tonight imperfect.
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Everybody who's here tonight comes with a ledger filled with sin.
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We haven't made a perfect score.
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In fact, the Bible says we don't even have any righteousness to our name.
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The Bible says the very best we can do is like filthy rags.
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Compared to genuine and true righteousness.
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So the Bible says to us that we trust not in our goodness.
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But we trust the One who is perfect.
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Because His goodness becomes our goodness.
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His righteousness becomes mine.
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God made Him who knew no sin perfect righteousness.
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To become sin for me.
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All of my sin is laid upon Him.
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So that I might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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His righteousness is like a robe.
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And here I am preparing in my life to go to a banquet.
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Every one of us.
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Every one of us looks forward to the day.
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One day when we will pass.
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And no one is going to beat that day.
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Unless you are here when Jesus returns.
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You will all face that day.
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Unless you are here when Jesus returns.
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The statistics are clear.
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Ten out of every ten die.
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No one has ever beat that one.
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And when we die there is a banquet.
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The Bible says.
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It says though that we have to be clothed right to get in.
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Jesus told a parable.
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He said there was a banquet.
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And the clothing was provided by the Master, the King.
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And one man came in.
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And he wasn't wearing it.
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And what happened to him? He was put out.
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And you say oh what a mean king.
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What a terrible king that he would simply put a man out.
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Because he wasn't dressed properly.
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No, no.
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Understand the parable.
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The King provided the clothing.
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The King provided the robe.
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He provided the perfect outfit.
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And the man rejected it.
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It isn't just simply the beggar couldn't afford the clothing.
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The King gave the clothing.
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But the man wanted to go in under his own laurels.
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He wanted to go in with his own outfit.
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And let me tell you tonight.
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If you try to go to the banquet of the Lord.
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In your righteousness you will be turned away.
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But if you will put on the righteousness of Christ.
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By grace through faith.
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You will never be rejected.
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Jesus said.
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That the one who comes to me.
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In faith.
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I will in no way cast out.
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Because you are given perfection.
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That's what you need.
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To be right with God.
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You need to be perfect.
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And you're not.
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Because God is holy.
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But he's provided perfection for you.
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It began with a perfect baby.
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And a perfect manger.
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It went on to a perfect sacrifice.
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On a terrible tree.
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And then a blessed resurrection.
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A beautiful atonement.
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Or rather ascension.
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And now a perfect mediation.
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That where Christ stands forever.
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To be the intercessor for his people.
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Beloved are you wrapped.
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In the righteousness of Christ.
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Are you clothed tonight.
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In his perfect robe.
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If not I say to you.
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Please wait no more.
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Trust in the Savior.
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Repent of your sins.
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And believe on him.
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He is the only one that can give you.
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The perfect robe that you need.
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For his blessed banquet.
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Let's pray.
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Father I thank you for this opportunity.
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To preach your word again.
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And I thank you for this opportunity.
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To talk about Jesus.
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My Savior and my friend.
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And I pray Lord that tonight.
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That everyone here has heard the blessed truth.
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Of his perfection.
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His righteousness.
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And that they would want to wear that robe.
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When the banquet time comes.
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Lord let us now.
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Turn our attention.
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To him.
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As we move forward in our celebration.
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Of the Christmas season.
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I pray it in Jesus name.
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And for his sake.
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Amen.