His Pre-Incarnate Appearances

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and open your Bibles with me and turn to the 12th chapter of the Gospel of John.
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We're going to be in John chapter 12, verse 41, just this one single verse as the opening text for our lesson today.
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It says, Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him.
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Father God, I thank You for Your Word.
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I pray that now as I seek to give an exposition of it, that You would keep me from error.
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I pray that You would open the hearts of the people to hear the truth and to understand it and to apply it.
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And I pray that You would use this time to glorify Yourself and edify Your people.
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And I pray as always, Lord, that I would preach the truth and be kept from error.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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Well, it's good to see everyone this morning.
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This morning, as I mentioned earlier in the service, marks the first day of the celebration of Advent.
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Now, some of you come out of church traditions, and I know that we sort of have a melting pot here of different church traditions come together.
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And some of you probably come from traditions that didn't celebrate the Advent season.
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Advent is a time in the church year where we prayerfully and meditatively focus on the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The word in the Latin for Advent means arrival.
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It marks the celebration of the first coming or the first arrival of Jesus Christ.
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And then it looks with hope and expectation toward His second coming.
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Last week, we began a sermon series entitled, Jesus the Christ.
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And it was meant to coincide with the Advent season.
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In our first lesson, we looked at His prophesied Advent, His prophesied coming.
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And we made note that Jesus' coming was not something that was unknown in the Old Testament.
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It was clearly known in the Old Testament.
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The Old Testament prophets, the Old Testament preachers foretold of a coming Messiah, a promised Redeemer.
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He was told in the writings of Moses.
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He was told in the writings of all the history books.
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He was foretold in the prophets.
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And this is why when Jesus came on the scene, people knew and they were expecting Him.
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And they said, is this the one who is to come? They had an expectation that there was one who was coming.
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Well, today we are going to look past His prophetic.
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And we're going to actually look at the pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus Christ.
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And I want to make a point because I think this is very, very important.
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The Old Testament looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
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The prophetic announcements of the Old Covenant talk about Him becoming a man.
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The prophecy of Isaiah 7.14 which we read to open the service this morning.
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The virgin shall conceive and bear a son.
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We know that's a promise that He's coming as a man.
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And then of course there's the prophecy of His death, Isaiah 53.
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He's going to be pierced for our transgressions.
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He's going to be crushed for our iniquities.
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And by His stripes we will be healed.
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So there's prophecy of His birth.
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There's prophecy of His death.
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And all of this wraps up in the idea that we normally call incarnation.
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Incarnation comes from the Latin.
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And it means to be made flesh.
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It means to come in flesh.
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When Jesus came into the world in Bethlehem, it was unique because it was in that moment that He took on flesh.
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He took on a human body and a human soul.
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God the Son became the Son of Man.
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He had a real earthly mother.
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He had flesh.
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He had bones.
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He had organs.
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He had tissue.
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He ate.
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He slept.
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He even wept.
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He was the God-Man.
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Emphasis at this point on the man.
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He's always been God.
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But He was not always the God-Man.
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It was in Bethlehem that He became the God-Man.
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Someone might assume that because Jesus comes on the scene in Bethlehem, that maybe He didn't have anything to do with the Old Testament.
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Maybe it was prophesying about Him, but He wasn't really there.
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But my point to try to get across to you today, my focus of the morning, if it were my sermonic thesis, is very simple today.
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Prior to the Incarnation, Jesus existed and is seen in Scripture.
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That's the sermonic thesis.
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That's the idea that I hope to prove today.
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That prior to the Incarnation, the Son of God is seen in Scripture.
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We believe in the Trinity.
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We believe that Jesus Christ is the second person of that Trinity.
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The Trinity is the fullness of God's being.
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He exists eternally as one divine being in three persons.
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The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are co-equal, co-eternal.
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But they are also distinct.
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The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father nor the Son.
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They are distinct.
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Each distinguishable within the Trinity, having a relationship with the other one, ability to interact with the other one, and yet they are one God.
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This is the mystery of the Trinity, and yet it is the truth of Scripture.
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And with that in mind, we can say without hesitation, that Jesus is God.
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He is the Son of God, but He is also God the Son.
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As a result, we know that He pre-existed Bethlehem, because God has never been born, neither will God ever die.
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And since we know that, and we know that He is God, we know that He has always existed.
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And as I said in the Incarnation, something new happened.
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He took on flesh.
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But prior to that, He was still in existence.
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And understanding this, you might think I'm sort of belaboring the point, but understanding this is essential to what I'm saying today.
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Because when we look in the Old Testament, when you look at the Old Testament Scriptures, you see people who see God.
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In fact, we're going to look at some passages today.
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There are several people in the Old Testament who saw God.
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But can I tell you today, that no one saw the Father.
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That the appearances of the Old Testament were appearances of the Son.
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And I plan to demonstrate this from the Scripture today.
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And before we get into our main text, I want to prove that simply by looking at John 1.
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So hold your place in John 12, and turn over to John 1, because this is important.
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John chapter 1, the great prelude to John's gospel, the prologue of John chapter 1, verses 1 through 18.
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And it ends in verse 18 with this very important text.
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John 1.18.
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Now if you have an ESV Bible, it'll read like mine, because that's what I'm going to read.
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But I do want to make note, if you have a King James Bible, it will read slightly differently here.
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And I'll explain why in a moment.
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It says in the ESV, No one has ever seen God.
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The only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.
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Now if you have a King James Bible, or one similar, it says, No one has ever seen God, the only begotten Son, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.
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If you have a New American Standard Bible, it says, No one has ever seen God, the only begotten God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.
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So you'll notice there, the difference in the two translations, is one says God, and the other says Son.
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And you might say, well that's a pretty big difference.
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From a language point of view, Son and God are two different words, two entirely different words.
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And this is where the issue of textual variation comes in.
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Because the oldest and most reliable manuscripts had the word Theos here.
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But the later, less reliable manuscripts used the word Huios.
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Huios is the word for Son.
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It's spelled very similar in the Greek.
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And we can see why there would be a variation here in the manuscript tradition.
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But the point is this, I'm not focused so much on the second part, about whether or not we call Jesus God, or we call Him the Son.
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He's both.
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So both are equally true.
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My focus is on the first four words.
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No one has ever seen God.
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That's an important statement.
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That's what we call a universal negative.
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I've explained this before.
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If I say no one has ever ridden a bicycle, and then you see somebody going by teaching, and they're riding by, then you know I'm wrong.
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Because I made a statement of universality.
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I said no one's ever ridden a bicycle.
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Here comes you and somebody rides a bicycle.
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I'm wrong.
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Because I made a universal statement.
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So when the Bible says no one has ever seen God, if anyone has ever seen God, that verse is wrong.
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You understand what I mean now, the importance of the universal declaration, the universal negative? So who did Abraham see? When he was under the oak trees at Mamre, and it says the Lord appeared to him at the front of his tent in the cool of the day, and they ate together.
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Who did Joshua see? When it says the captain of the Lord's army was there, who did Isaiah see when he said he saw the Lord seated on his throne? Might I declare to you today that they saw the embodiment of the person of Jesus Christ.
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Because this text tells us no one has ever seen God, and in that respect, it's talking about the Father.
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But the only begotten Son, or the only begotten God, the Son, He has exegeted the Father.
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That word in the Greek, exegeo, means that He has explained Him or He has demonstrated Him.
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He has shown Him.
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Jesus said, if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father.
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John 1.18, when it says no one has seen God, it's using John 1.1 language.
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What's John 1.1? I'm getting precariously dangerously away from my notes because I could go all day.
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John 1.1 says, in the beginning was the Word.
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And we know the Word is Jesus, because later in John 1.14, He says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld its glory.
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The Word of the Lord is the only begotten, the Father, full of grace and truth.
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So we know who the Word is.
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It's Jesus.
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It says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
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That's talking about the Father.
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And then it says, and the Word was God.
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That's talking about His divinity.
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So the word God there is used in two different ways.
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God is used as a personal title for God the Father, but it's also used as a title of divinity for the entire Trinitarian God.
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That's why it says, He was with God, meaning He's with the Father.
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But He is God, because He's part of the Trinity.
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He's not part, let me back that up, because I just said something wrong.
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It's so easy to make that mistake.
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Jesus isn't part of the Trinity, because you can't break the Trinity up.
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The Father, the Son, and the Spirit share the divine nature.
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They don't break it up into pieces.
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So forgive me.
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Even I can make that mistake at times, and I don't want to do that.
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But you understand though, now when you get to verse 18, it says no one has seen God.
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It's talking about the Father.
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It's using the language of John 1.1 and John 1.18 to say that God the Father has not been seen.
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But God the Son has.
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God the Son has exegeted.
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God the Son has demonstrated.
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God the Son has shown God the Father to the world.
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I contend that anywhere in the Bible, anywhere in the Bible, where someone was in the presence of God or saw God in person, he was actually experiencing the presence of Jesus Christ.
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Sorry, that's just not going to work for me.
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So again, I remind you of the logic here, because I'm making a logical proclamation.
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If no one has ever seen the Father, and yet people have seen God, then it must be that they saw Jesus, because He is also God.
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But this is more than a logical deduction.
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This is a scriptural proclamation, because now go back to John 12.
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Remember, I told you to hold your place there, because that's the text for the day.
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Everything else is prelude to get to this, because in John chapter 12, Isaiah is talked about here by John.
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And in John chapter 12, Jesus is preaching.
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A voice from heaven speaks.
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And the people who are listening hear that voice from heaven, and they don't recognize it.
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They ignore it.
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They say, oh, what was that thunder? And in verse 37 of John 12, it says, Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him.
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Isn't that sad? When I hear atheists, they'll say, well, if God would just perform a miracle before me, I would believe.
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No, you wouldn't.
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The Bible demonstrates all throughout that there are people who saw miracle after miracle after miracle, and still did not believe.
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It says, Though He had done many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him, so that the word spoken by Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled.
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He is the Lord who has believed what He has heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed.
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Therefore they could not believe.
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For again, Isaiah said, He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.
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Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him.
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That's our main text today, verse 41.
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And it's in that last verse, our focus point, that three pronouns are used.
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It says, He saw His glory and spoke of Him.
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Now the He there is Isaiah, but who is the His and the Him? The His and the Him is Jesus.
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The antecedent of His and Him in verse 41 is found in verse 37, and it is Jesus Christ.
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So when it says in verse 41 that Isaiah saw His glory and spoke of Him, it's talking about Jesus.
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No doubt.
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Linguistically, there isn't an argument here.
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It is beyond the shadow of a doubt.
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This isn't, well, that's your interpretation, Pastor.
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It doesn't work that way.
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It's how language works.
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You don't get to play that game.
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The antecedent of His and Him is Jesus.
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Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus.
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When? When did Isaiah see the glory of Jesus? Well, there's two passages that are quoted here.
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One is Isaiah 53, and that's the passage talking about Jesus' death.
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And that's where he quotes there in the first part, when he says, Who has believed our report? That's from Isaiah 53.
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But the second is from Isaiah 6, and I want to take you there because this is one of my favorite passages in all the Bible.
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I tell you, if I was asked to just go somewhere and preach and I didn't know what I was going to preach, if they just said, Pastor, get up and give us a word from the Lord, I would say, open your Bibles to Isaiah 6.
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Well, either that or Romans 5.1, but I don't want to go there this morning.
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But Isaiah 6.
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Isaiah chapter 6.
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Listen to this.
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In the year that King Uzziah died, this is Isaiah speaking.
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He's talking about his king who he loved, who had just died.
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It was actually his relative.
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It was Isaiah's relative, King Uzziah.
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And he says, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
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Above Him stood the seraphim.
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Now, seraphim were angels.
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It says, Each had six wings.
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With two he covered his face.
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With two he covered his feet.
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And with two he flew.
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Now, I've always tried to picture what that looks like.
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I know angels don't look like sort of the idea that we have them.
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We always tend to look at angels as sort of like very feminine.
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And the two big pretty eagle wing type creatures.
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In the Bible, angels are masculine in general.
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They're spoken of in masculine terms.
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But also in this, they're covered.
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They're not big and open like you think of the big wide angel wings.
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But the wings are used as utilitarian.
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They have a purpose.
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They cover their face.
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Why? Because they're in the presence of the Lord.
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They cover their face.
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They cover their feet.
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You remember what God said to Moses when he saw him in the burning bush? Take thy sandals from off thy feet, for the ground upon which you stand is holy.
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So they cover their feet.
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Because they're in holy presence of God.
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They cover their face.
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And they have those two that they use to fly.
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Where they can move in and out and around the presence of God.
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Announcing what? His holiness.
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Verse 3.
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And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
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And the whole earth is full of his glory.
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And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called.
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And the house was filled with smoke.
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And I said, this is Isaiah, I said, woe is me.
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For I am lost.
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King James says, I am undone.
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I'm a man of unclean lips.
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I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
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And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
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Isaiah saw the Lord.
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He saw his glory.
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And when he saw the Lord and he saw his glory, you know what he saw? He saw his own sinfulness.
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He saw his own desperate need.
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He didn't see himself as a good person.
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And you know what? He was probably the best person in Israel.
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He was probably the nicest person in all of the land.
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And he didn't see his goodness.
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And he didn't see his work as a profit.
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As something that would profit him.
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He covered his mouth.
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He said, woe is me.
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Woe is judgment, by the way.
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It's the same phrase Jesus used when he condemned Corazon and Bethsaida for denying him.
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He says, woe unto you, Corazon.
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Woe unto you, Bethsaida.
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Remember? So here we see Isaiah looking at the face of the Lord.
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And I want to show you something from the text.
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And this is, again, sort of a language thing that's very important.
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If you look at verse 1, it says, The Lord's sitting upon his throne.
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Or a throne.
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That word Lord, if you have in your Bible capital L and then lower case O-R-D.
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That is the English translation way of identifying the word Adonai.
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Adonai means Lord.
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It's title.
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But in verse 3, When the angels call out, They say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord.
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And it's capital L, capital O-R-D.
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That is the English translation way of using the word Yahweh.
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Or what we might say in our vernacular, Jehovah.
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It is the proper name of God.
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It is the divine title of God.
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So this person sitting on the throne.
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This person sitting, looking at Isaiah.
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Isaiah looking back at him, them face to face.
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Is Adonai, Lord, but he is Yahweh.
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He is God.
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And that's Jesus.
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Because in John 12, 41, John tells us he, Isaiah, saw his glory.
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This is the only passage in Isaiah that fits that description.
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Who is Isaiah face to face with? A pre-incarnate Jesus.
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Albert Barnes in his great commentary on the book of John says this.
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John affirms that it was the glory of the Messiah that Isaiah saw.
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And yet Isaiah affirms that it was Yahweh.
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And from this the inference is irresistible that John regarded Jesus as the Yahweh that Isaiah saw.
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The name Yahweh is never in the scriptures applied to a man or an angel or a creature.
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It is a unique, incommunicable name of God.
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So great was the reverence of the Jews for that name that they would not even pronounce it.
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This passage is therefore conclusive proof that Christ is equal with the Father.
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Because he is called Yahweh by Isaiah.
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He is called Yahweh by the angels.
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He is identified as Yahweh by John.
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When Isaiah saw Jehovah, he was looking at the face of Jesus.
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So what is the takeaway? Why does it matter? You say, okay pastor, I can see you kind of worked up.
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Jesus pre-existed Bethlehem, we see that.
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Jesus is the one Isaiah saw on his throne, okay.
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So what? Beloved, if you understand this, then you understand that the Lord we celebrate this morning is more than a simple prophet come on the scene 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem.
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Jesus was on the scene before the manger.
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Not just prophetically, he was there personally.
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He was under the oak trees at Mamre with Abraham in Genesis 18.
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He grappled with Jacob in Genesis 32.
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He appeared before the elders of Israel in Exodus 24.
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He was the commander of the Lord's army in Joshua 5.
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He was present through the Old Testament as the messenger or angel of Yahweh.
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Throughout the Old Testament we see him.
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And he was the one seated on the throne before the prophet Isaiah.
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He was there.
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Some have called these theophanies.
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A theophany is what is identified as a presence or appearance of God.
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But I think they are rightly called Christophanies.
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The presence and appearance of Christ.
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This is who we worship.
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This is the Jesus, the Lord, the Divine.
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This is Jehovah.
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And it's he that we worship.
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Jesus is Lord.
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Jesus is Divine.
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Jesus is Jehovah, Yahweh.
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And I asked this morning.
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And the pointed question of the morning, the thrust of the question is, Is this who Jesus is to you? Is Jesus your Lord today? Some of you are focused on so many other things right now.
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You are not focused on this.
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And this is the most important question you will ever be asked.
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This is the most important thing you will ever be confronted with.
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Because the reality is that many people claim to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ and have no idea who he is.
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You can spend your whole life in church and be lost at death.
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Jesus Christ said on that day, there will be people who come to me and say, Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name? And do many mighty works in your name? And do miracles in your name? And he says, I will say unto them, depart from me.
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I never knew you, you worker of lawlessness.
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They never knew the Lord.
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They knew the church.
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And they knew the church language.
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They knew the church people.
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They knew all of that.
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But they didn't know Jesus.
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See, this is more than an exercise in mere theological proposition.
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This is not an exercise in just mere theological talk.
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It's full of propositional truth.
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That's true.
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It's full of Bible study.
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That's true.
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But this is intended to move the heart.
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When you see Jesus as he truly is, you cannot remain the same.
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Isaiah couldn't remain the same.
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When he left the day that he saw Jesus on his throne, when he left that day, he was never the same.
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Has Jesus changed you? Or are you still the same? When faced with the reality of who Jesus is, our souls should be stirred with a sense of the magnitude of the reality of who he is.
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And it has to change us.
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And if it hasn't, then we know not him.
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We know him not.
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Jesus, the Son of God, eternally existent, Jehovah in the flesh, to whom belongs all glory and dominion and praise forever and ever, is who we have come to worship today.
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And if that is not who he is to you, then I pray for you to repent of your sin and trust in him.
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For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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In the name of Jesus Christ and to him be glory forever.
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Amen.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time of study.
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And Lord, I pray for a spirit of conviction to fall on this place.
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Right now, I look out and I see those whose minds are elsewhere.
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And I pray that they would focus right now and understand the seriousness of this moment.
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And perhaps even the lostness of their condition.
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For Lord, it is so easy to make the verbs, the words come out of our mouth.
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But it is not a change of heart that results in words.
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It's a change of heart that results in a life that is changed.
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Father, I pray that you would change hearts and change lives today.
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Draw your people to yourself.
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Convict, convert with passions for serving you today.
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I pray in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Let's stand and sing together as we prepare for communion.