Why God Became Flesh - part one

 

Sermon October 3, 2021

Why Did God Become Flesh and Live Among Us?

 

Over the last two weeks we have looked at the question of Jesus’ deity – meaning His co-equality and co-eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In other words, is Jesus God in the flesh? Did Jehovah God take on flesh and blood and live among us as a human being – 100% human and at the same time, 100% God? We also examined the question, ‘Is our belief in the incarnation of Jehovah God as the man Jesus necessary for our salvation?’

 

We saw from both the Old and New Testament Scriptures that the answer to those questions is an unqualified, ‘Yes.’ Jesus is God incarnate, and yes, belief in His incarnation is necessary for salvation.

 

Today and for the next week or more we will look at the question, ‘Why did Jehovah God become incarnate in Jesus to live – and die – among us?

 

So, why are we examining these things? Because God tells us through Peter’s first epistle: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15)

 

We are examining these doctrines under the light of Scripture because it is important not only that we know and understand them, but so that we will also be knowledgeable enough to explain to others why we believe what we believe.

 

When Nancy had her stroke a couple of years ago, she told me as we waited for the ambulance, “I love you.” When I asked her later in the Emergency Department of the hospital where she would spend the next three weeks in ICU bed why she told me that, she said she believed she was dying, and she wanted those to be the last words she said to me.

 

When God became flesh and entered humanity, He did so for the sole purpose of dying on that cross. Here is what He told His disciples shortly before His crucifixion: “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.” John 12:24-27

 

As Jesus spread His arms on that crossbeam of wood that He told us in unmistakable language the He loves us, “This much.” He wanted that to be the last image that we would remember of Him.

 

Jesus came to die in our place, to receive God’s wrath for our punishment. So let’s look more closely at that truth as we examine the Scripture.

 

First, and not in order of priority, Jesus did NOT come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” Jesus told the religious people of His day, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:31-33

 

This is such an important message for us and our families, for our friends and neighbors, and for those with whom we eat our meals in the dining room because many of them feel they have gone too far, done too many bad things, and done them too often that God has given up on them.

 

And that would be a demonic lie straight from hell into their minds.

 

God loves sinner. Romans 5:8 – “God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

 

Because He loves sinners, because He knows what sin does to sinners, He became a man to call sinners who want to be made new, He calls them – He calls all of us – to repentance. He calls us to healing.

 

Now here is a question that tests the orthodoxy of our Christian faith: Are we sinners because we sin, or do we sin because we are sinners?

I’ve heard pastors and apologists teach as truth the fictitious nonsense that we are sinners because we sin. They tell us we are all diamonds covered with mud. When pressed to how one can remove the mud, they often will tell you the answer is education. If only we can educate sinners as to why they should not sin, sin will eventually be eradicated.

That idea is nothing short of New Age mumbo-jumbo and Age of Aquarius psychobabble. Their bibles tell the truth quite clearly – if only they would read it and believe it: We were dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1); The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:2-3); For there is no man who does not sin)  (1 Kings 8:46); The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9); “Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one!” (Job 14:4); “What is man, that he should be pure, or he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? (Job 15:14); “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)

To the contrary of what the false teachers want us to think, God tells us we sin because we are sinners by our very nature inherited from Adam and Eve. Furthermore, sin has corrupted everything in our bodies – including our intellect, our conscience, our ability to reason and to understand truth. Without the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, none of us would be here today seeking to worship our Creator, Master, King, and Lover of our souls.

We were DEAD in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) Dead people can do nothing of their own. Only God can make them alive.

Listen, please. Our thoughts have been so corrupted by sin that if we still don't know we were lost before we came to Christ, then how do we now know we’ve been found? If we still don't recognize how blind we were to truth, then how do we now know that we see? If we still don't know we were walking in darkness before we came to Christ, then how do we know we are now walking in the light?

Those really are important questions to which we must be sure we correctly answer. As St. Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth: “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! (2 Corinthians 13:4).

That’s one test we do not want to fail.

Jesus did NOT come to educate us into righteousness. He came to create in us new hearts. That’s why He told the great religious leader Nicodemus: “You must be born again.” (John 3:3)

Jesus did not come to call the righteous, those who think they are alive, but are dead – as Jesus accused the church in Sardis (Revelation 3:1) He came to those who knew they were in darkness. And He STILL comes to those who WANT to see as they should, who WANT to think as they should, to those who WANT to live as they should.

 

I like what the writers of The Chosen television series (you can download their app TheChosen.tv) had Mary Magdalene tell Nicodemus about her deliverance from the demons. She told him, “I was one way, but now I am completely different. And the thing that happened in between was Him.”

 

Are you completely different today in your attitudes and lifestyle than you were before you met Jesus? If you are not, I urge you to test yourself. See if you are truly in the faith.

 

Jesus came to call the unrighteous, the sinners, those trapped in addictions and demonic influences and yes, even demonic possession – Jesus came to heal the broken and the wounded and the bleeding – who WANT to be healed of their brokenness and their wounds.

 

The second reason – again, not in the order of priority – Jesus came as God incarnate is this: He “did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45).

 

Never would you find Jesus carried on a richly gilded couch by His followers. But you would find Him riding on a humble, smelly donkey, a beast of burden. You never found the Jesus of the Scriptures clothed in the embroidered finery of the day. But you found Him stripping off His well-worn outer cloak to wrap a towel around His waist as He stooped to wash His disciples’ feet.

 

The people of His day knew Jesus was approachable to everyone who wanted to be close to Him. Lepers and harlots, the educated and the ignorant, the sinner and the religious. He never required those who came to Him to walk on their knees over gravel, or to kiss His hand, or to grovel at His feet. Never. Nor does He require it today. The Jesus who came to serve others is STILL approachable. That is why the writer to the Hebrews tells us: ¹⁶ Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

And St. Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus, tells them they now have bold and confident access to the very Throne of God with boldness and confidence through their faith in Christ. (See Ephesians 3:12)

The Christians of the first century all had bold access to the very Throne of God! And so do you and I today who have made Jesus our Lord. Direct access. We do not need an intermediary to bring us before God because as He Himself tells us through St. Paul’s pen, there is only one mediator between us and God – Christ Jesus Himself (see 1 Timothy 2:5).

That’s another important part of the ‘good news’ of Jesus we can share with our family, friends and neighbors. It is an important message for you and me to remember day after day – that our God is not a distant, aloof Creator. He is always, always as near to us as our very breath.

“Where can I go from Your Spirit?” The psalmist asked. “Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me,
and Your right hand will lay hold of me.” (Psalm 139:7-10)

I know I will never forget when my father, Tom Maffeo, adopted me and my sister after he married my mother. I was 12. We’d gone to a local courthouse for the ceremony. At the conclusion, when Andrea and I were told that we were now his legal children, I ran to him with outstretched arms and happily called out, “Hi, Dad.”

Those were my exact words. I remember them to this day, 60 years later.

I expected him to reach down and take me in his arms. He didn’t. Instead, he held me at arm’s length and let out an awkward chuckle. I suppose he just didn’t know how to love his new son and daughter.

But our God-Incarnate is nothing like that. Not only is He approachable, but He stoops down and sweeps us into His big arms and squeezes us to Himself.

We need to know that. Our families and friends and neighbors need to know that. We should never think Jesus is too aloof or too distant or too uncaring to pull anyone to Himself who comes to Him for love and mercy and compassion and forgiveness. 

Jesus came to serve. Jesus came to love. Jesus came to adopt us into His family – harlots and lepers, lovable and unlovable, educated and ignorant, sinner and religious – all who will call on Him will never be disappointed.

 

And, now for the sake of time, let’s look at yet a third reason Jesus came into our world to live among us: Jesus did not come to judge the world, but rather to save the world.

 

Hear that again. Jesus did not come to judge us, but to save us. So why do so many of our friends and family and neighbors think God is standing at the edge of heaven chomping at the proverbial bit, waiting for us to mess up so He can whip us into submission? What kind of Being do they think God is?

 

Sure, if they’ve been taught by parents or clergy who have taken biblical texts out of context in both the old and new testaments, people can end up with a pretty dark case for a malicious and wrathful God. But texts taken out of context are always pretexts to teach error.

 

Instead, let’s take Jesus’ words at face value when He told us in many portions and in many ways, “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” (John 12:47); and again – “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”  (John 3:17)

Do we mean to say God never punishes sin and thereby contradict the testimony of God’s wrath against willful sin and sinners? Of course not. For example, Romans 1:17 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”  Or again, in Ephesians 5:5-7 “For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them.

But those who seek God with an honest heart, those who confess to Him their sinfulness and their need for mercy and forgiveness – God promises to never cast aside.

No, Jesus did not come to judge you and me or our family and friends. He came to save all who want to be saved. Jesus did not come to BE served, but to serve us and give His life as a ransom, to purchase us with His very life’s blood back to our Creator from whom we had turned away. And Jesus did not come to call the righteous – those who think they are good enough for heaven. Rather, Jesus came to call sinners who KNOW they can never be good enough for heaven without the sacrificial atonement of God-incarnate, of Jesus the Christ.

There are yet more reasons why God-Incarnate came to live for a time among us, but we are out of time to examine those reasons today. So, I am officially making this a series of messages devoted to the question – Why did God become flesh and dwell among us? I promise you, the answers are good news to all who need to hear good news.