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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Merry Christmas, dear saints, and may God grant us in this Christmastide, in this feast of the Lord’s incarnation, his joy and his peace. Especially dear Maddox, the baptized, it was about 2,024 years ago that Jesus was your size. Can you imagine that? He was held in the hands of his mother Mary; his stepfather Joseph cared for him just like you are. He was born then so that you might be born again. And this is true not only for you but for all of us, the baptized.
We rejoice that this birth of our Lord Jesus is also and always for us. For that joy and that wisdom, we’ll meditate today on the Gospel lesson, John 1, also on the epistle lesson, Hebrews 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. But what was he doing? What was God and God the Word doing in the beginning? What was God the Father and God the Son up to before they constructed the universe and all this creation?
You guys are thinking, well, Pastor, that’s a pretty good question that you’re asking to get us thinking and imagining because it’s one of those questions that probably, you know, doesn’t have an answer. Wrong, it does. We know, at least we know part of what the Father and the Son were up to. They were talking with one another. There was a heavenly, eternal conversation, and not only do we know that the Father and Son were talking with one another, we know what they were saying.
This is… If I could give you a Christmas gift, this is the gift. I think this is an amazing thing, that the Bible has passages that tell us how the conversation was going between the Father and the Son. It tells us what it was about. In fact, Hebrews chapter 1 and 2 collects those passages from the Old Testament, all these prophecies that reveal to us what the conversation was. Can I show you this? It’s on page 13 in your bulletin. We want to look at this here. We can flip back a few pages and find it there.
Page 13. The Hebrew, the lesson from Hebrews chapter 1. Long ago, in many various ways God spoke to his people, told by the prophets, but now in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son. It goes on to collect not only in the text that we have, there are a few more verses in chapter one, and then also into chapter two; it collects these little bits of prophetic insight into the heavenly conversation.
Now it seems like one of the problems that the addressees of the sermon to the Hebrews, one of the theological problems that they were having, was that they were thinking too much and too highly of the angels. And so the first chapter, and probably also of Moses, and then also of Aaron, and so the epistle of this sermon, Hebrews, is addressing all these problems.
But here in the first couple of chapters, thinking too highly of the angels, it’s going to gather up all the times where God the Father spoke to the Son and compare that to how He talks to the angels. We see it in the offset little passages there; for example, look at verse 5, to which of the angels did God ever say, Psalm 2, verse 7, “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” Who’s the “you” there? Jesus. And who’s the one talking? God the Father.
It’s even more; it’s already amazing enough, but if you go back to Psalm 2, you see that it’s the Son who’s actually telling us what the Father said to Him. So Jesus is telling us about this conversation between the Father and the Son: “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.” That’s God the Father there talking about Jesus. That’s from 2 Samuel 7, verse 14.
And then Deuteronomy 32, verse 43. Again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him, the Son.” Of the angel, God the Father says, Psalm 104: “He makes his angels winds, his ministers a flame of fire.” But of the Son, he says, Psalm 45 verses 6 and 7: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above all your companions.”
We heard about that from my Isaiah passage last night, the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit. And then, verse 10, which is Psalm 102, again, God the Father talking to God the Son: “You Lord laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning. The heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain. They will wear out like a garment; like a robe, you will roll them up; like a garment, they’ll be changed, but you are the same; your years have no end.”
Now, this is beautiful, how God the Father is speaking, and look at how He speaks to the Son. It is the very nature of God to speak in this kind of way to His own Son, and for the Son to receive all these gifts from the Father. This is what’s happening in all of eternity, and it goes on to quote Psalm 110, this beautiful verse: “Sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool,” the Father again to the Son, giving all these gifts.
But this conversation, dear saints, has to turn eventually; the talking of God the Father and God the Son has to turn eventually to you. They’ve got to sort out what to do with you, and me too I suppose, and all of us from Adam and Eve. What are we going to do with this problem of humanity? What are we going to do with this problem of sin? What are we going to do with death? What are we going to do with the fact that Adam and Eve are going to disobey us in the garden and bring death and corruption into all the world?
Now you would think, well, maybe this is just me; if it was me, my guess would be that the Lord would say, well, just leave them be, or maybe hand them over to the corruption and the condemnation that they deserve. But that’s not how the conversation goes. In Hebrews 2, it quotes Psalm 8, which says, “You made Him a little lower than the angels.” In other words, God the Father and God the Son, in their eternal determination, decide that the Son would become part of creation.
That the Son would take upon Himself your flesh and your blood so that He might be your brother and your friend. That the Eternal One would be born and have a birthday. This is this marvelous change in the heavenly conversation, that the Son who is exalted above all, who is worshiped by the angels, will now be below the angels; that the One who created Adam and Eve in His own likeness would now take upon that likeness Himself; that the Son of God would become a man; that the Word – this is how we had it in the gospel lesson, John chapter 1 – that the Word would become flesh and dwell among us.
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Virgin Mary and was born, incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary and was made man. That, dear saints, is what we celebrate today; that this heavenly deliberation and conversation came to pass 2,024 years and nine months ago today, that the Lord Jesus took on human flesh and then nine months later first revealed that sacred face.
But why? What’s the purpose? Why does Jesus have flesh and blood like you and I have flesh and blood? Hebrews talks about this a little bit later. It’s a bit of a riddle; it’s really wonderful. It comes up in Hebrews chapter 10 where it quotes Psalm 40. Psalm 40 quoted there in Hebrews 10 says this: it’s the Son now talking to the Father, Jesus talking to God the Father, and he says this: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.”
Now what does that mean? The sacrifices of the Old Testament, this is the context; these were instituted by God. Remember there was the morning sacrifice of the Lamb, the evening sacrifice of the Lamb, the Passover sacrifice of the Lamb, and the blood was put over the door. There was the annual sacrifice on the Day of Atonement when a bull was sacrificed for the sins of the high priest, and then a ram was sacrificed for the sins of the people. The blood of those sacrifices was carried into the holy place, even the Holy of Holies, and put over the Ark of the Covenant. The Lord had instituted all these sacrifices.
But Hebrews tells us that the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin; that all those Old Testament sacrifices, the Lord didn’t desire; they didn’t make Him happy. Those were not for taking away sin; they were for preaching the taking away of sin that would happen when the Son of God would have a body to offer up to God the Father. And that’s what this riddle means: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.”
And then with shock, we realize why Jesus has a body, why He has flesh and blood, why He has come into our humanity. He has come so that he himself might be the sacrifice to take away the sin of the world. That’s why John the Baptist sees him and preaches, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” That’s why Jesus has our humanity.
This way it makes so much sense that he was born in the manger outside Bethlehem. What are the odds that the ox and the donkey that are in that manger would end up in the temple in Jerusalem? What are the odds that the sheep that are being raised by the shepherds watching over their flocks at night are going to end up as a sacrifice in Jerusalem so that Jesus Himself is born and lays there among all these animals intended for sacrifice because that’s why He was born.
He has His head so that He could wear a crown of thorns. He has hands and feet so there would be places for the nails. He has his back so that it could be whipped. He grows a beard so that they could pull it out. His little face is there for spit. His ears are to listen to the mockery of the people; his lips are there so that he can taste the gall mixed with wine; his side is made for the spear; and the blood that he has is meant for the ground, “a body you have prepared for me.”
Jesus comes down from heaven and earth; he comes into our humanity as the perfect one God, so that He might bear our sins and our sorrows, so that He might take on our own mortality and death, so that the heavenly conversation between God the Father and God the Son would eventually sound like this: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This is hard even to imagine. But Jesus is there forsaken for you so that he can say this: “Father, forgive them.”
Father, forgive them. Jesus, dear saints, comes into your humanity, but not just your humanity. He comes into your weakness, into your humility and shame, into your death, into your sin, into your condemnation, to take your place so that this one, laid in a manger, nailed to the cross, laid in a tomb, and sitting now in glory at the right hand of the Father, this one is your salvation.
This it turns out is what God the Word and God the Father were doing in all of eternity, planning this: your eternal life, your forgiveness, your peace, and your joy.
So God be praised. The Son has come into the world for you. Merry Christmas. Amen. The peace of God, which passes all that our minds could possibly achieve, keep you in the true faith to life everlasting. Amen.
