[Machine transcription]
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Amen. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear saints, may God grant us joy and peace and comfort in the meditation and consideration of this great mystery, that God is with us in our flesh to be our brother. That verse, that verse from John chapter 1 verse 14 is one of the most stunning verses in all of the Scripture. The word, it says, became flesh and dwelt with us. The Greek word there is really quite nice. It’s skene; it means to tent or to tabernacle, and it is the word used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament for the tabernacle that God gave instructions to Moses to build.
Now, remember the theology of the tabernacle. It was for a distinct purpose. The Lord says, like in Exodus chapter 20, it says, where I cause My name to be remembered, there I will come to you, and there I will bless you. You see, maybe to take two steps back, we want to realize that when the Lord comes to us, it’s not automatically good news. Remember this when we talked about the second coming? It’s like when I was a kid and my mom said, your dad’s going to be home soon. Now most of the time, that was trouble. I mean, this is how it is with God too. God is coming, and that is not necessarily good news. God is going to show up, and what’s going to happen?
I mean, remember, we are sinners. We’re corrupt, we’re mortal, we’re guilty, and God is holy. He is glorious. We are not. So the presence of God is dangerous. The Lord says to Moses, no one can see My face and live. Now think about that. No one can see My face and live, which means that if God is going to be present, He’s going to have to cover His face. He’s going to have to hide His glory. He’s going to have to contain it in such a way that we can approach it without being destroyed by it, and that was the theology of the tabernacle.
The Lord says, I’m going to build this tent and I’m going to dwell in there, and I’m going to give you a way that you can approach My presence safely without being destroyed. But look at all that it required. There was the priesthood, which was sanctified by the sacrifice, and then those priests would bring the sacrifice and pour the blood over the altar, and in the tabernacle itself was the incense and the bread offering and the lights, and the priests had to come into that place in a particular way. And then, even then, no one would go into the most holy place where the Ark of the Covenant was, that had the Ten Commandments and the pot full of manna and the rod of Aaron—no one would go into that most holy place except for the high priest.
And only on one day in the year, the Day of Atonement, and on that day not without the sacrifice of a bull for his own sins and a lamb for the people’s sins. On that day, in fact, the process to go into the holy place was so complex that the priests, the people who have studied this have said, the priest would change their clothes fourteen times. They would take seven or eight distinct baths. There would be offered not only two, but dozens of sacrifices so that they could safely approach the glory of God. That’s the theology of the tabernacle. That’s what’s going on there. The Lord has to protect us from Himself. He has to protect us from His holiness. He has to protect us from His glory. He has to protect us from His presence, and so He has to hide His glory.
Now listen to what it says in John again: the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Do you see that Jesus, when He takes on our humanity, our flesh and blood in the womb of the Virgin Mary, is clothing His glory, covering His glory so that He can be with us in order to bless us and be merciful to us? So that He would not show up in His raw divine glory, which would destroy us. After all, it says in Hebrews that God is a consuming fire, but rather so that He could show up to bless us, to forgive our sins, to give us what we need for life and life eternal.
Now this takes us to this meditation on the second great mystery of the Christian faith. The first great mystery of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the Trinity. The second is the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the third is the doctrine of our redemption; but we want to meditate for a little bit on this second great mystery, and I want to give you three illustrations that are authorized from the church fathers and then one that is not—that’s the dangerous one. Because this is very difficult to understand, and so we need pictures to do it. For the last 2,000 years, the church has been meditating on three unique pictures of what it means that Jesus is God and man united into the single person.
And the first picture is the picture of fire and iron. You have to imagine the old blacksmith shop. And remember how it was? The guy would take the iron and he would put it in the fire, and it would start to glow, and it would be red hot. He would pull it out, and as you see that red hot piece of iron, that becomes a picture for us of what it means that Jesus is both God and man. The fire is in the iron; the iron has been joined to the fire, and yet the iron remains iron, and the fire remains fire. That’s the first picture.
Or the second picture to imagine is the image of the body and the soul. You can’t see your soul; you see the body, and yet your soul is what is there. It’s what animates you. It’s all through the body; it’s what causes you to move and be alive. We know what it’s like when the body and soul are separated from one another because we’ve all been there and seen people who have died. Body and soul are apart. But just like for a living human being, our bodies and souls are joined together into a single person. So Jesus’ divine nature and human nature are joined together in the single person of Christ.
Or here’s the third picture. You remember when Moses, who had been a shepherd for forty years, was out wandering around, and he saw all of a sudden in the wilderness a bush, and it was burning but not being consumed. He says, I’ve got to go check this out, and the Lord saw him coming close, and so He says from the bush, take off your shoes; you’re standing on holy ground. Well, that picture is the third picture of what it means that Jesus’ divine and human natures are again united; like the fire and the bush that was burning but not being consumed, so the divine and human natures are joined together in one person, in Christ.
I told the Confirmation kids that that’s what they’re supposed to think about every time they see a Christmas tree. It’s supposed to be a picture; at least this is what I think—it’s supposed to be a picture of the burning bush. I mean, we have kind of little LED lights, so it’s not as dramatic, but did some of you grow up where you had actually little candles that you put on the tree, and you would light the candles? Now, I can’t imagine a more dangerous thing to do, but maybe it’s worth it to get the picture of a burning bush. That the bush is burning and not being consumed, and this is a preaching to us of how the divine and the human natures have joined together in the single person, and the divine nature remains the divine nature, the human nature remains the human nature, and yet they are combined, united—what we call the personal union.
Now, we were talking about this in confirmation class, and so I was asking them a couple of trick questions, and here’s the first trick question that I asked them, and now I’m going to ask you, so the kids don’t feel so bad. When did this start? When did the incarnation begin? We normally say Christmas, right? That’s when we celebrate it, but no, in fact, the Incarnation was nine months previous—March 25th, the day that we call the Annunciation, when the angel came and spoke to the Virgin Mary and the Son of God was incarnate in her womb. Now, this is an amazing thing for us to consider, that when Jesus was just a two-week-old little baby in the womb, He was God and man united. It is at Christmas that He first reveals His sacred face, but it was God and man already in the womb.
And then the real trick question is, when does the incarnation end? I asked the confirmands if they thought it ended at the resurrection, or at the ascension, or at the second coming, but when does it end? The answer is, never, never. Jesus never lays down His human nature. He took His body up from the grave, and He still has His body. That’s how He gives us His body and His blood, from the altar in the supper.
To get this in our minds, I want to give you a fourth illustration. Now this is a warning that any illustration like this is always going to come up short. And this illustration comes up short in a couple of key ways, so I don’t want you to—I don’t want you to build doctrine off of this picture, but I think it will get to the point. I want you to imagine this: a father and a son, and they are space explorers. And so they are traveling around space, and they come to a particular planet, and they start orbiting that planet, and the father knows what’s on the planet and he’s showing the son. He says, can you see who lives down on the planet? And he says, well, I see people or I see things that are alive down there; I can’t quite see.
And so they go in for a closer look, and as they get closer, they realize that this planet is filled with dogs. And not only is it filled with dogs, it’s filled with huge, very mean, bloodthirsty, like cage-fighting dogs. And as they get closer, they see that these dogs are biting and devouring one another and attacking one another and destroying one another, and the whole place is filled with carnage and disaster. And the son, as they travel around this, sees this planet full of dogs, and he says, that place is a mess; that place is a disaster.
And the father looks over to the son, and he says, son, I love those dogs. In fact, son, I want you to save those dogs. Okay? You’re the father; you’re the boss. What are we going to do? And the father says to the son, to save those dogs, you are going to have to become a dog yourself. In fact, you are going to have to become a little Chihuahua, and you’re gonna go into the midst of these dogs, and they are going to tear you to shreds. They are going to destroy you. They’re gonna rip you to pieces. But the Father says, I’ll rescue you; I’ll put you back together; you’ll be alive again. But listen, son, you will be a Chihuahua forever, from now on, to dwell with them, to bless them, and to save them.
Now, you can see how it comes up short, but I hope you get the point. When Jesus became a man, He took on your humanity, never to lay it down again. He didn’t put on flesh and blood like we put on a jacket or put on our shoes. He took it into Himself in order that He might be forever your Savior, and that you might be forever His children.
So we rejoice in this, but our rejoicing now is just the beginning, because Jesus, who is in your flesh, has you forever. God be praised. Amen. And the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
