“The Case for Christ - His Importance” - (part 6)

John opened his gospel with: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He [or ‘It’] was in the beginning with God.’
  
This is a great thing John is writing to his readers!

But - how easy it is to just skip over the reading of this without giving it much thought.

It is something difficult to understand, I know, - but, I think the problem in our understanding this is because our thinking does not match what is in this amazing statement. 

We sing the song sometimes that says:

‘Jesus - Jesus - Jesus
There’s just something about that Name!
Master, Savior, Jesus - like the fragrance after the rain.
Jesus - Jesus - Jesus - let all heaven and earth proclaim
Kings and kingdoms shall all pass away -
But there’s something about that Name!’

Yes - There is something about that Name! - an indescribable ‘Something’!

I think most of the times we sing that, we really cannot pinpoint that ‘something’ about His Name that so charms and inflames us as believers.

Have you noticed that?

But - John has helped to open that up to us!

Tonight, let us look together at what this ‘something’ is.

It is spelled out for us in these first words of the Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...’.

And, then, from this very triumphant opening, John’s declaration flows into the ‘Word’s’ Incarnation: ‘...And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us...full of grace and truth.’

This is how the fact of Jesus in His earthly history began.

And it was all done, as Mt 1:22-23, explained: ‘...that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.’

It is the truth of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ that takes us far beyond the limits of nature and its customary course of thought about human procreation. 

When John stepped into the sphere of his thought of Eternity first, he was declaring the fact of the starting point of all things.

The starting point was Divinity ‘...in the beginning...’ as the Word, of the Word being ‘with’ God, and of the Word Who
‘was’ God.

He was referring to the Divine Being, a ‘Principle of the Greatest Importance’, to a ‘Wisdom Being’, to a ‘Dynamic’ beyond the possibility of giving it a full and accurate description in the unit of human language. 

This is the ‘Word’, the ‘Logos’, the ‘Holy Thing’, Who - in terms of Ultimate Greatness and Majesty - is linked only with Deity moving on in His creation Activity. 

And, then, in the second part, John stepped down in his thought to the earth to make the point: ‘the Word was made flesh’ and came to inhabit earth.

The Word, Who was only linked with Deity, now linked with flesh!

Deity’s creation Activity made its move!

This was the ‘Ruling Fact’ of the universe he was trying to put into words for our understanding.

The Word became flesh - He became one of us!

The question has been asked: ‘How can this Mighty, Ruling Principle or Being of the universe, this Divine Creator of all creation, become one of us?’

To be sure: John is not saying something that is commonplace - something that is familiar to us as we read through this opening statement of his.

This is unfamiliar territory, hard to lay hold of, even harder to explain, and easy to reject flat out - is it not?

Yes - but John is writing about an unparalleled, remarkable wonder - plain and simple.

He is writing about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the One Who is truly and fully God and at the same time, the One Who is truly and fully Man.

God became flesh in the form of Jesus Christ - The Eternal stepped into time.

This Ruling Principle of the Universe was taking action in Jesus Christ to bring to fruition His salvation to the fullest degree.

And God remarkably regulated every circumstance along the way with great Wisdom and Prudence. 

Let us go over to Luke chapter one, verses 36-37 to see God’s ingeniously divine Way of bringing God and man together to effect this salvation. 

It is there we read of the angel’s appearance to Mary, and in verse 31, she is told of the Son she would conceive Whose name would be Jesus.

‘But’, she asked, ‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’

And the angel replied, in v 35: ‘the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore, also, that ‘Holy Thing’ [i.e., the ‘It’, the ‘Word’ - my insertion] which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’

Then as a confirmation of this miraculous birth, Mary was given the news of Elizabeth, her cousin. 

Zacharias, Elizabeth’s husband, thought it was so absurd for the angel who visited him to suggest he and Elizabeth were going to be parents!

He said to the angel who was delivering the news: ‘Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man and my wife well stricken in years’. (Lu 1:18)

Yes - their child was conceived by the natural order of human generation - in spite of the parents’ ages!

Now - that alone was a miraculous doing - it, too, was God’s creative action!  

And, just as it was His action with Elizabeth and Zacharias, so also was it His action in Mary’s case, only significantly greater.

The explanation of the birth of Elizabeth’s child and the explanation of the birth of Mary’s child is given in verse 37: ‘For with God nothing shall be impossible.’

With Mary, the ‘impossible’ was explicitly explained: ‘the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.

And ‘...that Holy Thing’ which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’

God was uniting Himself with the humanity in the form of Jesus Christ Who was ‘born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’, even of God, the Holy Spirit, in His own supernatural, phenomenal way.
(Jn 1:13)

Thus - nature suspended its laws to bring forth a Child - to bring the pre-existent Word to earth to live among men.

And - is it not amazing: although He was born of a virgin woman, yet He did not inherit the sinful legacy of man’s nature passed on to man through Adam and Eve!

The Word became flesh, came out of Mary’s flesh, but did not come through the ordinary means of conception nor did He inherit the sinful nature of man. 

God’s overruling overruled thoroughly - there was not one blunder in His vetoing power.

The ordinary course through human generation was overruled by the ‘power of the Highest’ Who overshadowed 
Mary’s physical being.

‘For with God, nothing shall be impossible.’

This was the answer to Mary’s question as she puzzled about it in her mind.

‘For with God, nothing shall be impossible’ - nothing, not even the birth of God through human flesh!

Now - we are living in an enlightened society today.

And our sophistication tells us that only gullible fools would believe this fact of a virgin birth bringing forth God’s Son. 

Why is this?  Why do we think this way? 

It is simply because the ‘overshadowing by the power of God’ cannot be explained in biological terms.

We have new and innovative technologies these days, and probably newer and more ways will be found in days to come for the propagation of our race.

And there will be debates and more debates over the ways and the whys of such means of generation - great moral issues will ever be before us about this.

But - as current and as different as our scientific methods can be and as much debating man can do - there is no biological explanation for the birth of God’s Son through a virgin’s body - nor will there ever be one until the Lord returns to reveal all things He now keeps hidden!

For those of us who are Christians, it is not difficult to explain it in our limited light.

The only way it is and can be explained is in terms of divine power in the act of creation, the power that is able to create something out of nothing.

By God’s creative energy, the Lord Jesus was fashioned in Mary’s womb so that when He was born, He was born to be known as the Son of God.

Yes - He ‘...Who shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’

Jesus was leaving His heavenly habitation, the realm of Deity, and was entering into this realm of human life.

As the Word Who was God’s Son in the Eternal, He ‘humbled Himself’ and became Man, took upon Himself the very depth of humiliation. 

And He did this even though He was of one substance with God His Father, even though He was the Eternal God, the Holy One of the very Godhead, everlasting Son living in the Eternal Presence with the surrounding hosts of angels.

He left that habitation to enter a foreign land, a hostile habitation as the Son of God. 

He said at one time in His earthly life: ‘The foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.’ (Mt 8:20)

Yes - the Divine had consented to ‘...tabernacle among men...’ where He was placing upon Himself limitations of such unimaginable magnitude!

‘The foxes felt at home in their caves; the birds were at home in their nests...’ - His own creation found themselves at home in their creation elements.

But Jesus had come into a place of creation where He was not in His own element of creative activity - He could do  only those things under God’s directives - in that sense, He had nowhere to lay His head.

Yet He pitched His tent where we live, right into this very existence in which we live.

He made Himself ready to take the same road through life as we do and be under the same restriction as we are.

Can you just fathom such a miraculous, creative act of God in this way? 

I - I must admit - cannot!  Oh - how it needs to be hammered deeper into my own heart!

How could God and man meet so together?

How could He speak to us in Jesus Christ in such a way that Jesus could become the meeting place between God and us?

It goes beyond our comprehension!

Some, who oppose the truth of Christ’s Incarnation, say that this is not the first time toward claims of a virgin birth.

There have been similar assertions of virgin births in the myths of the heathen gods. 

They come through disgusting, lewd stories of the gods supposedly consorting with women of the earth.

But - there is no comparison between the two: they are simply fables; the virgin birth of Christ is a fact.

There is a vileness in such opposition to the virgin birth of Christ that tries to strip away the purity of God’s overshadowing in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Yes - it was the Son of God, that ‘Something’ Who became flesh through the purity of God’s thought and creative action!

The Holy Spirit spoke of that ‘Something’ as being supremely great when He called Jesus that ‘Holy Thing’!

And John spoke of that ‘Something’ as the Word that was ‘in the beginning’, that was ‘with’ God, and ‘was’ God.  

Now - this, when you really stop to think about it - is a staggering, unbelievable, opening thought that John wrote -  a thought that the average intelligent person finds, not only hard to grasp, but equally as hard to believe and accept.

Have you found it easy to receive and understand?

Our young people today would call it ‘mind-boggling’, and mind-boggling it surely is!

But - is it not strange that today’s public can believe all kinds of drivel that it is fed through the various media avenues - to believe and trust in nonsense that is seen and heard in commercials, in ads, of statistics, of polls, and all sorts of false claims of myriads of things?

And, yet, it can overlook the might and the wisdom of the power of God in His creative acts!

And, equally as strange, yet so true and so commanding, Jesus’ birth is still that pivot of life that men find difficult to receive altogether.

God’s continual judgment because of Christ still hangs over men; men are always troubled with this one originating point - His Incarnation through the means of a virgin woman!

Instead, He is approved as a good man having come just as any other, they say.

And, He may be given a place in history but it is not much of a place.

Listen - and hear me well - whenever man stands upon his own self-appraisal of Christ’s birth and puts upon the Son of God the label of ‘man only’, he is touching hell itself!

We dare not trifle with God’s ‘Holy Thing’, born of a virgin!

When man does this, he is missing that ‘Something’, that ‘Holy Thing’, Whose birth he cannot explain with his own creative powers and technologies!

He is missing the meaning of the Son of God having come in the power and the authority of God’s Creative Word.

If we are to grasp the sense of the ‘Something’ about Jesus, if we are to possess Him, if we are to carry anything of worth into the eternal, then we must build on the intelligent conviction that God’s design of life in Christ Jesus is Best.

This is the Name of One Who is as great as can possibly be imagined - that ‘Something’, that ‘Holy Thing’’ conceived by God’s creative power, and born of a virgin, Who is Jesus, the Son of God!   

In closing, let me just read John’s opening words once again: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He [or ‘It’] was in the beginning with God.’

And, also, Lu 1:35 of the actual fulfillment of this, as given to Mary: ‘...The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’

Think about it - pray about it - accept it - ponder it very seriously this week - and believe it with all your heart.    

 AMEN!   

 Let us pray: