Series

Series: Advent, #2

December 16, 2007

GOD’S FINAL WORD

John 1:1-3; Hebrews 1:1-3a

John 1:1-3

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was with God in the beginning. [3] Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made… [14] The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Hebrews 1:1-3

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. [3] The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

I. The Heavens Declare the Glory of God Psalm 19:1-4; Rom 1:20

I love to look up at the night sky on a cold winter night, because the stars just seem so much brighter against the blackness of the sky. Three thousand years ago, King David was impressed by those stars, and he wrote, Psalm 19:1-4

The heavens tell of the glory of God.

The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.

[2] Day after day they continue to speak;

night after night they make him known.

[3] They speak without a sound or a word;

their voice is silent in the skies;

[4] yet their message has gone out to all the earth,

and their words to all the world.

It is even more amazing to realize that those tiny pinpoints of light are actually massive galaxies and stars trillions of miles away.

That’s one end of the spectrum. The universe is incredibly big and beautiful and wild! Then we come down to earth, and we see God’s glory displayed in the beauty He has created here. We have seen the beauty of the snow this week, we live in one of the most beautiful states in the country, we stand in awe at the intricate way God has designed the whole environment to work together, with each plant, each animal, each mineral playing its proper part. And then there is the crowning achievement of His creation—mankind, created in His own image.

If we keep shrinking the scale, we get down to the level of cells, then of molecules, then atoms, then the bizarre world of sub-atomic particles with weird names like muon, and meson, and quark, and gluon. All of this declares the glory of God the Creator.

What does the physical universe tell us about God? Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” So God has revealed Himself in nature, and from that we can tell that He is powerful, very orderly, unbelievably creative, beautiful, and big!

But the universe tells us nothing about His personal qualities. In fact, if the physical creation were all we had to go on, we wouldn’t know God was personal at all. We might think He was nothing more than a force of some sort.

But God created us to be in a relationship with Himself, so He revealed Himself to people who then wrote down what they saw and heard, and this became the written Word, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. So we have the general revelation of God in the world He has created, and then there is the special revelation of Himself in the Scriptures.

II. Scripture Reveals the Glory of God

In the Bible, God has revealed a great deal about Himself. All His qualities and attributes are portrayed there, as the mighty works of God are described. He speaks through the prophets, and tells us about Himself. The Bible is like the autobiography of God.

I don’t know how to go about describing in just a few minutes what the Bible tells us about God, because He is so complex. I have compiled a list of over 200 attributes of God from the Scripture, and I’m sure that’s not all there are. But here are two of His characteristics that seem to stand out to me.

A. God is holy Isaiah 6:1-5

There is a whole complex of traits related to God’s holiness. He is pure, just, righteous, perfect in every way. One day, the prophet Isaiah had a vision of God in His holiness, and it blew him away. Isaiah 6:1-5, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. [2] Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. [3] And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." [4] At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. [5] "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." When we are faced with the holiness of God, the first thing we notice is that we are not holy. And that means we are in trouble.

But, praise God, another central quality of His nature is that He is loving.

B. God is love Isaiah 54:5

One of the most astonishing ways God’s love is revealed in the Old Testament is through the imagery of husband and wife. God pictures Himself as the husband of His people, Israel, and they are His bride (Is 54:5). He loves us like a husband loves his wife: He is committed to us; He seeks our good; He wants to provide for our needs; and especially, He desires to enjoy a close, intimate relationship with us.

Now from our perspective, trapped in time as we are, it appears to us that these two central attributes of God, His holiness and justice on one hand, and His deep love for us on the other, create a dilemma for Him, because of our sin.

C. God’s dilemma Habakkuk 1:13

He loves us, wants to be in a relationship with us, wants to bless us and make our lives go well, but we are rebellious children. We resist His leadership, we resent His rules, we bristle at the notion that we are not the masters of our own fate, and we have our figurative fist stuck in His face, defying His authority in our lives. That’s a problem. Because God’s justice and holiness will not allow Him to overlook that rebellion. He has to punish us. Habakkuk 1:13, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” God is just, and He cannot compromise His justice. He cannot just ignore our sin, or pretend it isn’t there, or sweep it under the rug.

What to do about this? How does God deal with this dilemma? He sends His Son. And Jesus is the ultimate and final revelation of God, the living Word. The Bible is the written Word of God; Jesus is the living Word. Both reveal God, but Jesus does it best.

III. Jesus: God’s Final Word

A. Revelation Hebrews 1:1-3; John 1:1-3; 14:9; 8:19; 12:44,45; 15:23

It’s Christmas, and as Christians, we are eager for people to understand the reason for the season. If it were not for the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, we would not be celebrating Christmas at all. He was God’s greatest gift to humanity, and we give gifts in recognition of that. (Actually, the tradition got started by a wealthy and godly man named Nicholas who anonymously gave gifts to poor people in his town of Anatolia, Turkey. But Nicholas (also called Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, and Santa Claus) did that because he was so thrilled at the gift God had given him in Jesus Christ.) The historical reason for celebrating Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ.

The early Christians struggled to understand the significance of Jesus, and they expressed their understanding in different ways. Hebrews 1:1-3 says, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, [2] but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. [3] The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being...”

God has spoken to us by His Son. Put that together with John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was with God in the beginning. [3] Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made… [14] The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

So here, in Jesus of Nazareth, God has fully revealed Himself to mankind. The Son is the exact representation of God’s being. The eternal Word, the eternal expression of God, took on human nature and a human body, so that Jesus could say to His disciple, Philip, John 14:9, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…” This is as close as we can get to God without being consumed by His holiness.

One night as a father is tucking his son into bed, the little boy asks, “Daddy, what is God like?” For a brief moment, the father panics—he’s thinking frantically for answers to this simple but profound question, and all he can think of is abstract theological concepts: God is just, God is holy, God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent…. And then it comes to him, and he says with conviction, “God is like Jesus.”

That doesn’t mean God has a human body. It means that when we see Jesus healing people, it’s a picture of God’s tender compassion and great power. It means that when we see Jesus teaching people because they were like sheep without a shepherd, it’s a picture of God’s wisdom and understanding. When we see Jesus hanging out with the riff-raff of His culture, the people who were despised and marginalized by the respectable religious people, it’s a picture of God’s great heart for the last, the least, and the lost of this world, and His passion to bring them into a love relationship with Himself.

Jesus also said,

· John 8:19, "If you knew me, you would know my Father also."

· John 12:44, “When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45 When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me.”

· John 15:23, “He who hates me hates my Father as well.”

Jesus of Nazareth was the final and complete revelation of God to the world. And therefore, our relationship to Jesus is our relationship to God.

That’s important, because a lot of people have some belief in God, but they’re not too big on Jesus. It’s OK in most social circles today to talk about God, or even pray to God, but when you start talking about Jesus Christ, people get nervous. They don’t like ministers to pray in Jesus’ name in public settings, for fear it might offend some folks. Jesus is just too…concrete for many people today. If you talk about God, then that leaves them some wiggle room to imagine God however they want Him to be. But Jesus was a real person, who lived at a particular time in history, and did specific things, and said specific things. It’s harder (though not by any means impossible) to mush Jesus into our own image, the way we do with God. But the fact remains: our relationship to Jesus is our relationship to God.

But this is actually a good thing, because He was also the final solution to the dilemma God had with humanity.

B. The solution

1. Sacrifice bunt Romans 3:23-26

God loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us, but we have rejected Him and His authority, and gone off to do our own thing, and He has to punish that sin. I’m going to use baseball to try to explain how Jesus is the solution to this problem God had.

I don’t know if you have ever thought about how theological the game of baseball is. Even though it is a team sport with nine men on the field at any one time, it is really a very individualistic game. One pitcher throws the ball to one batter who is fully and solely responsible for what he does with that pitch. If he hits it, one fielder is fully and solely responsible for how he handles that ball, and if he muffs it, he gets charged with an “error” that goes up on the big scoreboard for all to see. Yes, the players have to cooperate with each other, but each one is responsible for his own performance. That’s a lot like life, where we may be part of a family, a company we work for, a neighborhood, a church, but we are each of us fully and solely responsible for our behavior and performance in life. And there is a giant scoreboard in the sky that keeps track of our runs, hits, and yes, errors.

Another way baseball is theological is in the concept of the sacrifice. There is the “sacrifice fly” in which the batter hits the ball so far into the outfield that the runners on base can tag up and advance, even though the ball is caught and the batter is out. Seldom does a batter intend to hit a sacrifice fly, but he is often happy when his out results in his teammates moving forward.

Even more theological is the “sacrifice bunt” in which a batter is instructed by the coach to “lay down his life” (they even use that phrase: “lay down a bunt”), knowing for sure that he will die (be thrown out at first base) in the effort to advance the runner. When the batter comes to the plate with that instruction from the coach, he knows that this is going to hurt his batting average, but he does it anyway, he sacrifices himself for the good of his teammates.

I don’t mean to trivialize what Jesus did on the cross, but that was the greatest sacrifice bunt ever made. He did lay down His life for us, because when He died, He was being punished for the sins of humanity—like the violence that has touched our state last week with the two shootings at YWAM and New Life Church; the sectarian violence that has divided Iraq for years now; the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade; racial prejudice; domestic abuse; marriages wrecked by selfish spouses; rapes, murders, kidnappings—we hear about it every night on the news, and it can overwhelm us. It did overwhelm Jesus on the cross—it literally killed Him.

You and I are responsible before God—the just, holy Judge of all the earth—for our actions. And we are guilty. You and I probably aren’t guilty of those horrible crimes I was mentioning before. But we probably are guilty of selfishness, of insensitivity to the needs of the people around us, of racial prejudice, of homophobia toward gays and lesbians. We do lose our temper when our “rights” are violated, or we just don’t get our way. We men do commit adultery in our hearts when we see the Victoria’s Secret ads on TV. We do covet the expensive things other people have, especially at Christmas, when all the advertising is designed to maximize our covetousness quotient. We do worry and fret about our future instead of trusting God to take care of us. We’re just not living the abundant life God intends for us, and it hurts us in some way every day.

Jesus Christ came to earth, not only to reveal the Father to us as His final word, but to be the ultimate solution to the dilemma God had with us. He stepped in to be our substitute at the bar of God’s justice. The Bible says, Romans 3:23-25 (NLT), “For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. [24] Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. [25] For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. [26 NIV] he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” This was the dilemma God had—how to be just, upholding the righteous requirements of the Law, being true to His own nature, and still forgive us our sin. The solution was to punish Jesus for our sin, and then forgive us and bring us into a relationship with Himself.

2. Grace John 1:14

There is no way that we deserve this. What we deserve, to return to the marriage image, is for God to divorce us for our spiritual adultery, our unfaithfulness to Him. But instead, He laid down His life for us, so that we could be reconciled to Him. The word for that undeserved blessing is grace. And that’s what Jesus was all about: John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Let’s say your spouse cheats on you. You have a right to divorce them, but instead, you try to forgive them, and go together to marriage counseling to see how you can make the marriage work. That’s grace on your part.

Or let’s say you promise your son you’ll go sledding with him on Saturday, but Saturday comes and you head out early to have coffee with the guys, then you swing by the office to take care of a few details. While you’re there, you stupidly take a call from the boss that leads to your staying the whole day. Finally, at 6:00pm, long after dark, you drag yourself in to the house, only to be greeted by your son, looking very disappointed. You feel horrible, and apologize, knowing as you do it that there is no way to make an excuse for that broken promise. But by the end of dinner, your boy is laughing and smiling, and when you get up from the table, he jumps on you for a round of wrestle-and-tumble. That’s grace. It’s undeserved favor, goodness, blessing.

The Scripture says Jesus Christ was full of grace and truth. That’s an unusual combination. We typically err on one side or the other. We may have so much grace that it morphs into syrupy sentimentality with no substance, or we may be so full of truth that people can’t stand to be around the white-hot fire of our righteousness; but we seldom meld the two together in just the right proportions. Jesus does. The truth is that we are rebellious sinners, separated from God, with no hope for eternity, and we are therefore objects of His righteous wrath. The grace is that Jesus died in our place so that we could experience the love and mercy and beauty and joy of a relationship with God.

So here we are at Christmas, 2007. Do you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or are you still trying to make it on your own? Do you have any idea how many “errors” you have on the great scoreboard in the sky? You can’t erase them, you know. You can’t make up for them by hitting a grand slam home run in the next inning. In fact, because of those errors, you are losing badly. The only solution is to accept the grace of God expressed to you in Jesus Christ, and to receive the forgiveness that He offers. It’s like you are losing 23 to 2, and you have committed 18 errors, and Jesus suddenly comes along, erases all your errors and changes your score to 100. You win, big time!

You know, there’s a lot of controversy about whether cities should put up Christmas lights and decorations with a religious theme, or whether store employees should say, “Merry Christmas” to the shoppers. Honestly, I think much of that is somewhat irrelevant. What really matters is whether you have the light of Christ in your life, or whether you are, in fact, merry because of the grace of God. Let’s not get hung up on the external trappings of the holiday. Jesus came to deal with a very internal and personal issue—our sin, our rebellion against God, our insistence that we can make it without Him. That’s the personal affront to God that you need to deal with today, and the only way to do it is to listen to Jesus speak the truth to you: you are a sinner, in danger of spending eternity apart from God. And then hear Jesus speak grace to you: Come to me; let me pay for your sins; let me forgive you and make you right with God. Because then you will experience the love, and the peace and the joy that are the undeserved gifts He wants to give everyone this Christmas.

Come.