Episode Transcript
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Let's turn our attention to Luke Chapter
One, verses twenty sixth through thirty three.
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Luke Chapter One, Verse Twenty Six, in the sixth month, the
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Angel Gabriel was sent from God to
a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to
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a virgin betrothed to a man whose
name was Joseph of the House of David,
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and the Virgin's name was Mary,
and he came to her and said
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greetings, O favored one, the
Lord is with you. But she was
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greatly troubled at the saying and tried
to discern what sort of greeting this might
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be, and the angel said to
her, do not be afraid, Mary,
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for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive
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in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
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He will be great and will be
called the son of the most high,
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and the Lord God will give to
him the throne of his father David,
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and he will reign over the House
of Jacob forever and of this UN
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of his kingdom, there will be
no end. You may be seated,
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but read this passage this morning for
Luke one twenty six through thirty three,
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so that we consider that can consider
the last of these questions that we've been
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asking and meditating on as it relates
to the incarnation. This last question is
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the how of the incarnation. How
is it that Jesus came to be incarnate?
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The explanation for that is given here. To marry herself, she is
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told that she will conceive in her
womb and bear a son. He will
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be called great and he will be
this promised King. We read on in
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that same passage, in verse thirty
five, that the Holy Spirit will come
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upon you and the power of the
most high will overshadow you. Therefore,
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the child to be born will be
called Holy, the son of God.
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When we considered the what of the
incarnation, we remembered that Jesus was fully
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God and fully man, one person
with two natures, if you take your
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hymnals. Actually, if you don't
mind, if take a turn to page
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eight hundred and a seventy. Yes, a hundred and seventy, this is
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our shorter catechism, one of the
confessions of our church, a good teaching
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tool. Question Twenty one. This
question is asked and we hear about who
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it is that Jesus is and what
he was and according to his two natures.
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For Question Twenty One, who is
the redeemer of God's elect the answer
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is the only redeemer of God's elect
is the Lord Jesus Christ, who,
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being the eternal son of God,
became man and so was and continue with
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to be God and man into distinct
natures and one person forever. That sort
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of the WHO and the what.
Right, who is the redeemer of God's
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elect his name is Jesus, as
Mary was called told to call him.
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And the what is the what is
nature is he became? He was always
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eternally, the in eternal son of
God. He became man, and so
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was and continue with to be God
and man in two distinct natures and one
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person forever. So one way of
putting this is, Michael Horton said it
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this way. Jesus is neither hybrid
in his two natures, a divinized man
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or a humanized God. Nor is
he a two headed Hydra, being two
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persons and one person at the same
time. No, Jesus is one person,
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but both God and man, distinct
and fully so in both ways.
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So that's the what of the incarnation. That's who Jesus was, but of
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course inquiring why. Minds want to
know how can this be? Mary herself
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and another place asks this same question. How can this be? And it's
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a fair question and even a good
question to ask for several reasons. One
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is the answer of the how gives
support to the what God tells us a
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truth and we can say and we
should believe it simply on the fact that
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he's told it. But God and
his goodness reveals to us more. He
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explains how it will happen, and
that how, the explanation of it helps
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us to understand and to believe in
its strengthens our faith. Another reason that
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question of how is is a good
question to ask is it's a really important
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question. As I mentioned early in
the service. Hebrews to nine and ten,
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or nine or sorry, ten,
through a team, says that our
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salvation depends on Jesus being made like
his brothers. Even makes the point that
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Jesus didn't come like an angel because
he didn't come to save the angels.
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He could have been he could have
become something else, but he didn't.
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He became like us, he became
a man, he became incarnate. Why?
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Because our salvation depends on it.
The how is very important. One
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of the Church Fathers, Gregory of
Nancy ends, has put it this way.
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That which he that is Jesus,
that which he has not assumed,
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he has not healed, but that
which is united to his Godhead, is
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also saved. Sometimes this is translated
is something like that which he is not
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taken on, he is not redeemed. It's a little maxim that reminds us
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that how important these two things are
to go together. Jesus didn't take on
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Angel, the nature of an angel, because he didn't come to redeem angels.
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He didn't come to save the angels, he came to save us.
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All this is to say that our
salvation depends completely on whether or not Jesus
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was in fact God eternally who came
to save and also a true man so
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that he might represent us who needed
to be saved. So that's where we
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get to this question of how and
this assurance to our faith of how that
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came to be. How did Christ, the son of God, become man?
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Well, that's the next question in
our cateschism, question twenty two.
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How did Christ, being the son
of God, become man? The answer
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is Christ, the son of God, became man by taking to himself a
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true body and a reasonable soul,
being conceived by the power of the Holy
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Ghost in the womb of the Virgin
Mary and born of her, yet without
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sin. You see what the catechism
says here, words directly from scripture,
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reminding us of WHO Jesus was.
It says that Jesus became man by taking
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to himself a true body. This
is a reminder, and and that Jesus
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didn't merely appear as human, or
his body wasn't sort of partially human or
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lacking in humanity in some way.
No, everything about Jesus in his incarnation
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was totally human. It was a
true body, not a Phantasm, not
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a projection or a ghost, a
specter. It wasn't an idea, a
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concept, it was a body.
And not only did he have a body,
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but, as all humans do,
he also had a soul, a
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reasonable soul, one that thought and
made sense of things and and worked,
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as souls do. How did this
happen? Well, he was conceived by
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the power of the Holy Ghost,
as we read in Luke Chapter One,
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that God would that she would conceive
in her womb through the overshadowing of the
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Holy Spirit. This word overshadowing is
such a remarkable term because it's the same
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verb that's used in genesis to describe
the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters,
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overshadowing things, this kind of brooding
spirit, at the beginning of creation.
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And you know what happened then.
The world came into existence as God spoke
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through his word and by the power
of the spirit. And the same thing
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happens here, only it's not the
whole world, it's it's really the new
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world. The new age is brought
forth in all here in Mary's womb.
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What an amazing thing to consider.
Just as the Holy Spirit at the beginning
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of the world overshadow to the world, brooded and hovered over the world and
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brought life, so here too,
but now over Mary, over her womb,
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and by the power of God,
the son of man and the son
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of God was conceived. And in
this being born of Mary, through this
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conception that she has from God,
we find out that she's no surrogate mother.
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God didn't implant a sort of God
divine embryo, the son of God,
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in her and then which she was
just a vessel. No, he
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was of her, he was from
her. This was his mother. You
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might think of it this way.
Jesus had Mary's DNA, to put it
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in modern terms. He was fully, fully, fully human, and yet
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also fully, fully, fully God, and we see all of that in
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this how how did Jesus become incarnate? Through this amazing thing that is never
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happened before in history and is never
happened again and never will, the conception
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of a virgin by God. Now
this might lead to all kinds of other
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house I tried to consider some of
them and came to a few dead ends
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and darkness and mystery, and that's
okay. God gives us the House as
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much as we need to know,
as much as is right for us.
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Our job is to make sense of
things, to understand things as they are
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given to us, to be assured
in our faith of these historical facts and
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things that God has given to us. But our job is not to master
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God, to make sure that we
can understand him and everything that he's done,
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both hidden and revealed. It's true
enough that when to humans conceive there's
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a lot of darkness and mystery and
wonder that goes on in the womb of
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a mother, beautiful things. How
much more so when she conceives by God
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himself. It is a wonderful thing. What kind of awesome power went in
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to this conception. And yet God
gives himself to us in this way,
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and he does so at least for
this reason that we might never doubt.
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I think this is one benefit of
focusing on the how. It encourages us,
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it assures our faith, it tells
us who he is and what he's
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done for us. Let me think
of just or or share with you three
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things as we close, as we
think about who he is and what he's
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done for us in the how of
the incarnation, consider these three things.
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First, consider the love of God
in the conception, this virgin conception,
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and the incarnation of the Sun.
The love of God we see in this
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moment is a very deep and very
intimate love. Consider how close God comes
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to his creatures, how close God
comes to the humanity that he is made
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at this moment of incarnation. And
God doesn't just come to us, he
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becomes us, not to say that
we are all divine or that God is
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in everything, but you know what
I mean. Using the language of scripture,
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he becomes man, he becomes flesh, this particular person. God doesn't
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just come alongside of us, he
becomes us. That's what I mean when
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I use the word intimate, when
I describe God's love, and to do
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so in this particular way, in
the most intimate spaces of our humanity,
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the son of God was conceived.
These moments of conception are some of the
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intimate moments that humans experience. You
might add to that the the gestation period,
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the growing of a baby in a
mother's womb. What's more intimate and
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close than these kinds of things?
This is how God loves us. This
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is how close he comes to us
when a mother carries a growing child in
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her and is nourishing that child by
the strength of our own body. Jesus
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was being nourished by the strength of
Mary, upheld by the hand of God
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and the power of the spirit.
God was not required to do any of
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this, he was not required to
come this close. In fact, is
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justice and repelled him from us.
In our sin, in our in our
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the ways that we had committed treason
against God and the ways that we had
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not lived up to the things that
he had called us to do, God
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was and had rejected us, left
us alone. But in the incarnation,
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in the promises leading up to it. In the fulfillment of those promises,
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God comes close and he comes intimately, close and deeply, and it shows
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us his very deep love. That's
what we see in the how of the
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incarnation, how much God loves us, and we also see, secondly,
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his deep grace, as I've just
been applied. He came this way not
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because he had to, but because
he wanted to, because in his the
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greatness of his mercy, he came
to save sinners. Christ was born,
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Christ humbled himself, Christ died for
the sake of sinners, for ungodly people
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and righteous people, people who didn't
love him and didn't want him, people
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who are too busy with the cares
of the world to seek him. Those
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are the people he came to save. I'm one of those people and if
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you believe in Jesus and trust in
him, lying you're one of those people
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too. You're a person who's recognized
that God came into the world not to
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put a metal on your chest and
say wow, you're a really amazing person,
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but he came into the world saying
I loved him, and I see
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how broken you are and I see
how unhealthy you are and I want you
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to be whole again, I want
you to be righteous, I want you
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to be mine. This is grace, undeserved favor, D merited favor.
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God gives this deep grace to us
in his incarnation, when he comes this
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close to us. It is love
and it is grace. And finally,
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I want you to consider, in
the how of the incarnation, God's awesome
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power. When we consider the hall
of the incarnation, the creation of of
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this human body, added to the
divinity of the son of God, may
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we never again doubt the power of
God to accomplish things. God brings water
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out of rocks, he stops celestial
bodies in their tracks, he divides waters,
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he stops waters, he casts out
demons and he brings life out of
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nothing. And he became incarnate too. The power of God is amazing here.
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When we consider him coming into the
world and all that he came to
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do, we remember how awesome him
he is. I mentioned this because this
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is so important as we come upon
the new year, as you consider the
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circumstances in your life, your health, your finances, your relationships, all
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of these various things, remember the
incarnation, remember the power of God as
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it's manifested in love and grace,
and never doubt again the God will take
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care of you, that he loves
you and that all the trials that you
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will face are being accomplished according to
his perfect and good and holy will,
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that he works all things together for
good for those who love him and are
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called according to his purpose. Look
and consider the incarnation of God and wonder.
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Pull this treasure of God that he
has given to us and revealed to
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you and hold it heights in your
heart, ponder it and meditate on it,
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consider it, even as Mary did. The wonderful thing about preaching and
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the sacraments, as will enjoy in
a moment too. Is it in these
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things God continues to be with us, he continues to reveal himself, he
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continues to come to us. One
of the things I've been thinking about as
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we've been going through these is the
the star of Bethlehem and how good sermons
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really should be like like that star
right, always taking us to Jesus right
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fall. We should be always following, following to Jesus that we might bow
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down and worship and give him praise. That's my aim, not just this
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morning but all the time, and
I do that because just because I like
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it, which I do, and
not just because I love it, which
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I do, but because this is
God working among us. He gives us
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himself through the preaching of the word, through the administration of the sacraments,
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and he continues to give himself over
and over again, taking us to Jesus,
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taking us to Jesus, taking us
to Jesus. And when he takes
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us to Jesus, he takes us
not just to a story or an idea
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or concept or philosophy, but to
the incarnate son of God who came in
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power and love and grace to save
you. So treasure it in your heart,
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believe on him who came to save
sinners, and worship at his feet.
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This is our savior. Let's pray
to him.
