Immanuel Sermon Audio
The Story of Christmas: Part III
- Realize it or not, you have a role to play in taking the gospel to the people that we watched on this video in South Asia. Some of you, God may be calling to go on a short-term trip or to pack up and to leave and to not come home and to take the gospel to those folks. But if that's not you, your job is not just to stay here and pray, but it is to give so that those who God does call are able to go and minister there. And so we're taking a world missions offering during the months of November and December, hope that you will be in prayer about what God would have you give to that, hope that you will give sacrificially, and hope that you will give as an act of worship, understanding that when you put that check in the offering box, it's not just a simple donation that you're given to our church, but you are actually participating and taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. So hope that you will be in prayer about that. If you have your Bible, take it out. There's an outline in the bulletin if you'd like to follow along there. I want you to find the gospel of John, chapter one, John one, our series during the month of December is called The Story of Christmas. What to tell your kids, parents, friends, neighbors, coworkers and enemies about the greatest story ever told. And in that title and subtitle, I'm trying to remind myself and you this month that we have something to celebrate during the month of December. It's not just presence and all of the busyness and all of the things our society tries to turn Christmas into. We truly have a story to celebrate, but we also have a story to tell. This is the message that God is asking you to take to people who don't know Jesus, whether they live across the street from you or whether they live in Southeast Asia or whether they live in Kenya, wherever, you are part of sharing this story. Now, when I say that to you, when I say you have the obligation to tell the story of Christmas to somebody else who doesn't know it, some of you get anxious about that. Some of you begin to feel overwhelmed by that and you begin to think, "Well, I don't know the story well enough. I might leave something out. I might say it wrong. I might get it mixed up." And so what we're doing this month is we're breaking down The Story of Christmas into four very simple statements. Anybody can remember these statements. Anybody can put them into your brain and then just rattle them off when you need to. The first part of the story, part one, is the idea that God is holy. He is holy, holy, holy. And when you understand the holiness of God, you understand that you and I are doubly separated from Him, separated one because of our creatureliness, the fact that He made us separated two because of our sinfulness. And when you understand this double separation that exists between you and God, the Bible says over and over and over again, the appropriate response for you and for me is fear. To fear God. He's our Creator and He's morally pure when we are not. And the story of Christmas has the audacity, we talked about two weeks ago, to say fear not. Fear not because God Himself has come to bridge the divide between you and Him. So part one of the story, God is holy. Part two of the story, very important. Sometimes we leave it out. It's the idea that we're sinners. All of us are sinners. Everything we do is tainted by sin and affected by sin. And we talked about last week, this is very, very important. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. The Bible says that there is something broken in us from the moment we show up in this world, from the moment we leave the womb. We are sinful from birth. And we understand the story of Christmas is the story of the angels saying to Jesus' parents, you will name this child Jesus because He has come to save His people from their sins. So part one, God is holy. Part two, man, you, me, all of us are sinful. Part three, now it's time for some of the good news. And the good news is that Jesus is the answer. God is holy, we are sinful, Jesus is the answer. Now we've looked the last couple of weeks at the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Those are the two Gospels that actually tell the Christmas story. And so we looked at Luke, God is holy. And we heard the angels speaking to the shepherds saying, although they were terrified, don't be afraid. God has come to bridge this divide. That was in Luke. Last week we looked at Matthew talking about our sin. And Jesus is the one who came to save us from our sin. So we saw the Christmas story from Luke's perspective. We saw the Christmas story from Matthew's perspective. This morning we're gonna see it from John's perspective. And we're gonna read a passage, John chapter one, verse one to 18. We're not gonna break the entire passage down, but there are several things in these verses that I want you to see this morning. So you follow along as I read John one beginning in verse one. Word of God says this, in the beginning was the word. And the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him yet the world did not know him. He came to his own people and his own people did not receive him. But all who did receive him who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only son from the Father full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who was at the Father's side, he has made him known. Let's pray. Lord, we are grateful for the chance to worship together. We're grateful for your word. We believe that it's true. We believe that as we read about Christmas from Luke and from Matthew and from John we believe that these things really happened. Father, we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts this morning to receive your word, to apply it to our life and to respond to you with hearts of worship. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Jesus has called several things in this passage, John chapter one. He is called the word. He is called the light. Down at the bottom he is called Jesus Christ. We could talk about what all of those names or titles mean. Jesus is his name. Everything else is some sort of title or descriptor. We could talk about the word. He was there, Genesis one, creating the agent of creation. Nothing was made that wasn't made through him. We could talk about the light. Jesus himself said, I'm the light of the world. Then when he sent his disciples out, he told them you are the light of the world. We could talk about Jesus Christ or Jesus Messiah and we could talk about how he's the fulfillment of the Old Testament, all the promises, all the prophecies. We could talk about all of those things and yet there would still be a nagging question in the back of our minds at some level saying, who is he? What is he like? What is the very basic description of his nature? Who is Jesus? We celebrate him at Christmas. We need to understand exactly who he is. That's an important question. It's been an important question throughout church history and there have been various answers, some better than others, some truer than others. But that was the central question in the year 325 BC in a town called Nicaea. I'm gonna tell you a story this morning. A story that's a little bit longer than most stories I share on Sunday morning, but this is an important story, 325 BC in Nicaea. Now, to build up to that, let's go back in time and we say, okay, we're talking about modern day Turkey. At that point in time, it was the Greek Empire or then the Roman Empire, but modern day Turkey and so that's where these events are happening. Jesus has been born, he's walked on the earth, he's taught, he has died on the cross, he's risen from the dead, he's gone back to heaven and the disciples begin to spread the message about Jesus just like he sent them out to do. And eventually in the Roman Empire, it became illegal to be a follower of Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus at different periods in the early years of the church meant that you were breaking Roman law. You could be killed, you could be jailed, you could be persecuted. It wasn't always enforced, but there were many periods of time where this was enforced. And eventually a man became emperor of Rome named Constantine, there's Constantine. He was not a Christian, but he had an experience going into battle one night and he saw what he thought was a vision and he decided that he was going to become a Christian. And so in the year 313 he passed something called the Edict of Milan, 313 AD, the Edict of Milan and this Edict said you cannot persecute Christians for being Christians. This was revolutionary. He took persecution off the table and said it is illegal to harm another person because they are a follower of Jesus. And eventually he didn't just make it legal to practice your faith, but he made it illegal to not be a Christian. He came full circle and he said you know what, the more I think about it, we should just be a Christian empire. And overnight he made the decision to say everybody who is a Roman citizen is a Christian. You're gonna read church histories and I think most of them agree this was one of the worst things that ever happened to Christianity in all times. One of the worst, you went from a period of time where people had to make genuine sacrifices to follow Jesus. To a period of time where you had to make a genuine sacrifice not to claim the name Jesus and you didn't have to do anything outwardly with your life to follow him whatsoever. To be Roman was to be Christian. So it was disastrous. But one of the things that they found they needed to deal with, Constantine says okay, all of you are Christians now. He says well, who gets to decide what we Christians believe? Because here's how it's operated up to this point. We have met secretly and we have met as churches. And when somebody teaches something that doesn't line up with scripture, we separate ourselves from them. We don't associate with them. We distance ourselves from them. But now we can't really do that. We're all in this together. Who is going to have the final say on what this book means and how it applies to our lives? So about 12 years after the Edict of Milan, Constantine said we're gonna have a get together. The first church business meeting in history is where it all began, 325 in Nicaea. The 1800 Christian bishops spread all across the Roman Empire were all invited. 300 of them made the trip to Nicaea and they held what historians call the first ecumenical council. All of the church gathered together and they gathered together to figure out we gotta be on the same page here. We gotta get all our ducks lined up, make sure we're all in agreement because this is the official religion of not just Christians, but now the empire. So Constantine is there. These 300 bishops are there and they debate all kinds of stuff. One of the things they spent time debating was the date of Easter. What day are we gonna celebrate Easter on? Up to that point in time, no one had an official date and churches just kinda did it when they felt it was appropriate. In fact, most churches just celebrated Easter every Sunday up to that point in time. But now they said, look, we need a day, we gotta be on the same page and so they spent time arguing about that. I'm sure that was thrilling debate to listen to them talk about when are we going to celebrate Easter. There was one really important debate, really important. It was between two men. On the one hand, you had a man named Arias. Arias was from Libya, North Africa, and Arias stood up and he said, "I think the church should teach this about Jesus." He's just a man. He is not God in human flesh. He is only human. He is a created being. That was Arias of Libya and he stood up and made his case. On the other hand, there was a man named Athanasius. Excuse me, Alexander. Alexander stood up and Alexander said, "I believe that we should teach Jesus "is fully God and fully man. "He is God who took on human flesh "and the two of them stood up at this council "and they debated." Now, I thought about debates this week and I thought about debates that we watch in our society. How many of you have ever watched C-Span? Ever watched C-Span? Is there anything you've ever done worse than watching C-Span? No, watch this video. This is actually some tape from C-Span. I got this off the internet. This is in the House of Representatives. On C-Span, it was live at 901, 1208 Eastern. And they're talking about actually Obamacare, but they're not talking about Obamacare, they're talking about rules for debating Obamacare. And so they're debating, everything is pretty calm. This is how they do it in the Ukraine. A little bit more exciting than C-Span. You've got these guys, keep your eye on the guy with the scarf, blue and yellow scarf. Just keep him in your mind. And you got guys jumping the rail over on the left. Keep watching. There's the guy in the scarf again, don't forget him. Now, somewhere on that left side, they decide they need a guy up on the platform. And so they're about to try to get a guy up on the platform while the wrestling match flags getting knocked down. Watch the guy in the gray suit, watch him. Watch. (audience laughs) Keep watching. Wait for it. Wait. There he goes. He's up, he made it. Now, here's the guy with the scarf again. Here we go. This is in the parliament. There we go. That's what I'm talking about. Way more exciting than C-Span. And you wonder why they have civil wars in Ukraine. So there's the Ukraine. Here's one more. I don't even know what kind of commentary to give to this video, but this is Taiwan. And this is just amazing. You got Jackie Chan up there. Crowd surfing, throwing haymakers. You got guys, I don't even know what that is. But they're fighting, they're angry, they're wrestling. Somebody went down. This is how they debate. Not all the time, but some of the time. They even brought signs cheering on their favorite congressmen. Somebody just went over the rail off the front. And then just in case you forgot, this is how we do it in C-Span. There's Pete Sessions. It's pretty boring. A lot of us, when we think about debate or church business meeting, you think about somebody like Pete Sessions standing up there and just kind of droning on. And we're following Robert's Rules of Order and on and on and on. Let me just tell you, at Nicaea, it was not that kind of debate. You understand? Now, the historians who were present, one of which is named Eusebius. Eusebius doesn't say a lot about the debate for the date of Easter, so I'm sure they stood up and it looked kind of like C-Span and back and forth they went. But here's what happened. Eusebius records this. He says, "Arias stands up." And remember, Arias from Libya, he stands up and he says, "Jesus is just a man. "He is not God." Then Alexander stands up and Alexander is from Egypt, by the way, so you have a Libyan in an Egyptian at the first ever church council. I'm looking around the room. While most of our ancestors are worshiping statues up in Europe, you've got two African guys leading the debate, right? That used to be the stronghold of Christianity. And so Arias says he's just a man. Alexander stands up and he says, "No, he is God "in human flesh." And they get to go back and forth and they get to argue. And at one point in the debate, one of the 300 bishops out in the congregation, out in the audience, I don't know if they had those hats on or not, but he's sitting out there. His name is Nicholas and he's from the town of Myra. Nicholas gets so mad at Arias. He jumps up, he runs to the front of the room and he socks him right in the nose. That happened. The first ever church business meeting had a fight in it. Not much changes. Nicholas pops up out of his seat, runs down to the front, bull rushes Arias and pops him right square in the nose. And you can imagine, these people are not just sitting by watching. I mean, it is chaos. It's like the Ukraine. It's like Taiwan, fisticuffs. People climbing over the rail. Total chaos. Now, I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about the debate, but let me tell you just a little piece of history about Nicholas. Okay, this is just free. You showed up today. I'm not gonna charge you for this. This is free. Nicholas, you would think a guy who gets up at the first ever church business meeting and throws a haymaker. You think he would get a great nickname out of that, like Nicholas the tough, Nicholas the puncher, Nicholas the nothing. He doesn't get any of that. History almost completely forgets that he got up and threw a punch in this first council. Do you know what history remembers Nicholas for? Giving gifts. They remember him as a man who gave gifts to people. You think I'm making this up? I'm not making this up. He used to do it secretly. He used to walk by people's house who were needy and he would throw these gifts in the window. That's what history remembers him for. And eventually after he died, remember, they just formed the Catholic church, lowercasee, Catholic church, and they canonized people, which means they called them saints, which is a strange thing biblically because the Bible says anyone who's a follower of Jesus is a saint. But they decide we're gonna use this title for people we think were really, really special, really important, really holy, whatever. And they call Nicholas for Myra a saint and he becomes known as Saint Nicholas. And these stories about Saint Nicholas get passed down and eventually they translate these stories into Dutch. And when they get translated into Dutch, the Dutch translation of Saint Nicholas is center cloths. Take that for what it's worth. Back to the debate, 325. He pops him in the face, right? Everything goes crazy. Eventually they settle everything down. They continue the debate. Now listen, if you turn on the history channel, if you watch the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, if you read some of these guys and some of these TV shows, they want you to think the vote came down and it was really, really close. Like it could have gone either way. Like half of them wanted to go with Arias, half of them wanted to go with Alexander. They weren't quite sure. And the guys who got out voted in the end, they just got a raw deal. Listen, two people out of 300 stood up with Arias. Two, you get two people that vote no at every business meeting in a church. So these two guys, who knows if they're even listening or paying attention, they might have just been the guys that wanted to vote no. They stand up and they say we agree with Arias. Everyone else present says that guy has lost his mind. Are you kidding me? That's not what the Bible teaches about Jesus. We've never believed that about Jesus. And so the rest of these guys get together and they excommunicate these knuckleheads and say you can't teach in the new church. And they say we need a document. We're gonna write this document. It's not scripture, but we're gonna write it to explain what we mean when we talk about Jesus. And what they wrote is called the Nicene Creed. Again, not scripture, not inspired by the Holy Spirit, but these men trying to understand inspired scripture, this is what they came up with. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, insert in parentheses Christmas, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried and on the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, insert parentheses Easter. He ascended into heaven, he siteth on the right hand of the Father and he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead whose kingdom shall have no end. There you have it. That's the Nicene Creed. That's Alexander and Constantine and all the rest of the people who had their head on straight saying, this is ridiculous. We're not gonna teach this kind of stuff on our church. This is what we believe the Bible says. Now you set the Nicene Creed aside and let's go back to scripture. What does scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit of God say about Jesus? Two simple ideas. Jesus Christ is fully God. Number two, Jesus Christ is fully man. He is fully God and he is fully man. Let's take the first idea. Jesus is fully God. In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah told us that Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ would be fully God. Look at what Isaiah says in Isaiah nine. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. So the Old Testament says it. The New Testament says it. Many verses I could give you in the New Testament. Here's Colossians 119 in Jesus. All the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Our passage that we looked at just a minute ago, John 1 agrees completely. In the beginning was the Word, capital W, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Jesus is fully God. Forget what area says, he is fully God. He's also fully man. Look back to the Old Testament, Isaiah seven. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Not just God gonna show up, but a son is gonna show up, a human being. And you will call his name a manual. The New Testament says the exact same thing, Paul tells Timothy, there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Our passage agrees 100%. John chapter one, believe I put verse 14 up there, the word became flesh, and he dwelt among us. And we saw his glory. Glory is of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. He's fully God, and he's fully man. Now you sit here this morning and you say, okay, nice story, didn't know they had brawls in the middle of church meetings, way back hundreds and hundreds of years ago. That's nice to know, interesting story about Mr. Nick. Great, what is the big deal with this and what does it have to do with Christmas? Is it really that big of a deal? And the answer is it is a big deal. It was worth Nicholas getting up and popping Arias in the nose. It's worth holding on to this truth and fighting for this truth. It has everything to do with Christmas, and it has everything to do with our salvation. Understand these two truths. Because Jesus was fully God, he could take our punishment. And because he was fully man, he could take our place. Because he's fully God, he can take our punishment. Because he's fully man, he can take our place. The Bible is clear that as sinful humans, we need a sinless human to take our place. The author of Hebrews says in the New Testament, look, the blood of bulls and goats could never, would never, has never taken away anybody's sins. It was a picture pointing you to the Messiah. Those sacrifices in the Old Testament, they didn't remove anybody's sin. You saw one on a video earlier. People who don't share our faith, but offering an animal sacrifice to appease the gods. And the Bible says that's insanity. An animal can't die for a human being. Anybody with common sense knows that. If you're a sinful human being, you need a sinless human being to take your place. Here's the problem. Part one, God is holy, holy, holy. Part two, you are sinful. And when you sin against an infinitely holy God, whether or not we think it's fair or not, the just and the right and the fitting punishment is an infinite punishment. You say, yeah, but I haven't broken all of the commands. And I'm not as bad as some other people. James 2-10, you break one law, you're a law breaker. And you break the law of a holy, holy, holy God and the punishment must be infinite. So yes, a sinless man in theory could take your place, but he as a man would have to be punished infinitely, forever. That's not the story of Christmas, that some guy walked the earth who managed to get all his ducks in a row and lived a pretty decent life and died on a cross for you. The story of Christmas is God becoming man so that the God man could die for sinners. Without these truths, we have no Christmas. We have no Easter, we have no hope, we have no salvation. The story of Christmas is the story of God becoming man so that as the God man, he could take the infinite punishment that our sins deserved and he could take our place on the cross. You need both of those things. You need someone to take your place and you need someone to take your punishment. And Jesus, the God man, is the only one who is able to do that. That's the story of Christmas. That's part of what you have been sent to tell your kids and your parents and your friends and your neighbors and your coworkers and your enemies. That's what we celebrate this morning. We want you to bow and we will pray together before we continue in worship, Father. We're grateful for your word. We know that there are some things in the Bible that are difficult to understand, but Father, some things are so clear. And we've looked at the book of Isaiah and we've looked at the first chapter of John. We've looked at what Paul says to Timothy and what Paul says to the church in Colossae and Father so many other passages. We believe that Jesus, the Messiah, is God of God. Light of light, very God of very God. He is not made, He is not a creature. He is the one who made all things. And Father, we believe that He really became man. And we can't understand that. We can't completely wrap our minds around that. But Father, we believe it because we find it in your word. We're grateful that Jesus took our place and our punishment. Father, I pray for people who are here this morning who maybe have never heard the truth about who Jesus is and what He came to this earth to accomplish. Father, we want them to have their eyes opened. We want you to draw them to yourself. We want them to fall in love with Jesus as He truly is. Father, those of us who know Jesus and trust in Jesus and love Jesus and want to follow Jesus, we're amazed and we're grateful and we're awestruck at what you have done in humbling yourself and taking the form of a servant in God becoming man so that we could live and that we could know you and that we could pray to you and we could sing to you. And so Lord, all we have to offer back to you is worship. To acknowledge how great you are and to acknowledge the greatness and the awesomeness of your salvation. So as we sing, we pray that you would receive our worship and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.