The Promised Son
The Promised: (Part V)
THE PROMISED SON
Isaiah 9:6 (ESV)
6 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.
John 3:16-17 (ESV)
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
All of us are quite familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 as “The Love Chapter” of the Bible. Someone has beautifully taken it and provided a Christmas version. Here it is:
If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights, and shiny balls, but do not have love, I’m just another decorator.
If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals, and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not have love, I’m just another cook.
If I work at a soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that I have to charity, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels, and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties, and sing in the choir’s cantata, but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.
Love stops the cooking to hug the child. Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse. Love is kind, though harried and tired. Love does not envy another’s home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens. Love does not yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way.
Love does not give only to those who are able to give in return, but rejoices in giving to those who cannot. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails.
Toys will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust; but giving the gift of love will endure.
Indeed, if there’s a message we should keep sounding off during Christmastime, it should be the message of love. It is the main reason why God was compelled to send His one and only Son to come into our world and give His life to rescue us from our sins. And I believe, that it is also love that motivated the Lord to keep His promise in the Old Testament to send His Son for us, sinners.
This morning, I’m happy to bring our sermon series to a conclusion. For the past four Sundays, we covered four specific promises that God has fulfilled in relation to the coming of Jesus Christ into the world – Savior, Priest, Servant, and King. This morning, we reserved the best for last as I present Him to you as the Promised Son. More than five hundred years before His actual coming, the prophet Isaiah declared – “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6). What a great statement! The reason why Christmas must be a very special time for us to celebrate is because God gave us the greatest gift of all – His Son. As we study God’s Word today, I would like to give you at least three things we can do in order to appreciate God’s greatest gift to us:
I CALCULATE THE PRECIOUSNESS OF THE GIFT:
Gift-giving is a big part of our Christmas celebration, because it reflects the generous heart of God when He took the initiative to give us His one and only Son. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it could have been for the Father to make this decision to sacrifice His very own Son for the broken and sinful world who did nothing, but rebel against Him. But He was willing to do it. Allow me to highlight at least two facts about this sacrifice
The Motive of the Sacrifice
In John 3:16, the main motivation why God was willing to sacrifice His own Son was His love. It says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” How many of you love someone enough that you would be willing to put your own child in harm’s way for his or her sake? Is there anyone in your life deserving of that kind of sacrifice?
Of course, it must also be emphasized that human beings—who are object of God’s love—are not really that deserving. Why? It is because when God has decided to do this, we were literally walking away from Him. The apostle Paul perfectly described this truth in Romans 5:6-8 (ESV)
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Consider the truths in this passage. If someone is a good person, perhaps, someone else might be willing to sacrifice his life for him. But for an enemy, it would be impossible, right? Yet, God did it because He wants to show us how much He loves us.
The Magnitude of the Sacrifice
When God gave up His own Son, how much was He willing to sacrifice for us? There are two areas of sacrifices we should not take for granted:
The Sacrifice of Separation
We need to understand that when Jesus came and dwelt among us, He had to abandon His close fellowship with the Father, which He had maintained since eternity past. This kind of sacrifice reminds me of the times when we dropped off our two children in college. At that time, there was this sadness because we knew our home would not be the same again. I’m sure that for the Father, it was even worse because of the perfect relationship He had with His Son.
2. The Sacrifice of Suffering
If separation were tough, this sacrifice of suffering would even be more troubling. To be fully aware that the Son you are giving up will have to go through human suffering, which means being weak physically, starving, working in order to survive, being misrepresented, or worst, being tortured, and crucified. Yes, all these were true for Jesus. Imagine, the culmination of this suffering wherein the Son Himself will cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, ESV)
I hope and pray that we will have a much better understanding about the preciousness of the gift we have received from God every time we get to celebrate Christmas. We have to stop and remind ourselves that we were recipients of the greatest gift of all when we came to know Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Perhaps, a good application of this truth is asking ourselves too whether we love God enough to make sacrifices for Him. I think it is just right to reciprocate the love that God has shown us and be forever grateful to Him because of His gift to us.
II CAPTURE THE PERSONALITY OF THE GIFT
The second truth that we should not miss is: knowing exactly who Jesus Christ is. You see, when we talk about Him as the “Son,” we need to move away from the false understanding of it and possess the right perspectives about His real being. For example, when we speak of Him as a “Son”, we must reject the idea that God the Father came to earth and had a sexual relationship with Mary, resulting to a demi-god, Jesus Christ. There is no basis for this doctrine. What you find in the Bible is that Mary was the chosen vessel that God has selected to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 (ESV)
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Notice, the prophecy is quite clear that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” In other words, when Mary conceived Jesus Christ, she was actually a virgin, who did not have any sexual relationship with anyone. The follow-up question is: “How is this possible?” Well, the Gospel of Luke provided the explanation.
Luke 1:35 (ESV)
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
Considering this verse, Jesus’ conception in Mary’s womb was a result of the Holy Spirit’s work of creation. The Holy Spirit Himself created the human body of Jesus as a baby in Mary’s womb.
In addition to this truth, we need also to identify two special titles ascribed to Jesus Christ in the Gospels that are attached to His Sonship.
A. Son of God
This title uses the word “Son” to signify the divine nature of Jesus Christ. Why? To be a “son” literally suggests, “being an offspring that shares the very same nature of the progenitor.” So, Jesus shares the same nature of God.
Without a doubt, this truth is well supported by many Scriptural references:
John 5:18 (ESV)
18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
John 10:36 (ESV)
36 [D]o you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
Sadly, when Jesus referred to Himself as the “Son of God,” the Jews who did not believe in Him accused Him of blaspheming against God.
B. Son of Man
This title, which Jesus also used for Himself, was a direct reference to Him being fully human as well. When He became a man, He also became one hundred percent human being with the exemption of inheriting our sinful nature (Luke 9:44; Luke 19:10). The question is often: “How can He be one hundred percent Divine and one hundred percent human?” Well, this is the mystery that the apostle Paul referred to in 1 Timothy 3:16 (ESV):
16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
I love how Dr. John Phillips, a great theologian, puts it:
The great mystery of the manger is, that God should be able to translate deity into humanity without either discarding the deity distorting the humanity.
III CELEBRATE THE PURPOSE OF THE GIFT
Lastly, we should not miss the very reason why God gave us the gift of His Son – “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16b-17).
When we examine these words, it is quite clear that God gave us the gift that we absolutely need. Why? It is because we, for sure, are going to suffer the condemnation of our sins. This condemnation is not only physical, but eternal death in hell. I know how much we love verse 16, but we cannot undermine the statement in verse 17. God wants to help us understand that Christ’s coming to the world is not to condemn us. Even though we deserve it, He was gracious enough to think of providing us a way to escape His condemnation.
However, let’s be very clear that not everybody will be saved. God has plainly stated a condition for salvation– “whoever believes in him.” Since God is the one who paid the price for salvation, He is the only who has the absolute right to set the condition in acquiring it. The condition is simple - Faith in Him. By this faith, man should be willing to abandon the idea of depending on his or her own goodness and righteousness and, instead, simply embracing the finish work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The truth of the matter is that if man could save Himself without the costly sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, then, there was really no need for Jesus to come into this world. But we are hopeless without Him. Therefore, Christmas is not a celebration of what we humans have done; it is about what God has done for us – He gave us His Son, so we can live fully while we are here on earth and after we die, be with Him forever.
As I close, I just want to challenge each one of us to spend some minutes expressing our deepest gratitude to God for sending Jesus to us. GOD GAVE US THE GREATEST GIFT WE WILL EVER RECEIVE IN LIFE AND THAT IS HIS SON. MAY WE KNOW HIM MORE AND SERVE HIM FAITHFULLY FOREVER.
Preached - December 25, 2019