Sermon Tone Analysis

This Christmas season we have much to adore our Savior for.

I want to that love and adoration to intensify and increase this morning as we dwell on the incarnation!

John 17:3 (ESV)

3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

“For to know God, so as thereby to be made like him, is the chief end of man.” —John Owen

Problem: How do we know God? How can we know Him?

He is so much greater and grander that we are!

God is solitary and unique and above all else.

How can we as simple finite beings truly know this great God?

Christmas is the glorious time of year when we reflect on the answer to this perplexing question.

We can know God by means of the incarnation.

The mystery, the wonder when God became a man.

Fully God and yet fully man.

And by means of Jesus and His incarnation we can know the God of heaven.

The incarnation of our Savior is a most wonderful and glorious event in history, and because of it Jesus deserves all our worship!

Why is the Incarnation so wonderful?

Because God is absolutely incomprehensible

What do we mean that God is incomprehensible?

“God, in his own essence, being, and existence, is absolutely incomprehensible.

His nature being immense, and all his holy properties essentially infinite, no creature can directly or perfectly comprehend them, or any of them.”

—John Owen

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,

most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,

almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,

thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;

all praise we would render, O help us to see

'tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

This is why Scripture says that God dwells in unapproachable light, and that no one has ever seen or CAN see God.

It is not merely that God is holy and cannot tolerate sinners like you and like me.

God is the invisible God, He dwells in light inaccessible hid from our eyes because He is absolutely incomprehensible by mere finite beings.

“He must be infinite that can perfectly comprehend that which is infinite; wherefore God is perfectly known to himself only—but as for us, how little a portion is heard of him!”—John

Owen

Illustration: playing charades with a group of friends and two of them of close siblings.

The objection is always, “they can’t be on the same team.”

Why?

Because they know each other so well that they can act out the simplest of pantomimes, which to any other person is absolute nonsense, absolutely incomprehensible—and yet the sibling gets the correct answer in a moment.

It is impossible for sinful finite beings to know a holy infinite God.

A God who dwells in unapproachable light.

A God whom no one has ever seen or can see.

And yet, Jesus Christ, because he took upon Himself a human nature, because He was born in that lowly manger all those years ago- makes God known!

Friends, Jesus deserves your adoration and your worship this Christmas season because He has made the absolutely incomprehensible God known!

Why is the Incarnation so wonderful?

Because of humanity's desire for a fuller representation of God

There seems to be an innate need within all humanity to some how take God, who is incomprehensible to their senses, and make a representation of Him.

Why do people desire to make some kind of representation of the incomprehensible God?

So they might understand and know Him better.

They must have a nearer and more evident manifestation of God!

God, in His grace gave humanity certain representations of part of his nature.

Creation:

The creation gives us certain information about the nature of God- namely his God-ness and his eternal power.

OT Law:

The OT Law was a shadow of the good things to come.

In some ways the OT Law represented God and His nature, mostly in pointing forward to the true form of those realities.

Neither creation nor the Law was sufficient to rightly represent God.

God a better plan for how to represent Himself.

All humanity needed to do was to be patient and wait.

But, they could and did not.

Exodus 20:4 (ESV)

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Romans 1:21–25 (ESV)

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,

23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

Amen.

“But none of these things ever did or could give such a representation of him as wherein the souls of men might fully acquiesce, or obtain such conceptions of him as might enable them to worship and honor him in a due manner.”

“They cannon, I say—by all that may be seen in them, and learned from them—represent God as the complete object of all our affections, of all the actings of our souls in faith, trust, love, fear, obedience, in that way whereby he may be glorified, and we may be brought to the everlasting fruition of him.”

—John Owen

This is why God commanded that no image or likeness ever be made of Him.

Nothing that finite mortal man could ever make would first of all be like Him, or second cause us to worship, honor, love, trust, fear, or obey him.

Illustration: Have you ever wanted to capture that most beautiful and perfect sunset in a picture?

Maybe it was a starry night sky, or a panoramic view of the ocean, or a glorious landscape of the Rocky Mountains?

No matter how good your camera is, no matter how skilled you are as a photographer, you just cannot capture exactly what you see in real life.

The picture of the thing, the representation, never lives up to reality.

This is infinitely more true in relation to an almighty, uncreated, eternal, immeasurable, glorious God!

This is the wonder of the incarnation!

God, in His grace, had a plan to make Himself, a representation, a manifestation, a likeness of Himself.

And God did this in the person of Jesus Christ!

Why is the Incarnation so wonderful?

Because Jesus is the image of the invisible God

Human wisdom or cunning could never have imagined the plan of God to reveal Himself to the world.

God’s plan to make for Himself his own likeness or image was beyond our understanding or comprehension.

Matthew 1:18–25 (ESV)

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife,

25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son.

And he called his name Jesus.

Luke 1:26–35 (ESV)

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,

27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.

And the virgin’s name was Mary.