20231224 Christmas through the Gospels: John - the Birth of Jesus the Son of God
Christmas 2023 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Call to Worship - Psalm 45
1 My heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a skillful scribe. 2 You are fairer than the sons of men; Grace is poured upon Your lips; Therefore God has blessed You forever. 3 Gird Your sword on Your thigh, O Mighty One, In Your splendor and Your majesty! 4 And in Your majesty ride on victoriously, For the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; Let Your right hand teach You awesome things. 5 Your arrows are sharp; The peoples fall under You; Your arrows are in the heart of the King’s enemies. 6 Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your kingdom. 7 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of joy above Your companions. 8 All Your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made You glad.
9 Kings’ daughters are among Your noble ladies; At Your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir. 10 Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear: Forget your people and your father’s house; 11 Then the King will desire your beauty. Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him. 12 The daughter of Tyre will come with a present; The rich among the people will seek your favor. 13 The King’s daughter is all glorious within her chamber; Her clothing is interwoven with gold. 14 She will be led to the King in embroidered work; The virgins, her companions who follow her, Will be brought to You. 15 They will be led forth with gladness and rejoicing; They will enter into the King’s palace. 16 In place of your fathers will be your sons; You shall set them up as princes in all the earth. 17 I will cause Your name to be remembered from generation to every generation; Therefore the peoples will give You thanks forever and ever.
The Nicene Creed
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And 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 for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
And I believe one holy catholic* and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. *that is, the true Christian church of all times and all places
Scripture Reading - John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. 6 There was a man having been sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the Light, but he came to bear witness about the Light. 9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to what was His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John bore witness about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has been ahead of me, for He existed before me.’” 16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
The Gospel of John: the Birth of Jesus the Son of God
Introduction:
Matthew - Jesus is the Promised King
Mark - Jesus is the Predicted suffering servant
Luke - Jesus is the Prophetic Son of Man
John - Jesus is the Perfect Son of God
This morning I would like us to once again look at the titles of Jesus, the Son of man and the Son of God. If we are to elevate our worship of Jesus we need to see Jesus as more than a baby, we need to see Jesus in His fullness, and we can do this through His titles.
(1) The name Jesus
To understand the distinction between Son of Man and Son of God, we first have to distinguish between Jesus’ name and Jesus’ titles
Joseph and Mary were told that his name would be Jesus - because He would save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21)
21 “And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
While Isaiah said that he would also be named Immanuel, God with us, Jesus is the name that he would be called and choose to be called.
His name in Hebrew is Yeoshua which is shortened to Yeshua and is translated to English as Joshua which means “Yahweh, or the LORD, is salvation”. In Greek it is “I eh sous”, which again is translated Joshua and means the Lord is Salvation but while we get Yeshua from the Hebrew, when we take the Greek name Iesous we get Jesus in English.
And so, he is called Yeshua based on his Hebrew name and Jesus in the New Testament and today based on his Greek name.
Not only is Jesus the new and better Adam, he is the new and better Joshua.
As Adam He is the perfect and obedient man, as Joshua He is the perfect and obedient Savior.
As Joshua led the nation of Israel into the promised land, Jesus leads those who are in Christ into our promised kingdom.
(2) The titles of Jesus
Now what do we do with our current culture’s most common reference to Jesus: Jesus Christ?
Many people think that this is the full name of Jesus, but his full name during his earthly ministry would have been Jesus bar Joseph - Jesus the Son of Joseph
Christ is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew Messiah - it means “anointed one”.
What other titles are there for Jesus? We see in Matthew that he is the King, in Mark He is the suffering servant
In Isaiah:
6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
In Luke
32 “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David,
But the title used of Jesus more than 80 ties in the NT, the title by which Jesus referred to Himself the most is: The Son of Man
(3) Jesus the Son of Man vs Jesus the Son of God
Because Jesus is the God man, fully God and fully man, and since Jesus has two natures, a human and a divine, and since Jesus is 100% God and 100% man, we can easily assume that Son of Man refers to Jesus’ human nature and Son of God refers to his divine nature.
But while there is Jesus’ humanity in the title Son of Man and deity in the title Son of God, biblically it is actually the opposite.
13 “I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And came near before Him. 14 “And to Him was given dominion, Glory, and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not be taken away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.
Everything about the Son of Man in Daniel 7 points to the deity of Jesus
What about Son of God?
While Son of God points to Jesus’ eternal Sonship and to his deity, there is a biblical use of Son of God that we often overlook:
Those who manifest obedience to the Father
Son of God refers to those who are submissive to the Father, those who are in one accord with the Father, those who have special relationship with God.
Solomon
Angels
The kings of Israel
The godly men of Genesis 6:2 -
Let’s look at Jesus in the gospel of John as the Son of God
The condemnation of Jesus is John 8:38-39
38 “I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.” 39 They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you are Abraham’s children, you would do the deeds of Abraham.
In contrast, Jesus the Son of God shows us:
His oneness with the Father
30 “I and the Father are one.”
His willingness to submit to the Father
38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
This is what it means to be a Son of God
When we look at those who are called sons of God in the Old Testament we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of the the title Son of God, the perfect and better Son of God.
And this is why we need to look at John 1:1-18 from the perspective of the humanity of Jesus and not the deity of Jesus.
John 1:1-18 is called the prologue. It is an overview of the entire gospel of John . It begins with John 1:1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
We read that the Word was God and we become fixated on the deity of Jesus.
But John 1:1-18 introduces us to Jesus who is God but the emphasis is on the humanity of Jesus, the incarnation of Jesus.
9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to what was His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John bore witness about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has been ahead of me, for He existed before me.’” 16 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. 17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
Just as Genesis begins with in the beginning, John wants us to see a new beginning, a new creation. But what is this new beginning?
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
It is Jesus, the perfect Son of God, the perfectly submissive and obedient Son of God, who came in the flesh who reveals and unveils and explains God to a lost and sinful world.
Let’s pray
It is Jesus the Son of Man who forgives sin
It is Jesus the Son of God who
Grace Be with You: Benedictions from Dale Ralph Davis (20)
Now the Father who chose you, the Son who bought you, and the Spirit who dwells in you, go before you in your darkness, stand beside you in your fears and hold you up in your sorrows until Jesus comes. Amen.
What about Immanuel? God with us while Jesus is God for us
23 “BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.”