Trusting In An Incarnate God (John 1:14)

Introduction

A. Housekeeping

I want to start with a matter of internal housekeeping. Sort of a family issue. If you are visiting this morning, I beg your pardon, as this is a family matter we need to take care of.

On Sunday, August 4, 2024 (about 2 months ago), I preached a sermon on The Armor of God from Ephesians 6. In that sermon, I used an illustration of the aristea, which is a Homeric or Greek concept that involves an inventory of the warrior’s armor, piece by piece, before he goes to war. I learned of this illustration from Dr. Benjamin Merkle at New Saint Andrews College, and I used it with great excitement, but without attribution.

Preaching is not, in the first place, an academic exercise, and when it comes to illustrations, I don’t always cite sources. In fact, I am quite sure there are times when I quote John Piper or Timothy Keller (for instance) without meaning to. Their work is just in my head. But in this case, I knew my source, and I should have disclosed it. So, I wish to offer my apology for not citing the source, or at least distancing myself from the origination of the illustration. I am sorry. I have previously made this known to the Session, and they have admonished me to be mindful of the need to more carefully cite sources in preaching. They also told me that they did not believe this was a grave error that necessitated a public apology.

However, it has recently been made known to me that rumors are taking root, even in places outside our fellowship, that I have engaged in sermon plagiarism, so I did see the need to publicly address it. Rumors and gossip are a sin and a poison and a rot that can wreck even the healthiest of churches, so I am publicly setting the record straight that I made use of that illustration without attribution on August the 4th, and I apologize for the error. I hope that in saying this, rumors and gossip will be disempowered. And if you hear any such rumors, I would admonish you to obey the letter and the spirit of Matthew 18 and tell them to call me up.

I am not in the business of plagiarizing sermons, or preaching sermons that are not mine as though they were, and I have never used a sermon writing service (those do exist, I am given to understand). I believe that preachers should bear the work of explaining a text to their people, and while it is entirely appropriate to make use of the good work of those who have gone before you and even preached before you, a preacher should acknowledge when he is repeating material that did not originate with him. So I again apologize, and will be mindful of such responsibilities in the future.

If you have any questions, you are more than welcome to ask me at the conclusion of our service, and if you believe that further action needs to be pursued on this matter, it is your right and responsibility to speak to one of your elders.

Let’s Pray

Our Father, we lift up thanks to you for the body of Christ, and for the many voices and preachers that week in and week out faithfully carry your words to your people. I pray for this church and for myself, that you would keep me ever mindful (indeed, more and more mindful) of the duties and responsibilities you have put before me, and that you would use my preaching to bless and fit and equip this people for all that you mean for us to face together in the coming years. I pray that you would guard our fellowship from the rot of rumors and gossip, and that you would give it to us to be eager to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace. Help us all now to give our focus and attention to the preached Word, that you may—by the work of the Holy Spirit convince and convert sinners, and build the saints up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

B. Preliminaries

Welcome back to our sermon series on The Apostles’ Creed, where we are going line-by-line through one of the earliest Christian Confessions of Faith, and understanding why each line is so important for our understanding of Christianity itself and the work of the Lord Jesus in our own lives.

So this morning, we will look at the second line: I Believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Only Son, our Lord.

And so I wish to direct your attention to Luke 1:35

Luke 1:35 (ESV)

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.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

C. Why The Creed?

Some of you have asked why this series? Why now? Why this topic at this time? And part of my answer is that we all have a foreboding sense that hard times might indeed be ahead. Many of the comforts we take for granted might not be the inheritance of our children and our grandchildren. So what is the responsibility of Christians when we have a sense that difficult days might be ahead. Not a certainty. Not a revelation. Not a guarantee. But a sense?

Well, what do you do if you live in ancient days and you have a sense that within your lifetime, there might be barbarians at the gates? You pray. You trust God. And you train. You practice courage. And you make sure your foundations are steady.

When the martyrs were taken to the places of their final moments, they went with songs and they went reciting their creeds. This is part of why we focus a lot on singing together, and it’s why in this series we are focused on what we confess together. This is—to use an old phrase—keeping our powder dry. If we think we graduate beyond the weight and gravity and importance of these things, we have not yet begun to understand.

So we are talking about foundations. We are coming back to basics. We are re-learning what we already know so that our courage can be steady for whatever comes.

I. Jesus, the Christ

You probably know, but I will tell you anyway, that Christ is a title, and not a last name. There is the old joke of the boy in Sunday School who mistakenly assumed that Jesus’s parents were “Mr. and Mrs. Christ.”

Christ is an English term based on the Greek word Christos, which means “anointed one.” Paul used this term Christos throughout his letters. The Hebrew word is Mashiach, from which we get our term Messiah.

And so when we confess the name Jesus Christ, we are confessing that Jesus is the anointed one or the King. And that he is our Messiah or our rescuer, or Savior. Just as Peter did in Mark 8:29

Mark 8:29 (ESV)

And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”

And indeed, this is also the foundation of our faith and our confession as well. In John’s Gospel, we read that this is the whole purpose John wrote:

John 20:31 (ESV)

but these [words] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

And so one thing I really love about the Creed is that while we must start with God the Father. We waste absolutely no time in getting to Jesus, the Christ.

Of this, Matthew Henry said:

To be a Christian indeed, is, sincerely to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and to act accordingly.

And so we believe and confess that Jesus is the Christ. He is our Messiah. He is our rescuer. And this brings with it the requirement that we confess our need for rescue.

Christianity does not begin with an invitation to glory. That is how the story ends. But it begins with a total confession of our sin. It begins with the realization and acknowledgement of our desperate need before God, as we take a look at our own life and realize we are hopeless. We are, as it were, a boiling pot of bitterness, fears, anxieties, grumbling, evil, and selfishness. And our faith begins in the moment we see our true selves in the mirror and cry out for that mercy. Christianity begins with getting robbed of any hope that you can make yourself, and rather the realization that you need to be un-made so you can be re-made.

For, as Phillip Melancthon—Luther’s dear friend—once wrote:

“You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that makes it necessary.” Phillip Melancthon

And so we say with David,

False and full of sin am I, Thou art full of truth and grace.

And Christianity does not only begin with confession of sin. Rather, confession of sin marks out the way of our entire Christian life.

The confession of your sins and that you are a sinner is not simply the entry point. It is the repeated refrain of the rest of your life. Until the day of your death, when you are set free from all sin, you spend your days on this earth, ever more conscious of your sin, and ever more dependent on the grace of Jesus.

Again, I borrow from Luther

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Martin Luther The 95 Theses (Thesis #1)

This is why we confess our sins every Sunday morning together. Not out of tradition. But simply because we are Christians. How could we dare do anything else when coming into the presence of our God?

We need a Messiah. We need a rescuer. We need Jesus, who is called Christ.

II. Jesus, God’s Son

In the book of Galatians, Paul gave us one of the most beautiful confessions of faith in the whole Bible. He said

Galatians 2:20 (ESV)

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

In our creed we confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and we live by faith in that same Son of God. In saying this, we do not mean that Jesus is less than God, but simply that He is the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father. In other words, God has always had a Son.

One of the first heretics in the ancient Church was a man named Arius. Arius of Alexandria. One of the first heretics, and he ended up starting a fight that eventually gave us the Nicene Creed.

A heretic is a teacher that engages in false teaching so heinous, one cannot believe it and be a true Christian at the same time. That’s what heresy is. It’s false teaching that puts you beyond the bounds of the Christian faith. There can be false teaching and error—and true Christians can fall short in those ways. But heresy is different. Heresy is a denial of a fundamental claim of Christianity.

Arius taught that God had not always had a Son, and that the birthday of Jesus in Bethlehem was the first day that God had a Son. So this meant that Jesus was not eternal. He had not always existed. He had not always been. He had come into existence at some point. And therefore, could not be fully God. That was Arius’s heresy.

And Arius knew that if you wanted to spread doctrine—true or false—the best way to inculcate teaching in the hearts of people was to get them to sing it. We confess our creeds, but when the storms of life come, we flee to our songs. We quote our songs from memory better than anything else. That is why I like to say what you sing is what you actually believe. So Arius wrote several little songs in an effort to spread his heresy. And these became rather popular. One of the most popular ones was a little ditty that went “There was a time when He was not.” In other words, there was a time when the Son of God did not exist.

And so, against that heresy, Christians have ever been singing “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen, Amen.”

In other words, all glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because the Holy Trinity receives glory forever—in both directions. Forever past, forever future. There has never been a world or a time where all three persons of the Trinity have not been receiving glory, and you will never live in a world where all glory is not given to the Eternal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Eternal Spirit.

Now all that being said: Before the Incarnation—when the Son took on Flesh—his name was not Jesus. Jesus was the name given to God’s Son when he became a man and was born as a baby in Bethlehem.

This is why our Confession of the Trinity is always Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit. That’s not really wrong. But by using the term Son, we are acknowledging that The Father has always been in perfect fellowship with the Son, even before the Son took on flesh and was given the name Jesus, which just means “Yahweh saves.”

But even beyond that, when we confess Jesus Christ as Messiah and Christ, we are confessing our need for a Savior. But when we confess him as the Son of God, we are confessing our need for a mediator.

We’re not just confessing a man, we are confessing the God-Man. Indeed, fully God and fully Human. Inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. (Westminster Confession, 8.2). Only one like us could take on our sin. And only God Himself could accomplish the mission.

This was prefigured in the Old Testament by prophets, priests, and kings. Three offices that reminded the people of Israel of their distance from God, which was continually being bridged by God.

He gave them prophets because they needed his Word. He gave them priests, because they needed forgiveness of sins. And he gave them Kings because they needed to be ruled and defended from all God’s enemies and their enemies.

And in Christ, the Son of God, the fulfillment of all three offices comes to us. As the Word of God, he reveals to us, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation. As a priest, he offers himself up as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, and he even continues to pray for us. As our King, he brings us to himself, and he rules and defends us from all his and our enemies.

Therefore we confess that God has made a way back to God. God has—in our Lord Jesus Christ—restored us to all that we were made for. Because the Son has come and died for us, we all are now—by his blood—made Sons of God, forever. Washed by His Words in Baptism, sustained by his body and blood, given immortality, called living stones in his new temple, placed into a church that will ever march under his banner, and see us move from strength to strength until we all appear before Him in Zion (see Psalm 84:7).

What does this mean for us practically? It means we have communion with God our Father by the blood of Jesus, His Son. It means we know God and are known by God. In short, the Sonship of Jesus Christ has created Sons and Worshippers.

This is why we worship, this is why we sing. This is why we pray. Because we can! Yes we are commanded to, but that’s just because our hearts are so slow and dull. We don’t just have to, we get to!

III. Jesus, our Lord

Indeed, the cry of Kurios Christos—Christ is Lord!—was the earliest confession of faith. The Apostle Paul tells us

Romans 10:9 (ESV)

...if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

The title of Lordship is Jesus’s claim over the entire universe. You know the quote, do you not? The immortal words of Dutch Theologian Abraham Kuyper? This is one all of you should have in your back pockets:

"There is not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, 'Mine!'" —Abraham Kuyper

The Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and resurrection has been given Kingship rights over every square inch of the universe. This is the Gospel we proclaim. It is not an appeal that people might give their vote to Jesus, and thereby bestow upon him an office he does not already have. No, the Gospel we preach is an announcement of the victory that has already been won. We do not ask people to make Jesus Lord. We inform them that he is Lord, even when that Lordship is mocked by rebels, sinners, mockers, and presidential candidates.

Lordship also means that Jesus has right of change in our lives. If a friend asks you to change, you can listen or not. If a husband or wife asks you to change, you should consider it well, but ultimately, you must decide for yourself if it’s good to hear them.

But, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship

But the good news is that Christ never commands without giving grace for it. He never commands without giving you what you need for it.

The Lord Jesus Christ can say Fear not. Be not anxious. Cease your grumbling and complaining. Tear out your lustful eyes. Bear with one another in love. Dispense with that bad attitude. Believe on me. Surrender that entitlement. Forgive, but only as much as you want me to forgive you. Forgive completely, and bury your bitterness. Get over your sleights, both real and imagined. Get over yourself. In fact, put off your old self. Put on the new self. Love your wife. Respect your husband. Honor and obey your parents. Be angry, and do not sin. Love your enemies and pray for them. Be imitators of God, as beloved children.

Jesus Christ, with a mighty and commanding voice, calls us to such radical renovation of our hearts and lives, because he gives what he commands, yes, but also because Christ is Lord.

So where is it with you today? What is the sin you are hiding? What is the command you are ignoring? Where has your heart been found lacking faith--”There is no way that can be asked of me! He can’t ask that of me! That would mean a change in my desires, a change in my moods, a change in my personality, a change in my habits. That would mean the removal of my fears. That would mean the removal of all my protective anxieties. That would mean the surrendering of a self-image I have worked so hard to defend and preserve. This Jesus asks too much!”

Oh, sinner, will you comet to your senses and see? This Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son, Our Lord. And yes, that means he greets you with the rather terrifying proposition that there is nothing he cannot ask of you. But it means also, that he asks you nothing without giving you the strength to do it.

Conclusion

So let us always be mindful that whenever we confess our faith, whenever we repeat the words of this creed, not merely to rattle them off as a rote exercise. But to confess with such joy and awe that people wonder if we are singing as we speak.

For what this line in the creed means:

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Only Son, our Lord

is that the center of our faith is not merely an idea or a theological concept or a doctrine or even a creed. At the center of our faith we find a person. A man. A God-Man. The Lord Jesus Christ. When we introduce someone to Christianity, it is not the introduction to an idea. It is an introduction to a person. This is why our bonds of fellowship are so important. Because at the center of our faith is a covenant and a fellowship. Faith in Christ is personal, this is most certainly true. But it is not private. Jesus Christ is my Lord, but that is only true because He is our Lord.

And he is at work in and through us to accomplish a plan greater than any of us can imagine. So lift up your hearts and speak and sing and confess again of the glories of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.