Mighty God

INTRODUCTION

Next year will be the 1700 year anniversary of the Nicene Creed.

It was written in 325 at a council where around 300 bishops of the church gathered to deal with the false doctrine of Arianism.

Arius was a false teacher who was saying that Jesus was not God eternal, but that the Son was the very first thing that the Father created.

The church responded to Arius, by gathering and composing a creed—a statement of faith—based on what the Scriptures say about the divinity of Christ.

I’ll read you the portion that most relates to Isaiah 9:6 this morning:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,       the only Son of God,       begotten from the Father before all ages,            God from God,            Light from Light,            true God from true God,       begotten, not made;       of the same essence as the Father.       Through him all things were made.       For us and for our salvation            he came down from heaven;            he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,            and was made human.

The Nicene Creed

The words of the creed stress to us the importance of this doctrine.

The fact that the whole church came together to deal with this issue stresses the importance of it.

But do we have the proper understanding of it that we need?

Hearing that it is so central—have we made it central in our lives?

Do we give our thoughts to it and wonder over the reality of it?

Do we seek to understand it to the best of our ability?

Does it change how we live?

Hopefully we can address these things today.

CONTEXT

Just a reminder that we are in Isaiah 9 this month and we are mainly focused on the four Messianic titles in chapter 9, verse 6.

Isaiah 9 is written in the midst of a period of Israel’s history where they were drowning in immorality, poor leadership and political upheaval and uncertainty.

God spoke to His people and reminded them that His plan is not thwarted by failing kings and foreign threats.

In a time of darkness, the Lord promised Light.

And that Light comes through His Anointed One—Jesus the Christ.

Last week we saw that He is a Wonderful Counselor.

Today we focus on how He is Mighty God.

I will read the passage for us and then we work through three points this morning:

1. The Doctrine of the Incarnation—What We Believe

2. The Demand for the Incarnation—Why It Was Necessary

3. The Difference of the Incarnation—How It Changes Things

Isaiah 9:6–7 ESV

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. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION

We start this morning with:

1. The Doctrine of the Incarnation—What We Believe

Let’s begin with the obvious this morning—the Messiah is being called Mighty God.

The Hebrew behind the English is El Gibbor.

Gibbor was a word used to describe a Mighty Warrior.

When combined with El, this means God the Mighty or God the Mighty Warrior

Some, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, have attempted to explain this title away.

They believe Jesus is a god, but not God. They believe that the false teacher Arius was right and that Jesus is the first being that God created.

And yet, the big problem they run into is found in Isaiah 10.

Isaiah 10:20–21 ESV

In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.

The Lord—Yahweh—the Holy One of Israel is also called El Gibbor—Mighty God.

And this happens just one chapter later.

What this means is that Isaiah has no problem using El Gibbor interchangeably to describe the coming Messiah and Yahweh Himself.

Why is this?

How can this be explained?

Well—without the Doctrine of the Incarnation—it cannot be.

Some read Isaiah 9:6 and they say it is about Hezekiah—the king who would be over Judah during a period of revival and who would see the miracle of God delivering Judah from Assyria.

The problem is that the language is so strong, that neither Hezekiah nor any other human king, can fit with it.

Even if you want to say, “Hezekiah was a Wonderful Counselor and a Prince of Peace,” we cannot say that he is Mighty God or Everlasting Father.

The best you could do is say that Hezekiah fulfilled the prophecy in part as a sign of a Greater King to come.

The truth of the matter is that there has never been and there will never be, anyone who can fully match the description of Isaiah 9:6, except the Lord Jesus Christ.

There has never been anyone else to walk this earth who could rightfully say, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”

If you have seen Me—El Gibbor, you have seen Yahweh—El Gibbor.

THE WORD INCARNATION

So then, if only Christ can be the child who is born, who is called Mighty God, this leads us to our Christian doctrine of the Incarnation.

The word incarnation comes from two Latin words which mean, “in flesh.”

And the idea of Isaiah 9:6 is that a child will be born to us who is God.

This is how we get to the doctrine to begin with:

The Word GOD being ascribed to a child who is born clinches the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Andrew Davis

THE PRE-EXISTENT, ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON

What the Bible teaches us regarding the Incarnation is that the pre-existent Son of God—the eternal 2nd Person of the Trinity—came to earth in human flesh via a virgin’s womb.

John 1:1–3 ESV

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 any thing made that was made.

The Word was both with God and was God.

This is our Triune God on display.

He is One WHAT in three WHO’s.

One God in Three Persons—Father, Son and Spirit.

This is the only way that John can say that the Word can both be God and be with God.

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

So—the Second Person of the Trinity—the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us.

His glory has been seen by humanity—glory as of the only Son from the Father.

This idea of the glorious Son of God, leaving His pre-existent glory, in order to revealed His glory to humanity is something we can see in Jesus’ own words:

John 6:38 ESV

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

He was in glory of heaven, and now He has come down from heaven in order to do the will of the Father who sent Him.

John 8:23 ESV

He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

He is from above. He is not of this world.

This tells us that Jesus is not like us.

John 17:5 ESV

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

He is referring to His pre-Incarnate glory.

So the one and only Son of God left His pre-incarnate glory and He was sent to Earth by the Father and this took place at God’s perfect time, through the virgin’s womb:

Galatians 4:4 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

This is the Virgin Birth. Here is how the Scriptures speak about the virgin birth:

Matthew 1:18–20 ESV

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

The Messiah in Mary is described as being “conceived in her,” and twice is said to be “from the Holy Spirit.

Luke 1:30–35 ESV

And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 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.

She will conceive in her womb, the angel says in v. 31.

In Matthew 1 and in Luke 1, the words used for “conceive,” are the same words that would be used to describe an ordinary conception involving two ordinary, human parents.

This tells us that Jesus is not implanted in Mary, but formed in the flesh of her womb.

A number of years ago, popular Bible teacher, Andy Stanley, said that people considering Christianity don’t really need to be so concerned with the Virgin Birth.

He argued that as long as the Resurrection is true, it doesn’t really matter if the Virgin Birth is true.

Here is why he is wrong and the Virgin Birth is so crucial to what we believe about the Incarnation and Christ in general.

Romans 5 gives us a picture of how our sinful nature and death are handed down throughout the generations of humanity:

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Romans 5:19 (ESV)

For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners...

Adam sinned and that sin, as well as the death that comes from it, has been passed down throughout the lineage of man.

This is why David said:

Psalm 51:5 ESV

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

His mother was a sinner and by nature, he was a sinner.

But Christ was not born of two human and sinful parents.

Adam’s sin is passed on by ordinary procreation.

But the birth of Christ, the 2nd Adam, is not ordinary at all.

If it were, and as Stanley suggested, the Virgin Birth might just be a myth, then Jesus would be a sinner just like you and I.

He would not be able to save us from our sins as one who cannot even save Himself.

But what we have in the Virgin Birth is a miracle of God that saw to it that His Messiah would be set apart.

He would not be born of ordinary procreation, but by miraculous conception.

And the fact that this comes about because the Holy Spirit comes upon her shows that this child will be holy. He is consecrated from the very beginning of His earthly life.

HYPOSTATIC UNION

But how can this be? How can the God who spoke the universe into place dwell in the flesh as a man?

How can it be—as Thomas Watson asked:

That Christ should be made of a woman, and of that woman which He Himself made; that the branch should bear the vine; that the mother should be younger than the child she bore; and the child in the womb bigger than the mother; that the human nature should not be God, yet one with God...

Thomas Watson

How can God be a man?

To explain this aspect of the doctrine of the Incarnation, theologians have turned to the following term: The Hypostatic Union.

The term comes from a Greek word that means, “person” or “subsistence,” and it is used to talk about the unity of two natures—Divine and Human—in the Person of Jesus Christ.

In fact, here is a simple working definition:

The hypostatic union is the personal union of Jesus’s two natures.

David Mathis

This definition has been very necessary through the years because of all the errors made throughout church history regarding the Person of Christ:

Some have said that Jesus is a distinct god from the Father

Some have said that He is God the Father Incarnate—not the 2nd Person of the Trinity

There have been people who have argued he is just a godly man or just a man uniquely anointed by the Spirit

There are people who say he was God and only appeared to be human

Others —like Arius—say he is created by the Father

Some say He is two separate Persons in one body

And some say he only has one nature and it is a mixture of the divine and the human

These are all wrong and if you were to subscribe to any of these errors, you would now be believing in a false Christ who cannot save you.

This is why doctrine is so important. Bad theology is dangerous for souls. Bad theology hurts people.

Instead, what we believe is that Jesus has two separate natures—divine and human—that are united in His one Person.

Jesus, as the Son of God—the 2nd Person of the Godhead—shares the same divine nature as God the Father.

But the Son is not the Father. He is distinct from the Father.

As God in the flesh, the Son also has a human nature and he has a body and a soul.

Therefore, Jesus is God and Man in the same Person.

100% God. 100% man.

In taking on His own flesh, He never ceased to be God.

And yet, as God, His human experience was real.

He lived a real life on this planet and endured real suffering, real emotions and real events in real time.

THE REVELATION OF THE GLORY OF GOD

So this is the doctrine behind Mighty God.

He is the 2nd Person of the Trinity who volunteered to leave His pre-Incarnate glory and be born of a virgin as God in the flesh—100% God, 100% man—two natures united in one Person.

And that one Person has dwelt among us and revealed to us the glory of God.

Going back to John 1, the Apostle writes this:

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

When John says that He dwelt among us, the Greek word is skenoo, which means “to pitch a tent.”

John is saying that the Son, in the Incarnation, has come and pitched his tent among us.

And in that act, we have seen His glory—His doxa.

Here is why this is so significant, as we close up this portion talking about the Doctrine of the Incarnation:

In the days of Moses and the people in the wilderness, God’s glory dwelt among His people in the tabernacle.

And the outside of the tabernacle was made with plain materials.

But the inside of the tabernacle, where the doxa of God—the glory of God dwelt—was filled with all sorts of gold and ornate design.

Well, that tabernacle was just a signpost in the ground, pointing to a greater Tabernacle to come. It was pointing beyond itself to a time in which God would reveal His glory to His people much more directly.

It was pointing to the time, when the 2nd Person of the Trinity would take on humanity.

He would come and tabernacle with us—His human body concealing the divine glory within Him.

Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

What the doctrine of the Incarnation delivers to us is a creed for our souls.

It gives us a biblically communicated anchor that roots us in the reality that though we were far from God, God came near to us.

Mighty God in the flesh, pitching his tent in our midst.

Coming to seek and save the lost.

Light from Light,            true God from true God,       begotten, not made;       of the same essence as the Father.

THE DEMAND FOR THE INCARNATION

Now the question is WHY...

Why did it have to be this way? Why did God the Son have to take on human flesh? Why did the Father send the Son in this way? Why was it necessary for a Child to be conceived in Mary that is from the Spirit?

Why did the Messiah have to be MIGHTY GOD?

2. The Demand for the Incarnation—Why It Was Necessary

In order to understand why it was necessary, we need to understand why the Messiah was born to begin with. As the Angel of the Lord told Joseph:

Matthew 1:21 ESV

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

The Messiah is born with the purpose of saving His people from their sins.

This is His mission.

And in this mission, we find why it was necessary for Him to be the God-Man: one Person with a divine and a human nature.

If this were not who He is, then He would not have been able to save us.

Listen to what the author of Hebrews says:

Hebrews 2:17 ESV

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

THE NECESSITY OF HUMANITY

On one hand, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he would become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.

This is really where we focus on why the Messiah had to be a man.

In Israel’s history, the high priest was the primary mediator of the people to God.

He represented the people before God.

He did this through daily functions and offerings and sacrifices, for sure.

But most importantly, he did this once a year, when he entered the innermost part of the tabernacle or temple and made atonement for the whole nation.

But ultimately, this role of the High Priest and the functions of the High Priest, were pointing beyond the High Priest.

Aaron and those who came after him in the priestly line, were just shadows of One that would come after them.

Ultimately, in laying down His perfect life for sin, Jesus has secured an eternal redemption for us by the means of His own blood.

As our High Priest, the sacrifice that He brought to the altar was His own body.

And He has done done this in the earthly sanctuary—He has made peace for us in heaven itself, and He represents us before the very throne of God.

Hebrews 9:24–26 ESV

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

The perfect relationship that God had with humans was lost because Adam—the first man created and humankind’s representative before God—made war on God with his sin.

And since Adam was our representative as the head of humanity—his declaration of war meant our declaration of war.

Adam’s sin put himself and all of his offspring in conflict with God.

But now, a new Adam has come. A 2nd Adam. A Last Adam.

The first Adam was from the dust, but this Adam is from heaven.

1 Corinthians 15:45–47 ESV

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.

This Adam was not like the last one. The last one ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and caused humanity to be separated from God.

But this 2nd Adam lived a perfect life and died on the tree of Calvary and caused humanity to be reconciled to God.

This was accomplished by taking His perfect life, which He lived under God’s law, without ever transgressing God’s Law, and laying it down in the crucifixion.

There, as our Great High Priest, he died for our sins as if He had committed them.

And in order for this to happen, He had to be a man.

He could not just be God’s Son—but He also had to be Mary’s boy, in order for Him to suffer.

He had to be a man in order for Him to receive the punishment we deserved.

He had to be a man who lived and died under the Law.

He had to be a man in order to be our High Priest in heaven.

He had to become like his brothers in order to free them.

He had to become like us, if we were ever going to be saved, and ultimately made like Him by the Spirit’s sanctifying power.

THE NECESSITY OF DIVINITY

And yet, going back to Hebrews 2:17:

Hebrews 2:17 ESV

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

He accomplished our salvation by making propitiation for the sins of the people.

That word propitiation is an undervalued theological term.

According to James Boice:

“Propitiation,”... is the act of turning God’s wrath aside.

James Montgomery Boice

And I would add to what Boice has said by saying, not only does it mean God’s wrath has been turned aside—it also means that we can now be reconciled to God and made right with Him.

Propitiation is where we see the love of God and the justice of God intersect.

We know God is love.

The Bible tells us that He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…He forgives iniquity and transgression. (Exodus 34:6-7)

But we also know that He is a God of justice.

The Bible tells us that heaven declares His righteousness and that He is a Judge (Psalm 50:6)

Ecclesiastes 12:14 ESV

For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

So how can these two things be reconciled? How can He forgive sin if He lets no sin go unpunished?

This is where propitiation enters the arena.

God is necessarily both the subject and the object of propitiation.

D. A. Carson

What Carson means is that the only way for God to forgive our sin, while still remaining just, is for God the Son to receive the wrath we deserve from God the Father.

On one hand, God must be appeased. Sin must be paid for. Justice must be served.

But on the other hand, the only One who can come and fix our situation and secure our forgiveness and redemption is God Himself.

For who else is capable of bearing the wrath of God for billions of people who have committed millions of sins?

The only way for God’s wrath to not fall on us, was for it to fall on His Son.

Therefore, God is the OBJECT and SUBJECT of propitiation.

In order to be qualified to be our High Priest, Jesus had to be a Man.

In order to be capable of being the propitiation for our sins, Jesus had to be God.

Only God could overcome.

Only God could endure and drink up the judgment we deserved

Only God could apply this great work of Christ to us by faith

Only the Incarnation could solve the problem of sin and death and destruction.

Only a Messiah who is Mighty God could live a perfect life and die an atoning death.

He had to be the God-Man in order for man to have a way back to God.

THE DIFFERENCE THE INCARNATION MAKES

So we have seen the doctrine and demand of the Incarnation.

We understand what we believe about Christ being Mighty God and why He had to be Mighty God in order to save us.

This leads to the final section this morning:

3. The Difference of the Incarnation—How It Changes Things

I want to offer up two applications for us this morning:

A. The Incarnation should lead to humble living in the present.

B. The Incarnation will lead to happy living in the future.

THE INCARNATION SHOULD LEAD TO HUMBLE LIVING IN THE PRESENT

This morning our Advent candle that we lit is the LOVE candle.

It was the humble love of Christ that saw to Him coming to us in the flesh and redeeming us from the curse of sin.

Here is Calvin speaking of what Christ has accomplished in the humility of the Incarnation:

This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that:

becoming Son of man with us, he has made us Sons of God with him; by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself, he has clothed us with righteousness.

John Calvin

Knowing what humble love has won for us in Christ, we should be led to humble living.

We should be seeking to imitate the loving humility of Christ in all that we do.

The Incarnation has left a divine pattern for us. God came and showed us how we should live as men.

And this is the model: To express a humble submissiveness to God’s will by loving God and loving others. `

Is this not what we have learned from Jesus, church?

Has he not shown us what the a life of humility really boils down to?

First of all, It is express love to the Father through obedience.

John 14:31 ESV

but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.

And secondly, it is to love others—even to the point of death:

Philippians 2:7–8 ESV

but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

To live for yourself is to live pridefully.

A life that exists to gratify its own desires is a life that is lived in rebellion against God.

You cannot be a servant of your own flesh and a servant of the Lord.

You cannot be one that loves your neighbor as yourself, if your love never goes beyond yourself.

In order for us to truly live lives that bring honor and glory to Mighty God, we must live lives that are patterned after Jesus, who is Mighty God--

Humbly submitting to the will of the Father

Expressing our love for Him by obedience to His Word

Expressing our love for Him by loving others, in the same way that He has loved us

So in light of the doctrine of the Incarnation, this is who we must be presently...

But let’s close with a thought about the future

THE INCARNATION SHOULD LEAD TO HAPPY LIVING IN THE FUTURE

As we consider the Messianic title of “Mighty God,” we should understand that there is a level in which the very name means that God’s enemies will be defeated.

Gibbor is a Hebrew word that described warriors.

So in saying that the Messiah will be El Gibbor, Isaiah is saying that He will be God the Might Warrior.

This is not how Jesus came in His first advent.

He did not come as a warrior, but as a child in a stable with cobwebs for curtains.

He did not come as an obvious king, but as what appeared to be a simple carpenter’s boy

And in His earthly ministry, He was drawing swords, but words of mercy in the dirt.

He was not drawing weapons, but instead, He was drawing all men unto Himself.

But when He returns, Revelation gives us a vivid picture of our God the Mighty Warrior:

Revelation 19:11–16 ESV

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

This is the picture of Christ in His 2nd Advent.

And when He has defeated and judged every enemy of God and the church, this will be the result for the people of God:

Revelation 21:4 ESV

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

All will be made well.

Through the sword of Mighty God, the people of God will be happy for all of their days.

BAND RETURNS

As the band is coming up to lead us in a final song—let me ask you—is this your future?

Have you trusted in the Messiah—the Wonderful Counselor, who is Mighty God?

Have you turned from sin and trust in Christ to die for that sin?

Have you surrendered your life to God and said, “Please save me Jesus—I believe in You?”

It is one thing to know the doctrine.

It is one thing to understand why it was necessary for God to come in the flesh.

But it is another to ask, “Has this made a difference in my life?”

That is a question you must ask.

I’d love to talk more with you about this. But right there in your seat this morning, you can:

Confess your sins to God

Proclaim to Him that you believe in His Son who had lived, and died, and rose again for your salvation

And you can ask Him to forgive you of your sins