Sermon Tone Analysis

THE QUESTION WE NEED TO ASK.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, I want to invite you to open with me to Philippians 2. That’s where we are going to camp out over the next four weeks as we think about the mammoth realities that are represented in The Mystery of Christmas.

The “incarnation” is a thick word, and I want us to begin to see it unfold this morning, I hope and pray, in a powerful and a fresh way.

We all know that Christmas is a pretty confusing time.

It just doesn’t seem to add up, to make sense.

We read about the humility and poverty of a stable and a baby that was born amidst that humility and poverty, and yet we surround ourselves with the wealth and indulgence of gift giving.

We read about a star in Bethlehem, and everywhere we go we are surrounded by blinking lights of all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes.

We see the story of a room in the Inn, obscure and dirty.

But when we think about Christmas, we think about warm houses and fireplaces and family feasts around the table.

We sing about shepherds, and then we see a lot of salesmen.

We read about angels, and then we talk about reindeer, one that even has a big, bright red nose.

And somewhere along the way there’s a disconnect.

I’m not trying to be Scrooge here, but there’s a disconnect between what we see revealed in the Christmas story and what we see around us.

And I’m not even trying to be cliché by saying to us that we need to keep Christ in Christmas.

We’ve heard that enough before.

What I’m saying is that even in the church, those of us who are focused on Christ have a tendency to miss the whole point, even those of us who are in the church and who know the story and who focus on the story, Mary and Joseph and the angels.

We focus on the wise men and the shepherds and we focus on all the circumstances surrounding this story.

Even then we have the possibility of completely missing the point of Christmas.

The mystery of Christmas is not found primarily in the circumstances of the birth of Jesus, but in the identity of the baby in the manger.

That is the mystery of what Christmas is all about.

It’s not in all the circumstances and all the trappings, but in the identity of the fact that God—what a huge reality—would become a baby, a crying, screaming, diaper-soiling baby that needed to be taught and changed and fed, that was dependent upon His own creation to nurture Him, sitting there with nothing to do but lie and stare like little children do often in the distance and wiggle around and make all kinds of noises that you have no clue what they are saying.

This is the mammoth reality of a God who became like that.

That is the mystery of what Christmas is all about.

We must dare ask the question, "Who is Jesus?"

So, what I want us to do is dive into that mystery and dare to ask the question: who is Jesus?

Who is the baby that was in this manger?

This is a huge question.

It’s a huge question on a number of different levels.

It’s a huge question because, number one, it’s a historic question.

A historic question

Even in early church history and ever since then, you have people debating the identity of this baby that was in the manger.

You’ve got guys like Apollos, Athanasius and Arius; all these guys in church history who having major debates about who Christ is.

Is He God?

Is He man?

Is He both together?

Is He fully God, fully man, part God and part man?

How does that work?

And you’ve got obviously the historic divide, the wedge that is driven between Judaism and Christianity.

It’s grounded in the identity of who Christ is.

And not just Judaism and Christianity, but across the board, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, even Muslims.

I remember numerous conversations that I had on the streets of India with Muslims talking about the identity of who Christ is.

This is a historic question.

An important question

It’s a very important question.

In fact, I think it may be the most important question in Christianity.

Because if Jesus is God, if this baby really is God, then that makes sense of everything else in the New Testament and it answers all the rest of our questions about Jesus.

Think about it.

It’s the most staggering claim.

If Jesus is God, then it makes complete sense that He would walk on water, don’t you think?

He made the water.

I think He could walk on it.

If Jesus is God, is it really that surprising to see Him take five loaves and two fish and feed over 5,000 people?

Is that a shock to us? No.

He made the loaves and the fish, and He made even the stomachs that are partaking of this food.

Is it really that surprising even when you come to the resurrection?

Think about it.

When we realize Jesus is God, then the staggering thought is not that He rose from the grave.

The staggering thought is that He died.

It makes complete sense that He rose from the grave.

What astounds us is the fact that God in the flesh actually died.

This truth changes everything.

It turns everything upside down.

I’ll share with you a quote from C.S. Lewis.

Just to give you a heads up, C.S. Lewis is going to help preach this sermon with me today.

I’ll refer to him a couple of different times.

He said this: “The doctrine of Christ’s divinity seems to me not something stuck on which you can unstick, but something that peeks out at every point so that you would have to unravel the whole web to get rid of it.”

It’s foundational.

So, it’s historic and it’s important.

An awesome question

It’s an awesome question that I believe we far too often take for granted in the church today.

May we never cease to be amazed by the fact that God became man.

This is a mammoth reality that cannot become commonplace and it cannot get drowned out in all the tinsel and commercialism that surround us over the next few weeks.

This is a huge reality.

It is awesome to think about.

It’s historic, it’s important, it’s awesome.

A personal question

And what I want you to hear today is that the truth we are about to look at has ramifications for every single one of our lives.

Every single one of our lives hinges on the answer to this question: Who is Jesus?

So, you’ve got Philippians 2 opened up.

I will go ahead and let you know this is going to be the passage from which we are going to be studying for the next four weeks, Philippians 2:5–11.

It is an incredible passage of Scripture.

I think it is the greatest picture of the Christmas story in all Scripture.

The only thing is, you are not going do see shepherds anywhere and you are not going to see Mary, and Joseph is not going to be here and angels aren’t going to be here.

There’s not going to be a star and there’s not going to be wise men.

That’s not what it’s going to focus on.

I want us to read this passage and then begin to unpack it.

Look at Verse 5 in Philippians 2. Paul writes, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” (Phil.

2:5)—I want to let you know this is what is called by many people a Christ hymn.

This is a hymn to Christ that exalts Christ for who He is.

All of that was said about a little baby in a stable.

I want us to see four truths over the next four weeks that come out of this, four pictures of who Christ is.

Today we are looking at Jesus as God.

The very start of this passage I’m calling The Hope of Glory, and we’ll see how that unfolds in just a second.

Look at verse 6, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped” (Phil.

2:6).

This obviously sets Jesus apart from everybody else in all of history.

This is not just your normal guy.

This is not your normal baby.

This is someone who, being in very nature God.

The words in the original language of the New Testament right there really are talking about His essence, the essential, His being, what He exists as.

He exists in the nature, in the form.