Sermon Tone Analysis

Wonder of Grace

What I want us to do today is dive into not as much the “who” of the incarnation, who is Jesus, but I want us to look at the “why”.

Why is the incarnation important?

Why did the incarnation happen?

What belief, if any, separates Christianity apart from other world religions?

Is there anything that is completely and totally unique to Christianity?

That was the subject of debates and discussion at a British conference years ago on comparative religions, and they were discussing whether there is anything that really makes Christianity unique.

And while they were in their heated discussion all these experts and religious scholars, a guy named C.S. Lewis wanders in, and he says “what’s the fuss all about?”

And they say well we’re debating, trying to figure out if there’s anything unique about Christianity, and he responded immediately, “Oh that’s an easy one, one word: grace.”

And that’s the word I want us to think about.

It’s the why of the incarnation.

It is incomprehensible to think about Christ becoming a man without considering the purpose for which He came.

And so I want us to dive into that and I pray that we’ll be a people today who even as we talk about some things that most of us have heard before and most of us are familiar with, that we would not yawn in the face of grace, that we would not ever cease to be a people who are amazed by grace.

Incomprehensible Grace...

So I want us to see in Philippians 2:8, three moves, so to speak, that Christ makes to help give us a picture of incomprehensible grace.

I. From exaltation to humiliation so that we might be exalted

That’s the picture we’re seeing here in Philippians 2:8 from exaltation to humiliation so that we might be exalted.

Now it says in this verse that Christ humbled Himself.

Notice that this is an action He took; it didn’t happen to Him, He wasn’t humbled.

There are a lot of things in our lives that humble us.

There are things we go through in life that humble us, I want you to see that Christ was not humbled.

No one humbled Christ, He humbled Himself.

I want you to hold your place here and go back to John 10, this is really important for us to realize.

I want you to see that what happened to Christ when He was on earth, the humiliation that He experienced was not an accident, it was not an unfortunate turn of events, “oh no, looks like they’re going to falsely accuse Him, and they’re going to try Him, oh no they’re going to crucify Him, look what’s happening to Him.” Instead, He was doing these things.

Do you hear what Jesus is saying there?

No one can take my life from me, I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again.

So He wasn’t humbled, He was humbling Himself.

Now what does it mean for Christ, God in flesh, to humble Himself?

Well we’ve seen part of that over the last couple weeks.

He took on a human form, He took on the nature of a servant, of a slave, but I want you to think about it even deeper than that—even deeper than just becoming human.

Because even once He was human, He humbled Himself even further.

This is a picture going from the highest exaltation to the lowest humiliation.

Think about it on two levels.

He was subject to His creation

Here is the creator of the world who is not even recognized by His creation.

Here’s the One whose glory is known throughout all the universe.

His glory is displayed throughout the whole world, and yet He’s standing there and He’s found in appearance as a man—they perceived Him as just a man.

This guy is not any different than anybody else.

Matthew 13, when He goes back to His hometown, they say, “Well why is this guy saying these thing?

He’s normal like us.”

And they even took offense that He was making some of the claims that He made.

The creator of the world, who’s glory is known throughout the whole earth, now unknown in front of His people.

Think about how that affected His relationships with people around Him?

He was subject to His creation—He obeyed His parents.

Now we all know as children we’re supposed to obey our parents, but isn’t that kind of weird to obey your parents when you’re the One that created your parents?

His creation mistreated Him, yet He still humbled Himself by subjecting Himself to them.

On another level though I think we see His humility, not only subject to His creation, but...

He was submissive to the Father

I want you to see Jesus as God the Son over and over and over again and how He had been sent by God the Father, how He was submissive to God the Father to do His will.

Let me show you some examples.

You might underline them in your Bible and just put the submission of Christ, the submission of God the Son out to the side.

Look at John 3:17,

So God sent Him.

Look over in the same chapter, look at verse 34.

So who sent Jesus to the world?

God the Father.

Who's calling the shots here?

God the Father is.

We see it even clearer in chapter 5.

So the Son is showing He is completely dependent on the Father.

Let's go to chapter 6.

Same thing here.

In fact, there's 30 different times in the book of John where Jesus talks about how He was sent by God the Father.

With that we get a picture that Jesus was God in the flesh was ultimately doing everything according to the will of the Father.

So we see God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit all working together to bring us salvation, to draw us closer to Christ, to make us in the image of Christ.

That’s part of the picture we need to see in the incarnation.

Now you've got the whole picture.

So at this point we should ask, "What does all this mean?"

Well, by implication it's basically this...

His incarnate position as the Son of Man makes possible our eternal privilege as sons of God

I want you to see how the incarnation is not just a cold doctrinal truth on a page.

Because of His position in the incarnation, because He went from exaltation to humiliation, He enabled us to be exalted with the eternal privileges of being sons of God.

We see that some in Philippians 2, when you go back there and you see verse 9–11, we’re going to study next week—“God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name.”

So we know that God exalted Jesus, but what we’re saying here is that He moved from exaltation to humiliation so that we might be exalted.

Where do you see that?

What do you mean we’re going to be exalted?

We know Christ is going to be exalted; this baby in the manger is going to be exalted, but what about us?

How are we included in that, and that’s the beauty of the gospel.

Because He went from exaltation to humiliation, you and I can sit here and know that because of His incarnation we have the eternal privileges of being called sons and daughters of the Most High God. 2 Timothy 2:11–12 says this...

Think about it.

Any suffering in this world cannot compare with the future glory that will be revealed in us.

We are heirs with God and co-heirs with Christ, sharing in the sufferings, one day we’re going to share in His glory.

II.

From life to death so that we might live

This is the second move He makes in His incarnation.

Now we really get into the heart of the why of the incarnation.

Now we remember in John 1, we studied the introduction of Jesus—“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.”

Okay that’s the picture, verse 4 “In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4).

The picture of life, this is who Christ is, He is life.

Everything about Him is life, He is eternal life.

But then we get to Philippians 2:8, “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to”—what?

“to death.”

Life was the light of men, but He became obedient to death.

From death to life, why?

So that we might live.

And this is where we’ve got to take a few steps into the Christmas story to really think about the implications here.

When we think about this baby in a manger, when we think about the magnitude of Christmas, we think about how He came to reveal God to us.

God with us; that was the picture.

But His coming, His birth, that alone is not able to save any one of us.