A Gift of Deferred
Notes
Transcript
Good evening. Welcome to Dishman Baptist Church’s Christmas Eve service. Please take your Bibles and turn with me to John 18, John 18. I mentioned on Sunday that if you thought Isaiah 53 was an odd passage to be preaching at Christmas time just wait until tonight. I know it may be surprising that you’re turning to a crucifixion passage on Christmas Eve.
I’m in good company though in this passage choice. On December 19, 1872 this passage was preached by Charles Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. I would never compare myself to the prince of preachers, but I’m just saying we chose the same passage for Christmas.
Tomorrow morning is Christmas and all over the nation gifts will be opened, children’s eyes will light up with delight., But have you ever received a gift that didn’t quite make sense?
There was once a young man who was an only child of a very wealthy couple. He was about to graduate high school and he was very excited, anticipating receipt of a new car to celebrate his graduation. The graduation ceremony flew by. The party was well attended with many gifts lavished on the young man and towards the end his father stepped out in front of everyone and called his son to the front. He handed the young man a small square package. The young man ripped into the paper, eagerly anticipating the car he was about to receive. What he received was a leather bound journal.
The young man was incensed. He threw the journal at his father’s feet in anger and stormed out of the party. He was estranged from his father following that day and never spoke to his father again.
Years later, after his father passed away, the young man returned to his childhood home to help with arrangements. As he walked into his room he found the offending journal sitting on his desk. He picked it up and thumbed through it. As he went to close the journal, he caught sight of something on the back cover. Taped inside the cover was a key with the words “This journal is for you to write all of the adventures that you will have in your new car.”
Now the parallel between that story and Christmas isn’t perfect. That young man had no idea the value of the gift that he was given and in anger turned away because he expected something different. The Christmas story delivers a gift that is in much the same vein - the true value of the gift that was given to the nation of Israel that night, that we received, was deferred until this moment in the life of Christ. Look with me at John 18:37-38.
“You are a king then?” Pilate asked. “You say that I’m a king,” Jesus replied. “I was born for this, and I have come into the world for this: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
“What is truth?” said Pilate. After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, “I find no grounds for charging him.
In response to Pilate’s question Jesus makes three statements that reveal the true value of the gift of Christmas - I was born for this, I have come into the world for this and that He is a witness to the truth. These three statements tell us all we need to know about the moment, the mission and the method that the life of the Christ-child would embody.
The Moment
The Moment
I was born for this...
What a statement! Think about this - for the last three years Christ has been touring the country side of Galilee, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, liberating demonically oppressed people and preaching in the synagogues and the countryside. Yet here He says - for this I was born. For this moment. Standing here, nearly a condemned man, Christ says that He was born for this.
It is a beautiful truth that Christ’s birth is the central point in all of history. It happened at the perfect time. Paul affirms this in Galatians 4:4 writing
When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
What a truth for us to grasp on to at the end of this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. That all of this is happening at the perfect moment for God’s foreordained plan to come to completion. Just as Christ’s birth took place at the right time, just as He was born and every moment of His life had carried Him forward until this moment where He stands before Pilate, every moment of our lives are known to God and happen at just the perfect moment for His will and for our good.
The second notable aspect to Christ’s statement is that it affirms His humanity. The God of the universe came as a man - He did not simply appear, He came as a frail, vulnerable child who needed parents and had to grow and develop. J.I. Packer said this “The really staggering claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man. The almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby unable to do more than to lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught like any other child and there was no illusion or deception in this: The babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth.”
But it had to be this way - there is no other way that it could be. Christ had to come as a human - or else His rule over humans would be illegitimate or unnatural. He would be an alien invader coming in to determine the value of human life and the direction this planet should take. So He condescended to come in the frame of a human to redeem humanity to His rule.
Note though that Jesus already preexisted as King over the universe and was the creator of all things - so He didn’t need to become a human to become King. Charles Spurgeon says it this way “To be King of men, it was necessary for him to be born. He was always the Lord of all; he needed not to be born to be a king in that sense, but to be king through the power of truth, it was essential that he should be born in our nature.”
And so He was - born in our nature, facing all of the challenges and temptations of this life to deliver the man Jesus to this moment in time - in words spoken centuries later “the man and the hour have met.”
The Mission
The Mission
“I have come into the world for this”. Christ has already laid to rest any fears or concerns Pilate may have had regarding His desire to establish an earthly kingdom. Look back quickly at verses 33-36 with me.
Then Pilate went back into the headquarters, summoned Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Jesus answered, “Are you asking this on your own, or have others told you about me?”
“I’m not a Jew, am I?” Pilate replied. “Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”
“My kingdom is not of this world,” said Jesus. “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
Despite many opportunities, the most recent of which had only been a few days before this, Jesus had always rebuffed any attempts to distract or change the mission for which He had come. Even despite His own disciple’s actions at His arrest when Peter took matters into his own hands and cut off the ear of one of the men sent to arrest Jesus. He had no desire to set up an earthly kingdom - at least not during this first advent - and He sought to allay any thoughts that Pilate might have in that direction.
Instead He points Pilate to His true mission and in so doing He gives testimony to His divine nature. Having affirmed His human nature by admitting to His birth, He now affirms His preexistent nature as He says I have come into this world. Commenting on this Martin Lloyd Jones said “Let me hold another phrase before you: Jesus Christ is come. What a significant statement. Do you see what it implies? It suggests that He was before. He has come from somewhere. It could be said of no one else that He has come into this world and into this life. You and I are born, but He came.”
And in so doing His arrival is significant as it is the return of the glory of the Lord to His people. In Ezekiel 10 and 11 the prophet chronicles the departure of the glory of the Lord from the Temple
Then the glory of the Lord moved away from the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim.
The cherubim lifted their wings and ascended from the earth right before my eyes; the wheels were beside them as they went. The glory of the God of Israel was above them, and it stopped at the entrance to the eastern gate of the Lord’s house.
Then the cherubim, with the wheels beside them, lifted their wings, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them.
The glory of the Lord rose up from within the city and stopped on the mountain east of the city.
But then in Luke - at the birth of Christ - the glory of the Lord returns not to the Temple but to a small town outside of Jerusalem and is manifested to shepherds in the fields
In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock.
Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people:
Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
The promised Messiah had come to return the glory of the Lord to Israel and to redeem His people. But only God can maintain the standards that He has set, only He can remain free from the stain of our sinful nature and so He had to come - which He willingly did - on our behalf to reveal the Father to us and to purchase our peace with Himself.
Christ makes the invisible God visible. John testifies to this in the preamble to this Gospel writing
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
Paul testifies to this truth in Colossians 1:15
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
There is a sense of mission contained within this statement. Elsewhere in John’s Gospel Jesus alludes to the truth that He has been sent. In John 7:28-29
As he was teaching in the temple, Jesus cried out, “You know me and you know where I am from. Yet I have not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true. You don’t know him;
I know him because I am from him, and he sent me.”
For this moment Christ had been born, for this reason He had come - Jesus says that He is here to testify to the truth.
The Method
The Method
Notice Pilate’s cynical response - what is truth?
We are no strangers to this cynicism are we? Fake news has to be one of the leading themes of 2020. We live in a society that has decided that it can determine truth from a relative or subjective viewpoint rather than any sort of concrete or objective standard. Truth is what you make it or determine it to be and in such an environment Pilate’s question is relevant.
But the truth that Christ came to testify too is the very embodiment of who He was.
It is this truth that is the true value, the true gift that we received in the birth of a baby in a manger that night in Bethlehem.
It is the truth that while we were still sinners Christ died for the ungodly. It is the truth that we are unable to accomplish this work ourselves but that we have a High Priest who has accomplished it for us.
So tonight - even as we celebrate the glorious and miraculous birth of Christ, if all we see is a babe in a manger we miss the true beauty of the gift because it is a gift that is deferred. It is through the terrible lens of the cross that the miracle of Bethlehem comes most vividly into focus.
“The beginning of the story is wonderful and great but its the ending that can save you and that’s why we celebrate. It’s about the cross, it’s about my sin, it’s about how Jesus came to be born so that we could be born again.”
At the beginning of our passage Pilate asks Christ if He is a King. This is a purely political question but the ramifications for us tonight are of a much greater, much graver significance. Is Christ your King? In truth He already is - but have you submitted your life to Him and confess Him as both Lord and Savior?
J.I. Packer said “The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity - hope of peace with God, hope of glory - because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor, and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.”
We’re going to gather now and light candles symbolizing the light that was brought into the world on the night Christ was born. It is also a symbol of the light that exists in the hearts of those who have submitted their lives to Christ in surrender. Tonight let it also signify our expectation of the second advent when our hope will be fulfilled, when our faith will become sight, when our joy will be complete, when our peace will be achieved and our love will be overwhelmed as we see our beautiful Savior face to face.