“God had come near. He came, not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries were heard by a peasant girl and sleepy carpenter. The hands that first held him were unmanicured, calloused, and dirty. No silk. No ivory. No hype. No party. No hoopla. Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of stargazers, there would have been no gifts. Angels watched as Mary changed God’s diaper. The universe watched with wonder as The Almighty learned to walk. Children played in the street with him. And had the synagogue leader in Nazareth known who was listening to his sermons… Jesus may have had pimples. He may have been tone-deaf. Perhaps a girl down the street had a crush on him or vice-versa. It could be that his knees were bony. One thing’s for sure: He was, while completely divine, completely human.
For thirty-three years he would feel everything you and I have ever felt. He felt weak. He grew weary. He was afraid of failure. He was susceptible to wooing women. He got colds, burped, and had body odor. His feelings got hurt. His feet got tired. And his head ached. To think of Jesus in such a light is – well, it seems almost irreverent, doesn’t it? It’s not something we like to do; it’s uncomfortable. It is much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation. Clean the manure from around the manger. Wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer.
He’s easier to stomach that way. There is something about keeping him divine that keeps him distant, packaged, predictable. But don’t do it. For heaven’s sake, don’t. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.”
-Max Lucado
When Lucado says that Jesus came to pull us out, he isn’t talking about something insignificant. Christ isn’t the guy who inconveniences himself slightly in order to help someone change their flat tire. He, the King of the World, the divine Word which has always been and through which we are created, left glory for us.
For centuries humans had been ignoring, mistreating, and killing the messengers of God. Still, His love is not something that can be measured on human scales. There is no limit to the ‘inconvenience’ God is willing to endure for us. Even knowing how we had treated his servants and how we would treat his son, God offered that which was most precious to him. This offer is the clearest demonstration of God’s love in human history – that Christ became flesh. In fact, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin.” If that sounds familiar, it is because John, the disciple who Jesus loved, wrote it.
Imagine that you are God the Father, looking down on someone who is so a part of you that he can only be described in human language as actually being you. You watch him as he is born in a shameful setting. You chuckle at Mary and Joseph as they try to parent him. You watch the humble town you chose as his hometown reject him despite the way you allow him to heal the very people who will one day lead him to Calvary. Then, as Christ hangs on that cross in the ultimate display of self-effacing love, you turn your face away from a piece of your own heart because of your desire to see the heart’s of all men made whole again.
“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” Jesus became human because of God’s love for the world. It is an immense love, a love that according to Paul, “surpasses knowledge.” Nothing can separate us from love – “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is the key: “the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is only through Jesus, the son of God, made flesh that we can actually enter this two way love relationship with the God who has always loved us.
One raw winter night a farmer heard an irregular thumping sound against the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and watched as tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside, beat in vain against the glass.
Touched, the farmer bundled up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn door for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights and tossed some hay in a corner. But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from the house, hid in the darkness, afraid.
The man tried various tactics to get them into the barn. He laid down a trail of Saltine cracker crumbs to direct them. He tried circling behind the birds to drive them toward the barn. Nothing worked. He, a huge, alien creature, had terrified them; the birds couldn't comprehend that he actually desired to help.
The farmer withdrew to his house and watched the doom sparrows through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him like lightening from a clear blue sky: "If only I could become a bird--one of them--just for a moment. Then I wouldn't frighten them so. I could show them the way to warmth and safety.
At that moment, another thought dawned on him, He had grasped the reason Jesus was born.
Before we can begin grasping and understanding Christ's humanity, we must answer why He became human in the first place. After creating a world of wonder and amazement God desired more. He created Himself a companion--Adam--to accompany Him for eternity. Someone to share in this glory and awe. Of course, sin's arrival became the kitchen glass isolating man from the warmth of God's all consuming Love. In order to solve this, God devised plan after plan to save His sparrow of Adam. He created a Law of cracker crumbs to direct them into Salvation; He sent Prophets and Judges to get behind His people and drive them toward Him. Finally, God went to such a great length to communicate to these sparrows, his people, that he actually became one of them. Christ's humanity is a direct revelation of His love for us. God willingly left the comfort of His heavenly kitchen, taking on the very nature of a lowly sparrow and forced himself into a cold world where He would be taunted, cursed, despised, killed in order to bring the news of perfect warmth, the news of perfect Life.
I’m going to ask you a couple of questions that actually need responses. This is the talkback portion of today’s show, so please, you know, talk back.
Let’s say your car won’t work. Who do you get to fix it?
Let’s say you’re very sick. Where would you go? Who would you expect to help you?
Would you ever have your car fixed by someone who had no experience with cars? Would you ask for medical care from someone who had never been to medical school? Of course not. The fact is, there are many problems that require professional help.
Now, you may be able to figure out what is wrong with your car with relative ease. It won’t start. It isn’t hard to tell you are having chest pain or trouble breathing. We go to see a mechanic and a doctor in order to get these issues resolved.
In the beginning God created a perfect world with a perfect man and woman to rule over it. He walked with them daily in perfect relationship. He gave them everything they could ever want with only one restriction.
Then, according to Genesis 3, the man and woman sinned. This brought perfect relationship with God to an end. At this point, because of the sin of Adam, sinned infected all of humanity. There were many serious consequences for this first sin, but the most drastic was the fouling up of man’s love relationship with God almighty.
There you go. We all now know what is wrong with us. Sin is wrong with us. Sin is what is still fouling up our relationship with God today. Just like when we deal with a car that won’t start or a heart that isn’t working right, we have to seek professional help. Except in this case, it is much more important because we are talking about eternity. We are talking about life and death.
In Romans 5 Paul says, “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
Sin is wrong with us. Sin won’t let us start. Sin is that pain in our chest. God, in His infinite wisdom did not refer to someone who doesn’t know the problem. He enrolled his son in a special training seminar. Jesus experienced a world full of sin. He hung out with the most sinful people. If Jesus hadn’t been human, it would all have been for naught. Hebrews 2 says, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death… For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”
So I ask you today, have you been to see your mechanic? Have you been to see your doctor? Recognize that you have a problem just like everyone else, a problem called sin, and if you haven’t yet, go see the professional, the one who can fix the problem.
Frequently when we begin to understand Christ’s identity we place him upon this pedestal out of our reach. We view Christ with wonder and awe. We start our prayers with innumerable amounts of adoration and praise glorifying His power and might. We constantly focus on his divinity in comparison to our depravity. We place Him upon this lofty throne barely in sight. Don’t get me wrong, this is not even the beginning of how much Honor and Glory He truly deserves, yet at the same time, we must understand that He has the ability to relate to us right here, right now in a way that boggles our minds. We focus on Jesus being completely God, yet forget He was completely man. He understands us; he relates to us. He knows our emotions, not merely because he created them, but because he experienced them. The Gospel of John is one of the most beautiful descriptions of Jesus’ Divinity, yet in Chapter 11 after hearing the news of the death of Lazarus, we see a grief stricken Jesus. He is not merely crying but rather weeping. He experiences pain. We turn to Mathew 21 in which we see an enraged Jesus furiously throwing out the money changers. He shows us compassion towards the woman with the alabaster jar; He shows us frustration with His “you of little faith,” to his closest brothers after calming the wind and the waves. Through studying His life we do not see the stoic and reserved Jesus of brown hair and blue eyes usually depicted in our minds but rather a man who laughs and cries, comforts and rebukes, attracts and offends. A man of complete humanity. He understands our emotions. He has experienced them allowing Him to relate to us on a completely human level even though He doesn’t dwell with us in the physical.
We place Christ on this pedestal for our comfort. As long has He is up there, out of sight, out of mind, we control the relationship. Though we may declare this all for Him and claim our lives as His, as long as we view Him strictly as a Kingly figure He cannot affect us. It’s easy to encounter a god only once or twice a week. As long as Jesus’ Divinity is the only thing examined He has become completely out of reach for us. As long as Christ remains only as God, we refuse to allow Him complete access. It is only in embracing the humanity of Jesus can we free ourselves.
Accepting Christ as human is so hard because it ruins all of our excuses. We all know we must live lives that reflect Jesus' life. We understand this need to live in holiness, yet we still slip up and fall whenever temptation rears its ugly head. As long as Jesus is strictly divine and supernatural we accept His sinless nature. Whenever we slip up, we can throw out the excuse "I'm only human." "Christ is divine, He can handle temptation, I'm merely human, I'm not expected to live a flawless life." Once we realize that Christ is human; He feels exactly what we feel, He understands us completely, including on a human level, we lose this excuse. Jesus was fully man and remained sinless, aren't we called to live lives striving for the same? Jesus handled the temptation thrown at Him, yet I fail, so many times, Wes fails so many times, Jeremy fails so many times. Where do we turn to strive for the life Jesus calls us to?
You sit down to take your End of Course exam for the most challenging and difficult class of your life--this isn't easy stuff like Calculus or Linear Algebra. In fact, this material makes Differential Equations and Quantum Physics seem elementary. You walk in to take the test. You're no longer in high school where you have about 100 other grades to balance this out. This is college and this one test is everything. You walk in, sit down. Your professor tosses a 100 page block of paper in front of you. A stern voice echoes out "you have an hour; begin." You're doomed.
In life we don't have all of our "trials and tribulations" set before us during out last hour of life. We have individual questions thrown throughout the course. We have the "I-shouldn't-see-this-movie" question, or the "I-was-up-all-night-working-on-Bio-so-I-need-the-Algebra-answers" question. Guys, how about the "dude-she's-really-hot-you've-got-to-come-see-this" question; ladies, the "I-can't-believe-the-two-of-them-are-dating" question? When we think about it, we really are doomed. Unlike in college, we have someone who not only took the course and taught the course, but who actually created the course sitting right next to us whispering every answer in our ear. We have an open book test where we can use the aid of the peers around us, yet most importantly the instructor Himself revealing to us each and every answer.
There was a professor who taught a course on logic and reasoning and, like a lot of college courses, limited his grades to one final at the semester’s end. He warned his students throughout the year of this one horrendous test. The class period before the final he handed out one piece of white paper to every student in the class. He explained that they could bring in this one sheet of paper on the test day and use whatever was on it. Immediately the students scrambled and began writing in microscopic print along the edges and corners trying to use every square millimeter of space. One of the students in the back smugly picked up his paper and left the room. On test day all of the students began comparing their blackened pieces of paper filled with almost unreadable notes. The one student walked in with that same sheet of paper completely blank and set it down on the floor next to him as the professor began handing out the exam. A minute before the students were to begin, in walked one of the professor’s former students currently working on graduate work regarding logic and reasoning. He walked over, stood on the blank piece of paper and began telling the paper’s owner each and every answer.
In our lives we have the opportunity for God the Father has provided Christ to stand next to us and provide us the answers in order to pass through our temptations. When we face these temptations, we must accept this divine escape and acknowledge Christ who is at our side whispering the answers and providing us the confidence to avoid the cleverest snares of the enemy.
Let’s consider a phrase that we often read, “Son of Man.” We often simply substitute “Son of God” in for this phrase just like we have learned to since our first day of Sunday School. Tonight, instead of making this substitution, let’s look at the history of this phrase.
All throughout the Old Testament, “son of man” was a reference to mankind or the whole of humanity. In Genesis God tells Abraham, “And I will multiply your seed like the dirt of the earth which no son of man can count.” In Psalms, David writes, “What is man, that you think of him? The son of man, that you care for him?” God commonly addresses Isaiah and Jeremiah as ‘Son of Man.’ Throughout the Old Testament, as well as in many other ancient pieces of literature, son of man is used as a generic phrase to refer to a human being or to sum up all of humanity into one phrase. Yet when we see Jesus refer to himself as the son of man, we allow our knowledge of his divinity to blind us to the power of his humble self-reference.
Put yourselves in the shoes of the people Jesus was addressing. They had no idea that he was the Son of God. They couldn’t even understand his parables, and they were in constant amazement at his miracles. Jesus didn’t address them as if they had it all figured out. He didn’t refer to himself as the son of man because he had decided that was a good way to call himself God. We associated this phrase with divinity because we know who Jesus was, but he did not say it to reference his deity. He said it to emphasize his humanity. Jesus constantly reminded everyone around him that he was just a human, the son of a human being. Even when talking about glorious things like the fulfillment of prophecy, his death, his resurrection, and his return to take home the saints, he emphasizes his humanness by referring to himself as the son of man. Jesus did this for a reason.
Remember Adam, the perfect man who messed things up? Well, Jesus is reminding us that he isn’t just God, he is man, the way we were supposed to be. And he is able to be this perfect man, the example for everyone who bears witness to his ministry, the example for all of us, because he dwelt while here on earth in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I’m not talking the warm fuzzies you and I get when someone asks the Holy Spirit to come into this room and we start singing some David Crowder song. I’m talking about an indefinable union of body and Holy Spirit, an overarching submission of will to divine guidance that actually affects behavior.
Then Jesus left. He left so that the mantle of the Holy Spirit could pass from him to us and that we could follow his example still.
Jesus thought it was pretty important that he be seen as the son of a man. It is so important because as much as we talk about worshipping God, submitting to his will, obeying him, and letting him be Lord of our life, we all know that we need someone to show us how to do it. We need someone we can relate to, the son of a man, to show us how to be love and to be loved, to show us how to live with strength and humility, to show us how to change the world.
It is essential, if we plan to follow the example Jesus set, that we be very familiar with his life and teachings. Jesus did countless actions which we should all strive to do. Daily he withdrew by himself to spend time with the father. He was patient with his disciples; he was bold in confronting hypocrisy. Still, perhaps the most lasting mark on history, the most intense word of truth that Jesus' life speaks into our lives, is his indelible love for the least of these. Tonight we must ask ourselves the question, "How, through the power of the Holy Spirit, will we follow the example set by God the Father and God the Son?" Who are the least of these around us, and how do we love them?
A million times we have heard the sermon about picking up our lunch trays and sitting with the person who is all alone. That is not what I am talking about. That is a watered down faith in action; it reeks of self-righteous and is bereft of a true change of heart. Jesus didn't go and 'minister to' the prostitutes, tax collectors, blind men, and simpletons; he lived among them in true community with them. He didn't keep a gang of Pharisees on the side to be his true friends when he had finished doing his good deeds among the lower class. Often times we confuse our goal of loving the unlovables with a mandate to make them as popular and accepted as we are. However, we need to take a serious look at the values behind this imaginary mandate. If we follow the Son of Man's example, we will see that we are called to submerge into the unpopularity and rejection in order to love them with a love that puts no stock in human judgments.
In November, a recent college graduate named Mike Yankoski came and spoke at ACU. He recently authored a book called Under the Overpass chronicling he and his best friend's personal experiences on the streets of 5 major US cities. Between their sophomore and junior years at Westmont College, they decided to take 6 months off and live on the streets. They had been considering Jesus' radical call to self-denial and unconditional love and decided that they needed an eye-opening experience. Mike tells a heart-wrenching story about a man he met on the streets. As he passed the unshaven, unkempt man, he saw the precious human being underneath. He asked him a simple question, nothing profound. Something like, "How is your day going?" The man teared up at the sound of his voice. He turned to him and said with a look of gratitude and love, "It is so good to hear your voice. Of the crowds that pass me by every day, you are the first person who has been willing to speak to me all week."
A couple of weeks ago I attended a Christmas Party through my church in Abilene. At this party a bunch of Christians, mostly college students from ACU, came to spend an evening dancing with the mentally-handicapped from a local Christian group home. The organizers advertised it as the 'Jesus Party.' After a night spent with the most precious of God's creation, people we often ignore or blatantly reject, I realized how fitting the name was. If Jesus lived today, he would have been at that party. He would have taken it a step further. He would have actually made the emotional commitment to become intricately involved in their lives.
I hope that tonight you will contemplate Jesus' challenging life. I also hope you will reflect on his radical teaching. Listen to some of His teachings we often like to sweep under the rug. "Give to everyone who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." "Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you." "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." "Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me." Finally, in a quote that speaks directly to following God's example, Christ says, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
After this, I spoke for another ten minutes on a text in Mark 8 and we listened to the song 'Glory of it All' by David Crowder. If you have the time after reading this long entry check it out on youtube.
