We are now in the midst of the Christmas season which is normally the time when culture treats us to some sort of explanation for the origins of Christmas and Christianity. We are told about repurposed pagan holidays. We are told about the myths of godmen in the Eastern world. We are told about the tensions of the Roman Empire of that day and how Christianity was simply a politically useful tool. We are told such stories because today’s culture has to give some sort of account for Christmas and the spread of Christianity. It can’t just ignore it when the word “Christ” is in the holiday.
What’s interesting is that these accounts almost never talk about the Judaism of that day. That’s interesting because Jesus’ original followers were all Jews and the New Testament, which is our source of information about Jesus, was written almost exclusively by Jews. Now no Jew could have invented Christmas or Christianity. The idea that a man living down the road was actually the God of Israel would have been unthinkable thought to any Jew of that day. It would have required a stunning level of genius to make that leap.
Now some people might say that this level of inexplicable genius was stumbled upon by this group of fishermen and outcasts we call disciples, but it seems far more likely that they wrote what they did not because they were thinkers of unthinkable thoughts but because they had the reality of Jesus’ divinity forced on them by experience after experience—the experiences recorded in the gospels.
The virgin birth is the first such argument for the divinity of Jesus. The virgin birth, which we are studying this Advent, says something that never could have been thought up by any Jew. It says that Jesus of Nazareth is God. That’s the claim of this sermon: the virgin birth tells us that Jesus is the fully God.
We will study this in three points. First: the pre-existence of Christ. Second: the earthly ministry of Christ. Third: Christ the judge. We will work our way through the relevant Scriptures as we go.
First: the pre-existence of Christ. Tonight we are studying what it means for this child of the virgin birth to be God and to always have been God. The Bible doesn’t teach that in the Old Testament there was one God and that once we turn to the New Testament there are suddenly three persons in one God. Rather, the Bible teaches that God was always Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that the Son simply took on flesh when Jesus was conceived by the virgin Mary.
You see the Son of God at work throughout the Old Testament. He was involved in creation. As John wrote, calling the Son the Word, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” In other words, when Genesis 1 tells us, ‘God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light,’ that creative word was the Son. My words don’t make things happen. God’s word does. You see that at creation. You see that in the gospels. The book of Hebrews agrees, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the universe.”
So the Son of God didn’t simply come to be at the moment of the virgin birth. That’s heresy. He is God. He created the world. He created humanity. The Son of God has always been and always will be. Jesus made that point to the Pharisees. When they rejected him, he told them that they were not children of Abraham because they didn’t have faith like Abraham. In response, they told him off at which point he told them that Abraham, who they claimed as their father, rejoiced to see his day. They laughed him off saying that he had never met Abraham to which Jesus replied, ‘“very truly I tell you before Abraham was born, I am!”’ as in, “I am who I am,” as in the God who told Moses, “I am who I am.” The Pharisees understood that Jesus was claiming to be the God who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and who called father Abraham out of Ur, which is why they picked up stones to execute him for blasphemy.
Now you need to decide whether you believe Jesus was delusional in claiming to be the God who spoke to Moses and Abraham, whether you believe he was lying for some sort of effect, or whether you believe he actually was the God of Abraham we just studied for twenty-two weeks now living in the flesh in first century Palestine. The virgin birth is part of an argument for that third choice. The God of Israel had taken up residence in Israel as a child born to a carpenter.
The apostles came to realize that. As they looked back over the Old Testament, they saw the Son of God at work. Paul saw him at work in the wilderness wanderings. Reminding the Corinthians about the manna, quail, and water in the wilderness, he wrote, “They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”
Now that might seem like a stretch to say that the rock which Moses struck and water gushed out was Christ, but let’s make the wild assumption that perhaps Paul knows his Bible better than we as twenty-first century Americans do. The Israelites were planning to kill Moses because he wasn’t providing for them in the way they thought best. God told Moses to call everyone together for a court case, which was to be a trial of God because by condemning Moses they were really condemning God. Now if you know the Exodus story, you know that God had provided abundantly for these grumblers. At the trial God told Moses, “I will stand there before you by the rock.” There is legal language behind that. “Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” In other words, the innocent Provider functioning as the defendant accepted an act of unjust condemnation to further provide for His people. He suffered an undeserved verdict of guilty so that his people might have life—water. When Paul understood what Jesus did at the cross, he saw that this was what the Son was like: he was an innocent who would accept unjust condemnation so that his people might have life. The way of the cross was nothing new to the incarnation.
To move through the Old Testament, we see the Son of God at work in the poetry of David—remember this was 1,000 years before the virgin birth. David wrote Psalm 110:1, ‘The Lord says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’ Now David was the king so who was this second lord to whom the Lord was speaking, ‘the Lord says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”’? Jesus told the Pharisees that it was him, the Son of God. He was David’s lord. He wasn’t merely the son of David. He was the lord of David, and we read, “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.”
When you deal with Jesus, you are dealing with a man who believed and believes that he has always existed and been active because he was, is, and will be God. Prophecies of his birth agree. You see divine titles in one of the more famous of them. Isaiah 9, “to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Two of those titles are human—wonderful counselor and prince of peace—and two are divine—mighty God and everlasting Father. No God-fearing Jew would call any mere moral, “Mighty God” or “Everlasting Father.” This child who was to be born, this son who was to be given would be fully man—the human titles—and fully God—the divine titles. The virgin birth is the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was and is that God-man.
We see that played out in his earthly ministry. That’s our second point: the earthly ministry of Christ. Now the goal here, as with the first point, is to understand what it means to say that this child born of the virgin birth was, is, and always will be God. He is the Son of God who is of the same essence as the Father, as the creeds put it.
Now as the Son, Jesus is like the Father—like Father, like Son—or as John put it, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known.” So when you read about Jesus in the gospels, you are seeing all sorts of surprising pictures of what God is really like—this is what He is like with sinners. This is what He is like with hypocrites. This is what He is like with the helpless. This is what He is like when dealing with the Bible.
In Jesus, you see God. This is because Jesus is fully God. On Christmas day we will see what it means for him to be fully human, but today we are focusing on what it means for him to be and always have been fully God. I’m stressing the word “fully” because we have a way of diminishing Jesus’ divinity, as if he is somehow less divine than the Father. We tend to think of him as a human/divine hybrid kind of like an El Camino is a car/truck hybrid. An El Camino isn’t really a car and it certainly isn’t really a truck. If you think it is a truck, try treating it like a truck. It is neither. Unless we stress that Jesus really is as divine as the Father and as human as you and me, we end up with an El Camino Jesus. The virgin birth says he is as trucklike as a Ford F-150 and as carlike as a Chevrolet Camaro. He is somehow fully both at the same time. The child of the virgin birth is fully human and fully divine.
The gospels take pains to underline his divinity. They show him doing what only God does. That’s what’s going on with him walking on the water. That’s Job 9:8, “He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.”
We see Jesus himself doing the miracles that, in the Old Testament, God did through humans. God used Elisha to feed one hundred men with twenty loaves of bread so Jesus fed five thousand men with five loaves of bread. God used Elisha to raise a boy who just died so Jesus resurrected a man who had been for three days. Jesus does the bigger miracle to show that he is greater than Elisha. He is the One by whom Elisha did the miracle. He is God.
He not only does miracles, he forgives sin. As Matthew tells us, ‘Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home.’ The claim, as the Pharisees saw, was that Jesus had the right to forgive all sins because all sins were against him because he was God.
The gospels point to Jesus’ divinity in any number of ways. When Jesus gave his teaching on the law, where did it take place? It’s Matthew 5-7; we call it the sermon on the what? The sermon on the mount. “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.” Why teach on the law from a mountain? Exodus 24:12, ‘The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.’ God gave the law from a mountain; Jesus explained the law from a mountain.
When you read the gospels, you are seeing God in action in the neighborhood. You are seeing what God is like by seeing Him living in the same context that you live—in this fallen world in the flesh. The virgin birth is what made that possible. Christmas is what made that possible.
So we’ve studied the divinity of the Son before the virgin birth. We’ve studied it after the virgin birth. Now we study it in the future; we see the return of Christ and his role as the judge. That’s our final point: Christ the judge. We tend to miss the references to Jesus’ divinity because we aren’t as versed in the Old Testament as we ought to be. We don’t see that Jesus was doing what only God did. That’s what was going on with the ascension; “he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.” That isn’t just a statement that they watched until they couldn’t see him any longer. It is a statement about his divinity. It’s Psalm 104:3 and any number of other references to the cloud chariot of God, “He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.” God rides the clouds, so Jesus did that.
He rode the clouds into heaven. Daniel saw what came next in a vision, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power.” This is exactly what Jesus said before his ascension, “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” This is why we as a church seek to make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to do everything Jesus commanded.
When this Son of Man returns to judge, he will return on the cloud chariot. As Jesus said, “At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” He rides the cloud chariot to do what only God can do—judge. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
All humanity will stand before the judgment seat of Christ because Christ is fully God. That’s what gives him the right to judge everyone. Now you are only human. We know how much trouble the judgments we do make about others create for them and for us. Jesus can and will comprehensively and accurately judge everyone because he is God.
The Father gave the Son this responsibility to judge humanity. He gave the Son this task so that everyone would fear the Son as they fear Him; “the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” People fear God because they have the sense they will one day be judged by Him. The Father gave judgment to the child of this virgin birth so that people would treat him with the same reverence. The Christmas song gets it right, “Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation? Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations? Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect lamb? That sleeping child you’re holding is the Great I Am.”
That’s the virgin birth—I Who I Am became a baby without ceasing to be God. Now that is not the story that you will read about Christmas in Newsweek or hear on NPR. That is, however, the account of Christmas according to Jesus’ original followers. That is the origin of Christmas according to those who lived with the man. That leaves us with the conclusion that Jesus is God. That is what surprised those first Jewish Christians. That’s what I hope continues to surprise you and drives you to your knees in worship. Jesus deserves that. God deserves that. Amen.
“John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”
Hebrews 1:1-2, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the universe.”
John 8:58, “very truly I tell you before Abraham was born, I am!”
1 Corinthians 10:3-4, “They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”
Exodus 17:6, “I will stand there before you by the rock… Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.”
Psalm 110:1, ‘The Lord says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’
Isaiah 9:6, “to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”
Job 9:8, “He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.”
Matthew 9:2-7, ‘Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!” Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home.’
Matthew 5:1-2, “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.”
Exodus 24:12, ‘The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.’
Acts 1:9, “he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
Psalm 104:3, “He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.”
Daniel 7:13-14, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory, and sovereign power.”
Matthew 28:18, “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.”
Luke 21:27, “At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”
Matthew 25:31-32, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
John 5:22-23, “the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.”
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