(The Preacher’s Magazine 1989-90)

John 1:14,18

GOD HAD A PROBLEM!

We are not accustomed to think­ing about God having problems. But He did. How could He establish a meaningful relationship with man? If we can imagine the difficulty we would face in finding a way to fellow­ship with an ant, then we can begin to appreciate the problem God must have had in scaling himself down to the dimensions of a fallen human being. The first problem God faced was a...

I. COMMUNICATIONS PROBLEM

How could God communicate to man who He really is, and what are His gracious intentions for the hu­man race?

Since the Fall, man's spiritual eyes have been so darkened that when­ever he tried to look upon the face of God all he could see was a fear­some, dark, grotesque image. We see that in the idols men have fash­ioned of wood and stone. Carved upon them are portraits, hideous and repulsive, Halloween masks, fill­ing pagan worshipers with fore­boding and fear.

In the light of our distorted per­ceptions, how could God break through our darkened understand­ing and reveal His gracious and lov­ing character? If He came on too strong, we would be destroyed by the blazing glory of His power. On the other hand, if He came among us too subtly, then it is possible that we might not recognize the day of His visitation.

So, how could God come among us without overpowering and thus destroying our free will? I had the same kind of problem while back­packing with my boys in the Califor­nia High Sierras. We stopped by a mountain lake for a midmorning trail snack. Inadvertently I spilled some trail mix on the ground. Soon a cou­ple of Chipmunks appeared and be­gan to dart in snatching up the pea­nuts and granola. I tried to be friends with them. But every time I moved close they darted away. When I backed off, they ventured out again. No matter how sweetly I talked or how gently I approached, they mis­understood my intentions and fled in fear from my presence.

I asked myself: How could I com­municate to those chipmunks that I wished them no harm but only de­sired to enter into a personal rela­tionship with them? As I reflected on it, I came to the conclusion that the only way I could ever really com­municate with a chipmunk was to become one. And that is exactly what God did!

John puts it this way, "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth .... No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father; He has ex­plained Him [communicated Him]" (John 1:14, 18, NASB). The apostle Paul adds, "He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God ... For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Col. 1:15; 2:9, NASB).

A little girl stopped in the middle of her bedtime prayers and said to her mother, "Mommy, it's so hard to pray to a God I cannot see. I sure do wish God had skin on His face."

The miracle of Christmas is that, at a point of time in human history, God did put skin on His face. And it was the face of Jesus! And it was not the grotesque visage of pagan gods but a face "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

How did God solve the communi­cations problem? By incarnation: by stepping into the stream of human history, by putting on flesh of our flesh, skin of our skin, and bone of our bones in Jesus of Nazareth.

God, however, faced a second and even greater challenge, and that was the...

II. CREDIBILITY PROBLEM

How could God become flesh and dwell among us in such a way that we would recognize who He was and take Him seriously as the 80nof God-and not some wild-eyed vi­sionary or crazy psychotic?

One afternoon while vacationing in Yosemite National Park, Dean, my oldest son, came into camp and told me that he had just been talking to Jesus. At first I thought he meant he had been having his devotions. But no, he claimed to have been talking to Jesus in the flesh, over on the other side of the Merced River.

He went on to describe this un­usual encounter with a strangely dressed young hippie who claimed he was Jesus Christ. He had a full untrimmed beard and long matted hair. He was dressed in a robe, had a staff in his hand, and sandals on his feet. And he was preaching to a small group of children and teens that he was Jesus Christ. Oh yes, he was also smoking a marijuana ciga­rette!

Josephus, the first-century Jew­ish historian, reports numerous self-­proclaimed messiahs who appeared in Judea prior to the time of Christ. Some of them gained large followings. And yet they all came to noth­ing. So why should anyone take seriously this carpenter's son of un­certain birth from the obscure village of Nazareth? How did God set out to solve the credibility problem?

First, God had to create a sense of expectancy for the coming of His Son into the world. And that is be­cause people only recognize what they are looking for.

In his massive history of science, The Pentagon of Power, Lewis Mumford reproduces a picture showing a screw propeller for a ship or a turbine. Its concave blades are symmetrically formed. I was sur­prised when I read the caption, indicated that it was not a pro­peller but a carving discovered archaeologists in ,Peru dating ninth century before Christ! It had been crafted to decorate some ancient Peruvian king's mace as a symbol of political authority. It never occurred to Peruvians, or any­body else for nearly 2,000 years, that it could function to propel ships through the water. (Lewis Mumford, The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970], 2:370, Illus. No. 17.)

If Jesus was to be believed and accepted as God's Son, it was nec­essary that a mood of expectancy be created so that someone would be looking for Him and recognize Him for who He was. Toward this end God carefully prepared a called out and chosen people, Israel, among whom He raised up gener­ations of prophets. They would paint a portrait of a Messiah who would be recognized as such by people like Mary and Joseph, 'the shep­herds, the wise men, and aged Sim­eon and Anna in the Temple. Estab­lishing Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies became crit­ical in the life of the Early Church as they sought to convince Jews that Jesus was indeed the Christ of God, the One who was to come. Matthew either quotes or alludes to the Old Testament no fewer than 113 times in order to establish the credibility of Jesus as the One anticipated in the "law and prophets."

Second, if Jesus was to be cred­ible as God's Son, He would have to be known and trusted.

People instinctively distrust strangers but tend to trust those whom they have known a long time. So it was necessary for Jesus to es­tablish deep roots in one locale, Nazareth, where people would get to know Him and develop con­fidence in Him. Several of Jesus' dis­ciples may have known Him be­cause they had previously been disciples of John the Baptist, who was Jesus' cousin. It is entirely pos­sible that all of Jesus' disciples knew Him well before He ever called them to follow Him. Consequently there was a long history of relationships in which Jesus' fundamental credibility had been established, preparing the way for calling them into a special relationship with himself.

Third, God established Jesus as His Son by accenting His unique­ness.

If Jesus were ever to be credible as God's Son, it was vital that He be something more than an itinerant teacher. Consequently, from His birth onward, God surrounded Jesus with a multiplicity of super­natural signs that said, in effect, "This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased, listen to Him." There are no fewer than 13 super­natural occurrences preceding, ac­companying, and following His birth.

Throughout His public ministry Jesus was enveloped with an aura of supernatural power: The Gospels report 35 "mighty works" in detail, besides giving summary statements indicating that Jesus touched thou­sands of lives with His miracles. Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, confessed, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with Him" (John 3:2, NASB).

The supreme and final vindication of Jesus' deity is His mighty resur­rection from the dead. Paul writes, "[Jesus] was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4, NASB).

There was, however, yet another problem confronting God. And it was a...

III. RELATIONAL PROBLEM

It was one thing for God to be­come flesh. It was quite another thing for people to feel comfortable with divinity dwelling among them. Most of us would find it difficult to feel at ease if the president of the United States were our dinner guest. How much more difficult would it be for us-weak and fallible as we are-to feel comfortable in the presence of the sinless Son of God, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!

So, how did God bridge the awe­some social gap between God and man?

First, God allowed His Son to en­ter the world as a tiny, fragile, and very vulnerable baby. Why? So that no one would feel intimidated in His presence.

Second, Jesus was born, not of royalty, but of a peasant mother and a craftsman father so that all of the common people who work and live simple lives could feel an identity with Him.

Third, Jesus was not born the son of a prophet or of a priest. He was never a member of the religious es­tablishment of His time lest some would feel awkward in the presence of a religious professional.

Fourth - and admittedly a deli­cate matter - Jesus was born with the shadow of illegitimacy over His head. While we accept Matthew's and Luke's witness that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, that was not a miracle likely to be believed by the gossips of Nazareth. Even as an adult, Jesus' enemies slurred Him by saying, "We were not born of for­nication" (John 8:41, NASB), im­plying that Jesus was. Why was Jesus, the sinless Son of God, born under such questionable circum­stances? So that the millions of ille­gitimate children born every year could feel that He identifies with them and understands their pain.

Several years ago I shared this as­pect of Jesus' birth in a Christmas message. Later I learned that the adopted son of a medical doctor, who had been having a difficult time dealing with the circumstances of his birth, told his father after the ser­vice, "It's all right now. Jesus under­stands what I have been going through, because He must have felt the same things I feel."

Fifth, Jesus took upon himself the form of a servant. He assumed the lowliest of social roles so that the humblest and most disadvantaged would not feel awkward and ill at ease in His presence.

Sixth, Jesus did not speak the language of philosophers and intel­lectuals. Neither did He speak clas­sical Hebrew, which, in His day, had become the language of the scribes and religious professionals. Nor, on the other hand, did He speak in unin­telligible tongues as experienced by some in the Corinthian church (1 Co­rinthians 14). Rather, He spoke in Aramaic, the language of the common people in Palestine. Further, Mark tells us that Jesus did not speak to the people without using parables. Jesus was ingenious in creating vivid word pictures so that even the simplest among His listen­ers could understand the Word of God and enter into the joys of His kingdom. Not surprisingly, the Gos­pels tell us that the common people heard Jesus gladly.

Seventh, Jesus knew suffering, abuse, rejection: "He carne unto his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11). He was misunderstood, mocked, and mobbed. He was poor, homeless, and owned no property apart from a seamless peasant's cloak. He was arrested, falsely ac­cused, convicted, and condemned in a travesty of justice. He died a horrible death, executed as a common criminal so that every social outcast, every human reject, every loser - even felons like the two thieves on the cross, could find a point of iden­tity in Him.

We can now begin to understand the lofty sweep and yet profound depth of Paul's words when he wrote, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich" (2 Cor. 8:9, NASB).

What lengths God went to in or­der to reveal Jesus among us! What a tremendously complex, intricate, delicate, and yet powerful Christ­mas miracle it was that constituted the Incarnation. I want to lift my voice and sing with Charles Wesley,

He left His Father's throne above,

So free, so infinite His grace!

Emptied himself of all but love,

And bled for Adam's helpless race.

Tis mercy all, immense and free!

For, O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay.

Fast bound in sin and nature's night.

Thine eyes diffused a quickening ray.

I woke; the dungeon flamed with light.

My chains fell off, my heart was free.

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Amazing love! How can it be

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?