John 1:1-14 - Christmas Day - December 25, 2012
The
Word Remains Flesh
In Jesus Christ, God Has Come to Stay
In Jesus Christ, God Has Come to Stay
In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee. How much less
this temple which I have built!”
So said Solomon, the
son of King David when he dedicated the first and greatest Temple in Jerusalem
that was constructed under his peaceful reign. It was beautiful. It has been called the eighth wonder of the
ancient world. If the gold and silver
and other precious materials used in its construction were valued today – just
the materials – it would amount to as much as $200 billion. The nations gathered to hear Solomon’s wisdom
and to marvel at the Temple he built as a dwelling place for the Lord God of Israel. Heaven and earth couldn’t contain Him – hence
Solomon’s exclamation of marvel – yet God chose so kindly to be available
exclusively there where He said He would dwell.
And here it was. It was where the tablets of the Law that
testified of the Gospel were kept within the Ark of the Testimony—that’s the Ark of the Covenant—which,
when it was brought with them into battle, it led them into certain victory. That’s how God established this mighty
kingdom of peace for Solomon to rule. Solomon’s
name itself means “peace.” God dwelt there in the Temple where the
sacrifices were offered continually on the altar of the Lord – where the blood was sprinkled on
the Mercy Seat, which was placed above the Ark.
God was there in a building erected by the sweat and labor of 30
thousand men, but designed meticulously by God Himself so that every last
detail served to point ahead in some
way to the Coming Christ. It was
magnificent in every way! It was the glory of God’s people Israel, and it
was known among the nations as the
Perfection of Beauty. But, it was
still earthly. Would God indeed dwell on earth?
This question was
answered with a resounding yes
when the Temple filled with smoke – the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.
God was there. The smoke was so
thick that the priests and all who were in the whole Temple had to leave. God was there. It was the same as it was in the days of
Moses and the Tabernacle, as we just heard in our Old Testament lesson. Except now, there would be no more wandering in
the wilderness for the children of Israel – no more following the Glory Cloud
of the Lord from place to place. No, here with this solid Temple, God was here
in a permanent location. God
indeed dwelt on earth.
But of course it didn’t
last. Israel was unfaithful. So naturally war ensued. They gave God’s glory to foreign gods. So God gave them to foreign nations. The
nations that once sought the beauty of the Temple came and destroyed it. They took its gold and silver and everything
precious, and did God-knows-what-blasphemous-thing with it, and led God’s
people into captivity in distant Babylon.
That hymn we sing – O Come, O come
Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, was written based upon those words of
Scripture that pleaded to God to have mercy and come to rescue His people from this captivity, and to bring His glory
back to the Temple.
Well, God answered
their prayer. He had promised He
would. Isaiah said He would in those
words on which the hymn is based: Comfort,
comfort ye My people, speak ye peace, thus saith our God. He rescued them and brought them back
when the Persian Empire supplanted the Babylonian Empire. God punished their captors. The second Temple was built under the leadership
of the prophet Ezra. Now, its beauty and
glory, however, paled in comparison with the first. I suppose a people fresh from captivity
didn’t have much gold to spare.[1] And of course the Ark of the Covenant, the
most precious and defining Jewel of the Temple, was never retrieved. But the most important thing remained. True worship of the Lord God resumed within it. It still facilitated the sacrifices, and it
still pointed to Christ. And besides
this, God promised that He would do
even more than restore His dwelling to its former
glory. He said He would make it better.
I’d like to read to you
a brief portion from the prophet Haggai.
He was one of those who came back from Babylon and who oversaw the
reconstruction and rededication of the second Temple. He comforted God’s people with these
words. Please listen closely:
“Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more in a little while I will shake heaven
and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the Desire
of Nations shall come, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says
the Lord of hosts. ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’1 says the Lord of hosts. ‘The glory of this latter temple
shall be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:6-9).[2]
If all these things
seem like boring historical details, I encourage you please to rethink and to
continue to pay attention. If we are
bored with history, especially the history of God speaking to and dwelling with
His people, then we have no real business celebrating on Christmas Day the
incarnation of the Son of God. This
happened in history. History is
important. Because some day history will
end and eternity will dawn, and if we are to find joy on that Day, we must know
what happened in time: The eternal God, who made you, unbound by time or any
measurement Himself, entered the strictures of worldly time in order to redeem
sinners bound by the strictures of law.
This is history. The omnipresent
God who is everywhere at all times, in order to save, chooses one location.
We celebrate Christmas
because we know where that is.
In the Old Testament,
we know, it was the Tabernacle, and then the Temple. These passed away. But you know that second temple that Haggai saw, never did see its former glory; and
it certainly never surpassed it. The
nations never gathered to pay homage; and peace never lasted very long. But this wasn’t the temple that God had in
mind when He made that promise that I just read. No. The
latter Temple that would surpass Solomon’s Temple was the One that Solomon’s
Temple pointed to – it pointed to
King David’s greater Son who would
sit on His throne forever – the true Prince of Peace Himself – to the Temple
that was made without hands. It was the
Temple knit together in the womb of the Virgin Mary when the Holy Spirit came
upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. This Temple was filled with glory, not by the
appearance of thick smoke, but hidden in the humility of a nursing baby. For it pleased the Father, as we read in
Colossians, that in Him – in a baby!
– the fullness of God should dwell. And God
was in Him reconciling the world to Himself.
The fullness of God
dwells in the Person of Jesus Christ in order that God might indeed dwell on
earth. As we read: “And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
the Father, full of grace and truth.”
But I suppose this
isn’t just some historical detail, is it?
No, it didn’t just happen …
and then … end. No.
God is still man. The significance of Christmas continues today,
because the Word remains flesh. As the
hymn puts it:
God is man, man to deliver;
His dear Son
Now is one
With our blood forever.
His dear Son
Now is one
With our blood forever.
Will God indeed dwell
on the earth? In the Person of Jesus Christ, God came
to stay. He didn’t assume our flesh and
blood in order to get the job done and then leave. No, the job He came to do was to unite
mankind to Himself forever—to reconcile God and man—so that He would never
leave us. Nowhere is this made more
clear than when we consider the Incarnation at Christmastime. The glory of God in the highest is seen
where? What do the angels teach us? The glory of God is seen when there is peace on
earth and good will toward men. When God
and sinners are reconciled. When a baby
is born so long ago in the city of David: Christ the Lord, our Savior. This is where God joins man.
Man has the delusion of
his own glory, though, and of his own spiritual strength and righteousness. That’s why he reinvents Christmas in so many
ways to be relevant to himself and his culture.
It’s really the same thing that the Israelites did when they were
unfaithful to the Temple. Man turns
God’s merciful service to sinners into some sort of celebration of man’s own
virtue. Man thinks that he is too good
to be judged – not by some young preacher who hasn’t lived life – ha! No that’s
not it. Man won’t be judged by God. Man is incorrigibly obsessed with himself and
impenitent. That is why man is doomed by
God’s law to die. That is why man needs
to be delivered, not from poverty and hunger and social injustice and oppressive
rulers – these are just symptoms. Man
needs to be delivered from himself – from his sin. But he can’t.
But only the holy God can do that!
That’s why He becomes one of us.
God teaches the true
measure of man where He teaches the true measure of His grace – when He takes
upon Himself to deliver man. He comes
humbly, lowly. He is born of a poor
maiden – a young girl who looks to have a lot of rough days ahead of her. And if anyone so thought to encourage her by saying
that God was with her, what an understatement.
For in her womb, united inextricably to her own flesh and blood was her
very God and Savior who would overthrow the devil’s kingdom. Her womb – pure and untouched by anything but
God – became the new Ark of the Covenant – the Ark of the New Testament bringing God’s glory back to His people and leading
them out of captivity and into victory over sin, death, and hell.
And this was God’s plan
from the beginning. It’s not an
afterthought. This is not a 2000-year-old
breakthrough in religious thought. No,
the details of the Old Testament prove and confirm that this event of the
Lord’s Nativity have been on God’s mind since He ever looked kindly on fallen man. This is the Word that from the beginning was
God, was with God, and by whom all things were made. This Word became flesh. This Jesus is the Seed of the virgin woman
who crushes the devil’s lying head. This
Jesus is the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. And this Lamb of God to whom pointed the
countless millions of animals that were sacrificed within the Temple – this
Lamb of God was Himself the Temple
who would offer a much more perfect sacrifice within the sanctuary of His holy body.
He becomes the Lamb that taketh
Sin away
And for aye
Full atonement maketh.
For our life His own He tenders
And our race,
By His grace,
Meet for glory renders.
Sin away
And for aye
Full atonement maketh.
For our life His own He tenders
And our race,
By His grace,
Meet for glory renders.
“The
silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,”
says God. But it wasn’t gold and silver
that would adorn this long awaited Dwelling of God. No, because these weren’t valuable enough. St. Peter tells us in his first Epistle, “know
that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold … but with the precious blood of Christ, as
of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
The Temple of God’s
dwelling, the body of Christ was adorned instead by shame and scorn, by the
mockings and beatings of unbelievers, by His own blood. Instead of incense, it was the stench of sin
and cruelty that oppressed His soul. And
yet His prayers still rose to God to forgive the sins of those who struck
Him. Here, in this lowly body, despised,
ugly, rejected—and I’m not just talking like at the time of His crucifixion –
no, but even today our Lord is hated whenever sinners think that all this is
too much—Here in our crucified and embarrassing Jesus, we find the Perfection
of Beauty as the Desire of Nations becomes the object of God’s wrath, and as
the Son of God bears our sin and death on the cross.
He dies. Death is lonely. Death is unavoidable and undefeatable. We know it.
On the cross, bearing the burden that our lives have placed on Him, the
Son of Man gives up His Spirit. Will
God indeed dwell on the earth?
But God does not
abandon His handiwork. His soul is not
left to perish in hell, nor does His body see decay. He does not flee this Temple. Jesus Himself assured us, speaking of His own
body, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). And He did.
The Word remains flesh. He
remains healthy, strong, living, life-giving
flesh, no longer hiding His glory, but perfected. The Word of God, come down from heaven, accomplished
what pleases God, and has prospered in that thing for which He was sent. He does not return to heaven void. No, He returns to heaven bearing the sheaves
of victory over all our foes.
And from there He rules
us in mercy—because the Word continues today to dwell in His Church on earth
through His Means of Grace—wherever His Word is heard and believed – wherever
your sins are forgiven on account of Jesus’ blood and merit – wherever He joins
His own body and blood to bread and wine in order that He may dwell in you by
faith, and so makes you His own holy temple set apart for what your gracious
God has planned. The glory of the latter
Temple turns out to be far greater than the first. We have beheld it, because we know the peace
that only Jesus gives. We have beheld the
glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. By grace, He serves us, still today as
unintimidating as He did when He came as a Child. In truth, He teaches us, and makes us true
children of the Most High God in order that He may share with us His glory.
This is such good
news. Your sins are forgiven. You will live forever with God. It is so good that our feeble thoughts cannot
hold onto it. It’s hard to live by
faith, because our fallen flesh fights against what God says. Our doubts try to claim us. Our minds
wander. We sin. And those moments of joy at hearing the
Gospel, just like the tranquility of Christmas Eve, seem to fade so quickly and
out of reach. And so we pray: “O Come, O come Lord Jesus, come quickly,” because
we see that our hearts cannot contain the surety and joy of God’s promise. Well don’t be surprised. Neither can heaven and earth. So come to where God defies such earthly
limitations, and joins Himself to you today.
Come to where the Almighty God who controls the universe bows down to
feed you with the very body and blood that the little Lord Jesus first revealed
in a stable and glorified on the cross. The
Word became flesh. And through the Word
you hear on Christmas morning, God indeed dwells on earth. And He will never leave. No matter how much people forget about the
true meaning of Christmas, no matter how much disappointment and guilt and
sorrow and death, God is with us. He is
our Immanuel. The cloud will not pass or
move on. And so we sing today with
angels and archangels and all the company of heaven what the angels first
taught the shepherds: Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace,
goodwill toward men! Evermore and
evermore!
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
And the peace of God
that surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
unto life everlasting. Amen.
[1]
But read through Ezra and Nehemiah, Haggai and Zechariah: according to Cyrus’
decree, and as Artaxerxes affirmed, gold and silver etc., confiscated by
Nebuchadnezzar was indeed given back from the store of Persia to supply the
needs of Ezra and Zerubbabel to build the “house of the God of heaven.”
[2]
See also Hebrews 12:26.
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