This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 5.30pm.
Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus says: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and
the last, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 22:13)
Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our
hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Tonight we’re following a custom that is more common in America
than in Australia of having a midweek Advent service. We often have midweek
Lent services and Lent is a wonderful time to focus on the Lord’s suffering and
death leading up to Good Friday and Easter, but as we prepare for Christmas,
Advent is a wonderful opportunity to focus on who Jesus is, and how he as the
Son of God took on human flesh and became a man.
In Luther’s Small Catechism, we have a really wonderful
summary of this teaching, which you may have learnt in Sunday School or
Confirmation. Luther writes: I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten
of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my
Lord. This evening we’re going to focus on the fact that Jesus is true
God, begotten of the Father from eternity. Next week, we’re going to focus
on the fact that Jesus is true man, born of the Virgin Mary. And the
third week we’re going to focus on the fact that Jesus is my Lord, and
how there are not two people called Jesus, but that he is both true man and
true God in one person.
Actually, it’s very appropriate that we should be talking
about this matter today, because the sixth of December is often called St
Nicholas’s Day. In the Netherlands, where my family came from originally, St
Nicholas’s Day is a time where people give each other presents instead of at
Christmas, and there are big celebrations. In Dutch, they call him Sinter Klaas,
which is a short form of “Nikolaas”, which is where Santa Claus comes from. But
St Nicholas was a real person in history, and he was actually a bishop in a
place called Myra, in modern-day Turkey, at a time when the biggest question in
the church was whether Jesus was true God or not. In the year 325, a
special gathering of the church was called together at a place called Nicaea to
make a confession of faith on this issue, which was called the “Council of
Nicaea”. The “Nicene Creed” which we say on Sundays was basically put together
at that council. St Nicholas was there on that occasion, and was one of those
who confessed that Jesus was true God.
This teaching or doctrine that Jesus is true God is the most
important teaching of Christianity. In fact, we could even say that the belief
that Jesus is God is Christianity. Unfortunately today, there are two
very active groups who don’t believe this at all, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and
the Mormons. These two groups often go around door-knocking and they do a lot
of damage in messing with people’s minds on this. The Seventh Day Adventists
also seem to have two views: some people in the Seventh Day Adventists do
believe that Jesus is God, but there are some who don’t. But even in our own
churches, people can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that Jesus was
nothing more than a Spirit-filled man. So it’s important that we make sure that
we discuss this doctrine in the church regularly to make sure that we know what
we believe.
Christians believe that there is one God, who is the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit. We believe that the Father is God, the Son is God,
and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God. They
are three-in-one, and one-in-three. We call the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit the three persons. This means that the Father is not the same
person as the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the same person as
the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the same person as
the Father and the Son. And yet, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—all three
are true God, and yet we don’t worship three gods—we worship the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit as one God in perfect unity.
Now in the Nicene Creed, we say that Jesus is of one
substance with the Father. Now I’m going to explain two words here: first
of all, the word substance, and then the word person. We say that
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same substance, but are
three persons. Now what does this mean? First of all, when we say
“person” we don’t mean “human bodies”: The Father and the Holy Spirit have
never had a human body. Sometimes when people hear the word “person” they think
it means a “human being”. In John 4:24, Jesus says: God is spirit. God
is a spiritual being, and has a spiritual nature. Now in philosophy, a long
time ago, if someone wanted to refer to a “species”, like a horse, or a dog,
they would call it their substance or nature or form. So
if I had a two dogs called Max and Rover, we would say they have the same
substance, the same nature, the same form, because they are both dogs. But if I
want to refer to a particular dog, then I would call it an individual,
or a person. So even though the dogs Max and Rover are both dogs, they
are individual dogs, they are different persons. Peter and Paul both
have the same the substance, they are both human beings, and they are
both men, but they are different persons, they are two individuals.
So we would also say that the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit have the same substance, they are all God. But they are
separate persons. However, with the dogs, Max and Rover, they are always
going to be two separate dogs. But the three persons of the Trinity, the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all true God, and they live in
communion and in unity with each other in such an incredibly mysterious way,
that there are not three Gods, but that the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are
one God, completely inseparable from each other, and interpenetrating one
another. They are not simply one in mind, or purpose, or character, but they
are one in being, in essence, in substance, in nature.
For example, Jesus says: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. (People,
or horses, or dogs could never talk like this about each other). So we worship
one God in three persons, and three persons in one God.
So the Son of God we call the second person of the
Trinity. And he is different from the Father and the Holy Spirit, because he is
the only one of the three persons who became a man and took on human
flesh. So the Father and Holy Spirit are divine in their nature, but
the Son is both divine and human. He has two natures, but he is one
person. There are not two “Jesuses”: there is only one Jesus.
So the first big question is this: In the first verse of the
bible, we read: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. We
have two things there. God on the one hand who is the Creator,
and on the other hand, we have his creation, the heavens and the
earth. Which side of the fence does Jesus and the Holy Spirit belong? Are
they God who created, or did God create them? The answer is that in the
beginning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit together as one God
created the heavens and the earth.
Now, the next big question is this: is this written in the
bible? The word “Trinity” and some other words are not in the bible, but these
are words that Christians have used to describe what the bible teaches. First
of all, we’re going to look at the different ways the bible speaks about Jesus,
and his relationship to his Father. Secondly, we’re going to look at different
passages where Jesus is actually called God.
The first passage we’re going to look at is from John
chapter 1, where it says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. Now, when John says “the Word” here, he’s
not simply talking about “words” or “the ability to talk” or “language”. He’s
talking in a mysterious way about a person. He says that the Word was God.
All through this chapter, the Word keeps on being referred to not as a thing,
but as a person who is alive and does things. It says: The Word
became flesh—and what did he do?—he dwelt among us. This is
talking about how the Son of God entered into the world, took on human flesh,
and lived a life among us. We’re talking about Jesus, the Son of God, here. But
notice that right back in the first verse, it says that the Word was God. So
this is a very clear passage where Jesus Christ is called the Word, that he
existed without a human body before he became a human baby. And not only did he
exist before this, but he was with God, equal to God, and was
God together with the Father, right from before the creation of the world. Think
back to Genesis one, when the world was created. How did God do it? He spoke
the word, and it was done. He said: Let there be light, and there was
light. And so there’s a wonderful way, in which this Word, was not
simply words, but a person, and even the Son of God himself.
This is how the bible speaks about it.
The second passage we’re going to look at is from Colossians
1:15-16, where it says: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible. Here Jesus is called the image of the invisible
God. This means that in an wonderful way, Jesus is a reflection
of his Father, but not one that came afterwards, but that has always existed.
Now afterwards it says that Jesus was the firstborn of all creation, and
some people have taken this to mean that Jesus was the first thing that God
created. But that’s not how the text explains it: It says: For by him all
things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.
Jesus was not something that was created, he was the one who created all things
together with the Father. Now, when the first people were created, it says: So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. But
the Son of God was the image of God in a much deeper way. Jesus explains this
when he says in John 14:9, Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So
Adam and Eve were created in the image of God as God’s creatures. But Jesus is
in the image of his Father, being equal to him, and one God
together with him. There has never been a time when the Son has not reflected
his Father’s image.
The next passage we’re going to look at is from Hebrews
chapter 1, where we have two wonderful descriptions of Christ’s divinity. It
says that through [the Son] God created the world. And then it
says about the Son that He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact
imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Firstly,
it says that Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God. This word
“radiance” can also mean “brightness”. The picture is that the Father
continually shines his wonderful light, and the brightness of this light is the
Son of God himself. There are many passages which speak about Jesus as the light.
In the Nicene Creed we say that Jesus is God of God, Light of Light. There
has never been a time in the whole of eternity when God’s light has not been
shining forth, and so there has never been a time when the Son has not been his
radiance or that brightness.
Then also in Hebrews in that same verse, it says that he is
the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature,
or of his “person”. It says that Jesus is an “exact imprint”. The word
there means an engraving, or a stamp, like a coin. But with a coin
with a picture of the queen on it, we have simply an imprint of her picture on
metal. The queen herself is not made of silver or gold. But in Hebrews it says
that the Son of God is the exact imprint of his nature. We might say
that he is a bit like a photocopy, but not a bad photocopy, but an exact copy.
And it’s not as if the Son of God was created at some time, otherwise he would
only be like God, and not an exact imprint of his nature. To be an exact
imprint of his nature means that the Son has always existed together with the
Father. There was never a time when the Son didn’t exist.
Finally, the bible says that Jesus is the Son of God,
and this also shows that Jesus is true God. Just as my children are humans like
me, so also God’s Son is true God like Him. Some people say that Jesus is not
God, but that he is only God’s Son. We are also sons and daughters of God, but
we are adopted by God. We could also say we are God’s children because he
created us. But also, the bible speaks about Jesus in a different way to us.
Jesus is not just God’s Son, but his only Son. Jesus is the only
Son of the Father. God so loved the world, that he gave not just any
son, but his only Son. In Romans 8, Jesus is called God’s own son (v.
32). God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all. And so
in the Gospel of John, we read that the Jews understood exactly what Jesus
saying, and we read: This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill
him because…he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with
God.
So we can see that Jesus is the Word, the Image of
God, the Radiance of the Father’s glory, the exact imprint of his
nature, and his only Son. There’s one last thing that we haven’t
talked about, and that is, that there is a difference between the Father and
the Son, and that is simply that the Father is the Father, and the Son is the
Son! And so we say that the Son was begotten by the Father. Now what does “begotten”
mean? It’s simply another way of saying that he was his Father. The old way of
speaking was that women bore children, and fathers begat children.
You might know the old translation of Matthew 1, where it says: Abraham
begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. This simply means that they were
their fathers. But the difference is that earthly fathers beget children in
time, but God the Father begat his Son from eternity. The Father and
the Son have always existed together, but they also have a certain relationship
with each other, they are not simply like two friends with no distinction. And
at the same time Jesus is equal to God. Philippians chapter two says
this when it says that Jesus was in the form of God, and that he had equality
with God.
Now, the second group of things we’re going to look at is
that Jesus is called God in a number of places. For example, in John
1:1, which we read before it says that the Word was God. In John 20:28,
after Jesus rose from the dead, we read about how Jesus invited Thomas to put
his finger in his hands and his hand in his side to prove to him that it was
really him risen from the dead. And what did Thomas say to him? We read: Thomas
answered him: My Lord and my God! In the letter to Titus, St Paul calls
Jesus our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Also, in Matthew’s Gospel,
when the angel went to Joseph in a dream, Jesus is called Immanuel,
which means God with us.
Also, in the Old Testament, God didn’t just have people call
him God, but he gave them his personal name. God gave this name to Moses
in the burning bush. This name in Hebrew is spelt YHWH. Nobody quite knows how
it should be pronounced anymore, because the Jewish people never spoke it
outside of the temple, for fear of blaspheming God’s name. Often today we say: Yahweh,
or some people used to say Jehovah. In our English bibles, whenever we
come across this name of God, it has the word “LORD” in capital letters. Now
there are so many passages which speak of Jesus as LORD. St Paul says: Nobody
can say Jesus Christ is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And also in
Philippians it says: Every tongue will confess that JESUS CHRIST IS LORD to
the glory of God the Father. But there is one very clear passage about
this. In Isaiah 6, we read about where Isaiah the prophet has a wonderful vision.
And he says that he saw the Lord, and also the angels sing to him: Holy,
holy, holy is the LORD of hosts. And Isaiah says: My eyes have seen the
King, the LORD of hosts. Now when it says the LORD of hosts, the
word “Lord” is spelt with capital letters, meaning this is Yahweh, God’s
personal name. In John 12, it is speaking about Jesus, and says: Isaiah
said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Whose
glory did he see? He’s talking about Jesus. It’s Jesus’ glory. But what
did it say in the prophet Isaiah? It said that he saw the LORD, that he
saw Yahweh. So we can see from this passage that it is not just the Father
who is Yahweh, but the Son.
Now, we could go through many other passage about this, and
there are plenty of other passages, but I wanted to show you the main ones. But
before we finish, let’s ask the question, what difference does it make that Jesus
is God or not? It makes an eternal difference, because our sin is great,
and sinners like us need the strongest possible comfort in the face of death.
We need not just human help, but we need God’s help. We don’t just need all the
help we can get, but we need the most perfect help from God’s own throne itself
that we can get! Because Jesus is God, he is a perfect mediator between God and
us, because he is just like us in his humanity and he is equal to God. Because
Jesus is true God, he is a perfect Redeemer, he helps us perfectly, he prays
for us perfectly, he is a perfect Saviour. Redemption belongs to him, eternal
help belongs to him, and life and salvation belong to him, and we know that he
will make no mistakes, like we human beings so often do. I’m going to finish
with words from an old theologian called Johann Gerhard: “Our salvation has
been set in His hands more firmly and more securely than the heavens and the
earth that those hands created. We have been written down in those hands from
eternity, and from them no one can snatch us or our salvation.” Amen.
Dear Jesus, you are our Lord and our God! You are the Word
of God, the image of God, the brightness of the Father’s glory, the exact
imprint of his nature, and God’s only-begotten Son. Have mercy on us and save
us according to your promise. Amen.
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