Transcript

In her book “The Whisper Test,” Mary Ann Bird writes: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.

When schoolmates asked, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different.

I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me. There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored—Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, and happy—a sparkling lady. Annually we had a hearing test…Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn.

I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back—things like “The sky is blue” or “Do you have new shoes?”

I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.”

Do you hear the words of Christ this Christmas? His coming to this world to save sinners tells every single person, “I wish you were mine. I wish you were my child. I wish you were in my family.”

Christ has done everything to make that possible through His finished work. But we must respond, and make the personal decision to trust that Christ paid for all my sins at the Cross, that He died for me and rose again. In that moment of placing our faith alone in Christ’s finished work, we become God’s and we then belong to Him forever.

John 1:1-2 reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.”

John 1:1-18 is the Apostle John’s account of the Christmas story. But in it you find no Joseph, no Mary, no Bethlehem, no manger, no stable, no shepherds, no star, no angels and no baby. But this is not any less the story.

Because Christmas is not just about the Savior’s birth; it is about His deity. “The Word became flesh” is the most profound truth of all truth.

Why we celebrate Christmas is not because of the physical features of a stable and a manger and a star and a young couple and shepherds and angels.

They all are a part of the historical circumstances surrounding the birth of Christ, but the real story is the Word became flesh, that God was born into the world, that the infinite, transcendent, eternal God of the universe became a human being.

That is the message. We sing about Emmanuel this time of year, which means “God with us.” That is the essential truth of the gospel and our salvation and it is essential because it is the only truth that can save a sinner from everlasting hell.

Only God could satisfy God’s justice and judgment against our sins, which Christ as God and man did for us at the Cross.

But why is Christ called the Word? Why not say, “In the Beginning was the Lord Jesus Christ?” The reason is because God wants to teach us something about His Son.

The “Word of the Lord” is a very familiar phrase in Scripture. If you read the Old Testament. You read it time and time again, “The Word of the Lord came, the Word of the Lord came to so-and-so.” The Word of the Lord came, and when it did, it was God revealing Himself, revealing His person, nature, will, wisdom, and truth.

The Word of the Lord was the revelation of the personal, true and living God.

Hebrews 1:1,2 says, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds.”

John is saying that the Word, the revelation of God, is now incarnate, it has taken on flesh. The FULL expression of God’s person, nature, will, wisdom, and truth is embodied.

The Word is not an impersonal power. The Word is not some kind of principle of reason. The Word is a Person. John is saying the Word is a Person and that He became a man, that the personal God came into the world and took on flesh.

And the Word reveals God to us. When Christ, the Word, speaks in Scripture, whether in the O.T., the Gospels, Acts, Paul’s epistles, the Hebrew Epistles, you are hearing from God, it is God speaking, and when He came to this world, God was fully manifest. As the Lord told Philip in John 14:9: “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”

Our words reveal to others our hearts and minds, so Jesus Christ is God’s “Word” to reveal His heart and mind to man. Christ is the heart of God revealed. The Bible too!

God has fully expressed Himself to mankind in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. By coming into the world, Christ has perfectly revealed God to us. By dying for our sins on the cross, Christ has revealed how much God cares and loves each of us.

Christ is the Word, the revelation of God to man, and He is because He is fully God Himself, which these verses clearly demonstrate.

John says “In the beginning was the Word.” In the beginning of the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1, in the original beginning when, other than God, everything that exists came into existence, the Word was.

Christ was already in existence when everything that exists came into existence. In the beginning when everything was created, the Word already was.

The Word is not a created being. He existed before anything that now exists existed.

Since time began with creation, whoever exists before time, exists eternally. And John says that at the point when the beginning began, Christ already was. He preexisted.

Scripture does not say, “In the beginning the Word came into existence.” Instead it’s “In the beginning was the Word,” in the beginning the Word was already existing.

There never was a point when the Word came into existence. When time began, the Word was. The Word existed in the beginning. He pre-existed time and creation. He did not have a beginning. He did not begin to be. He has always been. He existed before Bethlehem. He existed before the creation. The Word is eternal.

Since Christ is preexistent, then He is not part of the creation. Since He is preexistent, He is outside the creation and He is before time. And since He is outside the creation and before time, He is eternal. And since He is eternal, Jesus Christ is 100% God.

A.W. Tozer wrote this: “The mind looks backward in time until the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapse from exhaustion; and God is at both points, unaffected by either. Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because God never began to exist it can have no application to Him.

‘Began’ is a time-word, and can have no personal meaning for the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity.”

Not only does John speak of the preexistence of Christ, but He speaks of the co-existence of Christ. Verse 1 says that the Word was with God. In verse 2, He repeats it: “the same was in the beginning with God.”

When the beginning began, Christ was already existing with God. The Word is not a lesser God. And He is not God’s competitor. “The Word was with God,” speaks to us how the Word is a distinct member of the Godhead. He is distinct from God as God, and He is “with God.”

Being “with God” teaches He is equal “with God,” He is one “with God,” and that He is preexistent and coexistent “with God.” He is with God as a separate Person and is fully God Himself.

“With” literally means face-to-face with God in intelligent personal communion. The Word was in perfect fellowship with God from eternity past.

The Word is on a level of equality, not under God, not looking up to Him, not above and looking down to Him, not to the side having no fellowship but face-to-face with the living God, as living God Himself.

In John 10:30 our Lord says, “I and my Father are one.” They are one and equal from eternity. In John 17:5 Christ prayed, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” The Word is eternal and in eternity past He existed in perfect, personal, equal communion “with God.”

And then not only was He “with God,” verse 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word was God.

He is both with God and is God. And that is the mystery of the Trinity. He is distinct from the Father, and He is fully God as the Father is fully God. He is as much God as God is God.

It says He “WAS God” because this is in reference to “in the beginning.” And before time, from eternity past He was God. He exists eternally, forever as God. He was God, He is God, and He will always be God, and importantly, becoming man didn’t change this fact.

So when you think about the Christmas story, this is what is at the heart of it, that the One who preexisted, who was eternally with God as God before anything existed, the One who came into the world is God Himself, and He came to this world for you and for me. He took on flesh, and was born to die, to die the death of the Cross in order to save us from our sins. He did so because we cannot save ourselves. We all need the Savior.

An ill prepared college student once took an exam just before Christmas vacation. He wasn’t ready for the exam so he just wrote on his paper, “Only God knows the answers to these questions. Merry Christmas.” The professor wrote on his paper and when the student got it back he saw that it read, “God gets 100, you get zero.”

Christmas is that way for a lot of people. God gets 100. They get zero. The simple question is who is Christ? And people can’t answer it clearly, definitively or with conviction.

For nearly 2,000 years, debate has been raging about who Christ really is. Cults and skeptics have offered various explanations. They’ll say He is one of many gods, a created being, a high angel, a good teacher, just a good example, a prophet, and so on. The common thread of all false beliefs about Christ is that they all make Him less than God.

God knows the answer to the question about who Christ is, and He has clearly revealed the answer in His Word, so we can know without a shadow of a doubt.

Who is Christ? Easy question. Christ is 100% God. And God’s Word tells us that salvation is fully in Him, because Christ, as God, is fully able to pay for and take all our sins away.

Lots of people believe in the manger. Lots of people believe in the shepherds and the wise men, the star and the angels. Lots of people believe in the nice sentiments regarding a baby being born. But the real question is, do you believe in Christ?

Do you believe in the Christ that is revealed here in Scripture? Do you believe in the reason He came, to save us from our sins? Do you believe in Him savingly as your Redeemer, your only hope of salvation, believing that He died for your sins personally and rose again? That’s the real question at Christmas.

John 1:3: “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.”

The great proof in demonstrating that the Word is God is that the Word created all things.

The Word is not the object of creation; He is the Uncreated One.

He was not created. Rather the Word is the Creator of all things. He exists before, outside, and above all His creation.

Jesus Christ is greater than all He has made. All the creation, individually and collectively, with all its detail and complexities owes its origin to the creative mind and wisdom and power of almighty God, the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

His creative work is said positively, “All things were made by Him,” and negatively, “without Him was not anything made that was made.” John says He created all things. If a thing was made, He made it. And then John slams the door on all doubt, that there is no possible exception, there is not a single thing which was not made by Him.

And He made “all things” taking in the entire universe, from the unlimited and massive expanse of space and all things contained therein to the entire earth, in its beauty, wonder, and design.

As Creator, the Word is Lord and Master over it all, and all things are under His command. He has supremacy over all creation, and He sustains it all by His power.

Now stop and think about how immense the universe is, how huge the stars are, and depending on the star how millions or billions of earths can fit into just 1 star, how there is no number for how many there are, how trillions and trillions of miles separate one star from another, one planet from another, and of the great power revealed in these things.

Then think of how the Word, God the Son is greater and bigger than all He has made. And then think how He willingly humbled Himself, took on human form and became a tiny baby, that He might grow to be a man, live a sinless life, that He might die on the cross for you and for me and for our sins.

And this should absolutely blow our mind, and it should also result in thanksgiving and praise in our hearts, that He did this because He loved me that much.

John 1:14: “And the Word was made 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.”

So we have seen through these verses that the Word did not become a Person as a baby in Bethlehem. When Christ was born as a Baby in the manger at Bethlehem, He had always existed as the Son of God with God the Father in heaven, but now out of infinite love and grace He chose to come into the world in a human body.

God became man, the powerful Creator God that was the cause of everything took on human flesh. So when you look at the manger by faith you see something so staggering: the all-transcendent, all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-holy, all-glorious God born as a small, dependent, human baby.

And without forsaking His divine nature or diminishing His deity, He was born into our world as a tiny infant. The Incarnation was the event when God took on the fullness of humanity while remaining fully God.

And notice how this verse is worded, “The Word was made flesh,” He became flesh. The way it is put assumes His preexistence. He didn’t come into being, He just came to be flesh, was made flesh. And when He came to be flesh He didn’t cease to be what He was.

The Lord Jesus Christ is God and man together in indivisible oneness, in one person.

Charles Wesley’s great hymn and Christmas carol “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” says it so well: “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.”

In Col. 2:9, our Apostle Paul says of Christ: “For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Christ is complete Deity.

All the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him before He took on flesh, all the fullness dwelt in Him at His incarnation and in His earthly ministry to Israel, and in Him in His risen, glorified body now and forever dwells all the fullness of the Godhead.

He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily eternally. This is what Christmas is about and what we remember this time of year: God, fully God, became man, fully man while remaining fully God. And He came to this world to be the sinner’s Savior.

And He dwelt among us, John writes. “Dwelt” here means to pitch your tent, to put up your tent. He put up His tent with mankind.

Isaiah 40:22 teaches that God created the vast universe “as a tent to dwell in” demonstrating the kind of space necessary for Him to dwell in it as a tent. Here we learn that God pitched His tent here on earth to dwell in human flesh.

The Word was made flesh by the miracle of the virgin birth and being conceived by the Holy Spirit. By this, He had a sinless human nature. Christ was born sinless and He lived a sinless perfect human life.

So at the cross, the Savior was an empty vessel, He had no sins of His own to die for, and God poured all our sins onto Him as He was made sin for us and paid the penalty for all our sins.

Then comes the testimony of John, that they had personally beheld “His glory.” John says when the Word was made flesh, we saw God’s glory.

John testifies that he saw this glory himself, witnessing the glory and majesty of God in Christ’s life. Divine majesty and glory filled the Lord, while veiled in flesh, but it showed through in His ministry.

And John says that they saw His glory as God in His deeds, His miracles, in His words.

He and the other disciples beheld the glory of an absolutely perfect life lived on this earth. And they saw God’s glory in His death, and His glorious resurrection from the dead.

And as He dwelt among us, John says He was “full of grace and truth.” He didn’t reveal some truth, or partial grace. He was full of truth, full of grace.

As the Word, the revelation of God, He reveals only truth, He reveals God’s truth. When He spoke and taught He only revealed truth for the nation of Israel’s program with God.

And in His coming to the world, humbly taking on flesh, becoming poor for us, coming to die for us and save us, you see full, magnificent, infinite, amazing grace.

The Child born in Bethlehem that we remember at Christmas time is none other than the living, eternal, sovereign God, who is over all.

In Him, the Word, Christ reveals God to us, and the unknowable becomes knowable, the invisible becomes visible, the transcendent becomes close, and the unreachable becomes embraceable. That’s the Christmas story according to John.

Michard Card said this, “All we could ever imagine, could ever hope for, He is. That is what Christmas means: to find in a place where you would least expect to find anything you want, everything you could ever want.”

John 15:22: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.”

In the first part of this verse, we are invited to consider a possibility. What if Christ had not come to earth? What if He had not been born in Bethlehem? What if He had not come to die on the cross and rise again? Where would we be?

If Christ had not come, the promises of God would be unfulfilled. If Christ had not come, there would be no way to God.

If Christ had not come, there would be no gospel to believe. If Christ had not come, there would be no hope beyond the grave. If Christ had not come, we all would be on our way to the lake of fire for there would be no Savior for sin.

If Christ had not come, there would be no Christmas. If Christ had not come, there would be no church, and no need for us to be gather to worship in a church building each Sunday. If Christ had not come, if there was no birth of Christ, there would be no hope.

The thought of this possibility reminds us of how thankful we should be that He did come and brought bright hope by His coming and His finished work.As it’s been said, “Without Christ there is a hopeless end, but with Christ there is endless hope.”

Christ said, “If I had not come,” but He did come and “When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His son, made of a woman, made under the law,” Galatians 4:4 says.

We should praise God at this time of year as we remember that He did come, and be thankful for the significance of the words spoken the night He was born:

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”