I wanted to speak this morning about the face of the Incarnation, the face of the Lord Jesus. And I want to read to you a text of Scripture that you might think is strange for a Christmas sermon about the Incarnation, but it shows the hatred of men for the Incarnation and how they sought to destroy it because they did not like the Lord Jesus or His character or His purpose. Indeed, they did not like His humanity. And we find these words in Mark 14 at verse 61 where the Lord Jesus has been arrested and taken before the leaders of His people and put on trial for His life. but he held his peace and answered nothing. Again, the high priest asked him and said, "'Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?' Jesus said, 'I am. And ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.'" Then the high priest rent his clothes and saith, what need we any further witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy, what think you? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death. And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to buffet him and to say unto him, prophesy. And the servants did strike him with the palms of their hands." You know, at this time of the year, we muse upon the wonder of the incarnation. the wonder of God manifest in the flesh, the wonder of Emmanuel, God with us, that the ineffable and unseeable and almighty God of all glory, should come down in the form of human flesh, in the form of the Lord Jesus, that He should live and walk and be amongst us, that we should be able to see Him and touch Him and handle Him, as the Scriptures have said, of the apostles and the disciples. That He should take on that body of humanity and present Himself unto His people. for the purpose and works which He would complete and accomplish on our behalf." It is a great condescension by God towards His creation that He should deign to embody the second person of the Godhead, the Eternal Son, in the form of flesh, take on Himself the seed of Abraham, and not that of angels. Of course, it was foretold in the clearest way in Isaiah 9 at verse 6, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Perhaps no other text states so clearly the union of deity with humanity as does this text in Isaiah 9. For he will be a child, he will be a son given to us. This marks his humanity and yet his names indicate He is God Himself, manifest in the flesh, and He takes to Himself His rule and His power. The rule and power that only God ought to have over all the world shall be placed in this Son, this Child, given to us by the goodness of God. And so this text preaches to us The essence of the incarnation, God manifests in the flesh. God come down as man to rule over his people. But some wonder during this season, why is the incarnation necessary? And you know, there is an obvious thing about the incarnation that is not often articulated. And that is one of the reasons that it is not necessary. It is not necessary in order to embody all the awesome power of an absolute, omnipotent, and infinitely powerful God. It is not necessary that that should be the sole purpose for an incarnation, for God can display that power anytime He wants to. He doesn't need it to be displayed in the form of a man. He can speak with a voice if He feels like it, as He did at Sinai. with those terrible roarings and rumblings and thunder. He can display His power in any number of ways. And if man will ignore it or will deprecate it or will deny that it is His power, he can make it clear. to any man that it's the power of God, if it be the thunder, if it be the lightning, if it be the wind, if men might just dismiss those things as just mere acts of nature. There's nothing stopping an all-powerful God from displaying His power and turning it to whatever purpose He will and making it clear by an announcement. that it is His power and it is His glory. So you see, the incarnation was not essential or necessary for the display of God's power, although the Lord Jesus did display it in all His works of goodness and healing. He did display it in His resurrection. He will display it one day in His personal rule and reign and in His judgment of all the wicked. All of that will be the manifestation of the power of an absolute and eternal and infinite God deposited in and displayed by and wielded by a man, the Lord Jesus. But those things could have been displayed and have been displayed and will be displayed apart from the incarnation. No, the incarnation was necessary It was necessary that God be manifested in the flesh, that the Lord Jesus come in the flesh, that deity be united with humanity, that there might be a perfect man, that there might be a sacrifice made, and that the incarnate Son of God might be in identity with the ones He would save, and that He might experience in His own person, in His own body, the troubles of man so that he might be a faithful high priest. These things are laid out clearly in Hebrews 2. We know the text well. At verse 9, it says, we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. This is why he was made man. The phrase a little lower than the angels is an equivalence of saying he was made man. Man is a little lower than the angels. was made man, he was made humanity for the suffering of death so that he could suffer death. God cannot suffer death. God is spirit. God is all powerful. God's not subject to the frailty of the flesh or certainly subject to the judgment for sin. But the Lord Jesus made a little lower than the angels for the purpose of the suffering of death. We see him crowned with glory and honor. And look at this, the reason, that He, by the grace of God, as a gracious act towards His poor people whom He would rescue, that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. This is the purpose of the incarnation. Number one, that God manifest in the flesh and the Lord Jesus should be able to taste death for His people. For it became Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons into glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." You see how not only was He made man in the incarnation so that He might suffer death, but also so that he might be the captain to lead his people unto salvation. And he might be a perfect captain, and he might be perfected by the sufferings that he bore in the place on behalf of his people. And that he might be the one who sanctifies his fallen people whom he will redeem. And that he might be all like them, joined together with them, in union with them in his humanity, And therefore, he's not ashamed to call the ones he was incarnate to redeem his brethren. And then look what it says in verse 14. For as much as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same." You see, this is further explanation of why it was that He was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, why the incarnation was necessary. "...that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage, for verily He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham." So you see, more specifically, He was incarnate in human flesh, that He might destroy the one with the power of death, that is the devil, and that He might deliver His people who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. You see, this is a reference not only to the destroying of the power that the devil has to invoke God's righteous judgment against his people who have sinned and so haul them all, as it were, into judgment with him, but also that he might take away the captivity of the law which binds men and causes them, because of their fear of death, to always be in bondage, ever trying to be righteous, ever trying to please God, and always failing, and always cringing, and always rebelling because of the judgment, because of the wrath that God's righteousness and holiness dictates must fall upon us. You see, the Lord Jesus solved all that when He kept all the law and when He expunged our guiltiness by His bloodshedding at Calvary. And so the devils legal trick, as it were, to demand judgment and demand death and hell for His people was stripped away from Him by the work of Christ in His redemptive work on the cross. It took away all the fear of His people who were all our lifetime subject to the bondage of the law and to the bondage of the rule that the soul that sins, it must die. He took all that away and He set us free And then at verse 17, it gives another reason for the incarnation. "...Wherefore, in all things, it behooved Him to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to help them that are tempted." You see, it was necessary for Him to be incarnate in humanity that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest, that He might be able to succor them who are tempted, knowing the frailty of the human body, and that He might represent us as a representative priest, and that He might make reconciliation for our sins as a priest, offering up the perfect sacrifice that satisfies the God who was offended with us. So you see, The Scriptures make it clear that the necessity of the Incarnation was not so that God could demonstrate His absolute power, so that He could rain down His wrath, so that He could work wonders on behalf of His people, although at various times in the history of the Incarnation, such will be the case. No, the essential necessity of the Incarnation was that there should be a perfect man, the God-man, who was capable and willing to bear away the sin of His people by the death that He died, fulfilling the cause of justice that had worked against the people that He would redeem, and satisfying it completely, and liberating them from the penalty of the law they broke, and presenting an offering as a priest, as man, representing man, as a priest before God, offering up the reconciliation that was necessary for our salvation. And so therefore, the incarnation that is God with us is not primarily to embody the awesome power of God, but rather to be the substitute man in the judgment, not as the ferocious lion come to exercise and wield unlimited power, but as the promised spotless lamb of the sacrifice to take away our sin. And so this is the purpose of the incarnation. And it was established when the angel announced to Joseph the name by which the Son of God incarnate in flesh was to be called. He said, his name shall be called Jesus, which is the word for Jehovah saves, because he shall save his people from their sin. because he shall save his people from their sin." Now, Israel was of a mind that the name Jehovah Saves should be a reference to the mighty power of God directed towards against the foes of Israel and for the blessing of Israel by acts of wonder and of power. But the angel makes it clear that the name Jehovah Saves in the incarnate Son of God would have a different meaning and that was that He would be the one who saved His people from their sin, stressing the point that the incarnation was not essential for the display of the awesome power of God in man, but rather was essential for the display of God's love for His people in the providing of a perfect substitute man for the judgment of our sin. Now, perversely in the heart of wicked men, this reality, this purpose of the incarnation became the reason, the very reason that Israel had the Lord Jesus put to death. The very reason was the real purpose of the incarnation. Because Israel wanted a political savior with power. They thought God with us meant that God's power in a man who would come to crush on their behalf, who would come to fight on their behalf, who would come to overcome their physical opposition and their enemy and the Romans who ruled cruelly over them. This is what they thought God with us ought to mean. The embodiment of the power of God on their behalf to crush all their foes. You see, they wanted a Messiah that would do for them what God didn't need to send Jesus to do in the first place. And what they needed was what Jesus came to do as God with us. But they hated Him for that because He claimed to be the Son of God. Yet he wouldn't perform the way they thought he ought to. He was interested in performing that essential aspect of the incarnation that could not be performed otherwise. God couldn't make an offering for sin that would be satisfactory. without the incarnation of His dear Son in the person of the Lord Jesus, to have a body, to be a man, to substitute Himself in the place of His people for God's wrath. They hated Him for that, not only because He wouldn't perform as they desired, He wouldn't wield that mighty power of God that they assumed Messiah ought to be invested with against the Romans and against other foes, but because He convicted them of sin and offered to save them from sin and judgment. But you see, they were self-righteous. They didn't think they needed any of that. They were under the covenant of Moses. They were Abraham's children. They resented his offer. They rejected his perfect sacrifice as something to be disdained, something to be looked down upon, something that was of no use or value to them. And paradoxically, because of their hatred, and despising of the primary and a crucial purpose of the incarnation in Christ. Paradoxically, they proceeded in their own wrath and fury at Him to offer Him up as the sacrifice. He was put to death for the people, He came to save and He was put to death by the people who despised Him for being God's Lamb. So you see, the irony of the incarnation is that that heart, which was that purpose, which was the essential purpose, the desperately needed purpose to save God's people, that was the very part that the people of Israel despised and rejected. It was the very part that they denigrated, that they had no need for. It was the very part that caused them to have such rage and fury against the blessed Savior, that they actually, against their own will and against their own knowledge, acted out their part in offering Him up as a sacrifice. He was the despised lamb that was put to death. for the saving of His people." You remember Peter said that you have taken the Lord Jesus by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. You have taken and slain Him by wicked hands. And so it was. And I said all that because at Christmas time, our thoughts run toward Jesus in His humanity. And we wonder sometimes what He looked like. And of course, there are no pictures. There are no real descriptions of him in the scriptures. We tie our humanity with our looks so much. that our mind runs towards the question, well, what did Jesus look like? And of course, the artists love to indulge their fantasies about what he looked like. But as we should have already discovered, it's not what he looked like that's the important aspect, the crucial aspect of his humanity that should concern us. It's what he came to do and his perfection and his righteousness and his obedience and the sacrifice that he made and that he was qualified. to substitute Himself and that His substitution and His sacrifice were acceptable and purchase our redemption. So His physical looks are really not important at all. They're along the lines of as unimportant and as secondary to the critical nature of the Incarnation as were the things that Israel looked for, that is, that manifestation of absolute power which they thought Messiah ought to wield. So all we know about the Lord Jesus looks are that when He was born, that He was foretold that He would be a child, He would be a son. We have just the bare declaration of His humanity as a male child and as a son. And then we have these excerpts from Luke 2 that describe his birth. While they were there, the days were accomplished. She should be delivered. She brought forth a firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger. Whatever that conveys to us, to our hearts, to our minds about what the Lord Jesus looked like is pretty much what we're going to have until we see Him with our own face. He's an infant born to a mother in a rural and agricultural place. He's her firstborn son. He looks like what firstborn sons look like to their mothers, to their parents, to their friends, to their neighbors. to the outside world. And he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger. And then the angels said about what the Lord Jesus would look like to the shepherds, this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And what that conveys, of course, to people who think it through is, This is not going to look like anything out of the ordinary. It's not going to look like anything exalted or very high. It's not going to look like a king or a powerful potentate. It's just going to be a poor little baby. with poor parents wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And what's amazing about the story is that the shepherds believed the angels' description of Christ physically and their description of His purpose, which was that He was a Savior born, sent by God. which is Christ, that He was Messiah, the promised anointed one. And so you see, they believed the purpose and the identity of Christ in the incarnation, regardless or in spite of the lowly look, and the lowly condition, and the lowly clothing that He was said to be born in. In fact, it was the lowliness of those things and the commonness of them and the sheer humanity of them that was the sign, it was the mark, the angel said, that would distinguish the Lord Jesus from all other babes. And then it says, they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. So there we see another very simple description of common ordinary human life of a newborn babe with a mother and with a father. And so the Scriptures tell us that the Lord Jesus was a baby, that He became a child, that He grew into a young man. Soon He was an adult man. Then He was a dead man, hanging on the cross in shame and in woe. And then, After he was raised, he was a dead man who was dead and ought to be dead, but is now raised and glorified." You remember, he displayed the marks, the wounds to his people to show them that he was really, really dead. And he really ought to still be dead. He had a gaping hole in his side. He had wounded hands and wounded feet and the pierced brow of the crown of thorns still seen upon his head. And yet, he was alive again forevermore, wasn't he? You remember in the book of the Revelation, chapter 5, it says that when they see the Lord Jesus, they see him as a lamb who had been slain. And yet He stands before them all and before the throne, and He has the power to take the book, to take unto Himself His rule. So there is in Christ these very simple descriptions and marks of His humanity, what He must have looked like. But there is one other description of Christ's looks that goes to the heart of his humanity and to man's rejection of the incarnation. And it's found in Isaiah 52, the passage we read this morning at verse 14, where we read, as many were astonished at thee, that is at the Lord Jesus, as many were astonished at thee. His visage was so marred more than any man and his form, more than the sons of men. This is a description of what the Lord Jesus looked like after wicked men had done what they would do to destroy Him, to disfigure Him. It's so sharp a contrast between the fact of the incarnation of God as man in Jesus And this verse, which foretells His disfigurement as a man, the vicious attack against Him so that His identity as a man is called into question. Some of the other translations, the ancient ones, say that this disfigurement of the Lord Jesus is such that some might not recognize Him as a man. So when we ask what the Lord Jesus looked like, We can read this text and wonder and marvel and be profoundly sad at the fact that the one who was incarnate God in human flesh, the one whose humanity is such a marvel and such a blessing and so necessary for our eternal salvation, that there would come a time when his humanity would almost be taken away from them, as it were, by the evil and wicked hearts and acts of man himself. You know, it was foretold by the psalmists and the prophets that there would be an attack against the person of the Lord Jesus, that there would be a degradation launched against the Savior. In Psalm 22, there, of course, is the best description of how the Lord Jesus would be abused. At verse 6, I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. They gaped upon me with their mouths as a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws. and thou hast brought me into the dust of death, for dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me, they pierced my hands and my feet, I may tell all my bones, they look and stare upon me, they part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. The evil of the crucifixion, the inhumanity of it, the disfiguring character of it, and of the flocking, and of the beating, and of the smiting, and of the tearing of the face. All of these things are prefigured in the psalmist's description of the condition of Christ as He hung upon the cross for the saving of His people. And these are but a small description of what it must be was done to him that marred his face and disfigured him as a man. The prophet Isaiah said of the Lord Jesus that he was obedient, to the fate that God had placed upon Him to be the sacrifice of His people. It says that He gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair and the beard. He did not withhold His face from shame and from spitting. And then in another place He says He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised and we esteemed Him not." And in his trial, the text we read describes how he was slapped and hit upon the head and abused and humiliated and mocked and taunted. And then he went to the Romans where he was mocked further, where he was stripped, where he was beaten nearly dead. where he had his face torn, the hair pulled out of his cheeks. He had that crown of thorn pressed upon the top of his head till the blood ran down. And then he was taken out to Calvary, nailed to the wood of the cross, thrown into a hole, stood up, strung up in humiliation, in nakedness. Then his side was opened, his heart was pierced by the Roman spear. And he was a mess when he was taken down and buried by his disciples, by Joseph of Arimathea and by Nicodemus. And I wonder sometimes reading this prophecy, his face was marred more than any man and his visage more than the sons of men. I wonder whether it contributed to the disciples after he was raised, sometimes having a hard time recognizing him. And no doubt the devil really hates the incarnation because he despises the creation of humanity to begin with. Because, you know, we are made a little lower than the angels, and yet it was always clear to the angels that they were to be the servants of the Lord and man was to be set over them to rule. God was preoccupied with the interests and with the glory of His creation made in His image and likeness. the devil must have hated it and perhaps it contributed to his rebellion against the Lord, that his race or his kind would be perfectly obedient and always doing the work and will and worship of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and yet that all of the exaltation and glory and all the care and all the purpose of divine history would be focused on that creature that was made a little lower than the angels, and that the Lord had promised He would put over all His creation, including the angels. So no doubt the devil hates the incarnation, hates the fact that God the Son was manifest in the flesh, was made like the brethren whom he would save. No doubt the devil delighted in the dehumanizing disfigurement of Jesus. But notice the way in which Israel rejected the Incarnation and sought to have it disfigured and destroyed by death. And that's what they did when they took the Lord Jesus into custody and took Him off the trial and handed Him over to the Romans. You see, the leaders asked Him at His trial, the Son of the Blessed." Now, what they're asking Him there is, are you God with us? Are you the promised Messiah of Isaiah 9, 6? Are you the Son? Are you the child sent from above, sent by the Father, but manifest in the flesh? Are you the one who is God in the flesh and who will assume all power and might? As the Old Testament has prophesied, they ask Him that and He replies, I am, does He not? And they say, well, what more need of evidence do we have? He heard from His mouth. He's guilty of blasphemy. Notice very carefully that if the Lord Jesus had presented to them as they supposed He should have in the incarnation, if He had come as they demanded He come in all of God's power, not just the power to heal, not just the power to do good, and certainly they had no interest in his coming as an offering for sin, but if he had come showing that fierceness and that wrath and exercising that power against all their enemies and showing everyone who was boss and who was Lord and using that force and that power of God, if he'd have come that way, you see, in fierce, in might, in cruelty, they'd have had no problem with Jesus' answer, would they? They wouldn't have minded that he said he was the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, but that he presented as the perfect, upright, obedient, gentle, good man who would not use force or violence. You see, then he had no right to call himself Messiah, the Son of God, in their way of thinking. To them, only a man who seized the name by force and destroyed those who questioned it could call himself the Son of God. You see, the very fact that the Lord Jesus was meek and lowly of heart and wouldn't use force or violence and wouldn't exercise that great power of God that they suppose he ought to, the very fact that he wouldn't do that proved to them that he couldn't be God incarnate in the flesh. In other words, if they had the power to question it, then manifestly it wasn't true. So you see, they were in a catch-22. The only people they would accredit for being the Son of God but being Messiah were the ones that would crush them if they called it into question. And the fact that the Lord Jesus wouldn't do that, that He had come for other purposes, that He had come to be a Savior to take away the sin of His people, the fact that He had not come according to their notion of what Messiah ought to do and say and how He ought to act. You see, that gave them the impunity to disregard His claim, the fact that they could with impunity destroy Him, prove to them that He wasn't who He said He was. And this is what the Jews will say to you today if you ask them why they don't accept Christ as Messiah. Well, they couldn't have been Messiah because people could put Him to death. And they did. Q.E.D. So you see how they objected to the incarnation of God manifest in the flesh. It was His very character as the perfect man. It was His character as the God-man that to them proved He was an imposter. And so they had to mar and disfigure and destroy this man who called himself the son of God, because being sinful men, they could not and would not recognize the perfect man, deity clothed in humanity. They would not recognize the child, the son sent, who is God manifest in the flesh. So if that was going to be his claim, if that was going to be the identity that he clothed himself with, the identity that they despised because it was not in the image they supposed the Son of God ought to take, if that was going to be the identity then they would destroy it, they would disfigure it. They would, as it were, disprove and dishonor the claim He made by sending Him off to death, and to do so in so cruel a way as possible, in such a way as to forever tear apart any claim He might be, to be the man He said He was. So you see, they hated the identity that Christ possessed, and they wished to see it destroyed. The marring foretold by Isaiah the disfigurement of Christ's humanity. It goes beyond a mere physical assault. It goes to the heart of tearing down his humanity and his identity, a denial of who he is, a demonization of God manifest in the flesh as the Lord Jesus, a tearing down of his body and soul so that not only is he not recognizable as a man physically, but you see his identity who he claimed to be, the perfect man, the God-man, the obedient son, so that that identity too is stripped away and he can no longer lay claim to it. This is why they treated him so cruelly. This is why mankind treats many people with cruelty and with shame and dishonor. It's an attempt to tear down and destroy their humanity, their identity, who they are. For whatever reason, if it be hated or if it be despised, this is the way that men have always destroyed those humans and those identities. that they despise by making them seem not human, by making them seem not to possess the character and quality and identity which they ought to possess. And so if He is going to be the Messiah, then they will mock His kingship. They will mock His power that He ought to have from on high. They will mock and destroy His claim to be the Son of God, the Savior of the world. And this is why, you see, when Christ presents Himself for who He is, the world does what Isaiah said, He hath no form nor comeliness. And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. All the beautiful qualities of Christ were things to be disregarded by lost and wicked men. There was nothing special in any of that, nothing that captured their imagination or their love or their desire. No, they wanted the Messiah of their own construction, the one who would wield all that power and crush all his foes and take away any question that they might even be able to raise that this is the Son of God. And what did it say about the Lord Jesus? They would say, "'Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.'" You see, they sought to undo, as it were, the incarnation. They sought to send the God with us away by executing the judgment of death against Jesus to disprove His perfection to disprove his sinlessness. You see, this is why they judged him guilty. You see, if he was the perfect spotless Lamb of God, they could show otherwise why they would convict him. He would have a conviction on his record. He would be judged. He would be strung up on a tree to die. That would be the curse of the law manifest against him, disproving all of his claims, they thought. And that's what they thought. That we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. What other proof could there be? that He wasn't God's Son incarnate in the flesh. But of course, Isaiah has the explanation. He was wounded for our sin. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our sin was upon Him and by His stripes we are healed. What they thought the judgment of God, the wrath of God poured down on Jesus while they thought that it disproved The incarnation, it has proved the identity of Christ as the Son of God. The writer of Isaiah had already laid out why it didn't. All it proved was that He was the substitute, He was the sacrifice sent to save His people. You see, the marring, the disfigurement sought to destroy His whole identity. as the God-man. It wasn't just a physical marring. It was an attempt by the people, by the leaders of Israel to completely destroy and undermine and set aside His whole identity as the incarnate Son of God. But it was all a loss for them, was it not? It didn't prove any such thing. All of their scheme to destroy, mar and disfigure Christ's identity As the God-man, it all came to naught, doesn't it? That's why Peter's taunt at them stung so bad when he said, The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted at his right hand to be a prince and a savior. to grant repentance and forgiveness to those who trust him. This is why they gnashed against Stephen when he said, I see the Son of Man, the Son of God, standing on the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high. This is what Jesus told them when they condemned him to death. He said, and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds with glory. So you see, this is why many are astonished at the Lord Jesus. It says in Isaiah 52, Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. As many were astonished at thee, his visage was so marred more than any man, his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations and kings shall shut their mouths at him for that which had not been told them shall they see and that which they had not heard. shall they consider." You see, they're not astonished that the Lord Jesus has been humiliated and degraded, that He has been crucified, put to death, that His face has been marred, His identity has been disfigured. No, no, that's not the astonishment. The astonishment is because He is shown to be the Savior and the King of glory. After all of that, after they had done their worst to disfigure Him, to mar Him not only physically about His face and body, but also crucially to take away His claim to be the incarnate Son of God, to be the perfect God-man sent to be the Savior. After they had done all that, after they had denied His humanity, His identity as a man, after they had done all that, by then the world's astonished because it turns out He is the Savior. He is God manifested in the flesh. He is the King of glory now." This is what astonishes them. And the kings shut their mouths because they're told and see things that they hadn't been told and seen. The whole people of Israel thought they had disposed of that little problem. And yet all across the world ever since, And to the end of time, the gospel of Christ will be preached. His true humanity, His true identity as the God-man, as the sacrifice, as the perfect Lamb of God is forever being revealed by the preaching of the gospel and the work of the Holy Ghost. And people are astonished when their eyes are open and they see who He really is, given how eager and how diligently wicked men tried to disfigure him, tried to mar his image as a man, tried to deny his identity as the incarnate son of God. Well might we sing the words of that song. Look ye saints, The sight is glorious. See the man of sorrows. Now, from the fight, return victorious. Every knee, every knee to Him shall bow. Crown Him, crown Him, crown Him, Lord of all." You see, sinners mar and disfigure the Lord Jesus even today. Even today. You see, we see all sorts of attempts to deny him who he really was, to denigrate him, to recast him into a modern, socially acceptable image. While he wasn't really God manifesting the flesh, he wasn't really the sacrifice for the sin of people because we're modern and up-to-date and we don't believe in sin, do we? People need reforming. So Jesus was a good example, wasn't he? Jesus went about teaching good. He went around teaching us all to love one another. You see, when people say that, they're disfiguring and marring the image of Christ because they're denying who He really is, who He claimed to be. They're denying that He's the incarnate Son of God sent to be the Savior of the world. And no matter how falsely obsequious and praising modern man might be, if they deny the reality of who Christ is, if they deny He is the King of glory, He's the Son of God, manifest in the flesh for the saving of His people, if they deny that, you see, they're marring and disfiguring Him In word and deed, you think of the disfigurement that was cast upon us by the performance of that blasphemous play, Jesus Christ Superstar, where they talk about He's just a man, He's just a confused, mixed-up man who can't figure out what He's here for and doesn't know why He's got to die and so forth. All of these things are attacks upon the identity and the manhood of the Lord Jesus for who He really is. And when he is rejected as king, when his sacrifice is rejected, thrown away because of modern liberal notions, or because of self-righteousness, or because of the righteousness of false religion that seeks to bootstrap its participants into right standing before God by their own acts of righteousness and works of the law, whenever he's supplanted by a false priesthood or by a sacramental, sacerdotal view of the Lord's table. You see, those people are marring and disfiguring the image of Christ. They're taking away His identity. They're trying to destroy, whether they know it or not, His identity as the man, Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. You see, He is being marred and disfigured. Whenever His true identity and who He is as a man. God manifests in the flesh, is taken away, is undermined, or is denigrated, and yet in the end, He is shown to be Emmanuel, God with us, the promised Savior, the promised Lamb, the promised sacrifice, the promised Prince. And when we believers look on our Lord Jesus in the face, when we see Him as He is, all His perfections, His humility, His compassion, His gentleness, His obedience, His love for us, the sacrifice He made for us, how He gave Himself up in our place to save us, when we partake of this remembrance, this Lord's table, this celebration of the death that He died for us, when we embrace the incarnation and all it really means and marvel and wonder at it all, God's goodness to us in the Lord Jesus. then we can sing with great truthfulness those words, fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature, O Thou of God and man the Son, Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou my soul's glory, joy, and crown. Let's give thanks for the Lord's table. And that in the Lord's table is pictured for us the true humanity of Christ and the work He came to accomplish, and His true identity as God's Son manifest in the flesh, God with us. He came down mainly to offer Himself up in our place in the likeness of man that it might have an offering to make for sin. to save His people. And this is what we celebrate at every Lord's table when we partake of this bread that pictures His body and this cup that pictures the blood poured out for us. Let's give thanks first for the bread that reminds us of the body of Christ sacrificed for us. O God, our Father, we thank You for the incarnation. We thank You that it didn't conform to the desires of wicked men. that it conformed to your purpose and plan of redemption, and that it didn't conform to even the ignorant and foolish criticisms of people like Peter, who tried to dissuade our Savior from being true to His identity and purpose, and going to the cross and sacrificing Himself in our place, but rather that He came and was faithful to who He was supposed to be, no matter how much wicked men tried to destroy His identity, tried to destroy His person as the blessed Savior, the Lamb sent. We thank You for that body that was given to Him all those years ago that He might be made like us, that He might have a body to be sacrificed and to offer up in our place, and that He did offer it up and that you poured out on that body of the Lord Jesus as it hung on the cross all the wrath and the judgment that poor lost sinners like us should have received. You poured it on to the Lord Jesus and He bore it patiently and He expiated all of our guiltiness there. And we give you the praise and the glory for so blessed a Redeemer as our Lord Jesus. And for this time of the year when we can contemplate the Incarnation and what it means and what its purpose was, how it was opposed by men, but how it's exalted, how the Lord Jesus has conquered death for us, and how He has accomplished all of His purpose and all of yours. And what a glorious salvation we have in our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus. We thank You one day we'll see His face. Maybe it'll still be marred by the suffering that He bore. But we'll see it clearly. And we'll be made like Him when we see Him as He is. and our hearts faint at the prospect of it all. We give you the praise and glory for what you've done for us. You spared not your own son, but delivered him up for us all. You'll give us all good things in Christ we're sure and confident of. And we praise you in Jesus' name we pray, amen. The scriptures tell us that on the night he was betrayed, he took the bread and he blessed it and he broke it. And he said, take and eat. This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Let's give thanks for the cup. I'd like to ask my father if he'd give thanks for the cup that pictures the blood of the Lord Jesus shed for our guiltiness and shame. The Scriptures tell us that after they had supped, he took the cup and he blessed it. And he said, drink ye all of it. This cup is the new covenant. in my blood for the remission of sin. Do it as often as you do it in remembrance of me." And the Scriptures tell us that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do preach the Lord's death till He comes. Let's stand and sing number 87 in the Blue Book. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing. Number 87.