Amen. Well, good morning and Merry Christmas. If you would, brothers and sisters, go with me to 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3, and we will spend our final week in chapter 3 looking again at this confession. We'll read verse 16. This is the Word of the Living God. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh. Vindicated by the Spirit. Seen by angels. Proclaimed among the nations. Believed on in the world. Taken up in glory. And so, Father, again we say thank You for Christ. Help us now for the next Half hour or so, Lord, to meditate and to think deeply about Your Son and all that He did for us when He came to the earth and assumed humanity to die for His people. Give us grace. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. It's a great privilege to be in the house of the Lord on any Lord's Day. And it's exciting to be gathered with you all here Christmas Eve as we continue to meditate on this apostolic creedal statement that we find here at the end of 1 Timothy 3. And so the last two weeks, Pastor John Mark, I think, convincingly argued that these six clauses we find here are an early apostolic creed that the early church would have confessed and that there is good reason to believe that they would have sung this corporately as a hymn. And I'm not going to say much more about that this morning, but I do want to just point out very quickly the parallel structure of this hymn. And so you see you have six verbs. He was manifested, vindicated, seen, proclaimed, believed on, taken up. And then you have six prepositions. In, by, by, among, in, and in. And then you have six objects. The flesh, the spirit, angels, the nations, the world glory. And so this statement is written in such a way as to be easily memorized, to be easily confessed. It would have been used for discipleship. This is very similar to another creedal statement that we find in 1 Corinthians 8.6 which says this, Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. So you have God, one God, one Lord, the Father, Jesus Christ, and then he says, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. You see the parallel structure of that statement. Another important creed or hymn that we see in the New Testament is what we call the Carmen Christi, or the hymn to Christ. And you just can't have church on Christmas Eve without reading from Philippians 2, 6-11, and so I'll do that for us. It says this, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." Now, this is what's really significant, and this will lead us to where I really want to go this morning. When we look at all three of those creedal statements that we just looked at, what do they all have in common? What's their unified concern? It's the person of Jesus Christ. All of these creedal statements are concerned with confessing accurately the person or the wholeness of Jesus Christ. We see this again in verse 16. Great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness. And then he goes on to give us six clauses about the life of Jesus Christ. Christ is the substance. Whether we translate that first word He or Who or Which, it doesn't really change anything. Christ is the substance of the confession. Christ is the mystery of godliness embodied. Christ is holiness manifested in the flesh. You know, we say things, we ask the question, what does it mean that God is holy? and we usually just kind of spout off without thinking, well, it means he's set apart. That's true, generally. But when we really think about God's attributes, God's attribute of holiness, to be holy is to be consistent with God's moral character. To think like God thinks. To act like God acts. To love what God loves and to hate what God hates. Jesus Christ is the perfect manifestation of holiness in the flesh. This is what we spend the entire month meditating on. You know, many have said this. We've said it here before, but we're not just merely thinking about Christ's birth. That's a central part of it. But when we zoom out a little bit and we ask ourselves, what are we really celebrating and meditating on throughout Advent? It's very clear. It's the incarnation. It's the incarnation. It's the first phrase. He was manifested in the flesh. And we attempt to meditate on and marvel at all the implications of the incarnation. And so on this Christmas Eve, I want to walk us through these six clauses. And my hope is just that for the next half hour or so, we could just stare at Christ and marvel at Him. And I'm going to read a lot of Scripture, and I trust that as we do that, we will be edified and He will be glorified. And so picking up here again in this first clause, He was manifested in the flesh. Divinity. Godliness. The eternal word was manifested in the flesh. Another Scripture that we just have to read on a day like today. John 1.1-2 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. This is the second Person of the Godhead. The Eternal Son. The Divine Son. Same in essence. Equal in glory with the Father. and with the Spirit, who is to be worshipped with the Father and with the Spirit. Yet, in verse 14, John says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And he says we've seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father. When they see Jesus Christ, they see the eternal Son. The glory of the eternal God. They see Him. as they see Jesus Christ. So the Eternal Son who has always existed in relation to the Father and the Spirit in due time in history assumed humanity. He did not appear to be a man without actually taking upon Himself humanity. He actually assumed human nature. This is what the heresy docetism taught. That he assumed humanity without actually becoming a man, or he just appeared to be a man. It's a heresy. Colossians 2.9, for in Him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. Let me say that again. For in Him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. We must reject any notion that the Son's divinity was altered or subtracted from in the incarnation because if we allow for that, brothers and sisters, our whole doctrine of God falls apart. And we will eventually lose the Gospel. Why? Because God requires that man keep His law. Yet, only God can do what God requires of man. The Word became flesh. However, because sin is a corruption of human nature and not essential to human nature, Jesus assumed human nature in its fullest sense without assuming a sin nature. This is why the virgin birth is essential. We'll talk about that more in a moment. This humanity included being developed in the womb. being born as a baby, needing to learn how to walk and read and talk and think. It included developing physically and emotionally. I mean, think about it. Jesus didn't just show up one day from heaven as a full-grown adult and just say, hey, I'm here. I'm the Son of God. And then begin to do all that He did and teach all that He did. No. How did He come? He came as a baby. It's amazing. And He took on the totality of humanity. And He did not deify His human nature. Jesus was not some superhuman that you see in Greek mythology. He took on the fullness of humanity. Yet, He maintained all of His divinity without mixing it into His humanity. This is what the heresy monophysitism taught. That Christ had a single nature and in this single nature there was this fusion of humanity and divinity. And this was denounced and repudiated. the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. And so it might be helpful to just take a step back and get a little historical context because these things didn't just come down to us in a vacuum. The Council of Chalcedon stood on the shoulders of the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople And these three councils along with the creeds they produced are among the most important in church history when it comes to having an accurate Christology. And so, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, the primary battle that was fought was against Arianism, which taught that the son could not be eternal, but must have a beginning. So the primary issue was over the son's deity. Was he like essence with the father? Or was he of equal essence with the father? Arianism was defeated, and the first version of the Nicene Creed was produced, which was the first post-apostolic ecumenical creed that divided true biblical Christianity from heresy. And there were many. However, as more questions and problems arose, a second council was held in 381, which we call the First Council of Constantinople. And there the creed was revised and developed more fully into what we now have and confess and know as the Nicene Creed. However, as you can imagine, questions began to arise. How could Christ be both fully human and fully divine at the same time? Their questions arose and heresies also arose. Did He subtract certain parts of His divinity to assume humanity, only to take them back up later again? Did He humanize His deity so that He kind of was a man, but He wasn't really a man? Because His divinity just influenced all of His humanity. Did Mary only give birth to a mere man? Or did she give birth to the God-man? The many heresies sprung up, which led to the Council of Chalcedon, which produced the definition of Chalcedon. And I would encourage you today when you go home to read the definition of Chalcedon. It is very short and very edifying, but what they concluded was essentially this, that in the one person of Jesus Christ are both the fullness of divinity and the fullness of humanity, and they do not mix so that He doesn't have one nature, but two. Yet at the same time, there are not two persons appearing in one man, but one person. who is fully man and fully God. This is a mystery. It's a mystery. And Paul masterfully says this. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. And then what's the first phrase? He was manifested in the flesh. There is no greater mystery in the Christian faith than the incarnation. And then you think about all the miracles recorded in Scripture. The Incarnation stands at the top. If you understand the Incarnation biblically. More controversy surrounded the issue of Christology than any other issue by far in the early church. And there's a reason why. I mean, it's so difficult for the human mind to grasp that it can only be received by faith. It is received by believing special revelation. Natural revelation cannot get you to the incarnation. God told us about the incarnation, and we receive it by faith in God's Word. Because here's the thing, the Bible is very clear on this issue. It's very clear. When you do responsible exegesis and biblical theology of the text, this is what it produces. It's very clear. It's not hard to make a biblical case for the one Person and two natures of Christ. The hard part is receiving it and resting on it by faith. The hard part is denying our pride and our arrogance and making our rationalism and our reason and our logic bow the knee to revelation. And that requires a work of the Spirit. And because many have refused to do this, many heresies have existed, and many heresies exist today who get Jesus Christ wrong. And when we ask the question, who do you say that I am? Millions, billions get that question wrong. We marvel at the incarnation. We meditate on the incarnation. We rest in the incarnation. Now, unless you guys want me to just preach right on through into the Christmas Eve service tonight, we've got to move on. Second clause, vindicated by the Spirit. Pastor John Mark got into this some last week, and he pointed out that the primary vindication of the Son happens where? It happens at the resurrection. I'll read this text again from Romans 1, 3-4, concerning His Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness." How? By His resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ our Lord. It's interesting. that even in these verses, you get the two natures existing in one person. He says, descended from David according to the flesh. So in His humanity, Jesus is from the line of David. From the root of Jesse. Yet, He's declared to be the Son of God. The Divine Son. How? What justifies Jesus' claims that He is the eternally begotten Son? It's the resurrection. It's the resurrection. That the Father by the Spirit vindicates or justifies everything that the Son ever did or said. And He approves it. And it's validated as true. And this should be our apologetic today. That Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Despite whatever else comes that trumps everything else. It trumps emotions. It trumps intellect. It trumps reason and rationality. It trumps intellectuals with PhDs who say contrary to that. It is an absolutely undeniable, indisputable fact. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and it will never be proven to be false. Therefore, everything Jesus ever said and did is true, including His claim to be Lord and King and the Eternal Son. And so, if Jesus says that we are all sinners, and that there is only one way to be saved and be reconciled with the Father, and that it is through Him, it's final. It's the only way to be saved. However, when we zoom out some, we see that Christ's entire life is marked by the presence of the Spirit. And again, this brings us to the virgin birth in Luke 2.33-34. And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I'm a virgin? And the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And what he says next, I don't think has ever really clicked to me until this week. Listen. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy. The Son of God. through being conceived of the Holy Spirit, Jesus will not have the fallen Adamic nature of sin, but He will be holy. He will be God's eternal Son in the flesh. Let me go on just a little bit. And people prophesy about Jesus by the Spirit. At His baptism, which is where like all the priests of the Old Testament, Jesus is anointed for ministry. Luke 2.21-22, when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form like a dove. And then just a few verses later, Luke tells us, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 40 days, being tempted by The devil. I mean, we could go on and on and on. The life and ministry of Jesus is accomplished by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. But when I started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that the virgin birth isn't the first time we see that the Son will be anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. What about the servant songs in Isaiah? You know, the series of five or six songs that we get from Isaiah 40-61, where you have Yahweh speaking to His servant that He's going to send to redeem Israel and to redeem the world. And you have the servant speaking as well. Last year on Christmas Day when we had church, I preached on the covenant of redemption. or the eternal covenant. And the covenant of redemption is this eternal covenant. It doesn't have a beginning. It's the eternal covenant that's always existed in the mind of God, where God the Father promised to send God the Son into the world to save a people. And God the Son willingly goes into the world to save this people for the Father. And God the Father promises the Son success by giving Him the Spirit in its fullness as the Son accomplishes this work. And the Father promises to exalt the Son and to give Him the people that the Son redeemed and to give them an eternal inheritance that they don't deserve but that they receive by grace through His merit. He will give to the redeemed by grace what the Son earned by merit for them. Isaiah 42.1. These are a lot of the Advent passages we read. Yahweh says, Behold My servant whom I uphold, My chosen one in whom My soul is well pleased. And listen, I have put My Spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. And so hundreds of years before the virgin birth, Yahweh tells Israel, look, My servant is going to come in and he's going to be empowered by the Spirit. I will uphold Him. I will empower Him. And then in Isaiah 61, you have the servant speaking. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And we know that Jesus quotes that text about Himself in Luke 4 in the synagogue and says, today, that Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. From the Trinity's eternal plan of redemption to His ascension and to His eventual second coming, the Son has been vindicated by the Spirit. Third clause. He says, seen by angels. There's a lot that could be said here, but because the interest of this confession is on the Son's incarnation, when the confession says seen by angels, I think it has in mind the angel's role in the life and ministry of Christ. When we really think about this, we see that angels play a large part in the Son's life. Just as Jesus' life was marked by the very beginning by the Spirit, His life is marked from the very beginning by the presence of angels. The angel Gabriel announces the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner to the Messiah, to Zechariah. He appears to Mary and announces that she will have a son who will be called the Son of God, and that she will call Him Jesus. An angel, presumably Gabriel, appears to Joseph, we just read this, and tells him not to put Mary away, but to take her as a wife, because her son has been conceived of the Holy Spirit. And he says, and He will save His people from their sins, and you will call His name Jesus. There was an angel who gave that famous proclamation to the shepherds. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you was born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And then all of a sudden, a whole host of angels appear and begin to sing and to worship and praise God. Angels are the first creatures. They are creatures. but they are the first creatures to proclaim the good news about what God was going to do in the world through Christ. Going on into the New Testament, we see angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness after His temptation. Matthew 4.11. We see when He's in agony in the garden just before His arrest. Luke 22.43 says, an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him. And we know, and I think this is probably what the confession has most in mind, angels were the first to witness and testify about the Lord's resurrection. And after He ascended into heaven, as the apostles stare up into the sky, two angels appear to them and say, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven. And concerning the second coming, Jesus says in Matthew 16-27, for the Son of Man is going to come, how? With His angels in the glory of His Father. And then He will repay each person according to what He has done. I'm going to combine number 4 and number 5. He says, "...proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world." And I agree with Patrick Fairbairn here who sees a contrast between this phrase, proclaimed among the nations, and the previous phrase, seen by angels. On the one hand, you have the incarnate Word who is seen by the heavenly host The glorious angels who don't sleep, but who worship God day and night. These powerful spiritual creatures. Yet, on the other hand, the incarnate Word is proclaimed among the Gentiles. The idolaters. The blasphemers. The pagans. The haters of God. We see in the New Testament that it's Christ's plan that the Gospel be preached to all the nations. We have the Great Commission from Matthew 28 that we quote nearly every Lord's Day. We have the Lord in Acts 1-7 saying to His disciples, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed on His own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, where? And to the end of the earth. This is the storyline of the book of Acts. That the Gospel that began in Jerusalem goes forth into all the Roman world and ends with Paul in Rome. Timothy is in Ephesus pastoring the church when he receives this letter from Paul. I mean, it's really striking how quickly the Gospel message goes forth and permeates in just a few decades. And a quick survey of church history shows that whenever the church is at its healthiest, there's a huge concern for foreign missions. And the Gospel going to the unreached places of the earth that Christ would be named. That Christ would have His inheritance among the nations. But this missional theology doesn't just spring up in the New Testament. I mean, it does seem to surprise everybody in the New Testament, but it shouldn't have. It is all over the Old Testament as well. The Old Testament witnesses very much that God will give His servant as a covenant not only for the Jewish people, but for the Gentiles spread out in the world. It's fitting for us to think about this on Christmas Eve, isn't it? So many of these famous Old Testament passages that we quote about the sun coming and the sun's advent, they're mingled together with this theme that God will have a people from the nations. Isaiah 9, 1, and 2. This famous prophecy, but in the latter time, He has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them the light has shone. Isaiah 11, 10-12, and that day the Lord will extend His hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains from His people. And listen to these nations. From Assyria, from Egypt, from Patheros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea, He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." And I do not believe that that's a prophecy about this end time, end gathering of Jewish people back into their land. This is a prophecy. about the servant going into the world and getting a people from all the nations. And winning through his redemption, the true Israel, the true people of God. Psalm 67, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face to shine upon us. Why? That Your name and Your way may be known on earth. Let the peoples praise You, O God. Let all the peoples praise You. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. Habakkuk 2.14, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. as the waters cover the sea. How do we understand these passages? It really is passages like these that separate the different eschatological systems. If you really think about it, it's not what's the mark of the beast and when's the rapture and all of that. It's really how you understand what those prophecies mean and how much you believe they're going to be realized in this age. Don't worry, I'm not going to get into all that today on Christmas Eve. But I do want to ask the question because it begs the question. All of us agree that these prophecies will be fully realized at Christ's second coming. But haven't they partially been fulfilled in the first advent? When Christ came to the earth the first time? And aren't they partially at least and ongoingly being fulfilled now As the church preaches the Gospel and sends out missionaries, and as the Gospel goes into the nations, and more and more people are won, and more and more people are saved and baptized, and more and more churches are planted, and the glory of the Lord is covering the earth. God has sent His Son to get Him a bride. Christ's kingdom is advancing. And His church will be victorious. It will be victorious. And God has given to Him the nations for His inheritance. The elect have heard the Gospel. They will hear the Gospel. They have believed. And they will believe. They will believe. He's been proclaimed among the nations and believed on The world. This is one of Athanasius' primary arguments for the legitimacy of the incarnation and the resurrection. That the Gospel has gone out and turned the world upside down. That the pagan, Platonic, Greek nations received Christ and bowed to Him and converted and turned from their paganism and turned from their idolatry. He's been proclaimed among the nations. And the nations have believed in Him. They've believed in Him. And they will continue to believe in Him. Lastly, and this is where I'll conclude. Taken up in glory. This is of course referring to Christ's ascension where Christ is further vindicated as He is exalted to the Father's right hand. And though perhaps undervalued today, the ascension is an extremely significant part of Christ's redemption. It's the historical fulfillment of Daniel 7, 13-14, which says this, I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came One like a Son of Man, and He came to, not from, but to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him, to the Son of Man, was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom, one, that shall not be destroyed. And so what does the ascension prove? How is Christ vindicated at the ascension? Well, for one, it vindicates that Christ really is the Son of Man from Daniel 7. And if you remember, it was that claim that got Jesus crucified before Caiaphas and the trial. And it vindicates that fact. He is the Son of Man. He will come again on the clouds of heaven with His angels. But what else does it prove? Well, it proves that Jesus Christ has successfully accomplished redemption. And He's been received back into heaven and exalted as the sovereign Lord of glory who sits at the Father's right hand. And will sit until all of His enemies have been put under His feet. And the ascension implies that He will come again. He will come again. And He will come, and it will be a joyous, glorious day for those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ. But He will come in judgment for those who have opposed Him. So as I end, I want to Just speak for a moment to anyone who is not in Christ. I know we have a lot of visitors here, perhaps with family. If you're not a believer in Jesus Christ, you've not submitted to these claims, they are true whether you have clung to them and submitted to them or not. And they bear down upon your life. And the Gospel makes claims and it bears down upon your life. And the call of Christ is to repent. Repent of your sins. Repent of your values and your philosophies and your moralism and your way of thinking that is not in line with God's will. To forsake all that and to turn to Him and receive Him as the Sovereign Lord who alone is worthy to save you of your sins. And the Bible says that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life. It's the greatest gift. It's the greatest gift that God has given His Son to the world to save the world. And if you would like to talk to me or to Pastor John Mark or any of our members about that, please do not leave today without doing that. Please do not leave today without doing that. He will come again and He will judge the living and the dead. As you go home today, brothers and sisters, as you celebrate Christmas tomorrow with your families, keep these truths, keep all of these truths in your mind. Meditate on them. Keep this confession at the forefront of your mind. Not just in some abstract way like I've got to believe these to be a Christian. Let them bear down upon your life. They have implications for how to live, for how to think. They are glorious truths. Meditate on the implications of the incarnation and all that Christ means for you. Let the truth of the incarnation permeate the way that you celebrate Christmas. And remember that every time that you give a gift, and every time that you receive a gift, we are reenacting a little bit, imperfectly, but we are reenacting the Father giving us His Son as a gift for our salvation. Amen? Let's remember these things as we come to the table. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you've been baptized, please come and take up the supper with us. If not, if you will be abstaining, there are some prayers, I believe it's on page two in your bulletin, that you can look at and pray right now. Meditate on these things, brothers and sisters. This is a glorious day. Every Lord's Day is glorious. And every day is glorious for those who have had their sins put away in Christ. and then forgiven. Meditate on these things. When you're ready, come to the table, take the elements, and return to your seats, and we'll take it together. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for Christ. We thank you that He was manifested in the flesh. Lord, help us now to remember and to meditate on His body that was broken for us, on His blood that was shed for us. We know, Lord, that You grew up to die in our place. And we thank You, Lord. Sanctify us in Your truth as we come to the table. And bless our brothers and sisters today. In Jesus' name, Amen.