Alright, we'll be studying once again from Benjamin Keech's catechism this morning. This time from question 25. Last week we studied question 24 which asked, who is the Redeemer of God's elect? This was the beginning of a section in the catechism which is devoted to the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The answer last week was The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. I made the case that these series of questions, starting way back in question 10, are a continuation of our study of God's decrees, and that the Redeemer of God's elect is maybe the most central element in God's decree to gather all things together in one in Christ. How better to gather a people to Himself in Christ than to place Jesus Christ as the mediator between His people and Himself and make Him the very way to the Father. That's exactly what God did. Christ, as mediator and redeemer, stood in the gulf between God and mankind and bridged a gap between the finite and the infinite, between the flesh and the spirit, and between the sinful and the holy. Jesus literally came to dwell with sinners so that he might live a life which is plagued by the consequences of Adam's sin, and yet a life which would overcome the consequences of that sin and redeem a people back to himself. Through Christ's perfect life, he earned life for the elect, and through his sacrificial death, he paid the debt of sin that we earned. That perfect life and death became a transaction, literally buying us back, redeeming us, back to the kingdom of heaven. There's an exchange being made where the righteousness earned by his perfect life is placed upon us like a princely robe and our sin and death is placed upon him in the crucifixion. That's the beauty and the love that we see in the Redeemer. He reconciles enemies without ever compromising his own holiness. He took upon himself the sin of the world without ever becoming sinful, and he gave his elect a holiness that they could never earn themselves. In Christianity, we emphasize two most important things in the work of Christ, and those are the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. As we consider the Lord's calling upon mankind and the necessity for holiness, only the blood and righteousness of Jesus can offer us hope. The death we owe is too great to pay and requires eternal damnation and the holiness required is too pure for the most holy saint who ever lived. We are unable to pay the consequences of sin and we are unable to earn our place in heaven through good works. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ as our only hope. Last time we talked a bit about how Christ accomplished our redemption as the eternal son of God who took on the form of a man. We talked about the need for him to be both God and man. And we talked about the fact that Jesus was the only one in all of history who could bridge the gap between a race of fallen sinners and the thrice holy God. And what do we see being accomplished in this amazing work of Christ? the will of God, right? He came to do the will of God, the decrees of God, and the reason God does everything he does is ultimately, as we've discussed, to gather all things together in one in Christ. He created heaven and earth to give man a place to dwell in his presence, and then everything that happened since, from the covenant of works, to the fall, to the eviction from the Garden of Eden, Along with death and suffering, chaos and tyranny and abuse and hate and sin all serve God's purposes in redeeming a people for himself. Literally all the suffering we endure in this life is so that God might gather his elect. Think about even death. Death teaches us to number our days that we might gain a heart of wisdom. Suffering makes us long for the peace of heaven. Our labor makes us seek after rest. Political unrest makes us yearn for the rule of Christ when he will one day reclaim this world as our king. For those who are given spiritual life and light and sight, everything bad in this world is working for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes. We saw that when we first started studying God's decrees. All according to His purposes. We know that. God is determined to save a people to Himself and He will. And He will guide us to the celestial city through parables and stories of patriarchs. He will teach us of treasures worth selling all we have for. He will teach us to leave homelands if we're called to, to find a spiritual promised land flowing with milk and honey. He will call us from sheepfolds to be kings and priests alongside of him. The entire biblical narrative is one of redemption, and every story we read in our Bibles points us to Christ, and to the heavenly hope. This is the providence of God in gathering to himself a people for his own name. These are just some of the ways he governs the world and history to write a story which illustrates for us his redemptive plans and purposes. God has one purpose with this world and his creation, to gather a people to spend eternity with him in his presence. And we saw that he accomplished that purpose. He executed his decrees by creation and providence. He creates, he governs, and he will gather a people to himself. That's the takeaway from those past 14 questions. And the most significant element of his providence was providing the eternal Son of God as a mediator and redeemer of his elect. So last time we saw the significance of the Son of God becoming a man and serving as mediator between God and man. We saw the need for his eternality and his infiniteness. We also saw the need of a son to die to bring many sons to glory. A son is given so that many sons would be gathered. That was Galatians 4. We also saw the need for this only begotten son to become a man. We saw that he intercedes, or he brings prayers to the father on our behalf, as one who has suffered like men. Jesus has been tempted like men. He understands the agony for the believer who falls into a sin after a battle with temptation. Of course, Jesus never fell into sin, but he understands the strength required in the battle. He knows the powers of sin over flesh. He understands the weakness of the body, and he understands suffering and persecution. He even understands the enemy's constant effort to sift God's children like wheat. He understands as one who has experienced. That's the man who sits beside the father. Think of Jesus like a mailman who personally delivers and reads every prayer to the Father on our behalf. Imagine that. He does that as a man in a body of flesh sitting alongside his Father in heaven. And he delivers our every prayer to his Father. He interprets our fumbled words. He fills in the voids in our thinking. And most importantly, the sins in our prayers are overshadowed by the holiness that Christ has given to us in our redemption. Through his blood and righteousness, our prayers and our works are brought to the Father and found acceptable in Christ. There is no other reason for God to even hear our words and our prayers. Jesus intercedes as one who understands our trouble and loves us in spite of it. And all of this is the providence of God in executing his decrees to gather all things in one in Jesus Christ. Which brings us to today's question number 25. Question 25 asks, how did Christ, being the Son of God, become man? And the answer is, Christ, the Son of God, became man by taking to himself a true body. and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her, yet without sin. Our summary can be found in your bulletins. It says, in order for the Son of God to finish the work that Adam started, he had to take upon himself the flesh of mankind. His work was to be the work of man. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary with a true body and reasonable soul, yet without the inherited sin nature of Adam. Christ is the only man, apart from Adam, to be eligible to earn life for mankind, and therefore is also the only one eligible to redeem them. Okay, and with that as our introduction, let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you first, just for calling us out of our busy lives to attend worship together as a body and with you. Oh Lord, all of our prayers and all of our studies we lift up to you. We ask you Lord to bless our time in your word. We ask you dear Lord to lay the works of our Redeemer heavily upon our hearts that we might truly understand the depth and the breadth of who you are and what you are and what you've done. We ask you, dear Lord, to help us to see the love of God. And we ask you, dear Lord, to help us to love you more as we understand you more. So help us, Lord, to have you and your person as the focal point of our study. Help us to be engaged, clear our minds and our hearts from distractions. And as we always do, we pray, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would be our teacher and that you would guide us into the deeper things of the Lord. And so we pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen. All right, so our question is simply, how did Christ, being the Son of God, become man? And I think this question is a reasonable one, simply because it had never happened before, and it's never happened since, right? How did God take on flesh? How did the first and chiefest being become flesh? Remember, the catechism teaches that God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And yet the Son of God, who is spirit, became a man. It seems impossible to reconcile in a way. It's hard to understand how a person who is spirit... Lost my place, I'm sorry. A person who is spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable can take on the form of flesh, which is finite, mortal, and changeable, right? So how did the Son of God become a man? Did he stop being spirit? Did he stop being infinite and eternal and unchangeable? And the answer, I think, is no. So as we consider this question, I want us to begin with an understanding of what it means that Jesus is fully God and fully man. I didn't give this a whole lot of time in our study last week, but I want to today. I think it's important to understand this as we read passages about Jesus' divine and human natures as they're compared and contrasted. There's no doubt it can be confusing. Think about Philippians 2, verses 6 and 7, which says Jesus being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men. Jesus is God and man. Now what we see here in Philippians 2 is that Jesus maintains the form of God while taking on the form of man. So there's no mixing of Jesus' divinity with his newly gained humanity. He is fully God, being spirit and infinite and eternal and unchangeable while also becoming flesh, finite, mortal, and changeable at the same time. So in a sense he didn't become a man, he just took on the form of a man. He added to himself another nature. Last week we saw that he is God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. I didn't focus on that part of the answer either in our last message. Jesus has two natures, but he is one person. And so this one person, the Son of God, added a human nature when he became a man, as the catechism puts it. The answer to our question today says, Christ, the Son of God, became man by taking to himself a true body. True body is our first sub-point. As God, the Son, didn't have a body before he came to earth. He was spirit only. So what is meant by a true body? Well, first of all, this term true body denies the heresy that Jesus' body somehow wasn't real. This heresy is called docetism, which basically means to seem. So they argue that Jesus just seemed to have a human body as if his body was just an illusion. So what they do is they deny the humanity of Jesus, just like the Aryans deny the deity of Jesus. This doctrine was strongly rejected as far back as the first council of Nicaea in 325, and even further back than that, by the way. But nonetheless, this is an important part of our understanding of who Jesus was. He was really God and really man. 100% God and 100% man, meaning he had a real body, with real bones and real blood. It also means that Jesus is limited. For example, he can only be in one place at one time. Everything that's true of our bodies is true of Jesus' body. When it got cut, it bled. This is the part that really does make Jesus' two natures hard to understand. How can he be spirit, eternal, infinite and unchangeable as God, and at the same time possess a nature that is fleshly, mortal, finite, and changeable. Think about that. As God, He sees, and He can never see more or less. As man, He sees, but is always seeing more, and is vulnerable to the loss of sight. Same with hearing. Same with knowledge. As God, He is omniscient. As man, He was able to grow in, quote, wisdom and stature. So He was truly man, with all of man's limitations and weaknesses. But He took on these limitations for a purpose, a purpose that could only be accomplished in the flesh. Listen to Hebrews 2, verses 14 and then 17. And as much then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same flesh and blood, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed he does not give aid to angels, but he does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things, he had to be made like his brethren that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. So notice the depth of the theology of Jesus' humanity. He had to be made like his brethren. He shared in their flesh and blood. Those aren't illusions of humanity. They're showing us true humanity. He's comparing the humanity of man to the humanity of Jesus and saying they're the same thing, right? And why is this important? It tells us directly. Again, this is theological and practical for the Christian life. And it has real importance for our salvation and our life. Jesus shared in our humanity that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Now think about this. Go back to the first Adam and think about what happened in the garden when Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Now think about that as a battle between warrior kings. The spiritual battle was waged between the covenant head of God's kingdom, that was Adam, and the head of the army of God's enemies, which was Satan. In the garden, Adam battled against Satan for the kingdom of God that day, whether he knew it or not. And whoever won would gain the people of God. That's what happened, right? According to Luke chapter 3, it was a battle between the lowercase s son of God, Adam, and God's enemy, Satan. It was a battle between a sinless son of God and Satan. It was a battle between men and Satan for the lives of men. That's what was going on in that temptation in the garden. Now fast forward to the wilderness scene in Matthew 4 where Jesus was tempted by Satan. Same spiritual battle, same stakes. A sinless son of God, a man, would go into spiritual battle with Satan and whoever won this battle would win the people of God. And Jesus had to be a man because God required it. That's why he had a true body. It was a man who sinned, and a man had to die to pay the sins of man. And through the battles in those temptations, and the battle at his cross, Jesus destroyed the devil. Think back to Genesis 3.15, where we read that the serpent would bruise his heel, but the seed of the woman would bruise his head. It would be a mortal blow to the devil. The battle between Adam and Satan would find a rematch, but this time it was Adam's much greater son, Jesus Christ, who carried the Lord's standard in battle. Why else did Jesus need a true body? Verse 17 tells us it was required that he might make propitiation for our sins. Again, it was a man who caused the separation between God and man, and it required a man to bring God and man back together. It's really amazing to think about. The work of the man, Adam, separated us, and the work of man, Christ, would reconcile us. Now consider Hebrews 10 and verse 5. It says, therefore, when he came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. Then verses 6 and 7 says, In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do your will, O God. That's Jesus' whole purpose. These are the words of David, but clearly these words aren't being spoken about himself, are they? David knew that he could never fulfill the will of God. but his son Jesus would. And so these words are Jesus speaking, saying that God had prepared a body for me. This means exactly what it seems to mean. God prepared a body for Jesus so that Jesus could come and fulfill the law for his people, just like Adam was tasked to do, but failed. And Jesus required a true body to do the will of God because the will of God was that mankind would be saved by a man. Jesus would be our high priest and he would offer his own holy body as a sacrifice for us. So first we see that he had a true body. Catechism then says that he also had a reasonable soul. Matthew 26 in verse 38 is our proof text here. It says, starting in verse 37, And he, Jesus, took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then he said to them, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with me. He went a little farther. and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." Again, he comes to do the will of God in the body. Think about that. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death, he says. This isn't the infinite, eternal, unchangeable soul of God. This is the finite, mortal, changeable soul of a man. Jesus was affected by emotions and passions. He was affected just like you and me. This is part of his humanity. Listen to John Gill here. He writes, Christ had a human soul as well as a human body. We see here that he was possessed of the same passions as ours are. but without sin, such as joy, love, grief, sorrow, et cetera. And at this time, its sorrows were exceeding great. His soul was beset all around with the sins of his people. These took hold on him and encompassed him, which must, in the most sensible manner, affect his pure and spotless mind. The sorrows of death and hell surrounded him on every side, insomuch that the least degree of comfort was not let into him, nor was there any way open for it, so that his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow. His heart was ready to break. He was brought, even as it were, to the dust of death. Nor would his sorrows leave him. He was persuaded until soul and body were separated from each other. This is our high priest. Fully man, both body and soul. Think about our passions. Think about our souls. They lead us to act emotionally, right? They make us do stupid or sinful things sometimes. Our anger can make us sin. Our sorrow can make us sin. Our joy can even make us sin. Humans are deeply moved and affected by passion and emotions. Jesus experienced all of that without sin. And what that means is that when you've been moved by passions and emotions to sin, you can literally pray to the Lord knowing that he suffered the exact same emotions, and the exact same feelings, and the exact same passions. He was stood without sin, but his soul was subject to every single thing that we experience. That's our high priest. That's the man advocating for us in heaven. And he had to have a true soul in order to stand in battle against Satan on our behalf. He had to stand in Adam's place as truly man, as Adam was, in order to accomplish what Adam failed to accomplish. See how it all fits together? See what you lose from the entire biblical story when you lose the humanity of Jesus? Both body and soul? You lose a Savior, is what you lose. And you lose the depths and the profoundness of Genesis 3. And the profoundness of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness. And the profoundness of the cross. All of it requires a loving, divine Savior who is fully man. and who is continuing the unfinished work of Adam. So Jesus has a true body and a reasonable soul. Now the catechism tells us how this happened. It says, being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her. So how did Jesus receive this true body? He received it in the womb of a true mother, just like the rest of us. The difference, as we see, is how he was conceived. Mary became pregnant, not in the natural way, but in a supernatural way, by the power of the Holy Spirit. So the power of God put the Son of God into the womb of Mary. And then what happened? I think we can presume that God fashioned him in the womb just like he does the rest of us. I think Psalm 139 is just as true of Jesus as it was for the rest of us. Starting in verse 13, Psalm 39 is a famous psalm. It says, you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works. and that my soul knows very well." I think Jesus could have said those words. That was the case with Jesus just as much as it was for David or you or me. He was formed and God caused cells to multiply and a baby developed slowly over a normal nine-month pregnancy. Again, he was very man. He had a true body conceived in the womb of his mother Mary. Luke 1 is our proof text for this section, starting in verse 27, and then I'll read down to verse 35, and then I'll skip to verse 42. It says, starting in verse 27, it says, There was a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, Rejoice, highly favored one. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.' But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and he shall be called Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.' Then Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I do not know a man? And the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore also, the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God." And then in verse 42, Elizabeth said to her with a loud voice, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. So Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit while Mary was still a virgin. So the virgin birth is part of this doctrine of Christ. I think part of the reason goes back to the reasons that Christ came here. He came to be the second sinless Son of God. Luke actually, and I mentioned this earlier, touches on this when he specifically calls Adam the Son of God in chapter 3 in verse 38. Again, we see something in God's plan of redemption that required a very special person. A person who fit a very detailed list of prerequisites. And part of that list of prerequisites is that he needed to be sinless and he needed to be the son of God. Adam foreshadowed this. And I think it could be argued that both of those things are accomplished in the virgin birth. We find a savior who was able to pick up the mantle that Adam dropped. He picks up the battle flag of Adam and he goes back into battle to regain the kingdom of God and the people of God. And he does it as the second sinless son of God. So his father is God and he is conceived in the womb of Mary and is born of her. meaning I believe that he possessed her genes and was born of her egg. I don't think Mary was just a surrogate. I think Jesus' humanity was received from Mary's womb in every way. His true body probably took on the resemblance of his mother, just like any other person. His hair, and his eyes, and his ears, and his nose. He probably had a strong resemblance to her because she was truly his mother in the flesh. Galatians 4 in verse 4 says, So he was born of a woman and he was born of Mary, but without sin. Our final point this morning tells us that Jesus was born without sin. Meaning somehow, the sin nature of Adam wasn't passed down through Mary. This was either due to the virgin birth, which I'm not convinced of, or it was simply due to the fact that he was the son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. But regardless, the Bible tells us explicitly that Jesus was without sin. Catechism offers us two different examples of this in Hebrews chapter four, and then in chapter seven. Hebrews 4 and 15 says, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Pretty straightforward, right? Jesus' humanity shared everything with our humanity, except the inherited sin nature of Adam. That's the only thing he didn't share with us. And yet he did inherit some of the consequences of Adam's sin, right? He was certainly able to suffer and die like us, so he didn't avoid all the consequences of the fall, but he did avoid the sin nature of Adam. So Christ experienced every part of the human experience except for sin itself. In Hebrews 7 and verse 26, Says, therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens. It's pretty remarkable. A sinless sacrifice was needed, and however it happened, Jesus didn't inherit Adam's sin nature. He was holy at his conception. He was harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. The only other people who ever experienced that in all of history was Adam and Eve. But this is our Savior, a Holy One, who is able to bring us into eternal life with God forever by His works. And all of this is for one purpose in the decrees of God, to gather all things together in one in Christ. And now listen to Hebrews 7 and verse 26 again. It says, He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. That word intercession points us to his role as mediator. He's literally intervening on our behalf. He's praying for us. Then it says, for such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens. This mediator had to be fully God and fully man. He had to be born of a woman, and he had to be a sinless son of God like Adam. Now how does this affect us in our faith and in our walk? How does it affect us knowing that our savior and mediator is God? And how does it affect us knowing that our mediator is a man just like us? Understanding this is about more than just helping our minds comprehending the work that God did for us through Christ. There's also the understanding that the man who stands beside the father at the throne, the one who prays on our behalf, has experienced everything we have, and yet he still stands there for us. The humanity of Jesus should help us to relate to him. Think about the love of Christ to walk through the valley of the shadow of death for us. He left heaven for that. Remember, we are the ones who dishonor him daily. We're the ones who once blasphemed him, if not with our mouths, certainly with our hearts. And yet he intercedes on our behalf. Think about the love of Christ and that he has witnessed humanity face to face as a man, abused by men. And yet he still desired to save us from the destruction that we so deserve. And think about the love of Christ in that he weeps when we struggle, he weeps when we sin, and he cheers when we share in his victory over sin. If there was ever a person in our court, so to speak, cheering us on, it's Jesus Christ. His entire life's mission was to save a group of totally depraved humans, and he did it by living a life surrounded by the filth of sin. and dying a death surrounded by the filth of sin. And he did it for us. The eternal Son of God took on human flesh to win us back from the devil and to bring us back into the kingdom of God. The eternal Son of God became a man so that he could give us the only true hope that man has, the hope that's found in the blood and righteousness of the man Christ Jesus. The Bible says that today is the day of salvation. That's not a message to just believers to repent and believe. That's a reminder to every person who hears it. Today is the day of salvation. Today and every day is the day to come before the Son of God and to find his blood and to find his righteousness anew. Be covered in the blood, the blood that he shed for us that we should have shed for ourselves. the innocent blood of the only holy and righteous man who ever lived. He is our hope. He's our Redeemer. And He knows our weaknesses and our struggles and our pain. This is the Redeemer of men's souls, a sinless Son of God who battled Satan in the flesh to restore our souls to God forever. Listen to Hebrews 2 and verse 9 once again as we close. For we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. for both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one. Remind you of Ephesians 1 in verse 10. For which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren. That's the Redeemer in human flesh. Let's pray. Dear heavenly Father, it's hard to even understand how we can exalt you when you are exalted so high. It's hard to imagine how low we think of you in spite of all that we can read in your word about who you are and what you've done. And yet we come before you even after reading these things, asking you to lay these things upon our hearts more and more each day. Help us to know your beauty and your goodness and your sacrificial love. Help us to understand what it means that you suffered for us, both in life and in death. Help us, dear Lord, to lay our burdens upon you, knowing that you understand. That's something that our human sinful flesh doesn't really allow us to do. But you ask us to. And so help us to do that. Help us to boldly come to you as one who understands our every burden and our every pain. And we just thank you Lord that you are the God who redeems and you are the man who has experienced life as we have. And so we just ask you now to bless your word to our hearts and bless the remainder of our our time of worship, and we just pray these things in Christ's holy name. Amen.