Word of Salvation – May 2024

 

The Word Become Flesh

 

Sermon by Harry Burggraaf, B.D. on John 1:14

Scripture Readings: Exodus 33:7-23 & 40:34-38; John 1:1-14

Psalter Hymnal: 37; 284; 336; 372; 480:1,2

 

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

 

Boys and girls, parents,

Who’s ever caught a tadpole?  Funny creatures aren’t they with no legs and all tail.

I want to tell you about one particular tadpole.  His name was Dodo and he lived in a large pond in a front garden.  There with all his tadpole friends he had a great time they played hide and seek and chasey and of course tadpole games which we humans know nothing about.

Now Dodo wasn’t only good at playing games he also loved to talk.  In fact he thought he was a bit of a philosopher.  He and his friends used to talk about what the world was like and how they came to be there and what it meant to be a tadpole and things like that.

“I only believe in things I can see and feel and eat”, said Dodo one day when he was discussing life with his friends.  “This pond in which we live is the only thing which is real.  How can there be anything outside of this pond if we can’t touch it or feel it or see it.”  And his friends nodded their head in agreement.

Now one day a young frog came to join the group of tadpoles.  Frogs of course are converted tadpoles.  They’ve got legs and they don’t have to live in the water all the time, they can get out of the pond.  While the tadpoles were eyeing the stranger up and down the frog said something absolutely amazing:

“You tadpoles don’t know what you’re talking about.  Since I’ve been converted I’ve come to realise that this pond isn’t the only thing that’s real, this water isn’t the only thing that exists.  There’s a huge world outside called dryness – with grass and trees and funny looking creatures called human beings.”

At this Dodo and the other tadpoles laughed.  “Oh you silly frog; how can there be anything outside this pond, how do you know there’s a thing called dryness, and as for these human beings – well that’s absolute nonsense.”

And they laughed and laughed and laughed….. until SUDDENLY, the pond seemed to grow dark, the reeds in the water swayed and whoosh…. a huge nasty looking beak came straight for Dodo and grabbed him and swallowed him right up.

A duck from the outside world, in which the tadpoles didn’t believe, had come to the pond…. and that was the end of poor Dodo…. poor, poor unbelieving Dodo.

And you know boys and girls, congregation… there are many people in the world today who are just like those silly tadpoles.  They only believe in what they can see and hear and touch.  They don’t believe in God or heaven or all the things that the Bible talks about.  And when converted people, Christians, tell them that God and heaven and Jesus Christ are real and do exist they just laugh.

We live in a closed universe say the philosophers and modern theologians.  Only what is accessible to the senses, only what we can experience, only what we can put in a test tube and observe and analyse is real and true they say.  God and Jesus Christ, heaven and hell are figments of the imagination – twentieth century, rational man can’t believe in the supernatural.

But congregation the wonderful message of our text today is that God makes nonsense of all such cynical and sceptical rationalism – he has demonstrated once for all, in the historical, space, time coming of Jesus Christ the reality of spiritual things.

Not only has God revealed himself throughout the ages in His inscripturated word  – but finally and definitively He has revealed himself and the reality of spiritual truths in the coming of His Son.

As the writer to the Hebrews puts it:

“In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son.”

The coming of Christ, Christmas, the incarnation, the historical fact of Christ’s birth is the ultimate proof that there is a reality beyond our senses and our reason.  In the incarnation God broke into our existence in a way which men dare not ignore.

When as Christians we are challenged to prove that God exists; when we are challenged to demonstrate the truth of the Bible – then the best thing we can do is point to that historically verifiable event – an event which is open to observation and reason – the incarnation, the birth of the Son of God in a filthy stable in that insignificant stretch of land called Palestine.

“For”, says the Bible “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Here in one short, shattering statement the apostle John unveils the heart of the Christian gospel the Word, God the Son, become man for man’s salvation.  Let’s have a closer look at the glorious words of this text.

THE WORD

And the Word became flesh.  Jesus Christ is designated by many names in scripture but only in John’s writings is He called the Word.

In our everyday language “word” is a fairly neutral term it is merely the verbal expression of a thought (and when we talk off the top of our head it’s not even that).  The “Word” in the Bible is a term with a rich significance and meaning.

“Word”, the logos, in the Greek world in which the apostle John wrote means not only speech but all that which produces speech – reason, thought, the intellect.  It was even used for the soul, for the principle of life, for the divine power which held the universe together.

However the apostle draws not so much on Greek thought as on Hebrew – and so we must go to the Old Testament to understand what he means.

Word in the Old Testament meant not only speech – but speech producing action; the deed accomplished in the word.  The word of God is His will producing the effects He wants.  Yes we can even say it is an extension of His personality and being.

And so in Genesis 1 we read that God speaks and it is:
            “Let there be light”, says God “and there was light.”
            “Let the earth bring forth living creatures… and it was so.”

The deed is accomplished in the word – and so we read in Psalm 33: “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made.”

The Word of God is always active, powerful, effective.

“So shall my word be which goes forth from my mouth” says God to Isaiah “it shall not return to me empty but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I send it.”

And now in the gospel of John this Word, this deed of God, His effective working, is personalised and used in a technical sense for the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.  It is through Jesus Christ, the Word, that the world was made, we read in vs.3 it is through Jesus Christ, the Word, that the will of God for men’s salvation is effected it is Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh.

BECAME FLESH

Congregation if this truth has become common place to us, if we fail to be thrilled by it then let us consider again the depth of meaning expressed in these words.

The Word of God, God Himself, the Almighty creator of heaven and earth, the one far above all rule and authority and power becoming flesh, entering into our existence.
            The mighty creator becomes in nature like the weak creature;
            He who enjoyed all the riches of heaven becomes utterly destitute;
            He who dwelt in all purity and holiness and inapproachable light
                        coming right into the muck and the dirt
                        and the corruption of our existence.

The Word became flesh.

No, it doesn’t say the Word took on human form; it doesn’t say the Word became man – but the Word became flesh.

“Flesh” is another one of those typically New Testament words which has largely lost its meaning in the English translation.  “Flesh” stands for man in all his weakness, man in his frailty, man in his temporariness, man in his sinfulness, man with all his limitations and failings.

The Word became flesh.

Here in three short words the Bible presents the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of the child conceived of the Holy Spirit born of the virgin Mary.

Throughout the ages the church has struggled to come to grips with the meaning of this mystery.  Particularly in the first five centuries there were the great, so called, Christological controversies.

Perhaps students going to a Christian school may remember some of the names of men involved from their church history lessons – men like Arius and Athanasius and Appolynarius and Cyril; and some of the great meetings or Councils the church held to come to an understanding of the problem – the Council of Nicea and Constantinople (from which we get our Nicene Creed, or at least the teaching of the creed) and the Council of Chalcedon.

“What does it mean that the Word became flesh?” men asked, and are still asking today.

In what way was Jesus Christ truly man?

How could He be both God and man – both Word and flesh?

1.  Does it mean perhaps that Christ came to this earth for a while and He outed he lived like a man but He was really God and never truly a man?  He acted out the port.  That was the error of the Docetics against whom the apostle John had to write in his letters.

2.  Or alternatively does it mean perhaps that the Word laid aside his divinity.  Christ stopped being God when he was born in Bethlehem.  That was the view of people called Arians.  They denied that when the Word became incarnate he still possessed absolute Godhead.  And throughout the ages Arianism has undermined the church – we see it reappearing in a modern theology which denies that Jesus was anything more than a good man.

3.  Or perhaps the Word becoming flesh meant that Christ took on a human body; that He sort of clothed himself in human form – very much like us putting on a coat – a divine soul in a human body.  That was the heresy of a group called the Appolinarians.

With these questions the church had to struggle again and again.  But under the leading of the Spirit of Truth the church of all ages has come to assert that however we attempt to explain the incarnation we must believe:

a)  that Christ was truly God and that he remained God after His birth;

b)  that Christ was truly and completely man, soul and body;

c)  and yet that in spite of these two natures (divine and human) He is nevertheless one person – deity and humanity combine as one and yet they are never to be confused.

One of the most beautiful attempts to explain the meaning of the elaborate Word become flesh is found in the Creed of Chalcedon where in 451AD the church tried to describe the incarnation keeping these things in mind.  Unfortunately this creed is not in our hymn books but a part of it reads

“We unite in teaching all men to confess the one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  The self-same one is perfect both in deity and also in humanness; this self-same one is also actually God and actually man with a rational soul and body.  He is of same reality as God as far as his deity is concerned, and of the same reality as we ourselves as far as his humanness is concerned thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted.”

It then goes on to explain how his two natures are neither to be confused nor divided.

But ultimately congregation, this text cannot be explained, we cannot say what the incarnation means – nowhere  does the Bible attempt to do so.  Rather the knowledge that the Word became flesh should lead us to praise and adoration and worship and thanksgiving.

For although the Bible has little to say on the meaning of the incarnation, it has everything to say about its purpose.

Why did the Word become flesh?

Rom.8:3 tells us that “God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh in order to condemn sin in His flesh.”  Christ, the Son of God, became flesh to carry the punishment we as humans – as sinful flesh – deserved.  And in his incarnation, death and resurrection we have the hope, the glorious hope of a new nature.

The mystery of Christ’s person is not explained but rather the purpose and result of His coming.  (You know it’s a little like a technical phrase such as nuclear fission – we don’t know exactly what it means, or the processes involved but we know that its purpose is to produce tremendous energy and that there is a mighty bang as a result.

HE DWELT AMONG US

Why did the Word become flesh?

The apostle John gives his explanation when he says, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Now on the surface you may say well so what?  Doesn’t that just mean that Christ was born and lived with mankind for a while?

But again the word “dwelt” is far richer than the English indicates.

In actual fact it says here that “He pitched His tent amongst us” (like many people are doing at holiday camps at the moment).

He set up camp, or more precisely, “He tabernacled amongst us”.

What a tremendously significant statement that is.

I don’t know about you congregation but I find that a wonderfully thrilling and exciting thought.  He tabernacled amongst us…!

Immediately our thoughts go back to the events of the Old Testament.  For the word used here is the same as that for the Old Testament tabernacle.

What did the Old Testament tabernacle stand for?

Well first of all it was the symbol of God’s presence amongst His people.  As we read in the book of Exodus: in the tabernacle the Shekinah glory of God dwelt.  There God in all His majesty met with the representatives of His people.

And wonder of wonders, although the tabernacle is gone (and the Old Testament temple) the Shekinah glory of God, the presence of God is with us in the Word become flesh.  No longer does God meet his people through the symbol of the tabernacle – He is with us, right in our midst, right here as we meet in this auditorium in Jesus Christ.  What a reason for praise and joy.

But the tabernacle is also a symbol for something else.  When John told his hearers that The Word tabernacled amongst them, their minds would have gone back to the desert wanderings of Old Testament Israel, to their bondage in Egypt and to God leading them out, rescuing them with a mighty, outstretched arm.

The tabernacle stood for salvation, for liberation, for the redemptive activity of God.  It was symbolical also for forgiveness and the cleansing of sin.  It was in the tabernacle that people could make sacrifices for the atonement of their sins.

And now John says, as it were, the tabernacle has come right down amongst us.

Christ, who is the one great sacrifice for sin, has entered into our condition and in Him we have forgiveness and reconciliation and fellowship with God.

Congregation, ‘The Word become flesh’ in order to pitch His tent among us, is the heart of the Christian gospel.  In becoming flesh Christ identified completely with our condition.  His incarnation meant total involvement in our troubles.  He did not attempt to solve our problems from a distance, but He dwelt among us.  That meant touching infectious lepers, associating with prostitutes, knocking around with the riff raff of society yes even becoming a common criminal and facing a Roman execution squad.

Incarnation meant going to the root of the trouble, going where sin was most deeply entrenched, in order to deal with it effectively and completely.  Praise God for so great a salvation.

Brothers and sisters when Hudson Taylor, the great missionary, went to China he did an unheard of thing.  Not only did he live right amongst the people in often filthy squalor, but he dressed like them, ate their food, lived in their type of houses.  He was totally identified with them.  Hudson Taylor was living out the incarnation.

I believe that ‘The Word become flesh and dwelling among us’ is not only the basis of our salvation, but it is also the model and the pattern for bringing that salvation to others.  To spell that out in detail would be another sermon in itself.  But as we think about the incarnation let us also remember the words of Jesus:

            “Even as the Father has sent me, so send I you.”

The Son of Man shared completely in our cause.  Is that the pattern of our outreach to others?  Are we where the problem is?

So often we deliver our evangelistic missiles from the safe security of the church hoping that the shrapnel may have some effect.

Christ dwelt right among us.  Evangelism is relationship.

People these days are in the pubs, on the surfing beaches, in depressingly crowded flats, in lonely middle class suburban streets, in old age people’s homes.

He dwelt among us – are we where the people are?  Are we identifying with their sorrows and their hurts, with their hang ups and their problems?  Each one of us is responsible for God to live out, as it were, the incarnation, so that men might share in the glorious benefits of ‘The Word Become Flesh’.

            Light looked down and beheld darkness;
                        Thither will I go said Light.
            Peace looked down and beheld war;
                        Thither will I go said Peace.
            Love looked down and beheld hatred;
                        Thither will I go said Love.
            So came Light and shone,
                        So came Peace and gave rest,
            So came Love and brought life,
            And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.