SERMON

Jesus Became the Ultimate Human Sacrifice

> Sermon Series: “Five Truths a Telling: The Doctrines of Christmas”
> Sermon 1: “Jesus Is a Man”
> Segment 2: “Jesus Became the Ultimate Human Sacrifice”

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Go to Segment 1:Heresies About the Christmas Baby
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Many of us decorate our homes and lawns with nativity scenes at Christmas time. Did you know that the first nativity scene was organized by St. Francis of Assisi, almost 800 years ago? Oh, you already knew that one? OK, here’s another. Did you know that Francis came up with the idea as a device to refute false Gnostic teaching about Christ that was spreading in Europe at that time?

What better way to illustrate the true humanity of Christ than to remember the details of His birth?
• That he came from a human mother, a young girl named Mary.
• That he was born in a real place, a little village called Bethlehem, in Israel.
• At a real time, 2,000 years ago.
• And that his first bed was a manger, a feeding trough, in a stable.
Jesus was, and is, a man.

This is the second segment of a sermon simply titled, “Jesus Is a Man.” The first segment, “Heresies About the Christmas Baby,” is posted here. “Jesus Is a Man” is the first in a series of Christmas messages titled: “Five Truths a Telling: The Doctrines of Christmas.” Christmas beautifully communicates five fundamental truths about Jesus of Nazareth.
• Jesus is a Man.
• Jesus is God.
• Jesus is the Son of God.
• Jesus is our Savior.
• Jesus is our King.

The First Nativity Scene
Francis Bernardone was a Catholic priest in Italy in the early 1200s. In those days, a form of Gnostic false teaching was spreading through Italy and Europe. Heretics were teaching that all flesh is evil, and that Jesus couldn’t possibly have really occupied a fleshly body or been a real human being. (The specific heresy Francis was battling was Catharism. Catharism was a form of Christian Gnosticism, which I explained more fully in the preceding segment of this sermon).

To combat the false teachings of the Cathari, St. Francis organized the first living nativity scene. It was outdoors. He used live animals. To represent Jesus, he used a statue of a baby. At nightfall he invited the townfolk to come, their path illumined by torch light, to walk through his nativity scene. The message of what they saw was obvious: Jesus had a real human mother, and a real human birth, because Jesus was, and is, a very real human being.

When the people gathered there, Francis preached a gospel sermon, and then he led them in a song, which was the beginning of the modern Christmas carol. The idea caught on, and soon nativity scenes were being staged and Christmas carols were being sung all over Europe. The practice continues to this day. Every year, proclaiming in a very graphic way: when Jesus came from heaven to earth, He became a man, one of us.

The preacher and scholar Arthur Pink wrote:

While we always contend that Christ is God, let us never lose the conviction [that] He is most certainly a man. … [A]s to His manhood, perfect manhood, made in all respects like the rest of mankind, sin alone excepted. His humanity is real, for He was born. He lay in the virgin’s womb, and in due time was born. The gate by which we enter our first life he passed through also.

He was not created, nor transformed, but His humanity was begotten and born. As He was born, so in the circumstances of His birth, he is completely human. He was as weak and feeble as any other babe. He is not even royal, but human. Those born in marble halls of old were wrapped in purple garments, and were thought by the common people to be a superior race. But this Babe was wrapped in swaddling clothes and had a manger for a cradle, so that the true humanity of His being would come out.

Jesus’ Early Development
Luke 2 contains much of what the Bible tells us about the Christmas story. It also contains everything we know about Jesus’ early development.

• Luke 2:6-7 describes Jesus’ birth: “While they were there [in Bethlehem], the days were completed for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger.”

• Verse 40 describes Jesus as a toddler: “The Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.”

• Verse 46 describes Christ as a preadolescent: “Then, after three days, they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions.”

• Verse 51 describes the conclusion of the confrontation between Jesus and His parents at the temple when he was twelve: “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them.”

• And Verse 52 describes Jesus as a teenager and a young man: “And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.”

Jesus was a real man. He had to learn how to walk. He had to learn how to talk. He had to go to school. And ask questions. And study. He had to obey His parents. He had to mature physically. And he had to increase in wisdom. Because He was, and is, a human being.

Why So Important?
But why is Jesus’ humanity so important? Why is it so important for us to understand and believe that Jesus is a man? Why did the Apostle John go so far as to say that anyone who questions this doctrine is a heretic and an antichrist (John 4:1-3)?

One reason is that Jesus had to become a human in order to become our Savior.

In Matt 1:21, when the angel was telling Joseph about the child Mary was carrying,
the angel said: “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Jesus came to be our Savior.

When the angel announced Christ’s birth to the shepherds, in Luke 2:10-11, the angel told them: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’”

Jesus came to save us. And to do it, Jesus had to be a man. But why was Christ’s humanity necessary for our salvation?

Think about it. Is the cross important to our salvation? Is the blood of Christ important to us? How important is His broken body? And how important would any of those things be, if Jesus was not really a man, if he did not possess a real human body?

If Jesus was not a man, in human flesh, then His death on the cross means nothing.

• If his body was merely an illusion — then his sacrificial death is part of that illusion. The atoning sacrifice in which we have placed our faith for salvation would be a sham.

• If Jesus’ body was not real, then the bread and juice of which we partake each Sunday would be an absurd and empty ritual. A symbol of what — if Jesus did not have a real body to be broken, and if He did not have real blood to shed?

Rom 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And Rom 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” Because of our sin, every single one of us deserves to die an eternal death. But Jesus came to be our Savior. In order to save us, Jesus became our substitute, taking the punishment we deserved. How can Jesus substitute for us? Because He is one of us.

I do not pretend to fully understand God’s great plan of salvation. The fullness of the gospel is beyond our ability to comprehend, but God has placed the essential aspects of the gospel within our grasp. This much I know: In Christ’s death on the cross, God satisfied the demands of His perfect Justice, while simultaneously expressing His infinite love and grace.

In an amazing act of both Justice and Mercy, God deemed that He would accept the sacrifice of one of us on behalf of all of us, and then He became one of us, God in the flesh, to become that perfect sacrifice for our sins. Jesus had to become one of us, the only perfect One who has ever lived, to be the perfect sacrifice for us all.

“A Body You Have Prepared For Me”
Listen to these verses in Hebrews 10. Amazingly, Heb 10:5 describes what Jesus, the Son of God — that part of the Triune God who existed eternally in heaven before He was born in Bethlehem — what He was thinking and saying in heaven immediately before He came to this world on that first Christmas.

Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.”

In the preceding verse, the writer mentions the animal sacrifices which used to be offered at the ancient temple. Heb 10:4: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Those animal sacrifices never accomplished forgiveness for anyone, but only served as a reminder of our human sinfulness. To do what animal sacrifices could never do, Jesus came into the world to occupy the body which God had prepared for Him. Heb 10:5-7:

Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. 6 In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have taken no pleasure. 7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come … to do your will, O God.'”

“When he [came] into the world,” the Son of God said to the Father, “a body you have prepared for me.” Why did the Son of God need a body? “I have come…to do your will, O God.” And what was God’s will for Him? Verse 10: “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all.”

Jesus came, born as a real human baby, possessing a real human body, and living a real human life — and yet without sin — to become the perfect sacrifice for our sins. As the Perfect Man, He became the Perfect Representative and Substitute for the human race. Jesus became the Ultimate Human Sacrifice.

Salvation is one infinitely important reason why Jesus’ humanity is so important. There is another reason of equal importance why we must understand and embrace Jesus’ humanity. It has to do with the resurrection from the dead — not only His resurrection, but our own. I will point out some truths about the resurrection and your eternal future that you may have never thought through. I will do that in the third and final segment of this sermon.

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