Sermon on Lord’s Day 14⤒🔗

35. Q. What do you confess when you say: He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary?
A. The eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God,[1] took upon Himself true human nature from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary,[2] through the working of the Holy Spirit.[3] Thus He is also the true seed of David,[4] and like His brothers in every respect,[5] yet without sin.[6]
[1] John 1:1; 10:30-36; Rom. 1:3; 9:5; Col. 1:15-17; I John 5:20. [2] Matt. 1:18-23; John 1:14; Gal. 4:4; Heb. 2:14. [3] Luke 1:35. [4] II Sam. 7:12-16; Ps. 132:11; Matt. 1:1; Luke 1:32; Rom. 1:3. [5] Phil. 2:7; Heb. 2:17. [6] Heb. 4:15; 7:26, 27.

36. Q. What benefit do you receive from the holy conception and birth of Christ?
A. He is our Mediator,[1] and with His innocence and perfect holiness covers, in the sight of God, my sin, in which I was conceived and born.[2]
[1] I Tim. 2:5, 6; Heb. 9:13-15. [2] Rom. 8:3, 4; II Cor. 5:21; Gal. 4:4, 5; I Pet. 1:18, 19.

Scripture Reading: Luke 1:26-38; Luke 19:1-10; Romans 8:31-39

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter) 
Psalm 86:1,2
Hymn 14:4
Hymn 2:3,4
Hymn 16:1,2,3,4
Hymn 27:1,4

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

We celebrated today the Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ. This supper did not come out of the blue, nor did the Calvary to which this Supper points. This Holy Supper has its roots in the work of grace God accomplished when He sent His only-begotten Son from heaven to earth. Now that we have tasted the goodness of the Lord at His table, it’s to this root that I draw your attention this afternoon.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

The incarnation of Jesus Christ displays the infinite grace of God to unworthy sinners

1. the manner of the incarnation
2. the motive for the incarnation
3. the marvel of the incarnation

The manner of the incarnation←⤒🔗

The question of how it was that the Son of God became man touches our sense of imagination. The angel told Mary that she would conceive in her womb and bear a child, one who would "be called the Son of the Highest" (Lu 1:31f). Mary’s immediate response concerned the how of this promise; said she: "How can this be, since I do not know a man", I have no husband? In answer, Gabriel spoke the words of vs 35:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God vs 35

As a result of those words, we somehow imagine that the Holy Spirit took the place of a human husband in terms of generating pregnancy.

We are to note, though, that this is not at all what the text says. "The Holy Spirit," says the angel, "will come upon you." In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit had been active in very much; He did work in the Old Testament just as in the New, though He had not yet been poured out and therefore worked more –shall we say– behind the scenes. There is one work of the Holy Spirit, though, that receives particular attention, one work very relevant to Gabriel’s word in Luke 1. That work is this: the Holy Spirit was God’s agent in creation. Gen 1:

the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters 1:2

Years later the Lord Himself recorded what He meant by that phrase "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Says God in Ps 33:

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth vs 6.

"By the breath of His mouth," say our translation. But the word that’s used is the same as that of Gen 1: Spirit. That is: all the hosts of heaven were made by His Spirit. So too Ps 104:

You send forth Your Spirit, they are created;
and You renew the face of the earth vs 30

There you have it, congregation: the Holy Spirit was God’s agent in creating the world, and is God’s agent in upholding the world God made.

Now the angel tells Mary that she shall conceive as a result of the Holy Spirit coming upon her. Are we then to think that the Holy Spirit simply takes the place of a human husband in making Mary pregnant? It’s to be clear in our minds, beloved, that this is categorically not the case. The message of Gabriel’s words to Mary is instead that here God is active –through the Spirit as His agent– active doing something different. The Holy Spirit was here sent by God to create something new, to do a work of creation as marvelous as those works of Gen 1. The Holy Spirit would come upon Mary, and the result would be that what was conceived in her was not half God and half man, a child having genes from the Father in heaven and genes from mother Mary on earth. Rather, the Holy Spirit would come upon Mary, and something unheard of would result; God would come in the flesh, true God in "human form" (Phil 2:8), true God sharing fully of the nature of man (Heb 2:14). Here is the unexplainable as echoed in the Catechism:

The eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took upon Himself true human nature from the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, through the working of the Holy Spirit.

No, our finite minds cannot grasp it. We have yet so many questions about how God can become man, how the Almighty can become a fetus in the womb of a virgin. But these are questions to which God has given no answer. We do not know either how God in the beginning could call into existence the things that did not exist (Heb 11:3). But just as that work of creation in the beginning is something we’re meant to believe and accept, so too is this new work of creation in the womb of Mary something we’re to believe and accept. What we’re to realize is this: with the incarnation of the Son of God, with His becoming man, we’re confronted with a new work of God, something God had never done before. Here is a new creation, a new beginning, a beginning as radically new as was the beginning of Gen 1.

That, congregation, is also why we need not be surprised that this work of creation in the womb of the virgin Mary is today denied by the skeptics of society. Society denies the doctrine of creation-in-the-beginning, and so this work of creation-in-the-incarnation must logically also be denied. At bottom it’s a question of denying God’s power.

If now this incarnation of the Son of God was something so different, so new, was in effect a new creation, why did God do this new work? That’s our second point:

The motive for the incarnation←⤒🔗

The Lord Jesus Christ has explained motive for His incarnation amongst other places in Luke 19. He said: "...the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (vs 10). For our part, we need to understand what He meant by the term ‘lost’. And: who are the "lost"? In what way were they "lost"?

Jesus’ statement that He came to seek and to save the lost finds its context in the story of Zacchaeus. When Jesus announced that He would go to Zacchaeus’ house for tea, the people expressed their displeasure; Jesus, they felt, was associating with a "sinner". In that context Jesus announced that He had come "to save that which was lost." Jesus’ reference to the "lost" is then in first instance to Zacchaeus himself; Zacchaeus, said Jesus, was lost.

As to what Jesus meant by the word "lost", we need to consider Zacchaeus’ situation. That little man was a social outcast, rejected by the people because he was a tax-collector for the hated Romans. In practical terms, this rejection meant for Zacchaeus that he was lonely, he had no support from his own people; he did not benefit from the communion of saints, he was "lost".

Yet that does not get us to the heart of the matter. For: why was Zacchaeus the outcast he was? This man, brothers and sisters, tasted in the concrete circumstances of his life the bitter effects of the fall into sin. Whereas Paradise had known no friction between people, Zacchaeus experienced friction and dislike all around him. He was a fallen man, and therefore his life knew misery, troubles. And in that he wasn’t alone. The Bible tells us of a Joseph who in the concrete circumstances of his life was hated by his jealous brothers, and therefore thrown into that pit and eventually sold into Egypt. The Bible tells us of a people enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt, who groaned under the burden of their bondage. The Bible tells us of a David hounded by Saul, depressed by the trials of life, rejected (so he felt) by man and God alike. Scripture even tells us of people given up to dishonorable passions, of women who have exchanged natural relations for unnatural, of men who have given up natural relations with women because they’re consumed with passion for one another (Rom 1:26f). And we can expand the list with our own experiences; in this life we taste daily the bitter results of our fall into sin. Paradise had been so delightful, but God so hated sin that He in wrath sent us out of His holy presence, sent us into a world of hostility and enmity, of strife and trouble, of sweat and tears. "Lost": that word captures all the tragic consequences of our fall into sin.

And we’re to note too: the fault here is fully our own. It was we who purposefully transgressed the command of God in Paradise, rejected God, exposed ourselves to all the wrath of an offended God. So that wrath is so very deserved; God would deal so justly if He would today drown the entire human race with a deadly flood, would deal so justly if He would cause each one of us to perish through the difficulties we today face. Lost we are, as a result of our own sins, and that should mean for each of us hell. Zacchaeus in his life tasted the beginnings of the horrors we’ve all brought upon ourselves.

But behold here now, beloved, the glory of God Most High! For instead of giving us the death, misery, hell we deserve, the Lord in mercy gave His Son to seek and to save that which was lost! Consider the words of the Belgic Confession (Art 17) about the fall into sin:

"We believe that, when [God] saw that man had...plunged himself into physical and spiritual death and made himself completely miserable, our gracious God in His marvelous wisdom and goodness set out to seek man...."

Notice those descriptions of the lostness of man: man "plunged himself into physical and spiritual death", made himself "completely miserable". Truly, that is lost. But this is what God did, beloved: He "set out to seek man." Here is displayed the grace of God, His goodness. God’s response to the sins of the human race was not that we should be left in the misery into which we had plunged ourselves; His response was rather pity, compassion, mercy. I draw your attention again to Luke 1. In the song which Zechariah uttered at the circumcision of his son John, Zechariah was moved by the Spirit of God to speak of why God would give His Son. Vs 78: Zechariah speaks in our translation of "the tender mercy of our God." But the word that Zechariah actually uses is bowels, intestines; he speaks literally of "intestines of mercy". The point is that God was moved to the pit of His stomach, He had –we’d say– no appetite left as a result of the misery into which the human race had plunged itself, the lostness of the human race. Zechariah is moved by the Spirit to portray God as so upset by the misery of man that God acted to work redemption, acted to save the lost. That’s the notion echoed in that Article we just read from the Belgic Confession:

...when [God] saw that man had...made himself completely miserable, our gracious God in His marvelous...goodness set out to seek man....

Gracious: so moved was the Most High by our total misery that He gave up His own Son, sent the Spirit to Mary to have His Son conceived in her virgin womb.

And now, brothers and sisters, we can answer too why it was that the Son of God became man, what the motive for the incarnation was, what caused it. What prompted that incarnation was, beloved, ourselves! It was our own sins that prompted God to send His Son to earth. That God had to make a new beginning in Mary’s womb, that He had to do something at the incarnation never done before, is result of our fall, our sins. From eternity the Son of God had been with the Father in heaven, but now He had to leave, had to humble Himself, become a servant, a man, and it was we ourselves who prompted this humiliation for the Son of God. We consider Christmas to be a season of rejoicing, and indeed it is. But in the first place, brothers and sisters, Christmas is a season of shame for ourselves. Were it not for our sins, the Son of God would not have had to leave heaven, become man. But now He did, because of us. He did, because we had made ourselves lost, "completely miserable", and this was something the Lord God did not wish to stomach.

We are to notice, then, beloved, that one cannot believe that the Son of God became man unless one first realizes and believes one’s own depravity. Had we not sinned, were we somehow able to save ourselves, the incarnation would not have been necessary. But as it is, we are lost, depraved, exiled from God’s presence so that we hurt day by day, and we’re not able to do anything about it, and that’s why the incarnation was needed. Deny your total sinfulness, your complete depravity, and you undermine the need for the incarnation.

There you have a second reason why our society would deny that the Son of God became man. Not only does our society deny the power of God displayed in creation (and therefore His ability to do a new work of creation in Mary’s womb); society is also quite content with human nature, denies that human nature is lost, needs redemption.

The conception and birth of Jesus Christ, then, gives us cause for shame. But exactly because of our unworthiness does this incarnation point up also the endless glory of God in heaven – third point:

The marvel of the incarnation←⤒🔗

That God Most High, brothers and sisters, was so bothered by the lostness and the misery of His chosen children that He set out to seek and to save them – that glorious gospel can prompt only to praise! No wonder the angels on the night of Jesus’ birth broke out into songs of jubilation: "Glory to God in the highest...!" (Lu 2:14). For this is a God beyond compare, so infinite in His grace, so boundless in His mercy. Then yes, at Christmas we do well to recall what prompted the incarnation, and so consider our sins and misery. But God, beloved, has given us reason too to step beyond that sense of shame. With the angels we may sing aloud of the grace of God as displayed in the manger of Bethlehem. What a marvel that this God should give up His Son for sinners as we! Here’s the surprise of the gospel. What a God!

And that’s why the apostle Paul can shout out with enthusiasm about the security he has with this God. Paul knows that life has so many difficulties, so many trials. The rejection Zacchaeus experienced, the envy Joseph tasted, the hatred David felt, the anguish of our lives: it’s all, says Paul, part of this earthly existence. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword: that’s this vale of tears. And we who live in the shadow of September 11 know that only too well. But in the midst of it all Paul had this assurance: if God in His grace has given up His only Son, has sent Him to earth "for us and our salvation" (as the Nicene Creed so nicely puts it), sent Him to deliver us from Satan’s power and free us from all the consequences of sin, then surely, surely our Father in Jesus Christ will give us all we need in this life! The apostle is so convinced: "He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all" will surely "give us all things with Him." More, given this grace, this love from God, there is nothing in all creation able to drive a wedge between God and any of His own, none able to separate us from God’s love. God gave up His only Son, sent His Spirit to overshadow Mary so that she became pregnant with the Son of God; what a security, what a comfort the apostle is allowed to have for the grind of his daily life!

O yes, for today the hurts and the griefs resulting from our fall into sin remain so real; we feel them all so deeply. But today God loves me, cares for me perfectly. And tomorrow, tomorrow the Son of God will come a second time to earth, this time to rid the earth of all sin and of every result of sin. How glorious that day will be! Small wonder that the book of Revelation shows us angels singing upon Christ’s return, singing even more than they did on the day He was born!

That is why we sing today already, sing with the church of all ages and places of God’s glorious work at Christmas:

…Thou didst not despise the Virgin’s womb, O Savior,
When Thou didst take upon Thee mankind to deliver.
Thou hast defeated death and Satan’s power infernal,
That all believers might inherit life eternal Hymn 2:3

Amen.