Preacher: Jeremy Herbert
Text:
- 1 Timothy 3:16
- John 1:1-14
Theme: Christmas: Why It Matters
Thesis: Celebrate the beauty and wonder of the incarnation by understanding it doctrinally.
Notes:
Errors in understanding the incarnation of Christ either:
- Deny His full godhood
- Deny His eternality
- Deny His full divinity
- a being less than fully God is unworthy to make sacrifice for sins
- Deny His full humanity
- Deny He had a real human body
- Deny He had a real human nature
- a being less than fully human cannot stand in place of humans
Why Does It Matter?
- Jesus identified with sinners in order to rescue them
- Hebrews 2, “He himself shared in the same”
- Jesus fulfilled the law as a human
- Galatians 4, “Born of a woman, born under the law”
- Jesus was our substitute
- Hebrews 2, “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect…to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
- Colossians 1, “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds”
- In the OT, animals (lesser creatures than man) were sacrificed to pay for sins–but the sacrifices were only temporary
- In the NT, Christ’s sacrifice is better (and permanent) because He is a greater than man
- 1 Peter 3, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit”
- Jesus is our sympathetic High Priest
- Hebrews 4, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
- While Jesus had no sin, He felt all the effects of sin and brokenness in this world
- Jesus is our model of true humanity
Live It Out!
- Be thankful
- Be different
- Be comforted
- Be hopeful
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