“If we admit God, must we admit Miracle?” Lewis

“Even if the Church had mistaken his meaning, it would still be true that no other historical tradition except the Church had ever even made the same mistake. Muslims did not misunderstand Muhammad and suppose he was Allah.

Jews did not misinterpret Moses and identify him with Jehovah. Why was this claim alone exaggerated unless this alone was made? Even if Christianity was one vast universal blunder, it is still a blunder as solitary as the Incarnation”. G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Something really new did happen at Bethlehem: not an interpretation but an event. God became Man. On the other hand there must be a sense in which God, being outside time, is changeless and nothing ever “happens” to Him.

1 John 1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—2 that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

John claims to have touched what was from the beginning, namely, the manifested eternal Life, it shows plainly that the point here is incarnation. The eternal Christ, who was with the Father from the beginning and indeed was God—this Christ appeared in flesh. He became a man.

Here is the great stumbling block, and people have stumbled over it from the days of John until our own day.

John says 2:7, “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.”

Many are willing to believe in Christ if he remains a merely spiritual reality. But when we preach that Christ has become a particular man in a particular place issuing particular commands and dying on a particular cross exposing the specific sins of our specific lives, then the preaching ceases to be acceptable for many.

When God Becomes Man

I am not sure that man’s disbelief is so much the mystery of a divine and human nature in one person that causes most people to stumble over the doctrine of the incarnation. The stumbling block might be that if the doctrine is true, every single person in the world must obey this one specific Jewish man.

1 peter 2:6 Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture: “Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious; and he that believeth in Him shall not be confounded.”7 Unto you therefore who believe, He is precious; but unto those who are disobedient, “The stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner,”8 and, “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,” even to those who stumble at the Word, being disobedient, unto which also they were appointed.

Mt 21:42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

Ps 118:22 The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

If Jesus is God, everything he says is law, and everything he did is perfect. And the particulars of his work and word flow out into history in the form of a particular inspired book, the Bible. that claims a universal authority over every other book that has ever been written.

The stumbling block of the incarnation, is when God becomes a man, he strips away every pretense of man to be God. It means, that I cant call the shots in my life, I must submit to Him.

We can no longer do our own thing; we must do what this one Jewish man wants us to do. We can no longer pose as self-sufficient, because this one Jewish man says we are all sick with sin and must come to him for healing. We can no longer depend on our own wisdom to find life, because this one Jewish man who lived for 30 obscure years in a little country in the Middle East says, “I am the way the truth and the life.”

When God becomes a man, man ceases to be the measure of all things, and this man becomes the measure of all things. This is simply intolerable to the rebellious heart of men and women.

“The incarnation is a violation of the bill of human rights written by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is totalitarian, authoritarian, Imperialism, and absolutism! Who does Jesus think he is!” Chesterton,

1 John 4:2, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God.”

Only the Spirit of God can break our rebellion against the authoritarian particularity of the incarnation and cause us to submit gladly to this one Jewish man as our absolute sovereign. So, the confession that God has come in the flesh is John’s doctrinal test of whether we are of God.

Why does God give us this magnificent promise here in the prophecy of Isaiah?

Isaiah 9: 6 For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.7 The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

What does it say to us today?

Lets look at the historical context. When Isaiah is writhing, it is about halfway through the eighth century before Christ. The southern kingdom, Judah, is on the one hand fairly prosperous. Economically it’s not doing too badly. King Ahaz is a wheeler-dealer. He has all of the answers along purely political lines.

Isaiah 9:1 is transitional. “Nevertheless ” Despite all of this gloomy picture, prior. Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress; in the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles by the way of the sea along the Jordan.”

8;12 to 15, “Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.” the reference is a general approach to events, an explanation of events that simply leaves God out.

You start living in fear of all the external pressures all around you. You look at the world, and you’re scared. You start living your life in fear, and you wonder about a conspiracy here or a conspiracy there, and you start living as if God is not in charge.

Don’t be so afraid of these things that everybody in the culture is afraid of, because there’s not much you can do about them in any case. They don’t have the final sway. Is it true that the church of God today in the Western world lives in a fair bit of fear? We are afraid;

Don’t live your life in fear of what others fear. They cannot see God’s hand in events. our response is to be verse 13: “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy. He is the one you are to fear. He is the one you are to dread.” God is different. Not to regard him as holy, literally, not to sanctify him, not to set him out by your actions and deeds as uniquely God is to make him out to be ordinary, unimportant, incapable, indifferent perhaps, even helpless.

That’s why the people of God in the Old Testament are told again and again and again to sanctify God in their hearts. That’s what it means: to make him holy.

Leviticus 22: 32: “Do not profane my holy name. I must be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites. I am the Lord who makes you holy and who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord.”

To profane God does not simply mean using four-letter words or using God’s name in vain; it means to make him common. There are other ways of blasphemy to make God cheap, simply by not fearing him at all, by sort of acknowledging his existence in some sort of distant creedal sense.

The way we look at society and culture and the church and our hope and everything else is really determined by sociological analysis or the current fears and trends or getting our news from google. We are not trusting God, but everything else.

That’s why sanctifying God, regarding him as holy and fearing God, are put in the same breath. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy. He is the one you are to fear. He is the one you are to dread, because if you really do fear the Lord, you fear no other.

the psalmist says, “The Lord is the light of my salvation. Of whom then shall I be afraid?” If you fear God truly, you fear no one else. If you sanctify him in your heart, if he is central to all of your ways of thinking and speaking, then how can you live your life in paranoid fear? He can be trusted.

Isaiah is not to act like the Judeans who fail to make God the most central fact of their existence. It’s not just Isaiah who’s being told this, but Isaiah is to pass this message on to the people. “The Lord is the one you people are to regard as holy. He is the one you people are to fear. He is the one you people are to dread.”

Sooner or later, people discover that God is either their sanctuary, as in verse 14, or he is the stone that trips them up. He’s one of the two. He will be a sanctuary if you regard him as holy. If you fear him, he will be a sanctuary. For both houses of Israel, for those for whom God is merely part of their creed and not much more, he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. For the people of Jerusalem, he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble. They will fall and be broken. They will be snared and captured.

Sooner or later, people discover that God is either their sanctuary or a stumbling block that trips them up. In substantial measure what we ultimately find God to be is shaped by our attitude to him. He is what he is, but if you try to marginalize him, you don’t remove him. He’s still there, so you will trip over him. Sooner or later, you confront him. On the last day, if not before, you will face him. You cannot possibly escape him.

“Bind up the testimony and seal up the law,”. Return to the Scriptures. Amongst those who are genuinely following God, bind up the testimony of God. Bind up
the law in the disciples. Let them have their confidence there where it should properly be.

Trusting what is futile and false. Verses 19 and following: “When men tell you to consult and mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? The sad reality is that when people forsake genuine revelation, many do not become more secular, instead, many become superstitious, even occult-oriented.

Is it any surprise in our culture that astrology is on the rise along with tarot cards and gurus, and tea leaves, the demonic, nature religion, séances, these voices from the dead that chirp and mutter.

You see, people want to control the future, to domesticate it, to handle it, to have an inside track about it, to know it, to find security in getting some sort of inside track about what is coming down the pike.

When all human attempts at order and security and justice have failed, God himself will intervene the prophet says. This is not because the people have found the magic key to power. It is just because God is that kind of God, and he comes in and he finally does disclose himself and rescues his people.

When these words were being written, a little farther on we are told that it’s going to get a lot worse because Assyria, the superpower to the North, is going to come in and the first place that he tackles is Galilee. He strips out all of the leaders and all of the artisans and all of the politicos and all of the intelligentsia and transports them, and then brings in another crop from somewhere else, and they intermarry.

In these verses already, we find God’s promise of transformation, and then in the two verses we quote at Christmas (verses 6 and 7), God’s means of transformation. A child is born.

He didn’t suddenly descend in a sheet of brilliant light, riding on a charger, one of the heavenly “Incredibles” going to solve it all by superior power. He comes as a child. A baby. Vulnerable. You see, this is setting us up for a picture of a servant king who is wounded for our transgressions and is bruised for our iniquities. That’s why he comes.

He’s a human being and here’s the paradox of how God works.

God’s timing is on a far larger scale than ours. 735, the Assyrians are pressing in on the North. The exile in the South finally takes place about 587 BC, and then the prophecies that predict the people beginning to come back, about 535 they’re coming back. The temple built about 520 thereabouts. The wall is not built until about 484, and even then the people are under oppressive regimes, one after another until finally the mighty powers of Assyria are still striking out and trying to paganize the people until the great Maccabean revolt of the second century.

Seven centuries go by between this prophecy and the arrival of Jesus. So when the people are told to trust God, they’re not simply being told, “Trust God and your life will be fine. Trust God and you will have happy children. Trust God and everything will be well with you.”

No, they are being Told, just as He tell us:

Trust God across this sweeping pattern of God’s purposes for his people. Now this does not mean that we can’t trust Him with every day life.

God wants people to be in solidarity with his own purposes across the centuries until the coming of Christ and to believe that God is in control and will bring all of his own promises to pass one after another.

The part I play in that may be in a time of suffering. It may be in a time of revival, or it may be in a time of prosperity. It may be in a time of poverty, but still God is trustable to bring about all of his purposes not only for my life, but for his people and for the triumph of his kingdom at the end and for all eternity.

Christ came as predicted, seven-and-a-half centuries later, but the consummation of these predicted blessings is only here in measure. We await his coming again. He has not yet made all wars cease.This is still a savage world, and God works in mysterious ways even behind these sorts of scenes, bringing about his own purposes, calling his own people.

Ultimately our hope is in Christ’s coming again.

He came as predicted, but the consummation is not yet. We too, like those in Isaiah’s day are expected to trust God, to take him at his Word. Not to fear what our culture fears. Not find false security in whispered voices of the occult or
complex conspiracy theories, but to remember that God is in control and Jesus is coming back.

This does not invite passivity, but genuine God centeredness. Genuine trust in God. Genuine fearlessness before the changing historical tides. As we look back and contemplate how those generations leading up to Christ were exhorted to wait for him, to look forward to him, to trust the God who would send him,

This season has simultaneously been a time to remind us of how people waited for his first coming and as a call to invite Christians to wait for his second coming. So we sing, “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”