The Son Was Sent to Save Us

Christmas is one of my favorite times because I love the music that comes out at Christmas. We get to sing some of the great hymns. Hark the herald angels sing. Joy to the world. Many that we've been singing today. But I also dislike a lot of Christmas music. Some of the worst music seems to come on the radio during the Christmas season. The 12 Days of Christmas, for instance. Why does anyone like this song? I'm not talking about the 12 Redneck Days of Christmas. It's a whole other issue. Just the original 12 Days of Christmas. It's a lot of birds. A partridge in a pear tree. Turtle doves. There's too many birds. And there's milking maids and ladies dancing. Is this a complaint list of bad Christmas gifts over the days? I'm not quite sure how to really read this. Another one. The Drummer Boy. I just don't like the song. I'm sorry if that offends someone. It's confusing, especially when my daughter's nativity set comes with a drummer boy with it. It's very confusing. Of course, there's a blue Christmas, but well, sung by Elvis, that's okay. Everyone else should leave that alone. Really, one of the catchy Christmas songs that is more recent is Happy Christmas, written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Don't sing it. It won't get out of your head. Trust me. The song was written in response to the Vietnam War. It was a protest song. It was promoting peace during the Christmas season, which is appropriate at some level. One of the lines in it is, the world is so wrong. Lennon was very upset with all the war going on in the world. He was protesting against it with this song. I agree with him completely. The world is so wrong, and it's not just the Vietnam War. It's actually a greater war going on. Lenin's problem is that he thought he was not the problem, that he was a solution to the problem. Really, we're all the problem because we are all at war with God. We have been fighting against His righteousness, His right rule, His lordship, His right as the creator and the king of this world all of our lives. The world is so wrong and we are what is wrong with it. It's God who has come to bring peace. That's what we celebrate this morning. That's what we celebrate every Sunday as we think about the peace Christ brought in the resurrection. This particular Sunday, we're going to meditate upon the beginning of His efforts, of His accomplishing peace. The Father has sent His Son to save us. It's a simple message, but it's, as Sean pointed out last night, for all who are with us for our Christmas Eve service, it's deep. It's beyond our mind's ability to comprehend. Our message this morning is this. The Son has been sent to save us and give us a new identity. We'll be looking at Galatians 4. And I'll explain why I have chosen Galatians 4. We read Matthew, the account of the birth in Matthew. I want to focus on Galatians 4 because it really gives us a number of ways of meditating upon the birth of Christ. I'll begin in verse 1, but our main focus is going to be in verses 3-5. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave. Though he is the owner of everything, but he is under the guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. Though in the fullness of time had come, God sent forth a son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you were sons, God has sent the spirit of a son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. Now the context of this passage, not just, I'm focused on 3 and 5, but verses 6 and 7 are one of the greatest promises we have in Scripture. Beyond that, Galatians 3 is important for context, but we really want to focus on verse 3 and 4 and 5 because it helps us think about what took place on the morning when God took on flesh. Verses 3 through 5 can be stated like this. Verse 3 states why Christ came. Verse 4 describes His coming or His sending rather. And verse 5 states the purpose for His coming. Verse 4 really is going to be the focus because it gives us four ways of thinking about the coming. It was at the right time. God's wise time. He was born of a woman. He was sent by the Father. He was born under the law. Let's look first at verse 3. Why Jesus had to come. Our first point is why Jesus had to come. It's because we were enslaved. Look again at verse 3. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. Now, Paul here is saying we were children as a reference to the life before faith, the life before acknowledging and recognizing Christ as the Savior. the life before salvation. Now, a key phrase to define here is, what does it mean to be enslaved to the elementary principles? What are the elementary principles? Well, we can look to Colossians 2.20 for some help here. Here, as I read, it's fairly clear. If with Christ you died to the elementary, elemental spirits of the world, very similar reference, Why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations such as, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they were used. According to human precepts and teachings, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgences of the flesh. I believe Paul is referring to the same thing with the elemental spirits and the elementary principles here in Colossians 2 and in Galatians 4. There are rules and regulations. There are self-imposed means by which we gain a right standing with God. There are things that we believe are good. There are things that we try to do to promote our righteousness. There are basic moral standards. Now, the Jews had a law which was revealed to them by God and that was their moral standard, but every human being has a conscience that God has written a law on their hearts. As Romans 2 says, for when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Well, their conscience also bears witness. We all have a moral code, a moral DNA. We are all trying to promote a certain kind of righteousness, and that means we're all going to be held accountable. We all know there's a right and a wrong. We all know that there are moral standards. And whatever our standards of righteousness are, we all fail them. Now we can all look out and say, I can see other people failing my moral standards. The issue there is somebody else is saying you are failing their moral standards. The real challenge is can you look and see that you yourself fail your own moral standards? See, we've all sinned against God. That's the most important thing we need to see today. The law that was revealed, which is good, the law revealed on Sinai, it's God's law. It all holds us accountable. We all will be held accountable according to God's standards, and we have all fallen short. See, we are all rebelling. We're all in that battle. The world is so wrong. Until we realize the sinfulness that's in our hearts, until we realize the restlessness and the rebellion that we bring into this world, we're not going to ever celebrate Christmas. We're never going to celebrate the resurrection either. It's going to be a sentimental time. It's not until we realize that there's something really wrong with us that we celebrate that God came down to save us. We have to recognize that we're rebels. We have to recognize that we need a deliverer. See, if we continue with our own moral code, if we continue with our own moral standards, There's only two ways you're going to go. One, you're going to be overwhelmed with guilt, or two, you'll be overwhelmed with self-righteousness. If you continue to try to build up your own stature of righteousness with either the law of God or your own moral code, there's either going to be overwhelming guilt or judgment and self-righteousness. If you're a Christian, Guilt guides you away from God and destroys the confidence that Christ has claimed for you. As you are trying to build up your own righteousness with your own code, if you're overwhelmed with guilt that you never accomplished it, that's a good thing. It should lead you to the cross. It should lead you to Christ. It should lead you to the resurrection. If you find your guilt leading you away from God, it's a guilt based upon the law, not a guilt given to you by God's grace. Stop striving for righteousness. Strive for the joy and the peace that you can have in Christ. I fear the greater danger is self-righteousness. When we have our own law, we like to figure out who's worse at that law than us. That makes us feel better. There's always somebody who's more disobedient. There's always somebody who you can point at and say, at least I'm not like that person. It's absolute misguided confidence. It's false confidence. If we look to the law and all we do is try to check off and say, look how much I've done and look how much better I am to other people, you're never going to truly embrace the peace and the joy that Christ can bring. We must realize we fail. We must realize that God's good law is meant to point us to our sinfulness, which then takes us to the cross. Let's go to the birth first. Verse four. Really, this is a fantastic verse to meditate upon on Christmas. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born of the law. There's four descriptions here. Really, it reads like a confession of faith. There's four different attributes. There are four different descriptions we want to look at here. First, when He came. Secondly, the Father sent Him. Thirdly, He was born of a woman. And then we will look at He was born under the law. And all this has to be under the backdrop of He came because we are sinners. When He came. He came in the fullness of time. Now, Scripture is a redemptive history of God's work. We can go back and, well, we just finished Genesis. We looked and we saw how Genesis 3.15 drove the book of Genesis. In the midst of the curse, after God had made everything good, God had made everything perfect, we sinned against Him. We disobeyed Him. And that brought about the curse that God said it was going to bring about. Death. Disunity, disharmony. In the midst of all those curses, God made a promise. He told the woman that you shall have a child and that child will reverse the curse. That child will put to death your greatest enemies, which are sin and death. Your child will be a blessing to all the world. See, that child wasn't the first child born to her. That child was Jesus Christ. That promise in Genesis 3.15 was pointing us even then to Christ. But Genesis continues to trace the lineage of that promise. Because everything hinged upon that child that was going to be born. The one that was going to put things back in proper order. First, Abraham, you will have a child. And we see God's faithfulness. We see God's patience with His people. Abraham continued to fail and continued to fail and God continued to be faithful. Until he blessed him with Isaac. And then we saw him bless Isaac with two sons. And he chose Israel, Jacob. And then we saw at the very end that God said the child will come through Judah. God is making a beeline through all the different nations, all the different children born. He's continuing to trace who will this child be until we get to David. And to David he made a promise, I will be like a father to him, and he will be like a son to me. And we see that he's going to come from David's line, and so every child born to David, there's hope. Every time a child was born in that royal line, there was hope, but then there was failure. A king would be born, and he would fail. A king would be born, and he would fail. Until finally, the most unsuspecting birth took place. And it was Jesus. God had been designing all of history. God had been leading all of history up to the point of the birth of Christ. Now, why was this the perfect time? Why was 2,000 years ago the perfect time for Christ to be born? Some possible reasons are that the East and West had been unified by Alexander the Great. He had conquered the entire Eastern world from the West and he had unified them. that brought about a highway system, that brought about mass communication for that day, at least, the message could go out. You also had the Pax Romana. Now, it's kind of funny, the Romans said there was peace. They had conquered everybody. There at least wasn't little battles going on all over the world anymore. The Roman government had beaten their enemies into submission, so there was a certain amount of peace. I'm not sure if these are why. It was the perfect time. It has much more to do with God's perfect wisdom in making His promises and fulfilling them according to His way. Now some people ask, wouldn't a day be better? Because we could film Jesus. We could put Him in HD and stick Him on YouTube and the whole world could see the miracles. And everyone would believe. I don't think that would solve the problem. See, the problem isn't what we can see. Our problem isn't a lack of knowledge. God has revealed His entire Word to us. God has given us everything we need to believe. Seeing is not going to be believing. God has given us His promises, a sure Word, a sure foundation. All we need is already revealed. The problem isn't what we don't see. The problem is our hearts. We could see Jesus do miracles. Many people saw Jesus do miracles and they didn't believe. It's not a matter of what we could see. It's a matter of how wicked and deceptive our hearts are. How they are turned against God. Now all we can say is that it was in God's perfect wisdom. He gave us all the word we needed to know how to expect the Messiah. And then He gave us the New Testament teaching us about Him. As we think of the application from this, God's ways are not our ways. We can learn to wait on the Lord. He does everything. He ordains every moment. He instructs all of history according to His righteousness and according to His wisdom. We must wait expectantly on the Lord to heal us of our physical problems, and to ultimately redeem us and glorify us. Let's look at this next phrase, and really it's the, well, I have favorites. This is my favorite phrase of the entire passage. The Father sent His Son. But God, if you take that out, the section there, God sent forth His Son. This may be the most clearest, precise, and succinct summary of the Gospel. God sent His Son, the Father sent His Son. This is the most important confession we have as Christians because it says so much. First, it's the foundation of the Trinity. That is a distinctive doctrine of Christianity. That one God consists of at least Father and Son from this passage. We look down to verse 7 and it's the Spirit as well, or rather verse 6 is the Spirit as well. We have the Trinity from this passage. It's a very distinct marker that the Father sent His Son. But really the second distinction is what is so fascinating is that Christianity is distinct in that God comes to us. The Father sent His Son down to us. See, Christianity is distinct because it's not about you rising yourself up to God. Christianity isn't about us making ourselves better and ascending up. It's about God seeing that we are helpless and hopeless and coming down. God initiates salvation. We don't work ourselves into it. We don't make ourselves better. We don't rise up to God. No. God descends and comes down to us. Let this be an encouragement to you. If you're striving to think, if only I could be a little better, I would become a Christian. If only I could act and look like somebody else that I see in the church. If only I had my life put together as that person, then I could become a Christian. You've got it all wrong, friend. It's not about how good you are. It's actually about how sinful you are and how good God is. He comes to save you. You do not have to make yourself. You cannot make yourself any better. Stop trying to fix yourself and let Him do the work. We must recognize that the One who came down, He wasn't just a great man. He was God Himself. He's not just a prophet. He is God Himself who spoke to us. He is the Son of the Father. He created us. He should be coming down to judge us. He should be coming down to say, you have broken every law. You've broken every promise. But He comes to show grace. He comes to show love. He comes to proclaim to us a good and faithful Word. Christian, do you ever question God's love for you? Do you ever question God's love for you? Whenever you start wondering, does God love me? Look to this proclamation. The Father sent His Son for you. That's how much He loves you. Jesus told it, there's no greater love than this and a friend will lay down his life for you. That's great love that someone would give you their life. That's what Jesus, the son, taught. But here, let's look at it from the father's perspective. There's no greater love than this, that the father would send his son to die for you. The father sent his only begotten beloved son into the hands of murderers, into our murderous hands. Because He looked at us and He saw that there was nothing but murder in our hearts, murder in our lips, murder in our hands, and we would be judged for that. And still the Father said, I will send My Son, because only if He dies by their hands can He forgive them. The Father loves you. And the Father's love is most seen in the Son. He has sent His own Son to die for us. Non-Christian, if you want to know about the love of God, look to the Son. The Son's death on the cross was for sinners. All the sinners. Let's now look to our third confession with Paul. The Son is sent by being born of a woman. There in verse 4, born of a woman. Very simple phrase. It doesn't say born of a virgin, surprisingly. Paul is not opposed to the virgin birth. The virgin birth is an extremely important part of our confession. But the virgin birth actually says more about Jesus' deity than his humanity. The virgin birth points to the fact that it was God who brought about the conception. Here Paul is simply making sure that you know that he is fully human. His full deity is clear from the scent from the Father. His humanity is clear from being born of a woman. He's perfectly human. A couple things to observe here. First, man was made to be incarnated. We are made in the image of God. God knew what was going to happen. God knew how we were going to rebel and go astray. God had already pre-designed us to be incarnated. Secondly, Jesus was without sin. This is extremely important. He became like us in every way except for sin. How is it that Jesus could get a full humanity from Mary but not get the sin nature? Well, I think that's actually revealed to us in Luke 1 verse 35. And the angel answered her, speaking of Mary. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. The word there is that the Spirit is hovering within her womb. The Spirit is there bringing the human nature upon the Son of God. The Spirit is there making a baby. fully human that the Son of God is going to incarnate. And the Spirit is also there being a filter, keeping the sin from the Son. This is a great paradox and a great mystery. That's all we can say about what actually took place in the womb. But this is what we can confess. This is the great paradox and the great mystery of the Incarnation. The God who is Spirit added upon Himself flesh. The Eternal One adds to Himself time. The One who is perfect adds to Himself a nature that is dependent. The Omnipotent One adds to Himself a nature that is limited. The Infinite adds to Himself a nature that is finite. The Holy One comes to walk among the corruptible. The Creator adds to Himself our created nature all while upholding and sustaining the created universe. Those are fantastic paradoxes to meditate upon. God adding to Himself a nature less than His while never ceasing to be God. One of the great fathers, Athanasius, said this, His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father above. At one and the same time, this is the wonder. As man, He was a human life. And as Word, He was sustaining the life of the universe. And as Son, He was constant. He was in constant union with the Father. What an amazing miracle that takes place on that Christmas morning. He has life as a human in that body. He has life as the Word of God sustaining all of life outside of Him. And He is in constant union with the Father. He was born of a woman. It's a very simple confession. It's very clear and concise. I fear that we add so much sentimental aspects to this. We make replicas of the baby's birth scene. We cannot get away from the great humbleness and the great descending that took place. See, Jesus is God. He is worthy of all glory and all honor and all praise. He removed Himself from being praised and sung to by angels and put himself in a position where he's being stared at by sheep. He'll eventually be yelled at by men. He'll eventually put himself in a place where he'll hear a declaration of judgment from sinful men. He'll put himself in a position to hear false accusations and condemnation of men. He deserves to be sung to by angels. But he humbled himself for us to be condemned by men. He went from declaring divine fiat. He went from declaring something out of nothing with a very proclamation of His Word, to having to cry for his mother's milk because he could not care for himself as a human. He went from the beauty of heaven, the throne of His perfect glory, the beauty of the kingdom and all the trappings of the glory, to a stable. with a stench of urine and dung and filth. He humbled himself. Why did he remove himself from such glory and such honor and such majesty to such filth and to be submitting to the words of condemnation and the false accusations? It's because he loves those who hate him. He loves those who hate Him. That's why Jesus came down. He exchanged His glory for humanity so that He might pour out His grace and His love upon us. He exchanged His glory for our humanity so that He could exchange our filthy rags for righteousness. See, He exchanges a lot for less so that we get the wrath of God removed from us. and we receive mercy. Again, Athanasius says this, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. Death is defeated for us and we receive the promise of a glorified life. Finally, Born under the law. He is born under the law. There's really two ways we can think about the fact that Christ was born under the law. First, to obey it. God spoke the law and it must be obeyed. It is God's good law. And when Jesus came, he did what we could not do and what we have not done. He kept it. He obeyed it. He fulfilled it as a human. He alone is righteous because He alone has kept every word of the law. Secondly, He is born of the law because He has suffered every consequence of disobeying it. He has suffered every consequence of disobeying it. As a human, He died as a sinner. As a human, He died on the cross. as if He had disobeyed every part. More than that, He died with the wrath of God being poured out upon Him that is worthy of all sinners. Every sin, every bit of wrath for every sin was poured out upon Christ on the cross. He was born into the law so that He could be held accountable and culpable for all of our sins. This is the doctrine of justification. See, He was counted as if unrighteous, so that we can be counted as righteous. He died as if He had sinned all of our sins, so that when we believe in Him, we receive His righteousness. So that when God looks upon us, He no longer sees our sin. He can be both just and the justifier. He's punished our sin on the cross, and He can declare to us. You're forgiven. You're forgiven. He is under the law because He's obeyed it perfectly. And He suffered for all of us who dissipate it completely. Finally, let's look at verse 3. Verse 5, rather. Our third point. Verse 5 gives us a purpose. What was the purpose of His coming? To redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons." See, it's sweet enough that we can just hear that word, you're forgiven. To be put in a proper relationship with God again, as a creature, as a man or a woman, made in the image of God, to just hear the words, your sins are no longer counted against you. We could walk away smiling and happy. But the promises get better. Because you're not just declared forgiven in Christ, you get a new identity that was actually better than that of Adam. You're not just restored to being a man in right relationship or a woman in right relationship, you actually get a new identity. You become an adopted child of the Father. Jesus, the one true Son of God, He shares His inheritance with all who believe in Him. He doesn't just die for their sins. He doesn't just declare them forgiven, which is great. He goes above and beyond and He gives the gift of His inheritance. Eternal life. A life that's incorruptible. An opportunity to speak to God personally as Father. See, if you're a believer in Christ, you're not just forgiven. You are drawn close to God now. You get to be in His personal presence. You get to experience the love of Him as a Father. You're drawn close to Him. You're drawn near to Him. You're protected by Him. You're cared for and watched for by the Father as if His own child. It's one of the great exchanges again. The Father sends His Son to die for us so that He can draw us back in to be His sons and daughters. It's amazing that we think about all that took place in that morning, in that stable. There's great sentimental value because there's a baby there. We have to remember that that baby was God. That baby was coming To wage war. To wage war for us. To wage war against our sin. To wage war against death. To begin redemption. To give us a renewed life. And life everlasting. We must realize that the battle continues. The battle continues today, and we have the Holy Spirit to help us as we see in verse six and seven, the Spirit continues to come into our hearts and allow us to cry out, Abba, Father. We must realize that we need to continue to pursue Christ and resist the temptation to make up our own law and have our own self-righteousness. We resist the temptation to be lazy. And just hear the promises and enjoy them and not go out and proclaim them. Friends, this morning we rejoice because God was born. He was born to die for us. Because He loved us. And now we rejoice because He's risen and He gives us the sure hope that we need. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. How glorious a mystery, God. Help us to peer deeper into that great paradox of how You, our Creator, took upon Yourself creation. Help us to look deeper into the love that You revealed to us in becoming like us, so that You could die for us. Help us to enjoy this season, because it helps us to reflect upon Your humble descent. Help it give us greater assurance in that You will lead us in Your ascension when You come back into the Holy of Holies, into God's own presence, to feast with the Father. We praise You, our great God, for the love You have for us even though we have hated You. Help us Help us to trust in Your Word. And help us to love You because You have loved us. In Your holy name we pray, Amen.