Sermon
God's Greatest Gift - Jesus Christ
September 9-10, 2000
Pastor Donald Sheley

Let's take our Bibles this morning, and I'll preach a short one, okay? (Congregation chuckles) If that's possible. For all of our guests, thank you for coming, and for a number of months we have been in our studies in the Gospel of John. And after months we've arrived at what is considered by some of the greatest text in the Bible, John 3:16. If you'd like to use the pew Bible, it's page 715, and in your own Bible it's John 3:16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Now I think we've spent about six Sundays already in this verse because some have said that John 3:16 possibly has all the theology of the Bible in it in one verse. It's a massive amount of theology in one short verse.

Let's take our notes, and we'll hurry along. I'll watch my clock very closely. We begin our notes today by suggesting that it is a distinctively Christian idea that God's love is wide enough to embrace all mankind. You say, why did to start there Pastor? Well, there are a lot of people who don't believe that. In fact, when Jesus was here in the Jewish leaders of His day thought that only Israel was loved by God, and everybody else was fuel for the fires of hell, and they let you know that. So the Gentiles were not loved and as far as the religious people of Christ's day, they were the only loved people in the world. I came across someone this week, they gave me a phone call and their information was they wanted me to meet with them because only people who belong to their church are going to go to heaven, and I'm not going to go so they're concerned about me. God loves them but somehow He doesn't love me, and you say, do people really think that? Yes.

My next sentence. His love is not confined to any national group or spiritual elite. It is a love which proceeds from the fact that He is love. It is His nature to love. He loves men and women because He is the kind of God that He is. God so loved the world. Now John tells us that His love is shown in the gift of His Son. And of this gift, the Son is God's gift to the world, and moreover, it is THE gift. There is no divine gives apart from or outside the one-born Son. Now John uses the word 'gave' in two senses. First of all, God gave His Son by sending Him into the world. Secondly, that God gave us His Son by sending Him to the cross to die for us. Now notice that the cross is not said to show is the love of the Son, but that of the Father. The atonement proceeds from the loving heart of God. It is not something wrung from Him. And the Greek construction puts some stress on the actuality of the gift. It is not, God so loved so as to give, it's, God so loved that He gave. There's a difference. His love is not a vaguely sentimental feeling, but a love that costs. God gave what was most dear to Him, His Son. And our Scripture verse is 1 John 4:9-10, In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.

Now before we turn the page there are probably a couple of words that you might want to write down the definition. You notice they changed the format. You can write some notes now today, so there are two words in that verse that you must understand. First of all, begotten, and secondly, propitiation. What does the word begotten mean? Well in the original Greek it simply means unique or only. That's all. It doesn't have any other metaphysical application. It just has that designation that it's unique and that it's only. It's used of the little child who's being carried dead in a coffin, and his mother is the widow of Nain. Do you remember the story? and Jesus comes along and stops the funeral procession and the boy comes to life. The Bible refers to that little lad as her only, and in the original it's her begotten son. He was unique in that he was her only offspring. Now if you go to Hebrews Chapter 11:17, of Isaac it says that he's the only begotten son of Abraham to. We'll just a minute. Abraham had many children, many sons. Why was Isaac named the begotten son? Because he was unique. You remember he came to that family when they were late in life beyond child bearing age, and so his uniqueness, his birth, made him the begotten son. He was unique in that he came as the child of promise, and so the Bible calls him the begotten son. He's unique. So we understand now what begotten means, but what does propitiation mean?

Paul uses it in his letters and so the next time we run across it you'll understand because here's the definition. You might want to write it down. Propitiation - it's a sacrifice that turns aside the wrath of God and thereby makes God favorable toward us. I'll say again. It's a sacrifice that turns aside the wrath of God and thereby makes God favorable toward us. Jesus Christ was the propitiation because He was the sacrifice that died for our sins that had separated us from God, and in that He was the propitious sacrifice, He appeased the wrath of God against sin, now God is favorable towards us because He took care of the issue of the wrath. He's the propitiation. Got it? Now let's go on to page two. In our previous lessons, we have discussed in detail the God of love and the love of God. Last Sunday we considered the meaning of the word 'world' and concluded that it referred to all mankind, fallen and totally depraved with no capacity to respond or appreciate spiritual things. Now remember, I write these notes along as I study and after I print them I sometimes like to go back and had a few sentences, because I'm saying man is so depraved that he has no capacity nor ability to respond to spiritual things. And yet, you and I, many of us have come from evangelical backgrounds and somehow we were taught this whole issue of free will. When I was a little boy I grew up and they talked about free will, and so I conceived the definition that free will gave me the volition, or the ability, should I choose to choose for God or choose against Him. I had that ability, but I was wrong. We all have free will, but free will is restricted by the nature from which it operates. In other words, our will, the will of a sinner, the Bible says that he's at war against God. His mind is at enmity against God. Paul tells us in Romans that the god of this world has blinded his eyes and he doesn't understand the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Now if the mind and the will is distorted and depraved because of the fall so that my very nature is evil, though only way I'll be able to use my will is to make evil choices. God chooses us.

The Bible says in John 16:15, you did not choose Me, but I chose you. Because in our fallenness, and our depravity, we lost the capacity to make choices for God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, for the natural man understandeth not the things of the spirit because they are spiritually understood. It takes the Holy Spirit. You're here today as a Christian because in the infinite grace and mercy of God He drew you by the work of His Holy Spirit, and that should cause our hearts to rejoice. On with our notes. Today, let's consider the next phrase of our text, that is, He gave His only begotten Son. So now we're face to face with the person of Jesus Christ, and in the study of the Scriptures it's called Christology, or the study of Christ. And within this study - His incarnation, His pre-existence, His humiliation, and His exaltation - and remember, not only does the word 'gave' suggest the sending into this sinful world, but it also includes the thought of His death upon the cross. So here's my logic as I work this lesson through today, if God's Son is His gift to us then it's imperative that I know as much about His Son as I possibly can to appreciate the wonder, and the glory, and the splendor of His gift to me. Amen?

So let's get acquainted for the next few moments to the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to Him pray in John 17, He says, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You gave Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. In His prayer Jesus is saying, Father, I'm going to finish my task on the cross. When that task is finished, I look forward - the book of Hebrews says, who what for the joy that was set before him endured that cross. What was that joy that was before him? The knowledge that when that task was finished, He would be back in the presence of heaven and enjoy the glory that He had before He came to this world. So when we get acquainted with the Son, we accept the fact that He pre-existed before He ever arrived at Bethlehem.

Now Paul, in his writing, this is the way he expresses that preexistence. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. In this passage, two words are most carefully chosen to show the unchangeable Godhead of Jesus Christ. The word which the Authorized Version translates 'being' is the Greek verb which is not the common Greek word for being. It describes that which a man is in his very essence, and which cannot be changed. It describes that part of a man which in any circumstance remains the same, and so Paul begins by saying that Jesus Christ was essentially and unalterably God. Page 3. He goes on to say that Jesus was in the form of God. Now there are two Greek words for form, which are morphe and schema. They must both the translated form because there's no other English equivalent, but they do not mean the same thing. We've learned in our study of the Scriptures that the New Testament text is in Greek, and we as English people in our speaking we have normally a vocabulary of 30,000 words. We have 30,000 words to express ourselves, but in the Greek, if you're well-educated, you're going to have a vocabulary that's going to exceed 200,000 words. And the reason being is because Greek is such a precise language. So what I'm saying here, there are two words morphe and schema, but we don't have any word in our English language to even give - so we use one word "form".

Now let's go on. Morphe is the essential form which never alters, and schema is the outward form which changes from time to time, and from circumstance to circumstance. For instance, the morphe of any human being is humanity. I was born a human being, I live a human being, and I will be a human being. That will never change. That's my morphe. I'm a human being. Secondly though, the schema is continually changing. I started as a baby, a child, a boy, a youth, a man of middle-aged, an old man - always having the morphe of humanity, but the outward schema changes all the time. Amen? Look in the mirror folks. (Congregation laughs) The old schema is always changing, but the form is still there. I'm a human being. I may feel like 20 inside, but I'm 70 years old on the outside. Now the morphe never alters but the schema continually does, so the word Paul uses for Jesus being in the form of God is morphe. Notice the preciseness, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the word that Paul uses. That is to say His unchangeable being is divine, and however His outward schema might alter, He remained in essence divine.

Dropping down a few lines, so to answer our question, what was the glory which Christ had with the Father before the world began? We can say that He was God in all of His Majesty, glory and eternal His splendor. Now here's the way the book of Hebrews introduces us to this Son that God so loved us that He gave. Now I'm reading from the Amplified text, and again, because of so many guests, the Amplified Bible is the Bible that takes the equivalent in the Greek and stretches out the meaning so you understand the full meaning of it, because we don't have words in the English to describe them. And I might suggest that when you're at a Bible bookstore pickup an Amplified Bible. Lay it alongside your Bible so when you're reading and you have a question you can slip over and see what it actually says in the Greek meaning. So let's read it, almost from the original. In many separate revelations [each of which set forth a portion of the Truth] and in different ways God spoke of old to [our] forefathers in and by the prophets. [But] in the last of these days, He has spoken to us in [the person of a] Son, Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time [He made, produced, built, operated, arranged them in order]. He's in full charge. He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God's] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of our sins and the riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high.

Page four. Thus, the only begotten Son that God gave was none other than God in human form. It's absolutely amazing. The other day we sang a hymn, now I made an error on my notes, it wasn't John Wesley it was Charles Wesley. I was informed that I had made a mistake on my notes in one of the earlier services. So Charles Wesley wrote that great hymn, And can it be, and the other day we were singing it here in church, and that last phrase just hit me. Look at what it says. And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain? For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me? Isn't that something? God so loved us that He came to this earth, took upon human form, and He died for us. Let's go on. The Christ of glory came to this earth and took upon Himself human form. That is known as His incarnation. Although the word does not explicitly occur in Scripture, the church has used term incarnation to refer to the fact that Jesus was God in human flesh. So when someone says, what does the incarnation mean? You can simply explain it's the act whereby God the Son comes to this earth and takes upon human form. God come from eternity into time and taking upon the form of man, that's the incarnation.

Now look at how Paul expresses it, back to that Philippian passage, who, speaking of Christ, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness and the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained. But stripped Himself [of all privileges and rightful dignity], so as to assure the guise of a servant (a slave), in that He became like men and was born a human being. Now that's Paul's description of Jesus coming to this earth taking on the form of a human being. Now I'm going to have to quit because I only have three minutes. We just got started, but here is where it's the heart of Christology because right here were we are now is where the heretics take over, and if we don't know the Bible we can easily be led astray.

In the gospel service last evening at the close, I had this lovely family sitting over here on the right side with three children. And the man came up to me after the service and he said, you know Pastor I want to thank you for being so explicit in your teachings concerning the person of Christ. He says, in our younger years we were in a church and we didn't understand what the Bible says about Christ, and he said we were led off the into the teachings of Jehovah witness, which literally mutilate the teachings of the Bible when it comes to the person of Christ. And he said, we didn't understand their teaching until we got deeply involved, and he said then we recognized we were in a church that didn't believe what the Bible teaches about Christ. He said, we've just come out of it, and he said, thanks for being so honest because he said most Christians don't have that understanding. So the question I have, and you'll have to read it when you go home tonight, this afternoon, is here's - my mind things this way - if it says that He emptied (because that's what it says in the King James) He emptied Himself. So I said all right, if He emptied Himself, what did He emptied Himself from? Did He become less than God when He became man? Did He give away any of His attributes in order to take on His manhood?

Now we're right at the crux of Christology because here's where the heretics takeover. And there is a teaching, it's called the Kenosis theory, and that's what I was taught when I was in Bible school. I was taught a lie, and I had to work this out just by studying the Scripture. But the Kenosis theory - kenosis is the Greek word for empty, so they call it the Kenosis theory. And these people who started teaching this about 200 years ago say that when Christ became man He eliminated some of His deity. My mind kept thinking, if He's less than deity to become man then He didn't accomplish everything deity needed to accomplish at the cross. Right? Go with me to page 5, and with this I'll close. I'm down to two-thirds of the end of the page. It says, in the New Testament there are hundreds of explicit verses that call Jesus God and Lord and use a number of other titles of deity to refer to Him, and in many passages that attribute actions and words to Him that could only be true of God himself. It affirms again and again the full absolute deity of Jesus Christ. Listen to Paul. Now the church 2000 years ago had people who wanted to make Jesus less than He was and so Paul writes this. He says, in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Now you can't get any clearer than that. Paul is saying in Jesus Christ all the fullness of God remained the same. Look at his next verse, and in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. So what he's saying is when Jesus Christ, the pre-incarnate Son of God, came from heaven to earth He never gave up one iota of His deity, but He took on totally manhood. Now this is the mystery of the incarnation.

Let me show you. When you go through the Scriptures and you begin to work them out, you see this beautifully in the Gospels. You see His human side and you see His deity side-by-side. He comes to the grave and Lazarus His friend is dead and He sees everybody crying, and He sits down and cries too. Can you see deity crying at a tomb? That was His humanity, but after a few moments He walks up to that old sepulcher and says, Lazarus! It says He said it loudly. (Congregation laughs) Come forth, and He named Lazarus because if He just said come forth, he'd have emptied the graveyard. They would have all come forth. You see what you have is His humanness, He weeps. His deity, He robs the grave from its victim. Amazing. He's asleep. The crowds have beat Him up. I mean, He's dead tired. He's got His head on a pillow. He's sleeping in a boat, and the disciples say, Jesus, wake up we're going to perish. That's the dumbest thing in the. Can you imagine a ship going down with Jesus in it when He can walk on the water? (Congregation laughs) But He's tired, His humanness, He must rest. He stands up and says, peace, be still, and the waves quiet. That's the marvel of the Son that He sent to save us. Perfect God - perfect man. Ah what a wonderful Savior He sent.

Father, we love You today. Thank you for identifying with us in our humanness, dying for us as our substitute. Jesus we bow our heads and our hearts and we reverence You. We adore You. We love You for being our Savior. And everybody said, amen. God bless you.