Christmas-The Right Person - Part B

When you see Jesus healing a blind man, you are seeing a compassionate God. When you see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, you're seeing a brokenhearted God. When you see Jesus teaching a crowd, you're seeing a concerned God, concerned that people know truth. When you see Jesus dying on a cross, you are seeing a determined God, determined to do something about the sin that has plagued this world.

For parents, letting go of a child is one of the hardest things they could ever do, and yet it's something God Himself did for us. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares why it was so important for God to send His only Son and reveals to you some encouraging truths about God. But first, we want to tell you about a special opportunity you have to take your knowledge of the Bible to a deeper level. Personal and small group Bible study is a great way to learn about God and His Word.

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Now, we're in Galatians chapter 4 as we dive into our study with Skip Heitzig. If you've ever talked to a missionary or if you've ever been on the mission field, you know what culture shock is. It's the shock of going into a culture that is so totally different than your own.

I experienced that when I lived in the Middle East for a period of time, and it wasn't like I was living in the slums of India, but it was pretty primitive. And I mean, it's like, I don't have air conditioning. I don't have a refrigerator.

I don't have a car. And I remember the stress, the cultural stress I felt. And then when I came back to America, what we call reverse culture stress set in.

I looked at my refrigerator and I went, wow, that baby's mine, even though I was only renting. I thought that was pretty cool. Okay, now, just, and you can only imagine it, leaving heaven, the glories of the Father, and coming to earth, talk about the ultimate culture shock. He was sent. The right one was sent by God. There's a great old story that comes to us from Persia, from ancient Iran, that is often used to illustrate, there was a king, a Shah, who was fond of putting on peasant clothes, workman's clothes, and going among his people and talking to them and just sort of listening to what they were like and what they needed. He loved to do that. On one occasion, he went to the lowest worker in his palace, the one who tended the furnace down in the basement. And with the clothes of an ordinary peasant, he sat with this man, had a relationship with him over time, ate food together, shared stories and background. But all the while, the king didn't reveal who he was. The peasant thought he was just another peasant, another worker come to tend the fires.

One day, the king revealed himself as his king, the Shah. And then he said to this newfound friend, this peasant worker down in the basement, now that you realize who I am, you realize what I can do for you. I can make you rich. I can make you famous.

I can give you a city. I can make you a ruler. The tender of the furnace bowed his head slightly. He said, you left the palace of your glory to come visit me in this dark and dreary place. You brought me joy to my heart. To others, you may give your gifts. To me, you have given yourself.

Which reminds me of that old hymn, the words of which say, out from the ivory palaces into a world of woe. At just the right time, what Paul calls the fullness of the time, God sent just the right person. In fact, the only one God ever sent into this world as a savior. He didn't send us Donald Trump. Not that I have anything against Donald Trump.

I like to be like a friend of Donald Trump. But God didn't send us him because that wasn't our greatest need. He didn't send us Albert Einstein because he wasn't our greatest need.

He didn't send us some Grammy winning actor because that wasn't our greatest need. In the words of a Christmas card I got several years ago that I've still kept, if our greatest need would have been information, God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need would have been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.

If our greatest need would have been money, God would have sent us an economist. If our greatest need would have been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer. But our greatest need was forgiveness. So God sent us a savior. The right person was sent by God. Number two, notice also in our text, the right person was the son of God.

Not just sent by God, the sent by God one was the son of God. For it says God sent forth his son. Now we are diving headlong into the mysteries of what we call the incarnation, God becoming man. I call it mysteries of incarnation because that's what Paul said. Paul said to Timothy, great is the mystery of godliness that God has been manifested in the flesh.

You go, now how does that work, Skip? How does God become a man? Don't ask me that. It's funny how we love to ask questions that are unanswerable. No man knows the day of the hour.

When do you think Jesus is coming back? Here Paul says the only one that God sent was his only begotten son. Now let me clarify something. When you see the term the son of God, understand that term means deity. It implies he's God. I have a son. In fact, I have an only begotten son, a one and only son. Never had any other child, but Nate, we wanted more. He's the one God gave us.

I have an only begotten son. He has the same nature that I do. He's a very different person than I am, but he shares my nature. He's human.

I'm human. The son of God implies he shares the same nature with his father. His father is deity. Jesus Christ as the son is also deity. So when you see the phrase son of God in the singular, it speaks uniquely of Jesus Christ who was God in a human body.

Make no misunderstanding about that. Even Jesus' enemies knew that. In the Gospel of John, it tells us the Jews sought to kill him because he said, Jesus said God was his father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus Christ is the son of God in that unique sense that he's deity.

And that's the term I'm using it. That's the term the Bible uses, not in the Oprah sense, son of God. We're all children of God. Dr. Phil said, we're all children of God. This is the unique son of God, Jesus Christ.

And people are confused about that. The son deals now with his position in his incarnation. He is submitted to the father.

Now listen carefully. Philippians tells us Jesus was in the form of God and he didn't think it robbery to be equal with God. So here you have Jesus who is equal with God, but he emptied himself.

He poured himself out. He came to this earth as a human being and he surrendered, submitted himself to the will of the father as his son. Now here's the best place in scripture to get it all put together.

It's the first chapter of John. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. So here we have Jesus.

He's God. Skip down to verse 14 and the word became flesh. That's the incarnation dwelt among us. We beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.

And we go down a couple more verses to verse 18. No one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father. He has declared him. So here you have Jesus. He never became God. He was God. He was God. He was deity pre Bethlehem, pre Mary, pre manger. He was God before he was born.

He was God after he became man, but he became the son of God when he came into this world and he took on the body of flesh and the word became flesh and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father. So and we talk about it every year in the Christmas story. Typically when the angel came to marry and told her what's coming down. Hey, by the way, you're pregnant. How can that be?

I've never had sex with any man. And then the angel explains how it was possible. The angel said to Mary, Luke chapter one, verse 32, he will be great and will be called future tense, the son of the highest. Verse 35, the holy spirit will come upon you.

The power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one who will be born will be called the son of the highest. Question. Why did God send his son? Why did God have to send his son? If he at the right time is going to send someone, why his son?

Here's the answer. Because God wanted to reveal himself. The best way to reveal himself is with his son. God sent his son into the world because God wants to reveal himself to the world. He is Emmanuel, which means God with us.

He's got with us. Somebody once said Jesus Christ is God spelling himself out in a language we can understand. That's important because the ancient Greeks when all this was written in the Bible, the ancient Greeks believed whatever God's or singular God existed, he was or they were unknowable. Plato said God and man can never meet.

Then Jesus comes on the scene and he says this blew their minds. If you have seen me, you have seen the father. In other words, if you want to know what God is like, just check me out. Watch me.

Listen to me. I embody the will of my father in heaven. That's powerful. That means when you see Jesus healing a blind man, you are seeing a compassionate God. When you see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, you're seeing a broken hearted God. When you see Jesus teaching a crowd, you're seeing a concerned God concerned that people know truth. When you see Jesus dying on a cross, you are seeing a determined God determined to do something about the sin that has plagued this world.

If you've seen me, you've seen the father. That's powerful to us. It means that we not only have a God who is up in heaven, aloof and apart from all of our tragedy, looking down at us going, oh those poor humans, they got so bad. But here I am up here.

It's pretty nice up here. Got the AC going, got the music going, all those poor earthlings. Now, we have a God who feels our pain. He came to this earth. He knows everything we go through.

But He also has all the resources of heaven to deal with what we go through. So at the right time, God sent just the right person. The right person was sent by God. The right person was the Son of God.

And here's the third and final one. This right person was surrendered to God. Look at the rest of verse four. God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.

Let's take a moment to focus on that, shall we? Now we're emphasizing not the deity, but the humanity of Jesus. Not that He was God in a pre-existent state of the same nature of the Father, but that He was born into our world, that He came into our world, that He had a human birth. He was not only 100% God, He was 100% human. So to put it all together, at just the right time, at the appropriate time, in the fullness of the time, culturally, spiritually, politically, prophetically, God sent just the right person, who was God and who was man. Larger than the universe, confined to the womb of a woman. My mind goes, the fuse just goes out at this point. God as a zygote, a fertilized egg, God as an embryo, God as a fetus, God as a newborn baby.

That's mysterious. Philippiancy wrote, imagine for a moment becoming a baby again. Imagine giving up language and muscle coordination. Imagine losing the ability to eat solid food and control your bladder. God as a fetus. Or imagine yourself becoming a sea slug. That analogy is probably closer. On that day in Bethlehem, the maker of all that is, took the form of a helpless, dependent newborn.

Now I beg your attention closely for just another moment. In order for Jesus Christ to be a Savior, He had to be, had to be, both God and man. If He wasn't, we're doomed, we're damned, we're hopeless. He had to be God and He had to be man.

Let me explain. He had to be God for His sacrifice to have any infinite value. That is, for His sacrifice to have enough value to atone for sin, He had to be God. Only God has the power to deliver us from the power of sin, death, and hell. If Jesus Christ was not God, then Jesus Christ was not perfect.

If Jesus Christ was not perfect, then He can't impute any righteousness to us. He has none to give. And when He dies, He can only die for Himself, not for anybody else.

And we have none to receive from Him. So we are all doomed and hopeless if He is not God. But Jesus must also be man because only a man can substitute in death for another man, feeling what it is like going through all of those revulsions during that time of pain. To be an adequate substitute, He must be a man. So to put it in a nutshell, He had to be God to have the power of salvation. He had to be man to have the privilege of substitution. That's why Paul puts it this way.

It's very neatly put and theologically put. He was born of a woman. Interesting there's no mention of a man because Jesus wasn't born of a man, was He? He was born of the Holy Spirit. This was at virgin birth. And then it says this, born under the law.

What does that mean? Means He wasn't just born a man, He was born a Jewish man. He was circumcised the eighth day like Jewish boys were. He was also dedicated in the temple as many Jewish boys were during that time. He was raised in a home reading the Torah and the Tanakh, the Old Testament. He was raised in a home praying to the God of Israel, attending the synagogue services. He was born of a woman, born under the law. Like every Jewish man, He had the responsibility to obey God's law. But unlike any other man, He obeyed it perfectly. He lived the perfect life we could never live.

So wrap it all together this week. At just the right time, in the fullness of the time culturally, spiritually, politically, prophetically, God in heaven sent forth one who pre-existed in His presence into this world who was both God, had to be God, and man, had to be man, and Jewish, had to be Jewish. It says in verse 5, to redeem those who were under the law.

We'll get to more of that next week. Bottom line, God sent a son. God sent a Savior. God didn't send a Santa.

He sent a son who was the Savior. Now, honestly, I have nothing personal against Santa Claus. He never did me any wrong. Except he made a lot of threats because he was checking the list twice to see if I was naughty and nice.

And you know what? His threats really didn't pan out because even when I was naughty, I still got gifts. But I have nothing against Santa Claus. In fact, I've told you before that there was a real historical person that Santa Claus, Sinterklaas as he was called in Dutch, came from. That there was a man in history named Nicholas who was the bishop of Myra. He was a pastor of Myra in ancient Anatolia which is a part of Asia Minor, Turkey. He was a man who was generous, compassionate, gave especially to the poor, developed a reputation of giving gifts in the name of Christ to people who needed them. But more than just a nice guy who gave gifts, did you know that Nicholas was at one of the most significant church councils in history called the Council of Nicaea from whence comes the Nicaean Creed which we still hold to?

In 325 AD, historic conference took place and there was a division. Some people believe Jesus Christ according to scripture was God of very God like we believe. But there was another group of heretics under the name of a guy named Arius who denied the deity of Christ. And during that heated council, when Arius stood up and said Jesus Christ is not God, good old Saint Nick, Nicholas of Myra, walked over to him, slapped him in the face for blasphemy.

Yeah, my kind of guy. Loving Jesus, passionately in love with him, and called a spade a spade, you sir are a blasphemer. So good old Saint Nick, Santa Claus, was more than a fat guy in a red suit given gifts. He's a guy who loved the Lord Jesus Christ. So when you tell the story to your kids, tell them as Paul Harvey says, the rest of the story.

That's the rest of the story. And I suppose if Santa Claus would have had a prayer, it would sound something like this. The sleigh was all packed. The reindeer were fed, but Santa still knelt by the side of his bed.

Dear Father, he prayed, be with me tonight. There's much work to do and my schedule is tight. I must jump in my sleigh and streak through the sky knowing full well that a reindeer can't fly. I will visit each household before the first light.

I'll cover the world and all in one night. With sleigh bells are ringing, I'll land on each roof amidst the soft clatter of each little hoof. To get in the house is the difficult part, so I'll slide down the chimney of each child's heart. My sack will hold toys to grant all their wishes. The supply will be endless like the loaves and the fishes. I will fill all the stockings and not leave a track. I will eat every cookie that is left for my snack. I can do all these things, Lord, only through you. I just need your blessing.

Then it's easy to do. All this to honor the birth of the one that was sent to redeem us, your most holy son. So to all of my friends, lest your glory I rob, please, Lord, remind them who gave me this job. Well, to be honest, we've given him this job. If anyone has exalted a man of history to play a part that he never really played and to forget the real role that he did play is wrong because the real Santa Claus pointed to Jesus, worshiped Jesus. Yet we've given him the job, bringing joy to every person.

That's a myth. This is reality. As we pray, I want you to consider your life. I want you to consider where you're at this Christmas season. You know, for a lot of people, Christmas is like not happy.

It's an empty time. Tragedy has happened in the past. There's been loss of a loved one. Christmas is a downer. It's a reminder of that. Or it's simply really empty.

It accentuates the emptiness they felt all year long. It comes out very, very poignantly at this time. Friend, I want you to think about your life and ask yourself this question. Do you personally know Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth? I didn't ask you, do you know facts about him? I didn't ask you if you're willing to come to a church and learn about him. You may come to church, but you may not know about him. You may not know about him. You may come to church, but you may not have come to Christ. You may not have personally surrendered to him. He said, well, I'm a religious person.

That's a bummer. That is a bummer because it's keeping you from the truth of the reality of a person risen from the dead, active and dynamic, who's in the business of changing lives. And he wants to change your life. He'll knock at the door, but he won't kick it in.

He needs you to open it up. Maybe you've never really surrendered your life to Christ, or maybe you had some experience in the past that was years ago, but you're not walking with him now and you want to come back to him. You're just tired of waking up every day like Groundhog's Day. Same thing, same thing. Grind, no happiness, no satisfaction. Give your life to Christ. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from the series of Red Christmas.

Now we want to share about a resource that will help you grow closer to the Lord and stay plugged into his word. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the reevaluation of priorities, life choices, and the path forward. This illuminates the question, what do I want out of life? Here's Skip Heitzig with some thoughts on priorities.

Don't we all want the life with a happy ending, a life marked by growth, a life marked by productivity and refreshment, and God's touch of blessing and prosperity and maturity upon it. Here's our special offer for this month for those who support this media outreach. The Daily God Book by Skip Heitzig plus playlist, eight CD messages on significant psalms. Start 2022 with Skip's Daily God Book, and they're both our way of thanking you when you give $35 or more today to help more people connect with God's word. Call 1-800-922-1888 or go online to connectwithskip.com. Now here's another playlist sample from Skip. When you pursue him and when you pursue holiness, happiness tags along.

Call 800-922-1888 to give or visit connectwithskip.com. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shows you the right reason for celebrating Christmas and how it impacts your life significantly. Certainly Jesus is the answer to the longing of mankind, but we're awfully squirrelly about presenting him sometimes. We don't always get it right because sometimes we even forget that the Bible has but one central theme, and that is Jesus Christ. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.