I knew a man who worked at the NASA facility in Huntsville, Alabama in the 1960s when America was rushing to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Things were busy. Deadlines were tight. But with bothersome regularity the NASA men in Houston, Texas unexpectedly requested this man’s work division to write reports on various subjects. It all seemed pointless and a waste of precious time! The man in Huntsville wondered if the men in Houston were even reading all the time-consuming reports they prepared!
So, working on a hunch, my friend sent a lengthy report to Houston having several pages at the beginning and several at the end but with nothing in the middle. Most of the report was simply blank sheets of white paper. It was a puzzle that did not make any sense. Sure enough, Houston never complained! Huntsville’s reports were not being read. But if the men in Houston had recognized that precious words were missing and had sought them, the report would have made sense. The report actually would have yielded precious insights!
The incarnation of Jesus Christ is like those missing words - like a precious missing chapter. It is the missing chapter in human history. It is the missing chapter in our personal life history. The incarnation enables life to make sense. It enables us to know lasting satisfaction with God in a world that is otherwise dark and troubled. Unless we understand that Jesus, the Son of God, became man to bring us to God, it is as if an essential chapter of our lives is missing! But if we receive this good news, we live in the light. We do not stumble about in the darkness. Life makes sense because we taste the glory of the world to come - the glory God created us to know but which was lost through our sin.
In the opening verses of his gospel, the apostle John defines the incarnation in this way. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1.14). In Jesus Christ, God really became man. And this was necessary, John says, so that we might know glory - life in its richest and most satisfying form. Jesus is the divine Word who became man so that we might know God in the deepest most satisfying way possible.
Here are three truths we must take to heart this Advent season:
Jesus is the divine Word who reveals God’s beauty. That is the first benefit of the incarnation. In verses 1 and 3 of John chapter 1, John says that before becoming man, the divine Word was present when everything was created. John also says that everything that exists was created by Him. When you wonder at the beauty and splendor of the sun rise in the morning or the starry host at night and you realize that the divine Word made it all, then you realize that He is a God of immense wisdom, power, and beauty. Knowing such a Creator is a matter of immense privilege! Knowing Him makes life worth living!
Jesus is the divine Word who reveals God’s light. In John 1 verse 4, the apostle says. “In him (the divine Word) was life and the life was the light of men.” Light is a universal religious symbol. We immediately understand the connection John is making. Light is essential for life. On day one of the creation, God said, “Let there be light and there was light” (Gen. 1.3). God created light as a matter of first importance. Without light there is no life, only darkness.
God created us not because He needed us, but so that we might share in the joy and life of knowing Him. Knowing God is the purpose of life (John 17.3). It is the light of life. Apart from knowing God, we dwell in the darkness of the sin, evil, and death humankind brought into this world, because “people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3.19). But wonderfully, that is why God became man in Jesus - to deliver us from darkness into light. In becoming man, Jesus did not simply enter the world of darkness which our defiance of God created; He also entered the darkness of God’s wrath and judgement for our sin - the sin, darkness, and indifference toward God that we have until God shines light into our souls. He came to overthrow the darkness!
As our representative on the cross, Jesus’s soul entered the utter darkness of being forsaken by God in our place. He received what we deserve. That’s why He cried out on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Jesus entered the deepest darkness of God’s judgment for our sin to bring us into the light and life of God’s presence, love, and joy. Have we received -have we accepted - the free light and life of knowing God through Jesus, the Word who became flesh and died for our sin?
Jesus is the divine Word who reveals God’s glory. John wrote, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father…” (John 1.14). Those words would have dumbfounded John’s first century Jewish readers (because we have so sentimentalized Christmas). For the Jewish person in John’s day, God’s glory was the most potent, fearful, and dangerous reality in the universe! When God met with His people on top of Mount Sinai, He turned it into a raging, thundering inferno (Exodus 19 and 20). He warned, “Don’t get too close because if you do my glory might break through and destroy you.” But here is the irony. When Moses met with God on the mount, he prayed, “I want to see your glory,” but he could not lest he be consumed.
Why did Moses say, “I’m afraid of you but show me your glory?” Because seeing God’s glory is the missing chapter of our lives! To know God in Jesus is the privilege of living in the light. It’s the light our first parents knew when they were created but forsook through sin. God created us to taste His glory. We naturally settle for lesser glories and lesser joys that do not satisfy. Jesus came to deliver us from our emptiness into the fullness of knowing God. When we receive Jesus, we enjoy foretastes of knowing God. When we finally enter glory through death, we know God face-to-face in Jesus, the Word. We know Him as the friend and lover of our soul. All will be joy and satisfaction because God’s blessing will flow to us without interruption. This world is only a shadow, but the world of glory to come is the weighty and lasting reality. Praise the Lord!
Bill Massey, Assistant Pastor
