AUSTRALIAN BIBLE CHURCH

 

December 14, 2003

 

THE GARMENT FOR LIGHT OF THE GREAT GOD

 

Hebrews 1:1-3, 2:1-4, John 1:1-14 with Phil. 2:1-12

 

SERMON NOTES

 

 

 

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1.    WHO HE IS …
Hebrews 1:1-3a, John 1:1-5,
John 20:28, Isaiah 45:12-14

He is the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Revelation 2:9),
the creator of man and his Redeemer,
who having been the commencement of creation,
became the dawn of its deliverance,
as a babe, as an entrant into His own realm,
like a novelist becoming part of the script,
without ceasing to be the Author!
 

     In the form of God, He thought it no robbery to be equal with Him, nothing to be seized,
since that was His status from eternity (Philippians 2).
As Creator (Colossians 1:15ff.),
His is the very name of God (Isaiah 45:12-14),
for God did it ALONE, the entire creation (Isaiah 44:24),
which the Son created (John 1:1-3), as He did the whole category of things MADE,
NOT creating therefore Himself before He was there to do it. If it is a made thing, HE made it.

He is outside that domain, just as only God is the ONLY Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11), and
Christ Jesus is the Saviour (Isaiah 53:1-12), Himself.

Blended in beauty, the Lord God sent the Lord to earth (Isaiah 48:16, Zechariah 3:9),
Indeed,  the despatch of no-one less than deity, one God in three persons,
Is the greatest event in the universe, except the conclusion of it,
The bearing of sin, instead of merely judging it,
By the only One sufficient to cover it with sinlessness and infinity alike,
And the breaking of death, which could neither control not keep Him (Acts 2:22ff.),
His innocence blazing with purity, like the sun (Galatians 6:14).

In the beginning, accordingly, there He was (John 1:1), not 'a god' as heretics assert,
since there is ONLY ONE GOD (Ephesians 4:4, Exodus 20, Isaiah 45:6),
who alone is to be worshipped, and there is none in heaven or earth like Him at all - Psalm 89:6.


To speak of more than one,  it would be like a doctor talking of 'a head' of a man,
as though he had many heads, when such a thing is contrary to nature.
Thus did Thomas say to HIM, 'My Lord and My God!' (in the Greek, THE God of me!),
as in John 20:28.
Neither do the polytheists understand His unity, nor do the unitarians understand His beauty,
For God is His own company, and in creating man, had nothing to learn, the only wise God.

 

     YOU ARE GODS, says God in thundering derision, in Psalm 82, to those pompous pretenders
who in line with the fall of Eve, dare to think of themselves in exalted terms.
Such have no truck from God. So He there adds of these: "But you will die like men!"
Pretension and pretence are for what is evil; purity and truth,
The light of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus, the way, the life and the truth,
Himself the Lord (John 8:58), alone is sufficient for man, God drawing man by Himself
To Himself.

2.    WHAT HE DID …
Hebrews 1:3b, John 1:4-5,10-14, 3:16, 13:1

 

 

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a) He made everything in the category of ‘made’
 
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b) He lit the earth with light (John 8:12, 9:4-5)
 
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c) He loved (John 3:16, 13:1, Psalm 40)
 
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d) He bled – sacrificially (Hebrews 9)
 
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 e) He rose – physically (Luke 24, Acts 2, John 20)
 
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 f) He ascended to where He was before
(John 6:62, 17:1-3, Micah 5:1-3, Isaiah 48:16)

 

bullet   3. WHAT HE BROUGHT TO GIVE …
      John 1:12-14, Hebrews 1:3b

He brought the companionship of God

– intimate at birth as a dawn (Psalm 110),

- light that challenges immeasurably at maturity,
which for the world is NOW,

- entry that does not fade at dusk, or breach at death
but being INTO life, lives (I Peter 1:3-6),

- the blessed operation of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts without priests, sacrifices or secondary intermediaries, such as pope, Mary or priest,
psychiatrist, social worker or minder.

He brought God to man, by coming as God to man (John 1:1-14, Philippians 2),
and man to God by breaching death, overpowering sin and
becoming in Himself the way (John 14:6, Matthew 11:27).

His is the light that lights man at the first, and delivers him at the last.
(John 1:4-5, Revelation 22:23);
But man has put it out by sin, not in itself, but in his heart (Romans 1:17ff.).

So He came, clothed in light (cf. Matthew 17, John 8:12, 9:4-5).
The last says this:   

“I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day:
the night cometh, when no man can work.
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

 

But of man’s evil acts, before they came, God knew and indeed He forecast them (cf. Isaiah 49:7, 52-53, Psalm 2, 16, 22).

 

He made the spear a spearhead

To bring those old in the sin of millennia

To become themselves, not physically as He did, but spiritually

New-born babes (I John 3, John 3, II Corinthians 5:17ff.),

Onto which His light reflects (Philippians 2:15)

Swaddled with love, fed on mercy,
Clamoring for the mils of His word,
And drinking in His lovingkindness.

He became a babe that we might be re-born,
humbled Himself that we might be holy,

was treated as refuse, that we might not be (Mark 9).

The Light, not Southern or Northern lights, but  celestial,
shone through flesh, that man, one at a time,
might be purged, then burnished by God.