For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground;  he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. - Isaiah 53:2-3 ESV

We were sitting in Mallard’s ice cream, just catching up on life.  My friend was visiting me from Massachusetts, where we had spent two years together.  During that time he not only became my close friend, but he also became my boss.  He and his family had come to Bellingham to visit, as they toured around the Pacific Northwest.  That night, by God’s grace, the conversation steered itself toward the topic of religion.  Despite being a close friend, we had never really talked about religion before.  I knew that he had grown up Muslim, and had married a woman who had grown up Protestant, but that night I learned that he, like so many people today, believed that as long as you were a “good person” you would one day go to heaven.  I asked him how good he thought he had to be.  His answer was vague.  He told me that all religions were basically the same.  I told him I disagreed, and that while all other religions claimed that you have to be good enough to get to God, my faith was grounded on the truth that no one can be good enough to get to God, and so God came to us.  Silently and quickly I prayed for God to give me words to speak to my dear friend.  The Holy Spirit brought to my memory Isaiah 53.

As these perfect words poured out of my imperfect mouth, I explained to my friend God’s plan to rescue us from our own fallen state, and I explained how these words in Isaiah spoke of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has now come to make atonement for our sins.

My faith in the truth of Christianity has been tremendously strengthened by Isaiah 53.  While there are hundreds of prophecies regarding Jesus throughout the Old Testament, Isaiah 53 stands out to me in stark contrast.  As I read this entire chapter of Isaiah 53, I feel like I am staring at the face of Jesus Christ.  And when I consider that these words were written between 600 to 700 years before His time on earth, I am struck with awe and wonder.  Although I know it is dangerous to make such sweeping statements, I would hazard to suggest that these are the most important words of the Old Testament that you could and should ever memorize.

Much like a multifaceted jewel, every time I read this chapter, I am given a new glimpse of the radiance of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.  And I am reminded of the cost that Jesus paid for my sins.  Today as I read these words again, what I am especially moved by is a consideration of what Jesus gave up to enter into human flesh.  In heaven He was clothed in majesty.  On earth “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him”.  In heaven He was the very definition of beauty.  On earth He had “no beauty that we should desire him”.  In heaven He was worshipped by a multitude of angels.  On earth “He was despised and rejected by men”.  In heaven He lived in constant and joyful community with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.  On earth He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”.  In heaven He was glorified and honored and praised night and day.  On earth He “was despised, and we esteemed him not”.

I went home that night praising God for the privilege of getting to speak scripture into a friend’s life, whether he accepted it or not.  I hope you too will memorize Isaiah 53, and will reflect often on the implications of the humanity of Christ. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” - Philippians 2:5-8.

The Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. - John 3:19-20 NASB

We have a rat living in our garage.  It is not a pet.  It is my fault that he moved in.  A few weeks ago I left a box of dog treats open in the garage.  The rat snuck in through a gap in our garage door that I had neglected to fix.  He must have taken the gap, as well as the box of food, as a sign of our hospitality toward his species.  We feel confident we have corrected this misconception of his by leaving out several rat traps around the garage (we have also secured all of the dog food, and covered the hole in the garage door opening).  Unfortunately, rat traps do not actually capture rats that are the size of a small dog.  So, the rat remains.  We have named him Sneaky.

Occasionally, I will open the door to the garage and turn on the lights, and Sneaky will quickly scamper into an, as yet, unidentified hiding spot.  As I read today’s scripture, I thought about Sneaky.  He hates the light.  He runs from it, for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  And I am reminded that before I came to faith in Christ, I was that rat.  I sinned in darkness for fear that my deeds would be exposed.  I rejected the Light.  I rejected Jesus Christ, because I loved my sin and I loved the darkness I was living in.  I had established an elaborate factory of idols in my heart, and that factory was in a perpetual state of darkness. And I wished for it to stay that way.  My name was Sneaky, and I was the rat in God’s garage.

My view of the role of apologetics has recently been transformed after reading several insightful authors on this topic.  I used to think that in order to win someone to faith in Christ, you had to “convince” them of the reasonableness of Christianity.  Christianity is in fact the most reasonable truth there is.  However, more often, it is a person’s heart that is keeping them from coming to the Light.  Non-believers do not come to consider the claims of Christianity with a heart that is a blank slate.  On the contrary, they come (as we all did) with sin stained hearts that love the darkness, because in their hearts, they know that accepting Jesus Christ, will mean rejecting that sin and idolatry and darkness which they have so grown to love.  John 3 does not tell us that men “trusted” the darkness, or that they “believed” that darkness was superior to light.  It tell us that men “loved” the darkness.  It is not so often a matter of the mind, as it is a matter of the heart.  We need to take this into consideration as we witness to non-believers, seeking to understand what are the idols of their hearts, which they love, and which are keeping them from coming to the Light.  And as we expose those idols, we pray that they will get even a glimpse of the Light, and will recognize It as infinitely more beautiful than the darkness.

Ultimately, we believe that “salvation belongs to the Lord” (Psalm 3:8).  We believe that when a person’s heart finds Jesus Christ as a more worthy treasure than the darkness they were living in, that this work is carried out by the Holy Spirit.  However, we are called to “walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.  Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:5-6).  It is God alone who can turn men’s hearts back to Him.  And He has given us the privilege of partnering with the Him in this awesome work, which will ultimately bring glory to Him, who alone is worthy of glory.

“For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” - 2 Corinthians 4:6.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.  In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth - John 1:1-4; 14 NASB.

Who is Jesus?  I posed this questions two weeks ago.  How do we answer that question in light of this week's scripture?  John 1 is massively important for our understanding of who Jesus is.  My fear is that for those of you who grew up in the church, these words have grown so familiar that they have become stale.  I pray that today you will look upon them with fresh eyes.  I pray that today you see with clarity His role in creation, His eternity, His deity, His revelation of God the Father, and His glory, full of grace and truth.  Have you seen His glory?

Why does John refer to Jesus as "the Word"?  I am sure you could spend a lifetime answering this question.  However, the short answer is found in the context in which John was writing.  John was writing to introduce his audience to the gospel of Jesus, and his audience was Jewish and Greek.  The “Word” (“Logos”, in Greek), was intimately familiar to both groups.  In the Old Testament, the Word is often the personification of God's will executed on earth (see Psalm 33:6, 107:20, 119:89).  It was for Jewish readers, the personification of God's revelation to His people.  In the Greek worldview, the Word was seen as the intermediate connection between the transcendent God and the material universe.  Now we arrive at the crux of human history, and John reveals for us God’s plan for redemption.  The Word is Jesus Christ!  Jesus is the personification of God in flesh, fully God and fully human, come to reveal God's glory, and His plan for redemption.  And "THE WORD WAS GOD"!  We have seen His glory.

My wife spent months meeting weekly with a team of Jehovah's Witnesses.  She invested countless hours, trying to convince them of the truth of scripture.  For those who don't know, JWs deny the deity of Jesus.  As you can imagine, this verse from John’s gospel, is one that they have been forced to re-interpret, to justify their faith.  It broke my wife's heart, and mine, to get to know these people, who are still living in darkness because of false doctrine.  And it reminded us of the importance of humbling ourselves beneath scripture, that we may obtain a true knowledge of God, and that we may live as He created us to live.  Pray that those walking in darkness would see His glory.

I often think about the deity of Jesus Christ.  I often think about His earthly life, and His heavenly reign.  But I confess that I often neglect to consider His role in creation and that "All things came into being through Him".  When I think about the creation of the world, I confess that I often neglect to give praise to Jesus, through Whom God created the earth and all that fills it.  Jesus has existed for eternity with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and He will continue to exist forever.  He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end (Revelation 1:8).  He is from everlasting to everlasting (Nehemiah 9:5).  I need to think often of the eternity of Jesus Christ.  I need to see His glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Word of God.  Today let us bend our knees and humble ourselves beneath the weight of Your glory.

For those interested a more detailed discussion of the defense of the deity of Christ against the errant belief held by Jehovah's Witnesses, I encourage you to read the following link:

http://carm.org/religious-movements/jehovahs-witnesses/john-11-word-was-god

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11).

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His son whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.  And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.  When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. - Hebrews 1:1-3 (NASB) This is a difficult passage for me to blog about.  Not because it lacks substance, but because it is so full of substance, that I fear that anything I would write would only detract from the glory of God's word.  Rather that reading what I would write, you would be much better served by reading this passage over and over and over again.

I want to tell you to climb to the top of a mountain and to meditate on these verses for hours.  I want you to sit in a closet with the door closed, and to feel the warm radiance of God's glory, manifested in the person of Jesus Christ.  I want to ask you to walk through the woods and to gaze at the unspeakable beauty of His creation.  I want to beg you to wake up every morning and to behold our risen King, who is the heir of all things.  I want to encourage you to sit and gaze at the holiness of God, as displayed in the face of His Son, the exact representation of His nature.  I want you to dwell on the eternity of Jesus.    I want you to taste the sweetness of God’s love, poured out for you at Calvary.  I want you to thank Him for His finished work of purification for your sins and for mine.  I want you to sit beneath His throne and to be still.  I want you to ponder the fact that He is God.  I want you to worship Him today!

And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power  - Hebrews 1:2.

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel... and he will save his people from their sins.... and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. - Is. 7:15, Matthew 1:21, Is. 9:6 (ESV).

CHRISTOLOGY - the study of the Person and work of Jesus Christ

Who is Jesus?  This is a tremendously important question, perhaps the most important question ever asked.  You may think the answer is obvious, but if you have ever studied the history of Christianity, you learned that our church fathers have fought tirelessly, for hundreds of years for the true and right answer to this question.  And we are now called, as Christians, to have a biblically informed, accurate and missional answer to this question.  We should, as followers of Christ, pour ourselves into the study of the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

This is an exciting week for me.  I confess that I have looked ahead, and read the verses that we are going to be studying in the next several weeks.  They are about Jesus.  Over the past twenty weeks, we have learned much about God’s love, and mercy, and faithfulness toward His people, and we have learned much about their (our) sin, and folly, and faithlessness.  We have heard foreshadowings of God’s plan for our salvation.  And now, we have arrived at the point in the story of God, when He announces how that plan is to be carried out.  It is through the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

Our Christology is the most important study we will ever undertake.  This is not to undermine “Pneumatology” (the study of the Holy Spirit), or “Paterology” (the study of God the Father), which are both massively important.  But it is our understanding of who Jesus is, and what He came to accomplish, that will ultimately shape everything about our lives, in this world, and in the life to come.  Our Christology is the very bedrock of our faith.  For “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11).  And we, at Redeemer, believe that the ultimate truth about Jesus Christ is arrived at by humbling ourselves beneath the word of God, through a thorough, careful, prayerful and worshipful study of scripture.  What do we at Redeemer believe is the answer to the question “Who is Jesus?”  Our statement of faith regarding Jesus Christ reads:

“We believe in the absolute deity of our Lord Jesus Christ; His virgin birth; His real and perfect humanity; the authority of His teaching, and the infallibility of all He has stated in the Word; His work of atonement for the sin of the human race by His representative, penal, substitutionary suffering and death on the cross; His bodily resurrection, His ascension into Heaven; His present high‐priestly intercession for His people; and His lordship over His Church as its supreme Head. We believe that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead. (Matthew 1:18‐25; Luke 1:26‐ 38; John 1:1; 20:28; Romans 9:5; 2 Corinthians 5:21; I Peter 2:21‐23; John 20:30, 31; Matthew 20:28; Acts 1:11; Romans 5:6‐8; 6:9,10; Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 9:28; 1 Timothy 3:16, 1 Peter4:5; Romans 14:9; 2 Timothy 4:1, Matthew 16:27, Mark 14:62, Phil. 3:20, 1 Thessalonians 4:15, Titus 2:13, 1 Corinthians 15)” .....  this is our short answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?”.

It has been said that all religions are basically the same.  We are all trying to climb a mountain to get to God, but are all using different paths.  God’s word tells us differently.  God’s word tells us the truth.  We are not climbing up a mountain to get to God.  God has climbed down the mountain, and has come to us!  “The virgin birth of Christ is an unmistakable reminder that salvation can never come through human effort, but must be the work of God himself” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 530).  While every other religious system in the world says you have to be “good enough” to get to God, a proper understanding of Christology tells us that we will never be “good enough”, and so God came to us!  If ever there was a reason to celebrate, this is it.

The birth of Jesus by the virgin Mary, tells us much about Christ.  It reminds us that He humbled Himself to come to us, for “though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing” (Philippians 2:6).  Can you think of anything more vulnerable than a baby?  I can .... a baby born into poverty in a rural town in the Middle East, by an unwed mother, at the time when Jesus was born.  Although we do not have data on infant mortality rates during the time of Jesus, I would hazard to guess they were comparable to parts of Sub-Saharan Africa today.  In Sierra Leone, one out of every 4 children dies by the age of 5 (2007 data).  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born into the most vulnerable, meek, and humble circumstances one could ever imagine.  This tell us much about the heart of God.  Truly we worship a God who “opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).  And so we, as God’s chosen people, are now called to live lives of humility and service, as Jesus humbled Himself for our sake.   Thank you Jesus, thank you.

Let us today embrace the Person and work of Jesus Christ, and let us humble ourselves beneath His word, as we seek to know Him more, and to enjoy Him forever.  Let us pray with the Psalmist that “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).  Let us gaze upon the beauty of Jesus Christ, and let us inquire in His temple.

If you desire to seek a deeper understanding of the Person and work of Jesus Christ, I recommend reading Wayne Grudem’s book Systematic Theology, Chapter 26 (The Person of Christ).

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

“For I am the LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.  The Law came in so that transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” - Exodus 34:6-7 (ESV); Romans 5:20-21 (NASB). Do you ever feel like sin has a hold on you that you cannot break free from?  Do you sometimes feel like you are so broken, that God cannot forgive you?  Do you some days feel like throwing in the towel and ceding victory to your greed, your lust, your addiction, your anger, or your lack of faith?  Please take encouragement from God's word today, "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more".  You may be the most wretched miserable sinner you know, but do not demean God's grace by ever thinking that your sin is greater than His grace.  It is not.  God's grace reigns triumphant!

Remember some of the "heros" of the bible.  Remember David, an adulterer and a murderer.  Remember Jonah, that trembling coward.  Remember Paul, a murderer of Christians!  All sinners yes, but sinners saved by God's grace.  You too, if you have confessed faith in Him (even if that faith seems like a mustard seed) are a sinner saved by grace. For "through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:2).

This passage from Exodus tells us of God's rich and beautiful attributes, His mercy, His steadfast love, His faithfulness.  And the culmination of this is that He is a God "forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin".  He is a God of grace.  We cannot keep God's law.  No one except the Son of God Himself, Jesus Christ, could keep God's law.  But, God's grace reigns!  His grace is victorious over our sin!  His grace reigns "through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"!

I confess that I have days when I feel like I am making no progress on my battle against sin.  I confess that many days, I am weak, and faithless and joyless. I confess that there are days when I ask myself how I "slipped through the cracks" to become an elder of a church.  And it is on those days that I need to remember these words, that "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more".  Yes, my sin is the problem, and yes, God's grace is the answer.

All this is not to say that we get to just sit back now and continue in our sin because of God's grace.  We are indeed called to fight.  But remember, the battle has already been won.  Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the famous German theologian, in his book The Cost of Discipleship, explains the difference between cheap grace and costly grace.  "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."   On the other hand, costly grace "confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

We, as followers of Christ, need to live in light of the triumph of God's grace over the sin of our lives.  We then need to remember the cost that was paid by Jesus for this grace.  Let us fight for costly grace, and let us rejoice in it's victory over our sin.

Gracious Father, You are indeed merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  We praise You God for Your perfect law, which points us to our need for a Savior, and we praise You God, for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ, to be that Savior, to atone for our sins, and to invite us into Your grace, in which we now stand.  Let your people today rejoice in the hope of the glory of God!

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.  Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:12-14).