When God Was Born

Beginning this evening, we want to be looking at eight crisis experiences in the earthly life of our Lord. I'm calling these experiences the milestones with the Master. I think it's important that you and I have our Christology straight, and we're going to be looking at these eight experiences—his birth, his baptism, his temptation, his transfiguration, his presentation as King, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension.

Our purpose is going to be to discover all that we can for our own hearts about the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are confused about Jesus Christ in his person and in his work, we're going to be confused about the whole scheme of salvation. If we don't understand who he is and what he did, we're not going to know what he did for us and how we can have it and how we can enjoy it and live it.

We begin in Hebrews, because our theme tonight is the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not going to turn to Matthew or Luke. These give the historic events.

We're going to look at Hebrews, which gives us the spiritual meaning. Behind the historic facts are the spiritual truths, and you would be amazed at how much the book of Hebrews has to say about the body, the physical body, of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10, I'm going to read through verse 18, a long passage but a very important one.

For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of those things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year, continually, make those who came to it perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? Because the worshipers, once purged, should have no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

Then said I, Lo, I come. In the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering, and burnt offerings, and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure in them which are offered by the law.

Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

And the Holy Spirit also is a witness to us, for after he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

Gracious Father, as we consider this tremendous truth of the Incarnation, grant by your Spirit that we will understand what you have for us. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh.

And Father, this is far beyond us. We need the Holy Spirit that we might not only understand, but appropriate. And so teach us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

Everything that our Lord Jesus Christ did on earth depended upon his birth. This was the beginning. We have here the remarkable account of the Son speaking to the Father as he comes into the world.

Now, we aren't going to pinpoint the time when this happened, but we have God the Son coming in a human body and saying to God the Father as he came into the world, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon himself a human body. And the question we're asking is why.

Why did Jesus Christ take upon himself a human body? And the answer to that is that he might fulfill certain divine purposes. Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. God the Father had certain divine purposes for God the Son to fulfill, and he could only fulfill them in a human body.

Now what are these purposes? The book of Hebrews suggests to us that there are at least four purposes that our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled by taking upon himself a human body. Purpose number one, he revealed God. Now God, as to his nature, is invisible.

In one of our favorite worship hymns we sing, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, a text that is taken directly from the Word of God. Now unto the King, Immortal, Invisible, God is Spirit. And because God is Spirit, he is invisible to the human eye.

When Jesus Christ wanted to reveal God to man, it was necessary for him to come on the level of man, which meant he had to become man. Many years ago I remember hearing an InterVarsity speaker talking about the Incarnation using the familiar illustration of insects. I'm not crazy about insects.

This is why I stay away from picnics, because I don't like bugs. But have you ever in a summer season been somewhere where a group of ants have been busy down there doing something, dragging something or gathering something? And your shadow falls across them, and they scatter. Now you have no intention of stepping on them, you have no intention of frightening them, but they scatter.

And so you stand there and you say to them, look, don't run away, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not on an anti-ant crusade. They just keep on running. Why? Because you can't communicate with ants, and they can't communicate with you.

The only way you'd be able to tell these creatures, these little insects, would be if you were to go down to their level and say, now just a minute, whenever you see that shadow, don't run away, don't be afraid, I'm not here to hurt you. This gives us some small illustration of what our Lord Jesus had to do. God had been revealing himself to man in many ways.

The heavens declare the glory of God. God had revealed himself to man through his creation. In fact, Hebrews begins this way.

I think the book of Hebrews begins the greatest of any book in the New Testament. It starts off, God, that's all it starts, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke. God has spoken.

That's a tremendous thing. If I were God, I wouldn't speak to anybody. The way they treat my law, the way they treat me.

But God has spoken. Now, how has he spoken? He has spoken in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, now, hath in these last days spoken unto us in his Son. In other words, one reason why Jesus Christ took upon himself a body was that he might come and be heard and be seen so people would know what God was like.

If you'll turn back to Hebrews 10, you will notice a remarkable statement here. He says, Lo, I come. No other baby could make that statement.

Jesus Christ wasn't just simply born. He said, I came into the world. Do you know what that means? That means he existed before he came into the world.

That's why Hebrews 10 says, A body hast thou prepared me. In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ existed before his birth. He existed before his mother.

He existed before his foster father. He existed before all time. When our Lord says, I come, he is declaring his deity.

Jesus Christ can reveal God because Jesus Christ is God. We go back once again to Hebrews 1, verse 3, speaking about the Lord Jesus, who, being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, he is God. If I stood before you and said, I am the brightness of the glory of God, you'd shake your head and say, no, I am the express image of his person.

You'd say, sorry, you haven't seen yourself lately. But Jesus Christ could dare to say, and no one could contradict it, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Philip said to him, show us the Father, and we'll be happy.

Jesus said, have I been so long time with you, and yet you don't know me? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And so Jesus Christ reveals God to us because he is God. Now when someone comes to your front door and denies that Jesus Christ is God, we have Hebrews chapter 10 telling us very, very clearly, he came in a prepared body.

Now when I was born, I didn't come in a prepared body. According to the word of God, there are only four ways to get a body. You better remember these.

You can get a body without a man or without a woman. That's the way Adam got his. God made his body directly.

Or you can get a body with a man but no woman. That's the way Eve got hers. She was made from part of Adam.

Or you can get a body with a man and a woman. That's where Cain and Abel got theirs. The normal process of birth.

Or you can get a body with a woman but not a man. That's the way Jesus got his. Joseph was not the father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was the foster father, the legal father, but not the begetter of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came in a prepared body. We have here the virgin birth.

We have here that amazing miracle of the Holy Spirit of God that even surprised and stultified Mary. Jesus came into this world in a prepared body that he might be able to reveal God. Now nobody can explain this.

That's why Paul wrote, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. But I am glad that this is the way it happened.

It tells me that Jesus Christ is God. It tells me that I am not an idolater when I worship Jesus Christ. It tells me that Jesus Christ is sinless, holy, harmless, undefiled.

As you read through the book of Hebrews over and over again, the writer talks about the sinlessness, the separateness of Jesus Christ. He had to come into this world with a prepared body. Had he come in with our nature, he would have been sinful.

He came with a prepared nature, conceived of the Holy Spirit, sinless. So the first purpose that he fulfilled was that of revealing God. When you see Jesus Christ, you see God.

When you hear Jesus Christ, you hear God. Now before I move on to the second purpose, I want to make a bit of an application here, what our old Puritan friends used to call improving the text. It's this.

Your Bible becomes a new book to you when you realize that Jesus Christ is God and reveals God. Some of us can never forget in our early Christian lives the excitement, I mean by that the real excitement, of discovering Christ in the Old Testament. Many of us, when we were first saved, enjoyed reading the four gospels.

We even enjoyed reading some of the epistles. But don't ask us to read the Old Testament. It starts off pretty good, but after a while you get to all those tent pegs and all of these curtains and all of these wars and then these prophecies.

And so you flip over and you start reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John again. And then one day you discover in the volume of the book it is written of me. The key to the Bible is Jesus Christ.

His birth, His life, His death is coming again. You see, Jesus Christ is written in the Old Testament. He is the key to history.

All of the history in the Old Testament is preparation for His birth. When I discovered that, Old Testament history took upon a whole new meaning for me. I understood why God chose Abraham.

He had to have a nation. Why God chose Judah, He had to have a tribe. Why God chose David, He had to have a family.

And all of Old Testament history begins to make sense. He's coming. He's going to be born.

He's going to be born. And Satan's doing everything he can to keep Him from being born. Fouling up the Hebrew nation.

At one point in Old Testament history, one little baby boy was all that was left in the link of the chain of Messianic prophecy. He's the key to Old Testament prophecy. When you read the Old Testament prophets, if you take out Jesus Christ, you're reading in the dark.

He's the key. When you read the Old Testament, typology. I used to skip over Leviticus and Exodus.

I mean, I wasn't too interested. I couldn't build a birdhouse. Why worry about a tabernacle? And I wasn't interested in slaughtering a bunch of animals.

And then one day someone said, you know, it's a picture of Jesus Christ. Is that right? Tell me about it. And I discovered that Jesus Christ is the key to prophecy and history and typology.

He's even the key to the Psalms. When you read the Psalms, you feel the heart of Jesus Christ, the feelings of Jesus Christ. And so the Bible becomes a brand new book to you when you realize that all the Old Testament is pointing to His birth, that He might reveal God.

In the four Gospels, He does reveal God. Then He goes back to heaven and leaves behind a spiritual body to take His place to reveal God and that we might do a good job of it. He gives us Romans through Revelation to show us how to live that we might reveal God.

Jesus Christ glorified God in His body and you and I should be glorifying God in our bodies. You see, the world can't see God. All they can see is us.

We're the only Bible they read. We're the only thing they ever see that points to God. He came to reveal God.

Now there's a second purpose in our Lord's coming, taking upon Himself a body. Hebrews 2, verses 14 and 15. He came to defeat Satan.

For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same. In other words, Jesus Christ took upon Himself human nature, that through death He might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. In other words, in order to defeat death, He had to have a body that He might be able to die.

Now God cannot die. God is eternal. Being eternal, He has no beginning and no ending.

Many of us can recall, I'm sure you do, when as a child the truth of God began to dawn upon you. I remember lying in bed trying to figure out eternity. Everything that I held dear was dear to me because I was going to lose it someday.

You grow out of childhood and maybe mother and dad pass away. I was just listening to myself, all the things that I had, and they were precious to me because they weren't going to last. How could anything be precious forever? And I would try to conceive of eternity going on and on and on.

And you wake up with a headache. Have you ever done that? It's a tremendous thing. Now Jesus Christ is eternal.

He has no beginning and no ending. You and I are not eternal. We've had a beginning.

Some of you don't want to remember your beginnings. You've stopped counting your beginnings, but you had one. But you're never going to have an ending.

We are immortal. We're going to go on forever and ever, either in heaven or in hell. Those who have trusted Christ as their Savior, eternity in heaven.

Those who have rejected Him, eternity in hell. What a tragedy. Now our Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself a body that He might be able to fight the devil and defeat the devil and wrest from the devil the power of death.

In our new hymnal, the one verse of the song, death of death and hell's destruction. That's what He did in the cross. One of the great Puritan writers has a book called The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.

You see, the Lord Jesus Christ, by taking on Himself a body, defeated Satan. By the way, we won't take time to do it, but it's rather interesting to contrast our Lord's attitude and Satan's attitude. Satan said, ye shall be as God.

Jesus Christ was God and became man. Satan said, lift yourself up and be somebody important. I will be like the Most High.

Jesus Christ was the Most High and came down to become the lowest of the low, a servant. Satan said, yea, hath God said? Jesus said in the volume of the book it's written of me, I've come to do your will. Satan said, ye shall not die.

Jesus came and did die and defeated death by dying. Satan said, you shall know good and evil. Jesus Christ took upon Himself the sins of the world when He died.

Now, He could not have defeated Satan and conquered death unless He could die. All of this started, as you know, way back in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, when God declared war on the devil. And God said that the seed of the woman would one day defeat the seed of the serpent.

And one day the serpent's head was going to be crushed. And that's what happened at the cross. Sometime whenever the devil is getting after you and you feel like he's going to win the battle, just turn to Colossians chapter 2 and read it to the devil.

Just read it to him. Just taunt him with it. Colossians chapter 2, verse 14, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross, and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it, in the cross.

On the cross, when my Lord was at His weakest, He won His greatest battle, completely defeating Satan and all of his hosts. But He had to have a body to do this. When Satan brought sin into this world, he did it through the body of Adam.

In one man, one man's disobedience, all of us were plunged into sin. When our Lord would bring victory into this world, He did it in a body of the last Adam, Jesus Christ. He had to have a body to defeat Satan.

I often think of those words of the Lord Jesus in John chapter 12 as He was approaching the cross. Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, shall draw all men unto me. Now, being lifted up doesn't mean honored and glorified by our praises. Being lifted up means being crucified, and He had to have a body for that.

There's a third purpose that our Lord fulfilled. This is going to be a surprise to some of you. Hebrews chapter 5, beginning at verse 7. Hebrews chapter 5, verse 7. He took upon Himself a body to reveal God.

If you want to see Jesus, read your Bible. He's there and He reveals God. He took upon Himself a body to defeat Satan.

We don't fight for victory, we fight from victory. Thirdly, He took upon Himself a body to learn obedience. Does that shock you? Hebrews 5, 7. Speaking about our Lord Jesus, who in the days of His flesh, that is, when He was here on earth in a human body, not yet glorified, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him out of death.

Speaking here about the resurrection. And was heard in that He feared. God didn't save Him from death.

Obviously, He died. God saved Him out of death. It was not possible that the cords of death should hold Him.

Verse 8. Though He were a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And being made perfect, being perfected in His humanity through what He experienced, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him, called of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Now, how in the world can God learn anything? How can you teach God anything? Who is His counselor? With whom does God come and get advice? Obviously, it's ludicrous to even say such a thing.

God knows everything from the very beginning. He's talking here about the days of His flesh. Now, the incarnation is not as easily explained as some people like to believe.

There are many mysteries about His incarnation that we'll not be able to understand until we get to glory. Our Lord Jesus Christ had perfect power and yet He was weak. Our Lord Jesus Christ knew what was in man, yet He asked, Where did you bury Lazarus? How long has he been dead? Well, of course, when our Lord showed up at the grave of Lazarus, He'd been dead for four days and He raised Him from the dead.

And yet He stood there and wept. He wept and then He exercised resurrection power and raised Him from the dead. How long has your boy been like this? He asked the Father.

There are mysteries here. When my Lord came in a human body, He emptied Himself, not of His deity, but apparently He emptied Himself of the independent exercise of His deity. I do always those things that please Him.

Whatever the Father says, that's what I do. We're going to see when our Lord was tempted that He defeated Satan not as God, but as man. Certainly God can defeat Satan, but I'm not God.

Jesus Christ defeated Satan in His temptation as man. Man shall not live by bread alone. What's He talking about here? He's saying this, and I marvel at this.

When my Lord came to this earth, He took upon Himself a body and went through the experiences of life that you and I go through. As the God-man, He learned submission through the things that He suffered. He has gone through hunger and thirst.

He's gone through misunderstanding and criticism. He's been lied about. He knew what it was to be poor.

He knew what it was to be a member of a downtrodden minority race. Our Lord went through the onslaughts and the assaults of Satan. Don't ever get the idea that once He finished those temptations in the wilderness, that was the end.

Not in your life. Satan was constantly after Him. There were people blaspheming the Lord Jesus.

He's a drunkard. He's a wine-bibber. The Lord Jesus went through things you and I have gone through and more.

He went through the suffering in the garden. He went through that arrest and being treated like... He lost His rights. Lost His human rights.

Lost His civil rights. Then He was crucified. And nobody in this auditorium can ever come to Him and say, Now, you don't know what I'm going through.

That's one reason why He took upon Himself a body. He learned to depend upon the Father through the things that He suffered. He learned to walk by faith.

He was perfected. He was equipped for His ministry. What ministry? The ministry of being our high priest.

I suppose everybody here at some time or another has said nobody understands. Lots of times children say this to their parents. Well, Mother, you just don't know how I feel.

Well, now, Dad, you just don't know how I feel. Well, I do know how you feel. No, you don't know how I feel.

Look, I went through... Nobody's ever gone through this. Ever talk like that? And someday they get married and they have their own kids and one day their kids come and say, You know, you don't know what I'm going through. They say, Uh-oh, that sounds familiar.

You can never come to Jesus Christ and say, You don't know what I'm going through. He knows what you're going through. In fact, He knows what you're going through more than you do because when He went through it, He had no sin in His life to dull it.

When He went through temptation, it was the whole thing. When He went through testing and trial, He had a super sensitive nature. He had the holy nature of God and He felt this far more than you and I feel it.

He knows what you're going through. That's why Hebrews chapter 2 says what it says in verses 9 and 10. We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death.

We see Him crowned with glory and honor that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. For it became Him, it was suitable for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, it was suitable for Him to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. Verse 17, Wherefore, in all things it behooved Him to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.

For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to help them that are tempted. And that encourages me. As my high priest, He can keep me from sinning if I'll just come to the throne of grace and let Him do it.

Now, the reason many Christians get bitter when they're going through difficulty is because they forget this. Some Christian fails you. Life fails you.

You say, well, God doesn't care. God doesn't know what I'm going through. Dear friend of mine, He knows more of what you're going through than you know.

All you have to do is come to that throne of grace and say, Lord, when you were here on earth, you experienced this. You know how I feel. You know what I'm going through.

Here I am. Give me the grace that I need. You're merciful and you're gracious.

Now just give me what I need to see me through. One little word about this and we'll move on. Jesus Christ learned obedience by going through suffering.

The only way to really learn the will of God is to suffer. A lot of folks want to know the will of God like you do the instructions for running your vacuum cleaner. No, God has to put us through difficulties.

He learned through obedience. So often we learn through failure. Hebrews 10 quotes back from Psalm 40 where it says, Abide thou hast prepared me.

Psalm 40 says, My ears hast thou opened. Here's a case where the New Testament expands the Old Testament. The psalmist said, speaking about the Lord Jesus, My ears hast thou opened.

When the Holy Spirit wrote it in Hebrews 10, he said, Abide thou hast prepared me. I came to do thy will, O God. No contradiction here.

If you'll read at your leisure Isaiah chapter 50 verses 4 and 5 where it talks about the Lord Jesus having his ears opened to the will of God. That's all he's saying. You gave me a body to obey your will.

My ears are opened to your will. I'm going to obey it. Now, he's able to sympathize with you.

Don't get bitter. Don't get critical. Don't stay away from church and say, Well, nobody understands.

Jesus understands. If you want the kind of sympathy and comfort and consolation and strength that really makes a difference, go to the throne of grace. There was a fourth purpose that our Lord fulfilled by taking on himself a body.

And we go back to Hebrews 10 that he might die for sinners. He took upon himself a body that he might reveal God. He took upon himself a body that he might learn obedience, that he might be able to defeat Satan, and that he might die for sinners.

The word perfect is used in verse 1 of chapter 10. It's used in verse 14. It's one of the key words in the book of Hebrews.

He's talking about that which is perfect. Now, if you'll turn back to Hebrews 9, you'll discover in verse 9 that the gifts and the sacrifices of the old covenant could not make him that did the service perfect. Mark that.

The sacrifices made nothing perfect. Turn back to chapter 7 of the book of Hebrews, verse 11. If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, the priests made nothing perfect.

Verse 19 of chapter 7. For the law made nothing perfect. Now, here we have the three great components of the Hebrew religion. The sacrifices made nothing perfect.

The priests made nothing perfect. The law made nothing perfect. And when you get to Hebrews 10, verse 1, he sums the whole thing up.

The law can never, with those sacrifices which those priests offered year by year continually, make those who come to it perfect. In other words, the old covenant never brought anything to perfection. It was all temporary.

Now, it's obvious that the blood of bulls and goats can't take away sins. Here's a man who is a moral creature made in the image of God. Here is a sheep.

How can the blood of a sheep, an animal, ever take care of the sins of a moral creature made in the image of God? Man's sin is deliberate. This sheep is not volunteering to die. His death is involuntary.

He's taken up to the altar. He's slain at the altar. He didn't volunteer.

The blood of bulls and goats could only temporarily cover sin. And every year, they had to go through the Day of Atonement. Every year, every year, the same ceremony.

And you'll notice that he says that these sacrifices did not bring the remission of sin. They brought the remembrance of sin, verse 3. In these sacrifices, there's a remembrance of sin. The animal sacrifices failed.

The altar failed. The priests made nothing perfect. The sacrifices made nothing perfect.

The whole system of law made nothing perfect. But there came one into the world who was perfect, who had a perfect birth, who lived a perfect life, and I want you to notice he died a perfect death. Each of these sacrifices is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the burnt offering, and he is the peace offering, and he's the meal offering, and he's the sin offering, and he's the trespass offering. All of those Old Testament sacrifices are wrapped up in Jesus Christ. And so when he died, he fulfilled all of the Old Testament sacrifices, and his blood, watch this, being the blood of the eternal Son of God made flesh, is able to wash away sin.

When John the Baptist stood there by the Jordan River and pointed to Jesus and said, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. It must have made those Jewish people shake. Who would ever say the Lamb of God? We have lambs, but those are man's lambs.

Those are men bringing lambs to God. Here's God bringing his lamb to man. Those lambs only covered sin with their blood.

This lamb takes away sin. Those lambs covered the sins of Israel. Here is a lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

To us it isn't a very amazing statement. To them it hit the headlines. John the Baptist declares there is a lamb that can do what no other lamb can do, take away the sins of the world.

And that's what Hebrews 10 is saying. The statements here are so amazing. I think we read them and we aren't stirred by them.

Look at verse 10. By the witch will, because he did the will of God in dying on the cross, we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Verse 12.

This man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins. What's the next word? Forever. Does that shake you at all? Does that make you want to get up and shout hallelujah? One sacrifice for sin.

Until you sin the next time. Oh no. One sacrifice for sin forever.

Sat down. Now you always sit down when your work is done. His work was finished.

Sat down on the right hand of God. Look at verse 14. For by one offering he hath perfected forever.

He likes that word, doesn't he? Them that are sanctified. Verse 18. Now, where remission of these is to remit sin means to send it away, to forgive it, to get rid of it, to carry it off.

Now, where remission of these is there is no more offering for sin. In other words, we've got a finished, completed, perfected salvation. Don't you add to it the Ten Commandments, or baptism, or the Lord's Supper, or foot washing, or fasting, or feasting, or anything else.

A perfect birth. A perfect life. A perfect death.

And now he offers to us a perfect salvation. And it's all by faith. I'm glad the Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself a body.

I'm glad that he took upon that body your sins and mine. I'm glad that today I can offer to you what he offered to me, and I received it, a completed salvation. Tis done.

It's finished. It always will be finished. And it's offered to you.

That's how J. Hudson Taylor got saved. The great founder of the China Inland Mission was a rebellious teenager. His mother left him home one day while she had to make a trip to visit some friends, and she'd be gone for some time.

And so he went up and found a box full of pamphlets, and he said, Well, these are religious pamphlets, but there'll be a story in them anyway. He started reading this one pamphlet and was reading the story that was in it, and he came to the phrase, The Finished Work of Christ. Now, what he didn't know was that miles away, his mother had suddenly gotten a burden for her teenage boy, and she'd gone off by herself and prayed and prayed and prayed until God released the burden and she knew he'd get saved.

And he was reading The Finished Work of Christ, and something hit him. If that work is finished, said he to himself, then all I have to do is accept it. And right then and there he did, and he was born again, and God made out of him a tremendous, tremendous missionary leader, a perfect salvation by one offering.

He's perfected forever them that have been set apart. Have you shared in that salvation? Can you say, I know I'm saved forever. Our Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself a body that he might reveal God.

He's done that. He is doing that. That he might defeat Satan.

He's done that, and he is doing that. That he might be your high priest and sympathize with you and help you. That he might be your savior.

Now, if you've never received him, do so, because Jesus Christ is not going to do one more thing than what he has done. He finished his work. Father, I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do.

He went back to heaven. Now he's engaged in his unfinished work, praying for his people. But my unsaved friend, Jesus Christ, won't do one more thing to save you.

Now it's between you and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God speaks to your heart. If you've never trusted Christ, do so, and he'll give to you a finished, perfected, eternal, forever salvation.

Gracious Father, we marvel at all that you accomplish in the coming of Jesus Christ to this world. How that even in his birth, he was able to accomplish your will and give to us, through his death, a completed salvation. I pray that there will be those here tonight who will trust him and be born again.

And Father, help us as we live in these bodies, and as Jesus lives in these bodies, to realize that he knows and he understands. Bless now this closing hymn. Help people to respond to your love.

I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.