Well, this morning we read very familiar words, the opening verses of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is a 15,635 word evangelistic tract. John tells us at the end of chapter 20, these things are written that you might believe. that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name. So John is not writing simply to educate us, to inform us, to enlighten us. He is out to win us to Jesus Christ. He is out to draw us by the work of the Spirit to put our hope and trust alone in Jesus Christ. So we read, 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 were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, that is John the Baptist, not John the gospel writer. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. From Him and His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only begotten Son who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. The Bible is a very ordinary book. It's a very ordinary book written to very ordinary people. It is, of course, extraordinary. All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable. Every word that God has inscripturated In this book, he himself expired. He breathed into it life. But at the same time, the Bible is a very ordinary book. It's not a book of philosophical axioms. It's not a book full of ontology or epistemology. It's a book about life. It's a very ordinary book because it was given by God to ordinary people. The Bible is not the preserve of the academy, of the elite, of the theologically insightful. The Bible is God's book for God's people, and God's people are very ordinary. Very, very ordinary. And yet, in the midst of the ordinariness of the Bible, there are statements that punctuate the extraordinary into the ordinary. The very opening words of the Bible, in the beginning, God. created the heavens and the earth. There is a grandeur, there is a literary magnificence, there's a theological magnificence, there is a spiritual magnificence. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There is this punctuating moment right at the beginning of Holy Scripture that summons us in our ordinariness to pause and to ponder. And throughout Scripture, as it trundles its way along the ordinary, there are times when God punctuates the ordinary with the extraordinary. I can still remember the day when I first heard the words of John 3.16. It was like an electric current going through my body. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And God deliberately punctuates the ordinary with the extraordinary. It's almost as if, as we trundle our way along through Holy Scripture and become engrossed in its details and in its teaching and instruction, the Lord simply says, stop. Stop. And consider this. Consider this. And I want this morning to consider with you what I think probably is the most extraordinary statement that we find in the whole Bible. There are many extraordinary statements. I've mentioned two of them. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. But in the opening words of verse 14 of John chapter 1, we have what I think is the most extraordinary statement that we find anywhere in the Bible. And one of the dangers is that the extraordinary, because it's so familiar to us, loses its extraordinariness. We sing about it, veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity. We sing, God of God, light of light, lo he abhors not the virgin's womb, genitum non factum. The familiar can so easily rob us of the wonder and the glory of the extraordinary. And I want very simply, and I do mean simply this morning, to reflect with you on these opening words of verse 14. And the Word became flesh. And the Word became flesh. Five simple words, not complex words. Words that are easy to parse. but impossible to comprehend. These words take us out of everything familiar. everything that we feel in any measure competent to speak about and make judgments about, and the Word became flesh. And one of the great purposes of Holy Scripture is to take us, at times, out of our depths. Remember how Paul, as he concludes his exposition of the gospel of the grace of God at the end of Romans 11, he simply, as he surveys all that he has written, he simply says, O the depths, O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, his paths are beyond tracing out. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay him? For from him, through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory. Paul is saying, brothers and sisters, I've done my best, God helping me, but I'm out of my depth. And so he then says, therefore, present your bodies as living sacrifices. We cannot comprehend, but we can, by the grace of God, apprehend. Like Job, we can say, Lord, we know the outskirts of your ways. So I want to reflect with you and unpack a little with you these five words, and the word became flesh. I want to notice first of all with you the wonder revealed by the incarnation. the wonder revealed by the incarnation. Now, if you have a new international version of the Bible, and I almost never criticize translators, A, because I'm incompetent to do so, and B, because it's the most thankless, difficult job in the world to translate the Hebrew and Greek scriptures into the common language, whether it be English or Russian or Mandarin. But if you have an NIV, you'll notice that the word and is omitted. Verse 14 begins, the word became flesh. And it's always puzzled me. Because that little word and is a hinge on which the whole prologue of John's gospel depends and hinges on. John has been speaking about the word who was in the beginning. who was with God, and who was God, through whom all things were made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. And now John is saying, now take this in, take this in, and this Word who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God, and He became flesh. He doesn't pause to try and unpack the physics of it, the metaphysics of it, the biology of it. He simply says, and the word became flesh. Charles Wesley has these two little lines, our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man. Maybe you're very different from me, but there isn't a day I don't think throughout the whole Christmas season, as people call it, when we sing these great incarnational hymns that I'm not convicted deeply in my soul. I sing about them so passionately, I believe, but how little the inexplicable glory and wonder that the uncontainable God became contained in a virgin's womb. That He who from everlasting to everlasting is God, takes to himself frail humanity. He became flesh. Have you ever wondered and pondered this, that there was something in the stable bigger than the cosmos? There was something in Mary's womb bigger than creation? We see in these words the wonder revealed in the incarnation. In his great volume, Volume 1, On the Glory of Christ, John Owen writes these words, this glory, and he's speaking of the hypostatic union, the uniting in the virgin's womb of deity and humanity. He says, this glory is the glory of our religion. It is the glory of the church. Listen to this. It is the sole rock whereon it is built, the only spring of present grace and future glory. If someone asked you this morning, tell me, I know you're a Christian, what is the glory of your religion? Would you have instinctively replied, the hypostatic union. the uniting in the virgin's womb of deity and humanity. Maybe you're thinking, well, Ian, Owen didn't get it right. The cross is the glory of our religion. I think if you'd said that to John Owen, he perhaps would have smiled. Maybe not. And He would have said, you think not well about the cross. The glory of the cross resides in the one who hung there. And what is the glory of the one who hung there? It was the God-man that gave virtue and glory and significance. to what was being accomplished on Calvary's cross. Now, lest you think I'm saying something that isn't right, let me just assure you that the Word who was in the beginning with God, God the Son Himself, He did not change. He did not change. He did not stop being what He was. Even as He was nursed by His mother, He was upholding the cosmos by the word of His power. In one sense, He didn't ever leave the glory of God. In another sense, He did. He became flesh. So we can sing Emmanuel, God with us. Everything rests on the hypostatic union, that union in Christ without confusion, without division, without separation, without mixture. That glorious union in Christ of our frail humanity. and his eternal deity and glory. Everything rests on it. It is the wonder of wonders. So we've simply noted the wonder revealed in the incarnation, but notice secondly, the scandal provoked by the incarnation. And the word became Flesh? Flesh? Now, you need to understand that John is writing into a particular context. The ancient Greek, Greco-Roman world into which John is writing and speaking here, that would have sounded a bit like saying, a circle is a square, or two and two equals a cake. They would listen to you with bewilderment. The word, you're telling me that this eternal word, and they would get that in measure, the Logos principle, the rationality, the coherence of the cosmos, the word. No, no, no. The gods have nothing to do with the material. The material is bad. The goal of life is to escape the material for the ethereal. And Christianity comes into the world and says, and the eternal logos became flesh. It was the scandal of the day. People couldn't get their head around it. It was intellectually incomprehensible. It was religiously bewildering. became flesh. In fact, the Bible is even more daring, isn't it? Remember in Romans 8, verse 3, isn't it? Paul says, he came in the likeness, homo iomitis sarcosimartius, he came in the likeness of sinful flesh. When you looked at Jesus Christ, he looked like a sinful human being. though he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. He didn't wander around with a halo around his head. He didn't have someone going before him with a sign saying, the Lamb of God, the Word of God, the Eternal One. From beginning to end, the gospel of God is a scandal to the world, and that scandal reached its omega point, its ultimate point on the cross, didn't it? This is your God. You're telling me that this bloodied, spit-dripping man nailed to a Roman cross is God? There's a graffiti somewhere in Rome which has the head of a donkey impaled on a cross, and it reads, the God of Alexandrinus, who probably was a Roman slave. It was mocking. You're talking incomprehensibly. You're telling me that good news is to be found in a crucified man from Nazareth? and the Word became flesh. The whole of the Christian faith is a scandal, not to the ancient world, but to this world as well. But here's the thing, but to those who are being saved, it's the power of God. You know, when Paul writes in Romans 1.16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, A number of commentators, maybe most commentators, think he's using a figure of speech called Laetotes. That what he's really saying is, I'm proud of the gospel. Well, that's true. He was proud of the gospel. But I don't think it's Laetotes at all. I think Paul is saying to these Romans, you live in the midst of an empire where Jesus Christ is a scandal. Where people are ashamed to be associated with a God who became flesh and who took that flesh to a cross. I want you to know, Sister Paul, I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed. Why? For it is the power of God for salvation. In the cross we see the wisdom of God, the glory of God, the grace of God, and the power of God. Can't many of you here this morning remember a time when the incarnation of Christ and the cross of Christ, if you gave them any thought at all, you just thought, well, what's that all about? I remember as a young, I must have been about nine, sitting in a church, I was never in church really, sitting in church one day, my parents must have sent me, and they were singing a hymn I later understood called Rock of Ages, and I remember vividly a little nine year old boy, I loved words, even then. And they sang these lines, be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power. I remember vividly sitting in that church and picture in my mind's eye yet thinking, that's nonsense. What does that mean? I could parse, I think at nine, I could parse every word in the sentence, but I didn't know what it meant. Fast forward eight years, I sang it again. That's wonderful. That's what the gospel does. It deals with the guilt of sin and the power of sin. You see, becoming flesh was a scandal because the whole of the Christian faith, the Christian religion is a scandal to the world. It doesn't like to hear that God has acted like that. It wants to have its own conceptions about God. It wants a God in their own image. You thought, remember Psalm 50 is it? You thought I was just like you. A bigger version of you. Someone you could manipulate. I'm nothing like you. I sent my son to become flesh. So the incarnation reveals the wonder of the incarnation. And secondly, it provokes the scandal that the incarnation is. But then thirdly, notice the salvation of God secured by the incarnation. Now here's, listen to this, and the word became flesh. But didn't you just say this was a scandal? Yes, indeed. Scandal to the world. but to those who are being saved. The power of God and the wisdom of God. You see, the salvation that God purposed and planned from times eternal was secured, was anchored in the incarnation. Around the year 1100, I don't know if he was the last good Archbishop of Canterbury, that a man called Anselm wrote a classic little work, Cur Deus Homo, Why God Became Man, or Why the God-Man. Why did God become man? Why would God, why did God become man in God the Son? Because in no other way Could he save sinners and reconcile us to himself? In no other way. Remember Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 15, as by a man came death, so by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. If God were to save and restore to himself lost, judgment-deserving sinners, there needed to be someone who could do what needed to be done and not be consumed in the doing of it. None among the sons of men, the daughters of men, could give the life to God that needed to be lived, and to die the death that needed to be died. But from another world, from another world, there came a man. Here am I. Psalm 40, here am I, send me. You can almost imagine in the councils of eternity, the covenant of redemption as we call it, The Father saying, whom will I send? Who will go for us? I'm here, Father. Send me. It will mean becoming flesh, becoming like them, sin apart, and taking that perfect life to a sin-atoning, sin-propitiating death on a Roman gibbet. Here am I. I'll go. Send me. And so he came and the cradle becomes a stepping stone to the cross. But without the cradle, there would be no cross. Without the cradle, there would be no cross. And without the cross, the cradle would be the revelation of God with us. But beloved, let me say this reverently, I need more than that. I love singing God with us, Emmanuel. I want to know this. Thank you for telling me that he's with me, but tell me, is he for me? I need more than Emmanuel. I need Elohenu, our God, or even better, I need Eli, my God. I need to know he's mine. Not just that he is in the midst, I need to know He's Eloheinu, our God. And even more than that, I need to know that He's Eli, my God. Christian life's about personal prepositions, personal pronouns. The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me. Immanuel is glorious. But without Calvary, Immanuel remains Immanuel. Not Elohenu and Eli, our God, my God. And then fourthly, finally, just briefly, Notice the unending comfort guaranteed by the incarnation and the word, notice the verb, became flesh. He became flesh. He did not take our flesh as a garment to wear and then to lay aside at some point in time or eternity. He became flesh. He became one with us in our humanity. so that He is tempted in all points such as we are, Hebrews 4, yet without sin. And therefore He is able to help those who come to Him. I've been there. I know what it is to be truly human. I know what it is to be brokenhearted, to be disappointed, to be failed. I know what it is to cry to God, my life has amounted to nothing. Jesus said that, didn't he? Who knows where he said that? Who knows where Jesus said, my life has amounted to nothing, it's been a complete waste? Put your hand up, anyone? Who knows? Anyone willing to go and find out? It's in the Bible. It's in the Bible. Not making it up. Second Servant Song, Isaiah 49 verse 4, my life has amounted to nothing. You know, if he couldn't say that, he couldn't have been our Savior. It would have meant his humanity was of a superhumanity. We don't need a superman, we need a man to stand before God in our place. He understands the frailty of our flesh. And in his sinless perplexity, as the disciples fail him and as he says, will you also leave me? His humanity is true. And that humanity is there in glory. There's glorified dust on the throne of heaven. You see, the incarnation is not simply a truth to believe. It's a truth to rejoice in and even be comforted by. Because he knows our frame. And he knows your frame not only by divine omniscience. He knows your frame because it's his frame. It's His frame. He knows your frame from the inside. He became flesh. And He will ever be flesh. And so we can come boldly to the throne of grace. To find mercy and grace to help in time of need because we come to one who is not unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. So let me leave you with a question. Has the incarnation brought you to bow down and worship? You know, we all have, I'm sure, favorite parts of the birth narratives. I don't know what really my favorite part is. But the one part of the birth narratives that I always end up thinking about is these mysterious strangers from the East who turn up following some special star. And you often wonder, what were they expecting? Had they read Daniel's prophecies? We don't know. The Bible's really annoying. It really is. It leaves you asking questions. I don't mean annoying in a bad way. Well, in some ways it isn't a bad way because we're so limited in our understanding. And biblical narrative is saying, look, join up the dots. Your problem, Ian, is you just don't think enough. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. And my problem is I don't meditate enough, I don't think enough, I don't join up the dots enough. But here are these strangers and they come, and they end up, somehow they get it, that there's something in the stable bigger than the cosmos, and they bow down and worship. Imagine bowing down before this little bundle of wriggling humanity and worshipping. What are you doing? We're worshipping the king. That's what the incarnation is about. The king has come. Bow down and worship. And be led by the hand to where this king will ultimately go. and understand that the glory of Calvary rests its weight on the wonder of the hypostatic union formed by God in the womb of the Virgin. May the Lord bless to us his word. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters in Christ, lift up your heads, open your eyes, and by faith receive the blessing of the Triune God. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you, be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, give you His peace. Amen.