Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and thanks as always for listening. Thanks for watching. I started a Christmas series last time to help encourage you through what is a special time of year. Personally, my favorite time of year, I love Christmas for all the reasons that I'm sure you who love it, love it. Memories, things slow down. The sweetness of peaceful nights by a tree with the family. Maybe you have traditions like we do, going to cut down your Christmas tree up in the mountains or whatever else brings you joy. But it really is about Jesus. For me, for you, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, the reset, I would like to call it, of our mentality of being reminded, Lord Jesus, you came as a baby to die in my place. You were holy and perfect. You were worthy of all majesty and glory. You were seated in heavenly places, and then you came down as a baby, became a man to grow, live a perfect life, and die in my imperfect place. All of that, I think that really is what makes Christmas my favorite holiday and so sweet, because it takes my perspective and shifts it back onto what life as a Christian, follower of Jesus, is all about. Today, I want to teach you about the incarnation. That big theological word is an important Christian doctrine, one of the most important you'll ever hear about. If Christmas is reduced to sentiment and nostalgia and tradition and our memories and our routines or rituals, we're actually losing the very thing that makes it good news. Christmas is not just about a birth. It's certainly not just about sweet family memories and slowing down and a reset of life. And finally, we don't have to work as much, we get a little time off, or the weather kind of chills and we can wear our warmer clothes. No, the birth of Jesus Christ is centered in this doctrine called the incarnation. What is the incarnation? It is this: God becoming man without ceasing to be God. Why is that a big deal? Well, God, Jesus, the Son of God, became man. He came and became a man, but he didn't just become an ordinary, not actually divine or deity, God now made flesh and can't do anything. No, he entered into our state, but yet still was truly and fully God. He became God incarnate. God has now become incarnate. He now has become human. Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 to 4 puts this into perspective. It's a beautiful passage about the incarnation and what it's all about. It says this God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, talking about the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, in these last days has spoken to us in his Son, whom he made or appointed heir of all things, whom through also he made the world. And he, meaning Christ, is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, so God's nature, divine, Jesus, the exact representation of that nature, he's divine, and he upholds all things by the word of his power. When he had made purification of sins, of course, that's the cross, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels, as he inherited a more excellent name than they. And it goes on to describe essentially this son who has been begotten. He's the only begotten son of God, and he's been sent, and he is the radiance of his glory, and he's not just an angel, he's not just one of God's messengers, he's not even an angel or a messenger of God. He is God himself. He is the word made manifest. He's Christ. The incarnation that God became a man and came to earth is a doctrine every Christian should know because it's the reason we worship Jesus during Christmas. If Jesus were not truly God and truly man, or fully God and fully man, there would be no salvation. He had to become a human to save humans. If he didn't come to earth as a man, mankind could not be saved. And I want to give you today four reasons why the incarnation changes everything. It makes Christmas matter. Number one, it reveals God's heart. Christmas shows us what God is really like. The incarnation is the picture of his humility. You say, how can God be humble? What do you mean? Well, he came and took on flesh to lay his life down for us. What could be more humble than that? He was self-giving and full of mercy. These are beautiful indicators about God's character and his heart. We don't serve a hard line, turner burn, fire just falling on everyone because he's hateful and spiteful in this angry deity, like in these Greek mythological storylines. No. Is he holy? Yeah. Does he burn with righteous anger? Of course. Is he going to smite the wicked and bring justice upon sin? 100%. But it's his loving kindness and tender mercy, his humility, his grace that is seen in the incarnation. That's the heart of God. Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 to 8 says this, have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. Paul the Apostle was talking about humility, saying, Don't look out for just your own interests, but with humility consider others above yourself. He says this attitude was in Jesus, who, although existed in the form of God, did not regard a quality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking on the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man. And what did he do? He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, and then the Bible says, even death on a cross. Paul isn't necessarily explaining a Christmas text in Philippians 2. He's giving a picture of discipleship. But it's tied to why Christmas matters. He's saying, look at Jesus, look at the eternal son. He didn't cling to privilege, he stepped down into poverty, he was demoted by taking on humanity. It's not a promotion to take on flesh. He embraced limitation, swaddling clothes, and ultimately embraced a cross for us. So what is the takeaway when it comes to the heart of God? The manger is a window into his character. He does not wait for sinners to climb up and do enough to be saved. He comes down to rescue them and he made a way for salvation. The incarnation changes everything. It makes Christmas what it is because it reveals the heart of God. Number two, the incarnation rescues us from sin. Christmas is about a necessary, urgent rescue mission. Jesus had to become human in order to provide salvation for humans. You say, Costi, how? You keep saying that. He had to become human. He had to live a perfect life. He had to this, had to that. Why? Well, because God is holy and God has established his law and his order. And what he will do to sin and sinners is punish it by death. The wages of sin, the Bible says, is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. God is the one who determined the law and the punishment for sin. According to His law, the punishment for sin is death. Well, you need a sacrifice. You need some sort of punishment. You need someone who would absorb it. Essentially, if you want to be let off the hook, you need somebody to take that from you. Well, Jesus was sent to do that. And only a perfect sacrifice could satisfy the wrath of God. Otherwise, all of us have to burn in hell. All of us have to pay the price and the condemnation. And then the payment will have been made because God is just. If he just let us all off the hook, he's not God. What kind of judge just lets everybody go free? A bad one, an unrighteous one, a wicked one? Well, God is perfect and holy in all of his decrees and all of his judgments. And therefore, when he says sin is punishable by death, therefore all men will die and they will pay the punishment in sin in hell for their disobedience. That's what it is. But because of his great love, the Bible says, with which he loved us, even when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. What did he do? Okay. But not sin like one of us. So he didn't need the punishment. He didn't need to go to hell. He didn't need to get committed. He's not damned and doomed like we are because we're stained by sin as humans because of Adam and Eve. No, the human race has been plunged into sin and damnation because of sin by our original mother and father, Adam and Eve. But Jesus comes, he takes on flesh, and instead of being stained by sin in the sense that he did it, no, he lives a perfect life. He satisfies the law of God, he fulfills it in every single way, never once sinning, and then voluntarily lays his life down to die the death we deserved, to absorb and take on the full wrath of God, to drink the cup, the Bible calls it, the cup of God's wrath, and to give his life as a ransom. Therefore, now God the Father would look at his human son, yet still divine, look upon him and pour out all of his wrath that we deserved on his son. Well, because Jesus was perfect and he's righteous and he's holy and he's capable and able to do what you and I could never do, God now looks at you through the lens of Christ's righteousness and sacrifice. And so he looks, not at you or I as the filthy sinner, but he looks at us through the lens of Jesus and what Jesus did. His blood shed in death washed away our sin. That's why we worship Jesus. That's why we say, Thank you, Jesus, for the cross. Thank you, Jesus, for your blood shed for us in death. That's washed away. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. So it's all about Jesus. He had to come and become a man. He had to live a perfect life, and he had to die, a satisfactory death. And so Christmas is about that. The Son of God has come. Hebrews chapter 2, verses 14 to 17 says, Since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death. So now the enemy, that is the devil. Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things. He had to be made like us, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest and then make propitiation, that's atonement, satisfaction for the sins of the people. God's law, God's decree, God's plan is that his son had to become one of us in order to redeem us. So the author of Hebrews is connecting Bethlehem to Calvary, the manger to the cross. His death would defeat Satan, his death would be the end of death, and it would satisfy the wrath of God. So the incarnation is a declaration that Jesus was born to die. When you think about Christmas, you gotta think about the cross. Number three, the incarnation relates to our struggles. I mentioned it just a moment ago. He's the high priest. He became like one of us. Well, if he did that, guess what? He's not a God who cannot relate to us. The Bible says in Hebrews 4.15, we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are and yet without sin. That's not saying that Jesus just observed the human life and he kind of hang out and the crowds like, oh, like he was auditing a college class. No, he lived it. He felt the exhaustion, the hunger, the sorrow, the betrayal, the loneliness, the testing in Matthew 4 when Satan's trying to tempt him to act on his own volition and yet he never sinned. Christmas is a beautiful reminder that your savior understands your struggles. He helps you walk in obedience to his commands, and he is with you, will never leave you, and will never forsake you. So when you pray, you're talking to a God who's near. When you cry out to Jesus, you're crying out to a fatherly, nurturing, priestly, caring, present God. This is the way that the Father's character is. And when you see the Son, you see the Father, the Bible says. And this is the way the Son's character is. And when you see the Son, you see the Father. This is what the incarnation shows us. That's why Hebrews chapter 1 says he's the radiance of his glory, the exact representation of who? Of God and his nature. Jesus is a shepherd who reflects the heart of the Father. He knows what your pain feels like. He ministers to you in your times of weakness. And he has come to be your strength. Christmas is all about Jesus. And so no longer do we start to think of things through the lens of like, well, what about this? And what about this? And what should it just like every everything is secondary. Every tradition, every memory, every joy, every decoration, every present, all sweet things, wonderful things, good things, but not even close to the ultimate thing. Jesus Christ our Savior. Finally, number four, and this is good news: the incarnation restores us to God. The incarnation is not the end of the story, it's the beginning of God's plan to bring sinners home. John 1.14 says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory. Glory is of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace, full of truth. Now Jesus has come. And we preach Christ and Him crucified. We preach Christ as the center of Christmas. We preach Christ who's come to be the tabernacle that you and I can dwell in and with, to be with God. Just as God once lived among Israel in the wilderness. He now lives among us in the person of Christ. And so Jesus did not come and merely visit earth and show us a good way of love. And I'm just a good example. And he's like a, you know, an olden-day Gandhi. You know, people insult the Lord Jesus Christ and the essence of Christianity when they think Jesus is just a nice moral teacher. He's a good guy. He had some good principles. You know, you'll hear that a lot from people who reject Jesus as the Messiah. No, he's a good guy. He's a nice teaching, but like, no, yeah. Well, listen, he came to reconcile heaven and earth. He came as the Son of the living God to lay his life down as a ransom. For all who would believe in him, oh, he is the savior of their soul. For those who reject him, well, he's the judge. But Christmas means that God came near. So the sinners who right now stand damned and condemned under the judgment of God and awaiting future judgment from God, they could actually draw near. But through whom? Through Christ. That's why Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Jesus is the only way to be saved. Jesus is the only main character at Christmas. The incarnation is not a seasonal doctrine either. It's the foundation of the gospel. And so as I tell you this during the Christmas season, praise God, it helps, and we apply it to Christmas. But listen, friend, he is the God incarnate, Son who died for us in February, March, in September, in July, all year long. The incarnation is the foundation of the gospel. What's the significance of it? Without God's heart, there would be no humility. Without God's rescue, there'd be no salvation. Without God's empathy, there would be no comfort. Without God's presence, there would be no reconciliation. You and I would be the most pitied of all mankind. If our God had not come to redeem what the devil had thought belonged to him and his kingdom of darkness. Christmas declares that God came to save us, his people. 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9 says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, that's the position he had in heaven, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, talking spiritually at the cross, might become rich. That passage is not about Jesus coming and being born in a stable and being poor. And now if you believe in him, you're gonna be happy, healthy, and wealthy. It doesn't mean that Jesus came and took on poverty so you could always have prosperity. It's not talking about money. It's not talking about material goods. It's talking about spiritual riches found in Jesus Christ. That's why he came humble. That's why he came as a human. And that's why he offers salvation to you and invites you to come and be filled with riches. This world's money can never buy, and this world and the devil himself can never steal. Christmas and the incarnation is a beautiful declaration of God's love and care through the gospel. Well, that concludes our second week of the Christmas series. I've got more coming up in the weeks ahead. Next week, we're gonna look at several ways to keep the focus of your home and your life on Christ in the middle of the Christmas rush. And I put that particular teaching episode at this point in the series because right about now, you're probably feeling the heat, feeling the rush, feeling the weight. It's work party, it's recitals, it's everything under the sun. And I think the episode will be perfect timing to encourage you and lift your eyes heavenward to Christ and bring peace to your soul at a time where things can get a little bit, well, we get a loss in perspective. And I think the episode will help you greatly. 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