SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Here at Faith, our focus this season has been on the humility of Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: That theme comes from the second chapter of the book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: There, the Apostle Paul shows that the eternal, glorious God became a human being without ceasing to be God.
SPEAKER_01: God the Son, the scriptures declare, took the form of a slave.
SPEAKER_01: That was an embarrassing thought for the Christians in the ancient city of Philippi.
SPEAKER_01: History shows us that social status and class played key roles in the community life of that city.
SPEAKER_01: It even appears in the scriptures as the idea or the theme of citizenship plays a central role in the letter to the church in Philippi.
SPEAKER_01: Ancient peoples often displayed their status through clothing.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not doing that tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Probably should have come dressed in jeans and a tattered t-shirt.
SPEAKER_01: But in ancient Philippi, status was displayed through what you wore.
SPEAKER_01: For example, you might recognize the Roman toga.
SPEAKER_01: Roman toga was often white in appearance.
SPEAKER_01: Roman senators, though, wore something a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: The white toga was worn by individuals who held Roman citizenship in the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_01: Roman senators, so just a step below the emperor, wore a white toga with a wide purple stripe on it.
SPEAKER_01: It was called the lattice clavis.
SPEAKER_01: Those of upper class status wore a similar toga with a narrow purple stripe.
SPEAKER_01: So you could tell simply by looking at someone if they were a Roman citizen, or if they were a Roman citizen of ruling class, or if they were a Roman citizen of an upper class.
SPEAKER_01: Even freed slaves, those who had received their manumission by some way or form, had their own symbol of status.
SPEAKER_01: They had an egg, half egg, or cone-shaped hat.
SPEAKER_01: It was a symbol of their freedman status.
SPEAKER_01: So imagine a proud Roman senator choosing to wear the clothing of a freed slave.
SPEAKER_01: It would be humiliating.
SPEAKER_01: People would happily accept the honor of graduating to a higher class.
SPEAKER_01: But it was unheard of to choose a lower class and appear as a slave.
SPEAKER_01: Yet that is exactly what God the Son did.
SPEAKER_01: He existed in unexplainable glory before the world was created.
SPEAKER_01: His status, his existence as God shone brighter than the star of Bethlehem, even before the stars themselves were placed in the sky.
SPEAKER_01: He is the perfection of God.
SPEAKER_01: By taking on human form, it was as if God was becoming a Roman slave.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't stop being God, but he set aside his right to display his glorious form and being when he came to earth.
SPEAKER_01: He wrapped himself in a body.
SPEAKER_01: He became the God man.
SPEAKER_01: The New Testament calls this a humbling, a humiliation for God.
SPEAKER_01: Yet he did it willingly.
SPEAKER_01: That act is so remarkable that many call it the perfection of love, because he did it for others.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps, though, more surprising than the humiliation itself is that it was planned.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't just happen.
SPEAKER_01: The humility of Christmas, that humbling act of God taking on human form, was intentional and foretold.
SPEAKER_01: The prophet Isaiah spoke of a person called God's servant or God's slave.
SPEAKER_01: And strangely, in Isaiah chapter 52, it says that slave would be high and lifted up and be exalted.
SPEAKER_01: Those words are only used, that language is only used of God in the book of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: A slave who would be high and lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: But then Isaiah goes on to say that many would be surprised by the slave's appearance because it was so marred and distorted beyond what a human being looks like.
SPEAKER_01: But that's jumping ahead.
SPEAKER_01: We need to back up.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Isaiah asked a question at the beginning of Isaiah chapter 53.
SPEAKER_01: He says, who has believed what he heard from us?
SPEAKER_01: The prophet recognizes that the idea of a glorious God appearing as a human being or even a slave doesn't align with human perceptions of reality.
SPEAKER_01: It would be humiliating for the indescribable God to appear as a slave.
SPEAKER_01: And Isaiah says that makes his message difficult to believe.
SPEAKER_01: But then the prophet explains a little bit more.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 2 of Isaiah 53, he says, Let me explain, that's what that four is all about.
SPEAKER_01: For he grew up before him, that is, the servant or slave, grew up before God, like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground.
SPEAKER_01: He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
SPEAKER_01: So let's follow the description from beginning to end.
SPEAKER_01: A slave would possess the form of God and be exalted.
SPEAKER_01: He would be high and lifted up.
SPEAKER_01: He would be glorious, yet he would grow up like a human being, emerging in a picturesque kind of way, like a like a sucker branch from a plant that was already there, but apparently cut down, and so this other branch just comes up out of the ground.
SPEAKER_01: But then we remember that Isaiah already spoke of that happening back in chapter 11, where he said, There will be a shoot that comes forth from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots, from Jesse's roots, will bear fruit.
SPEAKER_01: There's an unexpected quality to this image.
SPEAKER_01: Sucker branches grow up on their own, out of the ground, unexpectedly.
SPEAKER_01: And this one depicting a human being was nothing remarkable.
SPEAKER_01: Just another sucker branch coming up out of the ground.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't seem special, it didn't seem unique or desirable.
SPEAKER_01: Under normal circumstances, we would merely cut it off.
SPEAKER_01: But Isaiah says that this branch from the root of the messianic line of David will be high and lifted up and exalted as God.
SPEAKER_01: He would enter time and space like a slave with no desirable appearance.
SPEAKER_01: The perfection of beauty and brilliance of God himself, clothed with a body, as though an emperor were taking off his royal toga and taking on the clothes of a slave.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah was looking forward in time, prophesying about the coming slave who is God.
SPEAKER_01: And looking forward, he says in Isaiah chapter 53, verse 3, that he was despised and rejected by men.
SPEAKER_01: He was a man of sorrows because he was acquainted with grief.
SPEAKER_01: And as one from whom people hide their faces, they didn't esteem him, didn't consider him worthy.
SPEAKER_01: So that root came out of the ground, so to speak, in humble Bethlehem of all places.
SPEAKER_01: No one heard about it or cared about the angelic announcement of his birth except for some poor shepherds in the middle of the night and some magi coming from some country in the east.
SPEAKER_01: That's because no one really notices when someone as low on the social ladder as a slave is born.
SPEAKER_01: But that, my friends, is precisely where the awe of Christmas resides.
SPEAKER_01: The glorious God humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: He did it to himself.
SPEAKER_01: No one forced him to do it.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't just happen.
SPEAKER_01: It was planned that the glorious God would humble himself by wrapping the glory of his deity and his majestic power in the form of a human being, the eternal God experiencing a beginning in his creation as a humble infant.
SPEAKER_01: So we don't find a royal toga, we find strips of cloth wrapped around an infant.
SPEAKER_01: See, only those who accept him as Christ the Lord, as those shepherds did, will understand what kind of child lies in the manger.
SPEAKER_01: Only those who believe what the prophets predicted and what the gospels reveal as fulfilled will come and worship him.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we don't come in faith, we see him as a despised and rejected sucker branch.
SPEAKER_01: It is undesirable.
SPEAKER_01: So this is a call to trust in the infant holy, the one who is high and lifted up and exalted, but who humbled himself for your salvation.
SPEAKER_01: It's a call to come to Bethlehem and adore the humble God who came for us.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Awed, yes.
SPEAKER_01: But to be awed by this indescribable event of God humbling himself, the all-worthy one.
SPEAKER_01: The one who is beyond worth.
SPEAKER_01: Indescribable.
SPEAKER_01: The one who already had all of the gold and frankincense and myrrh that he could desire.
SPEAKER_01: Who came and set that aside to be found as a human being, like a slave, like a lowly one on the social status that no one would notice or desire.
SPEAKER_01: Except those with eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, give us eyes of faith that we might see beyond the strips of cloth, beyond the swaddling, beyond the manger to the glorious truth that our God took on human flesh to die.
SPEAKER_01: A death on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: There would be a distant night not so silent.
SPEAKER_01: And people would weep and wail.
SPEAKER_01: For yet another indescribable event.
SPEAKER_01: The death of God.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we will look forward with faith beyond that cross.
SPEAKER_01: To when you came out of the tomb, demonstrating once and for all that the God man is real.
SPEAKER_01: So in your presence we gather tonight to come on bended knee and adore you.
SPEAKER_01: Remembering the humiliation of God being born.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.