THE MAN FROM HEAVEN

[Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18-23]

          Introduction to the Scriptures: In the best known account of the birth of Jesus, Luke begins the story in chapter one, verse 26 with the announcement from the angel to Mary that something new was about to happen. “In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee.” [Read Luke 1:26-27] By the way, Nazareth was a very tiny town at that time, probably about 40 families or so, a little out-of-the-way place. And here is what the angel had to say:[Continue reading Luke 1:30-35]

When you stop and listen carefully, this is quite a remarkable account, isn’t it? Now let’s move back to Matthew and his story. Remember last week that we were looking at this genealogy and we found an interesting little break when it came to Mary and Joseph and Jesus. And he follows up on this in the 18^th verse with this account.

[Read Matthew 1:18-19]

Note: An engagement could only be terminated by a divorce even though they had not come together, hadn’t actually been married or had any sexual relations.

[Continue verses 20-25]

          That is a remarkable story, isn’t it?

Prayer for Illumination - Heavenly Father, as we explore your word, even these familiar words, may we experience the illuminating power of your Holy Spirit to take us to the heart of your word and recognize the privilege we have in this conversation with you about things that seem fundamental to the universe and to life and to your plan for history. Awaken our minds then and our spirits, so that we might receive all that you have for us, in Christ’s name, AMEN.

Message

          CNN talk show host, Larry King, was once asked who he would most like to interview if he could choose anyone from all of history. He said, “Jesus Christ.” The questioner said, “And what would you like to ask Him?” King replied, “I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin-born. The answer to that question would define history for me.” That is quite a remarkable statement, isn’t it?

          I don’t know exactly what Larry King was thinking, but contrary to most people both inside and outside the church who have concluded that the question is pretty much irrelevant, I would like to say that Larry King was right! In an article entitled The Virgin Birth and Childhood Mysteries of Jesus, James Still writes, “Biblical scholars have long ago dismissed the literal interpretation of the miraculous virgin-birth of Jesus. Also, many liberal Christian denominations have either quietly purged the curious piece of teaching from their body of philosophy, or conveniently ignore the issue altogether.” He is right, but my response is that in both cases these people are (I don’t know if this is an exact term, but) “intellectual wimps,” unwilling to do the hard, careful thinking that is required if we are to uncover real and significant Truths. For the fact is, as Larry King observed and I hope you will come to understand this morning, nothing less than the definition of history is at stake in this question of the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus!

          In the first place, as you, I trust, heard in reading these two accounts this morning, it was obviously significant to the Bible writers who gave us the earliest accounts of Jesus’ birth – not something I think we can dismiss 2000 years later. We saw last week that Matthew, committed to tying in Jesus’ genealogy with the major characters of the Old Testament, nevertheless introduced a discontinuity in his genealogy by breaking the pattern and observing that while Jesus was the son of Mary, he was not apparently the son of Joseph. This would seem to weaken Matthew’s own case in trying to tie Jesus to David and to Abraham, and then to say: Well, of course, that wasn’t really the connection. But he does it anyway. Why would he do that? One must assume he did it because he knew it to be true; he couldn’t leave it out of the story. Any time a person is willing to weaken his own case with a fact, his account becomes the more credible.

          Matthew himself goes on to explain in our text this morning that the remarkable fact was that Mary’s pregnancy was the result of the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit in the natural order of things. Mary became pregnant even though she had no sexual relations – something unheard of in history, and certainly something no one trying to construct a credible story would include. You wouldn’t make that up! The only reason to include it was the conviction that it was true!

          Then Matthew tells us this surprising development actually makes sense of a prediction of Isaiah the prophet that “the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, ‘God with us.’” Now any of you who have studied the Scriptures closely on this question of the virgin birth have heard that the Hebrew word for “virgin” in Isaiah may refer to an actual virgin, but it may also simply refer to a young, unmarried woman. So some have concluded that the idea of Jesus being born of a virgin is not actually a Biblical idea. But of course, once again, I think this fact strengthens Matthew’s argument because it means he had an “out” if he wanted to take it. He didn’t have to use the word in terms of a pure virgin, but he didn’t take that “out”! And he didn’t because apparently he was convinced it was true.

          Besides, this also strengthens the argument for the veracity of the Scriptures themselves, because Isaiah’s prediction is a prophecy which, as is typical of prophecy, had an immediate fulfillment for the kingdom of Judah, and a distant fulfillment in the birth of Jesus. So the Hebrew word would apply equally to both the first birth which did not involve a virgin, and the second, which did. Right down to the particular words and their meaning, the Scriptures are always consistent.

          If we still had any doubts about what the New Testament was trying to say, they are dispelled when Luke, (who was, you’ll remember, by profession a doctor), in our second text went into some detail to tell us how this happened. Now the field of medicine was not so specialized in the first century, so Luke, as far as I know, was not an OBGYN, but he certainly knew how babies were conceived. And he verifies Matthew’s account and adds to it. For that matter, Mary herself knew perfectly well how babies were conceived, and in all innocence protests to the angel messenger that this is quite impossible since she has had no sexual relations. “You’re talking nonsense,” she implies.

          But the angel explains that, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” And he adds, “For nothing is impossible with God.” Why would you think that the God who created the universe and breathed life into it could not accomplish this simple act of procreation?

          No, it is impossible to read the New Testament and dismiss the idea of the virgin birth, even though many recent scholars have attempted to do so. But their efforts are contradicted by every Christian creed from the original Apostle’s Creed through the Reformation over 1500 years later. Those closest to the event and most deeply steeped in the Scriptures agreed that Jesus had in fact been born of a virgin. It is a very recent idea that we don’t need that anymore. This was a profoundly important truth for all the early Christians for the better part of the first two millennia of the Christian faith to recognize that this in fact had taken place.

          One of the very few vaguely Biblical attempts to deny the virgin birth has to do with the claim that the apostle Paul never referred to it. I beg to differ, and I want to take you now to one of the apostle’s best known texts to explore the tremendous significance of the virgin birth, as well as the rationale behind it. Please turn with me to 1 Corinthians, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, the 15^th chapter, because there are some remarkable things here that we need to understand. Beginning in verse 45, listen to this:

So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being;” the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of th earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

                                                           [1 Corinthians 15:45-49]

          This is a tremendously powerful passage of scripture, and deserves our close attention this morning. What it does is compare and contrast two men, the man from earth (Adam), and the man from heaven (Jesus). Let’s begin with the man from earth. What he says here about Adam, the man from earth, is that while he was strictly a natural creature, made from the dust of the earth, nevertheless he became a living being. Now that is pretty miraculous if you stop and think about it, isn’t it? The dust of the earth had come to breathe, to think, to interact in the person of Adam?

          He is taking us all the way back to that powerful and familiar account of creation from Genesis 1 and 2. You will perhaps recall from earlier studies which we have done in Genesis that God’s choice of words, particularly of verbs, here in this account is very important. There are a number of words which describe the earth as “producing” certain things, and words which describe their natural development. This is certainly compatible with many notions of what science today describes as evolution. I want you to know that I have no problem with at least 90% of the current theory of evolution. In fact, it greatly enlarges my sense of what God has done in creation because evolution shows us the tremendous adaptability of God’s creation, which has allowed life to develop in new ways, survive some catastrophic change, and continue producing wonderful and beautiful things.

          But the Genesis account uses a very different word three times, and it is the Hebrew word bara, which describes a unique action of God whereby He brings something entirely new into being. Not something that developed from something else, but something entirely new. That word is used in Genesis 1:1 where the material universe itself comes into being. It then begins to develop along the amazing and complex lines which God has built into its potential. But the word bara reappears when God introduces life into creation – something which cannot evolve on its own. The third time bara appears is when God creates human beings in His own image. So the universe itself, life, and humanity are the unique points in the creation story.

          This is the word we are referring to when we say God created ex nihilo, that is, “out of nothing.” And it is indeed out of nothing material, but it is not really “out of nothing.” It is something which comes from God himself, so perhaps a more accurate term would be not ex nihilo, but ex deo, or “out of God.” The universe, life, and the uniqueness which constitutes our humanity comes directly from God. Science, incidentally, has no alternatives to offer at these three points.

          So the first man, Adam, comes into being ex deo. Are you with me? Our humanity – not necessarily our bodies, but our humanity – comes out of nothing which had existed previously. Adam’s is, if you will, a “virgin birth.” It is a unique act of creation from the God of all creation. And of course in this sense, every birth, including yours and mine, is a virgin birth. Our parents did not make us. They do not have that capacity. They were simply the instruments God used to make us, to pass along this life that had been virginally introduced into creation.

          So, I must ask you this morning, what is so amazing about Jesus’ virgin birth? I had sometimes thought that if I wrote a sermon on the virgin birth, I would entitle it, “Inconceivable!” But it is inconceivable only if there is not a God. That which was conceived in Mary came directly from the hand of God. It was, if you will, simply one more act of creation ex nihilo, or better ex deo. At the birth of Jesus, God is taking His creation to a new level. And by the way, why should we be surprised that God is still doing this? There were, after all, many millennia at least between each of those three other acts of pure creation. They didn’t happen all at once – the birth of the universe, the beginning of life, and the inception of the human race. Jesus’ virgin birth is God’s fourth act of pure creation, for here He is introducing a whole new thing.

          In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul calls him “the man from heaven” as opposed to the man from earth, Adam. It is Paul’s acknowledgment of the virgin birth, which, it turns out, is quite “conceivable” after all! The source of the unique person of Jesus was heaven itself, Paul tells us. He was not restricted to earth as we are. God was doing something entirely new.

          This is important for several reasons. The first is that Jesus’ birth to an earthly mother and a divine father shows us how he came to be uniquely inhabited by both a divine and a human nature. Without this, the idea of Jesus reconciling man and God becomes preposterous. As a man only, he would share our corruption. As God only, he would still be separate from us. Only as both natures are drawn together within one man can he bridge this otherwise impossible chasm which separates us from a holy God.

          The second, and related reason this virgin birth is so important is because it reveals the source of Jesus’ otherwise impossible sinlessness. It is, as the Scriptures tell us and as we know from our own experience, impossible that any of us should not sin. How then does Jesus escape this curse? It is because of his divine nature, perfectly attuned to his Father God.

          And here, by the way, a bit of silliness creeps into much of our theology. I have seen it explained by scholars who ought to know better that since Jesus was born of a divine Father and an earthly mother, it is obvious that our sinful nature is passed along through our fathers and not through our mothers. And maybe half the congregation would agree with that. Certainly while all of us fathers would be quick to admit that our children seem to have picked up most of the worst things about us, it is also true that every honest mother would have to admit the same. No, the issue is not that our sinful nature comes strictly from our fathers, but rather that our sinful nature comes from the fact that our humanity has been divorced from God. Significantly, the virgin birth of Jesus points us toward God’s ultimate answer with this new “marriage” of humanity and God which reconciles our earlier divorce.

          It also becomes clear from the virgin birth that our salvation is strictly an act of God’s grace. The purifying of our humanity is simply beyond our natural ability. We could not do this on our own, under our own power. This is what Paul is explaining in Romans 3:20 when he reminds us that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather through the law we become conscious of sin.” We become conscious of the fact that we cannot please God, that we are not holy. The opportunity for salvation, as he goes on to explain, comes to us only through the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ.

          Now if you have followed me so far, we’ve covered quite a bit of significant ground and maybe some new thoughts along the way. This is about as far as any of us ever seem to get with this whole, strange doctrine of the virgin birth – if indeed we get this far. Yes, God could do it, and, yes, it makes Jesus unique. But the really exciting news is still to come, and it is this to which the apostle introduces us in 1 Corinthians 15. Look back at those verses again:

So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being;” the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. [vv. 45-47]

So here we have the virgin born man from earth, and the subsequently virgin born man from heaven. But what is this all about? Paul begins to explain in verse 48. “As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; . . .” We share Adam’s nature, Adam’s body, Adam’s fate.

. . . and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. [vv. 48-49]

Did you hear that? Again, I don’t know what Larry King was thinking, but this revelation totally redefines history! “And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” In other words, as men and women made from the dust of the earth, we are condemned to go the way of all flesh. “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” As Paul goes on to point out in verse 50 in this passage, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

          But then, hardly able to contain his excitement, he continues, “Listen! I tell you a mystery [it is not always going to be this way]: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.” He goes on to say, “The sting of death is sin . . . But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So keep at it, he concludes at the end of 1 Corinthians 15. This is the climax of history for the believer.

          John understood it. In his first letter he writes about our likeness to the man from earth and our potential likeness to the man from heaven. 1 John 3:2, “Dear friends,” talking to the people who have committed their lives to follow Jesus Christ, and who had received his Spirit, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.” That is the promise of God’s Word! We shall be like the man from heaven!

          The apostle Paul stated it very succinctly in his second letter to the Corinthians [5:16-17]. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” We don’t view you as men from earth anymore . . . “Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

          Yes, with the fourth bara – the Fourth Creation, the virgin birth of Christ – God has begun His new creation. There in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul describes the risen Christ, free now from the power of sin and death, as the “firstfruits” of this new creation in which we are all invited to participate. “Christ, the firstfruits,” he says in verse 23, “then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom of God the Father,” all other enemies, including death, having been destroyed.

          And that, of course, takes us to the final chapters of the last book in the Bible, the Revelation to the apostle John where he writes,

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men [Immanuel, God with us], and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

          Remember when Matthew reminded us that Isaiah had said the child born to the virgin would be called “Immanuel – God with us.” Well, here in Revelation John describes this new creation which is finally established when God reaches out from heaven to embrace the earth and the whole of His universe to make all things new – to make all things as beautiful and as delightful and as holy and as pure and as exciting and as deliriously joyful as He set out to do in the very beginning.

          Ah yes, “in the beginning” God created, – bara – the heavens and the earth. And then He created – bara – life. And then He created – bara – human life. And then He created – bara – incorruptible human life that could share His creation for eternity. His creation is finally complete! And you and I are invited to be a part of it. Indeed, He intended for you to be a part of it all along. You must simply accept His offer of this new life from the virgin’s son – the Son of God!

Closing prayer - Father, if we have understood your word correctly here, the virgin birth becomes an incredibly important thing, because it is one of your central acts of creation, bringing the material universe into being, investing it with life, creating humans in your own image, and then creating an incorruptible race in which we may participate. This is a remarkable thing. Truly it defines history for us. It is the message of the gospel. May we be bold to embrace it, and may it shape us both for now and for eternity. We pray this in the name of Jesus, the Living Word, the second Adam, the man from heaven, AMEN.