God’s Son Became Man to Be Your Saviour
Can you imagine? The gall! Did you hear? Prime Minister Carney was at the Winspear Centre last night. The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was playing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and just as the second movement was about to begin, the Prime Minister walked onto the stage, tapped the concertmaster on the shoulder, took his violin, and started playing! It was terrible! What possesses a person to think they can do that?
And to think, this comes after last week’s NBA Finals disaster. Did you hear about that? President Trump was at Madison Square Gardens and interrupted Jalen Brunson’s free throws in the fourth quarter when the game was on the line to take a stab at it himself. Who does he think he is?
If either of those headlines were true, how would you have reacted? With a mixture of humour and horror? Neither of those men are qualified to do either of those things. Especially in such stark contrast to the experts who had just been performing at the peak of their respective crafts, their lack of skill would have been like nails on a chalkboard. The amount of arrogance and profound lack of self awareness would have been staggering. It’d be hard even to imagine that such a thing were possible… if it hadn’t happened before.
In the year that King Uzziah died…[1]
Uzziah had been a good king. At least, it started that way. He took the throne when he was young – only 16 years old! Chronicles tells us that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.[2] He was instructed in the fear of God. He won victories over God’s enemies. He rebuilt towns, erected towers, fortified cities. He was so successful that neighbouring nations brough tribute to him. His fame spread as far as Egypt.
But then we read, after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and you won’t believe what he did next. He entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.[3]
If Mark Carney stealing Robert Uchida’s violin would have been disrespectful, if Donald Trump snatching Jalen Brunson’s free throw attempt would have been disgusting, this was downright blasphemous. Burning incense was the priest’s job, not the king’s. In fact, there were only a very select few who were eligible and qualified to do it, and even they had to wear the right clothes and go through the proper ceremonies, but Uzziah barged right in and grabbed at it like it was his dinner.
When Azariah (and eighty other courageous priests) tried to stop him, Uzziah became angry and started raging at them… until leprosy broke out on his forehead. The Lord had afflicted him because of his arrogance and insolence. And Uzziah spent the rest of his days in a separate house – leprous, and banned from the temple of the Lord.[4]
In the year that King Uzziah died, [Isaiah] saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.[5]
The same temple that Uzziah had desecrated, the Lord filled with the train of his glorious robe.
Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.[6]
The angels were modest. The holy angels who had never sinned, nevertheless covered their faces and their feet in the presence of their even-more-glorious God.
And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.[7]
The glory of God couldn’t be contained to one room in the temple. It filled the earth. It shook the earth. And it shook Isaiah too.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”[8]
Isaiah is very understandably and appropriately afraid. He knew what God had done to Uzziah when he sinned. And even though Isaiah wasn’t a blasphemer like that, he wasn’t holy like these angels, let along glorious like God. He didn’t deserve to be there, and he knew it.
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”[9]
Isaiah – very well aware of the very recent history of Uzziah, also very well aware of his own unworthiness and sin – receives God’s transcendent yet imminent grace. He didn’t deserve to be there. He was sinful. But God was gracious, and sent an angel to purify Isaiah’s unclean lips in a way that Isaiah couldn’t miss. It wasn’t a grand proclamation or a written certificate. It was personal and intimate and met Isaiah precisely where he was most insecure, directly in the place where he felt his guilt. The pure and holy altar of God, brought to him by a holy messenger, and applied to his body to atone for his sin.
That’s exactly why God sent Jesus.
You heard the story last week of Adam and Eve and how they had sinned in the Garden of Eden, and how God had graciously promised them forgiveness and salvation and eternal life. You heard how God had promised to send his Son to crush the head of the serpent. What you didn’t hear was how, and why it had to be that way.
Well, as a matter of fact, you did hear one part of the how: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”[10] Who was going to crush the serpent’s head? Jesus, yes, but as God calls him here: “the offspring of the woman.” Which tells us something, i.e. that God’s Son, would become human, as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed: conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary = both God and man in one person.
And that mattered! Had Jesus been just another guy like Adam or Abram or Isaiah or Uzziah, he would have fallen into the same traps they did. David talks about it in the Psalms: The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. And this is his conclusion: All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.[11]
Adam started out perfect, but one bite of one fruit and it was all gone. Abram was blessed by God, but in fear he loved his life more than his wife; he grew impatient for God’s promises to be fulfilled and took matters into his own hands. You already heard about Uzziah’s leprosy for his blasphemy and Isaiah’s unclean lips.
That all describe you too. Some of you started life with every spiritual advantage: parents who had you baptized a week after you were born; pastors who spent years walking with you through confirmation class. But then what did you do? You grew bored and faith became passe. You grew entitled and when God didn’t give you what you thought you deserved, you walked away.
Or maybe you didn’t grow up that way, and now that you’re here you’re painfully aware of how unclean your past was (and, let’s be honest, your present is too), e.g. the sinful desires you indulge without a thought, the words you speak without a care, the deeds you do without a modicum of the modesty of the holy angels in the presence of the glorious God.
The truth is, we ought to be terrified to come here. We should fear lightning falling from heaven as we walk from the car to the door, leprosy breaking out on all our foreheads for being in the presence of God. Or, at least, that’s what we would have had to fear, had it not been for God’s Son becoming human.
God didn’t just sit up in heaven and turn a few knobs and flip a few switches to fix the problem of sin. He sent his Son to become one of us, i.e. to be born under the law,[12] as Paul says. And do you know what that means, i.e. to be born under the law? Think about it this way, what would it mean if you thought you were above the law? Then the law doesn’t apply to you. So, if you are under the law, that means it does apply, i.e. you do have to obey. And Jesus did too.
But again, better than Adam and Abram and Uzziah and Isaiah (and me and you and everyone else who’s ever lived): For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.[13] In what way was Jesus just like us? He was tempted. But in what way was he very different? He did not give in; he did not sin.
God’s holy Son became a human man. He was tempted just like you, but unlike you he remained perfect his whole life through. And here’s the critical piece: why? So that he could do what you could not: No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them – the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough.[14] What could you never do? Ransom yourself or anyone else.
But Jesus became the impossible to do the impossible: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”[15] Because Jesus was able to lead a perfectly pure life, what was he able to do when he gave up that life on the cross? He was able to ransom you.
Uzziah had no right to offer a sacrifice in God’s temple. Jesus – your perfect, Great High Priest – did. And he did so willingly, not to cause you to tremble in fear at the mention of his name, but to cleanse you and make you holy in his sight. Jesus was like that live coal from the burning altar that the angel carried to Isaiah’s lips. You were impure and imperfect, undeserving of anything but punishment, but instead of waiting for you to fix yourself, he came to you in flesh and blood. He met you in your sin and forgave it. He gave his life on the cross to give you life, both now in the peace of his love and forever in the presence of his glory.
There is no greater gift that God could have given you than the Son of God becoming the Son of Man so that he could be your Saviour. And that’s what he did. He died on the cross millennia ago so that you could know the extent of his love. He washed you water (or if you haven’t been baptized yet, he offers to), so that you can have the same confidence that Jesse’s parents and grandparents do, i.e. that you live every day as a dearly bought, adopted child of God immersed in his grace always. He still comes to you and touches your unclean lips with his holy body and blood to assure you that the faith you foster and grow through years of confirmation class and week after week of worship – that faith is founded in the established fact of his forgiveness for you.
Can you imagine? The gall! To come somewhere he had business being, to do something he had no earthly reason to. All because he loves you. That’s why God became man and Jesus became your brother, so that he could be your Saviour and so that you could live in his love and favour forever.
This is most certainly true. Amen.
[1] Isaiah 6:1
[2] 2 Chronicles 26:4
[3] 2 Chronicles 26:16
[4] 2 Corinthians 26:21
[5] Isaiah 6:1
[6] Isaiah 6:2
[7] Isaiah 6:3,4
[8] Isaiah 6:5
[9] Isaiah 6:6,7
[10] Genesis 3:15
[11] Psalm 14:2,3
[12] Galatians 4:4,5
[13] Hebrews 4:15
[14] Psalm 49:7,8
[15] Matthew 20:28