To Do God’s Will
Hebrews 10:5 – 10
Indulge me this morning if you will. From the beginning of time, as far as mankind is concerned at least, there has always been a need to bring mankind back into relationship with God. Adam and Eve were there in the Garden of Eden, the perfect home for mankind to live in eternal relationship with God. Everything they could ever have needed was there for their existence and their enjoyment!
They were in relationship, in communion with the Creator who loved them greatly and all mankind had to do was to love Him back, do as he asked and populate the world with more children that they could love and that He could love as well.
But as we know, Satan, the fallen angel, had other plans. God had imbued him with free will, just as God had imbued mankind with free will and Satan chose to work to separate man from God. Long story short, from that first act of disobedience, mankind needed a pathway back into a renewed relationship with God. Living in the perfect garden was over, a new reality needed to be found.
Through the generations and centuries, mankind struggled to find that pathway, to find the key that would unlock that door back into relationship with God. The door had been closed, but God has a plan.
Through the years, God has been leading mankind back through His appointed and anointed people that we see first in Genesis; beginning with Adam and then Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, among others, preparing mankind to find a pathway, the narrow pathway to the narrow gate of salvation, if you will, back into a righteous relationship with their Father.
So here is where I need your indulgence for my story. In my mind’s I see and hear this interaction; one day God summons Jesus to His side, both of them have been watching mankind struggle with the temptations that Satan unleashes on man, and how man struggles to do what is right. For much of the time, many of the people have been adhering to the sacrificial law, brought down from Mt Sinai, but it is not all of the people, it is not all of the time, and it is not a permanent solution.
God has been preparing mankind for the opportunity to find a lasting solution, a permanent relationship with God. God has been sending numerous prophets, the prophets that we have been reading and listening to over the past three weeks during Advent in preparation for Christmas. A King for the Jews has been prophesied, is coming and now the Father tells Jesus that the time is for him to go to Earth and become the Messiah that had been foretold.
But there is one catch, He will be coming not as a mighty co-creator of the universe, wielding power and majesty unimaginable! Rather He is to come, as a helpless baby, born to mortal woman, a shunned virgin no less, to grow and live, to learn as mankind. And He will have to sacrifice himself for them, die their death of disobedience. And without missing a beat Jesus proclaims the words that we find in our lesson today “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first, His life, to establish the second, God’s Will.
You know the lectionary threw us a bit of a twist this year. You might recall that we had the scripture that immediately follows this scripture back in November during the message on being made Perfect Forever. So, if some of this sound familiar, that is why.
As I mentioned last week, over the previous two weeks of Advent, we had been learning how the past is prelude for the future. In this case however it remains that the future remains dependent on the past! We know all adult male Israelites were required to give regular sacrifices to atone for their sins, whether they were aware of them or not. There were many different reasons that the Israelites were instructed to make sacrifices to God for their disobedience to the Law that Moses brought down for Mt Sinai and there were many different objects of sacrifice that were required, mostly the blood animals of one sort or another.
But sacrifices of the blood of animals was not enough, is not enough, to cleanse our muddled souls. It was and it is our debt, inherited by us because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. It is a blood debt and blood of mankind must be willingly shed to pay the debt, if we are to wash away our sinfulness. God knows this, and the Son knows this, and yet when the Father sends him to come to earth and become that blood substitute he obediently and reverently says to the Father, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.”
Therefore, Jesus obediently and faithfully condescends to come To Do God’s Will. What does that mean then? What is the condescension of Jesus? The definition of condescension, it is the act of descending to a lower and less dignified state; of waiving the privileges of one’s rank and status; of bestowing honors and favors upon one of lesser stature or status. This means that in order To Do God’s Will which is reconciling God’s people, Jesus needed to give up everything that He was, is and has, to be like mankind, like us, you and me, warts, and all. And embedded in that statement is his willingness, obedience, even eagerness, to sacrifice himself at His first coming, the first Advent for the purposes of God in the second Advent.
Not only is he leaving behind, at least temporarily, all his status and powers as a divine being to become mortal. Fully Divine yet fully human. At Christmas He comes as the most helpless of all humans, He comes as a mere infant, in a lowest of places imaginable for any human birth, in a stable surrounded by the great unwashed animals and He is laid, not in a cradle fit for a king but rather in a feeding trough, a manger. He will be born through a simple birth, in an obscure place, to a shunned a virgin, and yet it is ultimately that body, His body that will make us, you and me, Holy!
That’s the theme today. With all the promises and prophecies sent to the Jews, the Apostle Paul reminds them that the Messiah did come, did fulfill the prophecies, maybe not in the form or nature that they expected, but He came To Do God’s Will and embedded in that statement is the willingness to sacrifice him self at the first coming for the purposes of God.
Friends, here today embrace the willingness to condescend, the faithfulness, the compassion to love and care for us, to come to us and for us for our Eternal souls. It would be a dishonor to reduce the coming of the Christ-child merely as an example for us to follow! Reducing Jesus to just an example diminishes Christmas to just another birthday commemoration.
You see, if following an example could make us holy, we didn’t need Jesus to come at all. The problem is not lack of a good example. The problem is that God needed the sacrifice of one that was totally devoid of sin and to repay our life debt. Only that sacrifice will satisfy God’s holy standard. Jesus alone met God’s holy standard perfectly. Jesus’ purpose for coming at Christmas was to be the completion of God’s will and plan for His people. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
God’s Will for sending the Christ-child is to deliver God’s saving grace to his children. This is why the Father sent the Son. This is the meaning of Christmas. Jesus was born as a human being with a mortal body prepared for him to serve God, in perfect obedience, To Do God’s Will, as our substitute. When we accept Jesus as our Messiah,God counts Jesus holy record as ours. God counts Jesus’ perfect obedience as ours because Jesus was born at Christmas to take your place.
He comes in the greatest form of humanity and humility at Christmas to eventually be able present you to God as holy and blameless, clothed with his holy life and washed clean with his holy blood. His body makes you holy, for he sacrificed his body to take away your sin. His body makes you holy, for he fulfilled the Father’s will. The coming reward you seek is found in the coming of the Christ-child!
To neglect or diminish the incomparable importance of Christ’s willingness To Do God’s Will empties Christmas of its eternal meaning. The reading from Hebrews today reminds us of what Christmas is all about. We don’t celebrate the birth of a child who grew up to show us how to love one another by following his example. That’s not a Savior. Rather we celebrate how God, the eternal Son of the Father, condescended to become human in a most miraculous, yet lowliest, of ways in order To Do God’s Will and the will that God had for him was for Christ to make us Holy. That is the theme today, His willingness to come, to take on a human body and to benefit and reconcile us, to make us Holy.
Hear the Good News my Friends……
“I have come to do your will,” Jesus says. He met God’s holy standard perfectly. He never disobeyed God’s will in the least. His words, actions, heart and mind kept it perfectly all the time. Therefore, because he was conceived and born as a human being, because he became flesh and blood with a human body and soul like us except without sin, his perfect obedience counts for you and me. That’s how he makes us holy.
Gregg Bitter writes: So dear friends, don’t look into your heart to find your holiness. Don’t look at your actions or your striving to follow an example. Rather look in the manger. There lies the beginning of your holiness. Because of His obedience and willingness, He came to present you to God as holy and blameless, clothed with his holy life and washed clean with his holy blood. Through His perfect obedience and willingness to condescend, give up everything and to come to us as a baby on Christmas morning, He makes us holy! That, dear ones, is God’s Will which has been done! Amen.