Go

Contact Us

  • Phone: (509) 747-3007
  • Email:
  • Mosaic Address:
    606 West 3rd Ave., Spokane, WA 99201

Service Times

  • Sunday:  8:30 am, 10 am, 11:30 am
  • Infant through 5th grade Sunday School classes available
  • FREE Parking!

Sermons

FILTER BY:

Back To List

Dec 22, 2024

The Consummation of Christmas Glory

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Advent 2024

Keywords: incarnation, rule, glory, restoration, reign of christ, consumation

Summary:

The incarnation of God in Christ has much more yet to be revealed in the future return and reign of Jesus. In that sense, the glory of the incarnation is growing and yet to come. With so many prophecies about the reign of the Messiah, the glory of God is still to unfold more and more in the future.

Detail:

The Consummation of Christmas Glory

December 22, 2024

 

Fellowship Question:  What is one thing you are looking forward to about Christ’s return?

INTRO: 

Today is the final Sunday of Advent.  Its focus is on the JOY that both the anticipated coming of the Messiah and the actual revelation of His coming in the Christ-child brought to people.  From Mary and Elizabeth and Zacharias to the shepherds, Anna and Simeon, joy permeates the revelation of our Savior in the person of the baby Jesus Christ. 

Some gifts are like that.  Many gifts bring great joy when they are first unwrapped and revealed.  But the glory of so many fades over time.  However, the best gifts in life grow in glory the longer you enjoy them, right? They aren’t a “one-and-done” sort of thing.  They grow in joy and wonder the more they are lived out.

ILL:  Think of the gift of…

  • A trip: Sabbatical RV trip with the family in 2000.
  • Marriage: wedding was great…but 42 years later the joy has just compounded.
  • Children: birth of each child was miraculous, overwhelming and joyful.  But the joys of every year, of their marriages, and now 16 grandkids an counting keep adding to the mountain of joy.

Last week I mentioned that the O.T. has some 800 prophecies about the Messiah that would come to save people.  300 of them were fulfilled in Jesus Christ’s 1st coming as a humble child, lived out in a perfect, sinless life and culminating in the suffering-Servant of God who died as the Lamb of God for sinners like us needing saving from the destructiveness of our sin and the wrath of God against it. 

            But that leaves another 500 prophecies both O. & N.T. yet to be fulfilled about the coming glorious reign of this Messiah, Jesus.  Last week we looked at the glory of the Incarnation from eternity past when God set this amazing plan of our redemption into motion before the world or any humans were ever created.  Christmas Eve we will primarily focus upon the glory of glory of Christmas in the actual virgin birth of Jesus in that little hamlet of Bethlehem.  But in the next 15 minutes this morning, I’d like us to think about the blinding glory of the incarnated and resurrected Jesus Christ that is still to come—His future glory that will fulfill those remaining 500 prophecies about the Messiah that will reign, not just over Israel and the Church, but over every nation and sinner ever to exist on this globe. 

            Just as our life in Jesus Christ is something that is transforming us from one experience of God’s glory to another, so the revelation of Jesus Christ as this world’s Savior is something that will just grow in its glory from that humble stable in Bethlehem to the glorious throne of God in the new heavens and new earth.  (2 Corinthians 3:18—And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.) 

That reality is meant to carry every Christ-follower through every possible and horrific test and trial of this life. (Romans 8:18—For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.)

It is meant to fire and energize every day of our life lived to the glory of God. 

It is meant to increase our joy and wonder and even reflective capacity of God’s glory every day we are given on this earth. 

So, let’s look at just a handful of the hundreds of prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled by the now-resurrected, incarnated Jesus, born in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago—His glory that is still future.  First from the O.T.

Psalm 89:29

“So I will establish his descendants forever

And his throne as the days of heaven.

Daniel 2:44

In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.

 

Isaiah 11

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
    or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
    with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
    with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
    and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
    and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

10 In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious.

When Christ comes as reigning Messiah the second time, not only will nations and people be subject to him; all nature will be restored to the kind of relationship God intended in the beginning.

The N.T. is even more forthright in its prophecies about Jesus future glory yet to come.  Here are but a few.

Matthew 16:27

27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

Matthew 24:30-31

“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

1 Corinthians 15:24-25 (ESV)

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Ephesians 1:20-21 ESV

That he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.

Philippians 2:7ff—speaking of Jesus taking on humanity…taking on…”the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

            Nowhere in the N.T. is it more clear than in the last book of the Bible, Revelation.

Revelation 5:12-13 ESV

The hosts of heaven said with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

Revelation 11:15-18 ESV

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”

Revelation 19:15-16 ESV

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

            This is the humble, wrapped-in-human-flesh, Jesus whom we celebrate at Christmas.  While his redemptive, suffering-servant incarnation for us was complete when he died on the cross for you and me, the revelation of His incarnational glory continues to build and grow through the end of time and into eternity. Amazingly, right now you and I play a primary role in the growing manifestation of the glory of God in this world.

1.)  God’s glory continues to be shown in this world now in US, the Church.  The many illusions to the church as “the body of Christ” now in the world says something about the present and future manifestation of God incarnate. (See 1 Cor. 12:27; Eph. 4:12, 15, 5:24; Col. 1:24.)

Paul prayed for all believers in Ephesians 3:20-21, with these words:  20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

When the love of God so grips us in our life together that we are filled up with more and more of the true nature of Jesus—his love, his mercy, his compassion, his grace, his truth, joy, justice and patience…that is when God is continuing to show, in human form, the glory of Jesus.  As we saw last week in John 17: 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

The glory of God manifested today in the world is the love of Christ manifested in God’s people…us…the church.  This is why Satan will do anything to divide us, to bring bitterness between us, to rob us of the love of Christ residing in us by the Spirit of Christ.  This is why we must be praying continually Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:18-19, that we “18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you [pl.] may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

 

2.)  This is also why our sufferings in this world matter.  Experiencing them, enduring them, growing through them by the grace of Christ have implications for us and for the coming, eternal glory of Jesus. 

  • Romans 8:18-- I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Greek eis [ice] dominant preposition expressing “in, into, among”.)

Just as Jesus kept his eye on the prize of bringing glory to the Father through His sufferings, may we value the opportunities suffering gives us to make the glorious nature of God visible in our world and multiplied in the world to come. 

            The glory of the incarnation has just begun!  There is SO much more to come! 

            The remainder of our service today is going to be hearing from some of the younger saints among us as they pick up the glory of Christmas and remind us that it was through a child, even more amazing, a BABY, that God chose to display His glory.  And as you watch and listen to some of our children and youth at the beginning of their spiritual journeys to bring a lifetime of glory to God, may the glory of God break afresh on all of us. 

PRAYER

(Transition to Kid’s Pageant) 

As we have a bit of a scene change now, let me invite you to worship the glory of the incarnate Christ and coming Messiah through one more of the greatest choral compositions in all history, the Hallelujah Chorus.  Originally written to be an Easter cantata, so much of the scripture in this magnificent work is focused upon the coming glory of Jesus.  As people have done for centuries, why don’t we stand and worship from our hearts through this amazing choral piece. 

The Hallelujah Chorus is the 44th of 53 movements in Handle’s Messiah. It usually takes 2.5-3 hours to perform the whole thing.  We’ll take the next 3½ minutes. This chorus is taken from Revelation 11:15--“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”

 

Video clip:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU-1EskFkZ8

0:00-3:40