The Once and Future Christ

Matthew 1:18-24
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, December 25, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

Today is a glorious day.  Not only are we here in the house of the Lord to worship and to commune with our God on His special Sabbath day, but it is Christmas Day.  We will gather later with friends and family to fellowship, to give gifts, to enjoy fine meals, and to celebrate the birth, the coming, the advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  He and His work of redemption are the greatest gifts ever given, and the greatest gifts ever to be given: eternal life in place of eternal judgment.  John 3:16 tells us that this is a love gift from God: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.”  Why did God do it?  Why did He give this gift?  Because He loves us.  Because He loves you.  Saints of God, faithful in Christ, those born of the Spirit, you have great cause to rejoice and to celebrate this morning.  You are beloved of God.

So let us examine this Christ this morning.  His name is Jesus.  Let us look at what He did in the past.  Why did He come in the past?  And let us look at what He will do in the future.  For He is coming again.  And I will spoil the mystery by telling you the answer now: He came because He was needed and because He was promised.  He came and He lived and He died, suffering all God’s wrath in our place.  And He rose again to show that payment was complete.  And what will He do in the future?  He will come again in glory.

I. Why Did Jesus Come in the Past?

Let’s look at the first question: Why did He come?  Jesus Christ is the second Person of the Trinity.  He is eternal God.  God is a unique being.  He exists as three in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet one God.  As the gospel of John tells us, He was with God in the beginning, and He was God.  He is the Word-became-flesh.  In other words, He was not a man who became God, but God who became a man: one person with two natures—fully God and fully man at the same time.  His birth, His advent, which we celebrate this morning, was no accident of the cosmos.  It was no product of marital union.  It was no determination of DNA.  It was a unique occurrence in all of human history.  He was born of a virgin, a godly and holy young woman who had never been with a man.  Luke 1:29–37 spells it out explicitly for us.  God the Holy Spirit came upon her and she conceived.  The Christ was preserved by God from the taint of Adam’s sinfulness (original sin); in short, God became a man and yet remained God.  He came because He was needed, desperately needed by desperate sinners.

Our God made the world very good, including man and woman.  Man and woman, Adam and Eve, were God’s special creation.  They alone among the creatures were made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:27).  They were to govern His creation in His place.  They were to care for it as His delegated authorities, as His under-shepherds, as His viceroys.  They were supposed to do that, but they rebelled.  They refused to obey God’s commands.  And though God gave them everything they could ever need or legitimately desire, they sought to exceed the benevolent limits that God placed upon them.  These were minor limits: “Do not eat of the one tree in the garden.”  But they exceeded those limits and opposed God’s authority to set those limits.  They believed the devil’s lie.  The devil came to them in the garden and said, “God is holding you back.  You could be so much more.  You could be like God.”  The devil came to them and said, “God is lying to you.  You will not surely die if you eat of that tree.”  The devil came and said, “You could be autonomous, independent, free of God’s limit—one limit—but free of God’s limitation.  You could decide good and evil, right and wrong, for yourself.  In fact, you can dethrone God and take His place on the throne.”

They believed it, but it was all false.  Their situation did not improve, as the devil promised them.  It became much, much worse.  They did not become gods.  They did not become autonomous.  They did not become free.  As a matter of fact, they were free already and what they became was slaves—slaves to sin, slaves to the devil.  And they surely died.  If you have any question about that, go and try to find them.  They are not here anymore.  They surely died.  We can say, “Wherefore art thou, Adam?”  He is not here anymore.  God said, “You will die if you sin.”  He sinned, and he died.

Beyond this, they plunged the whole world into sin, and their descendants from Abel down to Isabella were born with a new nature, twisted by sin and enslaved to sin.  Every man or woman born thereafter—that is all of us—had a sin nature, and so each sinned.  I sinned.  You sinned.  Whether as good as Gandhi or as bad as Hitler, everyone is a sinner.  Romans 3:23 tells us all, all, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Now, this is a real problem.  The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23).  And after death we must face judgment.  Death might be okay if that was the end of it, but that is not the end of it.  It is destined for man once to die and then face judgment.  We must give an account for our sin (Heb. 9:27).  And because we all sinned, because we all rebelled against God, that judgment is severe.  The due punishment for sinners—remember, that is all of us—is God’s infinite wrath in eternal hell.  I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but Jesus Christ Himself said so (Matt. 25:41).  Our God is infinitely holy, infinitely pure, and infinitely just, and all sin is ultimately against Him (Ps. 51:4).  Sin against our infinite and holy God requires an infinite and holy punishment—his infinite wrath upon us.  As I said, this is a serious problem, for none of us are infinite.  We are finite people of limited capacity.  We could never satisfy this infinite debt.  So we would have to attempt to pay it forever in the frustrating reality that we will never be able to pay it.  It would be like if you owed a trillion dollars, and you paid one cent a year trying to pay it off.  It is like that, except worse.  There is no way to finish the payment.  It is infinite and just torment and agony forever (Luke 16).

So we needed Him.  We desperately needed Him.  We needed one who was infinite to come and to satisfy that infinite debt, and only God is infinite.  We needed one who is perfect to go and pay for us.  If He had sinned, He could maybe pay for His own sin, but that is it.  We needed one who was perfect, and only God is perfect.  And yet we needed a man, a man to stand as our representative in our place.  So what we needed is a God-man, fully God and fully man at the same time, and that is just what God provided in Jesus the Christ.

God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, became a man.  He lived a sinless and perfect life.  He suffered the infinite wrath of God in our behalf, and He died the death that we deserve.  And then, praise the Lord, He rose again in glory, proof that it was paid.  Fully God, able to live without sin, able to pay the infinite debt.  Fully man, able to stand as our representative.  And then God made all of this available to us by grace through faith.  Not by money, which would cheapen it.  Not by race, which would arbitrarily limit it.  We are all one race of man; one race of sinners.  Not by good deeds, for even our good deeds are tainted.  The sacrifice provided by God the Son is too valuable to be bought, too valuable to be earned, and it is perfect in and of itself, and in no need of addition or supplementation.  It is available to everyone for free by grace through faith.  If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  This is the only way to be saved.  Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else.”  There is no other God-man.  He was a unique being.  The only God-man.  No one else can save, and no one else is coming.  You must trust in Him alone to be saved.

He was born a little baby in the manger.  If you drive around at Christmas time, sometimes you will see a manger scene and there is a little baby.  He was born a little baby in the manger, but He was very God.  He did not need us.  We needed Him.  And we still need Him today.  We celebrate His advent, His coming, at Christmas.  And next to His sacrifice, death, and resurrection at Easter, this is the greatest event in all of human history.  God became man to save His people from their sin, from its just judgment, and from its penalties.  This is a great act of God’s great love for us (John 3:16).  God so loved the world that He sent His only Son.  That is what we celebrate today; today is the day that we celebrate that coming.  If you are in Christ, rejoice and be glad; the Savior came.  If you are outside of Christ, rejoice and be glad; the Savior came.  He offers you His salvation still today—by grace through faith, on the same terms as everyone else.  Trust in Him, believe in Him, confess with your mouth, believe in your heart, and you can be saved today.  We needed Him and He came.  Hallelujah!  All glory to God!

I said He came because He was needed, but He also came because He was promised.  The fall of man that I spoke about earlier was no surprise to God.  God knows all things, and He is sovereign over all things.  So He made provision to save His elect people in eternity past (Eph. 1:4).  The advent of the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, was not part of some rapid response plan by God; as though He had a good plan but it went bad, so He scrambled to get a new plan.  No!  That is not the way it went.  God gave man free will, and He knew that man would use that free will to sin.  So the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit gathered in the eternal council, and it was agreed that the Son would become man for the salvation of sinners and the Holy Spirit would apply that salvation to God’s elect people.  God, being very gracious, promised us this Messiah beforehand.  His chosen Old Testament people looked forward to the coming of this Christ.  And we, His chosen people, look backward to the coming of this Christ.  That is what we celebrate today.

This promised Messiah, this Christ, is all over the Scriptures.  Genesis 3:15 is the earliest indication.  It is the first good news.  As soon as they fell, God revealed to them, “One is coming who will pay for your sins.”  But it was made more explicit as time went on.  The prophecies grew more and more explicit: Isaiah 9:6–7 and more and more and more prophecies over hundreds and thousands of years so that, by the time of His coming, it was common knowledge that a Savior would come.  The crowd knew all about the Christ in John 7:31.  These are regular people.  This is not an obscure or hidden doctrine.  Andrew, the brother of Peter the fisherman, knew in John 1:41.  In John 4:25, the Samaritan woman, who was not even an Israelite, knew all about a Christ that was to come.  This was not an obscure promise.  This was a promise made and repeated by God over and over again, and everyone knew about it.

There can be no doubt that this Jesus was the Christ.  He fulfilled dozens of these prophecies that I have already referenced.  But let’s just examine a few of the Christmas prophecies this morning.  Micah 5:2 says that out of Bethlehem will come one “whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”  This is fulfilled in Matthew 2:1: “Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea.”  In Luke 2 we are told of the census ordered by Caesar Augustus, which caused Mary and Joseph, newly married and very pregnant, to go up to Bethlehem so that the child could be born there.  Look at Psalm 72:10.  This prophesied that kings from distant shores will bring tributes to Him and gifts to Him and bow down to Him.  This is fulfilled in Matthew 2, which tells how the Magi from the east came and they did just that.  They worshiped Him, and they offered Him gifts.

He was prophesied to be a descendant of Abraham and Jacob, of the tribe of Judah and of the line of David.  This is fulfilled.  Matthew 1 provides a detailed genealogy showing Jesus to be descended from all of these.  His birth was announced with great pomp to the shepherds by the angels.  The shepherds were living out in the fields, and they heard it: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to men on whom His favor rests.”  They were told, “You will find the Savior born—you will find Him in a manger” (Luke 2:8–14).  This was fulfilled.  These shepherds went and they saw and they found Joseph and Mary and the baby in a manger, just at the angels told (Luke 2:16–20).

The most detailed prophecy of the advent of the God-man Jesus Christ is found in Isaiah 7.  Verse 14 says, “The Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel,” which means “God with us.”  This was fulfilled in Luke 2.  Beginning with verse 26, it tells the story.  Verse 27 says that young Mary was a virgin, pledged to be married to Joseph.  And the angel Gabriel visits her, and he speaks to her, and he explains that she will be with child, and she will give birth to a son, the Son of God—the Son of God to rule forever (Luke 2:31–33).  Understandably, Mary is confused.  She does not understand.  “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”  And the angel explains, “The power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will conceive the Son of the Most High.”  He told it to her.  He told it to Joseph in Matthew 1:20.  He told them to name Him Jesus, which means “The Lord saves.”

Now, you may scoff at it or you may doubt about it.  It is outside of our experience.  But don’t scoff and don’t doubt.  It is no problem for God.  He wrote the rules of biology; He can easily overcome them.  God promised that this Savior would come, and God gave very specific terms so that there would be no mistake who this Savior is: a Nazarene yet born in Bethlehem in Judah; born to a virgin; descended from specific people, hundreds or thousands of years before; in a manger; worshiped by distant kings; announced by the heavenly host; and a glorious confirmation: This is the one, the Savior of the world.

You may ask yourselves, like Mary: How could it be?  How could it be that all these things told way in advance came to be?  And our skeptical, unbelieving human minds say it must have all been made up.  But I submit to you that that is an implausible explanation.  It would require that Joseph lied, Mary lied, Elizabeth and Zechariah lied, John the Baptist lied, right up to the point where he himself was beheaded.  The apostles and the disciples lied and were jailed and were flogged and were painfully executed for what they knew was a lie.  The individuals that Jesus miraculously healed lied.  Crowds that witnessed all those healings and things lied.  The Magi lied.  The women at the tomb lied.  And all this conspiracy of lies for no gain; in fact, for great loss to those people.  None of them gained from this supposed lie.  They suffered personally.  They watched their friends and their families suffer and mostly die and for nothing, for no gain, if it was all a lie.  What did they gain?  Made-up is simply not a reasonable explanation.

I will give you a more reasonable explanation.  It happened this way because Sovereign God said so, Sovereign God decreed.  God decreed it beforehand and so it must happen.  God is all-knowing and all-powerful.  He never lies and He never fails.  When He says something will happen, it is not a mere prediction.  We make predictions all the time.  Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong.  But we are in a sense guessing or projecting what will happen.  That is not the way God does it.  When He speaks, His word is a powerful agent to cause that thing to happen.  God created everything by this powerful word.  You say, “Let there be light,” and nothing happens.  But He said, “Let there be light,” and there is light.  Psalm 115:3 says, “He does whatever pleases Him.”  Isaiah 14:24: “Surely, as I have planned it, so it will be,” says the Lord.  Isaiah 43:13: “When I act, who can reverse it?”  When we act, maybe someone can reverse it.  But when God acts, none can reverse it.  Isaiah 55:11: “[The] word that goes out from my mouth .  .  .  will not return to me empty, but will .  .  .  achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  Or the great man Job said, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

Our God moves kings to do His very will (Prov. 21:9).  Our God determines the exact times and places men should live (Acts 17:26).  Ephesians 1:11 puts it this way: “[God] works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will.”  We human beings are limited.  But He is infinite and eternal in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Now, when we consider God and His nature, it does not seem all that difficult to fulfill all these prophecies.  The father and mother are living in Nazareth, but the baby is to be born in Bethlehem.  No problem.  God will move in the heart of Caesar to decree a census, and so Joseph must take his very pregnant wife up to Bethlehem.  Kings must worship this newborn king of kings to be found in some obscure town in an obscure manger in the middle of nowhere.  No problem.  We will guide the Magi from the east by a star to that very place.  He is to be of Abraham, Jacob, Jesse, David, and the tribe of Judah.  Easily done.  I will just arrange a few generations.  No problem.  It is not like we are creating a whole universe here or anything.  We have done harder things than this before.  Born of a virgin?  No challenge at all, for it is God who knits children together in their mothers’ wombs (Ps. 139:13).  Or remember what He said about Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jer. 1:5).  We think of biology as the determinative factor.  No, no, no.  God is working through the biology that He created.  He can work around that.  No problem.

Why would God, who created everything and sustains everything, require our help to do anything?  Let us not impose or project our limitations onto God.  He alone is eternal.  He alone is self-existent.  He alone is totally dependent.  He is Lord.  What He says always comes to pass.  He decreed that this Messiah, that this Christ, would be born to a virgin in Bethlehem and yet be a Nazarene, called out of Egypt, worshiped by kings, descended of David and so on, and of the tribe of Judah—He said it and so it happened.  Whatever He foreordains shall come to pass.  Our Messiah whose birth we celebrate today came to save us from our sin because the triune God declared it.  He decreed it in His great love and in His rich mercy for us, praise the Lord.  That is what He did before.

II. Why Will Jesus Come Again?

What will He do in the future?  He is coming again.  It is wonderful to celebrate His coming some 2,000 years ago.  But we would be foolish to celebrate His first coming without remembering that He is coming again.  This time He will not come as a baby in a manger.  He will not come to suffer and to die.  He will not come in the humiliation of becoming man.  No, He will come in glory.  He will come to judge the living and the dead.  He will come as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Listen to this description of the risen Christ coming again from Revelation 19, beginning with verse 12: “His eyes are like blazing fire, and on His head are many crowns.  He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and His name is the Word of God.  The armies of heaven were following Him.  .  .  .  Out of His mouth comes a sharp [double-edged] sword.  .  .  .  He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.  On His robe and on His thigh is this name written: king of kings and lord of lords” (Rev. 19:12–16).  He is coming again.  He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead.  He will come again to separate those He has saved by grace through faith from those who are destined for eternal destruction.  He will come again for the same two reasons He came before: because He was promised and because we need Him.  He said so.

He promised that He is coming again.  Remember, whatever He decrees shall come to pass.  We just finished explaining that He always accomplishes what He says He will do.  And He said He will come again.  Like His first coming, His second coming is not some obscure doctrine picked out of a vague sentence in an out-of-the-way and controversial book of the Bible.  No.  By some counts, prophecies of the Second Coming appear 1,845 times in the Bible.  I did not count it, but someone else counted it and he said 1,845 times.  That is about eight times as often as His first coming, which already occurred.  His second coming is spoken of in seventeen books of the Old Testament and twenty-three of the New Testament.  Virtually the entire book of Revelation is dedicated to this topic, although in highly symbolic language.  My point is that this is a core and unmistakable doctrine of Christianity: Jesus is coming again.  It is, in fact, our greatest hope.  It is our most fervent desire.  Come, Lord Jesus.

If you do not believe that He is coming again, then you have denied the Scriptures and you are not a Christian.  Just listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:30–31: “They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.  And He will send His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect .  .  .  from one end of the heavens to the other.”  In John 14:3 Jesus said, “I will come back and take you to be with me.”  Mark 13:32: “No one knows the day or the hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son of Man, but only the Father.”  We don’t know the day or the hour, but we know He is coming again.  Luke 17 says that He will come, not secretly in a manger, not tucked away in an obscure place like Bethlehem.  No, “the Son of Man in His day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other” (Luke 17:24).  In Matthew 25:31–32 Jesus says, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His throne in heavenly glory.  All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”  In Matthew 26:64, Jesus said before the Sanhedrin, “I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”  And His final words, recorded in the Scripture, in Revelation 22:17, say: “Yes, I am coming soon.”

He promised it, and it is guaranteed to happen, just like God promised His first coming and it already happened.  He promised it.  He is God and no one can thwart Him.  It is the very purpose of creation and our continued existence.  Just as He promised and came the first time on that advent so many years ago, He promised that He will come again and He will.  And then when He does, this age will end.  This creation will cease to exist, and we will go to Him in glory forever, or we will go to eternal hell forever.  The only reason we are all still waiting around is because He has determined it is not yet the time.  There are more people left to be saved.  There is more grace left to be shown to mankind.  So He promised it and it is guaranteed.

The second reason He is coming again is that we need Him.  The first coming was to meet our need for atonement, for propitiation, for a payment of our infinite debt to infinite God.  We no longer need Him for that.  It is all accomplished already.  As He said on the cross, “Tetelestai.”  It is fully paid, it is finished, it is satisfied.  The payment has already been made.  Our need now is different.  If you have not confessed Him, you need to partake of that payment by faith.  You need to appropriate it to yourself by confessing, “Jesus Lord.”  But for those who are in Christ, our need is not for payment of our sin anymore.  It has all been paid.

Our need now is for the renewal of all things (Matt. 19:28), for the palingenesia, the new genesis.  Our need is to be ushered into the very presence of God forever.  Our need is for the new heaven and the new earth where dwells righteousness (2 Pet. 3:13).  Our need is to be free from the very presence of sin.  Our need is for the fulfillment of that blessed promise of Revelation 21:

“Now the dwelling of God is with men, 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” (Rev. 21:3–4).

That is our need and that is what is coming.  Our need is our destiny, to be ushered into glory, the immediate presence of God, to worship Him forever in eternity.

We don’t know when it will come.  When the last of God’s elect are saved and His purpose for this age is over, He will usher in that new era with that new heaven and that new earth.  It is our hope as God’s people, it is our destiny as God’s people, and it is guaranteed by the unbreakable word of God.  As you go home today and celebrate His first coming, rejoice and look forward to His second coming.  He is coming soon.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is one question for you.  When He comes again, how will you meet Him?  There are only two ways to meet Him when He comes again: as your Savior, or as your Judge.

You will not meet Him as a rich person or a powerful person or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever else you might call yourself in this world.  There will be no such distinctions on that day.  Nor can you avoid meeting Him on that day.  Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is destined for man once to die and face judgment.”  Second Corinthians 5:10 says, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.”  You are going to this meeting, and you cannot break the appointment.

You will not meet Him as an equal.  You will not meet Him with an argument.  Sometimes you hear people say that they would say this or that to God if they met Him.  You will not say anything to God when you meet Him.  When you meet Him, you will fall facedown.  That is what everybody does (Lev. 9:24; Num. 16:4; Judg. 13:20; Ezek. 3:23; 43:3)—facedown, facedown, facedown.  It is the only response when you meet Him.  You will not answer Him defiantly or give Him a piece of your mind.  Job 40:4 says you will put your hand over your mouth.  You will be compelled to acknowledge the truth.  Romans 14:11 says that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Your meeting will not depend on who you are or how much money you have or what you have achieved.  It will depend on what you did in this life, but only in one way.  Did you confess Him as Lord and Savior?  Did you repent of your sins and prove the authenticity of your profession by living for Him and persevering to the end?  Then you would meet Him as Savior, as loving Father, as God who says, “You don’t need to fall facedown; you can get up.  You don’t need to put your hand over your mouth.  You can exclaim, ‘Glory!  Hallelujah!  Praise the Lord!’” You will meet Him as your loving Father.  You will hear from Him, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.  Enter into your Master’s happiness, your Master’s rest.”

Did you reject Him?  Did you scoff at Him?  Or did you politely decline His gracious invitation to salvation by faith alone?  Did you reject Him by saying, “Jesus is my Savior but not my Lord.  I will live as if He is a nothing”?  If so, you will have a very different meeting on that day.  You will hear, “Depart from me; I never knew you.”  You will go to eternal hell forever, in torment, in agony, in suffering, and without end.  You don’t have to do that.  Don’t do that.  Don’t do it.  Don’t go to eternal hell.  There is no need for you to do so.  Confess Jesus Christ as Lord.  There is still time to do so today.  God loves His people, but God also loves the world.  That is why He sent His one and only Son to die, to give you the opportunity to be saved.  So do it today.  Confess with your mouth, “Jesus Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.  You have time to do it today.

Time will eventually run out.  We don’t know that time either.  Either you will die, or He will come, and the time will be up.  And in that day, it will be too late to confess, “Jesus Lord.”  Oh, you will confess it all right, but it will be too late to do so savingly.  It will be too late to receive salvation.  It will be too late to seek forgiveness, too late to apologize.  It will be too late to gain eternal glory.  But it is not too late now.  You can do it now.  You can do it today.

Though Christ came once before to save, He is coming once again in the future to judge.  Trust in Him.  Trust in this once and future Christ today and be saved forever.  Amen.