Sermon on Matthew 11:25-30, for Christmas Day, "Father-Revealer"

P: The Savior is Born! C: He is born in a manger!

Several weeks ago, my children and I had a very interesting conversation, about how confusing it is that God reveals Himself as the Trinity—3 in 1. Their little minds were grappling with the cosmic mystery of how 1 God can be 3 persons, and not 3 gods. How Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to each other, and are One God. How Jesus can pray to the Father—isn’t that God praying to Himself?

God made a mathematical universe, but Math cannot explain it. God has ordered His creation according to relentlessly predictable laws; but the laws of nature cannot explain it either. God has created us with our reason and all our senses—but even these cannot explain the eternal, unfathomable mystery of the Godhead—the Three in One.

I related to my children the analogy of trying to empty out the ocean, or to scoop up the whole ocean in our beach buckets. Impossible! The ocean seems infinite compared to our buckets. And many have compared God’s infinity and transcendence to the ocean, and our minds to those beach buckets. We just don’t have the mental capacity to comprehend the fullness of God; and that’s not saying we aren’t intelligent human beings. But God has condescended to reveal Himself to us. That’s a key part of Christmas. We could not comprehend God in all His vast greatness and glory, but He has condescended to our level, humbling Himself to be born on earth, in human flesh and blood. He came down to our size and perception.

Our Gospel reading from Matthew is not a traditional Christmas reading, and you probably know it more for the part about being weary and heavy laden, or Jesus’s yoke being easy and light. But today I want to focus on the Christmas theme in the first few verses: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children;  yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Wise and understanding minds could not search out and understand all the mystery of the Gospel, but God has revealed it to little children. It’s not PhD’s that will make sense of it all, but by God revealing it to us. And God wants humility from all.

And slow it down to hear this—no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. So reflect on what this means. Only the Father and Son know each other. And the only way to know God the Father is through Jesus His Son. And only those whom Jesus has chosen to reveal it, can know the Father! So that means that there is no outside track, no backdoor to knowing God outside of Jesus—no self-chosen way of us finding God, but only the Son-chosen way of Him revealing, uncovering the Father to us. Only Jesus gives us true knowledge of Him. Like Father, like Son, they say; especially true in the Trinity. Later, before His death, in John 14, the disciple Philip asked just a teensy little favor from Jesus “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Not like he was James and John, asking to be seated at Jesus’ right and left hand forever! Philip just wanted to see the Father!

Perhaps Jesus sighed before answering Philip: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (John 14:8-10). Seeing Jesus is seeing and knowing the Father. There is no other way to the Father.

So what does that mean for Christmas? Or for the whole of Scripture? It means that Jesus has the job description of Father-Revealer. He came to earth so we might know and see the true face of our heavenly Father. Hebrews 1:3 says: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s nature. We don’t have to wonder about what is the nature of God, we only need to see and read about it in Christ’s own sacrificial life, death, and resurrection. Colossians 1:15 adds, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” We cannot see God, the invisible God, except in Jesus Christ. On the first Christmas, Mary and Joseph and the shepherds first beheld God, swaddling in baby clothes, lying in a manger. They saw God in perfect, tiny human form—LIFE…every bit like ours, yet without sin. Life with all the potential for growth, for goodness, for greatness. And yet His life was also marked with certain potential for sorrow and grief and loss. Not His fault, but through the weight of sin that was thrust upon Him. Through the fact that He was born under the Law to redeem us from under the law (Galatians 4:4-5).

So the miracle of Christmas is the incomprehensible God comes down in familiar, recognizable, tangible, touchable human form. A baby needing love, care, and protection. An innocent life, thrust into a world of sin. But unlike any other ordinary child, Jesus would not add sin and wrongdoing to His potential, but follow a straight path toward the good. Unlike any other ordinary child, this Jesus would not add to the debt of sin—rather He came to pay it. God needed knowing—or rather, we needed to know Him—so He makes Himself available, accessible, and understandable to us in the person of Jesus. In Jesus we can see God’s love lived out and exemplified. In Jesus’ we see God’s rebuke for hypocrisy, pride, and unrepentant sin, but His compassion for the downtrodden, the weak, and the suffering. In Jesus we see God’s justice and mercy, like Father, like Son. And we’re not getting a close replica, or a variation, but the exact imprint, the image of the invisible God.

So instead of grappling with the mysteries of the invisible, and trying to peer behind God’s unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16), we come to the visible and approachable flesh and blood Jesus. We come as the shepherds first came, to find understanding in the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. A mystery that calls more for worship and adoration, less for dissection and analysis. Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the Newborn King! In Jesus we find God dwelling in all His fullness (Col. 1:19). It doesn’t lessen the puzzle of the Trinity for my children, it doesn’t make God fit into the “little buckets” of our understanding—but it gives us a way to access God’s mystery. Hidden from the wise and understanding, but revealed to little children—it takes the simple wonder and awe of a child to recognize God’s gift. Jesus says this is the Father’s gracious will.

Jesus said no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. It’s Jesus’ choice to whom He will reveal the Father. Our ability to believe, to know God, is Jesus’ choice! Jesus says in the Gospel of John to His disciples, You did not choose me, but I chose you (John 15:16). How do we know if we are chosen by Jesus to believe in God? A few simple questions: do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God? If so, then together with Peter, Jesus tells us, “Blessed are you!...flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven!” (Matthew 16:16-17).  Another question, do you believe that you are a sinner, in need of Christ’s forgiveness, and that Christ has forgiven your sin? If yes, then know that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8-9).

If your answers are ‘No’, and you do not yet know Christ, or know Him as your Savior, only listen to His Word and believe! Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17), and God uses His Word to call us into faith and knowledge of Him.

Christmas shows to those who will receive it, that God is not the distant God, or an uncaring God, or the unknowable God, but He is the God who is near to us, who cares for us, and who is known to us in Jesus Christ. We don’t have to wrap our head around an enormous mystery, only bow down in worship before a humble mystery, God’s gift of salvation wrapped up and laid for us in the manger. He continues to wrap up and give to us this gift of salvation in the pages of Scripture, His Word, where we find Jesus. Today we come to His Table to receive Jesus’ body and blood, wrapped in the humble packaging of bread and wine, but still God’s true gift for us, for the forgiveness of our sins. Blessed are we to know the Father through the Son!

P: The Savior is Born! C: He is born in a manger! Amen!