The Gospel of John

God’s Invasion Of History

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 11- 70

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Track: 011

Dictation Name: RR197F11

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Let us worship God. Let us go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, that the Lord has made known to us. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon His shoulder and His name shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace. Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will toward men. Let us pray.

All glory be to thee God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost who has made us rich through the birth of Thy son Jesus Christ. Who has become man oh Lord God that we might become the sons of God. We thank Thee that Thou dost direct and rule our hearts and we pray that day by day we may be joyful in Thee, ever praise Thee as we ought and know that we are more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, Amen.

The scripture this morning is John 1:11-14. Gods Invasion of History, John 1:11-14.

“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power [or it can be rendered the right or privilege] to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

These verses are a landmark statement. As we saw earlier when we were studying the first chapter of John these verses tell us that our rebirth is comparable to Christ’s virgin birth which was not of blood, not simply a question of family and ancestry, nor the will of the flesh, a matter of biology, nor of the will of man, a case of historical determination, but of God, a supernatural act. So our being born again is compared to the virgin birth. Jesus Christ is not of blood, that is, He is not of a privileged race, He does not represent a human goal nor a human aspiration because He is the expression rather or the exegesis of God’s purpose. So neither race nor human accounts account for Him nor does the will of man. Human hopes and aspirations for a higher level of life. He is the invasion of history by God the Son, the new Adam, the new man of human history. In Adam’s fall history was invaded by an anti-God movement and that anti-God movement is from pole to pole now. As against truth this anti-God movement was the deification of the lie and man was persuaded to live in terms of and to believe a lie that He was his own god. And of course in the past century and a half we have had noted thinkers declaring that a lie is preferable to the truth and more important politically and socially. Instead of grace the world was marked by a pitiless vengeance as the song of Malech in Genesis 4:23-24 manifests. Man’s revolt against God led to man’s bondage to his own fallen nature and to other fallen men. God invaded history in the person of Jesus Christ, fully god and fully man, the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. He was not welcome even by his own people we are told. The world being fallen men prefer their own kind, fallen men.

This is why they will always be critical of us. The reprobate will favor, vote for and support their own kind, ungodly men. Because of this fact both the church and state of that day were unhappy at Christ’s coming. In Matthew 2:1-18 we see the anger of Herod at God’s entrance into history. All the children of age 2 and younger in the Bethlehem area were killed. With the cooperation of the church of that day the Roman state crucified Christ later on and over the centuries political orders were ungodly have persecuted the people of Christ. The wayward churches have also seen Jesus Christ as a threat. Dostoyevsky in the Grand Inquisitor tells us that the church too often believes it can do Christ’s work better without Him. The problem for the fallen world is this: in the same way that our Lord was virgin born, miraculously born, and therefore in the world and yet not of the world, so the redeemed of the Lord are miraculously reborn. Neither history nor biology can fully command us because our life comes from God. The miracle of the virgin birth is paralleled in our rebirth. We are now more than our heredity or our environment. WE are the children of God by the adoption of grace. We transcend our birth and our history because our life and our direction are now God given. This posed a problem for the Romans. How could Christians be so insane? These were apparently rational men in places high and low, rich and poor, all kinds, and yet they were ready to die for their faith and they would not swerve from it.

This was a mystery to them, it is still a mystery to the ungodly. A few hundred Christians are killed for their faith every day somewhere in the world and yet their number is increasing phenomenally. We are the children of God by the adoption of grace, we transcend our birth and our history because our life and our direction come from the very throne of God. But the world hates Jesus Christ because the world wants neither grace nor truth. It will therefore hate or resent us as His people, as members of God’s family. It will work to find something in us to criticize and to condemn because our faith exposes their unbelief and our morality is resented as a judgment against them. The world does not want truth. In our age in particular the concept of an unchanging and eternal truth whether as the person of Christ or as an unchanging morality and justice is bitterly attacked in the name of new doctrines of truth. Nothing has changed as far as the nature of law is concerned in the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation. The old Soviet concept was that there was no law in the sense of an unchanging truth, law was what the state willed today and the reverse could be the law tomorrow and equally right. Of course that’s what we’re coming to with bureaucratic law here and all over the world and the philosophies of our time insist that this is the only way. Existentialism and its sisters, instrumentalism, situation ethics, pragmatism and other philosophies insist on doctrine of truth as something determined by the needs of man and the context of life.

There is no absolute right nor wrong according to these people. Well it should not surprise us therefore that the gospel of John with its strong emphasis on Jesus Christ as God incarnate, as truth incarnate, is resented, attacked and treated as a false gospel by the ungodly. Well for fallen man it is obviously is because it insists on an eternal truth incarnate in God the Son, requiring us all to live in terms of God’s eternal truth and law. When John declares in verse fourteen we beheld His glory he refers to the disciples and their personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. John in his first letter declares that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. This was the particular privilege of some of the early Christians, to have seen, to have, hear and even to have touched the son of God, the Lord of glory. But as against this vision of glory and the grace and truth given to them by Him those who reject God the Son inherit shame. Paul in Philippians 3:18-19 writes:

“(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:

19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)”

That’s quite a statement and I was reminded of this verse this past week in reading the life of one of the most famous women of this century who gloried in being involved in depravity. But Proverbs 8:36 so clearly tells us: he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul, all them that hate me love death. And shame becomes their glory.

Nothing could be plainer. Men love death if they are not in Christ who is wisdom incarnate, the truth made flesh. Hatred of truth is hatred of life and the love of death. John tells us that the world in all its ways is governed by death and the lie, this means that in God’s creation fallen man cannot tramp the ungodly do indeed rage. They conspire together against God and His anointed one but they imagine, Psalm 2 tells us, of vain things and God laughs at their pretensions and He holds them in derision. Given this reality we should ever live in terms of Nehemiah’s great summons and statements to a discouraged people, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Our joy is to be like a citadel or fortress for us because it is grounded on the knowledge of who God is and what He has done for us. This is why the Christmas carols are so full of joy and hope and victory, almost every one tells us that Christ het Savior is born but that He is the king, the ruler of the cosmos, therefore joy to the world the Lord has come. This is why too we are seeing those carols increasingly removed from television and the radio at Christmas time. We used to hear them for two weeks before hand every day and it was marvelous, no more. They are not common because they ring with victory and with truth and the world, whatever it may say, is geared to shame and to defeat.

They glory in their shame. God invaded the world in the person of Jesus Christ so we are members of His army of conquest. If God be for us who can be against us? The incarnation and our chosen estate in Christ tells us that we are the people of victory. Therefore rejoice, let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that our glory is Jesus Christ, His birth, His atoning death and His resurrection. Teach us not to be fearful not pessimistic as we look at a world that glories in its own shame and pursues death with all its heart, mind and being. Make us ever joyful that ours is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in Christ. Oh Lord our God Thou has made us rich by Thy glorious present, Jesus Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, king of kings and lord of lords. In His name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

What we are seeing in our day the world is seeing before, the radical hostility to Christmas. It has led at times to resurrecting pagan terms like yuletide to supplant the word Christmas because it has Christ at the very front of that word. But such efforts always have failed and they will fail again now at their highest worldwide pitch and drive to wipe out the name of Christ and to eliminate anything and everything associated with Him and faith in Him. There have been times as in English history for example when it has been assumed that Christian faith is virtually dead and that in a generation no one will remember it, in fact, that has been openly stated more than once in history and on every occasion it has been proven to be false.

I believe that we are on the verge of the greatest triumph of the faith, that we shall see from pole to pole a spectacular spread of the faith. Let us not forget that all they that hate me love death, God says and we have a worldwide march into suicide on the part of the ungodly. And so we can rejoice that God is ruling on the throne and that we are the people of victory. Any questions or comments?

If not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father how great Thou art and how glorious is this blessed season. We have a hope, we have a blessed assurance, we have been called to victory in Christ. Give us ever a holy boldness, heal us of our doubts and our disquieted spirits. Teach us to look at Thee and to know that we are the people of victory. We have an eternal life that nothing in this world can put out or dim. How great Thou art oh Lord in Thy gift to us and we praise Thee. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.