2nd January 2026

2nd January 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (John 1:14-18)


Message (Alan Burke)


In William Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ the character Skylock is a Venetian Jewish moneylender, Shylock is the play's principal villain in the play but it has a line in it which I think is almost universal in it’s application to all people, “ If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” Ok that is taken a little out of context and you should go read the play and I’m still struck that from my GCSE English Literature I could remember it. But as we come to these verse where we learn that the Word who was with God and was God became flesh we often loose the wonder of what we are being told. Jesus was true God and at the same time true man, two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.


The meaning for the word flesh speaks of the muscle and fat between the bones and skin, we know what flesh is yet the one whom through all that has been made took upon himself four flesh should indeed cause us to marvel. Our creator to on our flesh. Jesus came was incarnate of the virgin Mary, he was born in a manager, there was nakedness of mother and child, there was crying, their was pain, there was sweat, blood and tears, he cried, filled nappies or what ever they had, he needed fed. In his coming, our God condescended, he came just like us, so that he might do what we could not. Pilate himself during the trial after Jesus was lashed and his bones visible cried to the crowd, ‘here is the man’ (Jn 19:5). The humanity of Jesus is key in our understanding of the atonement, without Jesus being fully man, no amends made for our sin, Jesus while fully God on our humanity and through his death the Devil’s power has been destroyed. (Heb 2:14-18). 


This truth of how Jesus was fully God and fully man to many in John’s day would have been scandalous! And in the days that the apostles creed came into being it was still as scandalous for many we have tried to put our imitations on the infinite God. But Jesus, who was with God and was God, gave up the riches of glory and condescend, that he would face what we faced, come into the world as we come into the world all that we might know the joy of salvation. 


This is something that we should marvel in, that love that God had for his creation that in the midst of the fall, that he promised beforehand regarding the coming of His son, who took on our humanity to our impoverished and lowly estate to exalt us and make us rich in Him! “For it is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that we by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9 edited), and “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).


Christ, the eternal Son of God, became man at his incarnation, and continuities to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person. That means from the moment of his incarnation onwards, throughout his life on earth he was God and man in two distinct natures, and now at the right hand of the Father in heaven he is there in two distinct natures, God and man yet one person and will continue to be God and man forever to all eternity. This is called the hypostatic union. He is the revealer of God the Father, the final revelation is brought by Jesus Christ, he is the ultimate disclosure of God himself, he reveals God to us, if we want to know God it is to the Son that we must look, we must trust, we must believe with the entirety of our lives. 


And John wants you to be in no doubt to whom this gospel is about. What have you done or will you do with this Word the one who reveals the Father to us?


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q61 What is forbidden in the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment forbiddeth the omission, or careless performance, of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.
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