The Parentage Of Christ
THE PARENTAGE OF CHRIST By W.E. Biederwolf “What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” Matt 22:42
Many people today want us to believe that it makes no difference about the parentage of Christ-no difference whose Son He is. But it does make a difference. They say it is not important. But it is important. They tell us, “The virgin birth is not to be accepted as an historic fact,” and want us to “spend our energy on something that really matters.” But it does matter. If the attack upon the miracle of His birth goes unchallenged, they will next attack the miracle of His resurrection and everything else supernatural about Him; and then they will end their attack upon His cross, and we shall be without a Christ altogether.
Son of Joseph or Son of God? If Jesus was not conceived by the Holy Ghost, as the Bible says He was, then Mary was not a good woman; for the Bible says, in just so many words, that Joseph found Mary great with child “before they came together.”
If Mary was great with child through Joseph, why did she say to the angel, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” If Mary was great with child through Joseph, then why did Joseph want to put her away, for he was a just man? If Mary was great with child through Joseph, why did God have to explain to him through an angel how it had all come about before he would take her back? Back in Christ’s own day His enemies said He was the son of Joseph; but they at least had sense enough or were honest enough to admit the awful charge their insinuation carried with it. Driven at last into a corner in controversy, they turned on Him and spit out their vile insinuationthis unholy charge and sacrilegious slander that has found an echo in the heart of the so-called modernist or selfstyled “intellectual ecclesiastic.” They said to Him with a sneer, “We be not born of fornication.” But Jesus, with holy indignation, resented their infamous imputation, and said, “Ye are of your father the devil…I proceeded forth and came from God.” “‘What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” The hardest proposition the infidel crowd has ever been up against is to answer that question. Isaiah said, “His name shall be called Wonderful” (Isa.9:6). And there is no better name to describe Him. He is the world’s one great wonder. No one else ever approached Him. He is in a class by Himself. If He were only a man, then by every law of evolution and by every code of common sense this twentieth century ought to produce a better one. It is one thing to proclaim His natural birth; it is quite another thing to explain on the same ground the mystery of His personality and life. Let the “evolutionist, the psychologist, the agnostic, account for this! Apart from His supernatural birth He is the world’s one great mystery; and the only clue you will ever find to that mystery is to be found in verse 35 of the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, where when Mary asked, ” How shall this be, seeing I know not a man ?” the angel replied, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Now this is what we mean when we talk about the incarnation. It means that when Jesus Christ came into this world He came with two natures-a human nature and a divine one-and that this was brought about by the miraculous manner of His birth. “But,” you say, “the thing seems so utterly impossible.” Nothing is impossible with God! If God could perform one miracle He could perform a hundred miracles just as hard, or harder, if anything could be hard with God.
What kind of God does the modernist want us to worship anyhow? A God who can’t do this and can’t do that and can’t do the other thing or who, if He can do it, must not do it because it seems so much more rational to do it some other way? I believe in a God who can do anything, and I am ready to believe anything and everything the Word of God says He did do. Why not? “But,” you say, “the whole thing seems so unnecessary.” It takes an infinite amount of conceit for little, finite, erring individuals like you and me to say what was necessary and what was not necessary in so stupendous an event as bringing into the world the Only Begotten Son of God. If Christ was to offer Himself a sacrifice for your sins and mine, He had to be sinless Himself; and it was the miracle of His birth that precluded the possibility of moral taint from the earliest moment of conception. “But,” you say, “why are there not more witnesses to it in the Bible?” Well, how many witnesses does God require to establish His Word as true? It is recorded by the prophets before His birth and by two of the evangelists after His birth and is supported by the question of Mary to the angel and by the conduct of Joseph, as we have already seen, and all of this in language too clear to be denied.
“But,” you say, “if it were true, the other writers would have known about it, and their silence therefore implies their denial of it.” But you are far from the truth here. Their silence implies their acceptance of it, or they would have made correction where the others had gone into error.
If, however, silence on the part of one or more means denial, then there is altogether little indeed in the whole New Testament that can be relied upon, e.g., the first three gospel writers are silent about the resurrection of Lazarus; therefore, it never took place. John makes no reference to the Transfiguration; therefore, there was none, although Matthew, Mark and Luke say John was one of the three who saw it.
Matthew and John say nothing about His ascension; therefore, it never occurred.
Mark and John say nothing at all about His birth; therefore, He was never born. These two evangelists begin with His public ministry, and so there was no occasion to say anything about His birth, virgin or otherwise. But they both specifically called Him the Son of God, and John repeatedly spoke of Him as the “only begotten Son of God.” What does “beget” mean? It means to “generate.” It means to “bring into existence.” Did John mean “begotten of Joseph,” or did he mean “begotten of God”?
“What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” Is He the son of Joseph? The prophets say, ” No!”
Matthew says, ” No!”
Mark says, “No!”
Luke says, “No!”
John says, “No!”
Mary says, “No!”
Joseph says, “No!”
Jesus says, “No!”
God says, ” No!”
The modernist says, “Yes!”
And all I can say is, God pity the man who, with the Word of God open before him, lends himself to this sacrilegious but futile attempt to snatch from the blessed brow of Jesus this masterpiece of the incontrovertible evidence of His glorious Godhood. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). I thank God that Jesus came. He might have come some other way, but I can think of no more beautiful way or more sensible way He could have come than by the way the Bible says He did come through His supernatural virgin birth. Christ Came to Destroy the Works of Satan
But here is another question just as important, and from a certain standpoint even more so. Why did He ever come at all? What was the real meaning of the incarnation ? What was its purpose? Well, there was more than one purpose. Let us see what the Word of God says.
In 1 John 3:8 we are told, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.” Is it not a bit of the most glorious news you ever heard ? You know what the works of the Devil are: murder, lying, lust and everything else born in Hell.
There is only one thing in God’s world that I am afraid of, and that is sin. No man ever played with sin that sin didn’t get the better of him. Don’t try to play with sin. If you must play with something dangerous, then go out into the field and pick up a rattlesnake and let it play in your bosom. Go down to the electric road and play with the third rail. Reach up into the skies and play with God’s forked lightening; but for God’s sake and your soul’s sake don’t play with sin.
Two little Italian lads of New York City were returning from a swim. Pietro had picked up a piece of copper wire and thought he would have a little fun with the third rail of the New York Central track along which they were walking. He poked away around the wooden covering of the rail, but nothing happened. “That’s funny,” he said, “I guess I didn’t touch the right spot.” Then he pushed the point of his wire down underneath the covering. There was a flash of blue flame and a shriek of pain as 11,000 volts of electricity shot through the wire. In a moment, or less, his clothing was on fire, and his hair and eyebrows were burned off. He tried to drop the wire as it hissed and sputtered at white heat, but it wouldn’t let go. He tried to pull it away, but it stuck to the rail as if it were soldered there. His little friend tried to pull him away and was hurled to the ground with a terrific shock. The brave little fellow then threw his rubber coat around Pietro and pulled him loose. Pietro started to run but fainted and fell. They took him to the hospital, and the doctor said, “One chance in a thousand to recover.” The two boys said they knew there was something dangerous about that rail; they had heard older people say so, but they thought it wouldn’t hurt any to play with it a little. And so sin scorches and burns and kills like a live third rail, and people know it, and yet they will trifle with sin. Maybe you my friend, have played with your sin so long that to you your case seems hopeless; but thanks be to God, sin never took anyone so low, it never bound anyone so tightly that Christ Jesus, the God-man, couldn’t reach down as low, snap the fetters, and set him free. That is why He was manifested; that is why He came-to destroy the works of the Devil.
And so I come to you with this message: no matter what your past has been, no matter what you have done or where you have gone, Jesus works Just as powerfully today as He did in the days of old, and if you will turn to Him, He will set you free, destroy the works of the Devil in you, give you the victory every hour. “Well,” you say, “that is very fine, and I need that kind of power in my life; but hold on. Oh, I’m already burdened with a sense of guilt; I’ve sinned enough already to lose my soul a thousand times over; the burden of guilt is like a thousand millstones, and it seems to press my soul downward toward Hell. ” Yes, that is so; but I have another piece of good news for you.
Christ Came to Take
Away Our Sins
In John 3:5 God’s word says, “ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins.” I tell you, to the man who knows his sin and loathes it, the man who hates the memory of his sin, the man whose soul is lashed with the whips of a guilty conscience-to this man the sweetest story ever told, the sweetest song ever sung, the sweetest message ever delivered is the glad news that in some mysterious way which he can never quite fully comprehend, Jesus Christ puts Himself underneath his sin, underneath all that is foul and vile in the experience of the past, lifts it up and off from his soul, and takes it away. That is what He came to do.
You say, “My thoughts have been dirty and impure”; and the message rings out, “It’s all taken away.” He says, “I will remove thine iniquities from thee as far as the east is from the west” (Ps. 103:12).
You say, “I’ve cursed and blasphemed and profaned, ” and the word rings back, “It’s all taken away. ” He says, ” I will cast all thy sins behind my back” (Isa. 38: 17).
You say, “I’ve led a double life; I have a virtuous wife, but I’ve not been true to her”; and the glad news leaps out from the pages of God’s Word, “It’s all taken away.” He says, “I will cast all thy sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). You say, “I’ve been a crook and a liar and a thief”; God’s answer is, “It’s all taken away. ” He says, “I will blot out thine iniquities as a thick cloud” (Isa. 44:22). But you say, “I took a man’s life in cold blood.” Yes, and you’ve done something worse than that; you’ve crucified the Son of God; your sin wove the crown of thorns and pressed it down on His brow; your sin fastened Him to the cross; your sin drove the spear into His side, and it was your sin that broke His heart, but I can hear the angels shouting down from Heaven, “It’s all taken away.” God says, “I will remember thine iniquity against thee no more for ever ” (Jer. 31: 34). He was manifested to take away sins. Oh, I wish I could paint a picture of Jesus on the cross that would break your heart and bring you to Him. The wonder to me is that the whole mob around the cross, instead of one poor penitent thief, didn’t become a band of penitents and sob out their sorrow of the sins they had committed. Christ Came to Reveal the Father
“Oh,” I hear you say, “all this is too good to be true.” Well, that is because you don’t know God. And here comes the other purpose of the incarnation-He was manifested to reveal the Father, and so in John 14:9 Jesus says, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” You have had an idea that God is a vindictive God and that He delights in blood and likes to punish and takes pleasure in letting a man go to Hell. But you do not know God, that is all, if that is your idea of Him.
The only perfect revelation God ever made of Himself, He made in Jesus Christ; and if you will look at Him through Jesus Christ you will know what kind of God He is. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” The old hymn runs, “God is reconciled.” But I don’t like it. I took my concordance the other day and looked up the word “reconciled,” and I found many places where it talked about our being reconciled to God, but I could not find any place where it said God was reconciled to us. Jesus revealed God as a Father, but as a Father He does not need to be reconciled. He is waiting for you to come and be reconcile to Him. The only place in the Bible where God is represented as running is in the story of the Prodigal Son, where the Father runs out to meet His penitent, returning child. The story is told by a man whose name is Brown, an honored evangelist, now in Glory. He had conducted a meeting in one of the towns of Wisconsin. He went away, and a little later he got a letter from an old man by the name of Stewart, telling him that his boy had left home saying he would come back, but he did not know just when. The letter stated: “Mr. Brown, you travel a good deal; if you ever see my boy, tell him his father loves him and that his mother is dying to have him come home.”
Two years later Mr. Brown went back to that town, and the first man he saw when he stepped off the train was old Mr. Stewart. It was a cold, raw day and Mr. Brown said, “Why, Mr. Stewart, what are you doing here?” The old man replied, “My son.” Said Mr. Brown, “Why, hasn’t he come yet?”
“No,” answered the father, “but I’m sure he will, and I’ve met every train since he went away.”
After eleven years Mr. Brown went to the same town, and as he stepped from the platform the first person he saw was old Mr Stewart. His hair was white as snow; his brow was wrinkled, and his form was bent.
He said, “Good morning, Mr. Stewart,” but the old man had forgotten him, and he asked “Who are you?” Mr. Brown made himself known and asked him why he was there. The old man said, “I’m waiting for my boy.”
“Why, hasn’t he come yet?”
“No,” said the old man, “we haven’t heard anything, but I’m sure he’s coming, and I thought he might be here this morning.” “Just then,” said Mr. Brown, “I saw a stalwart young man coming down the steps of the car, and I said to myself, If I was not sure the boy was dead I would say that was the son. But the other eyes had seen him, too, and the old man started, dropped his cane, and ran as fast as his tottering limbs would let him, and in less time than I can tell it the boy was in his father’s arms.” And the old white-haired man sobbed out: “O my son! Thank God, you have come!” Then turning to Mr. Brown, he said, “Mr. Brown, I would have waited until I died.”
Something like that is God’s love for you, and a yearning something like that is what God has in His heart for you. He has been waiting for some of you now thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years, and you haven’t come yet. But if Christ was made flesh and dwelt among us for the reasons we have seen, and if God loves like a father and is a God like the God we know Him to be, I think if I were you I wouldn’t keep Him waiting longer.
Christ Came for You; Will You
Come to Him Now?
Dear friend, you have read the sermon, “Why Christ Came,” by W. E. Biederwolf, a grand preacher of past years. At this Christmas season when we think of the first coming of Christ, Dr. Biederwolf has put before us the reasons why Christ came.
He certainly fulfilled His purpose in coming and has provided salvation for everyone who will trust Him as Saviour. He is indeed waiting on you now to receive Him and be reconciled to God. Jesus’ own statement of His purpose in coming to the earth was that He came “to seek and to save that which was lost.” If you have never trusted Christ as your Saviour, you are what the Bible terms “lost.” And it is you that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save. He came to this earth and died on the cross in your place to pay for your sins.
The Bible says that Jesus bore our sins in His own body on the cross. That means that, when Jesus died on the cross, He was paying our sin debt so that we wouldn’t have to go to Hell but could have eternal life and a home in Heaven.
He has made very clear in the Bible how we are to get these things Acts 16:31 says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” And John 3:36 states, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” That simply means that, if you will trust Jesus Christ as your Saviour, He will save you and give you everlasting life and a home in Heaven.
Don’t spend another Christmas without Jesus as your Saviour home to Him now, recognizing that you are a sinner and that He is the Saviour; and trust Him as your very own Saviour. Then you have the promise from God of His salvation.
If you will trust Him right now, pray this simple prayer telling Him you will:
Dear Lord Jesus, I know I’m a sinner, but I believe You came into the world and died on the cross to provide salvation. Right now I receive You, trusting You to forgive my sins, to save my soul and to give me the gift You promise of everlasting life and a home in Heaven.
Thank You for loving me and dying on the cross in my place. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer, trusting Jesus as your Saviour, I want you to fill out the decision form below and send it to me so that I can send you a beautiful book that will help you live the kind of Christian life that will be pleasing to God.
Decision Form
Dr. Curtis Hutson, Editor
Sword of the Lord Foundation
P.0. Box 1099
Murfreesboro; TN 37133
Dear Dr. Hutson:
After reading Dr. W. E. Biederwolf’s sermon, “Why Christ Came,” I understand that Jesus came into the world to die on the cross to provide salvation.
I have now trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and I would certainly appreciate your sending to me the free book you mentioned that will help me live a good Christian life and be pleasing to the One who loved me and died for me.
Date______________________________________________
Name______________________________________________
Address___________________________________________
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Harvester Baptist Church
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