God For Us - Ken Shigematsu | February 8, 2026

0:00 Do you remember back in 2014, the Ebola virus crisis in West Africa? Well, back then, a physician named Dr. Kent Bradley, a committed Christian, was serving in Liberia with a Christian organization called Samaritan's Purse. Ebola is a highly contagious, dangerous disease. And so understandably, during this outbreak, many medical professionals were hesitant to go into the actual Ebola wards with the patients. But Dr. Brantley didn't want to just help his

0:49 patients at a distance, shouting advice, standing behind a barrier and trying to give guidance. Dr. Brantley had face-to-face contact. Of course, he wore a mask, and he touched his patients, and of course, he wore surgical gloves. He ended up contracting the disease. Fortunately, he was able to receive treatment, and he amazingly survived. When the living God wanted to serve us in the way we most needed to be served, when he wanted to demonstrate his love for us to the utmost. God did not stand

1:39 at a distance hollering advice. God didn't stand behind a barrier. No, God came to us and for us as one of us, as a human being. And as... Pablo mentioned we're in a series right now in the Apostles' Creed. And today we're going to look once again at this section where we affirm, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. I was tempted to go on, but I'll hold it off right there. Last week we looked at this part of

2:25 the Creed, And we explored how because God became one of us, a human being in Jesus Christ, he can identify with all that we go through, all of our experiences. He can empathize with us. Today, we're going to take a slightly different angle. And we're going to see how because God became one of us, a human being in Jesus, he can serve us in the way we most need. During Advent, we looked at a passage in the Gospel of Luke where the angel Gabriel suddenly appears to a 15-year-old, probably 15 or 16-year-old, teenager named Mary, unwed, and announced to

3:15 her, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus, which means Savior. And then in verse 34, Mary responds, how will this be? She asked the angel, since I am a virgin. The angel answered, the Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. And then in a parallel passage in the Gospel of Matthew, We see that when Mary tells her fiance, her betrothed

4:01 Joseph, that she's expecting a child and that, of course, Joseph is not the father, but no other man is the father either, that God has enabled her to conceive. Obviously, Joseph does not believe her. He feels that she has cheated on him. He initiates a breakup of the relationship. He starts to proceed for a divorce filing. But then we read that an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream and says, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him

4:49 the name Jesus because he will save his people from death. their sins. Let's pray. Living God, we thank you that you do not stand at a distance, but you've come to us as one of us. And we pray that through your word and through the illuminating power of your Holy Spirit, you would give us insight into what this means. And we pray not only for knowledge, but for transform lives as a result of what you've done for us. In Christ's name we pray, amen. So today we're going to be looking at how God becoming a human being in Jesus

5:38 Christ enables our creator to serve us in the way we most need. As I mentioned last Sunday, I When the early followers of Jesus were trying to come up with a word to describe this phenomenon of God becoming a human being in Jesus, they came up with the word incarnation, which literally means in flesh or with meat. Do you recall the Spanish phrase I used to illustrate this? I mentioned chile can carne. which simply

6:24 means chile with meat. And the word incarnation simply means God with meat, God with flesh. And some of the early followers of Jesus fell into one of two theological errors. Some of the early followers of Jesus believed that he was God, but that Jesus just appeared to be human, that he wasn't really human. And this is known as the heresy or the theological error of docetism. Jesus really wasn't human. Another error that some of the

7:15 early followers of Jesus made was that they believed that Jesus was this enlightened teacher, this superior human being, a great guide and sage, but they didn't believe that he was fully God. And this theological error came to be known as Arianism. Arianism, that Jesus wasn't fully God. Now, these theological errors have consequences because if Jesus God did not become one of us, a human being in Jesus. It means that he cannot represent us. He cannot stand in our stead. And I'll unpack more of what that means

8:03 in a few moments. And if Jesus, on the other hand, wasn't fully God, it means that he could not save us from our sins. And we'll explore more of what that means in a moment. In what's called the Old Testament part of the Bible, we see that when people sin, God provided a pathway for them to respond. God invited them to offer sacrifices of grains, of first fruits of the harvest, or animals. Now, these sacrifices were important because they showed us that sin matters to a holy God and that a price needs

8:49 to be paid. But in a way, the sacrifices were only symbolic because they gave us a picture of what it might look like for our sins to be removed. But those sacrifices could not actually remove completely our sins. And we read in the scriptures, in Hebrews 10, 4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. And part of the reason why it's not possible for the blood of animals, bulls and goats, to take away human sins is because an animal cannot

9:38 represent us. An animal cannot stand in our place before God. And so it was important that the creator of the universe became one of us, a human being, so that our creator as a human being could represent us, stand in our stead, and bear the price, the penalty for our sins. It was also important that Jesus Christ was was not just fully human, but fully God. Because in order to satisfy God's holy standard, the sacrifice that would be offered on our

10:26 behalf needed to be perfectly sinless. And then, I know this is getting a little bit abstract here, and Jesus Christ fulfilled that requirement as God in human form. It's getting a little abstract here, I know, just stay with me. If Jesus was only a human being, even if he was a flawless, sinless human being, he could only offer himself as a sacrifice for one other person, for Hubert or Teresa or Brent or Amelia, but not all of them.

11:16 The fact that God was a human being meant that he could represent us. The fact that God in Jesus was not only a human being, but also God meant that Jesus was infinite. So human being, singular human being, plus infinite God, infinity, means that Jesus could represent offer himself as a sacrifice for the sin of not just one person, not just Pablo, but for Steve, Susan, for all of us, for all of us. And that means that our sins can be forgiven. In 2 Corinthians 5, 21,

12:05 we read that God made him, that is Jesus, who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. God made him, Jesus, who had no sin to be sin for us, not just for me or for you as a singular individual, so that in him, through Christ's work, we might become the righteousness of God. I'm sure some of you have read Charles Dickens' famous classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. It's a very moving story, of course, set in 18th century France during the tumultuous, violent French

12:52 Revolution. And one of the main characters in the novel is a man named Charles Darnay. Charles Darnay is arrested, and he's declared guilty, not because of any particular crime that he's actually committed or wrongdoing, But he is approached, arrested, and told that he is going to die by the guillotine. Why? Because of his class. Because he is part of the educated upper aristocratic class, which during the French Revolution was itself considered a crime. Now, in the novel, there is another main character

13:42 named Sidney Carton. And Sidney Carton happens to look almost exactly like Charles Darnay. Sidney Carton is brilliant, but he is flawed. And he has wasted his life and he lives with all kinds of regrets. And what he's about to do is inspired by a woman named Lucy Manette. Lucy Manette is a woman who shows great kindness to Sidney Carton, kindness that enables Carton's best self, his truer self, to

14:32 emerge and to blossom. And because Sidney Carton loves Lucy Manette, and because Lucy Manette is married to Charles Darnay, and they have a young child, a daughter. Sydney Carton wants to do something for her so she can stay with her husband, even though he's been sentenced to death by a guillotine, and so that their daughter can have a father. And so at the end of the novel, sorry if this is a spoiler, but the novel's been out for a long time. Sydney Carton, who, remember, looks exactly like Charles Darnay, goes to the prison where Darnay is being held captive, visits him, enters his

15:18 cell, and then drugs him. Charles Darnay passes out. Sidney Carton exchanges clothes with Charles Darnay. They've got an inside person who's helping them who carries away Charles Darnay, and everyone else thinks that it's Sid Carton who's passed away, passed out. And then Charles Darnay eventually wakes up and is reunited with his wife and his daughter. And as Carton walks calmly to the guillotine, his final words were, it is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. And what Carton does in taking Charles Darnay's place is, is

16:06 in one sense very similar to what Jesus does for us because Jesus stands in our place, dies on a cross so that our sins might be forgiven, so that we might live eternally with God in the world to come. But it is different in a couple of other ways in that Sidney Carton was not a perfectly sinless man and God required that the person who represented us on the cross, be perfectly sinless, Jesus was. And Sidney Carton was just a singular individual, which meant that he could only take the place of one man and free one person from death, in this case, Charles Darnay. But because Jesus was not only a human being, but because he was also God

16:57 infinite, it meant that his death could die. serve as a sacrifice for all of us, which means that our sins can be forgiven. It means that we can experience the washing away of our transgressions and know the joy of our relationship with God. What are some of the implications of this? I recently went through Andre Agassi's memoir, Open, and the... Memoir is entitled Open for, I think, a couple of reasons. One is because some of the major tournaments, tennis tournaments around the world, as you know, are called the Open. You know, the US Open, the Australian Open, and so forth. But it's

17:46 also called Open because Andre Agusty is very open about his life in this memoir. And he shares that he hated tennis. And sometimes people would approach him and they would say, you must love sports. And I guess he would say, no, I hate sports. And they would say, you mean you hate all sports except tennis, right? You must love tennis. No, I especially hate tennis. And the reason why he was playing the game in the first place was because his father forced him when he was very, very young to play. And he Part of his frustration with the game was because he felt that his sense of worth was so dependent on his performance as a

18:36 tennis player. But even when he became successful, he realized that he still carried a great deal of self-doubt. After Agassiz won his first slam, his first major tournament at Wimbledon, something that most people can only dream about, This is what he says. He confesses. I've been let in on a dirty little secret. This is just after Wimbledon. Winning changes nothing. Now that I've won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad. And the feeling doesn't last as long as the

19:23 bad not even close. Psychologists tell us that we human beings have what they describe as a negativity bias. So we feel losses more intensely than wins. We experience the feeling of failure longer than the feeling of success. Super Bowl Sunday. I've heard Tom Brady, who's won more than twice as many Super Bowls as... as he's lost, say, he thinks about the losses far more than the wins. And that's not just true in sports

20:12 or in work. It's true in life. We tend to rehearse and replay our failures, our mistakes, our sins, our shortcomings, our flaws. And that can lead to guilt that feels unresolved, or shame that feels like it's hanging on. When we understand that because God became a human being in Jesus Christ and offered himself as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be freed of our sins, it means that we can live with less unnecessary guilt

21:00 and shame, and those things steal our joy, and we can live with more peace, more joy, more lightness of being, because insofar as God is concerned, if you've given your life to God, you are in the clear. You're in the clear. And hopefully that is good news. In the eyes of the one who matters most, you're in the clear. When God became a human being in Jesus Christ. He opened up the path for us to experience the forgiveness of our sins and freedom from them. But he also opened up a path for us to experience

21:46 transformation through an encounter with him. In John 1, verse 14, we read that the word that is God became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And the phrase made his dwelling among us literally means that God tabernacled among us. Now at this time in the history of the people of Israel... They weren't living in tents. So this was not a reference to how most people lived at that time. It was a reference to a period in their history when they were wandering through the desert, lived in tents. But there was one special tent that they erected called the tabernacle. It was the tent of God. And

22:36 according to Exodus, when God's glory filled the tabernacle, no human being was could enter the presence of God and survive. Not even Moses. When Moses asked God, the great Moses, can I see your glory? God said, you cannot see my glory and live. And he hid Moses in the cleft of a rock and passed by only letting Moses see God's back. But in John chapter one, we read the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, tabernacled among us. And then it goes on and says, we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. God has come to us in Jesus Christ, in his

23:26 glory, but in a form that we can actually encounter. And as we encounter the glory of God, we can be changed by that glory. In John 1.12, it says, yet to all who received him, To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. In the ancient world, to be called a son or daughter of someone wasn't just a reference to the fact that you were the person's biological offspring or you were adopted by the person. It was a way of saying, in some way, you are like your father. as a daughter, as a son, that you bear some resemblance. And when we become daughters and sons of God, it

24:16 means that not only do we experience God's glory coming to us in Jesus, but we become God's children and we take on the character of our God who is both our father and mother. A vivid example of how this transformation works comes from the life of Chuck Colson. I had the privilege of serving with him on an educational board during a latter stage of his life. Chuck Colson, as you may know, was one of the most powerful people at one time in Washington, D.C. He was the special counsel to President Richard Nixon. He was a ruthless operator. His nickname was the Hatchet Man. Chuck

25:03 Colson once bragged, I would run over my own grandmother to get the president reelected. Then, of course, as he describes in his memoir, Born Again, Watergate occurred, the scandal broke, and Chuck Colson ended up in prison because of his crimes that were revealed during Watergate. And when Chuck was in that prison cell, he said, the hardest thing was not the loss of my physical freedom to move about and to go different places. It was the fact that

25:49 I no longer knew who I was. I had lost this prestigious, powerful role in the government. And I was now seen as a publicly disgraced criminal. I no longer had access to power. I no longer could control things and influence things. I didn't know who I was. I felt utterly and completely lost. And then a friend of his gave him a classic book called Mere Christianity, written by C.S. Lewis. And through that book, He came to believe in Jesus and not just believe in him intellectually, but he offered his life to Jesus.

26:35 And Chuck said, as a result, I received not just a new moral code, but a new identity. I came to realize, even though I continue to struggle with pride and with a great capacity for self-deception, that my life was not defined as being a publicly disgraced criminal. But I was, in fact, a beloved and forgiven son of God in the eyes of the one who matters most. And Chuck Colson also realized that he didn't need to be chasing after things like power and prestige in order to

27:25 to form an identity that instead he could embrace values like service and love because of the ways that God had served and loved him. When Chuck eventually got out of prison, he, this time, returned voluntarily to prison, not as an inmate, but to visit with people that were imprisoned, to love them, and if they were open to it, to share how Jesus has changed his life. And Chuck would go on to launch a ministry called Prison Fellowship, which as you may know, among other things, not only offers education and opportunities for people to grow in their faith, but

28:12 fosters real loving relationships with prisoners, with inmates, and people outside of prison, people in the larger community, so that when the prisoners are released, the inmates are released, they will have a community in which to be integrated, which can help foster their wholeness. Now, our situation may not be as dramatic as Chuck Colson's, but no matter what our background, no matter what we've done in the past or have not done, because God became one of us, a human being in Jesus Christ, and then offered himself as a sacrifice for

28:59 our sins. It means that our sins can be forgiven, that our shame can be healed. It means that we can live with peace and joy and a sense of lightness of being that we otherwise wouldn't have because insofar as God is concerned, you are in the And it also means that we can encounter the glory of God in a form that comes to us in Jesus Christ and survive that glory. We can become a daughter or son of God and that our life does not need to be defined by

29:48 seeking power or privilege or validated through Success, money, popularity, which is such a temptation in the online age of social media. But our lives can be defined. Our identity can be shaped most by the glorious fact that we are a beloved daughter or son of God whose lives are being shaped and transformed through the glory of Jesus Christ and the fact that we are children of our Father in heaven. Let's pray together.

30:43 Let me just offer this and you can pray in response to it. If you feel a sense of guilt or regret over something you've done, hear the words of Scripture from Romans chapter 8 verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation if you are in Christ Jesus. And if you have any doubt that you are in relationship with Christ Jesus, remember that John says in his gospel, to as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God. And so if you'd like, you could say this day, I don't understand

31:31 it all, but I receive Christ. I receive his forgiveness and new life. Living God, make me your daughter or make me your son. Thank you for making it so. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.