Christmas Eve: John 1:1-5 & 9-14

Yes, I'm gonna sound a little scratchy, and I know that when Kim mentioned that about my voice, uh I had a confidence in our congregation that a few of you went right to prayer.

Uh and then it dawned on me that a few of you might have been giving thanks, thinking he won't talk so long.

It'll go quicker, and we'll be getting right to the point.

Well, we will get right to the point.

Uh I don't want to spend a lot of time, but I do want to talk for just a second about our theme over the Advent period, which has been that the story of Christmas really runs from Genesis on through Revelation, because all of Scripture is ultimately about Jesus Christ and points to him and the work that God wants to do through him.

Um at the Advent season, we always talk about how we it's a twofold look.

We we look back upon in time his first appearing.

The Advent means appearing or arrival.

So we look back in time, reflecting upon his first appearing, and then we look forward in time as well because he's promised to come back one day.

The kingdom of heaven was inaugurated, or it began when he first came, but it won't come in its fullness until he returns again.

And this second appearing of Christ is sometime in the future.

I don't know when it will be.

There have been a lot of people that have speculated about that.

Um I'd love for it to be before I finish this sentence.

But there, I made it, didn't I?

So um when will it be?

I don't know.

Um I just know that he promised to come back and set things right in a broken world.

And it's who he is that makes his promises worth trusting.

Okay, so you know somebody, I know somebody that's made promises to us that somehow or another has failed they failed us, and so we find ourselves with some difficulty trying to trust them.

And what we would like to persuade you of is that this God of the Bible is faithful and true, and that when Jesus said one day he will set things right, I'm excited about that.

I don't know what it's gonna look like, I don't know the details.

Uh, but I'm I know that there are some things that are wrong in the world, and they need to be set right.

Just like when Jesus came the first time and all the prophets that had gone before, uh, so many of them had talked about the coming Messiah.

And even Isaiah talks about the fact that there was so much darkness.

People were living in darkness, right?

And then uh the other thing that I think, as I think back to the first appearing of Jesus, is the confusion that was there as well.

Darkness and confusion both.

Confusion over who was Messiah, because the Jewish people have been promised this Messiah many times over, and lots of people have kind of stepped forward suggesting that they were the Messiah, but none of them turned out to be the Messiah.

And so there's confusion and darkness at the same time.

And those appear to me to be timeless problems that humanity has to wrestle with darkness and confusion.

I want to suggest to you tonight as we consider Jesus and his appearing and the promise of his second coming, that in Christ we have the solution to both darkness and confusion.

And I think we live in a time that's full of darkness and confusion.

And uh you may be experiencing that personally, you may just see it in the world around you.

Um, it might be some kind of darkness that you feel that's a it's a a psychological thing or a physical thing uh or a contextual thing at work or in a family relationship or in a marriage relationship, whatever it might be.

There's darkness and confusion in a lot of places in our world, and we need a Savior to come and break in and break through to us.

And that's what Jesus has done.

And this is the beauty of the of the gospel story that we have.

So we have uh through the Advent season, we've described the grand narrative of the overarching, if you will, storyline of the Bible as these four words creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

Beautiful words because they describe the reality that we're experiencing.

I think that the Christian faith makes the most sense of the real world in which we live.

I think it's the burden of every religion, though, to answer at least two questions.

Who is God?

And secondly, how can sinful human beings be reconciled to a holy and righteous God?

And how each religious system answers those questions is really critical to me.

When I look at these four themes, creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, we've suggested throughout the Advent season that Christ is integrated into all four of these themes.

John 1, which we'll read in a second, tells us he was there at the creation event, that he created everything, and that by the power of his own word, he sustains everything.

In other words, Jesus is critical to our existence.

Jesus is critical to this created world that we live in.

And so we understand ourselves as part of creation, and that makes a big difference because there's a whole lot of people out there in the world that want us to think that all of human life is just a random co-location of uh a collision of uh atoms and chemicals in a sort of random way.

And therefore, there's really no meaning in life.

You see, there's no purpose, no telos to life, unless we've been created and designed and created by a loving creator who is interested in that third word up there, redemption.

Because we've fallen, we've gone our own way.

Jesus is the one who did not fall, but he did lay down his life for all of those who have fallen.

He paid the price for my sins and yours.

And so you see, Jesus is integral to creation, he's integral to the fall because he's the solution for the fall.

And it's redemption that he purchased for me and for you.

You see?

And that's a beautiful thing.

That's a wonderful thing.

We studied that a couple weeks ago.

Last week we studied the restoration.

That's the goal of all of this.

That ultimately what God intends to do is set things right, and through Jesus Christ, he actually makes that possible.

See?

And so that's why we put our hope, trust, and faith and confidence in Jesus, not in ourselves, not in church, not in work, not in money, sex, or power.

We put our confidence, we find our total identity wrapped up in who Christ is and who he wants us to become as we belong to him.

And it's not just merely about following, it is about following, that's true.

It's not not about following, but it's really about belonging to him.

You see, he purchased my salvation.

I belong to him.

The Apostle Paul would use the word dulos to describe himself.

He would say, I'm the slave, I'm the bondservant of Jesus Christ.

And every bit of his life belonged to Jesus, and that's the way he saw himself.

And what a what a freedom comes with that realization.

But I want to get to reading just this passage together from John chapter 1, the first five verses, and then verses 9 through 14.

John 1 · chapter mention

And I want just to, if you don't mind, because of my voice being a little scratchy, I'd love for you to read it with some gusto.

And so uh would you mind doing my job for me?

Okay, I'll get you started.

Ready?

In words.

He came to his own, those who were his own.

But as many as received him, became flesh.

Ah, I love those words, grace and truth, don't you?

In a world where there's darkness and confusion, Jesus comes along and he's offering us grace and truth.

Um seems like the exact solution to the problem, doesn't it?

John describes and uses a couple metaphors in these passages, this passage that you've read.

He talks about Jesus as the word, the living word, if you will, of God.

So here comes God's salvation, and a person named Jesus, whose actual name means God is salvation.

That's what Jesus means, okay?

God is salvation, and he comes and he doesn't send an angel.

He sends a lot of angels along the way, but when it comes to salvation and securing our salvation, he comes himself.

He lays down his life.

He pays the price for my sin and for your sin.

And he brings us the word of God.

And he is, he calls himself the way, the truth, and the life.

He calls himself the resurrection and the life.

I mean, he makes such bold claims that whatever you do with him, you cannot just take him lightly.

You either have to think he's a complete nut job and just laugh at him and ridicule him and burn every book that was ever written about him, or you have to think he's like a some kind of deceiver or liar.

C.S.

Lewis made this real clear and said, or the third option is that he's who he said he is.

He's the Lord.

He's the living word, and he's the light of the world.

As John, which we just read, one of his closest friends.

An eyewitness, this isn't like 15 generations later.

This is an eye witness that walked around with Jesus on dusty roads, sat around campfires with Jesus, went fishing with Jesus, heard Jesus teach and preach, saw Jesus perform miracles, all of which were, you know, uh echoes, if you will, of this grand miracle, as C.S.

Lewis calls it.

The grand miracle of what?

The incarnation.

God becoming one of us to save us.

See?

Not just becoming one of us because he was curious about what's it like to be a human.

No.

He came here to save us.

Thinking, think of all the cramping and the condescension that he had to endure to become one of the infinite God who made everything that exists out of nothing.

He chose to show up on this planet as one of us.

That's mind-blowing.

And to save us when he didn't owe it to us.

We didn't even deserve it.

We're covered up in our own darkness and our confusion, and most of that's because we've sinned and gone our own way.

And some of us don't want to find our way back, some of us aren't interested in hearing about him.

And yet he still came, even for those people who put him on the cross itself.

I love the way the gospels describe Jesus to us.

Can't define him, but they can describe him.

He is the fulfillment of Scripture.

That means God has had you and me in mind for a long, long time.

Thousands of years.

Matter of fact, even before the foundations of the world, it was God's plan to save, to call out a people he could call his own, and to redeem and rescue them.

And I love that about the Bible and the God of the Bible.

Mark presents Jesus as the ultimate servant king.

What a beautiful thing.

What kind of king are you interested in?

Who do you really hope rules the world one day?

How about one that would lay down his life for you?

Not a taker, but one who is a giver and who has come to give us life.

Third, Luke presents Jesus as the Savior of the world.

And that's interesting because I believe that Luke is the only non-Jewish author of a New Testament book.

And isn't that great music running behind me?

Is that my phone?

Is it me?

It's always me.

You know, it's a you know you always think it's somebody else, right?

And then it ends up being you.

Yeah.

Um, Merry Christmas, yeah.

Um I think it's gone.

So Luke, Luke presents Jesus as a Savior of the whole world, not just one group of people, not just one nation, but salvation on offer to the whole world.

That includes you, that includes me.

Jesus came born into a very poor family, uh in an insignificant little village and in a pass-through nation.

And that's where he chose, the creator of the entire universe, that's where he chose to come and be born.

So that all of us, no matter who we are, no matter what level of income or socioeconomical advancement we've had or how we've been educated, or whatever, no matter who we are, we could see that he actually cares for us.

That he understands our plight, if you will.

And we talked a lot about that in the Advent season, the inescapable plight that we are in, in the darkness and confusion of the world around us.

John is presenting Jesus as the solution to all of this.

He is the living word.

So now confusion starts to melt away.

Why?

Because I have a certain word.

Jesus who said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

And here we are in a world in a culture that's constantly trying to suggest to us that there's no such thing as truth.

And I go, are you sure about that?

Is that a true statement that you're making?

Because it seems that if it's a true statement, there is such a thing as truth.

If it's really true that I cannot fly, then it would be smart for me to live in accordance with the truth and not attempt to fly without some help of some kind.

So Jesus comes with a certain and a sure word from the Lord.

We're not left in the Bermuda triangle of trying to figure out where's true north.

I can't figure it out where all the ships are going down.

No, he came as a sure and a certain word for us.

And he came as the light of the world.

Why?

Because we're covered up in darkness, man.

I don't know if you've ever, you know, found yourself in a dark room trying to navigate the room.

Maybe it was even a room you knew, but somebody rearranged the furniture and you find yourself stubbing your toe or falling over an ottoman that you didn't know was there, or stepping on a cat or whatever.

I mean, there's all kinds of things that can go wrong in the dark, right?

And here comes Jesus breaking into our darkness, as if we're in the prison cell and it's locked, and it can only be opened from the outside.

We can't get out.

And he comes and he opens the door.

He's the door, too, John tells us.

Jesus is all of this for us and to us for those who will choose to believe.

John Stott said this about Jesus.

There's no other person in which God has become human, died, been raised from the death, and been exalted to heaven.

And therefore there's no other Savior.

No one else possesses his qualifications.

The Latin phrase is sui generis.

He's one of a kind.

There's no other one like him.

He's not one of many world religious leaders, and he has the same characteristics that they all have.

That's not Jesus.

You're not talking about Jesus when you talk about that.

He's not just a guy that started a world religion.

He's not just a philosopher.

He's not just a you know soft-spoken kind of you know robe-wearing, sandal-wearing guy that walked around just being nice to you know small animals and people who left their phones on and stuff like that.

That's not Jesus, okay?

He went into the temple where they were abusing the poor, and he turned the tables over and ran them out of the temple.

See?

Because they were abusing the poor in a place where they should have been praying, in a place where they should have been reflecting the love of God.

This is the Jesus of the Bible.

This is the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And John says, into your darkness, into your confusion comes the light of the world and the living word of God.

So that we can know God and we can know how much he loves us, and that Jesus who's shown us what grace and truth really are.

Because I tell you what, I I'm a pastor, I've been a pastor for 18 years.

This is my last Christmas message of this decade.

A little bit of glee back there.

It's my last Christmas message of this decade.

But but here's what I want to say.

In Christ, what we have is grace.

I don't need religion.

I gotta be honest with you.

I'm I can't follow the rules.

And if Jesus is just an example, I'm sunk.

But if Jesus is a savior, that's a different deal.

So if you need a savior tonight, if you find yourself in any way in the smothered in the darkness, being tossed about by the confusion, may I recommend Jesus to you.

He is the light of the world, and he is the living word of God.

Come, let us adore him.

That's what we want to do at Christmas time.

Come, let us rejoice in who he is.

Fleming Rutledge said this about him.

Really powerful.

In the birth of the Savior, we've received something.

It's beyond our deserving, beyond our preparations, beyond our potential, human potential, beyond our expectations, even.

That comes to us in the words of beloved carols, like in the silent night or in the dark streets or in the bleak midwinter, in such a world as this, to save us all from Satan's power.

The solution to darkness is light.

The solution to confusion is a clear and certain word.

Jesus is both for us.

Tim said this about the gospel narrative.

They are telling you not what you should do, but what God has done.

The birth of the Son of God, that's what we're going to celebrate tomorrow.

We have no clue what day he was born.

Um I hope I'm not disappointing anybody by saying that.

But that's not what's important.

What's important is that he came.

See?

And that he intends to come back and set things right.

That's really important.

How do you respond to that?

Well, the birth of the Son of God into the world is a gospel.

It's good news, an announcement, just like the angels gave to the shepherds when they said, This is going to be great news for everyone.

God has come and he's brought salvation into this world.

So you don't save yourself, as Keller says so beautifully.

God actually has come to save you.

Do you know him as the living word?

Do you know him as the light of your world, the light of your heart?

I hope that you do.

We like to close this service with a kind of a symbolic move.

We're all going to get a candle.

I think you may have gotten one when you came in, and we're going to sing the last two carols lighting these candles.

And what this symbolizes is not just a warm, fuzzy moment, but this symbolizes the longing of my heart because Advent began in the dark.

Creation itself began in the dark, and God said, Let there be light.

Advent began in the dark.

The people were in darkness and confusion.

And into that kind of world and into our world as well comes the light of the world, Jesus, the living word of God.

And so we're going to light these candles, and they're basically just going to be us with wax and wick saying, Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

I welcome you here.

Prepare him room.

You know?

Why wouldn't you?

He's that kind of servant, King, and Savior.

What would hold you back from the gift that God has given us in the person and work of Jesus Christ?