The Mess of Relationships | The Mess & the Miracle

So we continue our sermon series, The Mess and the

Miracle, our Advent sermon series this morning.

And we are going to be in the Gospel of John, Chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

Now, I told my staff and my council this is the shortest

sermon notes I've ever written, and it is true.

It is not even a full page.

But I will do my best to really encapsulate what I believe the

Mess and the Miracle is in our Advent journey of John 1.

Because you see, John 1, the Gospel of John, this very first

chapter, is a vision and a version of Christmas.

Now, it's not one that you will probably hear read on either

December 24th in a service or on December 25th in a service.

Because we go to Luke or we go to Matthew because they give us

real good detail about the shepherds and the angels and

even the lowly animals, the manger and all that it is.

However, what John does is he encapsulates the person of

Christ.

So we are going to be in the beginning of John, John 1.

And so we are going to start with the very first verse.

And a lot of you know these verses.

And for some of you, you have never really tied them to

Christmas, but let's journey in that this morning.

In the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him and without Him was not

anything made that was made.

In Him was light and that light was the life of men.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has

not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that

all might believe through Him.

He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light which gives light to everyone was coming

into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made through Him, yet

the world did not know Him.

He came to His own and to His own people did not receive Him.

But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He

gave the right to become children of God who were born

not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of

man but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen

His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father full of grace

and truth.

That is the gospel of our Lord this morning.

So we see in John 1 we see a narrative about three different

people.

Okay.

The first narrative we see is about the Word, right?

The Word that becomes flesh is who?

Jesus, okay.

And we see that that part of God's plan, He is coming into

the world, right?

If you don't know the word light after reading those 14

verses, you weren't listening because light is mentioned

multiple, multiple times and we'll get to that in a second.

And then the second person that we're talking about is who?

John, right?

John the Baptist, so we understand.

John the Baptist, not John who wrote the gospel but Jesus'

cousin John, John the Baptist who came as witness, some would

say the last prophet.

We'll get to that in a second.

But then the third, this one might be a little, maybe it's

tough.

I'll put a cup of coffee and a conversation with Pastor Jim on

this one.

What's the third person?

I'm not elevating it to lunch.

It's not that hard.

No, I already said Jesus.

No.

Who said us?

Okay, Nick, you've gotten way too many coffees.

But no, it's the world, right?

That the world engages the light.

The world knows who the light is because of John and the

witness that John brings but we play a part in this narrative.

And that should be super exciting.

We get to be brought into the Christmas story, the Jesus

narrative, we get a part to play.

But that's the great disappointment, isn't it?

That when you read John 1, it sets from the very beginning

what the issue is and we talked about it last week when we were

in the Garden of Eden.

We talked about the mess that sin created, that in the sin

being, you know, Adam and Eve, that after sin had entered the

world and got put in our kind of in our bloodline, we see the

first thing that Adam and Eve do when they hear the sound of

their father, God, in the garden, they hide, right?

We use the term held, right?

That they created their own version of hell because the

definition of hell is an eternity without God.

That instinctively because of sin, when we do something that

we think our parents, like let's go when we're kids, we do

something that we think our parents disapprove of, we try

to hide it.

We either try to hide from them or we try to hide what we do,

the truth of the situation.

So we see that in Adam and Eve.

We see the mess that not only was created but the mess that

was sustained from Genesis chapter 3 that is still a

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

problem today in 2023.

So we play a part in this.

But the part that you play, the part that I play, even the part

that the kids are going to play today, yes, even the pre-Ks, the

part we play in this is actually sin.

We represent the sin of the world because we are the world.

Now that's probably not something you're going to put

on your Christmas cards, right?

You're not going to, we're probably not going to get from

the Schleichers this morning.

You know, I'm only picking on you because you're sitting in

the car, you know, Merry Christmas from the Schleichers.

You are the sin of the world.

Right?

You're not going to get that from the fishers like, hey,

Christ brings darkness but you bring death.

Merry Christmas.

Hopefully you don't do that.

If you're planning on doing that, use this as the Holy

Spirit's prompt to have you not do it.

Just don't send one out then.

Right?

If that's what you want, don't send one out.

But that is the truth of the season.

And if you look at the world, the world wants to create this

season that has nothing to do with the truth, everything to

do with consumerism and all that other junk.

But at the heart of the problem, the heart of the solution is

sin.

That Jesus didn't come because it was a nice day.

Jesus didn't come because, you know what, it was just getting

too boring up there in heaven so he's going to come as a baby

into a manger, a feeding trough.

He came because there was a plan set in place from Genesis

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3.

And what John is teaching us, what John is cultivating for us

is that the sin that we will deal with because of Genesis

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3 are two different levels of broken

relationships.

The mess we find ourselves is that we are a people of broken

relationships.

We see it in John 1.

There is an intent to have a good, awesome relationship.

We have that ability.

Christ, because of Christ in God's plan, we should be able

to have healthy relationships in this life.

But we don't because of the sin that is in the world.

And it's not just the person maybe in front of you or across

the sanctuary that you have a problem with.

We had a problem with Jesus.

That we actually have a problem with the truth.

We have a problem with the solution.

We have a problem with Christ.

But the one person that we do need to focus on as well is

John.

Now, John wasn't perfect.

No.

You read John, right?

John was more like his zealot, right?

John, yeah, he called it like it was, but he had his righteous

anger, but John was not perfect.

John was not the Savior.

Just because you're in the bloodline of Jesus doesn't make

you Jesus.

But we see here that John is bearing witness.

And that's an interesting word.

When I say the word witness, what comes to mind for you?

A couple people.

When you hear the word witness, what comes to mind?

A truth teller, okay?

A courtroom, absolutely.

Expound on that.

Witnesses come to give truth or give testimony, right?

Because the opposite of that is perjury.

And so that they give testimony to what they saw.

I see this daily with my three boys.

They love to bear witness about what the others have done.

It happens on a regular occurrence, right?

When one of them is in the eye line of me or my wife, I'll

throw myself in there.

When one of the four boys are in the eye line of Carrie,

knowing that we've done something wrong, we love,

instead of owning it and saying, I did that, I am sorry, we love

to initially bear total truth and witness to what the others

have done in the situation.

That sounds a lot like Genesis chapter 3, but that is how our

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

relationships work.

Because what's the quote?

If I'm going down, I'm taking all of you with me.

I appreciate all of you being good stewards of only one

person, but it's really everybody.

If I'm going down, I'm taking all of you with me.

Because we don't know how to stand on our own even when

we're wrong.

Think about that in your life.

When you bear witness to things or people bear witness of you,

what are they actually bearing witness of?

What truth are you giving the world or your family or your

neighbors or the kids in your class or insert whoever here?

What are they witnessing?

If I sat down, I'm not going to make this personal because

that's going to be super awkward, but if I sat down with

eight of the closest people in your life and I said, so, what

do you bear witness about this person's life?

I hope it's a really fun conversation.

I hope it's, oh man, this person, they're so helpful,

they're thoughtful, they're compassionate, you know, they

know really what my love language is and they really

speak to that.

They're very considerate.

They're self-aware.

But if I had to guess, because I get to handpick, not you.

Because if I let you handpick, my guess is it would be all the

people that think really good things about you or the people

you paid to have that conversation that when we get to

the heart of it, what are people witnessing about our life?

Well, that person's actually more of a tyrant.

That person comes across this way, but really behind closed

doors they're like this.

Sustaining these relationships is hard, is messy.

But wouldn't it be a lot easier, just like we learned last week

to this week, that even in our mess we could stand before not

only God, not only his church, but our friends and family and

say, yeah, I made a mess of that.

And I got this blind spot in my life.

I don't know why I keep going back and it's so attracted to

this sin that we open ourselves up vulnerability to say, man,

I know I fall.

I know that I can go to Christ in forgiveness.

And not in a cheap way.

Not as Paul refers to it, cheap grace, that Lord, thank you for

forgiving me.

I'm sorry for what I did Friday.

And we'll set the appointment next Saturday so I can

apologize for next Friday as well.

That's not how it works.

But if we're looking at the heart of the miracle that is

Advent, it is the miracle that we can live in the world, good,

bad, and ugly, knowing that there's grace.

Knowing that there's forgiveness.

Maybe we don't do it when we're little kids, but we should do

that as adults.

That if we're adults of faith.

Now if you're here this morning and you don't have faith, if

maybe this idea of Jesus is a very distant one, maybe you

don't fully get it or maybe you've been burned by that on

behalf of the church, I am so sorry that you were burned by

that, I would love to talk to you about that.

I'll pay for the coffee that time.

But understand that if you're here this morning and you claim

Jesus, you claim the miracle of Advent, you claim that the word

that came flesh dwelt among us, that our example is here with us

today, then things like grace, forgiveness, humility,

tenderness, compassion, that should be what people witness

about us.

Us individually, us as a church.

Is there still truth?

Absolutely.

You don't deny that.

Passion and compromise are two very different things.

But that we understand that when we come alongside someone that

is stuck in sin, in a season of sin, in an ideology of sin or

an identity of sin, understand that we come alongside them not

as perfect.

You can't come alongside someone that's unperfect.

If you believe you're perfect, it doesn't work.

But that we come alongside going, I'm messy just like you.

Let's work at this together.

We know where we're going.

We know what the end goal is.

The end goal is the cross.

But maybe, just maybe, we got to walk through the manger first.

Maybe we got to sit low in what we're dealing with, being honest

with who we are, understanding that in Christ, the true light,

that is what we are bear witnessing to.

So I leave you with this thought.

When people see your Christianity, when people see the

way you live your life and you walk out your faith, are they

witnessing the true light of Christ or are they witnessing

the darkness of the world?

Because if there's a blend of that, I think the darkness is

going to be the one that wins.

Even though we know in the story it doesn't.

But if your witness is that of forgiveness and grace and hope,

then you are the witness of the miracle because you've gone

through the mess.

But if it's the other side, think about the damage that's

doing, the hurt and pain that's causing, the hypocrisy that is

being walked out.

Next week, we're going to be in the book of Esther and we're

going to see someone who is standing to be the witness, even

amidst pain and hardship, even if she loses everything, yet she

still stood.

Let's pray.

Father, for this morning I give you thanks for the prophecy

that you've given, John, for our hearts.

Father, though we camped in it just a little bit, may we read

that this week?

Read the implications of what it means for you to dwell among us

that the world would see that, the incarnation alive.

But God, now as I hear those kids getting ready to come up

the stairs, I pray a peace not only over them but over all of

us, that we would journey with them, the story they're going to

tell, the songs they're going to sing, the Christ that they're

going to praise.

Father, we give you thanks for that and we pray all this in

your holy son's name.

Amen.

Our offering this morning is for Highway Connections, a wonderful

ministry that we partner with.

So at this time, Deacons, come on up and take our morning

offering.