God with Us: The Reality of Christmas

Scripture

John 1:1–18 (NASB 2020)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind.

And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.

A man came, one sent from God, and his name was John.

He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.

He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.

This was the true Light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him.

He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him.

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,

who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John testified about Him and called out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who is coming after me has proved to be my superior, because He existed before me.’ ”

For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.

Introduction

A little Christmas humor……

RATS

A minister once enlisted four children to help him preach his Christmas sermon on “The Star.” He gave each child one of the four letters to hold up so he could make a point on each letter of the word “Star.” When the children stepped forward and turned around, they were in reverse order. The congregation nearly fell out of their pews as they read: “RATS.”

Robert J. Morgan, Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 119.

He came in the flesh to redeem the world. We can be a part of that cause today.

“We were once sinking in the sand of our sin, and it took our older brother Jesus to sacrifice himself so we could be saved” (Mark Driscoll, Who Do You Think You Are?, 69-70).

Christmas isn’t an abstract holiday or idea; Jesus came to earth (as a human) in order to reconcile us to God.

The Reality of God’s Existence

He has always been “was the Word” (Verse 1)

‘there never was when he was not’ (Athanasius)

Bruce Milne, The Message of John: Here Is Your King!: With Study Guide, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 33.

He is God

He is with God

He literally stands face to face with the Father and is embraced by Him.

He knows the Father so that He can reveal Him to us.

He is intimately united in all things with the Father & reveals who the Father is.

He is equal to the Father.

They are united in one mission.

Nothing will limit them or have power over them.

They have no beginning or end.

He is the Creator of all things

He creates all things out of love.

Nothing exists without Him.

i. “The word ‘made’(egeneto) has the meaning ‘became’ rather than ‘constructed.’ The action refers to an event rather than a process. The visible universe with all its complexity owes its origin to the creative mind and power of God. Apart from his Word, existence is impossible. The priority of Christ over creation is taught here and it also is mentioned in Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews 1:2” [Merrill C. Tenney, "John", in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Volume 9: John and Acts (ed. Frank E. Gaebelein; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 28-29].

ii. The Big Bang Reality - God spoke and BANG it happened!

The Reality of What He Brings

Life

Eternal Life

The reward of becoming a child of God. His inheritance becomes ours by His grace.

Eternal life gives us the living hope that we will see Jesus face-to-face and spend eternity united with Him.

Eternal life with Jesus separates us from temptation, sin, suffering and division that this world of darkness offers.

a. There will be: No death so that means no more funeral homes, no more hospitals, no more doctors, no more medication, no more addiction, no more poverty, no more sadness, no more worry, no more depression, no more anxiety, no more temptation and no more sin. God has amazing things in store for those who love Him and are His child!

Acceptance of eternal life leads to the light that Christ offers that will illuminate our lives.

The Holy Spirit lives in us.

a. To guide us

-Teaching us His Word

-Giving us the perspective of God to view the world

-We live in the world but are not a part of it

-Pointing us to Jesus

b. To comfort us

-In loss

-In grief

-In our sorrow for sin

c. To pray for us

-When we don’t know what to pray

d. to inspire us

-To reveal who God is

-To encourage us as we serve and love Him

Light

Christ is the Light

This is represented here tonight through the Christ candle on our Advent wreath. Later, when we have our candlelight service, the light you will find from the candle you hold will be lit by the Christ candle to illumine this room. This candle will remain with us throughout the next year (except during lent) until the Sunday before Advent. During lent, it will be absent to help us remember that our sin extinguished this light on the cross. That great light though will reappear, brighter than ever when we celebrate His resurrection on Easter Sunday. It will be a symbol as we gather each Sunday to worship that Christ is here with us as our Light and that He calls us to go out and share His light with others.

He is the light that shattered the darkness of the world

Jesus the White Light

John 1:4; 8:12; 1 John 3:3

Preaching Themes: Jesus

In white, all the colors are blended. A perfectly white substance combines all the colors of the rainbow merged in true proportion, but green and indigo and red are only the reflections of a part of the solar rays. So John, Peter, Paul are parts of the light of heaven; they are differing colors, and there is a beauty in each one of them. But if you want to get the whole of the rays of light, you must get to Christ, for all light is in him. In him is not simply the red or the blue, but in him is light, the true light, the whole of light.

Charles Spurgeon, 300 Sermon Illustrations from Charles Spurgeon, ed. Elliot Ritzema and Lynnea Smoyer (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).This light brings us to better understand who God is

The light shines but some reject its illumination in their lives.

Darkness seems more satisfying to them but in reality it is going to just make them more miserable.

Adoption

The moment we accept accept and believe in Christ for salvation, we become a child of God.

He unites us with the Father through His sacrifice at Calvary.

All of heaven rejoices over in welcoming another member into the family of God.

When we confess our belief that Jesus is the Son of God, we share in the love the Father has for the Son, becoming adopted children of God.

The love Jesus brings to earth is the love of the Father.

He wants all to experience this love that has no measure and never changes.

Grace

God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

God doing things for us that we do not deserve.

The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott “Grace Is Love that Stoops”

“Grace Is Love That Stoops”

Themes: God: Grace; God: Love

“Grace is love that stoops. Love radiates in every direction—grace radiates downwards. Love is between equal and equal, or between inferior and superior; grace, may I say, is love toward the bottom dog.”

SOURCE: Morrison of Wellington, Sermon on Song of Songs 2:14.

At Christmas, Christ stooped down to earth as the God-man out of His love and grace. Love came downward at Christmas. He doesn’t care who you are…His grace is available to you. We don’t deserve all we have in Christ but He gives it to us if only we accept it.

Truth

Jesus shows the reality and embodiment of truth. He also shows that He is genuine and can be trusted.

God never breaks His promises with us.

He will never let you down.

The truth that Jesus brings us to earth is the truth of the Gospel message. It is the message we need the most on earth.

The Persistence of Righteousness and Truth

Themes: Righteousness; Truth

“Truth does not cease because people give up believing it.” Nor does righteousness cease because people give up practicing it!

Source: Edward R. Norman, Christianity and the World Order (OUP, 1979), 14.

John Stott, The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott, ed. Mark Meynell (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).The Reality of Christmas

Don’t let someone’s denial of this truth stop you from sharing it to other people.

The Reality of Christmas

The Creator Became the Creation (Verse 14)

This is the heart and climax of the Gospel.

He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.He loves us with an everlasting and immeasurable love that never changes! - Augustine

“The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but a baby, and before that a fetus in a woman’s body.” – C.S. Lewis

He took on our likeness and weakness so that He can identify with us!

He shares in all of our human struggle, except sin. But He, on the cross, felt the full burden and openly embraced it so that we did not have to.

A Sinless Man Is a Miracle

Themes: Jesus: Birth

“A sinless man is as much a miracle in the moral world as a virgin birth is a miracle in the physical world.”

Source: A. B. Bruce, Apologetics (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892), 410.

John Stott, The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott, ed. Mark Meynell (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).The highest form of self-humbleness that human history will ever see.

He came off His throne, He emptied Himself of royalty, came down to earth as one of us, became our servant as He lived, suffered, died, rose from the dead and now lives as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Lo, within a manger lies

He who built the starry skies.

Edward Caswall

Bruce Milne, The Message of John: Here Is Your King!: With Study Guide, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 47.

Our humanity was home for Him who is forever.

As He is human, He still is God.

Emmanuel: God with Us.

The world rejected Him then just like it does now. (Verse 11)

Israel

This is the central problem which dominates the whole gospel story. Jesus comes to God’s people, and God’s people do what the rest of the world do: they prefer darkness to light.

Tom Wright, John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 5.He came with one purpose in mind: To save us from our sin so that we could spend eternity with Him.

His own people are the ones that rejected the truth of what he taught and preached. They are the ones that yelled ‘crucify him’ on that Good Friday.

The nations of the world (Gentiles)

God Remedies the situation by offering us the free gift of salvation.

God wants people from everywhere to be born in a new way, born into the family which he began through Jesus and which has since spread through the world

Tom Wright, John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 5–6.

2 Corinthians 6:2 NASB 2020

for He says, “At a favorable time I listened to you, And on a day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “a favorable time,” behold, now is “a day of salvation”—

How do we accept this gift?

We receive Him at the door of our heart as He convicts us of our rebellion towards God.

We believe in His Name and that He died and rose for your sin. (Verse 12)

i. We recognize the fact that we cannot do anything to save ourselves.

ii. We place our trust in Jesus and of what He claims to be.

iii. We believe but we do not see. That is called faith.

We give our lives to Jesus so that we can be born of God.

i. The world tries to define who we are:

a. God, through Jesus, shows us how much we are truly worth.

ii. By faith, we dedicate our lives to Him.

a. We now have the right to become His child. (Verse 12)

iii. We let His Spirit move in our lives and change us.

a. He sets us free from sin that has kept us in bondage

This is not a story. It is reality!

Jesus is not an abstract principle. He is a person just like us!

Jesus is not a page in a history book. He is the Savior of the world!

Jesus is not just a good man who did good things. He is the source of all good that shows God’s glory to us!

Christmas is not supposed to be a secular holiday. It is so that we can totally embrace Jesus in our hearts just like Mary did in holding God and man in her hands in the form of a little baby she just gave birth to.

God is not off far away, not caring what happens in this world. He is intimately involved in the lives of believers and shows this in the most extreme way by sending Jesus into the world.

To Sum It Up

God is with us! Jesus came, He saw, He conquered! We can now do the same because of His coming in the flesh. His life, death and resurrection gives us victory and all that we need to come to and share Jesus with the world.

Conclusion

In reflecting on the profound words of John 1:1-18, we find ourselves standing at the threshold of eternity, gazing into the mystery of the Word made flesh. This passage reveals to us the timeless truth that God, in His infinite wisdom and love, chose to enter into our world, to dwell among us.

As we've journeyed through these verses, we've witnessed the Word, who was with God from the beginning, becoming flesh and dwelling among us. In the birth of Jesus Christ, we see the incarnation—a divine act of humility and grace. The light that shines in the darkness has not been overcome, and this Light is Jesus, the Word made flesh.

In a world often veiled in darkness, this passage serves as a radiant beacon of hope. The Word became flesh not only to reveal the character of God but to bring us into a transformative relationship with Him. Through Christ, we receive the fullness of grace and truth.

As we close this time of reflection, let us carry with us the awe and wonder of the incarnation. Let the truth of Christ's presence in our lives inspire us to be bearers of His light in a world desperate for hope and truth.

John 3:16–17 NASB 2020

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.

Benediction

May the reality of "Emmanuel," God with us, resonate in our hearts daily. Let us embrace the profound mystery of God becoming one of us, offering salvation, grace, and the promise of eternal life. As we go forth, may the love and light of Christ shine through us, drawing others to the transformative power of the Word made flesh. May Almighty God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit go with you now and remain with you forever. Amen!