Hope of All the Earth: The Grand Miracle of Love

Reading of the Word

John 1:14 NASB 2020

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.

Prayer of Illumination

Introduction

The Light That Moved In

Imagine sitting in a house during a power outage. The sun has set. The rooms are dark. The cold is slowly creeping in. You can hear the wind outside, and the silence feels heavier than usual. At first, you light a single candle.

That candle doesn’t remove the darkness completely—but it changes everything. The shadows soften. You can see faces again. You stop stumbling over furniture. People naturally draw closer together around the small circle of light.

Now imagine this: instead of someone standing outside and handing you a candle through the door, the light moves into the house. It steps into the darkness. It settles right in the middle of the room. And it stays.

This is what Advent leads us toward. Not a God who sends light from a distance. Not a God who offers hope while remaining safely removed. But a God who moves in.

John tells us, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That word dwelt literally means pitched a tent. God moved into the neighborhood. God chose to live in the darkness with us—to share our cold, our fear, our waiting.

This verse is one of the most significant ever written. It is the heart and climax of the gospel. This is love—not shouted from heaven, not sent as instructions from afar, but lived among us.

And on this last Sunday of Advent, as we wait for the fullness of God’s kingdom, we remember that the light has already come. The God who is love has drawn near—and that love now calls us to be a people who live and love in the same way.

1. God’s Story Has Always Been a Story of Love Moving Toward the World

From the very beginning, the story of God is a story of love reaching outward. Let’s take a look at salvation history and see God working towards this very moment.

At creation, God recognizes that humanity is not meant to be alone and provides community. God calls and blesses Abraham—not for Abraham’s sake alone, but so that all the families of the earth might be blessed through him.

When Israel is enslaved in Egypt, God does not remain distant but comes to deliver them, leading them into a new life so the world might know God through them.

And time after time, when Israel turns away, God sends prophets—not to abandon them, but to call them back.

The direction is always the same: God moves toward humanity in love.

1 John 4:10 NASB 2020

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

John makes it unmistakably clear—love is not defined by our movement toward God, but by God’s movement toward us. The question isn’t whether humanity reached high enough for God. The question is how far God was willing to go.

2. In Jesus, God’s Love Enters the World in Person

John’s answer is staggering.

The God of whom Psalm 8 says, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth,” does not remain distant in glory. That very God comes near.

The fullness of God does not merely rest upon Jesus or work through Jesus—the fullness of God dwells in Jesus. Jesus does not represent God’s glory; He is God’s glory, hidden behind flesh.

That is why Jesus can say in John 14, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” To see Jesus is to see God—not partially, not symbolically, but truly and completely.

And this God does not come pretending to be human. He takes on our flesh and lives a full human life—from birth to death and everything in between. God does not come down to become God; He comes down as God.

The Word has existed for all time.

John 1:1 NASB 2020

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

Jesus did not start existing in John 1:14 but rather He entered human history at this point in time.

And that eternal Word became flesh—real humanity, with weakness, vulnerability, emotions, and suffering.

The Grand Miracle and Its Meaning

C.S. Lewis calls it ‘the Grand Miracle.’

The incarnation changes everything.

Salvation: It was not enough for God to appear as flesh. The God-man had to die so that the price of sin could be paid.

Affirmation: This reveals the immeasurable value of human life. God comes for all. As image bearers, we are so precious to God that he enters the world in the most unimaginable way to bring us home. The true Image Bearer comes and takes on our image.

Identification: Jesus does not merely suffer at the end of his life—he lives for 33 years as one of us, knowing hunger, exhaustion, grief, and sorrow. He understands our weakness from the inside.

Adoration: This truth leaves us with only one fitting response—worship.

Many gods promise rescue. Few would pay the price themselves. The Christian story proclaims a God who does not save by command alone, but by sacrifice. A God who enters death itself so that others might live.

The Word became flesh. The flesh was broken. Love remained.

Would any other god do this?

3. This Is What It Means That God Is Love

This is what John shows us when he says God is love.

God seeks relationship with us so deeply that he tabernacles among us. Just as God once dwelt among Israel, God now comes in flesh to dwell with humanity. No longer hidden behind a veil in the Temple, God now stands before us—visible, approachable, knowable.

But God’s desire does not stop with dwelling among us. God longs to dwell within us.

The God of all creation chooses to make his home in human hearts—not merely to be near us, but to transform us from the inside out.

Jesus is not like God in the way a son resembles a father. He is God, exactly the same in all things.

And God does not abandon us to our pain, our sorrow, or our death. God takes all of it into his own life and triumphs over it through the cross. God is near. He receives our suffering and transforms it for his glory and for the work of His kingdom in the world.

4. We Are Called to Be a People of Love

If this is who God is, then this love cannot stop with us.

We are called to love one another and our neighbors as God has loved us. As C. S. Lewis reminds us, “Love is not affectionate feeling but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good.” And that kind of love always moves us to action.

Love cannot be practiced while ignoring the brokenness of our world. It requires us to move toward those who suffer—to know the poor, the addicted, the grieving, the oppressed—and to join them rather than avoid them.

This past Monday evening, I had an encounter that made next year’s vision unmistakably clear. I was at GriefShare and struck up a conversation with a man who found one of our brochures recently. As we talked, he shared that he lost his mother in 2018, that he had just returned from Oklahoma City finding out that he has cancer, and that when he saw the lights on here, he thought about going home but instead came into the church.

Then he said something that stopped me cold: he lives two doors down from the church.

I was overwhelmed—not just by his grief, but by the realization that we had been so close, and yet so unaware. This wasn’t a passing conversation. This was holy ground. A moment where God made it clear that loving others begins right where we are—with our neighbors.

That night, I slowly drove around the block, enjoying the Christmas lights but praying for the people who live around us, and it became clear to me: the vision God is giving us doesn’t start far away. It starts two doors down.

This is incarnational love. Love that shows up. Love that stays. And the love that God brought us in Jesus is the love we are called to bring to others.

Takeaway for the Week: God moved into our world in Jesus, so we are sent to live that same love in the world around us.

Conclusion

God is love. And that love has been revealed among us—not as an idea or a command, but as a life. God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

During this season of waiting and watching, as we prepare again for God’s kingdom to come in its fullness, we are reminded that God does not remain distant. When darkness threatens to overwhelm us, God comes as hope. When chaos surrounds us, God comes as peace. When sorrow weighs heavy on our hearts, God comes as joy.

The light has already come. The light has moved in.

And now, strengthened by God’s presence within us, we are sent to live in that light—to carry it into ordinary places, into real relationships, into the lives of those nearest to us.

May God’s hope, peace, joy, and love dwell deeply within us, and may that love be made visible through us, as we learn to love the world the way God has loved us.