TRANSCRIPT
At this time of year, you’ll see the lights go up, the tinsel, the ivy.
The calendar fills.
The music turns on.
You’re going to hear for the thousandth time.
Houses are full of people who look rested, and they have tons of money for gifts, and
are just having the best time of their life with the people they love.
Meanwhile, there are people during this time of the year who walk into December feeling
like they are barely holding it together.
On the outside, they know how to smile for the picture.
They know how to answer the question, how you doing?
Well, you know, doing good, busy, busy, you know, doing good.
But on the inside, they’re tired, anxious, disappointed, or maybe just kind of numb to
it all.
Maybe that describes you this season.
Maybe you’re looking at your life thinking, by now, I thought I’d be further along.
I thought that this relationship that I, you know, desire would look different.
I thought my faith at this point in my life, after all these years, would feel stronger.
And the funny thing about the Christmas season, it has a funny way of exposing that gap in
your life.
The gap between the life that you imagine that you would have and the life that you
actually have.
Between the kind of maybe Christian that you hope to be and the one that you realize you
kind of really are right now.
And if that’s you, I just want you to know you’re not strange.
There’s nothing strange about it.
You’re not alone.
In fact, the fact I’m even talking about it is just giving, I don’t know, attention
to the fact that that’s a real thing.
And what you need most in that place is not a thin layer of Christmas cheer over the difficult
or complex realities of your everyday life.
What you need, what we really all need, is to be reminded of who Jesus is.
Because when you see Jesus clearly, it kind of does two things.
First, gaining a clear picture of who Jesus is has the ability to reorient your heart
towards a real hope that can carry you through whatever realities you’re facing.
When you understand who Jesus is clearly, then the lies you tell yourself about who
God is and how he cares for you in the situation that you’re in, when you realize who Jesus
is, it’s almost like he’s looking at you and saying to your doubt, to your anxiousness
that he’s not going to show up, to the heavy heart that he’s not going to come through
and looking at you and basically saying, not possible.
And second, when you start seeing Jesus with the right perspective, it can reignite a passion
for Jesus as we prepare our hearts to welcome Christmas as it was meant to be celebrated.
And if for some reason you’ve forgotten or never heard what it looks like, just listen
to the lyrics of an old Christmas hymn that all of us should know that goes like this,
joy to the world.
Why?
The Lord has come.
And that is, in essence, what Advent is all about.
Advent is a word that means arrival, waiting for arrival, the appearance, and so here’s
the question I want sitting kind of in the back of your mind as we walk through our passage
of scripture today, and it’s a simple question, who are you most looking forward to seeing
this Christmas?
That’s a simple question, but I think it’s one you should ask yourself, who are you most
looking forward to seeing this Christmas?
For many of us, that includes family, friends, or maybe even someone we haven’t seen for
a long time, but today I want to suggest one more name to consider putting at the top of
that list.
And so instead of starting with stories about a manger or shepherds and wise men, we’re
going to start where one of Jesus’ best friends began, when he wrote an account of what he
remembered to be the good news, the gospel of Jesus.
Before Bethlehem, before the first Christmas, John takes us behind the scenes and shows
us who this Jesus really is, and so if you don’t have your Bibles already out, go ahead
and open to the gospel of John with me.
We’re going to be in chapter one, and over these next several weeks, we’re going to be
looking at John chapter one to understand who is this Jesus that has come, God in flesh,
to be among us.
So would you join me as I read our passage of scripture for today?
It says this in John 1, verses 1 through 5, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
All things were created through him, and apart from him, not one thing was created that has
been created.
In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
Would you join me as I open prayer?
Lord, I pray this morning that as we kick off this season of remembering Jesus, of celebrating
Jesus, I pray that your Word, which is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, would
shine into all the recesses of our heart that may be in shame, may be in guilt, would want
to hide itself from you.
And so, Lord, I pray that as we open up your Word, we would get a clear picture of who
this Jesus is, and why he is the hope of the world, and why he is worthy to be called Emmanuel,
God, with us.
In your name I pray, amen.
In the beginning, in the beginning, this is how John starts his gospel, in the beginning,
it’s a phrase that would have been very familiar to anyone who knew the Old Testament.
In fact, if you’ve ever read the Bible, you’ll know that John is echoing the first verse
of the Bible, right?
Genesis 1-1 tells us this, right?
In the beginning, right, God did what?
He created the heavens and the earth.
So before anything existed, before galaxies and mountains and oceans, before human history,
God already was.
And John says in that same beginning, the Word already was.
This is John’s way of talking about Jesus.
Before Bethlehem, before there was a baby in a manger, there was an eternal Son of God.
Now, if all you had read were the first few verses, you might not be sure that John is
talking about Jesus here, I get that, and that would be fair, but as you read down to
verse 14, it does become abundantly clear that the Word is the one who became flesh
and who dwelt among us, and he even goes on to say it’s Jesus Christ, and we’ll look
at that more next week.
But for now, we’re just going to pay attention to two things that John sets aside and puts
side by side, and it’s this phrase that the Word was with God and that the Word was God.
The Word was with God means the Word is distinct from the Father, but also is in a real relationship
with him.
The Word is not the Father, just to be clear, yet he is fully in God’s presence, so the
Word was with God.
But then John says the Word what?
Was God.
And that means whatever makes God God, the Word shares in that same nature.
He is fully God, not a lesser being or a created helper as some religious sects would want
to believe regarding Jesus.
This is what Christians have confessed for centuries about the triune nature of God.
God the Father, right?
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
In God, three persons.
Consider what C.S. Lewis had to say in his book, Mere Christianity, regarding the significance
of this triune nature of God, which I think is very, it’s not what you usually would think
of when you think about the triune nature, the purpose of the triune nature of God, but
I think it’s something that I actually heard, I don’t know if you know who West Huff is,
he actually brought this up, and so I’m just quoting him, quoting C.S. Lewis, who actually
is really quoting St. Richard of Victor, but anyways, here’s what he says, all sorts
of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that God is love, we’ve heard this
right, God is love, but they seem to not notice that the words God is love have no real meaning
unless God contains at least two persons.
Love is something that one person has for another.
If God was a single person, then before the world was made, he was not love.
Now, okay, why are we talking about this at Christmas, right?
Why are we talking, like how does this have any relevance towards Christmas?
Why does this matter?
Because listen, when the scripture tells us that God is love, it is not describing a lonely
God who had to make people in order to have someone to love.
He has always been love, Father, Son, Spirit in perfect fellowship.
Love is not something God had to learn.
And that changes, if you let that sit with you, how we think about Christmas.
If there’s one thing that people are focused on during the season, it’s the promise of
love, right?
It’s not just the excitement of spending time with the people you love or the chance that
when you go back to your small town in Minnesota, that you’re going to meet a tree farmer, and
you’re going to fall in love, and you’re going to leave your big city job, right?
No, I’m talking, this is every Hallmark movie, right?
This is not what it’s all about, and for some, Christmas is hard.
Christmas is hard because of the felt absence of someone to love, or someone they love who
is no longer with them.
I know this past week, before we headed into Thanksgiving, I just stopped by one of the
staff members at Osseo and just asked like, hey, how are you doing?
And they were like, not really good.
And I knew why, because this was the second holiday season without their son who had passed
away, and that’s a real thing, like, a season called Thanksgiving has now become a season
of anything but thankfulness, and Christmas can be that way for some people as well.
Now, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, I know, like, Phil, how are you bringing it
there, but like, listen, if Jesus is going to be the hope of the world, we’ve got to
come to grips with the reality where there’s hopelessness.
And this might not be a message for you, but I tell you what, it’s a message for someone
in your life, and if you can’t be that voice of hope, then who?
Then who?
So, this is important for us to listen to, because the good news of Jesus is not only
that he was with God, the one 1 John 4, 8 calls love, right, God is love, but that Jesus
is God.
And so, if you want to know what God is actually like, if you want to know what true love looks
like, you’ve heard me say this before, you do what?
You look at who?
Jesus.
And some of us carry mental pictures of what God is like that we picked up from our family
or maybe some of us have this picture of who God is like from our bad church experiences
or maybe even from our own fears.
Some of us picture God is distant, up there somewhere, watching, but not very involved.
And some of us picture God is easily disappointed, arms crossed, tapping his foot, waiting for
us just to mess up.
John is saying this, if you want to know what God is like, look at how Jesus treats people.
How does he treat the ashamed?
How does Jesus move toward the suffering?
How does Jesus confront the proud?
This is what God is like.
This is what love is like.
A simple Advent practice this month could be this, maybe read one of the gospels and
keep asking the one question, what does this show me about what is God like?
If the one who is arriving is truly God and with God, then he cannot stay in the background
of our December.
So who are you most looking forward to seeing this Christmas?
That’s the question.
John wants us to make sure that the first answer in your heart is Jesus, obviously.
And then John makes a statement about Jesus that serves as another reminder for us all
during this season of Advent.
He says this, he says all things were created through him.
In other words, Jesus was not part of creation, he was the agent of creation.
Now why is this important?
Because it means you and I are not here by accident.
You are not here by random chance, even if the circumstances around your birth or your
upbringing were messy and painful, the fact that you exist comes through the choice and
power of the word, Jesus Christ, who made you.
And then John says, he goes on and says, and in him was life, and he’s not just saying
Jesus was alive.
John is saying that life itself is in the word.
He’s the source of life.
Yes, that includes physical life, breath in your lungs, a beating heart, but it’s actually
more than that.
This is the kind of life that your soul was made for, life connected to God, life with
meaning and purpose, life that is more than just getting through the week.
Whether you describe it this way or not, people are always trying to plug into a source that
will give them a sense of worth, a sense of joy, a sense of security.
For some of us, that’s work.
If the job is going well, we feel like we’re okay.
If the job falls apart, then what?
We feel like our life is falling apart.
For some of us, that’s relationships.
If I’m married, if I’m dating, if my kids are doing well, then I feel like life is okay,
but oh my goodness, if any of that isn’t going well, then life just feels incomplete, it
feels chaotic, it feels hectic.
For some of us, it’s neither of those.
Maybe you’re accomplishment driven, or it’s attention driven, or it’s approval driven.
We watch for likes and comments, we search for compliments, and if we haven’t had any
in a while, we feel like, well, how come nobody’s noticing me?
We live off of what other people think of us.
Now, I will say this, those things matter.
Like work matters, relationships matter, getting things done matters, living life in such a
way that people are thankful for you, appreciate you.
I would say those kind of things matter, right?
But they’re not the source of life.
They’re not the, they matter, they’re not trivial.
I know, I’m saying it in a trivial manner, they’re not trivial, they matter, but they’re
not the source of life.
It’s not the source of life.
And so if it’s true that in Jesus was life, then it’s fair to ask, where are you most
looking forward to seeing this Christmas?
What are you most looking forward to?
Where do you feel like, if this thing is okay, I’m okay, and if it’s not, I’m skunk.
Like what is it?
What is it in your life?
Part of it means that to trust Jesus is to move created things out of the place where
only he should be.
And there’s also another implication here, because he made you, he knows you.
This means he knows how you are wired.
He knows your strengths, and trust me, he knows your weaknesses.
He knows the burdens you carry, and he also knows the questions that you have.
And if this seems a little hard to deal with, right, like I like it when God sees the good
that I have, but I don’t want a God that can see every nook and cranny of my life, every
part of me, the doubts, the ways I disappoint him, the ways I disappoint myself.
I don’t want a God who sees that.
Just remember what Romans 5-8 tells us.
God proves his own love for us in that while we were what?
Still sinners.
Have you ever thought about that?
While you were still, not because you repented, Christ died for us.
While we were still looking for life elsewhere, God moved towards us through Christ, in Christ,
which means this, you do not have to clean up your search for life in order for Jesus
to come for you.
He has already come.
He is Immanuel, God with us.
He already went to the cross.
He already rose from the dead.
You can stop trying to manufacture life on your own and start leaning into the journey
of figuring out what it means to receive life from him because in him was life.
The one who is arriving is actually your creator and the source of your life that should reshape
what you are hoping for this season.
Now you might be looking forward to seeing people who make you feel alive for a few hours.
That’s good.
Enjoy that.
Listen, those people, they are not the source.
The one whose arrival we celebrate at this time of year is.
Verse four to five, John shifts from the life and language to this light language.
What does light do?
What do we know about light?
Light reveals what is there.
Light shows the way forward.
Light exposes what is hidden.
John says that the life in Jesus is the light of all mankind, not just one group, not one
nation or one personality type, all people, all people.
And then he says that light shines in the darkness.
He doesn’t pretend that darkness isn’t real.
He assumes it.
Darkness in John’s gospel can mean sin, ignorance of God, evil, injustice, grief, loss, fear,
confusion.
John doesn’t say the light shines where everything is already fine.
He says the light shines in the darkness.
And if any of you ever feel that darkness, that does not mean something strange has happened
to you.
That is just a part of the broken world we live in.
But there’s hope.
There’s Jesus.
That’s why John adds, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Darkness is real.
Darkness is powerful.
But listen, darkness is not ultimate.
At the cross, it looked like darkness had finally won.
The Son of God crucified, buried.
If there’s any moment in time where God the Father looked absolutely out of control, it
was at this moment.
His Son, dead, mocked, on a cross, humiliated.
The disciples were scattered, and they were afraid.
It looked like the end had come.
But then, on the third day, on the third day, he arose, proving, proving that the light
has not been overcome.
The darkness cannot overcome it.
Now those are great preaching points, an easy way to get an amen, but what does that mean
for us practically?
Darkness does not get the last word in the life of someone who belongs to Christ.
That’s what it means.
You belong to Jesus.
Darkness does not get the last word.
There is hope.
There is hope.
For those who follow Christ, our story does not end where it is the darkest.
If you’ve decided to live a life of increasingly submitting all of yourself to Jesus as master
and savior, then your life is tied to the light.
It’s tied to his life.
We walk through death and came out the other side.
He walked through death and came out the other side, and so his light was not overcome.
That same light that was in him is at work in you.
More importantly, John says, we are invited to walk in the light.
Peter and John, Jesus will say, I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
And so to walk in his light is to live in honesty before him and respond when his word
exposes your sin, exposes your confusion, exposes your false beliefs about who he is
and what he wants to accomplish in your life.
It is to say, I’m done, Lord, I’m done pretending to be fine.
I want to live in the light.
Walking in the light is not about perfection.
It’s about direction.
Listen, it’s not about perfection.
It’s about direction.
This is why we had a whole series entitled Long Obedience in the what?
Same Direction.
Step by step, bringing more of your life under the light of Christ.
So again, who are you most looking forward to seeing this Christmas?
And what would it look like to move Jesus from the edges of that answer to the center?
So the word is God.
The word was with God and the word is a source of life and creation.
The word is light and shines in the darkness.
Advent celebrates the arrival of that person, God in flesh, Jesus, Emmanuel.
For centuries, Advent has been the church’s way of reminding hearts, do not forget who
has already come for you and who will come again.
This is what Advent is all about.
It’s about expecting arrival.
Well, if he really came, how can we expect arrival?
Because he’s coming back.
I remember growing up in a church with lots of old people and silver-haired old people
who had been around for a long time and the thing that they always were encouraged by
was this idea that the Lord’s coming back soon, right?
They’d always say that, well, life is tough, but guess what, the Lord’s coming back soon.
Eucachus might become president, but guess what, the Lord’s coming back soon, right?
Some of you don’t even know what I’m talking about.
That’s all right.
He didn’t.
It’s okay.
He didn’t.
Right?
But the Lord’s coming back soon and I think the older you get, the longer you walk with
Christ, I think you begin to understand the power of that hope because we live in a world
that’s full of darkness, don’t we?
Darkness around us, darkness from within us, and sometimes it can get really heavy to get
caught in that reality, but listen, the light has shown to the darkness and the darkness
does not overcome it.
If you are a follower of Christ, darkness is not the end.
So what would it look like for you to say, Jesus, I want you to be the one I look most
forward to this Christmas?
For some people, that might mean trusting him as master and savior for the first time.
I’ve gone to church, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, but you know what, I’ve never placed
my trust in him.
It’s the kind of people who walk into Drew’s office, who were athletes under his care for
years and years and years, who finally came with tears saying, I need to submit my life
to this savior, this master, maybe that’s you, maybe that’s someone you’re connected
to.
Are you ready for that?
Drew wasn’t, and that’s okay anyways.
For others, it might mean coming back to him from a place of deconstruction.
Maybe you’re in a place where you believed and now you’re not believing, and all the
things that you thought you were believing, you thought that he was the light of the world,
but then I heard this podcast, and it sounds like that Jesus of the Bible is not so much
a light of the world, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, and all of a sudden I’m
confused, but maybe, maybe this season is a time for you to dive back, turn off the
podcast, open up the Bible, and maybe sit with someone you trust just enough, who’s
a step ahead of you in their relationship with Christ, and go, hey, would you help me?
I want to know who God is, so let’s look at Jesus, let’s look at Jesus.
And for many of us, it might mean simply just making room, right?
Creating space in this busy season.
It’s going to get busy.
I just looked at my calendar the other day, and I’m like, oh my goodness.
Maybe we just need to make some room, make some space to listen to his word, to be with
And then when we’re with him, to be honest about our darkness, and to let his light search
us, and lead us, and guide us, and as we walk through Advent together, my prayer is that
we would not just remember a baby in a manger, but that we would encounter the word who is
God and was with God, the one who made us, the one who brings life, and the one whose
light shines in the darkest path of our lives.