Text: John 1:6-13 Title: Christmas Light

Transcription

1 Text: John 1:6-13 Title: Christmas Light Our Christmas celebration here at Travis Avenue is in full swing. Don t miss our musical presentation All is Well tonight at 6:00pm. I heard our musicians rehearsing Wednesday night. It s going to be great. Next Sunday, Dec.23, we ll have just one worship service at 10:30 with no SBS. We have several to be baptized and we ll share together in a Christmas Lord s Supper. Then the climax of the season is Christmas Eve at 5pm here in the Sanctuary. We ll experience the presence of the Lord singing carols, reading the Christmas story together, hearing a powerful testimony and, of course, candle-lighting. Grab a bunch of the invitation cards we have available at the doors and invite others. Open your Bibles to John 1. As you re turning, are any of you Star Wars fans? If you are, you know that the Star Wars films all open with words sort of crawling up the screen. The first words to appear are, A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away After that the text describes the backstory of the film you re about to watch, with the wonderful music of John Williams playing in the background. That opening crawl helps us see where that particular Star Wars movie is going. Well that s purpose of the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John. It is typically called the Prologue and it helps us know where John s Gospel is going in the amazing revelation of Jesus Christ and why He came to this earth. John approaches the life of Jesus Christ in a way different from the other Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Kyle Walker began this short study last week talking about two powerful images of Christ here in John 1. First, Christ is the Word. He is the perfect, personal, powerful Word of God to us displayed in a human body. John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. The second powerful image is that Christ is life. John 1:4 says, In him was life. We re talking about real, eternal, spiritual life. But then it goes on to give us a third powerful image light. That life was the light of men. And we need light because we are engulfed by the darkness of sin and death. And John 1:5 - The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

2 So in the birth of Christ we celebrate at Christmas is the direct revelation of God Himself, our Life and our Light. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION There was a heartwarming story on CBS News last week of a family with a five-year-old-boy named Matthew who is blind and suffers from a form of autism. The mom took Matthew to see Santa at Cabella s, and this Santa immediately recognized the challenges this little boy faced. PHOTO #1. So the Santa got out of his chair and sat down on the floor with the little boy. He let him feel his beard and his suit. PHOTO #2. Matthew said, I want to feel your eyes that twinkle. So you can see here Matthew feeling the eyes of Santa. In a very simple, childlike way that may help you understand the amazing thing that God did when the Word became flesh. He got down on our level so we could know Him and so He could redeem us. He s the source of true life to us as we are dead in our sin. And He s the light we need as we re engulfed in the darkness of our sin. Now let s keep reading. Read John 1:6-13. So the written Word of God shows us the personal Word of God, Jesus Christ. If you re already a believer, this season I want you to adore, embrace, treasure, and glorify Him more than ever. If you are not a believer, I want you to recognize your need for Christ so that you will receive Him as your Savior and Lord. That, by the way, is the motivation of John as he writes this Gospel: John 20:31 - These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. When the Word of God, Jesus Christ, became a human being, He came on a great rescue mission with light for our darkness. Let s talk about that light for a moment: 1. THE LIGHT OF CHRIST IS TRANSMITTED THROUGH HUMAN WITNESSES. John 1:5 - The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Darkness is a powerful image of what plagues us as humans. First, this is a spiritual darkness where we have no purpose or direction in life and there s no hope for the future. And then there s the emotional darkness of depression where we might feel like we re in a cave of despair with no way of escape. There s the

3 darkness of grief. Since last Christmas maybe you ve lost a loved one; they won t be at the Christmas dinner table with you this year. But the light of Christ overcomes the darkness. It says in v.5 that the darkness has not understood it, or better, not overcome it can t control it. Light always wins. Walk down a dark sidewalk and click on the flashlight app on your phone and darkness flees. Light always wins over darkness. So God sent His Light in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ. And, amazingly, He chose for that light to be transmitted through believers who themselves have come to the Light of Jesus Christ. That was the point of John mentioning another guy by the name of John in John 1:6 - There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. This John is typically called John the Baptist. You can read the other Gospels to learn about John the Baptist. His coming was foretold in the OT where there was the prophecy of one who would pave the way for the Messiah. John was born in a miraculous way to his father Zachariah and his mother Elizabeth who was a cousin to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Then John came on the scene as an adult calling for people to repent of their sins, baptizing them (that s why he s called the Baptist ) and pointing to the Messiah who would ultimately be the one who would take away their sins. John 1:7 - He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. Don t miss that a witness to testify. That s the noun and the verb form of the same word a witness to witness. Why? So that through him (through John) all might believe. That s an amazing statement. People come to believe in Christ through the witness and testimony of believers. A witness is someone who simply tells what they know about something or someone. So as witnesses for Christ we say to our classmates or coworkers, Let me tell you what I know about Christ. And let me tell you what He has done in my life. We re just satisfied customers telling what we ve experienced. John 1:8 - He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. Now that s important for us to remember. John himself was not the light. He reflected the light. It s the difference between the sun and the moon. Ninety-three

4 million miles away that giant ball of fire called the sun is burning, sending light to earth. The moon possesses no light of its own; it reflects the light of the sun. The light of the sun is strong enough and the moon is close enough to reflect that light. ILLUSTRATION To put it a little differently, suppose we re all standing around a campfire at night. We can see the reflection of the fire on each other s faces. But if I walk away from that fire and stand back in the woods you can t see the fire reflected in my face because I m not close to the fire. Maybe we don t witness as faithfully as we should because we re close enough to Christ for His light to reflect on our faces. Oh we know about Christ; and we even know the Gospel. So it s not a head problem; it s a heart problem. We re not as close to Christ as need to be. But you can change that today. Repent of whatever has distanced you from Jesus. Move back toward Him and others will begin to see His light reflected in your life. Who shined the light to you? Maybe it was a parent or a Sunday School teacher or a pastor. In my case the light of Christ was transmitted through some family friends who invited my sister and me to church and told me about Jesus. There was something different about these people. Is the Light of Jesus shining through you to the people around you? John 1:9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. The birth of Jesus Christ that we celebrate was the true light coming into the world and that light shines through human light fixtures obedient human witnesses. And then the light does it s work. 2. THE LIGHT OF CHRIST TRANSFORMS LIVES THROUGH THE NEW BIRTH. When the light of Christ shines into a human heart, everything changes. But not all people who see the light will receive the light. John 1:10 - He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. Before we come to Christ our lives are closed to Him. We don t recognize Him or know Him. And why is that the case?

5 John 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. This was particularly true of the nation of Israel in Jesus day. John 1:11 - He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. When it says, He came to His own, it means Jesus own people, the nation of Israel. They didn t receive Jesus Christ as the Messiah; they rejected Him. Here s the problem. The light of Christ is shining, but we have a problem. We love the darkness instead of the light. When God saves us He opens our eyes to see the light and to see ourselves in that light. And here s the Good News: John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God To receive Christ points to the accepting of a free gift, which we do by faith by believing in His Name by trusting in who Christ is. ILLUSTRATION One of my favorite Christmas movies is The Polar Express. In the movie Josh Groban sings the song Just Believe. Those lyrics say, Believe in what your heart is saying. Hear the melody that's playing. There's no time to waste There's so much to celebrate. Believe in what you feel inside. And give your dreams the wings to fly. You have everything you need, if you just believe. No, we don t just believe; we believe in his name. We don t believe in ourselves; we believe in Christ. We don t trust ourselves or what we can do to please God; we trust in Christ and what He did for us when He died on the Cross and rose from the dead. By God s grace when we receive and believe He gives us the right, the privilege, to become His children. You are born again into a new family. When you were born the first time, you were born into a physical family. The second birth, being born again, brings you into a spiritual family God s family. You see, we are not all God s children in the sense that we are not all in His family. We are all God s

6 creation, but not children in His family until we believe in and receive Christ. Notice it says in the family of God we are not John 1:13 - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband s will, but born of God. Not of natural descent You don t become a Christian by ancestry. You are not saved because you have Christian parents or Christian grandparents. You have to believe in and receive Him. It s not a human decision in the sense that you can do it by your own willpower apart from Christ. We can t do this for ourselves. And no other human being can do it for us. When we are born physically we have human parents who make a decision to have a child. The new birth doesn t work that way. It begins with a decision that God makes to make us His children. So when we believe and receive we are born of God. It is accomplished by God, and by God alone. The only way to explain the change that comes into our lives when we are saved is that we are born of God. When you make the choice, God makes the change. And this is what happens when the light shines into your life in the person of Jesus Christ. Has that ever happened for you? In the season when we celebrate the coming of Christ to this earth you can experience the coming of Christ into your life. Let s bow to pray.