What do you do when you’re excited about something? I’ve discovered that when I’m into something, when something excites me, I need to physically respond to it. I need to do something with my hands to show my excitement. As a child this meant that I built lego constructions based on things I was into. I was a fan of Transformers, these toys which turned robots into cars and back again. It wasn’t enough for me to have the transformer toys, I needed to construct my own using legos. I have found that drawing has also given me a way to respond to things that I am interested in. I have drawn pictures that respond to scriptures that touched me, or comic books that I have enjoyed. I have taken action figures and painted them to represent characters in books that I have liked. And I have built models of cars or spaceships that I am interested in. I find that when I get excited about something, I need to respond in some way. It is not enough for me to just be excited. There needs to be some sort of response. And often this response needs to be a physical one for me. I know I’m not alone in this way. This is one of the reasons so many of us have collections of one sort or another. We are responding to things that we are excited about.
But how do we respond to our excitement about God? How do we respond to the wonderful thing that Jesus did for us? At Christmas time we respond to Jesus’ birth in a number of ways… many of them good. We respond by spending time with our families. We respond by giving gifts to each other. We respond by decorating our houses and going to a couple extra church functions. We respond by dressing our children up like Mary, Joseph and Shepherds and Wise Men and having them act out the Christmas story. We respond by singing Christmas carols.
All great things. All worthy responses. But is this the response that God is truly looking for from his people? God became man. Creator became created. We rejoice and praise God for this… but how are we truly going to respond to such a wonderful thing?
I. Word and Flesh
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” We have been talking about the incarnation in the time since Christmas. Two weeks ago we talked about God becoming man, about the Creator becoming a part of the created. We remembered how special this is, how much it shows that God loves us. He loved us so much that he became one of us, he came to experience the things that we experience in our daily lives.
But there is another side to this glorious story of Jesus becoming human and dwelling among us. Not only is it a way that God comes to know us better, now we are able to know God better. Now he is revealed and we are able to understand him in a way that we haven’t before.
The scripture that we read this morning from the beginning of the Gospel of John is all about God revealing himself and us knowing him. It begins in verse 10 by talking about the world not recognizing its creator, something that is not at all uncommon. But then it shares that there is life, a glorious life for those who do recognize and accept him. And when we recognize him we receive grace and truth. Mostly, the scripture tell us that when we know Jesus, we know God. So it’s all about knowing God. And we know God through Jesus.
Throughout the history of God’s people, humanity tends to miss recognizing God. It happens again and again throughout the Bible. It culminates in the religious leaders in Jesus’ day having Jesus killed, but it starts much earlier than that. In the Old Testament, we see the nation of Israel continue to turn from God and worship other gods. It happens when Aaron builds a golden calf and proclaims it the God who rescued them out of Egypt and it continues through the lives of the kings as they so often worship other gods and listen to prophets who tell them what they want to hear and not what God wants to tell them. God sends prophet after prophet and the people of God refuse to listen to these prophets, and have them hunted down. And then God does the miraculous and sends his very son, and the religious leaders of the day want nothing to do with him. They are too focused on their religious life and rituals and expectations to recognize the very God who they have been worshipping. But it doesn’t end with the Pharisees, for when we look at the New Testament, Acts and the epistles, we discover that even Jesus’ disciples don’t always recognize what it is that he is doing in the world through the Holy Spirit. Therefore we have councils and meetings of the apostles as they decide whether to allow gentiles to become Christian without having to follow the Jewish laws. Again, God is working in the world, spreading the good news to the world in a new way, and God’s own people don’t recognize him right away. The difference is that the New Testament church sought to recognize him and therefore spent time in prayer and discussion with each other so that they could recognize him in the things going on in their world.
So, God’s people, and the people of the world, don’t always recognize their God when he works in the world. Partly this is because he doesn’t ever do exactly what you’d expect… instead of coming as a king he comes as a refugee baby. Instead of conquering the Roman Empire, he allows himself to be crucified by them. But partly, it is because God’s people, and the people of the world aren’t truly focused on the things of God, but rather on the things of the world. When power guides your decisions, you are not going to recognize the God who wields his power in the most unusual of ways. When selfishness guides your decisions, you are not going to recognize the God who gave everything of himself for a world that treated him horribly.
II. Grace and Truth
But there is hope here also, for John does tell us that there are those who will recognize Christ. And there are two words that pop up a couple times in this scripture when talking about recognizing Christ. They are grace and truth. Interesting words. Words we don’t often spend much time thinking about. But important words nonetheless.
Grace and truth first show up in verse 14 as we see God’s glory revealed through Jesus, who lived among us, and that glory is full of grace and truth. And then in verse 17 we see that we receive grace and truth through Jesus.
Let’s do a quick word study on verses 14-17 and look at what this is saying to us. Starting with verse 14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word refers to Jesus and focuses on his wisdom and glory… we’ll see more about glory later. Flesh refers to human nature. Dwelt is the word “tabernacled” or “lived” or “set up residence”. In the Old Testament we have the tabernacle which is the place where God dwelt. It is the place where God’s presence rested among his people. Now his presence is resting in human form through Jesus. And because of this we see his glory. Which is full of grace and truth. God’s grace is his redeeming love. Grace is about God loving his people so much that he brings salvation to them. Truth is something that we see throughout the Bible. But it is not truth in general, there are specific truths that are focused on. Sometimes these truths are the truths of what we are to believe as Christians: that we are all sinners, that Jesus died for our sins, that Jesus rose from the dead, that the Holy Spirit is sent to us, that God loves each of us. In this case, the truth is that God is faithful to his promises. In a way, this wraps up all the truths of the Bible. God is faithful. When he promises something to his people, when he promises something to the world, we know that he will follow through. He always has and he always will.
We are then told that we have all received grace upon grace. This tells us that this grace, this redeeming love is endless, it continues and builds upon itself, and we are shown that these are much greater than the laws of Moses, the rules that we live by. They fulfill those laws and again bring grace and truth to us.
III. Sharing
What is so important to see in this scripture is that the grace and truth, God’s grace of redeeming love and the truth of his faithfulness to his promises are available to all. Jesus didn’t just come for you. He didn’t just come for those who go to church. He came for all people. He desires for the whole world to recognize him. And we have a part to play in that. God revealed himself through Jesus. God made himself known. And we are the ones who he has been made known to. But how many of us have known him for most of our lives? How many of us learned about him from our parents and our childhood. That is my history. I grew up believing. I trusted and received Christ at an early age. And there’s something wonderful about knowing God as a child. But there are so many who don’t have that opportunity. There are so many who have not grown up in the church and who do not therefore know God. And this is a trend that is going to continue in our country and in our world. And we cannot be complacent. We need to reach out to them in grace and with truth. We need to share the grace of God’s unending love. We need to share the truth that God is faithful to his people. We need to let people around us know the wonderful God that we know. We can do this as individuals. We can do this as a church. One way that we can do it is by inviting people into our lives… inviting them to be a part of the things that we are into. This means inviting them to church, but it means more than that. It means inviting them over to your place. It means doing things with them. It means sharing with them about your life and how God has worked in it. Starting on January 30th and lasting for three weeks we are going to be having worship services with a more evangelistic bent to them. I’m going to be preaching the Gospel at its most basic, at its simplest. We are going to be talking about the basics of the faith, we’re going to get rid of all the clutter. What is it that a Christian believes? How is it that a Christian lives? If you know God, it’s a good message to hear again. It’s the good news that is so central to our lives. If you’ve never picked up a Bible in your life, and don’t really know what this Christianity thing is about, here’s your chance to find out. I encourage you to invite friends from your neighborhood, from work, from school to come to church with you those weeks. The message and worship those weeks will be for them to experience. But don’t just invite them to church. Invite them to dinner afterward. Invite them to experience your life with you. Invite them to experience God with you.
We have something to be excited about. Jesus loves us. God’s love is unending and his promises are true. How can we respond to that excitement but by doing something? Let us share that excitement with those around us in a new and fresh way. Amen.
But how do we respond to our excitement about God? How do we respond to the wonderful thing that Jesus did for us? At Christmas time we respond to Jesus’ birth in a number of ways… many of them good. We respond by spending time with our families. We respond by giving gifts to each other. We respond by decorating our houses and going to a couple extra church functions. We respond by dressing our children up like Mary, Joseph and Shepherds and Wise Men and having them act out the Christmas story. We respond by singing Christmas carols.
All great things. All worthy responses. But is this the response that God is truly looking for from his people? God became man. Creator became created. We rejoice and praise God for this… but how are we truly going to respond to such a wonderful thing?
I. Word and Flesh
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” We have been talking about the incarnation in the time since Christmas. Two weeks ago we talked about God becoming man, about the Creator becoming a part of the created. We remembered how special this is, how much it shows that God loves us. He loved us so much that he became one of us, he came to experience the things that we experience in our daily lives.
But there is another side to this glorious story of Jesus becoming human and dwelling among us. Not only is it a way that God comes to know us better, now we are able to know God better. Now he is revealed and we are able to understand him in a way that we haven’t before.
The scripture that we read this morning from the beginning of the Gospel of John is all about God revealing himself and us knowing him. It begins in verse 10 by talking about the world not recognizing its creator, something that is not at all uncommon. But then it shares that there is life, a glorious life for those who do recognize and accept him. And when we recognize him we receive grace and truth. Mostly, the scripture tell us that when we know Jesus, we know God. So it’s all about knowing God. And we know God through Jesus.
Throughout the history of God’s people, humanity tends to miss recognizing God. It happens again and again throughout the Bible. It culminates in the religious leaders in Jesus’ day having Jesus killed, but it starts much earlier than that. In the Old Testament, we see the nation of Israel continue to turn from God and worship other gods. It happens when Aaron builds a golden calf and proclaims it the God who rescued them out of Egypt and it continues through the lives of the kings as they so often worship other gods and listen to prophets who tell them what they want to hear and not what God wants to tell them. God sends prophet after prophet and the people of God refuse to listen to these prophets, and have them hunted down. And then God does the miraculous and sends his very son, and the religious leaders of the day want nothing to do with him. They are too focused on their religious life and rituals and expectations to recognize the very God who they have been worshipping. But it doesn’t end with the Pharisees, for when we look at the New Testament, Acts and the epistles, we discover that even Jesus’ disciples don’t always recognize what it is that he is doing in the world through the Holy Spirit. Therefore we have councils and meetings of the apostles as they decide whether to allow gentiles to become Christian without having to follow the Jewish laws. Again, God is working in the world, spreading the good news to the world in a new way, and God’s own people don’t recognize him right away. The difference is that the New Testament church sought to recognize him and therefore spent time in prayer and discussion with each other so that they could recognize him in the things going on in their world.
So, God’s people, and the people of the world, don’t always recognize their God when he works in the world. Partly this is because he doesn’t ever do exactly what you’d expect… instead of coming as a king he comes as a refugee baby. Instead of conquering the Roman Empire, he allows himself to be crucified by them. But partly, it is because God’s people, and the people of the world aren’t truly focused on the things of God, but rather on the things of the world. When power guides your decisions, you are not going to recognize the God who wields his power in the most unusual of ways. When selfishness guides your decisions, you are not going to recognize the God who gave everything of himself for a world that treated him horribly.
II. Grace and Truth
But there is hope here also, for John does tell us that there are those who will recognize Christ. And there are two words that pop up a couple times in this scripture when talking about recognizing Christ. They are grace and truth. Interesting words. Words we don’t often spend much time thinking about. But important words nonetheless.
Grace and truth first show up in verse 14 as we see God’s glory revealed through Jesus, who lived among us, and that glory is full of grace and truth. And then in verse 17 we see that we receive grace and truth through Jesus.
Let’s do a quick word study on verses 14-17 and look at what this is saying to us. Starting with verse 14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word refers to Jesus and focuses on his wisdom and glory… we’ll see more about glory later. Flesh refers to human nature. Dwelt is the word “tabernacled” or “lived” or “set up residence”. In the Old Testament we have the tabernacle which is the place where God dwelt. It is the place where God’s presence rested among his people. Now his presence is resting in human form through Jesus. And because of this we see his glory. Which is full of grace and truth. God’s grace is his redeeming love. Grace is about God loving his people so much that he brings salvation to them. Truth is something that we see throughout the Bible. But it is not truth in general, there are specific truths that are focused on. Sometimes these truths are the truths of what we are to believe as Christians: that we are all sinners, that Jesus died for our sins, that Jesus rose from the dead, that the Holy Spirit is sent to us, that God loves each of us. In this case, the truth is that God is faithful to his promises. In a way, this wraps up all the truths of the Bible. God is faithful. When he promises something to his people, when he promises something to the world, we know that he will follow through. He always has and he always will.
We are then told that we have all received grace upon grace. This tells us that this grace, this redeeming love is endless, it continues and builds upon itself, and we are shown that these are much greater than the laws of Moses, the rules that we live by. They fulfill those laws and again bring grace and truth to us.
III. Sharing
What is so important to see in this scripture is that the grace and truth, God’s grace of redeeming love and the truth of his faithfulness to his promises are available to all. Jesus didn’t just come for you. He didn’t just come for those who go to church. He came for all people. He desires for the whole world to recognize him. And we have a part to play in that. God revealed himself through Jesus. God made himself known. And we are the ones who he has been made known to. But how many of us have known him for most of our lives? How many of us learned about him from our parents and our childhood. That is my history. I grew up believing. I trusted and received Christ at an early age. And there’s something wonderful about knowing God as a child. But there are so many who don’t have that opportunity. There are so many who have not grown up in the church and who do not therefore know God. And this is a trend that is going to continue in our country and in our world. And we cannot be complacent. We need to reach out to them in grace and with truth. We need to share the grace of God’s unending love. We need to share the truth that God is faithful to his people. We need to let people around us know the wonderful God that we know. We can do this as individuals. We can do this as a church. One way that we can do it is by inviting people into our lives… inviting them to be a part of the things that we are into. This means inviting them to church, but it means more than that. It means inviting them over to your place. It means doing things with them. It means sharing with them about your life and how God has worked in it. Starting on January 30th and lasting for three weeks we are going to be having worship services with a more evangelistic bent to them. I’m going to be preaching the Gospel at its most basic, at its simplest. We are going to be talking about the basics of the faith, we’re going to get rid of all the clutter. What is it that a Christian believes? How is it that a Christian lives? If you know God, it’s a good message to hear again. It’s the good news that is so central to our lives. If you’ve never picked up a Bible in your life, and don’t really know what this Christianity thing is about, here’s your chance to find out. I encourage you to invite friends from your neighborhood, from work, from school to come to church with you those weeks. The message and worship those weeks will be for them to experience. But don’t just invite them to church. Invite them to dinner afterward. Invite them to experience your life with you. Invite them to experience God with you.
We have something to be excited about. Jesus loves us. God’s love is unending and his promises are true. How can we respond to that excitement but by doing something? Let us share that excitement with those around us in a new and fresh way. Amen.
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