SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a lot of joy and a lot of homes tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: I can feel the anticipation among these children.
SPEAKER_00: The little children and the big kids as well.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to think a few more minutes about the light coming into this world.
SPEAKER_00: A few moments we're going to have a candle lighting this Christmas Eve, but I'd like to think for a few minutes about John chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to read the first few verses of God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the beginning with God.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
SPEAKER_00: In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: And I go down to verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Glory is of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Let's consider these words tonight.
SPEAKER_00: The Word became flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The Word was with God.
SPEAKER_00: The Word was God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 is pretty clear.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not come simply to bring eternal life, although he did.
SPEAKER_00: But what John is saying is Jesus is eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: He is eternal light.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever Jesus goes, he brings light.
SPEAKER_00: Then verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: This is the mystery of all mysteries that God Himself took on flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you know that no other religion teaches this.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity alone teaches that God took on flesh and became a man, a human being like us.
SPEAKER_00: It is the mystery of all mysteries.
SPEAKER_00: And dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Jesus is more than an idea.
SPEAKER_00: He's more than a philosophy.
SPEAKER_00: I think some people today confuse that with, well, he's just a very inspirational being.
SPEAKER_00: He's a great philosopher.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's more than that.
SPEAKER_00: He's God.
SPEAKER_00: As if this was not enough.
SPEAKER_00: This was one of John's favorite thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: We read in 1 John, the same author.
SPEAKER_00: He says in 1 John, talking about this, this truth, this historical fact, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.
SPEAKER_00: That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us.
SPEAKER_00: Scholar, New Testament scholar Robert Yarbrough says about this language, this striking language that John uses.
SPEAKER_00: We have seen them with our own eyes, we've heard them with our own ears, we've touched them with our own hands.
SPEAKER_00: These verbs correspond to court language and jurisprudence.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, John is not just saying these things in a very random way.
SPEAKER_00: This is court language to testify.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, John, when he wrote these words, was under oath to tell the truth.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I know he's the Messiah because I saw him, I touched him, I heard him, and all of this after he was raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: It would be one thing if he saw and touched and heard simply before his death.
SPEAKER_00: But he said, no, after the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Shocking language.
SPEAKER_00: Back to John chapter 1, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: John says, we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: You remember how God's glory was revealed in the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_00: In the tabernacle first?
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle would move whenever God told it to move.
SPEAKER_00: But the glory of God would shine in that tabernacle in the Holy of Holies.
SPEAKER_00: And then later it came to shine in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy of Holies, where the glory would shine, and nobody could look at it.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the sinfulness of men, nobody could look full on on the glory of God until Jesus came.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul tells us that when we look at Christ, we see the face of God, we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have to kill us.
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle came down.
SPEAKER_00: I want to share something that John Dunn wrote a poem from the Book of Uncommon Prayer.
SPEAKER_00: The whole of Christ's life was a continual passion.
SPEAKER_00: Others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr.
SPEAKER_00: He found a Golgotha where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem where he was born.
SPEAKER_00: For to his tenderness, then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns.
SPEAKER_00: The manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last.
SPEAKER_00: His birth and his death were but one continual act.
SPEAKER_00: And his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day.
SPEAKER_00: From the cradle to the cross is an inseparable line.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas only points forward to Good Friday and Easter.
SPEAKER_00: It can have no meaning apart from that.
SPEAKER_00: Where the Son of God displayed his glory by his death.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said that before he died on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: My glory is going to be revealed, not by his great preaching and teaching, which it was, but by his very death.
SPEAKER_00: What John Dunn, the poet, is reminding us of is simply this This baby was born to die.
SPEAKER_00: This baby was born to be the substitute for people like you and me.
SPEAKER_00: That's the message of Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: It started in the incarnation, it ended on a cross and the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to illustrate this in another way before we close.
SPEAKER_00: This is a true story of a man named Father Damien.
SPEAKER_00: Father Damien was a priest on one of the islands of Hawaii back in the 19th century.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just read a little background.
SPEAKER_00: He moved to a leper colony in Hawaii that had been quarantined to serve as a leper colony.
SPEAKER_00: For 16 years, this priest lived right there in the midst of all these lepers.
SPEAKER_00: He learned how to speak their language, he bandaged their wounds.
SPEAKER_00: He embraced the bodies nobody else would want to touch lest they contract the leprosy.
SPEAKER_00: He preached to hearts that otherwise would have been left alone.
SPEAKER_00: He organized schools, bands, and choirs.
SPEAKER_00: He built homes so that the lepers could have shelter.
SPEAKER_00: He built over 2,000 coffins by hand so that when these lepers died, they could be buried with dignity.
SPEAKER_00: Slowly it was said the island became a place to live rather than a place to die.
SPEAKER_00: For Father Damien had come among them.
SPEAKER_00: Father Damien was not careful about keeping his distance from these lepers.
SPEAKER_00: He did nothing to separate himself from the people.
SPEAKER_00: He ate from the same bowls of food along with the patients.
SPEAKER_00: He shared his pipe.
SPEAKER_00: He did not always wash his hands after bandaging open sores.
SPEAKER_00: He got close.
SPEAKER_00: One morning before he was to lead worship, he was pouring some hot water into a cup when the water swirled out and fell into his bare foot.
SPEAKER_00: It took him a moment to realize that he had not felt any sensation by the hot water.
SPEAKER_00: Gripped by the sudden fear of what this could mean, he poured out more hot water on the same spot on his foot and felt nothing.
SPEAKER_00: He immediately knew what had happened.
SPEAKER_00: The next time he got into his pulpit, which he had been doing for 16 years, as he walked tearfully to deliver his sermon, no one at first noticed the difference.
SPEAKER_00: He normally began every sermon with my fellow believers.
SPEAKER_00: But that morning he began with my fellow lepers.
SPEAKER_00: And then they knew.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the only solution.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only way that the light can dispel the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus came to this earth and he kept his distance and he said, I'm not going to mingle with sinners, I'm just going to keep to myself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to, I'm just going to visit this planet for a while, and I'm going to go back to my father.
SPEAKER_00: You know there would be no solution for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about this story this week, pondering it, with a growing appreciation for what the son knew full well before he took on this mission.
SPEAKER_00: He knew he was going to get our disease, your disease, my disease.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he came.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't like Father Damien, he wasn't there just to help him.
SPEAKER_00: Now he was one of them.
SPEAKER_00: From that day forward, the priest wasn't just on their island.
SPEAKER_00: He was in their skin.
SPEAKER_00: First he had chosen to live as they lived.
SPEAKER_00: Now he would die as they died.
SPEAKER_00: One day God came to earth in the form of his son and he said, We lepers.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we're here tonight.
SPEAKER_00: What God but our God would take on our sin so that we could have real joy.
SPEAKER_00: The joy that comes from the good news.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is that God loves sinners.
SPEAKER_00: God sent his son to save sinners so that we could find our joy not in our circumstances, not in the events of our life, not in our successes or anything else, that we could find real joy in a person, not a philosophy, not simply an idea, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: May we all find that joy this Christmas and the God who left heaven to become a sin offering for us.
SPEAKER_00: For me.
SPEAKER_00: We can thank him.
SPEAKER_00: We can praise him.
SPEAKER_00: We can adore him.
SPEAKER_00: And we can take that same love that we receive from him and that light and be the light to a city that desperately needs to see and experience this kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: In us, through us.
SPEAKER_00: He's the light.
SPEAKER_00: Can you say this Christmas?
SPEAKER_00: Because he came, I am forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Because he came, I am loved.
SPEAKER_00: Because he came, I have a home in heaven forever.
SPEAKER_00: That was the mission of our Savior who came to do what we could never do for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: If you understand this and you believe this, you will have a good Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what else is going on in your life.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what the story may be, no matter what the circumstances may be, you take this message into your heart by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And to know that God is with you by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And you will see his light, and you will walk by his light, and his light will shine through you to others.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray now that you would please, please just reveal your truth to us tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, some of us have heard this story for many years, perhaps, and it just feels like maybe something's still been missing.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, I pray, reveal your truth to us tonight, from the youngest to the oldest.
SPEAKER_00: Reveal your truth.
SPEAKER_00: Shine the light of your son into our hearts tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jesus, for leaving heaven to take on our disease, becoming a sin offering that the Father would accept.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for paying the price that we could be forgiven, that we could be loved.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, accept our worship, accept our gratitude this Christmas, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.