SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm Jim Thomas.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the pastor here.
SPEAKER_00: So so good to be together uh this Christmas Eve.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many some of you may be visitors.
SPEAKER_00: I see some faces that seem new to me, and uh I'm really, really glad we could be together tonight.
SPEAKER_00: It's just uh so awesome to hear you sing, as Kim said earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Uh during Advent and especially at the Christmas season, I I don't know if you've ever uh wondered yourself uh what's so special about Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: What's so special about a baby being born a couple thousand years ago?
SPEAKER_00: And and why is why is it that we've we've talked about this person?
SPEAKER_00: He's the most talked-about individual ever lived, he's the most scrutinized individual that has ever lived, and why are we still 2,000 or so years later, why are we still taking time to focus in on this baby's birth?
SPEAKER_00: Um, when it comes to finding out the truth about Jesus, uh I like to go back to the sources that were eyewitnesses or ear witnesses, those who might have seen Jesus, known Jesus, walked with Jesus, sat around the campfire with Jesus, perhaps saw him perform some of his miracles, heard some of his teachings, uh, some of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, which I'm looking forward to studying uh next month together here at the Village Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: We begin a brand new study of the book, the Gospel of Matthew uh on the first Sunday of the year.
SPEAKER_00: But I like going back to those uh those sources because I feel like we'll get the most accurate uh uh sort of research that way to find out who Jesus is and why he's so important.
SPEAKER_00: Um, John was quite clear, the Gospel of John, very clear about the three reasons for his writing.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote about Jesus because he wanted us to know something, to believe something, to receive something.
SPEAKER_00: It's that simple.
SPEAKER_00: And even in an ancient book like the Gospel of John, he tells us so.
SPEAKER_00: Toward the end of the Gospel of John, it says it this way in John 20.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.
SPEAKER_00: But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in his name.
SPEAKER_00: So John wrote about Jesus because he wanted us to know something.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted us to know about the evidence for Jesus and the reality of what happened in his miracles and his teachings.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted us to believe something that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He told us that.
SPEAKER_00: That he wanted us to receive something too.
SPEAKER_00: John is writing not just so he can be a number one New York Times bestseller, not just so he can, you know, create a big crowd or whatever for himself.
SPEAKER_00: He actually wants you and I, as we read so many years later about Jesus, to know this life that is on offer through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So pretty clear there when you look up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's your subject, Jesus, there's your strategy.
SPEAKER_00: Present the evidence, there's the purpose that you might believe, and there's the intended result that you might find life in his name.
SPEAKER_00: That's refreshing clarity, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in a day and age of concealed manipulative messages, misleading headlines.
SPEAKER_00: That's also wonderful news for those of us who are longing for more of God in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the holiday we call Christmas is right upon us, just a matter of hours, as we as we typically uh celebrate on the 25th.
SPEAKER_00: We have no clue.
SPEAKER_00: I hope I'm not dashing anyone's uh dream, you know, images or dreams here.
SPEAKER_00: We're not really sure exactly what day he was born, but uh we have just chosen to celebrate it on the 25th of December.
SPEAKER_00: There are other church traditions that actually celebrate uh his arrival on a different day.
SPEAKER_00: But what we've been talking about here at the village chapel throughout the Advent season is that because of the love of God for sinners, he sent Christ to bring us the joy of salvation, the hope of eternal life, and the peace of God to rule our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And all of that is found and fulfilled in this person, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the reason we give so much attention to this thing we call the incarnation that we celebrate here in the Christmas season.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um, the four different gospel records, you you may know there are four: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
SPEAKER_00: They're the first four books of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew and uh and John in particular, these are two people that are eyewitnesses.
SPEAKER_00: Um Mark, we think, was informed by Peter, who was an eyewitness.
SPEAKER_00: Luke is a Gentile writer and came along later and researched everything really, really carefully.
SPEAKER_00: And he interviewed a bunch of eyewitnesses and ear witnesses to the life and teachings of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna jump to the very beginning of the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: There's a really important uh text that I think answers my original questions, which is what's so special about Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Why is he so significant that we would even think about that baby born so many years ago in that pass-through nation to a peasant couple in a tiny little village like it was?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you're familiar with the text, some of you, and it I'm just gonna read through it and make a couple comments as I go, but it goes like this in the beginning was the word.
SPEAKER_00: And the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the beginning with God.
SPEAKER_00: All things came into being through him, and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: In him was life, and the life was the light of man.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.
SPEAKER_00: There came a man sent from God, his name was John, and this is John writing about John the Baptist, not John writing about himself.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, John the disciple hardly ever references, references his own name in the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: Here he's writing about John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: He says there came a man sent from God, his name was John.
SPEAKER_00: He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that's his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to believe, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was not the light, this man John, but he came to testify about the light.
SPEAKER_00: There was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the world, and the world was made through him.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the world did not know him, though.
SPEAKER_00: He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but born of God.
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
SPEAKER_00: And the word became flesh, and it dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: He dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: John testified about him and cried out, saying, This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I.
SPEAKER_00: For he existed before me.
SPEAKER_00: For of his fullness we've all received, and grace upon grace.
SPEAKER_00: For the love was given through Moses, but grace and truth were realized, not just given, but realized through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: No one has seen God at any time.
SPEAKER_00: The only begotten God who's in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him or revealed him, some of the English texts will say.
SPEAKER_00: So here we have this amazing, this amazing testimony of John, who was a close friend of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he's so poetic.
SPEAKER_00: He's not telling us just the, you know, here's the place he was born, and here's the people that came to.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad we have those, that data in other accounts.
SPEAKER_00: I really am, but I'm also really fascinated by some of the images that John uses when he talks about this one Jesus who came.
SPEAKER_00: And it's fascinating to me that John's gospel starts with an old beginning and then leads us to a new beginning.
SPEAKER_00: What's the old beginning it started with?
SPEAKER_00: Well, back in verse 1, in the beginning, somebody tell me what book that starts the same way as that.
SPEAKER_00: We just finished studying the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: The entire Bible starts that way, in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And here's John, the disciple of Jesus, saying, This whole thing that started all the way back then in the beginning is about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm really fascinated because I'm not much of a poet myself, but I like the images again that John uses here in this little, this what we call the prologue of his gospel here.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about Jesus in several different ways, and it's fascinating because they all really reveal what's so special about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Right in verse one.
SPEAKER_00: He's the word, it says, versus the empty silence or the quandary of speculation.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're hungry at some point for a word from God.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're there now.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you wish God would speak to you in some way about something, or just reveal himself to you in general.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up with a lot of people saying, well, if God's really real, why doesn't he just show himself to us?
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says to us, he actually came here to the planet in the flesh, and some of us just pushed him away.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us believe, though.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of cool.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we're actually sitting here today because of those ones that believed and continued to tell the story about that old beginning that leads to a new beginning in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it begins with words, just like the entire creation event began with words.
SPEAKER_00: When God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
SPEAKER_00: So just by the power of God's word, he speaks, and things come into being.
SPEAKER_00: That's an amazing thing when you think about that.
SPEAKER_00: And now you think about John saying, that's all about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What's so special about Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: He's the living word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Contrast that with, let's just toss it all.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just say it's only about reindeer and gifts and all that sort of thing, which is fine.
SPEAKER_00: I'm all right with all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But what if it was only about all of that?
SPEAKER_00: What if there was no Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: We just have the empty silence.
SPEAKER_00: We just have the quandary, the problem, the difficulty of our own speculation about what does it mean to be a human being and to live in this world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're hungry for a word from God, but he has come and he's the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: May I recommend you turn your appetite toward Jesus first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00: He's the living word of God.
SPEAKER_00: You can read what he said, some of it, in this book we call the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And we study through it because we want to know the mind and the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, through the incarnation of Christ, God's taken the initiative to make known to us the source, and Jesus is revealed here that way as well.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, all things came into being by him.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing came into being that's come into being.
SPEAKER_00: Kim read this story about the shepherds out in the fields.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing of that story came into being apart from Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the claim here.
SPEAKER_00: You may think it rubbish.
SPEAKER_00: You may think it doesn't really matter, it's not significant, but you still have to at least acknowledge that the claim here is that there would have been no sheep, no shepherds, no grass, no fields, no starry night, no angels, no night, frosty night air, nothing that has come into being, came into being apart from him, John says.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's so special about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's the personal, eternal creator.
SPEAKER_00: The uh versus your other option is if he doesn't exist, if there is no personal infinite creator, well, how about impersonal cosmic accident?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to believe that's all you are?
SPEAKER_00: There are eight billion of us, nearly eight billion of us here on the planet right now.
SPEAKER_00: What blows my mind is that each one of us are a sentient creature.
SPEAKER_00: Each one of us actually have a unique mind.
SPEAKER_00: And all other minds are not my mind.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if that's frying your circuits, I'm not trying to.
SPEAKER_00: I just I just want you to think about that for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: There are eight billion other minds, just like yours on this planet right now, thinking stuff, talking to one another, doing stuff, creating.
SPEAKER_00: That's mind-boggling, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That there would be that many.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it's because of him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the source.
SPEAKER_00: In him was life, and his life was the light of men.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the next thing I want to say is that through the incarnation of Christ, God's taken the initiative to make known to us the life versus the death or the hopeless nothingness.
SPEAKER_00: See, if this is all just a product of the random chance co-location of atoms and chemicals, uh, sort of the naturalistic atheist model, and there's nothing except for what the physical world has to offer, then there's a whole lot of stuff that you have to eject if you're going to be consistent with that viewpoint.
SPEAKER_00: Honor, love.
SPEAKER_00: These things can't be found under a microscope.
SPEAKER_00: Um, nobility, truth.
SPEAKER_00: These things, they're immaterial.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God has come in the person of Jesus and offered us life.
SPEAKER_00: So is there a purpose for your life, something greater than yourself?
SPEAKER_00: If so, what is it?
SPEAKER_00: And we point to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Through the incarnation of Christ, God's taken the initiative to make known to us also the light versus the darkness or the shifting shadows.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes in the world in which we live, I know you feel it, I feel it as well.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like we're being smothered and covered, and we're not even working at, you know, Waffle House.
SPEAKER_00: It feels to me like we're being smothered and covered in darkness, doesn't it, sometimes?
SPEAKER_00: In lies, in falsehoods.
SPEAKER_00: Where's true north anymore?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: And here comes Jesus, and he's the light.
SPEAKER_00: From time to time, I've made the claim here at the church that our modern culture is intellectually confusing, morally bankrupt.
SPEAKER_00: An incessant, ever-increasing, encroaching cloud of darkness coming over us.
SPEAKER_00: And into that blazes the light of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll continue to point to him and um and talk about him.
SPEAKER_00: Also through the incarnation of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God's taking the initiative to make known to us the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: See, it said later in the text here that grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ in verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: Grace and truth versus the guilt and shame of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: See, religion is about behavior modification that none of us can live up to.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're all guilty all the time, shamed all the time.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is grace on offer to people who are guilty and undeserving.
SPEAKER_00: As a gift.
SPEAKER_00: Not as something you got to balance out the moral scales and hope you make it, but as something God has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's something you can't do for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You can't buy it, you can't earn it.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus came to pay the price for my sin, for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: So we connect throughout John's gospel, we connect the baby in the cradle to the man on the cross and to the king who is returning one day to set all things right.
SPEAKER_00: They are all one in the same.
SPEAKER_00: Through the incarnation of Christ, God's taking the initiative to make known to us grace, but also truth.
SPEAKER_00: And in a day and age, again, where we're sort of drowning in lies and uncertainties that are all over us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, raise your hand if you've been lied to by a politician.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't, don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: How about a preacher?
SPEAKER_00: No, please don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody in your family, some friend, somebody that you thought you could trust.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: All of our hands would be up if we were honest, wouldn't we?
SPEAKER_00: And here comes Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: To the souls that are weary of trying to say to themselves, where am I going to find any truth?
SPEAKER_00: Where is there any sense of true north anymore?
SPEAKER_00: And here comes John telling us, it's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You need look no further.
SPEAKER_00: And we continue to say that here at the village chapel as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons why we keep celebrating his birth.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the reasons why I'm stoked that this is our 20th time as a church to celebrate the incarnation of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's an amazing thing for me.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of preachers come around to the holidays and they're like all nervous.
SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna say?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to say.
SPEAKER_00: I kind of talked about it already.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we're just starting to scratch the surface on this.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean that God became one of us?
SPEAKER_00: It means so much.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have time to tell you, and I'm actually out of time.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna take just a little more time.
SPEAKER_00: Believing in Jesus, we find the freedom of his forgiveness for our past, the power of his presence with us now, and the hope of that great day when he returns again to set the world arights.
SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't want that?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody here might say, or somebody watching online, you might say, I'm just not ready.
SPEAKER_00: And I've been around long enough to have heard that enough times to know that you'll probably never be ready if you're waiting until you're ready.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what you mean by I'm not ready.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're waiting for you to get your act together thinking you're gonna impress God, that's never gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: You dress up nice, you seem to be a nice person and all that sort of thing, but you're never gonna be ready in that way.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody would say, Well, I've got intellectual questions and it's complicated.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say, actually, I've been running at a lot of those intellectual questions myself for a long, long time, and it's not that complicated.
SPEAKER_00: It ends up becoming something where my pride just gets in the way.
SPEAKER_00: And I just don't want to acknowledge that he's the king, that he's the Lord, that he's my savior, that I need a savior, that I love darkness more than I love light, and I need him to rescue me.
SPEAKER_00: Some would say, Well, I'm not interested in this because of the hypocrisy in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And I I say it over and over again, we we we talk about it all the time here.
SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to get away from hypocrisy, you gotta leave the planet.
SPEAKER_00: But then you're still stuck with you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: Because hypocrisy is there as well.
SPEAKER_00: All of us are hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us says one thing and does another.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're waiting for hypocrisy to end, that's not ever gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: And as a matter of fact, my problem with hypocrisy is actually the reason he came.
SPEAKER_00: See, because I can't live up to even what I believe to be true.
SPEAKER_00: He came to save me from my failing self and my attempt at self-salvation.
SPEAKER_00: This year is not just another Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of different in a lot of ways, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean to disparage anyone, but Santa?
SPEAKER_00: He's watching to see who's been naughty or nice.
SPEAKER_00: Santa is going to bring gifts to those who are nice.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And he's bringing us all the gift of himself.
SPEAKER_00: And those of you that are humble enough and have your eyes open enough and are ready to acknowledge that you're naughty.
SPEAKER_00: I just want, you know, Jesus is so much better than Santa for that reason.
SPEAKER_00: And uh whatever's going on in your family with Santa and all that stuff, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I got no problem with that.
SPEAKER_00: All I'm saying is, whether you're naughty or nice, Jesus has come for you.
SPEAKER_00: And he's come for me.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the one quote I'm gonna put on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Abd creates new men and women.
SPEAKER_00: Look up, you whose eyes are fixed on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: You who are captivated by the events and changes in the surface of this earth, look up.
SPEAKER_00: You who turned away from heaven to this ground because you had become disillusioned.
SPEAKER_00: Look up, you whose eyes are laden with tears, you who mourn the loss of all that the earth has snatched away from you.
SPEAKER_00: Look up, you who cannot lift your eyes, because you are so laden with guilt.
SPEAKER_00: Look up, your redemption draws near.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the person and work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: John wrote about Jesus because he wanted us to know something.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the evidence Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he said, here's what he did.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't read it before, I want you to read the gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: Read the rest of it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he wants you to believe: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what he wants you to receive: life in his name.
SPEAKER_00: There's your new beginning.
SPEAKER_00: He began with an old beginning and he wanted to lead us to this new beginning.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you've come to believe that Jesus is the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you found life in his name.
SPEAKER_00: If you're curious about this, or you'd like to talk with someone about it, come up and introduce yourself afterwards.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us up front will be glad to talk to you to you.
SPEAKER_00: You can send an email if you prefer to do it that way to info at the village chapel.com.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll be glad to set up a coffee with you and one of our staff.
SPEAKER_00: Happy to do that to talk about how Jesus is the word, how Jesus is the source.
SPEAKER_00: How Jesus is the life, the light, the grace, and the truth.
SPEAKER_00: He is all that you may never even know you've been looking for.
SPEAKER_00: You need look no further.
SPEAKER_00: He truly is the one.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.