Among Us (Advent 2024) 3: The Word Saves Us
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: John 1:9-13, John 1:29-34
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, and thanks again for being here to worship the Lord Jesus together!
If you’re visiting with us this morning (either in person or online), we would love to be able to send you a card to thank you for your visit, and to see if there is anything that we can do to minister to you. If you’re online, you can fill out a communications form by visiting our website and scrolling to the bottom of our “I’m New” page. If you’re in the room you can do that as well, or you can fill out a physical card while you’re here. You’ll find it in the back of the pew in front of you. You can return that to us by bringing it down to me here at the front after service is over, because I would really like to meet you personally and give you a gift to thank you for your visit today. If you don’t have time for that today, I understand. You can get that welcome card back to us by dropping it in the boxes by the doors as you leave after service. Thanks in advance for filling that out!
I want to say one other thanks this morning. Over the past few weeks, our audio-visual ministry has (especially the chairman, Richard Stump) has had to put in some serious overtime for things. They are a vital part of everything that happens in this room, both on Sundays and during the week. They’ve run the lights, the sound, the lyrics, and the stream every Sunday. They’ve had band practices and choir practices. They’ve served at school programs and the practices for those. They do things like They’re always literally behind the scenes, and so are rarely acknowledged. Thanks, AV Ministry team for your service to this church family!
Announcements
Announcements
LMCO Video
LMCO ($20,406.88) Goal $32,500.
Opening
Opening
For our Advent series this year, we’re taking a little bit different approach from years past. The message of Christmas doesn’t just begin with a baby in a manger a little over 2,000 years ago—it begins at the creation of the universe, with the eternal Word of God—the Word who was with God and who was God, and through whom the universe was created. And as we saw last week, John revealed the wonder and glory of Christmas when he wrote that this eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us as that baby Jesus Christ, and through Christ’s earthly ministry, He brought us near to God, made the invisible God visible, and brought undeserved grace instead of the wrath we are owed. We find all of this in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.
This morning, we will step backward just a little bit in chapter from where we were last week, as we consider four aspects of how the Word saves us. So please open your Bibles or Bible apps to John chapter 1, and stand as you are able as we read our focal passage for this morning: verses 9-13 and verse 29-34:
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I told you about: ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ 31 I didn’t know him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him. 33 I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
PRAYER
One type of story that many enjoy is a rescue story. Someone or something (admittedly, usually a damsel in distress) is in danger, and the hero swoops in to push back the darkness, defeat the enemy, and save the day. Most fairy tales have some sort of rescue involved: think about Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. Even more modern stories like Shrek, Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, and Narnia all have rescue motifs in them. Even some Christmas movies have tales of rescue embedded in them. It’s a Wonderful Life, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or a more recently Elf or The Christmas Chronicles are just a few.
In the movie A Christmas Story, the main character Ralphie, a 9 year-old-boy living in Indiana in the 40’s, desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. As he reflects on what he might become should he receive such a—as he calls it— “deadly-looking piece of weaponry,” he makes himself the hero in his own rescue story in his imagination. Watch:
A Christmas Story video
I think that most of us (at least most men) tend to put ourselves in the same position in our minds as Ralphie: the hero of the rescue tales that we manufacture. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But I suppose the issue is whether or not it’s accurate. I think we’d all like to be the hero. We want to be the one who saves the day. But what the Bible tells us that is that we all need to be rescued. We all need to be saved.
And that’s really what Christmas means: that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could be saved—rescued—from darkness, destitution, and death.
We’ve seen that the Word is God. We talked last week about how the Word became flesh. But the question that we will address today is: “How does the Word—Jesus—save us?” In the totality of our focal passage this morning, we see four ways that Jesus rescues us. First:
1: He brings light in the darkness.
1: He brings light in the darkness.
In the physical sense, we need light. We function best when we regularly are in the sunlight (I’m not talking about vitamin D production). Studies have shown that it helps us regulate our sleep patterns and diets. Lack of sunlight can cause depression, lack of energy, and even weight gain because it can tweak your metabolism. Did you know that one method that interrogators use as a means of torture is called “the darkness?” It’s actually technically referred to as “deprivation of sunlight,” but “the darkness” sounds terribly ominous, doesn’t it?
From a spiritual perspective, we need light as well. And that light has only One Source. As I said in the first message of this series, the eternal Word, the Son of God, has life within Himself, because He is the author of life, and everything that has come to exist has done so because of Him and through Him and exists for Him. “In Him was life,” verse 4 reads, “and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness...” John expands a little on this in verses 9 and 10:
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him.
John spoke in verses 6-8 of the fact that John the Baptist (not the same John) had come to testify about the light. This seems kind of strange, doesn’t it? For nearly all of us, if I were to take you to my house and show you around, and we walked into my living room and I turned on the light, I wouldn’t declare to you that the light was now on. The light being on would be self-evident if you are capable of seeing and experiencing light. Only those who are completely blind would need to be informed that the light was shining.
But the Baptizer had to give testimony about the light coming into the world. Why? Because we are spiritually blind. Without Jesus, we walk around in darkness, with our eyes covered by our selfishness and sin, unable to see the truth of our need of rescue. We think we can see, but we really can’t. We need someone to point us to the true light.
This is what John calls Jesus in verse 9: the true light. This makes sense given that John would in just a few verses connect grace and truth together as he referred to Jesus. He is the light that we need, the light that shows us the truth, the light that brings grace.
Jesus referred to Himself as the light of the world on more than one occasion. One example is John 12:46:
46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness.
In this way, the fact that He brings light to the darkness, Jesus fulfilled the prophecy given to Isaiah back in Isaiah chapter 9:
2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness. 3 You have enlarged the nation and increased its joy. The people have rejoiced before you as they rejoice at harvest time and as they rejoice when dividing spoils. 4 For you have shattered their oppressive yoke and the rod on their shoulders, the staff of their oppressor, just as you did on the day of Midian.
Without the light of the Word—the light of Christ—we all are walking around in darkness. We’re all trapped under an oppressive yoke, but not in the way the Jews thought in the first century. They all thought the oppressive yoke was Rome, but it wasn’t. It was the yoke that still oppresses all of humanity today: sin. Sin imprisons us in darkness, unable to see, unable to save ourselves.
Jesus came into the world, as verse 10 says, the world that He created. And you’d think that we would all be thrilled to see our Creator walk among us, but sadly, the world at large didn’t recognize our Creator when He showed up in the flesh, bearing the light of life.
It’s when we come to Christ in faith that we step into the light. It’s not even that we “step into” the light, but are actually brought into the light by God, as Paul said in Colossians 1:
13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
Because of the rescue that Christ has performed, those who are in Christ are actually from a different kingdom, or as Peter wrote, it’s as though we are a different race, a different kind of nation, with a different allegiance:
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
The light of the world came to earth on that first Christmas not so we could celebrate with our own light displays and share gifts with each other, but because He was on a rescue mission. He came so that we who were in darkness would experience true light. He calls us out of darkness, and changes our very identities when we belong to Him. In fact, we not only change kingdoms, but we change families as well:
5 For you are all children of light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness.
The only way that we go from being children of one family to being children of another family is through adoption. And that is the next kind of rescue that we see in this passage:
2: He gives us the right to be children of God.
2: He gives us the right to be children of God.
In the time that the New Testament was written, being an orphan was a great difficulty. Nearly all of your identity and wealth came from your father. The abandoning of children was fairly commonplace, especially girls. James even wrote that part of “pure and undefiled religion before God…is…to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” (James 1:27). If you were an orphan, you were very likely destitute or a slave.
And spiritually speaking, without Christ we are orphans—we are without a Father. I know that people say that “we are all (meaning all of humanity) God’s children.” But that is not true according to Scripture. We are certainly all God’s creatures, and are loved by Him on that basis, but we aren’t God’s children unless we are in Christ. That’s what the next few verses bear out:
11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
This truth is a pretty radical departure from how humanity related to God before. The closest that anyone came (after Adam, that is) is the people of Israel. Even they rarely referred to God as “Father.” It happens over and over in the New Testament, but only 8 times in the Old Testament. They were raised up by God as His special people for His purposes in redemption—from the nation of Israel would come the Savior, and through them God would display His glory to the nations.
And it was to Israel that the Word incarnate came. They were waiting for Him. Watching for Him. Praying that He would come. Many in Israel still do. I’ve been to the Western Wall on a Sabbath night. I’ve seen how the Jews read and pray and weep while they are as close to the Temple as they can get today, many of them asking God to send Messiah to rescue them, to deliver them, to save them.
Verse 11 says that “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.” This is one of the great tragedies of Scripture. Israel had been prepared. They had been told. Promised. Warned, even. But when the Messiah came, they didn’t receive Him. The way this is phrased isn’t that they just didn’t realize, but that they willfully rejected Him. They refused to believe.
But the good news comes in the very next verse: Not everyone rejects Him! And the Scripture tells us that those who receive Jesus, namely those who believe in His name, are given the right to be children of God!
The word “believe” is one of John’s favorite words. He uses it 98 times in his gospel, nearly every time as a verb directly referring to trusting in Jesus. Believing isn’t a work that we do. It’s a surrender. It’s realizing that we cannot save ourselves and that we need Jesus to save us, and then giving up trying on our own. We actually quit working for our salvation when we believe in Jesus. We can’t do anything to earn or deserve salvation, and we can’t do anything to earn or deserve being children of God. It’s something that we must be given.
Galatians 4 says:
4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
God adopts us as His children by His own sovereign choice. He doesn’t have to adopt us. But He does! And along with that new status as His children, the Scripture says that God has also made us His heirs! What a reversal from being destitute and orphaned!
14 For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” 16 The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children,
In just a couple of chapters, Jesus would speak to the necessity of being “born again,” or born in a spiritual sense:
3 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
5 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.
We will look at the work of the Holy Spirit a little more in our fourth point. But for now, verse 12 tells us that if we believe in the name of Jesus, meaning that we trust in the reality of all He is and does, then we are born of God, according to verse 13.
Verse 13 might seem a little strange, but let’s make a personal application to it. First, it says that we are not children of God according to “natural descent.” Literally, the Greek reads by “bloods.” This is what the Hebrews thought and sometimes still think. Because of their lineage, then they deserve salvation, and it’s guaranteed to them. While we don’t think in the same terms exactly, how many people do you think have ever uttered the phrase, “My grandpa/father/uncle/cousin/etc. was a preacher,” as if that somehow meant that they would be considered righteous before God because of that? We aren’t saved because of our lineage.
Next, John says that we don’t become children of God through “the will of the flesh.” We cannot demand that God save us on our terms. His terms are the only ones that count: believing in the name of Jesus is the only means of becoming a child of God.
And finally, John says that we do not become children of God by “the will of man.” I can’t tell you how many people I’ve shared the Gospel with who just felt like now wasn’t the right time to surrender. They had other things to do, and following Jesus would demand too much. They’ll think about it and maybe believe in Him later. You can’t plan your way into the Kingdom. In the parable of the rich man, God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you...” (Luke 12:20) You cannot know what your life will bring. If you’ve never trusted in Jesus, then don’t wait, because if you were to die tonight, you would die in your sins.
And that’s really what Jesus rescues us from when we believe in Him:
3: He takes away our sins by His sacrifice.
3: He takes away our sins by His sacrifice.
As I said earlier in point 1, apart from Christ, we are all under an oppressive yoke of sin. We cannot carry it, and we cannot free ourselves of it. We are trapped by it. This is why we need a rescuer who didn’t have that yoke on Himself, but who could understand the burden that we carry in it. This is why Jesus came as a baby—to become the man who took our place in death, so that we can rejoice in His eternal life.
At this point in our focal passage, we jump to the narrative of John the Baptist and his identification of Jesus as the Messiah. He specifically calls Him the Lamb of God, certainly a reference to the sacrificing of lambs at Passover in the Hebrew culture. This makes great sense, given that it was almost time for the Passover, according to John 2:13. Notice what John the Baptist said:
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I told you about: ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ 31 I didn’t know him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Back in the book of Exodus, on the night before Israel was released from Egyptian bondage, God sent the destroyer throughout the land of Egypt to strike down all the first born of the land to break the will of Pharaoh. The Jews had been instructed to set apart a special lamb for 5 days, and then to sacrifice it at sundown, and take some of the blood and strike the doorposts and lintels of their houses as a sign, so that the destroyer would “pass over” the house. In this way, the lamb died so that the people in the house wouldn’t die. The blood covered over the fact that those in the house deserved death.
The imagery of the Word of God as the Lamb of God echoes what was said about Messiah in the fourth Suffering Servant song in the book of Isaiah:
7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.
Jesus died so that our sin and the punishment and wrath that we deserve from God because of it would be fully covered over by His blood, just like the blood of the lamb covered over those who were inside the houses where it was painted. We are “passed over” for the wrath of God that we deserve, because Jesus took it upon Himself.
Not only does the Passover imagery fit with Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away our sins, but Exodus 29:38-39 prescribed for the Israelites the daily sacrifice of two lambs as a constant offering to the Lord. John the Baptist’s father Zechariah was a priest who served at the Temple. Making those sacrifices on the days that he served would have been a part of his task. Those lambs were offered as a burnt offering for sin, their blood shed so that the nation would be forgiven. Hebrews 9:22 tells us:
22 According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
But in Christ, the Word who is God, the Lamb who is priest, He has made one singular sacrifice of Himself, and since the perfect Lamb of God has been sacrificed for our sins, the sacrifice has been completed, and doesn’t need to be made any more.
27 He doesn’t need to offer sacrifices every day, as high priests do—first for their own sins, then for those of the people. He did this once for all time when he offered himself.
Anyone in the world who turns to Jesus in faith and surrender, believing in Him as Savior and Lord, can have their sins covered by the blood of Jesus. He is perfect, and so His sacrifice is perfect, and is therefore enough to cover any and every sin. This is how God has shown His incredible love for us:
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God wants to be in a relationship with each of us because He loves us. And Jesus came so that a relationship between sinful man and holy God could be possible. But He’s not going to force you to believe. Jesus lived a perfect life so He could willingly die in your place and mine, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring us to God. If we believe, trusting in Jesus for our forgiveness, then we will be forgiven. And Jesus beat death and rose again, so that if we surrender to Him in faith, we will have eternal life with Him, and will be with Him when He returns to set all things right in the world. Surrender to Jesus this morning, even right now!
When we give up and surrender to Christ, according to our focal passage, we receive one more incredible gift that I want to speak about briefly: we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
4: He gives us His Holy Spirit.
4: He gives us His Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist said that he hadn’t really known who the Messiah was, and that part of his ministry was so that He (Jesus) might be revealed to Israel, calling them to salvation through faith. He was just trusting what God had promised about the Messiah before. Just the day before, he had baptized Jesus, and prior to that, the Baptizer had been given an indication of who the Messiah was:
32 And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him. 33 I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
John the Baptist knew that the one the Spirit descended and rested upon was the one who was the Savior, because God had revealed it to him likely from the book of Isaiah:
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, a Spirit of counsel and strength, a Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
1 “This is my servant; I strengthen him, this is my chosen one; I delight in him. I have put my Spirit on him; he will bring justice to the nations.
The residing of the Spirit in the Old Testament was always a temporary thing—the Spirit would “come upon” someone for a time and purpose, and then leave them again. But now in Christ, He was giving us His Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, to live in us and to regenerate us—bringing us back to life with His life.
63 The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
What a tremendous gift we have received! We can now walk with God, because the Spirit is God, every day.
Closing
Closing
If we belong to Christ, then we have been set free to declare, along with John:
34 I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Word of God who became flesh and dwelt among us? If you’ve never trusted in Christ before, then I pray that today you have understood the message of the Gospel, and that you right now believe that God is drawing you to Himself. Be glorified.
Baptism
Church membership
Prayer
Offering
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Cassie Boyer Funeral Tuesday at 6:00 pm.
Bible reading (Isa 26-27, Pro 12)
No Pastor’s Study tonight for Cocoa, Cookies & Caroling at 5pm.
Prayer Meeting this week, finishing our look at the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple in 1 Kings 8.
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
17 Both the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let anyone who hears, say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely.
