Christmas Hope For Misfits

Now, if telling you when Charlie Brown was first aired made you feel old, this will make us feel older. Rudolph was first aired by NBC on December 6, 1964 — six decades ago.

Rudolph has a big problem. Reindeers are supposed to have nice, dark, black noses. Not Rudolph. This makes him stand out, and kids can be cruel. But what was most hurtful for Rudolph was that the rejection also came from his father.

At the beginning of the show, Rudolph’s father is fitting him with a fake nose that is black. His father says it’s so Santa will approve of Rudolph: “Santa can’t object to you now”. But you get the impression that it’s more for the father. He is embarrassed of his son because he is different from the others.

So, wearing his uncomfortable, fake, black nose, Rudolph retreats away from his dad. He gets alone with himself, and with tears in his eyes and emotion in his voice, he sings: “Why am I such a misfit? I am not just a nitwit. Just because my nose glows, why don’t I fit in?”

Why don’t I fit in?

The pain associated with those words is something that the popular cannot relate to. There are some people in this world for whom life just comes easy. And it is of comfort for those who do not fit in to realize that Jesus didn’t fit in either — and He did that for us.

In this text, Christ takes us on a journey from His heavenly home to this earth where He experienced rejection for us and for our salvation, and from there back to HIs heavenly home, where He invites us into His family through faith.

Let’s embark on this journey. The title of the sermon today is Christmas Hope For Misfits. May the Lord bless the preaching of His word.

I. Christ’s home is with His Father

First, Christ was at home with the Father. Christ’s home is with His Father. [Wording mine but confirmed by Basil Atkinson, quoted in Stott, Bible Speaks Today, p33]

We come to the Bible in order to be edified, built up, and instructed. John gives us some important instruction about Christ in these passages.

Now Matthew’s gospel took us all the way back to Abraham. Luke’s gospel takes us all the way back even further.

But John’s gospel takes us up higher and back further than we can ever go, because the scene is these first three verses is heaven, and the timetable is eternity past.

I want you to look with me at verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word”.

Pastor Dustin, that sounds a lot like the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.

That’s exactly where the apostle John wants your mind to go. What’s happening at creation? God is creating — heavens, earth, dry land, sea, bugs and insects, animals and beasts.

How does God do this? What is His tool for creating? His word.

Genesis 1:3 ESV

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:6 ESV

And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

Genesis 1:9 ESV

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.

We see that God creates by His Word alone.

John wants us to understand that Jesus was there at creation with the Father in the beginning, way back in Genesis, and not just that Jesus was there, but that Jesus is that Word of God by which the Father created the universe.

John says Jesus is the Word of Genesis 1. “The Word was with God”, John says. When? And that as such He was right there with God from the beginning.

Christ is at home with the Father.

We see that in the last two words of that phrase: “the Word was with God”.

If you mark in your Bibles or highlight, highlight those two words “with God.” In the original language the word “with” means personal association. Close companionship. Intimate relationship. It means to be there face-to-face with someone in perfect knowledge of one another.

“With God”: This is the place, at home with the Father, where Jesus experiences complete and total acceptance and love from His Father. Like home on earth is meant to be.

At the same time, the words “with God” mean that Jesus is distinct from the Father. They are not the same Person. The Father is not the Son. The Son is His own person.

Not only is the Son at home with the Father.

The Son is just as much God as is the Father. The Son is in fact one with the Father.

He tells us this when He says, “And the Word was God”.

“The Word was a god”, say the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That’s not what the Greek says. They mistranslate John 1:1 and build an entire religion on that mistranslation. The correct translation of verse 1 is “the Word was God”.

But…how faithful the Jehovah’s Witnesses are in witnessing!

No other religious group in the country is as systematic and dedicated as they are. And yet the Christ to whom they point is in their minds a halfway-God. He is therefore a half-Savior. Which is why they have to supplement their faith with good works to make up the difference.

If Jehovah’s witnesses can canvas neighborhoods and reach whole communities with a defective view of Christ, how can we who have a correct view of Christ be so apathetic about reaching our community with the gospel?

Christ is one with the Father. And therefore Father and Son are inseparable.

In fact, their hearts beat in perfect accord with one another.

“I always do the things that are pleasing to Him” (John 8:29b NASB).

Christ’s home is with the Father.

But John takes us further, and shows us in verses 3-4:

II. Out of love for one another, Christ & the Father created human life

In creating us, Christ shared His very life with us.

Look with me at verses 3-4: “All things were made through him” — that is, through Christ, the Word — “and without him was not anything made that was made” — that’s John’s style, to repeat the same thing but state it in opposite terms.

Raise your hands this morning if you’re a parent.

Now keep your hands raised if your children ever asked you where they came from.

That’s a question that strikes fear in the heart of parents! It wasn’t the stork, right? How do I explain my child’s origin without sharing too much?

Really, one answer could be: the love between mommy and daddy created you.

True love creates.

I remember when we had both of our kids that we had prepared the nursery beforehand.

When Abigail was born, I was in seminary and we only had a two-bedroom apartment, so Abigail didn’t get her own room. But if we had the room, we would have had her bedroom all prepared and ready for her arrival.

Our love was what brought both of them into the world. And it was what drove us to make a home for them.

In creating us, Christ shared His very life with us.

Now I want you to see something else. That physical life that He gave us at creation also carried the possibility of eternal life.

“In him,” verse 4 says, “was life, and the life was the light” — or salvation or hope “of men.”

But now notice this: when we sinned, we forfeited eternal life & rejected Him.

When we sinned, we forfeited eternal life and rejected Him.

Adam and Eve could have persevered through temptation and come out victorious on the other side, and they would have been confirmed in their eternal life. And then their action would have carried the same benefit for us.

But they sinned and forfeited the eternal life they could have had and won for us.

We forfeited eternal life and rejected Him.

But you gotta know that sin and rejection of Christ is not the last word. I want you to know that Christ came to restore this life we forfeited.

III. Christ became flesh to restore this life to us, but was rejected

We might begin first by saying that Jesus Christ restored this life to us by being misunderstood.

You’re going to see this in verse 5, if you’re looking there with me: “The light” — who is the Light? Christ — “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it”.

Couldn’t grasp Him. Didn’t get Him. No one understood Him. The NIV says “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it”.

Just consider how lonely it is to be misunderstood!

Unless a person gets you, there is distance between them and you. Unless a person gets you, they don’t really and truly see you. Unless a person gerts you, there is often hostility between them and you.

John tells us more about the rejection of Jesus by the world. Verse 9: The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world”.

Think of a perfect, divine gift offered at a great cost, yet sitting unopened on a shelf. This is what happened when Christ came to us; He offered His life, knowing it would be met with rejection by many. Just like the unopened gift, we sometimes ignore the depths of His love. But, can we open our hearts and embrace the life He restored for us?

John teaches us two things about this rejection of Christ on our part.

First, we did not know Him.

Verse 10: we did not know Him. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (ESV).

Rejected by the very ones He came to save.

I imagine this must be what it is like for a parent who has an adult child that wants nothing to do with them.

My great grandmother could not tolerate hearing “I’ll be home for Christmas”.

My great uncle, her son, lived all the way in upstate New York. Every year he would say, “I’m coming home this year. I’ll be there at Christmas”.

Time after time, he promised. Time after time he failed to show up.

So when she would hear this song, my great grandmother couldn’t do anything but cry.

We did not know him. That was first.

Second, we did not receive Him. We did not receive Him or accept Him. The opposite of receiving someone or accepting them is to reject them.

Jesus was not received on His own terms. He was not accepted for who He truly was. Jesus may have been sent to restore eternal life to the human race by dying a substutionary death on the cross, but everyone had their own agenda for Jesus.

Some wanted to be entertained. Give us more miracles! more healings! more casting out of demons! more multiplying of loaves and fishes! Give us more, more, more of what we like!

Some wanted political revolution. They wanted Jesus to do in Jerusalem what the Syrian rebels have done in Damascus — liberate the oppressed Jews from the harsh, pagan rule of the Roman state.

Some wanted perfect conformity to the letter of the law. You have six days each week on which to heal and cast out demons; you have no need to heal people on the Sabbath.

I see myself here. Where do you see yourself here?

But Jesus had not come to this earth to accomplish the agenda of any person other than His Father.

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, themn comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:34-35 ESV).

Jesus came to do the Father’s will, not ours. He came to execute the work the Father gave Him to do. What was that work?

“to draw to himself certain disciples out of the unbelieving mass and to consecrate them as a people apart, within the world and yet ‘his own’ and no part of it, just as Yahweh chose Israel as His ‘peculiar people’”. [G. H. C. Macgregor, The Gospel of John, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary (New York: Harper), p. 12.]

And I want you to understand that because Jesus did not fulfill any of the agendas of those who had agendas for him, He therefore became their enemies.

Christ was deemed a “misfit” by the world.

In the early 20th century, a man named Albert Einstein was often ridiculed for his unconventional ideas and unkempt appearance. Scholars of his time dismissed him, labeling him a misfit. However, his theories revolutionized physics! Just like Einstein, Jesus was deemed a misfit, rejected by the religious elite. Yet, it’s the misfits who challenge us, inspire us, and show us the beauty of God’s kingdom.

Christ came to restore eternal life to us, but was rejected. This rejection has its roots in the devil’s ancient hatred of God. This rejection begins with the Pharisees and other rulers. It culminates in His being betrayed by one of His own disciples, arrested by His own people and crucified by the Romans.

But, to all who accept rather than reject Him, He receives us into His home.

IV. To all who accept rather than reject Him, He receives us into His home (vv. 12-13)

Last week, an American citizen was found wandering aimlessly around the streets of Damascus.

This was an American citizen who had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage seven months ago. He was captured and imprisoned and tortured.

When the government fell last Sunday, the rebels went into prisons and liberated the prisoners and he was one of them.

Let me tell you what moves me about this story. Syrians aren’t “supposed” to like Americans. Americans — westerners — are “supposed” to be the enemies.

And yet, here are these Syrian rebels who found this American citizen who was imprisoned. They take him off the streets, gave him a place to place to stay and sleep while the United States figured out what to do with him. It didn’t matter to them whether he was an enemy or not. They saw a human being in need of help.

This is a picture not of rejection but of being brought in, accepted, loved, and taken care of.

Verse 12 shows us this this picture is a reality for us if we are willing to become misfits in the eyes of the world.

Can we say that Christ became a misfit in the eyes of the world for us? Yes, verse 11: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”

But then we have the grand promise of verse 12: “But to all who did receive him — to all who did accept him” — what does it mean to accept or receive Jesus? It means to believe in Him. “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Can we say that we can only come home to Christ if we are willing to become misfits in the eyes of the world? We can.

If you trust in Christ and live your life for Him, you will become a misfit in the eyes of the world. The Bible says “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted” (2Tim 3:12 ESV).

The surest way to become a misfit in the eyes of the world is to become a follower of the One who challenged and overturned all the world’s values, whose very name when mentioned brings fear, shame and conviction to the hearts of those who are walking in darkness.

John 1:12 “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (ESV).

So, if you’re willing to become a misfit in the world’s eyes, welcome home!

Not because we are from a Christian family or are good people (v. 13)

But because of God’s grace alone (v. 13; Eph 2:8)

Call for response

What happened as Jesus died? What are perhaps Jesus’ most famous words on the cross?

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”

That question continues to puzzle people.

How can Jesus, the Son of God, speak of having been forsaken by God the Father? There are people who try to downplay this but we cannot get away from His words. Something much darker was happening in that moment than we’re aware of.

Why would the Father temporarily distance Himself from His Son? There is only one thing that would cause that breach. Sin.

But surely the sin isn’t Jesus’. No, it’s ours. “For our sake He made Him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in HIm we might become the righteousness of God” (2Cor 5:231 ESV).

So as Jesus bore our sin, the Father left His side. And then, “it is finished”.

In those three hours of darkness during the middle of the afternoon, in some incredibly mysterous and holy way the Son of God made a complete end of sin our sin.

Transferred to HIm. Borne by Him. Atoned for by Him. Paid for by Him. Sin now out of the way, the Son restored to fellowship. And now we are invited in.

The beauty of the gospel — our sin caused to be estranged from God, not part of His family, at birth and by nature.

But the Son endures that estrangement for us with God, on the cross, in our place, so that we might have fellowship with God.

The Son was exiled from the Father that we might be brought in.

The Son left His rightful home so that by faith we might become part of His household, part of His family. And never be out of place, never be misfits, again.

God is so pure, so holy, and sin is so counter to who God is that He cannot even tolerate it in HIs beloved.

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