four stories of the life of Jesus, the good news, the gospel.
We're not going to look at all of the stories today, but I just want to
as we get started here, think about how they start.
Now, the Gospel of Mark starts with the story of Jesus's baptism.
That's where the Gospel of Mark begins, when Jesus is getting baptized.
There's two of the Gospels, which talk about what we traditionally say
is the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke.
It actually starts talking about the birth of John the Baptist.
And then it gets to Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem.
And then it talks about the birth of Jesus and the shepherds.
The shepherds see the angels on the on the mountainside,
and they come and see the baby Jesus.
So that is in Luke.
Now, Matthew starts a little differently.
It's got a very long genealogy about people who were born
to different Bible characters.
And then it eventually gets to in Matthew chapter two,
it talks about the story of the Magi or the wise men.
And it actually says that the wise men come to a house.
So they probably weren't there on that first day.
But, you know, it looks good in our Christmas plays and our Christmas stories.
But I want to read one or two verses in Matthew.
And then we're going to settle into the Gospel of John.
But in Matthew chapter one,
we read a couple of verses here in verse 22.
It says so all actually, let's go back to 21.
It says, she will bring forth a son and you shall call his name Jesus,
for he will save his people from their sins.
That's why Jesus came to save his people from their sins.
And then in verse 22, it says, all this was done
that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.
And then it quotes from the prophet Isaiah.
We read this a couple of weeks ago.
You probably read it last week as well during the great Christmas program.
Thank you. I watched that online.
That was very well done.
Behold, the Virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Emmanuel.
Emmanuel, which is translated God with us.
Now, we sung, Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel this morning.
And that was a perfect song for this sermon, for this thought today.
And so Matthew begins talking about this idea,
which was quoting from the Old Testament, Emmanuel, God with us.
What does that mean? God with us.
It's just what I always wanted.
But what is it? What does that mean?
With that in mind, let's turn over to the Gospel of John,
because the Gospel of John does not begin with the baptism of Jesus.
It doesn't talk about the wise men or the shepherds.
It goes back even further.
The Gospel of John begins with the same words that the entire Bible begins with.
You remember John 1, 1?
It says, what is John 1, 1? Excuse me.
Genesis 1, 1, the very opening verse of the Bible.
What does Genesis 1, 1 say?
In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth.
Well, in John 1, it echoes that thought, and it begins with those same three words.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
And so the Gospel of John goes back even further.
Before the shepherds, before the wise men, it goes back even further.
And we see in this verse here, there are three different phrases,
which if you kind of took them by themselves,
you could maybe get a skewed picture of this Word, of what this is all about.
But when you put them all together, it kind of gives a more complete picture, a more full picture.
Now, I'm going to give a little spoiler here.
We're going to read it in a couple other verses a little bit later, but who is the Word?
Jesus. That's a spoiler. We're going to get to that.
We're going to show that from Scripture in just a little bit,
but I just want to tell you that ahead of time, because that will make more sense.
So, in the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Three different things there. In the beginning was the Word.
Now, that kind of reminds us, as we take this picture of the Word, this picture of Jesus,
that this Word was already there in the beginning.
As far back as we can go in the beginning, Jesus was already there.
Jesus was there in existence, in continuous existence from before what we would call the beginning.
This is kind of hard for me to grasp as a human to fully understand this.
And then it says, and the Word was with God.
So, there's some sort of separateness.
But then it says, the Word was God.
Again, my mind is human, so I can't quite comprehend how one equals three.
We talk about one God, and we talk about a Godhead.
And yet, as we put these verses together, it says, the Word, Jesus was there,
already there in the beginning. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And so, that gives us a little bit of a picture of who Jesus was.
Jesus was not created. Jesus is eternal. Jesus was always there.
And as we read down a few more verses here in the first chapter of John,
we're going to see three different miracles that are recorded.
And we may say, oh, those were miracles way back when, way back then.
Who cares? Why are we talking about this?
But these miracles actually still are important for us today.
And they still resonate with us today.
So, we're going to look at verse 3 here.
John 1 and verse 3. It says, all things were made through Him.
Now, remember, we're talking about the Word in the beginning.
Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made.
And so, we see here a miracle of creation.
The Bible opens with this infinite power of God.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And in Genesis chapter 1, when the voice of God spoke, things happened.
God said, let there be light. And there was light.
God said, let the air and the water separate, and it was done.
And then as you read through Genesis 1, it talks about, and it was good.
When the Word of God spoke, this infinite power caused things to come out of nothing.
That's what God could do. That's what the power of God could do.
That's this miracle that we see here.
All things were made through the Word, through Jesus.
And without Him, nothing was made that was made.
Now, we know and realize that in our society today,
there are many who are either turning their back on creation,
or maybe not even thinking about creation at all.
Oh, it doesn't even matter.
But this fact that Jesus is our Creator, this miracle that Jesus is our Creator,
it brings, I think, some meaning and value to our life.
When we think about Jesus as our Creator, it tells us about our past.
It reminds you and me and all of humanity that we are not some collection of amino acids
that somehow boiled together back in some primordial soup or swamp
or however you want to describe it, that somehow these cells came together
and somehow miraculously, boom, life appeared.
It tells us about our past that we are of value, that you are of value,
that you are created in the very image of God.
And that's something that can make us feel important because we are.
It reminds us of our past, but it also informs us about our present,
that each one of us here today was created for a reason.
We were created for a purpose.
In the Psalm, it talks about how we were knit together in our mother's womb,
that God created us, and that even here,
this last week of 2023, that you've got a purpose for being.
You were created for something.
And when we remember this miracle of creation,
I think it can also give us a hope for the future,
that God created this world, and the entirety of the Bible is God's quest
to bring us back to this place of perfection,
to bring us back to the perfect world that He created for us.
So you may be thinking about 2023, here we are, seven days from the end of it,
and maybe you've had some rough times over the past year.
Maybe there's been some heartaches, some challenges, medical challenges,
financial challenges, relationship issues, whatever it happened to be,
and you may be feeling that it was all for nothing, but guess what?
God gives you hope for the future.
Because if Jesus created us, we have a promise that Jesus is coming back,
that He loves us enough to come and get His creation.
No matter what your 2023 was like, you are important to God.
So that's a miracle that we can remember of creation.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made.
Let's turn over to Colossians chapter 1.
Colossians chapter 1 and verse 16.
So Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians chapter 1,
it tells us a little bit more about this idea of creation.
It says,
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.
We can watch the news and see all these different things happening in the world,
but we remember that God is over and above that.
All things were created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things and in Him all things consist.
That means that we are created for God and by God,
and that God is coming back to take us to heaven with Him.
So we have a miracle of creation.
Go back to John chapter 1.
We're going to read that spoiler verse now.
John chapter 1 and verse 14.
It says, Remember the word in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
Well now in verse 14, it says,
The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
The word became flesh.
That's what the Christmas story is all about.
That's why we put up nativity scenes.
That's why we sing songs about a baby Jesus.
That's why we remember all of these things because God, the creator of the universe, came to earth.
The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
Now that word dwelt is an interesting word because that can also kind of be translated
tabernacled or pitched a tent among us.
So God, the creator of the world, came and tabernacled with humanity, with the people on earth.
You may remember as you read through the Old Testament,
the children of Israel were making their way out of the land of Egypt.
They were in the wilderness.
And it was during that time that God said, Let them make a sanctuary.
Do you remember how the rest of that phrase went?
Let them make a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.
God wanted to be close to his people.
He wanted to be in the midst of his people.
He wanted to tabernacle with them.
And here we have in the New Testament,
the word became flesh and tabernacled or dwelt among them.
God continued to want to be close to his people.
Think back to that tabernacle.
You've got the courtyard.
You've got the sacrifices which pointed forward to Jesus.
You've got a cleansing laver there which represents sins being taken away and so forth.
And you go into that first room.
What's that called?
Not the first one.
The Holy Place.
And there's candlesticks and tables of bread and altars of incense which are our prayers.
And then the next room through that curtain, what is it?
The Most Holy Place.
And what was in there?
The Ark.
And there was something else above the Ark.
Angels and what was between the angels?
The Mercy Seat and even above that?
Okay, there we finally got to it.
The glory of God, the Shekinah glory of God was there in that Most Holy Place in the midst of his people.
God said, let them make a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.
And the glory of God was there.
It was on Mount Sinai that Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments.
Let's turn back to Exodus chapter 34.
Exodus chapter 34.
In Exodus 33, Moses asked God, he's like, show me your glory.
Show me your glory.
And God won't quite do that.
And it says that God took Moses and he put him in the cleft of the rock.
He put him in a cave or somewhere and he said, I'm going to show you my back.
That's all you can handle of my glory.
And even that, if you remember when Moses came down, he was glowing from the glory of God.
But in Exodus 34, as God begins to show Moses a little portion of the glory, notice in Exodus 34 and verse 6,
it says, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed.
It seems like the glory of God isn't just a brightness, but the glory of God is a character that is revealed.
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed.
And this is what he said, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
That's the glory of God.
That there's a character of love and truth and forgiveness.
And it goes on and talks about his justice as well.
But there's this forgiveness and mercy and patience and long suffering.
And that is a picture, I think, of the glory of God as revealed in his character.
So John 1, 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.
And then it says, full of grace and truth.
That's what Jesus revealed, this glory of God, this character of God.
As you looked at the Old Testament sanctuary, it was a place where a lamb was slain,
but it was also a place of blessing and grace.
And it was a place where the glory of God came down and it filled that temple, that tabernacle.
But now the word became flesh.
Now Jesus, the Lamb of God, comes to this earth as blessing and grace.
And as incredible, as powerful, as wonderful as that sanctuary is,
pointing forward to the plan of God, as great as the sanctuary was, Jesus is greater than that.
Jesus is a greater revelation of the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness of God.
Now back to John chapter 1.
We're going to go back to some verses that we skipped over.
We've seen a miracle of creation.
We've seen a miracle of the incarnation.
I don't know if I said that or not, but that's the second miracle.
The incarnation, the word becoming flesh.
And then here's a third miracle, a miracle of salvation.
In chapter 1 of John and verse 4, we're reminded that the Creator came to the creation, but He wasn't accepted.
John 1, 4, In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Jesus is the giver of light. He's the giver of life.
He comes to this dark world, this spiritually dark world, and the people did not accept it.
They did not recognize Him. They did not receive Him.
But the fact is, if you go outside, it's a bright sunny day, and you close your eyes,
what is the sun doing?
The sun is still shining.
Even if you close your eyes, the sun is still shining.
I remember several years ago, I think it was 2017, I was down in Calhoun at Georgia Cumberland Academy,
and they loaded up on this particular day, they loaded up all the buses, and they were taking all the kids on a field trip.
I know we've got a couple of GCA students here, and it's a very rare thing for the students to all go on a field trip at the same time.
Sometimes they may take the freshman class or the senior class, but on this day, all of the students got on the bus,
and they left Calhoun, and they drove about an hour.
They opened up the doors of the bus.
We all got off, and we were in a parking lot at the Bowman Hills Church in Cleveland, Tennessee.
Doesn't that sound like a fun field trip for all the students?
You see, on this particular day, they had to leave Calhoun.
They couldn't come to Ringgold, because it wasn't here either, but they went to Cleveland,
because on that particular day, if you were there in the right place at the right time,
there was something happening called a solar eclipse.
You had to be in the certain spot, and at the certain time of day, the moon would go between the sun and the earth.
If you were there in the right place, you were in the path of totality.
For three minutes, there was going to be a total solar eclipse.
We were there. They set up their little science experiments,
so you could see the shape of the moon crossing through without going blind.
They had the special goggles you could look at, but then that moment came.
Did anybody see totality? Did anybody go to where a few people did?
It went totally dark. It was like the sun had gone down.
The streetlights came on. All the things that usually happen at sundown happened in the middle of the day.
But you know what? The sun was still shining.
Even though there was something blocking it for just a few moments, the sun was still shining.
It says, In him was life. The life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness.
The darkness did not comprehend it, but the light was still shining, even though it was rejected.
We can skip down to verse 10. It says, He was in the world.
The world was made through him, and the world did not know him.
He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.
He came to his own, but his own did not receive him.
There was rejection that took place.
You know, we read about the Christmas story.
We share the story. We sing the songs, and we read about Mary and Joseph accepting the messages of the angels.
The shepherds coming from the fields to seek out the baby Jesus.
The Magi coming from afar, following the star to seek out this king.
They even came bearing gifts.
But even in that story, there were so many people that did not come to meet the Word that became flesh.
There were the priests, and the leaders, and the king, and all these people.
They knew the prophecies. They knew the stories, and they didn't even show up when they'd been told.
Maybe there's something to come and see.
Then, of course, we traced down the story later, and we recognized that more and more people,
while crowds came to hear Jesus, when the time was right, maybe I should say the time was wrong,
more and more people rejected Jesus.
Because Jesus was born to die.
Jesus was born with this knowledge that he was going to be rejected.
We can look at Matthew 23, verse 37.
In the last days of Jesus' life, he says,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her,
how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,
but you were not willing.
That's the story of Jesus' ministry.
He was here, living a perfect life, proclaiming the message of grace and truth,
healing the sick, and yet people were rejecting him and turning away from him.
Jesus was rejected.
But there's that promise, that miracle of salvation.
John 1 and verse 12, we're carrying through this story.
It says, As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name.
So, I know there's a few students here,
there's a lot of people who are many years away from school,
but a quick English grammar lesson here, received him.
When did that take place?
It's got a D on the end.
That's past tense, right?
As many as received him at some point.
To them he gave the right to become children of God,
to those who believe.
When's that?
That's present tense.
So, you've kind of got two sides to the same equation here,
this reminder that this is an ongoing journey that we have with Jesus.
We have believed in him.
Hopefully all of us here have believed in him at some point.
Excuse me, I said that wrong, received him at some point in our life.
We have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, that he died for our sins.
We've done that.
But then are we daily believing in him,
recognizing that Jesus is our Lord and Savior,
recognizing that Jesus did come to this earth,
that he is God with us, Emmanuel, a daily abiding.
But even this, even receiving him in the past,
and believing him in our daily life,
even this is not something that we have to do on our own.
Notice the next verse, verse 13.
Let's read this together.
But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God.
He gave the right to become a child of God,
a child of the King, to those who believe in his name,
who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but are born of God.
It's God who is giving us the right to be called his children.
It's God's grace and God's power and God's patience and longsuffering,
which is pulling us towards him.
God, the creator of the universe.
God, the tabernacle of grace and blessing.
God, who joined us in humanity.
God, who gives us salvation, also gives us the authority to be part of his family
when we received him and when we continue to believe in him.
Jesus became human so that we can all be part of his family.
I want to tell a story here about a gentleman named Roddy Edmonds.
Now Roddy Edmonds, I didn't know about him until recently,
but he actually grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is where I grew up.
And he was a sergeant during World War II.
So he was a sergeant in the US military during World War II.
He had joined the military and he went through all of his training,
and he finally made it over to Europe in the winter of 1944.
And about a week after he got there, to the front lines in Europe,
the Germans, the Nazis, decided that they wanted one last chance
to try to turn this thing around.
And so they had this massive counterattack,
which we refer to in history as the Battle of the Bulge.
You may have heard of the Battle of the Bulge.
It was about this time of year that it was happening in 1944.
And it's called that because the line made a bulge.
Their counterattack, they pushed the Allied forces back a little bit,
and so there was a bulge in the front lines.
They were trying to break through and fight back a little,
but it didn't work for them, thankfully.
But Roddy Edmonds had been over there about a week,
and as this bulge took place, he and his men were captured.
So he'd only been in battle for just a few days, and he was captured.
And he was taken to Stalag IX.
He was taken to Stalag IX.
And he found himself as the ranking non-commissioned officer.
So he was the highest rank in the camp that they were.
They took the other officers somewhere else.
So he'd been in the prison camp about a month,
and on January 27, 1945, the Nazis said that tomorrow morning
all of the Jewish-American POWs, all of the POWs who were Jewish,
had to line up in front of their barracks first thing in the morning.
Only the Jews were to line up.
Now, Sergeant Edmonds, he was the ranking officer,
so he gave a little different command.
He said, we're all going to line up.
All the Americans are going to line up first thing in the morning.
And so that's what they did.
All 1,000 soldiers were there.
And so the Nazis were not really happy about their commands not being followed.
And so that morning they came out and said,
okay, now you command all the Jews to step forward.
You're all here. Just have the Jews step forward.
And Sergeant Edmonds, he gave a different command.
He ordered all 1,000 troops to step forward.
And so as you can imagine, the Nazis were not very happy.
They were getting upset.
And the commanding officer said, you can't all be Jews.
And Sergeant Edmonds said, sir, today we are all Jews.
All of us are Jews here today.
And they say they took out a gun and they held it to Roddy Edmonds' head,
and said, you order the Jews to step forward or we're going to shoot you.
And he said, well, today we're all Jews here,
so you're going to have to shoot me and you're going to have to shoot all 1,000 of us.
And then he said, and we all know this war is almost over,
and if you do that, you're going to be charged with some serious war crimes,
you know, for murdering all of these Americans in this spot.
And so the Nazi commander turned around and walked away.
And that day, Roddy Edmonds, because he was willing to stand up,
turns out there were about 200 Jewish soldiers there in those ranks,
and likely their lives were saved because Roddy Edmonds said,
today we are all Jews.
He saved the lives of the Jews by becoming Jewish.
And years later he was awarded something called the Righteous Among the Nations.
This is an award that Israel gives out to those people who risk their lives
in order to save Jews from the Holocaust.
And he is one of only five Americans to receive this Righteous Among the Nations,
and the only U.S. serviceman to receive this award.
He saved those lives by becoming one of them.
Jesus saved the lives of all humanity by becoming human.
And he didn't just become human, but he went to the furthest extremes,
and he sacrificed his life.
He died so that we might live.
And so as we sing, as we celebrate this Christmas season,
as we remember angels we have heard in high,
Gloria in Excelsis Deo.
As we sing, Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel, God with us,
we can remember Jesus our Creator who reminds us of our past
and informs us of our present and gives us hope for the future.
We can remember that God became one of us to bear our sins so that we might live.
And when you receive Jesus as your Savior, as you daily abide,
as you daily believe in him, you, we, have the power and the authority
to be children of God.
We're going to sing in just a moment, Joy to the World, The Lord is Come.
The next line says, Let earth receive her King.
I hope that you have received Jesus.
Let's bow our heads as we pray.
Dear God, thank you for this story that God became one with us,
Emmanuel, God with us.
The word became flesh.
And Lord, it's my prayer that each one of us here can say that,
yes, we've received you.
And Lord, it's my prayer that we will daily believe in you.
And forgive us for times when we have been distracted.
Forgive us for times when we have gone in different directions.
But Lord, thank you for your love and your grace and for giving us the authority,
the power to be called a child of God.
Be with each person here, with each family that's represented,
and may we each day invite Jesus to be God with us.
Amen.