Good morning, my friends. It's been a while since I stood in this pulpit. Thank you for
your invitation, for me to open God's Word this morning to you. Let me wish you a very
blessed Christmas and a very providential New Year. You might think Christmas is gone,
that's only for the Western churches. Apparently, today is Christmas for the Eastern Orthodox
churches. Calendars. Who can live with them? But one thing is cemented for sure in time and
calendar and history, the Lord's Day. It's always on a Sunday. And so here we are to celebrate the
Lord's Day together, opening up the Lord's Word to us. Let's bow our heads and ask God to come
and be found with us. Father, open our hearts and our minds as we peer into your Word. Open
your Word to us through the ministry of God, Holy Spirit. Enable us to appropriate it, hide it in
our hearts, carry it with us as we go about our daily living. Enable us never to forget what Christ
has done for us. That even now in His name, we can gather and in His name proclaim Him and enjoy
His presence through God, Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, we ask for this grace. Amen.
How many of you have heard of Helen Keller? Ah, good to see some hands up. She was a very vehement
supporter of disability, disabled people in two centuries ago. Not just in our times when we hear
that so often. She was born towards the end of the 1800s and passed away in 1960, if I'm not
mistaken. When Helen Keller was 19 months old, she contracted an illness that left her blind and
deaf for life. It was not until she was years old that she began to have any meaningful communication
with those around her. This occurred when a very gifted teacher, and I think she was Aussie, Anne
Sullivan, taught her to say water as Anne spelled water on the palm of her hand. From that pivotal
experience, Helen Keller entered the wonderful world of words and names and it transformed her
life. Once Helen was accustomed to the new system of communication with others, her parents arranged
for her to receive religious instruction from a very eminent Boston clergyman by the name of Philip
Brooks. That was common door-says. Christianity was cultural as well. One day during her lesson,
Helen said these remarkable words to Philip Brooks, I knew about God before you told me,
only I did not know his name. What profound statement. You know, I read the story in one
of Warren Beardsby's books as I was looking at hymns for myself this Christmas season. So forgive
me, this is partly my personal musings of what the year holds for us, holds for my family, for myself,
and I trust this will be beneficial to you. So looking at the hymns that we normally sing,
I came across this hymn, At the Name of Jesus by Carolyn Noll. Now there's a stanza in that
hymn that goes like this, Humble for a season to receive a name from the lips of sinners unto whom
he came. Faithfully he bore it, spotless to the last, brought it back victorious when from death
he passed. So it's no wonder I've been musing on the incarnation, what it means for me and hopefully
for you too as a church when we look at the incarnation, not only just for the moment today,
but remembering the incarnation in our daily living. You may consider it like a theological
construct and just leave it in the books, but the incarnation is real, Jesus is real, Jesus is present,
and when he says I am, it's also for the present, not just the past or the future. So we must not
lose that relationship that comes from the incarnation. So that's why my thoughts are
going to John chapter 1 verses 1 to 18. I'm not going to be exegeting the whole passage,
you know, I'm totally aware how out of depth I am when I come to it. There's someone who said
John's gospel, particularly even the prologue of his gospel, so what we're looking is like a
lake where birds can swim but elephants drown, and he already meant that, and we mean it too as we
read through the gospel. But after the busyness of Christmas and New Year gatherings, when everything
seems to have slowed down and we go back to the routine of life, I suppose all of us will be
asking ourselves what is that we expect and look forward in the year ahead? What is that we desire
most for the coming year? Others may ask in another way, what is that God wants for me to do this
coming year? I know what I want for myself in this coming year, and I hope you know what you want
for yourself. As an individual and even as a family, what we desire most, my friends, is the
relational presence of God with us. Getting to know Him more and more, resonating with Paul when
he says, I want to know Him. Towards the end of his line, the Philippians letter, that's what he
writes, I want to know Him. I want to know the power of His resurrection and dare I say even the
sufferings of His life. It's been a tough year for us with many unexpected things happening,
and we need His relational presence with us. And that is what the prologue of John's Gospel is
about. Who is this person you're going to have a relational presence with? Who is this person that
you commune with, engage with, and get to know more and more? If you look into the Bible as a whole,
it is obvious that what the triune God desires most is to have a personal encountering relationship
with His people. That's at the core of the Bible. It's at the core of the covenant. I will be their
God and they will be my people. It's a relational thing. It's a relational construct. And to
facilitate that relationship, He has even entered into creation to enable it. That is what we
celebrated at Christmas. That is what we call the incarnation. Isn't that an awesome thing? That God
loves you and wants to have a relationship with you and has gone to such limits to make that a
possibility. Isn't that awesome? Isn't that wondrous that God wants this for us, not whether we desire
it or not, but this is what God wants for His people and this is what He has pursued throughout
the scriptures. Why did we start in Exodus this morning? I just want to make a few comments on
that passage. There's much we share in common with God's first congregation in the desert of Sinai.
You know, we may be separated in time, but in human nature, we are the same. At least that is
what the Apostle Paul thought too. Not just us as we study the scriptures. We just had to read
chapter 10 of his first letter to the Corinthian Church and we note there in chapter 10 all the
parallels he makes between us, upon whom the end of the ages has come, and those first people in
the congregation in the desert. We noted the predicament in our Old Testament reading, didn't
we, from Exodus 33 this morning? You find that a lot of echoes in John chapter 1 verses 1 to 18,
with the Old Testament, especially in Exodus 33 and 34. They're in deep trouble. These people
who left Egypt and came out with Moses, they were in deep trouble, my friends. God had rescued them
from bondage in Egypt. God had saved them, brought them out of the mighty hand, and they have so far,
when these words were written, camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. A lot of things happened while
they were at the foot of Mount Sinai, the worst being the Golden Calf Incident, where they blatantly
rebelled against the God who saved them in the first place and worshiped other gods to their
detriment. So God commands them, guys, it's time to move out to the promised land. But this one thing,
God was not going to go with them. What? He who led them out of Egypt with fire and smoke, fire
and clouds, he's not going to go with them. And he tells them why he's not going to go with them.
You read Exodus 33 verse 5. God describes them as a stiff-necked people, as a stubborn-hearted
people, and I'm not going with you because I might destroy you on the way. They did not recognize the
holiness of God. They were so self-centered that they forgot or didn't understand who this God was
that saved them in the first place. Wonder of wonders, God still condescended and met with Moses.
Obviously, he did not participate in the rebellion and he agreed to meet with him in the tent of
meeting outside the camp. Moses continued to intercede for God's people and noticed persistence
at seeking God's favor, not only for himself but also for the people. God always uses the first
person in that interaction with Moses. I am pleased with you. I will go with you. I will look after
you. But Moses on the other hand says, Lord, us, don't forget about us. Don't forget about us as
a people. Let me read chapter 33 verses 13 to 16. You'll get the picture there. Moses answers God,
if you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with
you. But remember that this nation is your people. The Lord replied, my presence will go with you and
I will give you rest. Then Moses said to him, if your presence does not go with us, do not send us
up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you
go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of
the earth? Isn't that the same problem that we have today? You meet as a church, you gather to
study the scriptures, you long to know Jesus and walk with him. Why? Because you want the rest of
the world to come to know him. That is my desire too, to know him and make him known. That was the
desire of Moses and the first people in the desert. And just like the people needed an intercessor
like Moses, we also need an intercessor who is greater than Moses. We'll find that out a little
later. Wonder and wonders, as I said, God condescends. They needed the presence of God amongst them as
much as we need his presence with us. If we are going to negotiate our lives today with contentment
and joy. This holy, intense, powerful presence of God is foundational to God's covenant promises to
his people throughout the scriptures. It appears to Moses in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai to
his people and then this shekinah enters into the tabernacle, the tent of meeting which becomes a
tabernacle and later even into the temple so that God can dwell among his people. But because of
indwelling sin, this has been a rocky road for God's Old Testament people. A rocky road indeed.
Now I'm not talking about the chocolate. Their sin and disobedience led to many a banishment from
God's presence. God departing from the temple, the kabod, Israel's exile from the land, their
captivity in Babylon. And in the midst of this however, grace upon grace, God never gave up on
his people. The fortunate people were the ones who went into captivity, not those who are left
behind in Jerusalem. I had to talk about this to my son when he left home this time. In the midst
of this, God never gave up on his people. He continued to reach out to them through his prophets
and finally fulfilled his promises in the Gospels. When Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us appears, the
incarnation my friends brings to a climax the relational presence of God. The theme that drives
the whole Old Testament story. The fulfillment of his promise that I will be their God and they will
be my people. So this is the burden and purpose of the Apostle John in the prologue of his Gospel,
which he then flushes out more in detail the rest of his Gospel. And as I said, we note many echoes
which after 33 of the book of Exodus. I'm only going to make some observations mainly from John
1 to 5 and the latter part of the prologue verses 14 to 18. They're just observations and I trust
you will just follow me as I muse along. That's a privilege we get. In John chapter 1, 1 to 5,
the Apostle makes it very clear who Jesus is and why he has come to earth. As we read earlier on,
John 1, 1, we note the similarity of the phrase in the beginning to the opening phrase of Genesis
1, 1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Yet in contrast, the in the beginning
here in John's prologue goes even further back than the creation of the visible world. You should
note that even before time and place existed. So in verses 1 to 3, John refers to Jesus as the word.
The only time we know that the word is really Jesus is later on in the prologue. When he,
I think it is in verse 17, you find that John links up the word with who Jesus is. Until then
it's the word. It is he or him. And he says in verses 1 to 3 that he was with God and was God.
John establishes the deity of Jesus even in his pre-existence. He shared in the same divine essence
of God. That's what John is saying. No, Jesus did not become God. As some people like Arius in those
days in the early first centuries and the Jehovah's Witnesses these days, all Aryan in their thinking,
they add the word a God to that verse and confuse the whole issue. So if you read the
New World Translation, it goes in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the
word was a God. Where you get that a from? I don't know. It doesn't appear in the great text. They
have their own convoluted way of arguing this from the semantics. But that is the point that
John is making. That Jesus is holy God. He did not become God. He was and is and will always be God.
Having declared that the word is God and proclaims divine essence, John goes on to prove his divinity
from his works. And what are the works? They are the works of creation. Through him all things were
made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. So you look around at yourself and the world
you live in and others and you see and you have to realize that Jesus made us all including the
world, including creation. He made everything. Even the guy who throws rocks at you or spits out bad
words at you. He was made by Jesus and he was made in God's image. Crippled or not. He is God's,
he or she is God's creation. God made everything. As someone once told me, God made neighbors. We
make enemies. And how profound that was. In verses 4 to 5, John tells us why Jesus came to earth. Why
did he come to earth? He says he came to give both life and light. If you look at Genesis 1-3, God's
first creative act was light. Let there be light, he said, and there was light. Light in turn makes
it possible for life to exist. So on day 5 and day 6 of creation, God made animate life and inanimate
life to populate both the waters and the dry land, culminating in the creation of human life.
Without light, there is no life. Anybody who knows biology 101 can attest to that. John asserts that
life was in him, Jesus. He's the source of life, both physical and spiritual. He's the one who
enables people to walk in the light. Light that enables people to be what? To be images of God.
So it's not just that you are created an image of God. Ask yourself, am I an imager of God? That's
what God wants us to be, his imagers in a broken world. And darkness which filled creation before
light, everything was tohu wa bohu, everything was chaos. The darkness which filled creation before
light came has not overcome the light. I think overcome is a better translation of that Greek word
there. In John's gospel, darkness pertains to the world estranged from God, dominated by Satan. And
Satan has not overcome the light brought into humanity by Jesus the world. Just pause for a
moment and think about the reality and the truth of all things. Who we are and what the world is.
These are profound words. Elephants can drown in them. So in verses 6 to 13, John the apostle,
in a parenthesis I would say, in brackets, describes that testimony of John the Baptist in
regard to Jesus as the true light and the outcome of all who accepted Jesus as the true light of
the world. They, he says, those who accept Jesus, they become true children of God. And who are the
children of God? Images of the God who created them. That is the intention of verses 6 to 13.
Then we come to verse 14. Oh boy. Really verse 14 can take over from verse 5 and you can forget
about the brackets in between. It uses the same words. It could be seen as a natural extension or
conclusion of verse 5. And in verse 14 we read this profound statement that this pre-existent word
became flesh. This word became flesh. Now this is shocking even to the Jewish ears. I've later
been reading some word works around Judaism of Jesus' time and it may not be alien to that.
People have gone to Greece and all this to pick up connections. We don't have to. But that the word
of God which John says is Jesus becomes flesh or something. Oh what? God entering this world? This
flesh? You know John, rather than using words such as human, became human or took on a body,
John here uses the most crude term flesh. Flesh here denotes all of the human person in creaturely
broken existence as distinct from God. That's how Kastenberger puts it. I think it's a great
definition. Paul uses flesh for the body under the control of Satan. If you read his letters,
he doesn't talk about the Soma. He talks about Sarkozy, flesh. So think for a second. The powerful
word of God has been born into frail broken humanity. You can only fall down and worship
that the God of creation should condescend to this level and become what he became. The word
became does not mean changed into in the sense that Jesus by becoming human ceased to be God.
No, he was always God and always will be God. Only that he has got a body now. My professor in
Trinity tells me something that I'm still working through. The Trinity has changed since Jesus came
on earth. He's got a body now. He's got a body now. Not as becoming flesh means that Jesus appeared
human or even took on humanity. No, the main point in this statement is that God has now chosen,
he has chosen to be with his people in a more personal way than ever before. This my friends
is the fulfillment of the relationship presence, the relational presence of God, which was so
eagerly desired in the Old Testament context. And we see this further on when John says that he made
his dwelling amongst us. That's the NIV translation. We see in that phrase and made his dwelling
amongst us. A Greek word that is used and translated dwelling, which is more like he pitched his tent
amongst us. It's like you've gone on a holiday and you go and pitch your tent somewhere, throw
your swags down and have a holiday in that place. Jesus has pitched his tent with us. That's what
that word means. That's the word used for the tabernacle throughout the Old Testament days when
they were in the desert. This rare term is used elsewhere in New Testament only in the book of
Revelation. And I'll suggest you go and look it up. You'll find this recurring in Revelation,
but nowhere else, not in the gospels, except in John. And it suggests that in Jesus, God has come
to take up residence amongst his people once again. He's come to take up residence. That's
his tent and it's amongst us. The house next door, the house down the road, the house in our backyard.
And he's done this in a way even more intimate than when he dwelled in the midst of Israel in
the wilderness. This is more intimate. Moses met God and heard his word in the tent of meeting.
Now people may meet God and hear him in the flesh of Jesus. That's what John is saying. This
dwelling amongst us or pitching his tent amongst us is related to his incarnation. That is Jesus
being made human flesh. So Jesus, according to John, literally, John is saying he took the place of
the temple in Jesus' time. And this comes out explicitly in John chapter 2 verses 19 to 22.
Let me just read that because this is quite mind blowing. You know, when they're arguing about the
temple, that became the focus of everything in Jesus' time. And how often was he accused of
speaking against the temple? Of not, of even going in and clearing out the temple? What right has he
got to do that? That is the place of God's dwelling. And he goes there and makes a whip and drives all
the people saying, you guys have turned it into a marketplace. And in the context, Jesus answered
them, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. He probably pointed to himself.
The Jews replied, of course, they missed the point. It has taken 46 years to build this temple and
you're going to raise it up in three days. But John adds, but the temple he had spoken of was
his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they
believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. There are profound things that happened
when Jesus was walking this earth. Again, in echo to what Moses experienced and even more profoundly,
John exclaims that we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father,
full of grace and truth. Of course, this refers to John and the apostles who were the first
eyewitnesses. Probably he is recalling the Mount of Transfiguration when John and Peter and James,
have you, were there with Jesus and he was transfigured before him. It's almost as though his flesh,
the light within him shone through the flesh. This is a different story, but it's worth meditating on.
They saw who Jesus really was. Who is this man that he had been eating and drinking and walking with?
They were the first eyewitnesses. We are year witnesses of the gospel. I know there are stories
where people have said they met Jesus. I don't know how he looks. I don't know how Jesus looks
like. We don't have any pictures of him. Even that lovely Scandinavian man with beautiful hair and
deep blue eyes. I was told that he was Jesus when I was growing up. You know that. If you take the
Middle Eastern approach, it could not be him. But let's not forget that. If we belong to Jesus,
if we belong to Jesus, we may be the only Jesus the world will ever see. So as John concludes in
verse 18, no one has ever seen God, but the God, the one and only, this one kind of a unique God,
monogreous is another word. There's lots of ink spelled. Many people thought it comes from the
Greek root of begat. So and so begat, so and so gnaw. But then they found out no, the root word
of it is genus, kind. So when I go and tell my Muslim friends, Jesus, God's only son, they say
what? God had a wife? No, what we mean is that he was this one of a kind, unique person. He said
this one of a kind, unique God. Actually, that text argues for monogreous theos for those sitting
here rather than monogreous he was. One of a kind, unique God, who said the Father's bosom, the
Father's side, he has made him known. And that word is the word we use for exegesis. He has
explained him to us. That's what John is trying to say. The point is this, even Moses only saw
the afterglow of the divine glory, the afterglow of the divine glory. But this was equated in the
scriptures to God speaking to Moses face to face. John says more profoundly that Jesus is the unique
one kind of a God who was at the Father's side has made him known, has explained him to us. In other
words, Jesus has broken the barrier that made it impossible for human beings to see God and has made
God known throughout the Gospels. Or let me put a big hermeneutic. If the Old Testament is about who
is the Messiah, who is the Messiah, who is this person, the New Testament is really about who is
the Father. Everybody thought they knew God, particularly the Pharisees, teachers of the law.
But Jesus come back to them and said, you don't really know my Father. You don't know my Father.
And so often it opens up the rest of the thing. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, he said
to his first disciples, how awesome, how wondrous. That 33 years when he was on earth. No, I wouldn't
want to be there. Why? Because I'm a man of little faith. Even those who are eyewitnesses had
problems finding out who Jesus is. What about me, a year witness? How many doubts come into our heads
and our hearts? That's why we always got to remind ourselves, go back to the Scriptures.
Scriptures are life to us. They're not empty words. They carry life to us. They bring light to us.
And in His light, we see light as we read the Scriptures. So what does the incarnation,
let me close with this. What does it mean for us, those who desire the relational presence of God?
First, since Jesus has come in the flesh, we are in a more advantageous position in biblical
history than our Old Testament counterparts. Think about this. If Jesus did not become man,
He could not be tempted as we are. If Jesus did not become man, He could not be an example for us
to follow, to emulate. If Jesus did not become man, He could not die as we do. So the writer of the
Hebrews sums this up so wonderfully in chapter 2 verses 14 to 18. He says, since the children,
those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ, have flesh and blood, He too shared in their
humanity so that by His death, He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the
devil, and free those who are all their lives held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it's
not angels that He helps, but Abraham's seed, Abraham's descendants. And we are Abraham's
descendants if we share the faith of Abraham, as Paul so clearly hammers over and over again.
For this reason, Jesus had to be made like His brothers in every way in order that He might
become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement
for the sins of the people. Because He Himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help
those who are tempted. My friends, Jesus has come, He has died for us and was raised, and Jesus will
come again. Until then, let us relish His relational presence through God, Holy Spirit, and explore
further what it means to be His people on earth. And that's my prayer for you as a church. Explore
Him, study the Word, grow to know Him, walk with Him, and share Him with those around you. To know
Him and make Him known, may that be your motto this coming year. That's going to be my motto too,
as well as his. Father, thank you for this moment to gather around your Word. We just flabbergasted
as we read your Word. Thank you for God, Holy Spirit, who enlightens us, who illumines us,
opens your Word to us, that we can peer into things that our flesh will not allow. Help us
to be less and less self-centered, and more and more Christ-centered. Help us to be a church that
is Christ-centered and grace-driven, as Jesus showed so much grace, grace upon grace. Help us
to be such a church, Lord, that will attract people to the person of Jesus Christ. Keep us
together. Walk with us this year. Enable us to see more and more of you as we walk with you.
In Jesus' name, amen.