So we continue our sermon series, The Mess and the
Miracle, our Advent sermon series this morning.
And we are going to be in the Gospel of John, Chapter 1.
Now, I told my staff and my council this is the shortest
sermon notes I've ever written, and it is true.
It is not even a full page.
But I will do my best to really encapsulate what I believe the
Mess and the Miracle is in our Advent journey of John 1.
Because you see, John 1, the Gospel of John, this very first
chapter, is a vision and a version of Christmas.
Now, it's not one that you will probably hear read on either
December 24th in a service or on December 25th in a service.
Because we go to Luke or we go to Matthew because they give us
real good detail about the shepherds and the angels and
even the lowly animals, the manger and all that it is.
However, what John does is he encapsulates the person of
Christ.
So we are going to be in the beginning of John, John 1.
And so we are going to start with the very first verse.
And a lot of you know these verses.
And for some of you, you have never really tied them to
Christmas, but let's journey in that this morning.
In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him and without Him was not
anything made that was made.
In Him was light and that light was the life of men.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has
not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that
all might believe through Him.
He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light which gives light to everyone was coming
into the world.
He was in the world and the world was made through Him, yet
the world did not know Him.
He came to His own and to His own people did not receive Him.
But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He
gave the right to become children of God who were born
not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of
man but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen
His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father full of grace
and truth.
That is the gospel of our Lord this morning.
So we see in John 1 we see a narrative about three different
people.
Okay.
The first narrative we see is about the Word, right?
The Word that becomes flesh is who?
Jesus, okay.
And we see that that part of God's plan, He is coming into
the world, right?
If you don't know the word light after reading those 14
verses, you weren't listening because light is mentioned
multiple, multiple times and we'll get to that in a second.
And then the second person that we're talking about is who?
John, right?
John the Baptist, so we understand.
John the Baptist, not John who wrote the gospel but Jesus'
cousin John, John the Baptist who came as witness, some would
say the last prophet.
We'll get to that in a second.
But then the third, this one might be a little, maybe it's
tough.
I'll put a cup of coffee and a conversation with Pastor Jim on
this one.
What's the third person?
I'm not elevating it to lunch.
It's not that hard.
No, I already said Jesus.
No.
Who said us?
Okay, Nick, you've gotten way too many coffees.
But no, it's the world, right?
That the world engages the light.
The world knows who the light is because of John and the
witness that John brings but we play a part in this narrative.
And that should be super exciting.
We get to be brought into the Christmas story, the Jesus
narrative, we get a part to play.
But that's the great disappointment, isn't it?
That when you read John 1, it sets from the very beginning
what the issue is and we talked about it last week when we were
in the Garden of Eden.
We talked about the mess that sin created, that in the sin
being, you know, Adam and Eve, that after sin had entered the
world and got put in our kind of in our bloodline, we see the
first thing that Adam and Eve do when they hear the sound of
their father, God, in the garden, they hide, right?
We use the term held, right?
That they created their own version of hell because the
definition of hell is an eternity without God.
That instinctively because of sin, when we do something that
we think our parents, like let's go when we're kids, we do
something that we think our parents disapprove of, we try
to hide it.
We either try to hide from them or we try to hide what we do,
the truth of the situation.
So we see that in Adam and Eve.
We see the mess that not only was created but the mess that
was sustained from Genesis chapter 3 that is still a
problem today in 2023.
So we play a part in this.
But the part that you play, the part that I play, even the part
that the kids are going to play today, yes, even the pre-Ks, the
part we play in this is actually sin.
We represent the sin of the world because we are the world.
Now that's probably not something you're going to put
on your Christmas cards, right?
You're not going to, we're probably not going to get from
the Schleichers this morning.
You know, I'm only picking on you because you're sitting in
the car, you know, Merry Christmas from the Schleichers.
You are the sin of the world.
Right?
You're not going to get that from the fishers like, hey,
Christ brings darkness but you bring death.
Merry Christmas.
Hopefully you don't do that.
If you're planning on doing that, use this as the Holy
Spirit's prompt to have you not do it.
Just don't send one out then.
Right?
If that's what you want, don't send one out.
But that is the truth of the season.
And if you look at the world, the world wants to create this
season that has nothing to do with the truth, everything to
do with consumerism and all that other junk.
But at the heart of the problem, the heart of the solution is
sin.
That Jesus didn't come because it was a nice day.
Jesus didn't come because, you know what, it was just getting
too boring up there in heaven so he's going to come as a baby
into a manger, a feeding trough.
He came because there was a plan set in place from Genesis
chapter 3.
And what John is teaching us, what John is cultivating for us
is that the sin that we will deal with because of Genesis
chapter 3 are two different levels of broken
relationships.
The mess we find ourselves is that we are a people of broken
relationships.
We see it in John 1.
There is an intent to have a good, awesome relationship.
We have that ability.
Christ, because of Christ in God's plan, we should be able
to have healthy relationships in this life.
But we don't because of the sin that is in the world.
And it's not just the person maybe in front of you or across
the sanctuary that you have a problem with.
We had a problem with Jesus.
That we actually have a problem with the truth.
We have a problem with the solution.
We have a problem with Christ.
But the one person that we do need to focus on as well is
John.
Now, John wasn't perfect.
No.
You read John, right?
John was more like his zealot, right?
John, yeah, he called it like it was, but he had his righteous
anger, but John was not perfect.
John was not the Savior.
Just because you're in the bloodline of Jesus doesn't make
you Jesus.
But we see here that John is bearing witness.
And that's an interesting word.
When I say the word witness, what comes to mind for you?
A couple people.
When you hear the word witness, what comes to mind?
A truth teller, okay?
A courtroom, absolutely.
Expound on that.
Witnesses come to give truth or give testimony, right?
Because the opposite of that is perjury.
And so that they give testimony to what they saw.
I see this daily with my three boys.
They love to bear witness about what the others have done.
It happens on a regular occurrence, right?
When one of them is in the eye line of me or my wife, I'll
throw myself in there.
When one of the four boys are in the eye line of Carrie,
knowing that we've done something wrong, we love,
instead of owning it and saying, I did that, I am sorry, we love
to initially bear total truth and witness to what the others
have done in the situation.
That sounds a lot like Genesis chapter 3, but that is how our
relationships work.
Because what's the quote?
If I'm going down, I'm taking all of you with me.
I appreciate all of you being good stewards of only one
person, but it's really everybody.
If I'm going down, I'm taking all of you with me.
Because we don't know how to stand on our own even when
we're wrong.
Think about that in your life.
When you bear witness to things or people bear witness of you,
what are they actually bearing witness of?
What truth are you giving the world or your family or your
neighbors or the kids in your class or insert whoever here?
What are they witnessing?
If I sat down, I'm not going to make this personal because
that's going to be super awkward, but if I sat down with
eight of the closest people in your life and I said, so, what
do you bear witness about this person's life?
I hope it's a really fun conversation.
I hope it's, oh man, this person, they're so helpful,
they're thoughtful, they're compassionate, you know, they
know really what my love language is and they really
speak to that.
They're very considerate.
They're self-aware.
But if I had to guess, because I get to handpick, not you.
Because if I let you handpick, my guess is it would be all the
people that think really good things about you or the people
you paid to have that conversation that when we get to
the heart of it, what are people witnessing about our life?
Well, that person's actually more of a tyrant.
That person comes across this way, but really behind closed
doors they're like this.
Sustaining these relationships is hard, is messy.
But wouldn't it be a lot easier, just like we learned last week
to this week, that even in our mess we could stand before not
only God, not only his church, but our friends and family and
say, yeah, I made a mess of that.
And I got this blind spot in my life.
I don't know why I keep going back and it's so attracted to
this sin that we open ourselves up vulnerability to say, man,
I know I fall.
I know that I can go to Christ in forgiveness.
And not in a cheap way.
Not as Paul refers to it, cheap grace, that Lord, thank you for
forgiving me.
I'm sorry for what I did Friday.
And we'll set the appointment next Saturday so I can
apologize for next Friday as well.
That's not how it works.
But if we're looking at the heart of the miracle that is
Advent, it is the miracle that we can live in the world, good,
bad, and ugly, knowing that there's grace.
Knowing that there's forgiveness.
Maybe we don't do it when we're little kids, but we should do
that as adults.
That if we're adults of faith.
Now if you're here this morning and you don't have faith, if
maybe this idea of Jesus is a very distant one, maybe you
don't fully get it or maybe you've been burned by that on
behalf of the church, I am so sorry that you were burned by
that, I would love to talk to you about that.
I'll pay for the coffee that time.
But understand that if you're here this morning and you claim
Jesus, you claim the miracle of Advent, you claim that the word
that came flesh dwelt among us, that our example is here with us
today, then things like grace, forgiveness, humility,
tenderness, compassion, that should be what people witness
about us.
Us individually, us as a church.
Is there still truth?
Absolutely.
You don't deny that.
Passion and compromise are two very different things.
But that we understand that when we come alongside someone that
is stuck in sin, in a season of sin, in an ideology of sin or
an identity of sin, understand that we come alongside them not
as perfect.
You can't come alongside someone that's unperfect.
If you believe you're perfect, it doesn't work.
But that we come alongside going, I'm messy just like you.
Let's work at this together.
We know where we're going.
We know what the end goal is.
The end goal is the cross.
But maybe, just maybe, we got to walk through the manger first.
Maybe we got to sit low in what we're dealing with, being honest
with who we are, understanding that in Christ, the true light,
that is what we are bear witnessing to.
So I leave you with this thought.
When people see your Christianity, when people see the
way you live your life and you walk out your faith, are they
witnessing the true light of Christ or are they witnessing
the darkness of the world?
Because if there's a blend of that, I think the darkness is
going to be the one that wins.
Even though we know in the story it doesn't.
But if your witness is that of forgiveness and grace and hope,
then you are the witness of the miracle because you've gone
through the mess.
But if it's the other side, think about the damage that's
doing, the hurt and pain that's causing, the hypocrisy that is
being walked out.
Next week, we're going to be in the book of Esther and we're
going to see someone who is standing to be the witness, even
amidst pain and hardship, even if she loses everything, yet she
still stood.
Let's pray.
Father, for this morning I give you thanks for the prophecy
that you've given, John, for our hearts.
Father, though we camped in it just a little bit, may we read
that this week?
Read the implications of what it means for you to dwell among us
that the world would see that, the incarnation alive.
But God, now as I hear those kids getting ready to come up
the stairs, I pray a peace not only over them but over all of
us, that we would journey with them, the story they're going to
tell, the songs they're going to sing, the Christ that they're
going to praise.
Father, we give you thanks for that and we pray all this in
your holy son's name.
Amen.
Our offering this morning is for Highway Connections, a wonderful
ministry that we partner with.
So at this time, Deacons, come on up and take our morning
offering.