Everyday Christmas

Tonight each one of us has come to this Christmas Eve service for many different reasons. Perhaps you have come because you like to sing Christmas carols, or perhaps you have come because you feel obligated to, it’s part of your responsibility or duty to attend a Christmas Eve service, or perhaps you have come because you realize that Christmas is more than just about presents, it is about the birth of Jesus and so you want to honor and worship Jesus, or maybe you just feel some strange tugging on your heart to be here and you are not sure why you’ve come. We come for many reasons, but what I hope we can each take away from tonight as we look at God’s Word is that it doesn’t matter why you are here, as much as it matters what you will do about Christmas every day of your life. God is happy we can be here to celebrate his Son’s birth, but what God is more interested in is what this child means for every day of your life. How does a child born in a manger 2000 years ago change every day of your life?

That’s why we go to John’s gospel to understand what difference this child makes in our life. John doesn’t mess around with a lot of details. No angel visitations, no traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, no manger scene. Instead he gets right to the point of Christmas and so he summarizes the whole birth story by saying this, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (1:14),” or I like the way the paraphrase of the Bible called the Message says it, “the Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” Jesus is the Word, and what he is telling us is that Jesus, the Word was around long before the child was laid in the manger, in fact he was there in the beginning of time, he was a part of creation, and he even goes so far as to say the Word, Jesus, was God. Jesus is God come in the flesh. This is more than just a human child, he is God come to earth.

God had come in the flesh to walk among us, to experience the same ups and downs we do, the same temptations, the heartbreaks, even to experience a brutal death on a cross. Why would he do this? Why would he leave the splendor of heaven and come to the darkness of earth as a weak human infant named Jesus? The Bible tells us he did this because he loves us that much, he knew that if he didn’t come to earth, we could never experience a truly full and abundant life, we could not walk in the light of his paths, and we could never be adopted as his children. That’s what John tells us here in these verses.

Three Results of the Word Becoming Flesh

1. We become adopted as God’s children.

The first result we can experience from the “Word becoming flesh” and probably the most important is that we can become children of God.

NLT John 1:12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.

God wants every person on earth, every person here, to be his child. We are not automatically God’s children. Just because we are born into this earth doesn’t mean we are his children. We must be born again, born of his Spirit to become one of his children. That is why God, a spiritual being became a human child, so that we could be one of God’s spiritual children. As it says in the passage we are given the rights to become a child of God when we believe that God came in the flesh and have accepted him into our life. When we believe in him and accept him, the Bible tells us we are adopted into his family and we receive all the benefits of being children of God.

NLT Romans 8:17 And since we are his children, we will share his treasures-- for everything God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

When we are adopted as children of God we receive treasures, the same treasures Jesus, as the Son of God received. These treasures include: forgiveness, eternal and abundant life, light, blessings of love, joy, peace, etc.. These treasures God give us in abundance and He works them inside us so that they are unaffected by whatever bad things or suffering we must endure. God tells us we will experience suffering in our life but those who keep the faith will receive his treasures which will endure forever.