A Christmas Message for December 22, 2024 (based on a sermon preached at New Hope Baptist Church near Fulton, MO on 12-22-2024. This is not an exact transcription.)
(Full disclosure: Sermon Central has already posted a message of mine, based on this same text, called “The Unwanted Christmas Gift”. This message was preached to a different congregation at least a year later and is not just a copy and paste of the previous message.)
Introduction: We’ll be celebrating Christmas Day in a few days! Some of us are remembering the different gifts we’ve received, or, maybe those we’ve given to others. But I hope we all, all of us, remember the greatest gift of all—Jesus Himself, and the salvation He made possible!
Our text this morning comes from John’s gospel, chapter 1; beginning with verse 1. I’ll be reading through verse 14:
<Opening prayer>
Text: John 1:1-14, KJV: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made 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.
1 He wasn’t known by the world in general
Note how our text actually takes us back to the beginning—doesn’t the phrase “in the beginning” remind us of what Moses wrote in Genesis 1? God made the universe and our earth in six days (I take the six days of Genesis 1 to be literal days) and He’s been managing things since!
Now, one of those things He managed was the presence everywhere, There’s a term some people use called “omnipresent” which just means God is everywhere and in all places—there is no place where anyone can escape from God! David said as much in Psalm 139, especially verse 7.
And part of that was being part of the world He had created. I mean, think of this: not long after God created Adam from the dust of the ground, God had a conversation with Adam! And they—God, Adam, and later Eve—all enjoyed that communion, fellowship, just talking things over, I take it. Even after they sinned, Adam and Eve still knew God wanted to speak with them one-on-one (Genesis 3).
God stayed in contact with His creation. Look at how often He would speak to people: Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and many others. John wrote in verse 10 that “He (Jesus) was in the world”, but here’s the sad part, “the world knew Him not.” More literally, as a Bible teacher explained, John said, “the world was not knowing Him”. It’s as if God was reaching out to people, but not many were reaching back to Him.
To get another look at this, take a moment and read Romans 1, especially verses 18 through the end of that chapter. Paul knew, as most if not all believers knew, that Noah and his family, eight people in all, survived the Flood as recorded in Genesis and all, to the best of our knowledge, were believers in the God of Noah.
But sometime later, the vast majority of humankind decided they wanted to worship something or some one other than the Only True God. Paul traces that sad, sad story how those first pagans knew God personally but rejected Him. Again, Paul said that those first pagans “exchanged the truth of God for the lie (Romans 1:25)—they had a choice between following the God Whom they knew, but rejected Him in order to worship other “gods” or idols which they made with their own hands!
Only a few have ever known the blessedness of speaking to God as to a friend, and truly, there is no better friend than the Lord Himself. Those pagans of yesterday and the pagans of today may or may not know what they’re missing, but we did! Aren’t all of us glad the Lord loved us enough to offer us salvation and forgiveness of our sins?
Let’s not forget, there was one man whom God chose to be the ancestor of a great nation. Most of us have at least a working knowledge of Abraham, but there was something even more special than Abraham’s salvation. We’ll see this in a moment.
2 He wasn’t accepted or received by His own (nation)
Abraham—so much could be said about him. The important thing is that he became a believer in the One True God and followed God. Of course, Abraham was not perfect: he made a few glaring mistakes but God forgave him.
That wasn’t all. Besides salvation, God gave Abraham a promise that one day his descendants would be more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore (see Genesis 22:17). And, eventually, Abraham’s grandson Jacob did receive God’s blessing and became the father of 12 sons. These twelve men became heads of the Twelve Tribes of Israel and every descendant of Abraham through Isaac (there were others) and Jacob (not counting Esau, Jacob’s twin brother) can eventually trace his or her ancestry back to one of these twelve men.
Some of us might be thinking, “Okay, we know Jesus was born into a Jewish family but why did God choose just one tribe?” I have to agree, why the Lord chose Judah and not the others has always been a bit of a puzzle to me. I mean, think back to the time “Little Joe”, their next to youngest brother, was sent by Jacob to see what the ten others were doing. They all wanted to kill Joseph but Judah in so many words said, “No, let’s sell him to these traders. Out of sight, out of mind, right? We get some money, and he gets a free trip to Egypt. So long, Joe!”
Pretty despicable, if you ask me. Judah even left the family for maybe 20 years trying to make his own way in Canaan, even marrying a Canaanite woman and having three sons with her. He did a few other questionable things, too, before he returned home with his two, ahem, other sons. Genesis 38 has that chapter of Judah’s life.
But something happened in Judah’s life where he completely changed. Compare how he acted in Genesis 37 when they thought they’d got rid of Joseph and Genesis 44-45.when they met Joseph again, for the first time in years! Judah spoke for the entire group and even offered to remain as Joseph’s slave (remember, they didn’t know it was Joseph they were speaking to)! Then Jacob sealed the deal, so to speak, when he blessed Judah in Genesis 49, prophesying that “the scepter would never depart from Judah (Gen/ 49:10). Many years passed but eventually God did choose a descendant of Judah, David, to be Israel’s greatest human king.
And Jesus was born into the family of David! Matthew 1 shows how Jesus had the title to the crown, through His foster-father Joseph. There was a problem, though, as one of David’s great-grandchildren, Jeconiah or Coniah, was cursed from ever having a son be king (Jeremiah 22:30). No problem: Luke 3 shows how Jesus was also related (I and others believe this is the line of Mary, the Lord’s mother) to David through Nathan, one of Solomon’s brothers.
So now we’ve seen that Jesus was “in the world, but the world was not knowing Him”. We may never know how many or how few ever really took time to even show interest in the True and the Living God—some did, like Abraham, Sarah, and some others. We would think or like to think that once Jesus revealed Himself to be the Son of God that Israel would rejoice! Prophecies were about to be fulfilled! Any number of things could happen! This could have been a great time for Israel!
Sadly, it wasn’t. Read any of the four Gospels and, time and again, we’ll read about when Jesus did something good and there was one or more people trying to get Him with a “gotcha” type of thing. Think about how many times the Jewish people (the unbelieving ones, that is) tried to kill Him! Think about the verbal or social traps they tried to use, like the question about paying taxes to Caesar and whether or not it was legal for a man to divorce his wife.
Even on the Cross, they made fun of Him saying things like, “He saved others but He couldn’t save Himself” and “Come on down from the cross and we’ll believe You!” And how would you like it, I know I wouldn’t, if we were to see the very people who nailed any of us to a cross and then rolled dice or gambled to see who got the clothes? “Well, that guy won’t be needing them anymore! High score takes it all!”
And the incredible pain our Lord must have felt when He not only saw, maybe, some of the very people He had spoken to before now crying out for His death; but also, when He saw Mary, John son of Zebedee, and a few other faithful ones there in the crowd. He knew what death would mean, and He knew they didn’t understand (did anyone, really, except Mary of Bethany?) that He would rise from the dead?
Yes, He came unto His own—His own nation, the tribe of His ancestor Judah, and the line of his father, David, the kingly line. By and large, the vast majority rejected Him, and as we just saw, they wanted Jesus dead. By and large, they did not, would not, believe His very words.
But some did!
3 But some did receive Him!
There’s a three-point outline of these few verses (10-12) reading “revelation (He came unto His own); rejection (and His own received Him not); and reception (but as many received Him. . .) and it’s this last idea or point we’ll look at now. To say that nobody believed or received Jesus as Lord and Savior would not be honest, would not be accurate. True, most did not, but there were a good number who did!
The Gospels give a few accounts of those who actually did believe, such as John 8 and John 9-10 where the man blind from birth met Jesus after receiving his sight. Jesus told the man, “I’m the One Who healed you” and the man worshiped Him. Thomas, after the Resurrection, was the first man in the New Testament to call Jesus “God”, specifically: when Thomas saw Jesus eight days after the Resurrection, he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”
Others, too, believed and received Him, during and after His days on this earth. We’ll never know many of them but one day we’ll be together in Heaven, rejoicing and praising our Lord forever! And think of all those who believed and received Jesus through all the years from the days He walked this earth till the day He comes back for us.
May I share an example? I remember some of the artwork from “The Bible Story” books, especially one showing how the Lord addressed some of the early believers. The clothing changed to represent different eras , from first century to middle ages to the 1700’s, and 1800’s, closing with the mid-1950’s when those books were published, The faces are different, the clothing changed, but it’s the same blessed Gospel story!
Oh, yes, here’s one more. I mentioned that one particular Christmas my parents gave me one of the best gifts ever—at least for a nine-year-old! Well, there was a smaller gift under that tree, too, and to be honest, I almost missed it! You see, back then we sort of piled our wrapping paper there by the tree until all was given to us kids. I almost missed it because the gift was tangled up in the wrapping paper!
Who would want to keep the wrapping paper, and throw away the gift?
And yet that’s exactly what goes on, every day in the world, as people come to the point of time where each one has to decide: will I receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior, or will I keep on refusing Him?
Those who never receive Him face a future, a forever, away from God in Hell. That’s a place of everlasting torment and punishment, and, let’s face it, all of us deserve it. But in God’s incredible mercy and grace, He provided a way to escape all of that.
Jesus came to live, preach, teach, heal, and show us God’s Love in person. He died on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins. And in this Christmas season, as important as it is to remember and celebrate our Lord’s birth, may we never forget His death and resurrection.
This can be the greatest Christmas ever for you! Receive Jesus as your Savior today!
Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV)
