Jes Brings Us God
--John 1:1-14
“This is about a modern man, one of us. He was not a scrooge; he was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with others, but he did not believe in all that Incarnation stuff that the Churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense to him, and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just could not swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man. ‘I’m truly sorry to distress you,’ he told his wife, ‘but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.’ He said he’d feel like a hypocrite. That he would much rather stay home, but that he would wait up for them. He stayed, they went.
“Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier, then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another and another. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. Well, when he went to the front door, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter they had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
“Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze. He remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter—if he could direct the birds to it. He quickly put on his coat and boots, trampled through the deepening snow to the barn, opened the door wide, and turned on a light. But the birds did not come in.
“He figured food would entice them in and he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow making a trail to the yellow lighted wide open doorway of the stable, but to his dismay the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them, he tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms—instead they scattered in every direction except into the warm lighted barn. Then he realized THEY WERE AFRAID OF HIM.
“TO THEM, HE REASONED, I AM A STRANGE AND TERRIFYING CREATURE. If only I could think of some way to let them know they can trust me: That I’m not trying to hurt them, but to help them? How? Any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. IF ONLY I COULD BE A BIRD AND MINGLE WITH THEM AND SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE, AND TELL THEM NOT TO BE AFRAID, AND SHOW THEM THE WAY TO THE SAFE, WARM BARN. BUT I’D HAVE TO BE ONE OF THEM, SO THEY COULD SEE AND HEAR AND UNDERSTAND.
“At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind. He stood there listening to the bells.
“Adeste Fideles.” Listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow” [--“The Christmas Storm: A Modern Parable,” as Read by Paul Harvey].
The message of Christmas is the Story of the Incarnation, how our eternal God became one of us in the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem’s manger. This Advent we have looked at the Story of the Coming of Jesus and have seen that “Jesus Brings Us Peace, “ “Jesus Brings Us Love,” and “Jesus Bring Us Joy.” On this Fourth Sunday of Advent as we turn to the opening paragraphs in the Gospel of John we hear the greatest message of All the Season, “Jesus Brings Us God.” Once again I appreciate the spiritual depth of Eugene Peterson when in his paraphrase THE MESSAGE he renders John 1:14 in these words:
“The Word became flesh and blood,
And moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
The –one-of-a kind glory,
Like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
True from start to finish.”
Incarnation simply means that in the birth of Jesus God took upon a human body; He became one of us, “flesh and blood and moved into our neighborhood.”
In a sermon entitled “Wonderful” Billy Sunday, who preached from this very location where we worship today, affirms that there are “two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ.” He then goes on to explain why this is so; “Because [Jesus] was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express.” [--Billy Sunday in a sermon, “Wonderful,” quoted in The Real Billy Sunday, Christianity Today, Vol. 33, no. 2.]
John’s favorite Name for Jesus is “The Word.” Absolutely no one can miss the message “Jesus Brings Us God” because it is evident to all in John’s testimony, “The Word Became Flesh.” Mark doesn’t even tell the story of the birth of Jesus but begins his Gospel with the preaching and preparation for the Coming of Jesus in the ministry of John the Baptist. Matthew and Luke begin His Story by telling of His Virgin Birth in Bethlehem, but John goes back into eternity by proclaiming, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
This reminds me of the song “Do, Re, Mi” that Maria and the Von Trapp children sing in Rogers and Hammerstein’s THE SOUND OF MUSIC: “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” What we call a beginning is “the starting point.” Jesus Christ is “the starting point” for everything that exists in the Universe.” He is our Creator God. John’s opening words are reminiscent of the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John declares here that our Creator God is “This same Jesus.” The WORD is God; The WORD is our Creator: Verse One, “The Word was God”; Verse Three, “Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.”
Paul affirms this same truth in Colossians 1:16-17 when he says of Jesus, “For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Did you catch it? You and I were created by Jesus for fellowship with Him, and He is the One “who holds us together.” Know this, my brothers and sisters, my personal life would totally collapse and fall apart without Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
“The Word” is a beautiful and persuasive Name for Jesus. Words are powerful. They are our means of communication and expression with each other. When God wanted to redeem us from sin and make know His way of Salvation to us, “The Word Became Flesh.” Remember our man who wanted to help the frightened birds in our opening story? He needed a way to communicate with birds; he could not become a bird, but in Bethlehem’s manger, our very Maker who created us for fellowship with Him became a human being, just like you and me. God became “one of us. “
“Jesus Brings Us God.” He is God’s Final, Ultimate, and Supreme Revelation to us.” He surpasses all other means God has used to show Himself to us, as the writer to the Hebrews asserts in Hebrews 1: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven [--Hebrews 1:1-3].”
Jesus is not only “The Word” who created us. He is also “The One and Only, who came from the Father.” Exactly what does that mean? It recalls for me the Golden text of Scripture John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” “One and only” means “one of a kind,” “one who is unique.” Jesus is the One and Only eternal “Son of God.” Jesus and the Father have always existed together along with the Holy Spirit as the Only True and Living God.
The “One and Only” Son came to earth so that you and I might become by adoption redeemed, forgiven children of God. Return with me once more to verse twelve of our text: “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believe in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
“Jesus Brings Us God,” enabling us to become forgiven, born again, redeemed children of God for all eternity. Recall with me the testimony of Paul in Romans 8:14-17 as found in the New Revised Standard Version:
“all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ . . .” God the Son came in order that we all might become through the spirit of adoption the redeemed children of God.”
Remember this: every human being is a creation of God, but not every human being is a child of God: “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believe in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God.” We only have the right to become children of God by personally receiving Jesus Christ as our own Lord and Saviour.
I really appreciated yesterday’s devotional in the UPPER ROOM. [--Jim Baum, “Salvation by Bookkeeping,” in The Upper Room: Daily Devotional Guide, ed. Stephen D. Bryant (November-December 2004): 56.] It was by a fellow Illinoisan Jim Baum. Jim points out that so many of us believe our relationship with God is like the song “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” As Santa Claus in the song is “gonna find out who’s naughty and nice,” so many people mistakenly believe that God keeps a list of “whose naughty and nice” and thus determines eternal destiny. Jim calls this fallacy “salvation by bookkeeping.” We erroneously believe that our salvation can somehow be won by earning “Brownie Points” with God.
Jesus shows us that we are all sinners, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23]. We are all failures and sinners. Jim concludes that “Heaven will be filled with people who are failures. In heaven there will be only forgiven sinners,” who have received Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord.
Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus in Luke 19 concludes with these words: “Jesus said to him (Zacchaeus), ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Just like Zacchaeus we all are lost in sin. In the words of Isaiah 53:6,
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way. . .”
The Word became flesh to seek and to save His lost sheep, you and me.
“Jesus Brings Us God” and His gift of eternal life, but we must receive His gift. We receive it simply by asking. Oswald Chambers in his devotional in MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST for December 17 reminds us: “Jesus said, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you. . .’ (Matthew 7:7). But God cannot give until a man asks. It is not that He wants to withhold something from us, but that is the plan He has established for the way of redemption. Through our asking, God puts His process in motion, creating something in us that was nonexistent until we asked.”
The thing that was “nonexistent until I asked” was my personal relationship with God as His adopted, redeemed, forgiven, eternal child. I received that gift when I asked Jesus into my heart in the spirit of the prayer:
“Oh, come to my heart, Lord Jesus;
There is room in my heart for You;
Yes, there’s room in my heart for You.”
If you are not a child of God’s already, you can become one today by opening up your own heart to the Lord Jesus Christ.
William Barclay has said that Jesus “not only sees what a man is; he also sees what a man can become. He sees not only the actualities in a man; he also sees the possibilities.” In Peter Jesus not only saw a Galilean fisherman but one who had in him potential faith upon which the Church of Jesus Christ would be built. Barclay continues, “Jesus sees us not only as we are, but as we can be; and He says: “Give your life to Me, and I will make you what you have it in you to be.’ Once someone came on Michelangelo chipping away with his chisel at a huge shapeless piece of rock. He asked the sculptor what he was doing. ‘I am releasing the angel imprisoned in this marble,’ he answered. Jesus is the one who sees and can release the hidden hero in every one of us.” [--William Barclay’s Commentary on the Gospel of John (John 1:42).]
“Jesus Bring Us God” in order that we may become “children of God and joint heirs with Him” for all eternity. “Give Him your life, and He will make you what you have it in you to be.”
