People make a lot of assumptions in life. Especially when dealing with a familiar subject. Let me give you an example. A young lady was in her first year of teaching first graders. On the last day of school before Christmas the kids all lined up to give her presents. The first student gave her a small box, she shook it and heard small things rattling inside it, knowing that the child’s father owned a candy store she said, “I know what this is, it’s a box of chocolate.” “Yes, teacher it’s candy.” She took the box from the next student, it was thin and long, his father owned a flower shop, so she said, “I know what this is, you gave me flower.” “Yes teacher, it’s a bunch of flowers.” The next student handed her a tall box, his father owned the local liquor store and it was leaking.” She tasted it and said, ‘I know what this is, it’s Champagne.” “No.” She tasted it again, “Is it wine?” “No, it’s a puppy.”
The Christmas story is one that everyone assumes they know. People think they know all about Christmas. Yet if you asked the average person on the street the reality is that you’d get something about a virgin, a babe in a manger and something about shepherds or wise men or kings. There is so much more to the Christmas story than that. When we are able to see things from God’s point of view the story become gander still.
The true story of Christmas is not linked to one day, or week, or even a season. The Christmas story in essence did not end even with the death of the babe who’s story is still told. Because the impact of that day will echo through out all eternity. It is the impact of God becoming man and dwelling with us. The only one who can properly put that into perspective for us is God Himself, and perhaps the best summary of what it means from a God point of view is found in John.
John didn’t write about shepherds and wise men because he was overwhelmed by the impact of what the incarnation of Christ meant for all people for all time. The story of Christmas is not about a few shepherds, or even Mary and Joseph, the true story is about “the good news of glad tiding for all men.” We celebrate Christmas today still because what happened that day was the defining event of so many of our lives today. That God came to save mankind and we have found Him.
In a couple of weeks most of us are going to go see “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” together. C.S. Lewis wrote repeatedly about finding the “deeper magic.” Sadly for many people there is a hidden story in Christmas. They’ve heard about the babe so much that the missed the God to came to be one of us.
So as we look for the deep magic within the story of Christmas there are three concepts that I want us to focus. The first is that John refers to Christ as “the Word.” John begins his book with these words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
That is an interesting choice of words but I think John was trying to point out the importance of God’s Word. As I looked up the word Logos there were many definitions but the one that stood out to me is that when it comes from God. It is His sovereign declaration of what will happen. God’s Word is His plan. Part of what John is communicating is that the coming of Christ has been God’s plan from the beginning.
That being said what John understood to be scripture, what we call the Old Testament is the dedicated to the revealing of this plan. It is revealed through our relationship. The Word of God tells us our past relationship with God. God spent a long time, working through many people to reveal the meaning of Christmas, of His coming to us. The writing of the Bible spanned 1,500 years.
The most important lesson we take from our past is our need for God. Think of the heroes of the Old Testament. All of them had flaws. Abraham, the father of the Nation of Israel had a disturbing lack of faith. Moses, the Prince of Egypt was a murderer. David, we won’t get into David yet. Noah, was considered righteous only after God gives him grace. All of our heroes had flaws.
Even Joseph, the son of Jacob had some problems when he was younger. Having dreams that your brothers and father will serve you are one thing, but repeating them is another. Joseph had some pride issues. All of us when we are honest know that we have flaws. That is part of our story we have a need for God, He is the only one who can give us the strength to be the people we want to be. That is the prayer that Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:16, “I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.” The strength to become the person that each of us wants to be does not come from ourselves. It comes from God changing us from the inside out. We need His strength.
That is why the most important promise from the past was that Christ would come. Specifically let’s look at the wording of one of those promises. It’s found in Isaiah 11:1, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” David was the original son of Jesse. He made a mess of his life. His life was marked by everything from lust, to fear to greed it’s all in the story of his life. If that sounds bad, his family tree got even worse. So the nation and was broken, the family of the great king fell from it’s lofty heights, out of power and out of the public eye, as Isaiah said, it was a stump. But out of that stump would come hope for all mankind, out of that stump our savior would rise.
Do you ever feel like you’re part of that line? You’re broken, despite your best intentions, despite all the things you desire to be, not just for God, but for yourself you’ve failed? Of course you have, we all feel that way at times. Catch the parallel, the Word tells our story, it tells of our need for God, and then it tells us that there is hope, that out of our need salvation will come. It is the divine declaration, the plan of God and it has been from the beginning.
That is the true meaning of Christmas. At Christmas Christ stepped into our present. In that day the story made a huge transition from telling simply of our need and the hope for the future that we had to a present reality. God came, the stump was brought back to life. That is the story for all of us. John put it like this, we went from “death to life.” Paul stated in Ephesians 2, ‘But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. Notice the word with, it isn’t that we were with Christ or that we will be with Christ, we are with Christ. Present tense, isn’t that good.
But Christ is not just a word or a collection of words, Christ is the Word. John uses the word logos in the singular sense. Christ is the final, authoritative Word of God. Christ was Gods plan from the beginning. Before there was sunrise and sunset there was Christ, the Word of God. He was ordained from the beginning to heal our relationship with God.
When you realize that you know what you need to do? You need to tell somebody. God worked through all those people through the years to tell of our past relationship, we need to be open to continue to tell people about our present relationship. People can come up with all sorts of silly objections to things that happened 2,000 years ago, but they can not object to what is happening today. We need to be telling people the story of Christ in us right now. Jesus is the Word, yesterday, today and forever, and His story, our story must be told.
But John also refers to Jesus as the light. Apart from Christ, people miss the meaning of Christmas and people still don’t quite understand the nature of light, it is both a particle and a wave, things are supposed to be either or but not both. It is a great comparison they both refuse to be put in a convenient classification.
The phenomenon isn’t new John was writing about it 2000 years ago. Verse five read it again, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” The picture of light and darkness is one of contrast and conflict. Where there is light the darkness is driven away. 2 Samuel 22:29, “For You are my lamp, O Lord; The Lord shall enlighten my darkness.” The Lord is the light, and sometimes the very source of our darkness comes from within from our own fears and failures. But John tells us that “The light shines in the darkness.” That picture of contrast and conflict. As the Sun Rises, the darkness retreats, as the Sun sets the darkness comes in invading and overcoming the land. It is a word picture of striking imagery that John is painting for us the conflict between light and darkness.
Then he move to another level, from God’s point of view this is not something that happens on an inanimate level, this is person. The darkness can not comprehend the light, it tries but it can’t. Look at that word comprehend. The Greek word is “katalambano”. When I looked there were two definitions for the word comprehend that seem to apply to the passage. I think that if he were asked which one John meant for our American minds, he would simply say, “yes.” Because they both clearly apply to the principle that he was writing about.
The first is “understanding.” In fact some of your translations may say that. “The darkness did not understand it.” That’s a good translation, because people who have not found Christ, can not understand what His coming meant for all mankind. That’s why you see so many people on T.V. who are paid good money to try and define who Christians are and they do such a bad job of it. They can’t understand what Christmas means, they can’t understand what Christ did, and they can’t understand what He continues to do in His people today. They are looking at a belief in a historical figure and we’re living life in the present in a relationship with God. If you can’t understand that God is not the past, but the present and the future, if you can’t get those basics right, then you’re not going to understand the details. Here’s the first basic, the babe in the manger is still on the throne. He was the plan in the beginning and He is still the plan today. He is the light, particle and wave. Those in darkness, those who are seeking can not understand Him until they embrace Him.
The second definition is to “grasp.” In this context literally John is saying of light and darkness that “it can not be grasped.” I like that. Do you ever stop to wonder why Christianity is so threatening, so opposed and every other religion is fine? It is because that little baby is so big that He can not be grasped. No matter how hard men may try He refuses to be put in a box and left alone.
Jesus told us His mission in John 10:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” If you’re here and you’ve never accepted Christ, and my talking about Him makes you uncomfortable, don’t blame me, don’t blame your friends who talk to you about Him either. Blame that baby in a manger. This wasn’t a simple birth, this was an invasion. People could not understand God they could not find God, they were trapped on Earth while God was in heaven. We were separated by our enemy Satan, by our own sin and the darkness of our lack of understanding. We were trapped behind enemy lines.
So God invaded that territory to save us. That star over the manger was the burst of the first artillery shell, on a spiritual level this was God sending in the Marines, but His army had only one person. This invasionary force was God Himself. The battle raged for 33 years and in the end His entire army was killed, but He won, and because of that we are free.
If you’re still seeking God hear me on this. He came from Heaven to Earth to have a relationship with you and just because you either lack understanding or are stubborn doesn’t mean He’s going to give up on you that easy. He will not fit in your box, He can not be grasped, but He can be found.
For those who have found Him there is another great truth here. He can not be grasped. When you run into trouble, when the world, or circumstances have you boxed in and your back is against the wall and you’ve been captured by the enemy, He can’t be grasped. He can not be tied down or stopped and He is coming to deliver you if you will trust in him. The distance of the universe, from heaven to earth couldn’t keep Him from you, death couldn’t either. No matter how dark things may be He will always be there and He will always be victorious because nothing can hold Him. 1 Samuel 2:9, “He will guard the feet of His saints, but the wicked shall be silent in darkness. ‘For by strength no man shall prevail.’’ We lack understanding, but He is the light to show us the way. We lack the strength to live the way we want to, all us do, “No man shall prevail.” But God is strength beyond understanding. He has been the plan for our salvation from the beginning, He is the light of our understanding in the present.
All of our greatest needs were met in one moment. The incarnation was the answer to our needs.” We need forgiveness for the past, we need strength to live today and we needed hope for the future. All of those needs were met when God came down into that manger.
This was the plan of God while we were still trapped in the darkness, before we asked for help, before we even knew of our need, God already had a plan in place to reach out to us. The Message paraphrase puts it like this, “This is the kind of love we are talking about – not that we once upon a time loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.” 1 John 4:10. What an amazing love God has for us. That is the kind of love that we should be returning to Him. Not because it is a commandment, although it is, but because that kind of love, love that reaches out to us through the ages and never leaves, is so overwhelming that when we realize the truth we should want to embrace it with everything that we have and never let it go.
Here is a beautiful truth. God reaches out to us not just to meet our needs, He said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Please don’t ever in your Christian walk settle for good enough, for getting by. Christ didn’t come that we could have an average life, He didn’t come that we could live on bread and water, He came that we might have abundant live. Listen, settling for good when you’ve been called to be great is a sin. Don’t settle for good enough, find the abundance that God is calling you to.
Understanding that Christ invaded our darkness to rescue us and bring us into abundance and relationship, should unleash a joy in our lives that is obvious, it should show in the way that we live and the way we act. That is the true joy of Christmas, the greatest gift we can give is to share the reality of the incarnation with those who are searching. A character on a t.v. show I was watching this week refereed to himself as a “hopeful agnostic.” Agnostic translated is the absence of knowledge. What the writer of that show was saying was I’m lost in darkness but I hope there is something more. We have the answer we need to share it.
A philosopher named Nietzsche once speculated that God is dead. I would hate to have that legacy, because He was wrong. You know why I know he was wrong? It’s not because I’ve read the abundance of evidence that has been collected over the years that prove that the events of the Bible are a historical fact. There is an even greater proof than that. It is because I’ve seen the impact of God working in the lives of people through the years. You want to defend your faith, don’t quote statistics, tell people what God has done for you in your life. Can I get a witness? (time for sharing brief testimonies)
