Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through John 1:1-14, emphasizing the significance of Jesus' incarnation at Christmas. He highlights that Jesus, the eternal Word, became flesh to reveal God and offer salvation to humanity, despite being rejected by many. The sermon calls for a personal response to this gift of salvation, urging listeners to not merely admire Jesus but to fully receive Him into their lives.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Amen.
What a great job that was. If you have a child who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, you can send them this time. Ms.
Carrie is going to take care of that today. I do want to mention one thing that I forgot to mention.
The flowers that are out around the poinsettias were donated by the Williams family. And if any of you would like a flower, you can take that. It's a gift from them to you. And so grab one on your way out.
They're all on the windowsills, but also some up here. And take that home and try to keep it alive. If it goes home with me, it will die. And so take them home with you.
That would be a blessing. We're going to be in John chapter 1 this morning. John chapter 1 verses 1 through 14.
As I was thinking and praying about where I was going to preach at this morning as we're going through the characters at Christmas. It just seemed fitting to sort of talk about Jesus on Christmas Day, Christmas Sunday.
And so we're going to look at this passage in John chapter 1. The Word Became Flesh is what I've entitled it.
And so if you have your place there, the words will be on the screen as well. Let's all stand as we read the scripture this morning and look at what God has for us from His Word.
The Bible says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, and all things were created through Him.
And apart from Him, not one thing was created that had been created. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in darkness, and yet darkness does not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John, and he came as a witness to testify about the light. So that all might believe through Him.
He was not the light, but He came to testify about the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was created through Him, and yet the world did not recognize Him. He came into His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, He gave them the right to be the children of God.
To those who believe on His name, who were born not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
The Word Became Flesh
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed His glory.
The glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Father, we thank You for the reading of Your Word. We thank You for this passage that means so much to us. We thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus,
here in this world to die for our sins, so that we can have eternal life through You and in You. Lord, we love You. In Your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated this morning.
John chapter 1, you may be thinking, well, Pastor James, you've been in Luke the last couple of weeks, and we've talked about the shepherds, and we've talked about Mary. Why don't you just talk about it there?
I feel like for this Christmas Sunday, it's a non-traditional passage that you would go to, but it exemplifies everything that Jesus is and was and came to be as He was born into this world.
And I love how John wrote these words because he's telling us this is about Jesus who came into this world through and by a supernatural experience.
And so, by way of introduction, I want to tell you a story about a Roman emperor in the ancient world. This Roman emperor was treated, the Roman emperors in their day was treated as gods. They lived in palaces. They were separated. They were in a higher place. They were guarded by people.
They had wealth. They had power. When their name was announced in the community, there were trumpets and there were bells. As Terry was playing along that instrumental, you would hear that sound and they would announce their name. And when they came out, their presence demanded fear.
You wouldn't dare speak against them. You wouldn't dare do anything against that name or that person. There's one emperor all throughout history that is still talked about today for a different reason.
This emperor was in the 4th century, around the 400-year, 500-year era, Emperor Theodosius I.
He ruled emperor during his reign. A riot broke out in the city of Thessalonica. We have a book in Thessalonians. It was in this very area. And this riot caused him to become angry, caused him to become mad at what was going on. And out of his anger, he declared a retaliation.
And in this retaliation, thousands of people were killed. When news reached Ambrose, the bishop of Milan,
he publicly rebuked the emperor, which was never to be done, and barred him from entering the church to worship until he repented.
And what had happened was up until this point, the entire Roman Empire was shocked. How could this church leader, how could this bishop of Milan, how could he go against the emperor? This is the man that rules everything. Months later, the most powerful man in the known world appeared at that church.
He didn't appear with royal robes. He didn't show up with guards. He didn't show up demanding honor. This is how he showed up. History records that he showed up barefoot, clothed in sackcloths, weeping publicly. And he came before the emperor, the bishop of Milan, weeping publicly and asking for forgiveness.
The emperor humbled himself and came down to where the people were at in order to have a right relationship with God. History records that that moment as one of the most stunning reversals of power the ancient world had ever seen. This man who was the ruler of everything,
who had, the history says that the sun never set on the Roman Empire.
Because it was so vast and it was so large. And yet this man who was over all of that humbled himself, came before this bishop and said, I am in the wrong and I need forgiveness.
Significance of Christmas
And yet when we hear that story, it doesn't even compare to what happened at Christmas. Because what happened at Christmas is God just didn't sit down from his throne. He stepped into flesh and into humanity. And he didn't come repenting of his sins. He came carrying our sins.
He didn't temporarily humble himself and say, for this moment I'm going to humble, but tomorrow I'm going to go. No, he fully became human and he fully became man and flesh. And the Bible says that John writes this word down. He says that the word visited us.
And I think that's so important as we think about it because Jesus is here visiting with us even today. The Bible says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
He came around us and wanted to spend time with us. And oftentimes we think of Christmas and because it's been commercialized, we think of Christmas as the sweet baby Jesus in a manger.
And that is a wonderful scene. That's a wonderful thing to think about. But it's about far more than just baby Jesus in a manger. It's that he was willing to come into this world to die for our sins so that we can have a relationship restored back with God.
This is what John wants us to see today. Not just the manger, but the miracle behind it.
The miracle behind God himself through the flesh of mankind sending his son into the creation that he created to redeem that creation.
And so let's look through this passage and we'll break it down into five simple parts. The first one is Jesus is eternally God. Jesus is eternally God. And I think I forgot to put these in there. I totally forgot to put all my notes in my slides today. I am sorry.
I did everything else and I was doing some other things.
But Jesus is eternal God. Your blank there is eternal. Jesus' life didn't begin in Bethlehem.
I can remember I was teaching Good News Club a couple of years ago. And I still do it today at our Ronda Clingman School.
And one of the kids, I asked, I said, when did Jesus' life begin? And one of the kids raised their hand and they said, well, at Christmas. That's when Jesus... And oftentimes that's what we think about.
We think that Jesus' birthday and Jesus' birthday was, yes, at Christmas time, whether you think that's Christmas in December or whether you think that's July, however you wanted to go back and forth with that. There's a lot of theological debate on that. But you can go back and forth.
And I said, that's a great answer. But oftentimes that's how we perceive Jesus is that he became a person and he was born then.
But it was sort of that moment where another kid spoke up and was like, wasn't Jesus always here? And I was like, yes, that's good. We're getting some theology in here. And so this is the thought here is that Jesus stepped into Bethlehem, but he was always there. He existed before time began.
He's the one that created earth and created time itself.
He is part of the father and he is distinct in the father, but yet he is the son. And you can go through a whole long theological diatribe on the Trinity and how that looks and how that goes.
And we would spend the rest of eternity trying to discover that and flesh that out. But all we know for the basis of today is that he existed before time.
And the Bible says that he is the creator of all things and that through him, creation was created.
You see, every morning, the sun comes up every morning.
It's a beautiful sign. It's a beautiful picture. My son, I get the privilege of taking him to daycare every morning, most mornings, unless I'm coming here for Bible club or something else that I've got to be here for early. And we'll walk out in these last couple of mornings.
It has been the most beautiful sunrise where it's pink and blue and all the different colors. And he would stop on the porch. He'd come out and say, dad, it's cotton candy sky today.
And I would say, yeah, like this is a four year old and he's perceiving the sun coming up and he's seeing this and he's enjoying it.
And he wakes up and he sees the light, but we don't get up and we don't celebrate or worship the light that's coming up. We get up and we admire it and we think it's great.
And this is the idea of Christmas as well. We don't get up and we don't just celebrate Christmas. We admire the reason behind the Christmas story. We admire the reason behind God eternally stepped down from heaven and into his creation, took himself from ruling outside of time to stepping into our existence.
I explain like this to kids often. My kids like Legos and they don't play with Legos as much anymore.
Hudson is slowly getting to that point where he'll eventually love Legos again and we'll take all of Bertie's Legos out of his room and let Hudson play with them.
But I tell kids this, I said, imagine you building this village of Legos and then somehow you've built this village of Legos and now you step into that village of Legos.
Like you become a Lego person and you go in there and now you live among them.
This is the best idea that we can get of Jesus. He created the world and he looks back and he says,
I want to have a relationship with these people and then we sin and he goes, but I want them to come back to me and so I'm going to step out of eternity from what I created and step into my creation and be a part of that.
Do you see Jesus just part of history or do you see Jesus as Lord over it all?
Where he says, I'm Lord over everything, but yet I'm going to come down. I'm going to be with you and interact with you and dwell among you as the scripture says.
Verses four through nine continues on and talks about Jesus as being the light of the world. Oh, what a wonderful thing. It says that the light shines in the darkness.
Darkness and Light
Christmas happened because the world was dark. The world today is still dark, but Christmas happened because we were in this darkness of the world. This goes back to the very beginning promise of Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve was in the garden and they sinned and God gave them a promise that from your seed, there's going to be someone that comes to crush the head of Satan. His heel is going to crush the head of Satan.
So we knew this was a promise from God and that Jesus was this fulfillment from the beginning.
And in that beginning, there was Jesus as well. And as you begin to think through this light of the world, I want you to think about a couple things. The first is this, darkness never overcomes light. When Jesus comes in this world, he overcomes the darkness.
Jesus is the light of the world and Jesus is the one that snuffs out all the darkness.
This is the beautiful picture of it. Light never negotiates itself with darkness.
It doesn't say, hey, I'm going to come in at this time. And when I come in, you're going to have to leave. No, when the light comes in, the darkness has to leave.
And Jesus says, I'm the light of the world. And when he comes into the world, the darkness flees from it. It drives it out. It flees from everything that's around it.
When you flip on a light switch in your house, you don't have to say, okay, hey, darkness, I'm about to turn the light on. Are you ready to be gone?
No, you flip the light switch on and the darkness immediately flees. The darkness immediately goes away because light has illuminated everything and drove out the darkness. There was no negotiating.
And this is what happens in our life when we invite the Lord in our life and we begin to adjust our life to his likeness and to his light.
It defeats the darkness in our life. And Jesus says that he is the light of the world that comes into the world to drive out the darkness. Oftentimes, this is us. We try to manage the darkness.
We say, God, I want you to come into my life, but there's some dark areas of my life that I want to keep here. And your light can only go so far. And Jesus says, no, no, no. My light comes in and it drives out all darkness. You can't negotiate with it.
And all of a sudden we say, but God, I really like these things. I really like what I've got over here. And I don't want you to come into this area.
And God simply says, I'm either going to be Lord over all or I'll be Lord not at all.
And we have to ask ourselves, are we willing to put Jesus as the center of our life and let his light illuminate through everything that we've got so that every step we take, every moment we make, every word
that comes out of our mouth, every thought we think is all about Jesus. Because that's what light does. It drives out the darkness and it drives out everything because we've surrendered to the light of Christ. His light is powerful. His light is greatness.
And his light is wanting to illuminate through us and in us.
The same Holy Spirit that lived in the Pentecost day of Jesus, of Acts, as we looked at the beginning of this last year, that where they stood up and thousands of people came to Christ is the same Holy Spirit that lives inside of us.
Are we allowing that same Holy Spirit to dictate everything we do? Or are we saying, yes, Lord, come into my life, but I still want to do what I want to do. Where are we at in that area? Jesus is the light of the world and it continues on by saying he's eternal.
Rejection of Jesus
I don't know if he's the light of the world, but number three, Jesus was rejected by the world. Jesus was rejected by the world.
The Bible says that he came into his own and his own did not receive him. You see, we're going to look next week at Herod.
As I was thinking about the Christmas characters and who we could talk about, Herod is one of those guys we don't really talk a lot about. And a lot of people will say Herod is sort of the tragedy of Christmas.
He's the one that came into Christmas story and he sent the wise men to go find Jesus, to go and kill Jesus.
And oftentimes that's what we think of the tragedy, but really the tragedy of Christmas is the rejection of Jesus. The creation that he created did not recognize him as their creator. They rejected him.
They rejected who he was and they rejected everything about Jesus. You see, the proximity doesn't dictate faith.
Oftentimes we think if I just get closer to something, I'll believe. The Bible says that there are going to be those that never see that believe in Jesus and greater is their faith than those that got to see Jesus. And so oftentimes as we go through this, we have to ask ourselves,
how are we believing and how are we accepting or rejecting Jesus?
When we were in Israel a couple of years ago, and I'm excited about going back at the end of January to go to some sites I didn't get to go to. But while we were there in Israel, one of the men made a phenomenal evaluation.
He said, every great leader that Israel ever had, they rejected him first.
Think of David. David came and he slew Goliath and they worshiped him and they said, we praise his 10,000s as Saul killed his thousands.
But then they rejected David the first time and David had to go. And then David came back. Moses, Moses, a great leader. He came into his people. He tried rescuing his people from the slavery. They rejected him and pushed him out into the desert.
Forty years later, he comes back and he leads them out. Every great leader that Israel ever had, they rejected it first. And it's no surprise that when we come to Jesus, the greatest leader that Israel ever had, what did they do? They rejected him.
They said, this can't be the man. His father is a woodworker, a carpenter from Nazareth. And no good thing can come from Nazareth. And so they rejected him.
And all of a sudden, the world that he came to save had rejected him and crucified him. I think about when we were in Texas visiting my sister,
because I think about this proximity. In Texas, everywhere you went,
it felt like 10 feet, 10 yards. There was this massive like pole with speakers it looked like. And I asked my sister, I said, what is that? And she said, it's a tornado warning.
She said, we get tornadoes that come through here and the tornadoes sound and they tell us to, you know, get the safety or whatever. And my mom began thinking as I was thinking about this proximity is someone could live beside that tornado warning their entire life.
And that tornado warning goes off and they hear it and they go, yeah, well, we've heard it before. I'm not going to do anything.
Just because they were close to that tornado warning doesn't guarantee them safety. They have to respond to that tornado warning and seek cover and seek safety. And oftentimes we are close to the gospel.
We hear what Jesus has done. And yes, we're close to it, but we never respond. And we ultimately are rejecting what Christ has done and we never follow his words.
I want to challenge us this morning on this Christmas Sunday. Are you familiar with Jesus or are you submitting to him?
It's one thing to be familiar with it. It's one thing to be familiar with what people like or what Jesus wants us to do, but it's another thing to fully submit our will to the will of the father. And that's what Jesus did. That's what Jesus exemplified.
That's what he's calling us to do this morning is to submit our will to his will. Number four, Jesus gives new life to those who receive him. There are those that reject him, but verses 12 through 13, we begin to see that Jesus gives new life.
Response to Christmas
He says, but to all who did receive him, receives new life. Christmas demands a response.
As we go into this Christmas season, as we go into this time of Advent, the first Advent, and think about the second Advent that's going to come when he comes back to reach and rescue his children and bring them home.
He says that there is a response that must happen. salvation is received, not inherited. We must receive salvation.
It's not just handed down from one generation to another. And just because your mother or your father was a Christian makes you equal into this Christianity. I heard it said like this one in one commentator, God has no grandkids, only sons and daughters.
And think about that. Just because your mother and father are a Christian does not guarantee you salvation in the world because your mother and father are maybe a CEO of a company.
You get this inheritance. That is all of what they have. But in God's foundation of what he says, he said, those that receive new life are adopted into his family, which makes you the sons and the daughters.
No grandsons, no granddaughters, but sons and daughters of the faith. And we must ask ourselves, are we adopted into the family? Have we received this new life? Have we received this perfect gift that God has given us?
Or are we just relying on the faith of a father or a mother to get us into heaven?
You see, as Christmas time is coming and every time I see this tree, it's a beautiful tree. I love all the people that help decorate it. But every time I see it and up until last night, my kids said the same thing. Dad, there's no presents under the tree, right? There's no presents.
And Brody, mom was wrapping presents last night and bringing presents out and putting them underneath the tree. But all of a sudden, and this is what the kids do, right? You've had kids before. You were a kid once. They walk up and they say, we don't put labels on our presents, okay?
They're all wrapped a certain way. Mom knows which presents are which.
Because if there's a label on it, they're going to go up, they're going to shake it, they're going to try to figure it out. Or if they were like me, they would try to unwrap it and figure out what it is and then wrap it before Christmas. It was a big mistake.
Kids never do that. You'll always get caught. But as we think about Christmas and we think about the gifts that are underneath the tree, a gift that is unopened is still a gift, right?
If Brody's got a gift that he's just dying to get and his life cannot exist without this gift.
And all of a sudden, we buy it and we put it underneath the tree. We put his name on it. We know it's his. He knows it's his. And Christmas comes and he goes, you know, that's a really good gift, Dad. I really appreciate that gift, Dad.
I love that gift, Dad. But he never walks over and picks that gift up and opens it. He never gets to enjoy and experience the gift that was given to him. And ultimately, that gift will stay there unopened, unappreciated, and never be inherited to him because he never opened it.
This is the gift of salvation. Salvation benefits the one that opens it up and receives that into themselves. But those that ignore it never receive eternal life. This is what Jesus says.
He says, as John is writing, he says that we have been receiving a gift of eternal life.
And the gift is only granted to that person when they get it and they rip the present open and they say, I want to enjoy this gift. I want to thank the one that sent it to me.
I want to tell you so thankful as we sing these Christmas songs of adoration to Jesus, it's a thank you for the faithfulness that you've given me and sending your son into a manger and the Noel that came as we sang these songs.
It's a thankfulness to God for what he sent to us because we have received that gift. The question we have to ask ourselves is, have you received the gift of salvation this morning? Or are you just admiring it from afar? Are you saying that's a great gift?
I'm glad, God, that you sent that gift to us and I really appreciate that gift. Or are you truly grabbing that gift and receiving it and claiming it as your own? Jesus gives new life to those who receive it. And number five this morning, Jesus became flesh to reveal God.
Jesus became flesh to reveal God. The Bible says that the word became flesh in verse 14 and dwelt among us. This is a picture that I will never fully understand. How God sent his only begotten son,
his dearly loved child in our mindsets and said, I'm going to send my son to go die for the world that's going to reject him and eventually reject me.
I think of my own children and I think of, I would sacrifice a lot, but sacrificing my own children for the sake of someone else, a stranger, to save their life.
God's Love and Power
It's incomprehensible in my mind. But God says through the vastness of his power and the vastness of his love, I'm going to send my son to die for the creation that I created that rejected me in the garden, that's going to reject him, that's going to eventually reject him or accept him.
I'm going to send my son to become flesh. See, God didn't just send a messenger. He sent a messenger to Elizabeth.
He sent a messenger to Joseph and he sent a messenger to Simeon and he sent a messenger to Mary, as we looked at last week as an angel came to them. But when it came to the gospel, when it came to the good news of redemption,
he said, Father, this has got to be me. I have to step out from eternity and I have to step into creation. It wasn't just a message, but it was him entering into our weakness.
And him entering in and saying, I am here to help you. He is entering into our weakness and he wraps himself in the humility of the flesh that we have. Think about the vastness of the power that Jesus had to speak things into existence, to create all things.
The Bible starts out here by saying that everything was created through him and by him.
And he submitted himself into the humility of our flesh to be limited in his power for a season.
To think about that, to think about, I mean, go back to that story of the Roman emperor who stepped out from his throne, who stepped out from the wealth and stepped out from the power and came sackcloth and barefoot and said, I'm coming in humility. This is Jesus.
He's coming in humility. He's stripping away part of his power to be fully human and fully God.
And the Bible says that grace and truth met in the manger.
A lot of us live in grace and a lot of us live hard in truth. But the Bible says that Jesus came to bring the two together, to marry the two of grace and truth and bring them together. If you want to know what God looks like, oftentimes my kids will ask me,
other kids will ask me, Dad, what does God look like?
That's why I tell them, I said, we don't know what God looks like. The closest we can get to knowing what God looked like is to look at Jesus.
Jesus loved us so much that he came into this world to die for us. He wrapped himself in humility because he loves us and he cares about us. And this is the picture of Jesus. This is the picture of God.
He is translated from heaven's form to human form. And this is what God looks like eternally into us.
And my question this morning as we go into our invitation as Terry comes is, does your view of God come from your tradition, your culture, or does your view of God come from looking at the scripture and saying, this is who Jesus is?
He's full of grace and he's full of truth and he's full of mercy and he's full of justice. He's full of righteousness and he's full of humility. Is this our view of God this morning? Or is it just a little baby in a manger?
And I'm thankful that baby in a manger, but I'm thankful that he grew with wisdom and knowledge and truth. And he grew with stature and favor of man. As scripture says, and he grew into a teenage boy and he grew into a young adult.
And he grew up into a full grown man who went in this world and had disciples and then ultimately sacrificed his life on a cross for you and me. The dust doesn't just end in a manger. It continues on into this salvation that we have.
If God was willing to come this far from eternity in time, from heaven to a manger, from the glory into the flesh, Christmas is not merely something to admire, but it's something to answer.
Something to ask ourselves, how am I responding to this gift that has been given to me? John tells us that when the word came, some rejected him.
I'm not naive enough to know that some in this room and some in this community are still going to reject him. But he tells us that we can become the children of God by simply accepting this gift that he has given us.
It doesn't mean that Jesus is simply just coming to show us things, but he's coming to make a way for us to be reunited with God himself. The same Christ who lay in a manger is the same Christ that hung on a cross.
The hands that reached out in infancy to his mother Mary and cried out for help is the same hands that spread himself on a cross and said, I have been pierced for my sacrifice for your salvation.
The God who stepped into our world that would take his sin upon himself, our sin upon himself, so that we could step into his family and be called the sons and daughters of God and be part of the
family of God is the same Christ that we're here to worship this morning at Christmas.
And so at every Christmas I ask this question and it's the same question that you should ask yourself.
Invitation to Receive Jesus
Have you and will you receive him this morning? If it's a yes, yes, I've received him, Pastor James. That's a wonderful thing. Are you living in the spirit? Are you living in grace and truth?
If you haven't accepted him this morning, would you? Would you not just admire what he's done? Would you step into eternity and say, God, I want to come and I want to receive this salvation. I want to receive what you've given to me.
I don't want you just to assume that you belong to him. I want you to ask yourself in a retrospective way and say, am I a Christian this morning? Do I bear the fruit of a Christian this morning?
Receive him, turn from your sin and fully trust in God alone, resting in his salvation, not in our own selves. The greatest grift that could ever be found at Christmas is not found under a tree.
Some of our kids may think that. The greatest gift that you'll ever receive at Christmas is the gift of salvation. The gift that is confirmed by an empty tomb that Jesus came and lived a perfect life and died for our sins so that we could have eternal life. Is that us today?
Are you able to say this morning that I have accepted that same gift that's been offered to us this very morning? I hope it has.
And if it hasn't for you today, may that be today that your response, and I want to accept Jesus this morning. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done for us. Lord, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for his perfectness, his eternality, his light. Lord, thank you that,
I know it's hard to say this, that he was rejected so that I could have salvation.
So that he was brought into this world and his own didn't receive him, and now we have been grafted in to this eternal life. Lord, thank you for the gift of salvation.
Thank you for the gift of you becoming flesh, becoming like us and growing and being able to relate in every single way possible.
Lord, help us this morning, if there's anyone here that doesn't know you, that today would be the day of salvation for them. That today they would say, I want to put my faith and trust in you.
And I pray, God, that you would help us to walk more and more with you every single day of our life. In your name we pray. Amen.
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