The Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us!

Read John 1:14

If you want to hear the Christmas story, you go to Luke’s gospel or Matthew’s gospel.  That’s just the way it is.  You get a little genealogy in each.  You get a couple songs in Luke.  You get the Magi in Matthew.  The child Jesus is presented at the temple in Luke.  The family flees to Egypt in Matthew. 

If you take both together, you get a fairly full Christmas picture.

Nobody uses Mark’s gospel to tell the Christmas story.  It doesn’t have one.  John the Baptist and Jesus are pushing 30 when this account starts.

Few use John’s gospel to tell the Christmas story, but it’s there.  There is no genealogy, no baby leaping in the womb, nobody singing We Three Kings of Orient Are.  But the Christmas story is there.  Only 14 verses into this gospel, John says Merry Christmas!

And the Word became 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.

Most of the year I preach and teach discipleship.  I offer charges and challenges to be a disciple of Jesus.  Follow him!  I am a little, OK, I am very passionate about this thing called discipleship.  How could I not be knowing what God has done for me, for us.

I am preaching to people who have said they follow Jesus.  I don’t preach much about salvation when I am talking to the saved.  Occasionally, I will sell a little ice cream to the Eskimos.  I love to tell the story to those who know it best.  You don’t need to walk the aisle every 6 months to be recertified in salvation.  I am not going to use the Evil One’s tool of guilt to get you to profess your faith yet once more.  No!

I talk mostly about following Jesus.  That’s a big subject area.  There is no dearth of material from which to preach.  Discipleship is our focus.  We want to get good at following Jesus.

We want God to be pleased because our hearts and our effort are in concert with each other and we are putting a lot of effort into pleasing our Lord.

I will offer words of invitation on a recurring basis but most of my teaching and preaching is to the saints, and you guys are saved.

Most of what you hear from me is about what we are called to do as disciples of our Lord.  I don’t look around the congregation and think, “Well, his salvation didn’t take.  I don’t know if she is really washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

I don’t think, “It must be time for a Seven Sunday Series of hell fire and damnation sermons.”  It might be sort of fun for me just to yell at you for an hour and see who is sweating my message, but I have been ordained to deliver good news.

And you have received the good news.  You celebrate the good news.  So sometimes, we just need to acknowledge and celebrate.

At Easter, I will say, He is Risen dozens of times in the course of that Holy Week which precedes the Resurrection Service. 

He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Christ the Lord is Risen today!

You usually get a short message at Easter.  He is risen just about covers every Easter message that I have delivered.

 

But at Christmas, we need angels and shepherds and overbooked inns and people going to their home towns to be counted so the Emperor could make sure he got all the tax he thought he needed.

We have to decide whether we will tell people to enjoy their worship service for the Christ or enjoy all of the holy days that we have this time of year.  Yes, that’s Merry Christmas or Happy Holy or Holly Days.

Easter is so much easier.  We just say, He is Risen!  That’s the message.

Have a merry worship service for the Christ—enjoy your late December worship hour—doesn’t convey the same thing.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had something like He is Risen at Christmas time?  Wouldn’t it be nice...

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

That cuts to the heart of the matter.  God, who 3 chapters later in this gospel is identified as Spirit, came in the flesh.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

Jesus stepped out of heaven and came into this world.  Matthew and Luke cover some of the conception highlights, deliver golden nuggets about his birth, and early childhood events, but John gets to the heart of what happened.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

Not only did we—humankind—suddenly jump from the world spinning out of control to a babe in a manger, we witnessed the magnitude of God’s mighty act.

And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

He came with grace—not sent here to condemn us but to save us.

He came with truth—not humankind’s version of its own situation.

And John said, we beheld His glory.  Humankind witnessed God with us.  We sing Emanuel because people witnessed God with us.  He became flesh and lived among us.

But he was like no other.  He was unique, one of a kind, one and only Son of our Heavenly Father.

Today, we are not diving into our discipleship.  We are not picking up the pace of our race of faith.  We are not even going to spend a lot of time rightly dividing the word of God.  These are all good things that we should be doing.

Today, just think on John’s simple message.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

Just as we frequently say, He is Risen as we approach that Easter Sunday each year, start saying, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

John gets to the heart of the matter.

And the Word became 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.

Merry Christmas and Amen!