Christmas Day Sermon 2022
Christmas Day 2022
John 1:1-14
There is only one God. Hear, O Israel! The LORD our God, the LORD is one. There is only one divine being or essence. God cannot be divided into parts. He is eternal, from everlasting to everlasting. He is omnipotent, almighty, omniscient, all-knowing, omnipresent, everywhere, omnibeneficent, all good, and yet He is not the sum of all these attributes. He is love, but He is not hate. He is Light, but uncreated, and there is no darkness in Him at all. He is the Creator of all things visible and invisible. He is the Father almighty, His only begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from both together. Each person is called and is Lord and God, and yet there is only one Lord, one God. Each is entirely and essentially God, three persons in one substance and being.
This is the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, the Holy Trinity. But this mystery cannot be known except through the second great mystery of the Christian faith, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. John calls Him the Word as the prophets did. In the beginning God spoke and created all things. In the beginning was the Word. The Word is not a creation of the Father, but comes from the Father in eternity. The Word is also called “Wisdom” in the Old Testament. This is what Solomon writes about the 2nd Person of the Trinity,
The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
And so we cannot say that the Word was created. He was with God in the beginning when all things were created. He was with God, and so He is not apart from God. And then John says, And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. You cannot think of any beginning without the Word. He is the Alpha, the beginning of all things created. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. This is why the Apostle Paul teaches the Colossians (1:15-17) and us about the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
And so there is no life apart from the Word of God, apart from Him through whom all things were made. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Life comes from Him alone. God does not give life apart from Him Word through whom He created all things. God is the source of all life, and the Word is the source of all life. The Word is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
The life that Jesus is our light. Apart from the life of Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father, we cannot see anything. We cannot know anything. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Just as God spoke through His Son and said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” so God speaks to us poor sinful men through His Son today, and the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness did not comprehend it.
The word for “comprehend” here is actually something more like “obtain” or “take possession of.” That is why it is sometimes translated as “overcome.” The darkness cannot over take possession of the light. The darkness doesn’t understand the light, doesn’t overtake the light that is in Christ. The light keeps shining the darkness. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
The life that Christ is, is a light that shines into the darkness. That is what we are celebrating tonight. The only way to know the first great mystery of the Holy Trinity is to know how God, who is light, shines into our darkness. Because we live in a dark and sinful world. The devil is the god of this age, the prince of this world, who blinds people, darkening their hearts so that the glorious light of the Gospel does not shine on them.
But the darkness does not overcome the light. Jesus keeps shining. He shines through His word that created the physical light we see. But His Word is brighter than the sun, and illumines the way of God to us in Christ. That is why God sent John to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. The word of God points you to the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
This means that every human being, every baby ever born, receives life from the Light of Christ. The light shines in the darkness of Adam’s flesh, but the darkness does not understand it. By nature we are sinners, and we need the light to shine in our hearts by His word. That is why we listen to preachers like John the Baptist. He and no other pastor is the light, but they testify about the light so that our hearts might be enlightened and see that Jesus is the true light which gives light to everyone.
But look at how the light shines in the darkness! He was in the world, and the world was made
through Him, and the world did not know Him!
But the light still shines in the darkness. He came to His own, and His own did not
receive Him! Even His own kin couldn’t
recognize Him, not for lack of light, but because the darkness cannot
comprehend Him. “But as many as received
Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe
in His name.”
That is how we come to know God, by receiving Him. He gives Himself to us. We took what didn’t belong. Every sin we lurch for is another fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that deludes us into thinking we are like God. But it is all darkness. God cannot be grasped by our taking what He forbids. God cannot be seen in the darkness. But the light still shines. The light shines into the hearts of those who know they are in darkness; who see sin and not righteousness, guilt and not innocence, death and no life. The light shines on those who know they need the light, and it causes a new birth, a birth not of blood or of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
The light shines and gives life. Where does it shine? It shines in the flesh of God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. How does the light shine in the darkness? With the Word made flesh. The Word, by whom light was created, who is Himself the eternal light, joins our darkness, and takes on our flesh, and is made man.
In your flesh the light shines. In a body and mind like yours. Your humanity that He claims is not destroyed by enclosing God Himself. God is not diminished by becoming man. This is not a temporary arrangement that will end with God leaving flesh. No, the Word became flesh. God is flesh like yours, but without sin. He through whom all things were made is Himself made. He in whom is life which is the light of men, brings all of His light and goodness and power and glory and wisdom and knowledge and love entirely into our human nature, into flesh. Every part of our humanity is filled with the fullness of God in Christ. His eyes are God’s eyes; His feet are God’s feet, His hands are God’s hands, His brain is God’s brain, His heart is God’s heart, and it beats with blood for you and for me.
The glory is in the Temple. In the days of Moses the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle, and again in the days of Solomon the glory of the Lord filled the Temple, so that no one was able to go in. But after the exile, when the Temple was rebuilt, the glory of the Lord did not fill it. Instead God made a promise through the prophet Haggai,
For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this [d]temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the Lord of hosts.”
Jesus came to that temple. God entered it and the light shone into the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. But that is only a picture of the reality. The Word became flesh and tented among us. In other words, the temple, the tabernacle, is the flesh of Christ. He is the temple. The fullness and glory of God fills the body of the baby in a manger. All that is God is in Him, and He is here to shine in the wilderness and lead His people as a pillar of fire by night.
His flesh is not destroyed by God, because His flesh is pure. It is as the Angel of the Lord who is the Lord and God, the Word of God, spoke to Moses from the burning bush. The fire does not consume the bush. So God’s holiness and divinity does not consume our humanity. The light is the life that is in Christ. It is the way to the Father by the Son through the Spirit’s words.
Therefore we know the mystery of the Trinity only when God sends His Son into the flesh to tent among us and show His glory. What is this glory? It is the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It is not a glory full of punishment. It is the glory full of grace. It is the glory that shines into the darkness. It is the glory that the Shepherds saw not in the angels in the sky, but in the face of a baby laid in a manger. It is the light that shines on the humble and the weak and the poor. It is the light that shone on the cross, and the darkness did not overcome it.
It is the light that shines in your heart, burdened by sin and care, not seeing so much, understanding so little, life being so short, and death being so real, but the light shines in the darkness and shatters it. The light of God does not destroy our flesh, but in our flesh the light endures the darkness of your sin, and the death of your guilt, and the flesh that the Light of Light took on dies, and the darkness still does not overcome it. He rises and your flesh is saved. He shines and your heart is awoken to the truth that is the grace of God, that He has mercy on sinners in His Son, that you know the Father in the Son He gave, for unto us a Child is born, unto a Son is given, and the government was on His shoulders, and He endured this dark life to shine eternal life in your hearts by the forgiveness of your sins, by glowing with the Father’s own thoughts towards you of peace, and the Word speaks those words to you today, and He gives you life. He gives you Himself in the Father by the Holy Spirit, and you worship the Trinity in unity and the Unity in Trinity by eating the flesh of the Son of God and drinking His blood.
Christmas is the day when the darkness is scattered. It is the day when God raised up our fallen nature by assuming our human nature under the Law for us. God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, to shine on us, to redeem us, to forgive us, to scatter the darkness of unbelief and make our hearts certain of the truth God is gracious and merciful to poor sinner because His Son is one with us forever.
And this grace of God teaches us salvation from the darkness. It teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present dark age. It teaches us to shine with the light that we receive, not by our works, by through faith in Christ’s grace and truth. And this light that shines on us leads us through the valley of the shadow of death to hope and see by faith the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works, walking in the light of His mercy.
If you feel the darkness, then turn to the light. It is not in the sun in the sky. It is not in the lamp in your house. It is not the light of your own reason. It is the light that is the life Christ lived, suffered, and gave up for you. It is all the Light and Goodness of God enclosed in flesh, which He gives you to eat today for the forgiveness of your sins. That is the light. Praise God for it shining in our hearts today! Amen.