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Okay, here we go.
Reading from the prophet Isaiah.
9-1.
But there will be no gloom for her who is in anguish.
And the former time he brought unto contempt the land of?
And the land of?
But in the later time he has made glorious the weight of the sea,
and the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of all the nations.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
Those who dwelt in the land of dark, deep darkness on them has light shown.
You have multiplied the nation.
You have increased its joy.
They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of?
The day of?
And for the boot of the tramping warrior in the battle, Tomah, and every garment rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For as a child is born, to us a son is given.
And the government shall be upon his shoulder.
And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
And of the increase of his government and the peace, there will be no end.
On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness,
from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
The grass withers, the flowers fade.
The word of our God, and forever.
Okay, you ready for number two?
Reading from the Gospel according to John.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
And the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
He came as a witness to bear witness about the light, and all might believe through him.
He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made through him.
Yet the world did not know him.
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
But to all who did receive him, who believe his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
who were born not of blood, nor of will, of the flesh, nor the will of man, but God.
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise be to you, O God.
You may be seated.
Thank you, Gail.
Good morning, Christ Church.
My name is Andrew, one of the pastors here, and I look forward to bringing God's Word to you today.
Will you join me in prayer?
Lord God, we want to give our attention to your Word, the Scriptures, but also your Word, your Son.
As we look forward to his return, would you fill us with hope and faith and love,
and would we prepare our hearts rightly in anticipation of the great hope you've set before us in this Advent season?
So be honored in the preaching of your Word, and we pray these things in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
You know, every single Sunday when I come up here to preach, I bring up with me the baggage of my best friend.
Many of you have heard me mention this best friend before, and he's given me permission to share about him.
But yeah, every time I come up here, I come up here with my best friend in mind,
this best friend who is no longer walking with Jesus.
Because after watching his grandmother die a slow, gruesome, and painful death from cancer,
he now finds it too hard, too hard to believe, and too hard to trust,
and too hard to hope in an all-good, all-powerful, divine author of history.
The darkness was just too dark for him to believe in any ultimate light.
And you know, growing up with him, I always just thought of him as a glass-half-empty kind of a guy.
Growing up, this was a kid who used to say things like,
Oh, I just can't wait for Jesus to come back.
Oh, I just want to get out of here. I just want to go to heaven.
And as an adult, he'll still say things like,
I never, never want to have kids.
There are just so many things that could go wrong.
And, you know, why would I want to bring more human life into this broken world filled with despair?
And you see this also come out in just the way he's chosen to live his life.
He's not living a life trying to pursue lofty ambitions,
but he's trying to live a safe life.
A life that minimizes any possible experience of pain and loss.
He lives simply and with great contentment,
just trying to enjoy what he can while he can.
And, you know, for the most part, the strategy of avoiding loss,
admittedly dependent on a ton of privilege and, you know, good fortune,
it's worked out pretty well for him.
I've actually never seen him just absolutely downcast or overcome with sorrow.
I mean, I've also never really seen him overjoyed and head over heels about anything either.
But, you know, if I'm honest, sometimes, especially recently, I envy him.
And the simplicity of his life, just avoiding the darkness.
Because sometimes the darkness is just too dark, right?
Sometimes it's just too dark.
It's really dark, isn't it?
I don't think I need to convince this particular church family today
of the depth and darkness of the darkness.
The gloom and the anguish spoken of by the prophet Isaiah in our text this morning,
they are so real, right?
They're so real.
And for those of us privileged enough to escape for a time
and to close our eyes and cover our ears
and minimize our exposure to the depths of this darkness,
it's tempting, isn't it?
For those of us who can, it's tempting to bypass the agony of Advent
and to skip ahead to distract ourselves with a commercial Christmas, right?
Stringing up hundreds, even thousands of artificial man-made Christmas lights
as if they'll overcome the darkness we're trying to avoid.
And that's one way of dealing with the darkness,
trying to ignore it, trying to forget it,
trying to minimize its devastation in our lives.
But while this strategy might work for a season or so,
it's never a sure thing.
Never actually victorious over the darkness.
Avoidance is but a poor and unreliable substitute for a lasting victory.
You know, my friend, now that he's stepped away from the faith
and from the hope of Christ, he is now inhabiting a new story.
One in which darkness is a mere and inevitable reality,
best avoided by hard work, but mostly just by luck and chance.
He's inhabiting this story in which the chief end of humanity
is to hopefully experience more artificial light
than impending darkness during one's temporary state of consciousness here on earth.
And you might say that the Advent that he is living for,
the only coming that he is preparing himself for,
is the coming of death and darkness.
Preparing for the inevitable by merely avoiding and delaying death and darkness.
But as we open up the Gospel of John today,
the good news of John, God shows us a better way.
A better way of responding to the real, deep darkness that so overwhelms us.
The prophet Isaiah, he caught a glimpse of this better Advent,
this better story we're invited to inhabit.
The prophet Isaiah caught a glimpse of it when he foretold
the dawning of a great and ultimate light
that was going to shine upon people dwelling in deep darkness.
A light to come at the arrival of a child who himself would be mighty God.
From the very first verse, verse 1, John's Gospel, it retells the story.
It retells the story of the world and invites us to inhabit God's story.
The most ancient story, a story not just of creation,
but a story of new creation.
In the beginning, it says, look there, in the beginning.
Echoing the first words of the Christian Scriptures from Genesis chapter 1, verse 1,
the story of light overcoming darkness.
From the very beginning of the creation of the world,
when God spoke with a word over the deep darkness,
let there be light, and there was light.
Just because he said so.
And the good news of John is that we are invited into this better story
in which just as creation came about by the personal divine word of God,
so also will new creation come about by the personal divine word of God.
And that's what these opening verses of John's Gospel are getting at.
In the beginning was the word.
And the word was with God.
And the word was God.
He was with God from the beginning.
All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and this life was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John's Gospel is given to us, a people dwelling in darkness,
to remind us that God, the creator, who overcame darkness at the creation of the world
by the mere power of his word, he has sent forth another final word of new creation
to permanently dispel all our darkness.
John's Gospel is a reminder to us about the word of God.
And the word of God alone is the hope of the world.
It's the hope of the world, and it's a sure hope.
You know, sometimes I wonder if we need a reminder in this Advent season that Advent isn't first and foremost about our longing,
but it's actually about our Messiah's coming.
I wonder if we need a reminder that while Advent longing is definitely appropriate to this season,
even more appropriate is Advent preparation.
The preparation of our hearts to receive this coming one with repentance and faith and hope and trust.
The takeaway application of Advent and the whole takeaway application of John's Gospel
is not to simply be real about the darkness and just linger in our longing.
John tells us that the main purpose of this Gospel account,
in chapter 20, verse 31, he says,
These things are written that you may believe,
that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God,
and that by believing, you may have life in His name.
The takeaway application of Advent from John is to believe.
To believe.
Even when it's hard,
and even when the darkness seems like the realest and most ultimate thing,
John's Gospel calls us not into a generic longing for some ambiguous better day,
but to faith in Jesus,
in the midst of our longing.
And so as we open up John's Gospel starting today,
we're going to see that the point of Advent is not simply to indulge our longings,
but it's to direct our longings toward our sure hope,
toward the one who came and who's coming again,
the one who made all things.
This is the Word, right?
The Word made all things.
That's who we direct our hope and our longing toward,
this Word who made all things,
and this Word who said,
behold, I am making all things new.
Write this down.
These words are trustworthy and true, he says.
It is done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end.
This is the sure hope
that Advent and John's Gospel invite us
to direct our longings toward the Word,
who was with God from the beginning,
and who is God Himself.
And my prayer is that as we look at this Word that John talks about,
that our hearts would indeed be prepared,
firm in faith, sure in hope,
longing with love to joyfully receive this Word,
who came and who's coming again.
Now I want to look at this text
because I imagine that this first line of John's Gospel
could be quite confusing, right?
This verse 1,
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
It could be confusing.
But I think that if we just slow down
and break it down
and observe a couple things,
I think this will really help us.
So first of all,
what we need to notice is that
while this language might seem strange to us,
for John's monotheistic Jewish readers,
he was making very explicit
what had always been implicit in their tradition.
He was saying,
you know your tradition, right,
that says that God is a self-expressing God
who revealed himself and created the world by his Word?
John is saying,
well, that creative Word who was with God
is also God,
and he was with God from the beginning.
What John is doing here
is he is making explicit the Trinity,
the triune nature of God,
the mysterious paradox of our Christian faith,
that God is one God,
and yet also three distinct persons,
Father, Son, and Spirit.
And what he's also doing at the same time,
he is also making an explicit claim
to his Greek readership as well.
See, the Greeks were looking for
and often debated something called the logos.
That's the Greek word for word.
They were looking for something called the logos,
this ultimate principle of reason,
this essence of rationality,
this meaning and purpose and direction
and order of all things.
And here John is saying that this logos
that the Greeks discussed and debated
was not some abstract concept like mere being,
it wasn't some principle or law
like the law of non-contradiction.
John was saying,
yes, there's an ultimate order to this world,
an ultimate reason and purpose and principle,
but it's not an impersonal principle,
it's a person.
Notice he uses the personal pronoun here,
it says,
he,
he was in the beginning,
the divine Word by whom the world was made,
the one who was with God and who was God,
he is the logos.
So this is what John is getting at
when he opens his gospel account
by introducing this concept of the Word,
the logos.
He's getting at two things,
that one,
God is triune,
one God and three persons,
and that two,
the logos is the divine and personal Word of God
revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures,
that that which is behind and holding together
all reason and meaning and purpose
and reality as we know it,
is a person,
the second person of the Trinity,
the Word who created all things.
Now, okay,
I know that was super abstract, right?
I know that was super abstract,
so let's get down to it.
Why should any of this matter to us?
What is the significance of God's triune nature
and what is the significance of this personal divine logos?
Well, actually,
a relatively newcomer to our church,
he came over to my house a couple weeks,
a couple weeks ago with Josh Lynn,
and we sat around my table
with watered-down boba and popcorn chicken,
and he actually asked me this very first question,
like,
what is the significance of the Trinity?
He said to me,
you know,
I've been investigating Christianity,
I've read the Bible from cover to cover,
and there are tons of things that resonate with me,
that God is powerful,
and that He's authoritative,
and He's the Creator,
and I love His mercy and love,
and that there's forgiveness through Jesus.
But there are some things that really don't make sense to me,
and I'm wondering how important they could really be.
I'm wondering if I really need to agree with them to have a genuine faith,
like the Trinity,
he said.
Is it really that clear,
and do I really need to believe in this Trinity that I can't make sense of?
And I really appreciated the honesty of his genuine question,
and there were a bunch of ways that I thought about answering the question,
but you know what I said?
I said,
you know,
we could open up the Scriptures to various places that indicate this doctrine of the Trinity,
and I talked about John 1,
and how the Word was God,
and the Word was with God,
right?
But I said,
or,
or we can talk about,
you know,
church history,
and how Christians have for a long time recognized this doctrine of the Trinity.
And I said,
I'm happy to chat about all these things,
but really briefly,
if I could share with you what I personally find most compelling about the Trinity,
there are two things.
So this is what I said to him,
these two things.
First,
the mysterious paradox of the Trinity,
and the way it confounds my human categories of understanding,
it actually gives me comfort,
that God is God,
and that I am not.
And that even when I can't understand him,
this is good,
and right,
and actually a confirmation of who he is,
and of who I am.
He is the creator,
and I am the creature.
And what he reveals to me,
even if I cannot wrap my finite and fallible mind around it,
I can say,
yes,
Lord,
and trust that he is good,
and faithful,
and true,
apart,
apart from what I think.
I'm so glad to have a God who doesn't need to fit in my small,
small box of understanding.
That's the first thing I said about the Trinity,
this paradox that we confess as Christians.
But secondly,
I said this,
and the other thing I love about the Trinity,
probably what I love the most about the Trinity,
is that at the heart,
at the core of who this triune God is,
is a father loving a son with his entire being,
with his entire spirit.
That before and completely independent of creation,
before and completely independent of this world,
love,
and life,
and joy,
and harmony,
have always been enjoyed,
and beheld,
and shared in God.
See,
a God who is not triune,
cannot in its essence be loving,
or caring,
or dynamic,
or personal,
in and of itself.
It would need something,
it would need someone to love,
and care for,
and to interact,
and be present with.
But the triune God of the Scriptures,
see,
he did not need creation to be a God who is dynamically loving,
and joyful,
and harmonious,
and a beauty beheld from all eternity.
The Father has always loved the Son,
in the joyful presence of the Spirit's witness.
Love and harmony have always existed,
because the triune God has always existed.
And because he is all these things in himself,
as one God in three persons,
we can know that the world was created,
out of a personal love,
joy,
peace,
kindness,
unity,
harmony,
and beauty.
Like,
these concepts aren't mere social constructs,
or superior evolutionary developments,
developments of enlightened humanity,
they're reflections,
of our triune God,
who is all these things,
in his very essence.
If you've known and enjoyed love,
it is not just because of certain neurons firing in your brain,
because of certain contexts that you're in,
it's because you're created by a God,
who is love.
Isn't that profound?
Isn't that amazing?
It's amazing to me.
Because there's no other faith like this.
Either you have polytheism with impotent,
tribal,
is it okay tonight?
Is that just like,
I got a mic.
Okay.
So this is what's distinctive about our God.
He is three,
and he is one.
There is no other God
like this guy.
No other God.
Now,
not only this,
John,
one of us understands
the humanitarian imitations of the law,
but he also wants us to understand
the lordship of the law.
Remember,
for the ancient Greeks,
the law was the rational principle
by which the world was logically ordered.
It was the most basic,
most fundamental foundation of reality
that made sense of
and directed all things.
And this may sound abstract
and irrelevant to us today,
but you see,
what the Greeks were searching for,
it's the same thing
that we are searching for today.
They were trying to make sense of the world
and of reality
by identifying an authoritative voice,
an authoritative word.
They were looking for something
or someone to tell them
their purpose
and the world's purpose,
some guiding principle to live by
that aligned with the essence of reality.
And is that not what we are doing today?
Is that not what we're after today?
A right understanding of who we are
and what we're made for
and who our neighbors are
and how we're to relate
to the rest of this world.
And haven't we,
just like these ancient Greeks,
haven't we come up
with several different kinds of answers
to this question?
Think of all the words,
think of all the different logoses
that have been offered up
to answer the question
of the meaning of life.
Right?
For the consumeristic materialists,
they live by the logos,
get money, get paid.
Right?
For the pluralistic relativists,
they live by the logos,
you do you.
The hedonists say,
YOLO,
you only live once.
The traditionalists might say,
family first.
And even those who don't think
that we can know
or identify a single logos
that makes sense of the world,
even agnostics have a word
that governs them.
They say,
who knows?
Who knows?
Or maybe if you're just like me,
a simple, selfish,
egotistical person,
the logos that you live by
is me first.
Mine.
What about me?
And my point is,
see,
if we don't use,
even if we don't use
the language of logos,
we all live by
a controlling word
that tells us what is good
and right
and true
and real.
And the question is,
as the ancient Greeks debated,
what is the true logos?
What is the logos
that makes the most sense?
Now,
I don't have time
to make that argument
and John himself
is not concerned
to make that argument
here either,
but what he does intend
to make clear
in these verses
is who he
and who the rest
of Jesus' apostles
believe the logos
to be.
For John,
the logos is none other
than the word
who was with God
and who was God,
creating the world
and giving life
to all.
this one,
the one who
John the Baptist
came and bore witness to.
The one the rest
of the gospel of John
is going to talk about
is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
is the logos.
Now,
maybe you are here
and you're exploring
Christianity
and maybe you're,
you know,
or maybe you're just
a Christian
who struggles
with a lot of doubt
and it's frustrating
to you that
I'm not making a case
for why you should believe
what John has to say
about the logos.
But you know what?
This is actually
intentional.
I want you to look
at verse 4.
Verse 4 says,
in him was life
and this life
was the light
of men.
Do you know why
John doesn't make
an argument
for his claim
about the logos?
Do you know why
I'm not trying
to make
an argumentative case?
It's because
even those of us
who say
with the very tongue
and lips
that God created,
I'm not sure
if God exists.
Even those of us
who think to ourselves,
is God real?
With the very minds
that God gave us,
that we have lives
at all.
Every life
is actually
a light
that reveals
the truth about God
as our maker
and our sustainer.
John doesn't give us
a logical proof
of God
and I won't bother
either because
each of us
having life
from God himself,
we cannot actually
escape the light
of God.
Apostle Paul
indicates this
in Romans chapter 1
when he says,
for what can be known
about God
is plain
because God
has shown it
for his invisible
attributes,
namely his eternal power
and divine nature
have been clearly
perceived
ever since
the creation
of the world
in the things
that have been made.
So we are without excuse
for although
we knew God,
we did not honor him
as God
or give thanks to him
but became futile
in thinking
and our foolish hearts
were darkened
claiming to be wise,
we became fools
and exchanged
the truth about God
for a lie
and worshipped
and served the creature
rather than the creator.
See, the light
has always shone upon us.
People made
in the image of God,
we all know
deep down
who we are
and what we're made for
and who our lives
belong to.
Just like Woody
from Toy Story,
Woody's cowboy boot
has always had
Andy written on it.
Just like
a Buzz Lightyear sleeve
has always had
Made in Taiwan
etched into it.
Our lives
were given to us
and they're owed
to our life giver.
He's given us
plenty of light.
But see,
the heinousness of sin
is that we've chosen
darkness instead.
We've chosen
to live by words
other than
the logos,
words other than
the word of God.
And with this
re-entrance of darkness
and sin,
because of our
rejection of God's word,
we become confused
about what is light
and what is darkness,
unable to distinguish
truth from falsehood,
right from wrong.
And that's why God
sent witnesses
like the prophets,
like John the Baptist,
to bear witness
to the light,
as it says in verses
6 to 8.
And God even sent
his own final word,
his son,
the true light,
it says in verse 9.
But verses 10 and 11,
while this world
was made by him
and he came to his own,
his own did not
recognize him.
His own did not
receive him.
Just like Buzz Lightyear
refused to acknowledge
he was made in Taiwan
and it ended
in a crash.
And this is the
insidious nature
of sin.
This is the depravity
of living by a word
other than God's word.
When we give up
on God's word,
the obvious truth
is no longer obvious.
And darkness
creeps right in
and all things,
including you and me
and our whole lives
and our very understanding,
it all gets twisted
and distorted
and put off course
from the way things
were meant to be.
And so really,
the problem of unbelief
is not a lack
of evidence.
God's light
has always shown clearly.
He has sent many
of his witnesses
to bear witness
to the light.
He even sent
his true light.
The problem is not
that God
has not revealed enough.
It's that our sinful
and darkened minds
have not rightly received
this revelation.
We have not rightly
received his word.
And this is the reason
why Advent longing
even exists at all
because of our sinful
rejection of the word.
But listen,
our text this morning
ends with good news.
See, though we've all
been infected by sin
and our minds
have been darkened
making unbelief
and doubt
and skepticism
more natural
than trusting
in God's word,
God has still
held out
his gracious promise
to us.
Verse 12,
But to all
who did receive him,
who believed
in his name,
he gave the right
to become
children of God
who were born
not of blood
nor of the will
of the flesh
nor of the will
of man
but of God.
And see,
this is the gospel.
This is the good news
that the light
shines in the darkness
and the darkness
has not overcome it.
That even
when we insisted
upon the darkness,
God insisted
on our adoption.
He has relentlessly
pursued our inclusion
and continues
and continues to
hold out
his offer
for us
to join his family.
How?
Not by insisting
that we have
the right blood lineage,
not by insisting
that we exert
our wills
to obey him
or measure up
to some man-made standard.
We join his family
by simply trusting
in his word,
trusting in his one
and only son,
the one he sent.
That's all it takes.
Just trust.
He's already taken care
of all the rest.
He's done
all the heavy lifting.
He sent his only
begotten son.
He sent his only
begotten son.
He denied the argument
that it was
no longer good
or worthwhile
to bring a child
into this world
knowing full well
all the terrible things
that could
and would happen
to his only son.
Knowing that the world's
deepest,
darkest day
was still yet to come
upon his son
hanging from a cross
at Gilgotha.
He sent him anyway.
He sent him anyway
all to pay
for our inclusion
into his family.
God drew near
to the darkness
of shame
and death
and defeat.
And he defeated it.
And this is the hope
of Advent,
Christ Church.
This is the hope
of Advent
that the coming one
is the Lord,
the Logos
of the triune God,
the one from whom
all eternity,
the one who
from all eternity
enjoyed the loving
smile of the Father
and the affirming
presence of the Spirit.
The hope of Advent
is that he is coming.
This is the kind of God
who is making
all things new.
And he's coming for us
that we might enjoy
the eternal love
and assurance
of the Father
with him forever.
Will you pray with me?
Lord, we confess
that there is no God
like you.
We are so glad
that your Son
is the Logos
and that the Logos
who is loved
from eternity
by the Father
in the presence
of the Spirit
is a Logos
of love
toward us.
He's given himself
for us.
Who's come near
the darkness
that we might be
adopted into
the family of God?
Lord, would you
open our eyes
to the great privilege
that you have offered
to us
that we might be
called children
of God
to have access
to you,
the Creator,
to be near you,
to be embraced
into your chest
as your Son
has been
from all eternity.
Open our eyes
to that great privilege
and honor
and would we not
squander this offer
but would we
joyfully prepare
our hearts
to receive
your Son
and enjoy
our Sonship
in Christ
we pray.
Amen.