During this Christmas season, we have been working our way through the prologue to John's
Gospel, talking together about some different aspects of the Incarnation.
In particular, in the last couple of weeks, we have been considering how Jesus leaves the glories
and the comforts of heaven and enters into our pain.
We've said that when the Word becomes flesh, He sacrifices the status and privilege of divinity
and He runs toward the pain and suffering of this world.
And that's glorious.
It's awe-inspiring to consider what God has done when the Word becomes flesh.
But it also begs the question, why?
Why?
What could possibly motivate God to leave those glories and comforts in order to enter into
pain and suffering?
What could drive Him to do that?
This morning, we get to the climax of John's prologue and we'll get to see a glimpse of
the heart of God in becoming man.
Hear God's Word from John chapter 1, starting at 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.
All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
In Him was life, and that 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 that all might believe through Him.
He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which enlightens 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 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 the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only
Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
If you turn over just a couple chapters to chapter 3 at verse 16, we hear these familiar words.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should
not perish, but have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through Him.
This is God's holy word.
Let's pray and ask Him to teach us together.
Father, we give You thanks for Your word.
We thank You for Your love for us and how it is displayed beautifully there.
Father, Father, would You give us Your heart.
By Your Spirit, teach us and change us this morning, that we might know more of Your heart
this Christmas.
Pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
When we ask the question of what motivated God to become man, to send His Son as the Word
become flesh, the answer is profound, but it's not complicated.
It's love.
That's it.
I'm not even going to leave you in suspense.
The sermon's kind of over at this point.
It's love.
That's all there is to it.
Love.
If we look at the definition of the incarnation that we've been considering, you'll see it's
in there.
The incarnation is the intentional entrance of the divine Son of God into our fallen world
in human flesh to secure our redemption at the cost of His life.
Why?
Because of His great love.
It's because of His great love that He would do that.
Love.
It's certainly there in John 3.16, those words you're familiar with, but that word love is
not even in the verses we're considering in John 1.
Rather, what we'll see in John 1 this morning is God demonstrating to us how much He loves.
When I was a freshman at Clemson, several upperclassmen reached out to me very early on.
They welcomed me in.
They made me feel part of a community and like I had a home during that very difficult transition
that we all go through and leaving home and living away from home for the first time.
They made me feel a part of a community, especially in RUF, the campus ministry that I was involved
in there at Clemson.
And so that next year, when I was a sophomore, I was on the ministry team with RUF and before
the year started, I went to our campus minister and said, that's what I want to do.
I want to be focused on those new freshman guys.
I want to make them feel loved.
And so I asked him, I said, what would you do?
How do you make them feel loved?
And his answer was not exactly what I was expecting.
I was looking forward to hearing like strategies and events to do and things to say and things
not to say.
And he gave a fairly simple answer, but it's stuck with me for many years.
He said, well, if you want them to feel loved, I would say the easiest way is to start by
actually loving them and then just kind of see where that takes you.
But it's actually best if you really love them.
And I thought, wow, that's crazy.
You mean it's actually easier to love them than to pretend that I love them and try to make
them feel like I love them to actually begin caring about them.
And that step one is genuinely loving is true because love is a feeling and a commitment
that drives actions, isn't it?
Actually loving them was easier than pretending to.
When you actually love, it will be demonstrated and usually then felt as well.
In John 3.16, we see that God so loved the world that he gave.
There's really no other or better explanation for the incarnation, for the seemingly inexplicable
decision that Jesus made to sacrifice for us than love.
Love fuels God's heart.
It overflows from God's heart because, as the Bible tells us, God is love.
1 John 4.8.
From cover to cover of the Bible, it's a story of a God who loves.
Loves enough to have relationship with the people he created.
Loves powerfully enough to deliver them out of Egypt and slavery.
Loves patiently enough to bear with their sin, their idolatry, their rebellion against him.
Loves persistently enough to bring them back from exile and bring them to the promised land
again.
The love of God is a love that reaches down to care about and to tangibly help those who
are in need.
As Sally Lloyd-Jones says, God's love is a never-stopping, never-giving-up, unbreaking,
always-and-forever love.
It's an irrevocable commitment to relationship with his people, to their ultimate good, no
matter what it takes.
And sometimes it takes a lot, a lot of sacrifice, as it does in the incarnation.
And so in John 1, we are shown, in essence, how much God loves.
In the incarnation, God demonstrates the reality and the enormity of the love in his heart as
he takes on flesh.
Kids, if you were to think at Christmastime, what is one way that our parents show us that
they love us, what would you think of?
How do your parents at Christmastime show you that they love you?
You got any idea?
Presents.
That is one way, isn't it?
They give gifts.
Giving gifts is one way to show love.
And God gives us gifts.
The gift of God, Romans 6.23 says, is eternal life.
That true and everlasting life referenced in John 1 and in John 3.16.
A gift that really can't be matched.
The best gift you could possibly ever receive.
The good news of Christmas is that Jesus didn't come to give merely a little social improvement,
a few family values, temporary political deliverance.
No, he came to give eternal life, which in the meantime can and does transform all of life.
But he came primarily to meet our greatest need, life in the face of death, which is what
we deserved.
God so loved the world that he gave.
But he didn't just send a gift in the mail.
That would have been loving, certainly.
But he didn't just send a gift in the mail.
That gift of eternal life is given in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 John 4 says, the way God shows that he is love is by giving himself.
He loves us so much more that he would even give himself.
Look at verse 9 of 1 John 4.
In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the
world so that we might live through him.
So that we could have life.
God himself came.
He gives himself in the incarnation.
That's another way at Christmas that many of us will show love or will receive love.
By showing up.
Right?
Don't you love when people don't only send gifts, but some of you are here this morning
because you have shown up face to face in the lives of those you love.
You've perhaps come a long way.
And don't we appreciate and receive that love all the more when we know how much it's
cost them to get there?
All they've had to sacrifice to be there with us because they love us.
In Jesus, God shows up to be Emmanuel.
God with us.
We've considered it over the last few weeks as light breaking into our darkness.
As God running toward our pain.
John says it this way in verse 14 of chapter 1.
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
You may know that word for dwelt, dwelt among us, is the word that in the Old Testament was
for tabernacle.
God's mobile home, the place he lived among his people, even while they wandered through
the desert and failed to trust him and obey him.
Here God lived in the tabernacle.
And so this verse is telling us that the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.
He shows up to demonstrate his love in person.
Not merely driving across the country to be with someone he loves, but reaching across
space and time, moving heaven and earth so that he can be with us.
So God didn't just give a gift, but he actually gave himself.
And one final demonstration, he doesn't just show up himself temporarily, but permanently.
This is not the obligatory 24-hour drop-in because it's the holidays and I don't want to get
in trouble with mom and dad.
No, the incarnation establishes, confirms our permanent relationship with God.
Verse 12 of John 1.
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.
God gives not just life, not just eternal life, but he gave the right to live that life
as his children in relationship with him, with him as our father.
Born into God's family, given the right to be his child because we wanted it so badly and we worked so hard?
No.
By the will of God, it was his idea to have you in his family.
How much does God love you?
God demonstrates his love by not merely forgiving our deadly sins and giving us life,
by not merely entering into our world and our lives here and there from time to time
to help us out in tight spots,
but particularly by once and for all adopting us into his family forever.
You know that I love the image of the judge who says our penalty is paid in full by Jesus
and we are declared not guilty but righteous before him.
And that same judge in criminal court jumping out from behind his desk,
grabbing you by the hand, running all the way down the hall to family court
and adopting you as his child, becoming your father.
Behold what manner of love the father has for us that we should be called children of God
and that is what we are, 1 John 3.
How much must the heart of God be full of love towards you
that he would adopt you into his family?
How committed is he to this relationship with you?
How certain is he that he never wants to be separated from you?
To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
born by his choice.
Behold what manner of love the father has given to us.
Now God's word has been challenging us and I've been pushing us a bit in the last few weeks
to consider how the incarnation challenges us
and how God sends us into the lives of others.
The darkness of the world, the suffering of those around us every day.
But today I have to admit and we have to remember that there's no way
we will sacrifice our comfort and our riches and our peace
to run toward pain unless we actually love.
You can't pretend that.
It's no surprise to you that God calls us to love others.
Right after that great definition of love in 1 John 4,
John says this,
this is how God loves.
He's loved.
He's loved us and sent his son.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another.
We are to love each other.
Our brothers and sisters in Christ,
elsewhere our neighbors,
and even our enemies,
we're called to love.
We are called to give sacrificially,
to show up in the pain,
to give of ourselves,
and consistently to be there for a relationship
that is outlasted only by the eternal relationship
they can know with their God.
We are called to love how?
Like God.
We are called to love as we have been loved,
as he has loved us.
Y'all, we better pray for God's heart
to love like God,
because we don't love like that naturally.
We ought to pray that we would actually,
truly love,
because there are a lot of people
hard to love in our lives.
Not just the ones we've talked about this morning,
like college freshmen,
family members at Christmas.
Don't raise your hand
if you've got hard people to love
sitting on the pew next to you this morning.
Just think it
and anticipate the next 24 hours together.
You can make it.
There are a lot of people
who are hard to love
that God is sending us
to show his love to.
But that's exactly what his love is like.
God's love is for the unlovely.
You know, that's what John 3.16 actually says
when it says,
God so loved the world.
Remember last week,
what we learned about the world?
It's a world in rebellion against him.
Who doesn't love him.
Who ignores him.
Who won't receive him.
And God so loved that world
that he sent his son into it.
He showed us his love
while we were yet sinners
and enemies of his
by being born in a manger,
living perfectly,
and then showing his love
to its fullest extent
by dying on the cross
in our place.
God's love is for those
who are against him.
It's love for the unlovely
that makes them lovely
because he loves them
rather than the other way around.
So if you feel unlovely this morning,
if you think your failures
and your shame
have made you hard to love,
perhaps have even put you
beyond the reach of God's love,
you need to know
that's not the case at all.
God's love is drawn to
and reaches toward
the most unlovely.
God, give us that love.
Love for the unlovely.
Love that is both deeply felt
and tangibly demonstrated.
Robert Benson
is the original author
of a Christmas story
that many have adapted
and I'm going to do that
as well this morning.
It's the story
of a homeless boy
in Chicago
on Christmas Eve.
I'll read.
It was a cold, dark night.
A blizzard was coming.
A little homeless boy
was selling newspapers
on the corner.
He finally walked up
to a policeman and said,
Mister, do you know
where a poor boy
could find a warm place
to sleep tonight?
I sleep in a box
in the alley
and it is very cold.
It's the night
before Christmas.
I sure wish
I had a nice, warm place
to stay.
The policeman told
the little boy
to go down the street
to the big white house
and knock on the door.
When a lady comes
to the door,
you just say,
John 3.16
and she will let you
in the house.
The shivering little boy
ran to the house.
He walked up the steps
and knocked on the door
and a lady came to the door.
He looked up and said,
John 3.16.
The lady said,
Come in, my son.
She took him inside
the warm house
and gave him a seat
in front of the fireplace.
The little boy
sat near the fireplace
and thought,
John 3.16,
I don't know what it means,
but it sure makes
a cold boy warm.
Later she asked him,
Are you hungry?
And he said,
Well, just a little.
I have not eaten
in a couple of days.
She sat the boy down
at the kitchen table
full of food.
He ate and ate
until he was full.
As he was eating,
he thought,
John 3.16.
I don't know what it means,
but it sure makes
a hungry boy full.
She took him upstairs
to a huge bathtub
filled with warm water.
She told him to take
a warm bath
and put on warm pajamas.
And as he soaked
in the tub,
he thought,
John 3.16,
I don't know what it means,
but it sure makes
a dirty boy clean.
Then she tucked him in bed
and kissed him
on the forehead.
The boy lay there
and thought,
John 3.16,
I don't know what it means,
but it sure makes
a tired boy rested.
The next morning
was Christmas Day
and the woman gave
the boy a big wrapped present.
He quickly pulled off
the ribbons
and opened it
and he was surprised
to find new clothes
and a Bible.
He happily thought again,
John 3.16,
I don't know what it means,
but it sure makes
a poor boy happy.
And the lady took his Bible
and sat down near him
and asked him,
do you know John 3.16?
And he said,
no ma'am,
I don't.
The first time I heard of it
was when the policeman
told me to use it.
She opened the Bible
to John 3.16
and he read,
for God so loved the world
that he gave his only son
that whoever believes in him
should not perish
but have eternal life.
And she said,
you are always welcome
in this house
and I would love for you
to be a part of my family
but even more importantly,
you are loved by God
and can be a part of his family
forever.
Now he understood
what Christmas really was about.
He held his new Bible
as he sat in front of the warm fire
and thought,
John 3.16,
now I know a little
what it means
and it sure makes
a cold boy feel warm inside.
It sure makes
a lonely boy
feel loved.
What a beautiful story
of love
for the unlovely
demonstrated
in word
and in deed
for God
so loved the world
that he gave,
that he gave
his only son
that whoever believes
in him
might not perish
but have
eternal life.
When God wanted
to show us
his love,
he gave.
He gave himself.
He gave himself
forever
to us
as our father
so that we,
though we be
completely unworthy
and unlovely,
would be his children
who know
and revel in
and delight
to share freely
his immeasurable love.
Let's pray.
God,
we worship you
for your
heart
of love.
we plead
with you
that you
would give us
your heart
that we might
truly love
in the way
that we have
been loved.
Father,
would those of us
who haven't
experienced that
love for ourselves
this Christmas
see a glimpse
of it
in a baby
in a manger
in a God
who would become
flesh
for us
because of
his great love
for us.
Do that work
in our hearts.
We ask
for Jesus' sake
and for the sake
of those
he would send us
to with his love.
Amen.
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