The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the
glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father,
full of grace and truth.
In order to have a meaningful relationship with someone
there are two basic ingredients that are needed. Communication and contact. People who meet on-line are never satisfied
with just chatting over the computer.
Sooner or later they almost always want to meet and have physical
contact. On the other hand, even the
most intimate physical contact will not guarantee a happy relationship
either. There needs to be communication
as well. The both go hand in hand.
The very first chapter of Genesis has God speaking the
Universe into existence and then communicating with man in the Garden. The LORD designed us to have a relationship
with Him. Even before the Fall man’s actions on earth were to be done to the glory of
God and in communication with God as Adam and Eve worshiped by not eating from
the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
They were created to listen to the Word of the Lord and enjoy working
and tasting of His physical creation. Communication and contact.
It shouldn’t surprise us then to see the LORD re-establish
a relationship with us through communication and contact. After the Fall the
LORD re-establishes His relationship with man by speaking to Adam and Eve. Time and again we hear the LORD speaking to
Abraham, Moses, and the Israelites.
Sometimes He used dreams, sometimes prophets, and one time He directly
spoke to the Israelites from the cloud at
The Old Testament also showed us a LORD who was willing to
have direct contact with His people.
There are a few instances of him appearing in the form of a man. The most prolonged and visible appearance to
all of the people was when He appeared in the pillar of cloud and fire
throughout the desert and then afterwards put His presence within the Most Holy
Place of the tabernacle. By attaching
Himself to these physical elements He was reassuring the Israelites of His
physical presence and protection on the way to the Promised Land. They knew that the LORD wasn’t way off in the
skies. His mighty presence was right
there among them, both intimidating and yet also comforting them on their
journeys in the midst of the tabernacle.
These two ways of establishing a relationship with the
Israelites foreshadowed the ultimate way that the LORD would come to the
Israelites both with words and with a physical presence, as He promised He
would in Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The
virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him
Immanuel. And so in the midst of the
dwelling and the Word John tells us the special way that the LORD appeared to
us – in the FLESH – a walking and talking physical presence. This was important. In the very first verse of his epistle John
wrote, 1 John 1:1 That which was from
the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we
have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word
of life. Notice how John in this
verse once again stresses both the words and the physical presence of the
Christ. This special appearance of the
LORD seems to be better than the appearance of the LORD within the fire and the
cloud. Why is that?
Fire and cloud cannot be handled, tasted or touched. It is too high and too hot. But when God takes on flesh He comes out of
the sky, cloud and fire and makes Himself touchable. When we see Jesus in the stable we recognize
that He has come down to our level. He
is not beyond us or above us. He is even
below us as a little baby. There is
nothing intimidating about God when we see Him in the stable. As He grows older we find someone who walked
with people, talked with them, and ate and drank with them. Instead of moving away and living in the
desert, He walked and talked among us.
He allowed people to touch Him – even the unclean lepers. Instead of being repulsed by sin, He cleansed
sin. Instead of running from death, He
raised the dead.
As we see Jesus lay in the manger, we recognize something
important about our God. He is not just
a philosophy or the imagination of our minds.
He is not just a concept that we like to sit around and talk about. He is reality. He walks and He talks and He exists. His words and promises are not just nice
thoughts that really have no power to them.
When God speaks it is nothing like when we emptily say to someone, “have
a nice day” or say, “hey, we’ll have to get together sometime,” when you and
they know that you have absolutely no intentions of doing so. When God took on flesh it showed us that He
was serious about His promises of salvation.
He didn’t just wish we were forgiven and holy. He did something about it. He took on flesh to take care of our problem
of sin and hell. He actually entered our
world and touched and lived among our filthy sin. He even took it a step further. Not only was He born in a cattle stall, but
within the wood of that crib we also see foreshadowed the wood of the
cross. It’s one thing to enter a pig sty
and allow the manure to touch your feet or your hands. It would be quite another thing to be buried
in that manure and suffocate under it.
This is what God did as he took on flesh and went to the cross. He did exactly what He promised He would
do.
Isaiah
53:4-6 Surely
he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him
stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought
us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep,
have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on
him the iniquity of us all.
Seeing the LORD in the flesh
puts the tabernacle and the Word together under a permanent arrangement for
eternity. From this point on we now have
a God who can be touched and heard at the same point. The relationship is made fully
accessible.
Think then about the wonder of these words, “The Word
became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” He made His dwelling among us. Do you remember the story of Moses moving his
tent way outside of the Israelites when they had committed idolatry – where
they waited to see if the LORD would descend on the tent? Do you remember the tension in wondering if
the LORD would go with them through the desert?
In the birth of Christ we have no doubt that God is willing to dwell
among us. Sinful as we are, He pitched a
tent here anyway.
If
you think about it, it’s completely foreign to the way we do things. Nowadays men and women are willing to move in
together at the first hint of love in the air.
A little attraction, a mutual affection, and bang – they shack it up
together and “try it out for a while.”
If they seem compatible, maybe they’ll get married five years down the
road. Our relationship with the LORD
went completely different than this. We
had nothing attractive about us. He
compared us to a bunch of filthy prostitutes.
The LORD was way too holy for us.
On top of that, we really didn’t want anything to do with Him. In spite of all this, He came and lived among
us anyway. He told us what love and
forgiveness is all about, and then He showed us what it is all about. He went so far as to be blamed for all of our
sins and become our sins. The Word took
on flesh to reestablish a permanent relationship with us. Without flesh, all of these promises of love
and forgiveness would have only been words.
But with flesh, the LORD made good on His promises. He showed us that His promises and His love
are real.
This passage still means so much to us, because we believe
Jesus when He promises us, “I will be with you always, to the very end of
the age.” This is not a distant God
who dwells thousands of miles and looks on us from there. This is Jesus talking, who took on
flesh. If He could do this once and put
Himself within the flesh of a baby so that He could be carried and touched,
then it is not too great of a miracle for Him to hide His righteousness within
the waters of baptism to cover sinful humans.
If He could hide His glory within a baby wrapped in cloths, then surely
He could that same flesh in, with, and under the bread of the Lord's Supper to
be taken and eaten. As we see God take
on flesh in the crib we then can more easily see and taste the miracle that
this same God could come to us throughout eternity in His Supper. As we take this Supper we are then assured of
His merciful presence and forgiveness for the rest of our sinful days on
earth.
Now let’s look at the second portion of the verse. We have seen his glory, the glory of the
One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace
and truth. This is an important
point. For what good would it be if Jesus
were walking and talking among us but we didn’t know it? What good would it be if all He did was walk
and talk among us? It reminds me of the false doctrine of the
Jehovah's Witnesses. In a complete contradiction
of the Scriptures they say that Jesus already came back in 1915 I believe it
was and established His kingdom – but nobody saw Him. He came invisibly. So now they are doing their best to prove and
convince people that He already came and they missed Him. Imagine if your favorite football player or
singer was in town and you could have met him or her – but nobody told
you. You would be more upset than
anything if you missed it! John makes
mention of us seeing this glory of the One and Only –
as if many people missed it. This is
true. Many people did miss it. John 1:10-11 He was in the world, and
though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came
to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
Ironically
enough, we very easily could have missed the coming of Christ – even though He
is described as the One and Only Son. Why? Isaiah said that, “He grew up before him
like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or
majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire
him.” Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians
4:4 that, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that
they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image
of God.” By all rights we could have and should have
missed His glory. Unfortunately many
people do miss His glory yet today. They
spend their Christmas time buying presents for each other, telling their kids
about Santa, going to their relatives – oh so busy. They may even come to a Christmas program to
hear their children sing and put on a play.
Yet in the midst of it all, all they think about is the music or the
program or the clothing that their children wore. They fail to see the baby which is supposed
to be at the forefront of this holiday.
It is a sad thing.
The good
LORD didn’t want anyone to miss it. He
doesn’t want YOU to miss it. He appeared
to us in the darkness of this world and said to us and the shepherds, “you
will find a baby wrapped in cloths and laying in a manger. He is Christ the Lord.” Could they be any clearer or more
direct? By a miraculous revelation of
the Holy Spirit we have seen the light.
We sit here on Christmas with John and say, “we have seen his glory,
the glory of the One and Only.”
What is that glory that we have seen in this One and Only that the world still doesn’t see? We could see it in his walking on water,
stilling the storm, or raising the dead.
Yet in context John mentions none of these things to be His most
glorious acts. It all starts in the most
seemingly normal act of life – in a baby being born – taking on flesh. Many of us have seen this happen ten times
over on television and in person. The world looks at this crib and says, “what is the big deal?
It’s another baby being born.”
But when we see the crib we say, “behold
the glory of the Lord.” What is so
glorious about this baby in the crib? He
is the One and Only – the Son of God. He
is the offspring of a virgin – by a miraculous overshadowing of God the Holy
Spirit. So in this crib we recognize
that the Second Person of the Trinity – one who existed before the creation of
the world and who created the world – took on flesh.
God
reveals to us that His most glorious works on this earth are not in the way He
rules over nature which is natural for Him to do – but when He submits Himself
to nature and becomes susceptible to it – something that is completely
unnatural for Him to do. The most
glorious things Jesus then goes on to do is to submit Himself to the Law He
gave, and put Himself on the cross - under the death and hell that He declared
for man – places He never deserved to be.
This is where we see His glory shine the brightest, in the most
imperceptible places.
We could have and should have missed the glory of the One
and Only. The world of Jesus’ time could
have as well even amidst the miracles. Many
of them did. But notice how the Father also
wanted all to know who Jesus was. At His
baptism He announced to Jesus and the world, “You are my Son, whom I love;
with you I am well pleased.” (Mark
But what is it that distinguishes this child and glorifies
Him for us the most? It is, as John
says, that He is “full of grace and truth.” It isn’t that He has a little bit of it –
where He may throw us a morsel of grace to nibble on from time to time or have
a little bit of truth to speak once and a while – as we have to decipher
through the lies and exaggeration. This
child is completely filled with grace and truth.
Where
do we see this grace and truth? Again,
we see it in His acts of the flesh. We
see it in the crib, as He comes down to become man to save us. We hear it in His words, as He uses His human
mouth to preach that He is the Savior of the world – the Lamb of God – who came
to sacrifice Himself for our sins. He
stood out from all of the preachers of His time with His wonderfully gracious
words. We also find it on the cross, as
we see Jesus dying for the sins of the world and cry out to us, “it is
finished.” In all of Jesus’ life and
death we see a God who has an unconditional love for us – one who was willing
to become us and exchange His righteousness for our sin. It is he who truthfully says to us, “I am
the way, the truth, and the life. No one
can come to the Father except through me.”
What
have we done to deserve such a wonderful birth and sacrifice? Absolutely nothing. We didn’t even exist when He came to do this
for us. We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t desire it. But He did it anyway – because He in His
mercy decided to love for us and care for us and didn’t want to see us end up
in hell. When we believe in Jesus He
doesn’t just give us a little bit of His grace, He gives us 100 percent of
it. When we see Jesus die on the cross
for us He doesn’t just give us a morsel of His righteousness – He completely
covers us with it. Why? Because He – Jesus – is full of grace and truth. How do we know this is true? Because Jesus – the truth -
promises us this. He says, “whoever believes in Him is not condemned. (John 3:18)
God is not a man that He should lie. If this is what He promises, then this is
what will happen. Jesus is the God of
grace and truth who walked and talked among us.
This is the greatest glory we see in the One and Only – His grace and
His truth.
The
older you get and the more people you get to know over time - the easier it is
to forget names and faces. Years ago I
had two pretty young ladies smile and wave at me at a worship music
conference. I thought, “why are they waving at me?
I don’t know them. Surely they
aren’t flirting with me.” I looked
behind me but nobody else was there. I
thought to myself, “what is going on here?” Embarrassingly I half waved and kept on
eating. Suddenly it hit me. About ten years ago - in my senior year at
the seminary I had served at a congregation where they were very active. I had known them quite well at the time. They were both married and still
married. They weren’t flirting with me. They were just saying hi. I sheepishly had to go over there then and
apologize for forgetting who they were.
Thankfully they were friendly and laughed about it.
There
are many people who are going to be more than embarrassed on Judgment Day when
Jesus comes – because they didn’t recognize and look to see who that baby
actually was that was lying in the manger.
Here they were singing His songs and seeing the mangers – and they never
stopped to actually inspect who He was! What
a sad thing that is! Here He is - God made flesh – the One and Only Son of God
who came from the Father – full of grace and truth. His Word has been declared throughout the
world – revealing Who He is – and so many people are closing their eyes to Him. The
saddest thing is that they will end up in hell if their eyes are not
opened. Your eyes have been opened. Make sure to look closely at Jesus this
Christmas and always – to appreciate the wonderful gift you have in Him and Him
alone. God took on flesh to live and die
for you through the crib and the cross. It
is only in Jesus that you have forgiveness of sins, life and salvation – the
grace and truth that we all need. He is
all we need not only to have a Merry
Christmas – but also to have a merry life - both now and forever. Amen.