The Existence of Jesus Christ

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  The Existence of Jesus Christ

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  We're in John 1, and we will look today at Jesus Christ, who we just sang of. There is no one more fascinating, wonderful, amazing to look at at any time. But in this particular time of year for us in this advent season as Ronald described the time of the arrival of the Messiah, the coming of the King God coming to earth to save sinners. It's common for all of us. We know it's that time of year to do an advent series in the church, and in the pastwe have looked at Christ from the Old Testament. We have looked at Christ in Matthew and Luke, the two most common places to go because of the genealogies, as well as the birth narrative and the manger scene. But we haven't looked in the Gospel of John. And so that's where we're going to spend the next four weeks, in what is called the prologue. John's gospel is really in four sections. In chapter one 1 to 18, commentators, scholars look at it and call it the prologue. It's the foyer that brings you into his account of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. You know a good foyer. It's the place you stand around and kind of you're told when you walk into the place, we're going to go here, or we can go up the stairs there. And really, that's what John does in these first 18 verses. He summarizes what is broken down over the rest of the gospel in the next 20 chapters. And then chapter 21 is the epilogue. It's the ending that leaves us standing there with the other disciples, particularly Peter, being told, now you follow me and go out. And John sets this whole gospel up, though with one sole purpose in mind, and that is for you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to have eternal life. That's right there from the start. He has a mission. We don't hear him say that until John 20:31. These things I have written so that you sitting there, Hickory, North Carolina, in that comfy seat of yours, with the coffee in hand, feeling those Christmas feels...that you would encounter Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the living God. God, very God, come in human flesh. He says that in John 20:31, I've written all these things. Every historical point I make in my gospel is for a theological reality that Jesus Christ is God, and that by believing in him you would have life in his name.
  So I would love to welcome you if you're new here, if this is your first Sunday with us, that's awesome. Fantastic that you would visit us this month. Maybe you synched it up this way. This is when you wanted to come. Or maybe this is a one and done because you're just here from out of town. Either way, that you would just know right out of the gates the reason for this advent series is not just warm fuzzies. It's the greatest reality that you could encounter at any point in your life is for Jesus Christ to be revealed to you and to receive him who he is as Savior and Lord. And so, I would not want you to feel any bait and switch this morning. Hey, where's this guy going with all this stuff? Because John doesn't want you to. But what he is going to do, and what we're going to see in this prologue is instead of him saying as if, um, you know, because he would have known of the other gospels, the Synoptics, Matthew, Mark and Luke. They're called the synoptics, that word synopsis or summary, this idea of you can pull Matthew, Mark and Luke together and they give you a lot of the details, particularly get into the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus, and give you things that actually the vast majority of John is nowhere to be found in those others because John wrote his a few decades later, perhaps waiting, led by the Holy Spirit, finally to say, you know, I want to give you not just a historical picture of the life of Christ. I want you to see into his soul. I want you to see past the flesh. I want you to see his transcendence and his immanence, that he is God who is far away and now come near. He gives you a theology of Jesus Christ, and he does it right out of the gates in our text today. He says, I'm not going to go to the manger scene and the prophecies to prove his existence. I'm just going to talk about existence. That's why as we start today and you hear me read John 1:1-18, it sounds less like a history of Jesus and more like a philosophy of him. The terminology that you will hear in these 18 verses over the next few weeks describing his existence and his essence, his mission of enlightenment, what he provided for that only he could bring. You'll learn all these things in the weeks to come, but today we will just talk about his existence. Eternal Son of God, unchanging, self-existent, unlike anyone ever in all history. So,follow along with me as I read John 1, even though we'll only study the first four verses. I want to read the first 18 because John wrote them to be heard at one time, to set the table, if you will, to read the rest of his gospel.
  John 1:1, "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 came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all may believe in him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. There was the true light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, 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 saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. John testified about him and cried out, saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me. For of his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him."
  Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. So,speak, O Lord, your servants are listening. Show us your glory, we pray. Amen.
  This series is called Post Tenebrus Lux, and that was a term coined in the Protestant Reformation that basically said after darkness, light. And that idea goes back to the beginning of Scripture. And even in our first point, the pre-existence of Jesus Christ, his eternality. And in the first phrase of John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word" in our minds should echo back to Genesis 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". And the creation of the heavens and the earth, when it was formless and void, and darkness is over the face of the deep...the first action is God speaking light into existence. And so long before the Reformation at the beginning of time...the creation of time itself was light that came after darkness. But even though the earth was formless and void, no universe to speak of, there was the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the spirit. And here in John 1:1 he wants to start his account of the life of Jesus again, not with his arrival in the manger, but with his pre-existence, before anything else is there. Jesus never became. He has always been. And there is your first philosophical idea this morning to think about...pure being not becoming...always existent, never changing. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever and sometimes we have to remove the image in our mind of Jesus in the manger and growing up to Jesus the boy, and then Jesus the man. No, no, before all of that...Jesus is the same in his character, in his essence. We're always becoming at some point in our lives, we have high hopes to become so much more. And then we hit that point where we realize this is the law of diminishing returns. I saw that evidenced to me at the Turkey Bowl this past Thursday morning that there were things I just could not do, that those young stallions galloping around the field were leaving this old horse in the dust. Literally, I was in the dirt trying to grab a kid's flag. Just went flat into it. Now we still were victors. I have a championship trophy somewhere around here. Kurtis took it and hid it. He didn't want you people to know. I want you to know I contributed zero to that victory. So you don't think I'm puffed up with pride. I was the reason for our defeat if we were to have lost. Not for victory, but seeing what I have become and now becoming was evident in the picture taken afterwards of all these young, strong men. And it hit me, and I showed my family.  I'm the old guy in the picture, now.  I grew up playing Thanksgiving football, and there was always the older guys. I thought they were really old. They were my age and I'm there in lots of sweats, just hunched over after the game, all the other men standing strong, and I'm hunched. And that's because I'm becoming. I'm going back to dust. But not Jesus Christ. And so right out of the gates, the pre-existence, the eternality of Jesus as he is in the beginning and he is the word. And maybe your question is, what's up with the word...Word? I don't see the name in the beginning was Jesus, and that's attributed to John wanting to write a profound prologue here. Not to say if he would have said in the beginning was Jesus, that would have been any less profound. But he wants to take you there by way of giving you these ideas of the word and life and light and darkness. And then verse 14, we start to get a hint of who he's talking about here when he says, this word became flesh. That is the incarnation. And he dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. So we get a description about this word who became flesh from heaven, from the Father, described as grace and truth. But we still don't get his name. And some of you that are new to Christianity are like, so where does this idea of Jesus come in? Well, look down at verse 17. Then he says this grace and truth that came from the Father, full of his glory, begotten, not made as we confessed earlier...he is full of grace and truth...the Lord Jesus Christ. Sothere it is. That's the connecting points in your Bible from verse one to verse 14 to verse 17. That's why we know who it is. It's Jesus.
  And in this advent season, that's where we start with his pre-existence that this message series we're in, even starting in something so transcendent and seemingly removed about him, is to help raise our gaze in a holiday season that comes at us thick and fast with all the wonderful things we love about it, but completely lost on our culture today is not the imminence of Jesus, not the baby Jesus in the manger, that kind of thing, but just his transcendent glory. Evidence of that this week was when I was in Barnes and Noble hanging with my homies, and there was a dangerous moment a shark was eating a giant squid. That actually wasn't the most dangerous part. It was what they were selling next to my son. I saw advent getting hijacked by National Geographic, as in they took the name and just slapped it on as a label to get you, the parent, to buy a toy before you're going to give your kid more toys. And we all know, like the advent calendars, the chocolates they're to lead up to Christmas Day. But this thing has nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever. I searched the box like there wasn't like National Geographic was suddenly going to turn Christian on us and say, hey, all these experiments you're going to do is going to be to lead you to this grand discovery that Jesus is the Son of God. No, John didn't make this toy. This was just them putting, hey, it's advent and maybe some parent will think I need to keep my kid busy for the next 24 days so they can do science experiments in the basement. And I just saw this as a picture just to show us that in this season. And this isn't against materialism as much as even a sacred idea, a word like advent means nothing to our society. It's just a label to sell another toy. And what I want these four weeks to be. Even though this splash of cold water this morning might feel more like an entire bucket being dumped on you like, whoa! I love what I was walking into. I had my eggnog latte from the cart, and I wanted all the fun and joy of Jesus, baby manger glory in the highest angels. And we're talking about some abstract Greek concept of the word or the logos. Yes, we are, because that's how John wanted to start his story. He knew he had two audiences potentially reading this book. His Greek audience, his irreligious audience, would recognize the logos. That's the word in the Greek. And that had been around for centuries, going back to 600 BC. Philosopher Heraclitus was a guy who was writing about the logos being this rational thought or idea, this perfect truth or wisdom that exists outside of us that we can never attain to and throughout that time period with every Greek philosopher, that same term was used right up through Marcus Aurelius would write about the logos, the logos. It's this perfect self-expression of something greater than us. And we mere mortals are on this quest to find this truth. And they thought I could find it just by what?...wisdom. That's why when Paul writes about 1 Corinthians 1, the wisdom of man is foolishness to God because they thought they could find it on their own exploration. And even though it was staring them in the face and the person of Jesus Christ. That would have been this idea of the word. A sophisticated self-expression of the highest form in Greeks through the centuries used it. And so maybe he thought, hey, some Greek speaking philosopher is going to pick up this gospel and hear this and be intrigued. Hey, I've been reading about the great philosophers through the ages and this logos can never be found. And now you're telling me in the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God? That's one way to look at it. Maybe you're that person here today, a secularist, a skeptic. I don't know what word would fit better than that. Maybe in the beginning was the truth. You know, because in our day and age, we don't know what to believe. You might not know what to believe because the truth has become a wax nose, moved around in the hands of whoever wants to claim it as speaking their truth. So that's a secularist point of view. But the religious point of view from the Jews would have been to hear in the beginning was the word. Well, that would have taken them back to Genesis. Genesis 1:3...that God spoke, let there be light. And then carried out throughout the rest of Genesis chapter 1. Any action of God's self-revelation in the universe was God saying, God's saying. And we have this children's book. It's actually for sale over in the bookstore. This wasn't meant to be a pitch, but it just came to my mind. The Big Story Bible and how they start that book is on page one with Genesis 1:1, and it's just words appearing in the sky like lights and the sun, or an animal name. And really, that's how it went down. There was nothing to work with. It was just God's ability to create before creation by the power of his word. Psalm 33:6, by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. So, to the Jews, using the word logos in chapter 1, verse 1 was not an abstract ideal, but a practical way God revealed himself to his people. And so, to the Jews and the Greeks hearing this opening line, they have to be reckoning with this idea of who Jesus is that they may have heard of before, existed before creation...His eternality. And throughout all history, the ability for man to try to find the truth about how it all began has continued to be elusive. I do my normal sleuthing on the internet and I typed in something related to....Ididn't want to go down the path of the Big Bang as much as I wanted to get kind of at the more the conceptual level, like what were the core components, Google of the universe, what had to be in its most broad terms for life to exist. And this was their answer from Google AI. "In physics, time, matter, and space refer to three fundamental components of the universe time, matter, and space. Where matter occupies space and its movement in existence are defined by time, and the relationship between them is described by the concept of space time." Now, unless you're Todd Jacobs, none of us really understand this. Okay, let's just put that out there. But it goes on to say, essentially meaning that space and time are interconnected and can be affected by the presence of matter, as explained by his theory of general relativity. Now I sit there and go, like I don't really make heads or tails of that, but it told me what I wanted to know about time, matter and space because it just confirms what the Bible already starts with. I like Genesis 1:1 version...in the beginning, time...God created the heavens...space and earth...matter. What Einstein couldn't find to complete what eluded him of the explanation for everything is right there from the beginning, isn't it? You have time. You have space, you have matter. But what the secularists can't find is who puts it all together, right? Who has this idea that he could take this and this and this and combine them and here we have everything we see around us in creation. What Einstein rejected was the simple, childlike faith that believes God at His Word. Towards the end of his life, he wrote in a letter to a friend...the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses. I mean, this is one of the smartest men to ever live. And that's his summation of the word God. It's the expression of human weaknesses. And the Bible is a collection of honorable but still primitive legends, which are nevertheless pretty childish. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions in anincarnation of the most childish superstitions. Well, the thing he did get right by putting two words nearby each other at the end of that is to talk about a child and the incarnation. It does take childlike faith to believe, doesn't it? But yet the more we dive into it, even today, in just the first six words in our English Bibles, lifts our minds well above the plane of something being just a superstition. The explanation for how we see everything around us. Stephen Hawking, the great physicist, wrote in his book The Grand Design that physics brought the universe into existence. And he said, religion is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark, to which an Oxford mathematician, a believer, John Lennox, replied, yes, and atheism is a fairy tale for people afraid of the light. It just depends on which side you see it from. You know, if you are afraid of the dark of what's next...the closer you get to studying religion, and the closer you get to the truth about God makes you more fearful if you're honest with yourself. Soit's easier to ignore it. And yet, on seeing it from the other way, if you want to hold to that atheism, that's the fairy tale for you. Not just wanting to come to the light because John says in John chapter 3. This is the judgment, verse 19, the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. And that's really what it starts with, is the pre-existence of Jesus, the one who could only say that he has come from God, and he knows in his eternality exactly who God is like. Maybe for you this morning, just the however you found yourself here, some of these truths, some of these ideas, or maybe some fresh beams of light coming in to your heart this morning. I pray they would be...to kind of loosen some of the bolts of your unbelief. Hopefully you'll stick with us this whole month and hear more about this Jesus, the Son of God, sent to save sinners, who can answer the questions that you've been looking for your whole life. Jesus Christ has existed forever, and the first light that breaks through the darkness is he has always existed. He's eternal.
  The second one is the coexistence of Jesus with God the Father. Back in John 1. Second half of that verse...and the word was with God. That's his coexistence with God, not just his pre-existence before time itself, but his coexistence with God. And the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. You see, God brought into the conversation and repeated three times to show that it wasn't just this cold and vacuous universe with nothing there except for this concept of logos. This word was with God, and the word was God in the beginning with God. Jesus is there, the Son, God the Father is there. God the Spirit is there. We know that from the beginning of Genesis 1:2, the Spirit was hovering over the face of the water. And so what are these three members of the Godhead doing? Okay, that's a thought experiment for us this morning. I'm going to ask you to do something I haven't asked you to do before here. I want you to close your eyes and clear your mind. No. Just kidding. You're like. Actually, pastor, I am way ahead of you. My mind has been clear for about five minutes. I checked out the moment you started talking philosophical on me. But I want you to just try right now and think about nothing. I mean, that's where we are in John 1:1. Nothing is there...no images...nothing material, just one God as he exists in three persons...Father, Son and Spirit. What are they doing before they start doing something?...loving each other. And enjoying it to the greatest degree possible. And the mission that Jesus is sent on is to invite you, part of the creation, the only part of creation into that relationship of love, so that you could delight in God by enjoying his love for you forever. So are we so out in the ether. Were we so far gone already in the beginning of this account of the life of Jesus that I'm like, yeah, what's in this for me? What's in it for you is being invited into the eternal love that exists between the Father, Son and the Spirit. We know there was this love between the Father and Son because Jesus said it about himself. John 3:35, the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He always wanted people to know, as he was speaking of his father, that there was a love relationship between them. He loved his Son. And in John 17 we hear the heights of this in his prayer in John 17:24. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory which you have given me. And was that glory that he's given him for no reason? No, it was to be invited into love. For you loved me before the foundation of the world. There is the pre-existence of Jesus the Son with the Father, but also the coexistence equal with God, enjoying a perfect love relationship before creation itself. And then when you read the Bible with these eyes awakened to see that this is who God is, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. I'm sure many of us read that around the Thanksgiving table this past week. Why do we give thanks to the Lord? Because his steadfast love endures forever. Sometimes we just always think about that steadfast love, enduring forever from the point of our existence moving forward. But it exists forever, going backwards. I was reading Micah 7 and a sad chapter for this prophet who is waiting on the Lord, and he says in verse 8, I dwell in darkness. The Lord is a light for me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord. It's a sad way this Minor Prophet's book is coming to an end. And then you read this wonderful verse near the end. Verse 18, Micah 7... Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession? He does not retain his anger forever. You say, what kind of God would do that? What's he like? Listen to the next line, because he delights in everlasting love, Micah 7:18. It's not just that this love exists between the Father, Son, and the Spirit to eternity past. They delight in the love that is between the three of them, and they invite you into that to experience that. That's what I wanted your mind to go to when you're thinking of nothing this morning, there's nothing to picture, no one to see. But at the heart of Jesus Christ's Eternality back in John 1, the word that was with God and was God, and was in the beginning with God, what is there other than love? A perfect relationship of love. And the last thing the enemy of our souls wants us to experience is that love. So, the initial way he got attacking that was to attack the person and work of Jesus Christ. At the time of John writing this, it's not surprising he had to write this in the prologue. He had to establish, because of the rise of Gnosticism, that spirits, good matters, evil and man needs delivered from the physical world in order to get to the spiritual world and the lies that were being propagated already within the church by 90 A.D. was that, you know, Jesus, if he was the Son of God, he couldn't really have taken on human flesh in the incarnation. But if he didn't do that, then we don't have what?...a perfect high priest who can sympathize with us in every way, who lived just as we lived in the flesh, that he was something other than that, and that destroys the gospel at its foundation, denying the truth about Jesus being truly God and truly man. I mean, that was the earliest and most frequent attack in the first three centuries on the gospel. That's why when we just recited this morning the Nicene Creed. What was the largest section of that dedicated to? It was dedicated to defending the deity of Jesus Christ, not just his deity, but also his humanity. And it still goes on throughout history. Even today, we defend the deity of Jesus Christ as coexistent and equal with God against Jehovah's Witnesses that teach that only Jehovah is God. They deny the Trinity, teach that Jesus was a created being, the Archangel Michael, who agreed to be placed in Mary's womb and is the first of created beings, not uncreated. I mean, we don't just say Nicene Creed together and talk about this stuff to fill the time. You'll run into people that want to call you brother or sister and say, we all believe in Jesus. There's just some minor details. The incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to save sinners equal with God. Coexistent with God is not a minor detail. It's really the whole thing. So you may have a really nice neighbor, a mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, a Jew. What do they have in common? They're all wrong about the person and work of Jesus Christ. What do you have to offer them?...the truth about Jesus Christ. And by offering that, you give them the chance to receive eternal life, which is the most loving thing you could do for a person to speak that truth in love. So that's what's happening here. But as I said before, it's not just an abstract intellectual game. It's as, Tim Keller wrote in his book, The Reason for God. "It's a dance to be invited into, one that completes our joy. It doesn't compete against it." Keller wrote this in his book to take the abstraction about the Trinity and what seems cold and and show that it's really about this relationship, beautiful to our hearts and useful to our theology. "The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness, but by mutual, self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into dynamic orbit around him or her. We center on the interests and desires of the other person, which creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us, each of the divine persons centers on the others." And we talk about that often, don't we? The Son wants to give glory to the Father. The Father wants to give glory to the Son. The Spirit wants to shine the light of of the gospel's good news on the person of Jesus Christ. So that what? So that at the end of the day, you accomplish John's mission, that you would believe...all three members of the Trinity a different function in your salvation, but all for the same aim for you to know Jesus Christ and to know of his everlasting love for you. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. So maybe another truth that's breaking the darkness illuminating your life is to see It's not just about the pre-existence and winning some debate there. It's about the coexistence. It's about being invited into a relationship with God that is rooted and grounded in love, and is meant for you to delight in it. Just as the Son delights in the love of the Father, and the Father delights in the love of the Son.
  Last, let's talk about the self-existence of Jesus, verses 3 and 4. We've talked about his pre-existence, coexistence with God. Now John wants you to know he is self-existent. We're not. He is. Verse three, all things came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. In him was life. We hear the same thing Jesus says about himself in John 5:26, just as the father has life in himself, even so, he gave to the son also to have life in himself. That's why he can offer it. That's the doctrine of the aseity of God. Now you're like, well, the what? The aseity of God. It's not a word we use a lot, but it's a good one. It's self-existence, independence. True independence, meaning I don't need anything else for my existence to continue, and that eliminates every single person ever from that category. We are dependent in every way on everything around us...the air we breathe, the food we eat, the people that help us into our old age. From our young age we're dependent creatures. You think you're independent. It's a lie. It's a lie that sometimes is staring you right in the face in your morning tea. It was for me this week. Now coffee is what speaks to me. I mean, coffee truly is in touch with my soul. But sometimes I get a little bit of coffee, tea theology or tea leaf theology. And this week it was on the little thing in front of my cup. It said, the universe is within you, bright and beautiful. Now, I did arrange that picture for you to see my Bible intentionally. So, you know, just the dedication that I have to the craft. Maybe make you jealous a little bit like this is what this guy does. He takes his tea and he. Well, it was just the phrase, the dumb thing that was on there that said, the universe is within me...bright and beautiful. First off, if you've watched any science fiction movie, the universe is a dark and dangerous and deadly place. You do not want to be out there. Everybody in those movies that goes out there gets stranded. It's an awful way to end. But yet the universe is within me, and it's bright and beautiful. Well, there's a lie...that's pantheism that the universe is in me and God is in the universe, and the universe is in God. And so, God is in me, and I am God. I am the force, and the force is in me...dumb. Eastern mystical mumbo jumbo that makes you feel good about yourself initially. But there's no truth in it. We're not gods. We're humans. God is eternal. We're dependent on him. You know, in that picture, he's the cup. We're the vapor that was disappearing above it, just there for a millisecond. James 1:14 tells us that your life is a vapor, a vanishing mist. And what John wants us to see right here is that the only way we're going to have eternal life and live forever is that if we experience the life that is offered from him who is life, who gives life. But to understand that, you need to know that it comes through the truth of Jesus Christ. That's why he moves in verse four from talking about life that is in Jesus, to the light that is given to men to see, and those two themes of life and light, you'll read all throughout the rest of this gospel, the constantly back and forth. These themes will emerge. The only theme, word or key word that you'll see more than life and light in this gospel is the word believe. Those things all work together. And here they are right out of the gates. He wants you to know that you came into being. You were a part of that all things. You are not the exception. Because apart from him, nothing exists if he didn't bring it into being. Colossians tells us this, verse 16...by Jesus, all things were created in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible thrones, dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. And here's his pre-existence. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. This is the testimony of Jesus Christ to the early church. It's the testimony to us today. We're here by him and through him and for him. We're not here by accident, through evolution, and for ourselves. That's the unholy trinity of atheism, Darwinism and hedonism. I'm here by accident, through evolution and for myself. But it's all around us in the culture. You know, we're the center of all things. Man is the measure of all things. How did I get here? I'm not sure, but science tells me I'm the highest in the chain of creation. It's not the message the Bible gives us that the only life I have that I've been given, initially born into this world, was determined by God, and the spiritual life is now given and received by me from Jesus Christ and Him alone. Verse 12, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. If you believe in his name, born not of anything you could do, not of any of your lineage, blood, or the will of flesh, but of God. Only Jesus can give life this morning.
  And so, for some of you who might be new to church, new to the message of Jesus, new to the gospel, I know I might not have brought you into all the merry and bright of the manger scenes that we see in people's yards and all that. But I hope maybe it stops you in your tracks this morning to realize who you're dealing with when we talk about Jesus Christ. And sometimes when you finally see him rightly, it puts yourself in perspective towards him, and you see yourself rightly as the sinner that you are and the darkness that you've been in. And it's only in the light of the gospel of Jesus offered to you this morning that you could come to a knowledge of the truth. Now, maybe there's more of you. Maybe this is just the start for you. And you're you're curious and you want to know more. Well, we're going to get into more in the weeks to come, but I want to give everybody something to do as we get out of here this morning. An assignment for the month. I've done this before. I've done it with the Gospel of Luke 24 chapters starting on December 1st, because that is the official start of the Christmas season in the Ashoff household. In fact, one of my kids at school was like, dad, one of my teachers did something wrong. She was playing Christmas music or said something about Christmas starting. And this was like a week ago. I was like, hey, ease up, okay? For me and my household but we can't enforce this on everybody else. They're not heretics for putting Christmas music on a week early, but now it's December 1, let's go. But what I want to give you is an assignment, and it just comes out of a reading that I was doing this week in coming to the end of 2 Peter.  Where there was just a line that struck me in my personal devotional time. Verse 18, well, start in verse 17, you therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard. You know we're always to be ready and never to let our guard down. For what? That you're not carried away by the error of unprincipled men. There is an enemy that seeks to kill, steal, and destroy in a world system that wants to steal any attention, extra attention this season that we would give in looking to Jesus Christ. Are you with me? I mean, of all times of the year, he can't stop the idea that it's a holiday we celebrate so he can inundate us with so much extra to distract us...good, bad or indifferent. So he says, be on your guard, that you're not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness. As great as this month could be, it could be an awful month for some of you in the faith. I mean, there's stresses that come this time of year that we know. I even came across a publication from last year, that the holiday season can be both a happy and stressful time of year, in part due to expectations to spend time with family and friends. And I saw this graphic and I thought, this is going to be for our people on a Sunday, you know, playing Family Feud where they're like, I'll take all of those. Yep. That one, that one, that one that I experience all that stuff. But what stood out to me in this study is nine out of ten people say there is something, something about the holiday season that heightens the stress in my life, rather than this be a time of year where it goes down...all kind of different reasons. There's only one solution to it, and it's in 2 Peter 3:18. What would contribute to a fall in us or a discouragement? Listen to 2 Peter 3:18, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Did you catch that? The remedy to all those things you just read through and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm one of the nine in ten. I'm just coming down off the Thanksgiving stress ready to ramp up to the Christmas one. The answer is right in front of you. 2 Peter 3:18...here's how you fight it. Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. How do you do that? Well, here's one way I'd like to do that as a church. We're studying John this month. We'll keep coming back to these 18 verses, but I would love you to some of these themes of light and life and belief. Read through the Gospel of John one chapter a day between now and Christmas. You got 24 days. You got 21 chapters. John six, seven and eight are the three longest ones. Cut them in half. You'll get right there. I would challenge you to read for your personal devotional time by yourself in the morning. Don't so much make it this big, you know, elaborate Bible study as much as just meditate on what you're reading about the person and work of Christ, and pray through it and be amazed by him. But save some of those thoughts and bring them back later in the evening, you know, because blessed is the man and woman who meditates on the Word of God, day and night. Bring those same personal devotional thoughts. And if you do this as a family or a group of friends or a life group, bring them back in the evening to share and then teach out of that. Dads, you can find something in a chapter in John, that leads us to faith. It says, that's amazing and awesome about Jesus, don't you guys think? And if they're like, yeah, now you're on your feet trying to say, okay, uh, let's look at it together. Let's read it together. Do it personally by yourself in the morning. Do it collectively with a friend or a spouse or kids, or call a friend up and say, hey, I was in John 3 today. This is amazing. I didn't see it before. I wanted to share it with you. Text it to somebody. Why do I want to offer you this this month? Because I want you to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. So that when Christmas Day comes and I know it's just a date on a calendar, that really wasn't the date he came. But it's not like you were just trying to flip the switch, you know, December 23rd. Okay, now I'm going to get to the manger scene. No, you've been in the Gospel of John the whole month, searching the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ...Paul calls them. So many amazing thoughts to fill our imaginations and stir our hearts to greater affections that he's pre-existent of time. Just to meditate on that this morning, if there is a way to eternity, the pre-existent Jesus is going to be the only guide. He is co-existent with God. If there is a truth about a God that we cannot see. He alone would know it. He is self-existent in creation. If there is a quality of life that we can't give ourselves, he can give it. It sounds like all three of these aspects are what uniquely qualified him in John 14:6 than to say I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but me. But here's what's wonderful this morning for all of us. He wants you to come to him. He says I'm the way, the truth and the life. Good luck finding it. He says no, come to me. He tells you who he is, and then he invites you to himself. One of my favorite parts of John chapter 1. Just look over to verse 35. The next day, John was standing with his disciples, and he looks and sees Jesus walking. And he says, behold, the Lamb of God. And these two disciples of John hear him speak, and they turn and follow Jesus. And Jesus turns around and sees them following and says to them, what do you want? That's really what he said. What do you seek? It's this idea of what do you want? What do you desire? And they say to him, Rabbi, where are you staying? And he says to them, come, and you will see.
  So what do you want from Christ this month? Do you want to know the way, the truth, and the life about him? He says to you, come and you'll see. Show up tomorrow morning with the coffee or the tea. Remember your own life as a vapor. And then come and see the eternal life that I have to offer you. And then pray that maybe the Lord would use it to encourage somebody else that day. Let's ask the Lord now to renew our affections for him as we enter in to a time of communion and remembering his life and death and resurrection.  
  Let's pray. Father, we thank you this morning for your Word. We thank you this morning for our minds and hearts to be lifted up to beyond the heavens, outside of space and time and matter and everything that we hold our lives together with as much as we can when we look around us. And it's the explanation for so much. But yet we ventured into the place where it was just the Father, Son, and Spirit and eternal love delighting in one another. And thank you for inviting us into that delight today. May the height of that now be, as we turn our attention to the Lord's table, as we remember you came, lived a perfect life, died a death in our place, and rose again for our justification. And sohelp us to see that and celebrate that this morning we ask. Amen.