Banner Logo

Sermon

Sermon Graphic


First Sunday After Christmas
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt, December 29, 2019


More Wonderful Than We Understand


Text: John 1:1–18

Several years ago, we spent Christmas with our son Ben and his family. Our daughter-in-law, Elizabeth’s parents, were also there for the first day. When it came time to unwrap presents our granddaughters opened a big box that was addressed to them both. They wasted no time ripping off the wrapping paper and opening the box. Inside there were items related to Disney characters and they looked puzzled because they hadn’t asked for those. The last thing they found at the bottom was an envelope with tickets for the whole family to go to Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Elizabeth’s parents had bought tickets for the whole family which included their three children, their spouses and seven grandchildren, plus themselves.

Our granddaughters just sat there looking puzzled and finally Elizabeth spoke up and said, “Aren’t you excited? We’re going to Disneyland, all of us, the whole family!” Emma and Lily both spoke up and replied with a very unconvincing, “yes”, but you could see they still had no concept of what was being given to them. Our son, on the other hand, had a pained look on his face because he knew that the gift was the tickets to get into Disneyland, but everyone had to pay their own airfare getting there, plus lodging and meals. Of course, our granddaughters didn’t worry about that, they just didn’t understand what Disneyland was and why they should be excited.

I could see the look of disappointment on the faces of Elizabeth’s parents. However, once Emma and Lily went to Disneyland, they came back talking about how wonderful it really was and had many stories of what they had seen and experienced there. Up until they experienced the place, they had no reason to be all excited at the prospect of going there.

Later on, as I pondered this, I wondered if Christians had the same problem with the promise of eternal life in the kingdom of God and what it will be like to behold Jesus face to face. Also, how do most Christians picture what it will be like to be in the complete presence of God without the effects of sin? We speak of these things positively, but I wonder if the actual truth of these promises has penetrated our hearts.

I confess that I love the Gospel of John and I have taught Bible studies and classes on the deep theological truths contained there, but what would it be like if I knew those truths the way that Jesus wants me to. Have I truly understood the marvel contained in our reading this morning from John 1:1–18? If I fully understood what was offered, would it change how I thought and lived today?

It’s always helpful to understand the different books of the Bible through the eyes of the writers. Of course, we believe that all Scripture is God’s Word and was revealed to the writers through the Holy Spirit and will only truly be understood through the witness of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But God – the Holy Spirit – used the Apostle to write this gospel. Early church tradition is that John wrote this gospel towards the end of his life. He outlived all the other disciples and was the only one not martyred, even though in Rome they had tried to kill him by plunging him into boiling oil and failed. It’s claimed that all the audience in the colosseum converted to Christianity after seeing this miracle. He wrote the gospel of John after having lived 60–65 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He stayed the course and persevered to the end because he had seen the truth and glory of the risen Savior and understood why everything revolved around Jesus and his glory. Nothing could rob him of his understanding and commitment because what he had seen and learned by being with Jesus and through the anointing of the Holy Spirit made the proclamation of Jesus Christ’s identity and promises of first importance. He knew what it was to behold Jesus face to face both here on earth and in the revelation given to him while in the Spirit.

One of my professors in seminary was Dr. Rod Whitacre. He wrote the IVP (InterVarsity Press) commentary on the Gospel of John. He spent many years after getting his Ph.D. from Cambridge studying this gospel and it completely changed his life. He went from being a strong and committed Christian to one who is sold out to Jesus Christ. Even though he struggled with serious health issues and family disappointments, he did not waver because his hope wasn’t in the here and now. I saw to it that I had Rod as a professor every semester while I was at Trinity. I saw in him what I wanted to be as a man of God. I want to read you a quote from him about this gospel,

We are at the outset of a story that will reveal to us the most profound mysteries of life. This story is simply about God, the glory of his character, the nature of his life and his desire to share that life with his creatures. It is about God come amongst us and the mixed response he received to his offer of divine life.

This morning we will focus briefly on the first five verses of John 1. John starts by immediately taking the reader deep into the understanding of who, in reality, Jesus was and is. He doesn’t start by discussing the beginning of Jesus’ ministry here on earth; the other gospels had already done that.

His opening echoes the beginning of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” Genesis refers to God’s activity at the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth, but John is introducing us to the one who existed before creation took place. In the beginning the Word, already was, so we are made aware of a time before the beginning of things as we know them and of the one who existed outside of time and space. Right from the beginning John takes us to a place well outside of our comprehension and ability to explain or understand. 

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.

The Holy Spirit, through John, affirms that the Word was God but is distinct from God. These two truths seem impossible to reconcile logically, but both must be held as truth. Later in this gospel John will reveal more of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but right up front he wants us to understand that their relationship has been from all eternity. The Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke—begin with the humanness of Jesus as a baby born of a virgin, but John jumps right in to reveal in the strongest terms the divinity of Jesus. John reveals the Word as not only with God but was the agent who created all of creation and yet he was distinct from the Creator. John isn’t seeking to explain in full all that can be said about the Trinity but is simply introducing this as the ultimate reality. In John’s gospel Jesus teaches that it’s the Father who is the ultimate source of all things, including the Son and Spirit, but life did not simply come through the Word but was in the Word. In verse 14 John writes,

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.

James Montgomery Boice put it this way,

Everything that can be said about God the Father can be said about God the Son. In Jesus dwells all the wisdom, glory, power, love, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth of the Father. In Him, God the Father is known.

Let’s look again at verses 4–5, “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 are at least two important things for us to see here. First, Jesus in his incarnation (God coming down in human flesh) is the light that exposes and overcomes the darkness of sinful mankind. We have seen that Jesus was the agent of creation but now we see that he also is the agent of re-creation. He restores and recreates the images of God who have been marred by sin. He came to redeem and transform the image of God found in man.

Here at the outset we have the two most fundamental affirmations about Jesus in this Gospel, namely that he himself is the presence of God's own life and light, and that he makes this life and light available to human beings. In one profound sentence we have the central assertion of this Gospel concerning the revelation of the Son and the salvation he offers.

John wants the reader to allow this story of who Jesus really is to penetrate their hearts and allow Jesus to change them in such a way that through their lives his light will shine revealing the truth of his identity, and so it will reveal the glory described in these opening verses.

However, it will be a tragic story of conflict because humanity has been and still is in the darkness of rebellion. The shining of the light is an ongoing, continuous activity, for it is the very nature of light to shine. But when that light and life came amongst us as a human being, the darkness did not grasp, or master, the light; it neither comprehended it nor overcame it.

As the story of Jesus in John’s gospel unfolds it will show both senses of this word to be true. The hope of John is that this revelation will be so profound that those who read or hear it will comprehend the wonder, majesty, love and power of Jesus and allow His light to transform them into those who continually shine as well. John wants those who are transformed by Jesus to continue the story to those who remain in darkness.

In Luke’s gospel chapter 4:18-19, Jesus stands up and reads from a scroll containing Isaiah 61,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He was reading from a portion of the Old Testament that we read this morning. Isaiah chapters 61 and 62 were prophetic words declaring that the Messiah would come and restore at that had been lost. These were words that Israel held onto as the promise of their salvation. However, when Jesus arrived their hearts were hardened, and they couldn’t see him for who he really was. 

The intent of John’s gospel was to clear up any misunderstanding as to the identity of Jesus the Messiah. The concern that I have is that little has changed in the past 2,000 years. I’m afraid that many who profess to be the children of God still don’t fully understand the impact of the creator God, who is holy, holy, holy coming down to rescue us from our sin. We can’t comprehend just how great and glorious God really is because we have nothing else to compare him to.

Part of the problem is that a great deal of modern religious writers focus on the love and provision of God without understanding his absolute holiness, or the incomprehensible nature of God, or the unbelievable promises that he has made to those who have come to him by faith and repentance. Often we can’t see the disparity between God’s absolute holiness and the darkness of our sins. I find myself asking, why would he come to rescue someone like me? What will it be like to behold him face to face and live in his presence continually? I can only imagine but I suspect that, like my granddaughters having no concept of Disneyland, Christians often have no concept of this amazing God and his desire to know us and be with us. If we did I think we would live differently. I am asking God to remedy that in my life.

This problem actually exists coming from the other end as well. Let me explain what I mean.

I believe I have mentioned before the time when I was 12–13 years old and I was crawling through a cave and got stuck. My shoulders were too wide to get through, so I needed the guys behind to let me out because I literally could not go further. They complained, but after I made threats about kicking their face off they let me out. While I was stuck, the roof of the cave was touching my nose and we were around 40 feet under a rock wall. If I remained stuck, there would have no way for me to be rescued, as not many adults were small enough to help. This happened around 52 years ago but I still dream about it occasionally and have to get up and turn the lights on and walk around to get rid of the awful feeling. So time ago while in an MRI machine I had to pray hard to stay put for 35 minutes. The technician commented that I seemed to be struggling and wondered whether or not I was going to panic, but I seemed to calm down. She was used to having people react that way and wanted to know what I did to settle down, I told her that I invited Jesus into my fear and kept doing that until I felt at peace. She looked surprised but she had seen the evidence.

A few months ago, I dreamed that I was buried alive. It was totally dark, and I couldn’t move. There was no one around to rescue me and I was panicking. I woke up with a start crying out to God and then thanked him that it was only a dream. It was then that God spoke to me. He told me he wanted me to consider the terror and panic that I felt and imagine what it would be like to be in that situation for eternity, unable to die and with no hope of rescue ever. He told me that is what Hell will be like for those who will not turn and accept the offer of salvation made to them by Jesus.

The difference is that it would be much, much worse because there will be absolutely no sense of God’s presence. Even the unbeliever has no concept of what it would be like for God to remove his presence. God’s presence is all around us, sustaining the creation. Jesus addressed the crowds in Matthew 5:45,

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

C.S. Lewis, in the Great Divorce, wrote,

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘thy will be done’.

They chose to not allow God into their lives, and that will be what they get, No God. There is no one who understands what that will be like. After I woke up God exhorted me to never let my heart grow hard against those who have hurt or betrayed me, but to do everything I could to share the gospel message of hope with them. The disciples and many since the time of Christ have understood this and gave their lives up to obey the command of the Savior that mattered more to them than their own lives. Most of the time very few in a crowd would respond and sometimes none at all, but they didn’t stop because Jesus asked them not to.

I have pondered this since my dream and realized that we not only don’t fully comprehend the joy and blessing of being in God’s powerful presence without sin or sorrow, but we also can’t fathom the awfulness and hopelessness of Hell. The disciples understood the truth of the Gospel, but they also knew what it was to be with Jesus and to have his heart for those who are lost. John reminds us of who Jesus really is and as his Word unfolds we see his heart for those who can’t see or understand.

There is no way that any of us will be able to accomplish this task just because a preacher lays a guilt trip on us. I believe that this is a matter of fervent prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal the joy that will be ours for eternity, while at the same time giving us a holy burden for those who are lost. It doesn’t matter whether or not someone wants to hear the gospel, we must be faithful to tell the story of Jesus, so the seed can be planted. I have found that God can take my paltry efforts and use them for his glory.

Let me close with a quote from Charles Spurgeon:

If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

I am making this my New Years' request to God. Will you join me?

Let’s pray.


©2019 Rev. Mike Moffitt

Return to top

Sermon Archives