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Grace Baptist Church

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God Has Come to Us

God Has Come to Us

Dec 18, 2016

Passage: John 1:1-14

Preacher: Tom Ascol

Series: Advent

Category: Sunday Morning

Keywords: advent, christmas, familiarity, incarnation, wonder

Detail:

Pastor Tom Ascol considers John 1:1, 14 in a Christmastime message entitled “God Has Come to Us.”  With proper reflection, today’s verses aid believers in not falling prey to losing reverence for the God of all creation. While it is true that we are to become more and more aware of the things of God, we must never become so familiar that our appreciation of Him and His work is diminished.

Today’s text claims that in the birth of Jesus Christ God has come to us. Four lessons arise from that significance of that truth. Understanding them helps us feel the weight and importance of Jesus’ birth. The first lesson teaches us that Jesus is the Word. He is God’s communication to us, showing us what God’s love and what He wants us to know. In Old Testament Hebrew thought the “Word” is associated with God’s creative power, God’s revelation, and God’s deliverance. Thus, the personification of the Word in the Son clearly points to the second lesson, the fact of Jesus’ deity.

Three things in this passage lead us to confess the divinity of Jesus. First, He was “in the beginning,” having existed eternally. Second, He “was with God.” The Apostle John, in this subtle statement, calls our attention to a great mystery. He reveals something of the Trinity. Although a distinct person, Jesus is at the same time one with the Father. Third, He “was God.” He was not a god, a heresy nearly as old as Christianity, but was the very and true God. This truth alone keeps the Christmas story from ever being trivialized or sentimentalized. Jesus was no ordinary baby; His birth was an extraordinary event.

The third lesson to arise from the passage is that in Jesus, God has come to us as a man. The Word, having already been shown to be God, “became flesh and dwelt among us.” This claim would have been foolish to the Greeks and scandalous to the Jews; modern Christian tendency may become dulled to the incredible truth of the Almighty taking on flesh. While nothing is as extraordinary as the Incarnation, the Apostle John has a fourth lesson to share.

In Jesus, we can know God. The disciples had “seen his glory.” They saw Him for Who He really was, a man but more than a man, God in the flesh, “full of grace and truth.” Grace is unmerited favor, a gift given to the underserving. Here it is the gift of salvation given to those (us) deserving just the opposite. Sinners deserve God’s wrath. Truth reveals reality. The reality is people are sinners and God is holy. The reality is Heaven and Hell do exist and all people are bound for one or the other. The reality is God has provided a way of escape from hell though His Son Jesus Christ. By taking advantage of this fourth lesson, by coming to the Father through the Son, we can access that escape. Avoid the familiarity of Christmas by recognizing the significance of Christ’s coming, turn to Him and be saved today.