Exodus, Prologue: Who Is This God?

Genesis 12

Today we’re really excited to be beginning a new series on the book of Exodus which will bring us up to this summer. It genuinely was not a joke we’d planned for this series to coincide with our leaving one location and going to another; we had planned on this series long before we knew about the move. But it is strangely appropriate.

If you’re only joining us recently, you may not know this, but what we’ll be doing over the next few months is what we usually do: with only a few breaks here and there during the year, we preach through books of the Bible, from beginning to end. We do this simply because we believe it’s the most faithful way to preach the Bible—if we go through a book from beginning to end, that means that you all can follow along with us, and hopefully understand why we’re saying what we’re saying. At the end of the day it’s not our opinion or our teaching that matters, but God’s Word, and what he wants to say to us through his Word.

We’ve got a bit of work to do today, because even though we’ll be starting at the beginning of the book of Exodus, we’re not starting at the beginning of the story. The story of Exodus is actually the second part of a much longer story that makes up most of the Old Testament; in order to truly understand the book of Exodus, we need to understand the book of Genesis, which is the first part.

Of course we can’t see all of that today, so we’re going to spend our time today in Genesis 12, which will serve as an introduction for what’s coming starting next week. For all the other things we need to understand but can’t cover today, we’ll fill you in as we go.

And we’re seeing this text, not so much to give us historical context, but more thematic context. That is, in Genesis 12, we see a sort of microcosm of the bigger story we see played out in Exodus, and in the rest of the Bible. The Bible isn’t ultimately the story of God’s people; it’s the story of God himself, and in this passage we see two massively important aspects of who God is. We’ll see these two aspects of his character over and over again, in the book of Exodus.

Who Is This Man?

But before we see all that, let’s look at the passage. In v. 1 of chapter 12, we’re introduced to a man named Abram (who would eventually be called Abraham). We see Abraham all over the Bible, in the Old and the New Testaments. So one of the first questions we’ll want to ask is, who is this man, Abraham? We’ve heard so much about him—who is he?

Well, first off, remember Noah’s sons? After they left the ark, Noah’s three sons had kids of their own. And in chapter 11, starting in v. 10, we have the line of the descendants of one of these sons, Shem. This genealogy follows the same pattern from beginning to end: “When so-and-so was so-and-so-many years old, he fathered so-and-so, and so-and-so lived so-and-so-many years and had other sons and daughters.” (So clearly not everyone is mentioned here.) But at the end of the genealogy, the pattern is broken: 26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Not a lot is said about Terah’s family; it says they lived in the country of Ur; that Abram had a wife, Sarai, who was barren; that they moved from Ur to Haran and settled there. But something is mentioned in the book of Joshua which is, I believe, significant. In Joshua 24.2, we see Joshua speaking to the people of Israel, Abram’s descendants: 2 And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.’” So Abram’s father, and (it would seem) Abram himself, was an idolator. He was not faithful to the Creator God of Noah; he served other gods.

But despite this, one day God decides to do something incredible. 12.1:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So you see, God makes Abram a promise, and he gives Abram a command.

He says, “Leave,” and he promisesto make him into a great nation.

Now there are two great leaps Abram has to make here with the information he’s been given. Firstly, God doesn’t tell him where he’s supposed to go. He doesn’t say, “Go to this place, because where you’re going it’ll be way better than here.” No—he just says, “Go where I will show you.” Could you imagine following such an order, with no idea of what you’d find when you got there?

Here’s the second leap. He tells Abram he will make him into a great nation…but we’ve already been told, just a couple verses before, that Abram’s wife Sarai was barren. How would God make him into a great nation if he couldn’t have kids? God explains neither of these two things; he simply gives Abram an incomprehensible command, makes him an incomprehensible promise. And what does Abram do?

v. 4:

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

It’s not until they arrive in Canaan that God explains to Abram why he brought him there: because God was going to give this land to Abram’s future offspring.

v. 7b:

So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

So he’s off to a pretty good start, right? God calls him to an unknown land, promising to make him into a great nation, and Abram just goes, “Yeah. OK.” Reading this for the first time, what are we tempted to think? We’re tempted to think God picked the right guy. This is the kind of guy I want to be! God does a great job picking those whom he’s going to use; he knows how to look through a stack of CVs and find the guy most suited for the job.

That’s what we think, and that’s what we’d be tempted to keep on thinking…were it not for what follows. Now, I realize that I haven’t yet talked about Abram’s faith in leaving—a faith that is not negligible. And I’m not going to in this message, because I believe the thrust of this chapter is not to applaud Abram’s faith (at least not yet; the author will get there in chapter 15, and the author of Hebrews will come back to it much later). The center of this chapter, I’m going to suggest later on, is not primarily Abram, but God. So let me show you why I think that.

In v. 10 we see that there was a famine in the land of Canaan. So Abram goes down to Egypt with his wife to stay there, in order to survive the famine. And in v. 11, Abram does something absolutely despicable.

11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”

Now reading this, we might not yet see the gravity of it. But we can see the gravity of it in what follows:

14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.

(Later on, in v. 19, Pharaoh explains what this means: he took her as his wife.)

Upon entering Egypt, Abram was faced with two choices: either tell the truth and more than likely be killed; or lie about it, say she’s his sister…in which case nothing would keep anyone else from taking her and sleeping with her. No one would be knowingly committing adultery; no one would be knowingly stealing her from her husband. Abram knew good and well what saying she was his sister would mean for Sarai…and he did it anyway.

Can we all agree that this is a massive marriage fail? “Honey, say you’re my sister.” “But someone’s going to want to take me as their wife if they think I’m not married!” “Don’t worry about it—I’ll survive. Do you love me? You want me to survive? Go ahead, honey—take one for the team.” This is disgusting behavior.

Thankfully, it doesn’t last long: the Lord sends plagues to afflict Pharaoh’s house because he’s taken Sarai as his wife. And somehow—this passage doesn’t say how—Pharaoh figures it out. So he goes to Abram and (very rightly so) asks Abram what’s going on.

18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife?

The answer? He was afraid.

And that’s it—the Pharaoh gives Sarai back to Abram and says, “Get out.” He orders his men not to touch them, and they go back home.

Now if we went back to the beginning, and read v. 1-9 knowing what kind of guy Abram was—the kind of guy he proves himself to be in v. 10-20—does it make any sense at all? From this man Abram, God is going to build up the people of Israel, from whom Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior and Messiah himself, would be descended. In other words, to work his redemptive purposes, God chooses to use an idolator, a coward, and just about the worst husband imaginable—if a man tried to do that today, what would we call him? An abusive husband. Abram is often painted in this glorious, almost-perfect light because of his faith. But by his actions he proves himself to be a deeply flawed man, at least at this point in his life.

So here’s the question I’d like to ask today, because I believe it’s a question the text prompts us to ask. I don’t think the main point of this text is to get us to look at Abram, and how wonderful his faith was. There was faith, but there was also incredible weakness. Abram isn’t the focus here: I think the text is prompting us to notice some things about God: how he operates, how he chooses to act.

I believe the author brings us here, not to get us to ask ourselves, “Who is the man, Abraham?” but rather to get us to ask ourselves, “Who is this God?”

Who Is This God?

Well, what does the text show us? What does this tell us about God? How is his glory seen in his actions here?

I think the answer to those questions can be summed up in two words: majesty and condescension. (I stole the juxtaposition of these two words from Jonathan Edwards, whom I’ll quote later on.) I think that as we look at what God does here, we can see both his amazing majesty on display, and his amazing condescension. So let’s take a few minutes more to see that in the text.

Majesty. I say “majesty” because when we talk about God’s majesty, we’re talking about his power and authority. Look at God’s command to Abram first:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

How could anyone make such a ridiculous command? “Pack up your things and leave, take your family…but I’m not telling you yet where you’ll be going. Just go.” The only way that command makes any kind of sense is if God has the authority to command such a thing. He comes in as a God among others—remember, Abram’s is a family of idolators, they worshiped other gods—but when God speaks to Abram, clearly he has an authority that the other gods don’t. His authority is also present in the fact that Abram begins to call upon his name, v. 8:

8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

Calling upon the name of the Lord was an act of worship which showed dependence on him. So Abram has moved from being an idolator to being a man who recognizes his dependence on God.

We see God’s majesty in the promise he makes to Abram. v. 2:

2 And I will make of you a great nation…

Think about this: Abram is an old man at this point. If I wanted to make a great nation of anyone, I wouldn’t use him. First of all because the idea of him and his super old pregnant wife is almost laughable, but after that they’d have to care for this baby and raise him!

But that’s exactly what God does! He makes him a ridiculous promise, and he makes that ridiculous promise because he’s powerful enough to make good on it. Not only is he able to make a woman that old have a baby, but he also tells Abram that he will use him to bless all the families of the earth. Can you grasp the expansiveness of that promise? Only one who is infinitely powerful can make such a promise.

We also see it in God’s judgment on Pharaoh’s household. v. 17:

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

God hasn’t yet worked a miracle in the life of Abram; he hasn’t yet made Sarai have a baby. But already he shows his power to do supernatural things by judging Pharaoh’s house with plagues because of them. God is able to say, “Leave those two alone” and absolutely make sure that Pharaoh does what he wants. God’s majesty is evident in his power and authority to command what he wants and to fulfill his promises.

Condescension. This term will probably have to be explained. It’s a word the old Puritan theologians often used, and I thought for a long time of other, simpler possibilities, but none of them fit. When we talk about God’s condescension, we mean his wisdom and his choice to accomplish his infinitely great will using weak, finite means. This is not a negative term, like we would often use it (“My boss always speaks to me in a condescending way”), but rather a choice he makes to execute his great plan at our level.

Think about God’s plan for the redemption of man on a grand scale. God’s plan to show his beauty in creation, and to redeem the fallen world after sin entered it, to save the men and women who have rebelled against him, is a glorious and infinitely massive plan, and his desire is that the world see his glory in the immensity of his plan.

Now, if you were God, how would you do that? How would you go about implementing and bringing this massive plan to fruition? If you wanted to show strength, whom would you use? Strong people! If you wanted to show holiness, whom would you use? Holy people! Think of Abram in Egypt: he and the Pharaoh are both sinful men, but Pharaoh is clearly more powerful. Wouldn’t it be natural to imagine that the Pharaoh would be the more likely candidate to be used to display God’s power to the world?

But that’s not what God does. Here in Abram we see it clearly: God uses a weak, cowardly, sinful man to bring about his plan of redemption. In other words, he doesn’t need to make a big show of it. He manifests his power in weak, ordinary people. He chooses one man, a very flawed man, and through this one man he starts humanity down the road that will lead to the cross.

In Genesis 12 we see God’s majesty in his authoritative call to Abram, in his power to fulfill his promises to Abram; and we see his condescension in his desire to use weak, imperfect people to accomplish his will. Now why did God begin his redemptive plan in this way? Because it was exactly in this way that he planned to finish it. We can see in the whole sweep of Scripture this pattern of amazing, powerful acts being done by lowly, unimpressive people—and it’s not difficult to see that God always chose to do things in this way to prepare us for Jesus, in whom we see the ultimate combination of majesty in condescension. In other words, God manifested a peculiar glory in Christ, for it is in Christ that his majesty and condescension find their ultimate expression.

Here’s a quote from Jonathan Edwards which perfectly explains why (it’s lengthy but it’s worth it):

“[Because Christ’s] glory [shines] upon us through his human nature, the manifestation is wonderfully adapted to the strength of the human vision; so that, though it appears in all its effulgence, it is yet attempered to our sight. He is indeed possessed of infinite majesty, to inspire us with reverence and adoration; yet that majesty need not terrify us, for we behold it blended with humility, meekness, and sweet condescension. We may feel the most profound reverence and self-abasement, and yet our hearts be drawn forth sweetly and powerfully into an intimacy the most free, confidential, and delightful. The dread, so naturally inspired by his greatness, is dispelled by the contemplation of his gentleness and humility; while the familiarity, which might otherwise arise from the view of the loveliness of his character merely, is ever prevented by the consciousness of his infinite majesty and glory; and the sight of all his perfections united fills us with sweet surprise and humble confidence, with reverential love and delightful adoration.”

In other words, Christ’s majesty reminds us of who he is, protects us from presumptuously assuming that he’s our “buddy”; it reminds us that we are not dealing with a mere man; it keeps us from sentimentally treating him like a mother hen. But his humility gives us an access to him in relationship we could never otherwise have; it makes it possible to believe that the God who created us and who has the right to judge sin desires to adopt us as sons and daughters; it gives us a reason for incredible gratitude, for “joy unspeakable and full of glory,” that comes from knowing that such a great God as he loves and cares for such weak creatures as we are.

Conclusion

I know this seems like a strange way to introduce the book of Exodus—I haven’t really given any historical background yet, any information that will help parse out the story. (We’ll get to that next week.)

The reason I wanted to do it this way is to show that what we see God do in the book of Exodus, he’s actually been doing it since the beginning. In Exodus, we see a microcosm of what God does and is still doing on a global, universal, eternal scale. We see the gospel, acted out, almost as if it’s a backwards allegory, written before the events it’s meant to represent ever take place.

And most especially, we see God. Exodus is not primarily about God’s people—the Old Testament is not primarily about God’s people. It’s about God.

So our call, looking at a text like this, is very simple: SEE the God who saved you.

See the One who created the entire universe by the word of his power.

See the One who gave a simple man, a veritable newborn, the task of naming the animals.

See the One who governs every atom of every molecule of every plant and tree and living being in creation.

See the One who gave simple men and women the task of cultivating and keeping his creation.

See the One who has the authority to judge sin and rebellion against him.

See the One who graciously replaced fallen man and woman’s pitiful fig leaves and with clothes of animal skins.

See the One whose anger justly drowned the world.

See the One who warned a sinful man of the coming flood, and provided him with a way of escape.

See the One who has the authority to command what he will, and the power to fulfill every promise he makes.

See the One who chose a weak, fearful man from whom his own Son would descend.

See the Savior who will crush Satan under his feet, vanquish death and sin and all the powers of hell.

See this Savior—who did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, who humbled himself unto death, even death on a cross.

See your God. Be stunned by him. Serve him. Worship him. Love him with your lives.

And if you don’t know him yet—he may yet be your God. Turn to him. Accept the gift of forgiveness and salvation that is offered to you. Repent of your sins and turn to him. Know this amazing, glorious, majestic, humble Jesus Christ, who humbled himself and gave himself up for those who are his.

Two Good Reasons to (Not) Treat Yourself

Ezra 8.21-23, Matthew 9.14-17

This is a big day, obviously. It’s our first week in a new venue in almost nine years. We knew going into this that no matter what decision we made—to stay at Espace Saint-Martin or to come here—we would be facing a lot of changes which we’ll have to get used to. In addition, today is the first Sunday of 2024, and a new year always brings unexpected circumstances.

If you’re an optimist, you’ll see these things as opportunities; if you’re a pessimist, you’ll see them as obstacles. Whatever the case may be, these changes and surprises bring uncertainty: we don’t know how this move to a new location will go, and we don’t know how 2024 will go either.

So we wanted to begin this new year with a week focused on prayer. And as I prayed about it and thought about it I realized I felt like we should go one step further.

In times of uncertainty, or in times of need, one of the most common practices the church has typically encouraged is not just prayer, but prayer and fasting.

The question is, why? We understand why we would pray in such times—at least somewhat—but why fast?

As we know, fasting is generally defined as depriving oneself of food for a fixed amount of time. Fasting doesn’t just happen in Christianity, of course, but all over the place, for any number of reasons. Nearly all religions which have ever existed include some kind of fasting ritual; their reasons for doing so vary wildly, but it’s always there.

If you’ve grown up in church, you’ve surely been subjected to a time of enforced prayer and fasting: they’re those times we dread all year long, because we know we’re going to feel terrible, and we don’t even really understand why it is we’re doing it.

And let me be clear: fasting isn’t just about food. In the Bible, people generally fasted food—but it wasn’t always necessarily all food, and it never says it must be food. The English pastor Martyn Lloyd Jones said, “Fasting if we conceive of it truly, must not . . . be confined to the question of food and drink; fasting should really be made to include abstinence from anything which is legitimate in and of itself for the sake of some special spiritual purpose. There are many bodily functions which are right and normal and perfectly legitimate, but which for special peculiar reasons in certain circumstances should be controlled. That is fasting.”

So it doesn’t have to be food, and if it is, it doesn’t have to be all food. But it should be something of which we’ll feel the lack. I occasionally go on an entertainment fast, during which I watch no TV, no movies, etc. I feel that (probably more than fasting food!).

So we’re going to talk about fasting today, but what we don’t want to do is simply imitate a ritual without getting to the bottom of it. The question we’re asking today is not whether or not fasting is a good idea in general, or why one would choose fasting above more traditional methods of doing whatever it is they want to do. Our question—and it’s an important one—is this: Is fasting a Christian thing to do? And if so, why? Why on earth would God take pleasure in his people depriving themselves of food? And what is the link between prayer and fasting? And can depriving ourselves of pleasure actually bring pleasure?

I’ve preached on this before, several years ago, but it’s been a long time, and many of you in the church now, unless you attend our regular prayer meetings, may have never even heard of fasting or why we do it. There’s a lot we could say about this, but one of the best clues is found in the book of Ezra, in chapter 8; the second is in Matthew chapter 9. So we’re going to do something unusual today and look at more than one text, to be able to get a fuller picture of not only the point of fasting along with prayer, but also what makes Christian fasting particular and different.

Reason 1: To Learn Humility (Ezra 8.21-23)

Just a bit of backstory to set up this passage. The capital city of the people of God was the city of Jerusalem, but in the 6th century B.C., the people of God are exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. Then, about fifty years later the King Cyrus of Persia overthrows the Babylonian king and takes over the lands he formerly occupied. And in 538 B.C. Cyrus issues a decree declaring that the Jewish people can now return to their homeland. The first six chapters of the book of Ezra tell us the story of the first wave of exiles returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple of Solomon. Then, in chapters 7-10, we see the second wave of exiles coming home about 50 years later, led by Ezra the Priest.

So our passage picks up just as they are about to leave. Ezra has just been given permission by King Artaxerxes to return home and reestablish the Mosaic Law in Jerusalem. Now apparently Ezra has spoken at great length to the King about the God of Israel, telling him that God is a mighty God who is more than able to protect his people from harm; so the King sends Ezra on his way, free to go and be protected by his God. But this creates a tiny problem for Ezra, in that he’s got a long road ahead of him; he’s traveling with a large group of people, and there will be various obstacles and enemies on the road. And although he does believe what he told Artaxerxes—that God is a powerful God who can completely protect his people—he hasn’t yet asked God to do so.

And so, starting at v. 21 of chapter 8, we see Ezra encourage the people to ask God for help.

21 Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods. 22 For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.” 23 So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.

Now there is one sentence here that is key to understanding why Ezra proclaims not only that the people should pray, but that they should fast. We see it in v. 21: Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods. Ezra declares that the people will deprive themselves of food for a time, and ask God for protection on the road; and this fast is declared that we might humble ourselves before God.

Everyone who has ever prayed knows that they need God. This is one of the main reasons we pray in the first place: to ask God for something we can’t do for ourselves. But I’m sure you’ve all had this experience before—let’s say you need to find an apartment, and quickly. So you pray: “Lord, please let me find an apartment quickly.” And then what do you do? You go to work: you put together an immaculate renter’s profile for the owners; you go visit every bank in town to try and find the loan which will be the most advantageous to you and attractive to the owners; you visit real estate agencies and make phone calls and work your tail off.

Now, these things you do aren’t bad; they’re necessary and good. But if you’ve ever looked for an apartment, you know the state of mind you’re usually in when you do so, especially if you’re pressed for time. Most of us going through this experience are bent over backward with stress and worry about it. Most of the time it’s not industriousness or work ethic that drives us to work as hard as we do, but fear—fear that if we don’t get everything just right, we won’t find an apartment on time.

Do you see the problem in this scenario? We’ve prayed to God to ask for help because we know that God can do something we ourselves are incapable of doing, and that he knows what is best for us. But although we know that’s true, we don’t completely believe it. If we believed it, we wouldn’t be worried! We would do the work we need to do, but we would do it with confidence, because it’s the right thing to do. Most of us pray, then work our tails off in fear that God might not come through: our work is not obedience to God, but a way of providing ourselves with a safety net in case God doesn’t come through.

So fasting, in this context, is a way to help us humble ourselves before God, in order to not work in this way. Fasting is a way of expressing with our bodies our spiritual dependence on God. It’s a way of helping us to feel dependent on him and to not just know intellectually that we are. Our stomachs ache for food, and we realize, Lord, I need you THIS MUCH, and more. As much as my body feels that I need food right now, I need you even more! And that kind of prayer honors God: that kind of prayer does not try to manipulate or strong-arm God into doing something he doesn’t want to do, but comes to God with open arms and an open mouth, saying, “I need you, Lord! Fill me! Help me!” That kind of prayer humbles us before God, because we don’t merely acknowledge with our mouths that we need God’s help, but allows us to feel with our guts that we need him.

And what is the result here? v. 23: So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty. The Bible never says that fasting will automatically makes God answer our prayers the way we wanted; but it does seem to incline his heart to act on behalf of his children in a particular way.

The best example I can think of to explain why this is the case is, as usual, an example about my kids. Zadie is five years old, and she is determined to do most things herself. I see she’s doing something wrong, and I say, “Here kiddo, let me help,” and she is convinced that she knows better than me how it should be done. So I let her do hisherthing. But eventually she realizes that no, in fact Dad was probably right about this, so she’ll inevitably crack and say, “Daddy, I can’t do this; can you help me?” And because I love her, and I enjoy seeing her grow in humility (it’s a hard thing to admit you need help, after all), I don’t hesitate for a second to help her and give him what she needs.

When we humble ourselves before God—not merely verbally, but when we feel in our hearts and in our guts that we need him—God is inclined to come to the rescue of his children, because that humility honors him, and helps us grow.

That’s the first key. But there’s a question we need to ask: Is there anything different about Christian fasting? There are multiple passages in the New Testament which talk about the reality that now that Jesus has come, Christians are no longer obligated to submit to rituals and rites to earn God’s favor, like the Jews did (including fasting). And this is true—to my knowledge there is no explicit command in the New Testament that Christians fast. So when a Christian fasts, what is different about his fasting? How do we fast in a way that doesn’t try to manipulate God into giving us what we want, but that honors him?

Reason 2: To Desire What We’ve Already Tasted (Matthew 9.14-17)

For this, we need to turn to Matthew chapter 9. In this chapter, we find Jesus in full “breaking-down-the-Pharisaic-system” mode. The Pharisees were religious leaders who followed the Law of Moses to the letter: they observed every ritual, kept every law. And everything Jesus is doing goes against what they say is right. Just a few verses above our passage, in v. 9-13, Jesus has just called Matthew, a tax collector—one of the vilest occupations imaginable in that society—to be his disciple. And when the Pharisees see this, they’re shocked and outraged to see that Jesus is eating with these terrible people and calling them to follow him. To which Jesus responds in v. 13, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. This was mind-blowingly counter-cultural.

And it is in this context that the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus with a question in v. 14:

14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. 16 No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. 17 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

Here’s what he means. The Jews fast to express their longing of something that hasn’t yet been fulfilled. They’re still waiting on the fulfillment of God’s promises, including coming of the Messiah. For the Jews, it’s an ascetic practice meant to show their devotion and their allegiance to God’s plan. The fasting of the Jews is the old wineskin, the old cloth—the old way of doing things.

But now, Jesus says, the kingdom has come! The old wineskins and the garments have been replaced with new ones, never before used or seen. The old way of doing things has been replaced by a far better one. They no longer need to long for the coming of the kingdom of God—the kingdom of God is here! They no longer need to long for the coming of the Messiah—the Messiah is sitting right there with them! We are no longer waiting expectantly for his arrival; he is here, we have seen him and know him!

And yet, Jesus does say that it won’t always be exactly as it is now (v. 15): The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. After his death and resurrection, Jesus ascended back into heaven and sent his Holy Spirit to fill his disciples and empower them to proclaim the kingdom of God all over the world. So soon, he says, he will be taken away from the disciples, and THEN they will fast. So yes, they will fast; but their fasting won’t the same as the Pharisees’. In some ways it will be similar, but in one massive, fundamental way, it will be radically different.

Christian fasting is similar to the Pharisees’ fasting in that it is expectant—it does express a longing in us. Jesus promised that when the time was right, when the gospel had gone out to all corners of the earth and all of God’s children had been called to him and given new life, that he would return. He will return, and establish his kingdom here on earth.

This will happen. This is what the children of God are waiting for; this is what we are longing for; this is what we our expecting. When we fast, our hunger expresses our longing for this time when the kingdom will be fully realized, completely fulfilled.

But at the same time, Christian fasting is wildly different from the Pharisees’ fasting, because the hunger we feel when we fast is not a desperate, painful hunger: it is a satisfied hunger, because the kingdom of God has begun. The Messiah has come, and we have seen him. We have been given a foretaste of that wonderful day.

Before the kids were born, we would travel back to America nearly every Thanksgiving to celebrate the holiday with my family. (Since we planted the church we’ve spent Thanksgiving with all of you.) If you don’t know Thanksgiving, it’s basically an excuse to eat insane amounts of amazing food we only eat on that day. Every time we would go home for Thanksgiving, I had a strange experience of going back to my childhood, and it always started with the smells.

My mom begins cooking the Thanksgiving meal at around 5:00 in the morning, and as the morning progresses the smells—these very particular smells that I’ve known all my life—gradually fill the house. We don’t usually sit down to eat until 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, which means we spend a lot of that time really hungry. It’s tempting to go into the pantry and grab a Twinkie or a Pop-Tart (or any number of unhealthy snacks) to calm our appetite a bit, but we don’t, because we know what’s coming. We’ve had this meal before, and we know it is so much better than the Twinkie in the pantry. And so not in spite of our hunger, but precisely because we’re so hungry, we wait: we stay patient, because we know that what’s coming will satisfy our hunger far better than anything else we could find to eat.

When we fast as Christians, we feel hungry, but our hunger is not desperate; ours is a satisfied hunger which says that we have seen the Messiah, we have tasted his graces, we have seen his glory, and we want more. We feel the stirring in our stomach that says it’s mealtime, and we turn that feeling to God and say, I long for you like this. I desire to see your glory this much.

Three Questions

There is much more that we could say about this, but as we close let me ask you a couple of questions, to help you examine yourself.

First of all, think about how you pray for something that is important to you, and what happens afterward. Ask yourself this: After I pray, do I feel anxiety over the idea that God might not act? Do I attempt to do God’s work for him, just in case? If so, consider fasting: when we fast, we humble ourselves before God, allowing ourselves to not only verbally admit our dependence on him, but to feel that dependence. And that humility both honors God and helps us to trust that he really is in control, that he really is powerful to act, and that whatever it is he does really is the best thing—even if it’s not what I wanted in the first place.

Second question: Have I tasted the joy of knowing Christ? Do I delight in his grace day after day? Do I have joy in knowing him? It’s amazing how many Christians find this difficult—it’s amazing how difficult I find this myself. In some respects it’s to be expected: we live in a fallen, corrupt world and are confronted with pain and anger and sin every day. It’s hard to feel joy and contentment in a context like that. So we need help. We need something to pull us out of ourselves and remind us of what we have in Christ, and how much better he is than all the things we so badly want on this earth. If you have a hard time delighting in God’s grace, if you have a hard time feeling the joy of knowing him, then consider fasting: when we fast, we express our satisfaction with what we already have in him: whatever it is I hunger for, God, you are so much better!

Last question: Do I long for the day when his kingdom will come? or do I rather long for pleasure in this life? Most of us rarely think about heaven, partially because it’s a little abstract to us, but mostly because we’re so preoccupied with this earth that it doesn’t even occur to us to think about the new heavens and the new earth. But we should be longing for them; we should think about them often, because that’s where our hope lies—our hope is fixed on that day when Christ will make all things new, and we will be like him, and we will live with him on this earth, perfectly renewed, and we will rejoice in his glory forever. Whatever we could find in this earth, no matter how legitimate that pleasure is, pales in comparison with the pleasure of knowing him forever (cf. Ps. 16.11). If you find it hard to long for that day, if you are preoccupied with the pleasure of this world and this life (even if that pleasure is legitimate), consider fasting: when we fast, we express our longing for what is to come—we feel the ache of whatever we have given up, and we say, Lord, I long for you LIKE THIS. I need you LIKE THIS. I hope in you LIKE THIS.

A Call to Fast

So as we conclude our series on prayer, this week I would encourage you to join me in fasting. And again, it doesn’t have to be food. But it should be something we feel. Because the point of fasting is to remind us that whatever it is we’re giving up, whatever it is that hurts us to give up, God is so much better. Sometimes not doing what feels good—depriving ourselves of what we desire—brings its own unique pleasure: that of feeling our desire for God in a particular way, and of knowing that one day, that desire will be totally and completely satisfied.

So please pray and consider fasting this week. Let’s humble ourselves before the God who has given us all things through the life, death and resurrection of his Son; let’s not only acknowledge, but feel our dependence on him; let’s remind ourselves, through what we’re giving up, of what we’re waiting for. Let’s feel more keenly, in our guts, the desire for that wonderful day, when Christ will return and make all things new.

The Conversation

John 21.15-19

I’ve been a pastor for almost ten years now, and I’ve been a Christian for more than twice as long. And over that time I’ve come to realize that what we think the Christian life should look like is often quite different from what it actually is.

Here’s what we often imagine when we think of what the Christian life ought to look like. It’s not perfection, but a life that could be represented on a graph by a straight line moving progressively upwards. Smooth, straight—not perfect yet, but always going up.

Honestly, that’s not what the Christian life really looks like most of the time. What it usually looks like—or rather, what it feels like—is more like a spiky line on a graph. There’s progression, followed by moments or periods of struggle or outright failure, followed by more progression, then more struggle, and so on. We still move gradually upwards, but it’s not a straight line.

For some people, these spikes are more pronounced than for others—but we all have them.

The holier we become, the more we realize how unholy we actually are. The more like Christ we become, the more clearly we’re able to see just how pervasive sin is, and how much still remains to be changed.

This can be discouraging to us, particularly at a period like Christmas, because we can feel like the beautiful picture people paint at Christmas doesn’t apply to us.

This is our last message for the season of Advent. We always take one extra week after Christmas to reflect on why we’re doing this. If you remember, Advent is the period where we reflect on the people of Israel waiting for the coming of the Messiah. We do this, not just to remember Christ’s birth and be thankful for it, but to help us learn to wait for the day when the Messiah will return, rid the creation of sin and its effects, and bring us with him to live forever in a world without pain, without death, without grief or anger or fear.

In other words, there’s a reason why we read those passages in Revelation this morning: this is the day we’re waiting for. But often this can seem very theoretical to us, very abstract.

I’ve had conversations with multiple people this month that make me think that we would be well served, on this last Sunday of 2023, by speaking not directly about Christ’s return, but about the time in between—the time in which we find ourselves now, when we’re still waiting. Because a lot of Christians will hear a sermon on the second coming of Christ and feel doubt rather than encouragement, because given how their lives are going so far, they’re not sure they’re going to make it. You may not be sure you’ll make it—that you’ll be among those whom Christ will welcome into his kingdom.

So rather than panic about it, let’s sit in it for a little while. The last three weeks we’ve been in the beginning of John’s gospel, when John described Jesus Christ to us—God himself, the Creator of all things, our life and our light, who took on human flesh, lived our life and died our death.

It’s a beautiful picture, but imagine you were there to see Jesus in person, and you let him down, you betrayed him—in person. How would you feel to have Jesus look at you then? How might he react?

That precisely was the experience of the apostle Peter.

Peter: Background

Peter was a fisherman, a disciple called by Jesus to follow him early in his ministry. Of all the disciples, Peter was one of the most devoted, one of the most fervent, and certainly the most confident.

Toward the end of John’s gospel we see a lot of things coming to a head for Peter. In John 13, Jesus tells the disciples what’s going to happen soon—how he’ll be arrested and put on trial and killed. Peter, ever confident, says that he’ll follow Christ even to death, and Jesus says, “No you won’t—before dawn you’ll deny me three times.”

Which is exactly what happens. Jesus is arrested, he is taken before the high priest. Most of the disciples run away in fear. Peter follows from a distance, standing outside the house.

We see it in John 18. Those standing around with Peter recognize him and ask him if he’s one of his disciples. Peter is afraid, so he says no—three times, just like Jesus said.

We can of course understand Peter; he was afraid, and it’s normal to be afraid. Who among us could say with absolute certainty that we would do things differently?

But that’s not the issue. The issue is Peter’s heart. He had been sure that he was stronger than that. He was sure that even if everyone else left Jesus, he wouldn’t. In other words, he was prideful—he imagined himself stronger than he was, and was depending on his own strength to see him through.

We know what happened next. Jesus was crucified, all the disciples—including Peter—were absent at his crucifixion, all but one (John himself).

Jesus was buried, the disciples were in complete despair over it all. Clearly Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, the great King they thought he was.

But then, to everyone’s amazement—on the third day following his crucifixion, Jesus comes back to them. He is clearly the same man—they can recognize him, they can see the marks in his hands and feet—but he has been changed as well, resurrected and glorified, alive once again in a perfect body, freed from sickness and disease and death.

Think of the massive shift in perspective this would have caused. Already Jesus had surprised them time after time, with his teaching, by performing miracles, and even raising the dead. But the dead he raised were pretty much the same after their resurrections as before; this resurrection was different.

The Jesus standing before them now was the sign of something much bigger than a simple bodily resurrection in the future: he was the sign, not just of resurrection, but of renovation, renewal. And not just of one or two individual people, but of everyone and everything that belonged to God.

I imagine the days following Jesus’s resurrection must have been remarkably strange for the disciples. You know that feeling when you learn some bit of information that is so huge, you walk around in a daze, unable to see anything in the same way because of what you now know.

The Conversation (John 21.15-19)

Now—in the last chapter of John’s gospel, John 21, we see a very interesting story, probably my favorite story in this entire gospel, and this is where we’ll spend the rest of our time today. Some time after Christ’s resurrection, some of the disciples were together near the Sea of Tiberias, and Peter decides to go fishing. So they all go out in the boat together, they fish all night, they catch nothing. They’re coming back in to shore, and they see a guy on the shore who tells them to throw their nets over the right side of the boat.

So they do it, and suddenly the nets are overloaded with fish.

John recognizes that the guy on the shore isn’t just a guy, but it’s Jesus, so Peter jumps into the water and swims like a madman to see Jesus. (I would have loved to hear what Peter said when he got to him, all wet, out of breath, while his buddies struggled to haul to load of fish to the short.)

When they get there and they bring the fish in, Jesus cooks them breakfast. Already, this would have been incredible: the resurrected and glorified Son of God serving you breakfast! But then after breakfast, Jesus trains his sights on Peter, for what would surely become the most significant conversation of his life.

Let’s read it together—John 21.15-19:

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Now this is a relatively simple story. Jesus asks Peter the same question three times, gets the same answer,  and gives a variation of the same command.

The question is, why did Jesus ask this question—“Do you love me?”—three times, and why was Peter grieved when he did?

Because that’s how many times Peter denied knowing him.

Jesus was subtly—but clearly—placing Peter directly in front of his own failure, in front of his own pride, in front of his own hypocrisy and sin.

Most of us know how that feels. All of us have disappointed someone. All of us have failed someone we love. All of us have hurt someone who trusted us. And if we’re Christians, we’re aware that all of us have failed God.

But sometimes, the knowledge that we’ve failed God can feel a little distant, like we’ve failed an idea or a principle rather than someone we love. So we need to try to put ourselves in Peter’s shoes here. He has walked with Jesus for the last three years. He has listened to him and observed him. He has had endless conversations with him, and been endlessly helped by him. Peter loves this man more than he loves anyone else in the whole world.

And now, Jesus is sitting across from him, reminding him none too subtly that Peter let him down. Peter responds to his questions the only way he knows how—“You know all things, Lord, you know that I love you”—and it feels a bit like when you try to say “I love you” after hurting your spouse, like you’re trying to say the thing that will make it better, when you know that nothing you can do in that moment will really make it better.

That’s the position Peter is in; that’s what he’s feeling.

It may seem cruel of Jesus to put Peter through this. Hadn’t he been punished enough during those three days when Jesus was dead? Why did he feel the need to rub his face in his failure?

It wasn’t for retribution; it wasn’t to punish Peter. Jesus is drawing Peter’s attention to his failure, and saying what he is saying, for Peter. Peter needed to know—not just in his head, but in his guts—that he would not “succeed” in being the perfect disciple he wanted to be. He would not get there under his own steam, and there would be bumps in the road.

And he needed to know that these bumps in the road didn’t mean he could no longer be a disciple of Christ.

Despite his failure, Jesus’s invitation still stands. On the heels of his questions, he also gives commands: “Feed my sheep. Take care of my sheep.” And most especially: “Follow me.”

Jesus is being very clear here. He is not expecting perfection from Peter. He’s expecting two things.

Firstly, he’s expecting dependance on God alone. That’s what the questions are for. “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” Peter’s failure held up in front of his face, to remind him he cannot do this alone. He cannot love Jesus like he should, or follow Jesus like he should, on his own. He’s not strong enough on his own to get there. He needs God’s help.

Secondly, Jesus is expecting humble perseverance. This perseverance is humble because Peter must recognize that he needs God in order to do anything, and that he must depend on God to give him what he needs; and it is “perseverance” because if God gives Peter what he needs to do what God has called him to do, he has to do it.

This is the part a lot of people have a hard time understanding. By reminding Peter of his failure, and then giving Peter these commands, Jesus is pulling him up off the ground, and setting his feet back on the road: something Peter desperately needed at that point in time. But you can’t be set back on the road without first recognizing that you’ve left it. Jesus is telling Peter, essentially, “Despite your failures, despite your weaknesses, you must continue to do what I’ve called you to do. Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs. Follow me. You won’t get it perfect on your own, but God is here to give you what you need—and even if you fail, keep going. Do what you know to do. Keep going.”

We know what happened next. Peter is a changed man in the weeks and months that followed. He is confident, but it’s no longer the brash and self-centered confidence of a prideful man. He is confident in God’s ability to carry out his will (which is a very different thing).

Peter was not perfect. He made other mistakes. He still struggled with sin.

But he fed Jesus’s sheep. He and the others founded and cared for the church. He wasn’t perfect, but he persevered.

Conclusion

Some of you really need to hear this. You’re looking at these first five or ten or twenty years of your Christian life and you’re doubting yourselves. You’re wondering if God could ever really use you, if how you’ve begun is any indication.

But it doesn’t matter how you begin. It matters how you end.

Perfection is not the goal; perseverance is the goal, and God will help you persevere.

Some of you always feel out of place here because you look around and you imagine that everyone else is doing so much better than you. Some of them probably are; most of them aren’t. You can’t see that because you don’t know them well enough, but we’re all struggling to live for God. Living for God is by definition a struggle, because it goes against everything in our sinful nature.

OK, so people struggle. But you still feel out of place. Because you look around and you see all these smiling people, all these folks who seem genuinely happy to be here, while you’re barely keeping your head above water. You wonder if they’re faking it, or if you’re just missing something, or perhaps a combination of both.

Some of them might be faking it (I faked it for a long time). But I’ve come to learn that more often, that happiness is sincere. Maybe these people are happier in their Christian lives than you are.

If they are, it’s for one reason only. It’s not because they’re better than you, but rather because God has helped them to understand what he expects of them. It’s not perfection. Rather, it’s dependent perseverance, which always results in progress.

Perfection is the end goal, and we will get there, on that day when Christ returns and makes all things new, and rids the world of the effects of sin and death—everything we read during the worship service earlier. That’s where we’re going, but we’re not there yet. So for today, our marching orders are persevere, and progress.

That’s why happy Christians are happy (at least if they’re not deluded, and are happy for the right reasons). It’s because God has helped them understand what he expects of them, that the strength to persevere and to progress won’t come from them, but that they can depend on God to give them what they need to persevere and progress today.

So let me give you a bit of advice. Take a cue from what Jesus says to Peter. When he asks Peter three times if Peter loves him, he doesn’t command him to start a church that would become a global phenomenon and would still be continuing two thousand years later.

If Jesus had done that, Peter would have balked, because at that point in time, he wasn’t able to do that.

Jesus called him to a much smaller, very simple task: “Feed my sheep.” Peter, at that moment in his life, may not have been able to become the foundational apostle he would become. But he could take care of the people God had placed in his life.

You don’t need to concern yourself with what God will call you to do in twenty years, and whether or not you’re able to do it. You’re not, more than likely—at least not yet. All you need to concern yourself with is what he has placed in front of you today.

And you don’t need to compare yourself with where some other Christian may be today; they’re not you, and they’re not where you are.  All you need to do is keep your eyes fixed on where you’re going, and keep marching, slowly but steadily, in that direction.

This is just the beginning, and It doesn’t matter how we begin, but how we end.

All he expects of us is that we run our race, and finish our race, dependent on him, and persevering in his call on our lives.

And since we don’t know when the end will arrive for us, it must begin today.

Christmas: Grace and Truth

John 1.14-18

Today is an exceptional today, because of course today is Christmas Eve. We’re here to celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ, as we do every Sunday, but this Sunday is different, because we’re celebrating a particular aspect of our Lord Jesus Christ: we’re celebrating his coming.

Now, we have the kids with us this morning. Kids, I know you’ll find it difficult to sit still today, so I’m going to start with you, and I’m going to explain really quickly everything I’m going to say to your parents and your big brothers and sisters, so on the way home you can ask them questions and make sure they understand what I’ve said.

Raise your hands if you have a favorite character—a favorite princess, or a favorite superhero. So imagine how incredible it would be if I told you that Elsa or Anna (or Superman or Wonder Woman) was coming to your house this week? And that they weren’t just coming over for dinner, but that they were going to live in your house from now on?

Wouldn’t that be amazing? What would it be like to have breakfast with them, to play games with them, to talk to them? And to know that they would be living with you forever?

Well Jesus is way bigger, way more important, than Elsa or Anna or Superman—and that’s exactly what he’s done. He’s come to us, and he’s moved in, and he lives with us now, and forever.

In John 1.14-18, the apostle John ends his prologue by making explicit the things he had hinted to before: that the Son of God became flesh, full of grace and truth, in order to make God known.

The Son of God Became Flesh… (v. 14-15)

We remember that John has used several pictures since the beginning of the prologue—he’s talked about “life,” and “the light,” and “the Word”: that is, what God wanted his people to know about himself. John said that this “Word” wasn’t just a message God was sending, but it was God himself, the Creator of all things. And then John tells us the incredible news—which of course we’ve heard now, but imagine what it must have been like to learn this for the first time. V. 14:

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.

Hold on—John said earlier that this “Word” was God; that he was eternal; that he created everything, including us. And now he says that the Word became flesh. That is, he took on a human form, became a human being, took on a human nature.

We’ve become numb to how huge this idea is, but imagine if Tom Cruise walked in through these doors this morning. You might agree with him, you might not, but his presence wouldn’t go unnoticed, and it wouldn’t leave us indifferent.

But even that wouldn’t be all that impressive, because even if it’s unlikely that Tom Cruise would come to our church this morning, it’s at least theoretically possible.

So rather, imagine if Nelson Mandela stepped out of history and walked through these doors. On top of being an incredible thing because of his significance to world culture, it should be impossible for him to be here, because he died ten years ago. What would our reaction be if it happened, and it really was Nelson Mandela sitting here?

The Word became flesh—God himself, the Creator of all things, became a human being. This is the most incredible thing to have ever happened in the history of the world.

And not only that, John says, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is another callback to the Old Testament, like John did at the beginning of this chapter: the word he uses for “dwell” is the verb form of the word “tent” or “tabernacle.” In the book of Exodus, when God gives the law to the people, he has them build a big tent, called the tabernacle. In this tent, they will place the Ark of the Covenant, and that is where God’s presence dwelt with his people. If you wanted to go to God, you had to go to the tabernacle. The tent was transportable; they could take it down and put it back up as they moved from place to place. And every time they set up camp somewhere new, God’s presence would remain in the tabernacle once again.

But at this point in time, the tabernacle had been gone for a long time. The Ark of the Covenant was lost (at least until Indiana Jones found it again, haha). The temple had been pillaged more than once. The days in which God’s presence was visibly active amongst his people were long behind them.

At least until the Word became flesh. God himself, the second person of the Trinity, was born as a human baby named Jesus, and that baby grew up, and he lived an ordinary life amongst ordinary people. When God became a human being, he dwelt among his people. He became, in a manner of speaking, a new tabernacle—a place where the presence of God remained, because he was God. And he wasn’t far away or inaccessible: he dwelt among us. The apostles, who were spreading this good news throughout the Roman world, saw him. That’s what John says next: and we have seen his glory.

The phrase “we have seen his glory” can mean a lot of different things depending on what kind of “glory” you’re talking about. I remember once reading a review of a stand-up comic who gave a one-man show in San Francisco. The review was one simple sentence: “He was glorious.” Of course by that, the reviewer meant that this comic’s talent was incredibly impressive.

So we need to be specific: when John says that we have seen the glory of “the Word”, what glory is he talking about? John tells us: glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

To put it another way, the Word became flesh in order to show us who God is and what God is like. That’s what God’s glory is: it’s all of his attributes—his power, his wisdom, his goodness, his justice, all of it—made visible to the world. So it’s fairly obvious that if God wants to show us his glory, he’d make those attributes literally visible. And he did it by becoming a person. A person we could see and touch and listen to.

When you look at Jesus in the Bible, you see God. His glory is divine glory.

And John gives us another reminder of this in v. 15, when he speaks again of John the Baptist:

15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”)

Remember what we saw in v. 1—In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word WAS God. John the Baptist is saying exactly that: even though he came before Jesus, Jesus is more important than him, because he’s always been here—he is God.

The Son of God became flesh, and he lived among human beings, and we beheld his glory—when we look at Jesus, we see God himself.

…Full of Grace and Truth… (v. 16-17)

But what precisely do we see when we see his glory? We see a lot of things, but there are two things John focuses on in particular. V. 16:

16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

So the first thing we see and receive when we see Christ is grace. Grace is a lot more than not getting the punishment we deserve. My dad used to make a very helpful comparison between two words we see a lot in the Bible: grace and mercy.

Here’s how he explained it—he explained it using noises. “Mercy” is when you deserve something bad, and you don’t get it. So the noise for “mercy” is: Whew!

“Grace” is when you don’t deserve something good, but you get something good anyway. So the noise for grace is: Wow!

Grace is—Wow! We deserved nothing from God but punishment for our rebellion against him. But only did we not receive his punishment, we received his goodness. We received his blessing. We received his grace.

And we didn’t just receive his grace; we received it from his fullness—grace UPON grace. It’s not as if God had to work really hard to convince himself to be kind to us. The most substantial grace you have ever received in your life is merely a drop in the bucket: we have received from his fullness, not from the tiny morsels of goodness he was able to scrape together.

So grace came through Christ, and the other thing that came through him was truth. V. 17—For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Now, John isn’t comparing and contrasting the law (like that’s the bad thing), and grace and truth (like they’re the good things). He’s talking about progression. The law God gave to his people was a picture of his perfect character and holiness—a picture his people could never live up to. So although they had a list of things they would need to see in order to see God’s character, they had never actually seen it, because no one had ever lived like that.

Until Christ.

The grace and truth that had always been in God, that had been described in the law of Moses, manifest themselves in Jesus Christ. Perfect grace, and perfect truth.

And you need both—because grace without truth causes some massive problems. Grace without truth makes a mockery of justice, because it ignores sin, or at least treats it like it’s no big deal.

God never gives grace at the expense of truth; he gives grace because of truth. The truth is that we are sinners, we need a Savior to take our place, and we need the Savior’s help to become more like him.

…To Make God Known (v. 18)

Jesus is that Savior. Jesus is God. Jesus brings grace and truth from his fullness. And he does it to make God known. V. 18:

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

This is John’s concluding sentence for his prologue, and he says it as clearly as possible, just in case we hadn’t understood before.

God’s goal, since the very beginning, has always been to reveal himself—to show his glory to the world. Only God himself could manifest God’s character and holiness to us; only God himself could reveal himself to humans.

Jesus Christ is that God. He is able to reveal God’s character and holiness to us because he is God. He took on a human nature, lived a human life, in order to make God visible to human beings.

If you want to see God, you need to look at Jesus.

Conclusion

The picture in everyone’s minds at Christmas is the picture of the baby Jesus in the manger, sleeping peacefully. It is a beautiful picture—a picture of peace and happiness (new parents of healthy babies are almost always happy), and it’s a picture that naturally makes us feel restful.

But at Christmas we must remember that this picture is just the beginning. The baby in the manger grew up. As he grew, he lived a perfect, sinless life in a world full of sin. He ministered to those who needed him even though he didn’t need to do it—he didn’t have to teach or to heal or to speak to people no one else would speak to. He did those things to show us who God is.

Then he showed us even more of God: although he was without sin, he took our sin on himself and suffered the punishment we deserve, in our place. God did that, for us. GOD absorbed his own wrath against our sin, so that we wouldn’t have to. That is mercy—that is whew!

And he gave us his own perfect life, so that we would receive the reward, as if we were the ones who had lived without sin. He gave us eternal life, eternal joy, eternal peace, in a world without sin or sickness or death. Everything he deserves, and nothing we deserve. That is grace—that is wow!

Before such grace, how are we called to respond?

We are called to respond with truth—the same truth Christ came to proclaim. We are sinners, in need of a Savior, and this Savior has come. He has shone his light on us all, and we don’t want to be like those in the world who didn’t recognize him or receive him.

So we will confess our need of him, we will confess our sin, we will accept his forgiveness, and we will follow him. We will become more like him. We will not take his grace for granted, but recognize it as costly.

And for such a grace, we will be infinitely thankful.

It is the only response that makes sense.

I don’t know where you are this morning, what kind of questions or doubts you’ve brought with you, or what you’re looking for. But in all honesty, it doesn’t matter. Every situation and every doubt and every pain and every joy is changed by this simple truth: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.

Let us come to him this morning, and humbly receive his grace.

The True Light

John 1.6-13

Light changes us.

We’ve all heard of seasonal affective disorder, that thing many people have that makes them depressed and exhausted during the dark winter months. If you know someone like that—first of all—give them a gift and buy them one of those lamps that simulate UV light, to help trick their brains into thinking the sun is out for longer. (I got one for Loanne a few years ago, they really do help.) And secondly, watch what happens to them when spring rolls into summer, and the days get longer, and the weather gets clearer.

The change that comes over them is often staggering. They’re happier, they’ve got more energy, there’s a spring in their step…

Light doesn’t just help us see; it actually does change us.

This year during Advent we’re focusing on John’s prologue to his gospel, where he introduces us to Jesus Christ. If you remember last week, we saw the first five verses of John 1, where John presented Jesus first as “the Word”, God himself, the perfect expression of God’s person and character. He told us that Jesus is the Creator of all things. He told us that in him was life, and that life was the light of men. The “life” he was talking about is physical life (because Christ is the Creator of all things), but most especially spiritual life; and the “light” is light that does two things—it exposes, and it illuminates. We’ll get back into that again today.

The Herald of the Light (v. 6-9)

Let’s pick up where we left off, in v. 6. We start with a bit of an aside, but John has a reason for it. (In today’s English manuscript I’m using the Christian Standard Bible.)

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. 9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

So this may be confusing, but the “John” mentioned in v. 6 is not the “John” who is writing this gospel. The man writing this gospel is the apostle John, and in v. 6 he’s talking about John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was actually Jesus’s second cousin, the son of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. John was the last of the great prophets, whose job it was to proclaim God’s will to his people.

This was actually a very big deal, because there had been no prophets in Israel for four hundred years. So John’s coming made massive waves. He was a bit of a weirdo (as the prophets often were): he lived in the desert, wore animal skins and ate bugs—he was the kind of guy you’d avoid if you passed him on the street.

But God sent John with a purpose, and gave him the power to accomplish that purpose—when John spoke, people listened. What he spoke of was repentance: that is, God’s call that people turn away from their rebellion against God, their sin, and obey God. John baptized those who repented for the forgiveness of their sins.

That often struck me as odd when I read about John as a young man. I’d been told that Jesus came to save us from our sins, by taking those sins away. But it seemed to me like, before Jesus even got a chance to do that, John was already there offering repentance—as if it was another, different way of being saved from sin.

Of course, that’s not what was happening. John was preaching a baptism of repentance because he was getting the people ready for Jesus—as he says in v. 23, “I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord,—just as Isaiah the prophet said.” Before anyone will accept the salvation Christ offers, they have to believe they need saving. John was putting their sin in front of their eyes, showing them that it is not possible to continue in that sin, but that God is willing to forgive. And how would that forgiveness come, once and for all? Through Jesus Christ.

All this is to say that John the Baptist was pointing to the light, but he wasn’t the light himself. As we see in v. 9: The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

There’s one more important thing to note in v. 9: John says that this “true light” that is in Christ “gives light to everyone.” Everyone. Light shines indiscriminately. If you turn on a light in a dark room, anything it comes into contact with is illuminated. Unless you’re a black hole, you can’t not be affected by light.

Every time someone shares the good news of Jesus Christ, his light shines on the people who hear it, whether they want it to or not. The question isn’t whether or not the light shines on you; it does. The question is rather, how do you respond to that light?

The Rejection of the Light (v. 10-11)

There are only two possible ways, two possible responses. The first of those responses is rejection.

V. 10:

10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Usually when the Bible talks about “the world” in the sense of “the people of the world,” it’s referring to those people who don’t belong to God, who aren’t members of his own people—and that’s what John’s doing here too. Although the world was created by Christ, the people of the world don’t recognize their Creator.

But John is saying this, not just to say how bad the world is, but also to accentuate an even more surprising point: the world rejected him, but that’s not all. Members of his own people rejected him too.

Jesus was born a Jew, to a Jewish family. And by and large—with the exception of a small handful of people before his death—the Jews rejected Jesus. They called out for his death. Now thankfully this didn’t remain the case (the first several thousand people to believe in him were mostly Jews), but you would think that the one group likely to accept the Jewish Messiah would be the Jews themselves.

But no. The world rejected him, and his own people rejected him. The question is, why?

We briefly talked about it last week. We see it a little later, in chapter 3, verse 20, when Jesus says that everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. The light shows us what we really are, so we naturally reject it. We saw this multiple times when we were in the book of Romans: we are all sinners, we all naturally reject God, so we all naturally stay away from the light. We don’t naturally like to hear someone share the message of the gospel, because the first thing we find out in that message is that we’re guilty before God, and no one wants to hear that.

You can see this happening if you keep reading Jesus’s story. Nearly every time Jesus taught, you had some people who were interested, and some who believed (we’ll get to them in a second). But you also had plenty of people in the crowds who were going, “Nope—sorry, I’m out.” His teaching was shedding light on their own sin and their own inconsistencies, and they didn’t like it. So they called him a blasphemer, and ultimately they killed him for it.

Anyone who has shared the gospel with several people knows this is the case. You’ll get as many rejections as you do interested conversations—sometimes even more. Even when you just try to talk about what the Bible says about other things, people reject it. As long as you just talk about the love of God and the grace of God, people can usually get on board with that, or at least appreciate that you’re saying something nice. But if you’re going to be faithful to the Bible, that can’t be all you talk about. And the second you start putting your finger on more specific issues—issues of what God says is best for us, what he calls sin and what he calls righteousness—that conversation often gets shut down pretty quickly.

He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

The Transformation of the Light (v. 12-13)

Naturally, this is the response every one of us have. So v. 10-11 shouldn’t be surprising.

What should surprise us is that some people did receive him. Some people do. Many people, in fact. And I’d suggest that the real question we should be asking is not, Why don’t more people receive Christ? but rather, why does anyone receive Christ? If we are all naturally sinners who resist the light, what makes someone want to go towards Christ, rather than run away from him?

That is the question John answers in v. 12-13.

12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

We’ll need to do a bit of work here, because this part of the passage is tricky.

I said before that the light that shines through Christ exposes. It exposes us for what we really are, it exposes sin for what it really is.

But that’s not all it does. The light also illuminates, and those whom it illuminates are transformed. They become children of God.

How does this happen? What are the steps in this process?

We see the first two in v. 12: to all who did receive him; to those who believe in his name. That’s what we need to do to be declared children of God.

But why do we believe in him and receive him, rather than reject him? We see that in v. 13: because we were born of God. Not because we were born into a certain family, not because we were born into a certain culture, not because our parents decided they wanted to have kids. If we believe in him and receive him, it’s because we were born of God.

Now if that sounds confusing to you, you’re not alone. Just a couple chapters later, in chapter 3, we see Jesus speaking with a religious leader named Nicodemus, and he’s talking about this very subject. The first thing we see Jesus say, in John 3.3, is:

“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus’s response is excellent, because it’s so human—it’s exactly the kind of thing any normal person would ask. He says (v. 4):

“How can anyone be born when he is old?… Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”

Gold star for Nicodemus—that’s a great question. So Jesus goes on to explain that he’s not talking about physical birth, but spiritual birth. He says (3.8):

The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

In other words, babies who are born don’t understand how they were born, and they certainly don’t decide to be born. The decisive element of our birth escapes us; it’s something that happens to us, not something we participate in.

In the same way, being born of God is his work, not ours. We don’t understand it, we can’t predict it, we can’t make it happen—it’s something he does in us. We hear the truth of the gospel—the light of Jesus “shines” on us—and that light changes us. It transforms us from the inside out. We might even try to resist it, but if God chooses to shine that light on us, we can’t help but be changed. We may not understand it, we may not even be comfortable with it, but once it happens, we can’t deny it.

That was my experience. I realized that I believed in God at work one day. I had a job when I was nineteen, silk-screening t-shirts, and I worked in an old barn in the middle of the woods. I was out there all by myself one day, listening to music, and suddenly I just realized: I can’t deny that I believe in God. I’d tried to deny it for a long while, but I realized that I couldn’t—although I couldn’t wrap my brain around it, I believed this was true.

But I wasn’t happy about it. Not at first. So I tried to just ignore it—to go about my life, to ignore that little voice in my head saying that I needed God and Jesus really had done all this for me. I did that for almost two years. But finally, I couldn’t do it any more. So finally, I did what I should have done years earlier and I started to read my Bible. I started to take it seriously. And I realized that not only I couldn’t resist the life he was calling me to, I wanted to live that life. I wanted to be his child.

So finally, I gave in, and I accepted him.

When God causes us to be born again, when the Holy Spirit gives us new life in him, we may try to find a million ways around it, but sooner or later we’ll realize we’ve only got one possibility that will satisfy us, only one option that seems remotely plausible. And that is to believe in him and receive him.

If God gives us life in Christ, it always ends that way. It’s what we refer to as irresistible grace. If God shines his light in our hearts, we will believe in him, and we will receive him.

And those who believe in him, those who receive him, are given the right to be called children of God. And in case you’re wondering, the formal way this happens is through baptism: those who are born again place their faith in Christ and receive his salvation, and they say it. They profess their faith in Christ. At that point, the church baptizes them, as a symbol and a seal of that truth. Baptism doesn’t save, but it formalizes the truth that this person has been saved. Baptism is the moment at which the new believer declares before the church, and the church officially recognizes, that this new birth has happened to them.

What’s The Point?

Now, you might be wondering what the point of all this theological rigamarole is.

Here’s the point—here’s the big thing John wants us to see, and it is absolutely vital to understand. John wants it to be crystal clear that if we are saved, if we have been forgiven for our sins, if we belong to God and look forward to eternal life in him, that is entirely God’s doing.

We don’t think often enough about how incredible this is. Nothing that we’ve seen today was an obligation for God. He didn’t have to send John the Baptist to prepare the people for Christ’s coming. He didn’t have to send Jesus Christ: the true light that gives light to everyone. Christ didn’t have to come into the world; he didn’t have to come to his own people, only to be rejected by them. He didn’t have to cause us to be born of God, to be born again.

God owes us absolutely nothing.

Christ didn’t have to give us the perfect life he lived.

He didn’t have to take our sins on himself and be punished in our place.

He doesn’t have to be our advocate before the Father.

He doesn’t have to intercede for us, he doesn’t have to care for us, he doesn’t have to live in us by his Spirit, he doesn’t have to grant us a single spiritual blessing. None of that is an obligation.

God did this, and he still does this, because he is just that good.

The point of this entire prologue, which we’ll conclude next week, is to use very simple and beautiful language to overwhelm us with God’s goodness.

Conclusion

Preachers usually like to end sermons with what’s called an application—it’s the part where we talk about how we as people are called to respond to the text we’ve read, because all Scripture drives us to a response.

In short, after reading the Bible, people want to know, Okay—so what do I do?

The thing is, sometimes we don’t do anything. Sometimes the Bible simply calls us to sit under its weight, to see, to realize the immensity of what God has told us. In those cases, the only proper response is to pray that God would help us do that. And how we pray will depend on who we are.

Some of you here haven’t yet been born again; you haven’t been born of God. You don’t believe in him, you haven’t received him. And this might be the first time some of you have been exposed to these things.

But if you’re here today, if you’ve spend the last few minutes listening, that probably means that at the very least, you’re looking for something. So here’s what I’d invite you to do. We’re going to put a prayer up on the screen; it’s a prayer for those who are still asking questions. We’ll leave it up for a few minutes; I’d invite you to just read that prayer, and make it your own—actually speak to God, and ask him to convince you of the truth that he really is as good as he says he is. Ask him to change your heart, and to convince you.

Some of you—and what I’m going to say may come as a bit of a shock—have been born again, some of you have been born of God…but you don’t know it yet. You might suspect that something is going on in you, but you haven’t yet recognized that God has done something in you that you can’t undo. You haven’t yet admitted to yourselves and to God that you actually do believe. You haven’t verbally professed faith in him, you haven’t actively received him.

If this is you, the second prayer is for you: it’s a prayer of faith. I’d invite you to do the same thing I said before: if you want to receive him, pray this prayer and make it your own. Place your trust in Christ, and tell him you’re doing it. Ask him to forgive you for your sin, to help you turn away from that sin and follow him. There’s nothing else we must do to be saved.

But a lot of us here are probably in a slightly different situation. You believe in him, and you have received him…but you’ve spent so much time in church that these realities don’t really do anything to you anymore. You’re used to the truth of the gospel, to the point where you’ve almost become hardened to it.

Over the next few moments, I’d invite you to keep your Bibles open and read over John 1.1-13 again. Ask God to stir your heart again, that you might not take for granted his incredible goodness to you.

And still others here are absolutely overwhelmed by God’s goodness. You’ve read these words and you can hardly contain yourselves.

If that’s you, spend some time simply thanking God for his goodness, and for the fact that you feel the weight of it. Then I’d encourage you to ask him to help you—to keep seeing it, to keep feeling it, and then to help others see and feel the weight of his goodness for us as well.

We’re going to spend the next few moments in silence before God, after which we’ll pray and take Communion.