Seeing God in the New Year (Ephesians 1.15-23)

Happy New Year, everyone!

I don't know if you received any surprise gifts for Christmas.

My wife was going to get me a tea pot. In fact, she accidentally sent a message to a family WhatsApp group I’m in too saying that she was going to buy that.

But I still got a surprise, because in the end she decided not to buy me anything!

Sometimes there are gifts that change our lives.

Like, for example, these glasses for colour-blind people that finally allow them to see colours better.

See the impact on this young colour-blind man in this video.

Moving... but question: through what glasses do we see the year 2026?

Some may be motivated by the start of a new year.

It's a new beginning, you have new projects. A new job, perhaps a wedding, perhaps a baby on the way.

Your outlook is tinged with optimism.

For others, it's different. There's a kind of dark cloud. Perhaps because of trials you're going through or anticipating. Your outlook on the coming year is tinged with anxiety or pessimism.

Through what glasses do we see the year 2026 unfolding?

This is not a trivial question, because how we view the world and ourselves determines how we live.
We all know Edith Piaf's famous song:

When he takes me in his arms

He whispers softly to me

I see life through rose-coloured glasses

And seeing life through rose-coloured glasses, she sings:

A great happiness takes its place

Troubles and sorrows fade away

Happy, happy to the point of death

Our outlook on life determines how we live.

Through what lens do we see the year 2026 unfolding?

We wanted to begin this new year by talking about prayer and meditating in particular on a prayer that concerns... our outlook on life.
It is a prayer from the Apostle Paul for the Christians of the city of Ephesus, who too could be tempted to adopt an anxious and fearful view of the world.

Fear and anxiety weighed heavily on all the inhabitants of Ephesus in the first century.

It was a city known for its practice of magic, through which people sought to obtain prosperity and protect themselves from demons.

It was also home to one of the seven wonders of the world, the immense temple of Artemis, goddess of fertility, who was worshipped to ensure her favour.

We read in the book of Acts that when people began to believe in Jesus and abandon Artemis, a riot broke out. If you angered the goddess, you put yourself in danger.

And the Christians who had turned their backs on all her magical practices and on Artemis, but who still saw them before their eyes every day, must have wondered if they had lost all protection against the forces of evil.

It must be the same today for Christians in regions where other religions dominate. Every day they are confronted with temples, mosques and crowds of people who believe that those who abandon their religion bring misfortune upon society.

In their place, I too would be tempted to look around me and feel that the world is against me!

What glasses are we wearing this year?

I'm not talking about Ray Bans or EnChroma glasses for colour-blind people.

This morning's passage invites us to ask God for a new pair of spiritual glasses.

To see life in its true colours.

So that it transforms the way we live this year.

Ephesians 1:15-23 – let's read it again together:

That is why I too, having heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus [and your love] for all the saints, never cease to give thanks for you as I mention you in my prayers.

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know him. I pray that he may enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power, which he has worked effectively through the power of his strength towards us who believe.

He demonstrated this power in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above every rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in this age but also in the one to come. He put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Approaching a new year with joy and confidence does not begin with resolutions to think more positively and have more self-confidence.

According to this text, it begins by asking for...

1. “Glasses” to see God

This is our first point.

The key to a changed outlook on life is first to ask God for help in knowing Him more deeply.

Verse 17

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know him.

The Ephesians had every reason to feel fearful, anxious, powerless, small, and perhaps even forsaken.

Paul says they need to know God better.

I speak for myself. I worry easily about things. Perhaps especially at turning points like the beginning of a new year.

I think about the challenges ahead, I get anxious, and my first instinct is to think about how to overcome them.

Paul prays for more knowledge of God.

Why? Is it just an easy answer?

'Whatever your worries, you need to know God better' – is that just the 'Christianly correct' answer?

No, to help the Ephesians change their perspective despite a very anxiety-provoking context, more knowledge of God was exactly what they needed.

Now, I know that when we say someone sees life through rose-tinted glasses, we imply that they are a little naive.

But why does Edith Piaf see life through rose-tinted glasses?

Because she is in love!

She feels cherished and secure, and that colours her whole outlook.

Perhaps you have experienced the same thing!

You fall in love, and the more you get to know the person, the more you fall in love and the more your outlook on life is flooded with light.

It doesn't have to be romantic love. Some friendships, as they deepen, have a similar effect. You feel secure.

Our relationships colour our outlook on life, except that in this case, the one we need to get to know better is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.

Why call him the Father of glory? Paul chooses his words carefully.

Glory in the Bible refers first and foremost to the manifest presence of God. It is when we see that he is there with us!

Think of Mount Sinai. The glory of God descends among the people. He comes to dwell in relationship with them.

Glory also refers to God's splendour. Literally, it is his weight! It shows that with God, we are dealing with something heavy!

When God saves the Israelites by parting the Red Sea, he reveals... his glory! He shows that he is the one and only God who fights for his people.

Then, when the people sin by making an idol, Moses wants to know how to prevent God from leaving them, and he says to God: show me your glory! And God responds by saying that what makes up his glory, his supreme splendour, is his love and forgiveness.

When the Israelites learn this, when they perceive his glory, their hearts are changed, they stop complaining and they give themselves to him to serve him.

Their outlook is transformed!

But Paul knows that with Jesus, this glory took human form, came to dwell among us to show us God's love and forgiveness.

The Father of glory is also the God of our Lord Jesus Christ!

So, in asking that the "Father of glory give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know him," the apostle Paul prays that we may see more clearly the presence and splendour of God.

It is a prayer that our eyes may be filled and transformed by the reality that the God of the universe, the one and only creator of heaven and earth, the God of Jesus Christ who fights for his people... is with us and is for us!

It is more than just storing up information about God. It includes that. We need to know who we are dealing with. But it goes further than that.

Knowing someone in the Bible means having a close and intimate relationship.

When a man knows a woman, it refers to sexual intercourse.

So Paul is praying that our relationship with God will deepen, be more informed by truth, more intimate, and characterised by more trust, more gratitude, more wonder, more love.

He wants us to see God, to fall more in love with him, so to speak, so that it colours our view of life.

A small analogy would be the family.

It often strikes me that children who know that their parents love and encourage them, and for whom that love is self-evident, have an impressive stability and security.

They have a perspective on life shaped by their parents' love.

Sigmund Freud, who said that we imagined God to be the father we would have liked to have, is wrong.

But where there is some truth in what he says is that just as our relationship with our parents shapes our outlook on life, so does our relationship with God.

Not everyone has had a close relationship with their parents, but God offers us an even more real and perfect one!

So the key to a changed outlook is first to ask for a more accurate vision and a deeper relationship with our Father.

It is not natural for us to know God in this way.

Many things distort our view, and Paul knows this because he asks God to give us "a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know him."

In other words, if we don't feel like we appreciate our relationship with God for what it's worth, welcome to the club!

It's not natural for us.

But the first thing to do to correct this is not to start a Bible reading plan or decide to be more diligent in our community group, even though these would be very good things to do.

The first thing to do is to pray... as Paul does.

Ask God to give us new glasses.

How much time do we spend praying for this?

It is a request that God is happy to grant, and he gives us this passage to tell us to do so... because it really is the key to everything.

The problem with comparing life to rose-tinted glasses is that if you are not cynical, you will accuse those who see life through rose-tinted glasses of lacking realism. 'At some point, harsh reality will catch up with you'.

The Bible is not lacking in realism!

What Paul prays for is precisely that the ultimate reality – God and the fact that we belong to him, if we are Christians – shapes our view of everything else.

At the beginning of 2026, it all starts here!

When we have a correct view of God, everything else falls into place!

Knowing how to approach challenges... it starts with glasses that see God.

Fighting sin... begins with glasses that see God.

Facing our worries...

Our motivation to serve, read the Bible, evangelise, or love our family... it all starts with asking for these glasses that see God!

Are we praying for this?

Because the better we know someone, the more we begin to share their perspective.

Perhaps you have noticed this.

At the beginning of a relationship, we are polite and reserved.

The deeper it gets, the better we see how the other person sees things and, in particular, how they see us!

I have a much better idea of how Anne-Sophie sees things and how she sees me today than I did before we got married!

That's why asking for glasses to see God is also asking for...

2. “Glasses” to see how God sees us.

This is our second point. Knowing God better allows us to see how God sees us.

This week, I looked at Fnac's bestsellers in the personal development category.

A common theme in these books is freeing yourself from the gaze of others.

If you want to be free and confident, stop worrying about what others think of you.

But according to this passage, there is someone else whose opinion we need to share.

God.

Paul prays that by knowing God better, we will come to share his perspective on three things

• Where we are going

• Who we are

• How to be sure

First...

• Where we are going

Verse 18

I pray that he will enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you

In The Lord of the Rings, the four hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin meet a character they know as Strider.

At first they mistrust him, but then they discover that he is on their side and that Strider is actually called Aragorn and is the heir to a great kingdom where he will one day reign and which he will share with them.

As they get to know him, their eyes are opened to see how glorious their future is.

Paul prays that as we get to know God better, our eyes will also be opened to the future he will share with us.

Hope is the life that God has in store for us in the new creation he is preparing.

Sometimes we talk about going to heaven.

But if we imagine that we will spend eternity sitting in the clouds, dressed in white and playing the harp, we are mistaken.

Ephesians says that we are waiting for Jesus to reunite heaven and earth.

A physical earth, without all that spoils this one, where Jesus reigns visibly.

Paul wants us to understand that this is where we are headed!

Why?

Because the way we see our future determines the way we live our present.

Lucie's French teacher asked the pupils to watch a documentary called "2050, le monde d'après" (2050, the world after), which depicted a catastrophic scenario of how the climate in France will change in the coming years.

I'm not qualified to comment on the content. I simply thought that if we believe our ultimate destination is inevitable disaster, it could cause anxiety and paralysis in the present.

On a smaller scale, perhaps we look at the challenges of this new year—finding a job, finding a place to live, succeeding in our studies—and we already feel overcome with worry.

Paul prays that we will see that our ultimate destination is not disaster. It is heaven on earth.

That doesn't mean things can't go wrong before then. It means that our ultimate horizon is bright, and it is guaranteed by Jesus. There is no doubt about it.

I recently heard about a Christian man who had just learned he had cancer.

His response: the best is yet to come!

His eyes were open to the hope that comes with his calling!

OK, some might say, but that's a long way off!

I need reassurance right now!

That is why Paul also prays that we may share God's perspective on...

• Who we are

Verse 18 again

I pray that he will enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints

What does it mean to be part of the glorious inheritance among the saints?

The word "inheritance" could give the impression that we are always talking about what God has in store for the future.

In that case, he is still talking about our hope.

But when we read this verse more carefully, we get the impression that it is saying something else.

Look again. To whom does the inheritance belong?

It is his glorious inheritance. It belongs to God.

It is among the saints: it is made up of Christians.

And Paul wants us to know how rich this inheritance is – how valuable it is.

In other words, he wants us to see that we are... God's precious and glorious inheritance!

We are His treasure!

In the Old Testament, Israel is described as God's inheritance.

With Jesus, it is the Christian church. Us.

Paul wants us to see how valuable we are to God.

The way we measure our value is so crucial.

When I was a teenager, I played a lot of music. Some teachers would say, 'You are only as good as your last performance'.

What does that produce?

Insecurity.

Some people are constantly overwhelmed by the feeling that they are never good enough.

Am I where I should be compared to others my age, etc.?

It becomes overwhelming.

Paul prays that we see ourselves as God sees us.

This is beautifully explained in the children's book, "You Are Precious".

In this story, little wooden men called Vémiches spend their time sticking stickers on each other.

The most beautiful and talented ones receive gold stars. The others receive grey circles.

Punchinello is very sad and convinced that he is a bad vémiche because he only has circles.

But one day he meets a vémiche who doesn't have any stickers sticking to her because she spends time with their sculptor, Eli.

So Punchinello goes to meet Eli. Eli puts his hands on his shoulders and says, "You are mine. That's why you are valuable to me." From then on, the stickers placed on him by others begin to fall to the ground.

He is freed from the gaze of the other vémiches.

Eyes open to who we are.

Ah, but how do I know I won't walk away and lose all this?

We are weak! And life is difficult!

Thirdly...

• How can we be sure?

Verse 19
"I pray that he will enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you may know ... what is the infinite greatness of his power, which is effectively manifested by the power of his strength towards us who believe."

What we believe about power also determines many things: what we fear, how we live, whom we trust, etc.

The Ephesians were in danger of believing that power belonged to Artemis or to evil spiritual powers or to the crowds who saw the church in Ephesus as a threat to society.

Today, we may believe that power belongs to the strong men of this world, or to tech bosses, or perhaps just to the blind forces of chance.

Even if we believe that power belongs to God, our view may be tinged with the suspicion that God will use it against us.

Paul prays that as we come to know God better, our eyes will be opened to see the extent of his power—his infinite greatness—and that it serves our good! It is effectively manifested through the power of his strength towards us who believe.

We can be sure of where we are going and that God will not lose his glorious inheritance along the way, because he deploys the infinite greatness of his power on our behalf!

During the holidays, I went ice skating with my 5-year-old nephew.

He was completely relaxed the whole time, skating along without a care in the world, because my brother was standing behind him to hold him up and, above all, because he was also holding on to a big plastic penguin that prevented him from falling.

In our case, it is not a plastic penguin that keeps us standing. It is the infinite greatness of God's power!

So, be careful. Paul is not talking about a power that can potentially help us stand.

It's not that when we feel a little weak, we can pick up the phone and ask God to throw in a little more power.

No, Paul prays that we will see the power that is already at work for our good.

Verse 20

He displayed this power in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above every rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. He put everything under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

The power that works in our favour today in 2026 is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and placed him at the head of the universe, from where he rules over all things for the good of his people, who are also his body. X 2

What does a head do for a body?

Our head takes care of our body, seeks its good, and nourishes it.

Perhaps in recent weeks, our head has nourished our body a lot! Perhaps a little too much!

God has placed Jesus at the head of the universe so that he may direct everything for the eternal good of his body!

If you are like me, believing that God is constantly and powerfully working for our good is the hardest thing to believe.

Our hope, our value, we might say, okay...

Believing that God acts in everything for our good... our physical eyes often tell us otherwise!

But the reality is that the world is not ruled by impersonal, random or hostile forces.

It is ruled by Jesus!

God must impress this upon us!

The One who rules the universe, who tells the galaxies which way to turn, rules the universe for the eternal good of His church; us, if we are Christians!

Amazing!

That is why Paul does not pray for God to give us more power.

He prays that as we contemplate Jesus, risen and reigning, the eyes of our hearts will be opened to the power already at work for our eternal good.

Some people are interested in what is known as spiritual warfare or spiritual combat.

This is the idea of doing things to prevent the forces of evil from harming us.

Ephesians is the book to explore if you have questions about this.

But it is striking that in a city as marked by magic and occultism as Ephesus, Paul does not ask God to protect Christians!

He asks that they see spiritual reality as it is! Jesus, risen and reigning, for our good!

He asks that we have glasses to see how God sees us!

How do we see the year 2026 unfolding?

Some may have high expectations for this year. Beautiful things await them.

Perhaps not everyone. It is possible that some feel more pessimistic.

Our society asks: what do I need to do to feel better?

Should I exercise more or eat healthier? Sure, why not!

But the Bible asks: what glasses are you wearing?

God's glasses... or other ones?

There is a world of colour and beauty to discover when we put on these glasses.

Not that nothing difficult will happen to us. But when we look through God's glasses, everything is put into perspective and the vision they offer is ultimately very, very good because the first thing we see through them is that God is very, very good.

What glasses are we wearing?

The view they offer may seem very different from our normal way of seeing things.

Perhaps we are tempted to think that seeing things differently is beyond our reach.

But everything is there for us to see!

Everything is there!

It is not a fantasy!

God wants to give it to us!

We just have to ask!

Connexion, let me say, that to pray in this way... we are weak!

We pray for our job interviews, our studies, stress at work. That's excellent. God tells us to pray for those things.

But when it comes to praying for the change this passage talks about, we can do better. We must do better! I include myself in that. So much depends on it.

May I encourage us at the beginning of this year to aim for that?

To pray that God will take what we read in this book and make it the lenses in our glasses... even if you don't wear glasses.

Perhaps if there is one good resolution to make this year, it is this.

To pray, without ceasing, as Paul says, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know him.

Why Christmas? 3: Come to the Light (John 3.14-21)

Christmas is one of the few moments when our culture still talks openly about light. Lights on trees. Lights in windows. Lights in the darkness of winter.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people like Christmas lights because they’re decorative, not because they’re revealing. They soften the darkness; they don’t expose it.

John 3 does something very different. It doesn’t say the light came to make us feel warm. It says the light came to show us what’s really there.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night—not just because it’s quiet, but because night is safe. Night hides things. And Jesus immediately tells him two things no one wants to hear at Christmas:

1. You are more broken than you think.

2. God loves you enough to do something about it—at terrible cost to Himself.

This passage forces us to see that Christmas is not primarily about comfort, nostalgia, or moral uplift.
It’s about rescue.

Last week, we saw a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a well-educated teacher of Israel, comes to see Jesus at night, to find out more about who he is and why he came. And Nicodemus surely wasn’t ready for that conversation. Jesus explained why he came, and it wasn’t because Israel needed liberation from Roman occupation; it wasn’t because humanity needs improvement.

Jesus came because humanity needs new birth.

That night, Jesus told Nicodemus that religion cannot save him; effort cannot save him; heritage cannot save him.

But that leaves a question hanging in the air: if none of these things can’t save him, what possibly could? How can anyone be born from above?

New birth sounds beautiful, but it also sounds impossible—because as we saw, it’s not something we do, but something God does in us.

So Jesus continues.

And what He says next tells us that his coming—the event we celebrate at Christmas—is not only about birth—it’s about death.

1. The Manger Already Points to the Cross (vv. 14–16)

We’re going to go back over two verses we saw last week, because they’re an important introduction to what he says here. He said that he, Jesus, the Son of Man, descended from heaven, and then he says in v. 14:

14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

This is a startling thing to say.

Nicodemus is still processing everything Jesus has just said about new birth, and Jesus jumps straight to this Old Testament story of judgment and death, from Numbers 21.

God had sent judgment on Israel because of their sin, judgment in the form of venomous snakes that were biting people. The solution wasn’t an anti-venom; it wasn’t medicine, or reform, or discipline.

God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole, and anyone who looked at it would live.

It’s a strange story, whose meaning was a bit unclear until Jesus said in this verse that the story of Moses and the bronze serpent was about him. Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the desert, Jesus would soon be lifted up. He would be lifted up on a wooden cross, where he would carry the sins of all of his people, and suffer in their place.

So let’s think of this in the context of Christmas. The baby in the manger wouldn’t just grow up to be a teacher or a healer. The baby in the manger would grow up to be the man on the cross.

Jesus does not come merely to teach life. He comes to be lifted up so that others may live.

And the way to benefit from his sacrifice is belief. He was lifted up “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Imagine being bitten by one of those serpents in the desert.

You’re in pain. You’re panicking. You want to do something. Apply pressure. Suck out the venom. Run somewhere. Fix it.

And Moses tells you: “No. Look.” Not work. Not improve. Not understand. Just look.

This is precisely why the gospel is hard to swallow for some of us. We don’t mind a God who helps those who help themselves. We resist a God who says, “You are dying—and I will save you, but you must stop trying to save yourself.” That’s belief—it’s not admiration, and it’s not agreement. It’s dependence.

The Israelites who lived weren’t the smartest ones, or the strongest ones. They were the ones desperate enough to trust God’s solution instead of their own. We want something to do. God gives us someone to trust.

That is the context of what is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, which we spent a lot of time on two weeks ago. V. 16:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Just a reminder in case you weren’t here for our Christmas service: when Jesus says that “God so loved the world,” he’s not talking about sentimentality or emotion, he’s talking about intention, and action. He’s not saying that God feels good about us—ask any parent whose kid has just painted the walls how they feel about the kid in that moment. That feeling isn’t important.

Jesus is saying that God made the decision to move toward us in love, despite everything in us that makes loving us difficult. His love is intentional, and it is costly.

God loved a world that did not love Him. He didn’t give advice, but his Son. And he gave his Son to bring life to those who deserved judgment.

Despite all the sentimental Christmas movies that would want us to think the opposite, humanity is not lovable. Christmas isn’t proof that we “all deserve love”.  Christmas is proof that God is merciful.

For some of you, I know that hearing that may feel like a bummer. Recognizing our guilt before God sort of drains Christmas of its good cheer.

But the truth is completely the opposite. At Christmas, we celebrate the grace of God, and grace does not deny guilt—it overcomes it.

If you want to understand the manger, you must look forward to the cross.

2. Come to the Light (vv. 17–21)

Then Jesus continues and tells Nicodemus more about why he came. V. 17:

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

This sounds nice, but this is often misunderstood.

Jesus doesn’t say there is no condemnation. He says that naturally, we are already condemned. “Condemned” is our default mode.

If you walk into an emergency room, no one assumes you’re healthy. You’re not there to be diagnosed as sick—you’re there because something is already wrong. The doctor doesn’t condemn you by naming your condition. He names your condition because treatment is possible.

Jesus functions like that physician. He doesn’t enter the world to announce bad news. The bad news is already true. He comes because the diagnosis has been made—and a cure exists.

Rejecting Jesus doesn’t make you condemned. Rejecting Jesus means you refuse treatment, and let the disease runs its course.

That’s why neutrality is impossible. Not choosing is still choosing. But those who do trust in him, who do believe in him, are not condemned—they are rescued.

The point is, Christmas is not Jesus coming down to judge humanity more effectively or more harshly. It is Jesus coming down to save those who are already condemned.

Neutrality is not an option.

So the question is, if we are condemned, and if Jesus is the rescue we need, why would anyone refuse him? It’s easy to think that it’s simply a matter of intellectual assent—I don’t think he’s the Savior, I don’t think God exists, so I won’t trust him.

And there’s a little truth to that. But there is a deeper truth motivating that refusal. Intellectual belief isn’t the real problem. Jesus tells us what the real problem starting in v. 19.

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

This is brutally honest. People do not reject Jesus primarily because of lack of evidence. They reject Him because of misdirected love. It’s not that they believe in the darkness, but that they love it.

And it’s easy to see why. In the dark, we can do what we want, because we think no one will see it. We can do what we want, because we feel hidden and secure and autonomous.

In the light, we can’t do that. Light exposes. Light reveals. Light threatens our autonomy.

Christmas is comforting only if you want to be saved. If you want to remain hidden, it is deeply unsettling.

No one stumbles into darkness; we love it. Most people say they want transparency—until it’s real.

Think about security camera footage. You’re fine with cameras when they protect you. But the moment footage might expose something you’ve done wrong, the tone changes.

“Do we really need to check that?”

“Let’s not overreact.”

“Context matters.”

Jesus says we avoid the light for the same reason. Not because it lies, but because it tells the truth. Darkness lets us curate ourselves. The light takes away our editing power.

And that’s what makes Christmas unsettling. The child in the manger grows up to say, “I already know the worst thing about you—and I still came.”

Christmas—and the whole of the Christian faith—doesn’t divide people into religious and irreligious, but into those who will be honest, and those who won’t.

Coming to the light means no pretending, no performing, no hiding. Christmas invites us out of illusion and into reality.

And reality, in the gospel, is not rejection—but grace. The illusion is that we can be okay on our own, that we have in ourselves everything we need in order to do and to be what we’re here for; the idea that we are self-sufficient is the illusion.

The reality is that we need help; we need God’s grace.

And the only way we can get that help is to come to the light.

That’s a frightening idea for an adult, because we’ve spent our whole lives doing our best to obtain the skills we need to survive and be successful. And we can do a reasonably good job at that, in certain areas. But when it comes to the deeper levels of the heart, when it comes to our eternity, we are woefully lacking. We need help. We need the light.

It’s scary, but it’s also profoundly restful. The light reveals sin, yes—but it also reveals a Savior who has already dealt with it.

The hard work has already been done. Our job is to trust it.

Conclusion

Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. Later in John’s Gospel, we will see him step into the light—slowly, imperfectly, but genuinely. He’s one of the two men who take Jesus’s body from the cross to bury him.

Christmas, if we actually take it seriously, always forces this decision—come into the light, or stay in the dark.

Christmas—the life and work of Jesus Christ—divides humanity, not into good and bad, but rather into a) those who come into the light, and b) those who retreat into the dark

The question Christmas asks is not whether Jesus is impressive, or whether we feel good.

It is this:

Will you come into the light, knowing what it will reveal—and trusting what God has already done to save you?

Christmas is God’s declaration that the Light has come.

The only remaining question is whether we will step into it.

Why Christmas? 2: Born from Above (John 3.1-15)

I grew up in a Christian home in the United States. It’s hard to describe the Christmas season in America to someone who’s never experienced it. Take all of the decorations, the songs, the feelings that we have at Christmas here in France, and raise the volume on all of that as far as it can go. Christmas in America is like a national campaign to feel good.

And the centerpiece of it all is, of course, the image of the baby Jesus in the manger, with his mother and father, the shepherds, the wise men, and maybe some barnyard animals looking on.

All my life, I had assumed that this picture was the one we latched onto for two reasons. The first is that Christmas is the story of Jesus’s birth, so that makes sense. The second is because newborn babies make people feel good—they’re cute, and they sleep all the time, so it’s peaceful. We sing songs like “Silent Night” and it’s like a mini-tranquilizer for our souls, making us feel calm and at rest.

But it wasn’t until I was much older—until I had, in fact, been a Christian for many years—that I realized why the image of Jesus in the manger is such a weighty image. It’s not just because that’s what happened, not just because the coming of Christ is what we celebrate at Christmas. This image is weighty because it’s a mirror, a projection, of what Jesus’s birth does to those of us who believe.

If you were here last week, you’ll know that we are spending the month of December in John chapter 3. It may seem an odd text to choose for the Christmas season, but we chose it for a very simple reason: it makes no sense to go over the story of Christmas without understanding why the story was written.

We know the story, at least in its general details; we’ll have the pictures in our minds that we mentioned before—Jesus in the manger, the angels and the shepherds, and so on. But in this week’s text, that’s not where John starts—he’ll get there, but that’s not where we start.

John tells us the why behind the Christmas story through a conversation that happens at night.

That is not accidental. In John’s Gospel, night is never just a time of day. It’s a condition of the soul.

This is John’s way of telling us something uncomfortable right at the start: Christmas does not begin with warm feelings. It begins with darkness.

And it begins with a man who, by all outward appearances, should not need saving.

1. “You Must Be Born Again” (v. 1–8)

V. 1:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night…

Nicodemus, John tells us, was a formidable man. He was a member of a hyper-strict religious group called the Pharisees—they were very morally serious and religiously disciplined. Nicodemus was a “ruler of the Jews”. He was influential and respected. And he was “a teacher of Israel”—educated, knowledgeable, and orthodox. If you’re at all familiar with our evangelical context in France, think of someone like Henri Blocher. M. Blocher isn’t a member of a strict religious subgroup, but in terms of the esteem he holds in people’s eyes, and his recognized knowledge, that’s sort of what we see in Nicodemus.

If anyone should be “close to God,” it’s him.

And yet he comes to Jesus at night.

Why?

Mainly because he doesn’t want anyone in his group to see that he’s coming to talk to Jesus. The Pharisees have been critical of Jesus from the first, and Nicodemus wants to keep his reputation intact. So he’s very cautious.

But he’s also curious, because what he had seen in Jesus has troubled him. As he says at the end of v. 2,

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”

Notice the language. He calls Jesus “Rabbi”—a term of respect that recognizes Jesus as a teacher.

Next, he says, “We know that you are a teacher come from God.” He speaks to Jesus as an insider, as a peer—someone who is evaluating Jesus from a position of authority.

But Jesus immediately flips the situation.

He doesn’t say that Nicodemus’ is right. He doesn’t thank him for his openness.

Instead, he challenges Nicodemus’s view of himself.

V. 3:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

It’s almost funny how ubiquitous that term has become—being “born again”—although if you asked ten people what they thought it means, you’d likely get ten different answers. Rest assured: it was as confusing to Nicodemus as it can be to us. He asked the most obvious, literal question in v. 4:

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

Obviously, that’s not what Jesus is saying. So Jesus gives a little more information. V. 5:

5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Now I may be reading between the lines here, but it’s hard to imagine these words as anything other than disconcerting for Nicodemus. Even if he didn’t understand exactly what Jesus meant.

What Jesus says is, you’ve been born once—you’re alive, you’ve been born of the flesh—but something else needs to happen. You need to be born of the Spirit. And this spiritual birth is something you can’t categorize or label or put into an easy framework. The wind blows where it wishes, he says in v. 8, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

He’s saying, You can’t do this yourself. You can’t control it; you can’t predict it; you can’t manage it. God must do for you what you can’t do for yourself.

That’s why Christ needed to come—if humanity could fix itself, the Son of God would never have needed to take on flesh.

Everything Jesus is saying here would have hit Nicodemus like a slap.

Jesus doesn’t say: “You need more clarity”, or “You need deeper devotion”, or “You need to refine your theology.”

He says: You need to be born.

Nicodemus’ entire identity—the Pharisees’ entire identity—was built on achievement: moral achievement, religious achievement, intellectual achievement. Improving in these areas is something they all feel confident that they can do; it may take work, but it’s manageable.

But Jesus tells Nicodemus that none of these things qualify him to even see the kingdom.

Christmas forces this truth on us: The problem with humanity is not that we are uneducated, uncultured, or insufficiently religious. The problem is that we are dead.

And dead people don’t need advice. They need birth.

This isn’t only devastating to Nicodemus, but to us too; it cuts against everything we instinctively believe.

We assume that better parents produce better people; better education, or better efforts, produce better outcomes; better systems produce better humans.

And all of that might be at least superficially true. But if we’re talking about the change that actually matters, the change that brings us to the kingdom of God, it will never be enough.

No matter how refined, disciplined, or sincere it is, human effort cannot generate spiritual life.

That’s why Christmas is not about inspiration. It’s about intervention. God does not come to motivate us. He comes to recreate us. And we aren’t able to decide when or how that will happen.

This idea is terrifying…unless the God doing the recreating is actually good. And Christmas is God’s declaration that he is good.

The Serpent and the Son of Man (v. 9–15)

So Nicodemus is, at this point, flummoxed. “How can these things be?” he asks in v. 9.

To which Jesus gives an answer we might find a bit sharp (v. 10):

10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?”

This isn’t mockery. It’s diagnosis.

Nicodemus knows the Scripture, but he doesn’t yet know God’s grace.

And here is the warning for us, especially for those deeply embedded in the church:

You can know Christian language. You can teach Christian truth. You can defend Christian doctrine. You may be able to do all these things…and still miss the point of Christmas entirely.

Because Christmas is not about knowing about God. It’s about being made alive by God.

Jesus presses further (v. 11):

11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

To put it another way: Jesus comes with a simple message—everything he has been saying about the kingdom of God and the new birth, these are “earthly things”, things that happen here and now. Nicodemus wants more information, but his problem isn’t information; it’s belief. I’ve told you of earthly things, Jesus says…and you do not believe. He doesn’t say, “You don’t understand.” He says, “You don’t believe.” You don’t accept it. You don’t trust it.

What Jesus is saying isn’t all that difficult to understand; but understanding’s not the problem. In order to see the kingdom of God, the Spirit has to wake us up, change our hearts, bring us to faith—everything God promised to do in Ezekiel 36.

It’s not hard to understand what Jesus is saying, but it’s difficult to accept it, because it’s scary to accept that our salvation is out of our hands. We like to be in control, we like to take things forward. And there are some things we can and must do.

But this part—the essential part—is out of our hands.

If you don’t believe when I speak of earthly things, how will you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? There is more to know, yes—but before you’re able to hear it, you have to believe.

If Jesus stopped here, this would be a horribly sad, almost hopeless statement. “So there’s just nothing I can do, then?” we might want to say. “I just have to sit and wait for God to do it in me?”

The answer is both yes and no. Yes, we can’t do this for ourselves—God has to do it for us.

But we don’t have to just sit and wait. Because God already has made the decisive step toward us; all we have to do is see it.

V. 13:

13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So we see two really essential things here.

First, we see that the one speaking to Nicodemus isn’t merely a teacher, as the Pharisee had earlier said. He is the one who descended from heaven. The Christian faith, the reason for Christmas, is not humanity reaching up to God; it is God stepping down into humanity. It was God’s initiative; it was God’s plan. He made the step toward us.

The second thing may be a bit confusing at first glance.

Jesus talks about Moses lifting up a serpent in the desert. If you don’t know the story, that won’t make a lot of sense—but Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, absolutely did know the story.

In the Old Testament book of Numbers, in chapter 21, we see the people of Israel grumbling against God in the wilderness. They believe God has abandoned them, led them out of slavery in Egypt to have them die in the desert. They despise the way God has provided food for them in the desert, exactly like kids who don’t want to eat their vegetables: they have food, they just don’t want the food that he’s given them.

So God does two things. First, he punishes their ungratefulness; he sends venomous serpents into the camp that start biting the people. This isn’t an emotional reaction, he’s not being unreasonable. He’s trying to show the people just how serious their lack of gratitude is, after everything he’s done.

And he wants them to see that he’s not punishing them with cruelty, because he provides healing for the bites. He instructs Moses to fashion a serpent out of bronze and to lift it up on a pole, and anyone who is bitten has only to look at the bronze serpent, and they will live.

On its own, even this story in Numbers is a little confusing—what is God trying to tell the people through his judgment, and through this image of the very thing which punished them (a serpent) being lifted up as a means of escape from that judgment?

The meaning of that event wouldn’t be fully clear until right now. Jesus tells Nicodemus that just as the serpent was lifted up in the desert, so too the Son of Man (Jesus himself) would be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

The reality is that all of humanity is under judgment for our rebellion against God—exactly like Israel in the desert. God is the one who judges sin, because sin is rebellion against him. But just as God exacts judgment against sin because he is just, he also provides escape from judgment, because he is good.

Later on, at the end of his ministry, Jesus would be falsely accused, he would take the sin of his people on himself, and he would be lifted up on a cross—his judgment for us visible for all to see. This, just like Jesus’s coming, was God’s doing, God’s initiative, not ours.

We couldn’t do it for ourselves; we couldn’t fix ourselves or make things right on our own. That was something God had to do—and he did it.

And like the people of Israel in the desert, all we do is look to him, and believe. Jesus was lifted up so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Conclusion: What Christmas Asks of Us

What does Christmas ask of us all?

Our passage confronts us before it comforts us. Nicodemus comes to Jesus out of curiosity, out of interest. But Jesus isn’t interested in satisfying Nicodemus’s curiosity or answering his questions. He gets to the heart of the matter, and responds by telling Nicodemus what he needs.

The heart of the matter is not: “What do you think of Jesus?” or “Do you admire the major tenets of Christianity?” or “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

Rather, the heart of the matter is: “Have you been born from above?”

People can feel a lot of doubt around this question. Maybe you professed faith in Christ some time ago, but find yourself struggling to live the Christian life, and doubting whether or not the new birth has actually happened for you.

It’s really important for us to see that in this text, Jesus is speaking about origin, not intensity. “Born again” isn’t a measurement of how vivid your emotions are or how consistent your obedience feels. It’s about where life comes from, not how strong it feels today. No baby doubts whether it’s alive because breathing feels difficult. In the same way, struggle—and even failure—is not a measurement for birth.

Jesus’s whole goal in this passage is to point us outward, not inward. Jesus doesn’t tell Nicodemus to He doesn’t tell him to examine his heart endlessly; he doesn’t ask for introspective certainty

Instead, he redirects his attention: as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

New birth is seen indirectly—by faith looking outward, not by reflection pointed inward.

New birth doesn’t remove struggle; it introduces it. Jesus doesn’t ask you to find proof that you’re alive—He asks you to look to Him.

Next week, Jesus will tell Nicodemus how this new birth becomes possible. But this week, Christmas tells us what we need.

So as we get ready to celebrate Christmas on Thursday, we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by meals and presents and events and gatherings. The only way to truly enjoy Christmas for what it should be is to remember why Jesus came—to thank him for the new birth he has given us, or to ask him to bring us to life if that’s not already the case.

Jesus did not come to make us better; he came to make us alive. And all he calls us to do is look to him, the Son who was lifted up, to believe in him, and live.

Why Christmas? (John 3.16)

I remember one of the first times I ever had a truly serious conversation with someone about God. I’d grown up in church, so I knew all the stories, and I knew a decent amount about what Christians are supposed to believe. But I wasn’t really interested.

But I had a friend named Jeremy who was a Christian, and who came at the subject from a completely different angle. He was saying things about the Bible that I’d never heard before, things that I’d never heard any pastor say, and I was completely confused. I found out later, after reading the Bible for myself, that what Jeremy told me was true—the things he said are actually in the Bible, and they make sense—but at that time, during that conversation, all I could think was, What are you talking about?!

That’s the sort of conversation we just read, between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee—he was the member of an elite group of religious leaders who knew the Jewish Scriptures backwards and forwards—and he had come to Jesus out of genuine curiosity, because Jesus was saying things the Pharisees disagreed with…but at the same time, he was doing things that were so spectacular, Nicodemus figured Jesus must come from God.

And right out of the gate, Jesus starts talking to Nicodemus about being born again, being born of water and the Spirit, about Moses and a serpent, and it was confusing—we saw him say in v. 9, “How can these things be?

In fact, over the course of this whole conversation Jesus has been telling Nicodemus why he, Jesus, was here—why he was born, why he had come.

So it makes perfect sense that this is the text we would choose to speak about at Christmas. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ—but such a celebration makes little sense if we don’t know why his coming was so important.

And we have a summary of that entire reason in a single verse of this text—we read the whole thing so that we could know the context, but we’ll be focusing today mostly on one single verse: verse 16.

We’ll be starting with the most important thing we need to know, and that is that Christmas—and everything around it—begins with God.

I. Christmas Begins With God

I know plenty of people who don’t like Christmas. And in my experience, one of the things they have such a hard time with is the drippy sentimentality that tends to come along with the season. The Christmas carols and the decorations and the picture of baby Jesus in the manger… Christmas has become commercialized, and we know exactly how to tug on those heartstrings and make people spend more money.

The church isn’t immune to that same kind of mentality. So Christmas services in church can sometimes be, at best, empty, and at worst, manipulative.

But that will only be the case if we properly understand John 3.16, which starts by saying:

“For God so loved the world…”

It’s really easy to look at these words and get stuck on the feeling. You may have a hard time with the idea that an all-powerful God would something as sentimental as love. You may have a hard time with the idea that God would feel love for the world, which is so broken. Or you may think about what you feel when you feel love, and just stop there—you may think that these words are talking about a feeling God has which is similar to what we feel toward those we love.

They’re not.

When the Bible talks about God’s love for the world he created, it’s not talking about how God feels about the world. It’s talking about God’s intention—his intention toward a world that is defined by two fundamental facts.

The first fundamental fact about the world is that God created the world good, and approves of the good thing he created (as we see in the book of Genesis).

The second is that since man rebelled against God, creation has been thrown into chaos. Human beings—and everyone in this room—desired to be their own masters, their own lords, rather than letting God be our God. That is what we call sin, and sin is like a cancer that has infested the world with sickness and death and corruption.

So when the Bible talks about the “love” of God, it’s not talking about a feeling, but rather a very simple truth: that the God who created the world good absolutely refuses to let sin win.

Christmas—the story of Christ’s coming—isn’t a sentimental story; it is the self-initiated mission of God toward a world trapped in darkness. It’s a darkness we wanted, as Jesus says in v. 19:

…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

The world is no longer lovable. It’s resistant. It doesn’t love light, because it is dark. It doesn’t love God and it doesn’t want God. That disregard for our Creator is at the root of every evil in the world, because in disregarding God, we are disregarding the source of everything that’s good.

But God loves anyway. He refuses to accept the resistance of a world that’s rejected him.

Think about what this means. A lot of us carry around with us the idea (or maybe just the feeling) that God is distant or disinterested—that even if he’s out there, he can’t possibly pay any mind to tiny things like us.

Christmas dismantles that idea, as we’ll see.

What we celebrate at Christmas isn’t sentimentality; it isn’t warm feelings. At Christmas we celebrate grace, moving toward hostility. We celebrate God’s love, which isn’t reactive, but originating. It is given before the people who receive it have done anything to deserve it.

Christmas begins with God.

Now that said, let’s go further. There’s a kind of love that heals, and a kind of love that hurts. Many of you may have experienced this when you were little—you have a bad cold, your nose is stuffy, what did your parents do? They had to get that awful plunger and flush your nose out. It’s terrible. But that is love: it is active love. They want to help you heal, so they do something that feels awful short-term.

That’s the sort of love that the world needs, because it has been corrupted by sin. The removal of sin is by necessity a violent, invasive thing—sin has to be judged, and getting rid of it will be painful. Getting rid of sin would mean, in fact, getting rid of sinners—which means getting rid of every human being who’s ever lived. In order to get rid of sin, God has to judge sin.

But here’s the question that Christmas answers: what if the solution to sin could not only be a judgment against sin…but also a gift to sinners?

II. The Gift: God’s Son

Now you may or may not know that Christians have always believed in what we call the “Trinity”—that is, there is one God, who has always existed in three distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father isn’t the Son, the Son isn’t the Spirit, the Spirit isn’t the Father. But the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. How is this possible? I have no idea; no one does. If we did, we’d be God. We don’t need to understand how it works; we just need to know that this is what the Bible says.

Why did I bring this up? Because John says that:

God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…”

The gift God gives is infinitely costly—it is the gift of his “only Son”.

That word “only” doesn’t just mean God didn’t have any other kids. It means that the relationship between God the Father and God the Son is entirely and completely unique. God, in response to the world that rejected him, gives himself—his Son. God takes on a human nature, he takes on human flesh, and is born as a human being.

He’s born just like any human being—as a baby. He’s fragile; he’s helpless; for the first years of his life, he needs someone else to feed him and change him and clean him and protect him.

Why did he come this way? Why didn’t he just come as a warrior, or as a full-grown man? Why come as a baby, like the rest of us?

Because God’s plan to save us was nothing we would have expected.

We say that Jesus is the Savior, and he is; but he’s not the kind of Savior we would have asked for. He didn’t just come as a rescuer; he came as a replacement. A substitute.

Jesus experienced everything we do. He got sick; he got tired; he was sad and happy and angry and disheartened and encouraged and even sometimes afraid. He was tempted to do wrong. He experienced everything we do, and he did it so that he could be our substitute. He wouldn’t be a fitting substitute if he came as anything other than a man. He lived a life like us, in all of our weakness—but without ever falling into the traps of sin that we fall into.

And because of this totally unique life he lived—totally human and yet totally divine, without sin—he was able to do what we could not. He took the sin of his people on himself, and was punished in our place, for our sin.

That is the gospel. Jesus takes our sin, is judged for our sin, and gives us his perfectly righteous, morally pure life.

Sin is violently, brutally punished…and sinners receive life.

We’re all used to these images of the manger at Christmas, and we’re used to the manger evoking warm and fuzzy feelings. But the manger is inseparable from the cross.

You see, Christmas forces us to re-examine what love really is. It’s not just a feeling; real love gives sacrificially, intentionally, at a great cost.

III. The Call: Believe and Live

God’s love for the world prompted him to give a gift, the gift of his Son. But all of us know that a gift serves absolutely no purpose if it stays wrapped under the tree. A gift is pointless if it isn’t opened and enjoyed.

Same thing here. God gives a gift, and he calls us to make the choice to receive that gift. What does receiving that gift look like? Jesus tells us:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him…”

I don’t know many of you here today. But I do remember what it was like to be someone who was unconvinced, but curious. That’s what we see in this text; this man Nicodemus comes to Jesus looking for answers; he’s not 100% convinced, but he’s curious, and he’s searching. Jesus tells Nicodemus what he really needs, but Nicodemus doesn’t understand what that means.

So Jesus puts the facts before him.

Jesus’s coming demands a response. In order to receive the gift of God’s Son, we must believe in him.

Now when the Bible talks about belief, it doesn’t mean the same kind of belief we think of today. We think of belief as a purely intellectual thing: I see it, so I believe it. I have the proof, so I believe it.

Belief in the Bible isn’t mainly an intellectual exercise.

It’s more like sitting in a chair.

A while back we invited a buddy of mine over for lunch. He sat at our table, in chairs we’ve used for years; he didn’t think twice about it. He’s not a huge guy, but the chair apparently had a tiny crack in the leg, and over the course of about thirty seconds during our meal, he slowly sunk to the ground, the chair crumbling under his weight.

I could take this chair, and look at it.  I can see what it’s made of; I can examine the legs and the seat and the backrest. And I can be reasonably sure that it will hold my weight. But the only way I can be absolutely, 100% certain is to sit in the chair, and see that it holds me.

That’s what belief is; that’s what faith is. It’s not strength, and it’s not intellect, and it’s not having all the answers to all our questions. It’s trusting. It’s accepting, even when we don’t fully understand.

Knowing the story is not the same as receiving the Son. Christmas invites us to a decisive faith, not seasonal nostalgia.

It’s not automatic salvation; it is offered salvation. It’s a gift that is held out, but not forced. To receive the gift, we must believe. We must entrust ourselves to the Son who was given.

IV. The Outcome: From Death to Life

So God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son for us; he calls us to believe in the Son he sent—why? What’s the goal?

It’s almost like a second gift. God gave his Son—and already (those of us who know him can attest), that is a wonderful enough gift. But when we receive Jesus, we also receive another gift.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

If you’ve been following, this makes complete sense. We die because we’ve sinned; if we are freed from sin, then we are also free from death—not physical death, but the death after death, an eternity separated from the God who created us.

And that’s the most important thing to see in this last part. The idea of “eternal life” can be off-putting, because—well, because it’s so long. And a lot of us have grown up with ideas of heaven that come more from cartoons than from the Bible: ideas of floating on clouds, playing the harp for all eternity. I agree, that sounds awful.

The eternal life the Bible promises is so much better, so much more down-to-earth than that. It promises life—like the ones we have now, in real, physical bodies, with real, physical things to do in a real, physical world…but totally unencumbered by sin and its effects.

And the best part of it all is not even that eternal life won’t be boring, or that it won’t be only spiritual. The best part of the promise of eternal life is that it will be life with the God who created us. Think of it like this: there is no one better than the Creator of life to tell us what life should be like. And the eternal life that is promised to us is that life, life as it should be—beginning now, and continuing on forever, freed from the shackles sin puts on us.

That’s what Christmas brings to those who trust in Christ. The baby in the manger brings the life humanity lost, the life the world cannot produce. As C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

That is what God gives us in his Son, and this eternal life is qualitative as much as quantitative: it’s not just long—it’s life with God, under God, from God, now and forever.

Conclusion

That is what we celebrate at Christmas. It isn’t family; it isn’t nostalgia; it isn’t chocolate; it isn’t presents. Christmas isn’t a celebration of sentimentalism, and it isn’t an attempt to escape from the harsh realities of life. Christmas is a confrontation with what reality truly is: a broken world under judgment that God moves to rescue.

I’m so happy you came to be with us today. And I’d like to finish in a very simple way.

I’d like to invite you to see the love of God—his sacrificial, active, self-giving love.

Receive the Son of God—trust him, even if you still have questions. Any number of us here can attest that he is indeed trustworthy.

And once you trust in him, walk in his life.

The world’s gifts fade. This one never does. Don’t leave it unopened.

We Stand Before the Empty Tomb (Mark 15.42-16.8)

Every book of the Bible—whether it’s the book of Jeremiah (1,364 verses) or 3 John (15 verses)—was written for a reason. Every book has a goal in mind, and every book intends to elicit a particular response from its readers.

The gospel of Mark is no different.

Mark has two main goals in mind, which we saw at the very beginning of this series. His first goal is to tell us who Jesus is; and his second goal is to explain and defend the universal call of discipleship—that is, to show us what it means to follow this Jesus, the Son of God, the King of God’s kingdom, the Messiah.

Last week, we got the clearest reminder of who Jesus is, given by the Roman soldier, who proclaimed upon Jesus’s death, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” And this week, he’ll remind us of the call God puts upon all of us, to be disciples of Christ.

This will be the end of our series on the gospel of Mark. But before we get into it, we’re going to need to do a bit of work, because there’s one puzzle we’ll need to sort out.

You probably noticed that we did not read v. 9-20 of chapter 16. And we’re not planning on doing that; we’re not going to see those verses next week. To understand why, we need to understand the use of brackets in our modern Bible translations. (I know, this is going to be really fun.)

In most of our modern translations, whenever you see a word or a verse in brackets, that means that the word or verse inside the brackets does not appear in many early manuscripts.

Now, most of the time, that fact makes almost no difference at all. Most of the time, it’s a word or a phrase that was added for clarification or for some other reason, but it changes nothing about the meaning of the text, or its place in the rest of the Bible. The translators include these things anyway, to be thorough, but they’re honest with us—when they put words or phrases or verses in brackets, that’s their way of saying whatever is inside the brackets was quite possibly added later, and not written by the original author.

Verses 9-20 of Mark 16 are like that. These verses do not appear in many early manuscripts; other manuscripts include these verses, but indicate that even earlier manuscripts don’t include them; and many early church theologians (like Origen or Clement of Alexandria) don’t seem to know about them. And there are several elements here which just aren’t in keeping with Mark’s writing style.

Like I said, most of the time this changes nothing, or very little. But in the case of Mark 16.9-20, it actually changes a good deal.

Most of v. 9-20 contains things we see elsewhere in the Bible: Jesus appearing to Mary and the two disciples first; then appearing to the eleven; then telling them to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel; and finally, Jesus being taken up to heaven and the disciples going out and preaching. All of those things, we see in the other gospels or in the book of Acts.

But there are two verses in particular that are problematic—v. 17-18—which says all believers should expect certain things (like being immune to snake bites and poison) that the rest of the Bible never says believers should or will expect. Some churches have based entire theologies off of these two verses alone—they’ve brought in poisonous snakes for Christians to handle. And guess what? Christians have died after being bitten.

So you see the problem. If these verses do not appear in many early manuscripts; if they contain stylistic differences from the way Mark wrote the rest of his gospel; and if they contain elements that are incoherent with the rest of the Bible, then it’s a pretty good sign that Mark did not write these verses—which means these verses shouldn’t be seen as the authoritative, inspired Word of God. There’s still some debate about this, which is why these verses are still included in brackets in our translations, but the debate isn’t very fierce: most scholars agree that Mark didn’t write these verses, and they were added later—and that’s our conviction too.

But I’ll freely admit that this fact brings up another question—and it fundamentally changes the way we read the end of this book.

We have all seen TV series in the modern era, and we’ve all been frustrated by them. The show builds and it builds and it builds and we get more and more invested and excited in the story. And then there’s a huge revelation, or a twist in the story…and the season ends. And we know we’ll have to wait another year, or two, or three, before we get the next installment.

If Mark ends at v. 8, then that’s essentially what he does: he ends on a cliffhanger. We never actually see Jesus resurrected; the women don’t go see the apostles to tell them about the resurrection; the story just ends. We know those things happened, but Mark never tells us about them. (By the way, this isn’t unprecedented in the Bible; the book of Jonah ends in a similar way.)

But if that is the way Mark truly did end his gospel (and I believe that it is), the question we need to ask is, “Why?” Why did he end his gospel in such an abrupt way?

We know enough about Mark by now to know that he leaves nothing to chance; he says as much through the structure of his narrative as he does through the text itself. So what is he trying to tell us through this mysterious ending?

The answer to that question is actually, I think, the main message behind this text—and it’s astounding. I love the way Mark ends his gospel at v. 8 of chapter 16.

So let’s get into it.

We remember the context. Jesus has just been crucified. The King was falsely accused, falsely condemned, crowned with a crown of thorns, and enthroned on a cross…and then he died. The Roman soldier saw his death and recognized that he is the Son of God, and the faithful women who had followed him throughout Galilee are standing there watching.

That is where we pick up the narrative threat again, in chapter 15, verse 42.

The Outsider (15.42-47)

The first thing we see here is the boldness of a quite unexpected disciple.

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Joseph of Arimathea, as Mark tells us, was a respected member of the council. He was a Sadducee—and we remember that the Sadducees are among those religious leaders whom Jesus rebuked so many times over the course of his ministry. The Sadducees were among those who tried to trap Jesus and who called for his death.

But apparently this Joseph was more clear-sighted than many of the others; he wasn’t in the council to maintain political power or the Jewish way of life. He was looking for something bigger—Mark tells us he was “looking for the kingdom of God.” It would seem he recognized something in Jesus that the others did not.

So, Mark says, he took courage. He had to, because going to Pilate meant that he, a Sadducee, was publicly identifying himself as sympathetic to not only a convicted criminal, but to the very enemy his own group had worked so hard to bring down. It was risky. And Joseph’s courage was all the more admirable given the fact that at this very moment, Jesus’s own disciples were nowhere to be found. Joseph was an outsider, showing faithfulness to Jesus when the insiders had disappeared.

So Joseph went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’s body, so that he could bury him. V. 44:

44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

Pilate was surprised that Jesus is already dead—sometimes it took days for a crucified person to die—so he sent for the centurion to confirm that Jesus was indeed dead. (That’s important: he got outside confirmation that Jesus hadn’t just fainted, but was really and truly dead.) And when he got confirmation, he allowed Joseph to take Jesus’s body.

V. 46:

46 And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

Ever since Jesus was arrested (and even throughout his gospel, really), Mark has been highlighting the irony of God’s plan of salvation. Nearly everything Jesus did throughout his ministry was unexpected. Those who seemed like they should have had a religious advantage—the religious leaders of Israel—were revealed to be the ones who didn’t want anything to do with the Savior God had sent.

And now, in a way, that position has been flipped. Jesus’s own disciples are absent; they’ve all fled. It would seem as if everything Jesus had worked for had come to nothing.

But when the plan looks dead, God raises up unexpected servants, unexpected disciples. The proof of a true disciple of Christ is revealed under pressure. Sometimes the people who look most “established” in the community—in this case, the eleven disciples who had followed Jesus throughout his ministry—end up clinging to safety, while the least likely step into sacrificial courage.

That is what we see in Joseph, and it is what we see in the women as well. We see in v. 47 that Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s mother were following behind to see where Jesus was laid, because they would be coming back.

The Empty Tomb (16.1–7)

Now, in chapter 16, we make a small leap forward in time. Jesus died on Friday. It is now Sunday, the day after the Sabbath. Remember what we saw several weeks ago: Jewish tradition held that the dead would be treated with oils and spices as a way of honoring them, after their death. Given the nature of Jesus’s death, they didn’t have time to do it properly on the day he died, before the Sabbath, so now these women who had followed Jesus are returning to his tomb to treat his body.

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

A couple of interesting things to note here. We saw these women in chapter 15, v. 40—they were witnesses of the crucifixion, and at least one of them was a witness to Jesus’s burial. Now they are coming to be witnesses of Jesus in the tomb. And their mindset is clear—they’re not expecting anything miraculous. They’ve expecting to find him dead. They’ve brought the spices to treat his body; they’re asking themselves who’s going to roll the stone away from the entrance (the stone was huge). They are still in the grips of grief, not in expectation of a promise.

But God has already solved the problem they expected to face (v. 4):

4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed.

So first things first: this young man sitting in the tomb dressed in a white robe is not Jesus. Presumably, it’s an angel. Mark says the women are “alarmed”—not mainly because they saw an angel, but because Jesus isn’t there.

V. 6:

6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

Mark, through this young man’s words, packs the entire gospel into three lines.

He says, “Do not be alarmed.” Don’t be afraid. Stop grieving. Stop fretting. This weekend has been horrendous—but there is no longer any reason to be afraid.

He says, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen.” The key truth of the Christian faith is not that Jesus died. If Jesus had died, and stayed dead, he would be no Savior at all, because he would not have defeated death. He would have been like any other man—a brilliant teacher, even a miracle worker, but not the Messiah.

But Jesus is risen. He defeated sin on the cross, and he defeated death in the grave. Literally everything we need as fallen human beings—freedom from sin, and freedom from the eternal death that is the consequence of that sin—has been provided for us in him.

He says, “He is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” Jesus did indeed say this to his disciples, in chapter 14—he said that he would be raised, and go before them to Galilee. Even so, the women could easily have doubted at this point, despite the stone rolled away, despite the absence of Jesus’s body in the tomb. Maybe someone stole his body; maybe this young man was a part of some mysterious conspiracy.

But he sends them out with proof to come—not immediate proof, not the kind we always want, but proof to come. He’s going before you to Galilee, and you will see him there. If the women needed proof, they would get it very soon.

And they would get it in the very place Jesus’s ministry began: in Galilee. The risen Jesus is leading his people back to the beginning. He’s not where they last saw him—he’s not in the tomb, he’s not on Golgotha, he’s not in the Garden of Gethsemane. He’s already ahead of them.

And finally, the young man says: “Go, tell the disciples, and tell Peter.”

This is maybe the part of this whole text that hits me the hardest, because it’s so illogical. Some of you are responsible for teams in your jobs. Imagine you’ve been leading a project, and your entire team fell apart under the pressure. It’s cost you millions of euros, they’re all on medical leave for burnout—and you still need to keep going. The project still needs to happen, quickly.

What do you do in that case? You get a new team. You recruit new people. You don’t call the same folks who have just abandoned you, who have failed you so badly.

Jesus could easily have done that. He had plenty of people who had followed him who weren’t among the eleven. He could have called Joseph of Arimathea. He could have called Nicodemus, the Pharisee (John tells us that Nicodemus helped Joseph bury Jesus). He could have called the women who actually showed up. He could have called any number of people.

Instead, he goes back to those he chose at the beginning. “Go tell the disciples” that Jesus is risen, and he’s going to meet you in Galilee. Even better: “Go tell Peter.”

Peter, who had so recently vowed that even if everyone else abandoned Jesus, he wouldn’t—and who, just a few hours later, denied even knowing Jesus.

Jesus’s goal isn’t just efficiency; it’s restoration. The failures of Friday are not the end; Jesus is looking forward, and he knows exactly what he plans for these people who have failed him. He knows what he’s planning for the church they will establish.

This is the gospel. Jesus is risen, his plan is not finished, and he can use anyone—even the most abject failures—to do his will. The resurrection doesn’t just defeat death; it restores failure.

The Call (16.8)

This is incredible news, of course—so what happens now? You’d expect a lot more out of this story…but, as we saw at the beginning, we have very good reasons to believe Mark gives us only one more verse. V. 8:

8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

And that’s it. No appearances of Jesus before the disciples. No “and they lived happily ever after.” No matter what the angel has told them, the women are afraid; they are trembling and astonished. They flee from the tomb, and at least at first, they say nothing to anyone. They will—we know this from the other gospels—but at first, they’re just astonished and afraid.

So if Mark really did simply end his gospel at v. 8, as we believe he did, we have to ask: why did he do it that way?

In reality, it’s very much in keeping with what Mark has been doing this whole time—with what Jesus has been doing the whole time. Every time Jesus had told his disciples that he would die and be raised, he followed this announcement with a call to deny themselves in order to follow him. It’s been plain this whole time: after the resurrection, there would be a choice.

And the choice would be made, as Mark’s readers would know. By the time Mark wrote his gospel, the church already existed in its earliest form; his readers would know that the story didn’t actually end here. So they would have understood that the disciples faced this very real choice to deny themselves after the resurrection, and that they made the right choice. What happened next would never have been in question.

Mark is making a deliberate, rhetorical choice. By ending his gospel this way, he forces his readers into the story. The resurrection is announced, but it’s not “finished”. He forces us to stand at the empty tomb, and he asks us to respond.

The women are afraid when they hear the news, and we understand them. Because they are women in Israel, in the first century. Women, at this time in history, would have had no credibility—women weren’t even allowed to be witnesses in a trial. The task to announce Christ’s resurrection to the disciples has been given to them…but why should the disciples listen to them?

Have you ever felt afraid to share the gospel with someone else? Then you know how these women felt. You’ve got this incredible news to share…but what if no one listens?

The resurrection always confronts us with a choice: stay silent, or move forward, and speak. Sooner or later, we all have to make that choice anyway, as these women would—despite our fear, despite our hesitations. Mark’s gospel ends in mid-sentence because he expects his readers to finish it. He ends in uncertainty, not in celebration, because he wants his readers to feel the weight of unfinished obedience.

Jesus is risen! The resurrection has happened!

Now what are you going to do with that incredible news?

I hope you can see why Mark’s choice to end his gospel in this way is profoundly encouraging. All of us will fail, and all of us will have to decide what to do with our faith in the midst of our failure.

If you’re a hesitant disciple of Christ, wanting to move forward but afraid you don’t have all the answers, or afraid that you don’t have the strength in yourself to live for him, God is speaking to you through Mark. He’s reminding you that you don’t need to have “resurrection-level faith” to begin; even frightened disciples, like these women, are invited.

If you’re a Christian living with failure, God is speaking to you through Mark. “Tell the disciples—and tell Peter.” Those men would carry their failure with them for the rest of their lives. But that failure wouldn’t define them; the restoration they found in Christ after their failure would. Our worst moment is not who we are. We are who Christ makes of us.

If you’re a Christian who’s become complacent, a little too comfortable, then God is speaking to you. We can’t assume faithfulness because we’ve grown up in church, or because we belong to a Christian family, or because we “do all the right things. Joseph shows up when the insiders don’t. Our faithfulness shows itself under pressure, not when things are going well.

If you feel like God is absent, and you don’t know how to move forward without him… God is speaking to you too. Jesus is already ahead of you. The silence you feel doesn’t mean that God is absent; he’s before you. He knows exactly where he’s bringing you, even if you can’t see it.

And if you’re hearing this gospel, but you’re still not convinced, you need to understand that you’re standing in front of the empty tomb. Jesus Christ lived, died, was raised…and he’s now calling all of us to follow him. And you’re now faced with that same call, with that same choice.

You see, Mark leaves his gospel open because the resurrection isn’t a conclusion—it’s a beginning.
The empty tomb isn’t the end of the gospel; it’s the place where discipleship truly begins.

So how will we respond?