The Incarnation
Transcript
Good morning. This is our Christmas gathering. We finished up our three-week Give Series this past week. And so what we do in our Give Series, we spend some time talking about generosity and how we ought to think about and handle money. And so I got kind of a report on our Give project and how some things went. So we threw a party with Midtown Two Notch.
And so what we did was we had three kind of aspects of our Give project. We were going to gather gifts to give to the children in the neighborhood, in the Two Notch area, the Pinehurst area, so that they could. The plan was, and this is not how it worked out. I'll explain how it worked out in a second. But the plan was that parents would be able to come.
We would distract the children with shenanigans and s'mores. We would stuff them full of chocolate, make them jump on a bounce house, let them see Santa Claus. And parents would get to go pick out gifts for the children to be able to have at Christmas. And so you can see in the background the bounce house. We actually went over to Midtown Two Notch's area and made a Christmas kind of shop. And so this is one of the rooms that we set up with all the gifts that y'all, our church kind of gathered together and brought over here.
If you were to turn back the other way, there's the other side of the room that looked like that. But the whole room was just filled with toys. It was really cool to see. And so parents were going to get to go in there and pick out gifts while their children were on a bounce house. And while we were giving them s'mores, we had a whole s'more set up. And it was actually really cool because a lot of the adults that ended up coming out had never had a s'more.
And so we got to coach them up on how to do that and how to make them. And it's really fun to get to watch a 30-year-old take a bite of a s'more and look at like, it's like, yeah, you've missed out on a lot, man. Like, yeah, your whole life, this is simple and you've missed out, you know. But we were able to do that. But here's what happened.
We learned a thing. And I think Midtown Two Notch learned a thing. So we came to them and asked them what they wanted us to do. They said they wanted us to throw this party. They wanted to gather gifts. They wanted to empower parents to be able to give gifts to their children.
And so we said, yeah, that sounds great. And so they said that's going to be a secret, though. And they sent out flyers and they kept it a secret on the flyer. But the problem was if it's that good of a secret, the parents don't know. So we had a pile of children showing up with no adults.
And so about 30 minutes in or something, the Midtown guys come around and they're like, hey, change of plans. We're giving gifts to children right now because we're not sending kids home without getting something. And if their parents aren't coming, we don't know how to fix that. And we were like, fine, sounds good. So they got to go in and see Santa Claus.
And so some of our people showed up early and set up a whole big Santa Claus area and made it look really beautiful. The only thing that was borrowed, I think, was chairs. Everything else was brought in and set up and made amazing. And so Santa Claus got to sit right there. And kids got to go see Santa Claus. And then they got to immediately go pick out a gift.
We had kids coming out with gifts. And they were like, I'm going to keep playing on the bounce house, but I'm going to go home first. We had some kids go home. They said, they were like, I'm going to open one now and I'm going to save one for Christmas. And there was these two boys. They were brothers.
Open one now. Save one for Christmas. That's a great idea. And they came back and they said, Grandmama said, we've got to save both of them for Christmas. I was like, all right, man, hop in the bounce house. That's a good idea.
Your grandmama ain't wrong. But the kids did really enjoy getting to see Santa Claus. Some had a wonderful time getting to see Santa Claus. Some of them not as good a time. But she ended up fine.
She and Santa Claus ended up getting along. But what we were able to do was give gifts to children and spend some time with them and just kind of love on them. And there was a lot of children. I remember there was a lot of children, you guys. And at one point I was like, okay, how are we doing? I looked at my watch.
The party was from 2 to 5. I looked at my watch. It was 2.20. I was like, I've got to quit looking at my watch. It's going to be a long day. I've got to just be happy, smile, walk around.
We had a really good time. And before we left, Mark Shingler, one of the leaders over at Midtown Two Notch, grabbed Raz by his collar. And he said, Mill City Church made a difference in Pinehurst today. And Raz was like, okay. And he said, no. You need tomorrow to tell them, Mill City Church, tell your church family y'all made a difference.
This was huge. And so they were very excited and got to have conversations with parents. And one of the cool things was, some kids were there. As soon as we said, hey, we're giving out gifts, they left. They were coming over to me saying, we're meeting people who live in this neighborhood we've never met. Because I'm meeting kids and parents and saying, hey, where are y'all from?
They're saying the neighborhood. It's like, oh, okay. So we hadn't gotten to meet these people, but as soon as we were able to do this, they started showing up. And so it was a really cool thing to be able to do. And just really excited that we got to be a part of that and see how Jesus worked through y'all. It's a fun thing.
The other part of our Give project was that we wanted to raise support for Aunt Frederick. Because he has to consistently raise support to be full-time in that area, which is a lower resourced area. It's high poverty, high crime, low education levels. They have to raise support all the time for him to be able to be full-time there. And so we just said we wanted to join in on that for our Give project. We wanted to not only give gifts.
We needed to do that first, but then we wanted to raise money. And so, so far, and we're still, you can give today towards the Give project by the envelopes that go in the box. Or you can give online if you do the drop-down tab that says Give. You can do that today. And through the middle of this week or so, we'll still be taking Give donations online. When you get online and click the little drop-down and there's no more Give drop-down, we have written a check.
We are done taking money, raising money for Give. We have so far raised about $5,500. So $5,500 will go towards his salary. That's exciting. We should be happy about that. $5,500 will be money he doesn't have to raise. And we're still raising some money.
And so we'll be able to, at the beginning of the year, say, here was the final amount that went on a check. That we just said, hey, we love y'all. We love what y'all are doing. And we want you to be able to keep doing it. And so really, really exciting, really encouraging. And so what we're going to do today, we have our Christmas gathering today.
And then we have our worship night this Thursday. And so we're going to study in the book of John this morning. So grab your Bibles, go to John chapter 1. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at what John has to say about Jesus coming. There was a famous author who was talking about her remembering her first journalism class.
And she was in high school. And her journalism teacher gets up and says, all right, I want to teach y'all how to write a lead. And a lead is the headline of a story. So the way a good newspaper article works is that the main thing that you need to get is in the headline. That's the information. Most good news articles do not work like internet things where they're like, you won't believe what this article has to say.
The third paragraph is going to be amazing. Like, they don't do that. That's not how news works. It gives you the information you need at the beginning. And then it works its way down so that the last sentence is the least important sentence. That's the way they're supposed to work.
So he's teaching them how to write a lead, which is, this is the main point of what we're talking about. And so he says, all right, I want y'all to write your first lead. He says, here's the information. This is the story you're going to write your headline for. Next Thursday, Principal Williams, so they're in high school, Principal Williams, is taking the faculty and staff to a symposium in the state capitol where they will train for the entire day. And he starts listening to the main speakers.
And everybody's writing down all the information, you know, who, what, when, where, why. They're writing it all down. And he says, now I want you to write your headline. So all the students sit out. They type out their first headline. They get it up.
They turn in their sheets. And she said that he took them and he flips through them really quickly and says, nope, none of y'all did this correctly. The headline is, no school next Thursday. That's the headline. He said everybody was just writing regurgitated parts of that information. He said, you missed the point.
And so what we're going to look at in John chapter 1, John was the last gospel to be written. Matthew, Mark, and Luke have already been written. And Matthew and Luke spend time talking about the birth of Jesus and give us some of the information about it. From Matthew, we learned that there were wise men that came, magi that had studied the stars and came. And we hear the story about them having to run to Egypt to escape the fact that King Herod is trying to kill all the children that were born in that area. From Luke, we learn about John the Baptist's birth and the fact that Jesus and John are cousins.
And we get all of this stuff and all these stories that go along with it. And we learn all the things that we celebrate and we put in the nativity. And John gives us none of that. John just says, no school on Thursday. Like he just cuts right to why all of that matters. What actually happened?
What was the main point of Jesus coming? And so that's what we're going to look at today. So on Thursday, we'll get to read some of the birth story and some of the stuff that we look at a lot at Christmas. Today, we're going to look at John where he just cuts right to here's what happened when Jesus came. So that for us, as we try to in this season, when everyone feels like they have a little too much to do, a little too much going on, a little bit too much pressure, a little bit too much weight, and it can easily get cluttered.
But we're just going to focus in on why the incarnation, why Jesus' birth, why his coming to earth matters. Just for a little while to be encouraged today, to be reminded today of the miracle that God was born as a human. And so let's pray for our time. And then we'll begin looking at John together. Father, I pray that as we study this this morning, that you would help it sink into our hearts. That we wouldn't just be reminded of things we already know, or we wouldn't just get to learn something new, but that it would become real to us so that we might actually worship.
So that today, our gaze might be turned to you. And we might grow a little more in awe of your goodness. And that as we go the rest of this week or so into Christmas, and as we celebrate with friends and family, and in all the different ways we're going to celebrate, that we might have a better handle on why we're celebrating, and why it matters. We ask for your help in this, in Jesus' name. Amen. John 1, verse 1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. So that's the first two verses. That's what he says. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
Now, when this was passed out as a gospel of John, people at this point would have known that he's talking about Jesus. He gets down there in a couple of verses and says, this is Jesus Christ. So most people would have known, this is who I'm reading about, this is what's going on. And so he begins with, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, that's kind of confusing, but what he's saying was, when he says in the beginning, he's immediately making us remember that's how the Old Testament begins. That's how Genesis starts.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so when John starts his gospel off with, in the beginning, what he's saying is, that beginning you already know about from Genesis, that's the beginning I'm talking about. And Jesus was there. As the divine Word of God, Christ was there. And so what he says was, Jesus was with God. So the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Now, as we believe in a Trinitarian God, that God is one God who exists eternally in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, that's what John's talking about. It's confusing, but that's what he's saying, that he was with God as the Son of God, and that he was God as God the Son. So Jesus, the preexistent Creator, was in the beginning, and all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. My son is about to be three. He goes to a preschool that's like a Christian preschool at one of the churches down the road. And one day he just started asking me, he would be like, Jesus made this?
And he just pointed at the thing. And I'm great at that game, you guys, because I know John chapter 1, that disappeared, but it's still in your Bibles. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John says that really confusingly, but he's making a point. It's just like when your mom says, I'm the only one who ever cleans around this house, and then doubles down on it and says, Not one single thing that has ever been cleaned in our home has been cleaned by anyone but me. So what are you doing?
All things were made through him, and without him was not one single thing. He's driving that point home that Jesus, this divine Word of God, was in the beginning and created everything. And so when you play with a three-year-old that did Jesus make this game, the answer is yes. We're walking down the road. He's like, Jesus made that tree? Yes.
That's an easy one, you guys. Trees? Yes. He pointed at a basketball goal. Jesus made that? And I was like, ah, yes.
Because all the things that were made were made when Jesus made them. Later, some people formed it into a basketball goal. But they're made. Now, at some point, he's going to be like, well, then why does my shirt say made in China? And I'll be like, who made China? I'm ready, you guys.
He made everything. It also says he was in the beginning with God. So this word is personal and masculine. He's getting to, it's Jesus. So verse 4.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So the first thing that John tells us is that God has come. That it's God himself. When he gets to Jesus has joined us, he plants his foot. He makes it clear that this was divine, preexistent, eternal creator of all things that I'm talking about.
The eternal God is who I'm talking about. And then he says, and I love verse 4 and 5 because it's drenched with hope. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. I love that the creator of the world, and I'm assuming when he created light and darkness, he did this on purpose. Designed it the way he designed it so that he might later say, I am light, and we would understand what he's talking about.
Light always wins. Darkness cannot overcome light. You've never been in a place that was so dark that you couldn't see your hand, and when you turned your flashlight on, the darkness was just so thick it swallowed your flashlight. That's not how it works. That light always wins. And so when he says that in Jesus was life, and that life was the light of men, and the light has come into the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it, there's an immediate call to hope and joy in the coming of Christ.
That he brings life, and he brings a light that cannot be conquered. I love also how clearly that works in our mind when we think about darkness. That we would say to someone, yeah, man, it's just been, I'm going through a really dark time. It's been a really dark year. And nobody's ever responded to you like, what, you need like halogen bulbs? Everybody knows immediately what you're talking about.
It's been hard. It's been rough. It's been sad. It's been dismal. I can't see, but a foot in front of my face, like I don't know where I'm going. And the promise that we have at Christmas is that there is a light that brings life in Jesus that the dark times can't overcome.
That no amount of sin, and no amount of shame, and no amount of brokenness, and no amount of pain, and no amount of lies, and no amount of anything can overcome what's brought to us in Christ. Verse 6. We're going to read verse 6, 7, and 8 fairly quickly, because John is not talking about Jesus. He's talking about John the Baptist. So, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.
He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. So, John's just saying, John, the author John, is talking about John the Baptist, not the same guy. And he says, this guy came to proclaim and point to Jesus. He wasn't Jesus. He's not the light, but he came to point to him so that we might believe in the light. Then keep going, 9.
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. So, what this is saying is that God, the creator God, who made everything, in eternity past, when he started time and began everything rolling, he created everything. And then he comes to the world that he created, and the world didn't recognize him.
Which is just baffling, but it's also amazingly beautiful to see how God humbled himself, that he would fit in. Like, that's, every little new show about an alien that comes to earth, or a robot, the whole funny part is that they don't really fit. Like, they're just weird, and they do, all the hijinks ensues when they do things that only an alien would do. And we're like, oh, this is, Jesus comes, and he's a builder for 30 years? Nobody notices? Like, even his parents, who had the angels come, and all the things happen, when he starts going and preaching, they show up, and they're like, hey, you need to come home, like, you're not, oh, I don't know what you're doing right now.
And how much honor God gives to humanity by joining us, it's, it's, it's baffling and beautiful that he would, that he would become one of us and fit in with us. And there are some things where he consistently, as we read the gospel, says some things that only someone who's existed for eternity and is God would say. Like, I'm God. And all the things we just talked about with how he talks about money and everything, but there are, it's just so honoring and beautiful that he would join humanity and live as a human, that he didn't just float down here, that he didn't just light up when he walked around, that, that he didn't, you know, he, he had feet, he had to walk places, he gets tired.
We get stories of him taking naps and eating food, that he joined us. The world didn't recognize him. It says he came to his own people, and his own people did not receive him. That's the Jewish people, that Jesus was Jewish, and he comes as the Jewish Messiah, and the Jewish people reject him. Because he turns their system upside down, and he calls them to something different, and they don't receive him. Verse 12.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So what he's saying is that it was God's will that all who would believe in Jesus would be welcomed into his family, would become children of God. And so at this point, John is continuing to just say, here's, here's the point, here's the reason he came, so that God became human. He joined us, he came into the world, and he came into the world so that all who would believe in him would become children of God.
That at Christmas we celebrate that God was reclaiming his children. That he was broadening his family. That what he had created in the beginning to be a beautiful relationship between humanity and himself, and had been broken by sin. That at Christmas, Jesus is coming, born into the world that he might claim those in the world to be his children. All those who would believe. And so that's why at Christmas, as you get to, over the next week or so, we get to celebrate family, and we mourn family.
That's what happens at Christmas. That at Christmas, and during this season, we celebrate family. And for some of us, it's like, you have those moments when you're like, this is just right. And it's just a moment. You have this moment where you're like, oh, this is what it's supposed to be like. And then it's gone.
Because your mother-in-law says something, and your uncle does something, or one of your nieces or nephews smacks your kid. Like, whatever. Like, there's this moment where you're like, oh, happy family. And then you're like, okay, that's enough. But we also mourn family, so that there's moments over the next week or so that are going to be very painful.
As we miss loved ones, or as we feel like we're missing out, or that something is missing in life and in relationships. And one of the beautiful things about Christmas is that Jesus came to invite all those who would believe in him into his family. That he's the son of God who wants brothers and sisters. He's the good older brother who comes to rescue and redeem those who've wondered, so that we might all call God the Father, Father. And we might all join his table. And so, as you, over the next week or so, get to celebrate with family, remember that all the beautiful parts of that point you towards your ultimate family.
And as you, over the next week or so, mourn, and have places in your heart that just feel broken, that just feel empty, remember that that longing and that brokenness will never actually be filled up here, but is meant to call you towards something that will be able to fulfill it. something that is eternal and is joy-bringing, that Jesus Christ came so that you might be his brother or sister and children of God through belief in his name. 14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So this divine creating Word that was God and was with God, becomes human, dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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. Verse 16. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Christ. This is the main point of the incarnation. This is the crux of it. This is what he's getting at. That the eternal God who created everything joins us in humanity, puts on flesh, and that from him we receive grace. So here's grace.
Grace is receiving something good that you do not deserve. If we can go ahead and have 16 and 17 up, we'll spin. That from his fullness we've all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. That we receive what we don't deserve.
We receive something good that we have not earned. That it's a gift. That it's something applied to our account that we haven't gotten. One of the ways that we've talked about this before is that when you have sin in your life, a lot of times we feel like Jesus comes and he cleans our slate. Then he hands it back to us and says, Okay.
Keep it together. That's not grace. Grace is that he takes our slate and hands us his. And if he had not come, if he had not been born, he can't do that. You see, what it says here is so helpful. It says, For the law was given through Moses.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The law is the Old Testament law that was given to the people of Israel. That was Moses. A cloud comes down on the mountain. And Moses goes up and he meets with God. And he comes down with tablets.
And then later he writes out the rest of what God says. And what it was was, Here are the things that we have to do to be God's people. Here are the things that we have to do to be treasured, to be loved, to remain where he is. And the truth is that every philosophy and every belief system can only ever give us what the law gave the people of Israel. Here's the way to think. Here's the way to live.
Here's what you have to do to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be a good person, to have God love you, to be moral, to be free. That's everything we have. It can only ever give us advice. It can only ever tell us how to live and what to do. It cannot give us grace. Jesus coming as a human is what offers us grace.
My grandparents were missionaries in Nigeria, West Africa. And so they were in areas where they would have to travel. There were times where my granddad would ride a bicycle with vaccinations. He was a doctor and they did medical missionaries and they would ride and they would give vaccinations. They would deliver babies. They did a lot of different things.
But they also, because the church was growing in that area, they would do conferences and they would do trainings. And so my granddad was going to be speaking at a WMU training in West Africa. And the WMU is the Women's Missionary Union. I was going to say alliance and I was like, that's an A. It's the Women's Missionary Union. And so they were, all the WMU people in that area, all the ladies were going to be coming to this thing.
He was going to go speak. And so he's riding in West Africa down one of the roads in the middle of nowhere. And there are two seasons in that area in Nigeria. There's the dry season and the rainy season. It was the rainy season. And so he's riding, sloshing through mud and muck on this lonely road by himself.
And then he gets a flat tire. And so he's sitting in his car, rain pouring down. It's muddy and terrible outside. And he's wearing his suit that he's going to go speak in. And he's trying to decide what he needs to do. In the middle of nowhere, he has one suit.
He's got to go speak in it. Strips down to his underwear, climbs out of the car. And gets in the mud and begins changing this tire. One of the things that is nice about being out in the middle of nowhere in this area in West Africa is that you can do these things. You can take your suit off so you don't get it muddy and climb out in your underwear and work on a car. If you did this on Highway 26, I don't know how well that would work out for you.
I mean, you could go for it, but probably not great. One of the bad things about being in the middle of nowhere in West Africa is that you're on one of the only roads. That's heading to the place that you're heading to. So while he's in the middle of changing this, he hears a vehicle coming and he looks. And it's not just one vehicle. It's several vehicles.
Actually, several vans filled with WMU ladies headed to the conference. He stands up. He looks at them. And he sees faces he recognizes. People are looking at him as they're driving through the mud. And he just stands in his underwear.
He's like, ah. And they go on. And he changes his tire. And he puts on his suit and heads on to the conference where, you know how sometimes they'll say, like, if you're public speaking, you should picture people. I think it worked the opposite that day. Like, they were picturing him in his underwear.
It was probably hard for them to listen as he opened the Bible and taught them things. But all other belief systems, all other philosophies just tell us what to do. And in the gospel, we're met with a God who stripped himself down, humiliated himself to get dirty to fix the problem. We're met with a God who is born as an infant. Now, think about this for a second. God is infinitely useful.
That all that he thinks and does immediately works out. That he works everything out beautifully to his will. There's that Christmas song. We sang it with, we sang it last night as we were putting Archer to bed, but it says, the cattle were lowing, the baby he wakes, but the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. Like he's some sort of an infant, but he's also perfectly a God in the middle of that. And so he would just wake up and be like, hmm.
But that's not what happened. He cried. He wept. He had to grow in wisdom and stature. He fell down. He skinned his knees.
He had to clip his toenails. He had to cut his hair. He humiliated himself. Babies are cute, but useless. They're cute. But they don't accomplish much.
They're not pulling their weight. And the infinite God, who's infinitely useful, stripped himself to join us in the darkness, in the pain, in death, that he might share his life, and his light, and his hope, so that we might be free. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. That he stripped himself down and joined us in the mess, and that everything else is just going to give us law. Everything else is just going to say, here's what you have to do to be good, but from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. That's the gospel.
That we believe that from Jesus' fullness, we receive grace upon grace. That he is a fountain that overflows, and it's not because he's lacking, but because he has so much that he shares with us. That's our hope in Jesus. That's what we believe. That's why we gather. That's why we celebrate Christmas.
Not that Jesus has given us law to teach us how to be full, but that we might believe in his name, and from his fullness, we receive grace. That he earned what we could not earn, that he accomplished what we could not accomplish, that he did for us what we could not do for ourselves, and that we trust in Jesus, and he gives us his fullness. We believe that he's strong, and he's smart, and he's good, and he's righteous, and he's holy, and that we get to be all of those things through grace from his fullness that's given to us. So it says, the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
So grace is that Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves, that he joined us in humanity and offered us something that cannot be offered to you anywhere else, that he would do the work on your behalf, and then it says we receive truth. Jesus later in this gospel is going to say that he is truth, so that we get him, but I want to share one of the truths that I think is clearly shown to us in Jesus' birth, that God would become a human. One of the truths that I think becomes so clear. Have you ever lied a lot and had to keep building off of your other lie, and you have to kind of reconnect things, and because you're not in reality anymore, so you have to just keep tying lies together.
My brother and I were in high school, and we were at a friend's house, and he wanted to show us a shotgun, so he walked into the room and fired it into the ceiling because he had done none of the things that you were supposed to do if you're going to show someone a gun. After that, when he's like, hey, you want to say, no, no, don't want to be around you in a weapon. You're terrible. But he walks in the room and a group of people and just shoots it into the ceiling and then was like, oh, and he was like, it's not supposed to be loaded. It's like, what's that not supposed to be loaded? Your finger, what was your finger on the trigger?
It's not supposed to have a safety. Go, go away. Like, but what we did, because we're kind, is we went to our house and got some stuff and fixed his ceiling, which was in his parents' room. We actually, Logan did this, but he patched the ceiling and then we took white out and drew little dots because we didn't have the little bubbly stuff, but we tried to make it look like it had some contour and we did pretty good. And then we all came up with, like, here's what happened this evening. And we just kind of, you know, just omit the thing in the middle and some of the story didn't quite make a whole lot of sense, but we were just like, we got it.
And so then we proceeded to just lie about this for a while. And then my parents say, Logan, check, come in this room. That's my dad. That's my mom. You know, if y'all could tell. We walk in the room and that was never like a, hey, y'all come in this room.
It was never like you walked in and they were like, we got pie. Like it just was never, you could tell the tone. You're walking in the room immediately. Like, it's just like you hear that voice guilt, just like you put a blanket of guilt on. You start walking in, you're going, okay, hold on a second now. And you're trying to think, what did I do?
When did I do that? Maybe it's mostly Logan. Maybe it was a thing he did. And I just get to be like, yeah, it wasn't me. You walk in, you know, you don't know you're going to walk in. He's holding a can of dip.
Like, you don't know what you're walking into. You're just walking in. And so you walk in and they were like, um, they started asking a few questions about this event. And we were both like, you know, there's this moment where you're looking at your brother like, I don't, are we, we stick into our thing? Like, am I going to mess you up? If I like, what do we do here?
But you also have a pretty good understanding if they're asking questions about this, they maybe have some information that you didn't want them to have. And so we're sitting there and we kind of like, well, you know, being mumbly. And then my dad just kind of with the truth and it really felt like we had had this elaborate system and that once truth hit it, it just kind of cut through like a stick through a, through a cobweb. I could just immediately, once truth hits lies, the lies just fall all apart. And so he was like, what about this? And we were like, oh yeah, no, yeah, that's a good point.
And it ended up not being too bad because we were just helping our friend out. Like, he didn't know at this point who had done what with what weapon that caused their roof to leak. We didn't think about that part. Yep. We didn't caulk their roof. So anyway, we, and honestly, when it says that grace and truth came through Jesus, it feels like the God of the universe took truth and he just broke right through time and history and space and he just landed so clearly.
I want to share some reality and just brought it down. And here's the truth at Christmas that needs to seep into our souls. The sheer fact that the eternal creator God humbles himself to become a human so that he might live a relatively short life to die a brutal, painful death on a cross declares definitively, eternally, that you were not going to get this together on your own. That the law that was given to Moses was insufficient as are all other rules and philosophies that say, you need this to be okay. That he came as a rescuer because we needed to be rescued. And for any of us who are saying, I'm going to be moral, I'm going to be good, I'm going to live a right life, all we are saying is, I definitively reject Jesus.
That's why it says that those who would believe in his name would be welcomed in. That we believe and trust in him and him alone and what he has accomplished, not our good works, not our morals, that we trust in him definitively have been declared that we need a savior, that we need someone to do this on our behalf and that we trust in him and from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace. That's what we sing about. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. That we have a God who loved us so much that he would send his son, that he would join us in humanity, humble himself, that he might do for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves.
And I pray and I hope that all of that was stuff you already know and believe and trust in and hope in and that maybe just a little bit of this today reminds us to focus on that and to have his light shine into the middle of this darkness and have his life buoy us and call us into hope and that we might remember again that it's not about our works and it's not about our effort but it's about what he's accomplished for us. That from his fullness we might receive grace. And if that's the first time you've heard it, the first time you've really thought about it, I want you to know that you can trust in his name. You can place everything on the name of Jesus so you can believe in what he's done and from his fullness you will be made full and you will receive grace and you will be given hope and you'll be invited into what happened in that moment a long time ago when a little baby was born in a podunk town in Judea that ended up being the light of the world and the hope for all humanity.
A band's going to come back up and we're going to celebrate today. We're going to remind ourselves of this and walk in this as we take communion. So communion is a celebration of the meal that Jesus had with his disciples the night before he was going to go to the cross and he takes a cup and he says, this is my blood shed for you and he takes bread and he breaks it and he says, this is my body broken for you and he says, do this in remembrance of me that as often as we do this that we would proclaim Jesus' death until he comes. You see, right now we get a communion meal. We get a meal that looks forward and backward.
We get a meal that looks back to Jesus' death and looks forward to his coming. And then when he comes we get a wedding meal. We get a consummation meal. We get invited to an eternal celebration where God the Father welcomes all his children home. And so today I want us as we take communion to do exactly that. I want us to look back and I want us to look forward.
I want us to hold the realness of the bread. Feel it. And realize that Jesus took on flesh. He became tangible for us to see and touch and hear that he was broken and that he bled so that from his fullness we might be made full. That we need him today. So if you're a Christian and you're part of our church family we invite you to pray.
We invite you to repent where you need to. Spend time with Jesus and then during this next song as they sing when you get ready come up take the bread dip it in the cup. Remembering that Jesus died for you and looking forward to the day when light fully pierces the darkness. And we're taking home to belong to him forever. Lord, let's pray. Let's pray.
God, we thank you for your grace. Thank you for your goodness towards us that through you we can be made full. And we ask that over the next week or so as we celebrate Christmas with friends, family as we walk through this season whether it's joy filled or mournful that we might remember the hope and the truth and the grace that we have in you. In Jesus' name. Amen.