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John 1:1-14
!
Introduction
For the last several weeks wrapped gifts have been under the tree.
I watched some young children find the gift with their name on it, shake it and try with great excitement to guess what was in the package.
They were to receive a gift and they didn’t know what was in it and they really wanted to know.
Today the mystery has been revealed.
The gifts have been opened and we know what is inside.
Well there are two more gifts under the tree for us today.
They say, To: REMC from God. Shall we open these gifts?
The note says, “In order to receive these gifts, please read John 1:1-14, so I would like to invite you to turn to P. 635 in your hymnal and we will read it together.
I will read the light print and ask you to read the dark print.
In this Christmas story the gift is unwrapped for us.
We discover that Jesus has always existed and that He came down to earth.
In fact, in this story we discover that since Jesus was God, it was really God who came into this world.
The message of Jesus’ coming is found throughout this passage.
In verse 9 we read that “the true light…was coming into the world.”
In verse 11 we read that “He came…” In verse 14, we read that “The Word became flesh and lived among us…”
!
I. We Have Seen Light
So let us open the first of these two gifts.
This one is the gift of Jesus, who is the light of the world.
We come across the concept of Jesus as the light in John 1:4, where it says, “In him was life and the life was the light of men.”
That makes me think of the song we sing at camp, “Jesus is the light, he’s the light of the world boom, boom, boom…” Each time we sing it, we sing louder and higher.
It is a fun song, but what does it mean?
!! A. Jesus Is the Light
The first thing we learn about Jesus as the light, in John 1:5, is that the light shines in the darkness.
Darkness can be difficult.
My father was a photographer and the camera he used in the early days had sheet film.
We had photographic plates and on each side of this plate was a film.
You put the plate in the camera and pulled the slide and then you could take a picture.
When each film was exposed, we had to take the exposed film out of the plate and put a new one in.
This had to be done in complete darkness and we had a room in our basement where we did this.
On summer days we took pictures at weddings and it was my job to take out the exposed film and replace it with new film.
It wasn’t easy to do it in the dark.
You had to remember where you left everything, how many steps from one counter to another and so on.
That is what darkness is like.
Other images of darkness are even starker.
Darkness implies evil and chaos.
The description of the world before creation is one of chaos and darkness into which God spoke light.
That physical darkness was overcome when God spoke light into being.
But the spiritual darkness remained until God spoke light into the world with the coming of Jesus.
When Jesus came into the world, God’s truth was revealed.
Jesus came into this world and helped us understand what sin is all about.
Jesus revealed sin by his sinless life.
The contrast between Jesus sinlessness and our sinfulness helps us understand the evil of the darkness of sin.
We also have a better understanding of what it means to obey God and to walk in righteousness.
Jesus obeyed God completely.
We have no concept of what it means to fully and completely obey God because we have never seen anyone do it.
Jesus is the light of the world in the sense that he showed us for the first time that it is possible to live in this world without sin.
One of the tools which we used to have in our photo studio was a magnifying light.
It had a large magnifying glass and around the glass was a light.
Sometimes when I do woodworking, I get a sliver.
When I do, I wish I had that tool.
I find now that I am always looking for the best light in the house and an old pair of glasses to magnify my finger.
It just isn’t the same.
When you have good lighting, you can see everything much better.
Light reveals what something is like.
Jesus is the light of the world in the sense that he reveals what God is like.
Barclay says, “To the pagan, God either dwelt in the shadows that no man can penetrate or in the light that no man can approach.
But when Jesus came men saw full-displayed what God is like.”
No one has ever seen God, but when Jesus came into this world, we finally came to see what God is like.
In our College & Career Sunday School class, we have been studying Jesus from the gospel of Mark.
We have asked the question, “What is Jesus like?”
What a wonderful vision of God when we begin to understand what Jesus is like.
When we watch Jesus interact with the Jewish leaders, we see the wisdom which God has.
When we see Jesus interact with sinners, we see compassion.
One of the my favorite passages is when Jesus was tired and wanted to get away from the crowds with his disciples, but when the crowds came with all their needs, the Bible says “he had compassion on them.”
That is what God is like.
If we allow the images of Sodom and Gomorrah or the flood of Noah’s time or the details of the law to form our entire image of who God is, we get a vision of God as one who judges and destroys.
God does hate evil and we see that in Jesus, but we also see what great compassion and caring he has for the lost.
Jesus is the light of the world in that he reveals to us what God is like.
William Barclay says, “What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.”
Driving at night can be a challenge.
It is especially difficult when you don’t know where you are going.
You can’t see the house numbers, you can’t into the distance to see changes in the road.
If a deer or some other wildlife jumps onto the road in front of you, you can’t see it until it is there.
In the daytime, things are much better.
Light is great to reveal the path.
Jesus is the light because He reveals the light of God’s path.
It is in Jesus that we find that God wants a relationship with us and that we can have that relationship through Jesus.
Jesus has revealed that the way to God is the way of trust in Him.
Jesus has cleared the path, built the road and in Jesus we see what that path is all about.
In Jesus we have a clear understanding of God’s path.
In verse 4 it says, “…the life *was* the light of men.”
But verse 5 says, “The light shines…” Jesus wasn’t only the light of the world when he first came.
He is the light of the world today.
!! B. Seeing
These days it is still dark I get up?
Here is my pattern.
I get up, go to the bathroom and turn on the light and then turn away from that light and gather up some clothes and make the bed.
By that time, my eyes have adjusted to the light and I can go into the bathroom to shower without squinting my eyes to protect them from the brightness.
One of the themes of this passage is that the world has not accepted Jesus.
They couldn’t handle the light which Jesus brought.
Some translations of John 1:5 say “the darkness has not understood it.”
This is certainly true and the theme is expanded in vs. 10 where it says “He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”
But that does not mean that the light is overcome by the darkness of the refusal of people to accept the light.
Some remain in the darkness because the light is too bright for them.
Some remain in the darkness because they close their eyes and do not want to see the light.
But this passage also says that Jesus is the “true light that gives light to every man…” Jesus is the light for all people.
If we want to see God and know what God is like and understand the path of God, there is only one way for us to do that and that is through Jesus.
He is the light of the world.
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