Good evening to you. How are we tonight?
Good. It thrills me to be with you all
this evening and for a time of singing and hearing a choir
sing, and reading the scriptures together, having the scriptures
read to us, but also hearing the word of the Lord taught, and all
of these things. I want to draw your attention to
one thought tonight, as you hear the word red, and as you hear
the word sung, and as you hear the voices of others who you
call brother and sister in Christ singing alongside you,
and as you hear the word of the word of the Lord proclaims even
now I want you to understand that all of this makes it clear
that God loves you. Amen.
He loves you. And this gathering, anytime the
Saints are gathered together, is great evidence of the love of
God. Now I want to recognize as well
that some of you, myself included, may be struggling at
times with the concept of love. How can a loving God allow such
pain? Or how can a loving God allow
loss? Or how can a loving God allow
misery? Or how can a loving God allow
suffering? All of those things shape our
lives at different times, right? But it's especially heightened
at a time of year where we're talking a lot about joy and
peace and happiness and mirth and being merry, right?
Not Mary the mother of Christ, but Mary MERRY, right?
I think the the reason for that and and I don't want to take a
ton of our time tonight, but I I did want to lead you through
this thought process. The reason for that is that we
live in a Dark World, you know, we don't want to overlook that
at Christmas We're constantly attacked by suffering and
deception and violence and lies and death and so many of the
other fiery darts of the enemy, the darkness of sin and death
and their effects on our world cast a very long shadow over our
lives constantly. As the prophet Isaiah says, he
speaks for the Lord. He says and writes for us in
Isaiah 822. It says there, and they will
look to the earth, but behold, distress and and darkness, the
gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness.
And yet, because of Jesus Christ, the immortal Son of God,
who puts on mortal flesh to dwell among us, yet because the
infinite becomes an infant, yet because the Lord of all creation
chose to be born in a lowly Manger in Bethlehem, because of
all of that and so much more, words fell us as we try to
describe the wonders of the incarnation.
But because of the incarnation, because of what we celebrate at
Christmas, we celebrate the fact that we have seen a great light.
That light has dawned, and this light cannot be overshadowed.
Rather, it cast out the shadows. It eliminates shadows.
In John One verse five, we see there as we read that the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. In verse five it says that he is
the light of man. This light shines in the
darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
You see what I'm saying? There's a light that has shown
in Christ that the darkness cannot over shadow.
Now in John chapter 3, if you have your Bible, you can turn to
John chapter 3. I'm going to read 16 through 21
here in a moment. We're going to look at 16
through 21 more closely, but we're going to spend just a
moment in John 3. What I want you to know about
John chapter 3 is that we meet a man here whose name or who's
called Nicodemus. And Nicodemus was a Pharisee.
He was a ruler of the Jews. I don't have a ton of time to
explain what all of that meant, but I need you to know this.
This means he spent his whole life working to gain those
statuses. He devoted himself to studying,
to working, to teaching for years, for years to reach his
goal and for these things. These things were the height of
the religious world at the time He climbed the ladder, And if
anyone was was going to have a guarantee, we might say to get
into heaven, it would be a man like Nicodemus, one who is a
Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, at least on the outside.
As we look at it, we say this is a man who is near to God.
He has to be. And yet John says this about
Nicodemus, says now there was a man of the Pharisees named
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, verse two.
This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, 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.
So he's making just a general statement about the works that
have been observed, that Christ has done the miracles, the signs
that he has performed thus far, early in his ministry.
But I want you to pay, and typically we catch that.
But what I want you to catch tonight as you think about this
passage is that he came to him by night.
John is not leaving out that detail because he wants us to
know the detail. John is not adding the detail,
just simply as a way for us to understand what it might have
looked like when Nicodemus showed up.
John adds the detail. The description of literal
darkness colors for us a picture about the condition of
Nicodemus's heart. He came to Christ in darkness.
He's he's full of darkness. How do we know this?
Well, Jesus makes the assessment himself.
He says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again,
he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
And when Nicodemus questions this, how could a man be born
again, Jesus buckles down on it and tells him once again.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of spirit and
water, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
What's the assessment that Christ is making about
Nicodemus? Well, it's nothing short of
this. Nicodemus.
Your heart is far from you. Assume that you stand in great
light and you come here to question me.
But I have some questions for you about the state of your
life. You must be born again.
You must start over, is what he say.
Now again you think about a man who has worked the totality, the
entirety of his life to achieve, becoming a Pharisee,
high-ranking Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, a teacher of God's
word. And yet now he's being told you
can't even see the Kingdom of God unless you are born again.
That's a crushing thing to hear, isn't it?
To be told that your whole life's work, all the morality
that you have built up, all the cred that you've built up among
the religious elite, is nothing in the eyes of Christ.
Why? Well, because your works will
not save you. Your works.
To be sure, I'm not a I'm certainly not against faithful
works. The Bible commands us to do good
works, but the Bible never commands that we do good works
unto salvation. The Bible commands that you do
good works from salvation, from a heart that's been transformed,
from a life that's been changed by the spirit of God, from a
life that has been regenerated, that is given new birth by God's
spirits. In that way you go, brothers and
sisters, and you tell the world of Christ in your actions and in
your words. But you best not trust your
works to get you into heaven, or you too will arrive in darkness
to see the Messiah. You'll arrive in darkness.
Darkness. The problem with darkness.
The problem with things like what Nicodemus is experiencing
and coming in darkness. The issue with this is, if you
ask Nicodemus, he has the most light available already on him.
He thinks he suspects that he stands in bright light and that
there is no darkness within him. You understand the deception
that comes through things like your good works.
They will make you think that because of my morality, because
I do believe that there is a God in heaven, and I do believe that
he had a son who existed and who came to be like man and to die
for us. I do believe those things.
And yet you never yield your life to His Lordship.
You may think that because there's morality and some
general belief in Christ or in his name, that this is enough.
But it just it is not enough. You must possess faith.
Well, what is faith? Faith is not only saying I
believe with my mouth. It's not only confessing with my
mouth that Jesus is Lord, but it's believing it in such a way
that I stake my own life on it, and that I give up the desires
of this world and the things that I want.
And I run after Christ and I submit to him, to His Lordship,
to his desires for me, to his will for my life.
In that way you dwell in light. But darkness appears as light by
Satan's very design, and therefore it always crushes us.
Very few people wake up saying I'm going to live a life for the
darkness. We're going to live a life unto
the glory of evil. And yet, because our hearts are
far from the Lord, we serve evil every day, even in our morality,
because even those good works are selfish works.
Jesus goes on to explain though that the new birth comes by the
Spirit of God when the Son of Man is lifted up in the
wilderness and the people will believe in him and receive
eternal life as the bronze servant was lifted in the days
of Moses. What's Jesus doing here was
drawing out a teaching from the Old Testament that Nicodemus
would have been very, very familiar with.
He spent his life studying the Old Testament.
Again, they didn't have a New Testament yet.
He spent his whole life studying the Old Testament, and Israel in
this particular story is wandering around in the
wilderness. Israel often sinned against God,
and in one instance God sent venomous snakes to bite them as
punishment, and so many died. It was a dark time in the life
of Israel. They had sinned against God.
God is judging them rightly for their sin, and many are dying.
And yet Moses pleads with God on behalf of the people.
And so God instructs him to raise up a bronze serpent in the
wilderness. And when anyone is written, so
it's a serpent raised up on a pole, and when anyone is bitten,
they could look unto it and be healed.
Nicodemus would know the story of these Israelites very well.
And so when Jesus says that the Son of Man will be lifted up,
Nicodemus is understanding. Wait a minute, he's talking
about himself. So not only is he saying I've
come from God, he never denied that we know that you've come
from God because the works that you do.
He's not only not denying that, he's now saying more than that,
He's saying I am the Son of Man. I am the promised Messiah, is
what this would mean, and anyone who looks to the Son of Man, who
will be lifted up and believes in him, will receive eternal
life. But why?
Why would this happen? What's the motivation for it?
How would that put away the darkness that is in Nicodemus's
life? Well, remember that John
introduced Jesus Christ as the Word.
In John chapter one, he introduces him as the Word who
became flesh, that he was with God in the beginning, and that
he was God, and he becomes flesh, and he is the light of
man, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
cannot overcome it. Now, in this report of
Nicodemus's meeting with the Messiah, John is going to flesh
this out for us. He's going to report to us what
Christ goes on to say. What does it mean that the light
shines into the darkness? Well, it means this.
That the light of God's love has shown in Christ Jesus.
That's what's revealed here. Look at verse 16, a verse you're
all likely very, very familiar with.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life. 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.
Jesus is simply here in verse 16 and 17 explaining further the
story of the Bronze Serpent, that that bronze serpent was a
type. It was a shadow in the Old
Testament of the Messiah to come and the work that he would do.
Then It was the serpent that meant the healing for the Jews,
but now it's the Messiah that marks a healing for the nations.
It's a welcoming of all peoples for God's.
So love just simply means that God loved the world in this way
that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him will not
perish but have eternal life. See, Jesus was not sent to
condemn the world, rather that the world might be saved through
him, meaning that the nations might come.
As the bronze serpent reconciled the believing Israelites with
God, so does Christ. Reconcile all who believes in
him with God. And this is the height of love.
This is the foremost work that God can do for us.
To show that he loves us is to send a Messiah.
You and I are destitute. Without it, you and I are
hopeless without a Messiah. You and I have.
We're guaranteed hell forever if Christ never comes.
You understand? It's not God sitting in the
heavens looking at us, saying, all right, I've given you the
law. You've proven that you can't
hold the law. You can't keep the law.
But I'm telling you, if just one of you could finally keep the
law, he'll be saved. She'll be saved.
Well, guess what? No one can keep the law except
Christ, and So what does God do? He looks into the darkness of
sin and death, a world marked by sin and death.
And rather than God remaining, I would call it transcendent
rather than distant, He becomes imminent.
He moves into the darkness himself in the second member of
the Trinity, Christ, Christ puts on flesh.
The Word is born of the Virgin, and he becomes the Messiah by
giving his own life. This is the height of love.
It's dying for those who hate you.
You say, well, I've never hated God.
Well, your brother and sister, as the great theologian Oscar
Meyer says, baloney. Apart from Christ, you can do
nothing but hate. God may might love the concept
of God, but you'll never love God's justice because you are
unjust. You'll never love the concept of
God's righteousness because you are unrighteous and those,
therefore judgment must be executed on your head on that
day but Christ. But Christ marks the love of God
for his people, the saving of his people.
And so Christ dies for those who hate the Father so that they
might be able to love the Father.
You understand Romans 5-6 and eight For while we were still
weak, meaning while we were still helpless, while we're
still bound to our sin, while we were still dead in our
trespasses at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person.
Meaning you might be good enough that you would give your life
like some of us men in here. We would say, yeah, I would
gladly give my life for my wife, right?
And so there's there's a scarcity to this that you might
scarcely die for someone that you think is worthy of dying
for, but you're not going to die for sinners, he says.
For one, we'll scarcely die for a righteous person, though
perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.
But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. How does he show his love for
us? And that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us? Again, He's not saying I need
you to do all of these things to check all of these boxes.
If ever there was a man who checked the boxes, what's his
name? Nicodemus.
And yet he still must be born again.
He still is a Sinner whom Christ dies for.
Ephesians 2, One through three we read it.
Set this way. And you were dead in the
trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the
course of this world, following the Prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of
disobedience. This is a long form way of
saying, Satan, among whom we all once lived in the passions of
our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the
mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest
of mankind. So there's no one exempt from
this. And so I understand that in a
room like this, of people gathered like this, such were
some of you, such were some of us, and yet such are still many
today. Potentially, even in this room
there is someone here who has not yet surrendered their life
to the Lordship of Christ Jesus. They're still trying to get in
by their good works. They're still trying to say, if
I build a life of good works, if I assemble this castle of good
works and I present it to the Lord on that day that it will
stand, I'll be the king of that castle.
But the problem with that thinking is that castle's made
of sand. It's going to come a cart and
it's not going to stand. And you must learn to build your
life now on the words of Christ Jesus, to turn from your sins
and to submit yourself to His Lordship.
And this is the God you'll come to find.
Verse 4. So I read that this you were
this way. Look at verse four.
Or you can hear it read. Sorry, Ephesians 2, verse four.
But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with
which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ.
That sounds a lot like Romans 5, doesn't it?
By grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated
us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
So that in the coming ages, the age in which you and I now live,
in the ages beyond us, and the ages that have preceded us,
became after the 1st century, so that in the coming ages he might
show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us
in Christ Jesus. Listen to the way the Apostle
Paul, once a murderer of Christians, once a persecutor of
the very people of God. He's now encouraging them, and
he's saying, such were some of you.
But look, God is rich in mercy, and He's filled with great love.
And it's this great love which He's lavished upon us.
Though we were dead in our sins, He's made us alive together with
Christ. You were dead.
It's not that you were drowning. It's not that you were hopeful,
hopelessly swimming in an ocean, and he's cast out a life net for
you to hold on to. You were dead, and he's raised
you up and his love, and he's made you alive together with
Christ, and He's raised you up, and He's seated you with him who
is in the heavenly places. So very much so even now you
possess eternal life, and you live here and now, But your
place, your home, your residence is in heaven.
Brothers and sisters, you reside with Christ because God has
loved you, unlovable as you are. He's loved you and He loves you
now, and He wants us at Christmas to remember this great
love you see without the coming of Christ Jesus as a child in a
Manger who was born to die for the sins of all who believe in
Him. Without that, and you and I
would not know the first thing about God's love, wouldn't
understand it. We couldn't know him.
We couldn't be reconciled to God.
We could have no peace with the Father.
And yet in Christ. In Christ, the love of God
shines for eternity, and it will never be overshadowed or put out
by the enemy's attacks. Though we are people who walk
amid great darkness even today, and though we sense great
darkness creeping in and seeking to over shadow us through our
persecutions and our pains and our sufferings and trials, and
through death and you name it, we feel this.
And yet the truth is, you've seen great light.
You've not been left in darkness, have you?
The light of God's love, through the coming of his own son has
shown on you. He sent Christ to die so that he
may save his people from their sins.
We read it early. I'll read it again.
She will bear a son. Matthew 121.
And she and you shall call his name Jesus.
Now this is being spoken to Joseph, who's having a little
bit of trouble understanding how his betrothed, soon to be wife
could be pregnant. And he's wondering, how do I
just divorce her quietly and let this go?
And yet an Angel says to Joseph, you shall bear a son, you shall
call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
And this took place, Matthew writes, to fulfill what the Lord
had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the Virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which means God with us.
You see, God has put on flesh in Christ.
The second member of the Trinity was born, and has resided with
mankind, and gave himself up, and will one day greet us in
glory. And yet he has not left us
alone. He has left His Spirit with us
to bear witness to the truths of who Christ is, to bear witness
to the truths of who the Father is, to transform us from 1° of
glory into the next, so that we bear the image of Christ in
ourselves. It's done this work for us
because God so loved the world, and so no matter what darkness
may come, though the shadow of trials and despairs and sins and
sufferings and deaths may rise, and that shadow may lengthen
over you. And around you the light of
God's loves withstands. All of it.
So I heard you come to Christ in your darkness, just like
Nicodemus, and understand that you will receive eternal life
with the hope and the joy there of this day.
In verse 18 I want to draw your attention to John 318, because I
think we must also receive this warning from Christ.
He says whoever believes in him and is not condemned.
Sorry, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever
does not believe is condemned already because he is not
believed in the name of the only Son of God.
You see, Christ didn't have to come to condemn because you
stood condemned already. The condemnation shows up when
you refuse to believe that Christ is Lord when you
blasphemy his name. And this is the judgment.
Verse 19. The light has come into the
world, and people love the darkness rather than the light
because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked
things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his
work should be exposed. 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.
And so I urge you, I ask you, I want you to see this.
If you love the false light of the world, those things that
seem as though they are light but are truly the deception of
Satan, their darkness. If you love that more than the
true light of God's love, the true light of what God has done
for you, the true light of what God commands of you this day,
that I implore you to repent this evening, to not go on
living this way, to be reconciled to the Father through
Jesus Christ, by the power of his Spirit, which is drawing you
even now. Or maybe you're a believer.
You've trusted Christ as Lord. You've submitted to him, but
you've allowed the the pomp and circumstance of the season to
cast a shadow in the light of God's love on the meaning of
Christmas, the wonders of the incarnation of God's Son through
the Virgin conception of Mary. And so I ask you, during this
time again, maybe the season brings about remembrances of
loved ones that you miss, and you just find yourself thinking
what a dark, horrible place this is.
Or maybe it highlights just the the way you get stressed out
over the season, the way you you focus so much on all the things
that have to get done or the things that need to get bought.
Or maybe you see in your heart a desire for stuff and you
realize, Oh no, I covet I want things.
I'm not content, right? I mean, the season can draw out
all sorts of all sorts of things.
And so I ask you, will you turn your eye to Christ?
Will you turn your eye to the love of God this evening?
Will you forget those busy things?
Will you submit those painful things to the lordship of Christ
and to his sovereign design for your life, to his providential
rule of your life, and say, Lord, it hurts, and I don't
understand it, but I submitted to you, and I trust that you're
good tonight. I trust that you love because I
see in the incarnation the love of God for me.
And so I have no reason to doubt that you love me even when I
don't understand. We forget those busy things,
those things that are seeking to distract you as Satan seeks to
tear your attention away from Christ.
And will you steal your heart and will you quiet your mind
before the Lord tonight? For God loved you in this way
that he gave his only Son. Whoever believed in him will not
perish but have eternal life. We're going to sing a song here
in just a second called He Who Is Mighty.
And I Want to Read to You the chorus and I guess it's a
bridge. Not very musical.
I'm not. But it says this.
It says He Who is Mighty has done a great thing.
He's taken on flesh, conquered deaths, Sting.
He shattered the darkness and lifted our shame.
Holy is His name. Now my soul magnifies the Lord.
I rejoice in the God who saves. I will trust his unfailing love.
I will sing His praise all my days.
Amen. We're going to invite the choir
and the team to come up. I'm going to pray for us.
And then we'll stand together and sing when I'm finished
praying. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for tonight. We thank you, Lord, for your
love for us. We ask, Father, that you would
help us tonight to fix our gaze on Christ Jesus.
To see He who is mighty, to see the One who has done a great
thing, to see the immortal become mortal, to see the
infinite become an infant, so that he might save his people
from their sins. My God, I understand there may
be all manner of of dark shadows hanging over our lives.
Maybe it's the darkness of our own sins.
Maybe it's the darkness of our failures and our frustrations.
Maybe it's the darkness of sin and death and its effects on our
lives. Or maybe it's just distractions
and the busyness of the season. But Lord, we would be amiss
tonight if we do not fix our gaze on issue.
We praise you, We thank you for your love for us, for your
kindness toward us. Lord, it is our hope now to lift
up the One who is mighty to sing the praises of Christ Jesus.
As our hearts soar with hope and joy, which we have given to us
in Christ, They are ours. Love you, Lord, we thank you for
your love for us. Christ Name, I pray.
Amen.