“The Outsider Who Became an Insider”

John 1:14

1. Read John 1:14-18
2. before this passage I feel like…
® Jr high art student before a Rembrandt masterpiece
® High school garage guitarist listening to U2’s The Edge
® Ranch Hills golfer playing in the Masters at Augusta
3. I can only scratch the surface of this passage this morning. I hope & pray that God will honor my scratching by grabbing your hearts minds wills & emotions.
4. prayer

Gift
1. the one thing that marks Christmas in our culture is giving. The National Retail Federation estimates that the average consumer will spend $700 on Christmas gifts this year. Have you ever carefully bought a friend a Christmas gift that they absolutely refused to accept?

2. this week a friend of mine brought a homeless man from Canby to the church so he could use our shower. He hadn’t showered since summer. The 1st thing this man asked me when he saw our shower was – do you have hot water? I said yes. He told me his feet were numb – his shoes & thin, worn-out socks were wet.

3. Ronell Warner, Executive Director of The Canby Center who has an office here, put together a large bag of socks, gloves, scarf & toiletries for him. My friend brought him some clean, dry clothes. He left freshly showered, dressed in clean clothes, with new warm socks, scarf & gloves.

4. this homeless man has a homeless friend who was invited to come for a shower & help BUT he refused to come. The gift was offered but he passed on it.
5. there is a sense in which all of us are like these 2 homeless men, spiritually speaking. In desperate straits. Hungry. Cold. Dirty. Needy. And without access to a hot shower, clean clothes, new socks & gloves. We can’t do for ourselves what we need done for us. Someone from the outside has to help.

6. and this is what Christmas is all about. NOT giving $700 of gifts to one another. BUT God giving us the invaluable gift of his Son Jesus Christ. Savior of this cold, needy, hungry, dirty world. The gift is offered – are we going to accept it or pass on it?

7. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. This is the story of the outsider who became an insider.

Word
1. Word is one of God’s names. Of this Word John says –
® 1:1 - eternal (in the beginning)
® 1:1 - God (was God)
® 1:3 - maker of all things
® 1:4 - brings life & light to what he has made
® 1:10-11 - not recognized or received when he came
® 1:12 - to those who believe in him he makes them his children

2. the fact that God names himself Word tells us something very important. Words are used to communicate. Languages, paragraphs, sentences, expressions depend upon words.

3. God the Word is a communicator, a talker. God the Word has spoken to us. In the Word God speaks. We’d better listen to this Word.

Flesh
1. in the Greek language of the New Testament flesh is a salty, earthy word. Flesh here means flesh & blood, the body, a human being. Literally, God the Word became a body, a person. The outsider became an insider.

2. Scot McKnight calls this God’s absolute identity with us. God became what we are. Human in every sense of the word except without sin.

3. Jesus the Word is fully God & fully human. And that’s the mystery we ponder in this season of Advent & Christmas.

Made his dwelling among us
1. made his dwelling is the word for tabernacle or tent. In the Old Testament the presence of God was established 1st in the tent of meeting while the children of Israel were in the dessert. Then in the tabernacle. Then in the temple. Then in the flesh & blood of Jesus his Son. Now in us as the temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

2. In Jesus God pitched his tent among us. He tabernacled himself in a human body. I love how this is rendered in The Message – The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.

3. God is local. Among us. This is the genius of the gospel. God makes the 1st move. He comes to us, localized in the flesh & blood of Jesus.

4. high school, beginning of college was a hard time for me. Conflicts with my parents. Hating church. Slippery attempts to find my social niche. I felt like my parents just didn’t understand what it was like to be me.

5. if only my dad could have jumped into my skin & spent a day with me to…
® feel my baffling emotions
® face my alluring temptations
® encounter my raging hormones
® experience my apathy & boredom in class

2. but it was impossible for my dad to crawl inside my skin.

Good news
1. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God has done what my dad couldn’t do. He has crawled inside our skin. He’s entered into our world & experience. NOT as a spectator BUT as a participant.

2. I remember once in Mexico talking to a taxi driver in Puerto Vallarta. He was driving us to a restaurant. He was married with 3 children. He worked 12-14 hour days. Seldom got a day off. Just to support his family at poverty level. He was exhausted. I tried to empathize with him, tried to put myself in his place. But I couldn’t. I was a spectator of his life NOT a participant in it.

3. God the Word became flesh in Jesus to participate in our lives. But why? Did God do this out of boredom, curiosity, as an experiment? He did it out of rescuing love. John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

4. believes is the operative word here. You believe in your mind & heart that Jesus is God & lived & died & rose from the dead for your sins. You confess with your lips that he is your Savior & Lord. And you follow that up with the very way you live your life 24/7, every day, all the time. You live for Jesus & not for yourself. This is called the gospel, the good news.

Three ways to live
1. according to Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, there are 3 ways to live our lives. Religion. Irreligion. Gospel.
2. Religious people strive to live a good life. God will accept me because I’m a good person.

3. The Irreligious or secular person says I can live my life however I want as long as I don’t hurt anyone.

4. Both the religious & secular person, as different as they are from each other, are their own Savior & Lord. They save themselves by how they live.

5. The Gospel is radically different from both. Jesus is Savior & Lord. He saves us. We can’t save ourselves. We are saved by grace alone, faith alone, his death alone.

6. Religion stresses truth or holiness. This is how you must live to be saved. But its truth without grace. And truth without grace is moralism. Too hard, sharp, too dogmatic, too black & white.

7. Irreligion or secularism stresses love or grace. The secular person says it’s all about love. Love includes all. Love is tolerant of all. But love without truth is relativism. Too soft, sentimental, schmaltzy.

8. what we get in the Word became flesh is the gospel. In the gospel grace & truth are united in Jesus Christ. He is full of grace and truth (14); grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (17).

9. grace informs us that we are treated better than we deserve to be. We don’t have to answer for our sin. God forgives us by his death on the cross & resurrection from the dead. Truth informs us that a penalty must be paid for our sin & Jesus paid it. And Jesus the Word doesn’t just point us to the truth but is the Living Truth. Truth is a person.

10. Jesus is not full of the news of grace and truth – grace & truth are full in him. He is grace & truth. Truthful grace & graceful truth.

Response
1. in the life, death & resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we are loved by God. Ours is to embrace & believe that we are. Ours is to invite Jesus to be our Savior. Ours is to give our lives to Jesus.

2. and when we do we are showered, we are washed clean, we are given new spiritual clothes, we are given new hope for the present & the future. Christmas is about turning religious & irreligious people into gospel people.

3. pray with me…..




Music I listened to while sermonizing – Eagles; Brian Doerksen; Handel; Sarah McLachlan; Over the Rhine; U2

Books I read & studied while sermonizing – The Intimate Merton by Thomas Merton; The Road by Cormac McCarthy; The Living Church by John Stott; The Shack by William P. Young; The Rhythm of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer by David Adam;