Christmas Eve Message

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of the world, I just did a quick Google search, organized religions, and within those obviously there's variants of that and all kinds of different ideas about who
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God is and where we go to know God. There's probably as many ideas as there are people that have existed in the world, everybody has their own ideas, especially in our age, you ask somebody, well,
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I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, I have kind of my own ideas of who God is. And we as Christians obviously know that we go to the
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Bible as God's word to know God. We go to the Bible, it's sufficient for everything we need to know about Him, and there's nothing that we learn outside of the
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Bible about God, especially now from private revelation. But specifically, the scriptures talk about how we know
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God in the person of Jesus Christ. So, yes, in the scripture, but even more specifically,
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Colossians talks about Paul speaks of Jesus as the image of God, and we go to Jesus to see who
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God is. So, very quickly, we're going to look at John chapter 1, the
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Gospel of John chapter 1, verses 14 to 18, talking about looking at Jesus to see who
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God is. So let me just begin to read in verse 14. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw
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His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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John testified about Him and cried out, saying, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.
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For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.
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For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
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No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the
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Father, He has explained Him. Now, this last verse, especially verse 18, no one has seen
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God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. This is just like I was saying earlier, we go to Jesus to see who
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God is. Jesus explains who God is to us. So I just want to look at this passage, three truths about Jesus, three truths about Jesus that we should think of that are going to inform our answer to that question,
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Who is God and where do we go to know Him? It's in the person of Jesus, we see that in verse 18, but three truths about Jesus that we don't want to think about God without thinking about these things.
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Number one, Jesus is truly man. Jesus is truly man. Jesus is truly
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God. I want to do Jesus truly man second. Number one, Jesus is truly God. He is
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God. Everything that the Old Testament or the Bible talks about when it talks about God, those same words and descriptions can be used to describe
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Jesus. Jesus is truly God. We see that in verse 14, Jesus is called the
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Word here, and the Word became flesh. And earlier in John, it says, in the beginning, verse 1, in the beginning was the
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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being.
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Jesus is truly God. It says so explicitly here in verse 1, He was
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God and He created everything. Everything that's come into being, everything that exists, has come into being by the power of Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ.
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Everyone in this room, at one point, did not exist. There was never a time where Jesus Christ did not exist.
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So, in the beginning was the Word, with this Word, this title, this name of Jesus, the Word shows that He is
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God, but also in verse 15 that I read, it says that John testified about Him, John the
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Baptist, this was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.
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Now, from the rest of the Scripture, we know that John the Baptist was born before Jesus on earth.
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He lived on earth before Jesus did. But he says about Jesus here, that He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.
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John very clearly understood, John the Baptist, that Jesus always existed. That just as verse 1 says, in the beginning was the
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Word, Jesus never had a beginning. He was always there. He created everything. Nothing was made without Him.
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Jesus is truly God because He's the Creator and because He's eternal. He's always existed.
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And we could talk about this for hours. We definitely don't have time. But Jesus exists as a member of the
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Trinity. And this is something that's very complicated and hard to understand. Okay, why are we talking about this at Christmas? But God exists in what we call a
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Trinity. One God and three persons. There is one God, it's a truth that's clearly taught in Scripture.
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Deuteronomy 6 .1, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. And then we see at the end of Matthew, the
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Great Commission, that we're going to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And Jesus is equal with God in all
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His attributes. He is equal with God the Father because He is God. And the Spirit is equal with Jesus because He is
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God. Not three gods. Jesus is God, the Father is God, and the Spirit is God.
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But there are not three gods, there is one God. That might not make very much sense, but we have to just confess that and believe it with the rest of the
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Christian church throughout history. And Jesus has always existed with the Father and with the
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Spirit. And when it says, with God, what that word really means is face -to -face with God. Jesus has existed face -to -face with God.
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He's existed with God the Father and with God the Spirit, face -to -face, as it were, in a relationship before time began.
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And even in our culture, there's a preacher that talks about this, that we reserve the special relationship where you can look someone directly in the eyes and hold that eye contact for a special intimacy, a special commitment.
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That's not just something you do with random people. If you do, you should stop. But that's something that exists for a special relationship.
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There's commitment there and there's intimacy. And this is a relationship, the Father and the Son and the Spirit, as it were, locking eyes before time began.
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In the Trinity, a relationship, God exists in relationship. One God, three persons.
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Like I said, we can continue to talk about that because it's been so hard to understand over the years, but we must see
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Jesus here, that He's truly God as a second person of the Trinity. Number one, truth about Jesus, Jesus is truly
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God. Number two, Jesus is truly man. Jesus is truly man.
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Verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That word dwelt is actually more like tabernacled among us.
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Tabernacle. I think we went to, there was a King James Version church only that we were associated with it as a tabernacle.
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I always say that. But anyways, Jesus tabernacled among us. He lived among us.
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He became flesh. This, who is truly God from before time began, entered a created body and entered the womb of the
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Virgin Mary and lived a life on this earth. That's what we celebrate at Christmas. This is where we come to the
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Christmas part of this message. And the word became flesh. Jesus became a man. And He wasn't,
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He didn't just appear as a man. He had a real body. And He lived a life on this earth experiencing everything that we experience.
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He even experienced the consequences and some of the pain of sin without contributing or participating in sin.
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He was the true human. We talk about injustice all the time. There's so much injustice done to the person of Jesus his whole life.
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Jesus was a true man. And He dwelt among us. He lived among people on this earth just as real as we're here in West Boylston today.
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He lived in the Middle East, in Jerusalem, and around Galilee. He lived a real person 2 ,000 years ago with real people like us.
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And they saw His glory. The glory of this
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God who was in the relationship of the Trinity since time began. Since before time began.
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Jesus is truly God. And yet He's also truly man. And number three, finally we see why
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He would become truly man. He's truly God. We know that. And He takes upon Himself a body. But why would
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He do that? Why would He take upon Himself a body? And number three, truth about Jesus that we need to understand, is that Jesus is the
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Savior. Jesus is the Savior. We proclaim good tidings of glad joy.
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There's something to rejoice about in light of Christmas. And that's that Jesus is born.
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And He came into the world to save sinners. Verse 16 says,
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For of His fullness we have all received. And grace upon grace. Grace upon grace is grace on top of grace.
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Grace in the place of grace. If you see a stream, I heard this illustration once. You see, maybe a clear stream, you can see a rock underneath there.
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And you pick that spot, that rock, and you see all the water going over it. And you just see there's never the same water particle.
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I mean, unless it's a round, some kind of pool. But you see all the same water particles. And there's just water upon water upon water.
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And there's grace upon grace that we see in the person of Jesus. But what really is grace?
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You know, that's kind of a word that we throw out that we might have up on some kind of special Joanna Gaines sign that we have in our house or something like that.
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But what is grace? And in the next verse, verse 17, We need to understand the law before we can understand grace.
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For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. The law was given through Moses.
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Moses was a prophet of God. He explained truths about God. We learned. And he even talked about Jesus and pointed forward to Jesus with some of these passages that we're reading.
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But God gave Moses the law. He gave Moses. You guys, you know, it's the Charlton Heston movie with the
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Ten Commandments. He gave Moses the law. And what the law said was, do this and live.
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Perfect obedience is required. Many of you know the Ten Commandments. And then Jesus adds. He, he, he, he intensifies the
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Ten Commandments by saying, not only do you not commit adultery, but you don't even lust after a woman in your heart or you've committed adultery with her.
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But the law is God saying perfect obedience is required. Cursed be every, cursed be anyone who doesn't abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them.
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God requires that you love your neighbor as yourself. And that you love God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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100 % of the time, every day of your existence, with no, oh, I'm not in the groove. No, oh,
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I made a little mistake. Not enough to outweigh the bad. Not enough good to outweigh the bad, but perfect obedience.
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Perfect, perpetual, entire obedience to the law is required. And God will judge everyone here based on that standard.
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Have you perfectly obeyed the law? James, James says that for whosoever keeps the whole law and stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
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Ezekiel says a soul that sins shall die. One sin is enough that you've broken the whole law.
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One sin, and the Bible says, Paul says that the wages of sin is death. The punishment for one sin, for one moment of not loving
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God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And loving your neighbor as yourself for one moment is eternal damnation in hell.
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That's the standard that God is going to judge everyone here today based off of. Have you perfectly obeyed the law?
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Have you kept it? Not only its letter, but its spirit. Your entire existence. That doesn't really sound like good tidings of glad joy, or I think
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I switched it. But glad tidings of great joy. It doesn't sound like good news, does it? The law comes through Moses.
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But grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. There's good news in Christmas.
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The good news is that the one who is truly God became truly man for a reason.
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To save sinners. He was born under the law, Paul says in Galatians. Born under the curse of the law. So that Jesus, he really did perfectly obey the law.
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Every moment of his entire life, he did love his neighbor as himself. He did love the
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Lord his God with his heart, soul, mind, and strength. We see his graciousness towards the outcasts.
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And his desire for true obedience. And he said that his food was to do the will of his father.
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Jesus perfectly obeyed every part of the law. And then he went to the cross.
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Jesus was born to die. Christmas cannot be celebrated without looking forward to the cross. That Jesus suffered on the cross.
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He was crucified for each one of us that would believe in him for our breaking of the law.
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God is just. He's holy. He's righteous. He has to punish sin. We've all broken the law.
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And God pours out his wrath and the hell and eternal damnation on his son on the cross in our place.
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2 ,000 years ago or so on a real place, on a real tree. Jesus was cursed for our disobedience.
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So that when God looks at us, he can see us as if we had perfectly obeyed the law.
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Because Jesus did as our substitute. He looks at us as if we were Jesus. Perfectly obeying the law.
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And he looked at Jesus as if he had lived our terrible life. And then he's not dead today.
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He rose again. And he ascended into heaven. And he's seated at the right hand of the father.
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And so grace and truth have been realized through Jesus Christ. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.
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If you're a Christian here tonight, won't you just take a moment and thank the Lord Jesus for what he's done.
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That he's perfectly obeyed the law in our place. And suffered the curse for us on the cross.
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He made him, the father made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf. That we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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And if you're not a Christian here today. If you have not perfectly obeyed the law, which you haven't.
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And you haven't believed in the one who has. Won't you believe? Won't you trust in Jesus?
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Free forgiveness, full forgiveness is offered to you today. Come unto me all who are weary and I will give you rest,
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Jesus says. There's another great passage I just want to read. It's an invitation to you today.
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A good reminder for us as believers as to what our confidence is in. And a promise to you as an unbeliever here today.
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Oh, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come buy and eat.
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Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend your money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy?
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Listen carefully to me and eat what is good. And delight yourself in abundance. Let's pray.
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Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for your son and for his incarnation. Truly God, truly man, yet he's the
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Savior. Help us to trust in him as believers and for unbelievers. I pray that they would turn from their sin and trust in the