Have you ever had the experience of Christmas of being given a present that you are not sure what it is for? You're not sure what to do with the present that you've just been given, or perhaps more exactly, you're not sure what it does for you—how it would improve your life to have this present that you've been given. Anyone for musical toilet rolls that, as you unravel the sheets, plays you the tune of Jingle Bells? You know what it does, but you're not quite sure how it improves your life. You might—pardon me for saying—it could drive you potty. But none of you have to buy Christmas crackers, so you can't complain, right?
It can be like that with the Lord Jesus, can it not? So you—we know that He is the greatest gift. We know that either because you're a Christian and you deeply believe that that is the right answer—that God's greatest gift to you at Christmas, and all year round, is the Lord Jesus Christ—or you know that because maybe you're not a Christian, but you do actually know that that is meant to be the right answer, even if you're not fully persuaded of that yet yourself.
You know that He is the greatest gift of Christmas. But what's He for? What do you do with Him? Or what would He do for you? Or—even if you understand what He does for you—how does having the Lord Jesus actually improve your life? Or maybe you even know all the answers to that, but what He doesn't do is light your life up. He doesn't delight you. You can know what He's for, but you just kind of know it. You can tick the boxes, but it doesn't absolutely fill you with overwhelming joy to have the Lord Jesus in your life.
We're looking at these famous verses in John chapter 1 over three morning services, asking the question: who came down at Christmas? John, who wrote John's Gospel, is introducing Jesus to us before writing his whole book about Him. But as well as introducing us to who Jesus is, John tells us what it is that we're supposed to do with Him. He tells us what it is that Jesus does for us. And so this morning, we're going to look at verses 6 to 13—we looked at verses 1 to 5 last week—verses 6 to 13. And in these verses we will find three things about the Lord Jesus.
Jesus was revealed
The first is that Jesus was revealed. Jesus was revealed. So, in the verses we looked at last Sunday morning, we discovered that the person we know as Jesus has always existed for all eternity. Even before there was a universe, He existed as the Word. If you were with us at Encounter on Wednesday, we thought together there how it can be that the one that we call the Word—who's always existed—could become a human being. But He's always been around. His story goes right back before the dawn of time. And this Word is coming into the world.
The question is: how do you know who He is, so that when you meet the Word born as a human being, you can recognise Him—you don't miss Him because you failed to recognise who He was? And the answer is that God sent somebody—somebody called John the Baptist.
John the Baptist was like all the prophets of the Old Testament, but he had a very specific job. His job was to point to the Lord Jesus and to say: that's Him. That is the Word. That man right there. Not that one—that one.
We meet John later in verse 15. We meet him further in chapter 1 at greater length. We meet him again in chapter 3. He's a really important figure in all four of the Gospels that we have that tell the story of the life of Jesus. He is the signpost pointing to Jesus and going: that's Him.
Our Prime Minister Boris Johnson made mention in a speech a few weeks ago of his visit to Peppa Pig World. I think he only made mention of this because he got confused where he was in his notes and thought he would fill the time while he was trying to find his place. And now the media has been full of people either criticising our Prime Minister or rushing to his defence. And it is not the job of the Christian preacher or the place of the pulpit to join in that particular circus. So I have no comment for you this morning on whether I think Boris is a good Prime Minister or a bad one. And to be honest, all Prime Ministers are a mixture of the good and the bad.
I want to just develop this story in one very particular direction, because what then happened was some newspapers got hold of the CCTV footage of Peppa Pig World and were able to confirm that Boris was indeed there. Now, you might expect me at this point to have that on screen—sorry, I've not organised that for you this morning—but here's the striking thing: if you watch some of that, virtually nobody else at Peppa Pig World that day had any idea who he was. They weren't expecting to see the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at Peppa Pig World. So they looked at him and he just looked like any other dad out for a day with his son. Extraordinary. They missed it. And wouldn't you really kick yourself if you're one of the people in that CCTV footage and you realised later that you were on the teacups with the Prime Minister and didn't realise?
Now, by the time we get to the end of Jesus's life, He's done lots of amazing miracles, He's done some impressive teaching, He's gathered a huge following—everybody knew who He was. But right in the early days, nobody knew. He just looked like any other human being, any other 30-year-old Jewish young male. So how do you know? John the Baptist says: that's Him. He needs the signpost.
And so today, there is no shortage of signposts to point us to the Lord Jesus. We haven't just got John the Baptist—we've got the whole of the New Testament, but especially Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We've got the preachers and teachers who unfold the Bible for us to point us to the Lord Jesus. You see, Jesus may have been born on a quiet night in Bethlehem, but that was not because it was God's intention to keep Him quiet. God wants the world to know. It's why He sent an army of angels to tell the shepherds. But the story goes on and on—God wants the world to know who this Jesus is and to know Him.
And so, with such an army of signposts in our own day, we have no excuse for not knowing that the Lord Jesus is the Word made flesh. And there's a slightly strange verse in verse 8—no, sorry, yes, verse 8: He himself was not the light—that's John the Baptist—he came only as a witness to the light. It's a bit hard to reconstruct what was going on there, but it would seem that maybe some people of John's day—John who wrote this—his day, sort of put John the Baptist on a bit of a pedestal and confused John the Baptist and thought that he was the light.
Now, whatever exactly that looked like—and we can't really reconstruct it—there is a warning there for us all, I think. That there is a danger that we take God's messengers in our own day and we treat them as if they were the main course. You see, we don't follow our pastors, we don't follow our life group leaders, we don't follow the teachers of the Bible that you might watch on YouTube. Their job—my job, Lee's job—is to point us to Jesus, so that we can follow Him. And the danger of following the signposts rather than the Lord Himself is a real danger today. So whatever was going on that made him write verse 8, I'm very grateful that he did. The Lord Jesus was revealed.
Jesus was rejected
Secondly, the Lord Jesus was rejected. The Lord Jesus was rejected. And this happens in two stages. What we see here in John chapter 1 is that when Jesus came into the world, He was treated as He always has been.
So, first of all—first stage—is verse 10: He was in the world. Generally speaking in John chapter 1, in this sort of beginning of John's Gospel, when you get the verb to be—Jesus was—it seems to be talking about Jesus before He was born. So I think verse 10 is not about what happened when Jesus came into the world, but what was happening with Jesus before that point. The answer is: He was in the world. He made it. The world was made through Him. His fingerprints are all over it. All over the world, wherever you look, there's evidence that it wasn't formed by chance, it didn't make itself—that there is a Maker who created the world we live in.
God—the Lord Jesus—made us with consciences to know the difference between right and wrong. And probably there's also a reference here to God's dealings with His people in Old Testament times—at that point, the nation of Israel—as God graciously spoke to them, rescued them, led them, guided them, protected them, delivered them. He was in the world. And yet consistently, people shut their eyes.
He was in the world. The world was made through him. The world did not recognise him. They didn't want to know. It's like children playing hide and seek — not the official structured game, but when they don't want to be seen. They don't want you to be able to see them, so what do they do? "You can't see me." That's what we do with God. He's there, we don't want him to see us, so we pretend we can't see him.
You see, if your maker suddenly turns up into the room, it's awkward. It's inconvenient. You suddenly have to sit up, listen, pay attention, and do what he says. And if you don't want to sign up for that, well, then you're going to refuse to recognise him. So, he was in the world. And then what happened when he turned up?
Well, that's verse 11: he came. He came home to that which was his own. And when the Lord Jesus had his big homecoming — came to the world he'd made, came to the people who were his own — what happened? His own people did not receive him.
And so today, Jesus is the greatest gift, and yet he remains, by many, unwrapped, unopened. People reject him. They don't recognise him. They don't receive him. They've got better things to do, other things to fill their lives with, other ambitions they want to fulfil. And somehow Jesus just doesn't fit into that plan. And so he's rejected — often quietly, not rudely, but still rejected.
You see, we love the good things in our lives that are there because the Lord Jesus has put them there. He's the maker of all. He loves to give good gifts to everybody. He showers blessings on every human being. Some have to endure a huge amount of suffering, and it's hard to believe, for them, that there is a good God there. But for all of us, God gives us many things, and for most of us that's really apparent and obvious. We love the gifts the Lord Jesus gives us, but we don't want to know the maker who gave them to us. And we certainly don't wish to bow.
Jesus was received
Jesus was revealed. Jesus was rejected. And thirdly, Jesus was received — verse 12: yet to all who did receive him. Happily, not everybody rejected him. And to those who receive him, enormous blessings come. And that blessing is to be a child of God.
How do you come to be one of God's children? In two ways, according to this passage. The first is verse 12: you are adopted as his child. "Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." He gives you the right, which means it's not automatically yours.
See, God only has one Son that is his by right — that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 13 (we'll look at that in a minute) even says you're not born a child of God; it's a gift given to you. So God only has the one Son by right. But then, in Old Testament times, God adopted the people of Israel corporately. At the time of the Exodus, God says to his people Israel — or says to Pharaoh, actually — "Israel is my son, my firstborn son. Let my son go." And it's the fact that Israel is God's firstborn son that explains why God deals with Pharaoh and the Israelites at the Passover in exactly the way that he does.
But then here, the gift to each and every person who receives the Lord Jesus, who believes in him, is to become part of God's family — to become the special object of his love and care, to become family.
Now, you may have watched The Crown — drama of our own royal family — or the drama about Queen Victoria and her family that was on a few years ago. And what's clear is that there's advisors, there's friends, and then there's family. And family are included to a depth and with a welcome and a homeliness that even the closest friends don't get. And the Lord God, the King of Heaven, invites us to be family, not just friends.
Now, it's by adoption, verse 12 says. It's not yours by right. Now, we've got friends who have adopted children. Let's not over-romanticise it. It can be tough adopting children. I've seen it be very tough for parents. I've seen it be very tough for the kids as well. So let's not over-romanticise it. But let's not be cynical either. It is a wonderful gift to be able to say to somebody who is not your biological child, legally, "From this day forward, we are going to treat you as family. You are not just treat you as — you will be family. You now have all the rights and privileges of any children we are born of our own." What a privilege to gift that to somebody. And what a privilege to do that if it's the Lord of Heaven and Earth who does that for you.
So we're adopted. But there's another way we become God's children, which is verse 13 — which is to be born. "Children born not of natural descent, nor of a human decision or a husband's will, but born of God." So he's not talking about natural birth — he gets that out of the way fairly quickly. You're not a child of God by virtue of your humanity.
You see, it's not a human decision or a husband's will — that's referring to the ordinary process of conception and childbirth. That doesn't make you a child of God. Which means, occasionally, you hear people say that all human beings are born children of God. Well, John would disagree. He would say, no, that's not actually true. Not all human beings are God's children. You don't get it by virtue of your humanity.
You also don't get it by virtue of your heritage. So this is the other bit here, the other "not" — not of natural descent. Not because of the family line that you're born into. Maybe in Jesus' day, some people took great pride in the fact that they could trace their family tree back to Abraham, and they thought because of that, they were God's children. In fact, you meet some people in John chapter 8 who thought exactly that.
And maybe certain people in Britain think that because they're born into a sort of higher-class society, that automatically means they must be God's children. Maybe you think, "Because my parents are Christians, my parents were missionaries, my parents were in Christian ministry of some kind — that makes me a child of God." John says no. Not of natural descent. Not of human decision. Not of a husband's will.
Just by the way, let's not misunderstand this. It is a huge blessing to be born into a Christian home. Huge blessing. Let's not lose sight of that — even to the degree that a great many Christians (myself and Lee included) think that it's entirely fit and appropriate to baptise the children of Christian parents into membership of Christ's church. We have a range of views on that here, which we welcome — the range of opinion — very gladly. We want to keep an openness about that.
But the bottom line is this: that as children grow up, they either grow up rejecting the Lord, or they grow up receiving him. And unless they grow up receiving him, the family into which they were born does not make them children of God. No — not because of your humanity, not because of your heritage. It's not universal. It's not handed down on your bloodline like the title Earl or Duke. It's by birth — by new birth. Born of God.
Read John chapter 3 — this becomes a much bigger theme in John chapter 3. Becoming a Christian is such a radical new start, it's like being born all over again. Starting your life right over.
I've got a friend I used to work with who really hated what he called "born again Christians". Now, what he'd spotted here was that there seem to be two types of Christians: people who have kind of grown up with it, who are quite mellow — and then people who have discovered in their adult years that the Christian faith is true. And they really irritated him, because they wouldn't stop talking about it, and being excited about it, and all of that. And that's what he meant by — he didn't like born again Christians.
Now, regardless of whether you have to be bubbly, exuberant and excited to be a Christian (brackets: no — the difference of personality is quite okay), let's just be absolutely clear: there's no such thing as a Christian who isn't born again. If you are a Christian — no matter what age, from zygote to 97 — you become a Christian, doesn't matter, you are born again. All Christians are born again Christians.
So receive the Lord Jesus. You become God's child. You become a younger brother or sister of the Lord Jesus. This is a pure gift. You are adopted. And it changes your life forever. It's one of the things that comes to you as a part of the radical new birth.
Conclusion
So it's time to unwrap the present. To see what a wonderful thing God has given to us. He's spoken very clearly. He signposted Jesus as the one to come to. Many will do as they have always done, and reject him. Please don't do that here. Although sadly some of us may, many of your friends will. But what's on offer is nothing less than a whole new life in which you can enjoy being a precious child of God.