In the Stillness of Night

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We are finishing, well, culminating tonight. We have one more, actually, next Sunday. So you can say good morning to me then, okay? Next Sunday we're going to do God With Us as well, this series to finish off the Christmas season. And tonight, though, we are kind of, it's kind of the culmination of it, because we are looking at the theological term that we've talked about over the weeks called the Incarnation. Have you ever heard of that before? In, in, then carna, like carnitas, do you like to eat? I like to eat. In the fleshness. God in the flesh. And it comes, actually, comes out in the Gospel of John, Chapter 1. But what you can see is, Dan, why don't you show them? I've got the Bible notes up. If you want to look at the You version of the Bible, you can actually get the notes with these little quotes and stuff, you know. What I say is not so great, but there are some good quotes. Not just the Bible, but some good Christian authors and others that have quoted different things. And you might just ponder some of them over this Christmas season. But we're going to start with John, Chapter 1, verse 14 to 18. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. John's Gospels got some of the simplest language with the most profound thoughts. I don't know if you realize that. So that simple phrase, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, or in the Greek, I'm not going to make you repeat this or memorize this. You got close. Kai hologos sarx agenito kai eskenosen enhemen. And that is, and the logos, sarx, flesh became. And eskenosen, tented or tabernacled, among us. Simple sentence. Revolutionary. Absolutely shocking. When the original hearers of John's Gospel read this or heard this phrase for the first time, I am sure they were astonished. Jaws dropped and they were like, what? What? What did he just say? No one had thought about this before. No one had conceived of it. No one had imagined what John wrote in that simple sentence saying the word became flesh. Complete surprise. Now, prior to this, in all human history, if God would show up in any way, because the word was God and the word was with God at the beginning of this passage that Paul talks about. So if God does show up, man, watch out. Scary. Frightening. Power. Glory. Terror. Almost every human being that ever encountered the living God prior to this was scared witless and said things like Isaiah. Woe is me. And I think that's probably a nice English translation for what I would have been saying. Woe is me. I am dissolved. Basically, I am a pile of, I'm falling apart, man. I can't handle this. Woe. Okay. That is what it's like to, and all Isaiah saw at that moment was the trail of his robe, the end of it. He didn't get the whole picture. Anybody, God even said, you try to see me, you're dead. You're dead. So when he was approachable, he still kind of remained hidden, you know. In fact, behind a curtain. And once a year, the high priest could maybe come in and boy, he better go through all the rituals and purification rites and make sure everything was fine. And even when he did all of the things properly and had a sacrifice for himself and for the people, they still tied a little rope around his leg. I don't know if you know this. So that when he went in, if he died, because, you know, something happened, they could just pull him out and nobody else had to go in. That's as close as you could get to God. Now, that was kind of from the Jewish perspective. Others, though, thought in a Greco-Roman world, why would God want to become flesh? I mean, come on. We don't even want. We think this stuff, it falls apart. Have you noticed your body keeps falling apart? And it decays and time wears us down. Why would God, the infinite God, want to come into this finite world? Why would the God who is timeless and above it all want to be bound into time and deal with all of this stuff? Why in the world would God do that in the first place? No, God would do that. The gods just don't even care. They stay away. We talk about them, but really. So, when John said that phrase, it was revolutionary. And when the Jews heard that, they knew that that word, you know, John didn't use just any words for the simple words he used. He used very specific. And like I use that word, hologos, the logos, the logic, the word. When the Jews heard that, they understood. Oh, God communicates. God spe...