The Jewish people waited thousands of years for the arrival into the world of the blessed Messiah. Very few understood that he had arrived some thirty years prior as a babe in Bethlehem. When the time was right, God sent his chosen herald, John the Baptist, to announce to the world that the power of sad darkness was being dispelled. The Messiah had come, his name was Jesus, and his ministry as the Christ was dawning.
In this sermon, we learn about the advent of the one who, more than any other, defines, demonstrates, and personifies all that really is true, good, and beautiful. The light of his glory shone in the world as the beginning of his ministry was announced: Jesus Christ, the Redeemer King, who alone can truly save. He is the light of God from heaven, the light of salvation, come to redeem fallen humanity from the power of darkness.
Read the full sermon transcript below!
The first Lord’s Day after Thanksgiving is a good time for our minds and hearts to begin focusing on the incarnation of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Simply put, the incarnation is that Almighty God in the person of God the Father’s divine Son took upon himself a human body.
As the great and ancient creed of the church says it: he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. In that human body, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and on the third day rose again.
Jesus Christ—the sinless Son of God—became one of us humans so that he could save us from our sin and bless us with life everlasting. No offense to my brethren who choose not to observe the holiday, but personally, I think the coming of God’s Son into the world to save us all is something to celebrate!
Some Presbyterian and Reformed churches choose to observe no Christian holidays. Some observe all the holidays of the Christian seasons throughout the year. Some fall somewhere in between. Neither practice is required by Scripture nor prohibited.
Those who follow the traditional seasons of Christianity and the Church always note this Sunday on the calendar as the first Sunday of Advent. It is the Sunday that traditionally observes the announcement of the Advent, or the coming arrival of the Messiah. And, traditionally, the sermon of this day includes the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist.
John was the greatest of all the prophets—except our Lord—because he was given the special privilege of delivering a message to the world. John’s special announcement could be summed up in the words of one of the greatest Christmas hymns: “Joy to the world! The Lord has come!”
Today in our sermon, we learn about the coming of the one who, more than any other, defines, demonstrates, and personifies all that really is true, good, and beautiful. The light of his glory shone in the world as the beginning of his ministry was announced: Jesus Christ, the Redeemer King, who alone can truly save. He is the light of God from heaven, the light of salvation come to humanity.
The Arrival of the Light
Every royal person needs to have their arrival announced by heraldry, and that is what we find in verses 6-8 of our Scripture passage. The Almighty God provided a herald, a forerunner, to announce to the citizens of this world that the King and Redeemer had come, and to provide a public witness to his grandeur and power.
That one designated by God as the herald of the Redeemer, King, and Messiah was named John. Not John, the author of the book we call the Gospel of John, but another man named John, whom the Bible calls John the Baptist. He was the forerunner, sent by God to announce the arrival of Jesus and to introduce him to the world as Messiah.
John the Baptist came to testify and bear witness of the Light, Jesus Christ, who had come into the world (vv. 6-8): There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.
The light, as we have said, is Christ himself, the light of God from heaven, to be the savior of men. John the Baptist is a key figure in the ministry of Jesus. John was an outstanding, charismatic figure, definitely eccentric by most standards. He wore a tunic woven of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist; his food was locusts and wild honey. He was a Nazarite for life, set apart even from the womb by a lifetime vow which required, among other things, that John did not cut his hair. He was like the prophet Elijah, who preceded him by hundreds of years, a rustic, woolly outdoorsman of a man with a forthright message, and no mincer of words.
John had no qualms about calling things just as he saw them and, therefore, caused quite an uproar in the region around the Jordan where he was preaching and baptizing. The religious leaders were concerned, for they saw John as a threat to them. King Herod eventually had him beheaded at the request of the wicked daughter of Herodias, Herod’s live-in mate. John had condemned Herod for living with Herodias, who was his brother Phillip’s wife. For John to speak out against the king makes it pretty clear that he was no pleaser of men.
People were flocking to hear this courageous, striking figure of a man who preached with power, boldness, and righteous audacity. Luke records that multitudes went out to hear him, only to find themselves confronted by words from John such as these: “Brood of vipers! Offspring of serpents! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” I imagine that would quickly empty out a lot of the squishy churches in our day, but it was no concern for John.
John’s message and ministry, as the signaling forerunner of Jesus, were foretold by the prophet Isaiah, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord: make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Isaiah 40).
The prophet Malachi, four hundred years earlier, had foretold the coming of John the Baptist, who would be the messenger to announce the coming of the Lord, and had spoken of the ministry of Jesus, which John would announce, the Lord through the prophet saying: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold he is coming,” says the Lord of hosts. “But who can endure the day of his coming: and who can stand when he appears?” (Malachi 3).
And John’s message rang true and clear, perfectly in the spirit of what the prophets had said of Jesus Christ: The judge of mankind is coming! He will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and gather the wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. But he brings salvation to the contrite of heart. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, even drawing near!”
John exhibited that one quality that must characterize every man who is a true preacher of the gospel, which is that his message and ministry were not about himself. John was the genuine article; his ministry and message were all about Christ. John said of Jesus, “He must increase, and I must decrease. I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me” (John 3; Matthew 3).
Then, one day, while John was preaching and baptizing, the one for whom he had been sent as a witness appeared…the one who was the true light…the light of the world for whom John and all the faithful of God had waited for so long.
One day, John saw Jesus coming toward him. John saw him and knew who he was, because God had revealed it to him. As Jesus approached, John cried out: “Behold! The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world! John bore witness of Jesus, saying, “I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God” (John 1).
John’s baptism of Jesus marked the beginning of Jesus’ own ministry, the inauguration of his ministry as Messiah. With the dawning of the ministry of Jesus, the light which had been coming was shown to have arrived to shine on men, as you can see in verse 9: There was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.”
That great prophecy of Isaiah had come to pass in the eyes of the watching world: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined” (Isaiah 40).
That true light, the light of God, the light of salvation, the light that gives spiritual life—Jesus Christ, the son of God and savior of men—had come to the world. John announced his public arrival, beheld him when he had come, and testified of him to all who heard his preaching—“There he is! The Lamb of God! He is here! The Light of the World!”
The Light Rejected
How grand and glorious! How it thrills our souls to know that, indeed, the light of the glory of God and of salvation for men came into the world in Jesus Christ. However, the arrival of the light of the world was not welcomed by all.
In fact, moving forward to our next point, we learn that by many the light was rejected (vv. 10-11): “10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. 11 He came unto his own, and those who were his own did not receive him.
Jesus was about 30 years old at the time of his presentation by John the Baptist. For some thirty years, from his birth until the time of the public ministry of John the Baptist, the Lord of glory, who himself had made the world, had been living and walking in the world in human form, yet was unknown to most. Ironically, once his identity was clearly revealed, most wanted nothing to do with him.
James Boice states it tersely, “We know from experience that if a man does not want to see a truth, he will not see it.” That statement is true. Because of the blindness and spiritual deadness of the fallen human mind and heart, people frequently will not acknowledge what they want to deny, even with the truth staring them in the face. When people saw Jesus, truth is precisely what they were beholding, the very essence of truth, who termed himself, “The way, the truth, and the life.” The people of ancient Israel did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah because they had no desire to recognize him as such.
The prophet Isaiah said it would be this way, when by the Holy Spirit he spoke prophetically of Christ hundreds of years before his arrival, saying, “He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we did not esteem him” (Isaiah 53).
People don’t like to think of themselves as despisers of truth. They rather fancy themselves bulwarks for the cause of truth—open-minded, understanding, willing to accept truth, fair-minded, noble in character. That is what a person likes to think of himself. But that is by no means the nature of man as described by the apostle John. John wrote of the propensity of mankind in his natural state to hate the light of God’s truth and to deny it.
John wrote of man’s natural reaction to God’s truth as manifested in Jesus Christ, saying, “This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:19-20).
When Jesus came into the world, his light—the light of God—shone upon man’s moral darkness and revealed that sinful blackness for what it is. People in whose hearts the Holy Spirit of God did not reside hated Jesus for exposing their sin. They would not acknowledge him to be God’s Son, the Lord of Glory, and the way of salvation.
Unregenerate men and women would not acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord then, and they still will not today in their natural state. Why? Until the Holy Spirit changes a person’s heart, giving him spiritual life, he has no desire to know Jesus; no desire, at least, to know Jesus as he really is. Some people, in an attempt to cover their lost condition, fabricate a Jesus of their own liking, but who is by no means the true Jesus Christ as presented in God’s Word. Therefore, rather than turning to the truth, they in effect turn away from it.
Because of his sinful fallen nature, it is not man’s natural way to turn to God but rather to turn from him. After man fell into sin in the Garden of Eden, the Bible tells us: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (Genesis 3:8).
That is the nature of man in his sin—to hide from God, to deny God, to reject God’s offer of grace and mercy. Man is blind to the truth of his sinful, fallen condition; blind to the truth that there is forgiveness of sin in Jesus Christ; blind to the truth that he desperately needs forgiveness and salvation; blind to the fact that without Christ, he has no hope forever. In fact, until a person’s darkened mind is brought to life by the Holy Spirit, he is even blind to the truth that he is blind.
Man in his natural state cannot see this, because the one whom he has made his god—the devil—doesn’t allow him to see it. Paul wrote of the devil in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, [He] has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Jesus came to his own created world, even to his own people, the Jews, and they for the most part wanted nothing to do with him: “He came unto his own, but his own received him not,” says John. This rejection of which we speak should not be taken as if mankind is simply indifferent to Jesus. It was not as if the people of Jesus’ day had no interest in him and quietly ignored him. No! The world of fallen humanity was, and is, apart from God’s special grace, actively and consciously hostile to Jesus.
The children of darkness hated the light then, just as they do today. How much do people hate the light in their lost condition? So much that they conspired together to have Jesus Christ—the light of heaven and salvation—nailed to a cruel cross of suffering and were glad when he died. They hated the light of God that shone from Jesus Christ.
Fallen man, under the influence of Satan, tried his dead level best to rid the world of spiritual life from God in Jesus. It was, of course, to no avail, for our King of light triumphed over and defeated forever that evil spirit of darkness and all who follow him.
The Light Received
John paints a grim picture of the heart of fallen man, who by his very nature has no desire to know and to trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord. John also informs us, however, that though all men are fallen, not all men are lost.
In the souls of many, the Holy Spirit of God does a miraculous work that only God can do. He gives them spiritual life. Those in whose hearts the light of spiritual life then shines do not reject the light of salvation in Jesus, rather turn to it. With gladness in their hearts, they receive Jesus Christ with God-given faith unto salvation.
John tells us next, therefore, of the light received. The very first clause of John’s explanation shows forth the light of hope and encouragement for fallen man (vv. 12-13): “But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
The Jews in Jesus’ day had little concept of the fact that to be a child of God, you must be born again. They tended to believe that simply by virtue of the fact that they were the physical, genetic, blood descendants of Abraham, they were accepted by God as his children and on their way to heaven.
In John chapter eight, the Jews argued with Jesus over this very point. Yet Jesus told them very clearly that it is not the physical descent from Abraham that saves anyone, but faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Abraham, in ancient days, two thousand years before Christ came into the world, believed in Jesus. That was the salvation of Abraham, the same as any other person. He believed in the one who was to come to save men from their sin. Jesus told the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
That day of the Redeemer who came into the world, the day that Abraham saw with eyes of God-given faith, was the very reality John the Baptist had been sent by God to announce. But the Jews of Jesus’ day couldn’t see it. They could not see the necessity of being born again. They had taken a great truth and distorted it into a malformed lie.
It was not their Jewishness that brought them to salvation. Being a biological descendant of Abraham, nor any other human merit, can never make one a spiritual child of God. So what is it? What is it that gives a person the status of being a spiritual child of God? What does John say? He says (v. 12), “As many as received Jesus, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.”
There is the part that the people of Jesus’ day were missing, and which so many do not grasp in this very day and age. Faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord—faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin—is the only way any person can be saved. You must believe in Jesus Christ as your only ground of righteousness before the living God. You must trust in his sacrificial, atoning death on the cross, where he shed his blood to pay the penalty of the moral guilt of his people to reconcile us to God. That is it! As many as receive Jesus in this way, God accepts as his very own dearly beloved children.
Gordon Keddie writes, “In practical terms, John is asking his readers a vital question about their true relationship to Jesus Christ. Are they born of God, or are they somehow depending on their ancestry or church connection? If they are born of God, then they know the power of a saving knowledge of Christ in their experience. Whether they were dramatically converted, like a Saul on the Damascus road, or came regenerate from the womb, like a John the Baptist, they know Christ in the power of his resurrection—the power that regenerates dead souls. The Christian’s experience of believing in Christ flows from something which no created power can affect—being born of God.”
You see, it is the same for us all. Whether we have come to repent of our sin, believing in Jesus as our Lord and Savior through a dramatic conversion experience that rocked our world and left us never the same. Or whether our testimony is, “I have never known, and can never recall, a time in my life when I did not trust in Jesus as my Savior.”
Whichever the case may be in the life of the Christian, all of us come to be Christians the same way and only one way. Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3).
The man to whom Jesus was speaking when he said these words was himself a highly respected teacher of the Jews, Nicodemus. This man, Nicodemus, didn’t understand this spiritual birth of which Jesus spoke, although he at some point came to faith in Jesus. Jesus explained it in similar terms as John in verse 13 of our passage for the morning: children of God…who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
This spiritual life that any and all must have to be true children of God is not received by bloodlines, not by the procreative act between parents, in fact, not of the will of man at all, but of God. Jesus explained it in these terms: “You must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).
Those who are born of the Spirit, who have been regenerated, who have been given spiritual life and enabled to believe in Jesus’ name…upon these God himself has conferred the status of being his own dear children, born of him and adopted by him into his own family.
Conclusion
And so, in conclusion, what about you? Are you one of these spiritually born and graciously adopted children of God? Are you? What are you trusting in for your salvation? What will take you to heaven when you die?
Are you like the Jews who trusted in their physical father, Abraham? Do you think you will be admitted into God’s kingdom of heaven because Mon and Dad made it? Do you think you are right in the eyes of God because you do enough good works to earn his favor? Do you think you are saved simply because you were born into the church by Christian parents?
All of these are important things, mind you, and not to be minimized, but none of them will gain for you forgiveness of sin and life everlasting. You must be born again. You must believe in the death of Jesus on the cross as the payment for your sin and trust in him as the only means by which you can be forgiven of your sin by God and have life everlasting. Are these things your testimony? Are you trusting in the true light who is Jesus Christ? The children of God have been given spiritual birth—new life, spiritual life from the Lord of Life. These are the children of light, spiritual light from the God of Light. These are the followers of and believers in the True Light who has come into the world, Jesus Christ. Are you one of these? Are you a born-again child of God? You must be, says Jesus our Lord, to see the kingdom of heaven.