We all like a good story with characters who are from humble origins, don't we? I think we're drawn to them because you and I can relate to those stories because I think we're probably all from humble origins. Anybody here of royal stock here? This is your chance to brag or have any of you born into high esteem? No, they're not. 

We're drawn to these stories where people come up from the bottom, right? It's actually a really popular mechanism for stories. As I was thinking about different stories that have this I had two that came to mind to me right away. And you probably have some of your own. The first one that came to mind, and I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this is a movie called The Princess Diaries. 

Now, I have to tell you, I didn't go looking for this. I have two daughters. Okay? Don't come up here and take my man card or anything, but the story of The Princess Diaries has this young girl whose parents were split. She doesn't know anything about her dad and her parents were split or divorced when she was very, very young, maybe even when her mom was pregnant. 

I know the story, but not that well. Anyway, her dad dies and so it comes to her knowledge that she is a princess because her dad was a prince, but because her dad died. She is now next in line for the throne when her grandmother will resign or die. And so it's this girl, teenage girl living in San Francisco coming to grips with the fact that she is really a princess. She was always born of this royal stock, but she didn't know it and she needed to come into it. 

And at the end of the movie, like most movies like this and most stories like this, you find out that she had it in her all the time, right? The other one I can think of is one of my favorite books from The Chronicles of Narnia is The Horse. And his boy Shasta is born and he is separated from his family. We don't know that at the beginning. And he has this man who he calls Father who treats him very poorly. 

And so he runs away. And through the course of the story, he runs away with this talking horse, Bree. And through the course of the story, he eventually finds out that he is a prince and he is the next in line to be a king again. He had it in him the whole time. It just needed to come out. 

And we are drawn to these types of stories, right? Because we sort of imagine it this way. I don't think all of us had maybe imagined stories where we found out we were a prince or a princess but I bet we've all had some sort of imaginary story where we found out we had a billionaire uncle that we were the only heir of, right? I mean, even the Three Stooges did a story about that. But we all have this idea that we're going to somehow or we like this idea that we can somehow be elevated here. 

It's about the ascension of a people, of this coming through and us rising to the top. Now, on the surface, it seems as though the Christmas story is like that, right? Because Jesus is low born. He is born in a manger. We know that he is the King of Heaven, but here he starts at the bottom. 

But at the same time, there's so much more to the Christmas story than the type of stories I was just talking about. Because really, by earthly standards, the movement of Jesus is not one of ascent in this life, is it? Jesus is low born. And you could actually make the argument I think it's fair to make this argument, and not just because I'm making it, that Jesus actually is on a path of descent. He isn't rising by human standards. 

In fact, he's headed to the cross. And we know from Scripture that anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed. So he starts in the manger and he ends up at the cross. And so while we know that Jesus is headed for glory, it's through a path of suffering. It's not through the earthly things that we find of value, it is through what God values. 

And it's not glory in this life, but glory that he has earned through his paying the price for our sins. And so we think about this today, jesus being low born and how Christmas is the story of glory, yes, but not earthly glory, of heavenly glory. This is what we celebrate today. This is what we look at when we think about this. We think about the humble origins of Jesus, but we're also looking forward to the humiliation of Jesus. 

But we know that through his resurrection and ascension, this one who is lowborn, he comes to his proper position of glory because of what he does for us. And he is the light by which we see salvation. The light comes to us in Jesus. And that's the story of Christmas. And so that's what we're going to think about today, this idea of the light that Jesus brings to us in his incarnation, coming in our very own flesh. 

Now, as we look at this passage, we're coming to an interesting passage of Scripture and it's going to talk about the idea of light. It's a very strong theme that comes through here as the Gospel of John begins. And this is one of those passages of Scripture that every time I come to it, I feel like I get a deeper appreciation and I go to love it even more every time I study it because there's such great depth in what is being stated by John here as the Gospel starts out. And one of the things that that I love about this passage is because there's really two senses to it. In one sense, this is a creation story. 

Look. Look at what we have here. In the beginning was the Word. That's creation language. It's going back to the beginning. 

It's not just dwelling with what we have in the story that we're going to hear about Jesus here in John. It's a creation story. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. It's a creation story. 

But at the same time, we know what's coming up later on because we read it. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. That is a Christmas story. And so here as John starts, we have a creation story and a Christmas story together. It all comes and tells us the importance of who Jesus is. 

Now, all of Scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness. Like Timothy paul tells us in Timothy. But there are different perspectives told in the Gospels, right? All of it comes together to help us to understand who Jesus is and what God is doing in Christ. And the true story of Christmas that comes through here in John is different than Luke and in Matthew. 

We don't have anything here in Luke. As I said, it's a Christmas story telling about the Incarnation, but we don't have the things that you put into children's Christmas plays here in John, do we? There's no in. There's no stable, there's no angels. We have heard on high. 

There's none of that. But what we do have is the very clear articulation that Jesus is divine and human. And that is important for us to not only understand so that we know what we believe, but also to say, hey, if this is who Jesus is, if he is the Word who was at the beginning and he's the word who took on flesh, then perhaps he is more than just a wise sage who's come through the ages to give us tips on how to live. Maybe he has taken on this human flesh for a reason. Maybe he is here to show us and to be something for us both. 

And this is the light that Jesus brings. The light of salvation, that salvation that is won by Jesus for his people. And we are that people, a people for his own possession. Now, we're going to look a little bit at the idea of light here. And as I think about this story of light, I'm drawn to a Christmas Eve service of my past. 

I experienced this Christmas Eve service many times. I think it was for the first time in 2003 or so. I'd been working at this church as the youth director for a couple of years, I think. And we were having a worship committee meeting, planning the 11:00 p.m.. Yes, the 11:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service. We used to take honor to that service in our pajamas started late and we were planning this service out and some people suggested that they do the Christmas Eve service that they used to do at that 11:00 service. And I didn't know what this was and what they said, what they told the new pastor and I was that it was a collection of readings of scripture passages about light. And they were trying to decide who would read these passages. And they actually decided that they were going to use an old cassette tape that was recorded of it years before. 

The reason being is the gentleman who had traditionally read it was no longer capable of doing it. He actually had a very rare form of Alzheimer's and he could not do it anymore. He was still alive at this point. And they decided to honor him and the contributions to the church and to sort of honor his family. They were going to use this cassette. 

Well, I don't know how many of you people who grew up in the 80s or were alive in the 80s remember how unreliable cassette tapes were and they were noisy. And so I actually decided to use my nerdiness for good. And so I captured this audio tape on my computer and I sort of, for lack of a better word, remastered the audio to take out the noise and to put it on CD so we didn't have to worry about the tape breaking. So I worked with this audio for quite a bit of time, but I never really listened to it because when I was capturing it to my computer, I left the room. And when I was working with making it sound better, I was working with the waveforms, I was working with it visually. 

So I really got to experience this church service for the first time that Christmas Eve at 11:00 p.m.. And it was interesting because they shut off all the lights. And the first scripture that came was, God said, Let there be light. And this guy who was bringing the candle up lit the match and it was loud, you know, pop, and it was dark in there and there was some light shined there in that sanctuary. And he lit the Christ candle. 

And I'll always remember, and I think I had this emotion every year we did it. So if we did it in 2003, I saw it like five or six times after this. Here this guy Bob, he always came and he practiced bringing it in. And he was bringing the candle in and he would bring it to the Advent wreath and he would set it in on the very last scripture. He had to time it out. 

I think he practiced like probably 510 times every every year. But he was walking in. I remember turning and watching the light and listening to the scriptures and the light would flicker because he's carrying you know what it's like to carry a candle. You're like, here we have this Christmas service going on and that is totally going to go out right in the middle and he's going to have to stop and relight it. But it never did. 

It never did. Maybe he would slow down a little bit. It would come back on. And as I experienced that service every year and saw that light coming up the aisle in the darkness, and finally when it hit, the organist turned on the lights and hit the first chord and we started to sing. It was really awesome. 

But as we did it, I came to a realization that really that whole service talking about light through Scripture, that light coming forward, was really the story of redemption, isn't it? Because we have the promise of the light of Christ, we have the promise of the Messiah all the way back in Genesis. But the story throughout the Old Testament, through the darkness before the Messiah, it's always the question, will the light come? Remember when we were in Genesis and I said the tension in the text was, will the promise fail? As that light was coming up the aisle? 

And as I was watching it, you think, is the light going to go out? Is it going to be snuffed out? And that's the story of redemption throughout history. Will the promise prevail? Will the light fail? 

Or will it come and spread light to the whole world? And we see this in Scripture all over the place. One of my favorite stories, it's just like one paragraph, maybe two paragraphs. And there's this in the historical section of the Old Testament. There's this woman who wants her grandchildren to be king and so she tries to kill all the descendants of David. 

And it's more than just killing a family who wants to be king. Remember, the promise is that the Messiah is going to come from the line of David. And so the story, the tension in that story is you have this woman who is obsessed and almost crazed in getting rid of the descendants of David and she gets rid of all of them except for one. The promise of the Messiah is down to one. The light is flickering. 

The story of redemption, it's flickering. Is the light going to go out? But God keeps his promise and it comes forward. And that story happens all throughout the Old Testament. The light comes forward through the darkness and Christ comes and the light spreads to the whole world. 

It seems as though the serpent is going to win. The serpent is going to put out the light, but the light comes in Jesus Christ. What a beautiful story that's on display for us with the image of the light that God does this stuff. No matter how dark it seemed in the Old Testament, the story of redemption is going to continue to shine. And now the light is here in Jesus Christ. 

And we see here one of the most famous statements in the whole book of John. And at the beginning here, there's a lot of them, right? The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Think about the power of light. I think I've mentioned this before. 

There's no such thing as a flash dark, right? You can't go to the hardware store, get a flash dark, get some batteries, put it in and come into this bright room and shine darkness at people, right? You can't do that. Darkness has no power when light is present. Now, you can try to veil the light. 

Light can recede, but darkness cannot overcome light. And when the source of your light is God Himself, when the source of your light is Christ, that darkness will not recede. The darkness cannot overcome it. And so this is good news for us, because the truth of the Gospel pushes the darkness away and the light does not recede. Christ is our light, and he cannot be overcome. 

And this is unbelievably good news for us as the people of God, because the world can be a dark place. I just got done using the illustration of the Old Testament being a dark place, but we feel that too. The world is filled with darkness. It is filled with evil. The truth of Christ does prevail, but it can be pervasive for us that it feels like the light of Christ is veiled. 

But we have to remember that darkness does not win. Christ has come and he has victory. He cannot be overcome. Regardless of the evil we see in the world, regardless of rampant immorality and destruction and hatred and all those things, the light of Christ is brighter, he prevails. And we see that this is so important in our understanding of who Jesus is, that he is this light who has come because he did not come just mystically. 

It would be really easy to overspiritualize Christmas, really over spiritualize, this imagery of light, right? Oh, we have the light, it's come into our souls, and we have this mystical power, this mystical presence, this ethereal, sentimentality maybe, of how we feel about the light that's in us. But it's more than that. Christ did not just come spiritually in an ethereal, mystical way. We read here probably the most famous statement in John one and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. 

Glory is the only Son from the Father, full of grace, of truth. We're not celebrating today that Jesus came mystically to give us some wisdom. We're celebrating that God the Son literally took on human flesh in real time, space, history for us. And this is important because he has to have our flesh to suffer and die for us. If he is going to do something about the darkness, he needed to be one of us. 

And he is not just a light that is up above and shining down. And now we have to aspire to that light. No, it's a light that came down and dwelt among us. The light has come near to us. And because he is near and among us, he is able to bear the wrath of God for our sin. 

And that light goes out of that truth because we have salvation. A salvation that is the light for us. A salvation that redeems the people of God from sin, death and hell and gives us new life. And we see that this grace that's being talked about here is on display for us in verses 16 through 18. 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 was at the Father's side, he has made him known. This is how the people of God received this life. By faith we have this light, this faith, this salvation. 

By faith we receive grace upon grace. This is God coming to us. It's not about us rising to Him, it's about his grace. And this is what we celebrate at Christmas, isn't it? Because this is how God has been made known to us. 

We celebrate that God the Son came and took on our flesh, and this is the truth that he has come near to us to save us. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. But of course, we make it about so much more. And as I mentioned last week, the trappings of Christmas aren't necessarily bad things. I'm not trying to poo poo all the wonderful things that we do at Christmas, but I can prove to you that we've made it about so much more than the incarnation of God the Son. 

By this fact, we get so sentimental about Christmas that we actually want snow on December 25. Who wants snow ever, right? That shows that we've made it about other things. Again, the trappings of Christmas are actually good things, right? It's a time of year where we get together with family. 

The sentimentality of being together for Christmas is awesome. The fact that we show charity towards our neighbor and care for others during the time is awesome. But without the grace and the truth and the incarnation, all of that means nothing. If we forget what Jesus came to do, that he came for us, none of that means anything. And so it's so important that we remember that this is the light that has come for us. 

This is the light of Christ for us. So as we consider the light of Christ that has come, may we remember this today and every day that we should live in the light. Because Christ has come. He has come through the darkness to break through the darkness for our salvation. But so often I think it's difficult for us to remember this because I don't know about you, but I get distracted. 

I get discouraged by the darkness of the world. The world gets me down. I I can even think that the darkness maybe has more power than it even does because it feels like the world is overwhelming and we have media coming at us from every angle that takes us away from this truth and fills us with everything else that's going on in the world. But we can remember that it is this world that Christ came to save. He physically came in a low born way to be our salvation. 

And we remember that he was not simply low born, he was low through his whole life for us. He suffered for us. And so we can remember this passage here that talks about the light of Christ and his coming in the flesh to remind us of the power of the light. The darkness cannot overcome the light. The light winds and the Lord Jesus Christ is that light. 

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. The message that we must always remember from Christmas is that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the baby in the manger. The gates of hell cannot overcome the light of Christ. He has one. And so may we walk in the light of Christ, for it is the and certain truth of the one who was low born for us, the one who came to be the light of our salvation. 

Amen.

This message was delivered on December 25, 2022 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.