Light of Everyone

It's the twelfth day of Christmas, and we're in John 1. The prologue of John is a remarkable piece of literature. For Christians, it is the word of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn. 1:14). He gives light to everyone (Jn. 1:9).

Transcript

Me to the Gospel According to John, Chapter one. The Gospel of John, Chapter one. And when you found that, go ahead and stand for our gospel reading this morning.

00:00:26

Notice these words here as found in what's known as the prologue to the Gospel of John, which is very famous, by the way, if you're new to Christianity or reading the Bible. This is a part of the Bible that is maybe the most famous. And you'll see why. Notice these words here, starting with John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

00:00:57

And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him. And without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life.

00:01:17

And the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light, the true light which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

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He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us. And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

00:02:44

John testified to him and cried out. This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me, ranks ahead of me because he was before me. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

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No one has ever seen God. It is God, the only son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known. O Lord, would you by the power of your spirit, bless and seal this word in our hearts today? And may it bear fruit everlasting. We pray in your name.

00:03:48

Amen. And you can be seated.

00:03:55

Well, Today is the 12th day of Christmas, which means it's actually still appropriate to say merry Christmas. So let's just try that. Turn to your neighbor there and just say, merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

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Merry Christmas. There you go. Yeah. See? Not so hard to do.

00:04:16

And. And yet, when I look around my house, as I Said it is very vacant of any signs of Christmas, except for one. And it's on the external. It's the lights. I put them up and they're still up right now.

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Okay. Because I'm the holdout at our house to make sure that all 12 days get celebrated. Alright, now inside Jessica rules. And like I said, it's empty of any sign that Christmas ever happened.

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Well, here's the point of reiterating and orienting us to where we are in the liturgical calendar is because this is an important day. The 12th day of Christmas is important because we're really at a pivotal point, a time of transition. In fact, we're moving from celebrating the birth of Christ to now to the revealing of Christ to the Gentiles, properly speaking. And this is traditionally understood to be Christ being revealed to the magi. You remember the ones who followed the star, okay, and came to Christ by that way, the wise men.

00:05:34

This is called epiphany. Okay? So an epiphany. The epiphany is always celebrated on January 6th, which is, of course, tomorrow. So the 12th day of Christmas then transitions over into the epiphany, which will begin a new season of the church, which is eight weeks long.

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Okay? And then that'll bring us straight into Ash Wednesday, which is March 5, and then the season of Lent and so on and so forth. You say, pastor, why do we have to say all of this and, you know, have these pyramids and colors? Well, we don't have to. There's nothing in the Bible that would compel us to do so.

00:06:14

Okay, Just to be clear, there's churches that don't, and that's fine. I grew up in a church that doesn't. But when we planted Harvest Point, we put in the DNA a liturgical year and a calendar. And. And the reason was simple, really.

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And it still remains the same reason today that we do it. And it's this. I didn't want to orient my year to a secular calendar alone. That's fine if you follow a secular calendar. You know, a lot of people do in the world, okay?

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But we as Christians, we have another calendar that actually moves us through the year on purpose, intentionally sharing with us and having readings and meditations and. And extended periods of reflection, even on significant events of the Gospel. It's literally the gospel played out in this, what we call liturgical year, this worshipful Christian year. And so we begin, of course, with Advent and then move to Christmas and then move to Epiphany and then to Lent and then to Easter and then Finally, Pentecost. And it's represented here in the flags that we have and the banners that we have and the colors that we always are showing and promoting, because we're moving through it together in these various seasons of reflection.

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And, of course, this is a very old thing to do. In fact, from the very beginning of Christianity, we find it written on the walls in the catacombs. And we know that they were celebrating some of these festivals very early on. But even before that, in the Old Testament, did they not have a year in which they were guided through various festivals and seasons of remembrance? They absolutely did.

00:08:10

And so we're simply continuing a biblical tradition that includes the way we look at the year. And so I would invite you once again to enter into all of what the church has to offer. And on this day, it gives us this profound foundational prologue to the gospel, a beloved Gospel, the Gospel of John. And it's very fitting as it is transitional today to be the last day of Christmas and next to the first day of epiphany, that is the revealing of Christ, the light of Christ, to the Gentiles. It is very appropriate that John 1 be said, because he is the light which lights everyone, everyone.

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And that light has come into the world. This is what we celebrated Christmas Eve, and it is what we're celebrating continuing to this day. So these are significant events. These are pivotal events. And this gospel is maybe the most theological scholars have said.

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It's also most philosophical, and of course, it's also most basic. And so really, what I'd love to do today is just Peruse through these 18 verses with you very briefly, scratching and kind of skipping around the surface here of this beautiful introduction to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to St. John. Now, what we mean when we say that John is more theological is that it's very apparent from the very beginning that his intentions are a little different than the other synoptic gospels. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a genius to figure this out.

00:10:21

If you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they all begin roughly the same way, but not John. In fact, there's not a birth narrative at all in the Gospel of John, which, of course, if you read the other gospels, is unique. Right. You know, instead, John lifts us up and carries us into eternity itself. In the beginning was the word, the Logos.

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Now, I normally chuckle when I preach, but I'm going to try not to do that today because I will 100% start golfing. I don't want to do that. But my little chuckle means That I love what's just gotten said. And that first little bit here in the beginning lifts us, doesn't it? It lifts us up out of time, into eternity.

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And in fact, John's Gospel is often represented symbolically with an eagle. Did you know that you've seen this before in the iconography or in the way we represent it in paintings? These are the four Gospels, right? It's always represented with an eagle. Why?

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Because John immediately swoops down and carries us into the unknown, into the vastness of eternality. Something where we can't go in our finite, time sensitive, contingent selves. No, we must be lifted up by God. And this is exactly what he does, isn't it? In the beginning, which are those famous words in the way that the Bible itself begins.

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You see, this is a new beginning. This is a new creation that the Son of God, the Word made flesh, is bringing about.

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So in the beginning was the Word.

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Now, when you're dealing with something profound. Okay, just a word of advice, okay, because I'm no genius, trust me, you have to get down to basic things like looking at actual words that are there on the page and not trying to get carried too far away or you'll drown, okay? You'll drown out there. Notice this. In the beginning was.

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That term was. A little word was carries quite a punch here because it's carrying us into an existence without reference to a starting point. In the beginning was.

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Now we know that God has no beginning. So we're being whisked into something that is unlike us, unlike anything we've ever seen. In fact, for everything that your eye has ever taken in and beholden is not eternal, but came into being and will pass out of being, at least out of view from us. So this term was here is actually carrying us to an existence without reference to a starting point, and emphasizes this reality, this, the Word's eternal existence without beginning. Notice again, in the beginning was the Word.

00:14:09

So in the beginning of all things already was the Logos, the Son of God. And then notice again, we get carried right away. Again, this term Logos word here, it'll be capitalized in most all translations to indicate that it's not just any word, but rather the word logos. And we find this term everywhere, even in English. Most of you studied biology, right?

00:14:43

You ever notice those are two words smashed together, Bios meaning life, and logos meaning reason or wisdom. So when you study something, you're assuming its intelligibility, right? In other words, that it has some sort of reason or understanding. There's a Reason for life, for instance. And so the study of biology is the study of life or the reason for life and so on with psychology or musicology or theology, all of these words have at their suffix, their logos word.

00:15:29

It can mean also wisdom, it can mean action, it can mean mind. In other words, the word of God is the mind of God, the reason of God.

00:15:47

Well, notice the Logos was with God. Again, nobody said John's prologue was easy. If an eagle symbolizes it, then we're going to be lifted up to where our brains stop at some point and say, oh, and we're just. We have to keep looking. You keep looking.

00:16:11

Don't close up, don't clam up, and don't always just go back to what is seen. Okay? So notice in the beginning was the Word, the Logos, and the Logos was with God, which means the Logos is distinct from God the Father. So just as in the beginning, in Genesis we have in the beginning, God created heavens and the earth, and then later on and the Spirit of God, now a distinct person of God. Now we have another distinction.

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And of course, this is exactly what we note and confess and just did out of our own mouths in the Nicene Creed. Was it not that he is light of light? So what I mean by that, he's God of God, Word of God as God, for the Word was God.

00:17:15

Now, these are basic things to some of you is, yeah, absolutely. And yes, some of us is wow, you know, and it should always be a little bit of wow here, because not one of us, not anything you've ever seen, not anything out here or in here is like God. He alone is Himself, and there is no other.

00:17:45

Now, light from light. Co Creator, Father, Son, Spirit. One way that I appreciate that some of the early church fathers have spoken about the Holy Trinity, God being Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, is to say that the speaker is God the Father. He speaks the world into existence. Yes.

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And by speaking is the Word, the spoken word, who is the Son of God. And the breath of the spoken word is the Holy Spirit of God.

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Co equal, Co eternal. One God, three persons. Three persons, one God. The Father loves the Son. And the love between the Father and the Son is.

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Is the Holy Spirit. Three in one, one in three. A tri unity of persons. Now, of course, that's the easy part, right? No, you say, pastor, I never have really been able to understand that.

00:19:04

That's okay. You join everyone that's ever heard that. Okay. We're not able to fully understand. We can make sense of.

00:19:14

And it is reasonable to Us, okay, but understandable completely. Not so much because God is not one of many, but is Himself. The very act of being itself. He did not come into being. So he's unlike anything that we could ever try to understand.

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In fact, the only way we even know he's Father, Son and Spirit, a holy Trinity, is because he tells us so. So this is one thing about God that could never be gained through looking at nature, through natural revelation or reason, or put simply, philosophy. We had to be told this, and we are told this both in Genesis and now in the New Genesis, John 1. So notice what happens next. And I love, you know, as I've been studying philosophy, this means a whole lot more than it did even a year ago, which is what I love about the Bible, don't you?

00:20:24

As you read these texts year after year, it just goes deeper. Or maybe using the imagery of eagle, it just keeps going higher. We think, like, oh, I got a little bit more. And it's another wrong that just keeps going up, up and away. Here's what he says.

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All things came into being through him. And without him, not one thing came into being.

00:21:00

Again, when you're dealing with something profound, you look at everything. And one of the things to look at is the term thing. What is a thing? What is a thing but a potentiality of anything? In fact, a thing could be an idea, a thing could be an event.

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A thing can be a thing, as we would say, all things, whether sentient, unsentient, right, alive, all things, both in heaven and on earth. What does that mean? But that the angels, which are immaterial and everything material. Notice the way we said in the Nicene Creed was what seen and unseen things came into being through him, all things. And without him, not one thing came into being.

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So that means there's no thing that exists without him. And he is existence itself. He's not just one thing existing, he is existence itself, which differentiates him from all contingent being, which would be all of us. That is to say, we did not choose to be. In fact, the way the philosophers talk about it is you could not have been, right, all of us know that very easily.

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I could not have been what I am.

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I came into being. And God alone sustains all being.

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For what has come into being in him was life. And the life was the light of all people. That's including you, the light that you have. The life that you have is a direct cause of God Himself. He not only created us, he sustains our life.

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We do not have an impersonal deistic God that creates and then withdraws. No, no.

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In the beginning was the Word he. Not. It was in the beginning with God. Notice God is not some energia energy alone. He has energy that supplies the whole world.

00:23:59

It's being. But he's not some impersonal energy. He's not the God of the philosophers. Exactly. The reason we say that is because he's not Aristotle's God.

00:24:13

Exactly. Aristotle had part of it right, but he did not have the personal part right. Because that can't be gained unless the personal God comes and tells us, which he does in his word and in his person when he shows up in his own story.

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Always think of Stan Lee, you remember, who makes these little vignettes in his own movies. You remember, he makes a little cameo, I should say, in his own movie. You know what I'm talking about, the creator of Marvel comic. Like, he shows up and he's in the. Not many people even know it, you know, like, if you didn't know what he looked like, you wouldn't even know that that's him.

00:25:03

That's like the guy who wrote all these characters. He wrote himself in his own play in a similar way. Christ, the son of the living God, the one through whom and in whom all things exist and hold together. Paul says he shows up in person in his own story.

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Now, with any painting, with any book, with any poem, the best person to ask what it means is the author. And the author of life has shown up in person in a man. Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary.

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And I hope you're seeing how all these things in our faith are not just disparate dogmas that don't relate to one another, but coalesce as the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

00:26:04

So all things came into being through him. And then he. He lights everyone.

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Now, what could be said of that? Notice the true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. That's John 1:9. This verse has always intrigued me, and more so recently. What could that mean?

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He lights everyone? Well, one thing that Christian theologians have said is you will be judged on the light you have.

00:26:47

Now, that's good news and maybe bad news at the same time, because those of us with a lot of light, wouldn't that mean there's more expectation there?

00:27:08

I know everyone wants to wonder and ask about the person who never hears the name of Jesus. I do too.

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But in asking, and it's fun to ask and search answers, but in trying to answer that over the years, always drawn Back to the fact that God is just and he will judge based on light. And that's a very serious matter for some of us who live in broad daylight.

00:27:46

I mean, basic tools. Some of the people who did like concordances and whatnot, they say that I think it was Noah Webster, you know, went insane because he's categorizing all these words. And there's other people who had a similar experience in doing concordances for the Bible, finding every word in the King James, for instance. Can you imagine that? Now we just have a computer, and instantly it's in our pocket, and it can look up any word in the Bible in any language nearly.

00:28:23

You can get an interlinear text right here for free. You know how much those cost? A lot. And it's a huge book. I got one in there.

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But it's in your phone.

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And most of us struggle to read three verses a day. We might get in the word of the day. What does that say? You know, I'm not trying to shame anybody but myself to say, to whom much is given, much is required. And we can worry all day long about people who don't have this or don't have that.

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But what of us? If that judgment really stands, that we're judged on what light we have, what does that mean for us?

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Some of us need to do some repenting here at the first of the year and say, lord, would you help me fall in love with your word?

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Lord, would you help me fall in love with you? Because when you fall in love with God, you want to hear from him, you want to talk to him in prayer, you'll bring your request to him, not just leave them for yourself.

00:29:44

How could Jesus light everyone? How could this happen? Well, two ways have been proposed. One is through creation, which is what we call natural light or natural theology or natural revelation. In other words, simply living in creation ought to tell you that there is a God.

00:30:21

Put differently, one could say it this way, science itself, which, by the way, the old word for science, scientia, is actually just knowledge, knowledge of anything, which is why there's a science of everything. Right? There's even a science of knowing called epistemology. Right again, logic. Right?

00:30:44

What are we saying here? What's the real point here? The point is this. God has created an intelligible world, and science is based on that intelligibility. And science cannot do its work if there's not a pattern.

00:31:04

And all of us just, in a very practical way, look for patterns, don't we? You know, we even find it like in spousal relationships, our best friends will say, man, you always do this. No, what are we saying? What we're doing. Our mind is geared in such a way to look for universals.

00:31:24

We want to do this right. We literally do this. And we say, oh, yeah. Like, for instance, this room. Look at the way this room is set up now.

00:31:34

When I go teach college this week, it'd be very similar setup. We'll have some of this stuff, but it'll have some sort of podium and all the chairs facing this way. As soon as we walk in a room, our mind just immediately already knows what's going on in this room. You would not come in here and be very confused by it. Why?

00:31:51

Because we look for patterns, we look for universals, and we start noticing that, you know, you'll be watching sports. You ever notice how they don't do this anymore? They don't have fullbacks. Oh, yeah. They're not really using fullbacks anymore, are they?

00:32:05

Oh, yeah. You see, our mind is just who created the mind? Why does the mind look for universals? Because the world is intelligible. And intelligible things are organized or reasoned or structured.

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Logos.

00:32:24

There's wisdom to be had there.

00:32:30

Which is why science does lead to God. Properly understood, properly followed, science does not lead to some sort of atheism or agnosticism, but rather leads to a creator, a cause for all things, which is exactly what our text tells us today. So the first way that God lights everyone. And Paul will say this as much, won't he, in Romans 1? You guys know this, right?

00:33:05

It's worth reading, though, just in case some of you don't know this. For the wrath of God. Think about judgment again. Judgment based on light. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness.

00:33:24

Notice this. Suppress the truth. See, here's the reality. We have to actually, as humans, suppress the truth. You know, it's that feeling that we get when we're in an argument and we're arguing a point and we realize we're wrong, but we suppress the truth because we don't want the other person to be right.

00:33:47

If you ever find yourself doing that, that's a really bad thing. That's a really bad thing to follow. It's deception at the end of the day.

00:34:03

4, verse 19. What can be known about God is plain to them, who to all people, because God has shown it to them ever since the creation of the world.

00:34:25

His invisible nature, namely his Eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

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All things were made through him, so they are without excuse.

00:34:55

So first way that he lights. Every man is. Every man can simply look out into the world that we take in and know you didn't do this, and the person before you didn't do this. And in fact, no person did this. There's something bigger, higher.

00:35:16

This is why we. It's kind of colloquial. Higher power. Right.

00:35:25

Everybody still with me?

00:35:28

The second way, conscience. This is something internal. God gives us an external and an internal to follow, and they work together, of course. One, we speak of the laws of nature. Well, if there's laws of nature, then there's a lawgiver.

00:35:50

Yes, absolutely. It would make no sense to have laws that you just find out in the woods and. Oh, yeah, the squirrels maybe did that. I don't know. No, that's ridiculous.

00:36:01

Okay, maybe the wind just blew in a certain way. Please, we're trying to be serious. There's a lawgiver, but there's a second type of law, isn't there? And this has been recognized by people throughout the ages as the moral law. Yes, the laws of nature and laws of physics.

00:36:25

Absolutely, physics. And then physics leads to metaphysics. In other words, even for Aristotle, it went from what is physical? You take in the physical, and it leads you up to the meta, beyond the physical. The invisible attributes deity.

00:36:42

But there's an internal law as well, which is the moral law. And this is the one that when you've done wrong. And maybe you've done wrong in December, I don't know, we're already in January. Maybe you've already done something wrong in January, where all of a sudden something we call it your conscience says, whoa, hey, should you have done that? Should you have gotten that bent out of shape over that?

00:37:06

You know, we blow up, or we do this in the moment and we try to forget it, and then we lay our head down in a moment of quiet, something in us says, you know what? That wasn't good, what you did, and you know it. Now, all of us have suppressed that, haven't we? Everybody in this room. And if you say no, please don't say no.

00:37:35

As they say, don't lie in church, man. Come on, just be real. We've all suppressed that. That's not a good thing. He's given us a conscience.

00:37:46

Conscience with knowledge. We have some sort of knowledge of morality, which is why CS Lewis marked in mere Christianity that really, if you just load up all of the laws of all of the groups and tribes and nations and everything, they're almost always the same. Why? Because there is an inner guide that Paul will say in that same Romans, one that we have seared. That's the way he talks about it.

00:38:19

Because we've suppressed it, it will become mutilated, bent, broken.

00:38:31

Yeah, the light shines to everyone.

00:38:38

And that light is not some abstract light, but rather Christ, the reason of God, the word of God, the wisdom of God, the mind of God.

00:38:52

And I love the way that Ecclesiastes 3:11 puts it, says this. He has put eternity in our hearts. He has. There's some longing. There's something that bumps us even from the inside.

00:39:09

And of course, the Holy Spirit works with our conscience, by the way. Something that bumps us and nudges us, impresses on us that when we see death, we just automatically, that can't be it. That just really can't be it.

00:39:32

It's kind of funny, like, I've thought about dying, and everybody hopefully has thought about dying. You should, because it's going to happen. I hate to laugh about that, but it will happen. Nobody's getting out of here without death. There's only one person who's ever come back to life.

00:39:49

That's Jesus. But you know, even when you're about to, like, even when you're thinking about death, it just doesn't seem real, does it? Doesn't seem like it's going to be the end. Because reality is, it's not. It's not the end.

00:40:02

It's death in the judgment. And so this morning, this text here swoops down, grabs us, carries us up to the highest of heights. But not just to be up in the highest of heights in the most esoteric way, instead, to show us our need for the Word in our life, for the need to become children of God. And that's not by heredity. It's not by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

00:40:38

And it's not by any other person than God himself. Notice he gave power to become children of God who were born not of blood or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but God. Have you been born of God?

00:40:57

Have you been born again? That's only by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit. He is here today. He's been working with you, perhaps for years.

00:41:12

Why not say yes?

00:41:16

Some of us have given into fear. And fear is a thing that we cannot see, is not material, and yet we've submitted to it, been under its rain anxiety too. Why not today? Faith. Why not today?

00:41:35

Trust in God. If you put your trust in him, if you put your whole trust in him, he will make you born again. I can't do it. Your parents can't do it. Your best friend can't do it.

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He must do it. And he puts his spirit in us to make us alive in Christ. Do you know the Word?

00:42:04

He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him. Yet the world did not know Him. Let that not be said of us. I want to know you, Jesus. That's an honest prayer today.

00:42:14

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May it be so. Amen.