John 1:31 “I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

 What do you want to do when you grow up? I know that that’s a hard question for many people. My children wrestled with the question. I don’t believe that any of them ended up in exactly the positions they once envisioned for themselves. I changed my own career plans during high school. Even in my adult life I have received calls that made me wrestle hard with what I should do. Did I want to teach at our college or seminary? Did I want to work as a synod administrator? Or should I remain a parish pastor?

John the Baptist’s career had been chosen for him before he was born. An angel told his father Zechariah what his life’s work would be before John was even conceived. Long before that, the Old Testament prophet Malachi had foreseen his career path. Simply put, John came so that “he (Jesus) might be revealed to Israel.” John was here to announce Jesus, explain him, and introduce him to the world.

Not all of us have been called to preach and teach full time. But if you believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes your sins away, the eternal Son of God who existed before all things, then you are here for a similar reason. Your career, your life, your path (no matter what it is) has been woven into Christ’s cause.

God has made you parents and grandparents to lead your children and grandchildren to know Jesus from the baptismal font and Sunday School. He has called you to live a godly life where you live and work, because your relationships and friendships may become an opportunity to share your faith. Your gifts and offerings help reveal Jesus to people all around the world.

The time you volunteer at your church helps to make him better known and understood in the community where you live. Whether you are conscious of the fact or not, everything you do, every moment you are awake, is part of your own mission project, because you see who Jesus is, and your life and faith reveals him to others.

When I became a homeowner, I became intrigued by the TV shows about real estate: House Hunters, Love It or List It, Property Brothers. Not everyone looking for a house has the “vision” to be able to see a home’s potential, to see past old carpet, unusual colors, and the current owner’s clutter. People who can see often get a good deal.

Not everyone perceives the value behind Jesus’ humble exterior. You see it by God’s grace. He takes away your sins. He is the God who loves you. Share the vision.

John 1:30 “A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”

This is how John the Baptist described Jesus. How does Jesus “surpass” John? He was John’s younger cousin by six months. He came from a less prominent family. Jesus’ stepdad was a simple carpenter from a small town, while John’s dad was a priest who worked at the temple in Jerusalem. At this point in time Jesus was practically unknown to the world. John had a ministry that was drawing large crowds and had caught the attention of the top leaders in Israel. John could have been tempted to put himself ahead of Jesus. After all, his ministry came first.

Tons of people didn’t see Jesus as any greater than themselves. They still don’t. He’s a great man, they may believe. But history is littered with great men. You can take your choice which ones to pay attention to, and which ones to push off to the dusty corners on the outer fringe of your memory. They may feel safe, we may feel safe, neglecting Jesus or ignoring him, because we don’t really see him. But it isn’t safe. We need John the Baptist to help us see Jesus, and to see his place compared to ours.

“He has surpassed me,” the Baptist says, “because he was before me.” I will admit that John doesn’t come right out and say, “Jesus is the eternal Son of God and Creator of all things.” The people weren’t ready for that. But he is implying it. In what way was Jesus “before” John? He was born six months later. Jesus himself later says of John that “of those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11).

Still John insists that he isn’t even worthy to tie Jesus’ shoes. Jesus was “before” John in the sense that he existed as the God and ruler of heaven before the beginning of time, and so, long before any human beings were conceived and born. His place far surpasses John, when we see Jesus as he really is.

Where do we stand? In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis addresses the people who want to reduce Jesus, who pronounced himself the forgiver of sins, to the status of “Great Moral Teacher.” “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. … Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Obviously many people either ignore Lewis’s logic, or they simply don’t care about it. They insist on seeing Jesus as something less than he is. That is the nature of unbelief. It is as much (or more) a problem of the heart as it is a problem of the mind.

See Jesus, and see his place, especially see his grace, and you see that he is not someone for us to neglect or ignore. Trust the one who far surpasses us all.

John 1:29 “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Jesus is a lamb. Nothing very spectacular about that. We could interpret John’s metaphor to mean a number of different things if he called someone a lamb today. You could be as gentle as a lamb, or as soft and cuddly as a lamb, or as easily led astray as a lamb. But there is only one point of comparison, one picture, “Lamb of God” would have raised in the minds of a 1^st Century Jew. Jesus was a Lamb of sacrifice. This was a man destined to die. And a lamb died as a sacrifice for only one reason: “…who takes away the sins of the world.”

That’s not something many people want to look at. The problem isn’t with the blood and the gore. No, it just doesn’t interest them very much. They don’t see the need. If John had said, “Look, the motivational speaker of God, who inspires the hearts of the world,” now we’re talking. That’s something I can use. Or maybe, “Look, the life coach of God, who mentors the behaviors of the world.” We’re headed in the right direction. Inspiration, direction–maybe I can get my act together. Or try this one: “Look, the role model of God, who shows the world how the job’s done right.” I need an example I can imitate. Then there’s always, “Look the therapist of God, who makes everybody feel better about themselves.” Bullseye!

If John the Baptist had announced Jesus this way, the priests, Pharisees, and leaders would have beaten a path to his door. They would have embraced him as prophet, promoted him as a celebrity, maybe even hailed him as some sort of savior. But people wouldn’t see Jesus. They wouldn’t see his main purpose. They wouldn’t see the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

 There’s another reason some don’t want to see this Jesus. They don’t want to see their sins taken away. They kind of like them. Sometimes we like the four letter words we use to pepper our speech. We don’t see a need to give them up. The world around us certainly doesn’t.

Maybe we like getting physically intimate with someone we practically just met. Waiting for marriage has become so old fashioned.

Maybe we think our parents are kind of idiots. “Honor” isn’t something we intend to give them. Maybe we just don’t want to work so hard, and sacrifice so much, to live the kind of life the Ten Commandments tell us to live. It’s easier to get comfortable with our sins than to repent and let Jesus take them away.

 Still, John calls out to us, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” Have you ever read John Bunyan’s classic story The Pilgrim’s Progress? It is an allegory of the Christian’s journey of faith through life to heaven. In the early chapters, the hero, Christian, is troubled by the heavy burden he carries. It is tied to his back and shoulders, and nothing he tries gets rid of it. It gets heavier, and more uncomfortable, and he is desperate to find relief.

One day he finds himself at the foot of a cross alongside the road, and there his burden finally falls off. It rolls down a little hill into an empty tomb, where it is never seen again.

When a person is in great discomfort or pain, and they are desperate for help, they will try almost anything to find relief. I’ve known victims of nerve pain ready to amputate a limb. I’ve known cancer sufferers who traveled half way around the world to inject untested poisons into their bodies.

For those whose burden of guilt and sin is too heavy to carry themselves, John doesn’t propose anything so outlandish. He simply says, “See this man. He is here to remove your burden and carry it for you. He will let it kill him so that it doesn’t kill you. He takes away the sins of the world, and the world includes you.” Let him have your sin. It’s the reason he came. It’s his purpose.

John 1:16 “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” 

Our translation is a little interpretive here, but it gets the idea across. “One blessing after another” is literally “grace upon grace.” Grace is God’s gift-love. The picture is that grace just keeps piling up with one gift coming right after another in a stream of gifts that never ends.

What do these gifts look like? Let’s unpackage a few of them. The foundational gift is God’s love itself. Jesus preached it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” He lived it. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love” (John 15:9). He finally gave up his life for it. “No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Isn’t this the one gift almost everyone wants most of all–to be loved? And isn’t this one of the hardest things for us to believe–that we are loved, just as we are, imperfections and all? How much sinful behavior doesn’t come from our insecurities about being loved and lovable?

Young people become promiscuous because they want to create an illusion that someone loves them. But sex isn’t love.

We pile up more possessions, more stuff, than anyone can reasonably use, and shop without control, because we are trying to fill some hole in our heart. But things aren’t love.

We smoke something, or drink something, or pop something, or inject something to numb our emotional pain and forget our emptiness. But being buzzed or wasted isn’t being loved.

We criticize others and pick at their faults to feel better about ourselves. But pride and self-righteousness may cut us off from love more than all the rest.

Jesus gives us more than substitutes and counterfeits and distractions. He gives us the genuine artifact. He gives us grace, the gift of love from God that we don’t have to deserve or earn. And from that gift, we receive so many more. I’m sure you’ve seen Russian nesting dolls before. They are made of hollowed wood, and they stack inside of each other, so that if you pull the two halves of a doll apart, inside is another just like it, only smaller so that it can fit inside. If you pull that one apart, you find the same thing, and so on. While a typical set has from three to twelve dolls, as many as twenty-five is not unusual.

Can’t we open up God’s gift of grace in a similar way, and keep finding new gifts contained within? Because God loves us he forgives all our sins, and Jesus paid the supreme price to make it so. Because God forgives us, our fear and doubt are replaced by faith. Because we trust God and know that our sins are forgiven, we have peace in our lives. Because our hearts are at peace and God loves us, we can experience real joy, even when our outward circumstances aren’t so positive. When God’s love leads us to faith, the Holy Spirit comes and lives in our hearts. In addition to love, peace, and joy, he starts producing “kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). As a redeemed and forgiven child of God my life is filled with purpose now. Even when I die my soul will go to live with God until he brings my body back to life on the last day, perfected and glorified.

That’s more than death insurance. It’s part of a mighty river of gifts that never stop flowing over us from the spring of divine grace. And every one of them traces its origin back to Christ, who has come to give us such gifts in the first place.

Matthew 2:9-11 “After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.”

            Before the Magi offered Jesus the three gifts that we know so well from this story, they gave him something worth at one and the same time far more and far less than the treasures that follow. They gave their hearts. Why else would they be so filled with joy when they saw the star again? In the Greek, Matthew actually piles up four terms to emphasize how happy they were: they rejoiced with an exceedingly great joy. This trip was not just a matter of duty or a way to satisfy their curiosity. Their hearts were fully invested in this quest.

            How else could they recognize this King when they found him? What did they see when they entered the house? A poor teenage girl holding a baby in an ordinary house in little town off the beaten trail. Nothing about the scene in front of them suggested royalty, much less divinity. Still, they bowed down and worshiped him. Why?

            People often say that “seeing is believing,” and often that’s true. But sometimes, it is the other way around. Sometimes, believing is seeing. Now, there are those who would criticize such an idea as people deceiving themselves. You see what you want to see, whether it is true or not–maybe especially when it is not true. A paper from Yale university reported that scientists make more mathematical errors when the correct math leads to conclusions that conflict with their political views. Like me, you have probably been sent some story by email about a political figure you didn’t particularly like. You were inclined to believe it, maybe even passed it on, because it demonstrated what was so bad about the person. Then you were embarrassed to learn that the story was “fact-free,” no truth to it at all. Believing is seeing.

            But in God’s kingdom, “believing is seeing” doesn’t mean we see what we want to see. It means we see what we otherwise can’t see. Faith allows us to see spiritual truths not visible to our physical eyes. Faith pulls back God’s curtain to let us see what is hiding behind it. Because the Magi trusted God, because he had their hearts, they could see their King, their Savior, and their God in the ordinary looking boy sitting on his mother’s lap.

            So what is this gift that God first desires, the gift of our hearts? On the one hand, can you imagine a gift less appealing? They are naturally so black with sin that there is no real love for God left in them. They don’t offer themselves to God. They are spiritually empty and powerless. Swedish writer Bo Giertz once described the heart as a rusty old tin can God finds on the trash heap–a fine birthday gift to offer the King!

            But a wonderful Lord passes by, has mercy on the tin can, thrusts his walking stick through it, rescues it from the junk pile, and takes it home with him. He works the change that makes our hearts his gift. His own love purifies that heart. His forgiveness shines it up. He knows that once he has the heart, he has our whole selves, and then our whole lives come along to worship the King.

1 Peter 1:23 “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

God illustrates some important truths for us when he describes coming to faith as being “born again.” It illustrates our helplessness. You know people whose pregnancies were filled with uncertainty. Think of how weak, how frail, and how dependent that little baby is before it is born. It didn’t produce its own life. It simply received life from its parents. No baby decides for itself when it will be born. When the time is right, the mother’s body gives birth.

There are many parallels with our spiritual life. Because of sin, we are helpless, totally dependent on God. We have no spiritual life until we receive it from our heavenly Father. Without Christ we are not just spiritually confused or weak. We have no spiritual life at all. This still applies to our sinful natures. Since we must be born again, we are utterly dependent on God. He alone gives us spiritual life.

Peter tells us that God has given this new life through the living and enduring word of God. This word of God is alive. It has a life of its own. Even though you cannot detect a heartbeat, even though you are not able hear it breathing, it lives and accomplishes great things.

The living heartbeat of God’s word is the overwhelming love he gave in the life Jesus lived for us and sacrificed to save us. Its breath is the breath of the Holy Spirit. Like a good germ, this message of love empowered by the Holy Spirit invades our souls and transforms our minds. It drives out doubt and despair. It creates a new life which says, “I trust God and I know he will take care of me.” It overpowers sin and creates a heart that wants to do what is good. It is more alive, more full of life, than anything else we will ever know in this life.

This word of God also endures. Peter illustrates this in the words of Isaiah: “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” We are all like grass and flowers. We are flimsy and frail. Our health doesn’t hold up. We don’t last very long. Seventy, eighty, even one hundred years aren’t that long compared to the great span of history.

Like grass and flowers, our shallow glory fades. The next generation will barely remember our accomplishments. How we looked and what we did just last year is already little more than a memory. The Apostle James sums it up this way: “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

But the word of the Lord stands forever. Long before any of us existed, the word of God was there, the same word we know today. Long after we are all gone, the word will still stand. It will still be the same. It will be comforting, supporting, empowering, and giving life to a new generation, just as it has done for you and me.

Luke 2:21 “On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given to him before he had been conceived.”

We tend to name our children because we like the way the name sounds. Some celebrities give their children strange sounding names like “Football Helmet” or “Pilot Inspektor” or “Moon Unit,” I think because they are unique and they draw attention. I will resist the temptation to say anything more about the practice.

Some people get their names because they run in the family. There is history and tradition behind the name. Some parents name their children after best friends or heroes or people they respected.

The names God gives himself are all meaningful and descriptive. His names are ways that he reveals things about himself to us. The name “Jesus” is no exception.

It was traditional for Jewish families to make a son’s name official on the day he was circumcised. Circumcision officially recognized the boy’s identity as one of God’s chosen people. It made sense to give him the name which would identify him on that day as well.

Unlike other parents, Mary and Joseph didn’t get to pick the name of their first child. That had been chosen by God before he was born. Angels had visited both mother and stepfather to make sure they were both aware.

It wasn’t a strange name. Archeologists have discovered the tombs of at least 70 people named Jesus who lived in Israel about the same time. It is a shorter form of “Joshua,” which was shared by several prominent people in the Old Testament. We know it best from the man who led Israel after Moses.

The name means “The LORD saves,” (that’s LORD as in Jehovah or Yahweh). The angel told Joseph to name him this because “he will save his people from their sins.” Every time we hear or use the name “Jesus,” then, we have a little gospel sermon promising us the forgiveness of our sins.

As we begin another year, doesn’t Jesus’ name promise us new beginnings? When two people live with resentments, they are living in the past. I can’t tell you how much marriage counseling I have done, and it is all about what she did behind my back, and what he said about me in front of the family, and how he always fails to do his part, and she can never control her spending. Two such people are living in the past. It drives everything about their relationship in the present. In one way, marriage counseling is easy, because what we need to do is almost always the same. Someone has to say, “I’m sorry,” and mean it, and someone else has to say, “I forgive you,” and mean it. Unfortunately, those two phrases happen to be two of the hardest things for anyone to say.

The name Jesus received on this day promises us that our God is ready and waiting to say, “I forgive you.” He doesn’t want to live in our past. He wants to put it behind him and us. He wants a day of new beginnings for him and for us, a year of new beginnings, a lifetime of new beginnings. His forgiveness promises that we can start fresh, like it never even happened. Jesus’ name promises that his forgiveness is real, because he came and saved us from our sins.

As we start 2024 together, I can wish you a happy new year, but I certainly can’t promise you one. For all I know the year ahead may be filled with more anxiety and heartache than the year we leave behind. But I can promise you this: with the Lord, every day will be a day of new beginnings, cleansed of sin. God promises it is so, in Jesus’ name.

Luke 2:21 “On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived.”

Circumcision was God’s way of saying to a Jewish boy, “You belong to me.” Other nations practiced circumcision for other reasons. But God had said to Abraham, “Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you” (Gen. 17). This covenant was God’s promise to have nations come from Abraham, to be his God and the God of his descendants, and to live in the land of Canaan.

To be truly circumcised, and to be part of God’s “deal” with Abraham and his family, required more than the outward procedure, the surgical removal of a little piece of skin. The Apostle Paul explained in his letter to the Romans, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, and not the written code” (Romans 2). The idea of “circumcision of the heart” is an idea Paul echoes from the prophet Jeremiah. What it says is that God gave the outward sign to help support faith, but without faith in the heart the outward sign did not make the God of Abraham your God all by itself. Circumcision could make a contribution to your faith. It could not serve as a substitute for faith.

The details God chose for this procedure were not arbitrary. They said something about the message he was trying to communicate. First, a piece of flesh had to be taken. Its removal was a reminder that there is something in our flesh that stands between us and a good relationship with God–namely our sin. It has to be removed for us to belong to God and for God to belong to us.

That piece of skin was taken where a man is involved in giving new life to a new generation. God was reminding them, and us, that sin is with us from the very first moments we exist. We may all commit sins of various sorts. But our real problem is with original sin, the sinful condition we have from our origins.

The second thing to note about circumcision was the timing. Jesus was circumcised “on the eighth day.” “Every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised,” God told Abraham 2000 years earlier. “Eight” is a meaningful number. There are seven days in a week. God created the world in seven days. The eighth day is the first day of a new week. Eight is the number God uses when he wants to say, “There is new life here, a new creation.” When Jesus rose from the dead, you remember what day of the week that was? It was Sunday, the eighth day of the old week, the first day of the new week, the first day of his new life after death.

Unless you were an adult convert to Judaism, God commanded that baby boys be circumcised on the eighth day. It was his way of saying, “There is new life here. When I become your God, and you become my child, then you are a new creation.” Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day, too, not because he had any sin, but God was saying to all of us, “There is new life here. I am his God, and he is my child, and Jesus is truly, in every way, a new creation.”

So what does this have to do with us? In his circumcision, Jesus began his life of law-keeping. On this day he was circumcised. Thirty-two days later he would be presented in the temple with sacrifices. Going forward he would keep the Sabbath, and attend the Passover, and honor his parents, and fulfill the whole law of Moses. This set us free from our need to keep the whole thing ourselves. We begin this year, we live every day, as free people. We aren’t driven by the old threats that say, “Do this, or else…”

On this day Jesus spilled his first blood as our Savior. His circumcision anticipates and foreshadows the complete payment for our sins by his blood shed on the cross. Our entire sinful past, our entire sinful future for that matter, is washed away and disappears under the flood of grace pouring from his sacrifice on Calvary. Spiritually, it is always a fresh start for us.

I suspect that you begin your day with a little time in the bathroom–a shower, a bath, a shave, brushed teeth, and new, clean clothes for the day. You start fresh without yesterday’s dirt coming along.

Spiritually, that’s how we start every day as well. It’s a new beginning, because the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. That is all anticipated, promised if you will, in Jesus’ circumcision.

Luke 2:6-7 “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Everyday there are people who want to worm their way into my life. I receive junk emails from people in other countries who claim that they want to send me millions of dollars. As friendly as their offers sound, I won’t be seeking a relationship with any of them.

I receive telemarketing calls and texts on my cell phone. Often it’s a recorded message telling me I have won something or making a credit card offer. I don’t press the number to talk to a live person or return the call.

Sales people visit my office with various proposals. They would like to do janitorial work, or building maintenance, or design our audio-visual system. Those are all legitimate services, and I don’t fault them for asking. But I know they don’t ask because they are deeply concerned about me or my church. They are mostly concerned about drumming up some business for themselves.

At Christmas, someone came who wanted to work his way into our lives. The things he promised could sound as outlandish as the junk emails promising millions for nothing. But he didn’t come to take advantage of our gullibility, or merely to drum up business for himself. He isn’t running a scam. He doesn’t practice a trade. He genuinely came to give, and to serve. One way I know this is that, when he came, he embraced a manger as his first bed. That is an astounding truth not just because of the lowliness of it all, but the enormity of the one who squeezed himself into that little space.

In the final scenes of the final book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, the children who are the heroes of the series take refuge from a battle in a little shed or barn. On the outside it is just a little building. But when they go through the door, they find a whole new world on the inside. This shed is, if you will, bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. One of the children observes, ““In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

That, of course, is the scene in front of us at Christmas. A stable, and a manger, contained the eternal God who is bigger than the whole universe.

It all sounds a little claustrophobic, doesn’t it–to go from filling and exceeding the entire universe to living in a cramped little body in a cramped little box in a cramped little building? But that’s what a loving Savior does when he comes down. He isn’t merely willing to spend time with little people. He makes himself small–smaller, and poorer than the average soul. He came to be our servant, you see. So he embraces the humility of a manger, and later on a little cross of wood, and after that a cold, stone tomb, where for three days they sealed the lifeless body of the eternal God who fills all things.

He did it so that we, too, could be bigger on the inside than we are on the outside. He did it so that saving faith, and the infinite God, and endless love could live in our little hearts. He did it so that one day we could come up to the vast expanse of his home above, where he lives, and his love rules, forever.

At Christmas I am thankful that he found his way into my world, and into my heart.