John 1:1-14
December 1, 2024
What do you do at your house to get ready for Christmas? I’m sure some of you decorated your entire house inside and out over the past few days, while others may have only put up a few modest decorations in the living room. Some of you may have put up your Christmas tree on Friday, while others like to wait until December 23 – making the decorating of the tree the last order of business for the season.
But there’s one ritual that is carried out at this time of the year in probably every home across the country. You go to the attic or crawl space in your house and stumble around a little bit among the many things that are stored there, looking for those well-worn boxes marked, “Christmas.” You brush off 11 months worth of dust off the top and carefully carry them from their hiding place to the living or family room.
These boxes are almost like a treasure chest to you. Someone else might think that the contents of the box are nothing more than glass, metal, and plastic, but to you their very presence make them very important to you as the contents in the box may contain a lot of sentimental value. Come Christmas morning there will be other boxes to surprise and delight you, but the joy of this box, here and now, is that everything in it is very familiar. It may even smell familiar, as you carefully open the lid and gaze once again at the treasures of Christmas past.
As you start going through it, you find the ornament that you and your spouse bought to commemorate your first Christmas together as husband and wife. It may be a little tarnished or ragged from various moves, but still it is a treasured keepsake. Then you find the one that says, “Baby’s First Christmas.” For many of you this ornament may still be fairly new. But for the rest of you, as you look at your child now, it seems so long ago since you first hung it on the tree. Whether that ornament is new or old, the memories rush back and it seems like only yesterday.
Somewhere inside that box marked “Christmas” you will probably find some smaller boxes. Inside one of those boxes you will find tissue paper or bubble wrap that are wrapped around several small objects in order to protect them. One by one you carefully unwrap the different objects, finding Shepherds, Wise Men, sheep, cows, donkeys, Mary, Joseph, and finally the baby Jesus. As you look through the remainder of your Christmas box, you find a curious mix of sacred and secular: angels and reindeer, Santa, stars, and bells. But there is one character you won’t find in that box, even though he is the central figure during these weeks of the Advent season, and that is John the Baptist. He appears on the scene at this time of the year every year, dressed in camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and he simply wants people to listen to his message.
What’s interesting is that the writer of the Gospel of John never mentions the title of “the Baptist.” Although baptism is mentioned in this chapter as something that John does, it is not who he is. His identity is that of a witness of Jesus, the Light of the world, so that through his testimony people would look to and believe in Jesus as the Savior. Note that our text says in verse 7, “He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him,” not “in him.” His job was to point people to Jesus and his message was not “follow me,” but “follow Jesus.” But some people had questions, namely the religious leaders of the land who asked John who he was. John told them, “I am not the light;” and no matter how many times or ways they questioned him, he never lost his focus on who he was and what he had come to do.
It is so easy today to lose our focus and to become distracted during this special time of the year. There is so much to do, so much to think about. There is shopping and decorating and socializing. There are special family and work activities that can be overwhelming. I’m sure many of you started thinking this weekend about all the things you need to do for Christmas. It
can be a lot of fun, but it can also be exhausting to the point that you get burned out or even depressed.
But if you truly take the time to focus yourself and others on Jesus, if you let Him be your top priority during this season, things change. In fact, everything else seems to fall into place. Just as John pointed people to Jesus, so you can be that person who points people to Jesus, the Light of the world.
There are plenty of advertisements for shopping during this time of the year. There are lots of advertisements for giving to charities. There’s a lot of talk about holiday parties. Lots of sappy articles and Hallmark movies about family and love. But where are the advertisements about the Light of the world, Jesus Christ? Where are the articles about the birth of our Savior? Well, those advertisements are sitting right here in the chairs in front of me. The advertisements are you and me. During the first century, it was John the Baptist. He was the witness. He was the one who testified about the Light of the world, but now it’s you and me – we are the witnesses.
But what does that mean? What does that look like for all of us? How does one become a witness for Jesus in our world today? Paul tells us in Romans 13 that we are to dress a certain way. He says, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Romans 13:14). That is, we are to live differently from people who are not Christians or those who do not attend a church. We are to live as God’s forgiven children, demonstrating a different kind of life to them, which involves being thankful in all circumstances and putting others before ourselves. But this is not easy. Even though we are children of God, we still have natural inclinations to want to wear the clothing of this world – the clothing of lust, greed, and deceit. In fact, Satan is constantly trying to rip Christ off of us by putting other activities in our lives that take our focus off of Jesus at this time of the year, or causing tensions within our families and friends, thru gossip & lies, the pushes us away from each other.
We have this wonderful gift of love and forgiveness that God has given to us, and people crave this gift. There is a story of a father and his 18 year-old son who had a relationship that had become strained. So the son left home and broke off all communication with his family. After several months, his father began to search for his son. After searching and searching, he finally put out an ad on social media that read, “Dear Jim, meet me in front of Starbucks on Main Street tomorrow at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Dad.” The next day in front of Starbucks at noon 10 guys showed up named Jim. They were all seeking forgiveness and love from their fathers.
Being a witness for Jesus involves loving and forgiving each other unconditionally, and that is certainly different from the ways of our world. But it also involves sharing your faith with others when the opportunity presents itself. When someone notices that you are different and says, “I always feel so stressed out during the holidays. I can’t wait until they are over. How do you seem to keep it all together?” You can respond with the simple Christmas story saying, “What helps me during the Christmas season is remembering what’s most important. During my life, I have made mistakes over and over again, and no matter how hard I try, I’m still making mistakes today. But I know God still loves me and He demonstrated that love by coming down to this earth in the person of Jesus. He was born for me, He lived for me, and even though I do not deserve it, He died for me to forgive me, to wash away all of my mistakes so that I could live with Him today and forever – that’s what Christmas is all about. When I focus on that, I am able to truly enjoy the holiday season.”
Be a witness for Christ this Christmas. Live that Christian life for others to see and share that simple Christmas story with others. Don’t let yourself get distracted this Christmas. Be a John the Baptist and point people to Jesus. Who knows, maybe through you someone will receive the greatest gift of all this Christmas – the gift of faith in our Savior, Jesus.
