The Witness

Let's take our Bibles and turn to John 1. We're going to work our way through what's often called the "prologue" to John's Gospel during this Christmas season. That's verses 1-18. It's a very famous introduction to the gospel of John because it focuses so much on Christ coming into the world to be our savior. This morning, our focus during the sermon will be on verses 6-8. I want to read a little bit more just so we can get the context. Let's look at John 1, beginning in verse 1. Stand to your feet if you're able to join me in honoring the Word of God as we hear it read this morning.

Earlier this week. I googled unexpected guests at Christmas. I was truly amazed at how many hits that search got. One of the most common was, what do you do if you have an unexpected guest, and you've got gifts for everyone that you were planning for, but you don't have anything for this unexpected guest? There were these tips for that, like eight tips to keep your house ready for all those unexpected guests who might show up a little bit early or stay a little bit late, or they're the plus one of someone you invited and you didn't know that they had that kind of game and they were gonna have a girlfriend or a boyfriend.

I read one really impassioned letter to a Dear Abby type figure that said, how do I de-invite this unwelcome guest? I'm expecting them, but I just don't want them. How do I make it clear that they're really not expected, not welcome here, because they're just so negative or awkward or they bring up inappropriate things and cause strife? What do I do with that kind of guest?

I read another one that seemed a little intense. It said the best way to prevent unwelcome guests is to never let them get in your house to begin with. I kept reading and it said, "but if they do find their way in there, we have an entire line of poisons and harsh chemicals that can be used." I quickly realized it was a pest control company. It wasn't talking about human pests at Christmas.

I did learn that in Poland there's a Christmas tradition of leaving one empty chair at the table for the unexpected guests. If they were to come, they could be made welcome. There are lots of Hallmark movies and stories about the unexpected Christmas guest who ends up becoming the beloved fiancé or just someone who ends up teaching the family and the smaller circle what Christmas is really for and what it means.

There's a lot about unexpected Christmas guests out there. I was thinking about all this because John the Baptist has always seemed to me like the unexpected guest in this Christmas passage of John 1, John's prologue. Verses 1-5, where we started, are so poetic. They are so profound. "In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God." These are some of the most famous verses in the whole New Testament. You move from the word reentering creation to bring about a new creation, and then abruptly you get verse 5, "There was a man named John." It's not at all what you were looking for. It seems kind of disjointed really. Then we get back to some of the poetic stuff. We hear about "the light coming into the world, coming to his own, those who received him becoming children of God." We're flowing along through some iconic verses about Jesus. We get to that high point of verse 14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." And we're really going places now with this Christmas passage. Then you get to verse 15 and you've got John again making what seems to be superfluous comments, "Yeah, that's exactly right. That's who I've been telling you about. That's the one I bore witness to." I mean, do you even really need verse 15. Could you not just flow directly from verse 14? "The word became flesh and he was full of grace," and then just flow right to verse 16, "For from his fullness we've received grace upon grace?"

Why John the Baptist? Why does he show up in verse 15? It's kind of tough on a preacher who's trying to organize a Christmas sermon series like I have been this month. Then you get back to the high level stuff in verses 16, 17 and 18. Jesus Christ is the very God at the side of God himself, God the Father. But then you get to verse 19 and you're right back to John the Baptist for another half of a chapter.

It probably won't surprise you to know that a lot of Christmas sermons and a lot of Christmas scripture readings just skip over John completely. They go straight from John 1:1-5, all the way down to verse 14. They just cut John out. The reason is because he seems like an awkward intrusion into this soaring text about Jesus Christ and his glory. But we don't need to skip over John. We don't need to skip over him because John the writer (boy that's another thing about John the Baptist, now I've got to spend this whole sermon distinguishing between John the writer and John the Baptist, it's all very confusing), but John the writer, the writer of the gospel, he doesn't think we need to skip over John the Baptist. He thinks that he has a vital role to play in the Christmas story. He teaches us a lot not only about who Jesus is, but how we are to respond to him. So we're gonna try to learn three lessons from this unexpected guest this morning.

I'll just take a little quick survey about preparing for Christmas. How many of you have all your Christmas shopping done, show of hands? I see maybe two people. Ok. How many of you will still be frantically scrambling on Christmas Eve to get your Christmas shopping done? A lot more hands. How many people have been decorated since about Halloween? Ok. How many people are still talking about the decorations that you're gonna put up this month before Christmas gets here? Ok. There's kind of a spectrum. One thing that we can all agree on though is that Christmas doesn't just happen. You don't just roll out of bed on December 25th and everything is the way that you want it to be. It takes a certain level of planning and preparation.

I think that's what verse 6 is getting at too about the first Christmas. Verse 6 says, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." Now, like I said, it seems like a little bit of a letdown after verses 1-5. When you think about the the true light who gave life to everything at the creation now coming back into the world, to go from that big picture to just "a man named John," it seems like a big step down. I think what John, the gospel writer, wants us to understand is that the first Christmas didn't just happen.

The eternal word of God did not just take on flesh out of the blue without any notice or without any warning. God took great pains to prepare for the first Christmas. In fact, you might consider the entire Old Testament, that first part of your Bible, God preparing the world to send his son to save us just like he promised in the beginning. How did God prepare the world for his son? Well, he sent a lot of men. He sent lots of men with messages from him. He sent men into the world that we call prophets to speak to the people about who God is and where we stand before him. He sent men into the world to show us our sin before God and our great need for forgiveness and atonement and reconciliation. He sent men into the world to speak about the promises God had made to meet our great need with the savior. That's what all of the prophets came to preach. That's what the entire Old Testament is about. You might think of the Old Testament as just this big long line of all of these prophets pointing ahead, pointing ahead, pointing ahead to God's promised salvation in Jesus Christ.

God also said in the Old Testament that there would be a final prophet in that line. There was going to be one last messenger who would prepare the way before the Savior arrived. He speaks about him in the very last words of the Old Testament. Does anybody know what the last book of the Old Testament is? Pop quiz. It's the prophet Malachi. You can read in Malachi 3 and 4 about God promising to send one final messenger before the Savior arrived, who would be like the forerunner, the last person to speak, and to announce that the Savior had come after this long period of silence, this long period where God was not sending any of these spokesmen or messengers. This forerunner is going to show up and announce that he had finally come. When this forerunner would speak and point out the Messiah, the Savior, he would authenticate his ministry. You could know that this is really the king who God sent, this is the true savior that we've been waiting for.

It's sort of like when God sets apart David to be that great king of Israel. He sends Samuel the prophet, who everyone recognizes as God's man, to anoint him and to set him apart as King Samuel. This prophet authenticated David. You didn't have to wonder if David was just rising to the kingdom on his own will. No, God sent his prophet to set him apart.

We are going to have a new president of the United States in January. He is going to be sworn in at the Capitol by a Supreme Court justice or by some major recognized figure, because you don't just show up in Washington and declare that you're the president and that you've got all this power. Another authority legitimizes them and authenticates them. That's what this forerunner was going to do. That's what this last messenger who God was going to send was going to do. And that's who John is.

When you read verse 6, "There was a man sent from God whose name was John," that's the ministry that he's fulfilling. John, the Baptist comes like he says in verse 23 to "make straight the way of the Lord," just like Isaiah said that he would, to "prepare the way" for him.

Did any of you go to the Christmas parade on Monday night? Yeah, it was kind of cold, wasn't it? Isn't it always cold for the Christmas parade? We're out there on the sidewalk waiting for the parade all excited. Who do we know that's going to be riding on a float? What kind of candy are they going to give? How long is it going to last? We've got all these questions. We're waiting expectantly. Before the parade comes through, usually there's some police cars with their sirens that come through first. They are preparing the way. They are letting you know, "hey, the wait is over. Here come the bands. Here come the floats. Here comes the candy. It's finally here. And that's what John the Baptist, the forerunner, is doing in God's plan and in God's story. He's preparing the way for the Messiah. He is saying, "The wait is over!"

One of my favorite verses to understand Christmas and God's story is Galatians 4:4. You probably see this on Christmas cards sometimes, but it says, "In the fullness of time, God sent his son." There has been this long period of preparation and waiting and longing. Now, God who rules over history says, "the fullness of time has come." That is John's message. The wait is over. The kingdom is at hand. We're at a turning point in God's story. That's this preparation that goes into Christmas.

My question for you just before we move on is do you know that story? Do you know the story that I've been talking about for the last few minutes? Do you know the story that God is writing in history? If you are like me, you've probably grown up or you are growing up fairly familiar with the contents of the Bible. You know lots of Bible stories. You know lots of names and events. You know some Bible verses. You are fairly familiar with the Bible. For a lot of us, all those stories and verses and lessons, they seem kind of disconnected from each other.

We know that they all have to do with God and that they're good for us. We know they are all part of God's word, but we don't necessarily see that they are a part of this one unified story. But that's exactly what the Bible is. It's the story of God's salvation, of God's redemption, what God the creator has done and is doing to save the world and to save us through Jesus Christ.

Advent, this time before Christmas, is a wonderful time to familiarize yourself with that story. Because when we get into these Christmas passages, we realize there were a lot of preparations before Jesus came. God has been preparing the way, and not only is advent a great time to familiarize ourselves with the story that led up to the coming of Jesus, it's also a really good time for us to realize we're still living in that story. God is still writing the story that the Bible reveals to us. Because now like John, we may be living at a different point in the story than he did, but we're still living in God's story, and we're now preparing for Christ to return just like the Jones family read to us during that Advent reading, just like we've been singing about all morning. We're waiting for the king to come back and complete this work that he began at his first arrival. We've got some preparing to do.

God's now sending men like me and like others. Maybe your grandma or your mom or dad or whoever has opened the Bible to you and told you about Jesus. He's sending people into your life to tell you, "hey, we're living in a story that God is writing and we need to prepare for the next event, and that is the coming of the Savior, the coming of Jesus, the king to make all things new."

Are you ready for that? Are you living like you're in God's story or are you, like we're all so tempted to do, living like our life is just a story about us, and our hopes and dreams, and our wants, and our achievements, and all the things that we pull off for our own glory. Do we understand that we live in God's story and we're preparing for something great? And that great something is the return of Jesus. John the Baptist reminds us of that Christmas preparation.

Now, I want you to imagine something really far fetched. You invite me to your family's Christmas gathering. What family doesn't want a Baptist preacher at their Christmas party? I'm in high demand, right? But let's just imagine that you do that. There I am with all of your family. I don't know any of them and you're trying to be hospitable. You lead me around the room and introduce me to everyone. And the way that you introduce me is by saying, "This is my pastor. His name is Eric Smith. But, I just want to be clear, this is not the pastor I've told you so much about. This is not the pastor that I love. This is not the pastor who changed my life with his amazing sermons and by being there for me. This is not the pastor who's just so great that I can't stop talking about all the time. This is not that guy. He is not nearly that important in my life as that other pastor. But we're really glad that he's here today for Christmas." You know, I would give you points for clarity since you're clarifying who I am and who I'm not. But after about four or five of those, you would excuse me if I would slip out of the room and go back to my own family's Christmas party, because nobody really wants to be introduced by how not significant they are. Nobody wants to be introduced by how they are in a subordinate position to someone else who's so much greater than them. Nobody wants to be introduced by a negative comparison to someone much greater.

That's what's so funny about this passage to me. John the gospel writer seems to drag John the Baptist into this text simply to tell us over and over again about who he's not and what he's not, constantly telling us about how comparatively insignificant John the Baptist is. That's the kind of treatment he gives him every time he comes up. "He's not the light. He's not the Messiah. He's not this prophet that we've been expecting." And we can almost start to feel a little bit bad for John the Baptist after a while. But then when John gets to speak up on his own behalf, he says the same thing when the the Pharisees and those messengers come to him and say, "John, what do you say about yourself?" All we hear is that not, not, not, not, not, "I'm not the Christ." "I'm not the prophet of Deuteronomy 18." "I'm not Elijah reincarnate." "I'm not anything really all that special or that significant. I'm just a voice telling you about who is really important. That's all John says about himself. It's like John the Baptist does not want any attention or applause. Why?

In our psychoanalytical age, we would probably say that he has self-esteem issues. He didn't get hugged enough when he was a kid. He would have a dad telling him now, "John, you're great. You have a lot of strengths." We think that John the Baptist needs to be in therapy or something, but that's not why John the Baptist keeps drawing attention away from himself. No, John knows that God sent him. He knows that he's got a purpose in life. John has found something so much more glorious, so much greater, so much brighter, so much more beautiful than himself. That's what he's occupied with. John the Baptist knows that what he's discovered is so much more brilliant and splendid than anything that he is or does. All of his own glory just fades in the light of this greater glory.

If you're like me, sometimes you forget to unplug your Christmas lights in the morning or they're not on a timer, and what was so bright at night time, you can't even tell that your lights are on in the middle of the day, when the sun is at its full strength, right? What is one little clear Christmas light bulb compared to the sun? Well, that's what John's glory is like compared to this greater glory that's appeared. Who is the greater glory? It's Jesus. It's the eternal word that made all things, that has now taken on flesh and come back into the world to save it. The light of the world in human form, coming back to the very ones that he gives life for. He is called the lamb of God. When John meets Jesus, when John understands that Jesus is this Messiah, he knows nothing could be more ridiculous than for him to draw attention to himself, than for him to talk about him and what he's doing or what he's going to accomplish when Jesus is close by.

I tried really hard to get up those steps gracefully today because I ran a marathon yesterday in Memphis and I am stove up. If you know what I'm talking about, I'm stiff. It was in Memphis and it was the St. Jude marathon. About mile eight on the St. Jude Marathon route, we ran through St. Jude Children's Cancer Research Center. It's premier in the whole world. It's an incredible ministry, an incredible resource just right down the road in Memphis. What's so beautiful about this race is that the families of these patients and some of the patients will come out and they'll bundle up on this cold December morning to cheer the runners on while we're running through the campus because the race is raising money for St. Jude. You want to talk about humbling! Who is going to run through the St. Jude campus and say, "Hey, let me tell you all about all that I went through to get ready for this race." "Hey, everybody, look at me. Call my name out. Aren't I something?" Nobody's gonna do that at St Jude. Am I right? Because there's a much bigger picture going on. You're aware of something that's really so much more praiseworthy, something so much more moving, something so much more worth talking about and thinking about and giving your attention to.

That's how it is for John the Baptist when he gets close to Jesus. He didn't hate himself. He just knows there's something so much better close by. We're going to see this really every time John the Baptist comes up in John's Gospel. When you get to John 3, a lot of John's followers who've been his disciples, they're gonna leave him and they're gonna start following Jesus. Some of John the Baptist's followers stay with him. They get kind of salty about it, "Oh, there they go. I thought they were a part of us, but there they go following Jesus. John, the Baptist says, "Well, let's shut that down right there. For me to want attention with Jesus right here is like the man of honor at the wedding trying to steal the attention of the bride from the groom." That's gross. That's ridiculous. Jesus is the bridegroom. This is his show. This is his world. This is his story. He has come to ransom his bride. I'm just his best friend. I'm here to serve him and to celebrate with him.

Then he says in John 3:30, "He must increase and I must decrease." Let's say that together. He must increase. I must decrease. That's a really good verse for Christmas time, isn't it? It's a really good verse all year long, but it's really good at Christmas because I think in this season, we're all tempted to focus on ourselves in one way or another. Maybe we focus on whether I got that gift that I really wanted and thought I deserved? Maybe it's does my family appreciate all that I do to serve them and pull all this off? Maybe it's is my holiday all that I dreamed of? Maybe as I'm looking at photos that people are putting online, I'm comparing my life as I perceive it to their life as I perceive it. And I become filled with self-pity and bitterness. We being to say, "Don't I deserve really a lot more and a lot better than I really have?

John the Baptist, this unexpected guest at Christmas, reminds us really how silly and how small and how sad it is for me to focus on me when someone so great as Jesus has come to rescue us. Artists throughout church history have often painted John and they almost always portray him the exact same way. Do you know how they they paint him? Pointing away from himself and pointing to Jesus! That's who John the Baptist is. That's the attitude with which he approaches life. That's true humility. And we want to embrace this at Christmas time.

True humility is not hating yourself. It's not devaluing yourself. True humility is forgetting about yourself, because you've become occupied with something so much better, something so much more glorious. It's amazing. I've seen this in my own life. Most of all I see it in the lives of other people I care for. The more concerned you are with your own greatness, the smaller you grow and the more miserable you are. But the more you forget about you and focus on Jesus and pointing to him with your life and directing others to him, the more significant your life becomes Jesus is going to say about John in John 5:35, "He was a burning and shining light." No, he was not the capital "L" light of the world, but he was a burning and shining light that drew other people to me. Now that's real significance. The more you forget about you and point to Jesus with your life and make your prayer when you get up in the morning, "Jesus, how can I make you be big in my life and for the people you've placed in my life? When you start making that your prayer, you'll find that your life actually becomes much greater and you actually become much happier. I think a large percentage of the reason why so many of us are so sour and miserable is because honey, we just think about ourselves too much and we need to stop thinking about us and we need to start thinking about Jesus, and how we can point to him. John reminds us of that. It also reminds us of this.

Now, I've been calling him John the Baptist all morning because I mean, what do you expect? This is my guy. I'm a Baptist preacher. However, John the gospel writer never calls him that. He doesn't call him John the Baptist. He calls him John the witness. Can you say witness? Verse 7, "He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him." Now, look, we know from other parts of the Bible that John the Baptist did all kinds of cool stuff. He preached fiery sermons. He dunked all kinds of people in the Jordan River. He led a major revival between the Old and New Testaments. He stood up to kings and those who were in power. He ate bugs and dressed like Elijah. He has a miraculous birth story. He is the cousin of Jesus! There's so much about John the Baptist that is so awesome. And yet, John the gospel writer boils his mission in life down to one word. He was a witness.

Do you know what a witness is? A witness is someone who reports to others what they have seen, what they have heard, and what they have experienced. John's gospel uses that term 'witness' over 40 times. It comes up over and over and over again. Some people have called John's Gospel one big trial for Jesus in which John the writer is calling one witness after another to the stand to tell us about him.

Later in John 1, Andrew and Philip are going to be witnesses. They're going to say, "Come and see. We have found him. We have found the one that we've been waiting for." In John 4, the Samaritan woman is going to say, "Come and see a man who told me everything that I've ever done." In John 9, this man born blind is going to say, "Look, I don't know where this guy came from, all I know is that I was blind, but now I see." Witnesses. These are witnesses to the miracles that Jesus performs. They tell us about who he is. Jesus himself is going to say, "The father bears witness to me." He affirms that Jesus is the Savior. The Holy Spirit is sent into the world to bear witness to who Jesus is. Witnesses, witnesses, witnesses. But the very first witness is John the Baptist. That is what makes him so special. We got to hear a little bit about his witnessing in those verses that I read with our scripture reading, especially in verse 29, "Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

John is that first witness, but what's the purpose of a witness? We know that in a courtroom, a witness is not just telling stories to entertain the people who are there. No, a witness is presenting evidence to help a jury make a really important decision. That is what the witnesses in John's gospel are doing too. That's what John the Baptist is doing. He is not doing all this pointing, and crying out, and teaching just to entertain us. He's not doing that for his health. He's not doing that just to inform us, or to tell us something interesting. He's trying to help us make a decision. A really, really big decision about Jesus. What John is trying to help us decide is that Jesus is worth believing in.

You see that word in verse 7, "that all might believe through him." That word believe shows up 100 times in John's Gospel. That's what this book is all about. John the Baptist and John the writer want you to believe in Jesus. Not just believe that he existed. There's hardly anybody in Hardin County this morning who doesn't believe Jesus existed. No, they mean something more. They want you to believe in Jesus, to trust him, to receive him in the way that verses 11 and 12 talk about. John 3 says, "to rely on him." This means to lean the weight of your life and eternity on him, and to entrust him with all that you are, to trust him to take your sins away from you. That's what it means to believe in Jesus. It means to to put all of you in all of his hands and all of his care.

John is going to say at the end of this gospel, John 20:30-31, the reason he wrote this whole book, "these things are written down so that you may believe that Jesus is the son of God and that by believing may have life in his name." John the Baptist is the first one to remind us that this is really what Christmas is all about.

Now, as you watch Christmas TV shows and movies and listen to Christmas music over the next month, you're gonna hear a lot of silly stuff about what Christmas is for, what the purpose is. I love it because this is the time of year where everyone's so nice to each other However, John the Baptist reminds us that the purpose of Christmas is not just to give you this sentimental feeling that lasts for two weeks because we play all these songs that you used to listen to with your grandma and hear these inspiring stories. That's not what Christmas is for. The purpose of Christmas is for you to hear a testimony about Jesus. It's for you to be confronted with a person, the savior who God has sent into the world, and to press you to make an individual personal decision about what you think of Jesus. What are you going to do with Jesus? How are you going to respond to him? Will you believe in him? It's great that you believe that he actually existed. But will you believe in him so that you won't just be changed for a couple of weeks, but that you'll be changed forever. Your sins will be forgiven and you will receive life abundant and eternal.

I want to press you too. I want to be a faithful witness. Will you believe in Jesus? For the people in this room who are growing up around him and around his story, have you personally believed in him? If you're here and you're a child, you're a teenager, your parents believe in Jesus, and that is a wonderful gift, but you've got to believe in Jesus. Why not make it this Christmas? Put your trust in him. Take your sins and lay it on the lamb of God. Let him take them away from you forever and ever. Let him lead you into eternal life.

Maybe some of y'all are here visiting because you know a preschooler that sang earlier. I know that was a lot more fun to listen to than what I've been doing for the last 35 minutes. But if you're here today and you've not believed in Jesus, he offers himself to you today without reservation. Why would you hold back from him? What is it about this God who made you, who knows everything about you, and still loves you and offers to receive you just as you are? He offers to cleanse you forever before God. What is it about Him that causes you to hold back from him, to put your life in his hands, to believe in him? That's what witnesses are for. That's the purpose of Christmas.

This could be the greatest Christmas of your life if it's the Christmas that you came to believe in Jesus. I plead with you to do it. It'll be the greatest Christmas gift that you will ever receive and the people who care about you could ever receive.

The other thing that John the Baptist reminds us of is for those of us who have already believed in Jesus, witnesses are really important. The role of a witness really, really matters. It says in verse 7, "John gave this testimony so that all might believe through him." They can't believe in John, right? John can't save anybody. But by his witness, he can connect people to the one who can save them. Isn't that amazing? That God still sends regular old men and women like you and me to be his witnesses and to do something eternally significant, to point to Jesus, to use our little bitty lives, our little bitty lights to shine on Jesus Christ and change people's eternity. Is that not incredible? It is amazing. You are called to be a witness.

If you've not believed in him, you're called to believe in him. If you have believed in him, you're called to be a witness for him. It can change somebody's life. You know somebody whose life it changed? John the gospel writer. I think that may be the pre-eminent reason that he drags John the Baptist into this, because John the gospel writer before he was a disciple of Jesus, was a disciple of John the Baptist. He was following him around preparing his heart, getting ready for the savior. He was there that day when John the Baptist said, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." And John the gospel writer believed in Jesus because of John the Baptist's witness. Now, John the Baptist, he may not be the light, he may not be the word, he may not be the Christ, but he led John the gospel writer to Christ. I'd call that pretty significant.

Isn't it amazing what God can make of your life when you stop worrying about what God's making of your life and you simply point to Jesus? Let's pray and ask God to help us.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church