Sermon Transcript
Many of you have Christmas traditions. You’re probably already doing some of those Christmas traditions since we’re already in December and we’re past November. And I did some reading just for your own benefit of different traditions that people in other places around the world— because this is a very global community right here, we have people from various places around the world— these are actual Christmas traditions that I read about from other places around the world. In Scandinavia, for instance, this Friday, December 13th, is St. Lucy’s Day. How many of you have heard of St. Lucy’s Day or St. Lucia’s Day?
So what they do here is this is in honor— the legend goes that St. Lucy or St. Lucia was a martyr in the 3rd century, and she took aid and food in the catacombs to Christians who were hiding away from the Roman Emperor Diocletian. And she wanted to have her hands free to carry as much food and aid as possible. So she apparently wore a wreath of candles. What could go wrong, right, with a wreath of candles on your head? And so for St. Lucy’s Day this Friday, you all can wear your wreath of candles.
I’m married to somebody who is Scandinavian. Shannon’s Norwegian. You’ve never told me about this. I feel very, very let down by this. I’m trying to convince Nate that maybe for the Christmas Eve service we could hand these out to the children, right?
Wreaths with candles. That’s a What— again, what could go wrong? Now, in Germany, apparently, uh, they have a tradition on Christmas Eve of putting a pickle in a Christmas tree, and whoever in the morning finds the pickle in the Christmas tree, you get a small gift. I was disappointed after I read and I learned that this is an ornament pickle. I thought this is like you put an actual pickle in your tree.
I don’t know what it symbolizes. I’ve tried to find people who actually practice this. This may go back A long time. I don’t know what it’s connected to. Sounds like fun.
Put a pickle in your Christmas tree, see what happens. Just remember that it’s there, because otherwise it’ll start stinking up the house. In southern Italy— I don’t have pictures of this— but in southern Italy, they have a tradition at holiday time of taking unwanted items and throwing them out their upstairs window, which again, this is fun. I’ve looked for videos, haven’t been able to find it. I, I don’t think you’re supposed to throw out family members.
Unwanted items in the home, but— or if you’re supposed to alert people, hey, I’m throwing out unwanted items, but it’s a symbol of I’m getting rid of unhappiness and opening up to happiness. In Slovakia, they have a couple fun traditions. One is the Christmas carp. Yes, the Christmas carp. And what you do— like, you all have heard of farm-to-table.
Well, this is farm-to-bathtub. Because what you do before you kill and clean and prepare the carp is you put the carp in your bathtub and you let it swim for a day or 2. I guess it gets all the juices and all that stuff off. I don’t know what it does. I don’t think you’re supposed to take a bath with the carp.
I’ve not seen any pictures of that. But the Christmas carp is a tradition in Slovakia. And also in Slovakia— this sounds like fun— the eldest male in the home gets a spoonful of pudding and throws it up on the ceiling, and the more pudding that sticks to the ceiling, the greater your harvest will be in the coming year. So try that in your home. Just make sure you clean it up afterwards.
Yeah, so that’s exciting. In Oaxaca, Mexico, they have on December 23rd the Night of the Radishes. Yes, it’s— they take oversized radishes and they carve them and they have a contest. This looks like the Last Supper scene of Jesus and his disciples as radishes. That’s not sacrilegious at all there.
That’s pretty amazing. So sign up for the Night of the Radishes on December 23rd. In Caracas, Venezuela, on Christmas Day, swaths of people go to Mass apparently on roller skates. What could go wrong there? So you can go to Venezuela, just get your travel insurance.
This happened. I have seen videos of this. And this is a really, really big deal. I don’t know how you got to church today. I don’t believe anybody came with roller skates on.
I’m told that the children, there’s a tradition of them actually going to bed on Christmas Eve with their skates on so they’re ready to go. So get your skates ready for that. Now, you may have different traditions, but let’s be honest, sometimes traditions can sort of take our mind off of the true meaning and message of Christmas, right? Because we get more caught up in the tradition than in the actual message and meaning. Of Christmas, there’s a particular tradition that is growing by leaps and bounds.
It missed us because our children are kind of at a different age, but it’s the Elf on the Shelf. You know the Elf on the Shelf? Yes. Wow, like actual applause for the Elf on the Shelf. Um, yeah, so the Elf on the Shelf, as the story goes— retail price $29.95, by the way, if you go on Amazon, and there are accessories if you want to spend more money— but there’s a book that goes along with it And the story is the elf is a scout elf for Santa, and the elf is on a table or on a shelf within the home and spies on the children to watch what they’re doing during the course of the Christmas season.
And then every night, the elf reports back to Santa, flying back to the North Pole to report to Santa who has been good and who has not been good. And then before the children wake up, the elf is usually settled in a new place of the home and is in some sort of mischief. And people do this and they spend lots of money on it, and I don’t really understand why, but I did think we could capitalize on this tradition. So for your viewing pleasure, I do have the pastor tradition of the Elf on the Shelf. So, so what we have here, what we have here, retail price $199.95.
You can pay me. We have Dave in a cave, we have Nate on a gate, and of course Dan on a fan. You can get all 3 for $900 in cash to me, please. But, you know, these traditions, again, let’s be honest, can take away from the meaning of Christmas in different ways, and we don’t want to miss the meaning. Pastor Dave talked about this last night with the children’s choir performances that we had, that so often we can get so focused on everything else that we miss the meaning.
And John here in our study of 1 John has given us some verses. He doesn’t have Christmas in mind, but he has the meaning of Christmas in mind, or what should be the meaning of Christmas for us. And we don’t want to miss this. I think that it’s neat that God sort of arranged this for us to talk about this at this time as we’re entering into the Christmas season. Christmas is about Jesus coming to earth in the form of a man, God in the flesh.
We call that the incarnation. And yet we don’t often think about the why behind that. We know that He came. We know when He came. We know where He came and sort of how He came, the means by which He came.
But why? And John is going to tell us why. And I don’t want us to miss again the meaning here of the holiday that we are celebrating here by being more focused on other stuff. Let’s start in verse 4. Of chapter 3.
You’ve got your bulletin notes. He’s going to explain here for us in just a few brief verses the meaning of Christmas, the message of Christmas. Starts in verse 4. He says, everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is lawlessness.
But you know that he appeared— might want to highlight that, underline that word appeared— he appeared, Jesus. Why? So that he might take away our sins, and in Him, Jesus, is no sin. Verse 6, no one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him.
Verse 7, dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared highlight, star, appeared, is to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God’s seed remains in them.
They cannot go on sinning because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. First thing that we see here right away in verse 4 is why Jesus came and why the, the true meaning of Christmas is Jesus appeared. Jesus showed up to take away our sins.
Jesus showed up to take away our sins. I don’t know what your biggest problem today is. If I was to ask you, what is your biggest problem today, you might say, I’ve got a relational challenge right now. I’ve got somebody who’s opposing me. I’ve got deadlines that are just hanging over my head.
I’ve got a big decision looming. I’m feeling pressure from family. I’m feeling pressure from these relationships. I’m feeling financial pressure. It’s so expensive to live in this area.
I don’t know what you would say your biggest problem is, and I could certainly name different things that I could think of in my own life. That’s not your biggest problem.
Those things are not your biggest problem. Your biggest problem is you. My biggest problem is, is me. Those other things are significant, but the fact is we are sinners desperately in need of someone to rescue us and to take away our sins. But we can miss the meaning of Christmas because we call sin everything but sin, don’t we?
We say it’s a mistake, my bad. I made an error, had a lapse in judgment. We call it everything but sin, but a true Christian is somebody who calls sin what it is. And we have in our minds different ideas of what sin is. John gives us here a definition.
Sin equals lawlessness. Sin equals lawlessness. Everyone who sins, he says, breaks the law. In fact, sin is lawlessness. It’s a pretty succinct definition there.
I consider myself to be a pretty law-abiding citizen. Many of you know that if you ever drive with me or behind me, I tend to drive the speed limit or under the speed limit. I’m a slow driver. I try not to commit crimes during the course of the day. I’m a pretty law-abiding citizen, and many of you are, too.
And so, we make a distinction between us and people who disregard the law, but the Bible makes no distinction. All sin is lawlessness. All sin is breaking of the law. Jerry Bridges, one of my favorite Christian authors, wrote a book a few years ago called Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate. We have certain sins that we tolerate and we accept more.
We have a peaceful coexistence with certain sins. The things that the Bible calls sin, we’re okay with— laziness, gluttony, Having a bad attitude, fear— those things that the Bible says are sin, those things aren’t as bad as murder, are they? But when we lie, we break the law. When we murder, we break the law. Every time we sin, we break the law.
We are lawbreakers. We are lawless, and we need someone to help make that right. And Jesus came— the meaning of Christmas— to take away our lawlessness, to take away our law-breaking tendencies and the penalty of us breaking the law. God hates sin wherever He sees it. He doesn’t hate sin in one person and then overlook it in somebody else.
Why? Because all breaking of the law is disregard, not just for the law. When you and I break the law, we’re disregarding the law, but we’re really disregarding who? The Lawmaker. We’re really saying, God, I hate Your law.
We don’t think of it like that, but Isn’t that what we’re doing? Every time we sin, we’re doing something God hates.
We are lawless.
But we often fall prey to different sort of strategies whenever it comes to sin. For instance, I grew up in a very conservative tradition where nobody taught me this, but I just sort of intuitively feel like I grew up with this mindset of the best thing to do with sin is to just avoid it. So if I avoid sin, I’m okay because doing fill in the blank is sin. And if I don’t do fill in the blank, then I’m not a sinner. But lawlessness is not just intentionally breaking the law, but it’s also ignoring the law.
And it’s not just the stuff you do, but it’s also what’s within your heart, right? You can comply outwardly, with the law, but inwardly have a rebellious heart. And that’s what lawlessness is talking about here, this idea of being lawless. And so you can be a Christ follower, you can have every intention to follow the law, and Dallas Willard calls it kind of having a barcode faith, this idea of whenever you become a Christian, you receive this sort of barcode that as long as it scans at the end of life and it gets you into heaven, you’re okay. Yeah, but what about everything else?
What about how we live our lives? God didn’t save us just to slap a barcode on us and say, okay, you’re good. He wants to make us more like himself. And we need someone to, to take away our sin and to deal with that penalty, but we also need someone to deal with the power of sin over our lives on an ongoing basis. And that’s what this message is talking about.
Jesus came to take away our sins. How did He do that? He dealt with the penalty of sin. The wages of sin is death. It’s eternal separation from God.
It’s hell.
And He came to take away the penalty of sin and to deal with the power of sin on an ongoing basis in our life. And eventually, we will be free from the presence of sin. He came to deal with all 3 of those things. And specifically, I think here He’s talking about the lawlessness with which we live our lives. Let’s call sin what it is.
It’s lawlessness. The good news is Jesus came to deal with that. Don’t miss the meaning of Christmas, the message of Christmas, that Jesus came to deliver us from our sins, to take away our sins. It’s the second thing that we see here in verses 7 and 8. He deals with the fact that Jesus came, he appeared to destroy the devil’s work.
I like this because it’s Jesus the destroyer. This is not a Christmas message you hear a whole lot. Hey kids, what’s the meaning of Christmas? Destruction, obliteration, annihilation. I’ve never gotten that Christmas card from anybody, by the way.
But if you want to send me a Jesus the destroyer Christmas card this holiday season, that would be fantastic. Jesus is a destroyer. He came to destroy the devil’s work. There’s a couple things here that we can point out. One is, is that we see that the devil has been sinning from the beginning, ever since the garden.
Sin did not originate with God. Sin originates and continues and is perpetuated through the devil. The word here for devil specifically is the word for accuser and slanderer. And the Gospel of John chapter 8 talks about Satan being the father of lies. He’s been— he’s not only been sinning from the beginning, he’s been lying from the beginning.
He’s a murderer. He’s been murdering from the beginning. Let’s call it what it is. But there’s also something else unique here in this passage that you don’t hear a whole lot at Christmastime, because let’s be honest, it’s not very politically correct. You have children of God and you have children of the devil.
I don’t see a third option in here. Well, aren’t we all God’s children? You’ve probably heard that, right? Yes, God is our Father. He created us, made in His image.
Everyone’s made in His image, has purpose and identity, and also the ability to have a will to follow Him or not. But we were born into sin. And while God wants to be our Heavenly Father and He oversees all things, because we’re born into sin, we’re really born children of the devil. Nobody teaches this, nobody preaches this, of course, because, well, I’m not that bad off, am I? But again, there’s no third option here in this.
And so Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work. Well, what is the devil’s work? The devil’s work is to oppose Jesus. He tries to steal and kill and destroy and to hinder the work of God going forth in our lives. But he also comes The devil’s work is to oppose you.
How does he oppose us? You don’t have to flip over, but in James chapter 1, verse 13 through 15, when tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. It’s using terms that we might use for an animal who gets trapped and lured and enticed and tempted and drawn away.
And that’s what the work of the devil is, to draw us away from God, to lure us with all the enticements of the world so that we take his bait again and again and again and continue in lawlessness, continue in rebellion against God.
And while we may not intentionally align ourselves with Satan, when we give in to those temptations and we continue to live in that way, we are giving in to what the enemy wants to do. And Jesus came to destroy that, which is not just— he came to destroy the penalty of sin, he came to destroy sinning itself. Think about that. The desire for sin will always be there, but he came to overpower those temptations in your life so that you have access to a God who can help you to say no to ungodliness, so that I can say no to things that are not pleasing to God, and we can actually stand. He has given us that ability, but sin so often holds us in its power, and Jesus came to destroy that.
He came to destroy it. Let’s call it what it is. He came to be a destroyer. And the lawlessness that’s within us. That’s really good news.
Don’t miss the message and the meaning of Christmas. That’s the message and the meaning of Christmas. But Jesus— there’s a third thing here. It’s a little bit more subtle in verses 9 and 10. Jesus came to demarcate the children of God, to demarcate the children of God.
Who’s a child of God and who isn’t? Who’s a Christian and who isn’t? We’d like to know that. And all throughout 1 John, he’s been giving us clues, and he kind of circles back again and again and again towards some of these things. And he gives us specific things in this very passage that can help us to know who is a Christian and who’s not, who’s a child of God and who’s a child of the devil.
The first thing, just going back to a couple things by way of review that we looked at 2 weeks ago, starting in verse 1 of chapter 3, see what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
All who have this hope in him purify themselves just as he is pure. First thing that we see here about a child of God is that a child of God knows God. Child of God knows God and A child of God looks like God. Just like a child bears a resemblance to their parents, you and I, if you’re a Christ follower, you begin to look more and more like who God is. A child of God knows God.
A Christian knows God, not intellectually, not just facts about God, but they know God in terms of an ongoing relationship.
And Jesus came to, to show those who are his so that us knowing him becomes evident in our lives, to demarcate who the children of God are. Verses 1 through 3 there. But then we also see that one of the other things that a Christian does— look at verse 9— no one who is born of God will continue to sin because God’s seed remains in them. That is speaking of a Christian as somebody who has received new life. That seed is The idea of being born again.
And John, the Gospel of John, quotes Jesus saying, you must be born again. You’re either born again or you’re not. You’re here today and you’re either born again or you’re not. What does it mean to be born again? It’s recognizing your lawlessness and saying, I need to receive a new life.
I need to be reborn from within. I need a new heart. I just don’t need a better version of myself, Steve Durand 2.0. I need to be remade and reborn. And that can happen only by the work of God and me putting my trust in Jesus and his substitute— substitution on the cross for me.
I’m not trusting in my good works, but I am born again.
All things are made new for those who are in Christ. Anyone who’s in Christ is a new creature, and there should— you should be a new creature if you are a Christian. There should be evidence of that. All Things that are of the past are behind you. God is making all things new.
You’re putting off the old self, you’re putting on the new self. All of these kinds of things that we see throughout the New Testament. So a Christian, a person who’s a child of God, first of all knows God. Second of all, they have received new birth. Third thing is they do what is right.
They do what is right. Verse 7 says, the one who does what is right is righteous. Now, don’t miss this. It’s not saying that you are right— or excuse me, that you are righteous and right with God because you do what is right. It’s not saying that.
You’re not right with God because you do what is right, but rather you do what is right because you are right with God. It’s evidence. You’re giving visible demonstration if you’re a child of God, that you will do what is right more often than not. Doesn’t mean that you’re perfect, but you will do what is right. There will be fruit in your life— love and joy and peace, patience and kindness and goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
You will become more like Christ as you get to know him. You’ve received new birth, and as a result of receiving new birth, you do what is right. And the one who is right with God is the one who does what is right as a result of being made right with God. But then he also continues here, a 4th thing to demarcate the children of God is somebody who does not continue sinning. They do not continue or persist or practice sin.
Now, this is a little confusing. If you look at verse 6, no one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him. Verse 9, no one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them. They cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
Not only is John saying that they do not sin, a child of God, but they cannot continue to sin. This is confusing to me and probably to you, because I can assure you I am quite capable of sinning. I do it all the time. Doesn’t this contradict what he said? We looked at this weeks ago in chapter 1 here, verses 8 and 9.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. So which is it?
Does a Christian sin or not? I’ll ask you the question. Does a Christian sin?
This is kind of giving us 2 different messages here, though, right? So maybe the answer could be yes and no, or maybe it’s actually a better question. How much can a Christian sin and still be a Christian?
I don’t have a, you know, a number to give you. But it would be reasonable to say that since in Jesus there is no sin, the one who says that he abides in him ought to not continue in sin. And that’s really what he’s talking about here. He’s not talking about being sinless. He’s talking about sinning less.
Does that make sense? He’s not talking about, you know, the fact is, is that whenever you sin, You ought to confess that to God. That’s what we saw there in chapter 1. We ought to confess that to God. We have an advocate with the Father that we can come to.
And if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins. But there’s a continuation, a living, a deliberate, a deliberate rebellious sinfulness that we continue to practice, that if over time we continue to go towards sin rather than towards God, you could reasonably ask, are you a Christian?
I don’t mean for us to be legalistic about this. That’s not, I don’t think, what John is talking about. He’s talking about the fruit of your life. How much right can we do? How much can we avoid practicing sin?
No Christian is sinless, but we ought to be sinning less. That’s, I think, what he’s talking about, not practicing sin. You can tell the difference here. And then there’s one thing here also in verse 10. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are.
Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child— already talked about that— nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. So a child of God, a Christian, is somebody who says that we love one another. There’s love that is evident in our lives. We’ll talk more about that next week. I’m going to share with you all from the verses that go on after this and talk more about what love looks like in action, and I’m looking forward to sharing that with you.
But you can put that in here for now. That’s a constant thing that John keeps on coming back to again and again and again. Love ought to be obvious in our life, not just saying that we love, but love in practice.
The implications for this are significant, aren’t they? You look at a list like this, and you can simply look at it and say, do I know God? Is that evident in my life? Am I growing in my knowledge of God? Have I received new birth?
Have I been born again? Do I do what is right as a result of God’s work in my life? Do I practice sin, or am I becoming, as part of my ongoing process of what the Bible would call sanctification, being made more like Jesus? Am I pursuing right, avoiding what is wrong, not in a legalistic sense, but as evidence of God’s work in our lives. Is love obvious in my life?
Is it evident in my life? The implications are significant, and you can look at these things and do your own evaluation on this. But this is the message of Christmas. Jesus came to take away our sins. Praise God.
He came to destroy the devil’s work. Praise God for that. And he came to demarcate who belongs to him. And all throughout 1 John, he’s been writing to help us to have eternal life and to know that we have eternal life. And he’s once again giving that to us, and I’m grateful for that.
That’s the meaning of Christmas and the reason why Jesus came. It’s not all the other stuff, it’s specifically this. A couple weeks ago, Shannon and I, on the week of Thanksgiving, had the opportunity to go up to San Francisco to, uh, on Thanksgiving Day, work with City Impact, which is a an incredible ministry in the Tenderloin District, and there were hundreds of people who were signed up who are homeless and without meals who were signed up to receive a meal. And so Shannon and I said, we want to help be a part of that, because our kids were scattered to the four winds that day. So we went up to San Francisco, and that was fun.
And we didn’t know what job they were going to give us. They gave us the job of being a host and hostess. And what this entailed was receiving people whenever they come through the line and then helping them sit in sort of a holding area where they will receive a brief message from somebody from City Impact who will be speaking to them. And then from there, we take them into a line, and they are supposed to single file, not pushing each other over. Good luck with that.
Like, there was lots of chaos going on. That’s a whole other story. But they were lining up, and then we were then to take them to their table, and then somebody else was going to serve them the meal and stuff. And it was kind of a process that was moving through things. And so, like, a group of 15 to 20 would come.
They’d sit. And they would hear a brief message from City Impact. And after a couple times that this person, this young man from City Impact, after he had been sharing the gospel with people, Shannon went up to him and said, you know, my husband is a pastor. If you want a break, he can talk for you. Thanks for that.
So, he says, here you go. He had never even met me before. I thought it was like really, really dangerous. And so, what do you share with somebody like that? And really, this is honestly the message that I shared.
It’s just God put on my heart. It’s so simple, and it’s good news for everybody who hears it. It really is. Not saying that a person doesn’t need food and clothes and shelter and all of that stuff, but that stuff doesn’t last, right? It doesn’t give us meaning in life.
Our greatest need is for a Savior and for eternal life. And the fact is, there are 4 great components of good news that we can take with us. First of all, that God is. He exists. Hebrews 11:6 says, anyone who comes to God must believe that He exists.
And the fact is, is we can come to God and know that He exists. We can have confidence in that. We don’t have to wonder. He exists. He is.
Secondly, He sees us. He notices us. He knows us, and He recognizes us. And not only does He notice us and see us, but He cares about us, and He demonstrates such care by coming near to us and sending Jesus. And then fourthly, he acts on our behalf.
He does what is good for us. It may not be received as good, may not be in our timing or in the way that we want, but he always does what is good because he is good. He is, he sees, he cares, he acts. And all of that is the meaning of Christmas, and we have that here in this passage. Let’s take this passage and let’s live it out with gratitude for the meaning of Christmas and Jesus coming and living among us.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these reminders and pray that you would bring to mind this week what you would have us to take. Some of us need to remember that we are lawless, desperately needy, and I pray that we would confess our lawlessness to you. And not downplay it by calling it something else.
Thank you, Lord, that you sent Jesus to deal with our lawlessness. And Lord, for some of us, we need to focus on the fact that you came to destroy the devil’s work in our life. And for many of us, we continue to do the things that we know we ought not to do and to not do the things that we know that we should do. And we’re caught, it seems, in a sense that we continue even though We may be a Christ follower, we continue to go back to our old ways, and I pray, God, that You would break us of that and remind us of what Jesus did to come destroy the devil’s work and his hold over our lives. Or for some of us, we need to evaluate whether or not we’re in the faith.
Pray that we would take these indications in a sober-minded way and humbly, acknowledging that we want you to make us more like you, Lord. We want to know you more. Thank you for the message of Christmas. Thank you for the time that we’ve had here today. Lead us in the week to come.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
