Advent 23 | The Real Tabernacle 2024

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
  There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
  The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known."
John 1:1-18

Intentional Echo

If you were going to summarize the book of John in one phrase it would be “Jesus is God”. It seems like everywhere you turn in the book of John either Jesus is saying that he is God, one of the supporting characters is saying it, or, like we have right here, John himself is making it clear.

Even those who aren’t very familiar with the Bible can realize that John is intentionally using the same language as the creation account in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created”. But why would he do this? He is letting us know that the God who created the whole world by the word of his mouth at the beginning is none other than Jesus Christ.

The Grand Arrival

Remember that we call this season that we are celebrating, “advent”. We explained at the beginning that it comes from a word that means arrival. So what we are doing this month is celebrating the arrival of Jesus into the world. Today we need to pause and think about the fact that when someone “arrives” somewhere it means that they were somewhere else first. Does that make sense? What I mean by this is very important. Jesus did not come into existence at his birth. In fact, Jesus never came into existence at all. Jesus has always existed. This month we are celebrating the time when the eternal God arrived in our world as a baby boy.

This Has Always Been the Plan

When Jesus created mankind in the garden we had fellowship with him. This is what God intended. God made mankind in his own image for a relationship with him. Unfortunately, you know what happened, man sinned and our relationship with God was damaged. But this isn’t the end of the story. God already had a plan to restore our relationship with him. And the rest of the Bible tells us the

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