In 1873, a Belgian Catholic priest named Joseph Damien De Veuster was sent to minister to lepers on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai. When he arrived, he immediately began to meet each one of the lepers in the colony in hopes of building a friendship. But wherever he turned, people shunned him. It seemed as though every door was closed. He poured his life into his work, erecting a chapel, beginning worship services and pouring out his heart to the lepers. But it was to no avail. No one responded to his ministry. After twelve years Father Damien decided to leave.

Dejectedly, he made his way to the docks to board a ship to take him back to Belgium. As he stood on the dock, he wrung his hands nervously, recounting his futile ministry among the lepers. As he did he looked down at his hands, he noticed some mysterious white spots and felt some numbness. Almost immediately he knew what was happening to his body. He had contracted leprosy.

It was then that he knew what he had to do. He returned to the leper colony and to his work. Quickly the word about his disease spread through the colony. Within a matter of hours everyone knew. Hundreds of them gathered outside his hut, they understood his pain, fear, and uncertainty about the future.

But the biggest surprise was the following Sunday. As Father Damien arrived at the Chapel, he found hundreds of worshipers there. By the time the service began, there were many more with standing room only, and many gathered outside the chapel. His ministry became enormously successful. The reason? He was one of them. He understood and empathized with them

Christmas is about the Creator of the universe, who is not himself part of the universe, moving himself, in the person of his Son, into the universe that he made. What makes this fact even more remarkable is that this created universe, the personal part of it, the moral part of it, is in rebellion against its Maker, and yet he came into the universe that he made in order to save those who are in active rebellion against him.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it. 9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be child of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God. 14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only SonI from the Father, full of grace and truth. 17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.

So Christmas is about something God initiated, something God did in history. Christmas is about how this God relates to us and how we relate to him.

Isaiah prophesied. 9:6 “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, ”Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6–7) Almighty God has put all of His divine energy in seeing that this is done.

The theological word to describe this mystery is not creation, but incarnation. The person, not the body, but the essential personhood of Jesus existed before he was born as a man. His birth was not a coming into being of a new person, but a coming into the world of an infinitely old person. 700 years before Jesus was born said;

Micah 5:2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

The origin of the Messiah who appears in Bethlehem is from eternity. Therefore, the mystery of the birth of Jesus is not merely that he was born of a virgin. That miracle was intended by God to witness to an even greater one, namely, that the child born at Christmas was a person who existed “from of old, from ancient days.” He was not merely born, as John 18:37 says; he came into the world. Jesus puts it in John 8:56–59, to the Jews:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” The Jews then said to him, “You are not fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

What Christ was before Abraham, indeed before all creation, John and Paul and the writer to the Hebrews make clear for us. John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Almost all scholars of antiquity, even those who think he was wrong, agree that John meant to say that the pre-existent Christ was God. Christ existed before Abraham, indeed, before all creation, because he was himself one with the creator God.

John 18:37 gives the purpose of Christ’s birth: “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”

If there were two deities, two gods, equally powerful and opposed to each other in conflict for the rule of the world, neither of these deities could be counted on to reveal truth. If their goals were to rule the world and they were threatened by each other, we might well expect that they would use deceit to gain an advantage. And so truth would not be a priority. Not so with the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He is the one and only God, and there is none besides him. He is threatened by no one.
Even Satan, his archenemy, is completely subordinate with his bounds fixed.

The God who becomes a human being.

Dr. John Phillips, said, “The great mystery of the manger is that God should be able to translate deity into humanity without either discarding the deity or distorting the humanity.” Isn’t that a beautiful statement? Listen to it again: “The great mystery of the manger is that God would be able to translate deity into humanity without either discarding the deity or distorting the humanity.” And so that little baby laid in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes is the great God who created the universe. The little baby of Luke 2 is the great God of Genesis 1, and the little toddler growing up in Joseph’s carpenter shop, playing with those with shavings that came down from Joseph’s carpentry, is the eternal God who created the world. My dear friend, God became flesh.

You say, “I don’t think I understand that.”. Paul says, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” (1 Timothy 3:16)

In one sense, he comes to Abraham and calls him on his pilgrimage. He comes to Moses and gives him a certain task. He comes to David and establishes a dynasty. In the Old Testament through large numbers of the books of the prophets God is repeatedly said to come.

He sometimes comes with judgment. Sometimes God comes, not only upon his covenant people with judgment, but the God of the Bible is the God of all the nations, so he holds all the nations to account.
The prophet Ezekiel in 34.“The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.” Then after saying this again and again and again, about 25 times, God himself is going to shepherd his people. He’s going to come. He’s going to do the job himself.

The first books of the New Testament are often called gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all begin a little differently, but they all begin in some way with the coming of Jesus.
John’s gospel begins a slightly different way.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

“In the beginning was the Word.” We could say, “In the beginning was God’s self-expression, in the beginning God expressed himself, in the beginning was God’s self-expression and this self-expression was with God, God’s own fellow, and this self-expression was God, God’s own self.”

The Word creates us.

John 1:3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.

That means simultaneously, to make a difference between the created order and the Creator, which is fundamental to all biblical thought, and to rule out a lot of the paganism of the ancient world in which it was commonly thought that different gods made different elements of the created order.

This text insists one God made everything and this one God made everything by one agent: his Word, his self-expression, who is with him (and thus different from him) and yet is him, his own self, somehow, God’s own agent in creation.

Colossians 1:15–20, we are told all things were made by him (that is, by Christ) and for him. Not only by him, but for him. Christ is not only God’s agent in creation

The Word gives us light and life.

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 That light shine in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome

The Word confronts us and divides us.

Verses 10 to 13. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.” Then the point is made in more focused pattern in verse 11: “He came to that which was his own …”
“He came to his own home.” The reference is to the Jewish people, the Jewish nation, into which he was born. “… and his own people did not receive him.”

This introduces us to the word world, the world, in it’s the created order in active, moral rebellion against its Maker. That’s why John 3:16 is so powerful. “God so loved the world.” This is to make us think greatly of God’s love, not because the world is so big, but because the world is so bad.

In John’s understanding of world, it is not really something that merely compresses a batch of rules, as important as various rules may be. It is the created order, this world made by God, which doesn’t recognize its origins.

One of the hardest things to get across to an increasingly biblically illiterate generation is what the Bible says about sin.

People are not bothered by what Christians believe, until they begin to talk about sin. They say, what right do you have to tell me what’s wrong? Yet you cannot finally get agreement on what the solution is unless you get agreement on what the problem is.

If you do not see how dysfunctional we are with respect to our Maker, how rebellious as creatures, we disavow our Creator and that all of our accountability before God is grounded in that simple truth, then it is very difficult to come to a genuinely faithful understanding of what the gospel itself is.

The heart of the matter is still being reconciled to this Maker, who is also our Judge.

The Word Incarnates God for us.

What he accomplishes on the cross, he accomplishes by virtue of the fact that he is the God-man, not just that he’s a man. On the other hand, if he were just God hiding out in a human shell, in what sense is he identifying with us at all? Everything Jesus said and did, he said and did as fully a human being and fully God, living in the fullness of both of his natures.

The Word did not simply assume flesh or reduce himself to flesh; rather, he became what he was not. He became a human being, without ceasing to be what he was.

The Word reveals God to us.

There is a sense in which we best understand John’s verses if we remind ourselves what’s in those Old Testament verses. They’re all found in Exodus 32 to 34.

Exodus 32-34, where Moses comes down from the mountain and the people are in idolatry. Moses prays before God, wants to see more of God’s glory, “Show me your glory.” 33:18 God says, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, but you cannot see my face and live.”

When God reveals who he is before Moses in that cave in Exodus 34:6, he describes himself in a variety of ways. The words are hard to translate, but they include that he is full of love and faithfulness. In Hebrew, they basically translate the idea of grace and truth.

Exodus 34:6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

John 1:17 “For the law was given through Moses.” But grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The law covenant was a gracious gift from God, but now Jesus is going to introduce a new covenant, ultimately grace and truth. This is a grace that replaces that old grace. It’s a new covenant.

A tabernacle in the Old Testament with this special, most holy room where only the high priest could go in on behalf of everybody else once a year with the blood of the sacrifices. It was the place where sinners met God. It was the only way a sinner to meet with God.

It was the great meeting place between a holy God and sinners provided for by this blood of the bull and the goat that was brought in by the high priest.

It was the great meeting place between God and human beings. Eventually, it’s the temple that replaces the tabernacle. Now in this chapter we’re told, “The Word became flesh and he tabernacled among us.

In John 2;19, Jesus insists that he himself is the temple of God. Jesus insists that he becomes the great meeting place between rebels and this Holy God.

Jesus say, If rebels are going to be reconciled to this God, they’ve got to come through the temple, and I’m the temple. John’s entire gospel explains how that’s so.

We have seen his glory?

What was it that Moses asked for?

“Show me your glory.” God said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.”

In John 2, when Jesus performs his first miracle: turns water into wine at the marriage in Cana in Galilee. We’re told at the end of it that the disciples saw his glory. The others saw the miracle. They saw that it was saying something about who Jesus was. They saw his glory. Eventually you get to John, chapter 12, where Jesus is to manifest God’s glory by going to the cross.

The most spectacular display of God’s glory is in a bloody instrument of torture. That’s where God’s goodness was most displayed. God displayed his glory in Christ Jesus who thus became our tabernacle, our temple, the meeting place between God and human beings.

Do you want to know what God looks like? Look at Jesus.

Jesus said, “Have I been with you all this time and yet have you not known me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

Do you want to know what the character of God is like? Do you want to know what the glory of God is like? Study Jesus, All the way to the cross, study Jesus.

We must help people to see, worship, serve, evangelize, and pray within the framework of God being amongst his people. It’s not a place where people throw their weight around and merely argue and use their money to have clout in the church or anything like that. It’s first and foremost a place where God manifests himself in his people.

“Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.” Moses understands that when things are at their worst, what you must have is a renewed and clarified vision of God. Nothing else is stabilizing. “Show me your glory.” He does not ask that he should see the end from the beginning, or even that all the problems would be removed. Instead, he asks God to, “Manifest yourself to me. Show me your glory.”

He knows that he must be anchored in God if he is to lead this rebellious people.

What else will anchor him? What else will anchor us when our world falls apart, we loose a love one, we loose a job, when the nation falls apart?

Exodus 34:5: “Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord, Yahweh. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness

The tabernacle and later the temple, were the great meeting place between God and human beings, the place of sacrifice, the place of reconciliation, and the place to which the people gathered.

Where is the tabernacle for us?

Where can we meet the Lord? Where is the place of reconciliation before God, the place of the priest, and the place of the sacrifice?

It is with Jesus, He is our tabernacle. He is the ultimate manifestation of grace and truth.