I'd like to have you turn in your Bibles to John, the Gospel of John, in the first chapter. One of the favorite passages of mine for Christmas, for Christmas time. Boys and girls, I'm going to tell you a secret when I'm done reading this, so So, keep alert. Keep thinking about that. In John chapter 1, let me begin reading at verse 1. 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, and without him nothing was made that has been made. And then our text for this morning is at verse 14. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. And then verse 16. And from the fullness of his grace, we have all received one blessing after another. Perhaps better translated, we have received grace upon grace. And it is at that point I want to stop reading God's word. Well, the secret that I wanted to tell you, kids, is that next week's Sunday is Christmas. Oh, duh, you knew that, huh? Yeah, I think you probably did. You say, well, we knew that, Pastor. We've been waiting and we have vacation from school and we have a Christmas tree in our house. And if we don't have a Christmas tree, at least there are presents that are wrapped and we're anticipating Christmas and we're going to have lots of fun. And Christmas is indeed a very exciting time, except that when Jesus was born, it wasn't very exciting. I mean, except for the shepherds and except for Mary and Joseph, it was not a very exciting time. No one paid much attention to the baby Jesus. As a matter of fact, if you had seen Mary carrying Jesus or if Jesus had been in the nursery, you could have looked and said, yep, that's a baby. He was no different looking than any other baby. There was no halo around his head. He didn't glow. He didn't shine. There was nothing special about him. And then the question is, well, why are we so excited about Christmas then? And the answer, of course, is because this wasn't just a baby, was it? This was God born in the flesh. It was the incarnation. Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity, we say. And we are excited about Christmas because with the birth of Jesus, God began to walk in our shoes. And that's what I'm going to talk about this morning. The glory of Christmas is that God walks in our shoes. What does that mean? Well, if you have asthma or if you have just been in the hospital or been sick and you come back to school and you're still very, very weak and with asthma you can hardly breathe and your teacher says in gym, well, today we're going to run around the ball diamond 20 times and you raise your hand and say, but teacher, I can't do that. I've got asthma. I've just been sick. I'm too weak. And your teacher says, sure you can do that. Here's how you do it. And they start running around the bald diamond and you say, but you don't know what it is to walk in my shoes. You don't know what it is to have asthma. You don't know what it is to be weak. But God knows what it is because he walked in our shoes. Except for sin, he became exactly like us. So that you see, when you pray, if you were praying to an angel, you could say to the angel, but you don't know anything about being sick, or you don't know anything about sinning. You don't know anything about being a human being, but you cannot say that to Jesus. Because when you pray to Jesus, he knows exactly what it's like to be a child. And exactly what it's like to be weak. because he walked in our shoes. And that's what we want to think about today as adults, too, about that fact that God walked in our shoes, and that's the glory of Christmas. And then I want to talk about the proof of that. And then finally we want to think about the blessing of God walking in our shoes. When John writes this in John chapter 1, It's probably 40 years after Jesus was crucified and after the resurrection. But John is still all excited about this event, isn't he? And he wants us to understand and to appreciate the glory and the wonder of Christmas as he understood it. And so he writes this passage to us and he wants us to be like the shepherds and like Mary and Joseph, giving glory to God and praise to him for what he has done. And what an astonishing statement we find here in verse 14 when we read, the word became flesh, the infinite becomes finite, that which was all glory becomes humble, and that which is adored by everyone is mocked. The contrast could not be more striking when he says the word became flesh. He doesn't even say the word became a baby. Because we might get the wrong idea. We might think about the innocence of a baby. We might think of a little baby on the counter that you've just washed and powdered and put lotion on. And you can take those little feet and you can gum them, gum those toes or their ears. I mean, they are so precious. He doesn't say the Word became a baby. He doesn't even say the Word became a man. But he says the word became flesh. The Greek word is sarx, S-A-R-X, you can spell it. The word became flesh, and flesh speaks about frailty. When the King James interprets the word flesh sometimes, it interprets it as carnal. When Peter talks about flesh, I think it's in 1 Peter 1, he says, all flesh is as grass, as the flower of the field, you know, it fades away, it dies out, it is weak. And that's the word that the Apostle uses here when he tells us that the word became flesh. And then, of course, you might say, well, it doesn't say that God became flesh, it says the word became flesh. But if you go back to chapter, to verse 1, of course, we are reminded that the word is God. There is no question about it. It says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And that is so clear that the Jehovah's Witnesses have to have a special Bible, special translations, because they want to avoid that reality. As a matter of fact, what John is going to say is so astonishing that he adds, this is the God through whom all things were created. This Word is the Elohim of Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created. This word is the Jehovah of the fourth commandment. For in six days, Jehovah made heaven and earth and all that is in them. That's what John is talking about. He is talking about that eternal God. And we say, well, why didn't he just say that to begin with? Why did he say the word, the Logos, became flesh? And there are suggestions, perhaps, that he wanted to remind us that this word, that this God, that this message is not just for the Jews, but it is for everyone. It is for the world. When he says the word became flesh, the Jews would understand that because, of course, they would be thinking, perhaps, about Psalm 33, where it says, by the word of Jehovah, where the heavens made. And the Greeks would think about the eternal and omnipotent God, perhaps, too. At least, James Boyce suggests that the ancient philosophers understood something about the Logos, the word that would come. Plato, says James Boyce, said to his followers, it may be that someday there will come forth from God a word, a Logos, who will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain. And another philosopher talked about the mind and reason, the word that controlled and guided the universe. So they had a divine aspect. They thought that the word had some divine power. And it was interesting, I was reading a novel that was in the setting of the Navajos at the four corners in our country. The author was an expert in Navajo history, and he believed that the Navajos came over the Bering Sea centuries and centuries ago. And he thought that they came with Asian philosophy in their history. And that's why they believed that words had power. Words were almost divine. That's why they would not mention death, because they were afraid that death would be the result of even talking about it. And so the Jews would understand, the Greeks would understand that the word became flesh was about the divine. But I think the answer is much simpler than that. John wants to remind us that he is talking about the great mystery of the Trinity. It wasn't the Father that suffered. But it was the son that suffered. And so he is dealing with the mystery and the reality of the Trinity here when he speaks about the word that was God from the beginning. There was no time when he was not, and yet he was with God. And so John is dealing with that mystery without explaining it, but he is sharing it with us that somehow or other there is a great mystery that we are dealing with here that there is this person who is not the Father and yet is God also. And of course he is speaking about the second person of the Holy Trinity. And so the Word became flesh. And we think what a wonderful term, what a wonderful description of Jesus to speak of him as the Word. Only the Holy Spirit could inspire such thought. The words, after all, express how we feel, how we think. The deepest emotions of our heart are expressed by words. Think how terrible it would be, children, if we couldn't speak. If we couldn't tell our mothers that we loved her. If we couldn't tell our mothers what made us afraid or what made us happy or what scared us. If we couldn't do any of that stuff, if we couldn't share good news that we had at school. How terrible that would be if we couldn't speak. So Jesus is God speaking. When we hear Jesus, we are hearing God speaking, his thoughts and his directives and the things that give him joy and the things that will bring us joy, the things of good news. So when we hear Jesus speak, we are hearing God speak. We are looking into the very heart of God so that Jesus could say to Philip, He that has seen me has seen the Father. I and the Father are one. It's this word that explains to us the wonderful things that God has planned for us. That's the glory of Christmas. And that's what the Apostle wants us to know. So that men everywhere might know that that God who was infinite power without any restriction, who was adored by the angels, who was infinite wisdom and grace and glory, that this God became flesh, sarks, that he walked in our shoes. That's a fact, says John. When we think about that, if we really think about that, we have to say, John, you're crazy. You've been out of the sun too long. How can you say such a thing that the eternal, invisible, all-powerful, omnipotent God became flesh? And he would say, because we beheld his glory. I haven't been out of the sun too long. This is the truth of God that I am speaking to you. We beheld his glory, he said. It isn't wishful thinking. It isn't, I'm not a Joseph Smith who goes out into the woods all alone and finds some golden plates and calls you to believe it. But he says, we beheld his glory. Not just me. It is a testimony of all who heard Jesus and who saw him speak. It's been verified by others. He says, we beheld it. We beheld it. We have seen his glory. That word seen doesn't mean that we've got a glimpse of it. You know, sometimes you're outside at night and you see a star, a falling star, we call it. You say, did you see that? I think I did. That isn't what John is saying here. He doesn't say, we've got a glimpse of it. But he says, we saw it, we beheld it. It's like if you would find a ring that looks like a diamond, children. And you want to know if it's a real diamond. You take it to the jeweler and the jeweler takes it and he puts in this magnifying glass by his eye. And he looks at it and he turns it over in every way. And he says, it is either a diamond or it's not a diamond. That's the idea of this word. We beheld it, says John. We looked at it. And what did we see? We saw his glory. We saw the very glory of God. That's what we saw. We watched him, we listened, we examined, we meditated on what we saw. And what we saw was his glory. And the more we looked, the more we saw. And if you want to know what John saw and what the disciples saw, then you read the rest of John. But just to give you an idea of what he is talking about in chapter 2, verse 11. We come to that miracle of Jesus when he makes the water into wine. And at verse 11 it says this, the first of his miraculous signs Jesus performed in Cana in Galilee, and thus he revealed his glory, and the disciples put their faith in him. That's what they beheld, you see. They looked at his life, they looked at his words, they heard his words, and his miracles, and his death, and his resurrection, and all of that revealed the glory of God. And finally John in chapter 20 says Jesus did many miraculous signs, more than are written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and believing have life in his name. That's the glory that they saw. That we might believe that God came in the flesh and he walked in our shoes. Now you understand why unbelief is such a horrible sin. Sometimes we think that unbelief, that, you know, some of our friends are, well, they're really searchers for the truth. You know, they want to dig in. They don't just accept things that their dads and mothers told them. They're not gullible. They want to search things out. And we almost act as if unbelief is an honorable thing. Unbelief is not honorable. It is tragic. It is refusing the very revelation that God has given to us, that he walked in our shoes. It is suppressing the revelation of God. It is suppressing the facts that the Word became flesh. John says in the third chapter, the 19th verse, light has come into this world, but men love darkness. It isn't that they couldn't understand it. It isn't that the revelation wasn't enough. But they loved darkness, you see. That's the tragedy of unbelief. It's not that the facts aren't there, but the tragedy of unbelief is that people love darkness, they love to sin, and they hate God. And that, of course, is why the wrath of God abides on the unbeliever. Because the word became flesh and dwelt among us and God walks in our shoes and in spite of the testimony of his life and his words and his crucifixion and the death and the resurrection and the rending of the veil and all of those things, they continue to live in unbelief because they love darkness. What a wonderful thing that God has opened up our hearts to hear the word and to see the proof and to acknowledge that the glory of Christmas is that God walked in our shoes. What a blessing that is. The text says he made his dwelling among us. He lived among us. He made his dwelling among us. Literally, as so many of you know, it means tabernacled. He tempted among us. John, of course, wants us to think about it. At least he certainly wants his readers to think about the fact that at one time, God tabernacled in the Jewish community in the wilderness when he was in the tabernacle and the glory cloud shown above there. And all the Israelites camped around the tabernacle, three tribes at each side. And God was in the center there, and they could see the glory radiating from the tabernacle. And what a joy it must have been for them to think that God was in the center of them. And if God was for them, who could be against them? But then, as you know, in Ezekiel 10, we read about the glory departing. And then there's this long period of darkness. And now John says the word became flesh, and he dwelt among us. God, once again, is coming to his people. His glory is seen, but this time not located in the Holy of Holies, where only the priests could go. But he became flesh and he walked among us. That's the glory of Christmas. He came where we lived and he ate what we ate and he walked where we walked and he laid in our beds and he walked in our shoes. And it wasn't limited to the priesthood to talk and to hear and to see, but everyone could come to him. No restrictions. He was one of us. God became one of us. About 55 years ago in Korea, the common soldiers lived in tents, but our officers lived up on the hill a little ways, out of the mud and out of the dirt. They didn't live in tents. They lived in Quonset huts. We had a mess hall, properly called so, and we stood in line with tin trays to get fed. And the officers had a dining room. They sat, they sat around a table on chairs and they had people serving them. But the glory of Christmas is, you see, is that the word became flesh and he tented among us. He wasn't in the quonsets. He tented among us and he pitched his tent where we were living and he ate what we ate and he walked where we walked. That's the glory of Christmas. That's the Savior that you come to. In India, we walked down the dirty streets and we saw the putrid wells and we stepped over those who were sleeping along in the gutters and we saw their pathetic condition and smelled the terrible aroma of cow dung being used for eating their meals. But at night we went to the hotel, to the Taj Mahal, and we prayed for them. Oh, we really prayed for them, but we didn't drink from their wells. We didn't eat their food. We didn't sleep. We didn't take their burlap bags and sleep under it, you see. but the glory of Christmas is that God became flesh and he dwelt among us he pitched his tent where we were he slept where we were at and he ate what we ate and he drank from our wells Hebrews reminds us what a wonderful blessing that is we don't have a high priest that can't be touched with our infirmities but we have one that has been in every way like us except for sin as I told the children earlier we can go to this person with confidence because he has slept in our sheets and walked in our shoes and he is a sympathetic high priest and we will find grace to help us in the time of need that's the promise of God to us later on in this he says he was full of grace full of it he didn't dole it out he was full of grace he was full of grace to little children he encouraged them to sit on his lap he was full of grace to the afflicted he touched the leper and healed them he was full of grace for sinners never a word of reproof to those who came to him in sincerity but he was full of grace. He not only walked in their shoes, but he took their shoes off and he walked where they would not have to walk. He walked to hell itself for them so that he would suffer what they would never have to suffer. He was full of grace. Isaiah said the bruised reed he would not break and the smoking flax, smoking wick he would not snuff out. What is more disgusting than a smoking wick? I mean, if you have it in your house, you say, put it out. I don't want that soot to be on the ceiling. What is more useless than a reed that's broken? I mean, it's good only for the fire. Isaiah says, a bruised reed he will not break, and a burning flax he will not put out. How often we come to Jesus, we come to the Lord God, and we feel like a burning wick. We feel so useless to be cast aside. John says, the word became flesh. Oh, praise the Lord, he became flesh, and he dwelt among us full of grace. And then he adds in that 16th verse, and from him we receive grace upon grace. One sin is hardly forgiven, and he is there to forgive the next, full of grace and truth. Come, this gracious Savior says, I have walked in your shoes. I am gentle and lowly of heart. And you shall find rest for your soul. that's the glory of Christmas my friends Amen Heavenly Father we thank you today again to be reminded of that great emptying out of our Lord Jesus Christ though he was equal with God in every respect experienced the adoration of the angels was all powerful spoke and the universe came into existence yet for the sake of his people he emptied himself out and became a servant not only feeling our pain but taking it taking it all the way to Calvary itself where he paid for our sins to you gracious Lord we give you our praise and adoration now and always Amen