Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to John chapter number one. Find your place there. It's good to be back. Lori and I left right after the Sunday morning service last week. If I'd have thought about what I was getting into between Fancy Gap and Whitfield, I would have stayed here. and preach Sunday night. And I might as well have done that as long as it took us to get through that stretch of road. Somebody asked me, did I watch any Christmas movies? I just want you to know, I don't know what they call them, maybe Honey Points? Is that good? Does that work? I can tell you this, I not only caught up, but I stocked up for three months next year. I did. So I was good. I even picked a couple of them out. I did. I'd say, no, I don't want to watch that one. That was too mushy. Let's move on to over here, you know. So anyway, we had a good time away and refreshed and it's good to be back here this morning to see you here. And you should be in John chapter number 1. And we're beginning a new series of messages. We've been talking about the greatest stories Jesus ever told. And we're going to take a little break from that. We're going to do our Christmas series that we do every year. And we've entitled it this year, The Miracles of Christmas. Now, if there was one theme that I saw in all of these movies... Now, listen, ladies, I'm not preaching against Hallmark Christmas movies, okay? I've got husbands, elbow and wife. See there? I told you it was wrong to watch this stuff. Okay. I'm not doing that. All right. I'm not. Okay. It's a good thing to spend time with your wife. Okay. And so anyway, what I was going to say is this. There was one little theme that kept popping up. Do you believe in Christmas miracles and Christmas miracles? Let me just say something and I'm not being critical and I'm not trying to be negative right off the bat, but Christmas doesn't do miracles, but God does. and we've entitled our series, The Miracles of Christmas. What we're going to do is we're going to go through the Bible and we're going to look at the different miracles that are associated with the birth of the Lord Jesus. When you think of a miracle, you think of something extraordinary. You think of something that is supernatural. It's impossible. Something that only the God of heaven can do. One preacher of the past put it this way. He said, I believe in a supernatural Christianity. I want to say amen right there. Don't you? He said, which presents a supernatural Christ, who had a supernatural birth, who lived a supernatural life, and died a supernatural death, who arose in a supernatural resurrection, and who is coming again in a supernatural manner. Amen. Another wrote, the birth of Jesus Christ was immersed in miracle. It was clothed in mystery and surrounded by marvels. This morning we're going to look at John chapter 1. I trust that you'll look with me here in verse number 1. The Bible says, in the beginning, we're going to talk about that beginning in a moment, was the Word. Did you notice that's capitalized? We'll talk about it a little bit more. And the Word was with God. It's a divine name. It's a name ascribed to the second person of the divine trinity, to the Lord Jesus. Very unique to John's Gospel. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. Now somebody's going to ask the question, how can the Word be both with God and at the same time be God? And the good news to that is that our God exists as a triune being. That God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Spirit, co-equal, co-eternal, co-existent. Somebody would say, well, you worship three gods. One plus one plus one equals three. I say, no, your math is wrong. It's one times one times one. equals one, three persons, yet one wonderful, matchless, glorious God. Isn't that wonderful? Notice he says, verse two, the same was in the beginning with God. All things, not some things, not many things, not most things, but all things were made by Him, literal 24-hour, seven-day creation, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, not just physical life, but spiritual, eternal life. And the life was the light of men. You realize when Jesus came into a world of darkness, He shined the light of God, the light of truth, the light of life. Verse 5, And the light shineth in the darkness. and the darkness comprehended it not. It failed to apprehend, to understand the fullness of what God had done in sending His Son into the world. Now let's look over at verse number 14, which will be the center of our message this morning. And the Word that has existed with God and was God and made all things, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus was God in human shoes. and we beheld, he said we gazed and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. I'm glad it didn't say wrath and judgment. What about you? Now listen, God is a God of wrath, isn't that true? And one day every person's going to meet God that we're going to stand before the judge, the righteous judge of the universe. But when Jesus came, the Bible said that He came with the fullness of grace and the fullness of truth. Listen, there is a throne of judgment, but I'm glad right now that God has a throne of grace. What about you? Let me just tell you what I just read right here. You say, preacher, what is it? It's the greatest of all miracles. God became flesh. Let's pray together. Lord, we love you. We have so enjoyed worshiping you today. I pray that you are honored and pleased with our worship. I pray, Lord, that Your Son was magnified, for we cannot honor You without honoring the Lord Jesus. I pray the Spirit of God might work in the service today through Your Word. God, my thoughts, my mouth, my speech, help me to clearly share Your truth, Lord, with Your people today. I pray, Father, that we'll go away having learned and grown in our understanding of who You are, the greatness of the Lord Jesus and the greatest miracle of all the ages, that you would become a man. Father, I pray that if there's someone here today that doesn't know Christ, they don't know the forgiveness of sins, the hope of heaven, that before this service is out, they'll come to know You. And Lord, that Your people will be blessed and helped and we'll thank You for it. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. When you come to John chapter 1, the Bible says, In the beginning was the Word. Whenever you see those phrase, in the beginning, it says something to us. It reminds us that there are four gospel writers. Each of them have a different purpose, a different narrative. They're sharing the Lord Jesus, a different view of the Lord Jesus and who He is taken together. We get a full view of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mark begins his gospel with John the Baptist. It doesn't even mention the birth of Jesus. It talks about the servant or the slave of Jehovah. Nobody cares about the birth of a slave. In John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Mark did not include any of the the birth miracles or the birth record of the Lord Jesus. When you come to Matthew, because he's writing to Jews and he's presenting Christ as the King and the fulfillment of the covenants given to the nation of Israel and Abraham and David, his genealogy begins his gospel with Abraham. When you come to Luke who writes to the Grecian world and he's writing and presenting Jesus as the Son of Man, he takes us all the way back to Adam and his genealogy and links him to the earth and presents Christ. You're going to find a phrase in Luke's Gospel that you're going to see over and over again, the Son of Man, the Son of Man, the Son of Man. But when you come to John, it's different. John, when he begins his gospel, carries us back into the eons of eternity past. In the beginning, not Moses' beginning of Genesis 1-1. He's not talking about the creation of a time-space-matter universe. He's not talking about the beginning of creation as you and I would understand it. That was an act in time. No, what John is doing, he's taking us far beyond that. And he's dealing with an existence that fills all of eternity. You see, he's talking about how that John is going to talk to us about how that he who fills eternity stepped into time. how the God who created the world is going to enter His world. That's what He's going to share. He's going to present Jesus in a very unique way as the Son of the living God. And let us remind ourselves that He's not just the Son of God. He is God the Son. This divine name that is ascribed to the Lord Jesus in John's Gospel, as I said, was unique to John's writing. It has the idea of communicating. That God is communicating Himself to us, and He does so through His Son. Notice it's capitalized and therefore refers to a person, not just a person, but a divine person, the Lord Jesus. And it reminds us that Jesus before He became flesh existed in eternity past. That Jesus didn't come into existence at Bethlehem's manger. He is the infinite infant. You remember what Isaiah said in his prophecy, For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. The child born is the Son given. And we find that God is going to send His Son into the world. It's the greatest of all miracles. It's the miracle of all miracles that God would become man. Notice, if you would please, first of all, the moment God became man. The moment He became man. Look again at verse number 14. And the Word was made. Those two words, that phrase means to become. It has the idea of something that's going to happen at a moment of time. The eternal Word who has existed from all eternity with God and as God takes to Himself a human nature and a human body. The Word, the Word that fills all of eternity has now stepped into time. The Word was made flesh. Do you realize it was a prophesied moment? Prophecy is history pre-written. God knows the end from the beginning. The Bible is the only book in the world that has and contains what we would understand as true predictive prophecy. It's the hallmark of the divine. You see, the fingerprint of God is all over the birth of His Son. throughout the pages of the Old Testament, God, through His prophets, penned beforehand the life of Jesus the Messiah. God said, when My Son comes, I don't want you to miss Him. When He fulfills the covenants to the nation of Israel, I don't want My people to miss Him when He enters the world. I don't want the world that I've created to miss Him. So He painted a portrait in the Old Testament so that when He came, we could look at the prophecies, the portrait of God, and say that's Him. Matter of fact, that's exactly what they did say. You remember the disciples came to Nathanael and they said, we have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets did write. Jesus of Nazareth. You remember that? What they were saying is, that's Him. We found Him. They saw the portrait. And then they recognized His Son. God detailed the events of Jesus' birth and life and death and burial and resurrection, His ascension and even His return. There are over 300 prophecies from Genesis to Malachi that relate to the birth of the Lord Jesus, His first coming. And 21 of them relate to His birth alone. We're going to look at one of them. If you can't find it or you don't get there quickly enough, I understand. I get that. Just jot it down. You can go back later. It's not going to come up on the screen. Look at verse 14 of Isaiah chapter 7. Would you turn there in your Bible? I'll give you a moment. Isaiah chapter 7 and verse number 14. We're just going to look at one of them that relates to the moment of God becoming flesh. Isaiah 7, 14. Isaiah is writing to a wicked king by the name of Ahaz. Syria and her allies are threatening the nation of Israel. God steps in and He says to Ahaz, I just want you to know, that I'm going to defeat the Syrian armies. I'm going to do something great and show my people that I'm God. Now, I want you to ask of me a sign. Ahaz, being an unbelieving wicked king, says, well, I'm not going to tempt the Lord. I'm not going to ask for a sign. So Isaiah the prophet says, well, the Lord is going to give you a sign. It was a rebuke to this wicked king. Notice what he says in verse 14. Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. This is a double prophecy. Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. It had a near-fulfillment in the wife of Isaiah who would give birth to two children that would be assigned to the nation of Israel of God's defeat of the Syrians and deliverance of the nation of Israel. And we're going to come back to this point and recognize when you come here in this passage that that prophecy, the near-fulfillment, didn't completely satisfy all that's mentioned in this prophecy. The virgin shall conceive. We recognize that Isaiah's wife did not supernaturally conceive. The two children were not named Emmanuel. They had names I can't even pronounce. Why in the world they want to name their children such names? They must have hated them or something. I'm kidding. We're going to find that it didn't fulfill it. It has a greater, more perfect fulfillment in a different setting. Hundreds of years are going to pass. An angel is going to make an appearance to a virgin in Nazareth by the name of Mary. He's going to tell her that she's going to conceive without ever knowing a man in an intimate way. And that the child that would be born of her would be called the Son of the Highest. He would be the Son of God. That He would be royalty. And that His name would be called Emmanuel. It was a distinguishing mark that all men could know that the Messiah had come. The Savior of the world had entered, that a virgin, a woman who had never known a man, a woman who is chaste and pure, a son would be born. And that son would be God in flesh, Emmanuel, a name that's only used three times in the Bible. It's one of the least named, least mentioned names of the Lord Jesus, yet it's the first name that God gave to His Son, and in that name is the miracle of Christmas that God is with us. God in flesh. The moment of His birth. It's a prophesied moment, but then I want you to notice it is a powerful moment. Turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 1. Would you do that please? Luke chapter number 1. Now we're going to fast forward 700 years to the actual appearance of Gabriel to Mary. He tells her that she's blessed among women. That doesn't mean that she's blessed above women, but among women. He informs her of what's going to happen. That she's the chosen instrument by which God would bring His Son, the Messiah, into the world. She asks a question not of unbelief, but of belief. She's not saying, I don't believe you. She's saying, I just don't understand how this can happen. Look at verse 34 of Luke chapter number 1. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" Now that didn't mean that she didn't know by name any man. What it meant is that she had never known a man in an intimate way, in a one-flesh marriage way, or in an immoral way for that matter. She was a virgin, chaste, pure. The angel gives her the answer, verse 35. And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost, third person of the Trinity, shall come upon thee. He's going to overshadow you. And the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Do you realize in Luke 1, verse 35, in fulfillment of Isaiah 7, verse 14, that God performed the biological miracle of the ages? That by a special creative act of the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Divine Trinity, a body was formed in the womb of the Virgin Mary by which the Lord Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, would clothe Himself in a body of flesh and take to Himself that human nature and that human body in that one marvelous, magnificent, miraculous moment. God became man. Somebody says, well, I just believe that's impossible. That's why it's a miracle. And that's why the angel said in verse 37, For with God nothing shall be impossible. Dear children of God this morning, can I help us understand the same God that brought Jesus into the world is the same God that can work mightily in your life, your marriage, your future, your family. Hey, I'm glad that we have a God with whom nothing is impossible. By the way, if the first man, Adam, got here without a father or a mother, don't you think God can bring someone into existence with just a mother and no father? Absolutely. He's the Word incarnate. A moment in time when the eternal God took upon Himself a human nature and human flesh. This is the miracle. Listen, that is the miracle of Christmas. Not only do I see the moment God became man, but very quickly this morning I want you to notice the miracle when God became man. The miracle. Now we're going to go back to John. John chapter 1. Our text verse. Notice in verse number 14. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." That word flesh tells us that Jesus didn't merely appear as a human. He wasn't some kind of phantom or ghost or spiritual eminence. No, He became one with humanity. The word dwell in our verse, the word dwelt, has the idea of pitching a tent. He encamped among us. It was temporary. That means that Jesus would come for a specific time, for a specific purpose, but the plan was that He would go back to the Father. He encamped among us. Let me give you a couple of verses to jot down the margin of your notes. Hebrews 2 verse 14. For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same. That Jesus had a body of flesh and blood just like your body and my body. And notice Romans chapter 8 verse 3, God sending His own Son and the likeness of sinful flesh. So while Jesus took to Himself a human nature and a human body, He did so without sin. Let me just stop and say something. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is not incidental. It is fundamental. When you remove the virgin birth of Christ, Christianity collapses like a house of cards. You say, preacher, why? Because every one of us have a sinful nature that we received from our father Adam. Every person in this room is a sinner. All have sinned to come short of the glory of God. For it is by one man's sin entered into the world. Had Jesus been born naturally as every one of us would, He would have inherited from His Father. a sinful nature. And therefore, he could not have been a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He would have had to have died for his own sins. The good news is, friend, that he bypassed the Adamic nature. Jesus Christ, being born of a virgin, entered this world, not only as a man, but as a sinless man, that he might be a sacrifice for my sin and your sin. It was a man that is sinned, and it took a man to die for our sins. Can I help us understand Jesus wasn't just a good man, and He wasn't just a godly man. He's the God-man. He's not half God. He's not a demigod, half God, half man. He is all God and all man wrapped up in one matchless person. The great mystery and miracle of the manger, John Phillips wrote, is that God would be able to translate deity into humanity without either discarding the deity or distorting the humanity. Do you realize Jesus was God as if He was never man? And He's man as if He was never God. He is fully God and fully man. And without controversy, Paul says in I Timothy 3.16, and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in flesh. It was called in verse, listen to this. Our blessed Lord combined in one, two natures both complete, a perfect manhood all sublime, and Godhead all replete. As many entered Cana's feast, a humble guest to dine. As God, He moved the water there and changed it into wine. As many climbed the mountain's height as suppliant to be, as God He left the place of prayer and walked upon the sea. As many wept in heartfelt grief beside a loved one's grave, as God He burst the bands of death, Almighty still to save. as many lay within a boat or powered by needful sleep, as God He rose, rebuked the wind, and stilled the angry deep. Such was our Lord in life on earth, in dual nature one, the woman seen in very truth, and God's eternal Son. O Child, O Son, O Word made flesh, may Thy high praise increase, called Wonderful, the Mighty God, the Eternal Prince of Peace. Robert Elmoyer, a preacher of yesteryear, in a sermon, here's what he said. He said, In Jesus, divine omnipotence moved a human arm. In Jesus, divine wisdom was cradled in a human brain. In Jesus, divine love throbbed in a human heart. In Jesus, divine compassion glistened in a human eye. In Jesus, divine grace poured forth in human lips. Oh friend, can I tell you, He became flesh with us, but now watch this lastly. He became flesh for us. When I was a kid, I used to like to listen to the radio. Nobody listens much to the radio. They stream all the time. We stream all the time. I mean, we do at times, and radio's still very important, but everything's different. And there used to be a guy that came on called Paul Harvey. How many know Paul Harvey? Yep, yep, the rest of the story. It was one of the most intriguing things I ever listened to. He was a Christian, loved the Lord. And every Christmas, every Christmas, he would share a column. written by a man in 1959 called The Parable of the Birds. It went like this. The man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a Scrooge. He was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man. He told his wife, he said, I'm truly sorry to distress you, but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve. He said he'd feel like a hypocrite if he did. That he'd much rather just stay home, but that he would wait up for them, so he stayed while his family went to the midnight service. Shortly after the family drove away, the snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read the newspaper. Minutes later, he was startled by a thudding sound, then another and another, sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stable their pawning. That would provide a warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, trampled through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds didn't come in. He figured food would entice them, so he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow. He made a trail to the brightly lit wide-open doorway of the stable. To his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them and waving his arms. But they scattered in every direction except into the warm-lighted barn. And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them he reasoned, I'm a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them but to help them. But how? Any move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. If only I could be a bird, he thought to himself, and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see and hear and understand. At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind, and he stood listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas, and he sank to his knees in the snow. Now I understand, he whispered. Now I see why you had to do it." See, God became man so we would understand. so we could see love incarnate in one person. At Bethlehem, the Word made flesh was God spelling Himself out in language men could understand. Somebody, and it's been said many times, that if our greatest need had been information, God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. If it had been pleasure, that was our greatest need, He would have given us an entertainer. But our greatest need is forgiveness. And so God sent us a Savior. You see, the Son of God became the Son of man, that the sons of men might become the Son of God. Listen to what John says. He came into His own. Listen to what He said. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came into His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power, the authority, the right to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. Friend, the greatest of all miracles took place at Bethlehem's manger where God cradled Himself into the womb of a virgin and was born into this world to save sinners like you and me. That a great miracle might take place in your life and my life that we might be forgiven and changed. God wants to forgive you and change you. if you've never been saved this morning. Let's bow our heads in prayer. As heads are bowed and eyes are closed in the quietness of our auditorium this morning, God is speaking to hearts. God is speaking to your heart in some form, some way, some fashion. Do you have the assurance that if you died, you'd go to heaven? Do you have the 100% assurance that your sins are forgiven and heaven's your home? Do you have that? See, Jesus came so that you could know not only how to be saved, but to know that you're saved and that your sins are forgiven and heaven's your home. If you know that this morning, if you can say, preacher, I know without a doubt that I'm saved, that my sins are forgiven, that heaven's my home and I have a Bible reason for it, I put my faith in Jesus,