Jesus, the Deliverer of God’s People

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And we’re continuing our look through John chapter 1 where we’ve been looking at John’s account of Jesus coming. Matthew and Luke tell us a lot about how Jesus came to earth. They tell us, you know, all the details about Bethlehem and all the details about the manger and the no room in the inn and the stable, all the things that we’re familiar with.

And John talks about Jesus coming as well, but he talks about why he came. And he explains from even before the beginning of time how Jesus existed with God the Father, how he’s always been there, how he was part of creating the universe, how he is, in fact, God the Son, God in human flesh, and how he came to create the universe, how he came to redeem the universe, how he brought light into the darkness of it all. And we’re going to continue on this morning looking at another thing that this teaches about him.

which is him coming to be the deliverer of God’s people. And that word deliverer is just a word that’s used a lot of times in biblical context. It means rescuer.

He’s the rescuer of God’s people. He came to be the hero for people who could not save themselves. And we love, as a society, we love hero stories.

I mean, there are all these superheroes I can’t even name. My son knows who they are. But he’ll come home from school talking about Iron Man or the blue something or other.

I don’t even know. And I’m asking him, which one is that? I don’t know.

He asked me who my favorite superhero was. I think I told him Thomas Jefferson. I don’t know.

But we love hero stories, whether it’s superheroes, whether it’s these epic movies, the Lord of the Rings, and I don’t even know who the hero is in that. Anyway, we love hero stories. And we always have.

It’s nothing new. Most of you, if not all, are familiar with the stories of King Arthur. King Arthur is a classic story of a hero.

And there are many versions of the story, and they’re all different. What he does in all of them are different. But he, in the story, like so many hero stories, he was the only one who could step in and do the heroic thing that needed to be done.

Many people had tried to come and get the sword, Excalibur, and it depends on which version of the story you’re reading, whether he got it from some woman in the lake, the lady of the lake, or whether he pulled it out of the stone. Excuse me, he couldn’t pull the sword out of the sword. He pulled the sword out of the stone.

Either way, he was the only one who could get that sword back and use it. He was the only one who could unite England and rule England. He was the only one who could defeat the Saxons.

He was the only one who could lead the knights to find the Holy Grail, depending on what version of the story you’re reading. And we love those hero stories where somebody comes in, and sometimes just an ordinary person comes in and does extraordinary heroic things that only they can do. And folks, that’s exactly what we’re going to see in this passage that Jesus has done.

He stepped in and did a heroic thing that no one else could do. God’s people had had many rescuers over the years, but Jesus rescued God’s people in a way that nobody else could. He rescued them so completely, where they’d just been rescued from little bits and problems here.

And this leads us to the first thing in the bulletin, if you’re following along, that God has sent many heroes to rescue his people from their earthly problems, but only Jesus could rescue us from our eternal problem. And if you think about it, that’s really what the whole Bible tells us, the stories of how God sent various heroes in to rescue his people. I mean, when I think of the word deliverer, the first place my mind goes is to Moses.

And God sent Moses to use him. Now it’s God who delivered his people, but God used Moses to do it. God sent Moses in to confront Pharaoh.

God sent Moses in to say, you let my people go. And then when Pharaoh wouldn’t, there were plagues. And there were continual confrontations, and there were flies, and there were lice, and the water turned into blood, and not in that order.

And then God took the firstborn of every Egyptian family, but spared those who were under the blood of the Lamb, which was a picture of Jesus going back to what we talked about last week. But God used Moses to then lead them out of Egypt. And God used Moses to lead them through the wilderness.

God used Moses to lead them to the edge of the Red Sea, and then when they had the sea in front of them and Pharaoh’s army behind them, God used Moses to stand there and part the waters and to deliver them safely to the other side. See, they had an earthly problem of we’re slaves in Egypt and we need to be rescued, and then we have an earthly problem of we’re here about to be slaughtered by the Egyptians and we need to be rescued. And then they had the problem of we’re dying in the wilderness and we need to be rescued, and God used Moses to deliver them from those earthly problems. They had the problem of the pagan countries in their land that they were going to have to fight with, and God used Joshua to deliver them from that.

Then when they were overrun by Philistines, God used Samson to deliver them from that. God used David to deliver them from that again. When they were ruled by an evil king and an even more evil queen who worshipped false gods that liked human sacrifice, and the country was overrun with violence and wickedness and all sorts of evil, God raised up Elijah to rescue the people from this oppressive religious system.

God has all throughout the history of the Bible used these heroes, used these deliverers, these rescuers, to rescue his people from their earthly problems. And we still had an even greater problem than that. It was the eternal problem of sin. The problem of the fact that we are not in a right relationship with God.

The fact that our sin separates us from God, that word sin just simply means the times that we fall short of God’s holy standard. It’s all the times that God says, do this, this is right, and we don’t do it. And it’s all the times that God says, don’t do this, it’s wrong, and we do it anyway.

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we all fall short of that standard. And that sin separates us from the holy God. And for thousands of years, there was nobody who could deal with that problem until Jesus came along.

And so we’re going to look at John chapter 1, starting in verse 9, and it says, And that was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. John is sort of refreshing our memory a little bit.

He’s repeating some of the things he’s already said about Jesus creating the world and not being known by the world. It says, He came unto his own, and his own received him not, but as many as received him. to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God.

And so when we look at verse 9 here, and it says that was the true light, he’s referring back to what he’s already talked about. And what we discussed last week, how John the Baptist came as a messenger sent from God. He came the last in a long line of prophets who for thousands of years had been foretelling the coming of Christ. That’s what all of human history was leading to up to that point was the coming of Christ. And John the Baptist was the final messenger saying, by the way, he’s here, get ready.

He’s just about to step on the scene. He’s here among us. You need to start getting right with God.

You need to start paying attention to God. And so he says in verse 9, that was the true light. He’s referring back to Jesus.

And he says that he lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Now, that doesn’t mean that every man in the world receives the light. We know that’s not the case.

We can walk out these front doors and go find people who have not received the light, or maybe, better said, have not received the light yet, have not received Jesus yet. We should never write anybody off. But we know that not everybody who’s lived has ever received Jesus Christ. But the light has shone into the world.

And as we talked about several weeks ago, the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. there was not a thing that darkness could do to overcome the light. There was not a thing that the darkness could do to conquer the light.

The light always conquers the darkness. As long as there’s a source of light, you don’t flip the switch and the darkness and light duke it out for a little bit and you have to wait and see who’s going to win. No, you flip the switch and if the light’s working, the light comes on and the darkness has to go away.

That’s just how it works. And so his light came into the world. And what he’s saying here is his light.

What John the Apostle is saying is that Jesus’ light shone on everyone. It didn’t mean everybody received it, but everybody who was around it saw it. And His light, even today, shines to the ends of the earth.

And even those who don’t receive it have the opportunity to hear, have the opportunity to know that there’s a God who loves them enough that His Son died for them to pay for their sins when they didn’t deserve His love or His forgiveness. And that salvation is available to all who will hear it and all who will receive it. That light shines on all men.

He was in the world and the world was made by him. He reminds us again. Don’t forget Jesus is the creator.

He’s not somebody that God created and then he stepped into existence. Jesus didn’t start at Bethlehem. Jesus didn’t even start as a little baby.

Jesus existed long, long before that. There has never been a time that Jesus didn’t exist. Even before time, Jesus existed. So he was God, he’s the creator, and he was in the world that he made, but the world knew him not.

The world did not understand. The world just did not get it. And we like to look at that and say, well, shame on them.

You know what, it’s hard for me to fault them too much for not understanding it. I’m not sure that I would understand who he was if I didn’t have the benefit of 2,000 years of hindsight. So he came and they missed it.

Despite all the signs, a lot of people missed it. Most people, in fact, missed who he really was. But all the prophets, they said this is the Messiah.

They identified who his parents were going to be, what his lineage was going to be, where he was going to be born, what he was going to do. How did they miss it? All these pictures through the Old Testament.

If you have the sheet I gave you last week with the list of some of the prophecies and some of the pictures from the Old Testament, go through that. How did they miss all those things? If you don’t have one, by the way, there are yellow pieces of paper back by the door, and we can get you the stuff to fill that in.

But how did they miss all that stuff from the Old Testament? Because it wasn’t what they were looking for. It wasn’t what they were looking for.

They were looking for an earthly king who was going to come kick the Romans out and give them their own kingdom. Oftentimes we miss the things that we’re not looking for. We miss the things that we’re not expecting to see.

Late last night, Charla had me looking for something in my study. I couldn’t find it. I had seen it earlier in the week when I was looking for something else.

And so I couldn’t remember where I had seen it. Because this card, this piece of paper that I was looking for, when I’d seen it earlier in the week, it wasn’t the thing I was looking for at the time, so I missed it. We miss things all the time because they’re not what we expect to see.

And so when they were looking for an earthly king, when they were looking for the typical idea of a hero, When they were looking for a big strong man who was going to come in with his sword and his army and whoop up on the Romans, it was easy. It was easy to miss the teacher who was the son of a carpenter who came and told people to love each other and that his kingdom was not of this world. It was easy to miss that.

The world knew him not. He came unto his own. But wait a minute, the Jewish people, their whole existence was about looking for the Messiah and setting up the kingdom of David.

How did they miss it? God had specifically been telling them, again, you miss what you’re not looking for. He came unto his own and his own received him not.

See, it’s not surprising that the whole world rejected him, but even his own people, even the Jewish people, when he came to be their Messiah, they rejected him. He came to be their rescuer. But they were looking for an entirely different kind of rescuer.

They were looking for the kind of rescuer they’d been seeing all along who could only deal with these relatively small earthly problems. I say relatively small. I can’t set y’all free from Egypt. Sorry.

If you find yourself there, I’m probably not the guy to call. So I’m not, I don’t mean to make it sound like, oh, it was nothing. We all do that every day before breakfast, what Moses did.

I’m just saying there’s a smaller problem than what Jesus dealt with. They were looking for these same kind of rescuers to deal with their earthly problems. And so when God sent the kind of rescuer who could deal with their eternal problem, they missed it. But.

So many of the greatest things in the Bible come after the word but. In Titus, it talks about how wicked we are and how sinful, and then it says, but the kindness and grace of God appeared toward us. And here it says, he came unto his own, and his own received him not.

His own people rejected him. It says, but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. But there were a few.

But there were a few who recognized him. his own nation rejected him and ignored him but there were some who recognized him and the good news is that to as many as who would receive him it didn’t matter that the whole rest of the nation missed him as many as did recognize him as many as did receive him as the Messiah, as the rescuer God promised even if it was just one or two as many as did receive him it says to them gave he power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on his name that’s incredible news when God looks at us and our problem of sin, this eternal problem that Jesus was sent to deal with. Our sin is so offensive to God.

It’s so ugly to God. Brother Greg, it’s worse than that yellow case you were complaining about on my iPad. He hated that color.

It was offensive to him. It’s more offensive than having to clean up. It’s offensive to me when I look and I have to clean up after my child gets sick in the floor.

That is offensive. I’m a germaphobe anyway. And that is offensive to everything within me.

We all see things on a daily basis that offend us. And I’m not talking about people in their safe spaces now with their trigger warnings. Oh, I’m offended by everything I see.

I’m talking about the things that just really bother us. The things that get under our skin. Down in our.

. . God looks at our sin and it’s offensive.

Because it’s rebellion against Him. It’s disobedience to Him. It’s hateful toward Him.

And it would be incredible enough if God looked at people like that, who’d sinned against him, who’d rejected him, who’d hated him, who’d spit in his face. If God looked at people like us and said, I forgive you, I’ll let you be my servants. That would be incredible enough.

But oh my goodness, God never stops at enough. God always goes one step further. And he didn’t stop at just saying, I forgive you, we can have peace between us and you can be my servants.

He says, to those who received him, you’re going to be my children. Wait a minute, God looked at rebellious people like us. People have spent our whole lives rejecting him and rejecting his will and disobeying him and loving it, quite frankly, and looks at us and says, I’ll adopt you as my child.

I can’t even imagine love like that. And he does it not because we can be good, not because we can earn his love, not because we can earn his acceptance. He doesn’t look at us and say, oh, you’ve gone to church enough.

I like you now. He doesn’t say, oh, you gave enough money. We’re good.

He doesn’t say, I saw you break for that squirrel. So now we’re. .

. All the things that we think of that are good. I’m going to be nice.

I’m going to go to church. I’m going to give money to the poor. I’m going to be nice to animals.

I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. None of it cuts any ice with God.

God doesn’t look at us and say, you’ve got to do this and this and this and this and this, and then we can be okay. It’s because Jesus Christ came to be the rescuer. It’s because he came to rescue us from our eternal problem of sin.

And now even to them that believe on his name is what he says. Verse 12. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to believe the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

And it’s not talking about believing that Jesus existed. But those who would look at Jesus as the one who came and gave his life on the cross, who shed his blood and gave his life on the cross, that if we would believe in him and what he did, believe that he was the rescuer, that we become the sons of God. We become God’s children, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

It’s a reminder from John that what Jesus came to do was not in any way, shape, or form our work. What we have in God through Jesus Christ is not anything that we have to boast about. It’s not anything that we’ve contributed to, I didn’t do one thing to earn my salvation.

I said that at the beginning of the message when talking about the Christmas gift. I’m so thankful anytime I don’t get what I deserve because I know what I deserve. I’m so thankful that my salvation has nothing to do with what I deserve because I would be lost and bound for hell.

It was not something I did. It was not something I contributed to. It was not by my will.

It had nothing to do with my birth. It had nothing to do with where I came from or what I’ve done. It was entirely from first to last the work of God.

The planning of God the Father and the execution of Jesus Christ when he gave his life on the cross. He carried out God’s plans to rescue us from our eternal problem of sin. So three things that we need to see from this passage here this morning that reinforce this idea of Jesus coming to be the rescuer, coming to be the hero that solved our eternal problem.

Jesus came to fulfill God’s promises of deliverance to the Jews He came unto his own in verse 11, and his own received him not. Jesus was, John reiterates here, Jesus was the fulfillment of all these promises. All the things that I talked to you about last week, all these prophecies, all these pictures in the Old Testament, all these times that God, like when God provided the sacrifice to Abraham, had Abraham prepare to sacrifice his son, and just as he drew the knife, God stopped him.

And there was a ram there in the clearing, caught in the thicket by his horns. And God was telling Abraham, no, no, no. You don’t give your son. I provide the sacrifice.

It’s not your son who’s going to die. I provide the sacrifice. All of those things, all of those things were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Every time God said, I’m going to deal with the problem of sin.

Every time God said, I will show you mercy. Every time God said, I’m going to be your God and you’re going to be my people, even though you don’t deserve it. Every time, every promise that God made was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He came unto his own.

Even though his own received him, not even though God knew his own wouldn’t receive him, God still fulfilled the promises that he made. Second of all, Jesus came to bring salvation to all who would receive it. He came to be the Messiah of the Jews.

He came to fulfill God’s promises to the Jews, but he didn’t come just to save the Jews. And thank God he didn’t. Thank God he didn’t because most of us in here are not of Jewish ancestry.

There may be some, but most of us are not. And if not for God bringing salvation to the Gentiles, we would probably be dancing around in the forest praying to trees, quite honestly. Because that’s what our ancestors did.

And thinking that trees and statues and gold would save us. Thinking that we could save ourselves by our intellect. Thinking any number of things.

Thank God he didn’t just look at one group of people and say, I love you more so you get to spend eternity in heaven. God looked at one group of people and said, you’re going to be the vessel by which I send salvation to everybody. And I’ve chosen you to be the ones to bring my son into the world so that everybody who receives him can spend eternity in heaven.

He was the true light that lights every man who comes into the world. And as many as receive him have the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. It’s not about your lineage today.

It’s not about where you came from. I know in our context today, not a lot of people are saying, well, I’m getting into heaven because of my genealogy. I’m descended from this group of people.

But a lot of times we look at where we came from and make decisions about our spirituality based on that. I’m probably good with God. My grandpa was a preacher.

It doesn’t matter. I mean, thank God for your grandpa’s ministry, If that doesn’t help you, my daddy was a deacon. Bless your heart.

That doesn’t help you. My kids don’t automatically get into heaven because of my job. But at the same time, look at where I’ve come from.

Look at the family I’ve come from. Look at the life I’ve lived. God doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.

See, it doesn’t work either way. God doesn’t accept us or reject us because of where we’ve come from. Jesus Christ came to bring salvation to all who would believe, to all who would receive it.

And Jesus came to make God’s enemies into his sons. I’ve already hit on that, but I think that’s the most incredible thing, that God would look at people who were his enemies. And you say, enemies, that’s kind of harsh.

That’s not me saying it, that’s God saying it. Friendship with the world. To love the things of the world is to be the enemy of God.

And Romans chapter 5 says that it’s through Jesus that we have peace with God. That tells me that without Jesus, we’re not at peace with God. It’s not because God hates us and is mad at us.

We fired off the first shots in this rebellion by sinning against God. We made ourselves God’s enemies. But it’s the most incredible thing to me that God would look at his enemies and say, first of all, I’m going to forgive you.

You can be my servants. But just like the story of the prodigal son, the father doesn’t say to the son, sure, you can come back and be a servant. He says, my son who was dead is alive again.

God looks on us and says, you were my enemies, but now you’re my children. It’s hard for us to fathom a love like that. But Jesus came and paid everything so that we could find that kind of love, that we could find that salvation, that we could be God’s children.

Jesus came to be the rescuer. We had Moses, we had Joshua, we had Elijah, we had all these through the Old Testament who came to rescue God’s people from one earthly problem after another. relatively little things, but still there was the problem of sin that nobody could deal with until Jesus came.

And he was the only one who could deal with the eternal problem of sin because he had no sin of his own. If I tried to die on the cross for you, I’d just be being punished for my own sins. And I’ve got plenty of them.

But Jesus had no sins of his own. And he went to the cross an innocent man, God in human flesh, and he shed his blood and he died taking responsibility for my sins and for yours so that the slate could be wiped clean with God. He came to be the hero that we needed.

He came to be the rescuer and the only one who could be that rescuer. And now Jesus’ offer of rescue leaves each of us, leaves each man with a choice whether we believe him or whether we reject him. And it’s your free choice.

I mean, God left it to be your free choice and I wouldn’t make it any other way. I don’t want to force my faith on anybody. I don’t want the government kicking down your door and making you accept Jesus.

it wouldn’t be real anyway and it wouldn’t do a bit of good for you. God leaves each of us with a free choice. God leaves each of us with an option.

Do we accept him or do we reject him? To as many as received him, gave he the power to become the sons of God. And so this morning the choice is yours, whether you accept him, whether you accept him as your rescuer, as your hero, as the one who died taking responsibility for your sins, being punished in your place or not.

But we all have the problem of sin. We deal with the same problem of sin that Israel did. All mankind deals with the problem of sin.

We’ve all sinned against a holy God. And we all deserve separation from God because our sin is offensive and hateful to him. And yet we have a God who loved us enough that even while we were making ourselves his enemies, he sent his son to take responsibility for our sins and to rescue us.

And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior before this morning, it is as simple as believing that He came to be the one to rescue you, that He was the only one who could do it, and that He did it on the cross. And if you know that you’ve sinned and need a rescue or He’s the only one who could do it, He paid for your sins on the cross, you believe that, then you ask God to forgive you because of what Christ has done. It’s not a matter of going to church.

It’s not a matter. All those are going to church, giving money, being nice to people. Those are all great things.

I’m not going to tell you not to do those things. But they don’t get you to heaven. It’s believing what Jesus did was for you and asking God’s forgiveness because of what he did.

And if you’ve got questions, if you want somebody to talk with you, pray with you, as our musicians come forward for a time of invitation, you’re more than welcome to come forward and I’ll visit with you. Somebody else from here, you can grab somebody in the pew near you and we’ll talk with you. We’ll answer any questions we can.

We won’t embarrass you or single you out. But also right where you stand, as we stand in a moment for our invitation, right where you stand, you can trust Christ and be saved. His offer, His offer of forgiveness and His offer of rescue is as good for you today and is as available for you today as it was to His own people when He came to them 2,000 years ago.