children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
6 sermons cite this verse
… and the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. The question we have is, is that worth the wait? Like, is what God has done, is that worth the wait? Because think about this, from the beginning of the story, from the actually very first story. Here's Genesis chapter one and two, chapter three, everything falls apart. But in the midst of Genesis chapter three, Genesis chapter three, verse 15, God promises, he promises that there is going to be one who crushes the head of the serpent. There is gonna be one who restores all things. And then the whole rest of the story is people waiting from Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob, to the judges, to the kings, to the divided kingdom, to the civil war, to exile, through all the whole entire story, all the way to Jesus. is that worth the wait? I was thinking about, you know, this, think of right now, Christmas Day. I think a lot of us, we get really excited. …
… 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. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, may you do this work of light and life for us. We pray that we would not be hard of hearing, that we would be like Zachariah, full of faith and obedience and contrition, and do this work in our midst by your word and your spirit, that we may lift up our heads and be ready to welcome the Savior.
… This is a divine miracle. What is it? How do I experience it? So to answer that question, what is the acting of faith? Let's go first to John chapter 1, verses 11 to 13. Very familiar text. Even if you don't look it up, you're sure welcome to look it up and follow with me. But if you don't, you'll recognize it, probably. Jesus came to his own. This is John 1, verse 11. Jesus came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, now notice, you call that a positive in grammar. To all who did receive him, comma, who believed in his name. So believing, receiving. interpret each other. 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. So John chooses to report this language to make plain, receiving Jesus is what believing does. …
And every year I enjoy hearing it sung on Candlelight Christmas Eve. It happens after the sermon and before the passing of the candlelight. And because I've been here 35 years, this will be my 36th Christmas Eve as your pastor. and I often will have eight or nine services that I preach and I've heard it over 200 times. It's etched in my memory and on my heart and the words and the melody, they just touch me. And so today we're going to kick off a series of sermons for Advent in which we're going to look at the Advent message through the lens of that song, through its lyrics, its music, and we're going to learn a little bit about the song today. We're going to learn a little history about Israel today, a little history of France, and then we're going to try to ask what is this message of Advent about hope and the message we hear from the book of Isaiah. What does it mean to us today? How does it speak to us today? I want to begin, however, by mentioning, as we said at the beginning of the service, some of you weren't here yet, the word Advent comes from the Latin adventus. It means arrival or coming. And we got that name for this season of preparation and, you know, reflecting and getting ourselves ready for the celebration of the birth of Christ and for His second coming from the Romans. So, the Romans, when the Roman emperor would travel across the …
… 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. He says, so this is what happened. The light, Jesus, came into the world. But the world that he made didn't know him. And earlier in that passage, the world actually preferred darkness. It's like the light was coming to the world, but there's some people in the world, the Bible says, that actually prefer darkness. They don't want light to come in and expose what they've been doing. And I was talking to some of my friends in the TL that live in SROs. They go, gosh, I just want all my windows blacked out, my doors just closed. I just don't want anyone to see me. I want to be in the darkness. And that's exactly what the Bible says, that the light came to the world, but the people are like, I don't want to be exposed. …
… created the heaven and the earth. John is saying, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. That sentence in and of itself was enough to keep the theologians busy for three hundred years because on the one hand the Word is distinguished from God and then from a different perspective is identified with God. And since we looked at that somewhat closely during the Advent season, I'm just going to remind you that it's there as pregnant as it is in significance and is the basis basically more than anything else for the church's confession of Trinity. We read, He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. Without Him nothing was made that was made. So that Jesus who came to this earth is now identified as the incarnation of that member of the Trinity for whom, by whom, and in whom all things were made. So that what John is saying in extraordinary ways is this, the one I'm going to tell you about, the one that I want you to believe in, and the one in whom there is life is the one who created you in the first place. …