Preached at Christ church, Billericay on 4 January 2026 at 10:00
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW4Tstb0kFo, from 28:55 to 42:34
Prayer
Gracious Father, we come seeking your presence and your wisdom. Speak to us today, and help us to walk in the grace you so freely give.
New Year
Well, although it’s not our new year, the church year starts at Advent, it is still the civic New Year, so I should wish you all “Happy New Year”. The start of the new year can be a bit of a reset. As we reflect on 2025, and decide that we’re not going to do that again, or we need to do things better, or at least differently. This is where new year’s resolutions come from. It’s common to think of improving our diet, reducing alcohol, taking more exercise – which seems to be the cure for most of our ills, these days. Suddenly, people join the gym.
Perhaps you are going to try a spiritual reset. To try to read your bible more, or pray more.
Quit Day
The problem is these things rarely last. The second Friday of January is being called “quit day” (there’s already a TV advert showing a crowd of people leaving a gym). That’s next Friday, only 9 days into the year. Mostly, it’s better to change your habits when there’s something more impactful than a calendar date.
If you’re going to try a spiritual reset, the first ‘in-church’ prayer evening is next Wednesday at 7:45pm, two days before ‘quit day’.
Jeremiah
In the Jeremiah reading, the Israelites are in a bad way. Jerusalem has been defeated. They are tired and possibly injured by the war. They have been forced across the desert by their enemies. It has been a long and difficult journey. They feel abandoned by their God:
Psalm 137:4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?
Here, we see God is promising a return from exile. Not only that, but the return will be easy, as we see from 31:9.
They will come with weeping;
they will pray as I bring them back.
I will lead them beside streams of water
on a level path where they will not stumble,
because I am Israel’s father,
and Ephraim is my firstborn son.
The promise should reset their thinking, allowing them to focus more on the future than the past. They will still have a lot of thinking and praying to do as they try to understand the disaster that has befallen them. Their thinking has to turn from “why did God abandon us?” to “why did we ignore God and His love for us?”.
What it teaches us
The experience of the Israelites, is no different from the experience of so many people in our world today. Millions have been displaced by war, or famine. They will all feel abandoned, and will not understand the culture of the countries they end up in. They just want to go home and resume their normal life.
Gaza refugees
I was struck by the scenes of the refugees in Gaza when the fighting stopped. Endless streams of people, carrying what little they had left. Making their way along the wide dusty road, with piles of rubble, destroyed homes and businesses, on either side, heading back to their homes – if they even existed now.
Like the Israelites, they will face the painful work of rebuilding and re‑thinking their future.
John 1
John, on the other hand, doesn’t want there to be too much of a reset in people's thinking as they read his Gospel. Today we are looking at his prologue. John is setting the scene, and providing the context for the story of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection.
Unlike the other gospels, where the question “Who is this man?” is slowly uncovered, John dives straight in.
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 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
So, Jesus is the Word, who was with God, and who was God. We see the beginnings of Trinitarian understanding here, though John’s main emphasis is on Jesus as Creator. Verse 3 links Him back to creation. All the “God said” verses in Genesis chapter 1 are Jesus, the Word creating everything.
That alone, is not enough, John also tells us that the Word has life, the implication being that all life comes from Him, and Him alone. His life is what gives us our ‘light’. The light Christ gives us is what awakens and shapes our moral conscience. It’s that quality within us that enables us, encourages us to do good.
As James 1 say
17 Everything good comes from God. Every perfect gift is from him. These good gifts come down from the Father who made all the lights in the sky. But God never changes like the shadows from those lights. He is always the same. 18 God decided to give us life through the true message he sent to us. He wanted us to be the most important of all that he created.
Darkness
There is also a darkness inside each one of us, which again goes back to Genesis and the story of how sin entered the world. The darkness though has not overcome the light.
I remember being on a small, narrow gauge train. We were on the first carriage, sat sideways, back to back with the people on the other side. Maybe 8 to a carriage. The little diesel engine groaned as it took us into the mountain - up hill. The driver was telling us about the mining operation, and reminding us to keep our heads down. The miners had followed the seam, it was a bit twisty in the little tunnels. Then we stopped, and the driver told us that he was going to switch the lights off so that we could see the conditions the miners worked in.
It was completely dark. You couldn't see a centimetre in front of you. On the dashboard there was the tiniest dim red light. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The darkness had not overcome it.
John the Baptist
Next John introduces John the Baptist, so I’m guessing the people he was writing for will have heard of John the Baptist, and perhaps some of them were even following his teaching. John the Baptist was only a witness to the light, and that light, Jesus, was coming into the world.
He came to that which was His own – the Israelites, the descendants of those who had returned to Jerusalem and later been conquered again. They were now so far from really understanding God, that they did not recognise Him when He arrived. He was rejected by their religious leaders, well, most of them. To those who did recognise Him and welcome Him, He gave the right to become children of God.
Children of God?
If we choose to accept that right, it forms the basis of our relationship with God:
We can speak directly to God in prayer (Heb 4:16).
We are not condemned for our sins, but forgiven. (Ro 8:1)
We will inherit eternal life (Ro 8:17)
but the offer also comes with responsibilities:
Love your neighbour (Matthew 22:39)
Do justice and love mercy (Micah 6:8)
Forgive others (Matthew 6:14–15)
Care for the poor and oppressed (Isaiah 1:17)
Accepting that right, is a major reset in anyone’s life.
The birth
In verse 14 we are told that the Word, became flesh, this is as near as John gets to a birth narrative. Rather than concentrate on the baby, because that’s not really relevant to a prologue, we are told that the one and only Son, is full of grace and truth.
Grace
God has already been gracious in His dealings with the Israelites, He has given them the Law and the Prophets to guide them, but they have chosen to ignore both. Even when they suffered the consequences of their action, He rescued them and returned them to their land. Now there is more grace from God, as He sent His son to guide all people everywhere. This is not a reset in God’s thinking, this is part of His long term plan.
Reset
If we are going to take this opportunity to reset our thinking, to review our spirituality, to determine to go in a better direction, let’s remember the grace that we have been given, and determine to have that same grace with others that God has with us.
In 2025 the world seems to have become a darker place, with more wars and hatred. So, let us shine Jesus’s spiritual light on the world. We can either be a reflection of Jesus’s light, [Show a mirror] or we can be a refraction of Jesus’s light [Show 'Dark side of the Moon cover'], and just pass on some of what we receive. This light cannot be overcome, it will continue to shine however deep the darkness gets, until perhaps it is the only thing we can see.
Or, it could become so bright that it's the only thing we can see
Amen.
References
- https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-the-word-become-flesh-in-john-1/
- https://mypastoralponderings.com/2025/01/03/living-in-the-real-world-with-god-my-sermon-on-john-11-18-and-ephesians-13-14/
- https://www.mfbc.org/hp_wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Hand-Out-for-John-1.1-18-Sermon.pdf
- https://shortpowerfulsermons.com/john-11-18-in-the-beginning-was-the-word/
- https://biblehub.com/q/archeological_proof_of_israel's_regathering.htm
- https://biblehub.com/q/Archaeological_proof_for_Jeremiah_31_events.htm
- https://www.bibliaplus.org/en/commentaries/138/peter-petts-commentary-on-the-bible/jeremiah/31/7-14
- https://desperatepreacher.com/sermonbuilder/a_2c.htm
- https://desperatepreacher.com/sermonbuilder/newsermons/close_to_the_fathers_heart.htm
- https://youtu.be/5VJMgzvrTZA?si=d_Z5BxkJpkKBHV2m. The prologue
- https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-jeremiah-317-14-10
- https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/12/31/3211800/0/en/Why-Most-New-Year-s-Resolutions-Fail-by-January-And-How-to-Make-Them-Stick-in-2026.html
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