Episode Transcript
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Let's turn on our bibles, and
or you can simply turn your attention to
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John, Chapter One, John One
versus one through five. This is a
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very poetic section. John begins his
letter, or rather his Gospel, with
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and here we have some very wonderful
things to consider. John One versus one
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through five. In the beginning was
the word, and the word was with
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God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
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All things were made through him and
without him was not anything made.
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That was made in him was life, and the life was the light of
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men. The light shines in the
darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
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You may be seated. I'm so
excited to begin preaching the Gospel of
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John, one of four gospels in
the Bible. Do you know what a
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Gospel is? Hopefully you know what
that word means. Gospel means good news,
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right, these are announcements of good
news about Jesus. When we say
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Gospel, though, as kind of
a type of book, what we're talking
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about are these. You could think
of it just as biographies. There are
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four biographies that begin the New Testament
about Jesus, right, and that's not
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unusual. Even today, you might
go to the bookstore and find five or
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six biographies on a particular person.
Why would you write a biography about someone
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that's already been written? Well,
you know the answer right there are different
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ways that you can tell the story, the ways that you can express the
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history. You can emphasize different things, point out different aspects, and that's
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one of the reasons that we have
of these four biographies, so this one
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by a man named John, and
so that's why this is called the Gospel
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according to John. And as we
begin this book, John Begins in a
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different place than some of the other
Gospel Writers Do. Some of the other
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Gospel Writers Begin with what they all
do, begin with that Jesus as birth,
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and they talk about his life,
his genealogy. Even John Begins with
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his Eternal Birth, His eternally begotten
nature. He doesn't start in the in
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the in the stable and in the
manger where he became incarnate. He starts
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with the nature of Jesus as divine, as God, and in this he
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jumps us, or he plunges us, right into the deep end, you
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might say. He gets US thinking
about some very weighty things, very glorious
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things, right from right from the
start, and if you felt this morning
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that that happened here at our church
as well, that we started in a
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very heavy way, very weighty way. I make no apologies. Right the
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the Scriptures, God himself does this
sometimes. You might think about a job.
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The Way God is sort of plunges
job under the weight of his glory
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by expressing all of these things about
himself, things that are so different from
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job, so so different from job, so transcendent and beyond who he is
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that by the end of it all, job what can only do is put
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his hand over his mouth. Sorry, I've got nothing else to say.
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Right, and this is true of
the beginning of John here, Jesus is,
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I'm so important to us for his
closeness to us, his presence with
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us. He is called Emanuel.
This is the name that was given to
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him, a name that was prophesied
about, a name that means God with
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us. Jesus is so close to
us, he's so intimate with us that
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in Colossians, when Paul Talks about
him, he describes him as being the
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head of the body of which we
are members. How connected is your arm
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to your brain? Pretty connected.
How connected is your other arm to your
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other arm and your foot to your
knee, to your nose, to your
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ear. It's one body and that's
the way that we are described, are
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our relationship, as the church is
described, with Jesus. It's that close
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and yet at the same time he's
so far away, so beyond us in
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every way, so infinitely beyond us. We can be barely begin we can
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barely find ways to speak about him. How John, of course, does
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find ways and he is guided by
the Holy Spirit, he is given words
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by the spirit that might express these
things to us. But I promise you
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you will never understand them in a
way that you feel like you've mastered them.
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You will never understand things about the
nature of God and the nature of
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the son of God in a way
that you feel like I got it now,
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and of course it should be that
way. Would God be truly God
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if you could master him, if
you could comprehend him, if you could
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understand every part of him? Of
course not. But that doesn't mean we
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have no knowledge of God or that
he's completely understand that we're not able to
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understand anything about him. One way
you might think about it is the way
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that John Calvin describes God's speech to
us. He talks about God speaking to
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us like a like a nurse or
a or a some kind of care worker
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might speak to a little child.
Right, sort of baby talk, right
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when we are when you have a
small children who are beginning to understand our
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language, we speak to them in
a way that they can understand right.
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We simplify our concepts, we simplify
our vocabulary, we we do things for
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them that tell them true things without
necessarily getting into everything. God does that
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with us in a way. It's
not that he's trying to hide something from
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us. No, he reveals to
US everything that we need. But as
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he reveals to US everything we need
in a way that we can understand,
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we also have to remember that he
is very beyond us. The Deuteronomy twenty
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nine says the secret things belong to
him, the revealed things belong to us.
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So here in the gospel of John, we have revealed things. This
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is the good news according to John. For you, this is the good
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news, this is the Gospel about
Jesus, for you to understand, even
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as you sort of stretch your mind
understand these things, even as you recognize
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there's limits to how much you can
understand at the same time, remember that
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it's given to you for you.
In fact, John says this himself.
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If you turn to the end of
the book, John Talks about his letter,
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he talks about why he wrote it. So, if you look,
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for example, in versus thirty and
thirty one, he says this is chapter
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twenty. Says, now, Jesus
did many other signs in the presence of
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the disciples which are not written in
this book. Right. So, John
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says, I didn't include everything.
There's a lot more I could have said,
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but didn't. But what does he
say in Verse Thirty One? These
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are written so that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the son
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of God, and that, by
believing, you may have life in his
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name. See, John didn't write
these things to confound you, to make
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you give up your hands and say, well, I guess, I guess,
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I just don't won't know anything.
No, he specifically wrote these things.
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In fact, he left out some
things and gave you these things.
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He was that precise about it for
a particular reason, so that you would
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believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the son of God, and that,
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by believing in him, you would
have life in his name. I want
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you to treasure that verse as we
go through the gospel of John, as
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we think about who he, who
Jesus, is and what he has done.
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Come back to that verse again and
again and remember the purpose for which
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God has given to you this book. And so, as we consider that
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and these other things, let's begin
at John's beginning, versus one through five.
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In the beginning was the word.
The word was with God and the
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word was God. He was in
the beat, he was in us are,
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he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him
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and without him was not anything made. That was made in him was life,
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and the life was the light of
men. And the light shines in
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the darkness, in the darkness does
not overcome it. So in these reverses,
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a John begins to introduce us to
Jesus, this Jesus that he's going
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to tell us about, Jesus who
will have conversations with people, Jesus who
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will perform miracles, Jesus who will
tell us and teach us things, Jesus
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who will eventually die on a cross
and be crucified and then rise from the
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dead. That Jesus, that John
is going to talk to us about the
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John's going to teach us about we
he we start out by this way.
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He is described as the word,
the one who is spoken, and we
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read that he was in the beginning
and he was with God. This tells
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us that Jesus, the son of
God, is very close to God.
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He was distinct with from the father. He, as we confessed earlier,
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was not the father himself. He
was with the father, distinct and distinguished
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from him. He was with God
from the very or even in the very
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beginning. But then John Not goes
on to say also, but the word
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was God, which means, though
he is distinct from the father, that
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he and the father together are God, the Holy Spirit, as well,
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as John will teach us a later. This means that, as we confessed
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earlier in the affanation creed, when
we think about God, we don't think
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about the Father God, the father
as one God and Jesus as another God.
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Notice he doesn't say and the were
these. These two were two gods.
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Know, they were one God.
Notice what he also says. He
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also says that this word in verse
two was in the beginning with God,
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and this is a very curious way
of speaking. How do you be before
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the beginning. How do you put
a was before the beginning right? Grasping
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at something like this is trying to
it's like trying to look out and fix
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your eyes on on the Great Ocean. Let's say you're on a ship.
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You're on a ship in the middle
of the ocean and you look out at
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this great vastness and you try to
sort of put your finger on it.
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It's very difficult. This is an
analogy that Crossostom, the great pastor theologian
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of the fourth century, used to
describe what we just read. When not?
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When you're on a ship and you're
close to the land, you can
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see ports and cities, you can
see shipping containers, market places, but
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when you're out at sea, you're
in the middle of nowhere and you just
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sort of see this vastness. That's
what trying to think about before the beginning
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is like, isn't it? When
you when you think about this, he
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says there's this is sort of emptiness
and unlimited expanse, and this is where
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John The evangelist takes us at the
very beginning of his Gospel. Try to
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do this for a moment. Think
about the beginning. Okay, in your
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own minds. Think about before today, so yesterday, and then the day
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before that. Let's go back to
your birth, let's go back to your
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parents birth, your grandparents, your
great grandparents, great great great keep going
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back and back and back, further
and further, as Hilary of pontiers put
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it, think back through the ranges, backward over space and time. Centuries
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are left behind and ages are canceled. Fix in your mind what date you
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will for this beginning. I find
that point, find even that nanosecond at
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which time and space begin. Fix
your mind there and yet you still,
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he says, miss the mark,
for even then he of whom we are
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speaking was he was before the beginning. Survey the universe. I'm continuing the
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quote here. Survey the universe.
Note well what is written of it.
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In the beginning, God made the
heaven and the Earth. This word beginning
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fixes the moment of creation. You
can assign its date to an event that
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is definitely stated to have happened in
the beginning. But this fisherman of mine,
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he's speaking of John, he says, this fisherman of mine, unlettered
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and unread, is untrammeled by time, undaunted by its immensity, he peers,
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has beyond the beginning, for his
was has no limit of time,
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no commencement. The uncreated word was
in the beginning. It's amazing, this
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past tense of before time, before
the beginning, thinking of things before the
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before. It confuses, it perplexes. Going back to Chrysostom again, he
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says, finding then that the was
in the text exceeds its imagination. The
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intellect has no point on which to
focus its thoughts. You just sort of
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feel like you're out at sea,
looking intently onward, but being unable to
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fix its gaze, the intellect becomes
weired and turns back to things below.
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Indeed, the ex Russian was in
the beginning, is expresses, is expressive
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of eternal and infinite being. This
is so important to say because there are
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people who have said the opposite.
There are people who have said that no,
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the word was created, that there
was a beginning for Jesus Christ,
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not in his incarnation but in his
divinity, that as a begotten Son of
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God, He was begotten into this
world, that there was a time when
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Jesus wasn't and then he was,
the problem with this, as we read
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in the affeination creed, is this
this is that this undermines the very divinity
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of Christ. It makes him at
least a second class God or are some
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other kind of thing. It puts
Jesus in his quote unquote, divinity,
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on the same category, basically,
with us. It's strips away Jesus Christ
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of his divinity, which ultimately ends
up stripping away our salvation. If Jesus
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Christ is just another created being and
nothing more than that, then we have
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no hope in him, we have
no salvation in him, and all of
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God's promises to come and be our
savior our null void. This error called
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Arianism, is what these various people
I've been quoting we're fighting against. They're
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speaking so eloquently and persuasively about this
because it really mattered. They were in
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a moment of time when this doctrine, this important point about our salvation,
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was being underminded, a point when
it was threatening to come undone in the
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church. Praise be to God that
there were people who stood before us,
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who went to the scriptures and read
it and read it carefully and thought carefully
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about phrases like this. What does
it mean to be before the beginning?
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What does it mean that he is
uncreated? And Eternally Begotten of God.
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But these, as you see,
are not just old debates. If they
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feel just like old debates, that's
because we are resting on them. It's
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because we have the great comfort of
being able to walk and to say,
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yeah, of course, the Trinity, but it's not of course the trinity.
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We say, of course God is
this way and revealed in this way,
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only because he tells us this in
scripture and only because we've taken the
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time to think about it, to
reflect on it and even go through great
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controversies to make sure we understand,
at least as best we can, what
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God means. And it matters a
great deal because our very salvation depends on
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it. There are all kinds of
implications of these facts, but first and
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foremost, we might say, as
it tells us, John is telling us
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that this Jesus, who would be
born of a woman, born under the
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law, as Paul puts it,
this one who would come and do these
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signs and miracles, one who would
come and die on a cross, was
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and is and always will be God. As he says in verse three,
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all things were made through him.
He is not created, but Jesus is
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the Creator everything you look at everything, you see, everything that ever was
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and ever will be are because of
Jesus, this one who would be born
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in a manger and wrapped in swaddling
close. It's because of him who created
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all things. In Him, he
says verse four, was life, and
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this life was the light of men. As we understand these words life and
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light, you want to think of
them in very broad terms. Physical Life,
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physical light, the Sun and the
moon were created by Jesus, but
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also in terms of our intellect,
in terms of our knowledge, our capability
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of knowing things, in terms of
blessedness and joy, in terms of our
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moral state, to be united with
God, to know him and rest in
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him. All of these things are
from Jesus, our Savior, and this
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means that as we go on to
read and hear things about the gospel of
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Jesus, we need to stand in
awe of him. It means that,
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as we perceive this world, we
need to understand that our whole world was
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made through him, Jesus, who
existed eternally with the father, is God.
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We should also understand that this reality
concerning the divinity and purpose of Jesus
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prepares us to understand not just the
work of creation now, but the work
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of new creation that is coming in
his coming. That's what John is preparing
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us for. He's telling us that
this light and life that came into the
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world when God said the word let
there be light, and through Jesus the
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world came into being and light came
into being. As Jesus is coming again,
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God is speaking a second word and
he's creating something new. Talk about
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good news, especially when we remember
the fact that the world has fallen,
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that in our sin, it has
fallen into disrepair and sin and misery and
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all kinds of of other things.
But now here comes Jesus, who was
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the light and life of men and
is the light and life of men.
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God is doing something new and you
know what, listen to verse five.
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The light shines in the darkness and
the darkness does not overcome it. Nothing
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is going to stop Jesus. Nothing
will stop Jesus. He is bringing about
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something new, something wonderful, something
glorious, something eternal, and he will
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overcome it as easily and as quickly
as the light in your bedroom, or
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the darkness in your bedroom is overcome. When you flip on the light.
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There's this shell, Silverstein poem that
comes to my mind all of a sudden.
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Shell Silverstein, for those of you
don't know, as this children's author,
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writes a bunch of poems in the
late s and S, so that's
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why I know. So he writes
this poem where he says something like wouldn't
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it be wonderful if God would just
turn off the light? Because if God
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would just turn off the light,
you wouldn't see skin color, you wouldn't
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see rich and poor, we'd all
just be there together. And it's a
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nice thought, right. He's saying
sort of if you if God would just
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turn off the light, it would
have this kind of equalizing power, right,
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and we would just be peopled in
a room no longer all of these
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differences of visible John Takes it in
another direction. God says that through Jesus,
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the turning on the light, so
to speak, this these things that
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we want, these things that we
hope for for unity, for reconciliation,
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for peace, for justice, for
hope for morality, for comfort and knowledge
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and all of these things. It
happens not when God covers up, but
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when God exposes and when God brings
something new. And that's hard because as
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people who are often living in the
darkness. We run and we hide and
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we try to get away, but
Jesus overcomes the darkness. We're going to
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hear a lot more about Jesus.
We're going to hear a lot more about
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the implications of these things, but
I hope you walk away from today is
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maybe just a little bit of silence, just standing with your mouth open,
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wondering, filled with awe at who
Jesus is and what he has come to
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do. It's amazing, it's difficult
to find the words to talk about and
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yet it's so true. These are
not just grand, big philosophical ideas.
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They are reality, they are reasonable, they are true and they will have
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God will have his effect in time
and in space because, as we see
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in the very next verse and verse
six, there was a man sent from
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God whose name was John. How
earthly, how practical, how how simple,
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how ordinary, a man whose name
was John. Next time we'll hear
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more about this John and who he
was and what he did, and he
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will tell us that he came not
to be the light but to bear witness
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about the light, to teach us
about the light, to tell us about
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the light. I pray that God
will help us to understand these things,
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to be humbled by this saving mission
of Jesus Christ and to be saved by
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it. Let's pray
