Faith Bible Church - Sermons
In The Beginning (John 1:1-5)
- It's a little hard to get up here after people say nice things about you. Thinking while they were doing that, I was like, "Shoot, I've got a preach after this." But I do want to just express my thanks and my gratitude to the elders and their intentionality through all this. I want to also thank the youth staff and students, student ministry, being the youth pastor there for 10 years in this church and getting to disciple and walk alongside students as they go through struggles and trying to figure out their faith, getting to serve alongside such mature believers and the volunteers that I had and even their growth and discipleship happening right in front of my eyes too. That's been a sweet, sweet thing. Really thankful for Wayne as well and his humble leadership of the flock, his mentorship of me over that time and just the encouragement that he's shown me throughout this process. This has been two years since Lori Wardle came up to me after I preached two years ago and she, I told her this morning, I was like, "This is your fault." (audience laughing) 'Cause she said, "Well, you pray about it." And I said, "Well, sure, I'll pray about it." And so then like that afternoon she went to the head of the elders, he's willing, you know? (audience laughing) But I also needed that push and I needed that encouragement, that level of courage, I think from the encouragement of Lori as well as many others that have come alongside Katherine and I through all this process. It has been sweet with the elders and them being willing to listen and have my name put in the ring. It gives me a confidence 'cause I've been here for 10 years and they've seen my mistakes and they're still okay with me standing up here and preaching. And that's a humbling thing for me. So I'm excited to open the word to you as a congregation. It's a privilege. It's a joy to be able to point your eyes, my eyes, to heaven. Let's say this is where we're going. That's where our king is. Preaching is not just about relaying information or about, you know, getting a correct understanding doctrinally of the text, it is that, but it's much more than that. It's about an invitation to meet the living God. And so that's what we get to do week after week through God's word. We get to meet with God. And there's some, as I proclaim God's word, there's some fear and trembling as I come to it because this is God's word. It's not my word that I'm preaching. And so I get to stand here as a messenger from God saying, "Thus says the Lord, "and this is how you should live your life "on his authority, on his power." And so as a sinner, I get to preach to sinners, as a saint redeemed by Christ. I get to preach to people who have been redeemed, saints who are redeemed by Christ. That's, I can't think of anything else. Then I would rather do so. Thank you for the encouragement and the blessing of allowing me to do this. So as we turn to God's word, we get to step into the gospel of John this morning. It's a, I like how it's all come together where Wayne and I last this past spring, we were finishing up First Kings and we talked together about what should we do next. And it really is ending up, what am I doing next? We're landing in the gospel of John. It's been a while since our church has gone through one of the four gospels, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. I think the last time as I was looking back on it was the gospel of Luke and 2011 to 2013. So over 10 years ago, and I think that the opportunity of John is such a rich feast for us as a congregation to see the truth about Jesus. Not just, there is plenty of intriguing story and narrative, but also just the depth of where John goes with his theology, his understanding of who Jesus is. So today we're gonna just go through the first five verses. I'm gonna read the first 18, but the first five verses, and we're just gonna scratch the surface of this book, but we're gonna have, we have a whole year and a half or so to be in the book of John. Hey, if it was Wayne, it'd be like three years. So a year and a half in the book of John, we'll see. But let's start by reading John one, one through 18. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through Him. He wasn't the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him, 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 the will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glorious of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him, and cried out, this is He of whom I said, He who comes after me, ranks before me, because He was before me. For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who was at the Father's side. He has made Him known. Let's pray as we start. Generally Father, we come to this passage of Scripture of your holy word, with a sense of awe. This is holy ground. To be introduced to your Son, Jesus. Who He is, and what He came to do. What I pray for us as a church, that we would keep developing in our conviction that your Son is the Savior of the world, and that He came to redeem us. He came to seek and to save the lost. The lost, and He came to sanctify us, by your truth, your word is truth. I pray that we would have that conviction, and we'd also catch His compassion. His compassion for sinners, for us. Because you love the God, you sent your Son to pay the penalty for our sins, and to offer us life everlasting. So it helps us to grow in your compassion, in your love. And give us opportunities to speak with courage, that truth as well. Just keep speaking to ourselves, to each other, to remind ourselves of truth, of who you are, and what your Son came to do for us, but also to the dark world around us. That your light has come, and He offers life. So Lord, I pray that you give us courage as well, as we study your word this morning, in Christ's name. Amen. The first line of John, I think, is something that you, I'm captured with. I think it's one of the strongest opening lines of any book in the Bible. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The first line of any book is key. It needs to grab you with some sort of foreshadowing of what's to come, to get your attention, to intrigue you, to wet your appetite. So as I was thinking about first lines of books, here's a few first lines that I found this week, as I was studying through. This one's Pride and Prejudice. I had to read this as a senior in high school, 'cause I was reading all the, like, 1984, and the Lord of the Flies, and my teacher was like, "Pride and Prejudice, here you go." So I had to read Pride and Prejudice as a senior, but this is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice. It's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. And it's like, it tells you a lot, but also it teaches you, intrigues you a little bit. This one is The Opposite, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. He says, "Call me Ishmael." Like, you know, like, that's the first line. Okay, I want to know, that grabs me immediately. What is, who is Ishmael? What are you supposed to do? Then there's Anna Karenina, which is a, I just like this line from Leo Tolstoy. Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. And that's the opening line of that. But my favorite opening line, I think, comes from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. It starts this way. There was a boy named Eustice Clarence Scrub, and he almost deserved it. (audience laughs) Like, such a good line. And it does. It sets you up for Eustice being a brat, and then him having a redemption story there. But each of those sentences grabs your attention in different ways. It gives you hints of where the book is going to go. And the same is true, the Gospel of John. It's the first line is broad. It's sweeping in its scope. R.C. Sproul says this. This sentence in John is in and of itself was enough to keep theologians busy for hundreds of years. And he said that because there's so much to unpack here, every word choice, every pronoun and preposition, every aspect of this sentence is tightly woven and needs to be interpreted correctly in order to understand who is this word? Who is Jesus? And since this is the first sermon in the Gospel of John, we need to talk about a few details about the author, about the date, the differences between the four Gospel accounts. This Gospel is attributed to the Apostle John. There's really not a whole lot of controversy about that. I mean, some people would say, oh, well, that's too much theologically developed. Someone else later must have written this. But we have scraps of John as one of the earliest manuscripts. I'll show you that to you later in a later sermon. But in John 18, we have a scrap from, I think, AD 125 or something like that. So really early on, we have actual manuscript evidence for the Gospel of John in its form as it is today. So it's not something that came later. So it was attributed to John. There is some debate as to the date of the book of John or the Gospel of John. We know other parts of John's writings were in the '90s. So he was exiled to the island of Patmos, probably in the '90s by Domitian, the emperor of Domitian. And so if we hold that peg and we know some of the things that he wrote in first, second, and third John, those letters to churches and the types of things that he was already starting to combat, Gnosticism in the church. And we could probably date this Gospel to about the '80s, early '80s, so 50 years or so after Jesus's public ministry. So in that time, I think John has been able to work with the fledgling church and also cease where it needed encouragement, where it needed depth. And that's what John brings. Now, why do we have four different Gospel accounts? I think some people would say, well, could we just have one that sort of streamlines it, makes it all into one account? You realize with a court of law having four witnesses that all attest to the exact same thing is way more valuable than just one witness, one vantage point. We get four different vantage points. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John bring their own unique voice to the story, to the story of Jesus. And God inspired them, but he didn't woodenly dictate their accounts. So we hear the different voices of the authors through their own experiences, through their own vocabulary and personality, they were moved along by the Spirit, inspired to write their experiences for us. And the picture we get is a much richer one of four Gospels. Mark's account is probably the simplest and the most straightforward. It's more action-oriented. John Mark was a young disciple of Jesus. And we see him a couple times maybe in the Gospel of Mark, adding himself in or saying, this is where I was at. But he was younger and he was probably basing his account off of the preaching and the stories of Peter for the ones that he wasn't there for personally. The stories and parables that Mark includes are almost all included in Matthew or Luke as well. So there's only 7% of Mark. That's unique to just his Gospel. So we think that maybe Matthew and Luke were looking at Mark and borrowing from his writings and putting in their own as well. But they are dependent on one another. Matthew's account has more of a Jewish focus, the Jewish customs and backgrounds. He's appealing to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. He traces Jesus' genealogy from Joseph back to Abraham to show that Jesus has a right, has a claim to be the Messiah, to be the King that the Jews were looking for. Matt, Luke then, Luke's focus was different. He was a physician and a researcher. He wasn't, as far as we know, an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry, but he was a travel companion to Paul and he studied and brought in resources, interviewed people in order to write down Luke as well as Acts. And he focuses on the humanity of Christ, his interactions with people, his healings as a doctor. He has an attention for detail and gives us details that we can verify by archeological discoveries, things that weren't known until recently, and we say that has to be an eyewitness account of those events. But the gospel, we're gonna spend at least a year and a half in the gospel of John. It was written with a different purpose, a little bit later at a different time. It has a theological purpose. John, I think, writes with the assumption that we would read the other gospels as well, that we would know those. Those were circulating at the time that he wrote his account of the gospel. And he also, he had some of the sayings in John are exact and identical to that in Matthew and Luke. And also, he's depending on us knowing certain information that we find in the other gospels. So it's a dependent thing. He is assuming that we're going to know those as well. But John has a purpose that he's writing. He tells us of that purpose, but it's to convince us that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. And he adds a deep and rich layer of who Jesus is. JC Ryle, who was a pastor in England in the 1800s, late 1800s, he said this. The things that are peculiar to John's gospel are among the most precious possessions of the Church of Christ. No one of the four gospel writers has given us such full statements about the divinity of Christ, about justification by faith, about the offices of Christ, about the work of the Holy Spirit, about the privileges of believers, as we read in the pages of John. And John does us a favor. He includes a purpose statement. So at the end of the gospel of John, if you want to turn there and circle that, you can, but John 20, 30 and 31, I'll read 20 is not on the screen, but 30 is not on the screen, but 31 is. Let me read both of those. This is his purpose statement. Therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. So that was John's purpose, to convince his readers, that Jesus wasn't just another teacher, not just a charismatic leader that people followed, but that he was the Son of God, he was the Christ, the Messiah. R.C. Sproul commenting on this passage of included a larger section in your bulletin in the front there, but R.C. Sproul says this, simply put, John is not interested in being a detached observer and a chronicler of the life of Jesus, he's trying to persuade his readers of the truth of Christ so that they might become his disciples, his stated purpose, that you believe and that by believing, you see the connection there, you may have life in his name. So his aim is to turn readers into disciples, from observers into worshipers, from people who are walking in darkness and showing them the light and bringing them into the light, from people who were dead in their trespasses and sins and bringing them to life by the power of Jesus. So that's his goal, his purpose for his gospel accounts. We're gonna be in the prologue, John one, one to 18 for several weeks, but really I'm just gonna be in the first five verses today. One of the commentaries that I was using from James Montgomery Boyce, and it was his sermon series, he spent five sermons on these first five verses, so sorry. Or six, I'm sorry, six, and we're doing it in one. So there was a lot to cover. John one, one, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. John echoes Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But John's focus, John one, one, his focus is on the word of God. He uses this language of word for just the first 18 verses. He doesn't come back to that in the rest of his gospel account, but this sets the scene for what he wants to do, this prologue. What does John mean by the word? The Greek word for word is logos, not logos, but logos. It appears 300 times in the New Testament. Most of the time it's translated as word, but there's a bunch of other ways that it can be translated. The image that I pulled that from the Bible software, which is ironic that it's named logos, Bible software. But that's the definition of a word, logos. And most of the time it's just translated that way, but it's also speech or message, question, matter. Now it's used in other contexts, so in Greek philosophy, it's used by Plato and others, and an idea of what they thought God actually was. So Greek philosophy thought God was more of an idea. It was the basis, God is the basis of rational, logical, logos, logical thought. It was a core principle of the universe. So that's what they thought logos meant and how they used it several hundred years before Jesus came on the scene. It was also a term that was used by the Gnostics. So the Gnostics were people who started to preach about a hidden or special powers. They would take from some paganism and some Jewish beliefs and they co-opted even the language of Christianity as well, and they talked about the eternal logos, the eternal word. But we don't want to justify based on what other people thought because John has a context. John was a Jew, and he was writing to a mixed audience, Jews and Gentiles, but they would have been familiar with the word of the Lord, of the Old Testament. It comes up so many times throughout the Old Testament, the word of the Lord, and here's a definition of the logos of God in the Old Testament. God's self-expression of power, of authority, and of covenant love, God's word, his speech, shows us his power, his authority, his covenant love. So we see even at the beginning of the Bible, what does it say? In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and how, how did he create? He said, let there be light, and there was light. He spoke, and things happened. This speech leads to an unleashing of his power. We also see God's word active in the giving of the law, Mount Sinai. Moses speaks to the Lord face to face in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 4, 5. And then in chapter 5 Moses is telling the people, I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord. And then he goes on to relay the 10 commandments, the law. God's word over God's people. They were to heed and to obey. To disobey God's word in the Old Testament was to put yourself under his judgment. You were bound to listen to the word of the Lord. But the Old Testament also includes God's love, his promises that's based on his word. Genesis 15, he comes to Abram for a second time and says, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not Abram, I am your shield. Your reward will be very great. And he takes them outside and says, look to the heavens. Number the stars if you're able to number them. And then God said to Abram, so shall your offspring be. And Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. So the word of the Lord was bringing his covenant love to his people. Now we all know the importance of words 'cause we have some phrases that we like to say. It's like this person is a man of his word. Or you say, I'm going to, I give you my word. I'm promising something. I give you my word, I'm gonna do it. So we know the importance of words and what is said, but we also know human nature, right? And especially as we have all experienced people giving their word and then going back on it. People saying, no, no, no, I'm promising, I'm here. Or this time of year, either sales or politicians over promise and under deliver, right? Of promising something and then it doesn't come through. But we are talking about something different 'cause we're talking about God's word. God's self expression of power and of authority, of covenant love. David says this in Psalm 1830. This God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord proves true. He is a shield to all those who take refuge at him. Isaiah, and one of my favorite chapters in Isaiah 55 says this, for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be. That goes out of my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I send it. So when God says something, it happens. God's word is not an uncertain promise. That's, well, we'll see, it's not like that. It's certain, just as certain as rain helping the wheat grow into a harvest. What God says happens, there's a result. So John 1-1, we are introduced to the word. What John is doing is taking it from a concept or a picture of God's action from heaven and he's bringing and he's saying, "The word has come down." The word of God has stepped from eternity into history and this gospel records what he did. So what does John say about this word? He first says that it's eternal. In the beginning was the word. The word's eternal. The word was there in the beginning of time, in the beginning of all things. This means that the word is eternal. There was never a time where the word wasn't. He always was. In the beginning was the word. It's hard for us 'cause we're time bound creatures. We experience time, 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week and that's how we experience. So it's really hard for us to think what timelessness is, what eternity is, but the word was there from the beginning. Isaiah 44 verse six says, "Thus says the Lord, the king of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last. Besides me, there is no God." And then John records Jesus' words. The very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22. Jesus says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." This word is eternal, as an eternal nature. Second thing from the verse, he is united with God. The second phrase, the beginning was the word and the word was with God. The word with there isn't one you would expect or there's another preposition that's easier to place in there from the Greek, but this one is normally translated to or toward. So the word was with God in a relational way. He was to him or toward him. They were together, the word was with God in relationship. And then the third phrase, and this is the one where so much of the ink has been spilled by theologians, the word is one with God. Under no uncertain terms, no vagueness, John states, this word was God. Now, people are gonna say, well, while in the Greek, they get into these things and you're like, have you studied Greek for more than 10 years? Like, I had a professor, he was a Hebrew professor, just brilliant guy. And he talked like Sean Connery as well, which made him very interesting to listen to. But he would have students sometimes argue about Hebrew or Greek and he'd be like, "Are you in second semester Greek?" Just sort of like, yeah, like he's been studying this his whole life. And then there's a guy in the front row like, "Ah, sir." And I think that's what sometimes people do with Greek when they see something on YouTube or they read something on the internet and they're like, "Whoa, see, it could be something different." Like, as people have wrestled with this and struggled through this and studied the word of God for years, there's benefit to historical theology, to us looking at how the church has viewed something throughout history. But the word here, the word was God. It's tightly worded, it's specific. The word was in the beginning, so he's eternal. The word was with God. So in some sense, he's separate or distinct from God, but yet in close relationship to God and the word was God. So it's not saying that the word makes up who God is fully, but he is fully God. So theologians have come up with a term which is called the trinity. The word trinity is not in scripture, but the concept certainly is. One God, three persons. And these truths are gonna be made plain as we go through the gospel of John because it's all throughout. The gospel of John, Jesus claims to be one with the Father. Jesus is going to say that in the presence of Jewish people and they're going to want to execute him on the spot for saying it 'cause they understand what he's saying, what he's implying. Jesus is going to use divine terms to make exclusive claims to say this is what my power is. This is what my mission is. This is who I am, my identity. And you have to hold all these pieces in tandem of him being eternal and united with God and one with God to really understand or make sense of who Jesus is in the trinity. We'll have a lot more opportunity to speak on this as we go through the gospel of John 'cause we will explore the relationship between the Father and the Son. I mean, John 17 is just rich ground for that where Jesus, the Son, is praying to God the Father and how the interplay of that. John, Jesus spends some time with his disciples saying how it's better for him to go so that he can send his spirit to be with them, to be in them. So we'll have plenty of time to talk about the three persons of the trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This is what verse one says, he's eternal, he's united with God and he's one with God. Verses two and three then that he was in the beginning with God, all things were made through him without him was not anything made that was made. Verse two and three gives us a clue about the word 'cause John switches to the masculine pronoun. This is he, he was in the beginning. The word of God isn't just an idea or something that emanates from God, it's he, it's a person. The word is a man and in verse three it says that this man was involved in everything that was made, his creative power, that nothing was made without his say. The word was involved with every molecule of creation. The word actively created everything we see and experience in six days. He spoke the stars into existence. He shaped the mountains, he designed birds and these birds can reach up to 200 miles an hour. He created cats that have night vision, he created bats that have sonar. I mean nature is so cool when you look at it and see the intricacy and the different designs of God's creatures and the word did that. All things were made through him. He also created us. He created us with immune systems that can fight against disease, with a cerebral cortex that is able to create complex systems and to be creative and to think, to experience a whole range of emotions. He made all that. He made us. And we're gonna see later in verse 14 that he became flesh. The creator becomes like his creation. Experience is that. It's in a couple of weeks. But the word created all things, everything that you have touched and experienced in the natural world, all of that the word designed and created. There's a parallel passage with the introduction that rivals this introduction, the book of Hebrews. Let me read the first three verses of that and you'll see some of the parallels. Hebrews one, one to three. Long ago and many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us, the word, has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. He's the radiance, the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. That's who Jesus is. He upholds this by his word. Final two verses for today and this is gonna be quick because these are themes that will occupy our time as we go into John. Two major themes, life and death, light and darkness. So the word offers life. In him was life. And the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. So the word offers life. Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life." Later in John. Now the word life happens 47 times in these 21 chapters. This is a key idea. How we understand that the word offers life to people who were destined for eternal death. He came on a rescue mission. And remember the purpose statement of John? What's the purpose? It's for us to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that by believing we have life. Life in his name. The word also brings light. He'll make the claim later, "I am the light of the world." And that's a shocking claim unless it's true. I am the light of the world. He says in John 1246, "I have come into the world as light." That's whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. That's our default state as humans to be in darkness. And the word enters the darkness. Verse five says, "I love this." The darkness is not overcome it. The light, even at the beginning, verse five of this gospel, we know the outcome that the light is going to be victorious. The dark seems so strong, right? You've experienced that, the God's light is victorious. We'll be talking about more of that next week in the next section. But as we close our time in the word, what do we see about Jesus? What do we see about him? He's the eternal word. He's united with God. He is the very God himself. Jesus is the creator of all things. And he's the one that brings life and light to the world. If you remember the definition that I brought to you earlier about God's word, that God's word was God's self-expression of power, of authority, and of covenant love. That's what God's word is. And as you look through the Old Testament, as he speaks and makes covenants with Adam and Eve, when he makes covenants with Noah and Moses and Abraham, and as he speaks to the judges of Israel, as he talks to the kings of Israel, as he relays his message to the people of Israel through the prophets, his word is expressing who he is. And in John, we see that that word takes on flesh, becomes human. And we have a response. If this is who Jesus is, if he is the eternal word, if he's united with God and very God himself, he's the creator of all things, he's life and light, and we've gotta listen, and we've got to respond. So, let's pray and response and then take of the table together. God, thank you for your eternal word, and that you did not leave us wondering how this might happen, how we might be redeemed, how we might be restored, how we could wander out of darkness into your light, how we could escape eternal death and come into your eternal day, an eternal life. Thank you for sending your son. I pray that as we study the gospel of John, it would not be an academic exercise, which is something that we are intrigued by, Lord, I pray that we would actually see our, the weight of our response. And I know that we've all, in various ways, experienced the darkness of this world. A darkness can seem so strong, can seem like it is overwhelming us, and yet your light has come into this world and has been victorious. I want to pray that we would live in his victory this week. In Christ's name, amen.