The Word - John 1:1-18
This is a sermon by Lee McMunn from the evening service on 2nd September 2007.
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When most Christians read the first 18 verses of John’s Gospel they
do not immediately think about the American detective Columbo. For those of
you not acquainted with this intelligent sleuth let me provide you with an
education.
Columbo was an American crime TV series starring
Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo. Columbo was a homicide detective with the
Los Angeles Police Department. He was shabby and apparently slow-witted. But
in each episode the bumbling detective lulled the criminals into a false sense
of security and solved the case by picking up inconsistencies in a suspect’s
story.
Like many other TV programmes it was pretty trashy but
unlike most other detective programmes Columbo began by showing the viewer
who committed the crime. In most of the others we need to piece together the
clues and try and work out who did it. But in Columbo the viewer knows exactly
who did it right from the beginning. We know something that Columbo is not
aware of and we must watch him trying to discover what we already know.
The first 18 verses of John’s Gospel begin like this.
Throughout the Gospel various people are trying to work out who
Jesus is. They examine what he says and what he does. They look at his words
and his works.
What is the best fit for the evidence before
their eyes?
Along the way various suggestions are made by all
sorts of people. Teacher? Prophet? Christ? Madman?
You will
remember the great climax when Thomas confesses Jesus as My Lord and My God.
Jesus does not respond by saying you’ve got it all wrong. He accepts
his worship.
Why did it take you so long? Reason we get so frustrated
is because right at the beginning of the Gospel we are told an amazing truth
about the identity of Jesus that everyone else must discover for themselves.
Ready for it? John tells us that Jesus of Nazareth was the Word.
Why the anti climax? The reason is because we don’t know
who this Word is. We hear his name ‘The Word’ but there are no
associations which leap into our mind.
Bit like if I said Priscilla
White is planning to visit us later this evening. It would be very different
if I said Cilla Black.
Or suppose tonight in the coffee lounge
I promised I could introduce you to Harry Webb, how would you respond? It would
be very different if I said Cliff Richard!
Some names have associations.
What we need are the associations. That’s what John gives us in these
first 18 verses.
So he will tell us that Jesus is the Word
but first of all he tells us more about who this Word is.
If
you look at your handout you’ll see that three things are communicated
about this person called the Word.
1. The Word existed before
the world (Vs 1-2)
2. The Word created the world (Vs 3-4)
3.
The Word sustains the world (Vs 5)
First of all, we are told
that the Word existed before the world.
Verses
1 and 2 are read every Christmas in many churches around the world but they
frequently leave people mystified about their meaning.
“In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.”
All sounds very nice
and seems to fit the mystical occasions of many Christmas carol services. Imagine
the scene. The candles are on the pews, the choir have been dazzling us with
their repertoire and then a posh voice reads from John chapter 1. “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.”
In the cold light of
day, what does this mean?
Let’s see if we can work it
out.
Suppose to think about the creation of the universe. John
begins like Genesis. And yet there is a different. Genesis says, “In
the beginning God…” whereas John begins, “In the beginning
was the Word.”
At first glance we may think the Word
is simply another name for God but that’s not what John says. He goes
on to say that this person called the Word was with God in the beginning.
Then the next thought should be, well maybe this word is an angelic
creature, created at some point prior to the establishment of the physical
universe.
But John will not allow this conclusion to stand.
He also says, “the Word was God.”
What is he talking
about? He is not trying to confuse us or give us a sore head. He is attempting
to communicate the truth about our Creator in words we might be able to understand.
Two dangers to avoid. We can understand nothing. We can understand
everything.
God is more complicated than we think. That’s
okay. Our minds are very small and lots of things are more communicated than
we think.
God is much more like a divine family than a lonely
individual or an impersonal force.
Not like the force in Star
Wars. Some vague power than is either inside us or able to be tapped into.
Terrible – we would then need techniques to relate to this force and
not a relationship. The appeal is that we are still in control of our decisions
but it becomes so impersonal whereas personal relationships are the best things
about human existence.
Not a lonely individual in the sky who
is starved of relationships before he created human beings.
Instead
he is a divine community – consisting of three distinct but not separate
persons- who we normally refer to as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We will express this view later in the service in the words of
the creed but here in John’s Gospel we begin to see the building blocks
of such a belief.
When John says before anything was created
there was a relationship existing between God the Father and this person called
the Word.
I’ll explain later why he is referred to as
the Word and not the Son.
He is affirming that the Word, the
second member of the Trinity, was eternally with God the Father – that’s
who he is referring to when he says God for the first time in the sentence.
Then he affirms that the Word is God. He doesn’t mean
that the Word is God the Father. That wouldn’t make any sense. He means
the Word is fully divine. The godness of the Father resides in him.
He is on the same side of the creator/creature divide as God the Father.
No mention of the HS in these verses but from the rest of the Bible
and in particular John’s Gospel we see that there is a third member of
this divine community.
I like to think of God like a divine
family. The danger of this way of thinking is separating the three so they
become three separate gods and not three distinct persons who make up the one
God. But that’s the danger I would rather be faced with because I find
this way of talking about God more helpful and I would argue is more biblical.
Does any of this matter? Yes it does. Must deal with the Bible
evidence. Also, relationships are what we value most. Why? What view of the
world coheres with reality? What view makes sense of our experience? God as
a relationship of three persons explains why relationships are so vital for
us.
Some of us need to reject the Western view of self-sufficient
independency and commit ourselves to loving and self-supporting relationships.
Whether this be in the local church, with friends or the more intimate relationship
of married life.
God is a relationship of three persons. One
of these is referred to in John 1 as the Word.
What has he
been doing all this time? Listen to what we are told in verses 3 and 4.
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was
made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”
The Word was responsible for creating the world.
Positively – all things were made through him. Negatively – without
him nothing was made that has been made. All life that has ever existed or
will ever exist owes its conception to this person called the Word.
I love the picture language of verse 4. The use of life and light. We all
know that for any life to survive on the planet we need the light of the sun.
Without it we all die.
Life within the Word burst forth as
the light necessary for humanity to emerge in God’s drama.
Wrong thinking about the Trinity. As if the Father had his part for the
first few thousand years and then the Son for thirty and then the Spirit has
his period now. This is not how it works. All three are involved in every activity.
Creation – Father planned it all (the author).
The Son announced the plans (as the Word – one of the reasons why he
is called the Word. Remember in Genesis 1 God speaks to create) and then the
Spirit accomplished the work and set it all into motion.
Redemption
– Father sent the Son. Son died on the cross, empowered by the Spirit.
Father sends the Spirit to enable people to follow Jesus as Lord.
People frequently say there is a God shaped gap in our lives. More precise
– there is Word shaped gap that only Jesus can fill.
Not
simply that the Word was involved in creating the world but, according to verse
5, he is also responsible for sustaining it.
“The light
shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”
Light has different meanings depending on its place within the Bible. In
John it frequently means revelation, knowledge that is required to guide those
who are in darkness towards the truth.
But here I think we are
still supposed to be thinking about the light required for human beings to
survive.
The light continues (present tense) to shine. The
Word continues to sustain the world he has created. Every breath we
take is a gracious gift from the Word.
What is the darkness?
It is the moral darkness of rebellious humanity. Although we are created and
sustained by the Word we choose to ignore him and not acknowledge his provision.
We choose not to understand his influence in our lives.
Our
minds are so corrupt. We should see so much more in creation. At the very least
God’s power and order. But how much more should we see that we don’t?
Why? Because the rebel’s nature is to suppress what is true.
Happens in many ways. As a society and as individuals. We reap what we
sow.
Amazing claim is that the Word continues to sustain his
world, a world that has rejected him.
Staggering enough but
what we are told next is completely mind blowing: The Word entered
into the world.
The way is prepared in verses 6-9.
“There was a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as
a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might
believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.”
Why all this talk about John the Baptist? We are moving into the
historical arena.
Why am I a Christian? Is it because I need
help? Is it because I need a community? Is it because I need forgiveness? Is
it because I need a crutch? Is it because I need help? Yes to all. But supremely
it’s because of the historical evidence.
The eternal Word
was preparing to come into the world he had made.
All sorts
of questions. Why? What would happen when he did?
We begin to
get some answers in verse 10. “He was in the world, and though the world
was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which
was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
Not always had
much luck with fancy dress. Tell story of church party when I went to Mass
dressed as Inspector Gadget.
Problem here is not that Jesus
is trying to conceal himself but that people don’t want the light of
Jesus to shine on their dark deeds. It’s a moral issue – then and
now. People reject him because they don’t want him to be the ruler in
their lives.
Yet don’t you love verses 12 and 13. “Yet
to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right
to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor
human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
There were some who chose to follow Jesus – both then and now.
How? They received him. They trusted him. And the divine side –
they were born by God. Regenerated. This is true born again Christianity. They
choose Jesus. God chooses them.
At this point we have not been
told how the Word was in the world and who he was. At various points in the
OT God appeared to his people – these are called theophanies.
But verse 14 is radical and unique. “The Word became flesh and made
his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Word
for dwell is tabernacle. Literally he pitched his tent. Memory of the OT. But
what is radical and new is that this Word became flesh and dwelt among people.
For some ‘spiritual’ people the body is a prison
to be liberated from. God takes the body seriously. The physical world is a
good thing. Helps us think properly about the new creation when we will have
new resurrection bodies and live with the glorious Trinity in the New Creation.
John says that those who encountered the word saw his glory.
All about his true character, what he was really made of.
I
love what he points out – grace and truth. He came with both those qualities.
It is possible to have one without the other but one on its own leaps to dangerous
distortion of the Christian message.
Possible to get the OT
wrong as if it was a bad time. Why I love verses 15-18.
“John
testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom
I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before
me.’” From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing
after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ (first mention of Jesus). No-one has ever seen God, but God the
One and Only, who is at the Father’s side has made him known.”
Law was a great blessing but now an even greater blessing has occurred
because the eternal Word has come to reveal who God really is.
Explains why the second person of the Trinity is referred to as the Word.
In his relation to the Father he is frequently called the Son. In his relation
to the world he is referred to as the Word.
Words are all about
communicating. This is the heart of the Word’s mission. He does much
more than this but what is emphasised here is his mission of revelation.
Here is a truth we need to remember when people say I need to see
in order to believe. How can I be sure that God really exist?
God
is not playing hide and seek. He sent his only Son to seek out the lost and
reveal himself to a rebellious people.
But what about today?
Will God appear visibly to people in order to convince them?
Come
with me as we finish to the end of the Gospel. John 20:24-31.
These
are written to convince. See the three stages. Evidence, faith and life.
Like a jury which has never seen the events. They hear the witnesses
and decide if they are reliable. Then make up their minds.
This
is to be our confidence. Live a good life but have trust in the power of God’s
chosen means to convince people. Invite folk to Christianity Explored. Take
a risk and put the evidence before people to investigate. And if we do we will
have the joy of witnessing many more people finding life in Jesus. Let’s
pray.
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