Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

This is the last Sunday in our Advent series on the four evangelist and their perspective on the Christmas Story.

If you have been here through the entire series, Hopefully you have seen the pathway of how they are connected and how they give us the readers of this story of God a greater picture of the Christ Child.

This week we finish off our series with the look at the book of John and his perspective on the the Christ Child.

I want you to think for just a moment on the beauty of nature.

Something that give you a glimpse of God’s great creation and when you see that you are reminded of the glory of God’s creation

It is a view of the majestic mountains as you hiked up and see at a distance God’s beauty laid out in front of you.

Or you are out camping in the prairies and you are awoken to the rise of the Sun casting a beautiful pallet of colors on a canvas of the open skies.

Rising to bring upon you a new day of God’s Sustaining grace.

Or maybe its the marvel of a newborn held in your arms an amazement of wonder and awe of the life that was created, sustained and grew to be delivered to proud parents.

Or maybe you are like the investigating child who with a magnifying glass in his hand is roaming through the fields to discover the unnoticed vast array of the miniature Eco system of the bugs so small, yet so intricate all woven together for a purpose in God’s Creation.

What about those fish at great depths many cannot see, but God has ordained them with flashing colours only for God to enjoy.

fish

What get’s your attention of the Creation of God.

John’s Gospel is no different.

He begins with not the birth of the Christ child but the glories wonder of God.

One author wrote,

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 27: John (Chapter One: The Divine Overture)

Is there any way one can plumb the depths of John’s prologue to his Gospel?

Such intense power in so few words!

I can readily understand why both Augustine and Chrysostom are reported as saying, “It is beyond the power of man to speak as John does in his prologue.”

John Calvin has written of the prologue, “Rather should we be satisfied with this heavenly oracle, knowing that it says much more than our minds can take in.”1

John has caught the sweep and wonder of the history of salvation and shared it in hymnic form.

All through the prologue he is setting forth the career of the Incarnate Word in simple, powerful phrases—“the light shining in the darkness,” “became flesh and dwelt among us,” “full of grace and truth,” “declaring the Father,” some “did not receive Him,” but others were “born of God.”

We watch in our world today, and through the famous Hallmark movies attempt to catch the wonder and magic of Christmas, but we have the very story right in our hands today.

And it is with that awe and wonder of Christmas, I want you to have as we look into today’s text

Turn with me to John 1:1

I hope you have been seeing this in the other gospels as we have been looking at the Christmas story that it didn’t begin with the Christ Child.

As amazing as that is and one to celebrate, God’s magnificent story did not begin at the arrival of Immanuel, but that of the Arrival Of the World.

Last week I mentioned, the Creation, cradle, cross and Celestial dwelling concept.

Now we see this in Action.

Long before the Christ Child, long before the prophecies about the coming of this child

God’s Word was at Creation.

God’s Word had a part in Creation as the spoken Word was a part of the building of creation

John then finishes off with a powerful statement.

The Word was not only God, but this Word now is beginning to be identified as someone specific.

Have you ever played the game with children called Guess Who.

Each player is given a person and by the process of elimination, you are trying to solve Who each player has by asking questions about the other players.

You see everyone in the game on your board and you ask a questions and if the answer is no or yes it helps determine the hidden player.

John is doing the reverse of the game.

One phrase, one paragraph at a time, he begins to tell the readers about the wonderful news about Christ.

It could be described this way

“In the beginning” recalls the opening words of Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The expression does not refer to a particular moment of time but assumes a timeless eternity.

“Word” is the Greek logos, which has several meanings.

Ordinarily it refers to a spoken word, with emphasis on the meaning conveyed, not just the sound.

Logos, therefore, is an expression of personality in communication.

Scripture also tells us that it is creative in its power: “By the word [logos, LXX] of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth” (Ps 33:6).

This verse clearly implies that the expression of God had creative power and called the universe into being.

To the Hebrew “the word of God” was the self-assertion of the divine personality; to the Greek the formula denoted the rational mind that ruled the universe.

John is asserting that the “Word” is the source of all that is visible and antedates the totality of the material world.

John wants the readers to know that in Genesis, Those very spoken utterances were not only words that created, and they were not only God, but there is a personality attached to these words.

You see this person who he is talking about is responsible for and was a part of creation.

The Psalmist declares what John was stating and Paul backs him up by telling the Believers in Corinth.

This Word that is being presented to us Today is the God that was there at creation, spoke the world into existence and is one God.

John also wants his readers to hear that this one that he is speaking about is not another Diety, but the same God.

It has been stated this way

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 9: John and Acts (A.

The Preincarnate Word (1:1–5))

The “Word” was deity, one with God, rather than “a god” or another being of the same class.

This is the real meaning of the phrase.

Unity of nature rather than similarity or likeness is implied.

The external coexistence and unity of the Word with God is unmistakably asserted

If you are still marveling at these thoughts,

That fisherman of men then takes the knowledge a few steps deeper

John is not just describing an event that happened in the past, that this God who set things in motion then let it work out the rest of it on its own means.

Know This,

God who was at creation is still actively working in and through us to create and sustain us.

When we were younger, God moved our family from Manitoba to Southern Ontario.

A young family with a 9 month old.

We had been called to go and while we waited for our next ministry placement, God provided a job for me at a manufacturing plant.

As part of the job, I had the pleasure of drawing up plans for a piece of machinery that would take paper and grind it up to it’s fibers.

It was like a 42” wide food processor for paper.

Two wheels, 42” in diameter, one fixed and the other spinning at a fast speed, almost touching would create a means to grind newspaper into fibers.

I had the pleasure of taking the concept from an idea to technical drawings to production, to operation, then to sales.

I was involved in the process of building this creation.

Seeing this creation in action in our own plant.

Building multiple machines and selling them to other plants who would in turn use them to grind up paper.

I guess you could say I was a part of the creation process of this machine.

But here lies the difference from me and those machines and The God we are taking about today.

Those machines ran without me.

They continue, with maintenance and repair may still be working today.

I have left, I don’t maintain them.

I have no part in building of new machines.

John’s words were clear.

This Word, Logos was and is responsible for the planning, building, sustaining of everything we see here today.

Like I said, John is not referring to a one time event, but that of an ongoing event.

Are you getting a picture of this Word, this Logos.

This morning when you woke up, whether you saw the sunrise or it was already up when you got up, This Logos, this Word is responsible to make all this happen.

Not only to make all this happen, He is responsible, capable, and successful in maintaining all that we see today.

Are you catching the wonderful and marvelous picture of Who this Logos is but are still wondering how John is going to explain the Christmas Story to us today.

He will, He is coming to the story shortly.

John then moves onto the purpose of the Word.

In Him, This Logos, the sustainer of Life, the creator of Life is also example of what Life will be like.

He embodies an eternal life.

You see this word, Life or in the greek, Zoe, used throughout the Gospel is telling the readers of a life that is both physical and spiritual.

It is often used in and with the term eternal that denotes to us the quality and power of what will become of our life ever after.

This Logos shows and will bring about life eternal.

John in his Gospel uses these words over 36 times to give his readers the Picture that this Christ is the life giver.

and if that isn’t enough,