In The Beginning

John 1:1–5 NASB95

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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

This is how the gospel of John introduces and describes Jesus, you have probably heard it before, you may even have quoted it, but have you ever really thought about it?

Humans have always wondered about how we got here and why we exist. We wonder if there is anyone else out there in the universe and if there is who are they, what do they want, what kind of beings are they and are they friendly or hostile toward us.

These are good questions, important questions. They are questions answered by the Bible. We want answers to these questions because of how it may affect us and what the answers might mean to us.

The ancient Greeks tried to understand why some people live longer than others and why a person is born at a particular time and in a particular place or family. They believed that there were three sisters whom they called the Fates. These three sisters took the threads of our lives and weaved them into a great tapestry, a scene that made up history. They would weave your thread in here and out there and your life would follow the path laid out in their great tapestry. One of the sisters had the job of determining how long each thread should be and when she decided it was the right time she snipped off the thread ending your life.

This may seem silly to us but if you believed it to be true then it gave you a way to try to get some control over the random things that happened to you in life. If you could pray or sacrifice to the fates and sway them maybe they would weave your thread into a better place or let it grow a little longer. It gave a reason to hope.

Much of what happens in our lives and in our world is out of our control, countries go to war, economies boom or bust, inflation rises, prices go up and wages go down, sickness comes, and even death comes. So we search for ways to control the things we cannot control so that we don’t have to be afraid of things spinning out of control.

We have always struggled to find some way to change the fact that we seem to be at the mercy of the world around us. I just finished a couple of days of working on tree removal from the tornado in Little Rock. One of the things I hear a lot from people who were home when it hit was how they were not expecting it and how it happened so suddenly, they didn’t prepare and didn’t know how to react. Not being in control and being at the mercy of the storm is not a comfortable feeling.

Enter John chapter 1.

John 1:1–5 NASB95

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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

First of all Jesus was there in the beginning. The beginning of what, not the beginning of God because he had no beginning and has no end. His thread of life goes on forever into the past and forever into the future. Because it goes on forever into the past he knows everything that has ever happened and because it goes on forever into the future he can take us into forever with him. What was Jesus there for the beginning of, the beginning of the story that is being told in the bible, the story of man. It begins with the creation of our world and the creation of man and it ends with our transition into eternity.

Jesus was there for it all. He was there when it all began and in the planning stages before it all began. He knows every thought that came before God first created. He knows all the plans exactly the way they were supposed to be and exactly what God intended creation to be like. Jesus knows it all.

Now if you had a car that stopped running and you wanted to get it back running, you might take a crack at fixing it yourself. If you could not figure it out you might talk to a mechanic or take the car to a mechanic to be repaired. But what if the mechanic could not figure out what was wrong. If no one else could fix it you might decide to take the car to the dealer. Surely the person who sells the car could fix it, after all the dealer has access to the people who made the car, the people who put it together. Not only that but he has access to the people who designed the car, the ones who decided how it should be built and what materials to build it out of, surely they could fix it. After all, if anybody knows how a car works surely it is the people who designed and built it, the ones who first tested it and worked out the bugs in the original design and made it all work for the first time, surely they know more about it than anyone.

Well, Jesus was there for the design and planning stages of our world. He was there when the plans were made for mankind to be created. Not only that, he was there when the world was actually made and nothing that was made was made without his helping to make it. He was not just there when the world was made he helped make it.

Not only that but he was there when we were made. When the first human rolled off the creation line Jesus was there, not only that but since without him nothing was made which was made when the first human was made guess who helped make him, Jesus Christ.

If anyone knows how this world works and what makes us tick it must be the creator, it must be Jesus Christ. So we don’t have to worry about the things that we don’t understand or the things that we cannot predict or control because we know someone who knows exactly how everything works and has control over it to boot.

It’s good to have friends in high places. It’s good to know someone who has the knowledge and resources to help when you are helpless, its good to be a friend of the king. It’s even better to be part of his family. We are part of the family of God, the family of Jesus Christ and we have a saviour who has always been there, a saviour who created us and the world we live in and knows us better than we know ourselves. And he has a plan.

This introduction to the Gospel of John actually lays out that plan. We get the broad brushstrokes of a master design that has been in place for thousands of years. A masterpiece that God and Jesus planned even before the first bit of matter was created.

In our Wednesday night bible study we are looking at the Truth Project and at one point the instructor speculates on what it was like during creation week. Most scholars believe that the Angels were created before the earth and man were created and he says I wonder what it was like, did God send out a flyer to the angels, be in the stands at 0600 tomorrow because God is going to create stuff.

Imagine the angels waking in talking among themselves, did you see the flyer, yes I did, what is stuff.......I don’t know but God is going to make some of it........ I wonder what it will be like.

So here for countless ages before time even existed there has been nothing, nothing, nothing and then suddenly God speaks and the universe is filled with stuff. The Angels peer down and say to each other, what is it......I’ve never seen anything like it........Me either....It must be stuff........what does it do......I don’t know......lets watch and see.

And Jesus was there, Jesus was in the know, he was part of the creative process, without him nothing was made which was made and as if that were not enough in him..........In Jesus was life. Life existed in Jesus and the life that existed in Jesus was the light of men.

The very essence of Jesus, the thing that animates the physical body of Jesus, the spiritual center or spiritual essence, the life of Jesus was there and it was the light of men.

What does that mean. Well, what is light, what does it do. Light illuminates, it brightens things up, makes things clearer and easier to see. Light shows what a thing is, if we want to examine something closely we hold it up to the light to see exactly what it is and how it is made. Light shows the flaws in a thing or it shows the perfection of a thing, light reveals what is true about something and makes it harder to hide or conceal anything. Light and truth are directly related, light reveals and unmasks a thing, light brings it all out into the open.

The life that is in Jesus is the light of men. It is by the life of Jesus that man is revealed, what man should have been, what man was created to be was shown in the life of Jesus. What man could be if man were perfect, what man was truly designed to be, intended to be, what man should have been was shown in the life of Jesus Christ. What man was created to be is demonstrated in the life of Jesus.

What God originally made us to be and what He is working today to remake us to be again is demonstrated in the life of Jesus. The light that reveals what should be and shows what God is working to transform us into today so that we can spend eternity in heaven, in a perfect heaven, a heaven that is exactly as it was supposed to be in bodies that were exactly what they were supposed to be with a mind and spirit that is exactly what they were created to be. That is what Jesus demonstrated by his life, that is that light that he shined on us and the truth that he revealed to us.

John 1:5 NASB95

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

It was all there, everything that was Jesus was there from the beginning, from before the beginning, and we missed it. Adam and Eve missed it, you and I missed it, generations of human beings missed it. We had the light, it was shining bright and showing us just exactly what we were created to be, perfect beings in constant communion with God, just like Jesus was a perfect being in constant communion with God. He showed us the way but we just couldn’t see it, we couldn’t understand it.

The world we live in is so far from perfect that our minds cannot comprehend a perfect world. It is so far from our experience that we can’t even imagine perfection in our wildest dreams. Even with Jesus there living it, showing it to us, shining like a lighthouse on a dark stormy night. We get glimpses of Jesus, little snippets of what perfection must be. We have fleeting touches of communion and communication with God, just enough to let us know that it is possible, but to imagine being one with God, thinking like he thinks....being always aware of his presence and having nothing we want to hide, being completely open and honest with him at every moment of every day just like Jesus was........ that is beyond our experience.

But guess what, all is not lost. Jesus is the light, his life is the light of men, he has shown us the way and he is our guide. We don’t have to understand it all, we don’t have to figure it all out, we don’t have to know the mind of God. Jesus does......and he has given us one task. If we want to reach perfection Jesus has promised it to us, He will make it happen. If we want to see God, to be in constant communion with God and be able to stand openly and honestly in God’s presence Jesus says come and follow me. He knows that we don’t know how to do that, Jesus knows that we have no idea what perfection looks like or how to get to it.

Jesus made his plans based on the idea that Jesus is the light and we don’t even understand what he has shown us. Jesus did not say come to me and I will explain everything to you so that you know everything I know. Jesus did not say come and figure this out so that you can proceed. Jesus did not say as soon as you figure out how to be perfect I will invite you into my heaven. No............Jesus said come and follow me.

We don’t have to know the way because the one who has been there since the beginning, the one who was a part of every plan and knows every detail, the one who had a part in the creation of us and everything around us, He is the one who knows, he is the one who understands and he is the one who says come and follow me.

Jesus promises to lead us and to direct us, He has the knowledge and the ability, he is perfect, and he knows how to perfect us, so he says come and follow me. That’s our job, to follow Jesus, that’s what we do, we follow the light. We don’t have to control it or understand it we just have to follow the one who does control and understand everything. The one who knows everything about us ,the one who created us… the manufacturer. Jesus Christ.

Won’t you come and follow him today, if you have never begun that journey I would love to introduce you to Jesus today, if your journey has already begun won’t you recommit to following the light, following Jesus. Won’t you come.