Jesus: The Word, The Life, The Light
The Gospel of John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Starting Jan. 2nd, we are going into our annual 21 days of prayer and fasting. It is a time that we give our first fruits, meaning our time and energy, to the Lord with prayer and fasting. This is what is considered a corporate fast. It is where a group of people come together to pray and fast in a corporate voice. Similar to what was done in the book of Ester.
What we will be focusing on is Revival! Revival in the heart, the home, the community, and the church. I have found a great devotional on the YouVersion app called “Send Revival”. It is a 21 day devotional centered on prayer and fasting for revival. For those that do not know about YouVersion, it is a free bible app that you can download. Once you have it downloaded, you can change the version of the bible to what ever version you would like to use. Once you have that, you go to plans, look up send revival prayer and fasting. The banner will look like this one on the screen. Start it on Jan 2nd. It is a way that we all can be on the same page with our prayers.
Now for those who are new to fasting. Fasting is normally where you give up something that takes you away from God and makes you focus on God when you long for what you are fasting. It is normally food, but in this modern age, it can be any sort of thing that distracts you. Most of us can do well with a digital fast. Maybe no Facebook, Snapchat, Youtube, TikTok, Spotify…if mentioning any of these, you say, oh I can’t go 21 days without that, it is that very thing you should give up, because it could be that very thing that has become your idol that has replaced God in your life.
Now let’s get into our new series, “The Gospel of John”. I have prayed and I feel the Holy Spirit telling me this is something we need to do here. This series will be a good bit different than other series we have done here. We will be slowly going through the entire book of John by taking it verse by verse.
It is my suggestion that each week, bring your bible, bring a notebook, because this series will show you how to look closely at a book in the bible and how to study it for yourself as you see each week the way the message falls into place.
Let’s pray to the Holy Spirit to give us revelation as we go into this new series and for the message today.
The principle of faith is fundamental in the Gospel of John. Faith is a dynamic activity: “believe” occurs in various verbal forms about one hundred times in this Gospel, while the noun “faith” is absent.
Walter A. Elwell; Robert W. Yarbrough
The purpose of the Gospel of John is to reveal that you can be the most religious person, doing all the right things, a consistent church goer, but if you do not believe in Jesus Christ as Messiah, you are dead in your sins. We maybe imperfect and struggle with sin, but those that believe in Jesus and commit to follow Him, will be given eternal life. Those that believe and follow will be spared from the wrath of God and are now coheirs to the kingdom of God. John tells us the reason he wrote his gospel in John chapter 20.
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
So when we look at John’s gospel, we should be aware that his main focus is belief and faith in Jesus as the Son of God.
Let me point out, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as Synoptic Gospels, meaning they are seen together. They are there to give us a brief look at the life of Christ. John’s Gospel is different. It is know as the Spiritual Gospel. It is because it teaches clearly the deity and preexistence of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of John is very clear in this emphasis. The other three gospels show Christ’s lineage through people or places, John’s gospel shows that Jesus Christ came from heaven and that Jesus Christ is God. He makes that abundantly clear in the first 5 verses of his gospel.
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 things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
The Word. The very 1st verse John gives Christ this very unique title, the Word.
Word- logos
-a title of Jesus understood as God’s ultimate communication of truth about Himself.
We must get a grasp first and foremost that there is power in the Word.
The heavens were made by the word of the Lord,
and all the stars, by the breath of his mouth.
For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
It is through this power we get creation and salvation through the Word. Let’s break this down a bit further to fully understand what and why call Jesus the Word.
In the beginning was the Word
This refers back to the timeless and eternal statement in Genesis.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
John is making it clear, when the beginning began, the Word, Jesus Christ was there.
The meaning of Word has deep rich roots in both Hebrew and Greek.
Jewish rabbis would not use the name of God so they would often call God the Word. So to the Jews, John is connecting Jesus to God and to creation, claiming that Jesus existed before creation.
To Greek philosophers, Word meant the power that put sense to the world, the voice of calm in the chaos.
So John’s very first statement is telling both the Jew and the Greek, that what you have been talking about, thinking about, and writing about this Word, I am telling you who this Word is. Jesus Christ! But John is not done yet.
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God
John’s 1st statement continues in saying Jesus is God, but at the same time, He is not God the Father. They are both distinct different persons of the Trinity. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, yet they are equally God.
It is understood that there is one God, but that one God exists as three persons, The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, we call this the Triune God or the Trinity.
What we need to understand, there is no greater revelation of the character and nature of the Father than through His Son Jesus. Jesus reveals God’s mind, will, heart and perfection to us through His life and His death and resurrection.
I want take a moment here to make us aware of heretical teachings on this verse. The Jehovah Witnesses will tell you through their Watchtower booklet and their New World Translation bible that where it says the Word was God, they change it to the Word was a god. Small g. Why? Because they do not see Jesus as a Savior but as an angel and a prophet only. They do not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ.
I want to make this very, very clear, there is no Greek scholar that interprets this verse that way. They all agree that is says the Word was God. In fact, the NET translate this as the Word was fully God. I bring this up because this is the reason we are going through this series, to make us aware of heretical teachings and to learn how to spot it by studying God’s word.
He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
Christ was there in the beginning and all things were created through Him. The way John words this, it removes what seems impersonal, and makes it personal. Christ did not make just a universal collective creation, but through Him, it is a personal individual creation. Jesus created the largest of things to the microscopic. Jesus created you individually. And one day we will worship Him because He designed it all.
Our Lord and God,
you are worthy to receive
glory and honor and power,
because you have created all things,
and by your will
they exist and were created.
It is so amazing to me, that when the world began, I was on His mind and He created me individually from everything else. That makes me want to praise Him more and more everyday.
In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
The life and the light.
The Greek translation for life here in Zoe not Bios. Zoe means life principle, while bios means biological life. John is telling us that the Word is the source of all life, not just in a biological sense.
Death is a permanent physical separation from life and a spiritual separation from the physical. Christ is the connection for both. Physical death will meet us all, but without Christ we are all dead to our sins and therefore separated from God.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.
John is saying that the power that created all life, both physical and spiritual, is in the Word, Jesus Christ.
Jesus came to give us eternal life. To reconcile us with God, to not only change us here in the present, but to change our future destination. All we have to do is place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Why?
Because Christ took our judgement upon Himself and gave us victory over death, hell and the grave. We no longer have to fear the physical separation, because we are no longer spiritually separate from God.
Jesus came to call people from death to life. to bring life to those who are spiritually dead and to bring light to a spiritually darkened world.
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
a light has dawned
on those living in the land of darkness.
The light will always overcome the dark.
John is not saying we need to be more religious. Modern religion has reverted back to what the Pharisees and Sadducees made it out to be. John is telling us to live in the light of the Gospel. You need not wander in your darkness and despair of sin, but live in the light that Christ has brought to this world.
Jesus is the Word that is still shinning the light and the life in this world. John is very careful in his words when he says the light shines in the darkness. To put in the American way of saying things, it says the light is still shining in the darkness and never stops. The dark has and will continue to do everything it can to remove the light. It has schemed. It has pretended to be religion. It has plotted against God’s people and those adopted into the kingdom. No matter what, the light and the life and the Word still overcomes it. The light can still be seen today. All we have to do is open our eyes.
