The Light Shining in The Darkness

John 1:1-5

Thesis: To show that Christ is the Son of God, evidenced by the witness of John.

Introduction:

Bar Kokhba, Sabbatai Zevi, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Apollo Quiboloy, and Sergey Torop all have one thing in common: they claimed to be either God or the reincarnate son of God.

Not one of these men is or was actually a deity at all.

Sabbatai converted to Islam, Jim Jones led a group of 900 individuals to commit suicide, and Marshall Applewhite convinced 39 people to commit suicide, believing they would ascend into a spacecraft.

While it is true that not everyone who has ever claimed to be Christ was a mass murderer or a suicidal maniac, it is true that not one of those men ever performed miracles, they never rose from the grave, and they certainly did not display any great acts of love towards themselves or others.

What these men did do is prove that anybody can claim anything and there is a great likelihood that someone will believe them, at least for a while.

In the case of each of those individuals mentioned, their claim of deity originated within themselves; people began to follow them afterward, and finally, when the self-claimed messiah died, their followers either literally died with them or dispersed shortly after their death.

There is one man we read about, though whose claim of deity did not originate within himself, there is one who did perform real miracles that could not have possibly been a form of trickery, there is one who ultimately died willingly because he loved His creation and wanted them to spend eternity with Him.

He is the man Jesus whom John speaks of in his gospel.

John bears witness to Him (John 1:6-7).

After Jesus has been declared by John, he claims and backs up the fact that he is a deity.

Even with John’s affirmation, all the signs, the crucifixion, and many more witnesses, some still do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus is the archangel Michael.

Muslims believe that Jesus was just a prophet.

And there are some others that, although they believe Jesus is the son of God, they do not believe he is God or is equal to God the Father.

Many of these same religious views were also problems during the time of John; those individuals were called gnostics.

Gnostics believed Jesus was a divine messenger from God, but was never made human.

They believed that the God over spiritual things was a good god, and the god over physical things (including the creation) was an evil god (Demiurge).

John wrote the gospel of John to affirm Christ’s deity, His identity, and his sovereignty.

In The Beginning was The Word

The Word was God

The Darkness did not Overcome

Discussion:

In The Beginning was The Word (John 1:1)

When John begins to tell us about Jesus he starts by taking us back to the very beginning (Gen 1:1).

It is no coincidence that John begins his gospel using the same wording used in the beginning of Genesis.

The likeness between the beginnings of both books has something to do with refering to the same timeframe.

In the beginning of time God created; In that same light, in the beginning of time was the word.

Continuing in the book of Genesis all through the days of creation there is recorded for us God speaking.

Gen 1:2 mentions the Spirit of God (Distinctly different from God) was over the face of the waters.

Moving down to verse 26 Moses by inspiration records God saying “Let make man in image.” Clearing showing that there is a plurality of the Godhead.us our

We know that there is God the Father from the genesis account, we know that there is God the Spirit from Genesis but there is one more member of the Godhead who was present during the creation.

The Word was God (John 1:2-3)

Jesus was not a created being, John said that Jesus was with God in the beginning and that he was God (John 1:2; Micah 5:2).

John says that all things were made by him and without him nothing would be made.

The word/Jesus was the driving force of the creation.

Jesus, although not mentioned was active in the creation of the universe (Gen 1:26; Psa. 33:6-9; 1 Cor. 8:6).

It is unclear to me the exact ins and outs of Christ’s involvement in the creation we do know that he was the creator of all things.

Jesus Christ is the one that has given us the new covenant (John 1:14-16 emphasizes this; Heb 2 as well).

He is, in a sense,  the embodiment of the Word of God, Jesus is the Creator (Col. 1, Heb 1)

He is the word in Communication and in Creation.

The Darkness did not Overcome (John 1:4-5)

During the creation there was a primary focus on life.

Creation began with the prerequisites to life being created (light, atmosphere, water, land) and then progressed to the creating of life.

Christ (God) did not just focus on life but man was even told that he was to maintain that life (Gen. 2:15).

The focus remains on life through the rest of scripture.

Gen. 1 shows the beginning of life, Gen. 2:15 shows God asking main to maintain life, Gen. 3 shows us the entrance of sin/dead into the world but we also find God providing a way toward life (Gen 3:15).

On and on through scripture, at the beginning, at the seed promise given to Abraham (Gen. 12:1-7), leading the Israelites out of Egypt (Exo. 12), the focus is always placed on life.

That focus has not changed according to John.

John tells us that Jesus is life and that, that life is the light of men.

When we become lost we need a light to help us see where we need to go, if we have a flashlight and we turn it on we will be able to see something. There has never been a darkness so dark that turning on a light did nothing.

Christ is described as the light of men which shows that he is our leader (John 10:3-4).

He is also described as the light because light is always visible in dark places.

It does not matter how dark/bad this world gets Christ will always be a light shining for us

Conclusion:

Jesus Christ is the true son of God, because of the witness of John, because of the consistency of scipture, and because of the power of Christ witnessed not only by John but countless others when he walked this earth.

The entire bible points toward Christ being the son of God who came to take away the sins of the world.

Life is a fundamental aspect of scripture, it is seen in everything God does.

We know because John tells us that the darkness does not overcome the light, we still have a choice to make however.

We can choose to keep wandering in darkness.

We can choose to look toward the light, to follow after it, begin walking in the light with Christ so that we can find our way home (1 John 1).