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Introduction
We love a good story, don’t we? It’s almost like we’re wired to organize our perceptions into narrative.
We love a story!
And as I was thinking this week about some of my favorite stories, a pattern began to show itself.
In a lot of our favorite stories, the one who will later become a hero is introduced from humble beginnings.
Luke Skywalker is the orphaned nephew of a couple of moisture farmers on a backwoods planet.
Jean Valjean is Prisoner 24601 in a French prison.
Frodo Baggins is a simple hobbit living with his uncle in the Shire.
Harry Potter, a boy who lives under the stairs.
In the beginning, these characters don’t have much going for them.
But, as the story develops, it turns out that our heroes aren’t what they seemed.
They was something more than we were told in the beginning.
Turn, please, to John 1. That’s page 603 of the pew Bible.
We are continuing our journey into the Gospel of John, the second of 5 sermons in Season 1 of the Book of John.
If you remember, last week we looked at the end of the book, at John’s thesis statement.
His purpose for writing his gospel.
John says:
That’s John’s whole purpose, that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah and son of God and by believing have life in Jesus’ name.
Now, we are going back to the beginning of the gospel, where we will spend three weeks looking at John’s prologue.
The first 18 verses of the book.
In the prologue, John reveals several key themes that he will develop throughout the rest of the book — kind of like the overture in a symphony.
So we would do well to spend time here and find each of them, so we know what we’re looking for in the rest of the gospel.
Let me read our text this morning, verses 1-5:
Big Idea:
Jesus is God, who came to deliver mankind from death and darkness.
Jesus is God, who came to deliver mankind from death and darkness.
PRAY: Father, as we open your Word, we pray that you would revive our hearts by the life in Jesus and let our souls see by his light.
Amen.
Jesus is God
In the Beginning
There can be no mistaking that John intends — when we read the prologue to his gospel — for our minds to be taken back to the first words of the Scriptures:
“In the beginning...”
If we look at the other Gospels, Matthew traces Jesus’ genealogy back to Abraham, the one with whom God made his covenant to save a people.
Jesus was the True Israel, Matthew says.
Luke takes us a step further back and traces Jesus all the way back to being the son of Adam, the son of God.
Jesus was the True Human, Luke says.
But John takes us all the way back.
Before man, before beasts and birds and fish, before trees, before land and sky, before day and night, before dark and light.
“In the beginning...”
In fact, John takes us even further than the beginning, because he says, “In the beginning, was...” At the moment of beginning, something was already.
And we aren’t surprised by this if we know Genesis because we know that Genesis says, “In the beginning, God...” Before the beginning, God is.
Before the beginning, God is eternal.
Before the beginning, God is all-powerful.
Before the beginning, God is all-knowing.
Before the beginning, God is self-existent.
We are not surprised when we read “in the beginning was,” because we know that in the beginning, God is.
And yet, we might be surprised because when we read John, we read, “In the beginning was the Word.”
Where Genesis says God is, John says the Word was.
The Word was in the beginning.
In the beginning, the Word was already in existence.
No matter how far you may stretch your imagination back, there will not come a time where the Word was not.
The Word was in the beginning.
What is this Word?
So what is this Word that was in the beginning?
We have a couple of options to define it as we consider the historical and cultural contexts from which John is writing.
John, of course, is a Jewish man, and so we shouldn’t separate his writings from their history in the Old Testament.
There, God’s word stands in reference as his powerful action.
God’s power is in His Word, so to speak.
In Genesis 1, when God is creating all things, He does so by His word.
He speaks creation into existence.
10 times in Genesis 1 we read the words, “And God said…and there was.”
God’s creative action is connected with his word.
God also reveals himself by his word in the Old Testament.
When the prophets of God were commissioned to reveal God’s person and His will to the people, their words were always, “Thus saith the Lord...” God self-revelation is connected with his word.
And it is by God’s Word in the Old Testament that people are healed and ultimately saved.
It is by God’s Word that he brought his saints back from death.
God’s salvation is connected to His Word.
From the Old Testament, then, we can see that the Word is God’s self-expression as He creates, reveals, and saves.
Repeat that
And so, we ought not be surprised when John uses the personification of this Word to introduce Jesus to his readers.
If the Word is God’s self-expression of creation, revelation, and salvation…then it is on purpose that John says this Word…this is Jesus, the one who created all things.
The one who is God’s light shining in darkness - God’s revelation.
And Jesus, this Word I’m writing about is God’s salvation - the life.
The Word — Jesus — is God’s self-expression of creation, revelation, and salvation.
Through Jesus all things were created.
Though Jesus God is revealed.
Through Jesus, God saves.
Jesus is the Word.
But, that’s not all.
John isn’t just writing from his Jewish background.
He is also writing into a culture heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.
And so, he grabs onto a foundational piece of that philosophy — something called the Logos.
One of the earliest Greek philosophers was a man named Heraclitus.
His major contribution to philosophy was the idea that things in the world constantly change.
He had a famous illustration that you can never step twice into the same river; the water from before it now gone and new water is in its place.
And Heraclitus said everything is like that; everything is changing.
But, he asked, if that is true, how can there be order in the world?
His answer was the Logos, the divine reason or the cosmic ordering.
The Logos was the principle that held everything together in a world of change.
Heraclitus said there is a purpose and design to the world and this is divine purpose the Logos.
The later Greek philosophers were fascinated by this idea of the Logos.
When Anaximander asked what keeps the stars in order?
The Logos.
When Theophrastus asked what controls the seasons?
The Logos.
The Greeks came to find order and purpose revealed everywhere in the world through the Logos, the divine logic.
John’s gospel was originally written in Greek and these opening lines, In the beginning was the word in Greek are: Ἐν ἀρχῇ (in the beginning) ἦν ὁ λόγος.
Plato, one of the most famous Greek philosophers wrote this some 400 years before John wrote his gospel.
He wrote: “It may be that some day there will come forth from God a Word, a Logos, who will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain.”
And John says, “That time has come!”
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