"The Word"

This has been automatically generated, and therefore may contain some unintended inaccuracies.

Today's reading is taken from the Gospel of John verses one to 18 of chapter one. And you can find that on page 1,063 of the Bibles. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made.

Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.

He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that give light gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of maternal natural descent, nor of human decision, or of a husband's will, but born of God. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father, full of grace and truth. John testified concerning him.

He cried out saying, this is the one I spoke about when I said, he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. Out of his fullness, we have all received grace in place of grace already given, for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God but the one and only son who is himself God and is the closest relationship is in the closest relationship with the father has made him known. Thank you, John, for reading that for us.

I encourage you to have that passage open in front of you, so if you've got a Bible nearby do grab it and have it open page 1,063. As we start our series in John's gospel, let me lead us in prayer. Father, we pray please now as we come to this book and this wonderful passage, which is so rich. Father, please, would you teach us, help us to understand it, and help us to be changed by it, we pray. Amen.

Like I say, we are starting this new series going through John's gospel, John's account of Jesus' life. And I want us to begin by asking the question, what does life consist of? What does life consist of? We know that life is more than just being alive. We might talk about someone who lives a full life.

What do we mean? What do our lives consist of? For lots, our lives are very busy. We have lots going on. Maybe work takes up a big part of life.

Our work, our goals in work, trying to please the boss, trying to get things done right, but yet we can also feel that, well, work can also be unsatisfying. We can spend so much time on it and yet wonder, is this really the right job for me? Is this really the right place for me? It's sort of fulfilling but not totally fulfilling. And then family can take up a major part.

I would think there are a good number of people here, maybe some who've had to go out to the creche for whom family for whom changing nappies is a big part of life and trying to work out why the baby is crying this time. Getting kids to school with everything they need, family can take up a whole load of our life, but we can still wonder is this really what life is all about? Our lives might be very full with a whole load of things, but we can still question and just have that nagging feeling, is there something I'm missing? Of course, for others lives can feel rather empty, you can feel like you've got a lot of time on your hands and life isn't so full And sometimes where we've got that we can think, is there something else? Is there more to life than this?

Where is real life to be found? We're pretty sure it's out there and yet many of us can feel we've not really got it. The adverts and films can say, yeah, is out there, go and get it, buy our product and you'll have it, but it always feels like it's just out of grasp, out of reach and we know life is fleeting. It goes by quickly, so we have all the more that nagging question, what if I'm missing out? What if there really is some big purpose to life, some meaning, something that it's all about?

Well, we're starting our series in John and between now and when we finish the series around Christmas, we're gonna get to the end of about chapter four. I'm gonna do the majority of preaching on that. There'll be one or two other sermons in there as well, if other people are preaching them, they might preach on something else, but basically, our big series this term is John, we'll get to about the end of chapter four, and there's a lot in John about life, what life is, what it's all about. Even in this prologue, that's what this bit that John just read for us is called, prologue, life is mentioned, we will come on to it, but before we do, I want us to start where John starts and see how does John begin his book and he doesn't begin first of all addressing you and me, about you and me. He's not first of all talking about you, he begins by talking about the word.

He introduces us to the word, a person called the word. And so let's find out what John says about the words. Now as we go through this prologue, I heard another preacher say about John one, if you're preaching one to 18, that it kind of takes the pressure off the preacher and I want you to know this because there's often in sermons, you're you're kind of you're thinking, okay, how am I gonna fill that? Not quite how am I gonna fill the time, but, you know, what's in the passage? What have I got to draw out and what can I, you know, feed you with?

And yet in John one one to 18, there is just so much that there's no possibility that we are going to cover everything in it. So there'll be things in there where you'll go, yeah, but what about that? I go, yeah, but we didn't have time. If we did everything, we'd be here for hours and hours and hours. So hopefully that takes the pressure off me and relieves you that we're not going go into everything.

But let's begin with our first point, which is to say, okay, what does John say about the word as he begins? We're gonna have three points this morning. First is the word. Verse one, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. So, John begins his gospel, he says, let me introduce you to the word, and then he gives a series of short statements about the word, each of which is very deep, very profound, and yet the words used aren't very simple.

As I've read it before, I thought it's almost like the kind of cat in the hat part of the bible or green eggs and ham. If you know those children's books, they are children's books if you don't know them. They're children's books where they use very simple words to create a fun story for children, but the words themselves are very simple, very short, often one syllable. I am Sam. Sam, I am.

You know, that kind of thing. And John's gospel is a bit like that. It begins with very simple words. In fact, if if you were learning New Testament Greek, actually, John's gospel is where you would start because the words are very very simple and yet as you read it, you think, woah, this is so profound, so deep. How do you do that with such simple words?

But that is what we've got. And so John begins, in the beginning was the word. What's he telling us about the word? He's saying the word had always existed. This person who is the word has always existed.

He starts by taking you back to the beginning of the Bible because the beginning of the Bible begins in the same way. It begins with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's Genesis chapter one verse one. And John begins his gospel by saying, in the beginning, echoing those words from Genesis, in the beginning was the word. The word, he is saying, has always existed.

Now we know as we go through John chapter one that the word is Jesus, just to give it away. The word is Jesus. And so John is saying Jesus has always existed from before the birth in Bethlehem, before the miraculous conception, before all that, the word was. In fact, you can go back to the very beginning when all things were created, indeed before that, that the word has always existed from eternity and that Jesus therefore has always existed and that should blow our minds. Simple words but amazing truth.

But more than that, we can't just dwell on that, he says, the word, and you've got to take these next two together, he says, the word was with God and the word was God. Those two have to go together, both of them, with God and was God. What does that mean? That he was with God means that in some way, he was a separate person from God, that he was with God throughout all eternity, but not less than God, nevertheless with God, but not with God like you might be with someone on the tube or on the bus, someone you don't know where you're thinking, well, I'm gonna keep myself to myself and I hope they keep themselves to themselves, so I'm gonna put the headphones in and I'm just gonna be by myself. I'm kind of with them, but I'm not with them.

The word for the word was with God means he was towards God, he was in relationship with God and we know he was in a relationship of love with God, love for all eternity between the word and God, with God and was God, not less than God, not another God, not inferior to God, but was God. Jehovah's Witnesses make a big deal or others make a big deal of the fact that at this point in verse one where it says the word was God, that there's no definite article there in the Greek and therefore they claim that it could be translated the word was a god, and therefore make him out to be lesser than God. But that's not true. It doesn't work in Greek. I mean, is a little bit more flexible about when you have the definite article and when you don't, but also, as you read through John's gospel, if you've got that in mind and you're thinking, yeah, what does he mean at the beginning there?

You can see as you go through John's gospel that Jesus is claiming not to be another God. I mean, that would be blasphemy for Jews, but he's not claiming to be another god, but he is claiming to be the God. For instance, and we can you can look through it as you read through John, have a look for it, but when it there are certain statements Jesus makes called the I am statements, when Jesus takes onto himself the name of God from the Old Testament. We'll come to some of them. And therefore, Jesus is not claiming to be a different God.

He's not claiming to be a lesser God. He is claiming to be the God of the Bible, and there are other places that you can look to in John's gospel where you can see that is what he is claiming, and the Jews knew that's what he was claiming, to be the God. So here is the big claim right at the start, verse one, that the word has always existed, the word was with God and the word was God, And therefore, you should read the whole of the rest of what comes in John's gospel in the light of that. A theologian, Barrett, says this, John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and works of Jesus are the deeds and works of God.

If this be not true, the book is blasphemous. That is the big claim right from the start. Here's the headlines like John saying, I'm not gonna be subtle with this, I'm not gonna sort of mess around and see if you can work out what I'm doing, I'm gonna hit it with you with it straight away that the word is and was God. Now he's kind of saying, I wanna give you the evidence for that. Keep reading.

Read on. I want you to be convinced of it. I'm gonna give you the evidence and so you read the rest of the gospel. Keep going to see, is he right that the word is God? So first point, the word.

Second, the word and the world. The word and the world, and there are three parts to this. We'll go through each quite quickly. And don't worry, yes, we go through each bit quite quickly, and we go through the whole of these first 18 verses quite quickly, but part of the reason why I do that is because, actually, a lot of the themes that come up in this prologue, John will come back to. So as you go through, as we go through together, don't worry if there are bits where you're going, yeah, you missed that.

Yep. John will come back to it. Don't worry. We will hit it later on. But if we cover everything in 100% detail in the prologue, then we'll have nothing to say the rest of John's gospel.

So don't worry. We will come back to these themes. Three things about the way the word relates to the world, three things, they are dependence, rejection, and acceptance. First off, dependence, that the world depends on the word. We depend on the word for our existence.

So verse three, through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made. Now again, you're back in kind of Genesis, if you know the Bible, you know right back, Genesis, first book of the Bible, first thing that happens is God makes everything and this is saying, John is saying, yeah, Jesus, the word made everything and the emphasis clearly there is everything. He says he made everything, there was nothing that was made that was not made through him, so he's kind of going, yeah, everything, really everything, from the big, the kind of galaxies, stars, planets, all those kind of big thing, mountains, that kind of stuff, to the minute, the microscopic forms of life. It says, all was made through the word, Jesus, involved in the creation of all things. So, that means we are all dependent on the word for our existence, for life.

But more than that, verse four, in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome or understood it. Now this is saying a bit more. It's saying, we depend on the word for life and light. Now, it's helpful to know that with some books and some films even that you might have watched, that you get more from it if you rewatch it.

Recently, before he went to university, our youngest son Toby was watching The Sixth Sense and if you've watched it, I'm not going give it away, but there is a twist at the end of Sixth Sense, which makes you want to rewatch the film. I mean, if you're if you don't like horrible things, don't watch it, but you get through to the end and you go, I really should watch that again, and I remember thinking that when I'd watched it, but then I thought, actually, I really don't wanna watch it again, but when he was watching it, I came in the room and sat with him for a little bit, and I was aware because I knew the twist, but he didn't. That we were watching it, therefore, in a very different way. He's watching it for the first time, and it's making sense as he's going through. I'm watching it, having watched it before, going, I know what's happening, so I'm watching this, and you could fit in the room, sort of thinking, you're watching this in a different way from the way I am, and I'm looking forward to chatting to you about it at the end of the film and being able to talk about it.

Now John's gospel is a bit the same. John works on John writes, he's a brilliant writer, and what he writes, he writes in more than one level. So as you read this first time around and you go, okay, in him, in the word, was light and life, your mind might still be going back to Genesis, and you're going, yeah, well, God created light, yeah, he breathed life into every into people. Okay. So light and life, and we go, well, that's Jesus.

He's he is the the life and and the light, so you're sort of thinking, existence, blood flowing through your veins, breath in your body, that kind of life. Yeah, we depend on Jesus for that, but then you read through John's gospel and you come back to the beginning and you read this again, and you'll go, ah, John doesn't just mean that when he talks about life, he's meaning real life, that Jesus holds out to people, he says, come to me and you can have life with a capital l, life at one point he says, in all its fullness. He speaks to one person and holds out and says to them, if you came to me, if you asked me, I would give you living water that will means that you will never thirst and will well up in you to eternal life. So Jesus is saying, I can give you life, real life and life that stretches on for eternity, that goes beyond death. Do you see, John is not just saying existence now, life now, he's talking about real life, the kind of life we were talking about at the beginning, and this is why, by the way, John one of the reasons why John begins calling Jesus the word or the logos.

Back then, Greek philosophy, had this term logos. The logos was the meaning behind the universe, the purpose of it, the logic behind it and there was a pursuit for what is that logos, that meaning and John is saying the meaning, the purpose of life. Life is wrapped up in a person, the word. So we are entirely dependent on the word for life, meaning existence, yes, creation, but more than that for life. Dependence.

But surprisingly, what you then get in John's prologue is that there is a dominant theme of rejection. Now you get that a bit in verse five, have a look at verse five. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. You know, that's intriguing. Was the darkness trying to overcome it?

And then you get it more. We're gonna skip over John the Baptist. We'll come back to him next week because he features more heavily next week in next week's passage. Verse nine then, the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

He came to that which was his own but his own did not receive him. So there's a theme of the light shining but being rejected, not being understood, not being accepted. And, actually, this gives away the plot of the book that Jesus, the light of the world, comes but is not accepted and is rejected. Again, to give away the ending, he's crucified. The light comes and we reject him.

Now be aware here what John is saying about mankind, the world, us, is very different from maybe how we think of the world or how maybe people in our culture think of the world. We probably recognize that we are in the dark in lots of ways. We probably think of that meaning we are ignorant. There's a lot we don't know. We go forward as humanity, but we don't know quite what we're doing.

You see that with things like AI, where we're thinking we don't know what to do here. Should we constrain it, restrain it, let it go? Do we we don't know what to do. We're in the dark. We need light, and we think, well, mankind and the world is in darkness, and if there is a god, well, god, where are you?

If there is a god, maybe he's very small as a light. It's like trying to find a candle under a bowl somewhere in the world, and we go, well, if there is light, the fault is with God. God, shine brighter so that we can see you, so that we can find you. John's saying, you know, it's exactly the opposite way around. The light shines, it's like the light in creation, the light shines out, and when the light came to us, we didn't go, great, let's go to the light, we said we're gonna reject the light and we see that in John's gospel and actually we see that in our own hearts and we'll need to come back to that, that the light shines, but our instinct isn't to go towards it, but to go away from it and say I don't want that light.

We depend on the light, we reject the light, but also there is acceptance. So we see this verse verse 12, yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God. So those who do receive the light, those who believe in his name are given the right to become children of God. Now we're gonna need to think more about that and what belief means, but I just want you to see, though there is rejection of the word, some do accept and receive him and a huge privilege is given to them to become children of God. Now that is saying not everyone in the world is a child of God in this sense.

Yes, all are made by God, but not all are in a father child relationship with God. You've got to come into that. You've got to you've got to enter into it, and that takes a miracle, this is saying. How do from our point of view, how do we do that? Through belief in Jesus.

Put your trust in him and you can come into a relationship with God. Now put that together with what we thought about life, what is real life? If we've got to come to Jesus for it, if we're dependent on him for it, and this is saying, you come to Jesus, you get into a relationship, father child with God, this is saying, that is what life is. Real life is found in the relationship with our maker, with God. So, we're dependent on the word, we reject the word, but some accept.

That's the word and the world. And you might be thinking, I think I've had enough spiritual indigestion, there's a lot going on here, there is a lot going on, and so we're gonna carry on. We've got the word and the world, last point, the word in the world, the word in the world. Verse 14, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. This is saying that word who has always existed from before the creation of the world, that word on whom we are dependent for our existence, for life, he came to us, became flesh, and lived among us.

The word for dwelling among us is a word for pitching his tent. He pitched his tent among us, a paraphrase of that, the word became flesh and blood and moved into our neighborhood. Maybe you know of famous people who live nearby. You know of famous people, the famous people who live in Kingston? I think people normally go for Stormzy as being one, who apparently lives in Kingston.

Tom Holland, who was Spider Man, grew up around here, went to Richard Chalmers School, very close to here, my boys went there as well. And, in a secondhand uniform sale, we got a blazer which had the name tag of Tom Holland's brother. Yeah, we practically know him. But having famous people around, you might think, have you seen seen those people living around here? And you might think, what are they like?

What are they like in day to day life? That's what you wanna know. Do they have bad hair days? Do they have grumpy what are they like in normal life? That's what you wanna see.

But the reality is normally when people then get really famous they move somewhere else and they move in sort of gated communities and with big walls and said you don't see me because they want their privacy. They sort of hide themselves away, That's not what the word did. He pitched his tent among us, walked around among us, and you might know the word again for pitched his tent, it's actually tabernacled amongst us, which is a reference to the Old Testament in Israelite history. There was a point in the wilderness, they were wandering around in the wilderness, they had a tent called the Tabernacle in which Moses could meet with God, and this is saying that the word tabernacled amongst us, it was the meeting point between mankind and God was Jesus, the word made flesh, God with us. And you wonder, what was he like day by day?

What was he like? What was it like having the word living amongst us? John, what was it like day by day? How would you describe it? Verse 14, the word became flesh, made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory. That's what it was like. He's saying when we saw Jesus, the word to describe him is glory, which is another Old Testament word, description of God, that he is glorious, his glory, people sometimes saw it. Indeed, when the temple was built, the temple of God was built, there was a point where the glory of God descended on the temple, and people couldn't go in it. It was just so it was just so overwhelming, they couldn't go in.

That was God's glory, and so you think, well, John, what was it like if you saw the glory of God in the word become flesh? What did that look like day by day even still you're wondering, wasn't it terrifying? He says, verse 14, he came from the father full of grace and truth, Grace and truth, full of both, full of truth that he spoke true things about God, truth about God and about us, and therefore he corrected people, he challenged people, he confronted people, he reassured people, but he taught truth, and that means as we go through John's gospel, there are gonna be things that maybe we don't like, things we don't wanna hear, but if you're gonna be in a relationship with God, if it's gonna be a real relationship, there are gonna be things where God is gonna say, I'm like that. I'm not like that, and some things where he might say, you need to do this, you don't need to do that, and where things, God will correct us, and Jesus came full of truth. We need to listen to him but also full of grace, full of grace.

And we've seen that already actually. How do you enter into a relationship with God? Through believing in Jesus' name. It's not by being virtuous or upright or super religious, it's those who believe in his name which means there's grace for those of us who are struggling, those who are discouraged, those who see their attempts to have a life haven't actually been fulfilling, and those who've maybe ignored Jesus or run away from him, that you can now come to him, put your trust in him, and enter into that relationship with God. That is grace.

And we'll see Jesus' grace as we go through John's gospel. Well, there you go. The opening of John, we've seen the word, the word in the world and the word in the world and there is a whole load more in those verses to get. I just want to say a word just quickly for those if you're not yet a Christian, if you're exploring Christianity, just a quick word. Can I encourage you to keep coming along?

Keep finding out more about Jesus. Maybe in the past you've been put off Christianity, maybe you've been put off church, maybe you've been put off by Christians. I mean, if that's true for you, it's amazing you're here and great that you are. Keep coming back. I want to encourage you to stick with this.

Maybe bring others along as well and look at Jesus afresh because he is at the heart of Christianity. Come with us through John's gospel. Let's see Jesus and his glory, the glory of the word made flesh and just be aware of what response is being called for. Twice in these opening verses, we are called to believe, that's what it says, isn't it? Belief is the response.

Be aware as you examine Jesus, as you explore Jesus, that he does call for a response of belief, and be aware that belief in Jesus, well, it's more like belief in water than it is belief in Mount Everest. Mount Everest, we all know, is the highest point on earth, highest mountain on earth. Do we believe it? Yes, we do. Does it make any difference to your life?

No, it doesn't. You believe it's true and it makes no difference, but water, do you believe that you need water to exist to live and that without it you will die? Well, if you say yes but you never drink any water, that shows you don't really believe it. The word, what we see about Jesus is more like water. But if you say, yeah, I believe it's true, that's going to change us because actually he's saying real life, eternal life as opposed to darkness and death is found in Jesus, and if we believe that, we'll come to Jesus and put our trust in him.

Let me pray for us. Heavenly father, we praise you that, we have read of the word, the one from all eternity on whom we depend and in whom is life, and we pray each one of us would come to Jesus for life and where we have been looking for that life in other things, even as Christians where we have been tempted to look for life, real life in other things. Help us to turn to Jesus and find in him truth and grace. Amen.