The book of John is a long expansion on the prologue…a prologue is a short introductory section to a book.
Following the prologue where Jesus is introduced as the eternal, cosmos creating, God who become human.
John then gives Jesus’ historical words and actions that back up this amazing introductory truth claim.
Today we are going to walk through the prologue, John 1:1-18
- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
Sounds really familiar…doesn’t it.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Last week we talked at length about the mind-blowing reality of the incarnation.
How it is not “unreasonable” or “non-scientific”…to believe that Jesus is fully God and fully man.
It is a mystery, beyond human intelligence not beneath it or apart from it.
Ultimate reality (what has always been) is not the merely physical as the atheist or materialist would say.
It is a “who”, not a “what.”
Ultimate reality is a trinity, a personal God.
In the beginning God...this God was Father, Son, Spirit.
God the Son, Jesus…was with and was God.
All things were made by him.
Again, do not let your hearts be troubled just because your mind is blown by this reality.
It is not sub-rational, it is above-mere-rational thought…we can understand it enough, just not completely.
Like a baby, who has very little understanding of self and virtually no categories for understanding the world around it…but can early on “understand” mom.
This hovering, feeding, hugging, smiling, happy noise making creature…is safe, is good, makes me happy.
The baby has true knowledge of mom, though it has very limited understanding of mom compared to say, what Dad has.
And of course, even Dad, who has more understanding of mom than the baby, doesn’t fully understand her…ask any husband and they will tell you so.
But the understanding I have of Christy…though not exhaustive…is broad, and accurate…and enough for a loving relationship.
John, as we will see…is not trying to get our minds all the way around Christ…but to get our hearts wrapped around him in relationship.
So, we need true truth, we need to understand who Jesus…it need not be exhaustive truth.
4 In him was life,, and that life was the light of men.
Life is a favorite word for John.
He will use it 36 times in 22 chapters.
Life is physical (Jesus has made us) and yet more than that…he is remaking us.
The life that Jesus brings is “eternal life”…not eternal as in “a lot of time”(quantity) but eternal as “a different kind of life”(quality)
Eternal life is a restored relationship with God that transforms us back to our original design this life begins at conversation and doesn’t end at physical death.
When we are converted, born again…we don’t just change our beliefs, our ideas …our lives begin the process of change into the image of Christ.
This is life that Christ brings.
This life in Jesus is the light of humanity.
John is saying Jesus is the revelation of God to humans.
Light reveals what is there.
Light dispels darkness.
In reality darkness is the absence of light not the “presence” of something else.
So, when the people walking in the darkness, have seen a great light (as Isaiah wrote) …they were walking in the absence of light, the absence of truth about who God is…the absence of a thriving relational life with God and each other.
Through Christ we can know who God is…and knowing who God is, is essential for knowing who we are and why we are…more importantly, to knowing how to have relationship with God.
Without the revelation (light) of Christ…we would have to guess who God is, who we are, what our purpose and destiny is…what our problem is and how we can fix.
We are notoriously bad guessers.
We guess that our core problem is lack of knowledge, or being unfulfilled, or the lack of money, or pleasure…or being misgendered…we often guess that the problem is “out there” not “in here”
The 1986 film, Mosquito Coast: starring Harrison Ford.
*Ford fled America to escape the corrupting influence of civilization on his family.
-It is a disaster from there…family hates him, everything goes wrong, he is killed…great Valentines Day movi
-It does show the problem…Man against nature, man against other men, man against self…because man shakes his fist at God.
-It is a movie that runs counter to the idea called “The Nobel Savage”
-A philosophy tied to the 18th century philosopher Rousseau…civilization is the problem…but who makes up civilizations?
-It is of course, a nonsensical idea…
But the movie…to its very depressing credit…showed that living for a solution to the wrong problem…always makes more problems.
Our problem is our sin(in here)…the solution is Christ.
We could not guess that, we had to be told that, shown tht…
5 That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
Some translations have “overcome” some “understood.”
Both are true…the darkness can neither overcome nor understand the light.
We often use “light and dark” as metaphors,
Martin Luther King, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can.”
There he used darkness as moral evil and ignorance, light as moral goodness and knowledge.
In our minds, since we are so accustomed to these figures of speech we can turn “dark and light” into equal and opposite forces in the world.
Evil and good are in this cosmic fight, who knows which will win.
Well, we know…they are not equals.
Christians can even do this without meaning to in regard to God and Satan.
We can begin to live as if they are like two near equally powered superheroes.
But in fact, Satan is a created being, God is uncreated…Satan is limited, God unlimited…Satan is no competition for God…none at all.
Just as darkness is not in competition with light, it is the absence of it.
When light comes, darkness is gone…there is no just no fight.
Christ, the revelation of God shines in darkness…darkness cannot overcome it.
But in another sense darkness cannot understand light.
Imagine trying to describe color to a person born blind…where do you even begin?
So, this revelation of the truth God…is a work of God…not mere human thought and imagination.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.
Why throw John in here?
He is not thrown in; this is key to understanding the “Word became flesh.”
John is a witness to the light…he was a man, who was born, and lived, and died.
In human history…God gave prophets…who foretold the coming of the light into the world…long before Jesus came, they said he was coming.
Now in human history…God gave a prophet…who said…”Here he is…right there.”
This incarnation stuff…is not just some kind of “religious” “spiritualized mumbo jumbo.”
The eternal Word of God became flesh…and this rough, bug eating, prophet who smelled of the woods and pointed his finger at the evil powers of the day…was very much a real guy in history.
He looked at Jesus, on an actual calendar day, and said, “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
It’s brilliant…John goes quickly from the eternal Logos of God…to this very earthy prophet of God.
The Bible will NOT put up with us splitting reality into component parts…the spiritual world and the physical world.
Some religious and philosophical systems have a world of shadows and semi-reality, the physical world…and a world of substance, the really real world of the “Spirit.”
No, when you are praying, worshipping in church…or changing diapers, or the oil in your car, or enduring stomach flu hugging a toilet…in all that you are in a world that is fully God’s world.
In the beginning was the eternal Logos of God…and John, the ranting Baptist…was living in the woods, picking ticks off his body…waiting to reveal Jesus to the world that he had made.
To understand where John is going you have to get all of that…the Cosmos creator became flesh in the real world…this is historical fact, not some religious fiction.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world., 10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
WE know where John is going but in his narrative flow…the big reveal is coming in verse 14.
In the flow of the script, we only know the true light of the world is coming…we don’t know how yet.
But what is astounding and ironic is that the creator of the world which includes everything and everyone.
Is going to be unrecognized and rejected by many in the world that he has made.
World is the Greek word, Kosmos.
John uses it three different ways in his writings…it can be the physical cosmos (the world was created through him).
Humanity (for God so loved the world)
Humans as societies and cultures in opposition to God (Do not love the world).
12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
Many, not all rejected him.
Those who did and still do receive him, they are reborn.
I’ll come back to these verses shortly.
Let’s finish walking through the prologue.
14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Now the plot is fully given away…the eternal, cosmos creating Word of God…became flesh…God became human and dwelt among us.
“Dwelt” is literally “pitched a tent” or “tabernacled” among us.
This is very significant use of a word here.
In the Exodus, God’s people have been rescued from Egypt in the greatest redemption event in Israel’s history until Christ came.
That event or series of events is full of historical realities that point forward to the coming of Christ.
The Passover, where the blood of a lamb spared the life of the people.
The deliverance through the sea…also a look forward to Christ.
Then the long guidance of God through the wilderness on the way to promised land, pointed forward to Christ.
During that decades long journey, they were instructed to construct a tentlike structure that was mobile.
When it was set up, at certain times, God’s glory would fill it and not even Moses could go into it.
When his glory lifted…it was time to go.
As long as it stayed…they were to stay put.
This was teaching them what it meant to follow God…be faithful.
I could imagine myself…getting up after a couple months in the same campground…looking over to the Tabernacle…seeing the cloud of glory “are you kidding me, still there…come on…I’m sick of this place!
Or, “What, we are moving already…I’m tired…we just got here…I don’t want to go!”
It is similar to my life as a whole…I spent too way too much time growing impatient with God because he was not moving at the pace that suited me.
I regret what I have missed.
He was kind in even in my impatient demanding…but I missed a lot of joy in the journey.
I’m getting better…I hope to figure it out before I am dead…but probably won’t.
Later when they arrived in the Promised land they built a temple where God’s presence would come and be with his people in semi-permanent fashion.
Eventually their sin brought about its destruction and their own exile.
Both the tabernacle and the temple pointed forward to Christ.
Jesus would one day stand in front of the temple and say, “Tear this down and I will rebuild it in 3 days.”
They said, “You are crazy, this took decades.”
He was of course referring to his own body…he was the temple…the dwelling place of God was now with men…he would be killed and rise from the dead in three days.
Here John writes, Jesus “tabernacled” among us.
Let me read Exodus 40.
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35 And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 36 Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. 37 But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
They learning to follow God…to move at his pleasure.
John wrote, The Word tabernacled among us, and we have seen the glory of the only Son of the Father.
Jesus has pitched his tent among us to reveal God’s glory to us.
15 (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after I ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’”)
Jesus was born after John, and John’s ministry preceded Jesus’…but Jesus far outranked John.
Why…he existed long before John did.
16 Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, 17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
In verse 14 John wrote that we have seen God’s grace in Christ…now he says we have received it.
We have received grace upon grace…meaning what Christ has brought far exceeds all that God has done thus far.
God gave the law through Moses, and it pointed to Christ…now the Christ has come.
The law was a gift from God, but it was fulfilled in Christ…God’s greatest gift to us.
Moses, the man who was so dear to God’s heart asked to see God’s glory and was told, “I’ll cause my goodness to pass in front of you, but you cannot see my face and live.” (Ex. 33:19)
Now, Jesus, the eternal Son of God has seen God, and who is in fact God.
Has made God known to us, we have seen what Moses could not…God’s glory in Christ.
John wrote in his letter…we have seen, touched, felt, heard…God incarnate…we experience God’s glory in Christ.
Glory is greatness, goodness, he is the ultimate meaning, source of life.
He was at the Father’s “side” is a word that implies closeness, affection…not just proximity.
John will use this same word to talk about himself in chapter 13.
“One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side.”
He was not just telling us logistics of the dinner…but at his side is tied to “one whom Jesus loved.”
There is intimacy of relationship, God the Father, and Jesus the son,
I said we would come back to verses 12, 13.
I want to do that now, by taking a look at how John has crafted this prologue as a kind of beautiful historical poetry.
These 18 verses are what is called a “Chiasmus” (ki as mus)
Comes from the Greek letter Ki…which is formed like an “X.”
If you have every done what is called a pyramid weight workout, it is like that.
You do a set with 10 pounds, then 20, then 30, then 40, then 30 then 20, then 10.
The center set is the heaviest set.
This chiasmus was a common form of writing because of its beautiful symmetry as well as its ability to enforce key ideas and focus on a central point.
There are many of these in the Psalms.
Let’s see how John as done this in the prologue.
a.1 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 men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
b.1 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.
He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
c.1 The true light was coming into the world that gives light to every man
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.
- d. Yet to all who received 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.
c2 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
b2 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, This was he of whom I said,
‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’
a2 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No-one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side,
has made him known.
The center is verses 12, 13.
“Yet to all who received 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.”
This is going to be the stated purpose of his book.
“These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)
That is going to be my first, final…application today.
“Have you believed the gospel and received Christ as your Lord and Savior?”
Are you at the place where you are willing to follow him?
You only have to believe that Jesus is the savior who has been raised from the dead…you don’t have to figure it all out.
It is about truth, what your mind can take in.
But it is a work of God…the Spirit moves in people’s hearts…this is not irrational, it is more than mere reason.
Second application: Are you, by the Spirit’s power, putting to death your demanding heart?
If you have followed Christ, I want to go back and think of Christ as the Tabernacle.
Jesus said to people who recognized who he was (to the degree that they did) …”Follow me.”
The disciples often became impatient with his pace…and his priorities.
Jesus had his own pace and his own priorities.
In the wilderness Israel often became impatient with the Lord’s pace…he was training them to trust.
God has not changed…he is training you and me to trust.
We get impatient with his pace, and we often have different priorities than he does.
He doesn’t need you to merely be busy…he wants you to follow him.
He doesn’t need you to worry and fret…he wants you to love him.
He also doesn’t want you to “save yourself”…he does want you to busy obeying him…he wants you to give your life away, to lay it down for others.
When Jesus says move, move.
When he says wait, wait.
To follow Jesus means to put to death that demanding heart.
Move at the pace of Jesus and live with the priorities of Jesus.
When the glory of God in the tabernacled moved…they moved.
When it stayed, they stayed.
This is to be the life of a follower of Christ.
They only had only to look at the physical tent structure…follow it.
We follow a person…to do this well…requires relationship.
You have to be growing in know him and his word…to know when he is saying move and when he is saying “be still.”