Just a moment we are going to hear from God's Word this morning from John chapter 1, but before we do so, let's take a moment to bow our hearts before the Lord in prayer. Father again, we come before you, and we give you thanks, that you made us and you take care of us. We realize that not a hair can fall from our head without you knowing. You've made us in your image. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. You created the heavens and the earth. You created all good things for us to enjoy. For that we give you thanks. But we also know that we are a people who are deceitful. In fact, your Word tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all things and who can understand it. We come to you and express our need for grace. We thank you that because the sinless Savior died, our sinful souls are counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me. We thank you that that is true. We thank you that as we read your Word from Genesis to Revelation, we are reminded of your promises to your people, to forgive their sin, to cast it off as far off as the east is from the west and to remember it no more. We thank you that you have adopted us as your sons in order that we might behold the inheritance that you have for us, which can never perish or spoil or fade. We thank you that we have your mark upon us, that we are your people, a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are that not because of what we have done or what we have avoided but because of the grace and merits of the Lord Jesus Christ credited to us. And so for that we give you thanks. God we also realize that we are people who live on this side of heaven. We already have your promises but we have yet to lay hold of the full fruits of it and so we come to you as people who are sick and afflicted and struggling and confused. We have a tremendous burdens that we are bearing. There are people in this congregation who are weeping inside, who know not what tomorrow brings, who fear for their future. Lord we thank you that you are a burden bearing God. We thank you that you call us to cast our burdens upon you. We thank you that you care for us. We ask that you would take these burdens that we have and that you would attend to them for our own growth and grace and joy in you and for the sake of your glory. We pray also for this congregation. We pray for this church and we ask that you would make us a church that reflects your holiness and your beauty and your grace. We pray that you would make our love abound for one another and for our neighbors. We pray that you would cause us to be a people who love your word and love your people and that you would cause us to be good neighbors reflecting the grace of Christ. Causes to fulfill the tasks that you have given to us with excellence as though we were working for God and not for man. Causes the gospel to take deep root in our lives. Lord now as we come to your word, we pray that you would penetrate our hearts with it. We pray that you would bring it to bear upon our lives. That you would cause us to see our need for Jesus and we ask this all in His name and for His sake. Amen. Well, if you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to turn with me to the gospel of John and chapter 1. That's page 886 in your Pew Bible. If you're looking for it, it's John, chapter 1. And we're going to be exploring verses 1 through 18 together this morning. Today we're beginning a new series of sermons here at First Presbyterian Church through the gospel of John. We're going to spend the next few months going together through this great gospel. And one of the things that I'm really praying happens in my life and that happens in your life as well, is that we would begin to see Jesus in a new light and really get to know Him and plum the depths as to why He matters for our life. Perhaps there are many of you here this morning who can never remember a day when you did not believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Or if you do remember that day, it was a long time ago. You have gone throughout the majority of your life knowing the Lord, being in church, sitting under the preaching of the gospel. And that's something for what you can be tremendously thankful. The Lord has been gracious to you in redeeming you and making you his child for such a long course of your life. But a lot of times for us who have known the Lord for a long time, the message of the gospel gets stale. It gets to be something that's wrote. We've heard it so many times before and it doesn't resonate with us like it did at one point in time. Well, I want you to know that this sermon series through the gospel of John is for you because I'm praying for you as we go through this gospel that you would see Him as beautiful as He really is. And that you would remember your first love and that you would build your identity upon who He is and what He has done for you. Perhaps there's another set of people here this morning who have recently become believers who are recent followers of Christ or who just don't really know very many things about Jesus Christ and the Bible and the gospel and His Word. When I first became a believer in my teens, I was in your shoes. I didn't know very much. I probably couldn't have named a half dozen books of the Bible. I didn't know who Paul was or who Moses was or who any of these important figures in Scripture were. And so I was directed as the first book that I should read in the Bible. I was directed to read the gospel of John. And when I read the gospel of John, who Jesus actually is and what my thoughts of what Christianity actually was in many respects were subverted and I was shown who this beautiful Lord is who had committed Himself to me and who I had committed myself to. So this sermon series is for you as well. And I'm praying that you would discover Jesus and that you would discover who He actually is and that He would become the greatest joy of your life as well. And finally, there may be another category of people here this morning. There may be some people here who aren't sure if you actually believe in the gospel or you actually know for certain that you do not believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Well, if that's the case, believe it or not, this series is for you as well. Maybe you have some issues with the Christian faith that are unresolved, some objections to it. And we're going to seek to answer some of those questions as we go throughout this series. Maybe you're wondering what the relevance is of building your life upon the teachings and the life of a Jewish rabbi who lived 2000 years ago. Maybe you have encountered Christians who rub you the wrong way, who seem to live a life that doesn't reflect what they actually claim to believe. I'll be praying for you throughout this series as well that you would stick around and at least give this a hearing. Give Jesus a hearing. Perhaps you'll have your own convictions affirmed. Perhaps you'll have them challenged. But either way, we hope that you stick around and we're glad that you're here this morning. Now, before we read the passage, you should know that John launches his gospel in a different place than the other gospel writers launched. Matthew and Mark begin at Advent. They begin with the anticipation of the coming of the king or the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and they celebrate his birth at Christmas. Mark is too busy for that. He goes straight to Jesus' baptism. Jesus is already an adult by the time you start reading Mark chapter 1. But John starts in a different place than those three gospels. John starts with Jesus at the beginning before the creation of the world. There are actually echoes of Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 as we read this passage that Jesus has actually been active and has been ruling and reigning and governing the world and his people since before he even created them. He is the eternal God, the creative God and the God who has come in the flesh to dwell among us. So, with that rambling introduction out of the way, let's take a moment now to read God's Word from John chapter 1 beginning in verse 1 through 18. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light but he came to bear witness about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through Him yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out, this was He of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me because He was before me. And from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. Amen, this is God's holy, inspired and inerrant Word. And we pray that He would write its eternal truth upon our hearts this morning. One of my favorite television commercials has a character who is a bearded man who is known as the most interesting man in the world. I don't know if you've ever seen this commercial but he's a very distinguished looking guy and he always seems to be doing fascinating things like taming grizzly bears and riding dolphins. And the narrator of this commercial says that the police often question him just because they find him interesting. He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels. It's a great commercial. I don't know maybe I'm the only one here who thinks it's great. It's a great commercial. And it draws me in because there's something about myself and there's something I think about human nature that causes us to want to have some kind of personal knowledge of someone who is larger than life. Of someone who is interesting and insightful and talented because when we feel like we know people like that, when we feel like we've had some kind of meaningful relationship with someone like that, we actually feel like we have become like them. We feel like we have taken upon ourselves an interesting, insightful, talented aspect to our own lives. And I think the reason why is because there's something about us, something about the way that we're made that causes us to want to live vicariously through somebody else. We want to live through somebody else. That's what this whole fixation on sports is about. I mean, why have people in New Orleans this week felt so much better about every aspect of their life? They felt better about their marriages, they felt better about their work, they felt better about their finances, everything than people from Indianapolis feel all because of a football game. I mean for goodness sake, it seems ridiculous but it's very true. We live vicariously through other people. We're designed to live through someone greater than ourselves. And here in verse four of this passage, John says that in Jesus was life. And that's a recurring theme throughout the entire gospel of John. In fact, when you get to the very end of the gospel of John, in chapter 20 verse 31, John tells us why he wrote this gospel. And it says, and he says that he wrote it 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. In other words, John's trying to show us that there's something about Jesus that actually gives us life as we believe in him and as we live our lives through him. And so if John is correct, as I believe that he is, it seems fitting that he described to us who this Jesus is that he's calling us to follow this morning. So when you look at verse one, you'll notice that John uses a very interesting word. He don't really see this in the other place in the scripture, at least this clearly. John begins by describing Jesus as the word. The word is an English translation of the Greek word logos. And the Greek person of that particular day would have understand the logos to really be the ultimate overarching principle of the universe that brings explanation and reason and order to the world. It's the overarching principle of all things. The Hebrew mind would have had a similar idea of what this was, but the Hebrew mind expanded upon it. They understood the logos to be the act of work of God in creating the world and his people in revealing himself to his people. In redeeming his people from their sins and for ruling and reigning over all of his people and all of their actions. And so it seems to work together quite well. It seems like John is trying to get us to understand that the logos, the word is not merely some kind of philosophical abstraction or some kind of impersonal unmoved mover. What he's trying to get us to understand is that the word is eternal, that the word is God and that this God has come into the world and he has taken on a human body and a reasonable soul and he has come to dwell among us. In other words, the word is Jesus Christ and he is the supreme reference point for understanding ourselves and understanding God and understanding how we relate to God and to the world that he has created. Jesus's word and his life and his being are really the hub upon which our life spins. It's the way in which we understand ourselves and the world and God. Because before there was anything else, God was there. He eternally existed in triunity, the Father and the Son and John will introduce us later to the Holy Spirit. They're in perfect, intimate, diverse, unified, knowing and being known relationship. The foundation, my friends, of all of our relationships has to do with the fact that God dwelt in relationship with the various members of the Trinity before he even created us. When you and I enjoy a relationship with someone, what we're doing is we're catching a glimpse into what God is like and how He has created us to be. When you spend time with your spouse or with your children or with your friends and you're sharing your life together, you're plumbing the depths of what interests them and what they think about and what they most want out of life and what their feelings are. You're living out the relational principles that existed before we were even created. They've always been in relationship with one another. God did not create people in order to get his relational fix. We learn from this passage that God is relational but we also learn that He is creative. He's the source of life. Verse 3, we just read it, all things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. I mean, it doesn't get any more ultimate than that. It doesn't get any more ultimate than that. He's always been. Before there was anything else, He was there. Life was all that there was. There was no such thing as disease or death or decay. None of that even existed. And I want to contend with you that creation by a God who is one existing in three persons who is not part of creation but existed prior to it. A God who created all things out of nothing is the only way to make sense of what we know is real. So you should know that the arguments against this view that so many of us who've been in the church for such a long time just take for granted. The arguments against this view are becoming louder and stronger and more sophisticated. I have at least a dozen friends who were sitting where you were sitting ten years ago, singing the same songs worshiping the same God who have over the course of the last ten years denied it all and become blatant vehement atheists. I'm telling you that this argument is becoming louder and stronger, that the God of the Bible, the God that we believe who has created all things out of nothing, who has created us is becoming denied by people who were once part of the church. So it's important for us to grab on to this. One of the more popular atheist writers, Richard Dawkins, launched an ad campaign in London about a year ago where he was going to put these ads on the side of those big red double-decker buses that they have roaming around London. And the ad said this, it said, there is probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. I don't know about the word probably, it doesn't sound too convincing to me, I mean they don't sound too terribly convicted, I mean probably no God. But the reality is that that view leads to a fundamentally different understanding of profound issues like authority and morality. And who is the source and the sustainer of life? And why life matters and why there is a sanctity to it? See, we don't have time this morning to delve into all of the various arguments on all the different sides, there are resources I could point you to. One of them being Tim Keller's book, The Reason For God, I would encourage you to read that if you have not yet done so. It touches on these issues more deeply, but the point is that it just doesn't make any sense that we live and think and feel and desire and relate if we are nothing more than highly evolved products of a lightning bolt that struck primordial slime several billion years ago. It doesn't make any sense, it doesn't make any sense that we are relational rational moral creatures if we were created by anything less than a relational rational moral God. How can an irrational creative force create rational people? How can an impersonal force create people with human personality? How can an amoral force create people who believe that there is some sense of morality, some sense of universal right and wrong? With that view, there is no ground for life to be sacred, there's no ground for it to be valuable, there's no ground for any kind of transcendent morality or truth, there's no basis for an authority that's any greater than the individual. That sounds like what hell is like, hell in the Bible seems to be everybody doing as they choose, which leads to complete relational hostility. In a world where there's no moral authority beyond the individual and the objects of the individual's affection. But see, people believe that life matters, not just people in here, people out there, people believe that life matters, the most relativistic people among us believe in universal truths, go steal something from them and see if they don't get been out of shape about it. They'll believe it's an injustice, they believe in universal truths, everyone everywhere believes that. The most vehement proponents of abortion in genocide believe that there is some point in which life is sacred, that it should not be taken. People cannot bear to live a life where nothing matters, so if you're here today and you don't believe in the God that John is talking about here, my question to you is what is your basis for distinguishing truth and falsehood? Morality and immorality, at what point life is sacred? If you don't accept where John is going here and you don't accept that God created all things, is in authority of all things, is the author and the giver of life itself. You're left with no other choice than to stir up an explanation for things being the way that they are, that seems to require a lot more faith than the Bible requires. But see, if God eternally existed in a relationship of openness and vulnerability and acceptance between the members of the Trinity, who are all equally glorious and equally majestic and equally powerful, and if this true-eyed God created all things out of nothing by the word of His power, then guess what? Life matters, this life matters, your life matters. That's why He says in the Psalms that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, we are made in the image of this God, in the image of this true-eyed God. And see that tells you just how to treat other people, about your own life, about how other people ought to be treated because they matter, even the people who drive you crazy. There's a foundation for truth that transcends popular trends and opinions, there's a basis for living in relationship with one another, and a piece with one another. That's important stuff. We've got to acknowledge the eternality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we're going to have any thoughtful, meaningful, reasonable understanding of how life works and how we should live life in this world, that's a foundational part of where John is going here. But it's not the most important part of the passage. The most important part of the passage is what John says here in verse 14. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. That's an astonishing claim. Living in America where there is some Christian subculture in it, you can claim that God came down from heaven, and took on human flesh and dwelt among us people, and for the most part, people are not going to think that you belong in an insane asylum. Talk to people who have no paradigm whatsoever about Christianity, and they will think that you are the biggest superstitious nut job for believing that that ever-rome planet Earth.
It's totally unique to Christianity. I know of no other religion in the world that says God actually condescends to us, takes on human flesh and dwells among His people. It takes on a human body and He has human needs. Do you see why John in this passage is talking about light and darkness now? Is this starting to make sense to you? Because when we confront the notion that God takes on flesh and dwells among His creation yet He doesn't lose anything about Him that's God. We either have to believe that, we either have to dock our ship on that reality, or we have to believe that that is the biggest load of nonsense and the biggest lie that has been told over the past 2000 years. There's no other choice. You either believe that and build your identity in your foundation upon that, or you reject it as a load of bogus nonsense. What John is getting at here is that Jesus in all of His glory and in all of His grace came and took residence among us. The Greek word here for dwelt in verse 14 literally means tabernacle. It takes us back to the Old Testament where God tabernacle amongst us people. He pitched his tent amongst us people. It was called the tent of meeting. It was where sinful men and women and boys and girls could come together and meet together with the holy God who created them. It was a tent. It was not God in the flesh. And John here is saying that someone much greater than the tent has come and He's come on the scene and His name is Jesus, the word God incarnate, He's come to dwell amongst us with His people. Have you thought about how absolutely incredible it is that God would do that? That God would send His Son to be born to a poor, unwed teenage mother amongst a bunch of stinky farm animals and a cattle stall and some obscure place in a dark corner of the world? That's how God in the flesh came to be with us. That God would come and dwell amongst His people. He would have to nurse at His mother's breast. He would have to have His diapers changed. He had to eat and sleep and drink like the rest of us. There were times when He got too hot and there were times when He got too cold. He knows what it's like to stand at the tomb of a friend who has just died. He knows what it's like to be insulted and disrespected. And treated unfairly. That alone tells me that it's nonsense that all religions are basically the same. This is unique to Christianity, my friends. Christianity tells you that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who has in every respect been tempted as we are yet without sin as the writer of Hebrew says. No other religion or philosophy or worldview can claim that reality. So what difference does this make? You're going to leave here in 10 minutes. I will be done before that. What difference does it make? One difference it makes for me and for you is that if I claim the incarnate Jesus Christ as Lord, if it's true that He entered my mess to know me, to love me, to give Himself for me, to exchange my sin and condemnation for His grace and righteousness, if that's true, then I am freed up to enter into the mess of other people's lives as well. Paul says in Philippians 2 that Jesus made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Folks, if Jesus did that for me and if He did that for you, that's the impulse, that's the fuel behind getting involved in people's lives, behind bearing their burdens, behind having mercy upon people in this church, behind having mercy upon people outside of it, your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends, the people that you encounter on a daily basis. That's how we imitate Him. That's how we imitate God. He's called us in this passage, His children. We are children of God. Children imitate their parents. Sarah imitates us. Rebecca and I always have to watch what we're saying or doing now because whatever we say or do, she will immediately follow in line. She'll just do that because that's how she is. She's a child. And as God's children, we're freed up to do the same thing, to dig into people's lives. If we claim Jesus is Lord, we're His child, we're His children, not in a pejorative belittling sense but in a sense that we're loved and protected and secured and guided by our Heavenly Father. And so we can imitate Him by bearing each other's burdens. We can get to know people and what makes them tick. We can get involved in their lives. That's one thing that this teaches me. And folks, if first Presbyterian Church of Baloxie, Mississippi begins to live like that, we'll have a real space problem here. That's one place that this passage challenged me. I hope it challenges you in that area too. But I don't think that we'll move in that direction until we understand the second thing that's important to understand here. That Jesus has to become more than just an interesting historical figure to me. He has to be more than someone who put out a lot of great information for my life. He has to be personally known and received. That's where John is getting at in this passage. And if you receive Jesus, you are receiving the life. You are becoming enlightened. When Rebecca and I first started spending time together, I had to learn how she worked. I had to study her. I had to discover what she loves and what she hates and what's most important to her and what's relatively unimportant to her. I had to learn her personal history that helped me understand what she thinks and believes and acts and why she responds in the way that she does. In other words, there was an investigative intellectual aspect to getting to know my wife. That's part of what it meant to get to know Rebecca and to fall in love with her. But that's not all. A relationship with anybody is about studying a person, but it's so much more than that. It's only a stupid, emotionally dense man who proposes to a woman by saying, I have studied you like a textbook and I have learned lots of great information about you and so it just logically makes sense that we should get married. That's a stupid thing. I tolerate you. Jesus was meant to be merely an interesting historical person to teach us how to live wisely and morally. He was meant to be treasured. We learned this morning in Sunday school in Colossians, the supremacy of Christ. If he is supreme, if he has created all things that are nothing, if he has created us for himself and for his glory, it just seems like we would find our greatest joy in landing upon him, in glorifying him, in knowing him. When I got to know all of this stuff about Rebecca, it just wasn't merely intellectually stimulating to me. It's what caused me to fall in love with her, to have affections for her that surpassed that of any other person that I could have affections for. And that's the point here that as we learn who Jesus is and what he has done for us in the gospel, that we would begin to treasure him in the same way and that our affections would be stirred up for him, that we would really love him, that we would find our greatest joy in him. That's what we're here for, that's what you have been created for to delight yourself in him. Folks, before you leave here today, I want you to ask yourself an answer whether or not you actually know this Jesus that we've been talking about this morning. Do you actually know him? I'm not asking if you walked an aisle or signed a card or raised a hand or if you were raised a Baptist or a Presbyterian or something else. I'm asking if you really honestly believe this gospel. Do you know him? If you don't, then receive him today, talk to me or one of the elders. But don't leave here without turning to this God who created you, this God who bears your sin, the sin of all of his people. In order that they might become his children and if you do believe that, give thanks to God, give praise to God that he would save a wretch like me and like you. That's good news, let's take that with us this morning. Amen, let's pray. God, we could study this passage for days and for months and still not do anything more than scratch the surface of it. Oh Lord, we thank you for it. We thank you that its words are true. How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear. It calms our sorrows, heals our wounds and drives away our fear. May that resonate in our hearts and in our minds today as we leave here. We pray this in the name of the one who came such a distance for us, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.