Abide, Part 1

This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida, where Reverend Kevin Labby is our senior pastor. Today's message is part one in a series on the Gospel of John titled Abide. This sermon is taken from John chapter 1 verses 1 through 18. Listen to God's Word as expound in the Gospel of John chapter 1 verses 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 came to bear witness about the light. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was 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 not of the will of the flesh, nor not 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 the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and tried out. This was He, of whom I said, who comes after me, ranks before me because He was before me. For from this 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. This is the Word of the Lord. Well, good morning. At this time I'm going to invite children up through grade three to go ahead and meet our director of children's ministries back there, Drew Taylor. For a time of children's worship, if you, their parents would like. And if you are new to Willow Creek and your children are going back there for the first time, would you take a moment just to go back and introduce yourself to Drew so that we can make sure that we safely return your kids back to you in the gymnasium following the worship hour. Give you just a moment to do that. And I'll ask you all to turn in your Bibles to the book of John chapter one. We're going to be looking at verses one through eighteen this morning. John chapter one verses one through eighteen as was just read. Let's pray. Father God, we thank You this morning for Your love and Your mercy through Your Son, Jesus Christ. We thank You that You did not leave us in the darkness of our sin and the darkness of this world, but instead chose to shine the light of Your Son in His truth and to even the darkest recesses of our world and our hearts to accomplish healing and rescue, redemption and renewal. Father, we pray this hour that as we turn to Your Word, you would speak to us clearly and that by the power of Your Spirit, we might have eyes to see and ears to hear what You are saying to Your church here at Willow Creek. Father, help us to honor You in coming days by knowing more and more the joy of our salvation helping us to walk by faith and not by sight. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. This morning I want to share with you a simple proposition that You should look to the future with hope and optimism, that You should be optimistic about the days ahead. Now You might be saying to yourself, well I don't need to be told that, I'm already quite an optimistic person, and that might be true, but let's not kid ourselves. Making the choice for optimism is not easy. One time I was driving down the road and I saw a bumper sticker, it struck me as rather humorous, even though it was a little bit crass, it said, there's no such thing as gravity. This world just sucks. Now You might object to the language, but I doubt You can object to the thesis at times this world is very, very difficult. It's a lot easier to grow pessimistic, even cynical than it is to stay optimistic and hopeful. Think about the world and the condition that's in right now. We have the Ebola virus in West Africa. We have the forces of ISIS moving from Syria into northern Iraq. We have innocent Christians and religious minorities being beheaded, even a former student of a local university was killed that way this week. Russia is threatening to conquer Ukraine, Hamas and Israel are at war back and forth. China is asserting itself in ways against U.S. power that it couldn't have done so even ten years ago. Secretary Kissinger recently remarked that a new order to the world is emerging because the world, as we've known it, is coming apart at the seams. There's a lot to be discouraged about. A choice for optimism is really a difficult choice. Add to that issues here at home. You can think about things like Ferguson, Missouri, spending the news over the past couple of weeks, immigration from Latin America, the issues over Benghazi, the IRS scandal, Obamacare, you name it. If you read the Orlando Sentinel, go online, visit the drug report, watch CNN or Fox News. I imagine after an hour of any of those, you will emerge more pessimistic than optimistic, and that's quite natural. A choice for optimism is difficult. Face with global and national issues, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed, maybe even hopeless at times, and it's not only those global and domestic issues that can overwhelm us. Those can be, or at least, seem very abstract and impersonal. Think about the issues you face every day of your life in this fallen world. Certainly, by God's common grace and His goodness, His mercies are new every day. We can see encouraging things in our own lives, but many of you know very, very deeply and profoundly this morning that life is not always easy, even for the people of God. But more often than not, it's sorrow upon sorrow, finances, employment, relationships, health, our aspirations, our private desires, sometimes these become sources of frustration, disillusionment, more than a fountain of optimism. Everything can fade and cynicism can quickly creep in. There's many reasons for that. For one, all of these trends, all of these difficulties we know are really the default setting of a world opposed to God, a world that's fallen. We who've peaked behind the theological curtain, so to speak, we who've been enabled by God to look at the fundamental order of the universe, we know it's in a position of rebellion against God, it's been frustrated, it's in bondage to decay, and that any decision for optimism is really to go against the world, the flesh, and the devil as we know them all too well. It's a lot easier to be, quote unquote, realistic, which sadly can become little more than a euphemism for pessimistic because as we raise our gaze, as our aspirations soar, we recognize that in this world, it's a likely possibility that we're only setting ourselves up for a greater fall. And so the solution for us is to let go of the optimism, to lower our gaze, to keep things more realistic and consequently ourselves safer, it's understandable to turn away from optimism toward pessimism. It's all the more easy and alluring for us as Christians when you recognize that there's an awful lot of theology out there that seemingly justifies our pessimism. A lot of Christians, including many of us in this room this morning, including myself as I grew up, were conditioned to view the future with a fatalistic mixture of dread and disgust. How many of you privately can confess that your understanding of the future, the end times, the days that are ahead of us, that are ahead of the church, you've been conditioned to view them primarily negatively. Maybe you grew up being assured that things will go from bad to worse for the people of God as we approach the return of Christ. Maybe you've heard the earth liken to a burning building and the best hope that we have as Christians is to rescue those that we can out of it. Maybe you've had your efforts in this present age to advance goodness and truths be likened to polishing the brass on the Titanic. This thing's going down, it's a waste of time. In fact, many of us have grown up looking forward to the rapture, the glorious appearing of Christ and his secret ushering out of this present age of the church. We've been looking forward to the rapture as the ultimate relief from a world gone awry and this leads to a spirit of resignation where we just sit around and wait. Things going from bad to worse, all efforts to advance the good of God's kingdom seemingly futile, the best we can hope for, a spiritual helicopter ride out of here. I want to give you a couple of questions this morning that might jar some of you, might strike at what you believe most sincerely and have been taught to believe as strongly as you possibly can. What if this pessimism, masquerading itself as piety is a lie? What if your pessimism and its resulting passivity in the face of evil actually emboldens evil in the world? What if this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to believe that things will go from bad to worse? What if expecting the advance of evil, we actually invite evil's advance? What if God actually intends something so much more audacious from His people? What if our Father in heaven right now is grieved by our pessimism, by our lack of faith that the gates of hell cannot even prevail against God's work in us and through us in the world? What if we've allowed the false teachings of end-time charlatans to steer our lives and neuter the church in America? What if God is grieved that our bad theology has turned soldiers of the living God into a bunch of Casper milktoes who can't even evangelize their own children in the kitchen, much less society? What if we hold to a faulty view of God in this kingdom in this world and have consequently traded the iron tenacity of a former age for weak need to middity in this present one? Well you can probably guess where I'm headed this morning. I think it's time for us as Christians to examine things in the light of God's word and to repudiate this sanctified shilly shally as some would call it and start getting in touch with the fact that our king, our conquering king, has inaugurated his kingdom in this world and is not backing down to anyone or anything and that we shouldn't either. If your theology makes you pessimistic, impassive, in the face of the world's evil, your theology stinks. It's not biblical, it might be popular, but it's not biblical. After all, as John wrote so many centuries ago in our passages morning, God's light shines in the darkness and while the darkness is not understood it, more importantly, the darkness cannot overcome it. So be strong and courageous, do not fear. He's won and despite any appearance to the contrary, he's winning right now. Today I want to show you several things from the prologue of the gospel of John that should reorient your perspective, your worldview. These things give us a ground for optimism, for hope, for things that I would call gracious and tenacious life. In fact, I want to show you that that is one of the things the apostle John intended as he wrote these words. And he was describing a revelation, so revolutionary, that it literally changes everything we should believe about the cosmos and makes us optimistic ultimately for the future. Now I'm not naive about evil, I'm not a utopian, I don't believe that we are going to utter in this present age the perfect fullness of the kingdom of God. I don't believe that we'll ever be able to exterminate evil and its influence from the world, but what I do believe is even as evil advances, Jesus clearly taught his kingdom advances. And as his kingdom advances, not even the gates of hell can overcome the church through which he advances at. And so as the kingdom advances alongside the kingdoms of this age, they might come into increasing friction with one another, but that should never be interpreted pessimistically. Rather, it should be interpreted optimistically. It means that the kingdom of God is here, that it's now that it's advancing, that forceful men and women lay hold of it and seek to live in, and what we do now matters. This world in its sin and rebellion is passing away. The world that God is bringing into completion is a world that will be refined, renewed, and ultimately remain. Verses one through three, I want you to see that God is creating a new world. In the beginning was the word, in the word was with God, in the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him, not anything was made that has been made. John is saying here, we're saying a couple things. The first thing he's saying is that Jesus is God. Now, that's an absolutely vital statement to make because when Jesus appeared, that was the principal question regarding him. What's his identity? Is he God or is he man? Is he merely a prophet or is he more than a prophet? Is he a liar? Is he a lunatic or is he Lord? John wants to remove all doubt. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, was involved in the original creation. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. It might surprise some of you to realize this. The Old Testament actually reveals in several places the triunity of God. By triunity, I mean that God exists eternally as one God, eternally co-existent in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you remember at the first dawn of creation that described in Genesis 1 and 2, over the waters, the surface of the deep, Moses describes the Spirit of God hovering. And then God speaks, and through the power of his word, he creates, and John fills in that it's through the word, the logos, the underlying person, the active agent of creation, Jesus Christ, that God created the world and all that exists in the space of those six days, however we define those days. Make no mistake, John's point is simple, Jesus is God and he's at work in the world. He's at work in creating the world. Paul goes on to say in Colossians 1, that by him always made, that has been made, and it was for him, that it was made for his glory. So Jesus is God. But there's a second thing going on in these three verses that's so vitally important and very easy to mess is that I've been consulted so many centuries ago. I would have put the New Testament in a different order. I have all the same books. Don't worry about that. But I would put them in a slightly different order. Had I been consulted, I would have put John first. And the reason I would have put John first is the parallel with the original creation that John is conjuring up here would be all that much more obvious. How does the Old Testament begin in the beginning? How does the New Testament begin if we begin with a gospel according to John in the beginning? The parallel to the original creation is conjuring up in the mind of John's readers that there's a new creation going on. And what are we who believe in Christ? We're a new creation, right? God is saying he's doing a new thing. The world that's fallen, God is now redeeming, reconciling, restoring, renewing toward a new heaven and a new earth. The kingdom of God is here and what is done for the kingdom of God here and now will remain. Though the world and the heavens be purified one day with fire, though the refining fires of God's judgment will fall upon the world. The Bible clearly describes what will remain is the nobility of the kingdom of God. What we do now matters. Listen to what Isaiah said in Isaiah 43 verses 19 through 21. This is the Old Testament for telling today when God would make, again, all things new. Behold, I'm doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me. The jackals and the ostriches for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people. The frustration that's come to creation, the topsy, turvy nature of the world in which we live, the disharmony, broken relationship, all of that that's resulted from sin. God is doing a new thing through Christ, setting it right. Verse 21, the people whom I form for myself, that they might declare my praise. God is called out of this world, the people for himself, a new humanity. And they will one day dwell, a new heaven in a new earth. I don't know if you're like me before I went to seminary, I learned an awful lot about God from Bugs Bunny. Maybe you remember Saturday morning cartoons. And on the Saturday morning cartoons, whenever daffy doc or Bugs Bunny or porcupag, whenever they got shot, those cartoons were viciously violent. They could never be shown today, we're too politically correct, but oh man, they were awful back then. Whenever they died, what happened, right? They would float up into heaven, disembodied, you know, the spirit, they would float up onto the clouds, right? And they would be given a harp and they would play there for a little while until by some of providence, they'd come back down and animate their body and go on again. They had infinite lives no matter how many awful things happened to them. But that's what I viewed my future as, that when my body went down to the grave, my spirit would go up to the abode of God, the heavens above, and I would dwell together with God as a spirit forever and ever, and quite frankly, as a little kid, I thought, this sounds so boring. I've just got to float around playing a harp. What is this all about? What do we do up there? Anything. When I realize later what the Bible actually teaches, I can so much more exciting. What the Bible describes is that it's God's plan to most certainly during that intermediate time between our death and the return of Christ to receive our souls into His presence. But that's not our final resting place. The final plan of God, the fuller plan of God, rather, is that at the return of Christ, our souls be joined together with new bodies, glorified bodies, bodies not subject to decay, that we would dwell together with God in the fullness of His kingdom on a new earth. An earth that God is inaugurating in this present age through His kingdom and its advance. When the Apostle John speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, he's not speaking of a new heaven as the abode of God, where God dwells, what he's speaking of is a new cosmos. You remember, biblically, at the fall of humanity, all the cosmos was placed in frustration. The world and the stars, the planets, everything that God has created is in some degree of disorder because of our rebellion against Him, but the creation longs. In eager expectation, Paul wrote, for the sons of God to be revealed, why? Because it will be set right again. The Apostle John who wrote this gospel, who's conjuring up that image of that first creation, is privileged to gain a glimpse of that and describes it in another of his books, the book of Revelation, Revelation 21, verses 1 through 4, listen to what he says. Then I saw a new heaven, stars, the canopy of the universe, and a new earth for the first heaven in the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for husband. What did Jesus pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven? It was coming a day where heaven, the abode of God, and earth will be conjoined. God's kingdom will know no boundary. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them as their God. What is Christ's name and manual? God with us, the fuller expression of Christ's presence with us is yet coming. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be no mourning, no crying, or pain anymore for the former things have passed away. What is John saying? Fundamentally, he's saying, God's not done here, God's not given up, and if God hasn't given up, why are we? Why aren't we fighting to advance His kingdom? We don't fight the way the world fights, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're spiritual. Why aren't we advancing the kingdom in every sphere if that's God's desire and His present work? This is one through three, also show us something else that is very, very integral to all of this, is that Jesus is not merely doing these things in some abstract way, He's doing them very personally by entering the world Himself. When John used the word logos, he was using a word that we have a hard time translating. Only the best translation is word, and that's why we use it so much in all of our various translations. But the word logos actually was a word with a ton of philosophical baggage already attached to it by the time John used it. It was a well-known term used by a variety of philosophers during the time of John, Aristotle used it, the Sofis used it, several others, and they all gave it a different shade and nuance of meaning. But when John takes it and appropriates it, he gives it a very definitive meaning that went against what the Greeks felt in thought it meant. Despite all of the diversity of definitions for the term logos, the Greeks had a fundamental understanding that the logos was a rational, impersonal framework for the universe, an underlying logic to reality. But this underlying logic was impersonal, which is the fact the nature of what is. But here what John does is he takes that word, so familiar to them, and explains to them that the underlying order giver to the universe is not impersonal and abstract, but personal. It's the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ, in whom things, all things were made, in for whom all things were made. And not only is he not an abstraction and personal, he's not only transcendent, but he's imminent. He's here at work in the universe. Now that would have blown the Greek mind, to think that God is invested in the world in which we live. For the church in America today, it's an equally stunning message because many, despite their statements, act as though God is somehow absent, given up, just waiting for the clock to run out, and then he's done. There was another Greek undercurrent in philosophy during John's time, and that was to divide the spiritual realm from the physical, and to teach that the spiritual realm is the good realm, and the earthly and physical is base, ignoble, even evil. And that any form of salvation involved turning away from the physical and becoming entirely spiritual in our orientation. John makes it very clear that God's not interested in merely a spiritual form of redemption. God's plan involves every dimension of our being, physical and spiritual, because Christ is Lord of all. He's reclaiming all, he's rescuing all, he's reconciling all, he's renewing all. Today, the way many Christians, evangelicals in America believe and act, is very close to the ancient Greek way, more than to what John is revealing here. They believe and act as though the world's devoid of good, or that the good in the world is merely a weak and fading remnant. They think that it's only in the spiritual realm, the spiritual things that really matter. Christ leads to pessimism, to a passiveness regarding the world around. That's not what Jesus modeled. Jesus was all in to the world, to rescue, to redeem, to reconcile, to restore. And he's personally doing it by entering into the darkest recesses of the world. Look at verse 6, 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 came to bear witness about the light, the true light, which gives light to 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. Living in Pennsylvania for several years, I came to enjoy deer hunting, and in order to be out in the woods and have any hope of getting a deer on opening day, you had to be out there very early. It was usually like 3 a.m. that I would awaken, get on my gear, and all that, and then head on to the woods by four, and then I would sit in a tree stand for an hour and a half or two hours until the sun would come up. And it was often as very boring, hard to stay awake, but ultimately worth it, because that was your best chance of getting a deer, and it became the gateway to seeing some awesome sunrises. And it was always fun to climb up into this tree and just sit there with the night vision goggle, looking around at the world and all of its darkness. But then there came that point where the dawn started to break over. And at first it was very hard to make out anything but shadows of the reality surrounding you. But then as the hour unfolded it gradually got brighter and brighter until that pristine moment when you saw the sun break the horizon. If you think of the Old Testament, think that way. God's light was shining into the dark world through this prophet, and then this one. Then this one, and that one, little bit more of the light, little bit more of the light, little bit more until shadows started to appear of reality, what God was doing in the world, what His plans and purposes for our salvation would be. And then in that perfect time, that fullness of time Christ appeared. The light shined in the darkness. The darkness didn't understand it nor could it. But listen carefully, it couldn't overcome it either. The light shines in the darkness wherever the light wants to go. What are you? You're the light of Christ. You shine in the darkness wherever you go. The darkness doesn't understand you, but the darkness can't stop you either. As you go following Christ in His triumphant procession through the world that is His, that He's redeeming, you don't need to be afraid of the dark. You don't need to lose your optimism, lose your tenacity. You have every reason to stay tenacious, but also never losing sight of grace. Verse 11, he came to his own, his own people, they didn't receive him, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave 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. We've seen His glory, glory is of the 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. For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who's at the Father's side, He has made Him known. There's many things that we could say about these verses, but I want to close with this. You might think that a call to tenacity means a call to brazenness, means a call to aggression, means a call even to coercion. Consider how the kingdom of Christ advanced and advances still. It's not through coercion, it's not through aggression. It's not through judgment, born of legalism. What Moses preached was the law, but through Christ is grace and truth. To all who believed in Him, they were given the right to be children of God. For God to love the world, He sent His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Why? God didn't send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. As we advance the truth of the kingdom of God, we advance it in love, in grace and in mercy. Does the world understand the means by which the gospel advances in our present age? No. The world grabs daggers and slits throats to advance its religions and ideology. The Christian suffers and dies to show the sacrifice by which all can be redeemed. The weapons we wage war with are not cornal, they have divine power, the weakness, the sacrifice, the service of Christ is the light of Christ to a dark and dying world. We don't need to fear the advance of evil in this age. We need to stand firm in the hope we have in Christ and be optimistic that no weapon formed against us can prosper. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your mercy and your grace that reveals to us that you have not left us to ourselves. We have been shining in the darkness with ever-increasing radiance through your Son Jesus and now by the power of your spirit. You feel your church to overflowing, to they might take a stand and advance the truth in love. Father, would you help us to remain tenacious but also gracious and that as we are, resting in your Son Jesus, that you would demolish every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ and you would build up your kingdom on the surface. More and more every day, we pray in Jesus name, amen. Willow Creek Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.Willow Creek Church.org and our phone number is 407-699-82. 11