DEC 24 2017 | John 1:1-5

Sea Change Church · "John 1:1-5" · Adam Stadtmiller · December 24, 2017
John 1:1-5
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

John 1, 1-5. 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 overcome it. The Word of the Lord.

You got some applause, dude. I love it. Yeah, right on. Love you, Sean. It's great to be here this morning. Over the last three weeks, we have been looking at the baby Jesus through the lens of four gospel writers. We looked at Matthew, who presented a Jesus who was to be the Messiah King. A Jesus who was being presented as a Jewish Messiah. And he wrote to the Jews in particular.

He was using lots of prophecy. He was using the lineage of Jesus, which was important to the Jews. In the book of Mark, we see a more Homeric Jesus of the epic heroes of Greek mythology. And he was writing to the Gentile people in a way that they could understand God. And so if you were to read Homer or the Odyssey, and then you were to pick up and listen to the gospel or read the gospel of Mark as a Greek mind, you would understand a almost superhero like Jesus, who was fast acting, who had all kinds of power, but was also God, Messiah, King.

And so Mark wrote to the Gentile believer, which most of us are here today. And he wrote to us. Elliot came and spoke about Luke. And he talked about Luke's version of the Magnificent, which is Mary singing a song of expectant joy. And that message resonated with me all week. Began to think, you know, am I joyful? We live in a world that triggers us to anger, sorrow, upsetness.

Bad, bad, bad, says the buyer Proverbs. And as you look around, whether it be the headlines, which at this church we try to live beyond the headlines, what we see over and over again is bad, bad, bad. And rarely do we see someone saying, this is good, hope, rest, hear. And so with Elliot's message last week, we were encouraged to try to live a life of joy.

Joy is something that needs to be harvested from heaven. Joy doesn't come because you get a new car. That is happiness. Joy doesn't come because you get a check in the mail. Joy can only, true joy, can only be sourced from its origin, from its place of Genesis, which would be heaven itself from God. And joy allows you to live beyond the headlines, to live beyond the circumstances.

And Paul speaks about it in Philippians from a prison. Perhaps your mind has become a prison as of late. And Paul shows us from a physical prison, and the Bible does that on a regular basis, doing physical things to show us invisible truths, that Paul had the ability to live beyond the bars. And so as we have emotional prisoners these days, and I believe that there is an emotional poverty in our country and in the world that far exceeds any poverty that the world has ever seen.

And we can meet the needs of mankind, which they began to vigorously pursue in the 1900s, late 1900s, early 20th century, with a social gospel, saying if you save man's needs, if you help save him from this corrupt world and meet his needs, then you can save mankind. But there has to be a gospel in the social. And so we see these headlines that are causing us to want to be triggered in the wrong direction.

You know, Mark spoke about, Matthew, Mark, Luke, excuse me, spoke about a Mary who was filled with joy. How's your joy meter? And realize that it is something that does not come naturally. Joy must be practiced. Let me give you a little homework or a prescription. Surprised by Joy, a book by C.S. Lewis. Write it down. Pick it up. If you want more joy in your life, check that out.

Read the book of Philippians at the same time. Today, we are in perhaps one of my favorite books. My favorite, I talked to Brian Hardin recently, and I asked him a question on a video podcast I did with him. I said, after reading the Bible 13, 12, 13 years in a row, what's your favorite book in the Bible? He says, I get asked that a lot, and I have to say, this year, it's these books.

And I'm finding that as well and becoming less definitive as the Word of God becomes holistic. I still doubt that Habakkuk will make it into my top books. But Zephaniah. Zephaniah is a book, right? I think it is, yeah. So Zephaniah, I was listening to recently, I thought there's some good stuff in Zephaniah, you know. On and on. But John has regularly shown up in my corpus of books that I love.

John was an intimate friend of Jesus whose life was radically changed by a friendship. I mean, ultimately, John knew him as the Savior who comes to him in the Revelation, in the cave, where he was living on the island of Patmos, and he was a political prisoner sent away. And Jesus comes in a vision, I believe, with the sound of mighty rivers.

And I think there might have been a sword in his mouth, as I remember. But nonetheless, it was awesome. The word awesome has been overused lately. Hey, those shoes are awesome. No, they're not awesome. Jesus coming in a vision like he came is awesome. The universe, the stars are awesome. And John comes, and he presents the awesomeness of God in a scripture, but coming from the paradigm of the perhaps closest, most intimate friend of Jesus.

I love that. I love that it's a book written from a friendship perspective, but yet at the same time, a high understanding of who Jesus truly was. You know, I think it's important that when we deal with the people around us, as C.S. Lewis says, you've never met a mere mortal, that all of us are eternal beings. And to look beyond perhaps the headlines that our lives shout out, which aren't always the truth about who we are, and begin to see the beauty beyond the surface.

And so this is something that John has the ability to do. And I put this image up here today on purpose to show exactly what John is saying in John 1.1. Perhaps one of the most theological passages in all of the Bible. It is a verse, a pericope was the word I learned. You're in seminary, right? You're in Bible college here, right? Have you used the word pericope yet?

It's a great word, pericope. So you can use that. No charge for that. And this first five verses in John is this incredible layer, a cacophony of scriptural truth and deep understanding of the infinite, but also the finite that tells us about the God-man. And basically what he is presenting is not Jesus has a baby. He's not presenting Jesus like Matthew did, coming with donkeys and in a manger, but he presents the God of the universe coming to mankind and a God-man, the infinite man.

And so what we see with this understanding of John is the entirety of the word of God. And we'll talk about what that means. The word, when they use that Greek word logos, what does that mean? But in a manger. And this is what John is saying. That the entirety of the entire, the Godhead was found, became human flesh, and that there was a duality.

That God was fully God and fully human. Divine paradox. But that shows that the word of God, the eternal. And so while others look at a manger over here and they see the baby Jesus in the manger here, you see a baby Jesus in this manger. But over here when John paints his scripture, he shows the word of God, the eternal power of God in a manger.

And that is the juxtaposition between the gospels and what John presents. It's fascinating. Let me read it again. In the beginning was the word. That word means not just a word. It means everything that can be said. A totality of all words that could be spoken. When Moses comes up and finds God at the burning bush, and when he speaks to him again, he says, Who are you?

And he doesn't give him his name and he says, I am who I am. Because he is beyond the confines of language, if that makes sense. We all want to box somebody in to know who you are. And he is beyond that. And John is saying, when he says the word, he is saying that God is more than can ever be spoken. That human language. And so he just says, he is the word.

Word up. And the word was with God. And so saying that this entity, this being, and this is Jesus, and you could scratch out the word and put the name of Jesus, because God did limit himself so that we might know who he is. And in order for us to understand God, he has to shrink himself down. I used to tell my junior high students that Jesus was God in a man's suit.

He was God. And God has to shrink himself that we can understand him, because he is beyond comprehension. The word of God was with God, and the word was God. And so what this is saying is, in the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God. Jesus was with God in the beginning. We'll talk about what that means. Was Jesus a created being that showed up in the beginning, or was he there beforehand?

Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. And so here we see this scripture. It is hearkening back to the Genesis passage. If you go to Genesis chapter 1, and you lay it next to John 1, it's a great study, another homework assignment, another prescription for you, to go print out John 1, and then print out Genesis 1, and look at the similarities.

He is drawing on the epic of the Hebraic faith, the air understanding, and rewriting it. I guess they call that fan fiction these days for the students. My daughter, they find a book that they love, and then they all start writing their own versions of the books online, and it's called fan fiction. Am I right, Lily? She's back there, right? Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. I don't know if you heard that on the tape, but yeah. This is what I love. All that's great. But in him was life. Life. In him was life. And that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it. One thing we know about light is it will always defeat darkness, no matter how small the light.

It will always light up a room. But you can bring all the darkness into a candlelit room. You can bring all the darkness of the world into a candlelit room, and it will never snuff out or be able to comprehend that light. And so light, the smallest light, God's not telling you to be a strobe light. He's not telling you to be a lighthouse, you know, the fixture that beams out to all of the oceans.

He's just saying be the light that he has called you to be. Let's look at this in the notes quickly. Book of John presents our fourth revelation of the personhood of God. So important that Jesus was a person. It makes no sense if he was not a physical being, and there has been heresies since Jesus has died, or before, actually since Jesus has died, that have tried to take away the humanity of Jesus.

The Bible goes to great lengths to portray a Jesus that you can relate to. It says that he was tempted in every way that is common to mankind. And a lot of times we like to think of a Jesus that is so good, and so far beyond us, that he didn't deal with that temptation. He never had that thought. You have to imagine that the enemy would bring up the most vile, disgusting, wicked thoughts that he could think of, and regularly give them to Jesus on a platter of debauchery, of self-inflicted fulfillment.

And perhaps you're in a season of self-inflicted fulfillment. But he was presented those things, but yet was, as the Bible said, without what? Sin. He did not sin. Jesus was real. Jesus was flesh and bone. God limited himself so that we might understand him, and that he might save mankind. And so John presents a God beyond our comprehension, but one that we could touch.

Let me say that again. John presents a God beyond our comprehension, but one that we can touch. I've got to say, I don't think it's changed much. I find that many moments in my life where I don't know what's happening. I'm trying to figure out why God, or how, or what. But then there's these other moments where God becomes real, where Jesus becomes warm again, where the rose in his cheeks begins to be visible to my sullen and darkened eyes that have looked in other directions, where I've seen Jesus come alive.

And it is in those moments that I find hope. Because in Jesus was the light, and he was the life of all mankind, the scripture says. I don't live in a constant state of euphoric ecstasy in a moment with God, although you think, obviously most of you must think that I do being a pastor, right? But it's not true. There are just moments. There's moments where God comes alive.

The moment where I went over to my neighbors the other day, and they're homebound, and we went and we visited them, and there was a moment there, and I didn't want to go because it's awkward, and they're both in wheelchairs, and I don't know them well, and going into the house, and you know that maybe you don't experience that, but there's an awkward feeling.

And I went in, and their faces lit up, and we had such a beautiful time, and I walked out, and I thought, that made a difference. Or perhaps this week, I watched as Sean was here this week, your elder Sean. He's also a pastor. He's an ordained pastor. So Pastor Sean was here, and someone came in this week, and he helped them fill out some paperwork for some government stuff that was so confusing.

I mean, Einstein would look at that stuff and say, what? What's going on here? Like, how do I make this happen? And I watched there in a moment, as they sat together, and they went through this paperwork together, and I thought, that is the face of love. That gives me hope. And that is putting the social back into the gospel, but it's also keeping the gospel in the social.

And so Jesus is a God who comes and presents himself as unfathomable, but able to touch. And I want to encourage you to stay on the road to keep trying to touch Jesus. We had the Surf Church kids here this week, and there's a lot of them that have never known God. They haven't grown up in Christian homes, and they began to speak of cancers in their families.

And we had a prayer time. And, you know, they began to raise their hand and say, would you pray for this? Would you pray for this? I don't know if they even understand how prayer works. I don't even know if they understand salvation, or the atonement, or eschatology, or any of those things. But in that moment, about six or seven kids raised their hands and said, would you pray for a family member?

We're hurting. And in that moment, I saw the gospel go out. And in that moment, I felt like I was able to touch Jesus. Were you able to touch Jesus this week? It's those moments that take us, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, it's only a shadow, right? As Harry said, it's on a time clock. That though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will not lay down.

That is mine, because we are walking. And if you end up, the end of that journey in Psalm 23, it takes us to the house of the Lord. Granted, we lay down in quiet pastures besides streams, but at the same time, we end up, it says at the end, living as his children in his house. We have a theological truth here. This is a theological truth in regard to this scripture of, if Jesus was created, then he can't be God.

And so we have this understanding. There are certain religions that say that Jesus was a created being. Certain Christian, I would say faux Christian religions, would put the word a God in front of this. That Jesus is a God, but he's not God. And let me give you a theological truth, and you can choose to chew on it later on if you want. God cannot create anything that is not subordinate to himself.

Let me say that again. God cannot create anything that is not subordinate to himself. That means that anything God creates has boundaries or is limited. Meaning that if there is a creator and the creator creates something, obviously what you created is subordinate to the creator. This is why it's important that Jesus was not a created being. And if you see here, in the beginning is a finite point.

There was a beginning where God began something. And Jesus was there in the beginning. When it started, I'd say a better way to translate this scripture would to say, at the beginning, Jesus was already there. That is what this is saying in the Greek. That at the beginning, Jesus was already there. This is the idea of the Trinity, the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

And it can overwhelm us. What does it all mean? And there are many tomes written about what this all means. And I got to tell you something. None of it means anything if Jesus can't change a life. None of it means anything. We can sit here and have debates and conversations. And I was listening to podcasts yesterday about the social gospel. And they're off into the kingdom theology.

And they're using all these big words. And I'm having to look them up. But some I know. And I feel good about it. And I get a sense of pride because I know that one word. But then I don't know others. And I'm there listening to this whole thing. And in the end, I thought this. And it's in your notes at the end. I'm giving you a spoiler alert. Here's the end of the sermon.

If Jesus doesn't change, if he can't change your life, then what's the point? Who cares about all this? Can Jesus actually change your life? Can Jesus actually make your life better? Can he cause you to have a life more joyful, more peaceful? You're not going to live in ecstatic joy. But can he change lives? And I will say that he can. It's been 2,000 years.

And let me tell you why the Christian faith still exists. Not because of some theological treaties that John wrote, although I love it. And I love digging into it. And talking with my friends about it. And writing papers about it. And discussing it with Jim and Elliot. And Kimberly. And all the other people that are here in our study. They're teaching.

But why does it really matter in the end? Because Jesus changed my life. Jesus absolutely changed my life. From waking up in a gutter, drunk, being picked up. From on cocaine, having a heart attack. My story. We all have our own story. I wouldn't be here today without Jesus. And so I will proclaim him from the rooftops. That Jesus Christ is Lord. And the mission of the Christian church, the mission of the church, is while we feed the poor and we meet people's needs, the mission of the church is to proclaim the gospel of who Jesus is.

And he is a God that cannot be understood. And John, as you'll see in your notes, presupposes that you need faith. This is a crazy story. God becoming man in a manger with a bunch of cows and shepherds around him. I mean, it's absolutely crazy. God hanging on a cross, being killed, raising again on the third day. Like, seriously. Like, I know we have all the books and evidence for a verdict and all those things.

But it's really easy. And I've got to tell you, about every 18 months, I step back and I go, really? Like, really? Can I have that moment? Can I just tell you I have that moment? I mean, come on. If you don't have that moment, you can't have faith. Because faith is the thing that supersedes doubt. Without doubt, there is no such thing as faith. There's a thing called foregone conclusion.

But faith, the beauty of faith, is that it has the ability to overcome the hashtag, really? I have those moments all the time. But then I think back to who I was and who I'm becoming. And I don't like using who I am. Because I'm still not happy with this product. It's not. Impatient, you know, upset. A slave to my own opinions. Easily triggered by headlines and things we see.

Lack of grace. You know, spiritually bipolar in so many ways. Yeah, okay. Well, okay. No, I'm going to put me back on my pedestal. I'm going to get off it. Come on. Get up on that pedestal. It comes down to this. Has Jesus changed my life? And the answer is absolutely. And that's what John presents. This infinite picture, but a finite friend. I want to say Jesus can be your friend if you let him.

And what I said to the surf church kids this week was, what if you just took a year to follow Jesus? Like, look, you got a long life. Hope you're going to live a long life. But just one year to explore Jesus. As opposed to just from the, you know, skeptical from the sides or not really giving him his due. Look, he's changed the entire Western civilization.

It is because of Jesus that there's so many of the positive things that you see are happening. Give him 365 days of your life and just see. John is presenting him as this God man who, at the same time, is a finite friend. Let's go to the question, and we're breaking down the text of this dual nature of Christ. You're going to see a picture on the screen behind me.

This idea is called the hypostasis. In 431 AD, in the first council of Ephesus, they used John 1, this text that you're reading today. So in 431, the same text you're reading today, they used as a proof text to affirm the doctrine that Christ was not only fully human, but that he was also the Godhead incarnate. Limited. And one thing you're going to see, if you, if you, my fingers sprained.

If you see Jesus doing this all the time, you always wonder why he's flashing signs, like, and peace signs and all that. This two fingers means the dual nature of Christ. Whenever you see that in medieval mosaics or whatever, this is the dual nature of Christ. And the three fingers there on the bottom is the Trinity. And so they are regularly preaching that there is a Trinity and the dual nature of Christ.

And what, why they affirm this in 431, the base, I mean, we can get behind all the theology and fly into the heavens with John of all this celestial understanding. But it's to say God can understand you. I mean, it would be so easy if he didn't come as mankind to say, what, what do you know about my struggles? What do you know about my pain? What do you know about the prison of my own emotions?

So the whole idea behind this understanding is the fact that God can relate to you. What the enemy wants to say is, God has nothing in common with you. But he does. He understands everything that you've gone through. And he's a God that you can relate to. He's not some far off God. That he came close. He came near. Already spoke to the homage to Genesis.

Let's look quickly as we come in for a landing. I'm circling the tower on verse one. In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God. We talked about the beginning of finite created place. John is balancing the finite with the infinite. And your life is a balance of the finite and the infinite. Sourcing the infinite for the reality of a finite life, of a mistake-driven life.

It says he was the word. In the use of the word logos, notice the capitalization, is meant to refer to an infinite being that is beyond any individual definition or the summation of all that could be said. In Revelations 19.6, I love this. This is the King James Version. It says, I heard it as it were the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

That when it speaks in that kind of language, it's saying when you hear God, and I believe if you were to hear the sound of all the oceans speaking, how would the roar, if you could hear all the sound of all the oceans and all the creeks running right now in the world, that roar is constantly speaking who God is. It says that the trees shall clap their hands.

It speaks about the creation groaning, that creation is alive, and it sings a chorus of the greatness of God. See, this is why it's so important that we get away in solitude, and have the ability to put our phone down, a finite little thing. See, this is what the enemy wants. He wants you constantly here, there, or with a mirror here, but not looking everywhere, anywhere beyond that place, not looking to a world that screams his name out, and yesterday in the midst of all the packing and things that are going on and me organizing the house and pittering, I love to pitter.

Anybody else a pitterer? I love pittering around the house and cleaning up and organizing socks and things like this. Took the dog for a walk, and I came out, and there was a moon last night that had a smoky brown orange to it that was setting. I don't know if anybody saw it, it was a slight crescent, and it's always so quiet. I don't know if you know this, I feel that Christmas Eve is the quietest night of the year, but it's followed, the penultimate, by Christmas Eve Eve, and it's just dead still, and all of a sudden, the infinite became finite, and it touched me again, and I thought, God is real.

That's that. That's that. The ability to get away from this and to experience the power of God. That's the call. That's the call this year, and if you're a newcomer or you go to this church regularly, over the next year, we're going to continue to take a journey through the word of God, through encouraging you through prayer and relationships and other things to meet this finite Jesus that your life, this infinite Jesus that your life might be changed.

Finally, it says the word was God. The word was with God. He was with God in the beginning. Note that John does not say he was formed or created in the beginning, but rather that he was there when it all began. And then I just wrote, so what? I love finishing a sermon. When I finish the sermon, I usually come in and I ask myself these questions, and one of my favorite questions is so what?

Right? Like so what? I mean, we can look and study and all this, you know, smoke and bells and all the trees and, but so what? And I thought, so what? It's got to change my life. I've got to give God the opportunity to change my life and to chase after him only to find that he's always chasing after me. And just when I think I'm running as fast and he's getting away from me in the distance, I look beside me and my pace setter is right on my right.

And he's there with me again, touching me in that moment. Ultimately, the entire philosophical and theological discussion means nothing if Jesus does not have the power to change individual lives. You know where I see the proof of that? Every Sunday. Every Sunday during the week, I see your lives and I see that while they're not perfect, while we all have our stuff, that God is changing lives.

And so I come back another Sunday, I show up again another Monday because the word of God is present in his people as they share the victory of the God that became human that we might know him. Verse 4 and 5, in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. That light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Amen?