MAY 7 2023 | The Gospel of John S1E4

Sea Change Church · The Gospel of John S1E4 · "The Gospel of John" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · May 7, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. I'm Christina. I am support for Pastor Adam and Andrea and, um, for everything else, so if you need me, don't hesitate to reach out. Um, today's scripture reading is from John one, nine through 13, the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him yet. To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to com become children of God. Children born not of natural dissent nor of human decision or of a husband's will, but born of God. The word of the Lord. Morning. If you have your Bibles open up to John one, nine through 13. Uh, FYI in the church for my sermons, I use the NIV V version from 1984. Uh, that's the translation I always use. I use other translations on, uh, on occasion, but uh, that's the translation we use. So if you see, uh, that's the one that's in your pew as well. Just so you know, if you wanna buy a similar copy to study at home. Uh, one of the dreams that came out during the Dream Summit was Chris Harold decided that she wants to do a him album, an album of hymns.

So let's see it happen. She said it in front of everybody else, so I'm gonna say it now. And I told her we'd pay for it, right? So let's pay for it and we'll make it happen and put it out. And, uh, we gotta get that voice out there that was amazing for and first time. So that was really, really good. Yeah, it's good stuff, good stuff. Uh, recognition. I wanna talk about recognition.

We're in John one and I was supposed to be by into John six by the end of this series, which will be over in two more weeks. And we're not getting outta John one, just fyi. John one is so meaty, so full of revelation and so consequential in regard to understanding what the gospel's about. But the God who comes alongside of the gospel, John presents a cosmological God, a mystical if you if if if you will, God.

And then he puts them incarnate into a human package and makes him known. John is about recognition. This whole passage is about recognition. John talks about lights and things becoming visible because of the light. We talked about light last week. This week I wanna really focus on recognition. It's a keyword. If you have your notes, write down recognition at the top of your notes.

I remember in 1995, I was at Dietrich's Coffee in Orange County. And if you're an Orange County kid, you know what Dietrick's Coffee is? They made the best frappuccino milk shaky things in the world, and they would be open till one in the morning. And there was multiple Christian youth or, um, college groups around the area there. And so on any given night, you would have a hundred Christians that would show up my age group, a little bit younger, actually, barely.

And they would show up and they would hang out and have coffee till like one in the morning. It was awesome. And it was a, an incredibly rich environment for possible relations relationships. And so I was there one day and hadn't, you know, I was, I was trying to be aware of the, my surroundings and I was sitting there working and I was in seminary and I was writing, and I, I heard this woman say something that I recognized that this was probably the woman for me. And I heard her say, Hey, I want to go up to Mammoth and get a job as a, um, as a, as a, um, lift operator in Mammoth and just leave everything and go to Mammoth and live there. And I was like, let's go. You know what I mean?

I peek up, there's my wife, I know the exact spot. She was where she was. And I recognized that that moment that I was going to pursue that woman. And there was a few weeks, months where we continued and the story goes on, and as you know, we're, we're still here. And, uh, it worked out. I actually, I gave her my business card, which was stupid cause I was like, cool.

I was 28 and had a business card. And she was all dressed like, like a female version of Kurt Cobain at the time. And so I handed it to her, but I just recognized that, that she was true and real and beautiful and pure and adventurous and just all these things I, I mean, I got messed up yesterday. Um, and at that moment it recognized something. And in that moment of recognition, it changed the way I acted. It changed everything that I did.

John talks about us having the ability to help people recognize who Jesus is, and he frames that up. And I, I want to say that for us, the job of a believer is to take this incredibly complex God and boil it down into understandable phrases. Like, I want to go to Mammoth to be a ski lift operator. I mean, that made sense to me. I didn't know anything else. And she's a complex person.

It was all these things, but there was this little bite size nugget that made something about her recognizable to me. And I hope that makes sense because when we're walking around in the world, it's that easy. That's the job, is to take what you know, the life experience, the witness that you have become. And I said, if you don't follow, you can't witness last week, right?

John says he was a witness to the light. And so as we follow Jesus, we become this witness. Now, let's go back to John one. Let's get back under the hood again with that in mind, that I, that idea that John is calling you to be like him, to be someone who helps people recognize, to have that moment, to help them recognize in that moment that God is real and to be aware in that moment. John one, let's go into the hood, the verse nine, the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. Circle recognize John speaks in John one as he, as he begins to, um, speak about his gospel. He doesn't start with stories of Jesus and I were by the campfire. He starts out with this cosmological understanding, and he takes his reader back to Genesis.

He takes his reader who would understand that when you say in the beginning, that would hit different to the Jewish audience than it would perhaps to someone today at the mall. You could say in the beginning, they would not originally think of Genesis one, but John's readers did. And he was taking them back there to compare and contrast and show that Jesus was there in the beginning. He was with God in the beginning, and that he was God in the beginning. God created light in the beginning.

And he says, Jesus is light. And he begins to take the narrative of creation with the narrative of who Jesus is. But then he begins to change the characters around. And all of a sudden, as we'll see in a moment, that light is no longer just John, because the, the original witness was light. That was the original witness. He said, let there be light before there was human beings to be the witness.

And so the original witness was light, but that witness doesn't suffice. And so John takes it around, he says, then there came a man, right there came a man. And he wasn't the light, but he came to testify what, according to the light or to the light. And so he became that light. And what I said last week is, without us being there to share the gospel, without helping people recognize through our words, through the way that we live our lives, through our actions, then the next thing they have to know about God other than God showing up in a dream and making himself known as a waterfall or the sun or some stars.

And the Bible says in Romans that it's gonna be easy if they don't hear the message of the gospel to start worshiping those things and having a worship of creation. And we see that happening today. So a few things happen. One, there's creation and light. The bi this this first chapter, he frames it up. He speaks about creation, he speaks about light, then he speaks about witnesses.

I said that in the beginning in Genesis. It said, let there be light. In Genesis, God speaks to light being the original witness of God. That word right there, and it's a theological understanding, is called creative revelation. That means that creation has your back. That means that God created creative revelation that everyone, every tribe, every nation, every tribe that was in the Amazon or wherever they were before they heard about Jesus or civilization reached SIMer.

They became their own civilization, looked up to the stars and said, there's got to be more than us. There has got to be more than us. And so creative revelation is the original way that people hear about God. The next though is through a word and God speaks, but finally it comes incarnate. It becomes, the word becomes flesh.

And John says that. And so Jesus became flesh. We're gonna get there in the next couple weeks. It says the word, that word, those words actually became flesh. And then what did he do? He dwelled among us. Say that the word of God, the words, the ideas, the concept, the light becomes flesh through you and the world understands it through you. And the way that you testify according to the light, you are the incarnate message. Let me tell you the backup plan, once again as a waterfall, that's the backup plan for people having the message of Jesus.

And many people have come to a knowledge of God through creative revelation. It's a powerful, it's a powerful creative revelation. It is a powerful tool God uses, but it's backed up. And it's better when we have those moments where we live in the flesh. You then become a witness. So John is big on witness and he says, you became a witness to the light.

And it's hard to be a witness of the light if you don't live in the light. And one of the things I wanna challenge you to do is go to your favorite search engine and put in Gospel of John, uh, verse on light, or begin to do some kind of search like that and begin to see how this idea of light, this creative light, brings illumination to the world. Remember, the world was formless and void. It was there.

The spirit of God was hovering over it. It says in Genesis. And then God said, what? Let there be light? And all of a sudden things had meaning, things had form things you could see. And the light brought meaning to that. At the conference, norm came up to me, um, he's a awesome guy. And he goes to our church here and Norm came up afterwards and he said, Hey, have you ever thought about just the way we share? And, and, and thinking, if God gives you a word, he goes, I was really inspired that when I see people, I just want to, you know, sometimes I just wanna give him a word. Like, Hey, I feel like God's telling me that he loves you. Or, and I was like, yeah, I used to do that a lot and I haven't done it that much.

And it was really inspired. And I went away and I felt like God was saying to me, I need you to do that more. So last night afterwards I'm, I'm kind of tired and I said, I'm gonna go to a movie by myself. I'm gonna get a $12 hotdog. And, and I asked for a small drink and it was this big and they charged me $14 for it or whatever it was. I was over at a m c and um, in the parking lot.

And I see this, oh, this homeless guy and he's, and he's got a jacket over him and he's got shorts on and he is like, freezing. And I got my cool new jacket, right? That cool one I bought on Amazon for Easter. Like particularly fyi, I do shop for certain events. So like you shop for events, ladies that you're gonna go to, I'll shop for a sermon if I wanted to match the sermon.

So I had my cool little hoodie jacket cuz Harry had one and I thought he's young and cool. And there was a picture of, do you have a picture from earlier? Just real quick, Jeff, the one from the, the, uh, dream Summit. No, that's a video. Sorry, you don't have that. Nonetheless, you won't see it. So I, I'm there and I thought to myself, cuz of Norm, wherever Norm is, thanks a lot there. You're thanks a lot, norm. I thought to myself, I gotta give that jacket away. That guy wants my jacket. He doesn't want it.

I need to give it to him. So I go inside, I come back out the movie and as I come outta the movie, guy walks, there he is, he's right in front of me. And I was like, here goes the jacket. All right. And so I'm talking to him and I said, Hey man, how you doing? He goes, good. I, and I said, are you cold? He goes, I'm real cold. I said, I got a jacket. And I said, I just bought it for myself for Easter on Amazon, but I can get another one cause I have the link still. And I said, I wanna give you my jacket. And I, and I said, uh, and I handed him the jacket and I said, God, you know, God bless you. He goes, I believe in the devil. I said, so do I. Crazy. Uh, he go, and, and I said, so do I. And he goes, but I believe in the devil. And I said, well, I do too, but the devil's gonna lose. And I said, have you ever thought, cause I don't know what dimension this guy's living in. I'm like, uh, cuz he was, he was on a different plane than me. And, and I said, have you ever thought that evil can never win because anything it's evil has a defect and anything with a defect will eventually desecrate down to become nothing. It can't sustain itself because it has a defect.

And anything with the defect will actually break. He goes, but the devil's gonna take God's throne over. And I and I said, well, no, he's not. He's gonna take God's thrown over. And I said, but I want you to know that Jesus gives you this coat, this coat's from Jesus. He goes, I believe in the devil. This is what he said. He goes, but I appreciate you. And he fist bumped me and I said, well, God bless you.

He goes, I believe in the devil. He goes, but I appreciate you. And he fist bumped me. He said, thank you. And he was in, he was in clarity in that moment. And if you ever had, if you ever worked with a lot of people that are having mental issues and struggles, there'll be moments sometimes where the Holy Spirit will just give them clarity.

They'll be like, and you've gotta kind of step into that. So he says, what I really need is pants. And there's no stores open, right? You're gonna get more of a, you're gonna get more than a revelation of the light. I'll tell you that much. Sorry. I got these new pants on. Uh, I actually got in my car and I started driving. I was in the underground, uh, you know where it is over at amc.

I was hiding from the Trader Joe's area cause you never wanna park there. And I thought to myself, I need to get this dude my pants. But it's like 11 o'clock at night in a garage and I'm on the pastor. And so I'm like, well, how can I do this? I thought, well, I'd have to take my pants off and then I'd like go up and throw them out the window to the dude. I'm serious. This happened. And um, and then I thought, but then I show up at home and I get out in the park and I walk through my neighborhood and my underwear cause I don't have a garage.

And I just had these visions of like, like something crazy happened in the neighborhood, but they find the pasture pantless, you know, needless to say, homie did not get my pants. Um, I was that close to giving him the pants, but he was small than me. He was like this tall. So I don't think they would've fit. And the whole thing he did ask me, so for some vape, he said, you have some vape? I said, oh, I just happened A couple of 2D fruity cartridges right here. No, I didn't, did not have any vape. I mean, I'm really thankful for Norm, because it reminds you that there's all always these moments. Now, I told a fail story last week about God told me to go talk to somebody else and I didn't. And um, it reminds you that these moments where you can just try to be the light. And as you look in that, one of the things go to verse nine and 10 as you keep going through is notes.

Verse nine and 10 says, the true light that gives light to every man, anthropo, I think, I believe that's men and women was coming in the world. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. One, as a believer, you know, if the world was made through him, he has the creative power to make something through you.

God has this creative power, and it, he has power in the moments to provide what you need when you step into a moment of recognition. And Revelation said, the world did not recognize him. The work of a witness is to make Jesus recognizable, to make Jesus recognizable. I gotta tell you, it's when you start doing it again. Um, and I have seasons of it. Um, it just gets easier and easier.

It's not that hard to smile. After the conference we walked, you're getting a bunch of free stories today, uh, after the conference we walked to, um, the Flower Pot, had a great conversation with Gloria and Amanda, the owner of the Flower Pot. We start talking about how we want to change the community together and how we can do an event together and how like, you know, we can bring said, he goes, you're, she said, Gloria, the owner said, your organization and my organization are my coffee shop are like some of the only things left that are like community based, where everyone from who actually lives here, we come and hang out together.

Or they live near here. She said, we're so tourists driven. And she says things are falling apart. And there there's like, you know, there was just, you know, there's all the you, you know, that they were broken into not too long ago. You saw that in the Lolla Light. And we said, well, let's do something together. You know? And as we're talking, I just thought this, there's just, I wasn't like, Hey, you, you know, here's Jesus. You know, I, she was telling me her history in church and, and Amanda's history in church. Um, her wife and, and they were just talking about where they came from. And I thought, man, we can do something together for this community and for me, I even said to her, like, for me, we just wanna be a revelation of who Jesus is to the light. You know?

And this is coming from once again, getting back into this understanding. There's a calling for you wherever you are. You might be on a high school campus, you might be a surfer. You can give a wave, you can give a smile. So as we walked down there yesterday, I decided I was gonna say hello. So I said hello to like six people, right? As we walking some act like you punched him in the face. What, you know, I thought we should do a hello project, get a hundred of us and just spend two hours in Lao and walk around Lao and say hello. Like, what would that do to the culture of La Jolla forever for a minute.

But just to make Jesus recognizable, my mom said, the best witness you could have is a smile. You know, I asked my mom, I said, what, what? I said, what's your hobbies? She said, people. I said, oh, that's so cool. I wish that was my hobby. That's so cool. That's my job. I wish it was my hobby. You know what I mean? Um, so the world oftentimes doesn't recognize Jesus. And it says that though though, he was, he was in the world and though the world was made through him, they didn't recognize him.

I wanna say a couple reasons why the world does not recognize him. I went to chat G P t AI and I asked chat, G G P T, ai, um, what it, that's artificial intelligence online. And I ask it, give me three, gimme three reasons why the world does not recognize Jesus. Gimme some great answers. So here you go. Prep my sermon. It's said distraction. That's true. Chat.

Be careful with chat gpi by way it's like heroin. You know what I mean? It's like, don't get started. Uh, it's said distraction. And I realize that's true. A devil can keep everyone distracted out of moments of clarity. It's hard to recognize anything when you're distracted. I went to a safety class recently just for own personal safety. Um, and it was self-defense and a few other things. When I was there, they talked about levels of recognition and they said, there's these zones that they have and there's, there's a white zone, a a orange zone, a yellow zone, orange zone, and red zone.

And the red zone is like you are, someone has jumped on you. You are in a fight and you're in the moment of the fight. And it says, everything focuses on that moment. And that is, that is the highest attention to what's happening in that moment. And then it, it backed it all the way down. And it said, the white zone is when you're asleep. It also said this, if you are on your phone and listening to headset phones at the same time while on your phone, it is the same or worse than or, or, or as, as distracted and not recognized anything as sleep. That's what the course said.

There was a study that they did. I see people walk across like crosswalks all the time like that. And I was like, watch out. Don't do that. We're just distracted. One of the jobs to make Jesus recognizable is to remove, to help people get excavated from their distraction. One of the best ways to do that is say hello. Just say hello. How you doing?

Bless you. How you doing? Oh, nice to meet you. Like this makes this actually, it, it, it actually removes distraction. One of the ways, if just a practical way that if you want to make Jesus known and recognized, like enter into their world with a question, get out from beyond the distraction. The next thing chat gpi created my sermon for me said this.

I think that's funnier than you seem to think it is. I think it's hilarious. It says expectation. People have an expectation of who, who God is supposed to be, and he's not living up to what they expect. One of the expectations of God right now is no limiting principles. A God with no limiting principles. A God that says yes to everything except hate.

Like a God that says yes to everything but has no limiting principles. People expect that kind of God. Another one is the expectation that maybe the Jews had, that God's gonna come and and be some kind of world leader. He is gonna, he would fix everything. If it was, if God was a good God, he would just fix everything. And so the third thing that it said, besides their expectations are not having proper expectations or their expectations being let down was that they mis he's misunderstood. I thought Chappy, G p t, you're good. This is amazing. So I kept reading it says, Jesus mission in the world was not to write all the wrongs, but to create sons and daughters. Who would chatt PT didn't write that I did.

He you see that here. Go to verse 13, the girl, verse 12. Go a little earlier to verse 12. 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 dissent nor of human decision or of a husband's will, but born of God, Jesus mission in the world.

Sometimes they misunderstand what he's all about. Jesus is more interested in creating sons and daughters with, to live in eternity with than he can also use to be the change in the world that he wants them to be. Otherwise he would just be a, a, a ro. We'd just be robots. We'd be in the matrix where he just fixed everything that he, that that sometimes they misunderstand that God isn't gonna change the entire world, the click of his finger with no human interaction, with no human free will, that he's, he's actually wanting someone to work alongside him.

And when you become that witness, people realize that you're, that you're in the game with Jesus. That actually you're on the field, you're on the playing field. I have a question for you. Um, if making Jesus known to the world was a soccer pitch field for the Americans, which I am one as well, and you, the game was ongoing, where are you?

Are you on the field? Are you on the pitch or are you on the bench? Are you in the stands or do, do you not even know where the game was played today? You can answer that for yourself. But Jesus is looking for people who will become sons and daughters to partner with him in making his son, in making himself known and the father's son known to the world through simple acts of recognition, like giving your pants to a homeless guy or meeting someone and giving them a smile or caring for someone. It's that easy.

And I guess the question is, as we come in for a landing is, where do you want to be on the field? I mean, do you want the ball? Carrie said in her talk yesterday, she, when she talked about getting healed from depression, that one of the things that she had to do was keep taking shots. Like she tells her daughter in basketball, she goes, I had to keep, I went to to therapist after therapist. She goes, I just never gave up. I did.

She goes, I tell my daughter all the time that you'll never, you're never gonna make the shot you didn't take. So I just kept doing it over and over and over and over again. Do you want the ball? Have you for some reason, um, disqualified yourself? You're too much of a sinner. You smoked pot in the nineties, you know, or whatever it was and you actually inhaled. Unlike the president, former president, that's a, that's a joke for everybody. 50 and older.

Um, yeah, you're disqualified, you're no good. You got nothing to say, you got nothing to do. Whatever it is. Where do you want the ball? I got a game tonight with our team and um, I got a guy on my team. He always wants the ball. He's, he's a good guy. He scores a lot of points. His name's Xavier comes to the church and we have a thing called Xavier Island on the team. And it's, we have video. Cause we have a video.

We always video the game and it's when somebody is calling for the ball and Xavier looks at him, doesn't give them the ball and goes and scores on his own or does whatever he does. We call that Xavier Island. I got a picture of Keegan on Xavier Island. They sent it to me. It's like a three second video because Keegan wants the ball. I want the ball.

The question is, do you want the ball? It's not that hard cuz Jesus will pass it to you every single time. He can give no look dishes. You're gonna get it every single time. Just be ready with your hands up when it comes. See the job that that John talks about here is to make Jesus known to become a light, to want the ball, to want to be on the field and to do little things like smile and care and be aware and do what Jesus tells you when he tells you to do it and fail as you try and be a part of the mix and be a part of the game.

The final other thing that as it says is this, which is interesting. It says to all who have received him to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Now, yesterday at the conference I shared a verse that if you are into God's sovereignty and predestination and it's all, all up to God if you get saved or not, it was a great verse to argue that this is a great verse for the Armenians, the Wesleyan and the free Willis, if I may use that word yet, to all who have received him, to those who have believed in his name, which is the initiative to receive. He gave the right to become children of God.

The thing I put at the end is, while we testify as God's witnesses, it is his job to ultimately make himself known to others and their job to receive. However that happens in the ether of faith. And I don't understand it. I don't know that it's not your job to make sure people are saved. It's not your job to close the deal.

The deal is closed through Jesus Christ, through Holy Spirit and through the recogni and through the realization and accepting who Jesus is. Many people know who Jesus is and choose not to follow him. Ludwig Wienstein said this, knowledge is the end. In the end based on acknowledgement knowledge in the end is based on acknowledgement. People have to acknowledge this, God is real and I want to step into that life.

I wanna live into that life and I want to come alive. But they won't know what life looks like if you don't display it. Because without you, there's a mountain and a waterfall and a river that is turned to ice or what the sun and the stars as a backup plan. And if it was good enough, God never would've sent witnesses like you. Let's stand if you would.