John 1:1-18: Word Puzzles

Presented to the Swift Current Corps, 10 April 2011
By Captain Michael Ramsay

A similar sermon was preached to Alberni Valley Ministries, 14 July 2019. To view that sermon, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2019/07/john-11-18-life-filled-word-that.html

    

Doctrines 2-4 of TSA read as follows:

2. We believe that there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.

3. We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory.

4. We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.

John 1:1-4 and 17 & 18 reads:

 ¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³ Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind…. ¹⁷ for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

Here we have a very important argument unfolding before us and it is one that I think is sadly overlooked a lot as we take snippets of it out of context for various purposes. This opening of the book of John, a letter probably written by the Apostle John between 60-90 CE,[1] as much as any other passage speaks to the divinity of Christ. Let us look at it together a little bit and see what John is trying to say in the first 18 verses of Chapter 1. But first I have some word puzzles for us – try to figure out what these words are (answers below):[2]

• This word has every letter in our language in it;
• This word contains many words but just one letter;
• This word is both queen and a capital;
• This word refers to both a Canadian citizen in general and a professional Vancouver hockey player in particular;
• This word is both a sharpened poll and a fish;
• This word is both an RCMP constable and a Salvation Army Captain;
• Here is a ‘Who am I?’ word puzzle. Figure out this word if you can:

1)            It is in Swift Current here,

2)            It is all over the world,

3)            You are it and you are in it,

4)            It is both people and a building,

5)            It is where people go on Sundays.

6)            It rhymes with perch.

• Lets see if we can figure out together what is this word:

1)            In the beginning was this word, and

2)            This word was with God, and

3)            This word was God.”

Let’s take our time here today and figure out together what this word is. We have a number of different clues that the Apostle John gives us here in John 1:1-18, to help us figure out what is this word:

Clue # 1: “In the beginning....” This is neat. This letter, the book of John, was written in Greek. Now, there is a very common ancient translation of the Old Testament with which the disciples were very familiar entitled ‘the Septuagint (LXX)’ and this was also written in Greek.

And the first Greek words of the creation story in the Septuagint are ‘En arche’.[3] These are also the first words of the book of John, and translated from Greek, these words are, in English, what we have in front of us today in both John 1:1 and also in Genesis 1:1. They are ‘In the beginning.’

Clue #1 is ‘in the beginning’, ‘En arche’. John is, with this phrase, giving us a hint as to what the word is by immediately drawing our attention to the creation story. You may wish to keep your thumb in Genesis 1 as we are looking at John 1 today. It is really the passage on which John is basing his argument here for the divinity of the Word and for some further hints as to the identity of this word that we are trying to discover today. Now like we here recognize the first line of certain famous books or more likely – in our contemporary society – like we recognize theme songs to certain TV shows or movies: Think of the theme songs to Stars Wars, MASH, Cheers, Bonanza, or the Lone Ranger; like some of us can probably hear these songs in our head now, when the readers of John’s letter here would read the words ‘in the beginning’, they would hear the theme song of Genesis 1:1 running through their heads again and again. Clue 1 to our mystery word today, John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,”

Clue #2: This word was actually God.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). This is clue number two to solving our puzzle today that I want us to remember: Who was the word? (God.) Who was God? (The word.) Remember this. The word was _____ (God).

Now, John 1:2, this word that was God, it repeats, was with God in the beginning and -in case we missed the earlier allusion to the creation story- John makes it very clear here that pertaining to this word – whatever this word is - that this word is God.[4] And that brings us to our next clue as to what is this word in Verse 3.

Clue # 3: “Through [this word] all things were made” and “without him nothing was made that has been made.” Everything that God made, God made through this word – whatever this word is – nothing at all was made without it. This word is how God created everything in the beginning. That brings us to Clue #4.

Clue 4: Verse 4, in this word was also life. God brought life to His creation through this word and this life that was in this word that was with God when he created everything in the beginning, this life was the light of all mankind. This is quite a word. And there is more – in this word, there is life itself and this life, it says, is the light of all humanity. This life that is part of the word we are looking at today is the light of all mankind. And this light that is part of this life, that is part of this word; this light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot either overcome it (NIV) or even understand it (NRSV).[5]

Now we have to keep what we know about this word in mind because we are going to come back to it in a second. To review:

1. This word was “in the beginning”
2. This word was God
3. Through this word all things were made
4. In this word was life

Remember this, John will come back to it but now John now goes on to speak about the light of all mankind that is in this word that we are trying to figure out today. John says about this light that comes from the word that it

• shines in the darkness;
• has not been overcome or even understood by the darkness;
• was coming into the world;
• made the world;
• was not recognized by the world.

 Now in the midst of these clues that we have about the word and the hints about the meaning of the light that makes up this word, John gives us one really big clue as to what this word is that we are trying to figure out today by telling us one thing this word is NOT. He says in a couple of parenthetical statements, Verses 6-8 and Verse 15, that:

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.  He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light… John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

John, the author of this book tells us that John the Baptist who –even though he was dead long before the composition of this book, still had a lot of his own followers around- John the Baptist is not the light. John, the author then tells us, Verses 12 & 13:

Yet to all who did receive [the light], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

So then finally in Verses 14-18, for those of us who haven’t figured it out yet, John reveals the answer to the word game for us. He brings us back to solve the puzzle for those of us who haven’t solved it yet. He says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” He says:

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…. Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through [here’s the answer to our question: Grace and truth came through] Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

So did you get that? De we really understand what this all is? This word is 'Jesus' and this light is from Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

·        Jesus was “in the beginning”

·        Jesus is God

·        Through Jesus all things were made

·        In this Jesus is life

And

• Jesus shines in the darkness;
• Jesus has not been overcome or even understood by the darkness;
• Jesus has come into the world;
• Jesus made the world;
• Jesus was not recognized by the world.

This Word and this Light of the world is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. There is only one Son, full of grace and truth, who comes from Father God and this Son is Jesus Christ himself. This prologue to John’s letter, Verses 1:1-18, is a very important way for John to start his whole gospel message. Before he goes on to discuss all that he is going to discuss in this gospel (the life and times of Jesus, a description of our Lord’s return to the Father, and an epilogue) before all of this John tells us that Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God.

Doctrines 2-4 of TSA read:

2. We believe that there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.

3. We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence and co-equal in power and glory.

4. We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.

So then the real question for us today, 2000 years after the light came into the world, is ‘what do we do about it?’ If we have figured out that the mystery word is Jesus and if we have figured out that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and if we have solved the puzzle and understand that Jesus Christ is God, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it? I think in that we only have two options after we realize that Jesus is God

1)      We accept Jesus as our saviour and we serve him with our whole lives, or

2)      We deny the Son of God and spend eternity separated from him. If we reject him, we will suffer the natural consequences for this rejection. If we choose to go to hell than that is what will happen and that is sad because we do have option #1 (Cf. TSA Doc. 10 & 11).[6]

We can serve God forever and always and if any of us haven’t made that decision yet, what is stopping us? In The Salvation Army, we have a Mercy Seat, this pew up front here, where we can come and make our choice public to serve our Lord and Saviour forever or we can come and pray for the salvation of a loved one. If you –or a person close to you- have never made that commitment before or if you have any questions and would like to reaffirm that commitment to serve God today I invite you, in these next few moments as the piano continues to play, to come here, to the Mercy Seat, to pray.

http://www.sheepspeak.com/

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[1] Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 4), S. 24, 31

[2] Alphabet; Envelope; Regina or Victoria; Canuck; Pike; Officer; Church. The final answer is located near the end of the preach.

[3] Gerard Sloyan, John (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1988), 14.

[4] Cf. Martin Luther’s comments on this phrase. Cited in R.C.H. Lenski, ‘The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel’, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), p. 33.

[5] Either translation is equally valid and neither translation alters the intent of the passage significantly. Cf. Gail O’Day, NIB IX: The Gospel of Luke, The Gospel of John. ‘John’, p.520.

[6] Doctrine 10: We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; Doctrine 11: We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the endless punishment of the wicked.