John 1:1-18: The Life-Filled Word that Created Everything and More

Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries, 14 July 2019. (Based on ‘Word Puzzles’ Presented to Swift Current Salvation Army, 10 April 2011) [a]

   

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 1:1-45 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 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [or even understood] it.

These words open the Gospel of John, the Gospel of John is a letter probably written by the Apostle John sometime between 60-90 CE,[1] and as much as any other passage in the Bible speaks to one of the divinity of Christ and the Trinity through references to the ‘Word’ and the ‘Light’. Now John’s writing about the light and the Word here can be a little puzzling; so I thought that I would begin today with some word puzzles [2]:

Here are some one sentence clues to discover six mystery words:

1.      This word has every letter in our language in it; what is the word?

2.      This word contains many words but just one letter;

3.      This word is both queen and a capital;

4.      This word refers to both a Canadian citizen in general and a professional Vancouver hockey player in particular;

5.      This word is both a sharpened poll and a fish;

6.      This word is both an RCMP constable and a Salvation Army Captain;

7. Here is a ‘Who am I?’ word puzzle. There are 6 clues to find 1 word. Figure out the word if you can:

a.       It is in Port Alberni here,

b.      It is all over the world,

c.       You are it and you are in it,

d.      It is both people and a building,

e.       It is where people go on Sundays.

f.       It rhymes with perch.

This is the same sort of thing John is doing here at the beginning of this letter here…

a.                         In the beginning was this word, and

b.                         This word was with God, and

c.                         This word was God.”

He wants us to track with him closely as he reveals to us that Jesus is this ‘Word’. And he does give us a big clue right in the beginning…The hint is the phrase “In the beginning” This is neat. This letter, the Gospel 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 called ‘the Septuagint (LXX)’ which was also written in Greek. And the first Greek words of the creation story in Genesis are ‘En arche’/ ‘in the beginning’.[3] These are the very same words, in the very same language, that John chooses to start his book with.

I am going to play some theme songs and let me know if you can tell me what shows they are associated with…

1)      Suicide is Painless (Johnny Mandel and Michael Altman):

2)      I’ll be there for You (Rembrandts):

3)      William Tell Overture (Gioachino Rossini):

Now like we recognize theme songs to certain TV shows or movies, when the readers of John’s letter would encounter the words ‘in the beginning’, they would hear the theme song of Genesis 1:1 running through their heads again and again. And this is important – the WORD is there at creation and the WORD is with the creator, creating. John then goes on to make it abundantly clear that, Verses 3, ‘Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Verses 4: “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” This WORD gave light to, created all of humanity. Not only that, but the psalms (104:29) even tells us that if He (that Spirit of God) is removed from us then we will all die. And Verse 5: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [or even understood] it. [5]” This light that comes from God cannot be overcome or even understood by darkness.

Verses 6-8: Now as we are reading this in Church today, we are all well aware that Jesus is the Word, Jesus is the Light of the World but in the first century some people who were even in and around the new growing Christian communities were not yet convinced. One such person that some may have thought this applied to was John the Baptist, thus Verses 6-8 and Verse 15 of Chapter 1:

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- was not the light.

So John, the author has established a couple of things for us:

1)      The WORD was with God and is God who created and gave Life and the Light to all humanity [4]; and

2)      This Word, this Light is not John the Baptist; it is someone else.

Verses 9-11:

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Here as John reveals to us that the Light and the Word is Jesus, he tells us some important things about Him. Even though he made the whole world when he came to visit it, the world did not recognize him.

Next weekend Stephen Court is coming here. He is The Salvation Army’s Territorial Evangelism Consultant. We served with Steve and his wife Danielle Strickland when God used them to start 614 Vancouver, a corps in Vancouver’s DTES around the turn of the 21^st Century. Imagine if he poked his head in there unannounced on this visit and no one recognized him. That could happen. I have met many Officers who don’t have many at their old corps who remember them. Can you imagine if you invest all the time, heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears, into starting something (like a church or a business) – sacrificing much of or your whole life for it - and that something no longer recognizes you? Or more than this: we know many people who were taken from their parents when they were very young or who had their children taken from them. Can you imagine if you invested in your own child until they were a certain age and then you were separated and when you were able to return they didn’t know you? This is the scene painted before us today. Jesus, the Word who made the world and the Light who sustains the world, walked into the world and the world for the most part had no idea who he was.

Verses 14 and 12-13

John, the author then tells us some good news, Verse 14,

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. [And Verses 12 & 13:] “Yet to all who did receive Him, 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.”

Though the greater world did not and does not even yet recognize Jesus; some of us do, just as some of us did. And for those of us who do recognize our creator and sustainer and rely on Him to recreate and continue to sustain us, He gives us the honour of being children of God. Like an earthly father returning home from a war, long journey, or for some other reason a long time away, to a child who may not at first remember him, but when reintroduced loves and accepts his dad; so, the same with God; the same with Jesus.

  

Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God; He is the Word and He is the Light and each and every one of us, John 1:16, “Out of his fullness we have all received grace.” So then the question for us today, 2000 years after the light came into the world, is ‘what do we do about it?’ If we know that the Word is Jesus and if we know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and if we 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 [6]:

1)      We decide this is 'fake news' nonetheless and still deny His divinity and His oneness with God and so sadly miss out on that amazing intimacy with God which He is offering to us; or

2)      We accept Jesus as our Saviour and we serve Him with our whole lives, experiencing forever the fullness of life that comes only from the grace and love of God

We can serve God forever and always and if any of us haven’t made that decision yet, what is stopping us? Next weekend is the Summer Rain Evangelism Crusade.  If you have any friends or family who are not yet experiencing the joy of life with Christ, bring them out; maybe as they hear the gospel, it will get ahold of their lives and transform them as only the Spirit of God can do.

And today here, at The Salvation Army, we have a Mercy Seat, 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.

Let us pray.

http://www.sheepspeak.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Salvogesis

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[a] Michael Ramsay, “John 1:1-18: Word Puzzles.” John 1:1-18: Word Puzzles, Sheepspeak.com, 8 Apr. 2011, 10:40am, sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/04/john-11-18-word-puzzles.html.

[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

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.