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 21st
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.
---
[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
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