John 1:1-18
Please turn in your copy of God’s
word, not to the book of Luke for once, but to the next book
over the gospel of John. And as you’re making your way
there, I’ll point out a couple of things for you to expect over
the coming weeks. We will be looking at, for the
next five weeks, today included, the next five weeks, verses 1
through 18 of John’s prologue, it’s often called. Different
gospels present different views of Jesus. They’re all in unity
and they’re all in truth. But Luke, as we’ve been studying
for the last little while, presents Jesus as the human, the atom,
the second atom. Mark has a different angle. He
presents Jesus as a servant. Matthew presents him in another
way. And in John’s prologue, verses
1-18, we have a very unique presentation of Jesus. And it’s actually a
little bit mind-boggling to think of Jesus in the way he is presented
in the Gospel of John. What my plan is, is week by week,
as we go through this prologue, we’ll read all 18 verses every
week, but we’ll only consider a little section at a time. So let’s give our attention now
to the word of the living God. This is the gospel according
to John, chapter one, beginning at verse one. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with
God. All things were made through him, and without him was not
anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life
was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from
God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear
witness about the light that all might believe through him.
He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which enlightens
everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world and
the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But
to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave
the right to become children of God, who were born, not of
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God. And the word became flesh and
dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory
as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John
bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said,
he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. And from his fullness, we have
all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through
Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever
seen God, the only God who is at the Father’s side, but he
has made him known. Amen. Pray with me. Lord, your word is simple. But this passage seems so complex. So help us now, by the light
of your Holy Spirit, to be able to see, hear, understand, and
believe, and most especially, to put these things into practice
in our lives. We pray this in the name of Christ.
Amen. There used to be a day and time
when architecture meant something. You are sitting today in a church
building. We sort of have an old school
church building, a sanctuary. We don’t do anything else in
this room. Now I have worshipped in other types of rooms in my
life. I’ve been to church in a roller
skating rink. I’ve been to church in an old
grocery store. And for some years when I was
a minister in Greensboro, we worshipped as a church in a gymnasium. Architecture means something.
We go to places that are designed appropriately for a certain use. We come into this room and there
are seats for you to sit in. There’s a pulpit for the minister.
And as we speak of our worship service, very often we speak
of worship being a divine dialogue between God and his people. I
speak on God’s behalf as a minister of his word to you. You respond,
we respond in song. We respond in confession, we
respond in thanksgiving or tithes or offerings, or we get up and
go and we leave this place to serve God throughout the week.
God assures us of our pardon. He greets us, grace to you and
peace. And so it’s a back and forth conversation, but this
room is designed for that purpose. It’s designed for worship. You
go to other places and you really have to go to older places to
find architecture that is designed for a purpose. Go to an old college
campus, for example. Very often you’ll find, and I
know some of you don’t like when I mention that school in Durham,
but go to Duke University, for example. At the center of the
academic campus there is a chapel. And from the firm foundation
of God himself come the arts and the sciences and the humanities
and all those sorts of things. And you find this at many old
schools where God was at the center and everything else was
subordinate to God and his word. That’s not the case any longer.
This past summer I took some study leave out in Tennessee
at a small Baptist university and instead of at the center
of their campus there being a chapel, the center of their campus is
a giant library and it’s called the Lagos. If you’re familiar
with the Greek language, the logos is simply the word. And that’s the word that’s used
here in John chapter one. In the beginning was the word
or the logos. And what this small Baptist university
is striving to point out in their architecture is that we are a
school educating you. but at the center of our education
system is the Logos, the Word. We’re a Christ-centered school.
And so we have this building that stands at the center of
all the academic buildings as they surround it. And so we are
going to be a Word-centered, Christ-centered place. And that
comes as a little bit of a distinction between having the chapel at
the center of the university, but you see what they’re trying
to do. We want Christ, the living word, to be the center of all
that we do. Isn’t that a breath of fresh
air in light of today’s education system? Isn’t that a breath of
fresh air when everything seems to be devoid of God and his word? Well, there’s another reason
I think this school put their library, the Logos, right at
the center of their campus. And it’s maybe a bit of the background
behind the reason John writes what he writes in the first chapter
of his gospel that we read today. And that’s this, only Jesus can
help us make sense of this world. Only the light of the truth can
help us make sense of this world. We can live a life devoid of
God, and that life will not make sense. We can live a life apart
from God, not affirming who he is, what he’s done, that he speaks
truth in all that he says, all that is written in the word.
And we can live apart from God, but life will not make sense.
It will be futile. It will be full of error, and
it will end poorly. But if we have a life that is
centered in the word of the living God, if we have a Logos-centered
life, a word-centered life, a Christ-centered life, the world will make sense. Think of 2020. This has been
a weird year. It’s still March, isn’t it? We’re
still on the two-week shutdown that has lasted until, well,
it’s almost December. We’re trying to figure out how
disease is spread. We’re trying to figure out what
prevents it. We’re trying to figure out all of this, and that
in light of a very hotly contested, not only presidential election,
but other races as well. This has been a very strange
year politically, a very strange year for health. But this has
probably been a strange year for many of you personally. You’ve
seen the stock market go up and down. You’ve seen some of you
have lost family members. Some of you have been sick. Life
has gone on in the midst of 2020 chaos. And only living in light
of Christ do all things make sense. And so think about John
here for just a moment. John had a different audience
than Matthew, a different audience than Mark, a different audience
than Luke. John was writing, as he says
in one place in his gospel, to present Jesus so that you may
believe in him. Well, who was he speaking to?
Was John speaking to a bunch of Southern Christians who had
always heard about Jesus and probably been at Sunday school
at some point in their life? No. He was speaking to a Greek
pagan world. He was speaking to people who
had never, ever, ever heard of Jesus. Now you gotta wrap your
minds around that. We’ve all grown up, I would suspect,
knowing something of who Jesus is, knowing something about who
Jesus is and what he’s done. Most of us have been dragged
to church at some point in time in our life. And when we became
a Christian, Christianity and Jesus weren’t that strange to
us. He’s speaking to people who never,
ever, ever heard of Jesus. As the gospel went out from Jerusalem
to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, the gospel
was going into places that had never, ever, ever, ever, ever
heard of Jesus. That’s strange to us. And so
sometimes we think of evangelism, how do we present Jesus in our
culture? Well, it used to be, it’s less
and less so. It used to be easy. Everybody
knew something of Christianity in the South. That’s not the
case. Think about being a pastor in
New York City or in London or in a faraway place of the world
where they’ve never heard of Jesus and you have to explain
everything. I mean, just think of it a couple
of weeks ago so that we could put the confession of sin a little
bit bigger font for those of you with presbyopia. You know,
bad eyes. We took out the Lord’s Prayer
because we figured you all kind of knew it. And that’s true.
But you could go to church in another part of the world and
do you think they know the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostles Creed
or maybe could sing a verse or two of Amazing Grace? And that’s
even without going to church very much. So think of this,
John is speaking to an audience that’s probably never, ever,
ever heard of Jesus. And so this idea of logos was
a Greek philosophical construct that helped them understand the
world and everything in it. Let me try to give you an example
of what that was like. Do you remember the apostle Paul
in the book of Acts? He goes into the marketplace and he sees
all these statues. They’ve got this statue and this
one. They have names and they have reasons behind why these
statues are there and why they worship them or what that statue
represents. But remember the Greeks, just
in case they missed a God they didn’t know about, they had a
statue to the unknown God. And what did Paul say? I’ll tell
you who this unknown God is. You say there’s a God not known
to you. I know him. And he presented God, the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit to those in that marketplace that day.
And so what Paul was doing is he was taking something that
they could latch their minds onto and explaining it to them
more fully in light of God and Jesus Christ. And that’s exactly
what John is doing here. They, in their culture, had this
Greek idea of the Logos. The Logos could mean about 30
different things, and I’ll spare you the details. But this idea
of Logos, or word, was the way that they, back in their ancient
day, said, oh, That makes sense of the world. This Logos, this
higher power we might say in American culture, this Logos
is what brings all truth together. And they had various ways of
explaining it. Well, John takes it and says,
this is the real logos. This is the real word. This is
the real thing, the real God, the real ultimate reality that
helps us make sense of this world and everything in it. Now, there
are about five things in the first chapter five verses that
I want us to very quickly go through today. This is a mind
bender. You know, some of you go to Cracker
Barrel and you, well, you can’t now, but you can play with the
little toys on the table. You know, the little golf tees.
And if you could leave a few, you’re pretty smart. I usually
end up on the pretty dumb side. And if you’re like me, those
little mind benders, they make you feel a little bit inferior.
And so let me encourage you at the outset of looking at John
chapter one, verses one through 18, but today, verses one through
five, if it blows your mind, if you can’t understand all of
this, well, neither can I. This is a mind bending passage
that says some wonderful things about Jesus. And we take God
at his word and say, I may not get it. I may not understand
it, but he says it. Therefore, it is true. And we
pray that by God’s grace and his Holy Spirit, he will help
us understand these things. And so just as the Logos helped
of ancient Greeks understand why the world existed and what
it was meant to be. But even more so, just as this
little Baptist university where I did my study work this summer
has the Logos, Christ at the center of their academics. We
want to look today at what it means for us, for Christ to be
the center of all things. Well, the first thing this passage
shows us is the pre-existence of Jesus. And we get this in
the very first part of verse one, in the beginning was the
word. We also get it at the beginning
of verse two, where well, verse two as a whole, he was in the
beginning with God. Most of us think of Jesus coming
into existence in a Bethlehem cattle stall, lying in a manger. Most of us believe the incarnation
is when Jesus first shows up on the scene. But John, in a
very powerful way, echoing the words of Genesis chapter one,
says to us, Jesus always has been. I can remember when I was
a kid, my mother trying to explain to me that God always has been,
and God always will be. Now, I knew at a young age that
I was born, and I think I’d seen my great-grandfather pass away,
so I knew that people died. So for me, beginning, end, Sort of blew your mind away.
And this ought to do that for us. Jesus has never not been. Now, some of you ladies in the
Wednesday Bible study, y’all are ahead of the curve, right?
We’ve been looking at chapter eight of the confession of faith.
Has Jesus always been God? And what’s the answer? Yes, y’all
know that well from our couple Wednesdays of Chapter 8 of the
Confession of Faith about Jesus. Jesus has always existed as Jesus,
the second person of the Trinity, as the Godhead. But has Jesus
always been human? What’s the answer to that? No,
Jesus became man. He’s the eternal son of God who
became man when he was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb
of the Virgin Mary and then born of her. But most of us usually
think of Jesus as a created being. And what this is saying very
clearly is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, always
Jesus is outside space and time, before creation, before the world
and everything that it was made. When he was in heaven with God,
he enjoyed the riches of heaven and the face-to-face fellowship
with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. So one thing we
must get straight, Jesus is not a created being. He has always
existed. And this is something we take
God as word to be true. We come to this by faith. We believe that Jesus is the
eternal son of God. We believe that he always was,
and he always will be. In fact, in the book of Revelation,
what does it say of Jesus? I am the alpha. I am the omega. I am the beginning. I am the
end. Before this world was, Jesus
always has been. Now, how does this help us? Well,
it helps us in this way. As Christians, we put our faith
not in a human being. Think about all other religions.
We won’t name them, but think about all other religions. Those
religions must put their faith in a man who was born and a man
who has died. All those religions must put
their faith in a man who did not preexist his birth. They
lived a regular human life just like you and I, and they are
now dead. our religion, our faith, Christianity,
we put our faith in the preexistent second person of the Trinity,
Jesus Christ himself. And that’s a wonderful truth
to believe in and to live by. So this passage teaches us of
the preexistence of Jesus. This passage secondly shows us
the fellowship that Jesus had with the Father before creation.
I know these statements are a mouthful, but they must be really to explain
it in a good way. So we look secondly at the fellowship
that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit had
with one another. Look at the second part of verse
one. It says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God. And then you look again at verse
two. He was in the beginning with God. Now, we don’t think
of this very often, but I wanna point out something that I think
is very obvious to you. To be with someone means to have
fellowship, face-to-face table talk, face-to-face fellowship. What does the name Emmanuel mean? God with us. And so it’s very
important concept for us to remember in our Christian theology, our
Christian walk, and in our Christian hope of the future, to be with
God is wonderful and glorious. To be away from God is hell. Remember when Adam and Eve first
walked with God in the garden, face-to-face, day-by-day? What
broke that fellowship? Sin. And what did God do? He banished them from the garden.
He cast them out of his presence. And so one of the sad effects
of the fall is that we lost communion with God. We lost fellowship
with God. We are no longer with God. We are apart from God. And
so one of the things that we can learn from this great truth
of the fellowship of Jesus with the Father and with the Son is
to be in that company is a very special privilege. And so before
creation, you wonder, what was God doing? What was God doing
before he made the world and everything in it? Well, he was
having a fine time. He was in the riches of heaven,
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, in the riches
and splendor of heaven, which we catch glimpses of in the word
of God. And they were having a grand time together. And sometimes
you’ll hear people say, well, God must have gotten bored up
in heaven. And so he made a world and put people in it so he wouldn’t
be lonely. And that’s really a false, it’s
a lovely thing to think about, but it’s really false, isn’t
it? God had perfect fellowship in and of himself in heaven.
And this world, by the way, created a lot of trouble for him, didn’t
it? God does not need us. His existence, his pleasure is
not dependent on us. But isn’t it wonderful that he
made us? And so the fellowship that Jesus has with God before
the world began is such an amazing thing. And this truth, this truth
is so important. How many times does John say
it? Well, he says it in verse one, and he says it again in
verse two. So this must be something super
important for us to remember. Being face-to-face with God and
fellowship with him is something that they divided in. and it’s
something that we ought to delight in. We were speaking in Sunday
school about the decline of church attendance in America. It’s at
a rate of about 7% a year, but it’s also at a alarming rate
with COVID-19 in this strange year. But it’s strange to me
to be a Christian and to be outside these walls in a dark and dying
world and in the middle of a crooked and depraved generation and saying,
I’m okay without God, I’m okay without going to worship, and
I’m okay without being with his people in church. That to me
is strange. Why is that? Because remember,
to be in fellowship with God and his people is a special privilege,
and to not be in fellowship, well, that’s hell, isn’t it?
That’s what eternity without God is. It’s hell. And so this
fellowship with Jesus and the Trinity that is experienced is
a wonderful thing. And here’s what I want you to
think of related to this for you. God in Christ has taken
you who were far off because of sin and has brought you near. Think of the words of Jesus.
We say these and hear these very often at a funeral. What does
Jesus say to his disciples? Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in me. If I go from here,
I’m gonna go and prepare a place for you so that where I am, there
you may be also. You see, these aren’t pie in
the sky statements. We could make it that way. I
could have gone on and on about the logos. We could go on and
on about what it means for Jesus to be the pre-incarnate God,
you know, second person. We could go on and on about all
this pie in the sky stuff. I’m not interested in that. I’m
interested in these things as I hope you are. Jesus has made
a way for us. to get to God and to be with
Him in that Trinitarian fellowship forever and ever. Read the book
of Revelation. What’s the goal of human history?
It’s for God to dwell with His people eternally. And that’s
what God has provided for us in Christ. What he gave up in
heaven to come to earth and die for our sins for, he is giving
that to us as our inheritance. We get to go and have that fellowship
also. Well, this passage also speaks
of the divinity of Jesus. Look at the last part. of verse
one. It says, in the beginning was
the word, the word was with God, and the word was God. There are Christological heresies
galore throughout the church history. There are many that
are present today. You get the Jehovah’s Witnesses
knocking on your door. You get Mormonism. You get all
these teachings, Islam, for example. Jesus was a good man, and he
was a good teacher, and that’s about it. In fact, the 2020 survey
of evangelicals conducted by Ligonier Ministries discovered,
this is a very sad discovery, 30% of evangelicals, okay, that’s
one third, 30% of evangelicals, evangelicals meaning those who
go to church and believe the good news of the gospel. That
definition is shifting a little bit, but just wrap your mind
around 30%. 30% of evangelicals in America
will say, that’s true. Jesus was a good teacher and
nothing more. And why is that true? Well, I
think it’s true probably for, well, two main reasons and we’ll
blame the church. Poor teaching and preaching and
poor hymnody. Poor preaching and teaching and
poor enmity. And maybe you could add a third
thing, poor creeds. Isn’t that Ligonier Statement
on Christology wonderful? Can you not read this Ligonier
Statement on Creology and leave saying, whatever these wackos
in that church believe, they believe Jesus is God. We confess
the mystery and wonder of God made flesh. We rejoice in our
great salvation through Jesus Christ, our Lord, with the Father
and the Holy Spirit, the Son created all things. sustains
all things, and makes all things new, was the next statement.
Truly, God. He became truly man, two natures
in one person. The Christian faith believes
a robust set of views about God. He is truly God. And because
of his incarnation, he is truly man. But the word very clearly
tells us Jesus was divine. Now, what does this mean for
you and me? This can’t just be pie in the sky, good theology.
We leave today patting ourselves on the back, Well, we had a good
sermon today. It was very theological. What
does this mean for you and your life? Well, there’s a wonderful
set of questions in our larger catechism. And these two questions
ask this, why was it necessary for Jesus to become man? We’ll
answer that in a few weeks. But for our purposes, the other
question is very important. Why was it necessary for Jesus
to be divine? Well, think of all the work that
Jesus has accomplished for you. the work of salvation, it could
not have been done by any other than God himself. And so God
the Father sent the Son into this world, the divine Son, to
accomplish the work of redemption. And yes, there are human aspects,
second Adam aspects, we’ll look at that in weeks to come. But
if Jesus were not God, guess what? You would not be saved. That’s a staggering fact, isn’t
it? So you see what happens when you begin to deny these truths. Well, there’s a fourth thing
this passage teaches us. And it teaches us that Jesus
was present at the work of creation. As if the first couple of things
haven’t already twisted your mind and maybe put some amazing
thoughts into your head, this is quite an amazing thought in
and of itself. Jesus was present at the work
of creation. Look at verse three. All things were made through
him. And then as if that isn’t clear, without him was not anything
made that was made. Friends, Jesus made the world.
He made everything in it. He made the world and everything
in it. Anything that you see that was made. I’ll get my mind
all messed up here. Jesus had his hands on it all.
Some of you are coming on Sunday nights when we’re studying the
book of Proverbs. Book of Proverbs will blow your
mind away. It says, Jesus, who is wisdom, made the world and
everything in it. We often separate out the Trinity
and say, God, the Father did this. God, the Son did that.
God, the Holy Spirit does that. And yes, those things are true.
Did the Holy Spirit die on the cross? No. But was the Holy Spirit
at work in the middle of redemption? Absolutely. You can’t separate
it all or you end up becoming a heretic, right? Gotta be careful
dividing up God. But we have Jesus at creation
doing the work of creation. One thing to think about here
that’s quite amazing, we have some kids’ books in our house.
Sally Lloyd-Jones wrote them, the Jesus Storybook Bible. But
there’s also a Christmas book by Sally Lloyd-Jones, I think
it’s called The Song of the Night or something, and it’s about
the night that Jesus was born. And the book ends very poetically. It says, there Jesus lays in
the manger, under the star that he made. Is that not a precious
truth? Does that not just bring together
the divinity and humanity of Jesus, but it reminds us that
that little baby lying in the manger, he condescended from
the riches of heaven and came to this world under the curses
of sin, under the law, and he came as not the creator, but
he came as the baby who would redeem us. And friends, if all
of this is mind bending and mind boggling, let me point out another
truth of this passage that really helps us. The little one in the
manger. who created the world and everything
in it. He made the stars and cast them into the sky, the sun
to rule the day, the moon by night, and all the fishes and
birds and molecules and all the things that we study in eighth
grade science all the way through college and whatnot. He made
all that. but he’s also going to remake
it. And so when we say Jesus as God
is the creator and Jesus as the man is redeemer, one of the things
you must have in your mind is that the one who made the world
and everything in it, he didn’t break it, we did, but he is fixing
it. And so these great truths remind
us that the one who made is also the one who fixes. And so we
can look at this year 2020 and say, what a messed up year. Well,
this tiny baby is Lord over molecules and COVIDs. I mean, he’ll be
the Lord over COVID-30 when it comes around, right? And so we
can put our trust in not only this little tiny baby, who is
redeemer, but he’s also the creator. He made everything. All things
were made through him. One last thing for us to think
about, and that is the fifth thing. It’s the self-existence
of Jesus. And we find this in verses four
and five. In him, in Jesus, in the Logos,
was life. And the life was the light of
men. The light shines in the darkness. and the darkness has not overcome
it. We had some neighbors when we
lived down in the Charlotte area, they had this little scrappy
dog and the dog’s name was Zoe. You see little girls on the soccer
field these days, running around, their name is Zoe. And Zoe is
the Greek word for life. That’s a different word for life
than bios, right? You study biology, so you understand
bios is just regular life. But Zoe, Zoe is, it’s life with
energy. It’s life to the fullest. Right? That’s what Jesus is. He is the
energy. He is the source. He is the life
giver. Think about some of the statements
that will come in John’s gospel. Jesus, in fact, gives seven I
am statements. I am the light of the world.
I am the bread of life. I am, I am, I am. Jesus is saying,
not only am I God, but without me, and what I give to you, you
would be dead. Not just spiritually dead, but
you would be physically dead. Several years ago, I went to
a preaching conference. It was down in Alabama, I think,
somewhere like that. And R.C. Sproul was one of the
speakers. And his group of 300 men singing hymns was a pretty
special thing to hear. A bunch of guys, they out-sang
the organ, they out-sang the instruments, they out-sang each
other. But we sang, And can it be that I should gain an interest
in my Savior’s blood. And then it speaks, Died he for
me, all the rest. Then there’s that refrain. And
can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me? And we sing that
hymn all the time. When we finished singing that,
R.C. Sproul got up to speak. And he said, men, you should
never, ever, ever sing that hymn again. And everybody listen,
this is R.C. Sproul. I mean, he’s going against
the Wesley brothers here. He says, God cannot die. And he said that for this very
reason, God in Christ is the life and the light. And he went
on to say with a very agitated voice, if God were dead, this
pulpit would cease to exist. This church would disintegrate,
the world and everything in it would disappear because in him,
in Christ, All things hold together. He created all things and he
sustains all things. And if God ceased to exist, you
and everything else around you would. Now he was quibbling a
little bit with the theology of the Wesley brothers, which
from time to time probably needs to be done. But we understand
that, don’t we? God cannot die. God is life. God is light. And that’s what Jesus is. Jesus
is the Logos. He’s the thing that explains
everything. And you begin to see what John
is doing for the Greeks, but also the Hebrews of his day.
There is a reason for the existence of this world. And it’s that
in the beginning, God. And that’s our starting point.
It’s the reality of everything. And so verses four and five are
very important. In Jesus was life. And the life
was the light of men. And this light is shining in
the darkness and it cannot be overcome. So think practically
about this for a few moments. This can’t just be pie in the
sky, the self-existence of Jesus. What does it mean for us? Well,
the fact that Jesus lives. means that we get to live. The
fact that Jesus is life means he animates us. When we become
Christians, he gives us life. You think about Lazarus in the
tomb. Jesus didn’t just go heal his
buddy and make him whole again. He was showing us a picture of
what he does when he comes into each of our lives. He comes to
our grave, he comes to our sepulcher, and he calls down into the darkness
where we lie dead, and he says, not just Lazarus, but each of
your names, you come forth from that grave and you live again.
So in him is life, and he gives that life, he imparts that life. But notice there’s something
else in these little two verses, verse four and five. Verse five
is very important. We live in a dark world. We live
in a sin-filled world. We live in a world that no longer
knows right and wrong and the difference. In fact, we live
in a world that says, this is wrong, but we declare it to be
right. And I dare you, especially you
Christians, to say something about it. That’s how dark this
world is. That’s how depraved this world
is. That’s how sin-filled this world is. But what does the word
tell us? The light shines in the darkness
and it cannot overcome it. And so friends, as you leave
this place this day and you flip back on your televisions, you
flip back on your news and you see an election that’s not finished,
you see a disease that’s not through spreading, you see all
the travails and woes of this dark culture we live in, you
remember this, Jesus shines brightly in it. and the darkness cannot
overcome it. So what should we think? What
should be our take-home lesson, so to speak, from this passage?
Well, simply this. Jesus is presented here to you
in an amazing way. He’s always been. He’s always
been in fellowship with the rest of the Trinity. Jesus is divine. Jesus is creator. Jesus is self-existent. Let me put it to you this way.
There is no other God like this, who is worthy to be trusted,
worthy to be worshiped, and worthy to be lived for. Pray with me. Our Lord and God, we thank you
that you put things in the scripture that boggle our minds, that blow
our minds away. But we thank you that you, by
your grace, you, by your Holy Spirit, you teach us what is
good, right, and true about your Son, the Savior, And these things
aren’t just pie in the sky, but they help us really live in this
world. Help us today as we go from this
place to continue to ponder these things, but also to put these
truths into practice as we live boldly lives of faith for you. We ask for your help, your grace,
and your blessings, and we pray it in Christ’s name, amen. We
want to edge into the Advent season, singing number 292, Let
All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.