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Introduction

Each gospel writer brings out a certain distinction in their openings of the gospel. It’s like the teaser trailer to a movie, giving us a snapshot of what we’re getting into.

• Matthew focuses on the fulfillment of God’s promises made throughout scripture
• Luke focuses on the common humanity Jesus shares with even the lowest in society
• Mark show that miracles, while awe inspiring, are not the full picture to Jesus

John opens his gospel in a distinct way that sets the tone for the entire gospel. John wants us to know Jesus as the perfect expression of God’s will in human form.

The Word

John 1:1–5 ESV

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

As we read these verses, we’ve already been taught that this is all about Jesus.

• In the beginning was the word – Jesus!
• All things were made through Jesus
• Jesus has life in himself
• Jesus shines and is not overcome or understood by darkness

But John doesn’t mention Jesus’ until verse 17 – the first time we see his name or title in this gospel.

We already know the conclusion of this all, but for a first-time audience, especially a Jewish one, it might not even occur to them at this point that John is talking about a person at all! All the pronouns, the he’s and him’s, would have sounded as natural to them as us calling a ship a she or her.

There are some things here and there that let a first-time reader know we’re talking about more than actual words and shining lights – for example the word becomes flesh in verse 14.

But many of these verses, especially these opening verses, would have been perfectly acceptable to people who denied that Jesus was God. Because when they heard about the word that gives life and enlightens, they didn’t immediately think of Jesus like we do – they thought of the word of God they already had through the Old Testament.

A Word of Creation

If I asked you to finish the verse “In the beginning…”  you might say:

• “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” (John 1:1). You probably would since that’s what we’re studying.
• But you might also think “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The first of God’s words being “Let there be light!”

There’s the word of God, in the beginning with God. And it is God, his word being an expression and command of his mind. And just as John says – God’s word banishes darkness and goes on to create life and everything else we know.

A Word of Instruction

And God went beyond creating with his word, he also instructed.

We call one of the more famous portions of the law the ‘10 Commandments.’ In the original languages they were called the 10 Words

Exodus 34:28 LXX

²⁸ And Moses was there in the presence of the Lord forty days and forty nights. He did not eat food, and he did not drink water, and he wrote these words upon the tablets of the covenant, the ten words.

Whenever Israel rejected those words, God would send a new word to a prophet:

Hosea 1:1 ESV

The word of the Lord that came to Hosea…

Joel 1:1 ESV

The word of the Lord that came to Joel…

Jonah 1:1 ESV

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah…

Micah 1:1 ESV

The word of the Lord that came to Micah…

Zephaniah 1:1 ESV

The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah…

Haggai 1:1 ESV

… the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai…

Zechariah 1:1 ESV

…  the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah…

Malachi 1:1 ESV

¹ The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.

The word which, both in the New and the Old

John 1:4 ESV

⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Psalm 119:105 ESV

¹⁰⁵ Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

… Is like a light that guides us through life.

Connect

So if Jesus is the word that created everything and is the light of the world, then we ought to realize that if you don’t have Jesus you are dead and in darkness – places we really don’t want to be, places that are scary to us.

But God has sent the word to bring us out of that. Verse 5 says

John 1:5 ESV

⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

And just like he did in Genesis 1, God is going to make something good out of whatever mess our life might be.

• Empty
• Without direction
• Without purpose
• Without any clue as to the point of all this

God sent his word so that anyone who feels like nothing can be made into something new – something good.

A Rejected Word

Now we’re introduced to a second person – John

John 1:6–8 ESV

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.

• There’s John who wrote the Gospel
• This is a different John – the Baptist

Who in fact is never called the Baptist in this gospel, and doesn’t preach fire and brimstone like Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us.

In this Gospel, John’s primary purpose is to be a witness – to testify and give attention to the light that God is sending.

Light is already something that we’re naturally attracted to, but God is going to make even more obvious and send John as a witness of the light to make sure everyone is looking at it!

But we read some sad words.

John 1:9–13 ESV

⁹ The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. ¹² But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

God didn’t just send light; he sent the true light – the light that outshines every other one.

The Law of Moses was a lamp to guide our feet (Ps 119:105). It showed us the way to live life.

Yet, even as exhaustive (and exhausting) we might find it to read over 600 of those laws, thinking that God had covered every possible subject – there was an incredible amount of debate over them. Not only did we have different schools of thought.

• Pharisees
• Sadducee’s
• Zealots
• Hellenists
• and Essene’s

…but we also had plenty of Rabbi’s within those parties who argued over how to interpret and obey the Laws of Moses.

When they wrote all of those debates down, they called it the Talmud. My copy is a full 20 volumes. We try to read the bible in a year – some Orthodox Jews try to get the Talmud in seven.

My favorite one is how to leave the leftovers of your harvest for the poor. The Law said not to harvest the corners of your field so that those in need could come and have something to eat.

Well how big is a corner? One Rabbi rounds his corners, another has hard edges. One suggests it should be 1/80th of the entire field, while another insists that if you leave just a single stalk of grain in each corner you’ve done your job.

So much for a clear and guided path, right?

Which is why John wants to bring attention to the true light coming into the world. This is not some invention of man, not a perversion of God’s word, not an angler fish luring you into a trap. This is the light that shows you, without hiding anything, how to walk with God.

So why did so many of the Jews reject it? You would expect that the light of God would be as obvious as the sun rise after a long night, especially to those who were so desperate to see it. But the world, brought into existence by the true light, didn’t recognize the light.

John says in verse 5:

John 1:5 NASB20

⁵ And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.

Throughout the gospel there is the play between light and dark. And people who are in the dark are in the dark about Jesus. for example, Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel who comes to Jesus at night – and can’t grasp what Jesus is teaching.

But it’s more than just an issue of not being able to understand – Jesus’ enemies don’t want to understand.

So many of the Jews, zealous for the traditions they had received, didn’t like seeing the light showing those traditions as fraudulent. It is as John says in 3:19

John 3:19 ESV

¹⁹ And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Rather than see the truth and be transformed by it, they wanted to stick with whatever system made them feel good about themselves:

• The Pharisees loved their moral superiority and looking down on the sinners. They loved their pride and the work they had put in to be so holy.
• The Sadducee’s loved ignoring 34 out of the 39 books in the Old Testament.
• The Zealots loved being allowed to hate Rome and rebel against it
• The Essene’s loved living in their turtle shells, waiting for God to come save them while the world burned around them

And the true light comes and exposes all of that.

• It exposes our sin and inability to merit salvation
• It shows us the whole revealed will of God – even those parts that make us uncomfortable
• It shows us a way of service and sacrifice – even for our enemies
• It shows us that we are to go out into the world to save it – not run away

And it shows how to have an actual relationship with God on his terms – not the ones we invent. Anyone who does receive the light is given the authority, the right, the privilege of becoming one of God’s own children. And that is only given through the true light.

• It’s not of blood – nobody is born into it
• It’s not from the will of the flesh – nobody earns it
• And it’s not from the will of man

Just as none of us had any say in what family we were born into, we have no say in God opening up the doors to his household.

Connect

So something else John wants us to understand about Jesus is that following him is more than just turning over a new leaf in life. We’re not just getting our act together and showing up to church. It’s not even us standing up to go to him.

It’s us receiving him. He’s the one who’s done all the movement in us coming together. Us becoming his children is not an inherent right we have as his creation – it’s a privilege that he offers.

So, it’s a good thing God wants to have you in the family. And he’s gone to great lengths to reach out to us.

The Word Became Flesh

John 1:14 ESV

¹⁴ 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.

This is the verse where anyone in an ancient setting would have to put the book down for a minute.

We take the fact of God coming down in the flesh for granted. We’ve had 2,000 years for culture and society to accept that God has come in the flesh and not be weirded out too much by it.

That was not the case back then though. So many of the ancient controversies and heresies revolve around the Word becoming flesh.

• He was just a man that God adopted
• He was a man that ascended to divinity
• He was purely spiritual and only looked and acted in physical ways

Because the idea of a high and transcendent being like God coming down to hang out with us in the dirt was ludicrous to them! That God would debase himself so much for our sake.

But that’s just what God did. His word is now coming to us in a highly personal way. He’s coming in the flesh.

You remember when everything was on Zoom for a while? Down in Conway when church was via Zoom, we had a song leader, but it seems everyone is lagging at different speeds, and then I’d preach to a webcam, and we’d even all hang out as best we could for a while just to catch up with each other. And it was so great that everyone decided we could sell the building and just have virtual services.

We all hated it. You all hated it. There’s a reason Ken puts in so much effort to be here instead of listening to the live stream. There’s a difference in talking to somebody over the phone or sending an email vs being in the same room. It’s why long-distance relationships fail so often. It’s why we lose touch with people when we move towns. It’s why so many people feel disconnected despite having so many connections on social media. There’s no substitute for a face-to-face relationship.

God knows it too. So instead of just sending a word like some bureaucrat on high, he sends his word in the flesh. And this new experience of God is so much more than anything that’s come before.

As he comes, we see his glory. Just about all of our translations will say something like “the glory of the only begotten son.” Yes, such language is used to talk about an only child, and Jesus is the Son of God – but more often it refers to something that is unique. For example, Isaac, the second child of Abraham, is called the same thing in Hebrews 11:17. He’s not an only child – just one who stands out in a unique way. So we’re seeing God’s glory in a new and different way unlike anything before.

And he came down and dwelt with us. He made himself comfortable down here. If we wanted to translate that really literally, we could say he came down and pitched a tent.

It’s the same language when God dwelt in the tabernacle in Exodus 40:28-29

Exodus 40:28–29 LXX

²⁸ And the cloud enveloped the tent of testimony, and the tent was filled with the glory of the Lord. ²⁹ And Moses was unable to enter the tent of testimony because the cloud was overshadowing it, and the tent was filled with the glory of the Lord.

Here’s John telling us that if we want to be with God we have to go see Jesus. He’s not a place, he’s not a building – he’s a person.

Connect

How many of us have felt like we’ve lost touch with God at times?

• He’s distant
• He’s silent
• He’s uninterested

And he’s the one we blame for that distance. But John is telling us that God has done everything to be near us and with us.

• He came home to us – and we didn’t know him
• He came in the flesh, and we crucified him
• He came as a light, and we loved darkness more

If we feel like God isn’t dwelling among us then the first thing we need to do is look at ourselves and see if we’re the ones running away.

Grace in Place of Grace

God has come to show us his glory and this glory is full of grace and truth. And from this glory we have, according to verse 16, received grace in place of grace.

John 1:16 NIV

¹⁶ Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.

As much as we often disparage the Old Testament in favor of the New, we still ought to realize it was full of grace.

• God didn’t have to establish a covenant with Abraham. He could have let the world rot.
• He didn’t have to save Israel.
• He didn’t have to keep putting up with their constant failures.
• Instead, he established a sacrificial system where people could come near him.
• And he continually kept his promises when nobody else did.

What else is that besides grace?

But the point that John is making, is that that grace is being replaced with another one. One that gives us so much more of God.

John 1:17–18 CSB

¹⁷ for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.

The law was given through Moses – but Moses only ever saw God’s backside. Now God is giving grace and truth through Jesus (we have the name!)- who is God, who is like a son so close to be embraced by his father. He is the one who shows us what God looks like as a person.

As the word of God, he is the perfect expression of who God is.

Application

So, here’s what John wants us to know about Jesus

He’s coming to create something new in you

• If you follow Jesus things are going to be different
• If we take this word made flesh into our hearts we are going to be transformed by it

But in doing

so, he’s going to expose some uncomfortable truths about us

• When the lights come on all of us are going to find ourselves in a mess

But he’s coming full of grace and truth

• He is the word become flesh. As Hebrews tells us, he knows exactly what we’re going through. It’s nothing he hasn’t felt himself.