The Word: John Talk 2 (1:6-13)

0:01 Before then, we get into our passage for this morning. Let's just do a little quick recap on where we started last week. We are going through the Gospel of John in depth. Why are we doing that? Well, we're doing that because we believe that John's Gospel is possibly the clearest and the most complete response to that question that we raised last week. What are we to make of Jesus Christ? What am I to make of Jesus Christ? And so for those of us who are here this morning, and we have already received him, we already believe in his name, we are studying John's gospel in depth for two reasons.

0:39 First, for the building up of our faith, that we might take delight in it and enjoy it and savor it and talk about it and get excited with each other about it, that we might be fed by it and strengthened and transformed by it. And then secondly, that we might be better equipped, we might be more confident, we might be more excited then to go out into friendships and relationships and so on and scatter those seeds of hope, scatter what we are finding out and being reminded of in John's gospel with those who do not yet know Christ. And asking God that he would work in power through his word to open blind eyes and that we would be encouraging each other and praying for each other and supporting each other in those little engine rooms that I talked about last week, and home groups and other smaller groups, and so on. But as I've said, you might be here this morning, and you might still be pondering that question, what am I to make of Jesus Christ? And if that is you, then I just encourage you to listen to what's being said, to consider it for yourself, to go away and read this gospel for yourself as well. And then if you have any questions, if you want to talk to anybody, please know that the proverbial door is always open to come and ask those questions. So let's get stuck in. Last week we focused in on what John's claim was about the word.

2:06 That claim that the word, the logos, is not a principle but a person, a person who was there with God in the beginning, the agent of God's creation. That when the Old Testament scriptures talk about the word of God, they are talking about the person of the logos who has always been with God, meaning that relationship, as we talked about last week, relationship preceded creation, meaning that all of creation came into being through him, the author of that creation, and that it came out of the ultimate reality of intimate loving relationship between the God and the word, between the Father and the Son through the Spirit. The truth also articulated by John that God is love. That's the ultimate reality. And John can say that because the word was not only with God, but the word was also God himself. And John is pointing us towards that picture of God as Trinity, that three-in-one God, Father, Son, Spirit. A concept that is so difficult for us to get our minds around, although who wants to be able to worship a God that you can put in a box in your own head?

3:28 I love what Glenn Scrivener says in that 321 course about the Trinity. He says this, the truth about the Trinity is not a mass question to be solved. It is the good news that God is love and you're invited. It's a good way to think about it. And as I was reflecting on last week, I realized that there was one reference to the word in the Old Testament that I had missed. I'd admitted it, quite a significant one. And it's from Exodus. And in Exodus, we all know about the Ten Commandments.

4:01 But actually, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, The Ten Commandments are actually called the Ten Words, the Deca Logoi. And as I was going through this morning's verses, I realized that I had ten words that I wanted to share with you this morning and explain to you this morning. So we're going to, this morning, look at ten words at Deca Logoi. Now, hear me out. I'm not suggesting there's any sort of theological connection between Exodus and these words in John. that's not what I'm talking about. This is organizationally only. But we're going to look at 10 words together.

4:43 None of this Presbyterian stuff of a three-point sermon. We are Glen Abbey. We're going to do 10, and we're going to get through them, okay? So, and I'm looking at words too. I'm looking at Logoi this morning because we've been talking about the word, of course, but also because these words that are expressed here for the first time by John in the prologue, they are words that will keep on cropping up again and again throughout the gospel account i want you to think back to school days you remember whenever you went to npo that's aging some people or you went to eston's to get your your lever arch file and you had to get your file dividers and so on as well and all the other things that went with it and i want you to think about those file dividers and imagine that john in this prologue and these words that we're going to be going through this morning. He is writing each of these words on the little tab of the file divider. But as we read the rest of the gospel, we're going to see all of those words cropping up again and again.

5:45 He's going to provide content to put in there, and we're going to find out more about the richness and the depth of the meaning of those words as we go through the gospel. We're just marking those in this morning. And so the 10 words that we're going to look at, that we're going to right on those file dividers are these. We're going to look at what he has to say about the word, about the true light, and so on. And we're going to look at that in the context of these words. We're going to look at life. We're going to look at light. We're going to look at darkness and witness and what is true on truth, on what John means by the word, on the response to Jesus of his own people and what it means to receive and to believe in his name.

6:29 And then finally, what it means to be children of God. And you're going to find the depth and the richness of these words. We'll start that journey this morning, but you're only going to find them in their fullness as you read the whole gospel. And so what I want to do is really encourage you as we are working through this in depth and really slowly on Sundays, I want to encourage you to keep on reading the whole gospel for yourself. Read it, go back to the start, read it again. Look for these words, mark them, highlight them, look for what's going on there. And one way that I find really helpful to do that, I'm not a person who likes to write in my Bible. I usually use digital stuff now anyway, but I like to be able to mark things and scribble and so on.

7:15 And this little, it's a little ESV scripture journal. You can get these in lots of different places of John's gospel. And it's just got the text on one side. It's got a blank notes page on the other, which allows you to start to note down things that you're spotting and seeing and so on as you go through. So I'd encourage you to maybe think about that. Right. Let's get into our 10 point sermon then. Let's get through what we can.

7:38 Word one, in him was life. We're just going to work through the passage as we go. In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. In him, in the word was life, John claims. We talked about this last week. The single source of all life is the word. That goes for all created physical life from the dawn of creation until now. But it also goes for, and this is what John is setting up.

8:03 He's setting up the new creation spiritual life. He's leading us into that, all new creation spiritual life, that all new creation higher level eternal life comes from this source, comes from the life. And if you read the whole gospel, you'll see John is obsessed with life in the word. And that's to be found throughout the whole thing. He records amongst many other references. In chapter four, for example, when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, and he tells her that he is the living water welling up into eternal life. Or after the feeding of the 5,000, and he tells the people that he is the true bread from heaven, the bread of life. Or in chapter 10, whenever he talks about the fact that he's come to give his sheep life, and life in all abundance.

9:00 Or in chapter 11, when he's talking to Martha after the death of Lazarus, and he tells her, Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this? And then let's not forget John's purpose for writing the whole thing, that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that you might have life in his name. Do you want life, John's saying? Real life, true life, abundant life, higher level, new creation life in the present now and also into eternity. Do you want to escape death? Well, you're not going to find that in any sort of anti-aging science. You're not going to find that in any sort of Silicon Valley, tech bro, technological transhumanism.

9:56 you're only ever going to get that from the source from the word in him and nowhere else is life John then moves on and that life he says was the light of all mankind the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it God's first scripture, let there be light. And now John's setting up for us again that the word is on the move again. And this time he has invaded and he has overcome the spiritual darkness of the world. And John sets it up that the darkness is strong, but he's clear. It is no match for the light of the world. This is not a contest of equal and opposite powers.

11:01 And of course, light and darkness are prevalent symbols in the Old Testament. Darkness is associated with terror and distress and disorientation. It's associated with lostness and evil and judgment and death and separation from God. Proverbs 4 says, way of the wicked is like deep darkness. Psalm 143 says, the enemy makes me dwell in darkness. Ecclesiastes 2, the fool walks in darkness. Zephaniah 1, the day of wrath will be a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. And don't we know this darkness?

11:44 We see it. We feel it. We know it in our flesh. We know it in our hearts. When we look inside ourselves, we have to concur with Jeremiah. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? And we know this darkness too.

12:12 In our world, it's everywhere. and it's here. We feel its power. You can almost reach out and touch it and it feels like through technology, especially through our phone screens, it is now inescapably, tangibly closer than ever before. Words of darkness, images of darkness. Whether that's a 24-hour news cycle bombarding us with the darkness of mankind globally. Or whether that's just the ubiquity of pornography that even those not looking for it can't help but see it. Or whether it's social media feeds full of hate and bad and horror.

13:05 And this was really brought home to me in the last couple of weeks, how close and distant darkness can be brought. Just a couple of weeks ago, that night of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, and my elder son was with me in our living room, and he was scrolling through social media to find updates on his condition, and I'm sure as many people did, he ended up stumbling across the video of the execution. And his face when he saw that. The mixture of horror and sadness and just regret. That picture that he would just love to be able to wind the clock back a few seconds and not scroll through. And that was emblematic for me of the pervasiveness and the proximity of even distant darkness in our current age. And so the question then is, what do we do in the face of such darkness? How do we live?

14:15 Is there anywhere we can turn? And that is a question that many in an overwhelmed world at the minute are asking themselves. And John's answer is this, there is light. There is a light. John's answer is that that light is personal. It's a person. It's a someone. The light that we can draw near to and be in close relationship with, intimate relationship with.

14:39 The light who can truly guide us in and through the darkness. The light who can bring genuine comfort and peace to our hearts in the darkness. And the light who has promised he will defeat and destroy the darkness completely and he has already set that train of events in motion again it's another file divider and John is going to tell us far more about the light far more about what Jesus himself says about being the light think of the famous words in John 8 I am the light of the world whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have light of life the answer to the darkness again is found only in the word only in Jesus he is the only answer to the darkness out there and to the darkness in here John goes on there was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness. That's our next word. To testify concerning that light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light.

15:53 He came only as a witness to the light. Here in verse six, John shifts from these big theological timeless truths down into the particularity of history, the earthiness of history. There was a man called John. And here we see God's plan for the word in action in history. And it all begins with the words divinely appointed forerunner, the prophesied witness, John the Baptist. Not to be confused with John, the writer of the gospel. It is John's witness, his testimony, his voice calling in the wilderness in the words of Isaiah that prepares the way for the Lord, that makes his path straight, that gets the historical ball rolling, that announces him, if you like, onto the world stage. It starts with a man called John.

16:53 And as we make our way through this chapter, we'll see John in action as witness testifying to the light. Verse 15, John testified concerning him. Verse 19, now this was John's testimony. It says, verse 32, then John gave this testimony again. And then verse 34, I have seen and I testify that this is God's chosen one. You can see the repeat that's happening here over and over again. And if you were to read through the whole gospel, which I know you're gonna do this week now that I've asked you to. If you were to read through that and you were to take a highlighter and you were to go through the gospel and you were to look for bear witness or testify or testimony, your pages would be covered with fluorescent color because it's everywhere when you start to go looking for it because John is persistently repetitive and adamant that this is the way that God works in history to build his kingdom.

17:46 This is the way he's chosen through the witness, through the testimony of his people, testifying to who Jesus is as witnesses to the light. This was God's plan for how the word would be made known in history. And it continues to be God's plan to this day. His people bearing personal witness. It begins with John. He gets the ball rolling. And then as we look through the gospel, we'll find witnesses cropping up everywhere. And it finishes with the writer John himself in the penultimate verse of the gospel saying, this is the disciple, this is me.

18:30 And I am bearing witness about these things and who has written these things. and we know that his testimony is true. I know that my own testimony is true. I'm bearing witness to you. And we then, of course, are to carry on the torch of bearing witness and saying, this is my testimony about Jesus. Let me tell you about Jesus. It's not an optional extra of being his follower, of being his disciple.

19:04 It's right at the heart of the DNA of what it means to be a follower. Okay, speed up. Fifth word, true. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The true light. John, and a lot of people won't like this, John is audaciously exclusive about his claim. The light to which John the Baptist has been appointed to bear witness is the only true light. The word is the only true light, the only true answer to the darkness.

19:41 And there may be, then John is alluding to, all sorts of philosophies, all sorts of religions, all sorts of systems, all sorts of different types of people who claim to give light, but they are all counterfeit. They are all pretenders to the true authentic light, the complete revelation of God. They don't have the answers. They don't have the power. They don't have the light. They don't have the truth of the word who was in the beginning the true light. And this connection between light and testimony and truth is central here. Jesus is the light because he is the truth.

20:29 I am the way, the truth, and the life. What gospel is that in? Of course, it's John's. He's not simply the way to the light, but the true light himself. He's not simply the way, some sort of pathway to truth. He is the truth himself. And so living in light, walking in light is walking according to truth and Jesus is truth. And again, John will go on in his gospel to keep coming back to that theme again and again.

20:56 Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. John goes on. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. It's repeating this word world over and over again.

21:23 It's the word cosmos. And you can think of the words that derive from that in our own English language. And interestingly, John is, again, this is a key theme of his. He uses the word cosmos 78 times in his gospel compared to 18 in Matthew, 9 in Mark, and 12 in Luke. So it's important to him. this theme is important to him. And in the vast majority of the cases that he uses the cosmos in, he doesn't use it in a morally neutral way, as in the way we would use it when we talk about the whole world. We're not casting any sort of moral perspective on the world.

22:03 We're just saying as it is. But for John, it's different. The cosmos is charged with meaning about the world's fallenness, about its darkness, about its rebellion against God, its opposition to God, its collective response to him. He's saying when he uses the word cosmos, this is what the world is like. It's dark and it's full of people who love the darkness. It's tragically rebellious and resistant towards its creator, towards its author. And John is setting up then for us and the rest of this gospel that juxtaposition between the world's rejection of and hatred of God with the depth of love and mercy of God for this world bent against him love articulated in the sending into the world of the word the true light his son for God so loved the world the world bent against him the world rebelling against him that he sent his one and only son.

23:15 And we'll see that play out in the rest of the gospel. And tragically, that story will tell that it's exactly the same response from his own people. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. John is introducing us here to how the Jews, represented by the religious leaders here, repeated testimony, repeated witness that Jesus is the promised true light, the promised Messiah. They are given testimony from John the Baptist. They're given testimony from Jesus himself. They're given testimony from the scriptures.

23:53 Jesus tells them, look in here, the scriptures bear witness to me. They're given testimony from all sorts of different places. Jesus works as well, but in their hard-heartedness, they refuse to accept him. They point-blank fuse to receive him. In fact, you could give the first 12 chapters of John the subtitle, his own did not receive him. That's the plot of the narrative, his rejection by the group of people who should have been able to recognize and far easier than anybody else, but they don't. They have a long history of, in the Old Testament, of refusal to listen, of stiffening their necks, a phrase used by Isaiah, or by Jeremiah, sorry, of rejecting the word of God through every prophet he ever sent them in his mercy.

24:49 And of course, John is preempting here in this verse what's gonna happen. they're not simply going to reject him. They're going to murder the word. They're going to murder the true light. Reality John paints here then is a bleak one. The true light that offers himself as the light to all people. Unwelcome, unrecognized, rejected, hated by the world he has created.

25:22 hated even by his own set-apart people, Israel. But thankfully, that's not the whole story. There is a but, there is a yet. And that brings us to words eight and nine. Yet, to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name. Some do respond to God's revelation and ascending of the word. Some do respond to God's initiative in ascending his son by opening themselves up to receive him. What does that look like even physically to receive somebody?

26:02 It looks like opening up arms, welcoming, embracing him as the true light, taking hold of the invitation to step into relationship with him, to trust him and to believe in his name. Receiving and believing in his name are connected, To believe in his name means to believe in who he says he is. To trust what he says about himself. To trust that life and light and truth are found in him. And then to go and live that trust out. You can't live, you can't show trust just by acknowledging words. You have to show it in living. Belief is not some cold adherence to a set of principles or a set of rules.

26:57 It is a stepping into a personal relationship with Jesus as your Lord, as your life, as your light, as your truth. And this gospel account is peppered with these encounters which result in Jesus being received as Lord. It starts with John the Baptist's testimony, and then we just see it sort of spreading out from there. He says, look, the Lamb of God, and two of his disciples go, and they receive Jesus, and they follow him. And then one of them goes and tells his brother Simon, and Simon comes, and he receives Jesus, and he gets a new name, and he gets a new identity. And then they go out and they tell more. And Philip is next. And then Philip tells Nathanael.

27:42 And Nathanael has reservations initially, but then he receives and accepts him. And this is the story, encounter after encounter, of people seeing who Jesus truly is, receiving him and believing in his name. And what John is doing, he's saying, will you be next? Listen to my testimony. Step into the invitation, receive and believe in his name. and join the remnant of those who have done that before you. And that brings us to our final word, 10 and under 30 minutes. That's spectacular.

28:19 Yet to all who did receive him, to all 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. To those who receive him and believe in his name, John claims. To you who receive him and believe in his name, everything changes for you forever. It changes with your spiritual rebirth, with your adoption into the family and the fatherhood of God. As sons and daughters of the father, brothers and sisters of the son and with the implanting of God's very nature in your heart by his spirit, writing his law onto your heart he talks about. Once you were far off, sorry, now you're brought near.

29:21 Once you were alienated, now you belong. Once you were under condemnation, children of wrath, Paul puts it in that way in Ephesians. Now you are beloved sons and daughters. Once you were in darkness, Now you're called a child of light. Once you had nothing, now you are an heir of the Father, a co-heir with Christ to share fully in his inheritance. And all this privilege is your legal, irreversible, utterly secure status as a child of God.

30:01 and it is all by grace through faith. What he's saying in that last verse is it's not by flesh, it's not the normal order of things in birth. It's not by race, it's not by heritage that you become a child of God. As Jesus will tell the Jews later to be truly in the line of Abraham, they thought they were, but to be truly in the line of Abraham is not to be in his natural bloodline, but to do what Abraham did to respond to the word of God in faith. That's what makes you a true child. So 10 words, Deca Logoi. 10 words to ponder, 10 words to reflect on, 10 words to respond to,

30:51 and 10 words to explore the richness of and the rest of what John writes in the next 20 chapters that you're going to go in and look at. But let me close with this. Shortly after I graduated from university, I did a history degree, so you're not going to audit it. There's no vocation for you after that. People doing A-levels, listen carefully. But after I graduated from university, I worked for a period of time in a children's home in Belfast. And there was one girl there, when I arrived, she was 14. I think from memory, she'd been in the home since she was around nine.

31:33 And she'd been going every weekend for a couple of years to a family for sort of respite weekend foster care. She'd be in the home during the week and then she would go to this family at the weekend. And it was going great. It was a brilliant thing. and so much so that they loved her, she loved them and they basically reached out and offered and said, we would love for this to become a full-time thing and actually we would love for this to be full-time fostering that would be on the trajectory towards us adopting you. And I remember she was over the moon. She was so excited and so were they and so were we because this doesn't often happen with a 14-year-old that they get this opportunity. And we made all the preparations and she packed up all her things.

32:20 We helped her do that. And then the day came. And she point blank refused to go. Despite all the lead up, she just would not listen to anybody. And she would not leave. And it was devastating. It was heartbreaking for her. It was heartbreaking for the family.

32:47 It was heartbreaking for the staff who cared for her so deeply. And those who had been there longer, who had known her longer than I had, their assessment was that she'd become so institutionalized and so fearful of change that she couldn't bring herself to go. Here was the offer of new life. Here's the offer of new love. So much better, so much brighter, so much deeper. the offer of a new identity, the offer to be part of a family and all of the rights and privileges of being a family member, all of the rights of eventual adoption. And tragically, she refused it all for what we could see as the darkness of what she already knew.

33:42 How much more tragic then are those who reject the opportunity to welcome and receive and believe in the name of the true light and become children of the living God and enjoy all the privileges attached. And if you're here this morning and you know that's you up to now, will you reconsider? for that girl there was a limit a time limit on that with God there is a new day but it it will not last forever will you look again at Jesus will you consider his claims will you consider his invitation and will you consider the privileges that go with that if you receive him and believe in his name privileges to be a child of God. But then there's a question for those of us who are already children of God, who have already been adopted. And that question that I've wrestled with this week is this, am I enjoying the rights that are mine already?

35:03 Am I genuinely reveling in those rights, I was thinking about this girl, and imagine if she had gone, right? Imagine if she had made the decision to go, and she'd been adopted into that family, but she refused to enjoy the rights that came with the adoption. She insisted not on calling her new parents mom and dad, but on calling them Mr. and Mrs. X or whatever. She refused their money and insisted on working to support herself. She share in all that they had as hers. She spent all her time in a room claiming she was too busy with lots of other stuff. She never went down for meals or conversations or advice or help. She never spent time in the presence of these people who had offered their love to her.

35:59 Would that not almost be as tragic as the decision she made? And that for me then begs the question, as we go into the week ahead that God has for us, as his children, as his adopted children, am I, are we, going to seek to enjoy and revel in the rights that are ours, the rights that he broke into history by his word to achieve for us and give to us? are we going to come in intimacy to him as Abba Father are we going to enjoy the opportunity for intimate relationship for for conversation for his presence are we going to sit at that table with him and enjoy and experience his love or are we going to keep our distance, stay in our room, get on with our own busyness? Are we going to are we going to strive somehow?

37:10 And we fall back into this so often. Are we going to strive for some sort of acceptance from him that actually is already ours in Christ? Or are we going to strive to build an identity, build a name for ourselves outside of him that is so paltry in comparison to the name we already have, the identity we already have in him. I want you to think of the week that you have ahead of you. Think of your relationships. Think of your studies. Think of your workplace. Think of your home.

37:52 Think of all those things. How might you approach it? How might you live it out differently? Out of the reality that in Jesus, you are an adopted child of God. He wants us to enjoy not just the future blessings of being a child of God in eternity, but the present blessings that he's achieved for us now in and through the word. So let's enjoy them. And let's pray that we can do that now. Let's pray as the band come back.

38:26 Father, when we reflect on it, we miss out on so much, not because of you, but because of us. So will you open our eyes again to, first of all, to your word, to your son, and to who he is, the true light. The true light who shines in and who overcomes the darkness. May we receive him. May we keep on receiving him. And would you open our eyes to who we are as your adopted children, to the privileges, to the rights that are ours

39:29 and that cannot be taken away because they're not reliant on us, but they are reliant on your word. And your word is true and your word is unbreakable and your word can be trusted. and Father for those who are here this morning who are still asking this question what am I to make of Jesus Christ use this portion of your word to open their eyes we pray so that they might step into the invitation to receive him and believe in his name and become part of the family as adopted children, as sharers in our inheritance with Jesus. That inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. And it's in his name we ask all these things.

40:32 Amen.