A Cosmic Opening – John Ch1v1–13

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

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 testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.

(0:18 – 0:30)

He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

(0:31 – 0:59)

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet, to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

(1:00 – 1:35)

Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. Amen, this is God’s Word to us this morning. I was speaking to someone recently about a TV series I like, and I was recommending it to them, and I said, it starts slow, but then it gets good.

(1:36 – 2:00)

I don’t know if you’ve had that kind of experience with a film, a book, maybe an album, a music album. It’s a slow burn, but if you push through the tedious opening, then you’ll be rewarded with the good stuff. Now, that is a problem with some things, but it definitely isn’t a problem with John’s Gospel.

(2:01 – 2:30)

John, one of the four Bible accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, is brilliant all the way through, but it has a barnstorming opening. It has one of the finest beginnings in all of human literature. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

(2:31 – 2:54)

So simple, so beautiful, so deeply profound, and that’s only verse one. We’ve actually got another 17 verses of this magnificent prologue, down to verse 18, that are equally simple, beautiful, and profound. So it’s a breathtaking beginning.

(2:55 – 3:22)

It’s actually really hard to preach on it, to do justice to it, and yet as breathtaking as it is, John hasn’t written this simply to wow us. He hasn’t written this to simply be a nice bit of literature that we will admire and applaud this morning. John always writes with a life-changing goal in mind.

(3:23 – 4:11)

John’s literally writing to change your life and mine. We’ll see more about that later in this morning’s message, but before we get to that, before we think about how we are responding to this, we need to begin where John begins, and of course, John begins with Jesus. I mean, his whole Gospel’s about Jesus, and his introduction’s all about Jesus, and John wants to show us this Jesus who he calls in this opening the Word, and we’ll think later about why that is, but he calls Him the Word, and John wants to show us three things about the Word, which if we grasp them, can truly change our lives.

(4:11 – 4:21)

So here’s the first thing about the Word. Number one, he tells us that the Word is God. The Word is God.

(4:22 – 4:46)

That’s the first thing you need to know about Jesus. Now, in the coming months, we’re gonna see as we go through John, we’re gonna learn lots of distinctives of John’s Gospel. It’s a really different Gospel in some ways to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but one of the distinctives of John is that John is upfront about the deity of Jesus.

(4:47 – 5:33)

The other Gospel writers get there, but John, by contrast, starts there. The other Gospels build their way up to the conclusion that Jesus is divine, but John starts on the mountaintop, because you see, I think what John wants to show us in his Gospel is that Jesus has the capacity and the power to change people’s lives. That’s gonna be the great theme of this Gospel, that people can have life in Jesus’ name, and so to make that clear, to sort of demonstrate that from the beginning, John tells us that Jesus is divine.

(5:33 – 5:57)

This is why Jesus has the power, because he is divine. Now, I don’t know if you ever ask your Alexa questions. I decided this morning to ask my Alexa the question, who is Jesus? It really was Wikipedia’s answer, as Alexa made clear.

(5:57 – 6:20)

This is what it says on Wikipedia about Jesus, but this was the answer. Jesus, also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was a Jewish preacher and religious leader who was the central figure of Christianity. Go back home, ask your Alexa.

(6:20 – 6:43)

That’s what she will tell you. John, by contrast, says in the beginning was the Word. So much more than a preacher in the first century, the person that John calls the Word was there at the very beginning of time.

(6:46 – 7:12)

If you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings, I know some of you like Lord of the Rings. If you’re one of the people that actually likes the books as well, which I do, you’ll know there’s a character in the books called Tom Bombadil, and for some reason, he didn’t make it into the film, and yet he’s fantastic. And the thing about Tom Bombadil is, he’s this mysterious character that Frodo and his friends meet.

(7:13 – 7:26)

He is extremely old, but he looks young. And at one point, he says this. Tom was here before the rivers and trees.

(7:27 – 7:43)

Tom remembers the first acorn and the first raindrop. He was here before the kings and graves. He knew dark under the stars before the dark Lord came from the outside.

(7:44 – 8:08)

That’s what John’s telling us about Jesus. He’s telling us that he was there before the rivers and trees, that he remembers the first acorn and the first raindrop. And of course, if Jesus was there in the beginning, then Jesus must be more than a mere human being.

(8:09 – 8:26)

And John tells us that, doesn’t he? The Word was God. He says it very plainly and straightforwardly. And yet the Word who was God was somehow also with God.

(8:27 – 8:48)

So he was, and yet he was with. Now, I had to double check this this morning because I’m not great with emojis, but when I read this this morning and I was thinking about this, what came into my head, I thought, what is the name of that emoji? And it’s the exploding head emoji. You know, the one with the, you see it there.

(8:48 – 9:06)

And I think when we get to the end of verse one, that that’s the emoji we need to use. In fact, you’ll notice in verse two that John virtually repeats verse one again. He says, he was with God in the beginning as if to say, you know, you can’t get your head around it the first time, so let me just say it again.

(9:08 – 9:21)

It’s just mind-blowing. Christopher Ashe makes this great comment about these opening verses. He says, John’s gospel is going to stretch us.

(9:23 – 9:44)

God with God is at the heart of the universe. I thought that was really good. You know, often when we do evangelism, we worry about being too heavy with people who aren’t Christians and we worry about overwhelming them.

(9:45 – 10:08)

And yet look at John’s strategy. John begins his evangelistic appeal by saying, you’ll never understand what life’s about until you grasp that Jesus is God. You’ll never really get what life’s about unless you grasp that God with God is at the heart of the universe.

(10:09 – 10:34)

That there’s actually a relationship within God himself that God invites you into for eternity. The gospel according to John is a Trinitarian gospel, as we will repeatedly see throughout John. And so these are simple words, and yet they’re deep words, they’re not superficial.

(10:35 – 10:48)

I guess our world has had more than enough of the trivial. What the world needs is something deep and substantial. They need to know that the Word is God.

(10:49 – 11:03)

And then what we also need to know secondly is possible because of that first thing. And so the second thing John shows us is that the Word is life. The Word is life.

(11:03 – 11:18)

Look at verse three. Through him, that’s Jesus, the Word, all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made. Jesus is the universe’s creator.

(11:19 – 11:26)

That’s what John is saying. He states it positively. All things were made by him.

(11:27 – 11:42)

And he confirms it negatively. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Just a short walk from here is the, what was the site of the old Shawbridge Arcade.

(11:43 – 11:54)

And they’re building, you’ve probably seen this, 71 homes on it now. And they cleared the site and it seemed empty for ages. I took a picture of it when there was nothing there.

(11:54 – 12:17)

And then they’ve been gradually building it up, and it looks as if it’s almost finished. Now, if I were to ask you the question, who created that set of homes? You could say it’s the Wheatley Group, because the Wheatley Group are the people who own the site. They’re the ones who made the plans and commissioned the building.

(12:18 – 12:23)

But I checked this out. It’s actually a company called CCG. CCG are actually the builders.

(12:23 – 12:35)

They’ve come on site. And they’re the ones who did the physical building. Without them, not a single brick would be laid on another.

(12:37 – 13:09)

And John is saying, without Jesus, there would be no solar systems, no stars, no seas, no snowflakes, unless Jesus made all of them. I suspect this is the reason that Jesus is called the Word in this passage. You may have wondered, why does John keep calling Jesus the Word, the Word, the Word? It’s kind of like a nickname.

(13:12 – 13:34)

We know that in Greek culture in John’s day, there was this concept of a word or a logos in Greek. And the Greeks had this idea in their philosophy that there was this thing called the Word that was kind of like an eternal principle that underlay the universe’s existence. There was this kind of word that held everything together.

(13:35 – 13:57)

And John may be using that idea and trying to connect with his audience. Maybe he’s saying, you know, Jesus is that underlying principle that sustains everything. And yet what we mustn’t miss is that, first and foremost, this idea of the Word, it actually has biblical roots.

(13:58 – 14:43)

The origin of the Word is not Greek philosophy, but the book of Genesis. Everything else in John 1 goes back to Genesis, doesn’t it? That phrase, in the beginning, is from Genesis 1.1. Through him all things were made. Clearly Genesis 1. Light and life, verse 4, Genesis 1. It seems that everything else in this passage is Genesis 1. So what about the Word? Could the Word come from Genesis 1 as well? Is there a reference to the Word? In Genesis, well, of course, there is.

(14:44 – 15:23)

How did God create the universe? God said, and there was. 10 times over in Genesis 1, we are told that God said, and there was. The Word makes the world in Genesis 1. And so I take it that when Jesus is called the Word here, John is using this nickname to remind us that Jesus is the life-giving creator of the universe.

(15:24 – 15:34)

He’s the Word who gave life in creation. And he gave life because he is life. Look at what John says there.

(15:34 – 15:49)

In him, verse 4, was life. The reason that Jesus is able to give us life is because he has it, he is it. To use an illustration, Jesus isn’t just the cable that carries the electricity.

(15:50 – 16:08)

He’s the power source that generates it. Later in the gospel, Jesus will say, I am the resurrection and the life. The reason why you and I can receive eternal life from Jesus is because he is life itself.

(16:12 – 16:20)

It’s not like the Wizard of Oz. You know, Jesus is not like the Wizard of Oz. I know some of you have probably watched that over Christmas.

(16:22 – 16:47)

That ultimately pathetic character, you know, they’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. And he’s called that because of the wonderful things he does. The trouble is, in reality, the Wizard of Oz is a hack with nothing more than some clever machinery and a light show.

(16:49 – 17:07)

Jesus, by contrast, is truly wonderful because he is God and because he is life. And because he is these things, a third thing is also then possible. So here’s the third thing this morning that we see about Jesus.

(17:07 – 17:21)

The third thing is that the Word is light. The Word is light, verses five to nine. Now, when I used to read this passage, I was always a bit confused.

(17:21 – 17:54)

I thought, you know, what’s the connection between life and light as John just sort of slipped between words that are unrelated? But of course, what was the first thing God made in creation? What was the first thing he made in Genesis 1? You should know this after a series in Genesis. On day one, God created light. So life and light are closely linked in the Bible, just as darkness and death are closely linked in the Bible.

(17:57 – 18:16)

And the brilliance of John’s writing emerges here. One of the things we’re gonna discover in the way that John writes is that as a writer, he loves deeper meanings, and he loves double meanings. Deeper meanings, double meanings.

(18:17 – 19:13)

And so when John says in verse five, the light shines in the darkness, that’s present tense, and the darkness has not overcome it, we’re wondering, you know, is John speaking of physical light here? Is he still just speaking about creation when light shone into the darkness? Or is something deeper being said, that light shines into darkness that opposes the light? And then we read down to verse nine, skipping forward, and we find that Jesus is described as the light. As indeed the true light. So the creation light shining into darkness is just an illustration of Jesus the light.

(19:14 – 19:33)

Jesus the light entered a world of darkness when he was born in Bethlehem. He was born into a world of spiritual darkness and death’s curse. And he brought light and hope and truth.

(19:34 – 19:56)

An exposure of the truth to the world. Because that’s what light does, doesn’t it? One of the things light does is it exposes what’s in the darkness. If you have a messy room, you can kind of kid yourself, at least at night, by turning off the room light.

(19:56 – 20:20)

If you just turn all the lights off and put the room into pitch darkness, you can have the false belief, at least until tomorrow morning, that your room isn’t messy. But in the morning, when the light shines through the window, the truth about your messy room is exposed. Light reveals reality.

(20:22 – 20:40)

And Jesus is the one, when he came into the world, who revealed the reality of who we truly are, that we are sinners in need of saving. But more than that, he also brought the reality of who he is. He is the light, he is the truth.

(20:41 – 21:16)

And so Jesus is going to come and we’re gonna see this in the gospel, and he is going to show us the truth about himself and about God. And yet we’re also gonna see in this gospel that even as Jesus does that, there are others who are pointing us to his light, to witnesses as one of the big concepts in this gospel. And in verses six to eight, we meet the very first witness to Jesus, a man sent from God, John the Baptist.

(21:17 – 21:34)

We actually learn very little about John from these verses, because I don’t think John is the focus here. In fact, we’re told that, aren’t we, that John is not the light. He only points people to the light.

(21:36 – 21:48)

He’s like a courtroom witness, verses seven and eight. Notice all the courtroom words there. John is testifying to the truth about who Jesus is.

(21:50 – 22:18)

And that’s all we are to ever do in evangelism. Evangelism is not about being clever and inventing something we think will be palatable to people. It’s telling the truth about Jesus so that others might come to the verdict that Jesus is all the things that John once says he is, that he is God, he is life, and he is light.

(22:19 – 22:47)

What an astonishing picture of Jesus this is. And if we are already a believer this morning, it should fill us with a sense of fresh wonder about the Jesus that we follow and that we worship. One of the things that struck me as I studied this was thinking of the time of year and the beginning of a new year and our goals for 2025.

(22:48 – 22:59)

Wonder what sorts of things sort of make that list for you. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Whatever’s on your list says something about what matters to you. And what you think is important.

(23:01 – 23:32)

And I wondered, after having thought of my own list before coming to this again, I wondered if a fresh sense of wonder about Jesus was on that list. You know, in some ways, it is relatively easy, relatively easy, I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s relatively easy to develop a habit of Bible reading and to discipline ourselves to pray. In a sense, that’s the easier part.

(23:32 – 24:11)

We can, to some extent, do that in our own strength by being a disciplined person. But something that we truly need the Spirit of God for is to then, as we open the Word and as we come to God in prayer, not just do something mechanical, but see with the eyes of faith the reality of who Jesus is. In the Word, in prayer, and even in church this morning, so that our hearts are set on fire with devotion to Him.

(24:12 – 25:04)

That’s why, in the book of Revelation, when Jesus is addressing a number of churches who have become complacent in a number of ways, that’s why the first thing Jesus does in John’s vision is He gives the churches a vision of Himself. Because what the church needs, first and foremost, and always, is a view of Jesus that will blow our minds and capture our hearts, so that this can never just be a Sunday thing, so that it’s gonna be more than a few weeks of greater disciplines and resolutions. Maybe you’re here this morning, and you’re a Christian, and you’re a bit lukewarm today.

(25:04 – 25:35)

Why not ask God, why not ask Him this morning to give you a fresh vision of Christ that will change the way you live your life in 2025? Maybe this morning you’re here, and you’re not a Christian, though. Maybe you’re exploring the Christian faith. I want you to notice that there’s a couple of different responses as we come to the end of this message.

(25:35 – 25:56)

There’s two different responses to Jesus here, aren’t there? And it’s interesting that John highlights this. He wants to make it clear the two roads that we’re gonna see in terms of responses to Jesus in this gospel. On the one hand, there are those who reject the light.

(25:57 – 26:20)

And we see them in verses 10 to 11. Kind of like some of us will be tomorrow morning, I’m guessing, you know, when we want to lie in once again, and someone might come in the room and prompt us and turn on the light, open the curtains, annoy us. And we’ll want to keep lying in the darkness.

(26:21 – 26:36)

The light won’t be welcome. And so it was that when Jesus the light came, many disliked the light and they rejected the light. We’re gonna think about that as we come to the table.

(26:36 – 27:02)

The part of what this tells us is that the light was rejected, crucified. Stunningly, the very world that Jesus created didn’t recognise him as the creator of the world. And even those who were his own, his own folk, I take it that’s the Jewish people, did not receive their king.

(27:04 – 27:17)

The tale of John’s gospel is going to be one of the light and life being rejected by many. And yet that will not be the whole story. Thank God, praise God.

(27:20 – 28:03)

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Here is a different response, a response of faith that leads to us receiving the light and receiving the life that Jesus offers. And that’s why John’s writing this whole gospel about Jesus so that you might receive Jesus and welcome the light and receive the eternal life that he offers through his death.

(28:05 – 28:26)

On New Year’s Day, this kind of shows you how boring I am. I watched a classical concert, which also makes me feel a bit sophisticated. But it was an orchestra playing in Austria in Vienna and they were playing the music of Johann Strauss.

(28:26 – 28:49)

I think it’s the 200th anniversary of his death. And even if you weren’t a classical music fan, the grandeur of the whole thing was so impressive. The stunning music, the expensive outfits that everyone was wearing, even the stunning flower arrangements were just incredible.

(28:49 – 29:21)

The whole thing was grandeur. And unsurprisingly, there was lots of stopping after each piece and lots of people applauding and bowing and just lots of applauding at how brilliant the whole thing was, how beautiful the whole thing was, how great the whole thing was. And yet I’m sure that when those people in the fancy suits and dresses went home, I’m sure that concert did not change their life one iota, one bit.

(29:23 – 29:39)

It was brilliant, but brilliant for its own sake. Just brilliance to be admired and enjoyed. John, on the other hand, writes his gospel with a life-changing goal in mind.

(29:40 – 30:04)

He’s not aiming that you will end John 1 by saying, bravo, isn’t that wonderful thoughts about Jesus? Isn’t that a great paragraph? He wants you to come to believe and receive Jesus. And it is a straight choice. You either reject the light or you open the curtains and you let it in.

(30:06 – 30:25)

May we receive the Word this morning so that our lives will be lit up with His glory and love and so that our hearts will not be lukewarm in 2025, but aflame with devotion for Him.

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