The Word Made Flesh
For the Lord’s Day:  the 8^th of May 2004

John 1: 1-18

Introduction:  We begin with a problem and an opportunity today.  That problem: how do we present the Gospel to our generation?  By all appearances, our Churches have not been very successful for well over a generation.  Now, this problem is not ours alone, it has been very familiar down through the ages in many places and times.  Paul, himself faced this problem in Athens:  So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.  For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’  What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17: 22-23). 

Notice in this report, he started with something the Greeks understood.  He started with their particular alter to an unknown God.  In the following verses he goes on to explain who it was that the Greeks had missed in their search for truth.  In a like manner, St Patrick had used the three leaf clover in Ireland to explain the Trinity, so also had an early missionary to Germany used a cultural symbol to advantage, when a little evergreen had been substituted for the pagan oak.  Then there is the story of a Missionary in the interior of New Guinea.  After five years of futile effort to explain the Gospel, the missionary family was packing to leave.  However, they were persuaded to remain another month by their pagan hosts for a special ceremony within their religion, which has only held every seventy-five years!  It was the Harvest Child festival in their religion.  It was an event rich in tradition and full of symbols.  In the midst of that pagan festival, the Missionary found the native idea to explain within their understanding the One true Child of God:  Jesus Christ.

A word of caution here: any attempt to bring something from one culture to another is difficult and full of dangers.  Another missionary to New Guinea was faced with the problem of explaining the word lamb.  He tried to think of a common animal that the natives were familiar with.  However, the only animal the natives really knew much about was the hog.  Unfortunately, a translation using this animal wasn't quite kosher!  So, before he could proceed to explain the concept, he had to go to the great expense of importing a small flock of sheep from New Zealand. 

Development:  Even Paul ran into his own difficulties. In our passage from Acts, we see at the end of the chapter that there was grave misunderstanding.   In the next chapter we would read that Paul even left Athens to go to Corinth.  In Corinth, Paul takes a completely different approach:  And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that you faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.  (1 Corinthians 2: 1-5)

In Corinth, Paul depended not on eloquence or wisdom, but in simply setting forth the true story of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  We note that the scripture records more success in the founding of the Corinthian Church than in Athens.  This is important for us to remember.  As the old hymn goes “We’ve a story to tell to the nations.”  And whenever we are able to do so, we may hope, pray and anticipate that the Lord will use His word and witness by and through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Application:  To that precious end, let us study the story once for all given to us in the revealed word.  We begin with the first five verses of the glorious Gospel of John.  The Greek term here used for “Word” is pregnant with meaning.  It is Logos and in the mind of the Greeks – this was a word that could just as easily be applied to the only creative force within the universe: the Supreme Being who in their minds had spoken the world and all that is in it into existence!  This revealed Logos  is not an attribute of God, but is a distinct person within the triune Godhead.  The Word here is beyond time, and as Calvin puts it "was concealed in God, and who, after being obscurely outlined to the patriarchs ..., was at length more fully manifested in the flesh.”  That Word was God declares John.

Verse two reinforces the first and summarizes the statements made.  The Logos  was with and in God from the very beginning and will be after our visible universe runs down and disappears:  “He was in the beginning with God.”  What we are looking at in this glorious Gospel of John is the preface to the whole of the book.  The Apostle wants to make it absolutely certain who we are dealing with in the context of his careful report.  This man Jesus is nothing other than the very person of God revealed to mankind in the Lord’s own anointed Messiah. 

The next verse, the third celebrates the transcendence of time, place and what it means to be a person filled with the substance of God the Father.  The Greek wording here means something "came into existence".  And it isn’t the Creator God Himself, but every aspect of creation.  “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”  Of the many articles and arguments being written about Cosmology and Science today, there is really only one logical conclusion to the evidence that demands a verdict, and that “intelligent design” as it is called, is the reality long understood by all of those who know and trust the absolute power of God.

The fourth verse tells us something vital about the source of life and just how it is defined and understood.  Just as God formed the first man and then breathed into him the breath of life, in this sense Paul writes: "in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28).  Not only that, when we are saved, then that new life is breathed into us in the same sense that Adam became aware of the Lord God Almighty.

The Greek word for “comprehension” has a double meaning.  First, there is the grasping with the mind.  In this sense, those in darkness cannot understand the light of the Gospel.  That is why so many different religions flourish.  Second, there is the being grasped by force and overwhelming power.  In this sense, the light that was in Christ shall continue despite the forces of the world and man's inability to grab hold of the light by himself. 

Of course in the sense of the text here the spiritual comprehension is drawn from the very nature of the “light” that “shines in the darkness.”  And just as little children soon realize, the light switch that is used to cast off childish fears is one that overpowers the darkness.  There is no room for any foolish idea that “darkness” is switched on so that it may overpower the “light of the world.”  And yet, the worldly and the wicked who surround us have attempted to do that very deed:  and if by chance they are able to hide the Word of God, then they presume to pronounce the darkness of their sin as absolutely normal.

In Canada, the Sodomite lobby is almost totally empowered to shut down any condemnation of their lifestyle – given the intrusive use of hate-crime laws to suspend even the public reading of any scriptures that set their wicked abnormality up as something that increasingly must be confessed as ordinary, good and an optional behavior.  Our own psychological experts have proved the satanic source of their “science” by throwing in the final towel against defining any behavior as “deviant” or “abnormal

But, we must move on to the more positive and powerful work of God opening up on the stage of history.  We turn now to verses six through nine.  In verse six, the Greek literally says: "there appeared on the stage of history" a man.  This man was John.  He, like Moses, Isaiah and the rest was called by God.  He was set apart for a particular task.    All of God's ministers are supposedly called and set apart for specific service.  However, the story is told of one minister who was being called to a new Church.  The opportunity was great, the salary was larger.  As the committee waited his decision, he told his wife:  start packing while I pray over this new call!  Somehow, I don't think he was of the same caliber of John the Baptist.  John the Baptist appeared with for a great calling.  And that calling as we were reminded at Presbytery is to point beyond ourselves to the greater One whom we serve.

John pointed beyond himself, yet despite his own testimony, some clung so tightly to him that they disregarded Jesus Christ.  Three centuries later, there were still followers of John the Baptist.  Far too often, people cannot see beyond what is immediately in front of them.  Always, we must point to Jesus as the source of our life.  And further in this regard:  during the first Desert Storm a decade ago, a journalist ran across a man who claimed he and his three sons were all that remained of that sect which we thought had died out almost seventeen hundred years ago.  Truly, the greater majority of men have loved darkness more than light.

By contrast, the emphasis in verse nine is on the coming into history of Jesus Christ.  Now the phrase "every man" here may be understood in the sense of the audience listening to a speaker at a graduation exercise.  In that audience, even those who are not listening will be considered within the speaker's hearing.  Similarly, every man will one day see the Light in and through Jesus Christ, because at the end of the age, “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Our next short section in verses ten through thirteen demonstrates the great divide between the worldly and the redeemed of the Lord.  Verse ten informs us of the great tragedy of every time and age.  Even though the Good News in the Gospel is crystal clear, even though anyone should be able to understand what is written in the Bible: men and women still do not recognize God nor do very many turn humbly to Him.  This has always been so – since the dawn of time. Jesus as the scriptures carefully relate was born a Jew.  These people were God's chosen nation.  Yet, when Jesus appeared in fulfillment of the prophets, He was rejected.  Even today, you could walk into the majority of our Churches and state the Orthodox evangelical sense of the Good News and be quickly run out the front door by God's own people!  On two different occasions I was invited to preach this sermon in evangelical churches with the prospect of going for several months.  However, after one and two weeks, respectively - they had had enough doctrine which might divide and thanked me and hired someone else.  So it was even in regard to the public ministry of Christ Himself.

But, the writer exclaims, even though His own received Him not, many others did receive Him.  Ever since the Christian Church began, Christian organizations have fallen into the error of emphasizing the wisdom of man over the truth of God.  Yet, God continually reforms and renews His Church in age after age.  Today, young evangelical Christians of every denomination are hungering for the truth.  And through God's action, lives are being reborn and faith is being renewed not because any Church is ultimately successful, but only through the power and action of the Lord God Almighty.

Our last section in this text is verses fourteen to eighteen.  In Seminary, in my Greek class, we began with John's Gospel.  When we came to verse fourteen the proper rendering is: "He tented among us".  God became man in Christ and lived among us.  We as Christians have seen and known His glory.  Now “glory” means many things, but, the primary sense is of divine presence.  This divine presence, John says brings us grace (unmerited favor) and truth (revealed reality) not imagination.

Verse fifteen informs us that even though John the Baptist was just a few months older than Jesus, he understood and pointed out the eternal nature of Jesus.  John the Baptist, like all of the law and the prophets before him had come specifically to prepare the way for Jesus Christ.

The Gospel writer puts the Baptist’s witness in the proper perspective: all of the blessings continually given to us by God, and at length everlasting life: are not payments for our merits, as if they were mere wages owed to us.  No, it is the fullness of God's unmerited kindness that we find Him, and in Him the gift of everlasting life.  Moses here is seen as an advance agent for God.  Through Him came the Law for a special purpose.  And because of Paul and the Psalmist we know that the Law is to show us that we are indeed sinners.  The Law is such that no person can ever hope of fulfilling it.  Once we realize that, then we can fully appreciate the favor of God and the reality of God delivered directly to us through the coming of Jesus Christ.  Moses, who brought the revealed Law, had been given only a fleeting glimpse of God Himself.  Yet, in the fullness of time God came in the person of Jesus Christ that His generation might see and believe in Him as the very Son of God, a God who came down from heaven to speak directly to all who would believe on His name.

Application:  One final point we need to make today.  If we are to adequately communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Like Paul, we ought to be aware of the culture to which we are bringing our message.  In doing so, we must be very careful to let God's truth shine through.  Like Paul and John, we ought to simply tell the story of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  In doing so, we point the world to the one and only Lord God Almighty of this His universe. And lastly, in the sense of verse eighteen, we like all evangelists must let God act within the lives of those to whom we are sent.  "No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known.”

Now, let me be more direct in this application of our responsibility today, than I normally am.  At our last session meeting we discussed our obligation to be more active in sharing the Gospel message in our day and time.  And now that we are moving ever closer to having adequate room to invite visitors to – we will be looking at a specific plan and program to do outreach Bible Studies this fall.  Certainly, this program is only coming together slowly and more materials need to be ordered.  Some of you I have talked too personally in this regard.  And what I am hoping that we can accomplish is to revisit the methodology by which this congregation was founded with the first ten members and then apply that in one, two or three different areas.  We will need to mobilize many of our younger and newer families in this endeavor.  So – I would beg you to begin praying for an expanded ministry as we begin to organize it.  May the Lord bless the sharing of His revelation and give us boldness to speak plainly of the grace received, the mercy so bounteously poured out and the faith which comes through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

 Bernard, J.H.  International Critical Commentary: The Gospel According to St John.
Brown, Raymond E.  The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John.
Parker, T.H.L.  Calvin’s Commentaries: The Gospel According to St John.
Tasker, R.V.G.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: The Gospel According to St John.
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.
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