Jesus, the Word of God

Today we’re starting a long journey. The gospel of John is 21 chapters . We will not be doing a chapter a week. Today, we’re covering the first five verses.

Several years ago, I led a Bible study in my home where we would walk verse by verse through books of the Bible, and one of the books we studied was the gospel of John. We had made it to chapter 3 when I first met Macie and she came to that Bible study. We finished John a week before we got married.

Now, some of the reason why this is going to be a long journey through John is because we’re going to take some breaks. As important as studying the life and teaching of Jesus is to our foundation as a new church, we want to continue to learn from all parts of the Bible, so we may take a month for an Advent series in December, pop back into the Old Testaments briefly later on, and allow this book to breath a little here and there over the next couple years.

But if you’re not used to this kind of teaching, then you might wonder why we’re going to take so long to study one book of the Bible. I mean, you could read all 21 chapters at your house this afternoon if you wanted to, so why are we going to go so slow?

I think the book is both simple and complex. Augustine described the gospel of John as “deep enough for an elephant to swim and shallow enough for a child not to drown.” This makes the book incredibly useful for us as a new church plant.

We have people attending Restoration who are new Christians or who are exploring Christianity either for the first time or for the first time in a long time, and you’re trying to figure out whether you believe in Jesus and what it means to follow him. This book is for you.

But also if you’re looking to grow in your faith, if you’ve been a Christian for a while and maybe you’ve struggled recently to be awestruck at the size and majesty of God and the infinite riches of his grace toward you in Jesus and all the ways he affects every sphere of your life, the gospel of John is an incredibly deep book that will disciple you well.

Yeah, you could read all 21 chapters when you get home this afternoon. And the beauty of John is that you would better understand who Jesus is and what he’s done for you in that short amount of time. You would know the invitation of the gospel to repent and believe in his work rather than your own.

But you would only know it like someone watching the movie adaptation of your favorite novel. Sure, it gets the plot across, but every reader always says the same thing: “The book has so much more in it.” I’m the guy that prefers the movies, by the way. I don’t really like reading fiction. I think it takes too long.

But I can admit there’s always more to explore with a story when you slow down long enough to really dive into it. By God’s grace, we’re going to take the time in the gospel of John to understand the life and work of Jesus clearly, but also explore it in depth as we apply it to our lives.

That’s why John, the son of Zebadee and the disciple “whom Jesus loved” wrote the book. All the way toward the end of the letter in John 20:30-31, John actually gives us the reason for it. He says,

John 20:30–31 ESV

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; ³¹ but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

So, we’re going to study through the book of John as long as the Lord keeps us here and pray that God would accomplish the purpose that we just read—that we would be led to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that our life would be shaped by him in his name.

› Would you pray that with me now?

Alright, I know I just read a section from John 20 that literally says “this is the purpose of this book”, but I don’t think that’s the most fundamental part of the John’ letter. I think it’s the passage we’re looking at today. These first five verses fit into the broader section of John 1:1-18, which is the prologue for the rest of the gospel.

Just like any good story, it sets up the book by introducing the main character. And so, over these first three weeks, we’re going to be diving into the prologue and unpacking the claims John’s making about Jesus that will frame the way we understand the rest of the life and ministry of Jesus as we get further into the book.

And the question verses 1-5 is setting out to answer is pretty simple: Who is Jesus? That’s kinda THE question, right? I mean, depending on how you answer that, the rest of John either carries no significance or eternal significance for you. Christians, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists—everyone has an opinion on who Jesus is. Some would say the historical Jesus was a good man, a good teacher. Some would say he was delusional. Others would consider him a prophet but not go so far as to call him the Son of God.

John knows there’s a lot he’s going to communicate in these 21 chapters. The book’s roughly built around 7 miracles and 7 “I am…” statements Jesus made about himself. But rather than give you a story about a man that ends with a twist: “Surprise, I’m the Messiah, and I rose from the dead”—John would rather come right out in these first verses and tell you who Jesus is and why he matters and then let the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus be seen as evidence for that claim.

But what I want to do this morning is not just look at our passage to answer “Who is Jesus?” or even “Why does he matter?” I want to make it more personal: “How does Jesus matter to you?” Because I believe the outcome of these verses can lead all of us, regardless of whether you are a Christian or not, believer or skeptic—this passage can lead all of us to think about the claims of Jesus and what that would mean for us and at least say, “I wish it were true.” “I wish it were true.”

And if that’s how we start our series in the gospel of John, then we are going to enjoy learning about each part of Jesus’ life and ministry in the coming months as we connect our real Savior to our real lives. So, how does Jesus matter to you? Based on these first 5 verses, two things: He can make sense of your life, and he can give shape to your life.

First, he can make sense of your life. Lots of things in our world are trying to make this claim. You look at your job, and your employers might expect the work you do to be like the sun everything else in your life orbits around. I mean, your job enables you to provide for your family, it gives you a level of comfort and security, it connects you to something bigger than yourself, it can give you a sense of purpose.

But do you know what your job can’t do? It can’t tell you why you exist. It can’t tell you why you matter. Not just why you matter to your company and not just why you matter for your accomplishments; but why you matter as a person. If you try to put that kind of weight on your career, then you’ll be prideful when your job’s going well (because you’ve earned your worth), you’ll be stressed when your job’s going poorly (because you have to maintain your worth), and you’ll be devastated if you lose your job (because you’ve lost your worth).

Your job can’t make sense of your life—but neither can your family. Yeah, they give you joy and a sense of fulfillment as you live for someone other than yourself. But what if you can’t have kids? What if you lose your spouse? What if your kids don’t grow up honoring you, but they end up resenting you? Or what if they just grow up, and everything’s great, but then they move away and start their own family?

Nothing that’s inconsistent can can consistently make sense of who you are and why you’re here. But if Jesus is who the Bible says he is, then he can. Let’s look in our passage at verses 1-3.

John 1:1–3 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.

Do you have any friends that when they tell you a story they always seem to want to give you way more information than you thought you needed to understand it?

John wants to tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but he doesn’t start with the birth of Jesus in a stable—he starts with the creation of the entire universe. “In the beginning…” No Jewish person would’ve been able to read that and not think back to the first words of the book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Right away, John sets the stage that this Jesus we’re about to get to know throughout the rest of this letter is different from any other person that’s ever lived—because he’s always existed. He was with God in the beginning of everything. But more than that: Jesus is God. He’s always been God.

Though he hasn’t always been Jesus. By that I mean, there was a moment in history when the Word of God was born as a baby. That was the birth of Jesus. But the Christ, the Son of God, he’s eternally existed in relationship with God because he is also fully God. Father, Son, and Spirit—one God in three persons—what we call the Trinity.

Interestingly, John refers to him here as “the Word” or “λόγος”, which he does again in verse 14 when he makes the connection explicit that who he’s referring to is Jesus. The λόγος was a well-known Greek term that philosophers used as the principle that undergirds everything in existence. But we also see the idea of “the Word of God” used in the creation narrative back in Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:1–3 ESV

¹ In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God created the heavens and the earth and everything within them through the power of his Word. We’re not given the mechanics of how it was created (because honestly the Bible isn’t concerned with that information and it’s not the purpose), but God spoke, and it came into being. And now, in the opening letters of his gospel, John tells us: that was the Christ, the Son of God who would be born as Jesus. He was in the beginning with God. He was God. And as verse 3 confirms, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

If this sounds confusing to you, that’s okay. You’re not alone. And I do want to offer a brief clarification, but I also want to say, “it’s probably a good thing if it’s a little confusing.” If an all powerful, all righteous, creator-God of the universe exists, then it would make sense that you aren’t able to understand everything about him. That as much as you get to know him and love him, he’s still bigger than you, and his thoughts are not your thoughts and his ways are not your ways as Isaiah 55:8 says. If God is greater than you, then that means he can do something about the things in your life that you don’t know what to do or how to overcome or how they might be used for your good.

But as good of a thing that it is that our God is so big that we must stand under him rather than us fully understand him—just because we’ll never reach the end of our knowledge of God doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to strive to learn more and more about who he is and what he’s done. We can’t be afraid of the deeper things.

Whether you’ve been married 50 days or 50 years, there’s still more you can learn about your spouse, and a good marriage is built on both people being committed to continuing to learn and grow in response to the other.

So, we don’t want to just throw our hands up when we come to these deep truths about God in the Bible and say, “Well, he’s bigger than me, and I’m never going to understand him, but I trust him.” No, ask questions and seek to know him better while you trust him and watch how each new insight you learn about your Creator pulls you deeper into relationship with him and helps you walk more closely with him.

So why does John call Jesus the Word of God? I’m not going to try to come up with the perfect metaphor to describe the Trinity today. But we do see this idea of “the Word of God” appearing in multiple places throughout the Old Testament, most notably when referring to how God creates, reveals himself, and delivers his people.

And that’s exactly what we see Jesus doing in the gospel as well. He creates new life within his people, he reveals who God is through his teaching and his actions, and he delivers his people from their sin. I’ve said it before: God never changes, and he has always brought life, revelation, and deliverance through his Word, the Son of God, who is the ultimate communication of God about himself. As Hebrews 1:3 says, “[Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”

Now, how does this help you make sense of your life? If Jesus is literally God, and is literally the source of every created thing, then you can be confident in where you come from and why you’re here. You’re not an accident. Sure, it took 17 years for my parents to have me. I was a “surprise”, but I wasn’t an accident. In Psalm 139, King David praises God saying,

Psalm 139:13–14 ESV

¹³ For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

Your existence was not determined casually. It was done with intentionality. Your job can’t give you that kind of meaning. Maybe you went to school for your particular field. You probably interviewed with your company at the beginning. Maybe you took a more entry-level job and have worked your way up into the position you have now. But nobody’s saying, “From my mother’s womb, I was being built for my career in marketing.”

Why don’t we say things like that? Because we know, deep down, that our jobs might be a good thing, but they can’t be an ultimate thing. But if we don’t have an “ultimate” thing to build our life around, then we still have to put that label on something for our lives to have meaning, and that’s why work or family or status or any other number of things end up trying to occupy that foundational spot in our lives that only God is able to sustain, and it leads our lives to kinds of disorder.

If Jesus is truly God, and he truly created you with care and intentionality, then you have a solid, unchanging foundation, which gives your life stability—but it also gives your life deep meaning. It answers the question, “Why am I here?”

When Macie and I first got married, we lived off of 190 in Covington. And we ended up moving toward highway 21 before we moved to Mandeville. But when we left 190, both of us agreed on the best part of that move: we got away from all the u-turns.

I don’t know what possessed the road-makers in Covington to decide that left turns are basically evil and should just be outlawed, but if we ever want to go somewhere down 190 in Covington, we know we’re going to make at least three u-turns to get there.

Of course, I still see people trying to make left turns in spots that are supposed to be u-turns, and that leads to some chaos. We might not understand why they made it that way, but if you don’t follow the roads the way they were intended, it’s not going to go well for you.

If the Word of God made you—if he knit you together in your mother’s womb with care and intentionality—then the Creator is the only one that can determine the best possible purpose for his creation. We want to think that that should be us; that we know who we are and so we’re the only ones that can determine the direction of our lives.

But we discover blind spots about ourselves every day. Just ask one of your friends to tell you something you might not know about yourself. Or look back on what you were posting on Facebook 10 years ago. We’re not as self-aware as we think we are. But there is someone who knows you better than yourself because he created you for himself. If Jesus is the Word of God who gives life to everything, then he created you with a glorious purpose that will only be realized when you walk in faith following him.

Knowing Jesus helps makes sense of your life, but he also gives shape to your life. Look with me at our passage again, now at verses 4 and 5.

John 1:4–5 ESV

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.

Because things were made through the Word, life was in the Word, which means there’s no life apart from the Word. This becomes an important theme throughout the rest of John’s gospel. Jesus describes himself as the resurrection and the life. Because of the foundation John’s laying here with Jesus as “the Word” that was from the beginning, we know that it;s through Christ that we were born to life, and it’s only through Christ that we are born again to new life.

Christ’s life is what gives life to us, which is why he gave his life fully on the cross, so we could be fully set free from our life in sin. It’s through his death and resurrection that he gives his light to mankind. As he’s going to say later in the gospel, he is the light of the world. And so, if Jesus is the source of your life and the only thing that can truly make sense of your life, then knowing him and making him known is the best possible thing that can give shape to your life.

My favorite concert I’ve ever been to was Def Leppard and Heart. I was probably the youngest person there and the only person not wearing leather. If you’re not big into 80s music and don’t know much about those bands, I could sing the first verse of Pour Some Sugar on Me right now or start doing some high leg kicks like the ladies from Heart do when they’re performing—but it wouldn’t be the same.

It might be entertaining for a different reason, but it wouldn’t be the same. If you really want to experience Def Leppard in all it’s glory with their one-armed drummer going crazy with all his pedals while he wears a British shield where his arm should be, then you need to go straight to the source and see the band for yourself.

If Jesus is the source of life, and you want to experience your life to the fullest with the most meaning and joy and satisfaction, then why are you settling for all the these good but secondary things to shape your life—like your work and your family and your hobbies—when all those things are meant to point you to the greatest good there is in life? The source of life who created you, knows you, and has a plan for you.

In Christ, those good things find even greater meaning. You don’t just work because you have to or you want to. You start to recognize that you were designed to work because God made you in his image, and he’s a worker. Adam and Eve had jobs long before sin ever entered the picture. Jesus is the source of finding deeper purpose in your work.

You love your family; you love your kids. When you love Christ, you’ll find that you have hope in all the ways you fail as a parent because it points you to the perfect faithfulness of our heavenly father. He’s now the savior of your family, so you don’t have to be.

Maybe you love hiking or fishing or spending time outdoors. In Christ, you see the diverse creativity of our God who made the mountains and oceans and waterfalls, and then set his people into that creation to enjoy it and steward it.

Knowing the source of life gives new layers of meaning and purpose and hope and joy to every aspect of our life. Jesus isn’t just our salvation. He’s our life, and growing as a Christian means increasingly understanding every aspect of who you are and what you do in light of who he is and what he’s done for you.

If you want to understand me better, look at my parents: I have the funnest traits of both of them. In the same way, you will come to understand yourself better and live more at peace with who you are (both the good and the broken) when you look to the God who created you and through Christ is able to redeem you.

And that gives us confidence because he has not and will not fail. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” One final note as we close this morning. Some older translations will make that last phrase in verse 5, “the darkness does not understand it”, which is certainly true. Darkness and light don’t mix. But I think that misses the mark. One of the easiest ways to figure out what a verse means by a certain word is to look for where the same biblical author uses that word again. And sure enough, John uses this Greek word, “katalambano” in John 12:35.

John 12:35 ESV

³⁵ So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.

Clearly, “overtake” is the right meaning there, not “understand”. You might feel like there’s a lot of darkness in your life. It’s no match for the light. In Genesis, the Word of God said, “Let there be light”, and darkness fled. In the gospel, the Word of God took on darkness again and proved that he is the light of the world. Darkness couldn’t hold him down. Death couldn’t defeat him.

If you’re not a follower of Jesus here this morning, if Christ isn’t the primary thing giving shape and direction to your life, the invitation of the gospel is to understand yourself better through your creator, be willing to acknowledge the ways you fall short of a perfect, holy God as you try to rule your own life, and instead look to him and rest in his life. Rest in what he did to pay for your sin on the cross and provide victory over sin through his resurrection.

Knowing who Jesus is and what he’s done led John to write this letter “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” And the same is going to be true for us too. As your life is shaped more by resting in who Jesus is and what he’s done for you, a natural result will be us making him known—sharing with others about the Word of God, the resurrection and the life, the light of the world: Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.