ON SCREEN: John 1:1a In the beginning was the Word

Transcription

1 One of my favorite heroes is a man named E. Stanley Jones. His father was an alcoholic. When he was a kid, he started attending a Methodist church and gave his life to Christ when he was seventeen. He became a missionary to India in his twenties and lived his life sharing Christ on the Indian road. He was particularly called to the lowest castes in India, and held these roundtable discussions where people could meet Jesus without the baggage of western culture. In his day, that was a radical idea. Some have called E. Stanley Jones the greatest Christian missionary since Paul. He was a close friend of Roosevelt and Gandhi and his writings influenced Martin Luther King. One of his last publications was a book of daily devotions called The Word Became Flesh fifty-two weeks of daily devotionals on one verse John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Jones said that if he had to pick one verse out of the Bible, this would be it that in this one verse is the whole difference between our religion and all the others. In every other religion, Jones said, humans are asked to reach up to God. In Christianity alone, God reaches down to us. The Word became flesh. Jones said, When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God s idea of God, and God s idea of God is Christ. What he s really saying here is that a lot of us, when it comes to getting Jesus, are trying to make a magazine into an ipod. No wonder we get frustrated with how to live the faith. We re starting in the wrong place. For the next few weeks, leading up to Easter, I want to spend time with a few verses in John, chapter 1 that lead us right into the heart of God and to his idea of God, which is Christ. Let s read this together. (John 1:1-2) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. (John 1:14) The Word 1

2 became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. That s how John starts the story of Jesus. That s not how Matthew does it. Matthew starts with the Jewish lineage, because he is talking primarily to Jews. Mark starts with the grown-up Jesus. His story of Jesus explodes with two opening chapters packed with healings and miracles. His point is that Jesus is not your average prophet. Luke writes like a scientist. He wants his reader to have all the facts, so he tells the story without a lot of emotion. But John John takes a different route. John is a theologian-poet-evangelist who wants us to hear just how beautifully cohesive the whole picture of God is, from beginning to end. He begins with creation ON SCREEN: John 1:1a In the beginning was the Word because he wants us to get it that Jesus is not an afterthought or a right turn or another chapter in a disjointed story. Jesus is the story from beginning to end it is all about Jesus. Jesus is the Word. In Greek, the word is logos. Listen to this: In the Greek world, the Logos was like a bridge between God and the material world. Where have we heard that before? So John is saying that Jesus is the way things work, and Jesus is the bridge or the mediator between God and the world. John s Jewish audience would have connected this line with their scriptures, our Old Testament. What are the first words of the Bible? In the beginning. And then what happens? In the beginning, everything got created. How? By God speaking it. God said, and it was so. The Word is how God gets things done. And John teaches us that Word is Jesus. 2

3 So the Word is the bridge from God to us. The Word is creative and powerful. There are also three things God can not do in these six words. Jim Cymbala talks about this. First, because Jesus is the Word, he can not lie. Jesus himself said (John 14:6) - I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. You can t be both the truth and a liar. Lying is not in God s nature. So that feeling you get sometimes and I m guessing you get it because I get it sometimes that feeling that God is setting you up so he can pull the rug out from under you that feeling is not from God. His Word only creates truth, and only creates what is most true in me. In Jesus, God has given us his word. We can count on him. A second thing God can not do: God Cannot Reject. This is what E. Stanley Jones said was the unique thing about our faith. God is the one who came after us. He has reached down for us because he loves us. Before we even know him, he has accepted us. I was with some college students the other night, and just being with them, I was remembering how it was when I was their age. Back in those days especially, I lived with so much shame. I remember that when I thought about this call on my life, I would feel shame like I d ruined myself for ministry that God couldn t use people like me. Eventually, I had to come to terms with the fact that God is more interested in my future than he is in my past. He didn t reject me then, and he hasn t rejected me yet. So I shared that story with these students and afterwards I was chatting with a young woman who has Tourette s Syndrome. She talked about the kinds of things she calls herself when she gets down. She is really hard on herself but she said, I m not letting myself say those things any more because I know that s not from God but its hard. Battling shame is one of the big wars in the spiritual life. Geri Scazzero says when we don t accept God s acceptance of us, it affects all our other relationships. We end up borrowing love from them to compensate. No wonder our expectations of each other get so out of whack. 3

4 In the beginning was the Word That Word came down here for us. And now we are accepted. God can not lie. God can not reject. And God cannot disappoint. This is ultimately the reason we can trust God. It is because God is for us. He came for us. If anything, we disappoint ourselves when we hold God at arm s length. Ravi Zacharias talks about the bad news in the story of the prodigal son. He says, The story of the prodigal son does not have a happy ending. He has come back, all is well, let s have a celebration. But the older brother the one who never left he s a mess. The Father says, Everything I have is yours. But the older son doesn t take it. And Ravi says God s question for all of us in this story is, What was it that kept you away from me? Because if we re disappointed with life, it isn t because God hasn t given. It is because we have kept our distance. Jesus has been there from the beginning. Genesis 1:1-3 says - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. John places Jesus into the creation story, and then he shows us that Jesus the Word is the one with power enough to create out of nothing. John says (John 1:3-5) - Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Why should that matter to me? It tells me Jesus is powerful enough to speak a new thing into my life. That I don t have to be who I have always been. 4

5 Steve has shared before about his battles with depression. He talks about a conversation that broke through some of that pain. He laid out his deepest fears, and when he got done the guy who was listening asked him, And how do you see Jesus with you in that situation? This is what he writes about that moment. He writes: I immediately saw Jesus on the cross. Everything I feared -- everything that terrified me to the depths of my soul because there was a remote possibility that one day, by chance, it MIGHT happen to me all of that terrible nightmare which was only a dream to me it had happened to him. He had lived it. Had lived it naked and nailed to a cross. Heaped with ridicule by his mortal enemies men regarded as brilliant scholars, men of great stature in their society. Jesus, splayed out on a cross, his hands pinned to the timbers, helpless to defend himself from the tiniest housefly, let alone the leaders of the Jewish and Roman worlds. Jesus had lived it had lived it to death. Had lived it to rescue me from having to live it myself.... Steve says that as he went with that thought, I saw myself wandering through a dark and gloomy castle, winding down, down, down into the very depths of it, into its deepest, darkest dungeon, down its bleakest, blackest passageway, to its most desolate, disgusting cell. There before me is a cold, solid, slimy, iron door, rusted shut. My punishment is to open it and enter, and there I will spend a lifetime of years alone with the thing I fear most. As I push against the rusted hinges, and the heavy door groans open, and as I peer inside to be met and devoured by the most horrible demon of hell, I find instead my Lord Jesus. He has been there all along, waiting for me, waiting with light and warmth and love. Waiting to rescue me, to take me with him. To take me home. That s who Jesus is to me, Steve says. Hebrews 4:15 and 16 says about Jesus,... we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are yet was without sin. Let us then approach the 5

6 throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. This is the strength of his grace. It is that willingness of God to be there no matter what, so he can be there when we finally turn to him. Methodists call it prevenient grace. It is that strong willingness of God to bear our stories of rejection and inadequacy, of dark nights and angry days and even our own stories of sin and shame. God s grace is strong enough to bear the pain we ve caused others as well as the pain of others that we feel. God is there through all of it. God in Christ the Word Made Flesh has been there the whole time, watching, grieving the pain of it but in his strength, waiting. This is a great truth: God knows what you are made of and God knows what you ve been though. And that same God has never once given up on you, not even once. Not even you. And Jesus will be there at the end. Jesus gets the last word. As followers of Jesus, this is what we claim, that Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again. In the beginning was the Word, and when everything else fails, the Word will be there. When we walk into the Kingdom, Jesus will be there The One Who Was, Who Is and Who Is to Come! 6