The Word in the Beginning

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Okay, here we go.

Reading from the prophet Isaiah.

9-1.

But there will be no gloom for her who is in anguish.

And the former time he brought unto contempt the land of?

And the land of?

But in the later time he has made glorious the weight of the sea,

and the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of all the nations.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwelt in the land of dark, deep darkness on them has light shown.

You have multiplied the nation.

You have increased its joy.

They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

For the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of?

The day of?

The day of?

And for the boot of the tramping warrior in the battle, Tomah, and every garment rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for the fire.

For as a child is born, to us a son is given.

And the government shall be upon his shoulder.

And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And of the increase of his government and the peace, there will be no end.

On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness,

from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The grass withers, the flowers fade.

The word of our God, and forever.

Okay, you ready for number two?

Reading from the Gospel according to John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.

And the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the 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 bear witness about the light, and all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him.

Yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive him, who believe his name, he gave the right to become children of God,

who were born not of blood, nor of will, of the flesh, nor the will of man, but God.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Praise be to you, O God.

You may be seated.

Thank you, Gail.

Good morning, Christ Church.

My name is Andrew, one of the pastors here, and I look forward to bringing God's Word to you today.

Will you join me in prayer?

Lord God, we want to give our attention to your Word, the Scriptures, but also your Word, your Son.

As we look forward to his return, would you fill us with hope and faith and love,

and would we prepare our hearts rightly in anticipation of the great hope you've set before us in this Advent season?

So be honored in the preaching of your Word, and we pray these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

You know, every single Sunday when I come up here to preach, I bring up with me the baggage of my best friend.

Many of you have heard me mention this best friend before, and he's given me permission to share about him.

But yeah, every time I come up here, I come up here with my best friend in mind,

this best friend who is no longer walking with Jesus.

Because after watching his grandmother die a slow, gruesome, and painful death from cancer,

he now finds it too hard, too hard to believe, and too hard to trust,

and too hard to hope in an all-good, all-powerful, divine author of history.

The darkness was just too dark for him to believe in any ultimate light.

And you know, growing up with him, I always just thought of him as a glass-half-empty kind of a guy.

Growing up, this was a kid who used to say things like,

Oh, I just can't wait for Jesus to come back.

Oh, I just want to get out of here. I just want to go to heaven.

And as an adult, he'll still say things like,

I never, never want to have kids.

There are just so many things that could go wrong.

And, you know, why would I want to bring more human life into this broken world filled with despair?

And you see this also come out in just the way he's chosen to live his life.

He's not living a life trying to pursue lofty ambitions,

but he's trying to live a safe life.

A life that minimizes any possible experience of pain and loss.

He lives simply and with great contentment,

just trying to enjoy what he can while he can.

And, you know, for the most part, the strategy of avoiding loss,

admittedly dependent on a ton of privilege and, you know, good fortune,

it's worked out pretty well for him.

I've actually never seen him just absolutely downcast or overcome with sorrow.

I mean, I've also never really seen him overjoyed and head over heels about anything either.

But, you know, if I'm honest, sometimes, especially recently, I envy him.

And the simplicity of his life, just avoiding the darkness.

Because sometimes the darkness is just too dark, right?

Sometimes it's just too dark.

It's really dark, isn't it?

I don't think I need to convince this particular church family today

of the depth and darkness of the darkness.

The gloom and the anguish spoken of by the prophet Isaiah in our text this morning,

they are so real, right?

They're so real.

And for those of us privileged enough to escape for a time

and to close our eyes and cover our ears

and minimize our exposure to the depths of this darkness,

it's tempting, isn't it?

For those of us who can, it's tempting to bypass the agony of Advent

and to skip ahead to distract ourselves with a commercial Christmas, right?

Stringing up hundreds, even thousands of artificial man-made Christmas lights

as if they'll overcome the darkness we're trying to avoid.

And that's one way of dealing with the darkness,

trying to ignore it, trying to forget it,

trying to minimize its devastation in our lives.

But while this strategy might work for a season or so,

it's never a sure thing.

Never actually victorious over the darkness.

Avoidance is but a poor and unreliable substitute for a lasting victory.

You know, my friend, now that he's stepped away from the faith

and from the hope of Christ, he is now inhabiting a new story.

One in which darkness is a mere and inevitable reality,

best avoided by hard work, but mostly just by luck and chance.

He's inhabiting this story in which the chief end of humanity

is to hopefully experience more artificial light

than impending darkness during one's temporary state of consciousness here on earth.

And you might say that the Advent that he is living for,

the only coming that he is preparing himself for,

is the coming of death and darkness.

Preparing for the inevitable by merely avoiding and delaying death and darkness.

But as we open up the Gospel of John today,

the good news of John, God shows us a better way.

A better way of responding to the real, deep darkness that so overwhelms us.

The prophet Isaiah, he caught a glimpse of this better Advent,

this better story we're invited to inhabit.

The prophet Isaiah caught a glimpse of it when he foretold

the dawning of a great and ultimate light

that was going to shine upon people dwelling in deep darkness.

A light to come at the arrival of a child who himself would be mighty God.

From the very first verse, verse 1, John's Gospel, it retells the story.

It retells the story of the world and invites us to inhabit God's story.

The most ancient story, a story not just of creation,

but a story of new creation.

In the beginning, it says, look there, in the beginning.

Echoing the first words of the Christian Scriptures from Genesis chapter 1, verse 1,

Genesis 1:1

the story of light overcoming darkness.

From the very beginning of the creation of the world,

when God spoke with a word over the deep darkness,

let there be light, and there was light.

Just because he said so.

Just because he said so.

And the good news of John is that we are invited into this better story

in which just as creation came about by the personal divine word of God,

so also will new creation come about by the personal divine word of God.

And that's what these opening verses of John's Gospel are getting at.

In the beginning was the word.

And the word was with God.

And the word was God.

He was with God from the beginning.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and this life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John's Gospel is given to us, a people dwelling in darkness,

to remind us that God, the creator, who overcame darkness at the creation of the world

by the mere power of his word, he has sent forth another final word of new creation

to permanently dispel all our darkness.

John's Gospel is a reminder to us about the word of God.

And the word of God alone is the hope of the world.

It's the hope of the world, and it's a sure hope.

You know, sometimes I wonder if we need a reminder in this Advent season that Advent isn't first and foremost about our longing,

but it's actually about our Messiah's coming.

I wonder if we need a reminder that while Advent longing is definitely appropriate to this season,

even more appropriate is Advent preparation.

The preparation of our hearts to receive this coming one with repentance and faith and hope and trust.

The takeaway application of Advent and the whole takeaway application of John's Gospel

is not to simply be real about the darkness and just linger in our longing.

John tells us that the main purpose of this Gospel account,

in chapter 20, verse 31, he says,

These things are written that you may believe,

that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God,

and that by believing, you may have life in His name.

The takeaway application of Advent from John is to believe.

To believe.

Even when it's hard,

and even when the darkness seems like the realest and most ultimate thing,

John's Gospel calls us not into a generic longing for some ambiguous better day,

but to faith in Jesus,

in the midst of our longing.

And so as we open up John's Gospel starting today,

we're going to see that the point of Advent is not simply to indulge our longings,

but it's to direct our longings toward our sure hope,

toward the one who came and who's coming again,

the one who made all things.

This is the Word, right?

The Word made all things.

That's who we direct our hope and our longing toward,

this Word who made all things,

and this Word who said,

behold, I am making all things new.

Write this down.

These words are trustworthy and true, he says.

It is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega,

the beginning and the end.

This is the sure hope

that Advent and John's Gospel invite us

to direct our longings toward the Word,

who was with God from the beginning,

and who is God Himself.

And my prayer is that as we look at this Word that John talks about,

that our hearts would indeed be prepared,

firm in faith, sure in hope,

longing with love to joyfully receive this Word,

who came and who's coming again.

Now I want to look at this text

because I imagine that this first line of John's Gospel

could be quite confusing, right?

This verse 1,

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

It could be confusing.

But I think that if we just slow down

and break it down

and observe a couple things,

I think this will really help us.

So first of all,

what we need to notice is that

while this language might seem strange to us,

for John's monotheistic Jewish readers,

he was making very explicit

what had always been implicit in their tradition.

He was saying,

you know your tradition, right,

that says that God is a self-expressing God

who revealed himself and created the world by his Word?

John is saying,

well, that creative Word who was with God

is also God,

and he was with God from the beginning.

What John is doing here

is he is making explicit the Trinity,

the triune nature of God,

the mysterious paradox of our Christian faith,

that God is one God,

and yet also three distinct persons,

Father, Son, and Spirit.

And what he's also doing at the same time,

he is also making an explicit claim

to his Greek readership as well.

See, the Greeks were looking for

and often debated something called the logos.

That's the Greek word for word.

They were looking for something called the logos,

this ultimate principle of reason,

this essence of rationality,

this meaning and purpose and direction

and order of all things.

And here John is saying that this logos

that the Greeks discussed and debated

was not some abstract concept like mere being,

it wasn't some principle or law

like the law of non-contradiction.

John was saying,

yes, there's an ultimate order to this world,

an ultimate reason and purpose and principle,

but it's not an impersonal principle,

it's a person.

Notice he uses the personal pronoun here,

it says,

he,

he was in the beginning,

the divine Word by whom the world was made,

the one who was with God and who was God,

he is the logos.

So this is what John is getting at

when he opens his gospel account

by introducing this concept of the Word,

the logos.

He's getting at two things,

that one,

God is triune,

one God and three persons,

and that two,

the logos is the divine and personal Word of God

revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures,

that that which is behind and holding together

all reason and meaning and purpose

and reality as we know it,

is a person,

the second person of the Trinity,

the Word who created all things.

Now, okay,

I know that was super abstract, right?

I know that was super abstract,

so let's get down to it.

Why should any of this matter to us?

What is the significance of God's triune nature

and what is the significance of this personal divine logos?

Well, actually,

a relatively newcomer to our church,

he came over to my house a couple weeks,

a couple weeks ago with Josh Lynn,

and we sat around my table

with watered-down boba and popcorn chicken,

and he actually asked me this very first question,

like,

what is the significance of the Trinity?

He said to me,

you know,

I've been investigating Christianity,

I've read the Bible from cover to cover,

and there are tons of things that resonate with me,

that God is powerful,

and that He's authoritative,

and He's the Creator,

and I love His mercy and love,

and that there's forgiveness through Jesus.

But there are some things that really don't make sense to me,

and I'm wondering how important they could really be.

I'm wondering if I really need to agree with them to have a genuine faith,

like the Trinity,

he said.

Is it really that clear,

and do I really need to believe in this Trinity that I can't make sense of?

And I really appreciated the honesty of his genuine question,

and there were a bunch of ways that I thought about answering the question,

but you know what I said?

I said,

you know,

we could open up the Scriptures to various places that indicate this doctrine of the Trinity,

and I talked about John 1,

and how the Word was God,

and the Word was with God,

right?

But I said,

or,

or we can talk about,

you know,

church history,

and how Christians have for a long time recognized this doctrine of the Trinity.

And I said,

I'm happy to chat about all these things,

but really briefly,

if I could share with you what I personally find most compelling about the Trinity,

there are two things.

So this is what I said to him,

these two things.

First,

the mysterious paradox of the Trinity,

and the way it confounds my human categories of understanding,

it actually gives me comfort,

that God is God,

and that I am not.

And that even when I can't understand him,

this is good,

and right,

and actually a confirmation of who he is,

and of who I am.

He is the creator,

and I am the creature.

And what he reveals to me,

even if I cannot wrap my finite and fallible mind around it,

I can say,

yes,

Lord,

and trust that he is good,

and faithful,

and true,

apart,

apart from what I think.

I'm so glad to have a God who doesn't need to fit in my small,

small box of understanding.

That's the first thing I said about the Trinity,

this paradox that we confess as Christians.

But secondly,

I said this,

and the other thing I love about the Trinity,

probably what I love the most about the Trinity,

is that at the heart,

at the core of who this triune God is,

is a father loving a son with his entire being,

with his entire spirit.

That before and completely independent of creation,

before and completely independent of this world,

love,

and life,

and joy,

and harmony,

have always been enjoyed,

and beheld,

and shared in God.

See,

a God who is not triune,

cannot in its essence be loving,

or caring,

or dynamic,

or personal,

in and of itself.

It would need something,

it would need someone to love,

and care for,

and to interact,

and be present with.

But the triune God of the Scriptures,

see,

he did not need creation to be a God who is dynamically loving,

and joyful,

and harmonious,

and a beauty beheld from all eternity.

The Father has always loved the Son,

in the joyful presence of the Spirit's witness.

Love and harmony have always existed,

because the triune God has always existed.

And because he is all these things in himself,

as one God in three persons,

we can know that the world was created,

out of a personal love,

joy,

peace,

kindness,

unity,

harmony,

and beauty.

Like,

these concepts aren't mere social constructs,

or superior evolutionary developments,

developments of enlightened humanity,

they're reflections,

of our triune God,

who is all these things,

in his very essence.

If you've known and enjoyed love,

it is not just because of certain neurons firing in your brain,

because of certain contexts that you're in,

it's because you're created by a God,

who is love.

Isn't that profound?

Isn't that amazing?

It's amazing to me.

Because there's no other faith like this.

Either you have polytheism with impotent,

tribal,

is it okay tonight?

Is that just like,

I got a mic.

Okay.

So this is what's distinctive about our God.

He is three,

and he is one.

There is no other God

like this guy.

No other God.

Now,

not only this,

John,

one of us understands

the humanitarian imitations of the law,

but he also wants us to understand

the lordship of the law.

Remember,

for the ancient Greeks,

the law was the rational principle

by which the world was logically ordered.

It was the most basic,

most fundamental foundation of reality

that made sense of

and directed all things.

And this may sound abstract

and irrelevant to us today,

but you see,

what the Greeks were searching for,

it's the same thing

that we are searching for today.

They were trying to make sense of the world

and of reality

by identifying an authoritative voice,

an authoritative word.

They were looking for something

or someone to tell them

their purpose

and the world's purpose,

some guiding principle to live by

that aligned with the essence of reality.

And is that not what we are doing today?

Is that not what we're after today?

A right understanding of who we are

and what we're made for

and who our neighbors are

and how we're to relate

to the rest of this world.

And haven't we,

just like these ancient Greeks,

haven't we come up

with several different kinds of answers

to this question?

Think of all the words,

think of all the different logoses

that have been offered up

to answer the question

of the meaning of life.

Right?

For the consumeristic materialists,

they live by the logos,

get money, get paid.

Right?

For the pluralistic relativists,

they live by the logos,

you do you.

The hedonists say,

YOLO,

you only live once.

The traditionalists might say,

family first.

And even those who don't think

that we can know

or identify a single logos

that makes sense of the world,

even agnostics have a word

that governs them.

They say,

who knows?

Who knows?

Or maybe if you're just like me,

a simple, selfish,

egotistical person,

the logos that you live by

is me first.

Mine.

What about me?

And my point is,

see,

if we don't use,

even if we don't use

the language of logos,

we all live by

a controlling word

that tells us what is good

and right

and true

and real.

And the question is,

as the ancient Greeks debated,

what is the true logos?

What is the logos

that makes the most sense?

Now,

I don't have time

to make that argument

and John himself

is not concerned

to make that argument

here either,

but what he does intend

to make clear

in these verses

is who he

and who the rest

of Jesus' apostles

believe the logos

to be.

For John,

the logos is none other

than the word

who was with God

and who was God,

creating the world

and giving life

to all.

this one,

the one who

John the Baptist

came and bore witness to.

The one the rest

of the gospel of John

is going to talk about

is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ

is the logos.

Now,

maybe you are here

and you're exploring

Christianity

and maybe you're,

you know,

or maybe you're just

a Christian

who struggles

with a lot of doubt

and it's frustrating

to you that

I'm not making a case

for why you should believe

what John has to say

about the logos.

But you know what?

This is actually

intentional.

I want you to look

at verse 4.

Verse 4 says,

in him was life

and this life

was the light

of men.

Do you know why

John doesn't make

an argument

for his claim

about the logos?

Do you know why

I'm not trying

to make

an argumentative case?

It's because

even those of us

who say

with the very tongue

and lips

that God created,

I'm not sure

if God exists.

Even those of us

who think to ourselves,

is God real?

With the very minds

that God gave us,

that we have lives

at all.

Every life

is actually

a light

that reveals

the truth about God

as our maker

and our sustainer.

John doesn't give us

a logical proof

of God

and I won't bother

either because

each of us

having life

from God himself,

we cannot actually

escape the light

of God.

Apostle Paul

indicates this

in Romans chapter 1

Romans 1 · chapter mention

when he says,

for what can be known

about God

is plain

because God

has shown it

for his invisible

attributes,

namely his eternal power

and divine nature

have been clearly

perceived

ever since

the creation

of the world

in the things

that have been made.

So we are without excuse

for although

we knew God,

we did not honor him

as God

or give thanks to him

but became futile

in thinking

and our foolish hearts

were darkened

claiming to be wise,

we became fools

and exchanged

the truth about God

for a lie

and worshipped

and served the creature

rather than the creator.

See, the light

has always shone upon us.

People made

in the image of God,

we all know

deep down

who we are

and what we're made for

and who our lives

belong to.

Just like Woody

from Toy Story,

Woody's cowboy boot

has always had

Andy written on it.

Just like

a Buzz Lightyear sleeve

has always had

Made in Taiwan

etched into it.

Our lives

were given to us

and they're owed

to our life giver.

He's given us

plenty of light.

But see,

the heinousness of sin

is that we've chosen

darkness instead.

We've chosen

to live by words

other than

the logos,

words other than

the word of God.

And with this

re-entrance of darkness

and sin,

because of our

rejection of God's word,

we become confused

about what is light

and what is darkness,

unable to distinguish

truth from falsehood,

right from wrong.

And that's why God

sent witnesses

like the prophets,

like John the Baptist,

to bear witness

to the light,

as it says in verses

6 to 8.

And God even sent

his own final word,

his son,

the true light,

it says in verse 9.

But verses 10 and 11,

while this world

was made by him

and he came to his own,

his own did not

recognize him.

His own did not

receive him.

Just like Buzz Lightyear

refused to acknowledge

he was made in Taiwan

and it ended

in a crash.

And this is the

insidious nature

of sin.

This is the depravity

of living by a word

other than God's word.

When we give up

on God's word,

the obvious truth

is no longer obvious.

And darkness

creeps right in

and all things,

including you and me

and our whole lives

and our very understanding,

it all gets twisted

and distorted

and put off course

from the way things

were meant to be.

And so really,

the problem of unbelief

is not a lack

of evidence.

God's light

has always shown clearly.

He has sent many

of his witnesses

to bear witness

to the light.

He even sent

his true light.

The problem is not

that God

has not revealed enough.

It's that our sinful

and darkened minds

have not rightly received

this revelation.

We have not rightly

received his word.

And this is the reason

why Advent longing

even exists at all

because of our sinful

rejection of the word.

But listen,

our text this morning

ends with good news.

See, though we've all

been infected by sin

and our minds

have been darkened

making unbelief

and doubt

and skepticism

more natural

than trusting

in God's word,

God has still

held out

his gracious promise

to us.

Verse 12,

But to all

who did receive him,

who believed

in his name,

he gave the right

to become

children of God

who were born

not of blood

nor of the will

of the flesh

nor of the will

of man

but of God.

And see,

this is the gospel.

This is the good news

that the light

shines in the darkness

and the darkness

has not overcome it.

That even

when we insisted

upon the darkness,

God insisted

on our adoption.

He has relentlessly

pursued our inclusion

and continues

and continues to

hold out

his offer

for us

to join his family.

How?

Not by insisting

that we have

the right blood lineage,

not by insisting

that we exert

our wills

to obey him

or measure up

to some man-made standard.

We join his family

by simply trusting

in his word,

trusting in his one

and only son,

the one he sent.

That's all it takes.

That's all it takes.

Just trust.

He's already taken care

of all the rest.

He's done

all the heavy lifting.

He sent his only

begotten son.

He sent his only

begotten son.

He denied the argument

that it was

no longer good

or worthwhile

to bring a child

into this world

knowing full well

all the terrible things

that could

and would happen

to his only son.

Knowing that the world's

deepest,

darkest day

was still yet to come

upon his son

hanging from a cross

at Gilgotha.

He sent him anyway.

He sent him anyway

all to pay

for our inclusion

into his family.

God drew near

to the darkness

of shame

and death

and defeat.

And he defeated it.

And he defeated it.

And this is the hope

of Advent,

Christ Church.

This is the hope

of Advent

that the coming one

is the Lord,

the Logos

of the triune God,

the one from whom

all eternity,

the one who

from all eternity

enjoyed the loving

smile of the Father

and the affirming

presence of the Spirit.

The hope of Advent

is that he is coming.

This is the kind of God

who is making

all things new.

And he's coming for us

that we might enjoy

the eternal love

and assurance

of the Father

with him forever.

Will you pray with me?

Lord, we confess

that there is no God

like you.

We are so glad

that your Son

is the Logos

and that the Logos

who is loved

from eternity

by the Father

in the presence

of the Spirit

is a Logos

of love

toward us.

He's given himself

for us.

Who's come near

the darkness

that we might be

adopted into

the family of God?

Lord, would you

open our eyes

to the great privilege

that you have offered

to us

that we might be

called children

of God

to have access

to you,

the Creator,

to be near you,

to be embraced

into your chest

as your Son

has been

from all eternity.

Open our eyes

to that great privilege

and honor

and would we not

squander this offer

but would we

joyfully prepare

our hearts

to receive

your Son

and enjoy

our Sonship

in Christ

we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.