"Genesis in Jesus" John 1:1-4 Sunday Evening Worship Service

You can open your Bibles, if you will, to the Gospel of John, chapter one.

We come to the part of our service where we open God's word and let it speak to us.

John chapter one.

I forgot how much fun this service is.

I can't possibly let Pastor Alex have all the fun, so I will begin tonight by reading this.

In the hole, in a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

Not a nasty, dirty wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry bare sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat.

It was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.

I asked ChatGPT this afternoon what the five most famous opening lines are of novels.

That one did not make the list.

Sadly.

Number five, Call Me Ishmael.

Moby Dick, Herman Melville, of course.

Number four, Marley was dead to begin with.

There's no doubt about that.

You know what that is, correct?

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Number three, The Man in Black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

The gunslinger by Stephen King.

Number two, I will skip.

Number one.

I'll get back to it.

Number one, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

A Tale of Two Cities.

Also by Charles Dickens.

You know, that guy maybe might turn out to be an author after all.

Number two, according to ChatGPT, confirmed by Alexa, and I'm still gonna dispute it, is Genesis 1-1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

I think the downfall of Western civilization is that that lost the number one spot somehow, but you can't trust technology.

We've been going through a series on Sunday mornings called Jesus in Genesis.

We've been tracing through how the book of Genesis prepares you for your encounter of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

The book of Genesis gives you outlines that you fill in with Jesus, just little patterns that Jesus himself will follow.

For example, we talked about the seed in Genesis 3.15.

The seed in Genesis 3.15 is where the where God speaks through uh his own word to Adam and to Eve in the curse of sin and tells them that they will have a child, that there will be a seed from Eve, and the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.

Genesis 8, chapter 1 says the Savior will be uh will be a savior, the ark.

The people will be delivered from the ark in Genesis chapter 8 into freedom, their life spared from the wrath of God, and Jesus will be our Savior as well.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

Genesis 15, verse 4 says the Savior will be a son.

Genesis 15:4

God speaks to Abram and says, Your very own son shall be your heir, your very own son shall be the seed.

Last Sunday night in Genesis 22, we saw that the Savior would be a substitute, that uh Isaac was gonna offer his, or Abraham was gonna offer his own son Isaac, and God stopped the offering and declares that he himself will provide a ram.

And then this morning we saw the scepter in Genesis 49, verse 10.

Genesis 49:10

The scepter shall not depart from Judah.

The savior will be a king.

So when you take all that together, you discover the savior will be a human being.

The savior will actually save people from their sin.

The savior will be a son, a substitute, and a king.

That's the outline of Jesus.

And you heard that in the scripture reading.

The Gospels of Matthew and the Gospels of Luke drive forward from Genesis into the person of Christ, where you recognize Jesus in the New Testament because of the descriptions of him in the old.

But the Gospel of John starts very differently.

If you're open to John chapter 1, the Gospel of John doesn't go forward into Jesus, but the Gospel of John backs into it.

John 1 · chapter mention

The Gospel of John goes backwards.

The Gospel of John begins with what I would say is the most famous line in Scripture.

It's hearkening to that from Genesis 1.1.

The Gospel of John begins with, in the beginning was the Word.

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 nothing was made that was made.

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

The Gospel of John, as I mentioned, starts differently.

It doesn't start by showing you Jesus in Genesis, it starts by showing you Genesis in Jesus.

John begins by taking a line that everybody would recognize Genesis 1-1, and using it to introduce Jesus Christ.

John, in stating it this way, is telling you that Jesus, the Savior, is the Lord of the universe.

He's the one the Bible is about.

John leaves no ambiguity.

He doesn't leave you to trace out all these prophecies in the Old Testament and guess that they're fulfilled in Jesus.

His starting point is that you know who Jesus is.

You know he is the Son.

You know he is the Scepter.

You know he is the Savior.

You know he is the seed.

You know that is where John begins.

You know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that he is raised in Nazareth, that he's raised by Joseph and Mary, that he was exiled to Egypt and returns back to Israel.

You know that he walked on water, that he healed the lame, that he raised the dead, that he caused the blind to see.

You know that he exposed the religious leaders as frauds and hypocrites.

You know that at the end of his life he was betrayed by Judas, crucified by the Romans, condemned by God to death for our sin.

You know that he bore on the cross the very punishment that we deserve.

You know that as he was dying, he declared, Father, forgive them.

They don't know even what they're doing.

You know that his body was rolled into the grave, and you know that three days later the grave flung open and he resurrected from the dead, where he reigns in heaven even right now.

So John's starting point in his gospel is that you know all of that.

You know who Jesus is.

You look at his life, you know who he is, and then John takes your knowledge of him, that he is the one we celebrate on Christmas morning.

He's the one that came to earth.

John takes that knowledge and goes back to Genesis 1.1 and says that this is that person that in the beginning was Jesus.

I've called tonight's sermon Genesis in Jesus, instead of Jesus in Genesis.

I'll give you three quick headings as we move through this.

First of all, Jesus is the beginning.

Jesus is the beginning.

The book of Genesis, the Bible itself begins with in the beginning, God created the heavens, the earth.

John begins with in the beginning was the word.

The word is going to be identified here as Jesus Christ.

And so that lets you know that he was in the beginning.

In Genesis 1.1, Jesus was already there.

Genesis is called the book of Genesis in the Bible because it speaks of it's the word for beginning, for origins, for where things came from.

Genesis 1.1 says, in the beginning, but it doesn't fill that out.

In the beginning of what?

In the beginning of tonight's church service, in the beginning of the United States of America as a country, in the beginning of Western civilization.

In the beginning of what?

Well, Genesis 1.1 is in the beginning of everything.

Of everything.

If anything exists, it exists coming out of Genesis 1.1.

And John's logic and Moses' logic in writing Genesis is simply this.

Everything that exists had a beginning except for Jesus.

When everything else began, Jesus was already there.

It's a simple grammatical lesson.

Everything else started, and when it started, Jesus was already there.

Everything else was had a beginning.

When nothing was past tense, put it that way.

Genesis 1.1.

When nothing was past tense, nothing had happened before.

Nothing was present tense.

Nothing could happen.

At that moment, Jesus already was.

He was already there in the beginning.

When Genesis 1.1 says, when the earth was formless and void, when the earth was didn't exist, void means it's canceled.

It's not there.

There's nothing there.

And when the earth did not exist, Jesus was already there.

There he was.

In his monumental work on the Trinity, Augustine cites John 1:1 more than any other verse.

John 1:1

He understood, as I think we should as well tonight, that as John begins his gospel, he's claiming the very deity of the Word of God, the very deity of Jesus Christ.

If he was there before everything else was, then he himself is God.

Secondly, Jesus was in the beginning.

Secondly, Jesus is the Word.

Jesus is the Word.

In the beginning was the Word in John 1:1.

John 1:1

Before a book is written, an author might sit down and look at the computer screen, and it is blank.

Many authors say this is the hardest part of writing, is in the blank pages staring back at you.

Two things exist at that point: the author and his perfect novel in his head.

That's all.

There's no words.

It's just the author and his idea of what should be on the page.

The Greeks had a word for that.

The word is logos.

The word it comes in English just as the word.

It's the perfect idea of all that should be.

All that is.

The system or the logical structure, the fabric of the universe, one commentator says.

You know, the word word here in John 1.1, the beginning was the word.

The word word seems so diminutive, seems so small and tiny, because we are people that talk all the time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Our words generally are worthless.

Believe me, I'm a preacher.

I know this.

Our words don't mean much.

We just say things.

But God's words are very different.

God's words have authority and power.

When you go back to Genesis and you're reading in Genesis 1, God created the world not with hammers and nails.

God created the world not with an assembly line, not even with angels.

God created the world with words.

He spoke and the universe came into being.

You get to the New Testament in the Greek mind, there is this concept of Lagos or of word is how it's translated, that is just the thing that gives everything else their meanings.

I thought about how to try to explain this, and here's what I got for you.

If I say the word zebra, you all think of a zebra.

Language works because my word zebra matches the zebra you have in your head.

That zebra you have in your head, that's the Lagos zebra.

That's the perfect zebra that you have in your mind.

My language works because you picture that zebra.

And if you pictured a horse when I said zebra, language is broken because you're not thinking of the right thing.

If I say Ford Explorer, you have a Ford Explorer in your head.

If I say Jesse, you have a Jesse in your head.

And language is only as effective as that image in our minds that it connects to.

That image of what we're talking about is the Lagos.

It is the Lagos.

That's what Jesus is in John 1.1.

He's not the Lagos for just a zebra and just a Ford Explorer and just a Jesse.

He's the Lagos for all things.

All things have their existence according to him.

He is the perfection of everything that is made because it is made through him.

He gives all other things their meaning.

The very fabric of human existence, the very fabric of language and of thought exists through the person of Jesus Christ.

And he's not your word and he's not my word.

The word was with God.

God had his own word.

God had his own thoughts, and God's word and God's thoughts were Jesus Christ.

He is the wisdom of God, Proverbs 8 says.

When God created the world, there was God and there was his workmen next to him, Proverbs 8 says.

And his workmen was his wisdom.

All of the God is the author and the book in his mind of what he wanted, and Jesus is that book.

He is the perfections of God, in other words.

Before there ever was a chair or a zebra or a Ford or a Jesse, there was Jesus who gave everything else their meaning and their significance.

Understand this.

Jesus is the word for all things.

All things they're derive their meaning from him.

All things exist for him and to him.

The connection between word in John 1.1 and creator is pretty obvious, but John makes it even more obvious.

It says in verse 2, he was in the beginning with God.

In verse 3, all things were made through him.

If he predates everything and he is the word, then everything that exists has to go through him to exist.

There is no other window into creation except Jesus Christ.

If he is the word, there's no other door.

If he is the word, there's no other creator that creates a part through the word of God.

No, the only way anything can exist is through the person of Jesus Christ.

He creates all things.

That's what John means in verse 3.

All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.

He's the only way that anything, Proverbs 8.

He is the workman of God, the wisdom of God.

Now follow the logic here.

If Jesus is the genesis of all things, that means he is not a created thing.

And I I know there's children here, so I have an illustration for us.

And this is not really a children illustration as much as the philosophy 101 illustration, but philosophy 101 is kind of childish, I'll give it that.

I have two categories of things: created things and things not created.

In my one circle, the created things is everything.

Zebras, Ford Explorers, Jesse's, I can't read my writing, yes.

And all things.

Everything is created except for God.

He's the only uncreated thing.

And so, by saying Jesus creates all things, or he's before everything in the circle on the left, that means he must be in the circle on the right.

It's a simple logical deduction.

All things are either created or not created, and everything is created except for God.

Jesus created everything, that means he must be God.

Now, this is pretty simple enough to understand, but the majesty of Christmas morning, the majesty of John 1.1, is that these two circles collide.

They're separated by a couple feet on the screen, but they collide on that Christmas morning when God comes into that other circle where the God of heaven comes to earth.

Where the God of heaven comes down and becomes part of creation.

Where Jesus takes on a human nature.

A human nature is created.

Jesus takes on a created nature and comes to earth.

The uncreated Son becomes part of creation.

The highest of heaven comes to the lowest of earth.

Mary's maker becomes Mary's child.

The lofty Lord on high becomes lowly, meek, and mild.

Glory is born.

Deity begins breathing.

Very breath that he designed.

The timeless truth is now held in time.

He's the hungry bread of life, and the life has come to die.

That's what happens on Christmas morning.

The God of the universe comes to his creation.

That's why John doesn't start in the manger, but John starts in Genesis.

In fact, before Genesis.

Now all this leads to the conclusion.

If Jesus made all things, then he made you.

Then he made in verse 4 life.

Verse 4 says, In him was life.

And that life was the light of men.

Life is created.

If Jesus created all things, he created life.

Death is not created.

Death is an absence, not something.

So Jesus didn't create death, but he created life.

Sin is not a thing.

If you sin, you make yourself out to be nothing.

But righteousness is a thing.

Jesus makes righteousness, not sin.

He doesn't make death, he makes life.

He doesn't make sin, he makes righteousness.

He doesn't make darkness.

Darkness is the absence, but he makes light.

He's giving.

He doesn't take, he gives light.

He gives life.

He gives righteousness.

He forgives sin.

He shines the light into the darkness, and he makes dead things come to life.

He separates the life from death.

He separates the light from the darkness.

He forgives sin and gives light.

Light radiates like the very Son of God Himself.

God gives, light radiates, and light shines into the darkness.

Augustine was asked why he preached on John 1.1 so often.

And he said, We human beings are made blessed by God, and our hearts are blessed just brushing against John 1.1.

Because in it we see God's eternal blessedness, that God gives happiness to people through the light that he shines into the world.

In other words, light shines into darkness and light brings life.

When John begins his gospel by saying in the beginning was the word, he's not just using a rhetorical flourish and hoping you get the connection to Genesis.

No, he's saying that Jesus is the creator of all things.

And he made you, and he exists before you.

And he came to you to give you his very life.

He died for your sin.

Your sin deserves death.

He didn't make your sin, he doesn't make your death.

But he will dispense your eternal judgment for your sin.

But for those who place their faith in him, he takes the judgment off of them and puts it on himself.

And he dies in the place of sinners, bearing God's own wrath on them.

He dies as their substitute, being their savior, which he could do because he is the Son of God and the Son of Mary.

He could do because he is the scepter, he is the king of the universe, so he can declare himself guilty for your sin and punish himself for your sins so that you can live.

Just as there's no other way for anything to be made except through Jesus, there's no other way for anyone to be saved except through Jesus.

He goes to the grave bearing the penalty for your sin.

Then he rises from the grave offering new life.

Just like life was born that Christmas morning, new life can be born, spiritual life can be born in your heart anytime a person gives their life to Christ.

Anytime a person believes that Jesus died on the cross for their sin, they go from darkness to light, from death to life, from blindness to sight.

And that happens when your heart believes the gospel.

But the book doesn't end there.

It carries all the way to the gospel where you can say tonight, on Christmas Eve, 2023, God can create new life in your heart through faith in Christ.

Lord, we're thankful for the message that you are light that shines into darkness.

That you give life to those who are spiritually dead but who trust in you.

All things were created through you, but apart from you, nothing was made that has been made.

In you is indeed light, and that light shines to sinful people.

It's the hope of the world.

It's the hope of the world.

It's the song the angel sang.

It's a song that we sing tonight.

We're thankful for the life of salvation.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.