The Logos, Life, & Light

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my privilege to be able to bring God's word to you.

We are really starting off a two-year journey through the Gospel of John.

And so if you didn't catch it on social media, we kind of made an announcement to the church.

We really would love to develop better a culture of being students of God's Word.

And so what we're challenging you to do is bring your Bible to church.

Some of you have it digitally and you prefer it that way, that's fine.

But also bring a pen and a notebook or a means of taking notes because we're going to go verse by verse, sometimes word by word, through this gospel.

It's one of the most theologically rich gospels.

And so there's a lot of kind of what we would call meat to chew on, right?

Big, thick substance to dive into.

And so we want to be able to be students of God's word together.

And so I would love for you guys to be there taking notes, underscoring things, highlighting things as we really seek to discover who Jesus is and what he's done for us in his finished work.

So we're going to dive headfirst, John chapter 1, verses 1 through 5.

John 1:1–5

Now, here's what we have to kind of set the scene with.

Jesus, in his life and ministry, was very well known as a phenomenal teacher, philosopher, uh, one who would make people wrestle with their kind of preconceived notions about life and its essence and its meaning.

And one of the most profound uh situations where we see Jesus doing this is actually in the gospel of Matthew.

And to understand what's happening is Jesus has his disciples around him, and in this specific instance, he turns to one of them who was named Simon, or we might better know him as Peter, and he poses a question to Peter.

He says this in Matthew chapter 16, verse 15 He said to them, But who do you say that I am?

Matthew 16:15

But who do you say that I am?

Now this is arguably the most important question that we could answer.

This on this question, the answer of it really hinges the very essence and meaning of life.

Many of us have probably wrestled with, like, what is the purpose of life?

What is the meaning of all of this?

When we look around creation, when we investigate our own mind and heart, we've probably wrestled with why am I alive and what's the purpose of this whole thing?

The answer to this question Jesus poses to Peter is going to help us realize that there is a meaning and specifically what it is.

Now, Jesus had earlier posed the question in a more broad way.

He looked at his disciples in Matthew 16 and he said, Who do they say that I am?

Right?

They said, Who do they say that I am?

So he's talking about kind of the general populace.

And his disciples answered back in this way.

He said, Some say that you're John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

You see, they were able to understand that Jesus was a good teacher, a wise philosopher, that he was moral in his character, but they were unable to actually answer the question in its truest state.

You see, the Gospel of John, in some ways, is one singular, comprehensive work to answer that question.

Who do you say that I am?

And so John's gonna set the course for us to discover through 21 chapters of investigation the answer to that single question.

Now, who is John?

That's important for us to kind of understand, right?

John is a disciple of Jesus, an apostle of the church.

And uh he was one who came to follow Jesus early on in Jesus' life and ministry.

So when we understand how that Jesus' life and ministry worked, we have to realize that he really didn't make a public uh uh scene until he was about 30 years old.

And the full scope of his public ministry, where he was traveling and teaching, performing miracles and signs, uh, was only about three and a half years.

And on the very beginning of Jesus' public ministry, we are brought into his calling of John to follow him as one of his disciples.

We see this in Matthew chapter 4, 18 through 22.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

It reads this way While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, we kind of just mentioned him earlier, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.

Immediately they left the boat and their follower and followed him.

So here's kind of what we want to help kind of clarify what's going on.

Uh there's the Sea of Galilee, and there's a lot of uh merchants there fishing and really trying to uh make a living for themselves.

Typically, if you did a trade like this in ancient Jerusalem in the Jewish culture, that meant you probably weren't fit or cut out to be a Pharisee.

If in today's culture, everybody's trying to get their kids to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, right?

Back then it was like you're gonna be a Pharisee or you're gonna be a religious leader, a scribe, or a lawyer, or some sense.

And so if you were taking on your father's trade, it probably meant that you really didn't have what it took.

You didn't have the chops to be able to cut it in that higher echelon of society.

So we understand that James and John were actually kind of apprenticing with their father in hopes that they would take on the family business.

Simon and Andrew, they're there in the same setting, fishermen, uneducated, and they're just trying to really make a living.

Uh, and we see that John's brother is a guy named James.

Now, he's not to be confused with James, Jesus' brother.

He was James the Less.

Uh John's brother was known as James the Great.

And so uh Jesus' brother was one of the pastors of the church in Jerusalem.

Uh James, John's brother, was not.

So, but they were both the sons of this man named Zebedee, who was a fisherman.

And when Jesus calls John, we know that he was about the age of 30.

So really, John and Jesus are right around the same age as Jesus begins his public ministry and calls John to be a disciple and follow after him.

So if you're around 30 years old, you can kind of get a sense of like their mature, well, John's maturity, John's like experience in life, right?

Some of that.

And it leads us to see a picture of this kind of younger, overly zealous, overly passionate, maybe hot-headed younger guy.

We actually get a picture of this, both James and John, who were nicknamed the Sons of Thunder, uh, from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 9.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

So here's what happened: Jesus is traveling, he enters into a Samaritan town, and he is not received there.

Meaning that they didn't treat him with hospitality, they didn't welcome him there.

And hospitality was a big thing in uh Jewish culture because they saw that as something that was the revelation of who God was, a hospitable God, and what he called his people to be, hospitable people.

When we actually look at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God's judgment came upon them because they were inhospitable.

It actually had nothing to do with what we think of their homosexual tendencies, but it was because that they didn't welcome people.

In fact, the way they didn't welcome people was very evident in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

It was very public and very crass.

That's how they showed you you're not welcome here.

And so God did what?

God called down fire, right?

And he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah.

They turned into pillars to all that, right?

So what does James and John do when Jesus enters into a Samaritan village and he's unwelcome?

They say this.

Luke 9, 54.

And when his disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

There's a part of me that like loves John for this, because just the dude thought he could do that.

Like, do you wake up and think, oh yeah, you know, like if somebody really disrespected someone I dearly love, like I might want to fight them.

I might want to, right?

I might want to approach them and fight them.

I'm not gonna be like, yo, hold up.

I'm gonna call fire from heaven and consume these dudes.

And she's like, whoa, John, whoa, whoa, buddy, whoa.

Uh so there's a part of me that really likes him uh for that, but then there's a part of us that has to understand, like, this overly zealous younger disciple of Jesus.

But when we engage with John in this gospel, he's actually 80 years old.

He's right around 80 years old.

So what do we engage with here?

We engage with a matured, weathered, tried man who has followed Jesus for over 50 years at this point in time.

And he's writing this letter from a city called Ephesus.

And he has fled to Ephesus because he's trying to avoid the persecution that he faces for being a follower of Jesus throughout the Roman Empire.

John has seen many of his friends and family members suffer at the hands of this Roman Empire for naming and living for the name of Jesus, fed to wild beasts in the middle of Colosseums, spiked on as lanterns in the midst of Nero's garden, to be beheaded and crucified and stripped of their very flesh.

This is what John has seen his loved people suffer because they claim the name of Jesus.

And so we can see kind of a tired saint, a man who has matured greatly in his love for the church, whose heart drove him to write 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, as a father would to his children.

We see this John now pin this gospel.

John was also the author of four other books.

So not only did he write the Gospel of John in the New Testament, but he also wrote 1, 2nd, and 3 John, and he wrote the book of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

As so John's a critical, central figure in our understanding of Jesus and his life and ministry.

Now we're gonna dive into the text.

As we come to the beginning of this gospel, we engage with what's called the prologue.

So if you think about the way that people would write, and some people write this way today, uh they actually begin their work with their kind of thesis statement.

Here is what we want to be able to communicate in this writing, and then from there they fill in all the content that they need to to be able to prove what they put in the prologue.

It kind of sets the table for us to come and feast on what the author intended for us to.

And so the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John is his prologue, and we're gonna be able to work through just verses one through five this morning.

In this prologue, John is using it to serve as the introduction of his thesis statement.

And it is this that he would answer the question Jesus posed to Peter.

Who do you say that I am?

In effect, this gospel works as a lens that is being turned and focused to be able to see what is in front of it, the object in front of it, most clearly.

I don't know if any of you are uh uh dabble in photography or video or anything of that nature, or you've just seen like how a camera works.

You guys seen how we're in that age, right?

You've seen that.

Uh so there's often times where the subject matter is really blurry, and we now have to focus in to be able to see it clearly.

That's how this gospel's gonna work for us in its entirety.

So let's look and see Jesus the way that John desires for us to.

Verses one through two as we enter into this prologue is summarized this way.

Before there was, there was the word.

Before there was, there was the word.

John starts off with a little bit of a borrowed language.

He says, in the beginning was the word.

And if you have some familiarity with the scriptures, you might recognize that in the beginning statement.

It is borrowed language from the Genesis account of creation.

So if we were to go all the way back to the very beginning of our Bible, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, we're gonna read those same three words.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning.

Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, as we look at this story of creation, what we see is that God created all that is in a matter of about six days.

And he spoke all that is into existence: light and darkness, the earth and the waters, the beasts of the field and air and all that is in it, God spoke into existence.

On the sixth day of creation, God makes man.

And in that we see for the first time God being intimate with his creation.

It's that he gets down in the dust of the earth and he shapes man or the Adam.

And in that process, he breathes life into the nostrils of this mound of dirt, and from it the Adam arises.

And he says, Mankind, Adam, which is what that means, mankind, you shall have dominion over all this creation.

And your job is to cause it to flourish.

You have stewardship and dominion over all that I created.

But God realized that he was insufficient in himself to accomplish the mission that had been handed to him by his maker.

So he said, I'll make a helper suitable for you.

So he puts the Adam to sleep, he pulls a rib out of his side, and he makes Eve.

And for the first time in the account of creation, we see the existence of gender, the Esh and the Esha, the male and the female.

It is when mankind has separated, do we get man and woman?

And Genesis tells us that they were made in the image of God.

In the image he created them.

In his own image, he created them, male and female.

And she was to be the helper to the man to be able to accomplish the mission that God had given to them, to see the garden flourish and stretch beyond the bounds of its borders.

But then something happened.

God had told them, You shall not eat of this tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it.

You can eat of all of the other fruit of the garden.

All that is in it is yours, but this one tree, don't eat from it.

The serpent comes into the garden, the serpent being the devil himself, and he begins to build doubt into the heart of Adam and Eve.

And he poses a question to Eve.

And what he's trying to get her to do is disbelieve that God would come through on his promises.

And so he says, Did God really say that if you eat this fruit, you will die?

The woman, as the account goes, saw that the fruit was good for eating, and so she took of it and ate.

But there's something critical we have to understand about the story.

It says that she turned to her husband who was with her, and he ate also.

So Adam was there next to Eve when she ate the fruit, and they discovered something.

For the first time their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked and ashamed.

And what's the first thing they do?

The first thing they do is in their own efforts and strivings try to cover themselves.

You see, that would be actually the story of mankind.

That in our fallen state, we would always scrape and claw to try and cover ourselves by our own works of righteousness.

So they sow these fig leaves together and they cover themselves.

But God said that clothing, that covering is actually insufficient.

And what does God do?

He comes in and he sacrifices an animal, and from its skin he clothes Adam and Eve.

And he separates the animal into two pieces and calls them to walk between it.

He makes a promise with them before he casts them out of the garden.

But as God is dealing with Adam and Eve, he does something spectacular.

He gives us the gospel.

In Genesis 3:15, we come across something called the Proto-Evangelion, Latin for the first gospel.

Genesis 3:15

The first person to ever actually proclaim the gospel was God himself.

And here's what he does as he's dealing with Adam and Eve and the serpent, he looks at the serpent and says, There will be a seed that comes from this woman.

You will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head.

And so God becomes the first proclaimer of the gospel itself.

And in that Genesis 3:15, in that proto-evangelion, what we see is not creation, but the promise of new creation.

Genesis 3:15

And that's where John wants us to set our gaze, is upon the new creation that we see in the finished work of Jesus.

John's taking us back though, even before the events of creation to the place where time just was or wasn't yet.

There was not time here.

When John is writing beginning, he is not necessarily speaking to a point in time.

He's speaking from before time even existed.

And he says, there in the in the presence of eternity was the word.

The Greek word there is Lagos, the Word.

And the Lagos is extremely important, especially to John's readers.

You see, John would expect that both Jews and Greeks would be approaching this gospel account and having to wrestle with, answering the question, who do you say that I am?

And both Jewish culture and Greek culture had a very uh developed understanding of this thing called the Lagos.

For the Jewish people, it was the wisdom and law of God.

The wisdom and law of God.

So if we think about God giving us his law, the Jews saw that as twofold.

When God gave us his law, it was God revealing himself to his people.

So if you look at the Ten Commandments, the the heart of the Ten Commandments is not a set of rules for you to follow, it's a disclosure of who God is to us as his people.

But they also saw the law as the source of life.

It was the very essence or source where they would discover life.

If they were able to be obedient to his law and they were able to live in such a way that they were to know God through it, then they would actually have obtained life.

Now the Greeks saw it a different way.

The Greeks had a very high value for logic and reason.

And so their philosophers, their debaters of the age, would constantly try to understand and communicate what is the meaning of life.

So if the Jews saw the Lagos as the source of life, the Greeks saw the Lagos as the meaning of life.

And it is in that revelation of this Lagos that they would be able to discover the essence and purpose of life itself.

Now, both Jews and Greeks saw the Lagos as something divine, something transcendent, something that existed before themselves.

Their pursuit was to discover it, not create it.

But in that understanding, they missed the fullness of what the Logos truly was.

And to understand that, we have to dive deeper into what John is saying because he's setting up anyone who would be reading this gospel to be struck with the remainder of this opening statement.

Because he uses two qualifiers to begin the process of completing our understanding about this Logos, this word.

And the first qualifying statement he makes is this and the word was with God.

Now that is critically important for us to understand.

Because here's what he's saying the word is distinct and distinguishable from God.

The word is distinct and distinguishable from God.

So the word was with God.

But he's also communicating something deeper.

And that word with, it literally means the word was toward God.

And what he's trying to communicate is an intimacy.

It really communicates almost as if two persons were perpetually running toward one another for all eternity.

He's saying the intimacy of God and this word is so great that they are actually running toward one another perpetually.

God is, the word was with God.

This divine towardness leads us into a realization, though, that the word has personhood.

The word has person.

So when John's saying the word was with God, what he's starting to help us understand is not that the word was something, but it was someone who had intimacy with God the Father.

And they were going toward one another in relationship.

And so the adjusting of the lens is helping us to see more clearly.

The word, the Lagos, always was, and he always was in intimate relationship with God.

But there's more that John wants us to see.

He doesn't just leave it there.

He says this the word was God.

Now, this is really John's mic drop statement.

He's not just saying that the Lagos existed with God.

He is saying that the Lagos, the Word, was God.

The Word was not simply divine, but he was God Himself.

But he wasn't God alone.

This is important for us to try and pause and work through.

The Word was God Himself, but He was not God alone.

The fullness of the Godhead did not reside in the Word, but the Word makes fully the Godhead.

Here's what we mean.

We are Trinitarian in our theology, meaning that we believe in one God that exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.

One God that exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.

None of them alone make fully who God is, yet all of them are fully God.

And so we need to try and work it this way.

God is one, but distinct in his persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.

The Word, the Logos, the Son is eternal and uncreated, for He was in the beginning.

The Word is distinct in person, but divinely intimate with God.

The Word is God.

What God is, the Word is also.

There's a famous pastor and theologian.

He was also the president of Westminster Theological Seminary.

His name's Edmund Clowney.

I like the way that he kind of summarizes this thought.

The word was with God, God's eternal fellow.

The word was God, God's own self.

And so John, he is really focusing us in on who was this word.

And in verse 2, he kind of really brings it home for us because in the first time he's going to personify the word.

He's going to bring personhood into our understanding of it.

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

What, or better yet, who is this Lagos?

This essence and purpose of life, John finally sets the lens in its most prime position.

The word, the Lagos is Jesus.

John intends for his readers to now view the whole of this gospel from this revealed image.

That Jesus is God, that Jesus' teachings, his words, his deeds, his signs, his miracles.

Everything that he did was God himself doing these things.

That they were one in their very nature.

The life signs and teachings are in fact those of God.

He goes on to say in verses 3, if we were to summarize verse 3, it'd be this way the word was spoken to bring life.

The word was spoken to bring life.

John quickly is going to take us back to the creation account.

And he's going to help us understand the scope that Jesus had in creation.

All things, he says, all things were made through him.

All things speak to both the scope of his role in creation and the pre-existence of his person.

Jesus made all things, and for all things to be made through him means that he existed before all things.

And it's important that John uses the language through, through him.

He doesn't say all things were created by him, but that they were created through him, communicating that this word is the very essence and source of being, of life itself.

Paul summarizes this thought more clearly and neatly in his letter to the church at Corinth.

In 1 Corinthians 8, chapter 8, verse 6, Paul says this about the relationship of God and the Son in creation.

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.

So from and for, critical words for us to see there.

And one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

We are to live for the glory of God, and we are only able to live for the glory of God because we have life through the Son.

And so the Godhead is so critical for us to examine and work to understand because they play distinct roles in not just creation, but the new creation that you and I are participating in by grace through faith in Jesus the Lagos, the Word.

He goes on to say, and without him was not anything made that was made.

Every aspect of creation came through the word being spoken.

With each active sixth day of creation that we see in Genesis, it is God said, Let there be light.

God said, Let it be morning and evening.

God said, Let the mountains be formed and the earth and the and the waters be separated.

God said, it continually, we see this picture of God the Father declaring and speaking the Lagos, and as it comes from his mouth, as he comes from his mouth, all of creation starts to take shape and form.

Psalm 33, 6 says it this way By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

Jesus is not just a person.

Jesus is not just a word spoken.

Jesus is the very origin and essence of life that comes forth from the Father.

And in him we find our life.

He closes out this section of his opening letter in verses four through five.

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.

In verses four through five, we would say, In the word there is life eternal.

In the word there is life eternal.

John focuses us quickly now into the new creation reality of Jesus.

And look at how seamless he flows.

Right out of verse three, talking about the creation account, into verse four, he's gonna pick it up into the new creation reality that we find in Jesus.

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

The life in creation being finite, but the life in the new creation being infinite.

You see, the life that came in creation was finite.

It was marred and perverted and distorted by our sin.

And we needed something greater than the original life that was given to us.

We needed eternal life, we needed new creation, so that all that our hands had destroyed could be restored and recreated in the person and work of Jesus, that we might have life and life eternal.

And so as Jesus broke into the world through the virgin birth, he brought with him a life that was distinct from that which was in creation.

He came bearing in himself the eternal life.

And that life shined a light on all mankind.

You see, John's preparing us to understand all that this letter will work to prove.

This letter is going to labor in proving that Jesus is both the light bearer and the life bringer.

Jesus himself will bear witness to this reality in his public ministry.

If we see in John 8, we'll get there, I don't know, next year.

Um he says this 8 12.

And again Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

This light and life relationship are inseparable from one another, and they are found in Jesus.

And it says that the light shines in the darkness.

That's what John says here in his opening prologue.

Jesus is the light that shines into the darkness of our very experience.

And this darkness that he's talking about, it helps us to understand the reality of both our external state and our internal state.

And so all of creation has been affected by sin.

And so we live in a darkened world.

I think that all of us can probably look around at culture and read the headlines and realize that we live in a darkened world, that sin has pervaded every aspect of it, and we're experiencing the consequences.

But what's harder for you and I is the reality that within us is a darkened state.

It's a heart that is in rebellion toward our Maker.

That we may communicate that we want a relationship with God, but if we're honest with ourselves, we're unwilling to have that relationship with him on his terms.

We're unwilling to have it in a way where we see him as Lord of all of life, where we bow our knee to his majesty and glory, where all of life is a sacrifice unto him, where we will obey his law and statutes, that we might honor him and serve him.

No, we're willing to take the eternal life he might offer, but we're only willing to take it on our own terms.

And God will not hand over that which his son had to purchase with his own blood.

He has terms to his gift.

And it is that we place our faith and trust in the resurrection of his son, and we bow our knee to him as Lord.

There is a darkness within us also.

But Jesus shines.

This is the first time in the whole opening first five verses of John's gospel that he uses the present tense.

He shines.

And the light of Christ shines on us.

You see, light speaks to both the revelation of God and his self-disclosure and the salvation that Jesus brings with him.

You see, one of the beautiful things about our faith is that we don't serve a God who conceals himself from us.

If God remained in darkness and concealed himself, then our understanding of him would only be left to speculation.

Your best guess about who God is is just as good as my best guess about who God is.

But we don't serve that God.

We serve a God who revealed himself.

Now we have an obligation.

And that obligation is not to remain in speculation, but it's to submit to the revealed truth of who he says that he is.

The self-disclosure of his personhood.

And how does he most beautifully do that, most graciously do that?

In his son Jesus, the word.

It is the word that discloses who he is.

And Jesus said that if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

For I and the Father are one.

And so Jesus is the exact imprint of the Father that we might know him rightly.

But it's also the salvation that he brings to us as his people.

John closes out this first five verses with, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Man, it's like he can't wait to point us to Calvary.

He cannot wait.

It's almost like, you know, he's got this thing that he wants to let us know, and he's gonna tease us a little bit.

He's this, he's this almost anxious child who just can't wait to let the secret out.

The darkness has not overcome it.

What John is helping us understand is Jesus wasn't just a good teacher or some type of brilliant philosopher that unlocked the secret to life.

He wasn't just a moral person of who we should exemplify and model our life after.

He wasn't just some rebel who died a criminal's death because he got caught up in the Roman Empire and its cult.

And it was he wasn't just someone who died and was buried and doesn't give hope to his people and his followers because his promises are now broken and devastated.

No, Jesus is the light and life of all men, and the darkness has not overcome.

And he's gonna pull us into the reality that the tomb is now empty, that he rose from the dead, and in him is the life that we long for.

You see, when Jesus asked Peter this, um Peter answered him.

And this is the answer that he gave.

We read on in Matthew 16, 17 through 18.

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Let's read the whole account.

Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Simon Peter's answer was, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus says, You're blessed, Simon.

You are blessed because flesh and blood never revealed this to you.

But my Father who is in heaven has opened your eyes to be able to see and witness the truth that yes, I am the Christ.

I am the life and light of the world.

I have brought salvation to my people.

And he says it's upon that rock.

The church is established on the confession of the answer to that question.

Who do you say that I am?

I am the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

That answer sets the table for the church to be built on such a rock that the church will prevail against every scheme and tactic and trial of the enemy, that the hell itself cannot prevail against us when we stand upon the foundation that is the answer to that question, the confession that Jesus is the Christ.

You see, John at the very end of his gospel, he goes on to tell us why he wrote this book.

He goes on to really, for the first time in black and white, lay out why did he write this book in the first place?

And we're gonna discover through this gospel.

John doesn't necessarily go in chronological order, right?

He's kind of like some dude with ADHD.

He's like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.

And he writes it down, like, oh man.

Um, where like Luke is more succinct.

He was a doctor, right?

He's like detailed notes going chronological.

John's just all over.

But it's not just because John, you know, had learning disability.

I don't think he did.

I've made that up.

But I think that what John was doing was he was curating stories about Jesus that helped prove that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And as he's resolving this gospel account, he says this in John 20, 30 through 31.

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

So why are we setting forth on a two-year journey through this Gospel of John?

Our prayer, our hope, is that at the end of this, you will be so resolved in your faith of who Jesus is and what he's accomplished for you in his finished work, in his perfect, obedient life, in his substitutionary death on the cross, in his burial and glorious resurrection again, that you will be so resolved on that confession of who Jesus is, the Christ, the Son of the living God, that hell won't be able to prevail against you.

Because you're gonna go through hell.

The world is gonna throw everything that it has at you, it's gonna try and convince you, like Eve, did God say?

And we're gonna have the substance in our soul to say yes, he did.

And Jesus is the answer to everything.

And so I hope that it builds us up.

I hope that it encourages us, and I hope, like a lens being focused on its object, we walk away seeing Jesus more clearly than we ever have before.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.