A Biography of Jesus: The First Story (Part 1) - John 1:1-5

This morning I mentioned it in the prayer.

Obviously, we're not in the chapel that we're working on and I think as, in a way, it actually serves as a fitting illustration of what it is that we're doing here.

You see, there's a part of me, and maybe there's a part of you, that really wishes we were in that finished nice chapel, and the truth is there's multiple reasons for why we might wish we were there.

We might wish we were there because it's a nice, it'll be a nice, comfortable place and it will be really nice.

We're really excited for that.

You might want to be in a nice place because you say God is worthy of a nice place, and he is, and you were in this building, which is not very nice.

But the thing is that is a good illustration of how it is that we come to God.

We come to God whatever the circumstance may be.

We can worship, and so we are here, ultimately to tell a story.

We're here as a church in the Dakota neighborhood to tell a story about a person.

When you tell a story about a person, say you write a book about a person, what's that called?

It's a biography, right.

So you write a biography.

There are a lot of biographies written.

One person who has things written about them, or one class of people that have things written about them, are astronauts.

And one person that stood out to me, whose history I've enjoyed, is Neil Armstrong, an astronaut who was the first person to set foot on the moon, and if you read about him, you'll read a lot about his time as a Navy test pilot.

You'll read about some of his accomplishments, his work as an engineer.

You'll learn about who he is.

That led him to be an astronaut, right.

What you won't read much about is that he married a woman named Janet.

They had three kids.

The second one, he had a daughter who died at age two.

She had a brain tumor that couldn't be operated on.

You won't hear all of those things.

They might be mentioned in passing, but that's not the focus.

Why is that not the focus?

Well, it's not the focus because you care about Neil Armstrong the astronaut.

You don't care about Neil Armstrong the husband, or Neil Armstrong the father, or Neil Armstrong the member of his local community organization.

You don't care about those things because he's famous, because he's an astronaut, and so when someone writes a story about someone like that in a biography, you choose the stories you include to give that distinct focus.

Today we are going to be starting a series that is in a book that could be called a biography.

This is the story of the person who is the reason why we gathered worship.

So this is the story of Jesus, a biography of Jesus.

In the Bible we have four of these biographies.

We call them the Gospels.

Each one has a distinct focus.

Three of those books have a lot of overlap and they share a lot in common.

They are often grouped together and called the synoptics.

Even though they have their own specific focus, they overlap and seem to have shared some sources.

One is more unique, one is specific.

When you take a person such as Abraham Lincoln or William Shakespeare, those are two of the people who have had the most written about them in all of human history.

I looked up the list.

Abraham Lincoln was number three and Shakespeare was number six on the list.

I don't know, but there are some of the most written about people.

Every once in a while, a new biography comes out.

There are already 100 biographies.

Why would anybody take the time to write a new biography?

What is the point?

The point is that person has a specific slant that they want to give.

They have studied and they think they have some new insight that would contribute to that field, because the field is saturated already.

What has been said has been said.

There is a focus of the biographer to tell a story in a certain way so that someone could hear it and learn something new about that person.

The biography that we are looking at today is similar.

The truth is, sometimes those new biographies, when you read them, when you pick them up, there is an introduction or even the forward.

It will tell you point blank what is the focus.

I don't know how many books.

It is not just biographies.

I will read this in books on discipleship.

A bunch of books have been written about discipleship.

Why would I write another one?

Then they tell you why.

What we are looking at today in the Gospel of John actually does the same thing.

It tells us in John, chapter 20, why he wrote it.

John 20 · chapter mention

Now, jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples.

This is near the end of the book.

He is like I just told a bunch of stories about Jesus.

He did a lot of other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.

He is like, hey, there is a whole lot more that you could know, but I didn't tell you.

That is like John, why didn't you tell us?

He didn't tell you?

Because he didn't think it contributed to his purpose.

He says they are not written in this book, but these are written.

The stories I chose as the human author of this Gospel, of this biography about Jesus.

These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

You see, john doesn't hide it.

He comes right out well towards the end of the book.

But he tells you his purpose.

This is why I wrote this Gospel.

Other Gospels may do similar things, but John tells us why he wrote this Gospel.

He chose stories of Jesus to tell.

Books, reading books, novels, biographies, whatever have chapters.

Bible books have chapters.

John obviously has chapters in it as a Gospel.

Bible chapters don't always correspond to the different stories that are chosen.

They were divided up later.

In this case we have the apostle John writing a biography of Jesus for us.

It wasn't written to show Jesus in a variety of ways that perhaps it could have been written, or perhaps we wouldn't want it to be written.

It wasn't written in a way to show Jesus as the greatest human son who ever lived.

To his parents, he was the most obedient child ever.

It wasn't written that way.

It wasn't written to just hold Jesus up as the great example of who we want to emulate with our life.

It doesn't mean you can't see some of these elements in the book, but that's not why it was written.

It wasn't written to show Jesus as an example of a revolutionary, counter-cultural leader who wanted to overthrow a government and change the world through politics or war or something like that.

It was not written for any of those purposes.

No, this biography was written so that the reader would know who Jesus is, that the reader would believe, and by believing in Jesus the reader would have eternal life.

That's why this book is written.

Me and Ricky, as pastors, we decided to focus on this book on John's biography of Jesus, also known as the Good News or the Gospel of John, for our first series.

We did this for a few reasons.

We did this because Jesus is the foundation that we want to build this church on.

We were like what could we start on?

What would be a good first point we're here to worship, to praise God, to daily or every time we come together, proclaim who Jesus is and that he is the Savior of the world.

This purpose statement for John that we just read in John 20, really it describes what our mission is in this place.

We have arrived in this place so that we could tell the story of Jesus, so that people would believe that he is the Christ.

Christ means anointed one, the Savior, the chosen one.

That Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Son of God.

That is our message.

We want people to believe that, so that believing they might have life in his name.

So we wanted to start on that foundation, but also not just the outward focus, but inwardly.

We don't say that believing in Jesus is just essential for entrance in, but it's essential for continued life in Christ.

It's through the Gospel that not only we come to saving faith, but that we live out saving faith.

It's through the Gospel that we are able to even work towards this goal here of establishing a church in a place.

We also chose this past, this book, because knowing who Jesus is is absolutely crucial for us to be able to talk about who Jesus is.

If that's our mission, we need to know deeply who he is.

Now, this particular Gospel unlike the other three Gospels the synoptic Gospels they present Jesus and they have theology that they teach, meaning teaching about who he is as God, the Son.

But John has more, it just is.

John is the most theological Gospel we have and it tells us deeply who he is, and so we thought that that is going to be helpful for us as we seek to establish this knowledge of who Jesus is.

But then also, something that we want to focus on as foundational to our church here, as kind of a core almost value, if you will, is what it is to abide in Christ, to be grafted into that vine, to live Christ.

What does that mean?

And perhaps nowhere better in Scripture is that captured than in John 15.

Now I don't know when we will get to John 15.

We're still working on some of the long-range divisions, but John 15 is not the only place where it appears.

That's kind of the climax of a theme that will start to become established over the next few chapters.

Our plan is to spend time in this book, at least up till Easter time, and we'll see where we go from there.

We'll probably shift for a little while, but we hope to come back.

We definitely want to get to John 15.

Like I said, we're still working on dividing those things up, but here we are, starting this series.

I'm not going to preach a really long time, but the truth is I don't have a clock, so it's 11.30.

I'll try to just feel when it's been a long time.

If you guys really start getting up and using the bathroom, like I said, don't use this one.

This is the first time I've ever been preaching a sermon on a scene at a toilet.

Anyway, use that one.

We'll figure it out.

Hopefully next week I'll have a clock.

That would be helpful.

I do have a watch, but I didn't look at it when I started.

The first sermon in the series is not a really creative title, but it's a title that captures what it is that we're doing.

Hopefully the title is just this A Biography of Jesus, the First Story, part 1.

I think that that captures what I'm trying to get to here because, like I said, when you have a biography, you choose carefully the stories you want to tell.

You choose carefully where the story begins.

Where do most of the other Gospels begin?

This is a small group At birth.

They begin with the conception, the Christmas story.

We don't do a lot of Christmas sermons out of John, right, but why?

Because John starts somewhere else.

Now, maybe you've already turned there, but who can tell me where John starts, the beginning beginning, right?

So we're going to start, and in a minute we're going to look at this, that the first three verses.

But Charles already told us that it starts in the beginning beginning.

It starts further back, and so we're going to try to understand what it is that John is trying to lay as a foundation For the story he's going to tell.

Because he is laying out this biography in a very particular way, different from the other three.

And and yes, we call these Gospels for a reason, because they are the good news of Jesus I'm calling them a biography to get our attention in a different way.

But the first thing we're going to try to look at is answering a question of who or what is the word.

So when I read it in a second, when I read the passage in a second, you'll see that it refers to the word.

And so John's first Goal in in the verses we're about to read are to answer the question who or what is the word.

So follow with me as I read these first three verses in the beginning.

There we go.

The beginning 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.

I see that phrase in the beginning.

If I would have just come up here and started Reading the Bible and you didn't see my Bible and I just had it down here hidden, I said I'm gonna start reading the Bible and and you tell me what the passage is, and I said in the beginning and I stopped okay, where am I?

Plenty of you would have said Genesis one.

Some of you might have said John one, but that's not an accident.

It's not an accident that John starts off with the phrase in the beginning.

See, john was not written in a vacuum.

It wasn't written specifically only for people who had never heard anything about Judaism or about Jesus.

It was written not just to tell you who Jesus was, but so that you would believe in Jesus.

And so it starts off in the beginning because it's essential that you know that in the beginning, beginning, jesus was there.

This is in the beginning.

Was the word, okay, the word?

Obviously I've kind of let the cat out of the bag that the word is Jesus, but it's interesting that it says the word, because how did God create in the beginning, in Genesis one?

He spoke, he used a word, right, he used a word let there be light and there was light.

This is not an accident.

These words that are here are Chosen intentionally.

In the beginning was the word, and so Jesus was there in the beginning.

And what did he do?

Where was he?

Well, he was with God.

Oh, okay, that makes sense, right, so far, nothing that's hard for our minds to comprehend.

Okay, I didn't know Jesus was in the beginning, but, okay, he's there and and he's with God.

That that's easy, right, that's, that's, that's easy, especially compared to the next statement.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.

And here we go and the word was God.

And then, all of a sudden, if this is kind of the first you've ever heard of this, your mind is blown because it's like wait, he was with God and he was God.

How does all of that work?

Well, I Can go.

I could go and I could spend a lot of time trying to prove this case.

I could go into the Greek and try to counter some of the the False teachers who have tried to pervert what the Greek in this text says.

That's not gonna be my focus today, because it's not just here that the gospel of John makes this point.

In fact, it is right here that the gospel of John just declares the point.

And so the point I'm declaring to you from this verse is that Jesus is, is both with God in the beginning and is God in the beginning.

The word created Okay, that you.

So somehow Jesus is both with God and Jesus is God.

And the fuller truth, or the more in-depth truth, as we look at all of Scripture, is that teaching of the Trinity is what the truth is, is that God the Father is fully God, god the Son, jesus is fully God and God the Holy Spirit is fully God, and yet these three are one.

How all of that works out is not presented in this text, so I'm not going to explain it to you.

So when I get to that text that explains how it all works, that's when we'll explain it.

But in the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

So then it goes back and repeats that things, but then it says that through the Word verse 3, all things were made and without Him was not anything made that was made.

Jesus is the Creator.

But you say, but when I read Genesis 1, it says that God spoke.

And was he that God?

How does I don't, I don't know.

I'm not saying that God the Father was not involved in creation.

I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit wasn't involved in creation, but God the Son was certainly involved in creation.

And so that's kind of the first kind of focal point of the text in answering that question of who or what is the Word.

Jesus is the Word who is Creator God from the beginning.

Jesus is the Word who is Creator God from the beginning.

This is who the story is about.

And you see, this is going to be important as we go into John, because John is starting here for a reason he wants you to know that Jesus is not just some political radical.

Jesus is not just even some miraculously created being that God sent to save His people.

It's not just that God, through miraculous means, created Jesus in Mary to give birth to this savior type leader.

That's not Jesus.

That's not who he is.

No, jesus is one who is not created.

He has been from the beginning.

Jesus.

It doesn't say first God the Father created Jesus and then Jesus created.

It doesn't say that it says he was there in the beginning.

Jesus is the Word.

Who is Creator?

God from the beginning.

The next question that we're going to answer in this text, as we look at the last two verses, is why do we need to know Jesus?

You see, john answers these two questions who or what is the Word?

So, who or what is Jesus?

And then, why do we need to know Him?

Why do we need to know Jesus?

Why do we need to know this Word?

Why is it important?

Okay, I understand that Jesus is the Creator, but why do I need to know Him?

What's the important thing?

Why can't you just let me go about my life?

Why would you, john, spend this effort, writing this Gospel with this particular focus, so that I would read it?

Why do I need to know Him?

Why are you introducing me?

Well, that's what he's going to answer in the next two verses, and this is as far as we're going is just through verse 5.

It says in verse 4, in Him, so in Jesus was life and the life was the light of men.

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

You see these are fairly universal.

Do I have those verses up there?

Yeah, there we go.

In Him was life, these phrases or these words, life and light they're fairly universal.

Pretty much every religion in the world would see life as a goal, as a good thing.

Usually the end goal is some kind of renewed life, whether that would be reincarnation, whether that is life in heaven, whether that is moving on to some higher plane of existence.

Usually life is some kind of a goal and light is pretty universally seen as good versus darkness being seen as evil.

And so you have here that Jesus was life and that life that Jesus was or is.

But we're talking particularly the past tense because we're still in that time of creation.

In fact, I would say that the way that John uses life and light in these verses it connects to how he uses the words life and light throughout the book, but it's a little bit different.

John is going to shift as he moves forward in John to talking much more present tense and life and light are much more associated with salvation, with saving faith and that kind of concept.

Right now.

In this text, though, it connects to that, though it leads to that, it's simply making the statement that Jesus is the source of life and light.

Or, in another way of saying that is that Jesus is the source of goodness generally, that light is a good thing and that that light has in some way, in some means which is not explained yet, but it'll get there that light has somehow shown out in the darkness.

Darkness is the absence of light.

Obviously and we were actually in here you might notice that there are three, exactly three, recessed light type lights in here.

They're surface mount lights and then several of the old lights.

We have more lights and our goal will be, hopefully, next week, when you come, it'll all be the new kinds of lights.

But we were in here last night, me and Ricky no-transcript.

He was working on this one and it was complicated, and I was like are you gonna just leave the lights on, because they're all on one Circuit?

And he said yes at first, and then he's like, okay, go ahead and turn it off.

And then he's like he shined the your phone light and it was.

You know it was, it was really dark, but I shine the light and he could kind of work.

And Eventually I was like you want me to look at my work lights, because I have some work lights in my house.

And so I went and I got him and I turned it on and all of a sudden it was like there was no more darkness.

He had been in here working in darkness or with just a miniscule amount of light From the flashlight on my phone, sitting on top of the ladder, which was right here.

But I brought in two work lights and plugged one in over there and one in over there, angled them up and turn them on and all of a sudden the room was bright.

All of a sudden you could see, and darkness was gone.

Okay, well, in a similar way though we don't know yet how, in the Gospel of John, in a similar way, darkness, which would be the stand-in for evil, for death, for the opposite of life, and and and good, somehow Jesus has over, has not been overcome by darkness, but has continued to persist in bringing light and life.

And so the answer of why do we need to know Jesus is, is, is is pretty simple.

So, whatever your background might have been whether you were reading this as a Jewish person with a Jewish background or as a Greek person with a with a Greek background you would know that you don't want to be overcome by darkness.

You want life and you want light.

And so the answer to why do we need to know Jesus?

Is this we need to know Jesus because we need life and light.

We need what Jesus has to offer.

It's not just that Jesus is, you know, a nice guy.

It's not that just that he is an example.

It is that Jesus is victorious, that that, though there is a Evil that seeks to destroy, that, though death is a problem, that that Ravages all of creation, jesus is the light that overcomes the darkness.

And so this is kind of the big idea of this text is this that Jesus came to rescue Mankind from death and darkness.

Jesus came to rescue mankind from death and darkness.

This is John's message and this is our message.

So remember how I said like that, that when John gives his purpose statement in in John chapter 20, that that Jesus, that that it's written so that you might believe Jesus and have life through his name.

John 20 · chapter mention

This is the message that that brings that, or at least the introduction to it.

This is the.

This is what our message is to the world that, hey, world, you are facing death and darkness.

You know it and I know it.

It doesn't take a lot of turning on the news, especially cable news, to realize the whole world is falling apart around you.

Depending on your political perspective, it might be falling apart in a different way, but it's all falling apart.

Or even just looking at your local issues and going, walking around the streets and seeing hurt, hurt all around you, drive through Oakland and see, see parts of town that that, that, that poverty is on open display and you're like, why?

Why is there suffering?

Why is there death?

Why is there darkness?

Why do we have this?

Can we overcome it?

Well, yes, because Jesus came to rescue us.

Jesus is the source of hope.

So I don't know how long this this has been, but I'm finishing up here.

I'm finishing up with this that, as we begin looking at the Gospel of John, I Want to ask you to try to keep the big picture in mind of this book and we're probably gonna at some point do bigger chunks and sometimes smaller chunks.

We'll try to to get to certain objectives by certain times, but try to try to keep picture, picture as we go through, that.

All of this is written To bring us to faith, to belief.

I use that word faith intentionally, even though faith isn't here in this verse, because he's making some bold proclamations.

Right, he is saying Jesus is God.

He is saying that he was from the beginning, he is.

He's gonna continue to make bold proclamations about Jesus and he's gonna give explanation.

He's gonna give answers that can be satisfactory If we have faith.

He's not gonna give answers that ultimately don't require faith.

Following Jesus is a faith thing.

So we're gonna go through this book and we're gonna.

We're gonna attempt to to explain who Jesus is as the one who came to rescue man from death and darkness.

But ultimately we come to Jesus by faith and and and so.

So, as we do that, learn who he is and Trust that he is the Savior, that he is our rescuer, that he is the one who darkness has not overcome and Ultimately, we're gonna get to a place in the Gospel of John where this statement will seem it disappeared, but that's okay.

We're gonna get to a place where this statement that Jesus came to rescue mankind from death and darkness seems untrue.

We're gonna come to a place where Jesus is dead, where Jesus is in the grave, where you can say that death and darkness have won.

But it doesn't end there.

It ends by Jesus triumphantly and victoriously rises, that he rises from the grave, ultimately proving that he is the one who came to rescue mankind from death and darkness.

So let's not lose sight of that message through John, because that's why it's written, and John will have a lot of insight for us as we seek to faithfully Live out what he has called us to do, and live out what he has called us to do, particularly here in the Dakota neighborhood of Union City.