The Word: Life & Light- John 1:1-5

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In just a moment, Pastor James will continue our verse-by-verse journey to the Gospel of John as we discover more about who Jesus is, his life, his teaching, his purpose, and what his word means for our lives today.

We pray this message encourages your heart and strengthens your walk with Christ.

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Well, this morning I'm excited because we start the Gospel of John.

John is probably one of the most recognized gospels in the New Testament of the four.

As a matter of fact, it's a gospel that oftentimes when someone comes to know Christ and they're new in the faith, the thing that we tell them to do first is begin to read the Gospel of John.

And there are some reasons for that, and we'll talk about those in just a minute.

But as we begin to look at these first five verses this morning, I could probably preach a sermon on each verse in itself.

We're going to cover all five verses, and we're going to see that in this passage that John is making the point that Jesus is the eternal word of God, and in him is light and life.

And that's really a theme that he's going to carry through the gospel.

He is asking the question, if you will, or he's responding to the question that someone may ask, well, who is Jesus?

And if you ask most people out in the culture, they have a lot of different answers to who Jesus was.

Most of the time, most often, they will not deny his existence or that he existed, but they do not know who they are.

And so John's writing this letter to tell us who Jesus is and all of his glory.

And he begins in the first verse of chapter five, chapter one, by stating this if you'll stand with me at the reading of the Word of God, I love to honor God's word by reading it as we stand.

John writes, and he says, In the beginning was the Word.

And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him.

Without him was not anything made that was made.

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

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

Father, we pray that as we not only read your word, but study your word, God, we ask that the Holy Spirit would be active in me as the expounder of your word, and God, in our hearts as the receivers of your word, that God, you would convince and convict us, God, of the tremendous gift that you've given to us in your eternal Son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

The big idea, really, in these first opening lines to John's letter is that he's revealing Christ to us, Jesus to us as the eternal word, the eternal revelation of God.

He's gonna make it very clear that Jesus is fully God, that he's not just a created being of God, but he is God Himself.

And he's gonna make it clear that all things, everything, was created by him, and he alone can bring life and light to darkness.

It's all in Jesus.

Unlike the other gospel writers who began at different places or different phases in Jesus' life, John does not begin at the story in Bethlehem, which is coming up pretty soon in December as we celebrate it.

But he begins this story long before that.

He leaves out Mary and Joseph.

He does speak of John the Baptist, but he doesn't give the genealogy of Jesus like Matthew does, beginning with Abraham and going all the way back.

Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, so it would have been quite reasonable for Matthew to start there.

Luke takes us back to Adam, tracing through Jesus' genealogy.

And Mark begins his gospel with the ministry of John the Baptist.

But John takes it far beyond that.

John takes us back before creation itself.

Notice the first line that he says in this verse that in the beginning, what is this beginning?

It's not the beginning at Jesus' incarnation, but it's a beginning of all time.

It's beyond that.

In him, there was no beginning and there's no end.

He is the Alpha and He is the Omega.

Amen.

Excuse me.

While the other writers of the Gospels write to specific audiences, John is writing to a much broader audience.

We know that John wrote his gospel somewhere around the year 80, 80, or 90.

And all of the other gospels were already written at that time, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

90% of John's Gospel contains information and predominantly the sayings of Jesus beyond what the other Gospel writers wrote.

And you may ask the question.

Sometimes people stumble on this.

Well, why didn't John include all the other stories that Matthew, Mark, and Luke had recorded?

And the simple answer is they'd already been written.

And so John, I believe, having been one of the close disciples of Jesus, took a lot of time to instruct us in other events and times where Jesus spoke and presented sermons and said things that had not been stated in the other gospels as they were written.

John specifically states the reason for his writing of this gospel, and it's found in John chapter 20, verses 30 and 31.

John 20:30

John writes, and he says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.

In other words, there were so many other things that Jesus did in our presence, but they're not included in this book, and I would think that he's including all the other gospels as well.

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

So his reason for writing this, his reason for you and I to glean from this this morning is so that we might know and that we might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that we might have life in his name.

I hope I can finish.

Ronnie, can you turn this up just a little bit?

So I can speak in a lower voice.

First thing we see in verses one and two is that Jesus is the eternal word.

John writes again in verses one and two in the beginning was the word.

And the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

John's opening here in the beginning kind of echoes what Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 states.

Genesis 1:1

That in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

When creation began, the word was already there.

Jesus was already there in creation, and he was instrumental and a part of creation.

So John takes us all the way back there so that we might see that.

Now he describes him with an interesting word.

It's the word that is Greek that we translate word, and it's the word logos.

Speaking of Jesus.

In the beginning was Lagos.

And what John is indicating to us that Jesus being the word, the logos of God, that he was the express representation, the very person of who God is, so that we might know God through a living example of his son Jesus.

This word that was used to the Greek philosopher, they had the understanding of the word logos, meaning that it was the divine relation, the divine rationale that ordered the universe.

So even the Greek philosophers didn't use the word logos as we would today, the word, but they had the idea that logos meant that it was divine rationale that ordered the universe.

There was a creator that ordered the universe.

And while they worshiped many different gods, they each had a part in that creation that they would worship that that God represented, but there was that divine logos.

The Hebrew, the Jew, would have understood this as it's used in the Old Testament, that it was a revelation of God Himself through the prophets that God was revealing Himself to man.

And aren't you glad that God has revealed Himself to us?

You know, clearly in the scriptures, as we read the scriptures, we realize that we are so separated from God because of our sin nature that not a single one of us would seek after God if God didn't first reveal Himself to us.

We know that He has revealed Himself to us through just general revelation, the creation.

You can't help but look at nature and realize that there is a cause, there's a creator, there's a designer to that.

But then God has given us special revelation whereby we might know him personally.

And that special revelation is number one, found in the person of Jesus Christ, that God Himself came to earth, God, clothed in human skin, human flesh, fully God, fully man, so that he might reveal to us the Father.

And then he's revealed himself in a special way through the Word of God, so that we might know him, and by reading the Word of God and seeing as we might know ourselves as well and recognize the chasm or the gap that's there between us.

Notice he says in here that in the beginning was the word.

That word was is very important because it tells us that Jesus is eternal.

He was with the Father in all of eternity.

He was not a created being, as some false religions teach, that God created Jesus.

No, he's already existed for all of eternity.

He had a beginning in the sense that his incarnation, when God took on human flesh and he was born in Bethlehem, the incarnation, that the ministry of Jesus began at that time, and God had revealed himself to us.

But Jesus had existed for all of eternity.

In the beginning was the Word.

What beginning?

The very beginning.

What is the very beginning?

The very, very beginning.

Our minds can't fathom what the beginning was.

God always has been.

He wasn't created in the mind of an individual, but he revealed himself to the minds and hearts of individual.

It's extinctive.

He's distinctive from the Father.

Notice that he says here that the Word was with God.

Some might look at this and say, well, what meaning does that have?

Well, it means that Jesus Himself is distinguished from the Father.

We have that doctrine that we hold to, the Scripture teaches of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

There are some who refuse that doctrine that we have three distinct persons in the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, yet they are one and have the idea that God revealed himself in three different modes, that he's revealed himself as the Father, then he changed mode, he kind of morphed or transformed like a transformer into God the Jesus, and then kind of transformed himself again and into God the Holy Spirit.

But the Bible clearly teaches that God is three distinct persons, yet one.

Do you understand that?

I don't either.

But always make this statement: if I understood the infinite God, me being finite, then I would be infinite God myself.

Somebody said to me last week, we were talking, it was some wisdom, and he said, You know, I've just learned to keep the mysteries of God a mystery.

Isn't that good?

I've just learned to keep the mysteries of God a mystery.

But it also states that he was fully God.

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

Jesus clearly divine God Himself.

And one of the clear things about John's gospel, and one of the reasons he writes it, is so that he might substantiate and support and display that Jesus himself was God.

He was not just a prophet, he was not just a good moral demonstration to us of how we live our lives in morality.

But Jesus was God himself.

In John chapter 8, verse 58, Jesus said to those Pharisees who were questioning him, He said, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am, the very word that you used, that was used with Moses, who shall I say hath sent me, Pharaoh?

John 8:58

Tell him I am God.

And after Jesus had made the statement that before Abraham was, I am, the Pharisees picked up stones to stone him, because they in their mind had committed committed blasphemy as comparing himself to be God.

John 17, 5 says this, and now, Father, glorify me as Jesus praises, in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

No one else shares the glory of God except God Himself.

Amen.

And Jesus shares that glory with him.

Colossians chapter 1, verses 15 and 17 state that he, being Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Colossians 1:15

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authority, all things were created through him and for him.

How much was created by him?

All things.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Divine, God Himself.

Hebrews chapter 1, 1 to 3, the writer speaks of the way that God had spoken through the prophets, but in these last days he spoken to us through his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he created the world.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

He is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Again, John is making it clear as he answers the question that we might ask: who is Jesus?

Jesus is the eternal God.

He is God Himself.

He has existed for all of eternity.

And so, in our response to answering the question, He is who is Jesus, we need to know that Jesus is eternal.

He's the eternal word of God.

He created all things and he is God.

Amen.

What we believe about Jesus determines everything else that we might believe.

Second thing we see again to reiterate, he's the creator of all things.

Verse 3.

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

Now here John kind of goes from the identity to the activity of Jesus.

Jesus was not part of creation again.

He is the creator, and he's created everything, including you and me.

And if he is our creator, if he's the creator of all things and he has created us, then it behooves us as his creative beings to honor him and to worship him and to know him and to love him and be obedient to him as our creator.

Did that sink home?

Do we treat him as if he is our creator?

Do we honor him as we are his created beings and in that he has all authority over our lives and we're to submit to him and yield to him and follow him and walk with him.

All things were made through him.

Nothing created exists apart from him.

He says in this, without him, not anything made that was made.

All has been created by him.

I think of this often when I have the tendency to be judgmental towards individuals that may not appear as I appear.

Anyone that doesn't have a bald head, I'm judgmental against them.

Anybody that wears their clothes in a very different fashion than me, I can be judgmental towards them.

Anybody that uses language that thank God because the Holy Spirit cleaned up my tongue, I no longer use.

I used to talk like a boatswain's mate on a surface ship.

Someone who might be confused about their gender.

Any other thing that is in opposition to what I believe or what I think, I have a tendency to be judgmental.

Is anybody else with me on that?

And then I remind myself that we were all created in the image of God.

You see, every human being has been created by him.

And every human being is in the same condition that you and I were in, where by God's grace he saved us and made himself known to us and changed our life.

Every human being was created that way, and God desires that none should perish but all come to eternal life.

He's created all things.

And in that, it's my take that if all are created in his image, then I need to express his love to them and his grace to them.

I may not agree with them.

I may be opposed to some of the things that they stand for or represent, but I'm reminded that no one is beyond the reaching, gracious hand of the living God to be saved.

Amen.

Scripture says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 6.

1 Corinthians 8:6

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

Notice he says that we exist for him, he doesn't exist for us.

We get that backwards, don't we?

God, you're there for me.

He is there for us.

But we have to understand he doesn't exist for us, we exist for him, for his purposes.

That'll change your prayer life.

Amen.

God, I exist for you.

God, what do you want me to do today?

God, what's your will for my life today?

Lord, where am I to do?

How am I to respond?

Because, God, I'm yours and I exist for your glory.

You don't exist for mine.

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

Colossians 1, 16 to 17.

For by him all things were created in heaven on earth, visible and visible.

Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

By his grace, he allows us to enjoy those things that he has created.

But ultimately they are for him.

He's before all things, and in him all things are held together.

I don't worry about AI taking over.

Because he holds all things together.

I don't worry about global warming.

Because he holds all things together.

I don't worry about wars and rumors of wars.

Why?

Because he holds all things together.

I don't worry about our economy.

Why?

Because he holds all things together.

I don't worry about those things that I can have no control over, and I realize and I recognize that an all-powerful God is in control of every single thing, even to the minutest detail in our lives.

Amen.

We may get a bad report from the doctor.

Realize everything is in his control.

That's comforting.

I don't know if I said this last week, but I was at a funeral, and the thought came to me that the greatest hope that we can have is that when life falls apart, that he is an almighty sovereign God, and every detail is in his sight.

See, without that hope, even when tragedy strikes, when tragedy is so painful we can hardly bear it, the comfort that we have as Christ followers is to know that he is a sovereign God and he's in control of absolutely everything.

He's God.

Writer in Hebrews says that in these last days, again, repeating that, he's spoken to us by Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through him also he created the world.

You see, the one who created us has rightful authority over us.

My life is not ultimately my own.

I belong to the one through whom I was made.

Amen.

And we need to say this morning, Lord, I am yours.

Maybe we have that in our hearts and our attitudes, and we made that decision at some point or another.

But I'd like us to do something this morning, whether you say it out vocally or you say it in the heart, but meaning in your heart, and just right now, in response to this, say, Lord, I am yours.

Isn't that comforting to know?

That we're his.

See, Jesus is not simply a part of our lives, he's a reason that we have life.

He's the source of life.

He says this in chapter 1, verse 4, the first part of that verse.

He says, in him was life.

Jesus, John begins to present an idea or a theme that's going to be repeated over and over in John's gospel that in him was life.

And he goes beyond a physical existence, but he goes to the very depth of what life is.

Living in him is life, but predominantly he's speaking of spiritual life where we were once dead to God because of our sins.

Now in Christ we have now life with him, and that's for eternity.

He speaks of this time of this life in him all throughout his gospel.

In John 3.16, he says that we have eternal life through believing or trusting in Christ.

John 5.21, the Son gives life.

John 6, 35, I am the bread of life.

John 10, 10, I came that they may have life.

11.25, I am the resurrection and the life.

14.6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except by me.

And in John chapter 20, verse 31, he says, by believing in him, it brings life in his name.

John 20:31

We have life only in him.

You see, humanity's deepest problem is not that we need to be improved.

My goodness, my wife's been trying to improve me for 43 years.

My deepest problem, your deepest problem, humanity's deepest problem, is not that we need to be improved.

See, apart from Christ, we're spiritually dead and we all need life.

That's our greatest problem.

And we can have all of the scientific advancements that are possible to man, but it is not going to fix the problems that exist in the world.

The problems that exist in the world is because we are spiritually dead to God in Christ and we need new life.

Life is good.

Amen.

And I would be the first one to say that my life has been much better since I've come to know Jesus.

I still suffer the same things that everybody else suffers in their lives, and so do you.

We still have life issues that hit us.

Jesus did not go to the cross and have his sin, our sins placed on him and the wrath of God poured out on him, so that we might just have a better, more prosperous physical life.

I mean, would you have gone through that?

So that people might just have a better life, to live a better life, and then they die?

No, he went that we might have the forgiveness of sin and the hope of eternal life, real life in him, at a great price.

Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 5.

Ephesians 2:1–5

Paul explicitly says this that you are dead in your trespasses and sins.

Dead, dead to God, dead, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, but God being rich in mercy, because of his great love, which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.

By grace we have been saved.

And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his son.

Whoever has the son has life.

Whoever does not have the son does not have life.

Let me ask you this this morning.

Do you have the Son?

If you have the Son, you have life and you have eternal life.

If you do not have the Son, then while you may be breathing and you may be walking, you are still dead in your sins.

And you face an eternal death separated from God for all of eternity.

Do you want life this morning?

You want the hope of life?

Do you want the life in Christ?

And you got to first be willing to repent.

Turn from living your life on your own and turn to Him and trust what He's done for us.

You see, Christianity is not just a matter of adopting better morals.

I've seen some people that, man, have better morals than a lot of folks in this church.

Morality doesn't mean that we know Christ, that we know God, that we're in relationship to Him.

He came to give dead people life.

He's the light that overcomes darkness.

Verses 4, last part of 4 and verse 5.

Says, and the life was the light of men.

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

John connects these two things of light and darkness, and throughout his gospel, he's going to use this phrase.

But Jesus brings light into an individual's darkness.

You see, light is an interesting thing.

Light reveals.

Light doesn't illuminate, it reveals.

And what it reveals is what darkness hides and it shows us what is true.

You see, light reveals what is in darkness and exposes what's there, and then it shows us what's true.

Jesus reveals God to us, John says, but he also reveals truth about ourselves.

After Jesus' discourse with Nicodemus in John chapter 3, where that famous statement is, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever trusts him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3 · chapter mention

Jesus tells Nicodemus, Nicodemus, you've got to be born again, and Nicodemus didn't understand that.

What does it mean to be born again?

It means that you're dead, and now you have to have that new birth in God through Christ.

But Jesus says this this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, speaking of himself.

And people love darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Can I tell you this in my experience of sharing Christ with people through 40-something years?

That most of the time it's not that I have to present a rational argument as to the existence of God and the existence of Christ.

It's not that I have to try to defend Christianity versus atheism.

My goodness, only a small percentage of people are literally atheists in the world.

But it's been my experience as you begin to present the gospel that there has to be a turning away from darkness to the light, that's when all of a sudden people put up their, they put up the stop sign.

Wait a minute.

I'm not willing to do that.

You mean I've got to surrender my life to Christ?

Yes! Because he declares himself to be Lord.

And see, darkness loves darkness rather than light.

So can I give you a pointer when you're praying for people that you know do not know Christ?

Begin to pray that their eyes would be open to the light of the truth and that Christ would shine his brightness into the darkness of their life and bring conviction of sin and cause them to say, Jesus, I want to know you.

I want to be saved.

I can remember the day that I came to Christ, that revealed itself so much.

I knew that God was holy, and I bragged about being a sinner.

And I rebelled against that, wanting to know, because I knew that it meant turning and surrendering my life to Christ.

You might be here this morning.

And you may have been in church for 30 years and only become a good churchman.

You may be sitting there realizing that there's darkness there and that you need to turn and you need to repent and you're desiring God's forgiveness so that you might be set free from that darkness and receive his light.

I would invite you this morning to trust him in that.

You see, he says here that light shines in darkness.

The darkness has not overcome it.

This word that's translated overcome, I think the ESV translates it correctly.

It can have the idea of overcoming, seizing, comprehending.

Some of your translations say the darkness has not comprehended it.

But in the context of what John is saying is that the darkness cannot overcome the light.

You ever switched on a light in a dark room?

The light always shines.

The darkness cannot subdue it.

You see, the light cannot be overcome by the darkness.

And I don't care how difficult life comes in your life, the darkness will never extinguish the light.

John 8 12, Jesus says this.

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

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, will give them the light of life.

Five things we've seen in these first five verses of the Gospel of John.

That Jesus, number one, is the eternal word, that Jesus is God, that he's the creator, that Jesus is the source of life, and he's the light that darkness cannot overcome.

Let me ask you a closing question.

Who is Jesus to you?

If Jesus to you is anything other than what John has outlined here, you're following the wrong Jesus.

I would invite you this morning, in our closing, to surrender your hearts to Christ, to trust Him, to follow Him as your Lord and your Savior.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for your goodness and grace to us.

Lord Jesus.

God, we thank you that for those of us who, by your grace, have come to know and trust you.

That God, while we were walking in darkness, God, walking in rebellion against you.

And God, even though it may not be that the outward appearance of our life seemed to be that bad, maybe we were good morally, but God, we recognize that in our hearts, at our very core, we were separated from you because of our sins.

God, we thank you for saving us.

Thank you for reminding us of that this morning.

God, I pray for the one this morning that has not yet trusted you.

God, I pray that this gospel message has been clear.

God, I pray the Holy Spirit would move them to respond this morning, to place their faith and their trust in you and forever change their lives.

Lord, we ask it in Jesus' name for his sake.

Amen.