1 Valley View Chapel February 9, 2014 Jesus, the One and Only, Part 1 Jesus, the Word John 1:1-3 Introduction I m a pack rat when it comes to saving material that I might be able to use in a sermon. On the topic of Jesus, I have a file folder several inches thick with articles that go back to 1979. I found one from the December 20, 1993 issue of U.S. News and World Report written by their religion editor Jeffrey Sheler entitled Who Is Jesus? Sheler observed: Today, as in his own time, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of history s most intriguing and enigmatic figures. The religion founded on his teachings claims nearly a third of the world s population as members, yet his words and deeds and the meaning of his life, death, and Resurrection are subjects of intense debate and sometimes surprising interpretations. Many still ask the question of the ages: Who was Jesus? In an article that appeared in USA Weekend magazine in 1992, Tom McNichol wrote: Writers depict Him as everything from a political revolutionary or a peasant caught up in social upheaval to a magician or charismatic prophet heralding the end of the world.the Medieval Jesus was a benevolent king. The Jesus of the Puritans was a stern black-robed judge. The Jesus of the late 1960 s was a longhaired dropout determined to overthrow the Establishment. The world is confused about Jesus. Jeffrey Sheler s question, posed over 20 years ago, is still relevant: Who was Jesus? This week we begin a 12-week adventure I ve called Jesus, the One and Only. We re going to try to answer what Sheler called the question of the ages. For the next 12 weeks we ll turn to the Gospel of John to find the answer. After all, who better to tell the truth about Jesus than an eyewitness to his life, death, resurrection and ascension? Who is more qualified to tell the story than a man who was so close to Jesus that 4 times in his gospel he called himself the disciple Jesus loved? Leonardo da Vinci thought that John was so special to Jesus that he placed John at Jesus right hand, the seat of honor, in his famous painting The Last Supper. I m going to spend 25% of this sermon series the first 3 messages examining the Prologue to the Gospel of John which is contained in John 1:1-18 because the Prologue sets the tone for the whole book. Think of John s prologue as an overture that you would hear in a Broadway musical. An overture previews the main themes of the show. In John s prologue, he states his main theme in the first 18 verses. Then he spends the next 21 chapters elaborating on it. So, what s the main theme in the Gospel of John? The Apostle himself supplied the answer near the end of the book: These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:31 (NIV)
2 The Gospel of John is the apostle s closing argument for the deity of Jesus Christ. In the Prologue John states who Jesus is. Throughout the rest of book he proves his point. John embarked on his daunting adventure because neither the Jews nor the Greeks could conceive of anything more outrageous than God becoming a man. The Life Application Bible notes stated: To the Jewish mind, a man who claimed to be God was the grossest violation of the first and most basic commandment as well as a contradiction of the bedrock truth of monotheism. The Jews never imagined that their promised Messiah would be God-in-the-flesh. Their Messiah would be a human being, anointed by God, whose task was to free the Jews from bondage and re-establish the kingdom of Israel to the glory it had known a thousand years earlier under King David. The Greek Mind When John wrote the Gospel of John he was living in the city of Ephesus. Ephesus was located in present day Turkey. The city was comprised primarily of Gentiles who were steeped in Greek thought and culture. Unlike the Jews, the Greeks had no conception of a Messiah. The idea of a deliverer sent from heaven on a mission to set them free from anything was completely foreign to their way of thinking. A second obstacle the gospel to the Greeks was that they believed that human beings were comprised of matter which was inherently evil and spirit which was inherently good. The body, since it was material, was evil. The spirit - which differentiated people from lower forms of life - was good. Death was longed for by the Greeks because that was when the spirit was liberated from its prison inside the body. To their way of thinking, the idea of God coming to earth in the form of a man was ridiculous. How could John possibly communicate to a Greek culture the most basic gospel truth of all that God became a man whose mission was to deliver humanity from the consequences of their sins when the Greeks didn t believe in a Messiah and did believe that the human body was intrinsically evil? The Word To appreciate John s strategy, we have to know that the Greeks were obsessed with the idea of order. They were fascinated by the arrangement of the stars in the night sky; that the tides ebbed and flowed with precise regularity; that night always followed day and day always followed night; that the seasons changed at the same time every year. What was the secret behind this orderly universe? The answer to those questions was put forth by a philosopher named Heraclitus in 560 B.C. He said that there was not only a pattern in the physical universe. There was a pattern in world events. He stated that in all the events of life there was a purpose, a plan, and a design. What controlled everything, what gave order and purpose to everything was something he called the logos or the Word.
3 As the idea of the logos was further developed, later philosophers said that the logos or the Word enabled people to choose between right and wrong. It was the means by which people recognized the truth when they saw it. To sum up: the logos was the power that makes the world a place of order and not chaos. It s the power that got the world started and keeps the world going. This concept of the logos provided the key by which John could unlock the door of understanding to people steeped in Greek philosophy. William Barclay imagined what John might have said to introduce Jesus Christ to the Greek world: For centuries you have been thinking and writing and dreaming about the Logos, the power which made the world, the power which keeps the order of the world, the power by which we all think and reason and know, the power by which we come into contact with God. Jesus is that Logos come down to earth. The Word became flesh. The mind of God became a person. Who Is the Word? John uses the prologue the first 18 verse of his gospel to tell us what kind of a person the Word is. The Word is co-eternal with God the Father. The opening two verses of the book make this clear: In the beginning was the Word.He was in the beginning with God. This brings to mind the first verse in the Bible: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (ESV) The Word was present at the beginning of creation. The implication is that the Word the Son of God is as old (if we can even use that term) as God the Father. Second, the Word is intimately related to God the Father In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. It was because Jesus was so intimately connected to God the Father that he cried out from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46 (NIV) The agony of the cross wasn t the cup that Jesus asked to be taken from him. It was the agony of separation from his Father. Third, the Word is co-equal with God the Father In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Unless you know something about church history, you may not know just how close we all came to being Jehovah s Witnesses instead of Christians. Jehovah s Witnesses believe that the Word (Jesus) is not co-eternal and co-equal with God. They believe that the Son was created by God the Father and then the Son made everything else.
4 This heresy can be traced back to the fourth century A.D. when a leader named Arius in the church at Alexandria, Egypt began teaching the same thing. His bishop Alexander became so alarmed that he petitioned the Emperor Constantine to call a church council to decide the matter. Arius contended that the Word the son of God, Jesus was homoiousios which means of like or similar substance with God the Father. A theologian named Athanasius argued that the Word was homoousious or the exact same substance as God the Father. Thankfully the council sided with Athanasius and the Nicene Creed affirmed the complete deity of Jesus Christ. There is one Greek letter difference between homoiousios and homoousious. It is the letter iota. The doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ was saved because the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet iota was removed from the statement of faith. Fourth, the Word is the creator of everything. We re told in verse 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John had to make this clear because a dangerous doctrine had become widely accepted in the ancient Greek world. Near the end of the first century, there was a movement called Gnosticism. Gnostics couldn t understand the existence of sin and evil and sorrow and suffering in this world, so they invented a theory to explain it. They taught that in the beginning, two things existed one was God and the other was matter. Matter was the raw material out of which the world was made. Consistent with Greek thought, the Gnostics believed that this original matter was flawed and imperfect. God who is pure spirit can never touch imperfect matter. Therefore it was not possible for God to create anything material. However, the Gnostics believed that a being existed who was distant from God, ignorant of him and hostile to him who was the agent of creation. John responded with an emphatic No! He called their attention to what the esteemed philosopher Heraclitus believed: that there was not only a pattern in the physical universe. There was a pattern in world events. All the events of life had a purpose, a plan, and a design. Even Heraclitus believed that what controlled everything, what gave order and purpose to everything was the logos or the Word. Heraclitus just didn t know who or what the logos was. John declared that the reason the universe is orderly and not chaotic; the reason why there is a pattern in world events; the reason that life has a purpose, plan, and design is because the logos, the Word is the Word-made-flesh who created everything! The Word didn t use flawed matter to create the universe. The Word created everything from nothing. And if the Word, the Logos created everything from nothing, then everything as it was originally created must have been perfect. And by the way, the Word not only created everything, he sustains and maintains everything he has created.
5 Paul told the Colossians: He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17 (NIV) The writer to the Hebrews stated the same truth: The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1:3 (NIV) That s why there is such breathtaking order in the universe because the Word holds together and sustains what he has made. The Word, the Creator and Sustainer of everything, is the one who was in the beginning with God and who is, in fact, God. The Word is Jesus Christ, God come to earth. Conclusion I ve laid on you some pretty heavy stuff today. It s been difficult to explain and probably more difficult for you to listen to. So what can we take with us this week that we can use in our daily lives? I ll leave you with just one thought. The Word, the Logos, Jesus is not only the creator of the universe, he s your creator. You have life today because he chose to give you life. John 1:4 says: In him was life. That means your life. And your creator is passionately interested in what he has made. Psalm 139 makes this pretty clear: Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb. I thank you, High God you're breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day. Your thoughts how rare, how beautiful! God, I'll never comprehend them! I couldn't even begin to count them any more than I could count the sand of the sea. Psalm 139:13-18 (MSG) If you re a parent, do you love your children? Are you passionately interested in them? Would you do anything you could to help them through life? Would you even die for them? If you feel that way about your children and you re not even their creator, how much more passionate must our creator s love and commitment be toward those he has created? This Word this Logos this eternal God this Jesus - is the one and only that we are invited to worship, love and serve. Do you know him?
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