John’s Prologue - The Word Incarnate

John 1:14-15

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

Exodus 40:34–38

The Glory of the Lord

Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.

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Sometimes one little word can say so much - much more than we think on first sight.   For instance, 'promise', 'possible', 'love', 'simples’. And sometimes we find powerful little words in our scriptures.   One of the challenges of the scriptures is that we are not reading them in the languages in which they were originally written - our OT was written in Hebrew, and our NT mostly in Greek, with a little Aramaic here and there. And in our translations, it's sometimes difficult to render certain original Hebrew or Greek words into English without losing some of the nuance of meaning.

We're continuing our little series from the prologue to John's Gospel, and this evening we find ourselves thinking about just one really important verse from John chapter 1. And in that verse, v14, one of those meaningful little words appears, one of those words that has lost its nuance in translation. We read this:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

It's that little word 'dwelling'. He made his dwelling - he dwelt - among us.

Dwelling

You see, what we miss in English is that the Greek word behind this derives from the word for a tent.   So literally,

The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.

Why does that matter? Well, John chooses his words very carefully.  He is the master of brevity.  And he likes to echo the OT.  He's already echoed the first verse of the book of Genesis in the way he opens his Chapter 1: in the beginning was the Word. And now he echoes the OT again - the Word (God) came to pitch his tent among us.   How does that echo the OT?  

Well, where in our bibles do we find God dwelling in a tent? Only in the Exodus, in the desert, in the midst of the Israelites whom he has called out of slavery in Egypt. Remember that in the OT God met his people - he figuratively dwelt -  in the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, the portable temple that travelled with the Israelites as they wandered those 40 years towards the Land he had promised. His presence was symbolised by the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night, moving with then through the desert.

And yet they could never see his face.  They were his people, and he was their God, but he remained remote, distant, a frightening presence characterized by thunder, lightning and smoke. Moses never got to see God; the nearest was when God allowed him to be tucked into a cleft in a rock while he passed by.

The LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand". (Exodus 33:21)

For no-one could see God, no-one could see his glory and live.

But now? John tells us, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. This was God in human form, who could be touched, spoken with, laughed with, adored, worshipped. Jesus, who declared to Thomas: Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. And in Jesus, the Word made Flesh, v14 tells us:

We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.   John 1:14

Moses and all those OT characters would have given their right hand to be able to see God - but in Jesus Christ, God made man - we have been given that immense privilege. God has made himself known in Jesus Christ, personally, first to the people of 1st Century Palestine, and now, through his Spirit, down the ages, to us. Even to you and me.

And what do we discover about him from this same verse?   That he was full of grace and truth.   Two very particular attributes.

Truth

John often refers to Jesus as 'The Truth'.   He is the way, the truth and the life. John records Jesus saying repeatedly, I tell you the truth.  He is full of grace and truth. Jesus is the ultimate truth - in him there is nothing false, nothing conditional, nothing that will shift like the sands.   His word is rock-solid; his judgments are true.

We find it shocking that certain powerful people, even world leaders, bend that word to their own purposes. For them truth is something of their own design, something to be defined as such so long as it suits them. And then revised for convenience. But with Jesus, truth is absolute - for God does not lie. Jesus prayed to the Father for his followers:

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. John 17:17

But truth is a two-edged sword - for the truth can be great news, but it can also be devastating. And for us, as we approach Lent, the truth is not always something we want to hear. Because, in truth, we have fallen below God's standards in our lives and our thoughts. The Apostle Paul wrote that:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

David the Psalmist wrote that:

there is no one who does good, not even one.

The prophet Isaiah wrote that:

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way

And that's something we especially recall on Ash Wednesday as we repent of our wrongdoing.

So we have a predicament.  If Jesus, the Word of God, came and dwelt among us bringing only truth, then our predicament would be terrible - for our sin is ever before us. But the good news is he came from the Father, full of grace and truth

Grace

We often forget the meaning of grace in everyday speech. If I say someone is full of grace you're more likely to imagine them as having great poise, delicacy of movement, maybe someone who is charming and polite. But the scriptural meaning is entirely different. In the bible, in God's language, grace is the free, unmerited gift of God's favour.

You can easily remember it if you think of it as an acronym - the letters GRACE meaning 'God's Riches At Christ's Expense'.

You see, God's Truth tells us that we have fallen short of his standards. That there is a gulf between us, caused by our rebellion and sin.   We have a huge and life-threatening problem. But God's Grace deals with our problem - not by pretending that it doesn't exist; not by sweeping it under the carpet; but by dealing with it head-on.

Sinful man and holy God cannot co-exist, any more than light can co-exist with darkness. So God deals with our sin by a great cosmic exchange - our sin is transferred to Jesus, and his holiness is transferred to us. Someone has to pay the price of sin - and God allows his own Son, fully God, to carry our sin on his shoulders on the cross where he died in our place.   Isaiah tells us:

he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

So, three little words that say so much.   Three powerful words to hold close to our hearts this Ash Wednesday: dwelling, truth and grace. For:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John’s Prologue - The Word Encountered

John 1:6-13

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Isaiah 42:5–9

I am the Lord, and there is no other;
apart from me there is no God.

I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me,

so that from the rising of the sun
to the place of its setting

men may know there is none besides me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other.

I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the Lord, do all these things.

“You heavens above, rain down righteousness;
let the clouds shower it down.

Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up,

let righteousness grow with it;
I, the Lord, have created it.

“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.

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God reveals himself and invites us into sonship through grace

One of my greatest weaknesses is for names.   I am hopeless at remembering names.   I can be introduced to someone and literally within seconds I have forgotten what they said was their name. And to be honest, I'm not always so good with faces either.   One of the issues of having worked in different contexts over the years is that I sometimes struggle if I meet people where I don't expect them to be ....  I am thrown because I'm meeting them out of context.   I've been thrown before now by meeting patients in church, or church people in the surgery.  

One of my favourite witticisms of doctors and former doctors like me in such circumstances is to say, with mock embarrassment, 'I'm so sorry, I didn't recognise you with your clothes on’. The one good thing about my time working in prison is that most of my contacts there are serving life sentences, so I am very unlikely to meet them out of context!

And sometimes this name- and face-blindness is genuinely awkward. Last summer I was invited to a Clergy garden party at the Bishop's house in Gloucester.   Clergy are terribly cliquey and they were all huddled together in groups, and we didn't know anyone.   So on those occasions I always seek out someone else who's standing looking awkward because they don't know anyone either.

And there was a couple standing under a tree by themselves, so I went over and got chatting.   After some time I suddenly realised that just six months before I had spent an entire morning with the wife, who is a curate in training, assessing her progress in her job.   I had been to her house, drunk her coffee, met her husband, and spent several hours with her and her boss talking about her work.  And written a report for the Bishop. And I had completely failed to recognise her, just a few months later. It was embarrassing.  But actually, it wasn't as embarrassing as it might have been because she clearly didn't recognise me either!

Today's passage from John's Gospel is also about recognition.

We're continuing in this short Prologue to the Gospel of John — it's a passage that is so familiar because we read it every Christmas in our carol services.   It's a passage that effectively summarises what John will be telling us as his story unfolds - it's a summary, a prologue, an overture to his Gospel.

You'll be familiar with those wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, which always begin with an overture that's composed of little riffs of all the wonderful melodies and songs we shall hear as the story unfolds, put together into a grand piece that plays just before the curtain rises. And so with John also - he has knit together in this first chapter a series of themes that he will return to as the story unfolds.

And today's section, verses 6-13, is about recognition: recognising who Jesus is.   But I'm going to use a more theological term than Recognition: which is Revelation.   And we'll also consider a second R - Regeneration.   Which conveniently gives me my two headings - Revelation and Regeneration.

1. Revelation

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. John 1:6-7

We learned last week from verses 1-5 that Jesus, the living Word of God, is the author of life itself, and the bringer of spiritual light. 

Because:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. John 1:3-4

And now, we discover that there is a herald who proclaims that light: John the Baptist.

God wanted no-one to be mistaken about the significance of the ministry of Jesus Christ: in the style of the great Old Testament prophets, a new prophet had come,

dressed in clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, eating locusts and wild honey. Mark 1:6

John the Baptist came to proclaim the revelation of God.   To help us recognize Jesus.

God is a god whose nature is to reveal himself.  It is always God who takes the initiative - God whose sends the prophets, God who calls his people out of slavery in Egypt, God who speaks his word, gives his commands, meets with those he has chosen to carry forth his message. God who cried out to Saul on the Road to Damascus.   God who speaks into our hearts, making us aware of our sin and rebellion, drawing us close to him.   God who calls us. It is God who reveals himself.  Revelation is in his nature. And he revealed himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he revealed his arrival through a man named John, who came as a witness to testify concerning that light, baptising in the wilderness, that through him all men might believe.  

But here's the shock:

The true light that gives light to every man (Jesus) was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. John 1:9-11

The world - Jews, Gentiles, men, women, children - simply failed to recognize Jesus.  They just did not understand who this was. Even the Jews, who had been waiting for centuries for their Messiah, failed to see that he was the very one they had been waiting for.   His own did not receive him.   They failed to grasp this astonishing, epoch-making, history transforming revelation from God. They were blinded, even to the message of John the Baptist.  We know from Mark's Gospel that people came in their droves to be baptized by John in the desert - in search of spiritual renewal.   And as he baptized, John's message was clear:

"After me will come one more powerful than I, .... I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Mark 1:7-8

And yet still for most the penny failed to drop.  They got baptized, they confessed their sins - and still they did not welcome Jesus into their hearts.   As Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians:

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.   2 Corinthians 4:4

The cares of life, the pressures of money and family and relationships and all the other things that bubble up to be our priorities, have blinded us to the truth of God's revelation: That Jesus Christ is the saviour of the world.

But of course, not everyone is blind. There were those who followed Jesus from the very beginning, despite the dangers.  And although largely to this day the world still does not recognize him, there are countless millions who do follow him, even though at times it feels like we wade upstream against the tide of a society which refuses to accept his call on its life. And if we do follow him, remember, it is purely because God has revealed him to us.   We did not seek him out: he found us. 

2. Regeneration

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. John 1:12-13

'Yet' is a great word.   The Greek word here in the scriptures has a kind of assertive force: and yet, in the sense of 'this isn't the end of the story' ... 'there is good news'...

… to all who received him he gave the right to become children of God.

And the word 'right' is forceful too - it's an absolute right.  If God invites you into his family then your place is secure. We have seen recently a member of our own royal family lose his place there; to have his styles and titles removed.   To do that is the constitutional right of The Sovereign - it is a Royal Prerogative.

For Christians, that Royal Prerogative works in reverse - God chooses to give us the right to become part of his Royal Family - to become children of God. And we don't get there by our genetic pedigree, nor by how well we behave, or by working it out for ourselves - not even by our parents deciding.

It is a gift of God.   It is his decision.   He reveals himself - and if we accept him, if we allow him into our hearts, he regenerates our souls.   He gives the immediate and absolute right to be adopted into the family of Christ - co-heirs with him of eternity.   In short, to be born again.

And who is the agent of this rebirth, this regeneration? Of course, it is the Lord Jesus Christ.  Our Isaiah passage prophesied that so beautifully:

"I, the LORD, ... will make you (Jesus) to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. Isaiah 42:6-7

Prisoners don't release themselves.  The blind do not open their eyes and regain sight by themselves.   We don't find our own way out of deep darkness.  But he is our light: he is our vision; he is our freedom.   In him we have royal status, the styles and titles of children of God in Jesus Christ.

As an older man, the Apostle John wrote for us once again in his epistles:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:1-2

So where does that all leave us?   In short, thankful, and wanting to live for him.   Thankful that he enabled us to recognize Jesus as Son of God. That he opened our eyes - that he freed us, that he brought us out of darkness.  That he gave us royal robes of righteousness, that he has invited into all eternity, that we might live for him as sons and daughters of God. We have seen his revelation - and we have experienced his regeneration.

If you sense he is calling you, and you haven't yet opened your heart to him, then what are you waiting for? The hymn-writer Horatius Bonar caught the sentiment beautifully in the hymn:

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I am this dark world's Light;”
Look unto Me, your morn shall rise, and all your day be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found in Him my star, my sun;
and in that Light of life I'll walk till travelling days are done.

John’s Prologue - The Word Eternal

John 1:1-5

The Word Became Flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Genesis 1:1–5

The Beginning

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

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We now begin a short series in the build-up to Lent in which we’ll be looking at this start of John’s Gospel, in which he says some amazing things about Jesus Christ. And no doubt from Christmas time these words are very familiar to us, that in the beginning was the Word. We hear that read out every Christmas. It’s one of the better-known bits of the Bible.And it tells us three things about Jesus Christ that I’d like us to think about this morning. And first, and most obviously, Jesus is the Word.

Now, words are amazing things, aren’t they? Language is an amazing thing. You know, I love language. Language is my big passion in life. But just thinking about what language is for a second is incredible. Just think about it. You’re using parts of your body that are primarily designed to begin the digestion process — you know, your teeth and your lips and your tongue. You’re using them to create sounds that then do amazing things in the people around you.

Words have power, don’t they? They have power to give great joy, but also great pain. And we love reading because in the words of books, we get great pleasure from creating worlds in our minds, from entering into amazing places, or getting new information for us to learn. Words carry meaning in a way that mere pictures cannot.

If I simply saw a picture of my wife, I would think she was beautiful, of course, but I would not know much about her as a person at all. It’s the same with God. He created the universe as a picture of what he’s like. But without his speaking to us, we can’t know much about him.

Our words connect our mind, our thoughts, and our very character to others. And so God’s word connects his mind, his thoughts, and his character to us.Importantly, in John’s Gospel we’re told that God’s communication to us is not first and foremost in language, but in the form of a person.

Think about it like this. When the internet first appeared, it enabled online chatting and therefore online dating. That was a thing. Do you remember Friends Reunited? That was an old website where you could meet old friends from school. And presumably the main thing was to ask them out on a date. But if the relationship stayed in just words, that wouldn’t be enough, would it? The whole point of an online relationship is that you end up meeting the person in question face to face.

Yes, God has spoken to us in language in the Bible, and that’s the equivalent of a love letter, if you like. But he’s actually come to meet us in person through Jesus. That’s not to downplay the importance of the Bible. It’s just to say that the Bible is a means to an end, a means to knowing Jesus — the person, the human being. In Jesus, in his words, in his actions, God communicates to us what he is like. And ultimately, that communication takes the form of Jesus’s death on the cross. The cross is such a powerful word to us. It shows us that there’s something terribly morally wrong with humanity, but that in his love, God has taken the blame for that moral wrong on himself. And he’s done all this by himself.

If we want to know what God is like, we must get to know Jesus. And if we want to know Jesus, we must look first and foremost to the cross.

So Jesus, first of all, is the Word. But John also tells us that Jesus is the instrument. It’s a funny word to use. Why do I use that word?

Well, John tells us about Jesus, the Word, that through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Now, understanding what John is saying here comes from understanding the word through in this verse. And it’s tough for Bible translators, as we don’t have one easy word in English to sum this up.

Older translations have a more literal version: in him all things were made. And what John is saying is this: by means of Jesus, all things came into being. Jesus is the means, the instrument, if you like, which God used to make the universe. What on earth does that mean?

Well, it links back to what we were saying about Jesus being the Word of God. Think about the game of charades, if you’ve ever played charades. The whole fun of the game is this: it’s very difficult to get people to understand things without using words. We can do our actions with our bodies, can’t we? But we have to use words if we’re going to make anything substantial happen.

And a word is something which comes out of our mind and makes something happen in the world around us. It’s an instrument, if you like, of transferring what’s going on inside us to what’s going on outside us. Of course, right now I’m attempting to do that myself with the words I’m saying to you.

So in the same way, Jesus is the Word who comes out of the mind of God and makes something happen in the world around him.

It’s fascinating that even in the Old Testament, before Jesus was born, when God does something physically in the world, we’re often told that it’s the Word of God which did it. The Word of God came to Moses. It says the Word of God spoke to Samuel. Because God is a spirit and has no body, he must have some means of connecting with the physical universe. And what John is saying in our reading is that Jesus has always been the means by which he does this, even before he was born as a baby that first Christmas.

Think of it like this. I don’t know if you’ve seen the classic science fiction movie Tron. It was cutting edge back in the day. It had amazing special effects back in 1982. You watch it now and you think… but anyway, back then it was very cutting edge, all these glowing people. And in the film, a computer programmer called Kevin Flynn is transported into the digital world, where he teams up with security programs Tron and Yuri to overthrow the evil and tyrannical master control program, which threatens to destroy all Kevin’s programming. The point is this. Tron and Yuri were originally ideas in the mind of Kevin, which he then programmed into the computer using his body, his hands and his eyes. And it’s only when Kevin enters the digital world that they see his agency firsthand.

In the same way, God has always brought about things in the world through Jesus, like creating us. But it’s only when Jesus enters our world as one of us that we see this firsthand. Jesus has always been the means, the instrument, by which God brings things into being.

So Jesus is the Word, he’s also God’s instrument, but he’s lastly life and light. John says this: In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

So we’ve seen how Jesus is the communication from God. Jesus causes things to happen from God in the world. So it makes sense to call Jesus life. And life’s an amazing thing, because scientists are at a loss to fully understand how life began. The main problem is to do with DNA.

DNA is, of course, the code language within our cells which enables the creation of new cells. And the thing is that language is made of words which have meaning, and DNA is no exception. The coding within DNA carries meaning which has an effect on the physical world. But think about it — meaning doesn’t come out of non-meaning. Meaning, like all words, has to come out of a mind.

Think about it like this. If you were walking through the forest one day and you found a letter written on the floor, would you think, “Oh, that letter randomly assembled itself on the floor through random physical processes”? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d think that letter was written by someone.

It’s the same when we look at DNA. It’s crazy to think that randomly assembled itself because it has meaning. Life has to start with a mind, and that mind is God’s mind. And he enables it through the Word, Jesus Christ. But words also give light, don’t they?

In our modern times, we take light for granted. We flick a switch and on it comes. But in the ancient world, light was harder to come by much of the time, especially at night. Light turns something which is unclear and potentially dangerous into something clear and easier to make safe.

In the same way, Jesus, in his person, in his teaching, through the cross, turns all human existence from something unclear into something clear.

People talk these days about a crisis of meaning, and research shows that people are deeply craving meaning in their lives — a meaning that was taken away when our culture turned away from its Christian roots. And for us as Christians, it’s a bit like this. Imagine someone in Broadwell who keeps falling over at night on the way to and from friends’ houses and from the pub. They say to you, “Do you know what? I really crave some way of seeing in the darkness so I don’t keep falling over.” What would you say to them? You’d say, use a torch — or having to say, get a torch. And they’d say, “No, sorry, I don’t believe in torches.”

You think that’s mad.

In the same way, we Christians see people going through life, stumbling, falling over in relationships, trying to find meaning. We say, “Have you thought of light for your path?” And often the response is, “No, thank you, I don’t believe in light.”

So what does that mean for us? Well, if you want to know what God is like, you have to know Jesus — not know about him, but know him personally, as a person. The challenge for each of us this morning is this: do we know Jesus personally? Do we have a personal relationship with him? Can we say we know him like we know our friends and family?

This comes from reading the Bible, from praying, from talking about it with other Christians. That’s why we put such a priority in the benefice on small groups, on our away day. That’s a time when we can talk to each other about what it means to know Jesus personally.

Jesus is the life and the light of the world. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

If we want to get through life as we were designed to, if we want to avoid the stumbling, the falling over, we have to rely on Jesus and allow him to guide us. If we try not to do this, we’ll be like the person coming back from the pub in the dark with no torch. We may be okay for a bit, but sooner or later we’ll fall over and hurt ourselves. Again, it comes from reading the Bible, praying, making faith not just a Sunday morning thing but a whole-life thing.

And if you speak to anybody who has known Jesus, who has walked as a Christian throughout their life, they’ll tell you it’s not always easy — but you don’t stumble and fall in the same way you would if you were not a Christian.