Have you ever traced your roots? Do you know your genealogy? Who are your ancestors? Are there any infamous or prominent people in your past? How does your story begin?
The beginning of Jesus' story is recorded differently by the 4 different gospel authors. Mark records it with the beginning of his public ministry as he is baptized by John. Matthew records it with the ancestral heritage of Jesus. Luke with the conception and birth.
John however, goes back....way back to the very beginning of time; in the foundations of eternity past for that is where the story of Jesus begins. In the Beginning. The only true perspective with which to see Jesus' story is in the light of eternity.
Johns gospel bears a disarming similarity to Genesis. In the beginning. In both instances, yet from differing perspectives, the author of genesis and John record for us how God spoke in the beginning and in doing so brought forth life and order to a chaotic world and universe.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became a living breathing person and lived in this world as one of us.
John Calvin says in his commentary that Jesus, the Logos of God is really God's speech.
Words have powerful influence don't they? It was said of John Knox that when he preached his words had more power than ten thousand trumpets.
No one alive during John Kennedy's days as president will forget the words: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."
Martin Luther Kings words ring as loudly today as they did in Washington when he shouted out "I have a dream."
Words can heal and build up or they can hurt and tear down. Perhaps you have been influenced by words in some way. You know how good it felt to hear your parent say "I am proud of you" and how it hurt when they said "I am disappointed in you."
"Welcome home, It's a girl, Congratulations, and I love you" are all words that are tender, healing and affirming. On the other hand, "I hate you, You're ugly, and Can't you do anything right" are words and phrases that tear down and defeat a person.
JOHN SAYS THAT Jesus IS GODS SPEECH TO THE WORLD TO BUILD IT UP AND HEAL IT.
Think with me about the power of God's speech and its effects. John lays out this passage that indicates that The Word does things.
John affirms some very profound truths here. Jesus existed before the world began. Jesus will exist after the world ceases to exist. Jesus is pre-existent and Jesus is eternally existent. Jesus, quoting the Old Testament said that Heaven and Earth shall pass away but my word shall not pass away. God's Word is eternally existent.
Not only is Jesus eternally existent but that existence is synonymous with and equal in substance to God the father or first person of the trinity. The essence of that Word was personal relationship. That Word was with God in the beginning. Nothing communicates like personal relationship. When we were home at Christmas time, my mother made the comment, oh I love to get mail from you (she never does because I am a terrible letter writer) and to talk to you on the phone, but it is so good to have you here. Jesus is with God and is God so that God can be with us.
The Word was not only with God in relationship but was and is God in substance. Paul writes that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him in bodily form The story is told of a little girl who was learning the Old testament in her Sunday School class and the teacher asked how a loving God could be like this. Her comment was that "oh, this was before God became a Christian." The reality is that God was, if we can use the term, a Christian.
John's purpose is to unequivocally state that Jesus was pre-existent as God in nature, but at the same time affirms that Jesus brings life. Even as God spoke the Words, "Let there be light" and there was light, so when God spoke "Let there be life, life came into being and did so in its fullest sense in the person of Jesus Christ.
The new English Version Translates verse three in this way. No single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life."
Eugene Peterson in the Message says that nothing - not one thing! - came into being without Him.
God's word brings life. The prophet Isaiah, seeking to remind people of this fact in the midst of words that also spoke of judgment said of the word of God, that it is like the rain and snow that comes down from heaven to water the earth and make it bring forth and bud, giving seed to the sowed and bread to the eater, so is God's word that comes forth from his mouth. It is life giving and creative.
Jesus God's speech gives life to those who allow him to penetrate their life.
Again, the similarity to Genesis is striking, Before God spoke the world was formless and void. The spirit of God was hovering above the dark chaos when all of a sudden God spoke and brought light. The first act of creation was light into darkness. In the same way, into the spiritual darkness of a world lost in sin and dark chaos, God spoke Light into existence.
Darkness is defined as the absence of light. Whenever there is even the tiniest glimmer of light, darkness is no longer absolute. God brought an explosion of light that illuminated the world with the very glory of the eternal God.
Can you imagine if you had spent your entire existence in dark blindness when all of a sudden a great, blinding light appeared. On one hand, it is great. You could see things you had never seen before. You could apprehend beauty and order and the warm sensations of that brightness but since you had never seen it before, you couldn't understand it. You didn't know what the light was.
John came to bear witness to the light. He was not the light but only its messenger so that when the light fully appeared people would begin to understand it.
In the movie Annie, Daddy Warbucks simply has to say that Annie is his daughter and it is so. God did not have to go through an agency and be approved. God spoke and those who received him became God's children.
This whole passage would be nothing more than fodder for academics in ivory towers if it were not for this reality. You see, God's word is always with the intent of restoring and healing and affirming. Even as Jesus and the Father were one, so God desires that we be in a relationship of oneness with God - We in God and God in us.
God's Word, Jesus makes that reality. As opposed to any who would say that you can bring yourself up to God or do anything to make yourself acceptable to God, God's Speech to us is the reminder that God acted unilaterally and unconditionally to adopt us as children. Not step children. Not foster children but children with all the rights and privileges and inheritance that goes with it.
God spoke and we who receive Jesus, became God's adopted children.
God's Word became flesh and lived in our midst and we beheld his glory, even the glory of the One and only, who came from the father full of grace and truth. Jesus is God's visual aid. The visible manifestation, the exact image, the one God in human form. Jesus said that if a person had seen him, that person had seen the father for Jesus and the father are one.
People today wonder and puzzle at the nature and existence of God. People construct paradigms of thought about who God is and what God is like. People even build idols and paint pictures trying to depict God. However, God is. And God is independent of any particular thought or idea we may have of God. God is the burning bush. The fourth man in the fiery furnace. The cloud of smoke and the pillar of fire. But most importantly, God is Jesus and Jesus is God. And when you know Jesus, you know God.
Brothers and Sisters, I say to you that God's Word still is speaking in the person of Jesus Christ who lives by the Spirit in each one of us.
The Christian life is to be one of incarnating God in the world today. The Word that is with God and is God is still able to create and give life. IT is still able to shine a penetrating shaft of light into the darkness of the world. That Word is still able to show others who God is.
We are not the light. We, like John only bear witness to the light. But as we make ourselves available and incarnated into the lives of people; when we step down out of our ivory towers and walk among the people of this world who are oppressed, lonely, sick, dispairing and lost in sin, the Glory of the one and only will make a difference.
During the days of the Revolution in Russia, priests in the Russian Orthodox church argued over what color stoles to wear while Christianity was nearly purged from the country.
The Church in Germany during the Days of the Third Reich remained virtually silent while 6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered.
But consider where the Word of God still speaks today through people like Charles Colson and those who take the Gospel into the prisons of this country; through John Perkins and the Voice of Calvary who work relentlessly to bring economic justice and racial equality to the poor and dispossessed African Americans of Jackson Mississippi; Millard Fuller who founded Habitat for Humanity in an effort to provide affordable housing for God's people in need; and for the people of LaSalle Street church in Chicago who work to offer free legal and financial planning help to the poor who live in the Cabrini Green Housing Projects.
The list goes on and on and it does not stop in other cities or other countries. It is true here in Las Cruces with those who take care of children of prisoners at the SNM correctional facility and who serve soup at the soup kitchen and who go to Mexico to build houses with Casas por Cristo and with all of you who are incarnating the love of God and shining the light of Jesus into the world through your flesh.
Again I refer to Eugene Peterson's translation of this passage. He says of Jesus Incarnation, that the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.
When God speaks amazing things happen. Is God speaking through your life? Has God moved into your neighborhood?