Preached 12/26/04

The Word

Preached by: Dr. Paul R. Smith

West Side Presbyterian Church

Seattle, WA

Contact: office@wspc.org

HE GAVE US HIS WORD!

[John 1:1-14]

Prayer for Illumination - Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us your word, for being true to your word in such a remarkable way that the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ. We want to know Him. We want to celebrate His presence with us here. May your Spirit move among us illumining our minds and transforming our hearts. May my words simply reflect your truth, but also your heart. We pray it in Jesus’ name, AMEN.

Message

Is there a more magical moment than Christmas Eve? Whether you are a shepherd under a crisp, star-studded Bethlehem sky some 2000 years ago, or a Scrooge, listening to the clock chime the hours on the wall, or whether you are a child, waiting breathlessly in the stillness for the sound of footsteps – or maybe bells – it is a magical hour, is it not? Many of you celebrated it with us on Christmas Eve at midnight. What is it that makes Christmas so special, so unique among holidays?

Well, the apostle John would like us to know. He says that first Christmas Eve “the Word [the Word of God] became flesh [and blood]!” What did he mean by that? In the first 14 verses of his gospel he begins to tell us an absolutely incredible story! He, first of all, identifies the “Word” as the intelligence, the purpose, the power that underlies our world – the elegant statement scientists have been looking for which brought the universe itself into being. It was an even simpler and more elegant statement than Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking have been able to discover, simpler than E=mc². Here’s the statement, here’s the word: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light”! That is the elegant statement that underlies the universe. God has brought it all into being!

So we encounter the Word which spoke light and beauty and order into the dark, empty chaos of pre-existence. We meet the Word which subsequently breathed life into that creation, and most particularly the Word which, face-to-face, breathed His animating spirit into human flesh to develop a responsive, interactive soul, one which could know Him, could actually know the transcendent God. He introduces us to His Light which can and will ultimately overwhelm, overcome every shred of darkness which still shrouds our broken world.

But then, as John comes to the climax of his introduction, the passage we’re going to scrutinize this morning, in verse 9 we learn that this Word, this Source of Life, this Light which reveals what is ultimately and absolutely True, was himself (for we have seen that the Word is a person) coming into the world! Or, as verse 14 says so eloquently, “the Word became flesh”! In short, God Himself is entering His own creation! He made us, and now He has come to visit us!

You know that. You have heard the word preached here, you have studied it for yourselves, but stop and think. This is an utterly unique and extraordinary concept – that God would enter His creation! To the Muslim people as well as many others who believe in a transcendent God, this powerful Spirit Being is aloof and distant and ultimately “Other” than us. Mohammed, the Muslim believes, was Allah’s greatest prophet, . . . but he was only a prophet! It would be blasphemy to identify him with God. You would have your head taken off, literally, for suggesting such a thing! God, they reason, could not become a part of something so mundane, something so corrupt as our world. This would be unimaginable!

Of course the ancient Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, had a whole pantheon of very earthy gods, but if you look at them closely, they are all trapped within this world. Other gods are aloof, transcendent, distant, while the Greeks and Romans, and others who follow suit, have a god who is trapped within the world. Zeus himself, the chief of gods, makes his home on Mt. Olympus, not elsewhere, not beyond the galaxies, and while he has great powers that transcend nature, nonetheless he has to contend with a contrary wife, and finds his plans from time-to-time thwarted by the intrigues of his children, various and sundry lesser gods in that pantheon. It never occurs to Zeus to “think outside the box” of the material universe, for he is himself a part of it. Neither Zeus nor any of these other so-called gods would ever go there. In fact, they would be bewildered by the suggestion that there was a “there” to go to beyond the immediately perceptible world.

The revolutionary idea that the God who created the universe and who stands outside of it could somehow enter that universe personally and take an active role from the inside, circumscribing himself with his own unalterable laws – the very laws that hold the universe together – all this would be unthinkable!

But nothing less than this is being proposed in John’s gospel. The God who created the universe has actually entered it, and as we shall soon enough learn, the implications of this act are, as you can imagine, simply staggering! It is a brilliant and ultimately unfathomable strategy by which God proposes to work from the inside to heal His creation, perhaps in something like the same way, within our own bodies, a white blood cell battles the diseases that infect our bodies, by absorbing those destructive invaders and then eliminating them through their own sacrificial death! White blood cells are an analogy of Christ.

Do you understand what is happening here? “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world, ” verse 9 says. What an incredible opportunity! That we might encounter the Lord of the Universe face to face! That we might know God! That we might hear the Truth from His own lips! That we might come face-to-face with the Source of Life which originally breathed His spirit into us mouth-to-mouth! That we might glimpse the glory of the One who is the very definition of Beauty! People, do you understand what is happening here? It is midnight in our world. It is dark and cold and scary and confusing, but the most astounding visitor imaginable is arriving that first Christmas!

One would be justified in presuming that this was the ultimate opportunity for the human being who had been made in the very image of God, corresponding to his person, just so that we might actually know the One who gives us life and the One who gives meaning to our lives. So now, suddenly, here He was, out of the darkness! He, the true light, the life of men, had come, and now, verse10 says, “He was in the world”! The God who created the world was in it. The moment had indeed come! The moment in anticipation of which the entire creation itself had stood on tiptoe!

It is indeed a breathless moment. Midnight has finally arrived on Christmas Eve and a shiver runs through creation, sensing the approach of the Creator himself! For God – the God who knows and is Everything, who brought us into existence – He Himself is coming! He has entered His own creation! If I have any sensitivity whatsoever to what is happening here, I cannot wait to see Him! What will He be like? I have come into existence for this moment – to discover my Creator and to observe His brilliance, His power, His beauty, and His glory!

But the world did not recognize Him, John tells us! This is astounding! How could we miss it? The One who created the universe is now walking within it, and we’ve missed Him? What were we looking for? How could we have missed Him? Were we looking for flash and dazzle? A blinding light? A rainbow? What were we looking for? A heavenly chariot driven by celestial horses? What?

It is a question worth asking. We had, after all, no eyes to see the One who transcends the universe itself. Our eyes were not created to behold His unfathomable glory. But what DID we see? We saw a man, like ourselves in every way (but of course, since we human beings were created in the image of God). Yet such a man! He knew it would be difficult for us to believe. After all, once He is inside the universe, He will have to resemble that universe, won’t He? He won’t look “other-worldly” because the whole point is He is finding a place within our world.

But look at this man! Look at this man who appears on that first Christmas. He can speak to a storm and it ceases! “What manner of man is this,” the disciples asked, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?” He can heal a man born blind, or crippled from birth, remaking his body. He can see all the way into the depths of our hearts and reveal our own thoughts to us, the intentions of our hearts that we thought we had kept hidden! He speaks with a wisdom and an insight that suddenly clarifies everything. What was obscure finally makes sense on the lips of Jesus. The light has come into the midst of our darkness. And in the end, even Death cannot defeat Him. But of course! For He is the Author of Life! What indeed would we expect were God to enter our world? That’s the whole point! He’s the one who breathed life into our bodies in the first place!

Really, it makes all the sense in the world that God would appear this way were He to come into His creation. How else might He appear and still reveal His character to us? A supernova could tell us nothing at all (and besides, it would incinerate us!) He’s not coming as an alien, for we are His children, made in His image. He will certainly resemble us (or we, Him!) A celestial chariot and kingly robes would send entirely the wrong message, and a supernova would not reveal anything of His heart. No, this is exactly how God means to communicate the Truth – in the face, a very human face, of a man of ultimate power who, in an act of ultimate compassion and grace lays down His life for those He loves! That, you understand, is the heart of God. What more beautiful picture of God could we desire than that?

Oh, one day, I have no doubt, we will see wonders beyond our ability to imagine! But here, in the face of Jesus, the Word become flesh, we have seen all the way into the heart of God! An incomparable vision of truth and beauty!

So how did we miss it? How did we miss it? Verse 10 in our text ends with the past (aorist) tense. It’s done. It’s all over. We failed to recognize Him. The sense of the aorist tense here is that the moment came, the incredible visitor arrived, and the world simply missed its great opportunity. How tragic is that?

Were we just unlucky? Was this a reasonable error which anyone might have made? Don’t flatter yourselves, John says in verse 11. You don’t really have an excuse for missing this one. The apostle Paul said it too, you will recall, in Romans 1:

What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. . . . His eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived. . . . So [Paul concludes] they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.

[Romans 1:19-22]

John says here in our text essentially, well come on, give me a break, “he came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” That was where He belonged. This was where He fit. It was like having a large ring of keys and trying each one of them on the lock, and suddenly, one fit perfectly, the tumblers all fell into place, and the door swung open. But you refused to walk through it! Here in Jesus was the answer to all the questions about life, but you wouldn’t accept it, he says. Why? . . . Well, I think it wasn’t the answer we wanted. He spoke of humbling ourselves and of becoming a servant to all, and that’s not what we wanted to hear. Nobody, John suggests, fooled us; we rejected it outright!

What fools to turn our backs on Life and Light and Beauty and Grace while we sought to build . . . what? Our own petty kingdom, one in which we could have things our way? Did you really think your way was better than His? And in any case, did you honestly think for a moment that your kingdom could rival God’s? If you did, of course, you were the ultimate fool!

It was an astounding ignorance, this rejection. Do you remember that word? Ignorance! We have spoken of it before. It can be traced back to the Greek word for knowledge, γνσις (gnosis). It identifies what we don’t know, but it carries the idea of neglecting to know – which we see in the word “ignore.” There is no excuse for ignorance. We have neglected to know.

God came to earth in the person of Jesus. It was the most astonishing thing we could ever imagine happening. But we didn’t like what we saw, so we chose to ignore it. It is entirely appropriate to call the unbelieving world “ignorant,” precisely the right word. In their arrogance, they have consciously chosen to pay no attention to God as He has revealed himself, as if He might go away if we ignore Him. What foolishness is that?! And, besides, just think what we are missing when the God of glory has entered our world! “He came to his own home, and his own people did not receive him.” [John 1:11]

But this is not the end of the story. We have had an astounding visitor – the Creator himself has entered our world! The world, for the most part, we are told, chose to ignore Him. But, John tells us in verse 12, some did recognize this astounding visitor who had come in the middle of the world’s night, and they received Him. They accepted Him for who He was – the builder and the rightful owner of this home in which we live. He had come, verse 11 tells us, “to his own home,” and His own people had not received Him. But now, John tells us, to those who did receive Him, and to them alone, He gave the right to become God’s children. Notice that they did not earn this right by being better than everyone else. It was given to them. It was God’s “house-warming” gift, if you will – the gift your guests bring with them and it is yours if you receive them. It is what He came to give. Receive Him and you will receive this Life.

But, blinded by their own pride and self-centeredness, most people rejected Him and therefore forfeited the gift He had come to give. Anyone who simply let Him in received that gift by receiving Him. As Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Invite Him in and He will share that communion with you. All you have to do is open the door. He, you see, is our midnight visitor, the Lord of the Universe has come knocking on our door, and we simply are called upon to open the door to Him. That’s all! To invite Him in!

To “receive him” is further defined in v.12, to “believe in his name.” What does that mean? It is not simply to believe that God exists, or even that what He says is true. To “believe on his name” takes us significantly deeper. In the Bible, and to nearly all the peoples of antiquity, a name was much more than a label. A name was intended to speak of the essence of a person. To believe on the name of the Word, the Christ, was to trust the person who was called “the Word.” It is to believe in Him as He is, not to make Him into what we desire for Him to be. It is to believe that God is God and to put our trust in that God. This is so important for us to grasp! When we ask if you believe in Jesus, we are not asking whether you believe that He existed. History knows He existed. We are not even asking if you believe what He says is true. Many believe that what He says is true. What we are asking is whether you trust Him as a person! Trust Him enough to commit your life to Him.

This distinction is why you see so many people who call themselves Christians, but who give no evidence of Christ in their lives. They sincerely believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but it makes no difference to them. They still live their lives the way they desire, not the way He desires. To believe on His name means to place your complete trust in Him, to surrender your independence to Him in order to be guided and shaped by His Spirit, which He sends to transform us into His image.

So it is, John informs us, that to all those who yielded their lives up to Him, “he gave power to become children of God.” What an incredible gift this is! He gives us a place within God’s eternal family, bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ, free of charge to us! It’s a gift, he says, to all those who will receive Him! What an astounding privilege finally! To be welcomed eternally into the indescribably glorious presence of the Living, loving God!

The Scriptures are full of descriptions of this gift. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him!” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:9. Do we believe him? “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us,” Paul writes in Romans 8:18ff. “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed . . . creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” What a promise is this! Talk about the Garden of Eden! Creation itself set free from its bondage to decay! That’s a description of paradise!

Isaiah, too, predicted this outcome from the Messiah’s visit. He said,

The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together . . . They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. [Isaiah 11:6-9]

And the Bible ends with this revelation,

Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. [Revelation 21:3-4]

That is the great goal of all history, a goal which all men everywhere have desired. But verse13 in our text makes sure we know where such a world comes from. There are three phrases in that verse which reveal essentially where it’s not going to come from (“. . . not of blood, nor will or of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”) 1) It’s not the natural course of events. This is not where the world will end up if left to itself. You need to know that, first of all. 2) It’s not something we can accomplish by making up our minds to do it. It is not by our own will. We’ve always wanted to do this, but we have not found ourselves capable of accomplishing it. 3) It’s actually not going to be the result of any human volition whatsoever. We’re simply not going to bring in the kingdom of God by our own efforts. It’s not going to happen.

Of course we should always be striving for a better world, as Jesus our Lord did. But just because our intentions are good does not mean we could ever actually accomplish it. I certainly hope that our current efforts in the world, in Iraq, for example, and in the Middle East, might make the world a better place to live, and we are right, to the extent we are pursuing that goal. But does anybody actually believe that we, with our government and our people, are going to restore the Garden of Eden in Iraq? There will always be terrorists and self-serving politicians and selfish neighbors who will make our lives miserable – if we are not capable enough of making our lives miserable ourselves.

What it will ultimately take, and nothing less than this, is the complete transformation of the human heart from within. This is something we simply cannot bring about by our own efforts, John tells us. It can only be accomplished by the power of God available freely to all who will receive it. The One who made us in the first place now desires to re-make us, for we corrupted His original design. What must happen now is so radical that it can only be described as a re-birth. That’s the way Jesus described it in John 3; we need to be born again of the Spirit this time. The apostle Paul sums it up in his 2^nd letter to the Corinthians. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” [5:17]

The good news of the gospel that I get to share with you at Christmas, concerning our amazing visitor, is that while our world is still struggling, still decaying, still bound for death, nevertheless we have been visited by God himself! In the middle of the world’s night, on that first Christmas Eve, He came down, to be born of a virgin, to walk among us, and to redeem us from death and decay. To receive Him, to yield your life to Him, is to get your first taste of Real Life, and to claim your place in the new heaven and the new earth which God cannot and will not fail to accomplish with His creation. After all, He has given us His Word!

Closing prayer - Father in heaven, thank you for giving us your Word. Thank you that we have been able to see it and touch it in the person of Jesus. I would pray now, as we reflect on this act and the difference it makes in our lives, your Spirit would touch our hearts with this truth. Transform us from within through the power of your Spirit which supercedes our own ability, for we know that we cannot do this on our own. We cannot simply choose it and have it happen. We must receive you, let your Spirit fill us and transform us from within. And so, in this moment, may we surrender, truly surrender our lives and our wills to yours. Take us, Lord, remake us; make us your own, through Christ Jesus our Lord, AMEN.