Jesus: God Made Visible

** Introduction Music ** Well, a very good morning to everybody today. If you have your Bible, we'd invite you to the gospel of John chapter 1 today. John chapter 1, where we begin a new series today. I appreciate Daryl's update a moment ago and wanted to let you know our planned first opening day in the new space is supposed to be July 12th. All right. So after 4th of July, go to the beach and then come back here and be ready to celebrate as we welcome and enter into our new space. So yeah, praise God for all of that. When I was a college sophomore, I had the opportunity, you know, we have to pick elective classes and like fill your schedule. And so I picked a class called scuba diving and got to take scuba diving in the aquatic center there at Auburn. It was great. So spring break, we went on our certification trip where you go down to the ocean. We went to the Florida Keys where your instructors basically test all your skills and certify you. You get all of that experience. And I was going for an advanced certification, which meant that I was required to do a nighttime scuba dive. And that meant I jumped into the ocean off of a perfectly good boat in the middle of the dark. And I don't even know why I did that because, you know, we had this beautiful daytime dives and you see all the coral reefs and the beauty. And then we go back out at night and I'm on this boat and everybody starts jumping into the water. And I'm like, I have lost my mind. Like, what in the world am I doing? I don't even know what's out there, what's down there, where am I going? You can't see anything beyond what your little flashlight will show through the ocean. And anyways, I decided not to be that guy that, you know, didn't jump into the water and failed everything. So eventually I mustered up enough courage and jumped in right after my dive buddy. There's about 30 of us on the dive boat and we descend through the black water, you know, just with our flashlights and I'm towards the end of the line following this crew of people. I had no idea where we're going, just following the dive master. And the next thing you know, there is a circle of flashlights and I look up and there's a statue of Jesus in the middle of the darkness and 30 of us with flashlights all had our flashlights on Jesus. And in that moment, it was one of my most spiritual experiences of my life, where I was touched in that moment to be reminded in the midst of my fear, in the midst of the darkness around me, Jesus was already there. And when we shined our flashlights on him, it just kind of illuminated this space in a beautiful way that still sticks with me to this day. And as we enter into this study of the

gospel of John, what John is doing for us is shining the light on Jesus in a big and magnificent way. He's helping us understand that Jesus is the center point, the focal point of everything. And we need to be reminded of that because oftentimes this world can be a very dark place, can it not? I mean, you don't need me to tell you that you already know that you feel that you experience that in many ways. There's so much pain and brokenness that surrounds us in this world. And at times the darkness can feel powerful and overwhelming, like it just is winning. It's defeating everything else. And that emotion would have been even more magnified to the early church because they didn't have 2,000 years like we do to look back on and see kind of the triumphal part of Christianity as it spread around the world. They didn't know that, that few hundred early thousand disciples that was there didn't know that the power of Jesus would go with them and shine light into a dark world. They thought that maybe that might happen. It might have been at times tempting to think that it was futile, though, because they're up against the power of the Roman government. And yet God took a carpenter and some fishermen from the backwoods of Galilee and changed the world. And John, what he does for us in this moment, is helps us see that darkness doesn't win and he counters the darkness. darkness with the power of Jesus in this world. And as we enter our study of this Gospel of John, he wants us to see Jesus in the proper context for who he really is and what he has done, his power and his glory. And John is highly qualified to write this because he's one of the closest disciples to Jesus, who got a front row seat to hear his teaching, his miracles, and to see his impact. And so somewhere around the year 90 AD, roughly six decades after the resurrection, John pens his account of Jesus to help us, you and I, come to faith in this and know Jesus as a person. Writing from somewhere around modern day Ephesus,

modern day Turkey, he's surrounded in this Hellenistic, very Greek environment, which flavors the way that John tells the story. He doesn't need a long Jewish genealogy like Matthew does, because Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience. John is writing to a different audience, so he doesn't even cover that for us. He starts in a different place. And now John, as an elderly man, writing with many decades of experience and reflection on his time with Jesus, begins the story for us. And here's how it begins, verse one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, and through him all things were made. Without him, nothing, nothing has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind, and that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The darkness cannot win, the darkness cannot defeat light. In this opening statement, these first five verses of John, kind of have this opening grandeur of majesty to them, which helps explain why John doesn't open with the manger, but with eternity. What he's saying to us is before time began, Jesus already was. Before the sun was created, before the earth started rotating,

Jesus was already there. He wasn't a part of creation, he was the creator. And John echoes this language found in Genesis, except he places Jesus right in the middle of it. He wasn't just a good person, although he was. He wasn't just a miracle worker, although he was that. He was not just a messenger from God, although he was that. Not just a moral teacher who could draw a large audience with some good ideas to share. He didn't originate in Bethlehem, although he was born there. Before anything in creation came into being, he was already there. And not only that, John says that nothing, nothing came into existence that Jesus didn't have a hand in bringing into being. Man, what an incredible week to think about this idea, as this past week on Monday, humans went further into space than any human has ever been. And we saw things with human eyes that no human has ever seen before on the backside of the moon. Isn't that incredible? And to think about, as astronauts are seeing this, humanity is seeing this for the first time, Jesus spoke that into existence. As they looked out into the furthest reaches of the universe and the galaxies, Jesus, with a word, spoke that into existence and it came into being. Let's don't take all of that for granted.

Let's let our minds be blown away. And these astronauts got to look out a small porthole from Artemis and see Earth in the distance. I mean, what a viewpoint. And John's just reminding us all of that came into existence through Jesus. And here's why this is important. When you are the designer, the engineer, and the artist, that means you know how it functions best than anybody. You're the expert on how it should be run and maintained and operated. So no one has more experience or understanding our knowledge than the one who crafted its existence. And so what does that mean for us? It means, well, Jesus ought to have some authority in our lives. If he created it, if he... spoke it if he was present before time began, then he ought to know how to run it better than anybody. So he has authority over nature. He has authority over sickness. John's going to show us he has authority over demons. He has authority over the weather. He has authority over his enemies. He has authority over time. And last week we saw he has authority over death. And if you have that kind of authority in your life, we probably ought to tune our ears and listen into that, aren't we? He probably has something to say that's going to be helpful for us. He knows best.

And to think otherwise would be the equivalent of me arguing with Wernher von Braun about how the Saturn V rocket ought to operate. It's ridiculous, right? Here's the expert. Why would I argue with the expert and the creator and the designer, right? If you want to know how to live life well, John is painting this picture from the very beginning. There's no other place to look but Jesus. And if he has authority and understanding that I don't possess and you don't possess, the question for us today is, are we listening to him? Are you following his instructions? If not, it's like trying to put together a 10,000-piece Lego set without reading the directions. You'll do something. You'll create something, but it won't be like what the picture is. And you'll have a lot of pieces that you don't know what to do with. And so John right out of the gate is setting us up to pay attention to the weight of what he is about to share in the coming weeks in the teaching of Jesus. And John is writing down, he's strategically and intentionally crafting for us the words of Jesus, the words of the creator. These are not the words of man. These are the words of God. And when I say, are you listening to him, I don't mean can you regurgitate them and tell me what they say, although that's important. Lots of us can quote information that we don't actually apply to our life. All of us know that we should be flossing, but how many of us actually do that? So don't be guilty of treating Jesus like you're dentists and say, yeah, I know I should, but then don't. What a tragedy that would be. I mean, do you hear his instruction and do you put it into application?

Do you respond in obedience to what he says? If not, then you have rejected his authority. And John's whole point is know that we want to listen to him and respond to him in obedience. And John continues the echoes of creation by saying that Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness. I love this imagery because light always beats darkness. When you walk into a dark room, what is going to defeat the darkness? You flip on the light switch and that light bulb comes on. You're outside, you turn on the flashlight on your cell phone, then you can see where to go. Without light, you can't see. You're going to trip over something and hurt yourself. When do criminals want to operate? At night when nobody can see them. Without light, you get lost and you can't see the way. And in darkness, we feel pretty vulnerable. And God doesn't want us in darkness, so he sent light into the world. This is the way John says it in verse 6. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. Now John is not talking about himself here. He's talking about John the Baptist as different from John the apostle. I wish they had different names, but they have the same name, so we have to understand that we're talking about a different person. So his name was John, John the Baptist. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him, all might believe. Here's his purpose. He himself, John the Baptist, was not the light. He came as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone 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. So here we get the purpose of the ministry of John the Baptist and the purpose of Jesus. John the Baptist's purpose was to point people to Jesus, magnify. John said, I must become less, and he must become more. come greater. So he's a witness to this light that came into the world and what's John's goal as he writes all of this for us and john the baptist goal is that all might believe his purpose for us is not just information about Jesus. His purpose is to lead us to a place of faith that we might believe in him. It's an important phrase because in john throughout the gospel of john it's repeated something like a hundred times that there's belief. Faith might be developed in our hearts and it's just a reminder here in this text that this true light gives light to everyone. Jesus did not just come for a few select people on this planet, for a few nations. He came for every nation, every tribe, every tongue, every language. The light is shining for everyone to believe. It's just another way of acknowledging the majesty of Jesus who deserves praise from all people around the globe. And john acknowledges here though that the very first people to encounter Jesus, his own people, the jewish people refused to see him for who he really was and crucified by his own religious authorities. They chose darkness over light but even in that tragedy as we reflected on last week, even in the darkest moment on good friday, God was working out his purpose for all nations to encounter that light. The darkness could not overcome the light. That's a part of the beautiful mystery of God that all came to believe because his own rejected him. And john emphasizes not just but believe, but believe in his name. In other words, we aren't just agreeing that Jesus existed, but we have put our faith in who he is and who has revealed himself to believe to who is revealed himself to be. We believe in his identity as the son of God. Yeah. And there's a confidence and a reliance that we can entrust ourselves to him. We're not saved by our good deeds or our moral ideas. We're saved by the name of Jesus. Yes. And that's why we just saying this morning all kinds of phrases about the beautiful name of Jesus.

That's why we sing things like Jesus name above all names. It's why we have phrases like at his name, the demons flee. There's power in his name. There is no other name under heaven by which we are saved. And if that's true, just a little warning, by the way, about misusing his name. So that when you stub your toe or you get frustrated about something in life, you don't scream out Jesus as if it's some sort of expletive to be misused or abused and belittled. Be real careful with that. Let's treat it as if it is the name above all names. And if we really believe in the power of his name, then stake your life on his identity. If he really is the son of God, listen to him like he's the son of God. Do what he tells you to do. Act like he tells you to act. And the early church did this. And so much so that their identity became tied to his name and they were called Christians, little Christs, Jesus the Christ. Now, these little Christs that have patterned their life after the one that they knew to be the resurrected son of God. As a Christian, I wear his name. Don't take that for granted. And when we believe in his name, he gives us this beautiful and amazing gift, the right to be called children of God. How amazing is that? It's only through Jesus that we move from being enemies of God to being his sons and his daughters. And you know what? You can't decide to be that on your own power. Like you couldn't just make that happen. God enabled it to happen. Jesus gave it to you as a gift. He gave you the right to be adopted as his sons and daughters. When you are a child of mom and dad, you have access to their life in a way that nobody else has. And it's through Jesus, John is reminding us that we have access to the Father.

And John is gonna say it a little bit more clearly in a few chapters from now, but it's worth saying here that Jesus is not just one path of access to the Father. He is the one and only path of access to the Father. Like there's not several choices of paths to God. There is one path to God. He is the way, the truth, the life. He is our exclusive access to being sons and daughters of God. And then the reason that path exists is because Jesus stepped onto our planet. And here's a beautiful way that he says this in verse 14. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and full of truth. So this is John's simple summary of the Christmas message. He gives us the Reader's Digest version. There it is, right there. The creator stepped into his creation. We didn't have to go find him. He came here. He put on skin. And he revealed God to us. Now John takes us from creation to the incarnation in just a few verses. In other words, Jesus is majestic enough to fill the universe, but he's near enough to be seen and touched and heard.

A key part of this understanding of what John is communicating here is this idea of dwelling, that the word put on flesh and made his dwelling among us. The word here, dwelling, in the original language is literally the word for tabernacle. And if you're not familiar with that word, the tabernacle was a structure in the desert when the children of Israel were on their 40-year journey in the wilderness. And God commanded them to create a structure where he would meet with them, where his presence dwelt. And it was the place where the glory of God dwelt among the people and sacrifices were offered and mercy was given. Literally, John is saying to us that Jesus pitched his tent with us. Simply put, Jesus is God made visible. It's an amazing idea, isn't it? That God of the universe, God the creator, put on skin like you and I have. And if you wanna know what God is like, John is saying, just look at Jesus. He came in the flesh. He walked on our streets and ate our food and talked in a language that people could understand. And I think that oughta encourage us this morning in so many ways.

Because if God feels distant to you, John says, be reminded that Jesus came near. In fact, Jesus came here. If you can't imagine that God could fix your broken life, John says, look at Jesus' encounters with people, very broken and messed up people, who brought incredible transformation. And in those times in our life where you feel unlovable, John says, look at Jesus on the cross and how much he loved you. And if you feel purposeless in your life, just look at how Jesus took a ragtag bunch of guys from the backwoods of Galilee and used them to transform the world. And if you, days when you feel hopeless, John says, why don't you look at the empty tomb and be reminded that God brings new life out of dead places. So what Jesus does for us is make God understandable and accessible. Yeah, he still blows our minds and there's still mystery to him, but Jesus puts skin on it for us where we can grasp it and understand it. And that's important because many of us carry distorted versions of God's wrong pictures. If we were to go around the room today, or especially to our non Christian friends who don't know scripture, and we were to ask them, tell us what God is like, we'd get all kinds of wrong answers. For some of us, we might imagine that God is cold, or distant, impossible to please, perhaps absent in our lives. And John says, stop building your picture of God based on your human experiences, your fears, your wounds, and your assumptions, or your failures about other people, and then projecting

that on God. Let Jesus tell you who God is. And over the next few months, in our sea of darkness as you and I live this life, what I want us to do as we go through this series over the next few months is to, in the middle of our sea of darkness, we're going to be shining our flashlight on Jesus. In the midst of what we're afraid of, beyond the unknown of the edge of where that light is shining right there, that Jesus is in the midst of that darkness, and that he's going to teach us and remind us what God has done, and what God is doing. May his presence be so strong and real in your life that it is undeniable. If you're ready for that church, say amen this morning. Let's come to our feet today. Father, so grateful today for the presence of Jesus in our world, not just that you sent an idea, but you sent a person, you sent your son, and that we have the blessing, that we have a written record of his words, and his actions, and his manifestation, and his victory over death, that gives us hope, that shows us how to live this life, Lord. And may, as we go through this study, Lord, you don't just speak information into our minds, but you speak transformation into our hearts, that we will become more like him, that we will be changed, that we will experience, that our ears will listen in more than we ever have to what he has to say to us, Lord, so that you will be manifest in our life. And it's in the mighty name of Jesus we pray, amen.