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Well, friends, today we begin the Gospel of John.
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We'll start in John chapter one.
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We'll read the very beginning of this gospel.
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And uh before we read, we'll begin with prayer.
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So pray with me, please.
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Dear God, we just thank you for this gospel that we will read together now.
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And as we turn to the first page, John chapter one, we we read about the beginning of all things.
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We consider and ponder your creation and your profound mysteries, and your incarnation in Christ.
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Give us wild imaginations, we pray.
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May your spirit be amongst us in the hearing of your word, the reading of your word, and the study of your word.
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Amen.
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So John chapter one, verse one, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
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He was with God in the beginning.
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So John begins with a poem.
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It's just it's so different than the other three synoptic gospels right out of the gates.
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It begins with a poem.
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And this poem calls our hearts back to the very beginning of the Bible.
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Right?
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If you go back to Genesis chapter one and read that first sentence of all of Scripture, you know what does it say?
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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So that phrase in the beginning, that's that's what Genesis means.
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It just means the beginnings, right?
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And in Genesis 1, it's in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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And in John, he takes that sentence and he rewrites it.
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In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
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If you read Genesis chapter one, how does God create the world?
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God creates the world through words.
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God speaks, and God said, and God said, and God said, and God said.
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Some people listen, some people don't hear.
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It's got its own little, it just flies out there.
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And yet it also is a part of me.
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Somehow the thoughts are coming out of me.
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I don't know where they come from, but they are mysteriously both the same as me and distinct from me.
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And somehow this word of God is present with God, within God, with God, was God, but also distinct from God because it's speech, it's words, it's right.
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And of course, the layers of meaning that God is creating the world in Genesis by the Word and by His Spirit, and yet we're reading this as a word, right?
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The Jewish people are people of the book.
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And Christians, like our Jewish brothers and sisters, are people of the book.
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And the word of, you know, if I just said to somebody, do you know what the word of God is?
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The first thing they might say is scripture, the Bible.
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The Bible is the word of God.
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But here, John is saying that as we read chapter one, he'll be saying that Jesus is the Word of God, the Word of God incarnate.
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So what is the Word?
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The Word creates the world.
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Uh the Word is, you know, the Bible, Holy Scripture.
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And also now, as we read, the Word straps on flesh and becomes Jesus Christ, the incarnation of the Word.
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But what is this word on other levels?
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There's more depth.
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In Greek, the word is logos.
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And logos has its own history.
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You could you could consider uh how did the Greeks speak of a concept like logos?
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You know, John is telling this story and writing this story, and he's not using the Hebrew word dabar for God spoke.
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He's using the Greek word logos in conjunction as a dance partner with Hebrew concepts of word.
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So, what does the Greek word logos mean?
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And you can study Greek philosophy and realize the Greeks talked about logos on lots of different levels.
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Almost all of their ancient philosophies dealt with logos on various levels.
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For the Stoics, Stoicism is kind of popular right now.
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For the Stoics, Logos was logic.
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That reason and ration and logic have a role in our world.
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And to be wise, you should probably figure out how to practice logic and be a reasonable person, right?
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And so there's something, there's there's an engine of authenticity and power and goodness in logic for Stoics.
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You know, for Plato, Plato says that logic creates the world, logos creates the world.
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That's the best Plato can get to.
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He does not say God created the world, he doesn't see logic as divine, but but when he reaches the depths of his philosophy, he's got to say some concept creates the world.
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And what concept creates the world?
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It's logic.
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And, you know, throw a dart at any ancient Greek philosopher, and they're gonna deal with the the issue of logic.
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And why?
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Because in the Greek mindset, there are patterns, there are undeniable patterns in the world.
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The world to some is chaotic and wild and crazy and free, yes, but also why is it that that type of seed generates that type of plant like every friggin' time?
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You know, why do dahlias bloom with the same pattern?
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Why don't some dahlias just look funky and weird and obscure?
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Why do flowers and seashells and areas of creation have some kind of sequence and order and reason and ration that you can just see with your naked eye?
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That is a pattern.
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There's patterns all over nature.
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Why?
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Why is that?
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Why isn't it all chaos?
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And what they're saying is logic, logic is just woven in, woven into our world in some way.
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And so, John, I think John is doing his best to uh speak to his Hebrew brothers and sisters and also assimilate Hebrew philosophy into Greco-Roman culture.
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He wants to tell a story of Jesus, he's choosing to write it in Greek, he wants uh the Greco-Roman Hellenistic world to read this story of a Jewish Hebrew god becoming a human being.
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And so he's playing with logic right away.
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And and we might miss it if we just don't know anything about logic and we're not Hellenistic, and we don't, but we are Western world people, and so we we have a little bit of this just in us.
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In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
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You could write a dissertation on that sentence right there.
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Yeah.
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So that's so if logic has incarnated God itself as Christ, which is where this first chapter is becoming, then we're saying, reverse engineer that, Jesus Christ was with God when the world was formed.
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And the big claim throughout John's gospel is that Jesus is God.
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That Jesus is divine.
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You know, the the a fancy kind of theological term is Christology.
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Christology is the study of Christ and Christ's nature and who Christ is.
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John, of all the gospels, has the highest Christology.
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When you read John, it's like, whoa, that is a supreme, divine Christology.
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And and here, I mean, you can't get any more divine than existing before creation itself exists, being a part of the whole creation of the world.
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That's about as divine as you can get.
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I mean, go talk to Plato and ask him where he edges up closest to divinity.
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It's probably with a term like logic.
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And so John is brilliant, and he's he's trying to help people see that Jesus is God.
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And so this first chapter, as we read it, you're people are gonna call Jesus.
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There's gonna be seven different names that he gets identified as.
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And and and the whole point is, yeah, he's that, and he's that, and he's that, and he's that, and he's that, and he's that.
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Tons of nuance, tons of diversity of of identity, but ultimately we're beginning in the beginning, and he is the word that is with God in the very beginning, distinct from God and yet God.
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Pretty cool.
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In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
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He was with God in the beginning, through him all things were made.
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Now which him is the hymn the word or is the hymn God?
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Through him all things were made.
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Without him nothing was made that has been made.
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In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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This is the creation story.
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You read Genesis one, and there's darkness and there's void and there's emptiness, and God speaks a word of light, let there be light, and light bursts into being, and what tumbles out next is life and goodness and creation itself, driving out the darkness of chaos, cultivating the goodness of life and the goodness of plants and birds and fish and humankind that bears God's image and rest and beauty and delight and love, all that is called into being.
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And it starts with light, and it starts here with Christ being a part of that whole process.
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Through him all things were made.
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Without him nothing was made that has been made.
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In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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Consider that, verse five.
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The light shines in the darkness.
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The tenses of the verbs here.
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The light shines in the darkness, present tense, it is shining now, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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Have we lost?
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Have we won?
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Where are we in the story?
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And these present tense, perfect tense verbs are saying God can't lose this story of redemption.
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The darkness, the chaos, death, the march of the evil empire, whatever you want to say chaos and darkness is the the isms, the racism, the the violence, the worst of what we see amongst us, whatever those darknesses are, they will rear their ugly heads and do their worst.
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But the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Yep.
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And I'm so glad you said that uh about we see a light, because John is gonna play with different different signs, and and light is fundamentally a visual sign.
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You see light with your eyes.
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That's what your eyes do.
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That's kind of the whole thing.
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You don't feel you feel warmth with your skin when you step out into the sun, but your it's your eyeballs.
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You light and sight are connected.
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And what John wants us to do, his ultimate hope with this gospel, you get to John 20, and he just puts it all out there and he says, uh, you know, as I've described these signs, I hope that you might come to believe.
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And then blessed are those who haven't seen these signs and yet believe.
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You haven't seen those signs that Jesus performed because you weren't alive 2,000 years ago, but you have seen light, and you have a certain kind of sight, and you can believe.
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And so sight and light and belief all roll together.
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And throughout John, these categories, they just don't follow perfect logic.
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He's playing with logic in the beginning here, but then they just roll into these like romantic expressions of ideas, and and it's really complicated and really beautiful.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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It's my favorite sentence to say in Advent while we're anticipating the incarnation.
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My favorite phrase: we light our Advent candles, the light grows.
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Then here comes the infant lowly, infant holy, born to Mary in Bethlehem.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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Now, pause the poem and tell us a story, John.
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Verse 6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
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And if you know nothing about uh the apostle John, uh, and you're reading something called the Gospel of John, you're gonna read this and you might think, What?
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Here comes the guy, right?
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And that's kind of, I think John is just smart and funny, and maybe he likes that John the Baptist was named John and he wants to give him a wink and you know, um, be like, if I ever wrote a book and then the first character introduced was named Matthew, I mean, that would be kind of funny, wouldn't it?
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So we can laugh at that.
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There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
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By the way, the Gospel of John is not written by John the Baptist.
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That's what makes this funny.
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This John, verse 7, came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.
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Witness who saw the light, through him all might believe.
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And yet he doesn't really see the full story of Jesus.
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Do you see what John is doing here?
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John the Baptist is going to get beheaded halfway through the Jesus story.
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He does not experience, you know, most of the chapters of John's gospel will be uh that Last Supper, final discourse scene, you know, and the description of the crucifixion and the resurrection.
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There are just chapter after chapter after chapter that deal with who this Jesus is.
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John the Baptist doesn't see any of that.
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But he is a witness to the light.
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It's possible to know the light without knowing the fullness of the Jesus story.
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That has to be possible.
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Because for all of human history, people have understood light and logic and logos and reason and rationality and beauty and goodness.
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So John comes as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that all through him might believe.
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He came only as a witness to the light.
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And he told people about it, and he witnesses this light.
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Verse 9, the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
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So this light, which is generally available for everyone to see, let there be light.
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Light bursts into the darkness.
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Stars adorn the night, and that's beautiful.
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And sailors and ship folk throughout history have used the stars to chart their paths.
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And daylight is pretty great.
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And my children love going to the beach on a nice sunny day.
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This general revelation of God's goodness and light has been readily available to every single human being who has ever existed.
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But also, another thing is true: the true light, the source of light itself, God, is coming into the world in a new way.
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And his name is Jesus Christ.
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The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
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He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
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And your heart sort of beats twice.
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Wait a second.
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He came into the world and we didn't recognize him.
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The whole point is to be able to see.
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And here he is standing and speaking and touching and eating and walking amongst people, and we don't know it.
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Have you ever seen that show, Undercover Boss?
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I think it's on CBS show where like the CEO of a company will like put on some prosthetic nose.
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So he's got a big fake nose, and he'll put on a handlebar mustache and put on like a fake pair of glasses and give himself like a hunch in his back, and and he'll put on like you know, the gear that the factory workers wear, and and he'll show up as a line worker working next to the factory employees, and he's but he's the boss, he's the undercover boss, and he learns all these interesting things about how his company actually works that they don't talk about in the CEO's boardroom, right?
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And that's kind of what's happening here.
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God and the word of God and the like the CEO's boardroom is gonna go and have a lunch break with the folks who actually do the work.
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And what's interesting is those folks don't recognize him.
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And and is that a bad thing?
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You read this and you think, oh, that's a bad thing.
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Shame on them.
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Especially a couple sentences later where it's gonna sound like there's judgment that comes upon the Jewish people because God came amongst them and they did not recognize him.
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But but also, what if that's a beautiful thing?
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That God might be unrecognizable to us.
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I mean, that happens to Mary Magdalene at the end of the story.
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She encounters Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, in the garden, and she does not recognize him.
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We just talked about the gospel of Luke on the road to Emmaus.
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People did not recognize the resurrected Jesus.
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Take a beat in your life and ask yourself: do I readily recognize God in my life?
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And the honest answer has to be not always.
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And that is a fantastic lesson to learn and to unpack.
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God, give me the eyes to see you everywhere, and also help me to you know give myself some grace because there's probably you're active amongst us in this world, and I don't have eyes to see it.
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And that's humbling, and it should be humbling.
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It also should be interesting and curious, and make it makes me want to seek, makes me want to search, makes me want to find, makes me want to put the puzzle pieces together and say, oh my word, maybe God is.
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Is at work right over here and has been this whole time, and I just didn't have the eyes to see it.
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Does that ever happen to you?
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Where you're blind for lack of a better word to how God might be interacting with the world around you?
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And if you say no, it never happens to me, I'll say, okay.
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Yeah.
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Yep.
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You're right about that.
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Yeah.
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Why are you a ways of one to write?
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This is really what 15 years, 30 years, and yeah, that's a great question.
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Um, why did so so question?
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Uh why did they wait so long to write?
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One, uh, they are following Jesus' model of discipleship.
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Jesus did not write anything.
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He didn't, he did not write.
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He wrote once in the sand, people like to say.
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Okay, yeah, he wrote something over there.
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But Jesus did not distribute letters to his people to be circulated the way Paul did.
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:14.160
He did not write his own autobiography, he didn't write his own version of a gospel.
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:16.000
What did Jesus do?
00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:23.519
He spoke, he acted, he had real relationships with human beings.
00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:34.480
He himself is the word incarnate who doesn't need to go back to the written word because he is embodying and enfleshing and incarnating the written word.
00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:36.799
And that's part of the point of who Jesus is.
00:23:36.880 --> 00:23:41.519
So why did they not just like the second he's gone, start writing down the story?
00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:44.400
Well, they weren't given that as a model, I think.
00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:45.759
I mean, that's how I would answer that.
00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:50.960
First, uh, what they learned from Jesus is yeah, here's what you do.
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:52.559
This is what ministry is.
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:54.400
Ministry is an action.
00:23:54.640 --> 00:24:00.559
Literally, the next chapter, you know, the next book of the Bible is the activities, the acts of the apostles.
00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:15.359
And their primary activities are to bear witness, to speak publicly, to perform, you know, to open their hearts up to God performing miracles through them, to open their hearts up to God performing healings through them, right?
00:24:15.519 --> 00:24:22.240
To actually address human needs and poverty and hunger, and and they cultivate communities.
00:24:22.559 --> 00:24:24.000
They're community organizers.
00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:28.160
Kind of like asking, why did that community organizer never write letters?
00:24:28.319 --> 00:24:30.960
Well, they're busy community organizing.
00:24:31.119 --> 00:24:33.039
That's their job description.
00:24:33.599 --> 00:24:38.880
But then they're doing that.
00:24:39.279 --> 00:24:39.680
Yeah.
00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:42.880
There you go.
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:45.279
Right.
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:46.960
And we're write.
00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:48.480
Right.
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:52.799
Yes, that's the next part of it.
00:24:52.880 --> 00:25:03.200
So I think there's kind of two more reasons why did they not write right away is some of them finally get into the season of their life where they can sit down and write these things down.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:10.720
And they're seeing, okay, this story might exist into history on a longer timescale than we thought.
00:25:10.960 --> 00:25:24.960
John, if you know, if this is John the Seer that's been arrested and put in prison on the island of Patmos, well, when you're in prison, that's a pretty good time to pull out a pen and paper if you can get access to it and start sending some letters.
00:25:25.200 --> 00:25:30.559
You know, and so maybe, maybe he's writing this in mid-80s AD.
00:25:31.279 --> 00:25:34.240
If that's who the author is, I would say probably.
00:25:34.559 --> 00:25:36.160
And he's he's in prison.
00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:40.079
And he's saying, okay, let me let me reflect on this Jesus.
00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:43.119
And and what is it that the world needs to know?
00:25:43.599 --> 00:25:45.599
And now's the time to write it down.
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:53.920
Also, most of Jesus' closest disciples were high school dropouts, flunkies who were not smart people.
00:25:54.400 --> 00:26:01.359
And in the ancient world, where literacy rates are like close to zero, you know, 10% people can read.
00:26:01.519 --> 00:26:10.079
Uh, Peter is not like the world's smartest cat, who was a phenomenal, like, man, you should grow up and be a writer, Peter.
00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:16.960
It's like, no, Peter, I think you need to stop being at school and go learn how to fish and learn from your dad, right?
00:26:17.279 --> 00:26:23.759
And so uh the idea that these writers would suddenly become poets is kind of silly.
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:28.400
The Apostle Paul, though, that man was a scholar his whole life long.
00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:33.519
He was trained, he was, he was the valedictorian of Harvard of his day, right?
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:40.480
He was just, he knew how to sit in his study, put his nose into the scrolls, analyze, interpret.
00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:44.000
No wonder his preferred form of ministry was writing letters.
00:26:44.160 --> 00:26:46.880
That's what he did was study and write.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:52.079
And he made some tents and he made some friends and he did some ministry and he traveled along.
00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:56.640
Absolutely, but in his heart of hearts, he's a scholar.
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.400
And then the last factor, why did they wait so long to write?
00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:13.680
I think that the disciples thought they were living in the end of the world, that the end of the world had happened, that they were living through, you know, from ordinary time into the fullness of time.
00:27:14.319 --> 00:27:18.079
And and that evolves in the decades following.
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:27.839
You know, so after Jesus, there's this cataclysm of a war in Jerusalem, and and that makes people sort of disrupt their opinion.
00:27:28.079 --> 00:27:30.799
Christians who are following this Jesus start to die.
00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:33.839
You can read 1 Thessalonians and realize that becomes an issue.
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:34.799
Wait a second.
00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:37.440
We thought that Jesus died to defeat death.
00:27:37.599 --> 00:27:38.960
Now why are we still mortal?
00:27:39.039 --> 00:27:40.799
We thought we became immortal.
00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:51.359
And the story takes a while to kind of find its theological legs and adapt, which is going back to like, do we know everything about God?
00:27:51.599 --> 00:27:51.920
No.
00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:53.759
No, we don't.
00:27:54.160 --> 00:28:14.799
We might think the story is this, and then this stuff happens to us, and we need to adapt and change our minds and you know, alter what we think is truth and goodness and mercy, and how that interplays with our lives, who God is, who we are.
00:28:15.759 --> 00:28:19.839
And they finally get to the point where some people writing things down are important.
00:28:20.079 --> 00:28:32.319
You know, Luke was not one of those original disciples, but he goes back and does the research as a physician, as somebody who has gone to you know a couple years of schooling.
00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:42.319
Uh, he thinks, yeah, maybe I would be a good person to write down a gospel and the acts of these people that I'm meeting as he joins the Jesus movement.
00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:52.559
So, John, uh, you can imagine him, I like to imagine him as an old man reflecting on Jesus, which is partly why his story sounds so darn different.
00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:56.640
He's telling a very curated version of the Jesus story.
00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:11.279
And he begins with Genesis, and he begins in the beginning, and he begins with creation and light and darkness and John the Baptist and signs, and here we go.
00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:16.000
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world, verse 10.
00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:21.119
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:28.400
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
00:29:29.279 --> 00:29:31.440
Obviously not true, right?
00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:33.359
Holistically.
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:35.759
Some of his own received him.
00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:36.799
Right?
00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:50.960
But now John, fifty years later, is thinking, wait a second, why have it it didn't it didn't change my people on the same way that I thought it might change?
00:29:51.279 --> 00:29:51.839
Right?
00:29:52.079 --> 00:30:04.559
The Phariseeic tradition found its legs after that big Roman Jewish war, and there's plenty of people who are just happy to follow the God of the Jewish tradition.
00:30:04.799 --> 00:30:13.279
Why aren't they interested in the fulfillment of their God, the fullness and presence of their God in Jesus?
00:30:13.599 --> 00:30:17.279
Now, plenty of them are, and then some of them aren't.
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:19.519
And so he's I think he's lamenting.
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:21.200
He came to his own people.
00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:25.519
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:48.319
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of a natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God.
00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:56.960
Now later on, Jesus is gonna tell Nicodemus you have to be born from heaven, or born from above, or born again.
00:30:57.200 --> 00:31:02.559
And so we gotta, if we're gonna study that in a little bit, we need to hear that word born.
00:31:02.799 --> 00:31:04.880
What is the power of birth?
00:31:05.119 --> 00:31:07.759
Well, one, John's talking about incarnation.
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:10.079
He's telling us his version of the Christmas story.
00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:18.400
Jesus himself is being born, and and what is Jesus' identity when Jesus is born to Mary and Joseph?
00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:20.799
Does he belong to Joseph?
00:31:21.519 --> 00:31:22.720
Yes and no.
00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:29.359
Does he belong I he is an entirely new category of being, really?
00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:41.920
And he's going to offer a kind of kinship, a kind of family identity to every human being who has ever lived through his own identity.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:50.559
To all those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
00:31:53.039 --> 00:32:16.160
Now, if you're an ancient Greek philosopher and you're reading this, or if you're uh a guy who digs trenches in Rome and you're reading this, or you're uh uh, you know, uh an odor of a small business over in Philippi and you read this, and you have nothing to do with the Jewish ethnic identity, and you read this, you're thinking, Oh, that's pretty good news.
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:30.160
I'm I'm not ethnically Jewish, and yet I have the right to receive their identity, essentially, children of God.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:32.400
Huh.
00:32:35.519 --> 00:32:41.200
To to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
00:32:43.039 --> 00:32:50.000
That disrupts our categories of family, and it disrupts our categories of humanity, of so of society.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:32:55.759
Um I gotta buy a new car.
00:32:56.160 --> 00:32:57.279
Sorry, pivot.
00:32:57.440 --> 00:32:58.480
I have to buy a new car.
00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:00.079
I do not want to buy a new car.
00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:04.799
My car is dead as a doornail, and it's gonna cost more than its value to fix it.
00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:06.880
So we're getting ready to sell the car.
00:33:07.119 --> 00:33:09.599
And now we're talking about what we can get out of it.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:17.039
We've got our title, we're looking into selling our car, and uh, and now we are now we're at the stage where we're asking the questions in our budget.
00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:25.359
So then what do we pay for you know the sales tax, or do we have the buyer pay sales tax as a seller have to say sell, you know, pay tax or not?
00:33:25.519 --> 00:33:33.039
And there's this interesting category of if you are direct family, you don't pay taxes on a car of a vehicle purchase in the state of Michigan.
00:33:33.279 --> 00:33:34.480
Have you heard that before?
00:33:34.640 --> 00:33:40.640
Like if I sold my car to my child, she and I would not have to pay any kind of tax on that.
00:33:40.880 --> 00:33:45.519
There's a family clause because of your child.
00:33:45.680 --> 00:33:49.200
Or if I sold it to my father, right?
00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:51.519
There's no tax involved.
00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:59.519
There's this loophole for families, and and how is the the government then defining family?
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:04.000
By blood relation, right?
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:05.119
That's what it is.
00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:07.920
It's immediate family means blood relation.
00:34:08.400 --> 00:34:26.239
These two people married, had kids, mar you know, and and could I could I go to the government and say, but by blood relation, or by by believer relation, I am family with Steve, who I'm selling my car to.
00:34:27.039 --> 00:34:33.760
No, they wouldn't they wouldn't say Steve is your brother, even though I'm selling it to Steve.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:39.039
He's he's my brother, though, in Christ.
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:43.119
Like reread that phrase and think about how ridiculous it is.
00:34:43.920 --> 00:35:06.960
To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, meaning God is your father and you are a part of the human family, children born not of natural descent, not of human decision, i.e., marriage, or of a husband's will, i.e., marriage or adoption, but born of God.
00:35:07.920 --> 00:35:13.360
Why can't I say to any institution I want, I'm born of God.
00:35:13.519 --> 00:35:15.679
I'm a part of the same human family as Steve.
00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:17.599
Steve should not pay taxes.
00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:23.360
This text, right, I know, I I understand.
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:30.159
I'm saying this text is meant to reshape and redefine who humanity is.
00:35:31.119 --> 00:35:33.920
And and that's really dangerous stuff.
00:35:34.239 --> 00:35:37.920
Because you take that and then you sort of ask, well, how far does that go?
00:35:38.719 --> 00:35:48.079
You know, do my can my kids inherit my Roth IRA at the end of the day, or or does that go to all of humanity?
00:35:49.360 --> 00:35:49.519
Right?
00:35:50.159 --> 00:35:53.280
I know, I'm on I know, in in this world, you have to say.
00:35:53.519 --> 00:35:54.159
Yeah.
00:35:54.880 --> 00:36:04.079
And and and yet Jesus comes into this world asking the human species to redefine themselves as a united family under God.
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:06.639
And that's pretty wild.
00:36:06.800 --> 00:36:11.280
It's just wild business, and it constantly should challenge us.
00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:14.239
Okay, so what how far do we take that?
00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:21.599
How how much do we allow ourselves to realize, goodness, Lois, you are my sister in Christ, you know?
00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:22.559
You are.
00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:28.159
You know, how far do we allow that to go?
00:36:28.719 --> 00:36:54.880
And and I think the answer is we should try to allow that to usher us into widening circles of love, to widening circles of grace, to widening circles of our understanding of our church family, our neighborhood family, our societal family, and start to see each other in kind of fresh ways as our life unfolds.
00:36:55.119 --> 00:37:09.840
But this is exciting because for people totally knocked down who have no kinship status, whoa, I just have to believe in my head and heart, and I'm in, I'm a citizen of this kingdom of heaven?
00:37:10.159 --> 00:37:10.800
Yeah.
00:37:11.039 --> 00:37:14.960
I'm a part of this God family system, yeah.
00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:16.480
How exciting is that?
00:37:16.719 --> 00:37:20.559
You don't even have to have been alive when he was around and see it with your own eyes.
00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:22.239
You can just believe it.
00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:24.480
What is the power of belief?
00:37:24.719 --> 00:37:29.280
If you trust that you are loved by God, is it true?
00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:31.360
Yeah, it's true.
00:37:31.599 --> 00:37:36.960
If you trust that your life matters in God's sight, is it true?
00:37:37.199 --> 00:37:38.159
Yeah, it's true.
00:37:38.239 --> 00:37:42.159
And there's nothing I can say to you to discredit that.
00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:49.679
God extends God's grace and mercy upon the human species through God's own Son, Jesus Christ.
00:37:51.599 --> 00:37:58.400
Verse 14, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:03.039
Okay, okay, made his dwelling.
00:38:03.760 --> 00:38:06.000
Any footnotes there in your Bibles?
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:12.800
So this whole thing is about incarnation, God, the word strapping on flesh, the word is becoming a human being.
00:38:12.880 --> 00:38:24.400
That very word that was present with God, that was a part of God and also distinct from God in the creation of the world is becoming in fleshed life, human being.
00:38:24.719 --> 00:38:29.679
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
00:38:31.760 --> 00:38:36.239
Dwelling, the Greek word is tenting.
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:41.199
The word became flesh and pitched his tent.
00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:45.599
It's the same word for tabernacle.
00:38:46.079 --> 00:38:51.440
The word became human and tabernacled amongst us.
00:38:51.599 --> 00:38:56.000
And what was the tabernacle for our Jewish brothers and sisters?
00:38:56.559 --> 00:38:59.519
What is the tabernacle in the tradition of Moses?
00:39:09.360 --> 00:39:10.800
The Holy of Holies.
00:39:11.039 --> 00:39:14.800
Tabernacle is connected to God's divine presence on earth.
00:39:14.960 --> 00:39:17.280
It's the spot where heaven and earth meet.
00:39:17.519 --> 00:39:27.199
It's it's where the hem of God's own robe from his heavenly throne room spills into the Holy of Holies.
00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:30.800
It's where God's glory is most seen.
00:39:31.039 --> 00:39:42.960
They call it sometimes the tent of meeting, because it's the place you go to meet the glorious and holy God who rescued you from Egypt, who created the world.
00:39:44.079 --> 00:39:57.840
The word became flesh and tabernacled 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 truth.
00:39:59.039 --> 00:40:11.519
He's saying the exact same thing here as what you know the synoptic gospel is saying when it says that the curtain is torn in two at the death of Jesus.
00:40:11.840 --> 00:40:21.599
God's glorious presence is readily available to be seen by the human species in Christ.
00:40:24.559 --> 00:40:37.519
I mean, it's it's a really fascinating concept because I mean, even today, people are they're very curious about the mysteries of something like the Holy of Holies, right?
00:40:37.920 --> 00:40:42.239
Uh Hitler was obsessed with those mysteries, right?
00:40:42.400 --> 00:40:49.199
He was constantly trying to find these secret, magical, holy, glorious objects.
00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:51.519
The Holy Grail, right?
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:56.079
Uh I mean, in the 80s, Steven Spielberg was kind of obsessed with it.
00:40:56.159 --> 00:41:04.880
All the Indiana Jones movies are about finding this thing that is so secret and holy and mysterious and pulsing with energy.
00:41:05.039 --> 00:41:13.519
And what John is saying right out of the gate is that glory that that those people are mysteriously attracted to.
00:41:13.760 --> 00:41:17.280
That tent of meeting, that holiness.
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:19.760
Yeah, tabernacle amongst us.
00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:21.039
We hung out with it.
00:41:21.280 --> 00:41:22.320
We all saw it.
00:41:23.280 --> 00:41:26.000
God revealed God's glory to us.
00:41:26.880 --> 00:41:28.400
That's awesome.
00:41:28.639 --> 00:41:29.920
That's amazing.
00:41:30.239 --> 00:41:32.559
It totally disrupts the mystery cults.
00:41:33.039 --> 00:41:35.039
The ta amongst us?
00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:36.800
We saw it.
00:41:37.679 --> 00:41:42.719
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
00:41:43.199 --> 00:41:52.960
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth.
00:41:53.519 --> 00:41:55.599
It's a great description of who Jesus is.
00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:58.400
Who is Jesus full of grace and truth?
00:41:58.639 --> 00:42:01.760
What is the difference between grace and truth?
00:42:03.519 --> 00:42:08.000
How would you define grace and how would you define truth?
00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:10.800
Is truth grace?
00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:12.559
Not exactly.
00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:14.079
Is grace truth?
00:42:14.559 --> 00:42:15.760
Not exactly.
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:23.039
Grace is undeserved kindness.
00:42:23.360 --> 00:42:26.320
It's kind of the opposite of truth.
00:42:26.639 --> 00:42:29.360
Grace is just wild and free love.
00:42:29.760 --> 00:42:33.119
Grace is is unearned gift.
00:42:34.400 --> 00:42:35.679
And what is truth?
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:37.840
Truth is closer to logic.
00:42:38.079 --> 00:42:40.159
Truth is true, period.
00:42:41.119 --> 00:42:42.639
Not in our world right now.
00:42:42.800 --> 00:42:53.039
There's plenty of untruths that are claimed to be truths, but we cling to this idea that there might be some greater truth, logic, that governs the whole thing.
00:42:53.360 --> 00:43:05.039
This Jesus is both and full of grace and full of truth.
00:43:05.280 --> 00:43:10.480
What you see in our world today is there's kind of two general trajectories of churches.
00:43:10.639 --> 00:43:18.480
There are churches that take grace and run wild, and they forget about reason and logic and truth.
00:43:18.719 --> 00:43:27.440
There are churches that take truth and run wild, and they forget about unearned kindness and free love.
00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:30.000
And Jesus is both.
00:43:30.639 --> 00:43:34.320
And I think the profound mystery is both are right.
00:43:34.719 --> 00:43:40.000
And we have to live in some kind of paradox that allows both to be right.
00:43:42.239 --> 00:43:43.199
And that's hard to do.
00:43:54.559 --> 00:43:56.000
I think that's a form of grace.
00:43:56.159 --> 00:43:59.679
Yeah, if your child does something that you think is wrong or that you don't approve of.
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:03.119
And you just downright determined to still love them and bless them.
00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:05.360
Yeah, that's that's a form of grace.
00:44:05.679 --> 00:44:06.320
Yeah.
00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:11.679
You know, uh think about amazing grace, the the hymn.
00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:13.280
What is amazing grace?
00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:15.280
It saved a wretch like me.
00:44:15.519 --> 00:44:18.559
Meaning it saved him before he stopped being a wretch.
00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:20.079
He was a wretch.
00:44:20.320 --> 00:44:22.000
Do you know what a wretch is?
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:24.000
His life was wretched.
00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:31.920
He was selfish, he was sinful, he was greedy, he was mean, he was a scoundrel, he was abusing human beings.
00:44:32.159 --> 00:44:34.079
He was a part of a slave trade.
00:44:34.239 --> 00:44:38.639
I mean, like a wretch, a bad guy.
00:44:38.960 --> 00:44:49.840
And he realized what grace is, that a God of love might love him, that a God of grace and mercy and forgiveness might forgive him, and it totally transforms his life.
00:44:50.079 --> 00:45:09.199
And he realizes, oh my word, everything I was pursuing was a lie, and the truth was always grace, and maybe I need to extend some amazing grace to some other people because I've now seen the glory of the Father's only Son full of grace and truth, and I need to start spreading that goodness.
00:45:09.840 --> 00:45:11.360
Amazing grace.
00:45:13.519 --> 00:45:23.679
Yeah, so this Jesus, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and that word is tabernacle, temporary dwelling.
00:45:24.159 --> 00:45:26.400
Temporary, not permanent.
00:45:26.639 --> 00:45:29.519
The tabernacle becomes the model for the temple.
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:33.199
The temple is made of stone and it is permanent.
00:45:33.440 --> 00:45:36.239
Well, until they go to war and it's destroyed.
00:45:36.400 --> 00:45:41.679
But the tabernacle is a tent that's able to be packed up and moved, packed up and moved and set up.
00:45:41.840 --> 00:45:43.039
It's temporary.
00:45:43.280 --> 00:45:48.719
If you go through a season of your life where you're living in a tent, we'll say it might be temporary.
00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:53.039
Jesus temporarily tabernacles amongst us.
00:45:55.679 --> 00:46:01.199
And we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:02.239
Verse 15.
00:46:02.559 --> 00:46:10.880
John, back to John the Baptist, not I, John, writing this with my own hand, but John the Baptist testified concerning him.
00:46:12.079 --> 00:46:24.000
He cried out, saying, This is the one I spoke about when I said, He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.
00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:31.760
John is double doubling down on the divinity of Jesus here.
00:46:32.079 --> 00:46:35.840
This isn't uh Jesus was not born before John.
00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:40.719
Luke makes sure we know the natural history, right?
00:46:41.119 --> 00:46:43.199
John is older than Jesus.
00:46:43.519 --> 00:46:45.440
Jesus is younger than John.
00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:56.000
Now this John is saying that John understood that that Jesus was from the ancient of days, the word that was with God in the beginning.
00:46:59.679 --> 00:47:04.320
He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.
00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:12.000
Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.
00:47:13.199 --> 00:47:14.880
What is the purpose of Jesus?
00:47:15.039 --> 00:47:16.559
To extend grace.
00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:20.559
For the law was given through Moses.
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:27.119
But grace in truth came through Jesus Christ.
00:47:29.360 --> 00:47:31.920
Paul would get excited about this.
00:47:32.320 --> 00:47:35.599
What is the purpose of all those laws?
00:47:37.360 --> 00:47:42.000
Its chief end and purpose is to show us that we we just can't follow them all.
00:47:42.239 --> 00:47:43.760
There's too many of them.
00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:47.920
I'm gonna s I'm gonna trip over rule number 37.
00:47:48.559 --> 00:47:51.920
I'm gonna fail when I get to rule number 115.
00:47:52.639 --> 00:47:55.519
No rule, you know, no excuses play like a champion.
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:57.440
Sometimes I'm gonna make excuses.
00:47:57.920 --> 00:48:04.159
And so the purpose of the law is, according to Paul and Romans, to convict us of our inadequacy.
00:48:04.400 --> 00:48:06.880
Well, the law came through Moses, but guess what?
00:48:07.199 --> 00:48:15.440
Grace, forgiveness, truth, the fulfillment of the law comes through Jesus Christ.
00:48:16.400 --> 00:48:18.320
Now here's an interesting statement.
00:48:18.639 --> 00:48:35.199
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God, and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
00:48:35.519 --> 00:48:37.199
So what is sight?
00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:39.199
What is the possibility of sight?
00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:40.880
No one has seen God.
00:48:42.639 --> 00:48:52.719
But the Son has seen God and has made this God known, and we have seen his glory full of grace and truth.
00:48:54.719 --> 00:48:56.400
And so it is a mystery.
00:48:56.880 --> 00:48:58.800
It is a paradox beyond us.
00:48:59.039 --> 00:49:08.159
God is entirely beyond us, and yet in Jesus we bear witness to the God of all people and of all creation.
00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:12.320
And sight is complicated.
00:49:18.159 --> 00:49:35.039
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
00:49:35.440 --> 00:49:48.320
One of the things that Jesus will model for us, that John will express for us about Jesus, God's Son, is how intimately connected the Son of God and the Father are.
00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:52.960
And that's just going to be a truism throughout John's gospel.
00:49:53.519 --> 00:49:58.880
The Son and the Father are intimately in union and communion with each other.
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:00.719
And he gave us that clue at the very beginning.
00:50:00.880 --> 00:50:03.039
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.
00:50:03.199 --> 00:50:06.719
And the word was God, and he was with God in the beginning.
00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:08.800
And John the Baptist confirms it.
00:50:12.239 --> 00:50:14.639
And then John's saying the same thing in another way.
00:50:14.800 --> 00:50:19.760
Nobody's ever actually seen the holy, mysterious, pulsing, burning love of God.
00:50:19.840 --> 00:50:24.719
And yet we have seen Jesus, and Jesus saw God, and Jesus makes God known to us.
00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:27.760
And what is sight anyway, but believing.
00:50:28.559 --> 00:50:34.159
And so sight is readily possible for you and I without having actually seen Jesus.
00:50:34.719 --> 00:50:35.599
It's pretty cool.
00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:40.480
That is something that is well, that's the that's the statement of the day.
00:50:40.639 --> 00:50:44.480
Well, that is something, and we'll say that after almost every paragraph.
00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:47.760
Exactly.
00:50:48.960 --> 00:50:51.360
Usually we have to see things to believe things.
00:50:51.519 --> 00:50:56.800
And here's going to be a story in which we never saw the things, but we've totally seen the things.
00:50:57.039 --> 00:51:00.400
You know them, you know them, and you believe.
00:51:00.559 --> 00:51:01.119
You do.
00:51:01.199 --> 00:51:02.559
I promise you.
00:51:02.800 --> 00:51:06.159
It's just sight is this paradox.
00:51:06.400 --> 00:51:07.280
All right, friends.
00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:08.239
We'll leave it there.
00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:09.760
Grace to you and peace.
00:51:09.920 --> 00:51:11.360
Have a wonderful week.
00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:05.519
Well, friends, today we begin the Gospel of John.
00:00:05.839 --> 00:00:08.160
We'll start in John chapter one.
00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:11.599
We'll read the very beginning of this gospel.
00:00:12.240 --> 00:00:16.239
And uh before we read, we'll begin with prayer.
00:00:16.399 --> 00:00:18.160
So pray with me, please.
00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:24.719
Dear God, we just thank you for this gospel that we will read together now.
00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:33.759
And as we turn to the first page, John chapter one, we we read about the beginning of all things.
00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:42.079
We consider and ponder your creation and your profound mysteries, and your incarnation in Christ.
00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:46.000
Give us wild imaginations, we pray.
00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:52.000
May your spirit be amongst us in the hearing of your word, the reading of your word, and the study of your word.
00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:53.200
Amen.
00:00:54.240 --> 00:01:05.040
So John chapter one, verse one, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
00:01:06.719 --> 00:01:09.519
He was with God in the beginning.
00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:11.760
So John begins with a poem.
00:01:11.920 --> 00:01:17.599
It's just it's so different than the other three synoptic gospels right out of the gates.
00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:19.200
It begins with a poem.
00:01:19.359 --> 00:01:23.920
And this poem calls our hearts back to the very beginning of the Bible.
00:01:24.159 --> 00:01:24.640
Right?
00:01:24.799 --> 00:01:31.840
If you go back to Genesis chapter one and read that first sentence of all of Scripture, you know what does it say?
00:01:39.200 --> 00:01:44.640
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
00:01:45.519 --> 00:01:48.959
So that phrase in the beginning, that's that's what Genesis means.
00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:51.280
It just means the beginnings, right?
00:01:51.519 --> 00:01:55.680
And in Genesis 1, it's in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
00:01:55.840 --> 00:01:59.920
And in John, he takes that sentence and he rewrites it.
00:02:00.159 --> 00:02:08.319
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
00:02:08.960 --> 00:02:13.599
If you read Genesis chapter one, how does God create the world?
00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:17.840
God creates the world through words.
00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:25.599
God speaks, and God said, and God said, and God said, and God said.
00:02:51.439 --> 00:02:53.599
Some people listen, some people don't hear.
00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:57.680
It's got its own little, it just flies out there.
00:02:58.319 --> 00:03:00.319
And yet it also is a part of me.
00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:02.639
Somehow the thoughts are coming out of me.
00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:09.680
I don't know where they come from, but they are mysteriously both the same as me and distinct from me.
00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:23.120
And somehow this word of God is present with God, within God, with God, was God, but also distinct from God because it's speech, it's words, it's right.
00:03:23.599 --> 00:03:38.400
And of course, the layers of meaning that God is creating the world in Genesis by the Word and by His Spirit, and yet we're reading this as a word, right?
00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:41.120
The Jewish people are people of the book.
00:03:41.360 --> 00:03:45.759
And Christians, like our Jewish brothers and sisters, are people of the book.
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:50.000
And the word of, you know, if I just said to somebody, do you know what the word of God is?
00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:54.240
The first thing they might say is scripture, the Bible.
00:03:54.400 --> 00:03:56.159
The Bible is the word of God.
00:03:56.639 --> 00:04:07.680
But here, John is saying that as we read chapter one, he'll be saying that Jesus is the Word of God, the Word of God incarnate.
00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:09.280
So what is the Word?
00:04:09.439 --> 00:04:11.199
The Word creates the world.
00:04:11.439 --> 00:04:16.079
Uh the Word is, you know, the Bible, Holy Scripture.
00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:24.399
And also now, as we read, the Word straps on flesh and becomes Jesus Christ, the incarnation of the Word.
00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:28.000
But what is this word on other levels?
00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:29.279
There's more depth.
00:04:29.519 --> 00:04:31.600
In Greek, the word is logos.
00:04:32.879 --> 00:04:36.560
And logos has its own history.
00:04:37.199 --> 00:04:45.519
You could you could consider uh how did the Greeks speak of a concept like logos?
00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:56.000
You know, John is telling this story and writing this story, and he's not using the Hebrew word dabar for God spoke.
00:04:56.319 --> 00:05:04.399
He's using the Greek word logos in conjunction as a dance partner with Hebrew concepts of word.
00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:07.360
So, what does the Greek word logos mean?
00:05:07.519 --> 00:05:13.600
And you can study Greek philosophy and realize the Greeks talked about logos on lots of different levels.
00:05:13.839 --> 00:05:19.120
Almost all of their ancient philosophies dealt with logos on various levels.
00:05:19.360 --> 00:05:22.480
For the Stoics, Stoicism is kind of popular right now.
00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:25.600
For the Stoics, Logos was logic.
00:05:26.879 --> 00:05:33.519
That reason and ration and logic have a role in our world.
00:05:33.839 --> 00:05:39.519
And to be wise, you should probably figure out how to practice logic and be a reasonable person, right?
00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:47.040
And so there's something, there's there's an engine of authenticity and power and goodness in logic for Stoics.
00:05:47.199 --> 00:05:52.560
You know, for Plato, Plato says that logic creates the world, logos creates the world.
00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:54.800
That's the best Plato can get to.
00:05:54.959 --> 00:06:06.079
He does not say God created the world, he doesn't see logic as divine, but but when he reaches the depths of his philosophy, he's got to say some concept creates the world.
00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:07.600
And what concept creates the world?
00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:08.800
It's logic.
00:06:09.680 --> 00:06:16.800
And, you know, throw a dart at any ancient Greek philosopher, and they're gonna deal with the the issue of logic.
00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:18.000
And why?
00:06:18.399 --> 00:06:26.720
Because in the Greek mindset, there are patterns, there are undeniable patterns in the world.
00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:43.279
The world to some is chaotic and wild and crazy and free, yes, but also why is it that that type of seed generates that type of plant like every friggin' time?
00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:48.079
You know, why do dahlias bloom with the same pattern?
00:06:48.399 --> 00:06:53.439
Why don't some dahlias just look funky and weird and obscure?
00:06:53.680 --> 00:07:06.560
Why do flowers and seashells and areas of creation have some kind of sequence and order and reason and ration that you can just see with your naked eye?
00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:07.759
That is a pattern.
00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:10.079
There's patterns all over nature.
00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:11.199
Why?
00:07:11.680 --> 00:07:12.720
Why is that?
00:07:12.959 --> 00:07:15.680
Why isn't it all chaos?
00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:24.480
And what they're saying is logic, logic is just woven in, woven into our world in some way.
00:07:24.639 --> 00:07:40.000
And so, John, I think John is doing his best to uh speak to his Hebrew brothers and sisters and also assimilate Hebrew philosophy into Greco-Roman culture.
00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:55.360
He wants to tell a story of Jesus, he's choosing to write it in Greek, he wants uh the Greco-Roman Hellenistic world to read this story of a Jewish Hebrew god becoming a human being.
00:07:55.519 --> 00:07:58.879
And so he's playing with logic right away.
00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:10.720
And and we might miss it if we just don't know anything about logic and we're not Hellenistic, and we don't, but we are Western world people, and so we we have a little bit of this just in us.
00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:16.000
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
00:08:16.079 --> 00:08:18.879
You could write a dissertation on that sentence right there.
00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:27.360
Yeah.
00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:45.279
So that's so if logic has incarnated God itself as Christ, which is where this first chapter is becoming, then we're saying, reverse engineer that, Jesus Christ was with God when the world was formed.
00:08:45.519 --> 00:08:51.919
And the big claim throughout John's gospel is that Jesus is God.
00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:55.120
That Jesus is divine.
00:08:55.840 --> 00:09:01.360
You know, the the a fancy kind of theological term is Christology.
00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:05.919
Christology is the study of Christ and Christ's nature and who Christ is.
00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:09.759
John, of all the gospels, has the highest Christology.
00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:16.799
When you read John, it's like, whoa, that is a supreme, divine Christology.
00:09:17.279 --> 00:09:26.799
And and here, I mean, you can't get any more divine than existing before creation itself exists, being a part of the whole creation of the world.
00:09:27.039 --> 00:09:29.120
That's about as divine as you can get.
00:09:29.279 --> 00:09:33.600
I mean, go talk to Plato and ask him where he edges up closest to divinity.
00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:36.639
It's probably with a term like logic.
00:09:36.799 --> 00:09:44.480
And so John is brilliant, and he's he's trying to help people see that Jesus is God.
00:09:46.240 --> 00:09:51.360
And so this first chapter, as we read it, you're people are gonna call Jesus.
00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:55.759
There's gonna be seven different names that he gets identified as.
00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:02.960
And and and the whole point is, yeah, he's that, and he's that, and he's that, and he's that, and he's that, and he's that.
00:10:03.200 --> 00:10:14.720
Tons of nuance, tons of diversity of of identity, but ultimately we're beginning in the beginning, and he is the word that is with God in the very beginning, distinct from God and yet God.
00:10:17.360 --> 00:10:18.159
Pretty cool.
00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:21.759
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:28.000
He was with God in the beginning, through him all things were made.
00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:36.320
Now which him is the hymn the word or is the hymn God?
00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:39.360
Through him all things were made.
00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:44.480
Without him nothing was made that has been made.
00:10:45.360 --> 00:10:51.840
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
00:10:52.879 --> 00:10:59.200
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:01.519
This is the creation story.
00:11:02.080 --> 00:11:43.440
You read Genesis one, and there's darkness and there's void and there's emptiness, and God speaks a word of light, let there be light, and light bursts into being, and what tumbles out next is life and goodness and creation itself, driving out the darkness of chaos, cultivating the goodness of life and the goodness of plants and birds and fish and humankind that bears God's image and rest and beauty and delight and love, all that is called into being.
00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:51.279
And it starts with light, and it starts here with Christ being a part of that whole process.
00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:54.559
Through him all things were made.
00:11:54.720 --> 00:11:57.600
Without him nothing was made that has been made.
00:11:57.759 --> 00:12:02.559
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:07.759
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:12:08.080 --> 00:12:09.440
Consider that, verse five.
00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:10.879
The light shines in the darkness.
00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:12.960
The tenses of the verbs here.
00:12:13.279 --> 00:12:22.480
The light shines in the darkness, present tense, it is shining now, and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:25.279
Have we lost?
00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:28.399
Have we won?
00:12:29.759 --> 00:12:31.840
Where are we in the story?
00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:42.639
And these present tense, perfect tense verbs are saying God can't lose this story of redemption.
00:12:42.879 --> 00:13:07.039
The darkness, the chaos, death, the march of the evil empire, whatever you want to say chaos and darkness is the the isms, the racism, the the violence, the worst of what we see amongst us, whatever those darknesses are, they will rear their ugly heads and do their worst.
00:13:08.159 --> 00:13:13.200
But the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
00:13:22.320 --> 00:13:22.960
Right.
00:13:27.360 --> 00:13:28.000
Yeah.
00:13:28.799 --> 00:13:29.440
Yep.
00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:43.759
And I'm so glad you said that uh about we see a light, because John is gonna play with different different signs, and and light is fundamentally a visual sign.
00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:45.840
You see light with your eyes.
00:13:45.919 --> 00:13:47.519
That's what your eyes do.
00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:48.960
That's kind of the whole thing.
00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:57.840
You don't feel you feel warmth with your skin when you step out into the sun, but your it's your eyeballs.
00:13:57.919 --> 00:14:00.879
You light and sight are connected.
00:14:01.200 --> 00:14:16.960
And what John wants us to do, his ultimate hope with this gospel, you get to John 20, and he just puts it all out there and he says, uh, you know, as I've described these signs, I hope that you might come to believe.
00:14:17.120 --> 00:14:21.120
And then blessed are those who haven't seen these signs and yet believe.
00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:33.360
You haven't seen those signs that Jesus performed because you weren't alive 2,000 years ago, but you have seen light, and you have a certain kind of sight, and you can believe.
00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:38.720
And so sight and light and belief all roll together.
00:14:39.039 --> 00:14:44.960
And throughout John, these categories, they just don't follow perfect logic.
00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:58.320
He's playing with logic in the beginning here, but then they just roll into these like romantic expressions of ideas, and and it's really complicated and really beautiful.
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:03.519
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:11.120
It's my favorite sentence to say in Advent while we're anticipating the incarnation.
00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:17.679
My favorite phrase: we light our Advent candles, the light grows.
00:15:18.399 --> 00:15:24.960
Then here comes the infant lowly, infant holy, born to Mary in Bethlehem.
00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:29.759
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:35.120
Now, pause the poem and tell us a story, John.
00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:40.240
Verse 6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:53.600
And if you know nothing about uh the apostle John, uh, and you're reading something called the Gospel of John, you're gonna read this and you might think, What?
00:15:53.919 --> 00:15:56.080
Here comes the guy, right?
00:15:56.320 --> 00:16:14.720
And that's kind of, I think John is just smart and funny, and maybe he likes that John the Baptist was named John and he wants to give him a wink and you know, um, be like, if I ever wrote a book and then the first character introduced was named Matthew, I mean, that would be kind of funny, wouldn't it?
00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:16.799
So we can laugh at that.
00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:19.519
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:22.879
By the way, the Gospel of John is not written by John the Baptist.
00:16:23.039 --> 00:16:24.720
That's what makes this funny.
00:16:25.679 --> 00:16:37.360
This John, verse 7, came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.
00:16:37.759 --> 00:16:42.480
Witness who saw the light, through him all might believe.
00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:46.799
And yet he doesn't really see the full story of Jesus.
00:16:46.960 --> 00:16:48.320
Do you see what John is doing here?
00:16:48.480 --> 00:16:52.559
John the Baptist is going to get beheaded halfway through the Jesus story.
00:16:52.799 --> 00:17:06.960
He does not experience, you know, most of the chapters of John's gospel will be uh that Last Supper, final discourse scene, you know, and the description of the crucifixion and the resurrection.
00:17:07.039 --> 00:17:10.720
There are just chapter after chapter after chapter that deal with who this Jesus is.
00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:13.200
John the Baptist doesn't see any of that.
00:17:13.680 --> 00:17:16.079
But he is a witness to the light.
00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:21.200
It's possible to know the light without knowing the fullness of the Jesus story.
00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:23.359
That has to be possible.
00:17:23.599 --> 00:17:32.079
Because for all of human history, people have understood light and logic and logos and reason and rationality and beauty and goodness.
00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:42.160
So John comes as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that all through him might believe.
00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:50.480
He came only as a witness to the light.
00:17:52.799 --> 00:17:57.759
And he told people about it, and he witnesses this light.
00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:05.039
Verse 9, the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:10.960
So this light, which is generally available for everyone to see, let there be light.
00:18:11.119 --> 00:18:12.720
Light bursts into the darkness.
00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:15.839
Stars adorn the night, and that's beautiful.
00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:21.920
And sailors and ship folk throughout history have used the stars to chart their paths.
00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:24.400
And daylight is pretty great.
00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:27.599
And my children love going to the beach on a nice sunny day.
00:18:27.839 --> 00:18:35.440
This general revelation of God's goodness and light has been readily available to every single human being who has ever existed.
00:18:35.599 --> 00:18:43.920
But also, another thing is true: the true light, the source of light itself, God, is coming into the world in a new way.
00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:46.319
And his name is Jesus Christ.
00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:51.599
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
00:18:51.920 --> 00:19:00.160
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:03.599
And your heart sort of beats twice.
00:19:03.839 --> 00:19:05.039
Wait a second.
00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.000
He came into the world and we didn't recognize him.
00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:13.839
The whole point is to be able to see.
00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:24.480
And here he is standing and speaking and touching and eating and walking amongst people, and we don't know it.
00:19:25.599 --> 00:19:28.079
Have you ever seen that show, Undercover Boss?
00:19:29.359 --> 00:19:37.119
I think it's on CBS show where like the CEO of a company will like put on some prosthetic nose.
00:19:37.279 --> 00:20:09.599
So he's got a big fake nose, and he'll put on a handlebar mustache and put on like a fake pair of glasses and give himself like a hunch in his back, and and he'll put on like you know, the gear that the factory workers wear, and and he'll show up as a line worker working next to the factory employees, and he's but he's the boss, he's the undercover boss, and he learns all these interesting things about how his company actually works that they don't talk about in the CEO's boardroom, right?
00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:12.640
And that's kind of what's happening here.
00:20:13.279 --> 00:20:25.920
God and the word of God and the like the CEO's boardroom is gonna go and have a lunch break with the folks who actually do the work.
00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:31.440
And what's interesting is those folks don't recognize him.
00:20:32.640 --> 00:20:35.519
And and is that a bad thing?
00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:39.519
You read this and you think, oh, that's a bad thing.
00:20:39.839 --> 00:20:41.119
Shame on them.
00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:52.000
Especially a couple sentences later where it's gonna sound like there's judgment that comes upon the Jewish people because God came amongst them and they did not recognize him.
00:20:53.279 --> 00:20:57.680
But but also, what if that's a beautiful thing?
00:20:58.319 --> 00:21:01.519
That God might be unrecognizable to us.
00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:05.440
I mean, that happens to Mary Magdalene at the end of the story.
00:21:05.599 --> 00:21:09.920
She encounters Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, in the garden, and she does not recognize him.
00:21:10.319 --> 00:21:13.440
We just talked about the gospel of Luke on the road to Emmaus.
00:21:13.680 --> 00:21:16.799
People did not recognize the resurrected Jesus.
00:21:17.200 --> 00:21:23.920
Take a beat in your life and ask yourself: do I readily recognize God in my life?
00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:28.079
And the honest answer has to be not always.
00:21:28.319 --> 00:21:32.240
And that is a fantastic lesson to learn and to unpack.
00:21:32.720 --> 00:21:43.119
God, give me the eyes to see you everywhere, and also help me to you know give myself some grace because there's probably you're active amongst us in this world, and I don't have eyes to see it.
00:21:43.359 --> 00:21:45.920
And that's humbling, and it should be humbling.
00:21:46.079 --> 00:21:59.759
It also should be interesting and curious, and make it makes me want to seek, makes me want to search, makes me want to find, makes me want to put the puzzle pieces together and say, oh my word, maybe God is.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:06.160
Is at work right over here and has been this whole time, and I just didn't have the eyes to see it.
00:22:09.119 --> 00:22:10.559
Does that ever happen to you?
00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:18.799
Where you're blind for lack of a better word to how God might be interacting with the world around you?
00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:23.359
And if you say no, it never happens to me, I'll say, okay.
00:22:23.920 --> 00:22:24.240
Yeah.
00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:25.359
Yep.
00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:27.039
You're right about that.
00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:29.359
Yeah.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:32.000
Why are you a ways of one to write?
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:38.880
This is really what 15 years, 30 years, and yeah, that's a great question.
00:22:39.119 --> 00:22:42.880
Um, why did so so question?
00:22:43.440 --> 00:22:47.200
Uh why did they wait so long to write?
00:22:47.599 --> 00:22:53.200
One, uh, they are following Jesus' model of discipleship.
00:22:53.519 --> 00:22:56.160
Jesus did not write anything.
00:22:57.359 --> 00:22:59.200
He didn't, he did not write.
00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:01.599
He wrote once in the sand, people like to say.
00:23:01.839 --> 00:23:03.599
Okay, yeah, he wrote something over there.
00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:08.720
But Jesus did not distribute letters to his people to be circulated the way Paul did.
00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:14.160
He did not write his own autobiography, he didn't write his own version of a gospel.
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:16.000
What did Jesus do?
00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:23.519
He spoke, he acted, he had real relationships with human beings.
00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:34.480
He himself is the word incarnate who doesn't need to go back to the written word because he is embodying and enfleshing and incarnating the written word.
00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:36.799
And that's part of the point of who Jesus is.
00:23:36.880 --> 00:23:41.519
So why did they not just like the second he's gone, start writing down the story?
00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:44.400
Well, they weren't given that as a model, I think.
00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:45.759
I mean, that's how I would answer that.
00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:50.960
First, uh, what they learned from Jesus is yeah, here's what you do.
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:52.559
This is what ministry is.
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:54.400
Ministry is an action.
00:23:54.640 --> 00:24:00.559
Literally, the next chapter, you know, the next book of the Bible is the activities, the acts of the apostles.
00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:15.359
And their primary activities are to bear witness, to speak publicly, to perform, you know, to open their hearts up to God performing miracles through them, to open their hearts up to God performing healings through them, right?
00:24:15.519 --> 00:24:22.240
To actually address human needs and poverty and hunger, and and they cultivate communities.
00:24:22.559 --> 00:24:24.000
They're community organizers.
00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:28.160
Kind of like asking, why did that community organizer never write letters?
00:24:28.319 --> 00:24:30.960
Well, they're busy community organizing.
00:24:31.119 --> 00:24:33.039
That's their job description.
00:24:33.599 --> 00:24:38.880
But then they're doing that.
00:24:39.279 --> 00:24:39.680
Yeah.
00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:42.880
There you go.
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:45.279
Right.
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:46.960
And we're write.
00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:48.480
Right.
00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:52.799
Yes, that's the next part of it.
00:24:52.880 --> 00:25:03.200
So I think there's kind of two more reasons why did they not write right away is some of them finally get into the season of their life where they can sit down and write these things down.
00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:10.720
And they're seeing, okay, this story might exist into history on a longer timescale than we thought.
00:25:10.960 --> 00:25:24.960
John, if you know, if this is John the Seer that's been arrested and put in prison on the island of Patmos, well, when you're in prison, that's a pretty good time to pull out a pen and paper if you can get access to it and start sending some letters.
00:25:25.200 --> 00:25:30.559
You know, and so maybe, maybe he's writing this in mid-80s AD.
00:25:31.279 --> 00:25:34.240
If that's who the author is, I would say probably.
00:25:34.559 --> 00:25:36.160
And he's he's in prison.
00:25:36.400 --> 00:25:40.079
And he's saying, okay, let me let me reflect on this Jesus.
00:25:40.319 --> 00:25:43.119
And and what is it that the world needs to know?
00:25:43.599 --> 00:25:45.599
And now's the time to write it down.
00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:53.920
Also, most of Jesus' closest disciples were high school dropouts, flunkies who were not smart people.
00:25:54.400 --> 00:26:01.359
And in the ancient world, where literacy rates are like close to zero, you know, 10% people can read.
00:26:01.519 --> 00:26:10.079
Uh, Peter is not like the world's smartest cat, who was a phenomenal, like, man, you should grow up and be a writer, Peter.
00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:16.960
It's like, no, Peter, I think you need to stop being at school and go learn how to fish and learn from your dad, right?
00:26:17.279 --> 00:26:23.759
And so uh the idea that these writers would suddenly become poets is kind of silly.
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:28.400
The Apostle Paul, though, that man was a scholar his whole life long.
00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:33.519
He was trained, he was, he was the valedictorian of Harvard of his day, right?
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:40.480
He was just, he knew how to sit in his study, put his nose into the scrolls, analyze, interpret.
00:26:40.640 --> 00:26:44.000
No wonder his preferred form of ministry was writing letters.
00:26:44.160 --> 00:26:46.880
That's what he did was study and write.
00:26:47.039 --> 00:26:52.079
And he made some tents and he made some friends and he did some ministry and he traveled along.
00:26:52.480 --> 00:26:56.640
Absolutely, but in his heart of hearts, he's a scholar.
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.400
And then the last factor, why did they wait so long to write?
00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:13.680
I think that the disciples thought they were living in the end of the world, that the end of the world had happened, that they were living through, you know, from ordinary time into the fullness of time.
00:27:14.319 --> 00:27:18.079
And and that evolves in the decades following.
00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:27.839
You know, so after Jesus, there's this cataclysm of a war in Jerusalem, and and that makes people sort of disrupt their opinion.
00:27:28.079 --> 00:27:30.799
Christians who are following this Jesus start to die.
00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:33.839
You can read 1 Thessalonians and realize that becomes an issue.
00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:34.799
Wait a second.
00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:37.440
We thought that Jesus died to defeat death.
00:27:37.599 --> 00:27:38.960
Now why are we still mortal?
00:27:39.039 --> 00:27:40.799
We thought we became immortal.
00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:51.359
And the story takes a while to kind of find its theological legs and adapt, which is going back to like, do we know everything about God?
00:27:51.599 --> 00:27:51.920
No.
00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:53.759
No, we don't.
00:27:54.160 --> 00:28:14.799
We might think the story is this, and then this stuff happens to us, and we need to adapt and change our minds and you know, alter what we think is truth and goodness and mercy, and how that interplays with our lives, who God is, who we are.
00:28:15.759 --> 00:28:19.839
And they finally get to the point where some people writing things down are important.
00:28:20.079 --> 00:28:32.319
You know, Luke was not one of those original disciples, but he goes back and does the research as a physician, as somebody who has gone to you know a couple years of schooling.
00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:42.319
Uh, he thinks, yeah, maybe I would be a good person to write down a gospel and the acts of these people that I'm meeting as he joins the Jesus movement.
00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:52.559
So, John, uh, you can imagine him, I like to imagine him as an old man reflecting on Jesus, which is partly why his story sounds so darn different.
00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:56.640
He's telling a very curated version of the Jesus story.
00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:11.279
And he begins with Genesis, and he begins in the beginning, and he begins with creation and light and darkness and John the Baptist and signs, and here we go.
00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:16.000
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world, verse 10.
00:29:16.160 --> 00:29:21.119
He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:28.400
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
00:29:29.279 --> 00:29:31.440
Obviously not true, right?
00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:33.359
Holistically.
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:35.759
Some of his own received him.
00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:36.799
Right?
00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:50.960
But now John, fifty years later, is thinking, wait a second, why have it it didn't it didn't change my people on the same way that I thought it might change?
00:29:51.279 --> 00:29:51.839
Right?
00:29:52.079 --> 00:30:04.559
The Phariseeic tradition found its legs after that big Roman Jewish war, and there's plenty of people who are just happy to follow the God of the Jewish tradition.
00:30:04.799 --> 00:30:13.279
Why aren't they interested in the fulfillment of their God, the fullness and presence of their God in Jesus?
00:30:13.599 --> 00:30:17.279
Now, plenty of them are, and then some of them aren't.
00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:19.519
And so he's I think he's lamenting.
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:21.200
He came to his own people.
00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:25.519
He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:48.319
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of a natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God.
00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:56.960
Now later on, Jesus is gonna tell Nicodemus you have to be born from heaven, or born from above, or born again.
00:30:57.200 --> 00:31:02.559
And so we gotta, if we're gonna study that in a little bit, we need to hear that word born.
00:31:02.799 --> 00:31:04.880
What is the power of birth?
00:31:05.119 --> 00:31:07.759
Well, one, John's talking about incarnation.
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:10.079
He's telling us his version of the Christmas story.
00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:18.400
Jesus himself is being born, and and what is Jesus' identity when Jesus is born to Mary and Joseph?
00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:20.799
Does he belong to Joseph?
00:31:21.519 --> 00:31:22.720
Yes and no.
00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:29.359
Does he belong I he is an entirely new category of being, really?
00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:41.920
And he's going to offer a kind of kinship, a kind of family identity to every human being who has ever lived through his own identity.
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:50.559
To all those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
00:31:53.039 --> 00:32:16.160
Now, if you're an ancient Greek philosopher and you're reading this, or if you're uh a guy who digs trenches in Rome and you're reading this, or you're uh uh, you know, uh an odor of a small business over in Philippi and you read this, and you have nothing to do with the Jewish ethnic identity, and you read this, you're thinking, Oh, that's pretty good news.
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:30.160
I'm I'm not ethnically Jewish, and yet I have the right to receive their identity, essentially, children of God.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:32.400
Huh.
00:32:35.519 --> 00:32:41.200
To to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
00:32:43.039 --> 00:32:50.000
That disrupts our categories of family, and it disrupts our categories of humanity, of so of society.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:32:55.759
Um I gotta buy a new car.
00:32:56.160 --> 00:32:57.279
Sorry, pivot.
00:32:57.440 --> 00:32:58.480
I have to buy a new car.
00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:00.079
I do not want to buy a new car.
00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:04.799
My car is dead as a doornail, and it's gonna cost more than its value to fix it.
00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:06.880
So we're getting ready to sell the car.
00:33:07.119 --> 00:33:09.599
And now we're talking about what we can get out of it.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:17.039
We've got our title, we're looking into selling our car, and uh, and now we are now we're at the stage where we're asking the questions in our budget.
00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:25.359
So then what do we pay for you know the sales tax, or do we have the buyer pay sales tax as a seller have to say sell, you know, pay tax or not?
00:33:25.519 --> 00:33:33.039
And there's this interesting category of if you are direct family, you don't pay taxes on a car of a vehicle purchase in the state of Michigan.
00:33:33.279 --> 00:33:34.480
Have you heard that before?
00:33:34.640 --> 00:33:40.640
Like if I sold my car to my child, she and I would not have to pay any kind of tax on that.
00:33:40.880 --> 00:33:45.519
There's a family clause because of your child.
00:33:45.680 --> 00:33:49.200
Or if I sold it to my father, right?
00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:51.519
There's no tax involved.
00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:59.519
There's this loophole for families, and and how is the the government then defining family?
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:04.000
By blood relation, right?
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:05.119
That's what it is.
00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:07.920
It's immediate family means blood relation.
00:34:08.400 --> 00:34:26.239
These two people married, had kids, mar you know, and and could I could I go to the government and say, but by blood relation, or by by believer relation, I am family with Steve, who I'm selling my car to.
00:34:27.039 --> 00:34:33.760
No, they wouldn't they wouldn't say Steve is your brother, even though I'm selling it to Steve.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:39.039
He's he's my brother, though, in Christ.
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:43.119
Like reread that phrase and think about how ridiculous it is.
00:34:43.920 --> 00:35:06.960
To those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, meaning God is your father and you are a part of the human family, children born not of natural descent, not of human decision, i.e., marriage, or of a husband's will, i.e., marriage or adoption, but born of God.
00:35:07.920 --> 00:35:13.360
Why can't I say to any institution I want, I'm born of God.
00:35:13.519 --> 00:35:15.679
I'm a part of the same human family as Steve.
00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:17.599
Steve should not pay taxes.
00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:23.360
This text, right, I know, I I understand.
00:35:23.679 --> 00:35:30.159
I'm saying this text is meant to reshape and redefine who humanity is.
00:35:31.119 --> 00:35:33.920
And and that's really dangerous stuff.
00:35:34.239 --> 00:35:37.920
Because you take that and then you sort of ask, well, how far does that go?
00:35:38.719 --> 00:35:48.079
You know, do my can my kids inherit my Roth IRA at the end of the day, or or does that go to all of humanity?
00:35:49.360 --> 00:35:49.519
Right?
00:35:50.159 --> 00:35:53.280
I know, I'm on I know, in in this world, you have to say.
00:35:53.519 --> 00:35:54.159
Yeah.
00:35:54.880 --> 00:36:04.079
And and and yet Jesus comes into this world asking the human species to redefine themselves as a united family under God.
00:36:05.199 --> 00:36:06.639
And that's pretty wild.
00:36:06.800 --> 00:36:11.280
It's just wild business, and it constantly should challenge us.
00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:14.239
Okay, so what how far do we take that?
00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:21.599
How how much do we allow ourselves to realize, goodness, Lois, you are my sister in Christ, you know?
00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:22.559
You are.
00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:28.159
You know, how far do we allow that to go?
00:36:28.719 --> 00:36:54.880
And and I think the answer is we should try to allow that to usher us into widening circles of love, to widening circles of grace, to widening circles of our understanding of our church family, our neighborhood family, our societal family, and start to see each other in kind of fresh ways as our life unfolds.
00:36:55.119 --> 00:37:09.840
But this is exciting because for people totally knocked down who have no kinship status, whoa, I just have to believe in my head and heart, and I'm in, I'm a citizen of this kingdom of heaven?
00:37:10.159 --> 00:37:10.800
Yeah.
00:37:11.039 --> 00:37:14.960
I'm a part of this God family system, yeah.
00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:16.480
How exciting is that?
00:37:16.719 --> 00:37:20.559
You don't even have to have been alive when he was around and see it with your own eyes.
00:37:20.800 --> 00:37:22.239
You can just believe it.
00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:24.480
What is the power of belief?
00:37:24.719 --> 00:37:29.280
If you trust that you are loved by God, is it true?
00:37:29.840 --> 00:37:31.360
Yeah, it's true.
00:37:31.599 --> 00:37:36.960
If you trust that your life matters in God's sight, is it true?
00:37:37.199 --> 00:37:38.159
Yeah, it's true.
00:37:38.239 --> 00:37:42.159
And there's nothing I can say to you to discredit that.
00:37:42.800 --> 00:37:49.679
God extends God's grace and mercy upon the human species through God's own Son, Jesus Christ.
00:37:51.599 --> 00:37:58.400
Verse 14, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:03.039
Okay, okay, made his dwelling.
00:38:03.760 --> 00:38:06.000
Any footnotes there in your Bibles?
00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:12.800
So this whole thing is about incarnation, God, the word strapping on flesh, the word is becoming a human being.
00:38:12.880 --> 00:38:24.400
That very word that was present with God, that was a part of God and also distinct from God in the creation of the world is becoming in fleshed life, human being.
00:38:24.719 --> 00:38:29.679
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
00:38:31.760 --> 00:38:36.239
Dwelling, the Greek word is tenting.
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:41.199
The word became flesh and pitched his tent.
00:38:41.519 --> 00:38:45.599
It's the same word for tabernacle.
00:38:46.079 --> 00:38:51.440
The word became human and tabernacled amongst us.
00:38:51.599 --> 00:38:56.000
And what was the tabernacle for our Jewish brothers and sisters?
00:38:56.559 --> 00:38:59.519
What is the tabernacle in the tradition of Moses?
00:39:09.360 --> 00:39:10.800
The Holy of Holies.
00:39:11.039 --> 00:39:14.800
Tabernacle is connected to God's divine presence on earth.
00:39:14.960 --> 00:39:17.280
It's the spot where heaven and earth meet.
00:39:17.519 --> 00:39:27.199
It's it's where the hem of God's own robe from his heavenly throne room spills into the Holy of Holies.
00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:30.800
It's where God's glory is most seen.
00:39:31.039 --> 00:39:42.960
They call it sometimes the tent of meeting, because it's the place you go to meet the glorious and holy God who rescued you from Egypt, who created the world.
00:39:44.079 --> 00:39:57.840
The word became flesh and tabernacled 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 truth.
00:39:59.039 --> 00:40:11.519
He's saying the exact same thing here as what you know the synoptic gospel is saying when it says that the curtain is torn in two at the death of Jesus.
00:40:11.840 --> 00:40:21.599
God's glorious presence is readily available to be seen by the human species in Christ.
00:40:24.559 --> 00:40:37.519
I mean, it's it's a really fascinating concept because I mean, even today, people are they're very curious about the mysteries of something like the Holy of Holies, right?
00:40:37.920 --> 00:40:42.239
Uh Hitler was obsessed with those mysteries, right?
00:40:42.400 --> 00:40:49.199
He was constantly trying to find these secret, magical, holy, glorious objects.
00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:51.519
The Holy Grail, right?
00:40:52.239 --> 00:40:56.079
Uh I mean, in the 80s, Steven Spielberg was kind of obsessed with it.
00:40:56.159 --> 00:41:04.880
All the Indiana Jones movies are about finding this thing that is so secret and holy and mysterious and pulsing with energy.
00:41:05.039 --> 00:41:13.519
And what John is saying right out of the gate is that glory that that those people are mysteriously attracted to.
00:41:13.760 --> 00:41:17.280
That tent of meeting, that holiness.
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:19.760
Yeah, tabernacle amongst us.
00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:21.039
We hung out with it.
00:41:21.280 --> 00:41:22.320
We all saw it.
00:41:23.280 --> 00:41:26.000
God revealed God's glory to us.
00:41:26.880 --> 00:41:28.400
That's awesome.
00:41:28.639 --> 00:41:29.920
That's amazing.
00:41:30.239 --> 00:41:32.559
It totally disrupts the mystery cults.
00:41:33.039 --> 00:41:35.039
The ta amongst us?
00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:36.800
We saw it.
00:41:37.679 --> 00:41:42.719
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
00:41:43.199 --> 00:41:52.960
We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth.
00:41:53.519 --> 00:41:55.599
It's a great description of who Jesus is.
00:41:55.920 --> 00:41:58.400
Who is Jesus full of grace and truth?
00:41:58.639 --> 00:42:01.760
What is the difference between grace and truth?
00:42:03.519 --> 00:42:08.000
How would you define grace and how would you define truth?
00:42:09.440 --> 00:42:10.800
Is truth grace?
00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:12.559
Not exactly.
00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:14.079
Is grace truth?
00:42:14.559 --> 00:42:15.760
Not exactly.
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:23.039
Grace is undeserved kindness.
00:42:23.360 --> 00:42:26.320
It's kind of the opposite of truth.
00:42:26.639 --> 00:42:29.360
Grace is just wild and free love.
00:42:29.760 --> 00:42:33.119
Grace is is unearned gift.
00:42:34.400 --> 00:42:35.679
And what is truth?
00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:37.840
Truth is closer to logic.
00:42:38.079 --> 00:42:40.159
Truth is true, period.
00:42:41.119 --> 00:42:42.639
Not in our world right now.
00:42:42.800 --> 00:42:53.039
There's plenty of untruths that are claimed to be truths, but we cling to this idea that there might be some greater truth, logic, that governs the whole thing.
00:42:53.360 --> 00:43:05.039
This Jesus is both and full of grace and full of truth.
00:43:05.280 --> 00:43:10.480
What you see in our world today is there's kind of two general trajectories of churches.
00:43:10.639 --> 00:43:18.480
There are churches that take grace and run wild, and they forget about reason and logic and truth.
00:43:18.719 --> 00:43:27.440
There are churches that take truth and run wild, and they forget about unearned kindness and free love.
00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:30.000
And Jesus is both.
00:43:30.639 --> 00:43:34.320
And I think the profound mystery is both are right.
00:43:34.719 --> 00:43:40.000
And we have to live in some kind of paradox that allows both to be right.
00:43:42.239 --> 00:43:43.199
And that's hard to do.
00:43:54.559 --> 00:43:56.000
I think that's a form of grace.
00:43:56.159 --> 00:43:59.679
Yeah, if your child does something that you think is wrong or that you don't approve of.
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:03.119
And you just downright determined to still love them and bless them.
00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:05.360
Yeah, that's that's a form of grace.
00:44:05.679 --> 00:44:06.320
Yeah.
00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:11.679
You know, uh think about amazing grace, the the hymn.
00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:13.280
What is amazing grace?
00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:15.280
It saved a wretch like me.
00:44:15.519 --> 00:44:18.559
Meaning it saved him before he stopped being a wretch.
00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:20.079
He was a wretch.
00:44:20.320 --> 00:44:22.000
Do you know what a wretch is?
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:24.000
His life was wretched.
00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:31.920
He was selfish, he was sinful, he was greedy, he was mean, he was a scoundrel, he was abusing human beings.
00:44:32.159 --> 00:44:34.079
He was a part of a slave trade.
00:44:34.239 --> 00:44:38.639
I mean, like a wretch, a bad guy.
00:44:38.960 --> 00:44:49.840
And he realized what grace is, that a God of love might love him, that a God of grace and mercy and forgiveness might forgive him, and it totally transforms his life.
00:44:50.079 --> 00:45:09.199
And he realizes, oh my word, everything I was pursuing was a lie, and the truth was always grace, and maybe I need to extend some amazing grace to some other people because I've now seen the glory of the Father's only Son full of grace and truth, and I need to start spreading that goodness.
00:45:09.840 --> 00:45:11.360
Amazing grace.
00:45:13.519 --> 00:45:23.679
Yeah, so this Jesus, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and that word is tabernacle, temporary dwelling.
00:45:24.159 --> 00:45:26.400
Temporary, not permanent.
00:45:26.639 --> 00:45:29.519
The tabernacle becomes the model for the temple.
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:33.199
The temple is made of stone and it is permanent.
00:45:33.440 --> 00:45:36.239
Well, until they go to war and it's destroyed.
00:45:36.400 --> 00:45:41.679
But the tabernacle is a tent that's able to be packed up and moved, packed up and moved and set up.
00:45:41.840 --> 00:45:43.039
It's temporary.
00:45:43.280 --> 00:45:48.719
If you go through a season of your life where you're living in a tent, we'll say it might be temporary.
00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:53.039
Jesus temporarily tabernacles amongst us.
00:45:55.679 --> 00:46:01.199
And we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:02.239
Verse 15.
00:46:02.559 --> 00:46:10.880
John, back to John the Baptist, not I, John, writing this with my own hand, but John the Baptist testified concerning him.
00:46:12.079 --> 00:46:24.000
He cried out, saying, This is the one I spoke about when I said, He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.
00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:31.760
John is double doubling down on the divinity of Jesus here.
00:46:32.079 --> 00:46:35.840
This isn't uh Jesus was not born before John.
00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:40.719
Luke makes sure we know the natural history, right?
00:46:41.119 --> 00:46:43.199
John is older than Jesus.
00:46:43.519 --> 00:46:45.440
Jesus is younger than John.
00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:56.000
Now this John is saying that John understood that that Jesus was from the ancient of days, the word that was with God in the beginning.
00:46:59.679 --> 00:47:04.320
He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.
00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:12.000
Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.
00:47:13.199 --> 00:47:14.880
What is the purpose of Jesus?
00:47:15.039 --> 00:47:16.559
To extend grace.
00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:20.559
For the law was given through Moses.
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:27.119
But grace in truth came through Jesus Christ.
00:47:29.360 --> 00:47:31.920
Paul would get excited about this.
00:47:32.320 --> 00:47:35.599
What is the purpose of all those laws?
00:47:37.360 --> 00:47:42.000
Its chief end and purpose is to show us that we we just can't follow them all.
00:47:42.239 --> 00:47:43.760
There's too many of them.
00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:47.920
I'm gonna s I'm gonna trip over rule number 37.
00:47:48.559 --> 00:47:51.920
I'm gonna fail when I get to rule number 115.
00:47:52.639 --> 00:47:55.519
No rule, you know, no excuses play like a champion.
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:57.440
Sometimes I'm gonna make excuses.
00:47:57.920 --> 00:48:04.159
And so the purpose of the law is, according to Paul and Romans, to convict us of our inadequacy.
00:48:04.400 --> 00:48:06.880
Well, the law came through Moses, but guess what?
00:48:07.199 --> 00:48:15.440
Grace, forgiveness, truth, the fulfillment of the law comes through Jesus Christ.
00:48:16.400 --> 00:48:18.320
Now here's an interesting statement.
00:48:18.639 --> 00:48:35.199
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God, and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
00:48:35.519 --> 00:48:37.199
So what is sight?
00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:39.199
What is the possibility of sight?
00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:40.880
No one has seen God.
00:48:42.639 --> 00:48:52.719
But the Son has seen God and has made this God known, and we have seen his glory full of grace and truth.
00:48:54.719 --> 00:48:56.400
And so it is a mystery.
00:48:56.880 --> 00:48:58.800
It is a paradox beyond us.
00:48:59.039 --> 00:49:08.159
God is entirely beyond us, and yet in Jesus we bear witness to the God of all people and of all creation.
00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:12.320
And sight is complicated.
00:49:18.159 --> 00:49:35.039
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
00:49:35.440 --> 00:49:48.320
One of the things that Jesus will model for us, that John will express for us about Jesus, God's Son, is how intimately connected the Son of God and the Father are.
00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:52.960
And that's just going to be a truism throughout John's gospel.
00:49:53.519 --> 00:49:58.880
The Son and the Father are intimately in union and communion with each other.
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:00.719
And he gave us that clue at the very beginning.
00:50:00.880 --> 00:50:03.039
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.
00:50:03.199 --> 00:50:06.719
And the word was God, and he was with God in the beginning.
00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:08.800
And John the Baptist confirms it.
00:50:12.239 --> 00:50:14.639
And then John's saying the same thing in another way.
00:50:14.800 --> 00:50:19.760
Nobody's ever actually seen the holy, mysterious, pulsing, burning love of God.
00:50:19.840 --> 00:50:24.719
And yet we have seen Jesus, and Jesus saw God, and Jesus makes God known to us.
00:50:24.800 --> 00:50:27.760
And what is sight anyway, but believing.
00:50:28.559 --> 00:50:34.159
And so sight is readily possible for you and I without having actually seen Jesus.
00:50:34.719 --> 00:50:35.599
It's pretty cool.
00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:40.480
That is something that is well, that's the that's the statement of the day.
00:50:40.639 --> 00:50:44.480
Well, that is something, and we'll say that after almost every paragraph.
00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:47.760
Exactly.
00:50:48.960 --> 00:50:51.360
Usually we have to see things to believe things.
00:50:51.519 --> 00:50:56.800
And here's going to be a story in which we never saw the things, but we've totally seen the things.
00:50:57.039 --> 00:51:00.400
You know them, you know them, and you believe.
00:51:00.559 --> 00:51:01.119
You do.
00:51:01.199 --> 00:51:02.559
I promise you.
00:51:02.800 --> 00:51:06.159
It's just sight is this paradox.
00:51:06.400 --> 00:51:07.280
All right, friends.
00:51:07.360 --> 00:51:08.239
We'll leave it there.
00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:09.760
Grace to you and peace.
00:51:09.920 --> 00:51:11.360
Have a wonderful week.
