In the Beginning Was the Word (John 1.1)

Introduction

A question for the men here, how many of you men at All Saints’ this morning can honestly say you positively enjoy shopping?

Well, isn’t that interesting? You might be interested to learn that a Psychologist called Dr. David Lewis was commissioned recently by a London shopping centre to monitor heart rates, blood pressure and stress hormones in male and female shoppers before, during and after their shopping trip.

Here’s what he found. The research showed that men's stress levels spiked alarmingly when faced with the prospect of choosing gifts and going into crowded shops, while only one in four women registered even a slight change.

Dr. Lewis said, "I was personally surprised by the very high levels of stress we found amongst the men. We were looking at blood pressure and heart rates and the secretion of stress hormones in some cases at a level we might expect to find in combat pilots or riot police officers in action!”

Another survey of regional trends among Christmas shoppers in the UK found that it’s Londoners who find the thought of hitting the High Street the most stressful.

43% of people in the East of England found parents to be the most difficult people to shop for. And more than half had particular trouble choosing a suitable gift for dads.

79% of people in Northern Ireland said they had bought a present for someone and when they opened it, no matter how pleased the recipient looked, the giver could tell that they obviously didn't like it.

And the report concluded that 66% of people in Yorkshire find Christmas gift buying “painful.”

Not stressful, or tiring, or time-consuming, but – with in what can only be a reference to excessive strain on the wallet – painful!

The exact words we choose reveal a lot. Words can be evocative. Sometimes words, because they are tied to a context, mean much, much more than they otherwise might. “That’s one small step for a man.” “I have a dream.” “They think it’s all over.” “Houston, we have a problem.”

These words are greater than a sum of their parts; they have weight and meaning and importance for us because we connect them to a significant event. The American fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss said, “Words have power. Words can light fires in the human mind. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” 

Words

Today’s reading, just a single verse from John’s gospel says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Why did John say this? Have you ever wondered why he decided to sit down one day and write a fourth gospel? There were three perfectly good gospels already. It’s not as if people were saying, “No one has yet written down a record of what Jesus said and did. Quick, before the last eye witness falls off his perch, someone who knew him, write a book about what he said and did!”

Mark had already written about what Jesus did. Then Matthew and Luke produced two more gospels, adding many of the things Jesus said. John, though, wrote his gospel to tell the world about who Jesus is.

In 20.31, right near the end of the gospel, he says, "These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."

So if I’m going to accurately convey John's purpose in writing this gospel, my aim this morning must be to increase your faith in Jesus as God’s Son so you can enjoy the blessings and the life he came to give. And that is what I have prayed I will do, by the grace of God.

Sometimes people ask, “What is the difference between what you believe as Christians and what all the other religions believe? Aren’t they all the same?” And the answer is “No, they’re not the same at all.”

Every religion tells you what you need to do to move towards God. Only the Bible tells you what God has already done to move towards you.

Every religion has prayer. But the really important thing is not the words you say to connect with God. What counts is the Word God has already said to connect with you. And that Word is living and breathing – it’s Jesus.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I want to approach this verse from three different perspectives this morning. The first perspective is looking back. What does it say about creation and the origins of the universe? The second perspective is looking up. What does it say about what God is like? The third perspective is looking in. What does God say to the depths of your heart today?

Looking back

Firstly then, looking back. “In the beginning…” That means there was a beginning. That may sound obvious, but it hasn’t always been so.

100 years ago, scientists and philosophers almost unanimously agreed with Aristotle that the universe has always been there. “There is no creator” they said, “because everything we can see and feel and sense just always existed.”

But in 1929 an astronomer called Edwin Hubble (he wasn’t named after a telescope by the way; it was the other way round)… he made a discovery that almost no one before had ever imagined or conceived; he proved that the universe is actually expanding.

He calculated the rate of expansion and then, working his figures back, to point zero, he established that our universe is about 13.75 billion years old. So it wasn’t always there. It must have had a starting point. The Big Bang. But here’s the thing; cosmologists since then have come to agree that, at the point of creation, the raw materials for everything that now exists were... nothing. Everything that is, just appeared, by itself, like a rabbit out of an empty top hat. As if by magic.

Scripture of course has always affirmed that there was a beginning. And the Bible says goes on to say not only that there was a beginning, but also that God already existed beforehand.

Try and get your mind round that. This takes us all out of our depth. Can any human mind imagine what existence was like when there was no matter, when there was no time, and when there was nowhere? It’s inconceivable. It’s incomprehensible. It’s unfathomable. It’s inexplicable.

But the Bible states that the universe of time and space has not always been here - and science now concurs.

The Bible goes on to say that God made everything and therefore you are significant, you are loved, you have purpose and value. Atheism says nothing made everything and therefore your being here at all is just an accident, and your life is totally meaningless.

Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the edge of the universe? If the universe is expanding like an inflated balloon, what’s on the other side of the membrane? Nothing. What does nothing look like?

Or if you could travel back in time through millions of years and get to the point of creation, you’d go back, and back, and back – what would you find? You’d find that Jesus is already there. That’s what John 1.1 affirms; “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

He was always there. He always will be. He spans the whole of time and space - and beyond. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He has complete sovereignty and total authority over all history; past, present and future. He knows where it all came from and he knows where it’s going.

Looking up

This is why John wrote his gospel. He wanted to show that Jesus is not just human size – he is God size. He is eternal. And if there is not eternity in Jesus, he can’t give you everlasting life.

I say “Jesus” but of course the name Jesus was only given to him when he was born in Bethlehem. The name Jesus describes what he came to do as a man. The angel Gabriel said to Mary “You will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. That’s what his name means. But before he was born in Bethlehem, Jesus wasn’t his name. Because it does not describe what he did before he was born.

He changed his name when he came to earth. In 3G the other week an Iranian man came to speak about his life. He changed his name by deed poll from Mehdi to Daniel to represent his new identity. It showed he was leaving behind his past and taking on something new.

Jesus did the same thing. Before he came to earth he had a different name. The Word is the first of many titles given to Jesus in John’s gospel. Each one has a significance and tells you something about who Jesus is and what he’s like.

Why was he called The Word? Because words form a connection between two people. You probably can’t read my mind. But if I talk to you, my spoken words express thoughts from my mind which are then received and processed by yours. And vice versa. Words connect us. They form a bridge between us.

Jesus is the Word because he perfectly expresses God’s ways, his thoughts, his ideas and his heart. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. What has God got to say to us? He’s said it all in Jesus.

“In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God.” “Word” there is our English translation of the Greek word logos, but logos means much more than “word.” It’s where we get the words logic, logical, logistics from and there is a history behind it.

We know John wrote his Gospel, in Greek, in Ephesus in the first century. Five centuries before Jesus was born, before Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, lived a philosopher called Heraclitus, who also wrote in Greek, in Ephesus, about the logos. In fact, the logos was his big thing. It was central to his quest to understanding what made everything work. In his thinking, the logos meant the principle, or the basis that explains why things are the way they are.

The logos is the reason why things are the way they are. What’s the reason behind the patterns in sunshine and rain and wind? It’s meteo – logos (meteorology). What is the reason why people behave the way they do? It’s socio – logos (sociology). What is the reason why planets spin round the sun and stars collapse into black holes? It’s the cosmos – logos (cosmology). Every discipline of human understanding and learning comes back to its logos, the reason why it is like it is.

So when John wrote this Gospel, he deliberately picked up this language from Heraclitus – he said that Jesus is the logos, the Word, the reason why.

All things find their true sense, their ultimate meaning in him. He is the reason why you were born and have life. He is the reason why God loves you. Life, the universe and everything has a purpose; Jesus is the reason why.

Looking in

We’ve looked back (in the beginning) and we’ve looked up (the eternal Word of the Father, who always was, is now, and will be forever).

Now, we’re going to look in. What word does Jesus, the Word of the Father, say to you today?

People have invisible tapes that play in their soul all the time. Not literally. But people hear words that have been spoken over their lives again and again. And it’s like a tape that replays over and over again, words that have been said at significant moments in life.

Words like: You’re no good. I always wanted a boy. You’re ugly. I always wanted a girl. I’m leaving you. I wish you’d never been born. You’re fat. You always mess things up. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re a waste of space (I’m sorry about him, he’s from Barcelona). We don’t need you anymore. We’re letting you go. Can’t you do better than that?

Do you ever hear tapes like that?

As a teenager growing up without a father figure in his life, Richard Taylor’s existence revolved around crime and drug addiction in South Wales for which he served several sentences in H. M. Prison Swansea.

One night, in jail awaiting conviction and sentencing, he picked up the Gideons Bible that had been placed in his cell and tore out a page to roll a cigarette. This is how he explains what happened next:

“I opened the Bible randomly and tore out a page and made myself a roll-up. I struck the match, but suddenly, I found that I had an inner voice that I wasn’t used to hearing. It said ‘This is all wrong, I should be reading this, not putting a match to it.’

I blew the match out, unrolled the page, and began to read it. It was the Gospel of John chapter 1 [what we’ve been reading today]. I read the page… and then read most of that Gospel, about twenty chapters, before I put it down. I found it captivating. I was lying on my bunk with the Bible resting on my chest and fell asleep.

Sleeping in prison is not easy because of the noise and I wasn’t on any drugs – my usual way of drifting off to sleep. But, I slept the deepest and most peaceful sleep that I could remember. From early afternoon, right through to the next morning, I slept.

It was as if the weariness of years of turmoil, crime, drugs, aggression and fighting was being rolled away through peaceful sleep. My subconscious mind was being cleared of the nightmares of my life up to now. The Bible talks about the peace of God that passes anyone’s understanding and perhaps this was my first experience of it.”

Richard was then inexplicably spared a heavy sentence on condition that he spent some time in a Christian rehabilitation centre which he agreed to do. His life turned around and he is now one of the country’s most dynamic and influential church leaders.

The Detective Chief Superintendent of Gwent Police who had no control over Taylor in his days of spiralling crime can only admit that he is a reformed man and happily wrote an endorsement of Taylor’s autobiography To Catch a Thief.

A life turned around by the Word of God. And yet some people want to outlaw the distribution of Gideons Bibles in schools, hotels and prisons for fear either of offending people from other faiths or upsetting touchy atheists.

Jesus has the power and the authority to press “stop” on the tape playing back all those messages. Those words may have shattered your past. But they are not the words that need to shape your future.

Because so many feel unloved and rejected, Jesus is the Word who says, “I have loved you.”

Because so many are racked with guilt over the past, Jesus is the Word who says, “Father – forgive.”

Because so many are lonely and bereft, Jesus is the Word who says, ”I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Because so many are sick, Jesus is the Word who says, “I am the Lord, who heals you.”

Because so many are tired, Jesus is the Word who says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.”

Because so many are in bondage to their addictions and compulsions, Jesus is the Word who says, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.”

Because so many are under a cloud of heaviness and judgment, Jesus is the Word who says, “Neither do I condemn you, leave your life of sin.”

Because so many just can’t find any peace, Jesus is the Word who says “My peace I give to you… don’t let your heart be troubled or afraid.”

Because so many feel that everything is meaningless and there’s no point going on, Jesus is the Word who says “I have come to bring life in all its fullness.”

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 6th December 2015