Good morning, please open your Bible to the Gospel of John chapter 1. We will focus on verses 16-18 this morning but we will read starting in v. 1. The first 18 verses form a complete literary unit, a prologue in John’s Gospel, and reading it complete and briefly examining it, will provide context. The Word of God says [READ] Let’s pray.
In the fallen world in which we live we are used to scarcity and want. We realize we cannot get all we’d like, even if what we want is good, because there is simply not enough of it. We can be disappointed at the lack of resources and tempted to be cynical about it if we’re not careful. We realize nothing can be renewed or replenished indefinitely. In one of my physics classes in college, our professor explained the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine, a fancy name for something that can keep on going forever without any need for gas, electricity, or some form of energy. Basically, a machine that will give you something out of nothing. It’s quite impossible, but our teacher went on to say people still try to invent these machines and patent them. The patent office is smart though, they ask for a working model, “if you bring me a machine that actually works without any input, let’s talk.” People will probably continue trying and will invariably fail, because there is only one being capable of creating things out of nothing. And that is God Almighty. Gen. 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” He alone speaks things into being. In Gen. 1:3 “God said, ‘Let there be light’” and what happened? There was light. Psalm 33:6 says, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” God is the unmatched Creator of all things. He creates beautiful and wonderful things out of nothing. Even pagans who don’t know God will ask: How did the universe begin? How did we get here? In their ignorance, they will often arrive at incorrect and even wild explanations, but they come up with something that explains everything around them. By New Testament times, the Greeks had developed the concept of Logos, a literal Greek term. One commentator explains the Greek understanding of Logos this way, “it denoted something like the soul of the universe. It was creative energy…the creative force in nature.” To be clear, this was the realm of philosophers, not of everyday people in New Testament times. But the concept of Logos had permeated the culture, just as today everyone is familiar with the concept of evolution, even when most of us thankfully do not know the particulars of the theory. The reason to bring up the Greek concept of Logos, is that the Apostle John wrote his Gospel in Greek, not only for Jews, but also for Gentiles. And right at the beginning of his gospel, John bridges the two worlds of Jew and Gentile by writing in v.1 “In the beginning was the Word [Logos]” What should this phrase transports us to? To Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God…”. And though we go from the Gospel of John all the way back to Genesis, we actually don’t stay there. In John we go back even further. In Genesis 1:1 there is a definite event described: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word” The verb “was” denotes being without a starting point. It doesn’t matter how far back you push the “in the beginning” of John 1, the Logos was already there. John is not using Logos in the Greek sense, which was developed by pagan philosophers. John didn’t need to borrow the pagan sense, for the Hebrew Scriptures had a rich history and a strong concept for the Word of the Lord. We read in Gen. 1:3 “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light”, and we also read Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” So, while John didn’t need the Greeks to talk about the Word, he purposely chose a term that would speak to the Greco-Roman world, be it philosopher or lay person, in addition to the Jews.