In C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a interaction between Lucy and the great lion Aslan.
Aslan is, if you're familiar with it at all, he is the Jesus figure in the Narnia Chronicles.
And Lucy approaches Aslan and she gazes into his large but gentle and wise face.
And Aslan says to her, welcome child.
Lucy responds, Aslan, you're bigger.
Aslan answers, that is because you are older, little one.
She questions his response, not because you are.
I am not, he says.
But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.
Every year you grow, you will find me bigger.
That is, it's an analogy.
The bigger Jesus is to us, the more we grow in our understanding of Jesus, the bigger he is to us.
And the more central he becomes in our lives, the bigger our sense of purpose will be in our life.
Meaning and contentment and passion and the joy will grow more and more the bigger Jesus is to us.
And that's why our purpose here at St. Paul's is to treasure Jesus.
And we do it ultimately for our joy.
John's massive vision of Jesus has opened the eyes to countless, countless people over the centuries.
To the greatness of Jesus Christ.
And it has been equally profound as a gospel.
Equally profound as an impact on Christians.
And it expands their vision for the magnificence of who Jesus Christ is.
And so as we spend this term working our way through the first 12 chapters, my hope is that we, like Lucy with Aslan, would find Jesus to be bigger and bigger and bigger than we ever imagined.
To move beyond a mere religious response to him.
And the more central we see him in our lives, the more abundant our life will become.
And today, so therefore, as we come into John chapter 1, I want us to see who Jesus is, the profound change that he brings in our lives and what we need to do about it.
And that's just the first chapter.
So St. Paul's app, get that open in front of you.
Got three points there.
But also your Bibles in John chapter 1.
John chapter 1 is one of the most richest and also famous parts of the Bible.
The first 18 verses makes the claim that the rest of the gospel of John explains, defends and supports.
John chapter 1.
It's John chapter 1.
It's the first 18 verses is the prologue to the whole of the gospel.
And the main claim is that the word that was in the beginning became flesh and lived amongst us so that we could bear witness to the word.
That's the main claim.
And we are told five things about the word in these verses.
The word is a person.
The word is a divine person.
The word is an eternal divine person.
And the word is the eternal divine person who's the source of all things.
And lastly, the word is Jesus Christ.
Now you could take five years to explain each of those five statements.
But I want to focus on just one of these things that he's picked out.
And that is John's use of the word word.
I want us to focus on the word.
It's a very interesting way to describe who Jesus is.
The Greek word that John uses here for word is logos.
In the beginning was the logos.
And the logos came to dwell with us.
It's a word that has an enormous amount of meaning for the first century Greco-Roman world.
The Greek philosophers looked at nature.
They saw balance.
They saw harmony.
They saw design.
They saw order.
And they concluded that there is a cosmic principle of order behind all that they observed.
And they called that principle the logos of the universe.
And the logos for Greek philosophers was an impersonal divine structure that brought forth all that we experience in the world.
And that was the foundation of the Greek worldview, which is also the foundation of Western civilization.
The Eastern worldview is built on a similar principle of purpose and reason and order behind what we observe.
And so the logos is the purpose.
It's the reason.
It's the logic, which is where we get the word logos from.
We get it from logos.
Logic.
Logos.
It's the logic behind all things.
It is what makes sense of all things.
Maybe think of it like this.
Most things that we purchase these days comes with a set of manufacturer's instructions.
The more complex, the greater the instructions that you have associated with these things.
And the instructions ask how to use and to care for that particular item.
They are the manufacturer's purpose for the item.
The guidelines how to use it within its purpose.
In other words, the instructions are the logos for the item that we have in front of us.
And the use of that item must be aligned to the instructions.
To the design.
The reason for its existence.
And if you don't use it in line with the logos, at best, you will not get your value out of that item.
At worst, it will be disaster.
If you do not plug it into a PowerPoint, but you plug it into a hose, instead, it is not going to work.
And at the very least, your warranty is going to be voided.
The Greeks concluded that if we align our lives with the logos, life would go well for us.
However, if you don't align your life with the logos, you would at very least experience an emptiness in life.
A discontentment in life.
A constant searching in life.
At the very worst, you would destroy your life.
Now, there are many different versions of what the logos was and how you would align your life to the logos.
As there are today.
Everything from living selflessly for the sake of others, for the world and for future generations.
And then along comes John.
John the Baptist.
With the earth-shattering category of the Christian faith.
The logos is not a principle.
The logos is a person.
To understand the world, to understand all things, you must understand a person.
And this person is the designer and the source of all life.
The one who we are to align our lives with.
That this person is the truth that sits behind all things.
And to live life well, we must have a relationship of love centered on a person.
That is the radical claim of Christianity throughout the centuries.
But verses 5 to 11 tell us it's a claim that has faced rejection right from the very beginning.
Verse 9.
Have a look at that.
The true light that gives light to everyone has come into the world.
He was in the world.
And though the world was made through him, the world, that's the people, did not recognize him.
He came to those which was his own.
But his own did not receive him.
Verse 5 is the key to understanding the rejection.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
Other translations, for those who are familiar with different translations, say that the darkness has not understood it.
In his commentary on this verse, Don Carson says,
This verse is a masterpiece of planned ambiguity.
That is, the word that John uses here, and he's very careful with all his words,
the word he uses here can mean both overcome or understand.
In the same way we might ask, what does it mean to master something?
What does it mean when we say, I've mastered that?
It may mean that I've overpowered it.
Or it may mean, oh, I finally get it.
It may mean both of those things at the same time.
I finally get it.
I figured it out.
And that is, if you like, the ambiguity of this word is that there are two broad categories of rejecting the claims of Jesus Christ.
One is an overly hostile.
The other is just simply not to get him.
Not to understand him.
And either way, you've rejected him.
In the post-Christian era that we find ourselves in now,
some people are hostile to the idea that Jesus Christ is the truth
that sits behind the universe.
Our secular society is increasingly hostile to any idea that there is any form of absolute truth behind the universe.
And in some quarters, there is an attempt to overcome Jesus.
Another way to reject Jesus as the logos is the religious approach, the moralistic approach.
It is not to understand Jesus.
The religious approach is to see Jesus as laying down a set of rules for life
where I need to obey in order to work for his approval.
That is to misunderstand the logos.
To misunderstand who Jesus is.
Relativism and moralism are both forms of rejection of Jesus.
Both leave us looking ultimately to ourselves
and the consistency of our own lives for truth and meaning and hope.
And that is why we are living in a world with so many fragile egos
because it puts me, moralism and relativism, put me at the centre of the universe.
As the truth of the universe.
And it's an oppressive weight to bear.
On the other hand, what John puts in front of us here is so liberating.
There are hardly more beautiful words in the entire Bible
than verses 12 to 14, or 12 and 14.
To all who did receive him, to those who believe in his name,
he gave the right to become children of God.
Verse 14, the word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst 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.
The right to become children of God.
That's what's at stake here in understanding who Jesus is.
The relationship of a parent to a child is not based on the child's performance.
It's not a consumeristic relationship.
It's not a cost-benefit relationship.
It's a covenant relationship based on unconditional faithfulness and commitment and love
from the parent to the child.
And in Jesus understanding him, we have the right to become children of God.
In other words, this claim that Jesus is the truth
is a non-oppressive truth claim.
And Jesus Christ declares it's possible to have that kind of relationship with the God of the universe.
How?
Because the logos, the word, became flesh and dwelt amongst us.
The logos of the universe came to us.
He hasn't left us to our own devices to navigate life,
to try and align ourselves with the manufacturer's purposes.
The word that John uses for dwelt here is the word tabernacled amongst us.
It's another name for templed amongst us.
And all around this world, through every culture, there are temples.
Temples have been built throughout history
because people, human beings from every culture
have instinctively sensed that there is a God,
there is a logos, there is a purpose, there is a being,
but there is a gap.
There is a big gap.
He is great and we are small.
And temples were built in every culture in an attempt to bridge that gap.
Sacrifices were offered.
Rituals were performed.
And holy people were engaged to bridge the gap for us.
And John tells us that the Lord of the universe
has now tabernacled with us.
He has bridged the gap himself.
Dwelt in our presence.
So that we might know who he is.
That's the beauty of the claim that Jesus is the word
and why we'd want to see and savour him and treasure him for who he is.
The heart of the universe is a person.
Now one person who saw Jesus, who witnessed Jesus for who he is
as the eternal creator God, the source of all life, was John the Baptist.
The first witness to the glory of Jesus Christ as the truth.
Now John was a guy who in the first century drew a lot of attention to himself
about his preaching and calling people to repent for their sin.
From the servants in the fields to King Herod himself in his palace.
From the religious elite to the Roman soldiers.
People everywhere were talking about John.
He had more Twitter followers than anyone.
Anyone on the face of the earth.
Lots of rumours went around about who John was.
That maybe John was the Logos.
Could he be the long awaited Jewish Messiah
who would rescue God's people from slavery?
Is he in fact the hope of humanity?
The saver of the nation?
Verse 20, he said, not me.
Well maybe he's the great Elijah, the prophet that Malachi predicted
that was going to come just before the Messiah.
Is John the Elijah figure from Malachi?
Nope, I'm not him either.
Well what about the prophet?
The promised prophet from Deuteronomy
who would lead God's people to a new day of dawn?
Nope, I'm not him either.
Who are you John?
What are we going to say about you?
How do you explain you John?
In all of your greatness and your millions of tweets
who are you?
I'm a voice.
Nothing special at all.
I'm a voice.
And yet you read Matthew chapter 11
and we get a very different picture of who John is
according to Jesus Christ.
This is Jesus' assessment of John.
Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John.
What did you go out to see?
A prophet?
Yes, I tell you.
And more than a prophet.
This is the one to whom it is written.
This is Malachi.
I will send my messenger ahead of you
who will prepare your way before you.
I tell you.
Among those born of women,
there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.
That's Jesus' assessment of John.
He's worthy of all these millions of Twitter followers.
Jesus' assessment of John is profoundly different
than John's assessment of John.
After the arrival of Jesus,
this is what Jesus says,
among those born of women,
which is quite a lot of people as it turns out,
there has not been anyone greater than John.
No one greater than John.
Jesus says he is, in fact,
the Elijah figure that Malachi predicted.
So how do you reconcile those two perspectives?
Is John just someone that we might call in our modern day
someone with low self-esteem?
Or maybe someone who's got a false humility.
Yeah, not really about me.
Well, this is not at all.
It's not at all the case
because as we go through John's gospel,
we will see that someone with low self-esteem
and false humility would be incredibly fearful
and would lack an element of confidence.
And John, therefore,
would not be calling the religious elite
to the Roman soldiers
to herod himself in his palace
to repent and to follow Jesus Christ.
That is not someone of low self-esteem
who would have that kind of boldness and brashness.
What's happening here is that John,
who bears witness to the Logos,
sees himself against Jesus and says,
I am nothing.
I may be the greatest human being
who's ever walked the face of the earth up to Jesus,
but I am nothing.
Compared to Jesus.
He's saying to the crowd,
you've missed the point.
It's not about me.
You've missed the point.
It's not about me.
I am merely a voice announcing a greater one.
I've seen the Logos.
The great one is verse 23,
the Lord.
And here John uses the covenant name
of Israel's God, Yahweh.
Verse 27 is the key to understanding
John's understanding of himself
in the presence of Jesus.
He is the one who comes after me,
the straps of whose sandals
I'm not worthy to untie.
First century Palestine
was a hot, dusty, dirty,
mucky place.
By the end of the day,
your feet would stink
bad.
I actually put originally in my text,
really bad,
but Microsoft wanted to correct that
for being bad grammar.
But I want to say really,
really, really bad.
Really bad.
And there were, in fact,
Jewish laws
that said you could not demand
a servant
or a worker
or a disciple
to untie your sandals
unless
they were a Gentile dog.
They weren't allowed
to untie your sandals.
It was seen as so
disgusting
in first century.
And every culture's got their things
which we would describe as
disgusting.
And it was so disgusting
in first century Palestine.
They had laws against it.
And notice what John
says here.
Notice what he doesn't say.
He doesn't say,
I am only worthy
to untie his sandal.
He actually says,
I'm not even worthy
to untie his sandal.
He's saying to his audience here,
I am lower
than even the Gentile dogs
in the face of Jesus Christ.
He's saying,
you,
my Twitter account
serves
his glory.
That's why I'm here.
I'm below the lowest
of the Gentiles.
I understand
the greatness
of Jesus Christ.
Don't try and understand
my greatness.
My life
is to draw attention
to him.
My purpose
is to bring him glory,
not myself.
He is the logos.
He is the purpose.
He is the meaning,
the reason
for the universe.
He is the meaning.
But John also bears witness
to Jesus Christ,
not just as the logos
of the universe
who has come to dwell
amongst his creation,
but he also bears witness
to how the logos
has come to his creation
and why he's come
to his creation.
He doesn't come
as a devouring
great lion
that needs to be appeased,
but as a lamb.
Now the relativist
rejects the idea
of a powerful
divine designer.
The moralist
misunderstands
that the powerful
designer
behind the universe
is in fact
a lamb.
The logos
is not just great
but also good.
Verse 29,
he points to Jesus
and says,
look,
this is John,
look,
the lamb of God
who takes away
the sin of the world.
Exclamation mark
in the original
Greek text,
look.
Other versions
have got,
behold.
John's Jewish audience
knew exactly
what he was saying
when he said that.
Centuries earlier
when they were slaves
in Egypt,
Moses went to Pharaoh
and said,
let my people go
and Pharaoh
refused to let
them go
and God sent
a bunch of plagues
to convince Pharaoh
and all of Egypt
and the final plague
on Egypt
because of their
oppression
and their rebellion
and their injustice
was an angel
of death
to strike down
the firstborn son
in every home.
that was
devastating
for the hopes
of a patriarchal
society
who pinned
their hopes
on the firstborn son
and God
also said
to his people
Israel,
don't forget
your sinners
too.
It's not because
you're better.
The only way
that they could
escape
the same fate
was if they
were to kill
a lamb
and have
its blood
spread
on the doorposts
of their homes
and when the
angel of death
sees the blood
he will pass
over the house
and they will
not be slain
for their sin.
In other words
the lamb
died
so that the family
didn't have to
and from that
very night
year after
year
century after
century
Israel celebrated
the Passover
meal
and remembered
the night
that they didn't
have to pay
for their sin
but how
is it possible
that a little
lamb
could possibly
atone
for the
sin
of an individual
or of a nation
of a world
how is that
possible?
You see
John and his
Jewish heroes
would have also
been quite familiar
with another
figure in the
Old Testament
that the book
of Isaiah
calls the
suffering servant
and Isaiah
says this
about the
suffering servant
we all like
sheep have
gone astray
each of us
has turned
to our own
way
and the
Lord has
laid on
him
the iniquity
of us
all
he was
oppressed
and afflicted
yet he did
not open
his mouth
he was
led like
a lamb
to the
slaughter
and John
goes
both of
those images
come together
in the
person of
Jesus
I'm
channeling
together
in the
person
of Jesus
the
suffering
servant
is the
sacrificial
lamb
for sin
the
logos
of the
universe
is the
suffering
servant
and he
says
behold
look
get it
understand
it
the
reason
why
our
firstborn
sons
didn't
die
in
Egypt
and
you
don't
need
to
now
is
because
God
has
offered
his
own
son
as
the
sacrificial
lamb
and
as
he
says
to
his
hearers
in
the
first
century
so
he
says
to
us
now
in
the
21st
look
behold
gaze
think
ponder
understand
get it
who
Jesus
is
he
is
the
logos
and
the
lamb
for
your
joy
the
logos
of the
universe
has
sacrificed
himself
so
that
we
can
be
free
and
loved
and
known
and
approved
get
it
and
get
abundant
life
you
see
this
news
is
news
that
humbles
you
that
Jesus
is
the
truth
that
he
is
the
lamb
it
humbles
you
because
that's
what
it
took
for
God
to
deal
with
our
rejection
of
him
but
it
also
lifts
you
up
because
his
love
for
us
is
so
great
that
he
was
in
fact
willing
to
do
it
in
Jesus
Christ
for
all
of
us
fragile
egocentric
people
trying to
find the
truth
in
ourselves
Jesus
Christ
in
him
we
receive
the
praise
of the
praise
worthy
we
receive
the
love
of
the
lovable
and
that
fills
you
up
on
the
inside
it's
the
source
of
abundant
life
it's
the
reason
John
is
so
bold
and
so
confident
and
yet
so
deeply
humble
it's
why
the
whole
trajectory
of
his
life
has
shifted
to
him
being
just
a
voice
the
greatest
priority
in
his
life
is
to
be
a
voice
a
voice
to
Jesus
Christ
when
Jesus
said
that
John
is
the
greatest
one
born
of
women
until
now
he
added
something
that
I
didn't
include
the
first
time
around
let me
include
it
the
second
time
among
those
born
of
women
there
had
not
risen
anyone
greater
than
John
the
Baptist
yet
whoever
is
least
in
the
kingdom
of
heaven
is
greater
than
he
the
greatest
in the
world
up to
Jesus
was
John
the
Baptist
but
those
who
trust
in
Jesus
on
his
terms
are
in
fact
greater
than
John
the
Baptist
how can
that
be
well
ask
yourself
the question
why was
John
so
great
why was
he
great
it's
because
he
was
a
voice
he
was
the
first
to
grasp
the
greatness
of
Jesus
Christ
and
he
did
it
better
than
anyone
else
up to
that
point
but
every
single
Christian
sits
on
this
side
of
the
death
and
resurrection
of
Jesus
and
it
means
that
we
have
a
greater
capacity
right
now
to
understand
to
grasp
who
Jesus
is
for
our
joy
and
to
experience
the boldness
of the
confidence
and the
humility
of
John
the
Baptist
to
the
degree
that
we
behold
who
Jesus
is
we
look
to
Jesus
understand
Jesus
is
the
degree
to
which
we
will
align
our
lives
with
him
and
it
will
be
the
degree
to
which
we
experience
joy
in
this
life
right
now
to
the
degree
that
we
grow
in
the
abundant
life
is
the
degree
also
that
we
will
be
a
voice
to
the
greatness
and
the
goodness
of
the
life
that
is
in
Jesus
going
to
the
heaven
him
it
his
oh
glory
to
the
motherfuck
to
the
another
gem