Before I get into text this morning, I have to do a lot of historical work for you, to give you some sort of foundational understanding.
• We’ll talk about Hebrew theology and its history.
• We’ll talk about Greek philosophy and its history,
• And I’m gonna bring these together for you guys in some sort of whole.
At the time that John wrote his gospel, the Hebrew people were in this place where they had a lot of pride in their racial identity because they could look back and could trace their ancestry.
Their heritage followed in the footsteps of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and all of the prophets, and all the priests, and the temple. And they could look at God’s provision for them; the delivering of them out of bondage in Egypt and the giving them of the land.
And the Hebrew people believed that because of their ancestry that they had a privileged position with God. And within that, at the foundation of their theology, was this understanding of the Word of God.
And for the Hebrews, this was tremendously important.
They believed that God at certain times would speak through men and that those things would be written down and recorded in a divine way, as if God were in his very essence speaking directly to a people with authority.
And so, for them, the Word of God was tremendously important so they would memorize Scripture, and their theologians would commit their lives to understanding the books of the Old Testament.
In addition, they understood that the Word of God was the active agent through which God accomplished his will in the world. In a sense, God’s Word did things. It was action in orientation.
For Example . . . in Genesis, we find that God speaks, and it’s through God’s Word that creation comes into existence.
And so, for the Hebrew people, the Word of God was foundational in their theology and world view.
But there’s this other world that exists alongside the Hebrew world, and that’s the Greek world and it isn’t bound up with theology – but rather philosophy. It traces its root system back to a man named Heraclites, a philosopher that predated Socrates and Plato, and Aristotle.
When Heraclites looked at the world, he saw a lot of chaos and disorder and he tried to find a way to explain how there could still be harmony and order, in the midst of the chaos and disorder.
And he came up with this concept of the Word, the Logos, and he said that the Logos was really the essence of all things that existed within creation and that any harmony and order that was brought out of chaos and disorder was because of the Word.
He also taught that the human soul was eternal in nature only if it was connected to the Word. And so, he developed this very extensive theory of the Logos in a 3 volume book called “On Nature”
Heraclites’ thinking on the Word came to influence Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Cicero, right up to the time preceding Jesus.
And so, for the Greeks, the philosophical concept of the Logos was foundational to their world view. And because of this philosophical worldview, their understanding of God was completely different than the Hebrew people.
And so, John is trying to find a way to talk about Jesus in such a way that both world views could understand and come together in harmony.
So, he starts his gospel on common ground where both worldviews could agree. He says, “In the beginning was the word (the Logos), and the word was with God”
• The Hebrews would have said, “Yes, the word of God is with God, before creation, it was through his word that he created. We believe that.”
• The Greeks would have believed the same thing . . . that the Word existed before creation and they would be comfortable with the concept of a creator god.
But then John does this tremendous transition . . . “and the word was God and the Word was with God in the beginning””.
So, he’s taken this concept of the Word that both worldviews could agree on and he’s saying the logos, the Word is not removed from God, but the Word is in and of himself God . . . it is divine. Not only is the Word divine but it is a person.
• It’s not just this objective, neutral, detached thing like the Hebrews understood.
• It’s also not this unknowable, unexplainable force as the Greeks understood,
• But that the Word is a person, and he was with God in the beginning, before anything was made
He continues in a place that both worldviews can agree to, “through him all things were made, without him, nothing was made that has been made”
Ok, so far so good. Creation was conducted by the word . . . but then he again takes it a step further. “and in him was life, and that life was the light to all mankind.”
He’s saying that life comes out of the word and that life, “is the light of man”.
In 1 John, he tells us that the light is the revelation, the truth and the understanding of God.
And as we live in the darkness, God is light and sends his light into the darkness of our soul, and into the darkness and chaos of this world.
Let’s keep going . . . “He, the word, was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”
The God who spoke creation into existence came as part of his creation, but the creation looked at him and said, “That can’t be God. That’s not very impressive.”
Fair enough . . . prior to his resurrection, Jesus is not that impressive
He comes from a backwater, hick town, born to a teenage girl who claims to be a virgin, blue-collar family, works with his hands, homeless, unemployed.
Comes into the world . . . and the world did not recognize him.” Well, of course they didn’t.
If he was gonna be born, he would come from a nice family with a nice line. And he’d go to a prep school. And he’d get a good job. And he’d have a beautiful wife and a few kids in a big house and a nice resume. And he would have something to show.
But that’s not how it happened . . . God came in this unexpected way, in this humble, simple, regular, normal way. The Word of God came, and nobody even knew it was him.
And the Jews rejected him. They looked and said, “No, we’re waiting for a king. You’re no king.”
And that’s John’s understanding of Jesus. It’s this beautiful picture of the word coming into the dark world and bringing light.
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
Here’s what happens.
God comes in the world in a common and regular way and to those who believe that Jesus is the Word of God become flesh . . . he gives this great adoption into a new family. He gives this concept that we’re all orphans, and that God adopts us as his kids.
And so, it goes from this enormous concept of the Logos, the Word of God and creation and light and darkness and good and evil, all the way down to, “What is the Logos about?”
He’s about taking people who are orphaned, living a dark world filled with chaos and disorder and adopting them into a family spiritually and the head of the family is the very one who created you.
Beautiful . . . it’s a homecoming!
And then John says something amazing about the Word, this great concept of both Greek and Hebrew thinking . . . He says, “The Word became flesh” – The Word was born into his own creation. The Word participated in his own creation. The Word became flesh, with all of its frailty, humanity, temptation, weakness, hunger, sickness, sorrow and grief, the Word became flesh.
For what purpose? To make his dwelling among us . . . I love that because it reminds us of Gods provision in the OT.
See, what happened was that the children of God were liberated from bondage in Egypt. They were sent on this great pilgrimage; a few million people, packing up their tents, functioning like a refugee camp.
They would stop and they would all construct their tents, and then they would live in their tents for however long, until they continued their journey to their ultimate home.
And what it says in the Exodus narrative, that God wanted a tent, too. God decided that he would have a tent pitched right alongside everybody else’s tent. His tent was going to be nicer tent . . . of course . . . but a tent, nonetheless.
And what would happen, then, is that God’s tent would be packed up, and God would be in the midst of his people as they journeyed to the Promised Land.
And each time they stopped, the tabernacle is constructed. God’s glory descends upon the tabernacle, and then all of a sudden, God’s glory is present among God’s people; dwelling, living in a tent.
It says that same thing has happened in Jesus. God throws his lot with ours and walks around with his creation. He says that’s done in the body of Jesus. That’s God’s tent.
The Word became flesh and pitched his tent, made his dwelling among us.
And Jesus – who is “the word become flesh” comes to bring us the truth about God, about us, about everything. Jesus speaks the truth. And he also speaks grace.
He comes from the Father, just overflowing with two-handed grace and truth.
He is completely truthful. But he also comes overflowing with grace, which is mercy and compassion and affection and devotion, demonstrated in action. And so, Jesus comes bearing gifts of grace and truth, directly from the Father.
He concludes by saying, “No one has ever seen God,”
None of us can see God, at least not in this present state – but Jesus is God, and here’s what he’s done for us: He’s shown us God.
You say, “I wish I knew what God was like.” Or we create our own image of god that fits into our world view.
But John is saying . . . Look at Jesus; that’s God. Jesus is the clearest picture we have of who God is.
John is saying to the Hebrews . . . If you understand Jesus, you understand everything; the totality of the entire Old Testament, all of their concept of law, all of their concept of Word, all of their longing for morality and justice and righteousness – Jesus.
And for the Greek desire for wisdom, for insight, for learning, for understanding. To understand the spiritual world and the physical world, the human soul, life after death – all of those great Greek questions – Jesus.
Jesus answers every question that any human being could possibly ask about God.
If it can’t be answered in Jesus, it cannot be answered.
And God did that because God loves us, and God knows that there’s so much darkness, that he sent one clean, pure light. And all we need to do is fix our eyes upon it, and it will take us back to the Father.
We live in this dark world, wandering and lost, orphans, and we know that God is light, and he has revealed himself in Jesus, and he is calling us to be his children.
What is desperately needed in our world that has multiple cultures and multiple understandings and multiple realities, are people who understand Jesus well enough and the world well enough to be able to take a concept like the Logos and use that as a means of articulating the whole that brings the parts together.
That’s why we exist.
Logos Dei Church is a (little w) word of God. Not that you are divine, but that you are a speech, you are a statement sent into the darkness of this world to communicate the truth that there is light.
God has sent you into the world as a (little w) word of God to speak about grace and to show it, and to speak about truth and to show it, and to speak about Jesus, and to be a witness pointing to him.
To carry the name Logos Dei Church is bold and it asks us to be more than spectators that simply go to church or try to build a church, it calls us to move beyond the structures and confinements of a church and be the church; the hands and feet of Christ to a world who desperately needs Him.