The True Light | John 1:1-18

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And there was the first chapter of John beautifully read by a man named John. And so if you think that wasn't intentional then you're right. It's just so beautiful to hear the scripture read in that, that just long form and song. If you came in, you probably got one of these it's a reading guide over the course of the next multiple weeks, we're gonna be in the book of John for 15 weeks.

We're gonna take a break over Advent and Christmas, and then we'll be back in the book of John up until Easter. So here's the dream with this. You'll actually get to follow Jesus towards Easter. When we get there towards crucifixion, towards resurrection. And so in the weeks that will come up to Easter and I know that seems a long way away right now, you'll actually feel what it is to move in that direction with him.

You'll hear all of it Red. And now because of the way the style of some of the people that preach here you won't hear all of it. Preach. There's big chunks and what I've said to people that are preaching, pick some verses and feel like you're free to get into detail on those verses, but what we're gonna navigate this.

Beautiful book together. And I think it's gonna be a rich experience. And let me explain why. So if you haven't met me before, my name's Alex. I'm one of the pastors here at South. And this book, John, is distinct. I, it's a book that navigates what it is to see Jesus care deeply. For the one. And to do that counterintuitively, I know I'm gonna invite you to turn to a passage.

If you have a text in front of you, turn to Matthew chapter 18, verse 22. Not John Matthew. To start with I'm gonna read this. What do you think if a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that has wandered off? And he finds it truly, I tell you, he's happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that did not wander off In the same way your father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

The four biographies that we have on Jesus' life. Are different. They're all inspired. They all teach us something, but they all bring us some of the character of the writers. So back all the way in the second century, a guy called Usia said this about John's Gospel. John, last of all, composed a spiritual gospel.

Now at that, at the time, that simply meant that John spoke in a way that touched on a higher spiritual plane. He talks a lot about the divinity of Jesus. A lot about some of those characteristics like that. The problem is that, that today for some of us, intellectually spiritual means not historical.

It means pushing into the realm of made up. So on an academic level, the study of John has just been a problem for a good 500 years, but John is actually rich in, in the historical. If you were to read Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, and come away with an impression of how long did Jesus teach for how long did his ministry on Earth last you, you'd probably say something like maybe six months.

Maybe nine months. And then you read John and you go away with this impression that actually, no it's much, much longer. We see Jesus go through three years with his first followers. So if you've just off the top of your head said to someone, Jesus taught and lived in amongst people for three years you got that somewhere from John.

But it's more than just that. John has a distinct attitude towards people. Or the Jesus that we see in John does that. In the other gospels, we see Jesus talk to crowds. We sometimes see him talk to his three disciples, the three of the 12 disciples. Very occasionally we see him talk to one person. But in John, we see that all the time in John, Jesus regularly interacts with just one person.

So this is what you quite often find with John. There may be a scene where there's a lot of movement. People move and gather. There's maybe a journey that ends up somewhere. There's questions asked by his disciples, questions asked by the religious leaders, his opponents, all sorts of things happening, and then somewhere in it for a moment, there's just this moment where everything else fades out, and you're left with a scene with just Jesus.

And one person and a con conversation happens, A healing happens, transformation happens, and John does this over and over again. The Jesus that we see in John is just deeply interested in one person. It's the outworking of the passage we just read. It's the Jesus who goes around and finds one person and brings transformation to them.

Now that, that actually raises a tension. What about the people that he doesn't heal? What about the person who's been blind next to the blind man and Jesus seemingly heals one blind person? What about the person who's lame next to the mainland, next to the lame man, and Jesus seemingly yields just one lame person?

Is this Jesus who cares about the one? Is that fair? And yet what we seem to pick up as we get further and further into John is this idea that the healings themselves weren't the main point. The main point is what it demonstrates for people like you and I. Somewhere in the midst of this beautiful book, what we start to get is an invite.

We're invited by John to imagine what it would look like to place us in the text. When we place ourselves in the story that's unfolding, whatever leaves the stories come alive to us, and so we suddenly start to begin to imagine what it would be like for Jesus to speak in this way to us to bring transformation like this to us.

One of the repeated pastoral conversations I have all the time with different pastors is this, that over and over again. They meet people following Jesus sometimes for years, who have this big sense that God loves the world. They have this working knowledge that God loves them personally, but the idea that they would be able to feel that really experience that for themselves that's lost on them.

Now, if you're in that place, that's not condemnation, that's judgment. That's an invite throughout this book to know that you. Are deeply loved by this Jesus. Who came for the world so constantly. What I hope you get week after week is this idea that we get to place ourselves in this story. We're gonna do that through a process called Gospel Imagination.

We're actually going to imagine what it would be like to be different characters in the story, what it would be like to be lifted from some of the things that these people experience. And my hope is that when we talk, like maybe at an annual meeting next year, that what we get to hear is stories of how Jesus in his teaching, how Jesus in his actions has brought healing to so many people in this community in different ways.

So to get there, we have to start at the beginning. A very good place to start, as some people once said, with the prologue. So the prologue is the first 18 verses of John chapter one that you just heard read. Now here's how I would describe the prologue for you. My family, every year go to the beach and one of my brothers, some years ago, he went out and bought a sea kayak, one of those big kayak as designed to handle the waves and the kind of rough waters.

Of the sea. And so every year he makes an effort to load this thing up onto his car and drive it all the way down to the beach. When you're looking for him on the road, you're just waiting for this moment where this huge yellow kayak just appears on the road and you're like, there he is doing about 45 miles an hour so it doesn't blow off the top of the roof.

And we drag it all the way down to the beach and people will take it in turns just getting out into the water. There's all these sorts of just clear places where you can spot all sorts of things. Just beautiful relaxing. A couple of my family rode out to one of the islands, but the challenging part is the first part.

You've gotta get beyond the breaking waves. And so these waves come pouring in and every year there's this moment where somebody capsizes, they try to get past these breakers and everyone begins to panic. And I chuckle with laughter 'cause I actually love that kind of thing. And this is the prologue.

The prologue is the hard work. When we get into chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, you're gonna get into the easy waters. Of John's Gospel. The, there's just this beautiful narrative to it that teaches us so much, but this part today, this is the hard work. So if you can get to through today, you can get through anything.

Leslie Newgen described the prologue of John as actually more like an overture. And Overture is the beginning of a piece of music. It's the beginning of a movie. Perhaps maybe you've seen one of those movies where you have this moment where they have some language that appears at the star that explains the situation.

And that's what the prologue does. It describes to us what's going to happen, what we're about to see, and that's why John picks up some of these big themes that he'll talk about during the book. Today, we'll focus on his metaphor of darkness. And light. He'll also talk about glory. He'll talk about these big ideas, truth, law, grace, that will come up over and over again.

He's nudging us towards some kind of understanding of where he is going. Now. We'll only really get it as we get further in, but already you can feel in the prologue he has a problem that might be described in these couple of questions. How do you describe. Something that's indescribable. How do you explain something that's unexplainable?

John's been with Jesus for three years. He's heard him teach. He knows what he's done. He's seen it all unfold, and now he has to write something that can be sent out all over the place to explain exactly what this thing. Means, how do you do that? I have a 2-year-old at the moment, Leo, who's in the phase that I call something like Why, when what?

He has all these sorts of questions that begin like that. And so we will have conversations together where we'll ask things like, who built this house? And we'll try and give him an answer that satisfies him. We'll say some builders why did they build it? So someone could live here. So why do we leave it?

And we'll go through all of these different things, all that end in another. Why. Sometimes it will be a little different. It will be what? So just the other day we had a conversation where he said, what do lion Z. To which I answered antelope. What dear Antelope eat, to which I answered grass, what does grass eat?

And all the way on to the point that you feel you're trying to describe something that really is indescribable. It reminds me of a film I saw years ago. Called blast from the past. The family have lived underground for about 30 years and you see some scenes as they're navigating life in this enc closeted environment.

And the son who has never seen baseball is asking his dad questions about baseball. A truly, from a British perspective, incomprehensible sport until he spent years watching it. And there's this moment where he wants to know why the runner from first has run to second, even though the man on second has the ball.

And he says, why does he go from first to second and his dad can only rely on because he must. There is no real answer. It's simply because, and John has to explain what Jesus has done and who Jesus is. Without just saying, just because he wants to give us his readers some sense of who this Jesus really is and how all of this is possible.

And so John does that by beginning. In the beginning he starts here. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in. The beginning. John begins in the beginning, which is a very different place than his fellow gospel writer's, right? Mark just begins at baptism.

He begins with this moment where Jesus is introduced on the scene. He's baptized by John the Baptist, and he goes about his ministry, and from that moment on Mark's Gospel just runs and runs. He uses language that just is over again. Immediately. Immediately, Jesus did this, and then Jesus did this, and then Jesus did this, and then Jesus did this.

He just goes and goes, Luke and Mark, they go a little bit Luke, sorry, Luke and Matthew they go a bit further back. They begin at Jesus birth, and Matthew wants you to know that Jesus' birth and his lineage go all the way back to Abraham, and Luke wants you to know that it goes even further back.

It goes all the way back to Adam. And John sits there writing and says, still not enough. We need to go further. He goes beyond birth and he goes all the way back to the beginning. Imagine that as a first century listener, or you've had this story all of your life. The beginning of your Holy Books, at least assuming you are a Jewish person.

Hearing that story, the first book, Genesis begins with the word bad. Kim, in the beginning, created God. Or in the beginning, the Creator created something like that. You know that story of the one God who created the universe, and now this writer comes along and he says no. Back at that very beginning. This.

Jesus was there too. He was part of that whole story. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing has made was made. That has been made. Now on the surface, this sounds like a literary device that I'm gonna try and convey to you really briefly in just a moment. It's simply called this retroactive continuity little example, really quick.

Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes dies in a season of Sherlock Holmes and in the books of Sherlock Holmes. And though the author says I really wish I could write more about Sherlock Holmes. So what do I do? I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna change the story, and then I can bring Sherlock Holmes back.

If you're a fan of Dallas, which is probably, it's America, it's probably all of you, or something like that. But if you're a fan of Dallas, there's this moment where they end a series and they don't like what they did in the series. So they say simply, oh, this was a dream of one of the characters, and now we don't have to talk about it anymore.

We get to change the story. On the surface, someone might say, that's what John's doing. He's just going back. And changing the story, but I don't think he's doing that at all. I don't think he's interested in Genesis. I actually think he's interested only. In Jesus. This is a conversation between John Lennox, British physicist, writer who has dialogue with some of the other physicists in his field, most of whom have an atheist point of view.

John Lennox is a follower of Jesus deeply passionate about him, deeply passionate about sharing him, and this is a conversation with one of his fellow physicists. What is consciousness? I asked him, I don't know. He replied after a little hesitation. Nevermind. I said, let's think of something easier.

What is energy? Willie said we, we can measure it and write down the equations governing its conservation. Yes or no? But that was not my question. My question is, what is it? We don't know. He said with a grin, and I think you're aware of that. Yes. Like you, I have read Nieman and I know that no one knows what energy is.

That brings me to my main point. Would I be right in thinking that you were about to dismiss me? Am I belief in God? If I failed to explain the divine human nature of Christ, he grinned again and said nothing. I went on. By the same token, would you be happy if I were to now dismiss you and all your knowledge of physics because you cannot explain to me the nature of energy.

After all, energy is surely by definition, much less complex than the God who created it. Please don't, he said. No, I'm not going to do that, but I am going to put another question to you. Why do you believe in the concepts of consciousness and energy, even though you do not understand them fully? Is it not because of the explanatory power of those concepts?

I see what you're driving at. He replied, you believe that Jesus Christ is both God and man because that is the only explanation that has the power to make sense. Of what we know of him. Exactly. When John sends Jesus all the way back to the beginning, it's because it's the, to him, the only logical conclusion as to what he has seen.

John is less interested in explaining Genesis than he is explaining Jesus, and the only way he can explain Jesus is to begin at the beginning. That this God was all the way this, Jesus was all the way back there. He not only was with God, but he was God. It changes our view of Jesus. If we didn't have John, we'd have nothing like the revelation we have of Jesus because of this book.

We understand who Jesus truly is and so after all that work, and again I told you technical, we'll get through it together, then John. Pushes into a different direction altogether. He goes from this technical language and then he moves onto a metaphor related to that. So verse four in him was life, and that life was the light and all man kind.

Just think about some of the beginning language. If Genesis well enough in the beginning, God did what God said, let there be light, and there was light. John will play with his metaphor of darkness and light, because it's exactly what it ha what happened in the beginning. In the beginning, God created light, and now we know Jesus was with God.

In the beginning, Jesus was God in the beginning, and now he'll talk about how Jesus life brings light to us. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. God said, let there be light, and there was light. Yeah, Jesus'. Beginning metaphor is Jesus is the light. Jesus brings light. You could turn those two ideas around life light.

You could have them forwards or backwards, but really John's point is this, is that the thing we experience when we know Jesus is light as opposed to darkness. Whatever your situation, when you encounter Jesus, the darkness turns to light. Jesus is the light. And light equates to light means life. Darkness in John's view of what Jesus has done gives way to light.

Now, this metaphor works when we take time to ponder it simply because of how, if run is perhaps even as adults, we feel about darkness. The metaphor works because of how we feel about light and darkness. Years ago, Paul Simon, art Garfunkel, hello, darkness, my old friend, wrote a line that nobody really actually believes, at least not true darkness.

It's fine to think about maybe shutting you away yourself away in a dark room for a while. It's fine to think about darkness on certain levels, but truly, most of us as humans don't love. The idea of darkness, I, I grabbed the darkest picture I could find of an evening on online. And you sit and ponder it for a moment and you feel like it, what it's like to be an environment that's devoid of light and instinctively as humans, what we don't want that.

And then just free of for a moment. What happens when we tweak it just a little bit and we start to add in some elements of light. The thing that we love is light, even on a dark, even. What makes it special? Starlight moonlight, firelight, all sorts of ways in which darkness is infused with little moments of light and what make those environments joyful, but true darkness.

If we're honest we don't love that. J just the other day, my 7-year-old walked into my room. He just came in the middle of the night. And you have those moments as a parent where you wake and the kid's just right there next to you and you jump scare. Because I don't love darkness. If I'm honest, and he said this to me, leave my door open because I'm scared of the dark.

Leave my door open. 'cause I'm scared of the dark. I don't wanna wake and find myself. With no light anywhere, and I resonate with that emotion. The year was 1986. I just started school as a 4-year-old. I walked into the classroom to do all sorts of things like learning to write your name, which when it's Alexander John Douglas Walton is a much bigger challenge than it sounds like.

Let write your name. It's gonna take you till eighth grade. It took a while. And in the midst of that, you have all those different fun environments that a classroom for four year olds is supposed to create. And in our environment, it was the eighties. Remember there was a box about five feet long and about 18 inches wide and 18 inches high.

And so in the midst of our playtime, I had this moment where one of the kids said to me, you should just climb in the box. And so I opened it up and we pulled all of the stuff in the box out and I climbed in and lay there. And then a couple of other friends closed the lid and jumped on top of it.

Friends with friends like that who needs enemies and I still remember the emotion, the blackness of it, the true darkness of it, what it is to have darkness, not infused by light, but darkness defined simply. By darkness. And I remember pushing against the lid of this box and finding that it didn't move.

And actually still to this day, remember what it is to realize that you have no concept of what's going on outside. Maybe some sense of yes, somebody's probably sitting on this box or they've locked this box. But this question of, does anybody know that matters that I'm in here. How long will I be in here?

And as a 4-year-old, this true sense of will I ever get out. And I remember pushing and pushing and pushing and nothing happening. And then this moment where I pushed another time and suddenly the lid opens. And I see the beautiful face of this teacher, Mrs. Rushworth, who was like in that moment, like a, something like a savior and what it is to be rescued from darkness and move into light.

It's just a little picture of the metaphor that John is playing with, and I remember what it was to be in my early twenties and go through a year of depression to hold some things so very deeply. I remember what it was to on family outings to say, I'm gonna stay home. So I could see it in that moment, that experience of darkness, and not be sure if anyone knew I was there and not be sure if I would ever.

Get out, and maybe some of you have been there and some of you are there. Now, the interesting thing to me is this, in this prologue, John does not deny the darkness, doesn't pretend it doesn't exist, doesn't pretend. There's not all sorts of reasons to recognize all sorts of darkness on a macro spatial kind of level.

Spiritually, perhaps on a worldwide level, questions around who we are as a species, where we'll go, what our journey will look like per personally, in terms of how we experience life Now, he doesn't deny any of those things. He doesn't define the darkness specifically. Just acknowledges that it might exist.

A couple of quotes of philosophers that have pushed into this idea. 'cause they paint if the if I'm honest, a bleak picture of the idea of darkness. This is Vladimir Nabokov, the cradle rocks above an abyss and common sense tells us that our existence is, but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

I love that. I don't feel that's painful. Emily Dickinson one, need not be a chamber to be haunted. Some ideas there that we experience darkness very specifically as human beings, and in the midst of those ideas, this is what John says, the darkness, the light is greater than darkness.

John specifically says, light is greater than darkness. Now, that might give you the idea on first reading that simply, we have to find a way to light up the darkness, and we see that all over the literary world. In actual fact, all over human experience, quote quotes like this, that, that actually love in lots of ways, Anne Frank, look at how a single candle can both define and define.

The darkness ideas that in the midst of dark experiences, personally and of this world, we can find things that light us up. The wonderful Desper who is a mouse charged with rescuing a princess who says things like this once upon a time, he said out loud to the darkness, he said these words because they were the best and most powerful words that he knew.

And just saying them comforted him. Conversations between Luke Skywalker and Yo, all of these ideas that have been shaped around light versus darkness and how light is victorious. But I don't actually think that's what Jesus says at all or what John says about Jesus. I actually think that John claims that Jesus is greater than darkness.

That in this case, light defeats darkness because Jesus, in his language, his life. And that life was a light. And what we read, I would suggest is that Jesus brings light to all who are in darkness. This is what the prologue is describing for us darkness and my own experience of it. My own experience of depression early on is.

A real thing. Brennan Manning notes this. If we can seal our wounds outta fear and shame and our inner dark, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become light for others. But if we can be open about it, there's a possibility that light may shine in that darkness and transformation. May happen.

That's why John continues to unpack this idea of light and darkness. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. And he shapes this idea of light that is coming into the world, but is perhaps ignored and missed by so many people.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Shapes an idea that this light is one that must be received, accepted yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. It's his nudge towards ideas of transformation, what it is for the light that Jesus brings to infuse every single one of us.

If you're like me, maybe you're tempted at times to find light in the midst of darkness in other ways. I often think of this beautiful piece of language that CS Lewis shapes in the silver chair. A story about two children that are charged with rescuing a prince. Somewhat similar, to desper please at your grace of the Prince, very coldly and politely.

This is their moment of escape when they're confronted by the witch. That lamp is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room, and hangeth, moreover, from the roof. Now the thing that we call the light, the sun is like the lamp. Only far greater and brighter. It gives light to the whole over world and hangar through the sky hangar from what my Lord ask the witch.

And then while they were all still thinking about how to answer her, she added with another of her soft silver laughs. When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only dream. Tell me what it is. That it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream, and there is nothing in that dream that is not copied from the lamp.

The lamp is the real thing. The sun is, but a tail, a children's story. I think in this life were pushed early on to find other things that will light up our existence. We're pushed into ideas of relationships, of success, of money, all of the things that we talk about regularly that, that Jesus exposes us not enough light.

And yet John just goes over and over again to this idea that no, the real light is simply what Jesus does in this world and everything else is like the lamp in certain moments that I think can be hard to hold on to, hard to believe. And yet what it's what the prologue holds onto and what the rest of the Gospel of John shapes for us.

Over and over again, people in darkness encountered Jesus. And when the encounter is over, there is light, the darkness is dispersed, is gone. Think about the songs that we just sang. Charles Wesley v and I Diffused a quickening Ray. I woke the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off. My heart was free.

I rose, went forth and followed thee. It's light and darkness. This is what John pushes over and over again. Verse 14. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth. I love how the message phrases this.

The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes. The one of a kind glory, the like fa, like father, like son, generous inside and out. True. From start to finish in verse 16 through 18, we've read this kind of conclusion to the prologue, to the overture out of his fullness.

We have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only son who is himself God and his I closest relationship with the Father has made him known. There's a story from about 10 years ago that has just stuck with me.

It's one of those stories that stuck with me ever since I first heard it. It's a story about a group of people that had been captured in a foreign land and held hostage. They were held in an underground bunker, kept away from all contact with anyone that spoke their own language. They were just held by a group of of terrorists that would occasionally make it seem like they were going to be released only to pull back and deny them release.

They were given minimal food and water, no access whatsoever to light. To above ground experiences, and then there was a moment when they were rescued, group of Navy Seals, went in the red of the terrorists, told them they were free. This group of people that had been rescued stayed together, huddled in a corner, they wouldn't move, stayed static.

The seals told them again, you're free. You need to come with us, you wouldn't move. And the too many of them to carry. There's no way of helping them out. But they wouldn't move from the place they'd been held, wouldn't move from the darkness, wouldn't move from the dungeon. And finally, one of the Navy seals did something that probably was not in any manual or any training that they'd ever had.

They handed their weapon to the seal next to them and went and sat in amongst the hostages. Began to talk to them, began to tell them who they were, why they'd come. They were here to rescue them and after a few minutes of conversation of feeling the feel of the person next to 'em of hearing the warmth of their voice, hostages got up, left the building and were free.

It was thought. That story was interesting because what it says about freedom, you can have freedom. But that doesn't mean anything. Until you experience freedom, you can have light. It doesn't mean anything until you experience light somewhere in the midst of these stories. That's what we're reading about this idea that light has come 'cause God has come.

John begins with simply this idea that Jesus is present in this world. He's bringing transformation. His light overcomes darkness. And throughout we'll see story after story of how this happens in people's lives. So a question for you. Where in your life do you need light? Because over these weeks, I hope that you experience Jesus meet you at the point of your need.

Bring light out of darkness. Jesus. Thank you for this prologue. John wrote it, you inspired it. It can be hard work to figure out what it means. It can feel like sailing through waves trying to get out into the ocean. Help us to capture this image of light and darkness. Then in whatever way darkness is our experience, whatever way it's been our past, whatever way it speaks to how we see the world around us.

Thank you that you are light, you are life. Amen.