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Prelude: How well do you know Jesus?
Let me begin today by asking you an incredibly important question, and I want you to take your time in reflecting upon it – how well do you know Jesus?
I’m not asking how many facts you can recite to me about Jesus. I’m not asking how many times you’ve read the Gospels that describe His earthly ministry and the Epistles that discuss the implications of His life for us or the Revelation given to John that gives us a picture of His glorious return. I’m asking how well you know Him.
Knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus are two very different things.
Today we begin a series in the Gospel of John. It’s going to be exciting as we explore together this wonderful record of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Before we embark on this journey we just need to remind ourselves that this is not an academic exercise. This is not about what we know “up here”, it’s something that needs to permeate our whole being.
To illustrate what I mean I want us to spend just a few minutes getting to know the author of this book better, and to see how knowing Jesus made an impact in his life.
Who was the Apostle John?
John was a son of the fisherman Zebedee. We don’t know his mother’s name for certain, but as we compare gospel accounts there’s a good chance that her name was Salome (/Sal-oh-may/), and she may have been a sister to Jesus’ mother Mary. What we do know for certain is that she was one of the women who travelled with Jesus’ group and helped look after His needs (Matt 27:56).
The Apostle John was initially a disciple of John the Baptist, but while he was working with his father and brother James on their fishing nets, Jesus came and called both he and James to come and follow Him. They joined Andrew and Simon as Jesus’ first disciples.
James and John were given the nickname “Boanerges” by Jesus, which means “Sons of Thunder”. They seem to have been a feisty pairing! One time the people in a Samaritan village snubbed Jesus because He was travelling to the rival city of Jerusalem
James and John – with the help of their mother – also asked Jesus to appoint them to sit at His left and right sides in the heavenly court – the positions of greatest honour alongside the King. (Mk 10:35-37, Matt. 20:20-21). The rest of the disciples were understandably peeved about that request!
Yet James and John, along with Peter were the closest disciples to Jesus and experienced some things with Jesus that the other disciples did not, such as seeing Jesus in superhuman glory on a mountain, and also having Jesus confide in them at the garden of Gethsemane about how He was feeling about the trial He was about to endure. These were Jesus’ closest companions. Among these three it was Peter who was being prepared to be the key leader, but it was John who enjoyed a particularly close friendship with Jesus.
As John spent those three years or so as a disciple of Jesus, and as he received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we see an amazing transformation take place. He goes from being a hot-headed, ambitious young punk to being a man who has been described through the centuries as “the Apostle of Love”. As you read his letters you can see how much love God had given him for others. This can be summed up by what we read in
1 John 4:7-12
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
The love that John had for people did not come naturally to him, it was produced because He had been given new life through the Holy Spirit (he’d been born again, which we’ll learn more about in chapter 3!) and because he’d been on a journey of getting to know God in Christ.
In the same way, if you are a Christian, you have been born of God. If you are a Christian, you must be growing in your knowledge of God, which is to grow in the depth of your relationship with Him. The evidence that this is in fact happening will be seen in the depth of love you have for others.
John recalls for us these words of Jesus in chapter 13 of his gospel:
John 13:34-35
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
So as we spend time together studying the life of Jesus, the proof of our effectiveness will not be found in whether we pass the exam at the end! The proof will be seen in how much more complete God’s love has been made in us as we journey together as disciples of Jesus.
Why Did John Write This Gospel?
This is an easy question to answer since John himself tells us in
John 20:31
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Remember that God’s plan for the Church is for it to be built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets who point us toward Jesus Christ, the Chief Cornerstone. We need to have the truth about Jesus in order to know that He is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him we may have life in His name.
John wants to remind people of the real, historical Jesus. At the end of the gospel John says:
John 21:24
24 This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.
It’s an unusual way of writing, but again it shows how much John has been changed by Jesus. The old John would have written himself as a major player into his gospel, but the John shaped by Jesus is now hesitant to even mention his own name. He just talks about himself as being someone who Jesus loved. At the end of the book though he reminds people who it is that is writing, and that he was an eyewitness to Jesus who can be trusted to tell the truth. His story has not changed in all the years since the events took place. He has not used his position as an Apostle for personal gain like a false teacher would. He has stood firm in the face of opposition, suffering for the sake of this message. John’s readers would have felt very confident that what John wrote was the truth. We can be confident also.
The reality of the historical Jesus has always been under attack. In John’s time, there were all sorts of groups that either wanted to erase any memory of Jesus from history or else claim Jesus for their own purposes. There were people who wanted to portray Jesus as not being God’s Son except in the sense that we are all God’s children. There were people who wanted to portray Jesus as being a normal human who was taken over by God around the time of His baptism. There were people who portrayed Jesus as being against any religious systems and moral rules. There were people who portrayed Jesus as not fully human, since God would never come down to our level – they said He merely appeared human. We could go on an on listing different errors that appeared over time, but the key point is this: that human beings applied their own ideas and agendas to Jesus Christ, and reinterpreted His life on the basis of their own ideas and agendas. The lost the historical Jesus and made up their own version.
There are many people who argue that this is what happened in the early church also. They claim that over the first couple of hundred years of Christianity that all sorts of myths grew up about Jesus and those myths eventually became accepted as truth. Books and movies like the DaVinci Code and thousands of clips on youtube all promote this idea.
I watched one clip this week that caused a huge stir a couple of years back – it attempts to prove that the story of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection all come from Astrology – myths that come from the observation of the stars, planets and seasons. It claims that there’s not much difference between Jesus and a whole bunch of other ancient Messiah figures like Horus of Egypt, Mithras of Persia and Krishna of India.
It’s easy to watch a clip like that and go “Aha! It all makes sense – of course that’s what happened!” The ideas are convincingly and beautifully presented.
The only problem is they’re wrong! There’s a whole stack of factual errors and assumptions being made. Yet people are being swayed by this stuff.
It was going on in John’s time and it’s going on today – the real, historical Jesus is under fire and we need to stand firm and say “This is who Jesus is”.
Now, I’m speaking to people today who accept the authority of Scripture as our reliable guide, every word inspired by God and preserved for us by His sovereign grace. As such I’m not going to spend time this morning trying to convince you of these truths – if you would like to explore this I’ll happily give you a whole bunch of information that you can work through!
What I want to address is how we accept the truth of Scripture and stand on it as a firm foundation, avoiding the temptation to remake Jesus after our own ideas and agendas. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people emphasize some stories of Jesus and sayings of Jesus, yet they completely ignore others. In doing so they are denying the historical Jesus. Some people see Jesus as Friend but not Lord, some see Him as Lord but not Friend. For some He is Righteous Judge more than Merciful Saviour or vice versa. We are all naturally drawn to different aspects of Jesus, but we need to know Him as He really is if we are to have real life in Him. That’s John’s focus as he writes this gospel, and I hope that it will be your focus as you receive it.
John wrote the gospel probably from Ephesus Egypt
It contains text from what we now know as John 18. It’s only a tiny fragment, about 9x6cm. It shows that John’s Gospel in book form was being distributed very early on in the history of the church. As the Apostles were dying out or being killed, the accurate oral record of their teaching was at risk of being corrupted over time, so God in His wisdom saw to it that written accounts were available to Christians much earlier than many scholars had predicted prior to the discovery of this and many other similar fragments.
As John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to provide this accurate record for people to get to know Jesus, how does he choose to begin?
In the Beginning…
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
The Gospel doesn’t start with the birth of Christ in Bethlehem
We have this mysterious being called “The Word”, who was God, but also was with God in the beginning.
What and who is “The Word”?
The answer is found by looking just a bit further on, to…
John 1:14, 18
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
…
18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
Picture in your minds John’s summary of history:
Right from the beginning has existed a being who is God, and who is also the Word – the full revelation of God to us. The one who will show us exactly who God is. This Word, we read in verse 3, is the One who made everything that has been made.
And this Word has become a human being, dwelling among us in order to be God clothed in flesh – God who we can see and hear and follow. There are other reasons why this Word became flesh, but John hasn’t told us about that yet – we’ll get there later on!
But for now what John wants us to start off knowing is that there is a God who created everything, including you and I. He is not a remote, disinterested God but a God who longs to be known by His creation. So His plan has always been to reveal Himself fully to us. That didn’t happen by awesome displays of power or words written on stone tablets, it happened when He came to us as one of us. God become Human – fully God and fully man. Matthew and Luke give us more information about how that happened, John just wants us to know that it did happen – the eternal God wants to reveal Himself to His creation, and He has done that by becoming one of us and living among us. We call that the Incarnation.
Does this God-Man have a name? Of course He does! His name is Jesus, and by studying this book together we will discover Jesus anew and be forever changed as a result, just like John was.
Let’s look in more detail at verse 3:
John 1:3
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
There are some that would argue that matter gave birth to life, that our universe contained all of the raw materials that eventually combined in the right way in the right environment for life to begin and continue and evolve to higher and higher orders, eventually leading to humans who would be able to make sense of it all!
The Bible says that it was life that gave birth to matter! Before the universe existed there was life, and that life was in God.
You need to know that you are not an accident, but that you have a Creator. This Creator has entered our world to let us know who He is and how we can be part of His eternal family.
However there are some who are confused on whether Jesus Himself was created. Hearing of Jesus as the Son of God makes people think that there was a time before He existed, but that at some point He was born or made. There is also a key passage that is often poorly understood and which has been used by many cults to lead people astray.
Colossians 1:15-16:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
What does it mean that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation? Surely it means that He was made first, then everything else was made afterward?
This doesn’t make sense, however, because in the very next verse it says that “by him all things were created…” – not “by him everything else was created”!
The grammar here makes it impossible to conclude that Jesus was made first and then made everything else. If that was the intended meaning, different or additional greek words would have been used. Of course this echoes the teaching of John 1:3 - Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
What Colossians is actually saying is that Jesus has the position of pre-eminence over all creation – that He is above it all. Even though Jesus was born into this world the same as you and I, He is in fact above it. He existed before it. That’s why in John 1:15 we read of John the Baptist saying “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”
John realized that even though Jesus was born after he was – giving John seniority in human age – that Jesus actually existed before even before the first human walked the earth. When it came to seniority, Jesus had it covered! That’s what Paul is talking about in Colossians 1 also.
Being the firstborn in ancient cultures was an issue of status, and it wasn’t always conferred on the child born first. Remember Jacob and Esau? Jacob was not the firstborn, but he became so when Esau sold him the birthright and he obtained Isaac’s blessing through deception. Jacob did not rewrite history and become the first born, but he did obtain the status of being the firstborn. He achieved pre-eminence over Esau.
In the same way Jesus is pre-eminent over everything that has been created, whether visible or invisible. He is pre-eminent because He is the Creator. He is pre-eminent because He is God Incarnate. He is pre-eminent because He is the Redeemer of Humanity and the Head of the Church.
Do not be confused. John says that the Word was God and was with God in the Beginning, and He made everything that has been made. That’s who Jesus is.
Don’t swallow the lie that Jesus was just a good man, a revolutionary, a prophet or miracle worker. He cannot be dismissed so easily. He is God the Creator and God the Revealer.
So How Does This Change My Life?
I said at the start that this journey through the gospel of John is about our transformation, not just information. How do these truths change our lives?
- The first way that these truths change our lives is that they inform our faith.
We need to know that Jesus is God, that He reveals God to us and that He is our Creator in order that we might believe in Him and have life in His name. It’s not all we need to know and believe about Jesus, but we’re only 3 verses into the book!
When I talk about having life in His name, I’m talking about the abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10 –we’ll study that eventually! It’s more than the forgiveness of our sins and the hope of life after death, although they are certainly important. It’s the ability to live now in close relationship with Christ so that His life fills up our life.
Knowing Jesus as Creator fills me with such awe and joy when I am out in the midst of the world He has made. Whether it’s feeling the power of being carried along by waves or admiring the majesty of tall trees or towering mountains, admiring the intricacy of tiny organisms or gazing out into seemingly endless space and being gobsmacked at the scale of it. Then I think of the words of Psalm 8 or Philippians 2 and I am blown away all over again. (Look them up later to see what I mean).
Knowing Jesus as the Word keeps me from following false gods of my own or other people’s imaginings. We don’t follow a set of cleverly constructed stories, as Peter wrote in his letter (2 Peter 1:16), but God in the flesh. Everything I need to know about God is revealed in Jesus. What would otherwise be completely mysterious has now been revealed. I read the philosophies and religious ideas of those without Christ and it seems obvious to me that their ideas are just the thoughts and words of men – they seem so limited and pathetic when compared to what has been revealed to us in Jesus. Jesus was not just another messenger – He is the message!
- Secondly, our faith then produces action.
Exactly what actions will be produced depends on how the Holy Spirit leads each individual according to your circumstances, but here are a few examples to get you started: - Since Jesus is God, I need to ask myself whether or not I am treating Him as God. Is He really above everything and everyone in my life? Will I really do whatever He says? Do I really trust Him to be able to do all He promises to do?
It’s easy to say you believe in Jesus, but does your day-to-day life demonstrate that there is a God who you serve? If you have guests over for a meal do you let slide your normal custom of giving thanks to God for the food? If that’s your custom, why are you ashamed to do it in front of others – don’t you want them to know you love God and rely on His provision for you? Do you think others are offended by the fact that you love and trust and serve God – and if they are, is that more important than how God feels? That’s a really trivial example, but it’s in all these little things that our heart attitude is often displayed. Does your life show that you know God?
Are you prepared to speak the truth in love to a Christian brother or sister who is persisting in sin? Will you risk the relationship for the sake of honouring God? One of the reasons that so many of our churches are limping along without spiritual power is that we are tolerating sin that should be confronted in love. Is God really God in our churches? If so, then we must share His hatred of sin and the destruction that it wreaks in our lives and the lives of those we love.
Many churches have struggled with a culture of hypocrisy, where people dress up all fancy and practice their best manners on Sunday morning, but harbour all sorts of garbage in their lives which comes out during the rest of the week.
Many people have responded to this fakery by trying to be honest about the garbage in their lives, almost letting it all hang out and saying “At least we’re being honest” as though that was good enough. We almost have one generation of people who hide sin and another generation of people who revel in it!
Both groups need to know that whether it’s hidden or paraded out for public consumption, God hates it! Don’t you dare indulge sin in your life or in your church family and claim that you treat God as God. Our God is a Consuming Fire – that’s how Hebrews chapter 12 finishes. Read the whole chapter to find out why. God can’t stand sin.
Confess your sin to God and each other, be forgiven and be restored and healed – that’s God’s way.
Are you treating God as God today?
- Since Jesus is the one who reveals truth to us, I need to make sure that I am putting myself in a position to receive it. I’ve got to let go of my ideas about God and about everything else for that matter, and actually seek the truth in Jesus. I’ve got to have a heart attitude that is says I am willing to receive what God wants to show me in Jesus – that’s not as easy as it sounds. John deals with this subject quite a bit in the next few verses of our text.
Also, I need to make sure that I’m helping other people to get a clear idea of who Jesus is. They can’t know God or be reconciled to God without knowing Jesus. There are so many people with mixed-up ideas about Jesus, I need to do the best I can to help them see Jesus clearly, so that they may have an opportunity to believe in Him too. Just as I need to be willing to receive the truth through Jesus, I need to be willing to express the truth about Jesus.
- Since this world was made by Jesus and belongs to Him, I don’t like to mess it up on Him. He entrusted it to our care and for our use – not to trash and abuse. I have a hard time when some people treat animals and plants as being more important than people – that goes against God’s intention in creation. I also can’t stand cruelty to the animals we were given care of. I can’t stand littering. I can’t stand thoughtlessness about how our behaviour affects creation. I can’t stand the way that we use the resources of this world greedily, not giving fair share to our fellow man, woman and child. Jesus gave it to all of us to sustain all of us not just a wealthy few.
I need to make sure I’m not living that way. I need to be prepared to share the bounty that I have received with others – just because I’m not a farmer or miner doesn’t mean I’m not benefitting from the earth’s resources. Whatever material things I have been entrusted with I need to be sharing with others.
I’m going to be thoughtful about what products I buy. Some of the stuff we buy is so cheap because people are taking short-cuts on being just toward workers or are abusing creation to get as much as they can from it with the least amount of care and responsibility. I don’t want to support that.
There are lots of Scriptures that deal with these subjects, but for me the simple fact of acknowledging Jesus as the Creator is enough to get me thinking about these things.
Writing to people who were at risk of getting mixed up about who Jesus is, John says that He is the Word, He is God, He is the Creator.
How does knowing this Jesus affect your life? What is God saying to you today?
[1]Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptures are from The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984. Grand Rapids
