Gospel Truths

Today, we begin a new series on the Gospel of John. Let me begin by asking you pray. There are many ways to preach John’s Gospel. So, please pray that I would preach what you need to hear and that I would do that very clearly. And then, pray that you would hear what I preach so that the Spirit could do His work in your lives.

This morning, I’m going deal with some basic Gospel truths as they are reflected in our text. I have no doubt that much of what I have to say will be review for most of you. But to be reminded of the Gospel is always a good thing. Being reminded of what you know makes it easier to learn what you don’t know. After laying out those truths, I’ll share with you some thoughts on how to put them to good use.

Now, please listen as I read John 1.1-13.

Let’s start where John starts, with the Word. This Word was with God and yet, at the same time, He was God. According to our text, God is two yet one. Later, we’ll encounter the Spirit, and we’ll find that this God is actually three – Father, Word and Spirit – and yet one God. So, right off the bat we are seeing that this God is not like us. Let’s add to this. This God, three yet one, is before all things. In the beginning, when all this came into being, this God already was. Now, if you’re going to get the force of this you will need to think carefully here. This doesn’t mean that God was in empty space before He filled it with planets and stars. There was no space. He hadn’t created it yet. And what’s more, existing before all of these things doesn’t mean that He existed a long, long, long time ago. He existed when there was no time. He existed before He created time. As John talks about God, these are some things that he begins with.

A question or two at this point seems appropriate. What does it mean to be three yet one? And what does it mean to exist but not in space or in time? What kind of God is this? The honest answer goes something like this: I have no idea. To be sure, God has revealed Himself to us. That’s what John’s Gospel is about. And as we work our way through this Gospel there will be new things that we will learn about our God. And yet, we also need to say that there are aspects of this God that are hidden from us, aspects that we will never understand – even in the age to come after we have spent an eternity getting to know Him. So, while we can and should say that we know this God and that we are getting to know Him better, on the other hand we also need to say that this God is mysterious. He’s really not like us at all.

And here’s the evidence that you are getting to know this mysterious God better: a growing sense of wonder, amazement, along with a little touch of fear. A growing understanding of this God includes a very clear awareness of the distance between us and Him. He isn’t one of us. He is outside space and time. He is three and yet one. He is the mysterious God whom we will never fully comprehend. He doesn’t fit into any of our categories. And yet, this strange God draws us to Himself so that we might sit on His lap and be close to His heart. Getting to know Him better also shows by a growing experience of His nearness. So, getting to know this God better involves being able to put two things together. Our God is the great and awesome God who inhabits eternity: distance. At the same time, He is to us, Father, Savior, Comforter: nearness. He is the mysterious God.

Let’s move on to another Gospel truth. This one is found in verse 3: ‘All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.’ This is about Creation. This God, the Word, created all of this. He created time and He created space and then He filled that space. He made the immense galaxies and the almost invisible one-celled amoebas. And He made everything in between. He created it all and that out of nothing.

If that’s true then other things are also true. Since He created it all, He writes the definitions and sets the rules. He gets to say, ‘This is what it means to be a man. This is what it means to be a woman. This is up and that is down. This is beauty. That is truth. And that way over there, that is good.’ He gets to establish purposes and goals. God, the Word, gets to define it all. He gets to define you. So, in our cultural situation it makes sense to talk about the rights of the Creator.

Now, a question, and the question is why. Why did He create it all, including you? Some have suggested that God was lonely, and so all of this is to deal with His loneliness. But that, of course, can’t be true. Remember, God existed, before space and time, as a family: Father, Son and Spirit. And They were a happy family, with each one enjoying the other. How could that not be the case? God didn’t need us, and He still doesn’t. If all of creation disappeared before your next breath, God would not be at a loss. He created us, but we are completely unnecessary. But He did have a reason to create. What was it? Read through your Bible, and this is the answer you will find. He created us so that He could enjoy us and we could enjoy Him. What do you think those walks that Adam and Eve had with God in the cool of the day were all about? Remember the nearness of God. This God created us so that we might enjoy Him even as He enjoyed us. This is the point of creation, and it explains our privilege in being created. I really think that there is much to be gained by meditating on this Gospel truth. It gives a clear purpose to life. The alternatives are silly in comparison. I am here to enjoy God as He enjoys me. I think this is profound, especially in our day.

We’ve talked about God and we’ve talked about Creation. And now, we’re ready for a third Gospel truth: ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ And now, the bad news. There is darkness. I talked about this last week: light versus darkness, good versus evil, Jesus versus Satan. Something has changed. When God finished creating, He said that it was all very good. But now it’s not. Now, there is evil, the darkness. And now is the time for a good question. How could the Creator God, who made all things good, allow this darkness to come into existence? And He freely acknowledges responsibility for doing so. ‘I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create evil, I am the Lord, who does all these things.’ At some point, God created darkness; evil. What was He thinking? That makes absolutely no sense to me. But He is the mysterious God.

Maybe a more pertinent question is whether this means the end of our enjoyment of God. People experience evil every day of their lives. When that happens, any enjoyment of God fades and, in some cases, it may even be completely gone. God grieves the evil, but it is not fatal for Him. He could just end the existence of His now‑evil creation. And after it all disappeared He would be what He was before any of this was: the family who is God, enjoying each other in infinite bliss. But that’s not what He did. ‘The light shines in the darkness’. This God decided to rescue His creation. He wants, once again, to enjoy walks in the cool of the day. And He wants to do that with you.

And so we read this: ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.’ God, the Word, the true light, the Savior, has come into the world in order to rescue it from the darkness. And here, of course, John is talking about Jesus. He comes to a creation poisoned by evil in order to remove all of that evil. He comes so that we might all be able to say of creation, ‘And it was all very good.’ You would think that people would rejoice at this. Imagine, no more darkness, only light, the full enjoyment of God. And yet, what happened? Rejection. The world did not know Him. They did not acknowledge Him for who He was: the Creator who has come to be Savior. Even His special people, Israel, would not receive Him. Rejection. This is not the rejection of a man, but the rejection of God. So, the darkness grows even as the light has come.

But there are exceptions to this. ‘But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.’ Imagine: children of God. Whatever that means, it sounds really good. But this is only for some, for those who believe in His name. So, John elsewhere writes, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not suffer death but have the life of eternity.’ Jesus, the Word, God, has come to rescue the world from its darkness. But only those who believe Him will be rescued.

And that leads to the last Gospel truth. Now is the time for choosing, for you, for me, for everyone. Will it be rejecting Him or believing Him? And this choosing is not a one‑time deal. We choose every day, and in very different situations, about all kinds of things. In each of these it always boils down to whether a person will believe in His name or not. A person’s fate, now and forever, hangs on his choices.

So, there you are. Those are some Gospel truths that John has pointed us to: God, Creation, Darkness and Light, Choices.

Now, what should you do with these truths? What you do with them is believe them. In saying that, I’m not suggesting that you are all a bunch of pagans, people who do not believe the Gospel. Consider this. What is needed for someone to become a Christian? Very little. ‘(1) I am a sinner in rebellion against God. (2) Jesus promises to rescue all rebellious sinners like me who trust Him to do that. (3) I choose to trust Him.’ That’s all that’s needed. A person who works through those three sentences believes the Gospel enough to get to heaven. And if ending up in heaven is what the Gospel is all about, then that would be the end of the story. But ending up in heaven is not what the Gospel is all about. Rather, it’s about is turning away from rebellion and instead, living well as one of God’s creatures, and doing that in the here and now. It’s about becoming who you were originally intended to be. To do that will take more than working through those three sentences, though that’s where you start. To do that a person will need to change. He will need to change what he thinks about all of this. He will need to believe truths of the Gospel, truths like God, Creation, Darkness and Light, Choices. The Gospel is not about getting to heaven. It’s about re-making you. It’s about changing your soul.

As a Christian works at believing these truths of the Gospel he will understand his life differently. That’s because the very way that he looks at his life will change. As a result of that change, what he once thought was up, he now sees is actually down. There will be a re-orientation. And life will begin to make more sense. Instead of fumbling along, day after day, there will be a growing understanding of how all of this works and how he fits into it. He will realize that he is not in control. Everything does not depend on him always making the right decision. And he will see quite clearly that he is not a mere cog in the machinery of existence but a creature of God with a glorious purpose. He is fallen, to be sure, and he continues to fall and yet he is rescued and is restored again and again. He comes to see more clearly, ‘God is not my puppet who is supposed to coddle me, someone I can get angry at when He doesn’t do that. No, He is the great and awesome God who I can’t really understand, but who desires for me to enjoy Him as He enjoys me.’ And he will see that at the heart of it all is this man who is God, Jesus who did not abandon him to the darkness that would have swallowed him up, body and soul. This Christian will see that Jesus came as a piercing bright light to scatter the darkness and He did that for him. You see, as the Christian grows in understanding and in believing Gospel truths, his life changes. He sees life differently. He sees it right side up.

And all of that makes a difference. For one thing, it affects his worship. ‘To meet with this God – how amazing!’ So, worship – whether worship together on Sunday or private worship each day – takes on a different tone. ‘I’m talking to God! And He’s talking to me!!’ Out of that comes a growing sense of amazement and awe and that little touch of fear, and at the same time, a kind of intimacy that he thought impossible. Because of Gospel truths worship changes.

There’s another way that believing these truths makes a difference. Here, I’m going to use an old-fashioned word, but I’m not going to mean it in the old-fashioned sense. This changes evangelism. In old-fashioned evangelism, a Christian took words that were given to him, words that he learned at some training seminar, and he was supposed to try to hand those words off to someone who wasn’t a Christian in the hope of converting him. This does not describe all who did the old-fashioned evangelism, but it does describe way too many. And it also explains why so many Christians never did much of this kind of evangelism. It just felt wrong. It was just some words, and they were someone else’s words at that.

But as a Christian grows in believing the truths of the Gospel, it is no longer a matter of trying to pass on some words. Now it’s about how that Christian understands his life. ‘This is what ‘up’ looks like to me.’ He could be talking about some big political matter, or his attitude toward his job, or what he thinks about his wife. There are no words to memorize because he is speaking from his own experience and understanding of life. It feels right. And sooner or later, if the conversation can continue, things get around to the key to understanding life in this way: Jesus.

What is needed is a change in how a Christian thinks. He needs to be re-oriented to the real ‘up’. If a Christian isn’t thinking about and thus believing these Gospel truths, what can he say to his unbelieving neighbor? He sees ‘up’ in the same way that his neighbor does. All he has are some religious words that never seem to fit into a conversation. He never does evangelism. But the Christian who is working at believing these truths of the Gospel doesn’t even call it ‘doing evangelism’. All he’s doing is talking to his friends and neighbors about how he understands life. Jesus said, ‘Out of the heart the mouth speaks’. A heart that believes Gospel truths will naturally speak those truths to others.

Last thought. Thinking about, understanding and then believing Gospel truths is hard. It’s work. First, there is simply learning Gospel truths. There is a lot that we just don’t know yet, things that we need to learn. And then, there’s all the work of actually believing them. Remember that believing some Gospel truth means no longer believing some worldly lie. That’s not easy. And so, there are times when it all gets a little discouraging. And that gets to one reason for this sermon. One of my goals is simply to encourage you. The hard work that you do to understand and to then believe Gospel truth is worth it. It changes your life, something that has already begun. And as that continues you will come to see life in a way that you cannot now imagine. It’s work the effort.

Here, I would just remind you of the tools for growth. Know your Bible. That’s where you’ll find more truth.  And then, of course, the second tool: prayer. It will take lots more than just being very disciplined for there to be change. The needed change is a matter of the soul. Only the Spirit can change that. So, we are once more left to the grace of God. But, as another Gospel truth makes clear, our God is eager to bless His people with His grace. So, ask Him to do that, and He will.