And Dwelt Among Us Series

“…and Dwelt Among Us”

Part 2 of Word Became Flesh

CCCAG January 21st, 2018

Scripture- John 1:14B

Won’t you be my neighbor? Show Mr.Roger’s Opening Video

Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood

From 1968 to 2003, Fred Rogers encouraged children to learn to care for others around them. His signature song, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” exemplified his simple message- know, respect, and care for the people around you.

I don’t know how many people know this, but Fred Rogers was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church. His message was one he had heard himself, as he echoing the words of His Lord Jesus.

In Luke 10, a teacher of the law stood up and asked Jesus how to enter into heaven. Jesus asked him, “What do you see written in the law?”

The teacher of the law replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus said, “You have answered correctly, do this and you’ll live”

The teacher of the law then asks, “Who is my neighbor?

That’s the question isn’t it?

In this incredibly polarized society we build walls, we erect fences, we try to demolish others with our emotional arguments, casting logic and common sense aside with the certainty that we are right.

And in doing so, alienate ourselves from the very people that Jesus left us on this world to reach.

Another way of seeing this was found in the beginning.

After the first recorded murder in the bible, God asked Cain where is your brother Abel?

Whenever God asks a question it isn’t because He needs information that only you know. It isn’t like God is sitting on the edge of His throne right now telling the angels to stop their praising because He hasn’t heard this sermon yet. When God asks a question, it is to elicit a response, and the response HE was hoping to get from Cain involved an immediate prayer asking for forgiveness and repenting of his horrible act of killing his brother in a fit of jealousy.

Instead, God got a hard hearted and cynical answer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

That same question echoes down thousands of years later to us this morning?

Are we our brother’s keeper?

Are we our brother’s keeper”

Who is our neighbor, and are we our brother’s keeper?

The Apostle John has some things to say about this.

Our verse this morning will answer those questions-

John 1:14b-

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,

Prayer

Answering the questions “Who is my neighbor and “Am I my brother’s keeper” exposes the heart of a person.

The teacher of the law didn’t want to consider those dirty Gentiles to be on the same level as himself.

Cain didn’t’ like Abel before he killed him and venting his rage on his brother didn’t purge it from him-in fact it probably hardened it even further.

That same cynicism today is seen today and it is why the church in America doesn’t witness.

It’s why the church in America doesn’t give,

it’s why the church in America doesn’t want to live for the Kingdom of God.

Live Kingdom lives

Under the authority of Our King Jesus

But that isn’t why Jesus came to us?

The Word of God is powerful in whatever language you read it. (repeat)

But to really dig into the mysteries of God, you need a good interlinear bible and something like Vine’s definitions to understand it as written in its original languages because there is so much depth there that is missed in the translation to English.

John uses a particular word that I want to spend the rest of our time here this morning, and that word in the Greek Language is “Skeenoo”. It has several meanings, and I want to explore those meanings today to fully understand how the Word became Flesh and Dwelt (skeenoo) among us.

The first meaning of “skeenoo” is this-

I. Jesus came to Encamp

The word encamp or encampment is a military term. It means to set up your forces in battle readiness expecting to attack, or be attacked.

The concept of encampment defines Jesus’s mission-

Jesus came to earth to fight a battle. You automatically think of the cross as the battle, but Jesus was a man as much as He was God.

That means that the first battle He fought was with Himself in the Garden. You remember the record of Him agonizing in prayer with Father God, begging Him to take away this cup of suffering that was coming.

Inside this cup was the beatings, the mockings, floggings that tore chunks of skin from his body.

The tearing of his beard, the thorns mocking a crown that was thrust into His scalp, and finally the nails driven through is hands and feet that fastened Him naked to a cross for everyone to see.