How To Find The Way Home

“How to Find the Way Home.”

OKAY - Do you want to do some theology?

John 1:1-14

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

It’s a dark night and even though your car headlights are on and shining brightly, you notice how dark it is outside: it’s a dark night.

You have been driving through the night, a long way from your home, but you will soon be home.

Even after your long drive ends and you reach your home tired and needing a good rest, you know that the only way you will be able to see the familiar things you love, as they really are, will be the next morning in the light of day. Somehow things will be better in the morning.

You may be carrying the weight of the world on your mind tonight, but things will be better in the morning.

The whole Bible pictures us as being in the darkness, a long way from home. Christians call home ‘heaven.’

I want you to consider this message about “How to Find the Way Home.”

There is something primeval about John’s use of the words “in the beginning” because as a Jew he was very much aware of and indeed immersed in the Jewish understanding of the beginning.

Everything begins with God: “in the beginning God,” Genesis 1:1.

So here he recalls that primeval truth and God gives him additional revelation about Christ: “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1)

Where we read ‘Word’ in English, it comes from the Greek word ‘Logos,’ the expression of information, is in this case about God. For the ‘Logos’ or the ‘Word’ is God, says the Apostle John.

If you study anthropology, you want to find out about man and if you study theology you discover things about God. So the dictionary says of this passage that in theology: “the divine word or reason incarnate in Jesus Christ. (John 1:1–14.)” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/logos)

The ‘logy’ part of these words, anthropology and theology, and many other scientific words like ‘biology,’ come from the Greek word ‘logos’ or ‘word.’

The ‘logos’ part of a word in English indicates ‘the study of’ or “matter under consideration.”

So ‘Theos’ and ‘logos,’ make up the word ‘theology.’

And here John embarks on a study of God: theology.

Who is God? The One who expresses knowledge about Himself.

He is the One who reveals Himself:

“In the beginning was the Word.”

God reveals Himself through His Divine Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. Verse 2 says, “He was in the beginning with God.”

He embodies the expression of who God is. So if you want to know who God is, look to Jesus!

“I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary and worn, and sad;

I found in Him a resting place,

And He has made me glad.” Says hymn writer Horatius Bonar.

Secondly, says the Apostle, Christ is Creator: Verse 3 “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

Christ is the mediator of creation as well as salvation.

Where is God? Verse 1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I thought that what I learned about Genesis chapters 1-11 at Bible College would always be a problem to me. I was so confused. But later in life I came to understand that God in His Word never lies or deceives us or leaves us with confusion as the teaching of men can often do. (I Cor 1:20-21).

John Bunyan warned of Mr Worldly Wiseman “In modern parlance, Mr.Worldly-Wiseman would be the equivalent of a liberal pastor who scorned the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ as taught in the Bible and preached social reform based upon evolutionary advance and moral influence.” (http://www.bunyanministries.org/pp_commentary/05_com%20_christian_encounters_worldly.pdf)

Jesus and John, Moses and Paul, Isaiah and Peter and all the Prophets and Apostles and indeed the Pharisees believed in Genesis as history. The dogma of an exceedingly ancient Earth was foreign to them as it was to the church for thousands of years.

It is only recently, in the last 160 years, that God has once again been slapped in the face and believers told “You will not surely die.” and “Has God indeed said?” (Genesis 3:1, 4) or "Has God really said that?"

What we know about God is truth from God, revelation from God, not given to us through myths and ancient loosely interpreted stories. The Apostle Peter said (2 Pet 1:16) “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables (myths) when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.”

“In the beginning was the word…”