John 1

THROUGH THE NEW TESTAMENT

JOHN 1

10-31-99

INTRO: He came from the bosom of the Father to the bosom of a woman;

He put on humanity that He might put on Divinity;

He became the Son of Man that we might become the Sons of God;’

He was born contrary to the laws of nature, lived in poverty, was

raised in obscurity, and only once crossed the boundaries of the land in

which He was born & that in His childhood;

He had no wealth or influence;

He had neither training nor education in the world’s schools;

His relatives were inconspicuous & uninfluential;

In infancy, He startled a king, in boyhood He puzzled the learned doctors,

In manhood He ruled the course of nature.

He walked upon the billows & hushed the seas to sleep;

He healed the multitudes w/out medicine & made no charge for His services

He never wrote a book, yet all the libraries in the country could not hold

all the books written about Him;

He never wrote a song, yet He has furnished the theme for more songs than all the song writers put together;

He never founded a college, yet all the schools combined can not beat the number of students He has;

He never practiced medicine, yet he has healed more broken hearts than doctors have healed broken bodies;

This Jesus is the star of astronomy, the rock of geology, the lion & the lamb

of zoology, the harmonizer of all discord & the healer of all diseases;

And throughout history, great men have come & gone, yet He lives on;

Herod could not kill Him, Satan could not seduce Him, Death could not

destroy Him & the grave could not hold Him. This is our Christ & this

is the Jesus spoken of here in this book.

Now John the gospel writer knew Jesus long before he ever became a follower of Jesus. John’s mother was a lady named Salome and we read over in Mark 15 & John 19 that Salome was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And so that makes John his cousin. Now that’s important for when John declares over and over again that Jesus is God, he knows what he’s talking about. He grew up with him and probably knew Jesus better than anyone else. And that’s why 93% of the gospel of John is material you will find in no other gospel record.

Here are just a few of the things you won’t find in the gospel of John

as in the other gospels. There is no description of His birth in the manger,

no details of the youth of Jesus, no record of His baptism or His temptation

in the wilderness, no account of the Transfiguration or of the Garden of

Gethsemane; John records none of Jesus’ parables. In fact, the Gospel of John

covers only twenty-one days of Jesus’ three and one half years of ministry.

Ten chapters are devoted to describing one week of His ministry; one third

of the verses cover a single twenty-four hour period in the life of Jesus.

The gospel of John is the single most-read book of the Bible. It was written by

the disciple of whom it was said, "Jesus loved him." John was one of the closest

disciples of our Lord during the days of his ministry. As best we can tell, he

wrote the gospel from the city of Ephesus, where he settled after the destruction

of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., probably, toward the close of the

first century. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke had already been written

by this time.

Now John tells you exactly why he wrote this gospel. So let’s turn over to

John 20:30-31 "And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His

disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you

may believe (The key word in the Gospel of John is "believe," which occurs 98

times.)that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you

may have life in His name." The Gospel of John was written to provoke

unbelievers to receive eternal life… And to provoke believers to enjoy eternal

life!

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VERSES 1-14

1-2 In the beginning. Sounds familiar, right? It should, the book of Genesis starts with

these same words, Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and

the earth. We have here the John’s genealogy of Jesus. It’s a genealogy that

goes back farther than any human genealogy. This genealogy spans back before

time into eternity.

Now who is the Word? The Greek word here is "logos." Now

if you were a first century Jew or Greek, you’d know exactly what

he was referring to. The Greeks referred to "the Word" as that