God has a Message for You
John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word.
What picture comes to mind when you hear this? A cloud floating in an empty universe with a big sign that says WORD on it? In the beginning was the word. Or maybe some certain word, Jesus, love, God. Those are words. In the beginning was the word.
You probably know that the Word is Jesus, so maybe you picture Jesus here, alone in an empty universe at the beginning of time.
Why use the word, word? What is the Word, other than Jesus?
Go back in time hundreds of years to when this was translated into English. Back them, word meant "a speech, a talk, an utterance, or a word." Today word has lost most of those meanings.
In this context, word actually means message. The Word is the Message. If we say in the beginning was the Message, we get a totally different picture. Since the beginning of time, God has had a message for everyone and a message for you. This is big. Of all the things that could be in the beginning, there was the message.
God has something to tell you.
But in the middle of verse 1 is where we usually ruin the whole passage, don’t we, because we insert who the Word is, but that is not told here. In fact, it is not told until verse 14. It is only there that we are told that the Word became flesh, became a man.
I propose to you that we can go through this passage and replace He with It, the Message, and get a clearer idea of what this passage is about. This passage is about the Message.
God has a Message for You. That is the title of my sermon. This message has four waypoints.
1. Four Waypoints of the Message (1-5)
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:2 He was with God in the beginning.
John 1:3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
John 1:4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Remember I am proposing that even though it says he and him, it should be it. It, the message, was with God in the beginning. Through it all things were made. In it was life. This is about the message. There is a progression here. First, you have the message, it is with God, and it is God. Then it comes to this world because everything is made or happens through the message. Then the message moves on to life. It is something that can be lived. As it is lived and infiltrates a life, it becomes light.
From with God (1), to all things (2), to life (3), to light (4). That is what it shows here. Picture it as four waypoints on a map or four levels of distribution of the message. To go between them, there are steps, three steps. The rest of this passage gives the steps in reverse. So, we are starting with the last step, step three.
2. Step Three – People Must Be a Witness to the Light (6-8)
John 1:6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
John 1:7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.
John 1:8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
Step three is going from life to light. The life becomes the light. The message moves from a life to light. How does that happen? By the life being a witness to the light.
John was a witness to the light. Through his witness, people saw the light and they trusted. They were saved.
Have you ever been a witness to something? I have. One night I was sitting in our front room with all the lights out. This was about one or two in the morning. A light flashed through our house. It was the beam of a flashlight. That got my attention. I looked out the front window, and a man was using a coat hanger to break into a truck parked in front of our house. He quickly got it open and started messing with the steering column. I was witnessing a crime. I called 911. The operator asked me questions. What race is he? I don't know. How tall is he? I don't know. What color is his car? I don't know. I didn't make a very good witness. But I was a witness.
A witness. To be a witness, you have to do two things. First, you have to see what happened. Then you have to tell someone. If you witness a crime but refuse to call the police or testify in court, you are not a witness.
John saw the message. The message was in his life being a light. It was revealing things to him, things about himself, things about others, things about God. He witnessed this. He told others about this through his preaching. His preaching was a light for others.
If you don't look at the message, if you never read the Bible, if you never apply its principles to your life, if you never bring your actions to the message, to its light, if you never tell anyone about what you have seen, you can't be a witness and your life can’t take this third step. It doesn't become a light. It will not go from life to light. This is where the message dies with many people. They refuse to witness the message.
Why don't people look at the message? Is it because they disagree with it? Is it because they are too busy? Is it because they don't like it? Is it because it exposes the wrong things that they do? It may be painful, but the message will make things better. It’s like yucky medicine. It is good for you. Don't be happy to just sit in the dark. The message is light.
God has a message for you. Witness what it says and does, and tell others about it.
That is the third step, the message going from life to light. Back up one step and we have the step going from all things to life. This is:
3. Step Two – People Must Receive and Trust the Message (9-13)
John 1:9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
John 1:10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
John 1:11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
John 1:12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
John 1:13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
As a point of explanation (this is bonus material), the word “husband” in verse 13 could also be man. Greek does not have a separate word for husband. It uses the word “man.” So in Greek you would say that I am Gerlie's man and Gerlie is my woman. The NIV translators took man in this verse to be husband. And they were probably correct. Back to the sermon.
These verses say that the message was in the world, but the world did not receive it. The message was trying to make the second step, from all things to life.
The only way that the message can enter a life is if that life receives it and trusts it. Let me say that again. The only way that the message can enter a life, your life, is if that life receives it and trusts it.
The person who receives and trusts God's message will be born again. He will be born of God. He will be a child of God. This is how you become a child of God, trust God's message. That is the beginning. But it is also how you advance in your Christian life. Trust the message.
God has a message for you. Trust it. It will help you.
A life trusting the message causes the message to step from the pages of a book or from words traveling through the air into a life. That is the message going from all things to life. That is the second step. Back up one step and we have the message going from with God to all things. This is:
4. Step One – The Message Became a Physical Body
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Step one – moving from with God, in the beginning, to all things. The message became flesh, a physical body. That is what flesh is in the Bible, a physical body. Whenever you see flesh in the Bible, this is what it means. It does not mean a sinful nature. The message did not become a sinful nature. Jesus did not have a sinful nature. He did not sin. He had a flesh, but He did not have a sinful nature. The message became a physical body and made its dwelling among us. Jesus was that physical body.
What did Jesus do while He was here on earth? He taught. What did He teach? He taught us the message of God, the things that God wants us to know. How are we going to know those things if we don't read what He said, what He taught? How will we know the message if we don't meditate on the words of Jesus? If we don't do them?
I know it is easy to say, “I already know it all.” Those who were raised in church often think this. But they are wrong. Sure, they spent hours upon hours sitting through boring Bible lessons, but what they learned is nothing compared to the enormity of the scope of the Message. The real learning starts when they leave the church building, when they go home and open their own Bibles each day, when they read Jesus' words for themselves, when they meditate on them, when they do them. It is only then that a person can start learning the intermediate and advanced parts of the message.
Early on a Wednesday evening, a young man came to my church in Ellsworth. His wife was leaving him and she was going to be there that evening. He was trying to get her back. So he came to church that one time. He told me (this was before church, no one was there), “Tell me what you’ll be teaching tonight. I know that I already know it.” I told him the topic and he had never heard of it. We were going through the Old Testament. I was familiar with this young man's upbringing. I knew his father. He was raised in a church that taught and preached a handful of topics over and over and over again. He had heard those lessons and sermons many, many times. He was sure that that was all the Bible had to say. He never opened his Bible to find out if that were true. He didn’t have to. He had heard it all. So he did not go to church. He didn't need to.
Under my ministry you will hear a lot of the message of God. But you have to put that into your life before you can really learn it. That is why the message became a physical body. It was more than just words. It was a person, Jesus, living with other people, having a relationship with them, showing them the unspeakable parts of the message, forcing people to live His message. He was moving the message from being with God to all things. I want to do the same thing. We all should want to do the same thing.
Conclusion
There you have it, four waypoints and three steps between those waypoints. Let’s run through them again, real quickly. The waypoints are with God, all things, life, and light. The three steps in order are Step One - from with God to all things – the message became a physical being; Step Two – from all things to life – people must receive and trust the message; and Step Three – from life to light – that life must be a witness to the light.
God has a message for you. In order for that message to have its greatest effect, its greatest benefit for you, it must go through these three steps.
The good news is that the first step has already been done for you. Jesus came. ? God has given us this book to tell about that. The second step, most of you have probably already done. So work on that third step. Read God's message every day. Take a long hard look at it. Put your life up next to it. Live the things that it says. Don't just say, “Oh, I have already done all of that.” Some of the message can only be known once it is lived. Living the message is a continual process that is important for all Christians. I do it. You should too.
Don't be like the Skipper, you know, the Skipper on Gilligan's Island, the show we all should model our lives after. One thing that seemed to happen a lot on Gilligan's Island was that Gilligan would discover something important. He would go to the Skipper, but the Skipper was busy. Gilligan would try to tell him this important thing, but the Skipper would say, "Not Now Gilligan." The whole episode would be the Skipper looking for that one thing, Gilligan trying to tell the Skipper, but the Skipper saying, “Not now Gilligan.”
God has a Message for you. Don’t be too busy for God. Don’t be too absorbed with the things around you, to not stop and listen to God’s message. Listen to it. Trust it. Witness it. Let it change your life. Don’t spend your entire life telling God, not now God, not now God.
