Our scripture reading for this morning's sermon is taken from John chapter 1. John chapter 1, I believe, can be found on page 1027 in the Pew Bible. I came to this passage because I believe Sunday school begins next week and an adult Sunday school, Dr. Godfrey and I will be working with you through the entire Gospel of John. This morning, we'll introduce us and get our thoughts moving towards that direction by thinking of this introductory passage in John chapter 1, reading verses 1 through 18. Let's ask God's blessing upon his word. We do give thanks for your word, O Lord, and ask that as we read and think upon it, we ask, Lord, that the Holy Spirit would bring power. Father, apart from your spirit, your word will simply be news lost amidst the flood of other reports in our lives. And so, dear Lord, we pray that your word will indeed accomplish its intended end for us. That Your Holy Spirit would renew our hearts, would transform our minds and strengthen our faith, enabling our lives in service of You. We ask, dear Father, in the name of Jesus, Amen. John 1, beginning with verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made. Without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God, and his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world. And though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or of a husband's will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me. From the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the one and only who is at the Father's side has made Him known. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in these first verses of John's Gospel, we are told that God has personally come to bring light and new life to a dark and dying world. Gospel, you may remember, means good news. And this good news is about Jesus, The Lord, the light, the life. If we step back and we think about news, we realize that news can make an impact, can't it? Think about the economic news that we've been hearing recently. Bad news about a bad economy. And some of us, we've heard it enough already, right? We hear it and simply turn the channel. There's something else we're interested in. but others will listen with great interest because they see or they recognize that there is a remarkable impact that this kind of news can have on their lives. Well, the Gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ is similar. It comes to some who find absolutely no interest in it at all. It comes to others who hear, And there's an impact. There's a significance. Beyond simply the announcement of news, there's an impact. There's a significance in their lives. In fact, in chapter 5, a little bit later in John's Gospel, we are told that the time has come when the dead will hear and those who hear will live. That's impact. And that's the impact that the Gospel of Jesus Christ intends to have. As I mentioned earlier this year, our adult Sunday school class, we'll study the entire book of John and as we go through it in greater detail, we'll consider some of the doctrinal things, these amazing truths that John brings out in oftentimes very poetic fashion. For example, the Trinity, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the two natures of Jesus Christ being God and man, or the sovereignty of God and salvation. In fact, we find each of those wonderful, amazing things in our passage this morning, but we'll leave those for Adult Sunday School to develop at greater length this morning. This morning I want to focus in on more of the broader themes that John introduces in these verses and trying to appreciate the way he has written these verses and introducing these themes in order to prepare us for the impact that God through the Gospel intends to make for his people. And so let's do so considering Jesus Christ, the Lord, the light, and the life. We begin with Jesus Christ, the Lord. As we read through John's Gospel, we find that the Apostle John refers to Jesus as Lord well over 30 times in just 21 chapters. It becomes the primary way that people refer to Jesus and one of the reasons for that is that Lord was just a very common term of respect offered by a student to a teacher or a servant to a master or certainly a subject to the king. a common term of respect. And yet we find that Jesus' title Lord in the Gospel carries a far greater meaning than something of general respect. And we find that meaning introduced to us here in these verses as Jesus is identified with the Word of God. Again, turn your attention to verses 1 and 2. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. This idea of the Word of God would have been very familiar to John's audience, both to Jews and to Greeks, to Gentiles alike. For the Greeks, it's been said that for the Greeks, there is no other God than Lagos. The Greek word for word is Lagos. And for the Greeks, Logos was an amazingly important concept, an eternal reality, such that some have said there is, for the Greek, no other god than Logos, the Word. Others of John's audience would have been the Jews. And the Word of God, well, what could have been more significant to the Jews than the Word of God, right? The Word, that speech for the Jews, it would have been that speech through which the one eternal God created the world. It would have also been that Word through which God called Father Abraham, establishing the covenant, proclaiming the promises, and through Moses articulating the law. The Word of God offered to the people through the priestly ministry. The Word of God proclaimed through the prophets. The Word of God to both the Greeks and the Jews was of utmost significance. And John, the very beginning of his Gospel, introduces the Word of God not simply as a power of speech. John brings this concept of the Word of God not simply to state that there is one of many gods, But rather, John makes clear in these first verses that the Word of God is indeed a person existing eternally with and even identified as God Himself. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. For those first audiences, wow! What a statement! What a thoughtful, at times poetic and most beautiful expression. Bringing them in as a catchy headline. Bringing them in to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Growing up I had some very good friends who were Mormons. And some of you no doubt have friends who are Mormons. And these verses are not the favorite. They wouldn't have these verses over their kitchen table. For the Mormons, these are a problem and there's great attempt on their part to interpret the Greek or the original language in different ways than we've heard this morning because they are convinced that Jesus is a God. Jesus is not eternal God, but Jesus is a God. And also growing up, I had good friends who were Jehovah's Witnesses. And it was very ironic that yesterday, early morning, I'm in a favorite coffee shop studying these very verses. And not only these verses, but the original language of these verses. And in comes in a whole troop of Jehovah's Witnesses to the coffee shop. It was too much. I knew them from previous occasions. and I just thought, boy, is that an interesting providence or what? Because the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus was the first thing created by God, through whom then God continued to create the rest of reality. And yet, do you see how these verses do not allow an interpretation of Jesus as a God? And as we read further, they don't allow Jesus to be simply a created thing. Verse 3 says that through him, all things were made. And if that wasn't significant or clear enough, he continues to say, without him, nothing was made that has been made. And though Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses may dispute the grammar or the interpretation of these verses, even unbelieving secular Greek scholars agree, though they don't believe, they agree that our Christian understanding of these verses is what is said and the best documents available to us of God's Scripture, of the Bible. John chapter 1 does not allow us to conclude that Jesus is a God, is a God. It does not allow us to conclude that Jesus was the first thing created by God. In fact, what we find here is that Jesus is Himself the Word of God, eternally existing with God, who Himself was God, through whom all things were made. without whom nothing could have been made that has been made. And so John, right at the beginning of his news, is making an impact, a stunning impact, upon the audiences who would have been hearing his message. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. He is Creator of all things with God. And He is the Son of God. Verse 14 says that the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory. The glory of the one and only. The glory of the one and only. Your footnote, I believe, will say the glory of the one and only begotten Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth. Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Word of God, Creator with God, the Son of God, so that, as we heard earlier, John 5, verse 25 can say that the time has come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. In fact, this impact upon those who heard the Gospel was so significant that towards the very end of the Gospel, Thomas looks upon the resurrected Christ and he says in chapter 20, My Lord and my God. As the full weight of the Gospel of Jesus Christ descended upon him and that dead man heard and lived believing that Jesus Christ is Himself Lord and God. The Gospel of John begins on a striking note, establishing the deity of Jesus Christ, establishing that Jesus is indeed Lord. And it continues in the second place by saying that Jesus is not simply Lord, He is also light. He is Lord who illumines all that's around Him. News and light are ideas that work together. Both reveal, don't they? News, at least news that is well done from a human perspective, tells us the truth of the world around us. It tells us about what's going on in the world around us. And light, in a very similar way, you strike a match, or you hold up a torch, or you've got a flashlight, it also illumines, doesn't it? Helps us to see and understand what is around us. Verse 4 says that in him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. We are told that light comes from the Word of God. Verse 4 tells us what this light did. Verse 4 tells us what this light did, that it was the light of men. And verse 5 tells us what this light does. It shines, both past and present. As we think about the past shining of the light of God, We might think about how God has always illumined the life of men and women with the truth of His Word. Creating all things by the Word of His power so that all things reveal the glory and wonder of our God. Creating men and women in His own image and planting within their very soul a knowledge of God and His truth and of His will. Verse 10 goes on to say that He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. You have these remarkable statements that though the light of God is present in all of reality, though the light of God is present within the very heart and soul of each man and woman, and though the light of God is suppressed by the darkness, okay, those things may not be overly surprising to us, but it goes on to say that this light came to His own. And even His own did not accept Him. We can think of Moses and how Moses and the priestly ministry and the prophetic ministry of the law. How these expressions of God's Word came to God's own people. How they came to them in the ministry of Word and through the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant. And how God Himself would meet with His people in the temple. How God would be present among them very much as He's present among us in Word and sacrament. And yet, hard hearts remain. Blindness continues. In fact, Isaiah 65, reflecting upon this remarkable hardness of heart of God's people, says, from the time of your forefathers, God is speaking, the Lord is speaking, from the time of your forefathers left Egypt until now the exile, day after day, again and again, I sent you my servants, the prophets, but you did not listen to Me or pay attention. And then the Word became flesh. And the ministers of that day, like John the Baptist, came bearing witness to the coming of the Word, to the birth of Jesus Christ the Lord. And John the Baptist was also killed, died a martyr. The Word became flesh and lived among us. Yet even at the end of Jesus' own ministry, even at the end of Jesus' own ministry of feeding the poor, healing the sick, raising the dead, He's left alone at the cross. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. The light shines in the darkness, yet the darkness has not understood it. It was true then, wasn't it? It was true then, and as we heard this morning in the excommunication, it's true today. A sobering commentary. Bad news about a dark world that does not understand the light. Brothers and sisters, there's more to the Gospel. There's more to the news that God has brought to us this morning. Jesus is revealed as the Lord and Jesus is announced and reported to be the light, but it doesn't end there. Jesus didn't simply come as a powerful or almighty Lord. He did not come simply as a light to shine. Jesus also comes, we are told in the Gospel, as life. Now, a good news story can only go so far. It can give light. It can illumine the things around us, but it cannot work change. The writer may hope to make an impact, but he cannot create one. Can he? But the Gospel of Jesus Christ has no such limitation. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not limited by anything of this world. Verse 12-13 say that to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or of a husband's will, but children born of God. The Gospel of Jesus Christ gives new life. The Gospel of Jesus Christ gives new life that is not natural or of human decision or of an individual's decision, but it comes through the supernatural power of God. And that's why I think we have this contrast between Moses and Jesus in verse 17. Here we have this beautiful, almost poetic description of the Gospel, right? And we're reading along and all of a sudden we have Moses and the law contrasted with Jesus and grace and truth and you think, where did that come from? At least I did when I was reading through it. It didn't quite fit in my poetic thinking of the passage. But I think the reason why that is included here in the very introductory words of the Gospel is so that we might see that what was a limitation for the ministry of Moses has been done away with in the ministry of Jesus Christ. This contrast is not that there is a conflict between Moses and Jesus. There's no contradiction between the law and God's grace, Both Moses and Jesus speak the truth of God, right? And yet what John wants to tell us is that Moses simply reported. Moses was like a light shining in the darkness. But no matter how well Moses reported, no matter what way he could shine the light, all his ministry could do was describe what is. Describe the glory of God, the wonder of God, the fallenness of man, the need for a holy life. All Moses could do would be describe the truth of what is and command what should be. But Jesus, working in harmony with Moses, bringing about the Word of God with Moses only far more fully, such that John says, The true light has come through Jesus. Jesus comes not simply as a reporter or as light, but He comes as the Almighty Lord. The One who Himself is the source of light and the One who has the power to bring about new life. To do what Moses could never do. Provide the grace and the power that is necessary for the dead to hear. and believe. I think that's why our Heidelberg Catechism in Question and Answer 65 says that you confess by true faith alone you share in Christ and all his blessings. But where does that faith come from? I know some of our kids have memorized that. And the answer is very brief. It says that the Holy Spirit produces it in our hearts by the preaching of the Gospel and confirms it through our use of the sacraments. You see, the good news of Jesus Christ is that He is God for the world. Not simply the Almighty Lord. Not simply a bright and more pure light, but Himself, the life coming to bring about new life. and all that is necessary for the living of this people. Brothers and sisters, the good news of Jesus Christ is given to us that it would not return void. The good news of Jesus Christ comes to us so that it would have an impact. We're told in John 3, verse 16, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life. And you see, for those of us here who believe, For those of us here who, like John's audience, have heard this before and are being reminded again and maybe have a greater clarity today for what the Gospel is and what Jesus Christ came to be and to do. See, the impact upon us is that it might strengthen our faith. That it might refresh us in the new life that Jesus Christ, through His life, death, and resurrection, that it might refresh us in that resurrected life that Jesus Christ has come to give us. And that we would be those who no longer are drawn towards the things of death or the things of this passing world, but might live in this world in light of the glory that we have seen. We need to join with John. and those like Thomas who have seen His glory. The glory of the one and only who came from the Father full of grace and truth and to join in them and having observed the glory of God's almighty grace and then living for that glory in the lives that God has called us to live. You see, that is the impact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. New life so that we believe and see His glory and respond to that glory by living for it in our home, at church, at school, in the workplace, wherever God calls us to be. For like John the Baptist, like John the Apostle, We too are witnesses. We too have seen His glory. Glory come from the Father, full of grace and truth. Let us, beloved, ask for that grace and truth to continue to be profoundly active in our lives. We do give thanks, O Lord, for the light that You shed upon us through Your Word and for the life that Jesus Christ Himself came to give. And ask, O Lord, that You would continue to sustain that life, providing all that we need in body and soul. Lord, of ourselves we can do nothing. And so we pray that Your Word and Spirit would continue to sustain our faith, creating in us a longing to not only see the glory of Christ, but also reflect the glory of Christ in this world. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.