Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. And the other day, my daughter, who apparently studies hard things in college now, was like, hey dad, will you help me factor these quadratic equations? And I was like, Yes, I will. Because that isn't intimidating to me. And I totally remember how to do that. Let me just come right over there right now. But I was lying. It was intimidating to me because I don't remember how to factor quadratic equations. And I looked at it and it was baffling. I couldn't even remember what the point was. Like, what do you even do? What would an answer look like here? So we sat there and we stared at it for a while, and then gradually I remembered a little bit. And we looked at her book. Okay, it started to come together. And we reasoned our way backwards to how to do this, even if it was, you know, pretty clumsy and not that impressive. Likewise, when we open the book of John to John chapter one, especially after being told that this is one of the most accessible books in the whole Bible, and we read the first five verses together. I think it's reasonable for one to feel like I felt when staring at the quadratic equations. This is intimidating. It's using very complex language. There's a word in here. Just to add to the complication, the word that is challenging that I'm referencing literally is the word word. And so you read this passage, and I couldn't blame a person if they felt a little bit overwhelmed. Like, well, maybe John isn't for me. Maybe it's just too hard to study the Bible because I it's hard to tell what's going on right here at first glance. But in the same way that it was initially overwhelming to try to figure out how to factor quadratic equations, with a few minutes staring at it with my daughter, our brains that have been trained to think rationally in other stuff in life kicked in, and we were able to crack the code and see the things that were right in front of our face, and we were able to get something done. You're gonna be able to get something done here, too, and we're gonna try to take a little ground right now on what I think is probably the most difficult chunk of the entire Gospel of John. It's right here on the front end. This is the hard stuff. So stay with me. Let's put our brains on it, and I'm just gonna do a real honest breakdown as though I were encountering this cold to try to make sense of John 1, 1 through 5. All right, ready? Here we go. In the beginning. Oh. Well, that's not too tough. That sounds like Genesis. The first phrase is easy. I mean, isn't that exactly what it says at the beginning of the Bible? And the what's the first three words of the Bible? Just a second. I turned the page. In the beginning. Oh. Well, all right, so it rhymes. We're doing great so far. We're referencing back to the very first thing in the whole Bible. We're talking about creation and origin stories. Like, there's no way those first three words are an accident. Look at that. Pattern recognition. We're factoring the quadratic equation in front of us. We're gonna win. In the beginning, and Genesis is in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Okay, so what was going on back then? Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Okay, so back then, we're talking like almost nothing. We're talking about the beginning, the beginning, when we're in Genesis 1. I mean, it looks like the book of Genesis opens before there's stuff or existence as we know it. So dang, those three words in Genesis, in the beginning, that takes us into the deep water. We're into the where did we come from? What started all of this kind of terrain? I mean, those are the big questions. But now here we are in John 1, same language. In the beginning. So, okay, that's clearly meant to conjure the same stuff as the very beginning of Genesis. I think we're doing well. Let's keep going. In the beginning, was the word. Well, dang it, now it got a little bit harder. Now I feel like I'm staring at the quadratic equation thing again. In the beginning, was the word. Now, in my Bible, the word word is capitalized, like it's a proper noun. Well, if this is my first time here, I'm going, well, what what does that mean? Is that a guy's name? Is it a really good word? What is the word? Is it a code word? Is it a secret word? Is it one word? Is it an oration? A sentence? Is it a lot of words? Well, we're gonna have to keep going to try to factor this quadratic equation, but we're gonna get through it. In the beginning was the word, and the word, we still don't know what that means, was with God. Okay, well now we know what it means. Whatever the word is here is very old. It's been around since before existence, as you and I think of existence. Okay, so this is very ancient, very timeless, predates things as we think of things. All right, we're getting somewhere. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Hmm. Okay, well, I'd say it just got a little bit harder because we've still got this capital W word here, and it's very ancient. And whatever the word is, it was with God before creation, before stuff, before the beginning of existence as we know it, but also the word was God. So is there more than one God? Is God more than one thing? Well, for now, uh, it's not solved. John 1:1 leaves us with a a bit of a riddle. The same way staring at that equation with my daughter initially left me with a little bit of a riddle, but we're not gonna get discouraged. We're gonna keep working on it. Let's apply our brains. All right, verse 2. He was with God in the beginning. Ah ha! Well, we got a good clue. He is the pronoun that's being applied to word. So that means word is a dude? Word is a person with a person, a god with a personality. He, that intones personhood and agency, like somebody who has ideas and then does stuff and has has the ability to do stuff. Okay, well, that's clarifying. So he or the word was with God in the beginning. Okay, let's read it all together and see if it makes more sense. Here we go. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All right, so we've learned some things about the word, but I still don't know that we know exactly who that is or how he's different from God. I'm not even sure I'm asking the right question. So let's keep going. Verse three. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Okay. That's pretty easy, right? Um it's hard to conceptualize of all things being made, but I understand the sentence. The word, whatever that is, was with God in the beginning, the word was God in the beginning, and the word made everything. So the word is something that orders, but doesn't just order thought, it can turn thought into action and material and the physical. Ooh, this is fascinating. This is getting all philosophical. Let's keep going. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. Oh, what there's another clue. I'm a man. We're all in this context of men, people, we're humans. So life, the ones you know that you and I have and enjoy, that came from this the word. Ooh. So he didn't just make stuff, he made us and he illuminates. Let's keep going. The light, so that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Okay, that sounds right. I feel like I'm in darkness to some extent. I felt like I was in darkness when I was trying to figure out how to factor a quadratic equation with my daughter. I knew what some of the symbols in front of me meant, but I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't understand how those symbols somehow are the language of reason that undergirds all of reality, but with enough work, we were able to decode it well enough, I suppose, well enough for her to pass the quiz anyway. So, yeah, I can relate to verse five. I have light, I can see some stuff, I have life, but also I'm in darkness. There's a lot of things that I don't understand. Okay, so big picture. This might be intimidating. You might be coming into this passage completely cold. You might be feeling like, ah, I was really hoping this would be more like, you know, stories where we meet Jesus and he's nice and interesting and powerful. And well, you'll be happy to know you have met Jesus. The word is talking about Jesus. I cheated ahead to find out, and you'll see that over the next few days. The word is Jesus. He was in the beginning, he was with God, he was God, he was with God in the beginning. Everything that's been made was made through Jesus. Without Jesus, nothing that's been made has been made. In Jesus was life, and that life was the light of men. And that light that is in Jesus shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Now, I know I haven't proved it to you yet that the passage here is using the word word to talk about Jesus, but I mean it's it's it gets pretty obvious the further along we go. Still, I thought it was fair to acknowledge to us that we're unwrapping this present together, this best book ever. And we're reminded in the first few sentences that we're dealing with things that are a lot bigger than us here, that we are not the knowers of things here, we are not the distributors of light here, we are the ones who need to be enlightened, and God is the holder of that light, the maker of all things, the maker of us, the sustainer of existence, the one who brings the light into the darkness. And when those two clash, light always wins. So this might seem hard to understand, but light beats dark, and God is holding light into our darkness, which means, even if it's hard, we can get it. We can see it. This is God revealing himself, revealing how the things are, how the universe is, in a way that is meant to deal with the big giant questions that all of us eventually ask: life, death, relationships, time, truth, falsehood, ethics, the point of everything, and ultimately God. What happens next? What happens with eternity? Everybody wonders. What we're seeing here at the beginning of John, even if it feels like an overwhelming equation or something at first glance, is actually the first hint that God Himself is about to take us by the hand and lead us into the light to start to pull back the layers and show us things about what is real and what is true and what is eternal. And even just the first five verses, we're starting to see this pattern emerge that says that he's going to reveal himself to us through Jesus, who is the main character of the book of John and the one that we're going to learn a whole bunch about as we move forward. More tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.