SPEAKER_00: Uh, friends, that is an amazing passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice that as it was read, it's it's sort of poetic in the way that it comes across.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that makes it difficult to read.
SPEAKER_00: So you read that extremely well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's rhythms and plays on words, and what John is doing in the first 18 verses of his gospel, of his account of Jesus' life, is introducing to us all of the themes that he's going to develop as he goes through the rest of his account of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_00: You can take almost any word from that prologue and then read through and trace the development of that word as you go through.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's there, that's why it's there, so you can so you can trace those themes through.
SPEAKER_00: The last couple of weeks, uh, as I've been doing a lot of driving, I've had uh an audio version of John's Gospel playing on a loop.
SPEAKER_00: And each time, and I've been particularly focusing on this idea of Jesus as the word, because that's the topic of the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and next week you're doing Jesus the light, and then the following work, Jesus the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And all three of those themes come out of those 18 verses, but are developed as you go through.
SPEAKER_00: You also take the word receive to those who received him.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the way that he keeps on using that word through the rest, and it'll give a really rounded understanding of how important it is to receive Jesus to those to live in him, to abide in him, the way that's developed.
SPEAKER_00: But my job is to look at the way that the word, this idea of the word, those first words of John's gospel, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was with God in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Before we go any further, I'm going to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to pray a really old, old prayer.
SPEAKER_00: It's a prayer that Anglican Christians, I'm not sure if you know very much about the history of Anglicans or the Church of England, but there was a guy called Thomas Cranmer, and he wanted every English-speaking person to know the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a king who was a bit of a rogue, but he gave Cranmer a chance to change things.
SPEAKER_00: And so he set about trying to set up a system of church that would make sure, even if the existing minister wasn't, didn't really know the gospel, would make sure that the people in the congregation would hear it week in, week out, week in, week out.
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote prayers that would collect the prayers of the congregation together.
SPEAKER_00: They've come to be called collects.
SPEAKER_00: They collect the people's prayers together.
SPEAKER_00: This is the collect that he wrote to be read today.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Would you grant that we may in such way hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy word we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Some of those old guys knew what they were talking about, didn't they?
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had the old guys.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about me.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word.
SPEAKER_00: And the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the beginning with God.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you're following along in the text there.
SPEAKER_00: Jump down to verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: I've been tossing around an idea for a while now.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to share it with you, and you can work out yourself whether it makes any sense of what we're going to be talking about in this.
SPEAKER_00: But two sentences.
SPEAKER_00: Works without words are ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: Words without works are hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: Did you follow that thinking?
SPEAKER_00: If you do things, you can't really work out why you're doing them unless the person doing them is telling you.
SPEAKER_00: Why is the person sweeping in the street?
SPEAKER_00: Is it because it's outside their front gate and they're just interested in that?
SPEAKER_00: Or are they paid to do it?
SPEAKER_00: Why are they doing it?
SPEAKER_00: Unless they tell you why they're doing it.
SPEAKER_00: You can make it up, but you can't be sure.
SPEAKER_00: It's ambiguous, their work by itself.
SPEAKER_00: Why did that person give that money away?
SPEAKER_00: You can make up ideas, but unless you ask them, unless they tell you, unless there's the words there, why they did the work is ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: But then if you say you're going to do something, but you never do it.
SPEAKER_00: If you have the words but never the actions, you're a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder how that works together with this idea of the word.
SPEAKER_00: We may or may not come back to that, but you can talk about it afterwards.
SPEAKER_00: You may have heard people say things like, preach the gospel, and when necessary, use words.
SPEAKER_00: That's attributed to St.
SPEAKER_00: Francis of Assisi.
SPEAKER_00: There's a particular series of words that I apply to that pattern of thinking, but I can't use them in church.
SPEAKER_00: St.
SPEAKER_00: Francis of Assisi never said that, and from what we can tell of his minister, he would have hated the idea.
SPEAKER_00: His great work, pretty much the only thing we have of his, finishes with, Blessed are those whom death will find in your most holy will.
SPEAKER_00: People who are so caught up in God's will that death is not a frightening thing for them.
SPEAKER_00: How is that possible?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's only by the word.
SPEAKER_00: It's only he Francis was a person so devoted to telling people about God that he even told animals.
SPEAKER_00: All of creation needs to hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's a bit nuts in certain areas, but he is a word person.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are word people.
SPEAKER_00: We're preaching, teaching, proclaiming, telling, testifying.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of thing the Christians do.
SPEAKER_00: And when we meditate, we don't aim for a vacancy of mind.
SPEAKER_00: We don't wait for God to speak through events and coincidences and into silences.
SPEAKER_00: Nor do Christians listen to God in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's actually an axymoron.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer means ask.
SPEAKER_00: No, we follow the pattern of the Psalms, we Christians.
SPEAKER_00: How does Psalm 1 talk about meditation?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it says, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And on his law he meditates day and night.
SPEAKER_00: Our meditation as Christians is taking God's word and turning it over in our minds.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish people were at times known as a nation of mutterers, because they were told by God that as they walked along the road, that they would mutter under their breaths the word of God, rehearse the law.
SPEAKER_00: They would have the whole of the first five books of the Old Testament memorized so that they could talk it over to themselves as they walked, because they were the people of the Word, and we are the inheritors of that title.
SPEAKER_00: How does the Bible begin?
SPEAKER_00: What are the words with which Genesis begins?
SPEAKER_00: John expects us to know Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_00: As he writes this beginning, he expects certain words and phrases to make us think, oh, oh, that's what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: How does Genesis begin?
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the voice and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: How does John begin with John's account of Jesus' life?
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Using the same words as the start of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He takes us back to creation.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us back at the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to know that this is an Old Testament pattern of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word.
SPEAKER_00: This word, this word is not just the means of creation, this word is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: None of this rubbish that you'll hear from Jehovah's Witnesses saying that this word is a God.
SPEAKER_00: No, if John had wanted to say that this word was a God, there was a different word to use.
SPEAKER_00: The word he uses here is theos, God.
SPEAKER_00: If he wanted to use it meaning divine or a God, he would have used a different word, theos.
SPEAKER_00: It's only one word, one letter difference, but we know that one letter makes a big difference in a word.
SPEAKER_00: Like the difference between prostate and prostrate.
SPEAKER_00: It means something very different.
SPEAKER_00: John is very, very carefully saying here that this word that was with God in the beginning is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Later on he says, I and the Father are one.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this word says.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever has seen me has said the Father is what this word says.
SPEAKER_00: This word is not God like, this word is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And John then ties up in verse 3, going back to the word beginning again.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to be back there at the point where nothing became something as a result of the word.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing, friends, in all of existence that does not know that existence to this word who is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Every atom that makes up your body exists because this word spoke it into existence.
SPEAKER_00: Now, from that, do you get something of the scope of the power of this word?
SPEAKER_00: Do you get something of the scope of the authority of this word?
SPEAKER_00: Do you get something of the scope of the ownership that this word has over everything in creation?
SPEAKER_00: Just from the opening in the beginning was the word.
SPEAKER_00: Now you'll be looking at some of these themes more in the coming weeks, but you'll notice that in verse 4, John changes from Paul talking about the Word to talking about light.
SPEAKER_00: And those of us who know Genesis won't be surprised by that, because we know the very first words recorded of God in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep.
SPEAKER_00: And God said, Let there be light.
SPEAKER_00: The light has shined in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: That is this word that we start.
SPEAKER_00: In the first couple of words of John's account, we're talking about something creation-size big happening here.
SPEAKER_00: You need to have all of the Old Testament and everything you know about God from the Old Testament in your minds as you read, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was with God in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Through him all things were made, and by him and nothing exists except was made through him.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to go on in just a second into verse 9 and verse 14, looking at this word who comes into the world, looking at this word who takes on flesh and dwells among us.
SPEAKER_00: But before we go to that, I just want you to pause.
SPEAKER_00: Pause and appreciate the wonder of who this word is.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate his power.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate his authority.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate whether you have a relationship with him or not.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know if you have a relationship with this word or not?
SPEAKER_00: What do you think are the consequences of not knowing or not recognizing or being estranged from the word who is the creator of all things, who owns all things, who you would not exist except that he spoke you into existence.
SPEAKER_00: And with that very firmly in our minds, we start to appreciate how extraordinary a thing it is that this is a word who made his dwelling among us.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm going to work you hard here because I'm going to make you think about a whole stack of stuff that you may or may not have known from the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: But the more we understand our Old Testament, the more we will understand what is happening here.
SPEAKER_00: God spoke so that we would understand what he was going to do in the world one day.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 14 with me.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we've skipped a couple of verses that are important, but you'll be looking at those in the coming weeks.
SPEAKER_00: But what does it look like that this word became flesh?
SPEAKER_00: The more we understand the way that God starts Genesis, the more strange the idea is that the word becomes flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is God, the transcendent God becoming flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The word transcendent, actually, it's one of the words that I think our friends who are coming from an Islamic background, our Muslim friends, find this aspect of Christianity about the most difficult aspect to get their head around.
SPEAKER_00: But it's because they have what is maybe a more developed and sometimes more true understanding of the transcendence of God than what we might have.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of transcendence is that God is not a part of creation, he is separate from it.
SPEAKER_00: That's a really important idea.
SPEAKER_00: It is a biblical idea.
SPEAKER_00: God is not contained within creation.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the majority of religions of the world believe that that's exactly the way it is.
SPEAKER_00: If you think about the old uh sort of Norse gods or Greek or Roman gods or the uh gods of the Vedic texts from India, the gods are all part of creation or form parts of creation.
SPEAKER_00: So you have the god of thunder, a part of creation.
SPEAKER_00: You have the god of this mountain over there, a god that is a part of creation.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the Australian aboriginal deities and uh so the uh Uluru, the rock, is a deity who has become dormant or died, and so the people of that place venerate that rock.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's now illegal to walk and climb on Uluru as rock, out of respect for the beliefs of the people there, that that is their god, a part of creation.
SPEAKER_00: In some of the ancient Vedic Indian texts and a lot of texts that are still believed today, the the earth and the sky are the result of a huge battle between two deities, and one killed the other, and the one that was killed became the earth, and the other in in um rose up in victory to become the sky.
SPEAKER_00: Deities that are part of creation.
SPEAKER_00: And the creation narrative in Genesis goes through and actually names some of these gods.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Oh, you worship light and darkness.
SPEAKER_00: They're concepts that you worship.
SPEAKER_00: Now the God we're talking about spoke, and those ideas came into existence.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you worship the sky and the sea.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, no, the God we're talking about, he spoke, and the sky and the sea came to his.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you worship fish.
SPEAKER_00: You've got fish deities.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, the God we're talking about spoke and they came into existence.
SPEAKER_00: He's not in creation, he is apart from creation.
SPEAKER_00: He created and sustains all things.
SPEAKER_00: That's the God we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And the extraordinary thing, once you start to get your head around that, you start to realise how amazing a thing it is to say the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
SPEAKER_00: You start to understand why our Islamic friends would find that so difficult to understand, because they do understand something about the transcendence of God that sometimes we might forget.
SPEAKER_00: But we need to hold those things together.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be filled with wonder at the extraordinary thing that God, the transcendent God, has done by becoming flesh and dwelling among us.
SPEAKER_00: And actually that phrase, dwelling among us, should also blow our minds because he uses another Old Testament reference there.
SPEAKER_00: Made his dwelling among us is a translation of really saying he pitched his tent among us.
SPEAKER_00: And that idea of pitching his tent is actually an Old Testament term for where God tabernacled among us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you are nodding because you know that word tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you don't know that word tabernacle, and it's fine.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you what the tabernacle is.
SPEAKER_00: John expects us to know Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us probably know Exodus chapters 1 to 20.
SPEAKER_00: That's the bit that they make movies about.
SPEAKER_00: The people in slavery who through extraordinary series of plagues, especially the last plague, death which came and killed all the firstborn.
SPEAKER_00: And yet death passed over those who had killed a lamb and put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts.
SPEAKER_00: And every year the Jewish people remembered that day when they when the angel of death passed over them because of the blood of the Lamb, and God rescued them in the Exodus, brought them out.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where people think it finishes.
SPEAKER_00: But that's Exodus is 40 chapters long, and that's just the first 20 chapters.
SPEAKER_00: The majority of sermon series on Exodus look at chapters 1 to 20 and Sort of don't do the rest.
SPEAKER_00: But the rest actually is the climax.
SPEAKER_00: The rest is the climax that actually, if you read it, to us seems terribly tedious and boring.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't really appreciate what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: The huge purpose of God in wonderfully and miraculously bringing his people out of slavery leads to this amazing 20 chapters about making a tent.
SPEAKER_00: That's God's big purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, what on earth is that about?
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just a tent.
SPEAKER_00: See, this tent, 20 chapters of describing what goes on around the tent.
SPEAKER_00: Who was allowed to go into various parts of the tent?
SPEAKER_00: How the tent was to be made, what dimensions the tent was to be, different sections of the tent, even the stitching of the tent was to be done the way that God said it was to be done.
SPEAKER_00: The decoration had to be done the way God said it was going to be done.
SPEAKER_00: Who could go into which part of the tent?
SPEAKER_00: How close the rest of the people could get to the tent, when they had to get farther away from the tent, because the tent was the one, the place that was to be right in the middle of the people as they travelled.
SPEAKER_00: When they set up camp, they set up that tent, and all the tribes were in a circle around that tent.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was a series of concentric circles because then there was this area outside the camp, which was further away from God.
SPEAKER_00: And if you had become unclean, you had to be in that area outside the camp, further from God.
SPEAKER_00: You could be made unclean by any number of everyday things.
SPEAKER_00: Being unclean doesn't necessarily mean that you were had committed a particular sin.
SPEAKER_00: It just meant that if you touched, if your relative had died and you touched them in preparing them for burial, which is what you were supposed to do, that made you unclean.
SPEAKER_00: And so you had to be away from the tent because it reminds you'd been in contact with death.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of thing can't come close to God because the center of the tent was the holy of holies.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of the tent was that there was going to be a place on earth where God would dwell with people.
SPEAKER_00: That had not happened in the world since Genesis chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 3 records that the everyday event for humans was that God would walk with them in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: And then humans rebelled, and in order that they would not be wiped out, God removed his dwelling from them.
SPEAKER_00: Because his dwelling would bro his presence would break out against them and destroy them.
SPEAKER_00: Because his holiness was so great.
SPEAKER_00: How on earth would God dwell with a people again?
SPEAKER_00: A people who were through everyday life just tainted with sin.
SPEAKER_00: God rescued his people by the blood of the Lamb and gave them a tent where he might dwell in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: A whole system of sacrifices so that they would understand that the only way you could move from being unclean to being clean was by the shedding of blood.
SPEAKER_00: The only way that you could even move from being clean to being closer to God in his holiness was again by the shedding of blood.
SPEAKER_00: How on earth was God, the holy God, going to make a dwelling with his people?
SPEAKER_00: The only way was by our sin being atoned for, so that his holiness would not break out against us.
SPEAKER_00: That tent became the temple, which again had in the middle the holies of holies.
SPEAKER_00: God dwelling with his people.
SPEAKER_00: This holy God took on flesh and pitched his tent among us.
SPEAKER_00: We have seen his glory, the glory as of the one and only, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that I haven't said the name of the word yet?
SPEAKER_00: That's because John hasn't said the name of the word yet.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the text there.
SPEAKER_00: How long does John take until we find out who this word is?
SPEAKER_00: Which verse is it in?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go on.
SPEAKER_00: 17.
SPEAKER_00: He waited, he makes us wait 17 verses until he introduces that this word is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the creator God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one who has who is God who has pitched his tent with us.
SPEAKER_00: So that we would not be estranged from God's glory anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that get makes you excited about reading the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Because the more you understand that, the more you will understand the wonder of what God has done in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to wrap up in a minute, but I just want to do something with you.
SPEAKER_00: Just show you a little bit about what John does as he takes this idea of the word going through.
SPEAKER_00: So the first two things I did was just show you how incredibly incredibly important it is to understand that this word is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: His extraordinary power, his extraordinary authority, the one who spoke and all things exist.
SPEAKER_00: You would not exist except that he created all things and sustains all things.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore your relationship with this word is the most important thing in your life, whether you know it or not.
SPEAKER_00: And that he loves you so much that even though his holiness cannot bear your presence because of your sin and my sin, he has created a means by which he can dwell with us.
SPEAKER_00: Now that is love.
SPEAKER_00: And we find out as we go through it is costly love.
SPEAKER_00: But let me start running through just a couple of examples of how John develops the idea of the word.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Would you turn that there?
SPEAKER_00: I won't give you too much, but it's Passover, you see in verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: He's gone up to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: This is the bit where he's driving out the money changes.
SPEAKER_00: He makes a there's a uh a reference to the disciples remembering verse 17, that it was written, so the quote the Old Testament, what's happening here has got to do with something that God planned in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You only understand it if you understand the Old Testament really well.
SPEAKER_00: But actually they only understood it, not just because they understood the Old Testament, but also after Jesus rose again, they thought, oh, that's what was going on.
SPEAKER_00: That keeps on coming up in John's Gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So the Jews, verse 18, said to him, What sign will you show for us doing these things?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days there's the temple.
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle becomes the temple, the dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews then said, It's taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days.
SPEAKER_00: But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
SPEAKER_00: The temple, the dwelling place, the tabernacle of his body.
SPEAKER_00: When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.
SPEAKER_00: He's developing that theme of the word.
SPEAKER_00: Next chapter, he speaks to Nicodemus, who's supposed to be a teacher.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3, verse 11, Jesus says to this great knowledgeable teacher, Truly, truly I say to you, we speak, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the word language there.
SPEAKER_00: We speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not believe perceive our testimony.
SPEAKER_00: If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how do you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
SPEAKER_00: No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: And as Moses, reference to the Old Testament again, lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that's an Exodus story.
SPEAKER_00: So must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that any every whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get John 3, 16.
SPEAKER_00: Look down to John chapter 3, verse 31.
SPEAKER_00: He who comes from above, he's talking about himself, is above all.
SPEAKER_00: He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way.
SPEAKER_00: He who comes from heaven is above all.
SPEAKER_00: He bears witness to what he has seen and heard.
SPEAKER_00: Yet no one receives his testimony.
SPEAKER_00: Who receiv whoever receives his testimony, notice the word language here?
SPEAKER_00: The speaking, the testimony, the sp Look at verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: For he whom God has sent utters the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: Who do you go to to hear God's words?
SPEAKER_00: You go to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: For he gives the Spirit without measure.
SPEAKER_00: The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life.
SPEAKER_00: But the wrath of God remains on him.
SPEAKER_00: You can go chapter after chapter and see these things happening.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to skip one, and this is where we're going to end.
SPEAKER_00: We find out through John's Gospel that Jesus' words divide into people who do believe and people who don't.
SPEAKER_00: We find out that the signs he is doing lead to people believing, but not in a way that makes Jesus trust them.
SPEAKER_00: There's a way of believing that isn't really believing.
SPEAKER_00: Signs won't do the job.
SPEAKER_00: Words and responding to Jesus' words is what does the job.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus' words are hard.
SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 6, people hear Jesus' words, and some of the people start to leave him.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 60.
SPEAKER_00: When many of the disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard teaching.
SPEAKER_00: Who can listen to it?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do not do you take offense at this?
SPEAKER_00: Then what are you Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
SPEAKER_00: It's the Spirit who gives life.
SPEAKER_00: The flesh is no help at all.
SPEAKER_00: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
SPEAKER_00: Skip down to verse 66.
SPEAKER_00: After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
SPEAKER_00: Do you get that in your mind?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has got a following, and because of his words, people start to say, This is too much.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to follow those words anymore.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus turns to the twelve in verse 67.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to go away as well?
SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
SPEAKER_00: You have the words of eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know your creator?
SPEAKER_00: You must listen to his word.
SPEAKER_00: If you reject Jesus' words, you reject Jesus the Word.
SPEAKER_00: And if you reject Jesus the Word, you also reject the Father.
SPEAKER_00: That's a hard word, actually, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I am the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_00: No one comes to the Father except through me.
SPEAKER_00: But what extraordinary love that the word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.
SPEAKER_00: So that glory that would have broken out and killed us now through the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It is no danger to us.
SPEAKER_00: It is actually the means by which we can come and dwell with him.
SPEAKER_00: What have you learned from God's word today?
SPEAKER_00: That would what what what do you want to thank God for as a result of hearing that?
SPEAKER_00: Just note that.
SPEAKER_00: Note that that's what you're going to talk to each other over coffee about.
SPEAKER_00: What does hearing this word today lead you to want to ask God for?