SPEAKER_00: So this week I started watching a new TV series.
SPEAKER_00: It's on HBO.
SPEAKER_00: It's called Newsroom.
SPEAKER_00: A couple friends had recommended it to me.
SPEAKER_00: And so we watched a few episodes.
SPEAKER_00: This first episode is kind of interesting.
SPEAKER_00: It's about this news anchor, and he was very intelligent, very intellectual guy, and somewhere along the lines, he sort of sold out from an intellectual, intelligent discourse about news and events into more of kind of a pop culture way of presenting news.
SPEAKER_00: And this was eating away at him, and finally he kind of overflowed and outburst into the media about what he really thought about what was going on and about the United States and about the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm watching this, and so they decide they're going to turn his show from this pop culture thing into this more honest intellectual discourse.
SPEAKER_00: And so the whole show is about this transition.
SPEAKER_00: And the end of the show is all billed to this.
SPEAKER_00: The end of the show is the newscast, and they they do the newscast, and it's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: It's out of the park.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's intelligent, it's intellectual, he holds people's feet to the fire, there's no bickering, there's actual discussion and argument.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of news show we would actually want to watch.
SPEAKER_00: And so what's interesting about this is that Christy's asleep like normal on the couch, and then I'm next to her and I'm awake.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I get teary.
SPEAKER_00: I start to kind of get teary, and I I recognize this might be because I ate too many Milano cookies that were there.
SPEAKER_00: There's some background music going on that probably affected me some.
SPEAKER_00: But I've done this before.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I cried in the rookie.
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen the rookie when he walks out to pitch?
SPEAKER_00: Y'all know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_00: I teared up at that.
SPEAKER_00: There's something there's something about, at least for me, there's something about an effort that is fully honest and true and good, and it's it is an expression of the individual and it's coming to fruition.
SPEAKER_00: And you put a little background music to that, and it gets me.
SPEAKER_00: That's my that's my my point there, and it gets me.
SPEAKER_00: I say all that because John chapter 1 is this for God.
SPEAKER_00: It is a passage about the most honest, true, good, creative expression ever.
SPEAKER_00: Period.
SPEAKER_00: And more than newsroom or Shakespeare or Michelangelo or Bankske or James Taylor or Mozart or Bonavert.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, more than any artist you could you could think of, the creative expression that we're gonna read about in John chapter 1 is the ultimate creative expression.
SPEAKER_00: We like to work through passages of scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: I like to take a passage and we just kind of work our way through it, and so that's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: Uh verses one and two.
SPEAKER_00: 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: Okay, so maybe you're here, and some of you love like really deep Bible studies, like dig in, and maybe you're here and you don't like that, and you like stories, or you really like the fact that a little story, or maybe you're here, you like helpful tips.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: We're all new, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're all sort of visitors here.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we're gonna work through it this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk a little philosophy, if that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk a little astronomy, if that's okay, and then we're gonna talk about me and talk about you, talk about people.
SPEAKER_00: So, this term word in this passage, uh, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: This this term word is the word logos.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of this mystery word, a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's it what we do know is that Greek philosophers were using this word.
SPEAKER_00: And this word meant world soul, like the soul of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: So the Greeks were wondering some of the same things we wonder.
SPEAKER_00: They were wondering, how did all this get here?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how did it get how did it happen?
SPEAKER_00: How did it start?
SPEAKER_00: How did we get here?
SPEAKER_00: That's our first question this morning.
SPEAKER_00: How did all of this get here?
SPEAKER_00: The second question, if there is a God, how does he make himself known?
SPEAKER_00: So, Plato, a few hundred years before Jesus arrives, Plato says this logos is this impersonal, unchanging energy.
SPEAKER_00: It keeps the planets on course, it's the way that even the planets came into being.
SPEAKER_00: It's the all-pervading principle.
SPEAKER_00: It's the rational principle of the universe, it's the creative energy.
SPEAKER_00: All things came from it, men derive wisdom from it.
SPEAKER_00: It is the logos, we're not even sure how it works.
SPEAKER_00: Plato.
SPEAKER_00: So John comes along and says, Hey, you know this logos you've been talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the logos, is what John is saying.
SPEAKER_00: So years ago, we moved into Grant Park, would have been seven or eight years ago at this point, and it was a the house was old, beat up, little bungalow, and we're gonna renovate it and room by room.
SPEAKER_00: But I decide I'm gonna build in this little scrappy side yard we have, I'm gonna build a patio, a field stone patio, and I'm gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00: And so I start reading about it, and you have to dig down like six to eight inches, and you gotta get your layer of gravel and then your sand and then your stone.
SPEAKER_00: So I order all my materials and realize I gotta dig a pretty big, I gotta dig like eight inches deep, like eighteen by twelve.
SPEAKER_00: And I quickly realize I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be out there doing that.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh a friend says, Well, you should run a bobcat.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I've never operated a bobcat.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: They'll show you how to work it just on the street when they drop it off.
SPEAKER_00: And so I call and say, I want to run a bobcat in like half a day, how's that work?
SPEAKER_00: I've never driven, do I need to get like a license?
SPEAKER_00: Do I go to a class or something?
SPEAKER_00: Something.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll show you on the street when we drop it off.
SPEAKER_00: So I learn on the street, I go in, I have a blast for a few hours.
SPEAKER_00: Give me a bobcat and a field of dirt.
SPEAKER_00: I can be very entertained.
SPEAKER_00: So weeks and weeks later, I dig the hole and then the gravel and then the sand and then the stone and the placement and then the pea gravel in between.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of this, I have a moderately attractive field stone 18 by 12 patio.
SPEAKER_00: And I am impressed with myself.
SPEAKER_00: And I will walk out there and I will look at my creation.
SPEAKER_00: And then we went to the Grand Canyon.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, jumping, just kind of hang on to that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my brother-in-law, Steve, lives in Virginia, and he got into astronomy.
SPEAKER_00: And so he decides he's gonna put an observatory in the top of his house.
SPEAKER_00: Um, some people build patios, some people put observatories on the top of their house, and so he puts an observatory on the top of his house.
SPEAKER_00: So we're up there last year, and at night we open up the roof, looking up, massive telescope, looking up, and he starts to tell us about we're looking at this supercluster and this cluster, and there's this galaxy telling all of this.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, he just kind of says, you know, by the way, um, you know the universe is growing.
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I did not know the universe is growing.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, you know, like space is growing.
SPEAKER_00: I like when my Azalea bush grows, it grows into space.
SPEAKER_00: What is space growing into?
SPEAKER_00: Like, well, where is it going?
SPEAKER_00: Like, right, we don't I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you don't know either.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody really knows.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we know space is growing, but where is it?
SPEAKER_00: What is it growing into?
SPEAKER_00: So I was reading recently about the universe, about this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Um the universe is made up of superclusters, and we'll get it let's get a working knowledge here.
SPEAKER_00: So we have superclusters, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we're in this supercluster called the Virgo supercluster, and where there's 54 galaxies in this supercluster, lots of superclusters in the universe.
SPEAKER_00: So, supercluster, galaxy, Milky Way, that's us, and then solar systems within the galaxy, that's us, you know, sun, third planet.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so and all of this big universe that is growing, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: The edge of the universe is 90 billion trillion miles away.
SPEAKER_00: They're sort of unsure about this.
SPEAKER_00: It's growing.
SPEAKER_00: Our Milky Way, our galaxy is traveling right now.
SPEAKER_00: We we are traveling 666,000 miles an hour.
SPEAKER_00: Our solar system inside that galaxy, we are traveling right now 558,000 miles an hour.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it we know it takes Earth a year to go around the sun, right?
SPEAKER_00: Most of us, hopefully we know that.
SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't realize this.
SPEAKER_00: When we feel the sun, we're or we see the light of the sun, it's the light that left the sun eight minutes ago.
SPEAKER_00: So the universe is so big, we don't even get to see it as it is.
SPEAKER_00: We only get to see the universe as it was.
SPEAKER_00: This is how big this is.
SPEAKER_00: And one time I built an 18 by 12 patio.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 19, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands, and all of this is expanding, and we don't understand all this.
SPEAKER_00: Even more absurd is if you want to go the opposite way.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my uncle got into like quantum theory a couple years ago, and he was telling me about this stuff about subatomic particles and how they behave.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just crazy, it's even crazier when you get small, it gets crazier.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens, the subatomic world, does not declare his glory because we can know nothing about it.
SPEAKER_00: It declares his glory because it works and because it was all created.
SPEAKER_00: What John is saying, saying, yeah, it all came from the Logos.
SPEAKER_00: The creative expression of God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, through Him, and what we're going to learn if we context of the passage, this is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Through Him, all things were made.
SPEAKER_00: Without Him, nothing was made that has been made.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you might believe in literal creation.
SPEAKER_00: We won't do hands.
SPEAKER_00: Um, some of you might believe in progressive evolution, some of you might believe in full-on evolution.
SPEAKER_00: Later we're gonna have a wrestling match in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be in the back of the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: If you're passionate about these things, we'll let y'all wrestle.
SPEAKER_00: Um that's not our discussion for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: It's a good discussion.
SPEAKER_00: Not our discussion for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Uh whatever you believe about creation, which we can talk about on another day, happily, here's what's clear.
SPEAKER_00: There was enough ability within God, there was enough wisdom and creative energy and technical intricacy to produce all the particles and all the possibility to maintain all of this as we are hurling through space while the universe is growing.
SPEAKER_00: So back to our first question: how did all this get here?
SPEAKER_00: It got here by the creative expression of God, which John is saying, yeah, that's the logos that the Greek philosophers were talking about.
SPEAKER_00: John, John's saying Jesus is the logos.
SPEAKER_00: This brings us to our second question.
SPEAKER_00: If there is a God, how does he make himself known?
SPEAKER_00: And I've always said for years, if there is a God and he decides to make himself known, no matter what he does, it's weird.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he speaks audibly, that's weird.
SPEAKER_00: There's like weird stuff in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, God becoming a man through a virgin.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've believed this for a long time, some of us.
SPEAKER_00: This is a weird story.
SPEAKER_00: But if there's a God outside of what we see and he decides to make himself known, no matter what it ends up being, it's going to be a weird story.
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic story, but a weird story.
SPEAKER_00: So at first God creates, creates the world and people, and then he speaks.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks principles, he speaks the law of righteousness, the Old Testament, what is right, what is wrong, and then it gets radical when Jesus comes.
SPEAKER_00: This brings us to verses four and five.
SPEAKER_00: In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: So in the right time, the Logos becomes known.
SPEAKER_00: We see over and over and over again, it's God's heart to be known.
SPEAKER_00: And in Jesus, we see that it's God's heart to know us.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4 says that in Jesus' life, this word life, it's not just like good times here.
SPEAKER_00: It's not biological, it's it's it's forever life, it's inner life, it's eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: See, creation says I am magnificent.
SPEAKER_00: The law of the Old Testament says I am righteous and you are not.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus says, I'm here and I love you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll make you righteous.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we've been wondering.
SPEAKER_00: Like even though I'm kind of I'm just I'm just kind of screwed up.
SPEAKER_00: Does God love me?
SPEAKER_00: Like, do I have to earn love?
SPEAKER_00: Do I have to learn acceptance do I have to earn acceptance?
SPEAKER_00: Do I have to earn value?
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're wondering.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're wondering when we look for approval from other people, or we look for approval from by our looks, or we look for approval by achievement or control or power, feeling superior to others.
SPEAKER_00: And we find a version of love, this kind of polluted version of it, but the problem with it is that it keeps asking us for more.
SPEAKER_00: Demands more and more and more.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't shrink darkness, verses four and five.
SPEAKER_00: Don't shrink darkness down to something other people do.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, darkness, oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you know, like strip clubs.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness is like you.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like me.
SPEAKER_00: That's darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Because what darkness is, whether it takes the form of like rebellious hedonism or it takes the form of like moralistic striving to feel accepted by God, that both are darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the relentless pursuit to deliver ourselves from our own inadequacy.
SPEAKER_00: It's being your own God.
SPEAKER_00: That's darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Self-delivering, but never entering God's rest.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 speaks of light.
SPEAKER_00: This word light.
SPEAKER_00: Light, by the way, it's fascinating in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole discussion.
SPEAKER_00: The universe is growing.
SPEAKER_00: The one thing that's constant is light.
SPEAKER_00: It's the thing that we measure everything by.
SPEAKER_00: It's always there, it's always constant.
SPEAKER_00: And this word light in this verse is talking about intelligence, understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the good news God's love, known in Jesus Christ, will absolutely make you smarter.
SPEAKER_00: Like not at not at calculus or physics or stock market, that'd be nice.
SPEAKER_00: Um you'll begin to understand yourself and why you do what you do.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be able to humbly actually with courage face it, confess it, repent of it.
SPEAKER_00: Because you already know you're accepted by God, by what Jesus did, not by who you are or what you do.
SPEAKER_00: So you can you can go into that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You you can you you'll understand yourself more, you'll understand other people more, you'll be able to have compassion on other people.
SPEAKER_00: The light will reveal this self-reliance.
SPEAKER_00: Several years ago, I began to realize that I did not really believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I believe like, I don't know, if we do some percentages, maybe half of it or something.
SPEAKER_00: Because what I believe is that I believe that Jesus forgave me of my sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's half the story.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus forgives you of your sin and he makes you righteous fully, exchange life, his for yours.
SPEAKER_00: So I what I didn't have is that I I was forgetting of my sin, but I didn't have security on a day-to-day basis.
SPEAKER_00: I worried about other people's perceptions of me even more.
SPEAKER_00: I worried about like how spiritual I came off as and how I presented myself and I compared myself to others and how spiritual they were and what they did and how I could maybe I need to do a little bit better and kind of kept score on all this, kept score on other people, how spiritual they were, how spiritual I am, how I'm doing, all of this rather than focusing on what's already been done for me.
SPEAKER_00: So I had little compassion for people.
SPEAKER_00: I was frustrated with people, really, when they behaved as people and not as like Jesus, I was frustrated with people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the result of living out of merit.
SPEAKER_00: This sort of anxiety and fear and comparison.
SPEAKER_00: I understood Jesus was my sin bearer.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand that he was actually my righteousness producer.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 says that the darkness has not understood it.
SPEAKER_00: The unconditional love of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is talking about the darkness, has no power to grasp the light, has no power to overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness does not know what to do with a love that is not earned.
SPEAKER_00: Because all of darkness is about earning.
SPEAKER_00: And light is about receiving.
SPEAKER_00: This is what frees the human heart.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity, freedom, is about resting in what has already been given to you versus you trying to manifest something in this world to feel valued or loved or accepted.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 6 through 9.
SPEAKER_00: There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about John in the coming weeks.
SPEAKER_00: He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.
SPEAKER_00: He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light.
SPEAKER_00: The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
SPEAKER_00: So the two questions for this morning we began with how did all this get here?
SPEAKER_00: The second one, if there's a God, how does he make himself known?
SPEAKER_00: It's the same answer.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Logos.
SPEAKER_00: It's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And in Jesus we find a rest.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: God, we come and we confess that we love to manifest our own value.
SPEAKER_00: We run to other stuff to feel loved or valued or accepted.
SPEAKER_00: And what we know by experience is it's toil.
SPEAKER_00: It's so conditional.
SPEAKER_00: And God, we see this story about you making yourself known.
SPEAKER_00: That you would shine into this darkness of self-reliance.
SPEAKER_00: God, we we we just open ourselves up, our hearts and our minds up, and let your light shine into us that we might have greater freedom by letting go and by resting in you more.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would increase our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.