In the Beginning – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

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 all mankind the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it there was a man sent from god whose name was john he came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all might believe he himself was not the light he

came only as a witness to the light the true light that gives light to everyone 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 did not who did receive 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 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 son who came from the father full of grace and truth the word of the lord interestingly enough there's a season in the christian year called epiphany and it um it it's not as well known as lent or advent uh it la it's actually it it ordinarily is understood to be between advent and lent because in advent we're looking at the birth of jesus and lent we're looking at the death of jesus and so epiphany is actually

a period of time to look at the life of jesus which by the way for those of you with a college education you already knew that that's what happens between the birth and the death of somebody is the life and uh and during during the dark time of the year epiphany means there's a light that has happened that jesus christ has come into a dark world and and during those uh months between the these months and the dark times of the year we look at jesus we just look at his life his words his deeds

and we're going to do this for two months we're going to be looking at one gospel john and what john shows us about the life of jesus the words and the deeds of jesus so we start with this very very famous first chapter it's also called the prologue of john and this it is so rich it takes a little pressure off me because one of the things that ministers want to do is we always say if i'm going to preach on a text i got to get all the good stuff out to give it to

people well there's too much good stuff to give you so i can't do it all not in the time allotted what i can do is give you a top-level look at the outline of it and the basic uh gist of it which is powerful enough so let's outline it 14 verses right verses 1 to 4 gives us a claim verses 5 to 11 show us the widespread rejection of that claim and verses 12 13 and 14 give us an answer to those objections and rejection of the claim so there's the claim there is the rejection

of the claim and the answers to the objections right okay first of all let's look at verses one two and three four uh and in here we have a claim this is very famous because it's about the word and we learn five things about the word the word is a person he the word is a divine person the word was god he's divine now there's a danger at this point to say okay so the word was with god and the word was god well that means that this is a divine ish person a kind of

person with lots of uh divine hat you know you know a kind of spiritual person no no this is an uncreated divine person because it says in verse 3 through him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made you know what that says everything that has a beginning got a beginning through him anything with a beginning gotta be getting through him which means he doesn't have a beginning so he's the uncreated creator so he's a person he's a divine person he's an uncreated person he's the source of all life verse

4 in him was life that's where life comes from and lastly verse 14 reveals that this is jesus the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory the world became flesh now uh it would be it would take all night it would take you know five weeks it would take a year to just unpack those five claims about jesus but there's a there's a there's a central issue central claim that's being made here that can only be made if we take a little bit of time to think it out because the

main thing that john is saying about jesus is not just that he's divine and he's personal and he's this and he's that but that he is the word and the greek word that john uses here very deliberately is uh when he wrote this in greek is that jesus is the logos l-o-g-o-s in the beginning was the logos and the word was you know the logos was with god the logos was god and jesus christ is that the logos became flesh and dwelt among us now he was using john was deliberately choosing a word that had

a lot of philosophical cultural and linguistic freight to it and unless you understand what that freight is and we do a little bit of background here we can't understand the startling nature of the radical nature of this claim now to understand it it goes like this uh the greek philosophers looked at nature and they saw balance they saw balance they saw order they saw harmony and they believed that behind that order in harmony was a cosmic spiritual principle of that order that they called the logos one um one here's a philosophy book just a textbook

that says this about it he says the logos for the greeks was the impersonal harmonious divine structure of the cosmos as a whole in other words the greek said look look at all this order where does this order come from there's some kind of principle some kind of divine structure some absolute uh cosmic order that the world is a kind of out uh working from now uh okay this has been very intellectual so far right very esoteric very elevated don't some of you feel really good about yourself just for being here at a place where

we talk like this isn't that well just let's bring this down to earth and if you're going to understand the logos this philosophical concept i got to talk to you about my space heaters uh my building is undergoing the uh the under is enduring the uh the tribulation called local law 11 local law 11 means as you know the every five years you have to inspect the facade of the buildings to see whether the bricks need or the mortar needs to be repointed or anything needs to be done and so when this decided oh yes

you do need that work done then they put these guys up there on scaffolds and and they put scaffolding up there and they're on these uh platforms they go up and down and they they fix the outside of your building in our case when they're doing that we're not allowed to have our heaters on for various reasons so they give us space heaters the management of the of the building is the space heaters now these space heaters comes with come with direction manuals and you know what's in the direction manuals the logos of the space

heater the direction manual tells you what the space heater was made to do what it was designed to do see the word logos doesn't just mean word it has a a broader range than that it actually means purpose or reason logo logic say logos logic the reason for existence well these these the uh the directions the space heaters the directions say here's what the space heaters were built to do this is their reason for their existence here's what they were made for and so it says don't plug it into this source plug it into this

source it says don't put it over there put it over here because it was made to do this but not to do this and what the directions are actually doing is they're urging me to align my use of the space heater with their design because if i don't use it in alignment with its design at the very best i just won't get the proper value out of it at the very worst i will burn down my apartment so the greek said what if the universe has a logos what if life has a logos what if

there is a um a reason for life that we all have to align our lives with and then it goes well and then we can be content and if we don't align ourselves with it if we don't align ourselves with the ultimate reality behind the universe what's happening we'll not be content or at worst we'll burn our lives down we'll burn our lives down and so the greeks said that's it there is there's a there's an absolute truth behind the universe that we have to get our cells aligned with this and and of course now

there was just a difference of opinion about how to do that or even what it was the stoics as you can guess already from the their name the stoics was a particular school of greek thought very powerful and the stoics believe that the way in which you aligned yourself with the with the the the universe ultimate reality was that you accepted everything that happened anything that happened no matter how bad it was you didn't let it get to you you just said that's it that's life so you're aligning yourself by by summoning up all of

your self-control to always accept everything that happens and never let it get to you see that's one way of aligning yourself with the universe now most people didn't take such ambitious ways of doing it there are people who said well the the logos the the reason for life is actually to make the world a better place for the people who come afterwards so you need to make the world a better place other people would say no the reason the meaning of life is to find what makes you happy and be happy that's the epicurean so

they all have very different views on what it meant to align yourself with ultimate reality what it meant to bring your life into alignment with ultimate reality and then the earthquake and it was an earthquake john chapter 1 was an earthquake in this book on philosophy history of philosophy that i just read to you from i'm going to read to you again it's not written by a christian it's written by a french philosophy professor he's an atheist but he just basically says what what what histories uh people who who know the history of of thought

human thought have said and that is up until this time both greek philosophy and eastern religions believed that that the heart of the universe was basically impersonal there was a kind of cosmic spirit behind things but the universe was basically impersonal and what it meant to align yourself with it with ultimate reality was to find what the the natural order of things and align your life with it it meant being a moral person or a strong person or a brilliant person or something like that but along comes john with all that background he starts right

out by saying oh yes there is a logo so in the beginning there was the logos and everything that happened every everything was designed through the logos and everything that existed come through the logos but this logos is not a cosmic principle it's not an abstract set of standards it's a person to be known and loved not something to be deduced through contemplation not something to be aligned with by summonsing up the blood and becoming this incredibly brilliant self-controlled person but someone to it's a it's a person a divine person that we are to know

and love and then we're connected to the heart of ultimate reality this is revolutionary nobody ever did anything like said anything like this before and this book that i that is a kind of a popular history view it's actually a good book to read it's called a brief history of thought and it's uh it's basically you can you know buy it it's relatively brief and it's pretty popular level accessible though the guy is a scholar and here's what he says i'll start back where i'd already read he says the logos for the the greeks was

the impersonal harmonious divine structure of the cosmos as a whole but to the horror of the greeks the christians maintained that the logos in other words the cosmic principle was not the harmonious order of the world but was a single unique personality one outstanding individual namely christ you see up to now everybody always says the heart of ultimate reality is impersonal suddenly along comes christianity so you know the heart of elementary reality is personal it's the tri-personal god it's father son and holy spirit knowing and loving each other and creating the world and this is

what he says what what the author says was so revolutionary about that it says by resting its case on a definition of the human person and an unprecedented idea of love christianity had an incalculable effect upon the history of ideas to give just one example it is quite clear that without this christian re-evaluation of the human person the philosophy of human rights to which we subscribe today would never have established itself now we can't go into that that's a tangent but you see what he's saying he says the i he says the fact is today

we talk about human rights and we believe that every human being has dignity and every human person is important because that idea came from christianity and it came on the basis of his reinterpretation of ultimate reality this is a atheist french philosopher who understood that but what john was trying to do at that point was not actually change the history of human thought he was trying to say get rid of this elitist idea that if you're going to be aligned with the heart of the universe you need to contemplate and be a philosopher you need

to be a stoic you need to you need to uh have this have this incredible self-control you see that's only for that's only for the the elites that's only for the most moral and the most self-disciplined and most brilliant people but the gospel is for everybody because if the logos is not a principle but a person that you can know and love anybody can do that and then you are aligned with the heart of reality you are living along the grain of the universe wow so that's the claim wasn't that a claim wow but very

realistically john says that that claim though has been influential of course is widely rejected and the next section verses 5 5 to 11 talks about that and says the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world he was in the world and though and through the world though the world was made through him excuse me the world did not recognize him he came to that which was his own and his own did not receive him now again there's so much to say in here but i can only give you the basic

idea what this is telling us is that there's been widespread rejection of the idea that jesus christ is the logo sees the ultimate reality behind the universe and that to get aligned with life and to find the reason for life is to know him as a person into a personal relationship is many people have rejected that but what's interesting about this these few verses is it tells us there's really two ways to reject it and they to understand that you have to look at this first verse in this past this section verse five the light

shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it now some of you know that that translation that other translations translated differently if you've heard this read before and it's read like every christmas for example sometimes you've heard some translations say the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it some translations say has not overcome it some say has not understood it in fact the old king james bible used to say oh i said this he still says this if you buy it excuse me the king james bible said the

light shineth in the darkness but the darkness comprehendeth it not okay so the darkness doesn't comprehend it doesn't understand it or it doesn't overcome it well which is it what's interesting is again this is the second time i'm going to show you where he does this john very carefully chooses a greek word that is very ambiguous in fact don carson a friend of mine who's written a commentary on john says about this verse in this word he says this is a masterpiece of planned ambiguity isn't that interesting now you might say i don't get it

you know here's a word that has a it's a kate laven it's a word that has a semantic range that can mean to overcome or to understand and you say those two things don't seem to be um related but they are if you think of a an english word that has the same semantic range is the word master to me what does it mean to master somebody well it could be that you just beat him in a game you know i mastered him on the golf course i beat him see but it could also mean

i figured him out i've understood him i've read all of his books and i have mastered him you see the word it can mean what overcome or understand and so when it says that there's two ways to reject jesus christ in a sense to just be hostile to him and reject him like that or to think that you're following him but not get it that's very interesting very interesting let me show you how that could play out or how it does play out today on the one hand we have plenty of people who completely overtly

are hostile they reject the idea not only that jesus christ is the logos and the cosmic reality behind the universe not only do they reject christianity but they reject the whole idea of an absolute truth of a logos they the very idea of absolute truth or moral absolutes or a logos that we have to conform ourselves to that whole idea is you know is is rejected and in new york city that's probably the default mode for most people and the idea therefore is that nobody has you have to decide what is right or wrong you

don't just figure out there's some moral absolutes or absolute truth everybody has to figure it out for themselves that's the default mode christian smith a prominent sociologist has written a number of really excellent books in which he studies the moral and spiritual and religious views of younger younger adults in america he's done a book on teenagers he's done a book on men and women in their 20s who live in america and he studied their moral and spiritual religious beliefs uh you might find that interesting since some of you just from looking at you look like

you might actually belong in that category that age category he says and his researchers discovered that there that the moral beliefs of younger americans in general not all of course but in general have three characteristics would you like to know what they are okay i thought you would okay three characteristics number one have strong moral feelings they're very upset if uh rights are violated they're very they feel very strongly about uh justice about treating people and and people groups fairly they're very concerned about the poor so they number one they have strong moral feelings number

two they're moral relativists they say morality is relative um even though they don't use these words the average younger american believes that morality is all person specific and culturally relative you know what those words mean person specific means everybody has the right to decide what is right or wrong for you and no one has the right to tell you what's right or wrong it's person-specific and it's culturally relative some cultures have their mores and their customs and their ethics and you cannot tell them that your cultural values are superior to theirs and that they need

to change theirs so one person shouldn't tell another person what's right or wrong for them one culture shouldn't say our values are superior to your values so 0.1 they have strong moral feelings point two they're they're rel they are moral relativists and point three they believe morality is self-evident because if you ask a younger american well why do you think that's wrong christian smith brings this out it's very interesting if you ask a younger american why do you think this is wrong the younger american will always say well it's i i just know it is

and everybody i know knows it is so morality they have strong moral feelings they're relativists and they believe morality is self-evident now the the the researchers concluded two things from their research number one this is incoherent and the inc i mean this the third one is incoherent on its own you know just the idea that all morality is self-evident my goodness people are arguing all the time of course it's not self-evident but the first two points are very incoherent if you hold them together and here's the reason why he says when you ask a younger

american something like this this is what the researchers would ask give them cases okay you know that there's a country over here where women aren't allowed to drive women can't have driver's licenses husbands don't want their wives to drive want them to be dependent on them and here's another country over here where husbands make women do this and that sort of thing it's okay what do you think about that well okay the younger american always says that's wrong so you're saying that your cultural values are superior to theirs crickets because you see if you have

strong moral feelings but you're a relativist you don't believe there's a logos you don't believe there's any absolute truth that actually gives you the right to say somebody is wrong if morality is relative you might have a basis for strong moral feelings but you have no way of saying to somebody else what you're doing is wrong you have strong moral feelings and you can't do a thing about them there is no basis for a program of justice it's totally incoherent and not only that by the way the researchers also said to not believe in a

logos and not believe in absolute truth is not only incoherent but it's inconsistent because they pointed out that most younger americans are very concerned about the poor but they're unbelievably consumeristic in how they spend money on themselves so if you don't if you just completely you know reject the whole idea that there's absolute truth it leads to what incoherence and inconsistency well what's the solution ah you say well there is a logos there is an absolute truth so you decide what that is do the ten commandments the golden rule whatever it is you decide what

that is and then you live up to it like the greeks you conform to it you align with it you you live in accordance with it then that gets you away from the incoherence and the inconsistency of people who completely reject the idea that there is a logos okay so what you do is you just uh you just adopt it but no now is that really the solution it's true that the opposite of relativism is moralism in which you decide there are moral absolutes and you decide i'm going to live according to them and then

i know i'm a good person then the world will be a better place but i'd like to show you a moralism is a problem to just adopt the moral absolutions i'm going to live according to them is oppressive do you know why it's oppressive it's oppressive in two ways if you adopt moral absolute values and say i'm going to live according to them it'll either oppress you it'll bring oppression by oppressing you in your heart it'll crush you you won't be able to live up to it you'll always be trying to live up and it's

just a crushing weight so moralistic moralism can either bring oppression by crushing you or if you live up to them can turn you into an oppressor you know why because you start to look around and you say hey i'm living up to the moral standards i'm not in prison i'm not poor i'm working hard why are you in prison why are you poor why what's going on here and so you become a bigot you become self-righteous you become a pharisee see moral absolutes if you just say i'm going to align my life with them by

just trying hard like the greeks and living up to them absolutes become oppressors they either will oppress you if you don't live up to them or you'll they'll impress other people through you if you do i said i was going to tell you two things about moralism a it's oppression and b it is not the way to embrace jesus christ see when jesus christ came to his own who with his own back then verse 11 it says he came to his own and his own received him not who were his own he didn't go out

to the world he was jewish he came to the jews and they didn't comprehend him they didn't get him they couldn't figure him out why well they looked at him hanging out with a prostitutes and and and and tax collectors and sinners and they heard him say to the pharisees the prostitutes and the whoremongers get into the kingdom of god before you and they said that doesn't understand i don't get it are you trying to say you don't have to be a good person they didn't get him they didn't comprehend him they didn't understand him

and that's the other way to reject him because you see if you're either a relativist or a moralist if you're a relativist you might be overtly rejecting and hostile to the idea of christianity but if you're a moralist you may think you're you may think by adopting and being a good person that you're following jesus but you're actually not you don't understand him and you're still rejecting him so what's the solution here's moralism here's relativism i said relativism is incoherent and inconsistent but moralism is a vehicle for oppression is there any hope is there any

way through is there any way forward yes it's the gospel it's been there for 2 000 years let me just before i show you what it says about the gospel in the last three verses let me just put this in cultural context to see where we are as a culture we're stuck why because on the one hand we have rejected the idea basically as a culture that there's absolute truth because we see it as oppressive i grew up in america at a time when when i was a kid here's what we were all told you

know who the bad people are who are trying to blow us up come on back in the 1950s and 60s who are the bad people trying to blow us up the communists and guess what they didn't believe in god see so religious people were good people and non-religious people were bad people but now who's trying to blow us up everybody who's the p who are the people who we say are going to try to blow us up religious fanatics moralists people who think they've got the absolute truth and so if you see if you and

a lot of you were i can tell just by looking at you a lot of you have been raised where the bad people were the religious fanatics and what that means is as a culture we are rejecting the idea of absolute truth rejecting the idea uh you know rejecting moralism but we said relativism is incoherent and inconsistent so what are we going to do here's what we're going to do it's the gospel and the gospel is so beautifully put right here look at this just take three minutes with me you know what if you have

to go to some place to explain the gospel to somebody you couldn't do better than this there are other places that are probably equally as good but i don't think there's any that exceeds this these three verses to all who did receive him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of god children born not of natural descent or of human decision or of a husband's will but born of god for the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory glories of the only begotten of

the father full of grace and truth look first of all this tells us that becoming a child of god is a gift is a gift see it's true that at one sense all human beings are god's children i mean paul says that in acts 17. he's talking to the greek philosophers by the way it's interesting he's talked to the greek philosophers and he says we are his offspring you say which means we're all god's offspring but in the sense that god is our progenitor in the sense that for example we could say henry ford is

the father of the model t but when the bible usually talks about what it means to be god's children the bible reserves this for people who've received it as a gift and here's the reason why it's such a gift think of your relationship as an employer as an employee with your boss or supervisor if you have one if you are a employee and you have a boss and you misbehave and you keep misbehaving eventually you'll be fired why the relationship between you and your boss is one is based on your performance it's based on performance

and cost benefit and if you're not performing and you're costing them more than you're giving them they're going to have to fire you but if you're a good father and you've got some children and one of them starts to misbehave and keeps misbehaving you know what happens if you're a good father you start to love that child more intensely the misbehavior kind of evokes and intensifies your concern and your and your and your love for that child why because a father child relationship is not a consumer relationship it's not based on cost benefit it's not

based on a performance it's based on a covenant it's based on unconditional commitment to that child if you try to go in to see the president of the united states without an appointment you'll be stopped and if you try to run toward the president of the united states without an appointment you'll be shot in fact if you try to run toward the president of the united states even with an appointment my guess is you'll be shot but if you're his little boy or his little girl if you are his child you can just run right

in daddy does the bible really have the audacity to say that it's possible to have that kind of relationship with god if so it's a gift it has to be received and you know how it can be procured only this way the word became flesh and dwelt and here is where john for the third time uses a very unusual and carefully chosen greek word because in the greek it says the word became flesh and tabernacled a completely strange use of the word the word became flesh and tabernacled among us and we beheld his glory now

you know in the old testament you went to the tabernacle ordered the temple to see the glory of god but you know what was going on in his temples and tabernacles see see all around the world in some ways you everywhere everywhere in the world there have been temples why because people instinctively know there's a gap between god and us god is great we're small god is holy and perfect we're flawed everybody knows there's a gap every country has known there is a guy so you have temples and what do you have in temples temples

are places where the gap is bridged by people who are in there doing offerings and sacrifices and chanting and rituals and priests you're bridging the gap do you know what this means jesus is our tabernacle jesus is our temple he's the ultimate priest because he laid down the ultimate sacrifice he gave his life he paid for our sins he bridged the gap permanently which means temples aren't necessary dick lucas old anglican preacher i he he he tells this story this is just an imaginary i can't you probably some of you heard me say it i

just love it so much he says if you want to understand the gospel particular says just imagine an early christian talking to his roman neighbor and the roman neighbor says hey i hear you're a christian that's interesting where's your temple and the christian would say we don't have temples jesus is our temple what no temples well where do your priests operate and the early christians would say we don't really have priests jesus is our priest what says the neighbor well where are the sacrifices offered to atone for sin well we don't need any more sacrifices

jesus is our sacrifice and so the roman neighbor would say no temples no priests no sorry what kind of religion is this and dick lucas says the answer is the world had never seen any kind of religion like this before it's really not a kind of religion like any other religion has ever been because now we are given the right to become children of god by grace and you know what this means everybody that is a non-oppressive absolute here's the answer to all the riddles we can't live without absolutes incoherence inconsistency but absolutes are vehicles

for oppression they oppress us or with through them we oppress other people but what if this is your absolute what if this is the ultimate reality of the universe a man dying for his sins a man dying for his enemies dying for our sins sacrificing himself he's dying on the cross and he's praying for the forgiveness for his enemies if you take that into the center of your life can that make you an oppressor now look if salvation is by grace through the sacrifice of jesus christ on the one hand what that does it doesn't

oppress you because it's grace it can't crush you you don't have to live up to it you just receive it but it can't turn you into an oppressor because you've received it by grace so how can you feel superior to anybody else and then man dying for his enemies how can you make that the center of your life and then become an oppressor oh you say but haven't christians been oppressors haven't christian churches been on the side of oppression and the answer is yes but only because they didn't comprehend it they didn't comprehend him they

didn't get it they didn't hear it they didn't understand it they thought they were following it they were rejecting it this is what the world needs this is the light that the world needs the world needs to know how to align your life with ultimate reality through a love relationship with jesus christ that's what that's what people of the world need most of all but even if they don't believe the gospel they need people who live next to them they need people all around them who believe the gospel because the gospel is a non-oppressive absolute

it helps you avoid the inconsistency and avoid the incoherence but it turns you not in an oppressor the early christians when they got it when they comprehended it they invented orphanages they invented hospitals they stopped infanticide of girls they changed everything comprehend it become children of god and be part of that change let us pray our father how grateful we are that your son was sent into this dark world as our light and though this darkness has resisted it and has not understood it it has not overcome it your gospel is still growing in the

world and i pray lord that everybody hearing this tonight would more deeply comprehend the meaning of the gospel and were therefore more thoroughly become ambassadors for your son and if there's anybody here who's never understood what it means to become a child of god i pray that they would get that right as soon as possible as they believe in his name and are born again not of natural descent it can't be something you're born into and not of human decision it's not something we can earn but born of grace and born of god we thank

you and ask that you'd pray answer our prayers through jesus in his name we pray amen thank you for listening today gospel life's ministry is supported by generous partners all over the world your gifts allow us to share the gospel message with millions of people through our podcast radio and other channels including here on youtube we're seeing god change lives through the increasing reach of this ministry so thank you for your part in it if you'd like to make a gift today go to gospel and life dot com slash youtube and we'll send you one

of my books as thanks for your gift thank you again for your generous support because the gospel really does change everything [Music] you