Jesus the Word: Fulfiller of Promises

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon

Lent Sermon, March 3, 2010

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Do you remember a time that your word was enough? Maybe there was a time that you could go to the bank and you could say, “I’m going to need $100 out,” and they’re going to say, “Well, I’m going to take your word for it that you’re going to come back and pay it.” There was a time when your word is what sealed the business contract.

I remember hearing from my grandma about my grandpa. He used to work for John Deere in Illinois. Sometimes, farmers would come to my grandpa and they would say, “You know what? I can’t really pay for the equipment up front. I just don’t have enough money. But after harvest, I can definitely pay for the equipment.” And my grandma said that he would give him the equipment based upon their word.

There was a time when your word meant something. I don’t remember that time. I can even think about just what we have to go through in order to get telephone service or get our water hooked up. There is pile after pile of paper, “Sign here. Oh, wait. You have to sign on Page 2. You missed the sign on Page 3.” Maybe some of you remember the process you had to go through to buy your house. Paper after paper, giving your signature. Why? Because your word wasn’t good enough.

So as we think about words tonight, as we think about Jesus being the word, we say that He is enough. Even when we don’t believe that our words are enough, when you might not believe my word is good enough and I might not believe that your word is good enough, but there is one who’s word is enough for us.

As we start to look at this gospel of John, something that’s always kind of intrigued me about this gospel is the way he starts. “In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God.” After I repeat it so many times, I know what he’s talking about and I’ve read John 1:1 constantly over time. I know Jesus is being called the word, but why? What is so important about Jesus being this word? Because when we think about words today, they may mean less. So what does it mean that Jesus is the word and what does it mean that He is enough for us?

I think in order for us to kind of understand this, we have to go back and hear what people were hearing when they understood and they saw this word, that Jesus was compared to the word, that He was called the word of God. We might be lost in some kind of interpretive loop if we don’t start to understand what the original hearers heard when they said Jesus is the word.

So for us to do that, what we have to do is we have to go back 500 years before Jesus was even around. And this has to do with some philosophy, so if philosophy scares you, if it’s something you don’t like to hear, just cover your ears, no, don’t cover your ears. Listen to this part. I’m hoping that I can get past it so you can figure out really what it means.

There was this philosopher and what he saw, as he looked at the world, and he said, “You know what, everything in the world seems to be in somewhat of an order.” But he said, “There’s still chaos.” And when he looked around, all he saw in the world was this somewhat of an order but then there was chaos. So for this philosopher, he looked at this and he said, “Well, there’s something that keeps all of this in good order.” And the term that he used to call this thing that keeps it in order is word or, in his language, it was logos. And so in this word keeps everything in good order.

So now continuing on, philosophers over time, the next probably most famous philosopher of all time, Plato, right? Everyone knows Plato, even the kids. You can mold it. You can make animals. No, wrong Plato, but sometimes it’s a good reference point at least. But Plato, the philosopher, he continued on with this understanding of what the word was because he looked at it and he said, “Well, from my eyes, I also see chaos. Everything is messed up.” When he thought about justice, when he thought about mercy, he said, “I don’t see any of that.” And so what Plato did was he said, “Justice is just a word but what you see is actually it exists in another reality.” It’s like ooohh, right? It exists somewhere else. When you think about justice, you don’t really know justice. Justice is out here in another form or another reality. But how do we know about justice? Through logos or the word. Do you see how there’s a continuing theme that’s pulling through these philosophers who are looking at the word as something that is very powerful? For that very early philosopher, it was the word that controlled this chaos. For Plato, this word was able to convey this greater reality.

So here we are with Greeks and Jews. We’re neither Greek, we’re neither Jew. We don’t know what it was like to live in that time. So we’ve looked at the Greeks, so you understand that a lot of their culture was built on these ideas of philosophy. A lot of people got into these philosophical ideas. It doesn’t sound like much fun to us, but they always got into these arguments and these big ideas. And they said the way we can control it is through the word. There is no more chaos when it is controlled through the word.

So what are the Jews thinking? The Jews are not Greek, but we can’t say that they were nonexistent in their own culture. They were affected by the things around them. The Jews later on in history had to learn Greek in order to communicate. They had to know the history of what was going on around them so they could do business. Something particularly that you should know, too, as the Jews went to synagogue, they would hear Hebrew read, right? What would happen, though, is they could never speak it in the divine name of God. They could never say Yahweh. And instead of that, what they would have to do is substitute it with a word. So now they would see the word Yahweh and instead of saying the divine name, what they would do is they would call him Adonai, which means Lord. What they would do is they would call Him the word, logos.

So when you start to see these parallels, when we start to see the Greek’s philosophers, even the people pulling this one word, this logos, this word, we see the Jews as they then attribute it to God. It’s not just an impersonal force. It’s not just what pulls things together. But then this is the reason why John tonight, when he starts off with his gospel again, “In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God.” This didn’t just speak it but people, when they heard that word, they started to say, “There’s meaning here. There’s something going on with John as he says that Jesus is the word.”

And tonight, that’s what we hear. As we continue in this series in Lent, as we try to figure out more and more about who Jesus is, about His characteristics, we hear that tonight He’s the word, not just an impersonal force but we can see that now that John, the apostle, is using this word from the Greeks, from the Romans, they all know what it means, philosophers bringing it in, the Jews then meaning that this word is from God. This word is God. Then now they can start to attribute something else to it.

Now let’s hear this as we kind of have some background information on what it is that somebody might have heard when they started to attribute this Jesus as the word of God. “So in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God.” He was with God in the beginning. So what is John taking you to? He’s taking you right back to the very beginning of scripture, the very beginning of time for us. He’s taking you back to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void.” Sometimes in the Hebrew then it says that the earth was in chaos. So do you see what happens in chaos when the word becomes part of chaos? It stills it. In the midst of chaos, in the midst of everything that’s happening around, the word entered and calmed the chaos.

Jesus is that word that came into the world. When God spoke, things happened. When God said, “Let there be light,” there was. Jesus was that word that created the light, and that’s how it happened. So when we hear this first part, we hear an echo that Jesus, this word, is God. Very intentional for us to hear tonight, very intentional that the gospel of John starts out this way. He wants to take us back. He wants us to see that Jesus is divine. He is God, there in the very beginning, not created, but God Himself.

Let’s continue on to figure out as John then tries to make a next connection for us. So “Through Him all things were made and without Him, nothing was made. In Him was life and that was the light. And that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” So when we look at this passage, we see that John then continues on this road and he starts to say that Jesus, the word, the divine God, went into His creation. But He said once He got into God’s creation, once He came into that darkness, the darkness could not understand Him. The darkness could not overtake Him. So as He continued, as He speaks a little bit about John, “There was a man who was sent from God. His name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through Him, all men might believe.” He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Jesus came to His people, the Jews. And the Jews were looking for something altogether different from Jesus.

They wanted that political figure, right? The one who was going to come over and take over the Romans and the Greeks and everyone who stood in authority over them. But it also wasn’t what the Greeks were looking for. The Greeks might have wanted somebody who was going to be a great orator, somebody who was going to bring about this new philosophy in life. And so yet neither Jew nor Greek found Jesus to be that one. And this is John’s point. He came into that world. People didn’t understand it. They didn’t comprehend it.

But we continue, “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become the children of God, children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will but born of the Father.” And then Verse 14 where John is drawing us back in, he says, “The word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” So the gospel of John starts off by giving us a very strong understanding that this word, Jesus, is divine. But then in Verse 14, he also shows us that this very word that has calmed the chaos came into flesh and dwelled among us. He didn’t dwell among us for His own good. He was God. He dwelled among us so that He might come and save us. He lived through the whole human condition, and then He went and suffered on that cross. He died for each and every one of us and yet we celebrate that word tonight, not because He stayed dead but yet that He rose again. And this is the reason why we can be called Children of God, because of that very reason.

So when we start to think about this word, this word that is called Jesus, we see that He is divine, we see that He is human made flesh. So when we think about it, when we think about what this might mean, God’s ultimate word, God’s word that has calmed the chaos, God’s word that firmly gives us that ultimate reality like Plato talked about, He gives us that reality here and now.

So when we talk about God’s word, when we talk about what it means to us tonight, when we learn about who He is, it’s the ultimate word that brings calmness to us in our world of chaos. He brings authority to us in a world that doesn’t want authority. Our words may mean nothing, but the word Jesus Christ means love and salvation through Him. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church