Getting Real with God

Read John 1:1-28

"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 men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came 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" John1:1-6

The Gospel of John opens with a ‘prologue’ set in eternity, and the words, “In the beginning.” These words echo back to Genesis, when God created the world with his words. John tells us that God’s Word is so powerful, so concrete, that it’s more than a sound; it’s a person.

This Word is given a mouth. He has eyes. God becomes human. This Word is with God and is God. Just as God spoke light into darkness, so God sends the Word of Light into a dark world again. And though we expect God’s Word to be obvious when Jesus appears, most people neither see nor hear God’s voice.

Two big statements: v5, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it” and v12, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”

Tim Chester writes, “light always wins. It’s an unequal contest. Light dispels darkness simply by its presence whereas darkness doesn’t naturally extinguish light. You can’t have a ‘torch-dark’ that casts a beam of darkness into the light. But a torch-light casts a beam of light into the darkness.—no matter how much darkness there is. If you have put your trust in Jesus the light then you are a child of the light. And the darkness has not and will not overcome the children of light”

So, God sends a man named John to prepare his people to see Jesus as the Light and to hear the Word become flesh. John was humble, never drawing attention to himself but instead defining his ministry with the words of Isaiah: “I’m the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (Isaiah 40:3).

RevGeoff

[This devotion comes partly from The Spoken Word website and partly from an advent devotional called The One True Light by Tim Chester]