We’re beginning today a series of sermons on the Gospel of John. Earl Palmer rightly calls this gospel, the intimate gospel. Because that’s what it is. It’s the personal story of John of the personal Christ. We’re going to be doing during the next few weeks, maybe more than a few weeks, we’re going to be doing what I call ‘preaching through this gospel.’ Now this will not be a verse-by-verse or a chapter-by-chapter study of the gospel, but rather we will hit the high spots. In fact, I have an idea that we won’t hit even all the high spots, because the gospel is so rich and so packed with meaning. John begins his gospel with a song, and that’s not a bad idea. We sing about important things – we call that song, the prologue. It’s like an overture to a great symphony. Now I’m not a musician, but I am moved by music. Because of the illness of Drs. Wayne and Susan Ruby Lamb, we received their tickets to the Metropolitan Opera this past Monday night. Now, I need to say right off that opera is not my favorite expression of music. Now that probably reflects more on me than it does on opera, and I admit that. I stayed for 3 ½ hours; the opera went for 4 ½ hours. Even though I am unsophisticated musically, I was moved by Voegner’s music. And soon as the orchestra began, I knew that we were in for a high time of majestic and powerful music. And I thought about the prologue to John’s gospel because I was preparing for the sermon today, because that’s precisely what John did, he gave us a kind of overture to the gospel in this prologue, announcing the themes that he’s going to be dealing with throughout the gospel. And he presented those with stunning power - themes like life and love and light, and he established right off the focus not only of the prologue but the focus of the gospel. The word became flesh – that’s the focus. The incarnation of God in Jesus Christ – Jesus is the focus. So I want to lodge three words in your mind this morning, words around which will turn our thoughts as we seek to discover the heart and soul of this message of John’s prologue, because in this prologue he’s describing who Jesus is. Those three words are – preeminent, powerful, and personal.

The first word is preeminent. The dictionary defines preeminent as distinguished above all others, supremely eminent. Well I guess that is as eminent as you can get. Distinguished above all others, supremely eminent. But that’s a gloss if you don’t really bring it down to earth. So let’s bring it down to earth as we look at who Christ really is, especially when we think of him in terms of preeminence. Listen again to verses 6 through 9. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came for testimony to bear witness to the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light, the true light that enlightens all men was then coming into the world. Now get a perspective on that. John was in a great line of prophets who had blazed the trail of God in human history. People were following John, they were flocking out of everywhere to come to the vicinity around the Sea of Galilee to listen to him preach. His preaching was powerful. It moved the people to repentance and they came to be baptized by him. They even began to think that he was Elijah returned to earth. And then they began to think that he was the messiah. And when they mentioned that to John the Baptist, John the Baptist said, no. And then they said, why then are you baptizing? And John the Baptist answered, I baptize with water unto repentance, but there’s one who’s coming after me that I’m not even worthy to unloose the sandals on his feet. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And then the next day, when John saw Jesus coming, he said to the crowd, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus was preeminent, over the climactic line of prophets in the Old Testament, but there was more than that. When you read on down in the scripture lesson and come to verses 16 and 17, Moses the great law-giver is brought into the picture. Moses, the one whom God had raised up to lead the people out of Egyptian bondage; and, of Moses the gospel writer said, for the law was given through him, through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. This Jesus Christ, this word of God, is preeminent. So friends, don’t ever fall into that trap, even in the name of tolerance and respect, don’t ever fall into that trap of thinking that all religious roads lead to God, and that one path of faith is as good as another. That’s not what the gospels say. That’s not what Jesus said. Listen to him – I am the way, the truth, and the light. No man comes to the Father but by me. We are to be tolerant, of course, to be Christian is to be tolerant. We are to be respectful, of course, to be Christian is to value the right of another person to make his or her own decision, to decide as they will, but we are called to a faith that has no other alternative than to be evangelical. Now listen to that. We are called to a faith that offers no other alternative than to be evangelical. For Jesus Christ is the evangel, he is the good news. Listen again to verse 17 – for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus is preeminent.

The second word is powerful. Those first verses of this prologue say who Jesus is in relation to all creation, and in relation to God. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God, all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. That’s power. John is saying that Jesus was preexistent. He was with the Father at the time of creation, and it was through Jesus that creation came into being and Jesus then became God’s ultimate word. In the beginning was the word. But, if you go on to those next verses, verses 4 and 5, you really have the focus of what I want to talk about this morning. Try to capture the thundering echo of those words – In him was light, and that light was the light of mankind, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out. Get the truth of that in mind. God is entering into the human realm of darkness as a human being. And he is confronting evil in the very domain where evil prevails. And Jesus, in that confrontation, becomes the victor. He is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out. Now let’s focus that truth as sharply as we can by talking about something that we don’t normally talk about, especially in a Methodist church like this. Satan is rampant in the world. Now you may choose any language you want to use, and you probably will choose more general terms and talk about evil and darkness and sin. You choose the language. Jesus personified evil as satan, or the devil. And he referred to him as the ruler of this world. Now I don’t mind what kind of language you use, but what I don’t want you to do as a Christian is to hide behind language and be naïve about evil. One of the greatest powers of evil is in its incognito character. And the first trick of the devil is to try to convince us that he doesn’t exist. Someone asked me the other day if I believed in demon possession. Now there was a day when I would have backed away from that question. Or sidestepped it. Or been tentative in my answer, but not any more. I believe in demon possession. I believe that persons can so give into forces of evil, so give into the unredeemed passions of the flesh, so give into the destructive reign of self-centeredness that they are controlled, possessed if you will, by those forces. Now we must admit that we don’t run into too many people each day who are pronounced in being demon-possessed. And so I want to address an issue that’s more important than demon possession as it relates to evil. But there’s a more serious problem that you and I need to deal with – the dynamism of evil lies in its skill in masquerading as good. Did you get that? The dynamism, the power of evil lies in its skill in masquerading as good. That’s the second trick of the devil. The first is to convince us that the he doesn’t exist, and the second is to hide his hideous face under a cloak of evil, or a cloak of good, and that’s precisely what happened at the cross. We don’t have time to elucidate, but if you look at the forces that coalesce to bring Jesus to the cross, none of those forces were evil within themselves; in fact, all of them were basically good. Rome wanted order and good political situations. The Sadducees were representative of the culture of that day. The scribes represented religion and the moral law. The Pharisees represented religious nationalism, and the zealots wanted to overthrow the yoke of Rome. See, none of these forces were evil; in fact, they were in a very real sense, good. And yet these forces under the guise of good, combined and nailed Jesus to the cross. So satan and evil often comes incognito and comes sometimes disguised as good. Do you want some contemporary examples of it? Look at the social level – legislation that hides the destructive and costly fallout of legalized gambling, under the good that can come from taxes; the ominous threat of a nuclear holocaust hidden behind the noble calls of national security; cutting public expenditures for the poor in a righteous fight against waste in government, and we could go on and on. Look at the personal level – the selfish hoarding of our world’s goods, not even to give 10% of our income to Christ and his church; the selfish hording of our world’s good hidden behind the noble idea of our own or our children’s security; allowing an issue like abortion to be reduced to someone’s right to their own body; selling divorce as an easy option that would be more satisfying to our own needs and our own feelings; putting others down, even trampling on them for the sake of number 1 in the name of self actualization and realizing our human potential. All of us are guilty at some level. We all give into satan’s seductive enticements. And the point I’m making is that people like you and me probably need to not focus on the dramatic expressions of evil in the world, so much as we need to focus on the subtle expressions of sin and evil in our own life. And the answer for both is the same – God has sent Jesus into the world to become the power over evil. In the temptation experience in the wilderness, satan sought to get Jesus to come to terms with him. But Jesus didn’t come into the world to come to terms with evil; Jesus came into the world to do battle with evil and to win. And he did. And he win, won not for himself, because his authority was not in question, he won for you and me. So John repeats the truth in verse 12 – to all who receive him, to them he gave power to become children of God. So don’t forget it friends – greater is the Christ who is within you than satan who is in the world.

And now the final truth – personal. If there’s a more important word in these three words, this one is the most important. Personal. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world is the ultimate in God’s revealing and redeeming activity. The mysterious, I am, now has a name. Do you remember that face-to-back encounter of Moses with God on the mountaintop? It was not a face-to-face encounter; it was a face-to-back encounter. Overwhelmed by the drama and the mystery of God speaking to him, Moses headed off down the mountain to tell the people about it. Now this is an MEV translation, Maxie’s expanded version – he headed off down the mountain to tell the people about it, and then it hit him – how would the people in the valley ever understand the experience that he had had on the mountain? And who would he tell them that he had met up there? Had he forgotten so soon, God had introduced himself out of the burning bush. God had said to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now obviously Moses couldn’t grasp that – a god who names himself as a God of human beings, claiming his identity in relationship to persons. Moses can’t grasp that, nor can we. So he stops dead in his tracks, starts to look around, but remembers that no one can look upon God and live, so he cast the question, sorta sideways over his shoulder, he said, who will I tell them that you are? And the voice came back, tell them I am. Now what sort of answer is that? Tell them I am. What a mystery to grapple with, and that’s the mystery that pervades throughout the Old Testament era, but now the I am has named himself, flesh and bone and blood, the word is incarnated, and the I am is Jesus. Now get the magnificence truth of this. You see, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough for God to name himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had to become an Abraham, an Isaac, or a Jacob. And he did. And his name is Jesus. This is Christianity’s most unique claim – the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Greek word translated dwelt is the same Greek word that we translate tent, so we might translate that passage, he cast his tent among us.

Let me use a story, a simple human story, that will tell us profoundly what God means by this, and with this I close. I hope you have been reading, Dr. Leo Bouscoglia, I think he’s one of the most exciting writers today, and you can pick up any one of his books and be excited about him and about his message, I think. He tells this story in his book, Living, Loving and Learning. He teaches at Southern California University, and one day a student came to him and said, what’s there to do? Well near that campus was a convalescent home, and Dr. Bouscoglia took Joel, that was the student’s name, Joel to that convalescent home. Inside there were a lot of aged people lying around in beds with old cotton gowns on, staring up at the ceiling. You see senility doesn’t always come with age, sometimes it comes because people are not cared for, and sometimes it comes because people don’t feel that they are useful any longer. They went into the convalescent home and Joel saw all those old people and he said, what can I do here? I don’t know anything about gerontology. And Dr. Bouscoglia said, that’s good. Go over and introduce yourself to that woman on that bed. Joel said, you mean that’s all I need to do? And he said, yes. So Joel walked over to the bed and said, hm hm, I’m Joel. The woman looked up at him and for a minute she was suspicious, and then she said, are you a relative? And Joel said, no, I’m not. She said, good, sit down. And he sat down and they started to talk. Oh my goodness, the things she told him. This woman had known so many wonderful things about life, so many wonderful things about love, so many wonderful things about pain, so many wonderful things about suffering, and they talked a long time. Nobody had ever listened to her tell those things, but Joel did. He became personal. And he started going to that convalescent home every week. And soon, all sorts of people would come to talk to Joel, and that day of the week became known in that convalescent home as Joel’s Day. People would gather around and wonderful things began to happen. And Dr. Bouscoglia said that the greatest triumph of his educational career, this is one of the great educators of our day, he said the greatest triumph of his education career came one day when, without knowing it, he walked out of office onto the campus of USC and saw Joel coming along, like a pied piper with 30 old men and women in parade behind him, hobbling to a football game. Now don’t think I’m being trite now. God sent Jesus into the world to be the pied piper for the human parade. He pitched his tent among us. He became personal. The divine became human in order that the human might become divine. Jesus, who was rich, became poor in order that we might be rich. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin in order that we might be saved from sin. Jesus died in order that we might live. He is preeminent, he is powerful, but most of all, he’s personal; and he wants to be personal with you today. I think we can pray on that.