John 1:10-13

00:00:00:27 – 00:00:23:39
Clint Loveall
Hey, thanks for joining us as we start, Monday together as we continue through the gospel of John. We are in the 10th verse of the first chapter, kind of slow going here on the front end. And it that’s partly our approach, and partly because John is packing a lot into these words, into these sentences. Today is no exception to that.

00:00:23:39 – 00:00:53:06
Clint Loveall
So let me read a couple of verses and then we’ll come back. There’ll be a lot to go through. Verse ten, he was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

00:00:53:18 – 00:01:21:57
Clint Loveall
So let’s stop there for a minute. Michael. He here is a reference to the word that’s a masculine reference. And so, the word is masculine word. The light is a neutral word. So we know that not not that it’s different for John, but specifically here. We’re going back to that idea of the logos, the word he was in the world and the world came to be through him, yet the world did not know him.

00:01:21:57 – 00:01:54:49
Clint Loveall
And this is a probably an important place to unpack a word here, because John is going to use it frequently. In John, the word world carries significance. When John says world, he doesn’t have in mind a generic reference to the planet or to a society, or even to humanity. John has in mind the the, the place where sinfulness reigns and resides.

00:01:54:54 – 00:02:23:39
Clint Loveall
World is opposed to spirit. World is opposed to God. So God is at odds with the world. Though God wants to save the world, redeem the world, but but I would say, Michael, I and I think pretty clearly the text will bear this out on many, many occasions. World is a kind of negative term for John and and I think it’s important because it’s going to come up so often.

00:02:23:43 – 00:02:46:51
Michael Gewecke
You’re going to have a lot of these dualities, these kind of opposing tensions throughout the entire gospel. This is, I think, a classic example of if we just had light and darkness, how these things are oppositional forces. And here you do have the reality that there’s an opposition between the world and the spirit. There’s also an opposition between the word and the world.

00:02:46:51 – 00:03:08:34
Michael Gewecke
There’s an amazing, gift that we have in the text like this to see the way in which the the world is the context. It’s the place. It’s the canvas upon which God enters. So. So the world is able for God to enter the incarnation. Jesus’s coming as the word into the world is a beautiful gift to the world.

00:03:08:34 – 00:03:32:52
Michael Gewecke
But the world is like oil and water to the divine. It it separates quickly. And so here we see this, that though the word is in the world, and the world even came to being through his presence and through his power, his, awareness or the knowledge of his revelation is not universal throughout the world. This is John.

00:03:32:52 – 00:03:54:34
Michael Gewecke
Clint, setting up the problem. The problem is that God has revealed we just actually last week, as we were finishing the study there, we were talking a little bit about how, we got this witness language in verse seven, the testifying to the light. Well, just a couple sentences later, now we have that the world hasn’t heard the testimony.

00:03:54:34 – 00:04:22:03
Michael Gewecke
It not just hearing as in like as the words were spoken. It has not received the testimony. It’s not been convicted by it. It’s not been transformed or converted. So the world remains the world because though the word has entered into it, the order and framework of God’s creative power is at work in the world. The world has not seen it, and this is the distinguishing feature of the way that John tells Jesus’s story.

00:04:22:03 – 00:04:40:39
Michael Gewecke
You have those who get it and you have those who don’t. And there’s many different varieties of that throughout the entire book. But Clint, over and over and over again, we’re going to see these kind of dualities because it represents what happens when the divine meets the created and when the created doesn’t see the divine for what is it?

00:04:40:39 – 00:04:47:24
Michael Gewecke
It creates this tension, this problem that is going to live with us throughout the entire reading of this gospel.

00:04:47:27 – 00:05:12:29
Clint Loveall
Not not to jump ahead, but many people know that verse in John three For God so loved the world. And it what’s important to understand about that is that God chooses to love a world that doesn’t always love him back. And so it is important, and we’ll try to highlight it when we get to it. But the word and the concept of world for John is not neutral.

00:05:12:34 – 00:05:39:45
Clint Loveall
It is at times very far reaching and at other times subtle. But there is a reality opposed to God, or at least at very least ignorant of God. And and that’s the next word that we see here. Just a couple words later, the world did not know him. And I want you to to maybe make yourself a note in your Bible, or if you’ve got a notebook, you’re doing this study with us.

00:05:39:50 – 00:06:04:42
Clint Loveall
The word know. The concept of knowing is fundamentally important. Throughout this gospel, Jesus is going to know things just by virtue of being Jesus. There will be other people who know things. There will be people who don’t know. They didn’t know what this meant. They didn’t know what the the idea of knowledge, and knowledge might not even be the right word.

00:06:04:42 – 00:06:38:20
Clint Loveall
Michael. Maybe more something like awareness, revelation even that there are people who understand what is happening and there are people who don’t. And the world is full of people who don’t. The world did not know him. And so again, John gives us this separation with this concept of knowing those who do and those who don’t. And the interplay between them in this gospel is, is really interesting and really important.

00:06:38:25 – 00:06:59:33
Michael Gewecke
It’s it’s tempting to get ahead of where we are. And I’m going to try to restrain myself a little bit here. But I do think it’s worth knowing that John is already giving us some of the background of what makes Jews Jesus’s interactions with the Jews and the Jewish leaders so contentious. Because, as you see it here, Jesus is in the world, and that that world is cosmic.

00:06:59:33 – 00:07:29:18
Michael Gewecke
That world includes the Roman Empire. That includes all of the pagans, those who worship other gods. But but this is really, really an amazing turn. And the text he comes to what’s his own and read this his own people did not accept him. That the Jews who become this major flash point throughout the entire book of John, that they are in the most deplorable position within the context of John, because they are the ones closest to Jesus.

00:07:29:18 – 00:07:51:03
Michael Gewecke
They’re the ones who should be best able to see that revelation. They should be best able to understand how it’s the fulfillment of all these things that they they believe and worship the creator and they’re missing with the creator takes on. This is the tension that gets built into John right from the very beginning. And, you know, biblical scholars, we mentioned this in the introductory materials.

00:07:51:03 – 00:08:12:43
Michael Gewecke
There are some debates about how far should you read these kind of divisions and, and where does it take us wrong and outside of what John originally intended. But that’s not the conversation to it for today. The point is just simply, the world misses Jesus. We aren’t some level get that, but the people who should have been first to recognize him, they also miss Jesus.

00:08:12:43 – 00:08:25:31
Michael Gewecke
And John wants it to be clear from the very beginning that though there is testimony to the light, to the truth, not everyone, even the people who you would think would be first to get it are going to understand it right.

00:08:25:46 – 00:09:00:34
Clint Loveall
And this is, you know, this is very important. And to some extent, this is the story of all the Gospels. John’s not unique in this, but John does paint this theme, I think, particularly strongly to all who received him, who believed in his name and noticed that that’s important because his own people did not accept him. The very one who should be celebrated, who should be welcomed, and who should be worshiped is rejected.

00:09:00:34 – 00:09:28:37
Clint Loveall
And the idea of rejection is important as well. In the Gospel of John, there are those who should accept. There are those who should know, they should see, but instead they are blind and they are unknowing, and therefore they reject the word. They reject the light. However, to those who believe in his name, he gave the power to become children of God.

00:09:28:42 – 00:09:53:44
Clint Loveall
And this is a divine decision. It’s not of their own action. It’s not of their blood, their heritage. It’s not of their ethnicity. It’s not of their religious background. It is their belief that opens the door for them to become the children of God. Now, it’s easy to read that through a Jewish Gentile thing. It’s probably a little early historically to do that in the Gospel of John.

00:09:53:49 – 00:10:24:45
Clint Loveall
But already here in the opening verses we have this idea of the breadth that that Jesus opens a door much wider than we anticipate, and those who should come to him do not. But any who do are welcomed and are transformed, not because they decided, not because they obeyed, not because of something they did or contributed, but because God honors their belief.

00:10:24:45 – 00:10:41:29
Clint Loveall
God responds to their belief. And so, John can’t. And you will notice consistently when John is telling a story, John cannot help but preach sermons within it. And we were seeing that, I think, start to happen here.

00:10:41:43 – 00:11:06:07
Michael Gewecke
So every gospel is written to a particular people at a particular time. There’s a purpose. And I think one of the things that makes John so special, so unique, so powerful, is that it’s clear that this book is written so that those people who have no connection to the story of Christ might be able to themselves believe what Jesus has done for them.

00:11:06:07 – 00:11:27:13
Michael Gewecke
And that’s what makes belief such a pivotal word throughout this entire book. And make no mistake about it, it’s not accidental that we’re only in verse 13, and this word has already been given to us, that to all who received him, every, every response to the revel of revelation, of God is gratitude. It’s the reception of the gift.

00:11:27:18 – 00:12:10:42
Michael Gewecke
And then you have this. They are the ones who believed in his name. That is not just a history circle anecdote. It’s not just saying, by the way, this is about this book is going to be about the people who believe Jesus. This is actually a kind of preaching moment where John is creating within the introduction of the book, this this moment, this space, this opportunity for us, the reader, to entertain the idea that we too might come to believe that, that those who believed then are witnesses who testify to the to the people now, who ourselves might believe that this book has been written not just to be locked in a library so that

00:12:10:42 – 00:12:35:33
Michael Gewecke
we can have history. This book was written as a living testament to the very one who came into the world. And you see how all of this plays together. In some ways, I think it’s like the building of a symphony. It’s harmony upon harmony upon harmony. All of these are interconnected in this book. For that sole purpose of inviting us, the reader, into to the revelation of who Christ is.

00:12:35:33 – 00:12:50:06
Michael Gewecke
And so when we get to a word like believe here, I think we need to understand it as not just describing what other people did, but also a kind of invitation for what this book might do within us.

00:12:50:11 – 00:13:21:43
Clint Loveall
So, I think a case could be made, Michael, this I don’t know if I’d want to try to argue this with Bible scholars, but I think on at a practical level, one could make a case that the word believe is the most important word. In the Gospel of John. We encounter it here. I already mentioned John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that all who what, who believe in him.

00:13:21:57 – 00:13:46:54
Clint Loveall
And if you skip to the end of this gospel, at the very end of chapter 20, John says, Jesus did many other things in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

00:13:46:58 – 00:14:16:53
Clint Loveall
So in the very summary of the purpose of this book, John highlights this word believe and many of the stories that John tells live in the tension between belief and unbelief. We’re going to see it with Nicodemus and see it with the man born blind. We’re going to see it with the Pharisees that this I think I really do think it might be the most important framework if you were going to dig into this gospel, and I’ll let you all make your own conclusions about that.

00:14:17:06 – 00:14:29:31
Clint Loveall
But we’re going to run into that over and over and over again, because for John, the purpose of telling the Jesus story is so that others will believe in Jesus.

00:14:29:36 – 00:14:55:24
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. I think that some of the details of other gospels, like in Mark, you have a very disjunctive kind of story, which everything is just so quick and, and fast transitions. And then the ending of it is even a little jarring in a book like that. Clint. You can see how that would present to an early church, a persecuted church, even that.

00:14:55:35 – 00:15:48:27
Michael Gewecke
Then Jesus himself lived at the very edge of difficulty and persecution that that even the Son of God experienced these twists and turns in the Gospel of John, the Jesus that we see consistently throughout the entire book is the one who is that is fully human. As he I, approaches, embraces, lives in the world. And yet John makes it clear to pull back the curtain, so to say, and to show us the full divinity, the full revelation, the full spiritual maturity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, if indeed the book of John is the last gospel written, it shows for how deep and complex and beautifully connected this theology already is in the early

00:15:48:27 – 00:16:13:30
Michael Gewecke
church, that it’s not an accident that we see in this book Jesus, who is the perfect encapsulation of God’s greatest power, clothed in humanity. It’s the creator who takes on flesh. And in this case, then the task of those who receive the one who was in the world is to know him it. And how do we know him is to believe in him.

00:16:13:30 – 00:16:35:31
Michael Gewecke
It’s a thing that you do today which enables the truth of who he was and is to continue to live in you. That’s what makes I think this book astonishing, is it is seeking to show us Jesus in the fullness of his divine reality and in the sonship in the deity that he is. The incarnation is the theological word we use for that.

00:16:35:31 – 00:16:59:04
Michael Gewecke
And and John, it gives us the the story, it gives us the framework and gives us the narrative, everything we need to understand the depth of that. John is sought out to tell us. And we see that not to keep repeating ourselves or repeating myself. But but I just think it’s so important. John is going to summarize at the end like any good writer, to tell us what we should have heard.

00:16:59:09 – 00:17:07:07
Michael Gewecke
And right now we’re in the beginning, and John is trying to tell us what we need to be listening for, and we should be hearing that clearly here today.

00:17:07:12 – 00:17:29:37
Clint Loveall
Yeah. So we have about another day of some of this theological foundation underpinning and then get into the story. I hope you can join us tomorrow, because again, we get to some material that is at the crux of what John wants us to know and what what we need to know. Moving into this gospel, particularly this book, but in general, the gospel as well.

00:17:29:42 – 00:17:33:41
Clint Loveall
And so, thanks for being with us today. Hope you can join us tomorrow as well.

00:17:33:50 – 00:17:50:16
Michael Gewecke
If you haven’t already. Give this video a like right underneath that subscribe button where we would love to have you join us as we continue along throughout the study of John friends, there’s a lot to come and some great conversations ahead of us and hope that you will be part of them. But, until then, be blessed and we’ll see you tomorrow.

00:17:50:18 – 00:17:50:43
Clint Loveall
Thanks all.