This text is an autogenerated transcript of a recording available in the video section of this website.
What's your story when you stop, when you think about it your life, your experiences?
It's unique isn't it?
It's utterly unique, more unique than your fingerprints, more unique than your DNA.
No one else in human history is quite like you.
No one else has lived your life of happiness, no one else in the world has ever lived your life of heartbreak, no one else has lived your life of hope for the future.
There is no one like you.
And yet when we hear other people stories, sometimes they sound very familiar, don't they?
There are things about other people's experiences, their deeds their desires which strike a chord.
If you wanted to you could make a really good case for either end of the extreme that either we are utterly unique, unlike anyone who has ever lived, or that we're all singing the same song on repeat, why is that why are we so unique on the one hand but so similar on the other?
Why is it that regardless of culture, regardless of time and history, people love, love stories?
How come they're universal thing?
Why is community so important to each and every one of us that when it's taken away through lockdown that we find creative ways of engaging with each other?
Why is that?
Why is it that 101 different ways we all live in such similar ways that our stories overlap and intersect?
For example now we're all sat here tuned into this, in just this one detail that we gathered together
listening to a sermon, our lives are intersecting with so many other people.
Why is that?
Why are our stories, our lives, while incredibly unique so, so, similar?
Last week we started looking at John's gospel - that is John's biography of Jesus life or the closest thing that you'll get to a biography of Jesus life.
We skipped to the end to where John gave the game away.
Why he'd written everything he'd written was to help us to believe in Jesus
and in Jesus find life.
I want us this week to concentrate just on the opening words of his gospel
of his story of who Jesus is
John chapter 1 verse one
“In the beginning was the word
and the word was with God
and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
All things were created through him
and apart from him not one thing was created
that has been created.
In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
That light shines in the darkness and yet the darkness did not overcome it.”
Now there's lots going on in those five short verses, that one small paragraph.
Some of it will make sense straight away.
Some of it will be a bit more confusing.
Let me just clue you into one detail.
The word that John is speaking about … very soon he's gonna reveal that that word is Jesus
a little bit later on he says that that word became flesh
dwelt among us that god came in humanity and rocked up and made his home in our neighborhood.
But this is what we learn: in answer to our question of why are all of our stories so similar, because we share a common author
verse 3
“All things were created through him and apart from him
not one thing was created that has been made.”
Jesus the word is the author of everything and everyone and in that sense
you'd expect to find similarities with you.
Imagine you wanted to sit down and listen to hundreds of hours of me speaking.
You could do that.
You could subscribe to the podcast available on all good podcast platforms, some rubbish ones as well … or our website!
This is not an advert this is an illustration!
I beg your pardon you did that for some reason you listen to me drone on hour after hour of my preaching, and you quickly come to realise.
You'd recognise that the sound of my voice but but the way that I make sentences the
the the words that I use
the vocabulary that I use the way that I construct arguments and reasons and
and pause and start speaking
and all these sorts of tiny little miny
minor details which make my speech
my speech and you could listen to a servant a week
two weeks from now without knowing who it was
and you'd recognise that it was me that was speaking
in exactly the same way
that is the answer to our question of
‘why do we all seem so similar?’
why do all of our stories share so many common factors
it's because we have a common author
and because that common author has a style
John here at the start of his book
is trying to get us to think about
the start of the book of the Bible
of the creation of all things and of all people
of how god decided to create humanity
in the first place
and this is what it says at the start
in Genesis God said
let us make humans in our image
according to our likeness
so God created man in his own image
he created him in the image of God
he created them male and female
that the answer to the question is we are
have these striking similarities
because we have a common author
but more than that all of God's created human creatures
have this same template
have this same purpose of imaging him
of representing him
of being like him in certain ways in his world
that's the reason we're so alike
because we have the same author
and the author has written each and every character
for a similar purpose
but what do we learn about that author
in John's opening I've already given the game away that
um that author is Jesus the word became flesh but
but what else do we learn about him
I think we learn something magnificently important
we learn in this description of Jesus
of god as the word who creates
and as the light who comes
we learn that god is a god who wants to be known
God is a god who speaks god is a god who reveals
god is a god who once asked to go from darkness and and
and ignorance and isolation there into light
into relationship into knowledge
the author is an author
who wants the characters to know him
now that's a that's a massive concept
and I've been helped in trying to understand it
by an illustration I read
I think first of all from Tim Keller
now I don't know if he made it up
if he's taking it from somewhere else
and that's up to his conscience to admit but um
the illustration is this Imagine Hamlet
Hamlet is a character in a play um
by Shakespeare by the same name
um imagine
Shakespeare wanted hamlet to know that he existed
how would he do that how would he do that
other than writing himself into the play
if Shakespeare introduced a character into that play
called William who is a playwright
uh in medieval United Kingdom
Hamlet could know him
couldn't just know about him
but know him personally
and that is what John is letting us into here that God
the word
has come the god the word has revealed the god
the word has spoken and shown a light
so that we could know him
that we the characters in his great play that is life
could know him and be known by him
now there are different types of knowledge
one of the advantages we have being Welsh in Wales
is that we use different words
there's good bod as in understanding
uh knowing that something exists
knowing what the weather is
gonna be like this afternoon
by checking an app on our phone
and there's NABOD which is knowing someone
it's personal it's involved
it's relational
our author wants both
our author wants our head to be filled with truth
about him and about ourselves
and about the world that we live in
and how it all fits together
but more than that he wants us to know him
he wants us to be known by him
he wants us to have a relationship
that is a genuinely exciting thing
isn't it to think
that the one who is described as creating all things
the one who without his creation
nothing exists
wants us to know him wants us to be known by him
to have a relationship that here
as at the end of John's Gospel is described as life
I wonder how how desperate are we to know our author
it need not be
in the case that he wrote himself into our play
it didn't have to be that way
we could reason we could understand quite happily
a god who makes and leaves and that's the end of it
a playwright who pens the script
and hands the parchments over
for actors to do their job
and stays out of the way
it didn't have to be like this
but God being god and part of his purpose in making us
his image bear as people who reflect him
is that God wanted us to know him
and to be known by him
and went to an extreme length that this god
this eternal this immense
this beyond our understanding and capacity and thinking
god took on flesh
became a human and everything that that entails
being frail being weak
being next to nothing compared to what he had been
this author was desperate for us to know
this author was desperate for us
no longer to remain in the dark
I think we get a bit of what John is getting out here
don't we when we think about someone being in the dark
we understand it to be someone who is ignorant not
not in the offensive way but as in knowledge is absent
if you're in the dark about something
you don't know the full truth
we don't naturally know God
where we're separated from God by
by by a distance
by a by a
by a kind and a type of what we are
by will find out some of the um
rejection
and the rebellion that has gone on in humanity
historically and in each and every one of us
but here's the thing that god wants to bridge that gap
this author wants us to go from ignorance
into knowledge from darkness into light
that's why the word
the author who reveals came into our lives
last week
we looked at whether we can accept the Bible as truth
whether we can expect accept
the author's revelation of himself
as something that is trustworthy
I encouraged you not to dismiss it
not to dismiss it just because it didn't sound
like how you want life to go
just because you don't like who's telling it to you
or whatever this is genuinely good news
this is genuinely great news
it's infused with uncomfortable things
none of us likes to think of ourselves
as being ignorant or in the dark
I can't imagine any of us
when we've come to see that and to recognize that
would want to continue to be in the dark
would want to continue to live in ignorance
the great news is that our god
our author our creator
he doesn't want us to stay there either
I think this is probably one of the most fascinating
uh concepts in
in the whole Christian story
is that when we pursue knowledge
when we pursue knowing our author
we have a hope that that's achievable
we can have an expectation that that goal will be met
verse 5 the light shines in the darkness
and yet the darkness does not overcome it
this isn't fruitless
this isn't wasting our lives
wasting our energy wasting our emotions and our time
pursuing and searching
for something that is not there to be found like
I don't know uh
folks heading off on expeditions
to find the abominable snowman
wasting their lives wasting their time
chasing after something that
they're never gonna achieve
know that the hope that we have the
the the confidence that we can have from Jesus
from John from the experience of
millions
billions of men and women and children who have
who have tried this path before us
is that when we search when we turn towards the light
the darkness doesn't overcome it
we don't stay in ignorance
this author who wants to be known will be known
and that should be an encouragement to you
if you've
never really come to encounter Jesus for yourself
or if you've encountered Jesus for yourself
decades ago that there is still so much to learn
that there is still so much to discover about him
as a church our mission is to know Jesus more
to make him more known
because we believe that this is true
because we believe that the author wants us to know
that our blind eyes can be opened
that our heart hearts can be softened
that our lives lived in darkness and distance from god
all the sudden
can be lived in light and relationship with him
so let me encourage you just to finish
if you're pursuing Jesus if you want to know him more
not just to know about him more
but to know him more
if you wanna know about yourself even more
as a character in his creation
there is hope
the author wants you to know there are
there are means
there are ways that you can get to know him more
the Bible
read John's Gospel read the rest of it
he's not shy he wants to tell us what he's like
he wants to introduce himself to us
he wants to tell us what we're like
carry on watching sermons online
when we start meeting together in person
come chat with Christian friends read Christian books
my encouragement to you is this
that if you are on that track
if you're on that path if you're on that journey
whether it's at the moment
having never encountered Jesus
or whether you've been walking a day by day
for decades keep on going
because that goal that you want
which is knowing Jesus and knowing him more
that's exactly the same goal that he shares
he wants to be known he wants to reveal himself
he wants to be in relationship with you
Let me pray for us all as we close
Lord God we thank you
that you are a revealing god
that you are not an author who is content to
to pen a novel and to send it off to the printers
and have nothing more to do with it
but you want to be known by the characters
in your great work
Lord I thank you that John describes you as the word
which shows us how how you speak
how you reveal
I thank you that Jesus described as the light
now that comes and it shines
and it dismisses darkness
Lord I thank you that
whatever our intentions whatever our desires
that is your desire
to be known and to know us in return
Lord
so I thank you that if we are heading in that direction
we can take confidence
we can take courage that we will be successful
because it's what you desire to
Lord help us to be a people who are genuinely looking
even those of us who have met Jesus
sometimes we can take our eyes off the price
we can take our eyes off the ball
we can be distracted by shiny things
in different directions help us to be a people who
our entire lives want to get to know you more
Wanna get to know ourselves more by knowing you
who want to be changed by knowing you
because we are after all
made to represent you when we get to know you
we understand ourselves so much better
we understand what we're supposed to be so much more
help us to be a people who value your word
who value each other who value your spirit
the Holy Spirit
come help our eyes to be open and to remain open
and to see and to know and to enjoy our great author
Jesus Christ
amen
amen
