John 1:1-18

When I started this blog, I opted not to try to blog straight through from Genesis to Revelation. I figured I'd sample different parts of the Scriptures. In some cases, I wanted to examine portions that don't come up very often in typical sermons or small group Bible studies. For example, the just concluded series of blog posts was on Nahum. Send me an email if you have heard a sermon from Nahum! Or even a quote of a verse from Nahum in a sermon!  I'd be curious to hear how it was discussed.

For the next series, I thought I'd go with something familiar, the Gospel of John. When I first started to follow Jesus, I was advised to read the Gospel of John to learn more about Jesus. And indeed, over the decades, I have heard many sermons from John. And I'm sure in the re-reading I'll be doing for these blog posts it will be refreshing to go over familiar things and am looking forward to new insights.  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it. 

The start of John's gospel has the echo of Genesis and the Creation. A grand sweeping cosmic description. Jesus the Christ was the Word, is the Word and was there at the start and continues to be the source of light and life.

A man came, sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that everyone might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.

We are introduced to John, as in John the Baptist. From what I have read and have heard about the Gospel of John, John, the Apostle doesn't explicitly refer to himself in this Gospel. Thus, when you see the name John, it is almost certainly John the Baptist. It has been hypothesized that when John referred to himself in this Gospel, he used the phrase, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Indeed, in the Gospel of John the word love appears quite a few times, more than in Matthew, Mark and Luke combined. Also, he used love frequently in his letter I John.

The true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him. But to all who have received him - those who believe in his name - he has given the right to become God’s children - children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband’s decision, but by God. Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory - the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. John testified about him and shouted out, "This one was the one about whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is greater than I am, because he existed before me.’” For we have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.
(NET) 

This is the part that I think is most profound: God "became flesh and took up residence among us."

The "deist" god is one that created the universe and hasn't been heard from since. The god of "non-theist" religions is an impersonal god.

What do we have here?

The idea was asked pointedly by the big hit song a decade or so ago by Jewel, "What if God was one of us?"

What if God was one of us?
Just a slave like one of us?
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' 2 make His way home

We started in John with a cosmic big picture canvas.  We also have before us in John, a God who inhabited a particular place and time.  We have a God who was not content for humanity to remain in the darkness we have chosen for ourselves.  Grace and truth was revealed through Jesus.  God took up residence among us:  his fingernails got dirt in them, his feet got blisters, he got soaked in the sweat of daily toil, he experienced the aches and pains of this life, he was accepted and received by some and rejected and not recognized by others. 

Lord, thank you for the grace of Jesus in taking up residence among us, of taking up human skin and experiencing the full sorrows of a fallen world.  Thank you that this truth has been proclaimed and preserved through the generations.  May your followers continue to proclaim this mysterious, amazing good news to all the world!  Amen.

Outline of Nahum

1:1  Author - Nahum

Judgment upon Nineveh introduced
1:2-7  The character of God
1:8-11  Judgment introduced for the first time in text
1:12-14  God speaks (text has God speak in first person on 3 occasions)

Judgment upon Nineveh revealed - possible chiastic structure.
A.  1:15-2:2  Judgment announced - cause for the oppressed people to celebrate
B.  2:3-2:10  Judgment described
C.  2:11-12  Judgment compared to defeat of a lion, a symbol of Assyrian culture
D.  2:13  God speaks
E.  3:1-4  Judgment described
D'  3:5-7  God speaks
C'  3:8-11  Judgment compared to defeat of Thebes, a city the Assyrians destroyed
B'  3:12-17  Judgment described
A'  3:18-19  Judgment announced - cause for Assyrians to mourn

UPDATE: The other day (May 6, 2013), I was visiting the NET Bible. I clicked on Nahum and looked at "Constable's Notes." He cited an outline that looked very much like what I wrote above. He footnoted the item to two works: Robert B. Chisholm Jr., Handbook on the Prophets, p. 428. See also Gordon H. Johnston, “A Rhetorical Analysis of the Book of Nahum,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1992) for a thorough analysis of the book’s structure. Its nice to know that someone else has seen the same literary structure!