Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Happy New Year, everybody.
[00:00:08] We are in a new series to start out this new year in the Gospel of John. We've been doing this every year for the last three. This is our fourth year where we start the new year with a gospel that then takes us all the way through Easter. And so I'm really excited to be in this gospel, the Gospel of John, which is one of my favorites. And to be honest, it is the book that we tell people who are new to faith or investigating faith to start with. A lot of times people grab a Bible and they open it up to page one and it's Genesis, and there's a lot to be learned there.
[00:00:40] But to inform the faith in Jesus, we like to start with the story of Jesus. And so we encourage people start in the book of John. And so we're gonna do this. And in the Book of John, there are some of the highlights that we quote the the most out of maybe any book of the Bible. John 1:5. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. John 10:10. I have come that they might have life and life to the full. John 14. I am the way, the truth, and the life. John 16. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. All these beautiful statements that we like to quote around here, this is all from the book of John.
[00:01:23] And John is writing this. He's the disciple of Jesus, who now is old in age. This is about 60 AD that he is writing this from the city of Ephesus. And so writing this as an old man. Now, he's not in the mix of what is happening, writing it down as it happens. He's reflecting on it, what his experience was with Jesus those years ago.
[00:01:48] And because there's been time between the account of what happened and now his writing of it, John is very reflective. And so with the other gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, we call them the Synoptic or the similar gospels because they tell more of a chronological narrative. John is writing this at the end of his life, and he's very reflective and pastoral, and he is connecting the dots of what does all this mean? What did Jesus Christ come to tell us about who God is and who he was?
[00:02:19] And so this brings us to US now in 2026, the beginning of a new year. And I think there's a lot of Pressure on a new year to be maybe what's been missing in our lives, right? Well, 2025, we didn't. We didn't do great in certain ways. But 2026, we're going to do better. We're going to be better, and we're going to be faster and we're going to be stronger, we're going to be younger. Well, maybe not that, but that's the pressure, right, is we got to fix ourselves. And so we put all this pressure ourselves in a new season or a new year, a new job, a new relationship, that all the things that went wrong before, now they're gonna be made right. And many times we get disappointed when that inevitably doesn't happen.
[00:02:59] I was talking to a friend. We had some friends over on January 2nd, so, what, two days ago?
[00:03:04] And, you know, we're what, 18 hours into the new year? So I said to my friend, I said, how's this going for you? How's the new year? He's like, well, see, my kids have both been throwing up all week. My dog needs surgery, and I spent all day out in the yard building a fence. And just before I got here, the fence started to lean over.
[00:03:25] That's how 2026 is going.
[00:03:28] He texted me yesterday with a picture of his fence standing straight and true. He fixed it. 2026 is looking up, folks, but the dog still needs surgery, so we'll pray for him. But this is kind of how it goes, right? We have the best of intentions, and this is gonna be our year.
[00:03:47] And then life just happens and it keeps happening. And what John is gonna tell us is that in the real stuff of life, what John came to the conclusion after walking with Jesus and then spending a lifetime reflecting on it, is that in good times and bad, whatever happens in this life, our hope is informed because Jesus is in the picture and he is close. And that tells us something about God's intention towards us. Because we all have this question. I think it's a burning question, as people of faith or people investigating faith, is that if God is real and if he is real and he is accessible to us, he's not just distant or far away or just a creator who then disappeared. But if he is real and accessible to us, is he actually for us, is he concerned with what we are concerned about?
[00:04:36] Does he come close in times of trouble?
[00:04:40] Does he have any opinion at all? If we have health and a life filled with love and relationships, or if we're isolated and alone, Does God really care? And is he for us?
[00:04:52] And John is going to tell us.
[00:04:55] And for John, at the end of his life, as he's writing this all through the pages of his gospel that we're going to get into over the next weeks, you're going to find that John, John and his account are soaked in this idea of how much John was shaped by the love of Jesus and how much his love for Jesus shaped what he wrote. And I thought about this for my own life. In however long I have on this planet, right when I get to the end of my life, what better thing could be said about me? For those who knew me, for those who were close to me in conversations and reading what I've written down, for them to say his life was shaped by his love for Jesus and Jesus love for him. I just don't know that there's any better thing to be said about anyone at the end of our lives, but that we were shaped by the love of God, but somehow that got into us.
[00:05:47] And I don't have a lot of appetite for a church filled with people who just know all their stuff but are far from the experience of the love of God.
[00:05:57] I could leave that like, that's fine. Like you want to be Bible experts and do that. Well, that's great. But I hope is attached to a deep love and encounter with a risen Jesus. I hope so, because that is the lifeblood of what this is all about. If this is strictly an exercise in intellectual knowledge of a religion, count me out. But if Jesus is alive and he is at work, I have hope for this year and hope for and hope when people are suffering that God is close in those moments. I think about many who have been in and out of the hospital from our church this week that we're praying for. I see Dan's here today, and I think of Mike and I think of Vic and so many that in the middle of this new year are facing challenges. And I think I'm so glad that we pray to someone that we believe is present in times when we struggle, in times when we are up against it, that God has come close. And so today I want to call this. Is God on our side or God is on our side?
[00:06:59] As we look at the Gospel of John, our friend Stephanie reposted this from Pastor Rich Velodas. I thought it was a great way to start the year.
[00:07:08] Pastor Rich Velodas from New York writes the story of scripture in four phrases repeated throughout its pages.
[00:07:14] I love you. I am with you.
[00:07:17] Be afraid. Come home.
[00:07:19] Good news to start a new. Good.
[00:07:21] You can Read it. Good news to start a new year. And I agree. All right. John, Chapter one. I'm going to read this out of a translation that's come out in the last 10 years or so from Tyndale called the Voice.
[00:07:33] And I think it's really beautiful how it refreshes John Chapter one. And we don't normally do this, but I would invite you, would you stand with me as I read from John Chapter one today out of the Voice translation?
[00:07:47] John, Chapter one.
[00:07:49] Before time itself was measured, the voice was speaking.
[00:07:54] The voice was and is God. This celestial word remained ever present with the Creator. His speech shaped the entire cosmos.
[00:08:02] Immersed in the practice of creating, all things that exist were birthed in him. His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light.
[00:08:10] A light that thrives in the depths of the darkness, blazes through murky bottoms. It cannot and it will not be quenched.
[00:08:18] A man named John, who was sent by God was the first to clearly articulate the source of this light. Now, this is John the Baptist. This is a different John in the narrative than the one who's writing. This baptizer put in plain words the elusive mystery of the divine light so that all might believe through him.
[00:08:34] Some wondered whether he might be the light. But John was not the light. He merely pointed to the light.
[00:08:39] The true light who shines upon the heart of everyone was coming into the cosmos.
[00:08:44] He entered our world, a world he had made, yet the world did not recognize him. Even though he came to his own people, they refused to listen and receive him. But for all who did receive him and trust in him, he gave them the right to be reborn as children of God. He bestowed this birthright not by human power or initiative, but by God's will. The voice took on flesh and and became human and chose to live alongside us. And we have seen him enveloped in undeniable splendor, the one true Son of the Father, evidenced in the perfect balance of grace and truth.
[00:09:16] John the Baptist testified about him and shouted, this is the one I've been telling you is coming. He is much greater than I am because he existed long before me. And through this man. We all receive gifts of grace beyond our imagination. You see, Moses gave us rules to live by. But Jesus the anointed offered us gifts of grace and truth. God, unseen until now, is revealed in the voice, God's only son, straight from the Father's heart. Amen.
[00:09:43] So, Lord, we receive your words today as we spend these moments together. I pray that you would break through time and history from the pages of what John wrote to us today in 2026, that we might hear your voice and that we might resonate with what you would say to us as a church today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. You can have your seat. Thank you so much for listening to God's word today.
[00:10:11] John begins his story not with the genealogy or the narrative of Jesus birth like the other gospels have, but instead he jumps into this picture of the cosmos at the beginning, and he's reflecting and paralleling the creation account in Genesis chapter one. If you remember from Sunday school, Genesis one, it starts with these words. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so make no mistake, John is trying to create a parallel to that passage in the very beginning of John's gospel. He's tying what happened in the 1st century in Bethlehem and Judea to what God was doing at the very beginning of all things, before time and space, when into the void and into the inky darkness, the voice of God goes out from the mouth of God and it begins to create things.
[00:11:02] And much like the voice that you're hearing now, my voice through this microphone, through the speakers, into your ears, through the processing of your brain into your understanding, what I am saying is not separate from me, although it goes out from me and is different than me. It is part and tied to who I am as a person.
[00:11:23] And John is using this as a picture, a metaphor for how Jesus was present with the Father and is also of the same substance and thing that is God. He is separate from God, and yet they are inseparable from each other. These are big, huge concepts that John is using this device of this poem to express to us an allegory that I think does this beautifully in reflecting on the creation of all things from the voice of God is C.S. lewis's allegorical telling in the Chronicles of Narnia. Maybe you read these as a kid or you read these to your kids, but in the Magician's Nephew, the way that C.S. lewis depicts the idea of a voice that creates is the children join this lion in a dark and empty world, inky black.
[00:12:14] And there they are.
[00:12:16] Excuse me, there they are in this void place.
[00:12:20] And in the silence and the stillness and the darkness of that place, the lion begins to sing.
[00:12:26] And from the tones of the singing of the lion, light and life begin to spring up all around them until the world is created.
[00:12:35] And so what Lewis is doing is he's putting into narrative what John is expressing in this poetic expression is that from the voice of God into Dark and void places, life and light spring up because of. Of Jesus.
[00:12:54] In 1968, physicists came up with a new theory of how the universes held together. And they were constantly and still are, you know, discovering different types of particles and quantum physics. And by the way, I'm a pastor. I'm not a physicist. This might surprise you.
[00:13:11] Pastor Ben gets up here and he always talks about football. He's a pastor. He's not a football player. That might surprise you.
[00:13:18] So, likewise.
[00:13:21] Yeah.
[00:13:23] So in 1968, they come up with this new theory of how the universe and the stuff of the universe, the substance of the universe down to the subatomic particles, is all held together. And the name of this new theory is called string theory. Maybe you've heard that phrase, string theory.
[00:13:40] And what string theory proposes is that if you shrink down all the way to the basic building blocks of the universe, what you would find is not these static particles that stand still, but the only way to describe them is strings of subatomic particles that vibrate at different frequencies. And that vibration, that tone or that note by which they vibrate determines what kind of particle they are.
[00:14:09] Of course, I could have told you that, right? No, of course not. This is deep stuff. But Brian Greene, one of the biggest proponents of string theory, even to this day, he wrote this about it. He said, string theory declares the stuff of all matter and all forces is the same thing. Vibrating strands of a string and what appear to be different elementary particles are actually different notes on a fundamental string. The universe being composed of an enormous number of these vibrating strings is akin to a cosmic string symphony.
[00:14:41] Fascinating stuff.
[00:14:43] And so I read this, and I don't know physics. I especially don't know subatomic physics or quantum physics, but I've read scripture enough to know that something is clicking here. When I read in Colossians 1:16, for in him the word Jesus, the voice, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[00:15:12] So in the first century, we have John saying, the voice comes from God, and the voice is made flesh in Jesus. And it's from this vibration, this tone, this song, that all things were created. And then in 1968, these physicists get together and they say, you know what? I think the entire universe is actually vibrating strings that are resonant in holding all things together.
[00:15:40] And I'm not trying to use string theory to prove scripture. I'm trying to illustrate maybe what John is getting at is that all that we can see and all that we can't see has something of Christ's presence from the beginning in it that is calling it and creating where there is darkness and lifelessness. That is the voice of the Creator and in Jesus that creates all things and holds all things together.
[00:16:07] And we have this old piano here. This normally sits in our prayer room. And this was my piano. I bought it years ago from somebody. And it's an old piano. It's 100 years old. And it was in our house. And then we moved stuff around. So I brought it into the church and we put it in the prayer room and had a tuner, piano tuner come out. And she tuned it once. And then months went by and came back. Cause it was out of tune again. And she sat down at the piano and she said, this piano, I'm sorry to say, has not been well maintained. It's 100 years old, and it's not fixable. The hammers are not working right.
[00:16:39] It's just. It's not playable. And it's not going to be playable. I'm sorry, I'm not going to charge you, but the piano's done. And so I was sad about that. And it sat there in the prayer room, unplayable for several years. And then this past year, I thought, you know, it's sad to have a piano in a prayer room that doesn't play. And so I went in one afternoon and I opened it up and I removed all the keys. And I took out the broken hammers in action and set that aside until we had just this cabinet with the soundboard and strings in the piano. And I took a keyboard that you see there where the key bed was, and I put the keyboard on the piano. And I put two speakers inside the cabinet.
[00:17:18] And once I turned it on, what I didn't think about, but was true, is that because the speakers are resting up against the original strings.
[00:17:32] Now, when you play this keyboard with the speakers against the strings, this is what happens, is that the strings resonate to the same notes that they originally played. And so check this out.
[00:18:05] Thank you. I've been trying to show you how I can play for years. I finally figured out a way to do it. I'm kidding.
[00:18:12] The resonance of the original piano is still present.
[00:18:16] And it's been years since that piano has played. And yet bringing in this outside song that sits so close to the strings, it draws out the original resonance of those strings. And I thought as I'm reading this, that there was a voice who was speaking into the darkness. And this is not a voice that is speaking into an uncreated place. This is Jesus showing up to a place that once was God's good earth, filled with goodness and wholeness and needed no redemption because nothing had been broken. But. But now Jesus shows up thousands of years later to a place that has been broken, where the song of humanity has been lost.
[00:18:54] And instead of coming with judgment and saying, you gotta fix this and you gotta figure this out and you gotta figure out how to get back to where we were. No, God sees us in our need, and he comes close enough to where his song still resonates in the heart of man. I mean, what a beautiful picture.
[00:19:13] This voice creating life again.
[00:19:15] When we've lost our song. And I have this heart for us, whether we are far from faith and just investigating it or whether we've been Christians for so long we don't remember anything else, is that we would not grow so calcified in our understanding or our openness to the presence of Jesus that we would pull back from allowing his voice to resonate in our hearts and our spirits.
[00:19:41] And what do I want for us in 2026? It's the same thing I want every day and every month and every year from this day forward is that the voice of Jesus would still ring in these halls and in our hearts, and that from us would come a song not of our own making, but because we are resonating to the tone of the voice of Jesus, our good shepherd. Hallelujah.
[00:20:03] And when we do this, John would tell us what comes out of us. What is the song that he plays? It's the song of truth.
[00:20:13] And what does the world need? Oh, man. It needs truth and grace.
[00:20:17] It needs the song that all the universe is held together by the song of the voice of God singing again over us.
[00:20:28] And it's this voice that in John's narrative begins to call out to the first disciples.
[00:20:34] Jesus goes and meets John the Baptist in the wilderness. John is baptizing folks, and as Jesus walks up, John the Baptist sees him at a distance and says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
[00:20:49] And it's in the narrative, and this is in the other gospel narratives. But the way John is telling it is he's sticking with the Genesis parallel. Okay, follow me on this.
[00:20:59] So he ties Jesus and Jesus presence to the original creation of all things.
[00:21:06] And then he notes that John the Baptist sees him and calls him the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world. Now, if you remember the garden narrative, Back in Genesis, what happens is that the man and the woman, Adam and Eve, they disobey God and they take from the tree they're not supposed to, and they sin.
[00:21:22] And that sin actually creates distance. Where they once were close in relationship with God the Father, now they are at distance because of their sin and their disobedience.
[00:21:32] And what is the way that they can receive forgiveness? Well, it's the sacrifice of a lamb in the story in Genesis.
[00:21:40] And so what John is doing is he's trying to paint a picture that what happened in the garden so long ago in the narrative of how all this went so terribly wrong, Jesus shows up on the scene to reverse what was broken for all of us.
[00:21:54] And here is Jesus now, the lamb, the perfect lamb who will take and absorb the sins and the world.
[00:22:02] Jesus is baptized by John and then he begins to call his disciples with a word.
[00:22:09] This is not unusual for a rabbi to call out to would be disciples. This would be pretty regular in Jesus day.
[00:22:18] What's not normal is that instead of going to the synagogue to find the most bright, well learned, well read young men to be his disciples. And this rabbi goes to the lake and he looks out and says, well there's some kids that are fishing with their dad, I think they'll do.
[00:22:35] And with his voice he calls out to James and John and Simon Peter and Andrew.
[00:22:41] And what he doesn't do is he doesn't, you know, say, hey, here's three points why I'm the best rabbi.
[00:22:49] Can I just sell you a little bit on why you should be my disciples? No, Jesus doesn't do any of convincing, debating, arguing for his point.
[00:22:58] He doesn't prove himself in any way except that his voice goes out across the water and calls to these guys and they drop what they're doing and follow him.
[00:23:06] And so oftentimes I fall into this trap of thinking it's going to be my brilliant arguments or my wonderful oratory that is going to convince people to find Jesus. And again and again in the narrative, what I find over and over, it's actually the voice of Jesus, compelling people, resonating with the deep stuff in hearts that compels and calls people to follow after him.
[00:23:28] And so whether I can make a good argument or not is beside the point. I want to hear Jesus voice call to each and every one of us that we might respond as these disciples did and say yes to Jesus, drop what we're doing to follow after his way.
[00:23:48] The story continues. Verse 43. This is the new living translation. The next Day Jesus decided to go to Galilee, he found Philip and said to him, come, follow me. And Philip was from Bethsaida, Andrew and Peter's hometown. Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, hey, we have found the very person that Moses and the prophets wrote about. His name is Jesus.
[00:24:10] He's the son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nazareth. Exclaimed Nathaniel. Can anything good come from Nazareth?
[00:24:17] Nathaniel thinks he's got it all figured out from day zero, but come and see for yourself. Philip replied.
[00:24:24] As they approached, Jesus said, now, here is a genuine son of Israel, a man of complete integrity. How do you know about me? Nathaniel asked. And Jesus replied, look at this. I could see you under the fig tree before Philip found you.
[00:24:37] And then Nathaniel exclaimed, rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel. Jesus asked him, do you believe this? Just because I told you I'd seen you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.
[00:24:46] So evidently, earlier, Nathaniel was hanging out in probably his normal spot, right, the fig tree. It was hot, dusty, so he's finding shade under this fig tree. And somehow when he encounters Jesus, who he thinks that him and his buddy Philip had discovered, you know, like, the new hot thing on the scene is this rabbi from. And so he's like, I'm gonna decide if you're good enough for me. And he approaches Jesus and Jesus says, hey, I know you and I've seen you under that fig tree. And this is the only gospel that even mentions this encounter and this mention of the fig tree. And again, why is John doing this? Well, again, the entire first chapter of John is a parallel to the creation account in Genesis. And what happens in Genesis after the man and the woman sin? They are so overwhelmed by shame and guilt that they hide from God and they create clothes for themselves to cover their nakedness out of fig leaves.
[00:25:43] And it's under the leaves of the fig that God finds them hiding in their shame because of their sin.
[00:25:51] And in the Genesis account, what they are met with is a God who casts them out.
[00:25:58] John portrays this moment with Jesus as the one who comes back to anyone who has ever found themselves hiding from God in shame.
[00:26:09] And instead of casting them out, he now calls them to come close.
[00:26:14] Wow.
[00:26:15] And so what do we have in Jesus? What would John tell us? In Jesus, we have the one who comes to reverse where everything went so badly wrong that the same power that called the cosmos to life is now present in Jesus. And the end of this story is not one where humans in their sin are cast away from God or kept at A distance. And instead, it's one where we are drawn close, compelled to follow, and brought back to life by the sound of his voice. Hallelujah. Amen.
[00:26:47] And this is not something that John just kind of comes up with on the fly. This is a lifetime of reflecting on what Jesus meant and who Jesus is that John shares his conclusion.
[00:27:04] And so for us, we believe it is true today that Jesus has the power to create new life in the void and the darkness. And this is true wherever we find darkness in our lives, our hearts, and our relationships. Jesus has arrived to absorb the sin that kept us at a distance from God.
[00:27:22] And when we hide in shame, Jesus sees us and invites us to follow him. And so for me, as one of your pastors, I know that it can be the hardest thing if you struggle with feelings of unworthiness or that because of who you are or your history, that certainly you're far from God or that God would not approve of you.
[00:27:45] I think John would tell you today, and I would tell you today that's not the Jesus I know.
[00:27:52] The Jesus I know was not one to keep hurting people at a distance. The Jesus I know was not one to leave people hiding under fig leaves of shame. The Jesus I know is one that moved into the neighborhood and got so close, unafraid of the stuff that has kept you far from God. And so today, the invitation is for all of us, if we have ears to hear it, that his voice is still speaking. The Creator is still singing. He is still calling us to come back to life where dead places have cropped up. Come on. This is the voice of Jesus that we read in Scripture, still ringing in our ears today.
[00:28:32] So I want to invite you, as we close today, I want to pray for you that we would have ears to hear his voice and that something in the deep places of our heart would resonate and vibrate with the song of grace and truth today. And so, Lord Jesus, we pray that you would be the creator who brings light into darkness, who brings life into dead places.
[00:28:57] We pray that you would be the one who absorbs sin and who casts out shame, and that in this moment, the first Sunday of this year, that we would have ears to hear your voice and that a song would respond.
[00:29:17] Lord Jesus, I thank you that you did not leave us in the dark, you did not leave us far from you, but that you have come close.
[00:29:32] Thank you, Lord.
[00:29:35] The good news of John's gospel, and for us in this new year is not that we have finally found God, it's that God has finally found us.
[00:29:43] If you're hiding, he sees you. If you feel distant, he has crossed that distance.
[00:29:48] And if you feel like your song has gone silent, his voice sings over you. Today.
[00:29:53] He is not against you. He's not angry with you. He's come to your side. Amen.
[00:29:59] Amen.
