Sermon Tone Analysis

Witness to the Light

October 25, 2009

John 1:6-8

Today’s reading from Experiencing God Day-by-Day is entitled, The Spirit Bears Witness.

The Scripture used is Romans 8:16-17 which tells us,

/The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children,/

/and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—seeing that we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.— /

Henry Blackaby says: It is impossible to perceive all that became ours when we were born again.

There is no way we can understand all that heaven is like.

How could we ever comprehend all that is ours as fellow heirs with Christ?

The knowledge that we will share Christ's inheritance with Him absolutely astounds us!

Left to our own, we could not begin to understand all that we received once we became children of the King.

The Holy Spirit convinces us that we are indeed children of God and helps us understand the riches of our inheritance.

Perhaps you did not have a loving father.

The Spirit's role is to teach you how to respond to a Father who relates to you only in perfect love and how to live like a child of the King.

Perhaps you grew up in poverty.

The Spirit will show you the inexhaustible riches available to you as a child of God.

If you were simply declared an heir and then left on your own, you could not begin to use your inheritance.

But the Father has given you His Spirit to serve as your Guide and Teacher.

The Holy Spirit will lead you to the magnificent promises and resources that became available when God adopted you into His family.

Take time to meditate on the wonderful promises of God that are available to you.

Let the Holy Spirit convince you of the reality that you are, indeed, a child of God and a fellow heir of Christ.

We return now to John 1:6-8 which we skipped during our time in John.

These verses are surprising because they seem to break into the flow of the text.

They seem sudden and jarring.

If you left them out, the text would flow nicely from verse 5 to verse 9. Verse 5 says/, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”/

And then verse 9 picks this up, /“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”/

That seems like a natural flow.

In between those two statements about Jesus, who is the light coming into the world, John inserts verses 6-8 about John the Baptist.

But in this Gospel, he is never called John the Baptist but only John.

If there were any label we would attach to John in this Gospel, it would be “John the Witness.”

*John Interrupts the Flow*

Look at verses 6-7: /“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light.”/

In fact, fourteen times in this Gospel the word /witness/ (/martureo/, /martus/, /martureia/) is connected with John.1

Then the same thing happens in verse 15.

John the author seems to interrupt the flow again to say something about John the Witness.

The ESV feels the interruption so keenly that there are parentheses around verse 15.

Verse 14 says, /“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”/

Verse 16 continues this thought smoothly, /“And from his fullness [the fullness referred to in verse 14] we have all received, grace upon grace.”/

But verse 15 breaks in and says, /“John bore witness about him, and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.”’”

/

So verses 6-8 and verse 15 are pressed into the flow of this opening section in a way that almost everyone feels is jarring.

So I assume John the author felt it that way too.

And I assume that he knew what he was doing.

And I assume he had his reasons.

(You can call that the Golden Rule of Hermeneutics: Do unto /authors/ as you would have them do unto you.)

Our job is not to improve John’s literary art by telling him he should have written more smoothly.

Our job is to penetrate his literary purposes — and by doing that, to penetrate to his theological purposes and his spiritual purposes and his evangelistic purposes — and any other purposes he has by God’s inspiration, so that by hearing and understanding, we might believe on Jesus, the Son of God, and have life in his name.

We are not playing literary games.

Salvation and damnation hang on whether we hear what the inspired author really meant to say.

/“These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”/ (John 20:31).

What I have found in thinking about verses 6-8 and 15 and the wider context is amazingly relevant for today.

I have found it very sobering for my own life and ministry, and I think you will find it so for yourself.

It has to do with the way pastors and evangelists and religious leaders and TV preachers and conference speakers and Christian musicians — and any other public Christians who represent Christ — speak of Christ and the way they represent themselves.

And it was the second of these that sobered me—the way we public witnesses represent ourselves.

If you have ever been bothered by the seemingly self-serving, self-excusing, self-protecting, self-exalting words of public Christian figures, you should be, and you will be all the more bothered by the time we are done.

I hope that one of the effects of this message is that it will have a humbling effect on me first, and then on you and any others who hear it, so that we who are called to be witnesses for Christ (namely, all of us) will see that this not only means making much of Christ, but it also means making little of ourselves.

To help you remember what I am saying, I am going to hang all I say on two pegs.

One is: “Our witness is a great /necessity/.”

And the other is: “Our witness is a great /not/.”

I know that’s not clear.

But it will be.

And the awkwardness of it just may help you remember it.

Our witness is a great /not/ as well as a great /necessity/.

We will take /necessity/ first and begin with verses 6-8.

/“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.”

/

Notice several things: First, John was a man, that is, a human.

This is important because up till now the Word, Jesus Christ, has been called God the Creator of all things.

In him was life, and that light was the light of men.

So it looks as if the way this Word and Life and Light are going to spread through the world is by its own sovereign power and brightness.

But John knows that is not the case.

This Word and Life and Light are going to spread through the witness of human beings—and no other way.

/“These things are written that you might believe”/ (John 20:31).

Who wrote them?

A /man/ sent from God also named John.

And when Jesus prays for us in John 17:20, how does he foresee that we will come to faith and salvation?

/“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”/

Humans who bear witness to Christ with words will be the means of everyone who comes to faith in the whole world.

That’s the plan.

The Word and the Life and the Light are coming into the world.

But they are not going to conquer this darkness the way a bolt of lightning brightens the night.

They are going to conquer it by lighting millions of cold, dead human torches with the oxygen of the gospel and the mysteriously spontaneous combustion of the new birth.

And that gospel will come through human witnesses.

Verse 6: /“There was a man.”/

There was a /person/.

There will always be a person.

A person like you.

John is pressing into his Gospel from the very beginning the truth that human witnesses to Christ are always necessary.

Our witness is a great /necessity/.

This is my first point.

Our human witness is a great necessity.

Keep going in verse 6: /“There was a man sent from God.”/

The point of this is that the /necessity/ of human witness does not mean God is dependent on the initiative of human will.

God was involved not just in sending /Jesus/; he is involved in sending /witnesses/ /to/ Jesus.

Jesus said in Matthew 9:38, /“Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”/

God sees to it that we pray.

And he sees to it that he answers and sends.

He said to his disciples in John 20:21, /“As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”