Light of Men
John 1:1-5
Study Finds Communication failures linked to 1,744 deaths in five years, by US malpractice
Hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide might have avoided nearly 2,000 patient deaths — and $1.7 billion in malpractice costs — if medical staff and patients communicated better, a report released in February of last year. Communication failures were a factor in 30 percent of the malpractice cases examined by CRICO Strategies, a research, and analysis group. The cases including 1,744 deaths involving some horror stories that no family, and no medical professional, wants to experience.
Now I am not going to give details but basically what happens is a doctor or nurse is on a shift in a hospital and sees a change in a patient, under his or her care. They see it but forget to tell the next person that comes on shift, or forgets to document it because they are really busy. The patient dies, and their lack of communication is to blame.
It just comes to show even if you are a doctor it doesn’t matter if you don’t communicate. Well here we see John and he is going to communicate to us the Answer to the world's spiritual condition.
Open your Bibles to John Chapter 1, we are going to go through versus 1-5.
John out of all the apostles from the biblical account was one of the most closest to Jesus Christ. He is known for his nature as a gentle sort of man. It is said that most likely he was one of the youngest of the 12. John when he speaks of himself in this gospel he says “and John whom Jesus loved.” Jesus loved John and John loved his master.
John watched all the miracles and sat under all the teachings of Jesus. From under Jesus’s authority, John was given the power to cast out demons and heal the sick during the Lords ministry in Israel. After spending only about three years with Jesus, seeing Jesus’ love, power and authority in Johns life, here is what he has to say about Jesus Christ Using not just a superior knowlege of the scritures but a Intimite knowlage of the scriptures.
In five verses John is going to present three truths about Jesus and his divine nature. The first one is Jesus is The Word. Second, Jesus is Creator God. Lastly, Jesus is life. So We go street witnessing and I like to use these three topics as a witnessing tool. So here are three ways you can use share your faith:
1Jesus being the word,
2Jesus as Creator God,
3And Jesus being life and the light of men.
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.
Life was in Him, and that life was the light of men.
That light shines in the darkness,
yet the darkness did not overcome it.
1.So John takes us back to the beginning before creation even happens before the foundations of the world were laid. There was the word. Why does John choose the word “word” to describe Jesus Christ? Well, let's look at the nature of humanity. Humans have deep longings.
We are always trying to satisfy our deep longings; it could be hunger, thirst, hygine, fellowship, comfort. All humans have this in common. We meet these needs by comunicating. Comunication is the foundation of human interaction we need to comunicate. God is the word, so he can be with us and be our foundation that governs our human interation. God told Moses “I Am” meaning all that you will ever need.
On top of that. We made in the image and likeness of God. It is fitting that “the word” came into human history and is God. Mathew Henery says “The plainest reason why the Son of God is called the Word, seems to be, that as our words explain our minds to others, so was the Son of God sent in order to reveal his Father’s mind to the world.”
So basically before the foundations of the world, God has been ready to communicate with you.
Before being a Christian I had a question about life or I would hear this question a lot. “what is my purpose?” This is why the Gospel of John is so good to go through with non-believers. The word “word” can be translated to reason, or purpose. We can use reason to explain to people their purpose. God the Father had a reason or purpose to send his son to come into human history.
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.
2. You can share about God being the creator. We believe in Creator God. A Japanese person can easily say “what's difference between your God and our gods?” My God is the living God, not made by the hands of men, and then worshiped.
He was there before the foundations of the world. He formed the heavens and the Earth. For manny Japanese, I have found that they don’t know this. In Shintoism, the heavens made the gods. It sort of appeared and made children. There are huge inconsistencies in the Shinto, and buddhist creation story.
Buddhism have three schools of thought and all three conflict with each other.
1.some say nature created everything but is unintelligent,we live in a world full of intelligent design being that everything in creation serves a purpose.
2.some say an almighty God created everything but is more of an absentee landlord.
This is where I would ask them why would God seperate himself from man, Then I would tell them thats Jesus. And start talking about sin.
3.then the third school thought rejects the Idea of a creator God and then the quote said in English it was funny: “There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.'(Bertrand Russell).” I like that he said our because it means he believes in creation too! He struggles with it. His poor soul!
Fun fact I was reading the article posted by the CIA they did a survey about religion in Japan last year. People who practice Shintoism is at 79.2%, Buddhism is at 66.8%, Christianity 1.5%, they noted that the totals exceed 100% because a huge percentage of people in japan practice both Buddhism's and Shintoism at the same time.
We Christians have the creation account and compared to most creation accounts, Our God is over all creation, not the other way around. It’s so important to teach this to new believers as well because it will increase their faith, most people don’t have a healthy understanding of who God is, it's important to share this so that their faith can be in truth and be established as a foundation.
3.Verse 4-5 this is my favoirate way to share the gospel
Life was in Him, and that life was the light of men.
That light shines in the darkness,
yet the darkness did not overcome it.
In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The word “was”, This is past tense,
John watched Jesus die. He watched his life get poured out, and he watched that life. He knew its purity, and blamelessness how Jesus’ life was spilled out.
But he also saw him after the resurection. And through that Jesus; whos name means the God who saves from paved our way to heaven because he is the light of men.
Why? Why would God die for me? Why would God love me?
Man is made in the image and likeness of God, our soul came from his breath.
Here is a intimate understanding that I have learned about my God
The bible says God spoke and light appered he spoke “Surrat” hebrew means to create something from nothing. He didn’t touch it. He spoke and it was. All things that God made from speaking, became and he said it was good. But with man he waited. Till there was substance. Man was made with that substance the earth,God formed man. The word “formed” its intimate its more personal.Your are sacred, and prescious to God. Look around the the room. God took time to make each and every one of you. We are made in the image and likeness of God and so we are precious to God. But their is a problem, mankind is sinful, we tend to hurt each other, hate eachother.
The Term “light of men” it implies that men are in darkness. It means man has a lack of clarity; failing to see the spiritual realities as they are ment to be seen. Man made in the image and likeness of God can only find his purpose, and understanding and fulfillment in Jesus the light of men. God in the scriptures tells us we are ment to contain his light. Think of your body like candle. What has God done for you? He lit you.
Psalms 18:26 King David the man after Gods owns heart says: For thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.
This is where I get personal and share my testimony: God is light and my life was in darkness, I knew I had no light. I would go off and do drugs and drink and I did them at night, under the cover of darkness. Jesus is the light of men He lit up my darkness. All my sin was removed by the light of man Jesus Christ whoes name means the God who saves from sin.
There are many ways to talk about salvation and comunicate the Gospel but here we see the four basic parts of the gospel: Creation, fall, redemption and restoration.
I like to use light or candles to explain the Gospel. The Gospel can be explained many different ways. But we are all called to be lights and share that light with others. We are going to give an acount for our actions in this world so I use what the scriptures provide and nothing else.
In America sometimes we get black outs, all the power in the city goes out. Its common in my family to have lots of candles so when I became independant, I would buy them all the time. We have scented candles and at night is cheaper to light candles the keep lights on and so I have them and they make the place smell better. One time the city power went out so I had to light my candles in the house so I could prepare for work the next day. As I went I light one candle but then I used that candle to light other candles.
You can use candles to light other candles, To light a candle you bring the two together and the candle owner does the lighting. You can’t grab the candle with the flame and put it over the unlit candle because the wax will put the flame out and its messy. the candle keeper brings the two together and bends the new candle over the old one and the old candle shares, serves of its light without any effort at all. And that's Johns purpose of sharing Jesus and his light to the world full of darkness.
One time I was thinking about this in America, It was winter and snowy and I was coming back from a missions class. It was dark and I was looking forward to lighting my candles. As I was thinking about it and missions class God used my candle to explain something cool to me. I saw my self as my candle my flesh as the wax. God lit the candle and the candle started to melt. The more the candle melted the smaller it got. The smaller it got the more the light begins to dance and shine.
God showed me The smaller I get, the more I let Gods do his work in my life, the less I become and the greater his light becomes in my life. I realized that if God were to send me out in missions this would be important for me. To be prepared for the sake of others. For their salvation, so they can have light too. John uses light as an analogy.
Its a good way to get people into a conversation. Most people don’t mind talking about spiritual things if the subject is curious. We should all be able to comunicate what we know about God. the gospels gives us alot of interesting parables to share in ways people around us can understand.
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you, to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 1 Peter 3:5
So lets be faithfull to our callings and the time God has given us. And pray for God to use us to share with others.
Let’s pray.
Tenshi Taijyo Community Member 
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