Tag Archives: John 1

Sermon Text: The Word Became Flesh (V2)

Posted by on June 28, 2011 No comments

This is the second version of my sermon, The Word Became Flesh, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on December 12, 2010. Text is from John 1.

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I knew, of course, that Brother Jun was going to be introducing me to you, because Pastor Alvin asked for a that biographical sketch of myself, highlighting my education and current work.

But as I was writing this sermon, I had a very overwhelming sense that I really ought to contextualize myself to you a little further… Or that is, introduce myself a little more to you so that you might understand just a little better what exactly I am preaching about and why I am preaching about it. Especially since this, I hope, is only the first of at least a few sermons that I will have the chance to share with you.

I am not sure how much it value it will be, I am treating this sermon more like how we do it in my church during communion Sunday, that is more like a short devotional leading into to communion. So no worries, I won’t be speaking for 40-45 minutes like I’ve been told Pastor Alvin does.

Anyway, I very much identify myself with what you might call a “new breed” of Ministers that is emerging, ready to tackle the new kind of challenges that this culture is presenting to us today. There are many different ways to describe this challenge – but possibly, the most popular term that you might be familiar with is “Post Modernism”. There many things that characterizes this new movement, or era, or whatever you might like to call it, but what is most relevant to us, is that it is characterized, in part, by a deep scepticism about Religious Faith in general, and in particular, because it is so prevalent in the Western World, the Christian Religious Tradition.

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Sermon Text: The Word Became Flesh (V1)

Posted by on June 28, 2011 1 comment

This is the first version of my sermon, The Word Became Flesh, preached at Fellowship Filipino Baptist Church in Vancouver, BC on August 15, 2010. Text is from John 1.

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I’d like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to share withyou today… Especially about something that is very near and dear to myheart – the Reliability of the Bible. Now there are of course manyways of looking at how the Bible is reliable. Often quoted is theverse from Second Timothy 3:16…“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, forreproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”

It is one of the classic texts to talk about the reliability ofscripture because it is talking about how Scripture was “Breathed outby God”. Which is another way of saying that the Bible is reliablebecause it is inspired by God. In fact, Inspired by God is a commonway of translating the Greek word behind this English phrase. Anyway,while this is of course very true, this verse and Biblical Inspirationin particular isn’t actually what I wanted to talk to you about today.What I wanted to talk to you about today is an often overlookedquality of the Bible, which is that it is rooted in History. Thingshappened, someone remembered it, and under God’s guidance – or,“Inspiration”, you might say – he wrote it down. And now, manythousands of years later, these things are preserved for us to readand learn from.
It’s an incredibly simple truth, but it’s one that, actually manypeople really do not think about.

Yes, today, I want to speak about the historicity of the Bible withtwo particular points in mind: Number, 1) The history recorded in theBible is reliable. And Number 2) The Bible itself as ancientliterature is historically reliable.
I am first going to talk about these two text, and then I will move onto our text for today, found in John 1:1-14, and see how thehistoricity of the Bible is ultimately reliable because of thehistoricity of the one to whom the Bible points… Jesus! The WrittenWord reveals the Living Word, and the Living Word gives authority tothe Written Word. It’s a little circular, I know. Kind of like thechicken and the egg. But I hope, at the end of all this, that you willgain an appreciation for history in general, and really begin to seehistory a little bit like I do. I’ll talk a bit more of that later.
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