In The Beginning - [John 1:1-3]

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I would invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 1, John chapter 1.
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And I'm going to be preaching from verses 1 to 3 this morning. You know, this is right before I came up,
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Bob Muto said something about Christmas cards. And obviously this is a Christmas season. I wonder if we've kind of been inoculated against Christmas card theology.
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Most Christmas cards are what? I mean, you know, do you send Frosty the Snowman? Does anybody send
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Christmas cards anymore? Some people do. I heard it's making a comeback this year. Imagine that. Nothing else is making a comeback.
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How about Christmas cards? Frosty the Snowman or Santa Claus.
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I mean, we used to send my favorite, personal favorite, although now we send for whatever reason
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Halloween pictures of us and the kids. But I mean, that's odd, really. Right. But we used to send,
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I used to like Thomas Kincaid cards. And the reason I like them is because they had a beautiful picture on the cover.
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And then inside there was always a scripture. This morning, I want to encourage us to kind of get away from a simplistic understanding of Jesus.
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And there are a lot of reasons for that. One is because I think he demands and he deserves more than that.
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But I think, too, as if you have the opportunity to interact even with Christians, especially during this pandemic, people are looking for answers.
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We have the answers or we should have the answers. And I want to equip you with those answers this morning.
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So as we look to John chapter one, I hope you'll be encouraged in that way. Let me read verses one to three.
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No preface. I'll just read it. John one versus one to three in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was
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God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.
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And this morning, I'm going to ask three questions. And really, they're yes or no, true or false.
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You can't you shouldn't miss them, right? But they really help us separate those who say they are, for example,
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Christians from those who are not from those who say they are people of faith, from those who are not.
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And it will help us inform even people who say, I'm an atheist. I believe in no God at all.
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How do we justify the religion of Christianity? How do we explain the person and work of Jesus Christ?
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And it all starts right here in John chapter one, verses one to three, because they prove really these three verses prove without any doubt that Jesus Christ is
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God. And our first question is, has
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Jesus again? Yes or no. Has Jesus always existed?
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Another way of framing it would be this. Is Jesus eternal? You might think, well, that's a pretty obvious question.
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Not always. And we'll talk more about that. But look at the text again. In the beginning was the word.
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Now we know from verse 14, and we should be familiar with this, that the word is in fact
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Jesus. But I want to focus just on those first three words in the beginning.
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When you hear those words, you should immediately call to your mind Genesis one, one, right?
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In the beginning, God, it's not an accident.
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Think about this. John writing around year 90 from the island of Patmos, where he's exiled.
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He has Matthew, Mark and Luke, the other gospels. He doesn't write about the birth narrative.
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This is his best friend. He calls himself the beloved apostle, the apostle that Jesus loved, right?
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He's really talking about his best earthly friend, Jesus. And he doesn't start like a couple of the others were with either the genealogy or the physical birth.
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He says in the beginning, which would immediately bring to a primarily, if you think about a
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Jewish audience, Genesis one, one, and that's on purpose. That's what he wants.
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He wants them to think back to Genesis and to immediately have that kind of mindset.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now when we hear the word
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Genesis, you know, we think of the first book, book of the Bible, but to the Jewish mind, the first word or the name of the book is not
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Genesis. It's kind of shocking to us, right? We think it would be exactly the same, but it's not.
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The name of the book in Hebrew is in the beginning, the first three words of the book.
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So he starts his gospel with that image because he wants them to understand one thing, that Jesus Christ is eternal, that he was there in the beginning.
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If you think about the opening verses of Genesis, how, you know, God said this and there was light,
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God said and such and such, God speaks and action takes place. But the point here is, is in the beginning, in this beginning in which
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John refers to is the start of creation, the very dawn of the universe. And our
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English language sometimes fails to accurately give us the clarity of the
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Greek. In verse one, John uses the imperfect tense of to be the word was three times.
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Why? Because he wants to emphasize something. Repetition is emphasis.
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Leon Morris, a scholar, said this. He said, the verb was is most naturally understood of the eternal existence of the word.
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The word continually was. It is appropriate to eternal, unchanging being.
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In the beginning was the word and eternal, unchanging being, not
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Christmas card theology. And it is to give the sense that when everything created came into being, the word was already there.
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And you might think to yourself or you might somebody might ask you, you know, the old question. Well, where did
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God come from? Well, where did Jesus come from? What's the answer? He always was.
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We have this in our humanity. We have this idea, this fallen, sinful idea that everything has a beginning.
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But the eternal son has no beginning and he has no end. He is when the confession says that he is eternally begotten.
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What does that mean? It means it describes rather the relationship between the father and the son, between those two persons of the
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Trinity. It's not in any sense indicating that he had a beginning because he doesn't have a beginning.
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John describes Jesus in a way that affirms his aseity, that is to say, his self -existence.
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When Jesus says in John 8, 58, before Abraham was,
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I am, he's saying that very thing. He's saying he always existed, not just before Abraham, but for all time.
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How do we know that? Because we went back to Exodus 3, 14, which he's quoting. And in fact, let me back up for a moment.
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If we went back to John chapter 8, we would understand because what is it that the
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Jews want to stone him for ultimately, what do they go after him for, for making himself out to be God?
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They understood, the original audience understood. That's one of the reasons they put him to death is they said he committed blasphemy for saying that he was
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God. John says that very thing. He says that he's eternal.
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And this idea of there being this eternal relationship between them is what
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Jesus is talking about, or this eternality is what he's talking about in John 8, 58, he references back to Exodus 3, 14, which is when
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Moses says, well, you know what? When I go to the Israelites, who am I going to say is sending me?
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You know, obviously it's not Molech or any of these other gods. Who do I say? What's your name? Tell him
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I am sent you, which is to say the God who has no beginning, no ending.
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He has no creator. He just is. That's who Jesus is.
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And that alone puts the idea to the idea or puts the light of the idea that put forth by men like through the ages, like Arius or even like Mormons today, that Jesus Christ is a created being.
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Simply put, there never was a time when Jesus, the second person of the Trinity did not exist.
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Years ago, when I worked for the sheriff's department, I was working with a man who was a returned missionary and it was about this time of the year,
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Christmas. And I don't remember exactly how, but we started talking about Christmassy things and he said that he was a
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Christian and I thought, okay, Steve, you're not supposed to witness, but here's a guy like putting it on a tee for you.
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How do you not say something right? You know that he's not a Christian. You can't let him get away with that.
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Besides that, I had the guilt trip of knowing that I was in seminary preparing for the pastorate. So how could I tell future generations that I whiffed on that?
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By the grace of God, I didn't. But what I said was I started asking him questions and he got all of them right and I was getting so upset, you know, because I'm like,
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I have to convince this guy he's not a Christian. So finally I said, hi, I go,
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I've got it. Thank you, Lord. Was there ever a time when
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Jesus did not exist and he got real quiet and he said, yes.
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And I said, then you don't believe in the God of the Bible. You don't believe in Jesus. You're going to get all the other ones right.
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Did Jesus die for your sins, et cetera, you know, faith and all these other things that they really they've altered the meaning of.
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But when I said, was there a time when Jesus did not exist, he had to tell the truth and then I had him.
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That's in direct contradiction to what the apostle Paul directed by the Holy Spirit writes here.
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There was never a time when Jesus did not exist. Now, look at verse two for a moment, we'll go back to verse one in a second, but look at verse two for a moment, he was in the beginning.
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Again, see the repetition there, he's stressing something, he wants us to understand that before anything else was.
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Jesus was he was in the beginning with God, it says. Now, the
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Mormons claim that he was a preexistent spirit, just like all of us, and that by his faithfulness he became
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God. It's false. It simply cannot be reconciled with what
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John writes here, that he was in the beginning with God. We could look at those two words with God and we could understand it this way, that, you know, he was just in the vicinity of.
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But that's not the idea. The idea is that there was in a closeness, a close relationship.
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But now imagine for a moment again, put yourself in the mindset of a first century
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Jew, you know, the Old Testament backward and forward. And John writes in the beginning and then in verse two, he writes in the beginning again.
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And you're thinking, OK, there's a message here for me. And that message is
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Jesus Christ is God, he's always existed before anything else existed,
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Jesus existed. Look at it another way. Let me just turn to Isaiah 40,
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Isaiah 40, verse twenty eight for just a moment. You don't have to turn there, but I want to read that because I just want us to give it to get an idea of this eternity, what it really means.
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Isaiah writes this, he says, have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting
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God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not grow faint or weary.
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His understanding is unsearchable. Then there refers to his knowledge and everything. But the idea that he doesn't grow weary or faint, what does that mean?
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It means there's no lacking of energy. Again, this idea that God is self -existent, the sat of God.
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When we think of eternal life, what secures the promise of eternal life? And you'll say the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And that's true. Right. But it's this principle, the sat of God, the self -existence of God.
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He created everything. And guess what? His power was not diminished. His energy was not diminished.
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It's not diminished now, even though he's upholding everything in the universe by his power.
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The life and the breath that you have right now. Is by the power of God, eternal life will never end.
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Why? Because God cannot run out of power. He has promised us eternal life.
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His promises are true and his being is such that he neither gains nor loses power.
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He is power. He is energy,
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I guess we could say he will not grow faint nor weary.
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Back to John, has
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Jesus always existed? Is he eternal? Will he exist just as he did before he came into this world forever?
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And the answer is yes. Second question, is
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Jesus truly God? Is Jesus truly God? We see it all the time. He's truly
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God and he's truly man. Well, is he truly God? Does the word of God say that? Look at verse one. And the word was with God and the word was
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God. Now, the Greek word there, as many of you are familiar, is logos. And there were many philosophies being taught then by people.
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The Greek world, Greek philosophical world, you know, all the smart guys were
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Greeks, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. And they filled this word logos with a number of different philosophies, which we're not going to cover today, thankfully.
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But here's the point. The point is, John wants us to know that that word that he's talking about is
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Jesus and God. And given the context and the parallels of Genesis 1, we have to think about what does the word of God do in Genesis 1?
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How many times do we hear in Genesis 1? I mean, I could go through it. Maybe I should. And God said, and there was, right?
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God speaks and what happens? Things happen. Things come into being. God said, let there be light.
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And there was light, right? He speaks and things happen. So this idea, again, if you just put yourself in a first century
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Jewish mindset and you're thinking Genesis, when you hear in the beginning and now you're hearing about this logos, this word, it's a powerful concept for them.
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The second person of the Trinity spoke, things leapt into existence.
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We could find that by Colossians 1 and other places. But he came from heaven, from the father's side.
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Why? To give us a message. How do we know that? Because he told us that. John 7, 16.
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So Jesus answered them, my teaching is not mine, but him who sent me, the father.
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John 14, 24, whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the father's who sent me.
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Jesus communicated exactly what the father wanted him to communicate.
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Not only did he tell us what the father wanted him to say, but he also showed us who the father is in John 1, 18.
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No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father's side. He, speaking about Jesus, has made him known.
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If you have seen me, you have seen what? The father. For the
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Jews, again, the idea of logos would be directly related to the power of God.
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And so this is a powerful concept for them. Now, look at the word again in verse 1, the word with, that he was with God.
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And when we think of maybe, you know, I went out last night with Janet.
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Well, what does that mean? That means Janet was in the car with me and we drove and we, you know, we went over to somebody's house together.
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She was in my sphere. She was in the area with me. But that's not the idea here.
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Again, the idea and the grammar here drives us to understand this relationship between the father and the son.
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Kistmacher says this. He says the word existed in the closest possible fellowship with the father.
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And we get a glimpse of that from time to time in the scripture. In fact, in John 17, five, we would read this.
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And now, father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed for all eternity.
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Before anything existed, before there even was an eternity. When we think about eternity, we think about, you know, a time past.
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What we fail to comprehend, really, is that there was a time when there was no time. I mean, it can get kind of mind bending when you just think about that.
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Time is a construct. It's a creation. It is. It is a I guess we could say it this way.
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That's a physical thing. When I I like to look at it this way, that God sees time like a picture, right?
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It's all laid out before him and that Jesus actually enters into that time space continuum.
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But God is not forced into his own creation. But that relationship is so close.
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The love is so perfect. That the son willingly gives up some of that fellowship for a time to come into this sinful world, to save sinners, to save us back to the text in verse one, the logos, the word was
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God. One writer says this, he says, the word order tells us that Jesus Christ has all the divine attributes that the father has.
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All of the divine attributes the father has, there's no difference in terms of substance between the father and the son.
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There was an ancient heretic named Sebelius who argued that God was not three persons of the same substance, but three different modes.
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Today, we call those people modalists. And here's the difficulty, if you think about it, and this is kind of the source of many heresies,
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Mormonism and other people. When you try to understand God and you try to simplify things so that you can go,
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OK, now I get it. Now I fully understand it. When we think about the Trinity, we go, that's mind blowing.
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So what do we do? The heretics do things like this. They look at Deuteronomy 6, 4, here,
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O Israel, the Lord, our God is one, right? There's one God. And the heretics say, well, wait a minute.
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Scripture says that the father is one or father's God, Jesus is God, the
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Holy Spirit's God. But there's only one God. Therefore, it has to be. God, the father, appears as God, and then he changes suits, as it were, into the son.
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And then he changes again into the spirit so that there aren't three persons, just one.
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Which is what the Bible says, that there are three persons and yet one God, God, the father,
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Jesus, the son are both fully God, as is the spirit. Doctrine of the
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Trinity is not easy for us to grasp, but it's what the Bible teaches. Truth is truth. The Bible teaches these and we must embrace these truths.
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And John is remarkably clear. He could have said something like the word was divine, not the word was
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God, if he wanted to. He could have said the word was the archangel Michael. He could have said a lot of things.
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Or he could have written like what the Watchtower, the Jehovah Witnesses, translates, which was the word was a
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God. And there's a problem with that translation. There are a couple of problems with it.
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One is it violates every rule of Greek, right? That's a problem. And, you know, they're not consistent in the way that they translate that construction throughout the
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New Testament. But there's another problem. Imagine, again, being a Jewish reader and reading that and having it say, you know, the word was a
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God. Okay, we're monotheists. We believe in one
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God. Here, oh, Israel, the Lord, our God is one. And you're talking to us about a God, a separate God, a different God.
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We're not interested in your paganism. But that's not right.
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He is God. He's just the second person of the Trinity. So there is no indefinite article there.
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He's not a God. He is God. Nothing higher can be said,
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Morris says. All that may be said about the father may be fitly said about the son.
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Now, if you've ever had a cultist like a Jehovah witness at your door or if they've said anybody receive one of those letters from them lately, like Pastor Mike did,
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Bob Muto did anybody else? I mean, they're they know their
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Bible to some extent. They have Bibles. So they show up at your door. They have a Bible with them. You know, professional tip.
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Don't try to take it from them and disprove their their theology because they've edited that Bible.
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They've edited it very well. And like I just said, it says in John one that the word was a
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God. Now, that's. It's not just wrong, it's heresy.
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Somebody says they're a Christian and then they say they're Jehovah witness. Well, no, they're not. They're not a Christian. They could be a Jehovah witness, but they're not a
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Christian. What they do is they alter the text to fit their theology.
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We want to look at the Greek and the Hebrew and the Aramaic and derive our theology from a right interpretation, not impose our theology upon the interpretation.
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Why? Because that's how you get heresy. Think about Philippians two.
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And I'm going to read the end of verse five through verse seven. Now, this would be a good
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Christmas card for you. Christ, Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God.
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Right. John says he was with God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, to be held on to, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men.
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Jesus condescends. He comes into his own creation. The great God, the creator, steps into his own creation.
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Why? To do the father's will. He lays aside his exercise of his deity.
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He doesn't stop becoming God. And I think it's important to note that. But he doesn't always exercise his power as God.
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Jesus always was and still is God. And he took on a second nature as man.
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He became the God who is with us and who is like us, the
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God, man, Emmanuel. Now, we we talk about doctrine and things we say we're saved by grace through faith alone.
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Right. Say, by the grace of God through faith, which is God given and that alone.
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But that can't happen if Jesus is not eternally God. He had to be
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God to pay the price for sin in such a way that all of his elect could have their sins paid for.
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It had to have infinite value, but he also had to be a man. Why? Because you can't send a chicken or a cow or a camel or a buffalo or to pay the price for men's sins had to be in our likeness.
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He had to be tempted and tried in every way just as we are. And he was God alone through his word tells us who he is.
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And it's no small doctrine that we're talking about when we're talking about the nature of Jesus.
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And if we get that wrong, everything will be wrong. So our first question, has Jesus always existed in the audience said yes.
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Second question, is Jesus God? Yes. Third question, is
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Jesus the creator? And this is really simple. Anyone could read this and get it right. Verse three, all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.
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I mean, this is like lawyer like language. This is to exclude everything. There's no way anybody could ever get this wrong, except they do.
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Nothing came into being except what Jesus made. I mean,
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I could talk about evolution. Can a Christian believe in evolution? I think the answer is no. Nothing just evolved into being.
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Jesus Christ made everything. But again, everything that was made was created by the pre incarnate
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Jesus. And without him was not anything made that was made. So he says it.
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He says it kind of positively and then negatively, as if to exclude everything. There are no exceptions, no mutations.
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There's nothing that is outside. I mean, are there mutations? Yes. But the idea is evolution is excluded.
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Here's what we know. This idea of a big bang theory, chaos existed, and then order suddenly came out of chaos.
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It's false. How do we know that? Right here. Nothing came into being that wasn't made by Jesus.
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Well, what does that nothing include? I don't know, like planets, people, everything that exists.
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Life in all of its variety did not just happen. It was made by its designer, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And this part of the verse also puts to the lie the idea of another heretic, a man named
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Arius, who said that Jesus Christ was a created being. Well, again, we go back to this.
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Without him was not anything made that was made. Well, what does that mean? If he was a created being, he would have to have existed before he existed so that he could.
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That doesn't work. He had to be ever existed in order to create everything.
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Has Jesus always existed? Yes. Is Jesus God? Is Jesus the creator? Yes. Yes.
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Is everyone a Christian who says that they are? No. But you know what?
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You're not going to find out if you just. Operate on Christmas card theology, and if you just accept what everybody says.
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And I thought, you know what? Let's just put this on our Christmas cards.
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How about this? This will warm the hearts of everybody. The son of God, the second person in the
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Holy Trinity being very an eternal God, the brightness of the father's glory of one substance and equal with him who made the world who upholds and governeth all things he hath made.
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Did when the fullness of time was come here, we're talking about Christmas. When the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin being conceived by the
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Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin. Put that on your Christmas card. If you'll be like what?
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That's where our confession of faith. That's who Jesus is. Now I open up talking about the virus.
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Haley, all these things. Everybody's concerned about the virus. Well, there is a virus we all have to be concerned with because it's going to kill everyone.
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And it's not the Corona virus. It's sin. It's going to kill every single person.
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You say, well, what do you mean? I mean, in the absence of sin, what would happen if there were no sin? If Adam and Eve never fell, then guess what?
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No death. We know that because the Bible says that death came to all men. Romans says there's a virus out there that's going to kill all of us.
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And it's called sin. Like the Corona virus, we want a cure.
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Well, God has given us a cure. It's faith in Christ Jesus. Well, you're still going to die.
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That's true. But you can have eternal life by believing in Jesus Christ, in his perfect life, his substitutionary death, and his victorious resurrection.
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That's the cure for sin. Eternal life is secured by the power of this all powerful
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God, who's also all loving, came to redeem his people from their sins.
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That's good Christmas card theology right there. Let's pray.
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Father, what a blessing it is to contemplate the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Just think, to even put ourselves in the mindset of the Apostle John, and to think how from eternity past you determined to save a people, sending the
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Lord Jesus Christ to preach to them, to be recorded by his disciples, to be that word to be preserved for us that we might know who he is, that in time you would cause us to believe in all for your glory.
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If there's anyone here today who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ, I pray today, if they're listening,
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I pray today would be the day when they realize they need a cure for sin.
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Because sin is going to cause their death. And one day they are going to stand before you, give an account for what they've done with the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Father, fix these things to our hearts. Help us to explain them to our friends and neighbors, even in the midst of this time where people are looking for answers.