Gospel of John (Study 2 of 24, Chap 1 Cont) — G.W. North

Bowing Before the Revelation of Jesus Christ

Now, let's take on where we were, that I believe, just to recap a moment back on the Ephesian statement and the Philippian position, that every knee has got to bow at the name of Jesus, but that's a step, I believe, in the whole process.

We are going to bow our whole selves, not just bow our knees, before God. And this marvellous revelation of Jesus Christ, who He is. Well, we know who He is, you say, He's God, manifest in the flesh. Ah, but these different names, there's something wonderful about them.

You must read about this in the Revelation. I don't, I want to make the connection, so I'm not talking of Revelation at the moment. But He talks in the messages to the churches, that you will receive a white stone and a name written, which only you will know.

Expositors have attempted all things about that, but cling to the truth of it, whether he's got it right, or she has got it wrong, or something. Don't worry about that. This is how I have proceeded. I'm quite a dunce, really.

You have to see, beloved, that it's got to mean something to you. You will receive a stone with a name. You. In other words, the secret has to be in you. If you haven't got something which is secret, a white stone, you haven't really got salvation.

But no one knows it. You have to have something. And this was in the breast of the Lord Christ, as He lived on the earth. He borne it from eternity. It's all in the mystery realm, beloved. The outworkings of it, wonderful incarnation, ministry, anointing, life, healing, crucifixion, resurrection.

The net, not the gross result of it, is that you will one day proceed into something great and glorious, which should keep you pressing on like old Paul was heading for the Marl all my life. He couldn't express it, though he could express much more than I can.

And do remember this, that when you read Paul, you'll never master him, but let him master you anyway. You will be entering into this great realm of mystery in which John shared, because only he and Paul were caught up to heaven.

So far as we know, none of the others were. And Paul says, you know, I had to have a messenger of Satan given to me. So you pay a price for elevation, not for your redemption. You have to pay a price.

Keep that clear. My blood? No, not your blood. My body? No, not all he wants it. There is something that I can't explain. The most obvious thing is that you will be greatly misunderstood. But he who becomes of like heart, like spirit, and like mind with you, though they can't have your personal experience of it, will understand what you're talking about.

Don't expect to meet a lot of people who do. Perhaps you'll think I am a mystic. I don't think I am. But I know this. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. And it was God. That's the hope of every preacher, to turn it into human experience.

That God is with him. And God is in him. When he preaches the Word, not words particularly. Words can be a veil, a mystic web woven over the truth, unless you use them correctly. In the multitude of words, says the old proverbialist, there wanteth not sin.

So don't pray to be voluble, will you? God wants us to enter into understanding. I've already mentioned that. How is it you do not understand the simplest things? So let's come on then. We've got through verse one.

If I only get through one verse of the lecture, I don't know how many chapters I shall cover. But be of good cheer. I hope to go further than that. By the way, I'm on test, you know this, don't you? If you're on, I hope Derek told you I was on test.

I'm on test. I don't mean acceptability, but shall I say health-wise. But I hope to die preaching. I hope I die, well I won't say here. Now, in verse two. It was like that in the beginning with God. All the verses like this.

Go back, read Genesis. Perhaps I ought to have brought my Bible. But I'm so, I'm infrequently in the Old Testament, I use it as sort of an illustration book. But here is the thing, this. That's how it was in the beginning with God.

So now you can think of creation, and listen, you will understand from a more advantageous position than Moses was in. That's right. He didn't know Jesus Christ, for instance. Each one of us, I hope, would be able to confess that we do know him.

He didn't know the Lord Jesus Christ, although he was with him, he didn't know him. That's what Jesus said about the Holy Ghost, making your connections, his kinship, his affinity with Moses. He said about the Holy Ghost, he said the same thing.

The Lord said to them, he's with you about the Holy Ghost. He shall be in Gazette. The world doesn't know me. He doesn't. He didn't say this. I said they never really saw him. Oh, they saw his body, they saw it hanging on a cross toward them.

But they'd never seen Jesus. I mean with the eyes of the heart. They'd never really, but he said to them now, you see me. And that was spoken in the secret rendezvous. It wasn't for the world. It was the rendezvous that the disciples didn't know about at all.

Being prepared for him. He was called the good man of the house that prepared it. But notice it was prepared by the good man of the house for the disciples to go and prepare the Passover. Do read your Bibles very intently.

So we're in the prepared position. And it was a secret rendezvous from which even ten of the twelve disciples were excluded. The knowledge of it. Only two. He said to two of them, you go there and follow the man carrying the picture through.

And where he goes in, you go in. That was it. A secret rendezvous. The world had never seen him. Oh, but we see him. We know his mother and his father, his brothers, his sisters. Here's the gavel of people that don't know anything.

You see? You have seen me. Very limited vision, but I'm not there yet. Where's that? John 14. All right. We've got a lot more days to cover. I could spend all this time I'm allotted in the last, those three chapters, 14, 15 and 16, but Derek said he's generous.

Here is the thing for us to see, beloved. That's how it was in the beginning. You say, when was that? I'm the beginning, he says. Lord, are you deliberately tying us up in knots? Or at least our minds?

Oh, yeah. He wants to destroy your mind. Your mind is but a vessel, a capacity. He wants to put in you the mind of Christ. Have you got it? Oh, we have the mind of Christ. You all say, Ghibli, we're all Christians, we've all got it.

Oh, I wonder. The capacity to think. The capacity, listen to this, to imagine. And did you know that the Bible speaks of people with every imagination of the thought of the heart? How about that? Possibility, friend.

If you just turn off, like a mimic, copying everybody's processes of thought and the statements that they make. If you will dare, not to be a queer, but if you would dare to be an independent man, that can't be independent at all, we all belong to the one body.

If you'll dare to think, Oswald James Meyer, quote him, that studies are not for wool gathering. Dare to think. You must never turn out to be nothing more than a churn into which milk is poured by some other person who gathers his milk directly from a cow, shall we say.

Or perhaps indirectly, must be collected. We're all part of the machinery. But God wants us to understand these things, beloved. You are not you. I'm looking at your face and who am I looking at? I look at your bodies.

But what are you looking at? May I ask you, what are you looking for? You. You're wonderful. Fearfully, wonderfully made. That's what scripture says. If you read one of David's songs, you'll wonder whatever he's talking about.

In the lower parts of the earth, you'll say, I hope you'll say, which I said many times, Lord, what does that mean? Dare to let your mind go, not into illusion or delusion, but into the word of God and go away and sit and think.

You know, one of those old English tag sayings. Sometimes I sit and think. Sometimes I just sit. But be careful. You have the enemy filling your mind with thoughts. You've got to be steeped daily in the precious blood.

You've got to keep walking with God. You've got to be in all the light. And I suppose I am a luminary to a certain extent in this mental realm. I hope I am light to you. You've got to be light. Jesus Christ, and this is the first statement about him after we get through the, shall I say, the very beginnings.

Jesus Christ as the Light and Life of the World

Light. He came to be light in this world. Beyond that, he could not be. But you see, he forgave people their sins. He did this. He did it. Yes, he did that. But you've got to distinguish in your mind about these things.

He forgave people their sins. But he'd rather you didn't sin at all. He doesn't want to have to forgive you in that sense. He wants to keep you from it. This we're making God our servant. You can't walk as a king if you're a servant.

Not in this realm. So here is the truth. In the beginning, it was God and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And it was always like that. So go back to Genesis in your thinking. And that's what you will discover.

You will find that in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Alright? And the Spirit of God was moving upon the waters and God said, what? Come out of the water. No, he didn't. He said, let there be light.

That was the first thing. Light, in this context of which I'm speaking, or in that reference back to Genesis, was to lead you into life. And Jesus takes that up in the third chapter a little bit. I want to soak you thoroughly in the mystical side of it all.

For it all came from there. But not to leave you in a mystical place in your spiritual experience. You've got to be able to put mystery into words and you'll have to be inspired of the Holy Ghost to do that.

Not attempts at preaching, but preaching. And nobody's preaching if what they're saying isn't inspired by the Holy Ghost. Now what a terrific thing this is. We've got to be aware of saying, would you like to give a word?

Who's got a testimony? What are they hearing when it's said? You see? Keep it back. I'm going to continue to give you testimony. Don't let me put you off. But you have to see is this, that you have to be the word you speak.

And that is wonderful. You say, my, you are pushing this thing out into a realm that we've never really considered. Or perhaps you have. I don't know. But this is what God is expecting of your session in this Bible school.

Creation Through the Word and the Image of God

So God wants to put the thing in entire perspective. All things, verse 3, were made by Him. Without Him, or apart from Him, or independent of Him, what you want to say there matters not. You can translate the Greek word in all those things, those ways.

Without Him was not anything made that came into being, really, that was made. Not without Him. Just as you could not live without breath. Just as you could not live without blood. Nothing. Where, how did, what did God create the world with?

I'll tell you, He got it out of Himself. I mean, it's very said, what did it mean to create? Well, make something from nothing. It's ridiculous. Is God nothing? It's ridiculous. But you see, it's so common talk, you hear it from pulpits.

That's God's superiority. That's because people are thinking absolutely materially. You must not be a materialist. God made it from Himself. Out of His own beautiful self and thoughts He created the wonderful earth and the heaven.

Out of that. Out of His desires, out of, oh, God's living person. We don't have to come down to our way of thinking. You've probably been betrayed by your teachers, who don't understand. They're mere materialists, unless they're thoroughly born again, and minister of the Spirit, and say, well, in the classroom, in the lecture room, I'm going back to university now, whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Above all what may be called their calling, your first calling is to be God-like. Whatever your job is, made in the image of God. But I'm running on now in Genesis 1. Let's go, here it is.

Without Him was not any one thing made. Now that's a wonderful thing. Do you think a tree came out of Christ without Him? That's how I know that all these prehistoric monsters, God will never make those horrible things.

That ought to convince you, unless you're dead keen on Jurassic Park or something. They don't. God doesn't make ugliness. Adam must have been a wonderful man, and Eve twice as wonderful as him. She had the advantage that she wasn't created from dust, you were, but she had the, that's why she's better than a man, looks finer than a man.

Compliment to you ladies. More complicated than a man, of course. But here is the thing to understand. That's why a woman is beautiful and a man's just ugly. You see, she was refined from Adam, taken from his bone, and that's where your life came from, from your bones of your father.

You keep that clear. God has modified it, adapted it to human existence, and how He was going to use it, but that's where you come from. That is on the physical side. They won't teach you this if you go to medical school, but what does that matter?

They don't understand. They're materialists, they've got to deal with material things. When they're up against something that mystifies them, they don't know what to do. How are we going to deal with the AIDS virus?

And that's your position. It all came out of Him. He was in it. Father, Son, and only Holy Ghost. Let's make man. Let's make him in our image. So you have to have something in you that corresponds to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Well, we know what that means, of course. Jesus Christ, when He appeared in the flesh, that's the man. He was in the utter likeness of what should be. Thank God He started all over again by the Holy Spirit, not in the mixture of man's seed and woman's contributions, though He took blood from her.

By the way, the last time I spoke to a doctor along these lines, it was a lady doctor, actually, going right back to my Baptist days. All right. She said, we're not quite sure where is the seed of the male or the female.

That's what she told me. You're a mysterious mixture. You can be like God or like the devil as you grow. And as you develop your mind, you can be like either. Not you I trust because you've given your lives over to Christ, I believe.

But it's all in you, beloved. It's all in you. When God made the creation originally, do you know what His intention was? Though this isn't written, you'll find out. He made Adam and gave him Eve. And it was His intention.

Now you check me out when you get to heaven about this. You check me out. He made Adam to be the Lord of the earth so that it would have said, Adam is Lord. That is if they could speak. He was over all the creation.

We say, He is Lord just because He's the second Adam. Don't you see? Wonderful. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Papa Elephant trumpeted to the Mama Elephant, Adam is Lord, for He was Lord of creation. Wouldn't it be wonderful if people would sing of you, that you have something of Lordship about you.

Oh, I don't mean trumpet blowing or heralds running before you. How wonderful it is then that God has moved this way and wants to move in you this way. It was the same in the beginning. And I want to tell you it's the same now.

Who is, who was, who is to come. God's never moved off that. Do you know if you apply yourself to God, as you should and in the ways I've spoken, going into your room and not go wool gathering, and you get down before God, this is where I got all my knowledge, if I have any from, I got it from Him, you go along with God.

He will let you enter into within the full. Oh, it says in Hebrews, boldness to enter within the full. You may have had the boldness given it to you as a concession from God, or if you like, part of the salvation.

But have you ever, dear? Don't assume something from a text in scripture that tells you a fact. Your life must not be built upon facts, even as factually factual as they can be. It's to be built on Christ, not facts recorded in the Bible.

Can't we trust the Bible to know? Oh, yes, with all you are. But it's to tell you what this great restoration is about. You say, oh, well, the restoration's all in the future. Christ's going to come again, dear, say Amen.

But I can tell you now, as though I was in heaven, that He's saying all that they would enter in now. How marvellous it is. How wonderful. I suppose I ought to mention the Toronto Blessing. I haven't been to Toronto, I haven't been in any place like that.

But that is my constant. If people talk to me about it, don't seek the blessing, seek the Blesser. If you get some blessings en route, that's fine. God wants you to see what it's about right into Himself, right into the thing He's revealed, right into Himself via the only route that you can go.

Life in Christ and the Call to Spiritual Hunger

I am the way, every other way will leave you far short of the goal, that is if you're on the way. God wants us to move in, for in Him was life. What do you think that word was refers to? It's in the past tense, was.

What do you think that is? Do you think it refers to creation in the beginning, or do you think that John is looking back and in one sense is making a statement about Him, in Jesus Christ was life. I saw it.

Because when he writes his epistle, they're all interlinked, he says that. That which was from the beginning, alright, which we have heard, which we have seen, which we have looked upon, which was with our eyes, which we have handled, the world of life.

If I can get you into a state where you're at least in the mind, wanting to enter into the mystery of things, it's wonderful. But that's the way you're to read your Bibles, don't for goodness sake go into the state, well, I've read me portion for today.

Ah, when I was a child, I thought as a child, understood as a child, and so on. When I became a man, I hope I am, I put daily readings on one side, except Oswald James, I visit him occasionally. Daily readings?

Well, it's a good way to start, yes, yes, yes, but you've come out of the primary class now, I hope. If you haven't, what are you doing sitting here? You should read at least one chapter a day, sorry, two chapters if you could.

In fact, there are some books you can read in a day. There are only five chapters in 1 John. God wants us to understand what it's all about, beloved, this great life into which you're entered. And it says, in him was life.

Aren't you all grasping after that? Don't you see, it's him, it's this I want. I don't want to be called just a Christian. Are you here because you are hungry and thirsty? Perhaps I may alert you to things for which you will hunger and thirst, and that's what I want to do.

You know, when I was a young man, I sort of, I mustn't be too reminiscent now, though people are always asking me to write my autobiography. Here's the thing, I went to a place, I've went to several places, they all held the same thing, they were always on the second coming, praise God, if he comes now it's wonderful.

I'm not turning you off that. But they used to ask in a sort of almost mysterious voice, now what do you think salt does? Salt is a preservative. You sprinkle it on and it preserves things, and that was finale, never went further than that.

They never taught me that salt makes you very thirsty. You are to make people very thirsty for what you've got, what you are. Try eating a spoonful of salt after lunch, see if that doesn't make you so thirsty then you have to have coffee every time, every five minutes.

Here is the thing for you to grasp, beloved, have you ever said, I mean people wouldn't think long, but has anybody ever indicated to you that you make them thirsty? Except for coke, you want to drink that.

You've got to see what it's all about, beloved. Go on, I want to imbue you if I never come to, when am I due next? Wednesday, if I don't come Wednesday and I've gone to be with the Lord, I want to make you thirsty.

Believers as Light in the World

You make my other people thirsty. If I may carry the thought through and make it a final statement with that one, you are to be the light of the world. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world, but he said, you are the light of the world, you are the light of the world.

I'm quoting from Matthew, one of the first statements he made after the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. You are the light of the world, and so I think it might be good to start at the primary level and sing, this little light of mine, Lord, I'm going to let it shine.

Did you sing that at Sunday school? That's right. Somebody saw something. How wonderful. In him was light. I mark it. To someone, are you listening carefully now? To someone, your life is a light. But if the light that's in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.

That is, the life you are living is spreading spiritual darkness. I'm not talking about mental illness or intelligence or anything like that. What are you doing? And where, may I ask, are you going? For he that walks in darkness, I'm quoting John again from his epistle, goeth not where he is going.

I'm going to heaven, and you walk in darkness, you're self-contradictory. You don't know where you're going. You don't want to believe about hell. I was talking with a young man in Germany. He didn't see why he should go to hell, and so on and so on.

I saw it. It was coming out of his mouth as I listened to him. Do you see? You will see immediately the only thing I'm concerned about in this class is you. You. You've got to be light. Life. May I ask you a question?

As ever anybody said to you, I wish I had what you have, and doesn't mean money or your car or anything like that. Means wish I had the life that I can see in you. Have you ever had anybody say that? Some have.

You see, beloved, that's the thing. You've got to make people thirst for your life. You've got to make them hungry for you. Oh, I don't mean in any just mute human affection or something like that. When something stronger than hunger sometimes carries boys and girls and men and women into damnation, you have to know these things.

It's the life. You may say about the Lord Jesus, if you like, in transcription from these things about the future past eternity into the present. He made people hungry for him. So at one time he said, I am the bread actually.

And listen, Moses didn't give it to you. You have to see, beloved, that Jesus wasn't a called man. He was a commanded man. I can only do the things that my father shows me, he says. Was he an automaton?

No, he was a human being vividly alive. What father was there, knew what father was. This is the thing we're going to discover. This introductory thing, we shall discover it right through this gospel.

He only did those things. Sometimes he gave them a peep into these great things that are transcribed into words for us by Moses when he wrote. He said, let the sea bring forth iron. Billions of fish fell in the sea.

He did that by feeding 5 ,000. Nothing. It was marvellous. Of course it was. But isn't the life marvellous? As marvellous in us according to our calling, commanding or capacity? Isn't it the same life as it is in God?

If not, we're not his children. You were born of your parents. You had the same life in you when you came out of your mother's womb as your mother had in her. This is the great and glorious thing. This is why you should reject utterly the evolution theory if you're holding it.

Beloved, your life is the life. Until the Lord Jesus came into the earth, I can't recollect now in the spur of the moment, whether ever anybody, their sight restored them. Samson was made blind. You see, it's this thing to have our eyes open.

Soon as he could, he said, no, I can't see. Let me destroy everybody. They were the enemies of God, of course. And he never knew what it was to be born again. Because the first birth that he had, though it was used by God, never made him to be filled with God.

Just understand it, then you'll begin to understand the difference between the old and the new covenants. These are the areas that are covered in these great things. In him was life. What a light has come.

John the Baptist and the Outshining Glory of God

They seem like before. That's the thing that John turns us to in this same first chapter. They seem like before. A burning and a shining light. His name was John Baptist. The outshining glory of God, limited down into flesh, lest we should be blinded by it.

So they groped their way through to the Lord Jesus Christ, those that had the sense to do it, or the need to do it. For once he started healing people, all the people that weren't whole discovered a need in themselves.

How wonderful it is then, that these things should be with light. I love that. Don't you? Now then, switch over into John chapter 3. God sent so loved in verse 16, of course, the world, that he gave it only begotten son, as whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have that same everlasting life.

I put that same in. He wouldn't offer you a substitute so often called Christianity in these days. The life of God he will give you. And it's so tremendous, lest we read on, that God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath made the decision that causes him to go into condemnation. He hath refused to believe in Jesus Christ.

Not that it was for that purpose. God sent him. He sent him that we should be saved. And he's condemned already, because he's not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. The only begotten son of God.

The only begotten son of God. You keep that clear. The only. In that unique, wonderful, hallelujah. By this time, of course, there's been another sentence imparted to the word begotten. When is the father begotten from the dead as a human being?

In that sense, he became the firstborn from the dead. So it's linked with new birth. And God wants us to move into this area, beloved. Let's go on then. This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light. Neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light. That's your first step in the way of truth, to move to the light.

All right. Your deeds may be manifest that they are wrought in God. And you do know, beloved, don't you? Unless the things I do, I'll put it on myself, are wrought in God before they are wrought in me.

I don't belong. So be careful about what you do. If I do a thing by the Holy Ghost, in the name of Jesus Christ, it was first wrought in God, communicated to me by the Spirit, urged along by that same Spirit, power imparted by that same Spirit, to do the thing I do.

Choose the thing I choose. Say the thing I say. You say, my, this is strict stuff. Of course it's strict stuff. But God's very gracious. How to make this thing which was entirely heavenly, oh Mary was involved in it, how to make this understandable to us.

So that, oh, I'm just going to say, groping in my misty way, I hear his voice, hear him say, do you? Or perhaps you're out of the mists now. God wants us to understand this, beloved, and so I go back.

You see how interwoven, that's why I take a theme out of the first chapter, and it's right through the book. It's right through everything. He doesn't do one thing that's inconsistent with the statements made about him in this first chapter.

That's why it's such a vital chapter for you to get into your mind. You've got to be able to trace your origins. You say, well I heard him preach, she said this to me, somebody gave me a tract. This is because we're caught in such a web of things in this earth.

Seldom do people go in and listen to, shall we call it a sermon, a message in a church, for the first time never heard it before and get born again. That's pretty rare. How many of you learn like that?

You might have read of some. This Holy Ghost has ability to generate in you the same power which generated Jesus Christ as a man on the earth. Oh, you won't have to die on the cross, and if they shed all your blood every day, couldn't save a rabbit.

Do you understand that? It's the life God wants you to have, not the way he produced it, though I hope I'm giving you some light on the way. And see what it's about.