Ascension Presbyterian Lord's Day Worship

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Grace and peace to you in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Welcome to the corporate worship of our
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God. Please stand. The Lord reigns.
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Let the earth rejoice. Let the multitude of isles be glad.
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Clouds and darkness surround him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
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A fire goes before him. And burns up his enemies round about.
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His lightnings light the world. The earth sees and trembles.
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The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the
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Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declare his righteousness.
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And all the peoples see his glory. Let all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols.
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Worship him, all you gods. Zion hears and is glad.
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And the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, O Lord. For you,
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Lord, are most high above all the earth. You are exalted far above all other gods.
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You who love the Lord hate evil. He preserves the souls of his saints.
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He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart.
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Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous. And give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name.
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Amen. Please pray with me. O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we as your people assemble and gather in your most holy name.
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We ask that you would be pleased with our worship to the perfect merit of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. O Lord, we pray that your name would be hallowed here, that each heart would worship you in sincerity and truth, and that you would kindle passions and affections of holiness and love for you.
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O Lord, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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Please kneel for the corporate confession of sin. Let us confess our sins with one voice.
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Have mercy on me, O God. According to your steadfast love, according to your love and your mercy, plot out my transgressions.
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Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
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For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.
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Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness.
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Let the bones you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
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Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
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Cast me not away from your presence and take not the Holy Spirit from me.
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Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.
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Amen. Please stand. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.
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O people of God, take heart and rejoice today. If you be in Christ, your sins are forgiven.
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Amen. Amen. Please take up the hymnal. We've just been instructed number 297, this glorious name above all names requires our highest praise.
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From your bowels with a full diaphragm and a loud voice, let us shout this praise and adoration to our great king, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, number 297. The insert 69, we've just been instructed on this as well.
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The tune is familiar to us. You guys did a great job in that practice. Let us sing it to the glory of God.
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Number 69. Please remain standing for the reading of the word from Genesis chapter one.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep.
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And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light.
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And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness.
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God called the light day and the darkness he called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.
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Then God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.
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Thus God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
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And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
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Then God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear.
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And it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas.
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And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind whose seed is in itself on the earth.
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And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind and the tree that yields fruit whose seed is in itself according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good. And then evening and morning were the third day.
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Then God said, let there be light in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth.
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And it was so. Then God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
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He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light to the earth and to rule over the day and over the night.
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And to divide the light from the dark, from the darkness, excuse me. And God saw that it was good.
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So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Then God said, let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures and let the birds fly above the earth, fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.
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So God created great sea, so God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their own kind.
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And every winged bird according to its kind and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth.
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So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Then God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth each according to its kind.
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And it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
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Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over the cattle, over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created them.
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Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
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Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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And God said, see, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of the earth and every tree whose fruit yields seed.
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To you, it shall be for food. Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life,
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I have given every green herb for food. And it was so. Let us now confess our faith in the singing of the
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Apostles Creed. ♪ Believing God and son of the
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Lord ♪ ♪ Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit ♪ ♪
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Born of those crucified and ascended into hell again ♪ ♪
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He ascended into hell, the
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Holy Spirit ♪ ♪ I believe the holy Catholic church ♪ ♪
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The communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins ♪ ♪
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Son of King, to kings of God ♪
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Please make preparations now for the prayers of the people. Let's pray together now in unison.
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Oh God, from whom come all holy desires, all good counsel and all just works.
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Give to us your servants that peace which the world cannot give. And also that we being defended from the fear of our enemies may live in peace and quietness through the merits of Jesus Christ, our savior, who lives and reigns with you in the
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Holy Spirit, God forever, amen. For the church of Jesus Christ, that it may be filled with truth and love and be found without fault at the day of your coming, we pray to you, oh
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Lord. For all ministers, missionaries in the mission of the church, that in faithful witness the gospel may be preached, we pray to you, oh
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Lord. Go to the front line and preach to you, preach the resurrection, the truth of your son,
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Jesus Christ. And Father, we lift up all these people who deserve you that they would be encouraged to do the course of Christ Jesus Christ.
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For those in positions of public trust, that they may serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of every person, we pray to you, oh
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Lord. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray,
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God, that you use the church at large to be a prophetic voice in that arena, proclaiming the proud righteousness of Christ, his truth, and his gospel, which is the only answer to any political problem.
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For the poor, the persecuted, the sick, and all who suffer, for refugees, prisoners, and all who are in danger, that they may be relieved and protected, we pray to you, oh
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Lord. Pray for this congregation, for those who are,
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I'm sorry, did we just do that? No. This congregation, for those who are present and for those who are absent, that we may be delivered from hardness of heart and show forth your glory in all that we do, we pray to you, oh
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Lord. Our prayers. Amen.
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Thank you. Please stand. I'm going to have to unfold the
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Psalm 69. It's on the opposite side of that one. The Psalm of the month, for the last time as the
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Psalm of the month. Psalm 17. Let us begin. Thank you for remaining standing and turn to the first epistle of John.
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First John. And chapter one.
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This is God's holy and infallible word. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.
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The life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the father and was manifested to us.
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That which we have seen and heard, we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the father and with his son,
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Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.
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This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
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If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
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But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin.
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If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
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If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
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The Lord be pleased with our consideration of his word. Please pray with me.
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Oh Lord Jesus, we ascribe majesty to your holy name for you are the eternal word of God.
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Come in the flesh. We thank you, oh Lord, that you have procured and secured our salvation.
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You have crushed the enemies of sin and death and Satan and you have made us your people alive and in this we rejoice.
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Oh Lord, I pray that you would allow our hearts to soar heavenward with holy affections when we consider who
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Christ is. We ask Holy Spirit that you would supply both light and heat and we ask all of this in Jesus name.
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Amen. Please be seated. I'm excited to start a new book with you and over the next several weeks of preaching it,
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I will be supplying more introductory and thematic information.
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Today we're going to jump right into it. There's two things that I wanna point out to you.
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The first is this. When we read just now in 1 John chapter one,
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I want you to look again at verse four. We're not going to be preaching on verse four today but we see a clear purpose in John's writing here in chapter one.
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He's writing these things that our joy might be full. Now that's encouraging to me because I wanna experience the fullness of joy.
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I think you do too. And a great overarching theme within John is assurance of salvation.
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If you or someone you know has struggled with assurance of salvation in Christ, 1
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John is a tremendous antidote to that fear. John so characteristically seems to be completely engulfed, entrenched and enamored with the eternality of Christ.
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And in this beginning part of chapter one, we have a message that sounds a lot like his gospel in the first chapter in the prologue to the gospel of John.
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He's going to argue here that Jesus Christ is the eternal son of God, the eternal word, the embodiment, the personification of divine wisdom.
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And this is going to be needful because of the error that resides within.
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The first thing I'd like us to do is I'd like us to take up the hymnal and turn to page 846.
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I'd like us together as part of the sermon to recite the second paragraph, the larger section of the
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Nicene Creed. This is going to serve us well when we consider who
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Christ is. The Christological controversies of the early church have their root here in 1
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John. There are those who would deny that Jesus Christ would come in the flesh.
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The denial of Jesus Christ coming in the flesh means there can be no salvation.
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If Christ, the living God, the second person of the Trinity does not come in the flesh, we would not be saved.
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So John is very eager to quench out this error and the Nicene Creed is going to help us articulate the person of Christ.
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Let's read it together as a congregation, beginning with and. And in one
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Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds,
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God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the
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Father by whom all things were made. Salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the
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Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man, was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, rose again according to the scriptures, ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the
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Father and He shall come again with glory, judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
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Thank you. Would you look and turn over to chapter two,
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I'm going to identify the error that John seems to be writing again, at least in the first part of the epistle, look at verse 18 and following.
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This is why I believe he starts his epistle in much the same way that he starts his gospel.
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It says, little children, it is the last hour.
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And as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come by which we know that it is the last hour.
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They went out from us, but they were not of us.
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For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us.
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But you have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things.
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I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and there is no lie, that no lie is of the truth.
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Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the
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Christ. He is antichrist who denies the father and the son.
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Whoever denies the son does not have the father either.
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He who acknowledges the son has the father also.
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To deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, maybe hearkening back in hopes of an
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Old Testament Judaism, John says that you don't know the father.
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The Jews today who claim to know the God of Abraham do not know the
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God of Abraham if they do not know the son. The great challenge in every generation is for us to get
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Christ right, to have a biblically informed and defined doctrine of Christ.
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Let's look at it again beginning at verse one. It says that which was from the beginning, children,
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I want you, many of you may have learned this. It came to my mind a couple of days ago.
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When you're learning numbers, they sometimes teach you about the number line. Have you seen that?
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Do you remember that parents? And it has arrows going in both directions.
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The beginning, in the beginning and providentially today, we were reading in Genesis chapter one, that could be the first dot on the number line, but there's an arrow pointing in the other direction.
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And in the middle of that number line, there could be another dot, and that would be the arrival, the incarnation of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That would be the dot in the middle. And the third dot would be the dot of the last day, the great judgment, the last day of the world as we know it, and the consummation of Christ's kingdom.
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And there's an arrow going beyond it. The straight number line has two arrows.
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And what John is saying here very clearly is, before the first dot, before when
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Jameson read Genesis 1 .1, before there was a Genesis 1 .1, there was an eternal word of God, the second person of the
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Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is divine logos, which was from the beginning.
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And here's the part that is so startling. John says, we, the apostles, the early disciples, the early followers of Christ, we have heard his voice.
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We have seen him with our own eyes. We have looked upon him.
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Our hands have laid hold of him and handled him. The divine logos, the truth has been revealed in the person of Christ.
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I'd like you to turn back with me to John's gospel in John chapter one. Another side observation,
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I think it's interesting that John is so taken with Christ and his divinity, big theme in his gospel, but also in his eternality in the past.
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When the sun was shining as Jameson read chapter one and the night is falling, there is the accounting of what we understand to be time.
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And before there was time, as we know it, there was a second person of the
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Trinity, himself very God of very God, begotten, not made.
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It says in his gospel, beginning at verse one, in the beginning was the word, the logos.
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And the word, the logos was with God. And here's the startling revelation.
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And the word, the logos was God. He was in the beginning with God.
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All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that was made.
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We often think about that creation account of being about God, the father, and maybe the spirit.
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But we forget that Jesus was an agent, the agent of creation.
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I want you to contemplate that for a moment. The divine word of God existing in eternity past, the one whom we read about in John's gospel and epistle, this one, this second person of the
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Trinity, he was present and he is the agent, the operator when it comes to creation.
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This one is going to rescue his creatures from their soul death.
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He's going to come in the flesh to make them right with God. It's absolutely amazing to consider what
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Christ has done. The great sculptor, the great fabricator, the great maker comes to retrieve and rescue his creation from destruction.
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In our text, the idea of word and life are so strongly linked.
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And this is consistent in John's gospel. It says in verse four, and him was life and the life was the light of men.
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And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe he was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.
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This was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. I want you to pause here.
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He was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him.
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He came to his own and his own did not receive him. This refers to, of course, Israel.
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But as many as received him to them, he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
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John continues, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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And we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.
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John bore witness of him and cried out saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me.
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And of his fullness, we have all received and grace for grace, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father has declared him.
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Now let's go back to our text in 1 John. We cannot be unmoved about these things.
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John says this idea, the reason, the divine wisdom, the divine truth is not an ethereal concept, but it is corporeal.
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Truth and wisdom and divinity and humanity reside in one person, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Invariably the question about what the word means has to be answered.
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The last half of, last part of verse one of 1 John. The word, the logos makes salvation possible.
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If there is no divine word, if there's no incarnate word, as I stated at the outset, there can be no salvation.
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To deny that Jesus comes in the flesh or to deny that he is himself divine removes the possibility of a person's salvation.
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He must be divine, he must be human, he must come in the flesh or we are still in our sins.
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The father and the son are inseparable. They are one
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God, not two. One is not lower or lesser than the other.
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The son is not a creation of the father, but has always existed with the father and is co -equal with him.
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Children, I want you to imagine and understand and lay hold of, there was no time when he was not.
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We think about Jesus coming in the middle of that timeline, that dot in the middle in the incarnation, but he exists on the other side of the arrow, on both sides of the arrow.
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Before he came in the flesh, he was still the eternal word. He was still the second person of the
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Trinity. John and his great wisdom teaches us that the divine wisdom, the divine truth, the word, the logos has come in the flesh.
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Logos appears about 330 times in the New Testament and it's a concept word in the
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Bible, which is symbolic of the nature and function of Jesus Christ.
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And it's also used to refer to the revelation of God in the world, but usually in its ordinary sense, it's translated word or speech or utterance or message.
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But I'm here today to tell you that divine truth, divine wisdom terminates in the person of Jesus Christ.
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We can esteem the philosophers and all their contributions. We can listen to guys on the podcast today who aren't
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Christian, who affirm masculinity or something like that. But until we acknowledge the source and origin, the revealer of truth to be
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Jesus Christ, we lack wisdom. Divine truth and wisdom find their resolution, they find their source, they find their origin in the person of Jesus Christ.
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It's not merely ethereal, it's not wispy, it's not airy, it's not floating in the atmosphere amongst the nebula.
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Truth resides in a person, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. The truth is tangible.
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The truth is holdable. The truth is accessible.
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God in his great love for us has brought the truth to bear in the person of Jesus Christ.
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The word, the eternal word has an entire book written about him.
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The truth of the revelation of the canon of scripture is the articulation of the person and work of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. You remember his discussion with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, beginning at Moses, he taught them all the ways in which the scripture was about him and reveals him.
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The word is used in this way that God speaks the creation into existence.
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It's very interesting because this speech, this divine logos is identified as a person.
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Jesus is the creator. Jesus is the redeemer. The whole world belongs to him.
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Everything consists and finds their value and connection to him. He holds it all together.
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How could we reject his incarnation? How could we reject his divinity?
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Well, the logos and its standard meaning designates very simply a word, a speech, the act of speaking.
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It's referenced there in Acts chapter seven with Stephen and his speech. In the second instance, logos and its special meeting, there's a standard meaning, a word, a speech, the act of speaking.
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And there's a secondary, more special meaning. It refers to special revelation of God to his people.
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The divine logos is God's special revelation to his people. But here and in John's gospel, we find the third and most unique meeting.
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And it's really confined to these two sections of scripture with an illusion again in John in Revelation 19.
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Logos in its most unique and perfect sense, personifies the revelation of God as Jesus, the
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Messiah. You and I, there's probably no
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New Testament subject that is more controversial than what does the logos mean?
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We can be enamored with the idea of the logos, but we have to get the message that John is conveying to us.
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We need to be enamored, not with the varied uses of the logos, but we need to be enamored with the person, the word himself, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That needs to be what captivates our greatest interest.
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John says, I know him, I've heard him.
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I've seen him with my own eyes. I've looked upon him.
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My hands have handled and touched him. This is the word of life.
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This chapter introduces again, the idea that Jesus is the word.
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The word that existed prior to creation. The word that only exists in connection with God.
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The word that is himself God and the word that became human by putting on flesh and dwelt among us and who possessed a glory that can only be described as the glory of God.
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John is an interesting figure. He is the youngest of the disciples. He seems to be the one who was in closest proximity to Jesus relationally.
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And I think he followed him around very closely. He's present to see a lot of miraculous things in the life of Jesus, but what's most striking to me is on the day of crucifixion,
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John himself stood at the foot of the cross and Jesus commanded him to look after his mother,
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Mary. And John is an eyewitness, not only to the ministry and life of Jesus, but the crucifixion.
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The other disciples aren't there, but John is there. He's the first of the disciples.
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You'll remember from the Easter season, he's the first of the disciples to see the empty tomb.
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Seems fitting that he would be the one to receive the apocalyptic vision of the end of all things in Revelation.
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John is consumed with the idea of the eternality of the son of God, the divine nature of Christ, which is perfectly united to his human nature and the hypostatic union existing, not as a bifurcated person, but one person who is fully
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God and fully man and the only possible source of life.
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In Revelation 19, the returning Messiah, again, authored, penned by John, is called the word of God in reference to both his person and work as the one who has been long awaited and revealed and also the one who is the revealer, the one who makes himself known.
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Christ shows us the father. He allows us to peer into the
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Godhead. He himself is the revelation of history. He's the great subject matter of the
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Holy Scriptures. He is the one who holds it all together and it all belongs to him and he's also the one who reveals the truth.
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In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it's regularly used, this word logos, to specify the word of the
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Lord. Places like Isaiah 110. And this, of course, relates to the special proclamation of God in the world.
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It refers broadly to the dynamic, active communication of God's purpose and plan to his people.
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What may be most interesting is in the
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Old Testament, there's not a direct personification of the logos. The closest approximation we get to it is found in Proverbs 8, where wisdom is personified.
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This, of course, leads some to believe this is a precursor to the unique technical use of logos in John's New Testament writings.
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I like to see continuity between the Old Covenant and the New but oh, the rapturous delight of the revelation of the word of God bursting onto the scene in the incarnation.
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The Jewish mind cannot conceive in its natural sense of God and man in one person.
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It causes their heads to spin. But at that time, the centerpiece of human history,
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Jesus Christ comes in the flesh, born of a virgin, lives a sinless life, perishes on the cross, bearing your guilt and shame.
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He rises again on the third day. He's seen by many witnesses. And 40 days later, he ascends to the
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Father on high, returning to his throne in his home. We've thought too little of the word of life.
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We've thought too little of the eternal logos of God.
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Much of what John says about the logos was found in the
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Jewish literature about divine wisdom. This would be extra -biblical literature.
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The idea of a personified wisdom was beginning to circulate more frequently in anticipation,
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I believe, of the arrival of Jesus Christ, the word of the
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Lord. D .A. Carson said,
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God's word, logos, in the
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Old Testament is his powerful self -expression in creation, revelation, and salvation.
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And the personification of that word makes it suitable for him to apply it as a title to God's ultimate self -disclosure, the person of his own son.
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Brethren, the gospel is a person. It's Christ.
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The good news isn't that there's just salvation in the world. The good news is there's salvation in Christ, in Christ alone.
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Truth is not floating in the air like ether. It's corporeal, it's bodily, it's personal.
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It dwells and resides and finds its terminus in Christ, Jesus, who himself is the only way of salvation, the source, the author, the creator, or the substance of truth is also the word of life.
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Let's look at the last part of verse two of 1
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John. The life was manifested.
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Jesus Christ has been revealed. John, again, affirms it with great credibility, his witness, his testimony.
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We have seen, we bear witness and declare to you that eternal life, which was with the father was manifested to us.
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That which we have seen and heard, we declare to you that you may have fellowship with us.
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And truly our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.
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And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.
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Christian today, are you properly reveling and rejoicing that you have been united to the word?
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Are you looking for truth out there somewhere other than the person of Christ?
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Everything else is a delusion. The Lord has created an orderly world.
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The enemies of God want to believe lies and propagate and promote them.
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He created men and women, male and female. Think of the perversions of that idea.
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He says there is no salvation to be found apart for himself. And the humanist manifesto says, there is no
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God who can save us, we must save ourselves. The battle lines are clearly drawn.
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It's black and it's white, it's right or it's wrong. It's the truth, the way, the life in Christ and everything else.
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John is going to teach us that we have assurance of God's love because we've been united to the word himself.
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Is there a more compelling drama in the universe and the creator himself comes and rescues his creation from certain death that the divine husband rejoices to recover his wayward wife and to bring her in, to draw her to himself.
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This is how John starts his first epistle. Today I ask you, are you filled with joy knowing
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Christ? You ought to be. May the Lord be pleased to have
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John help us achieve that end. Let's pray together. Oh Lord, we again acknowledge your preeminence over all things.
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You are the divine word, the word made flesh.
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Oh Lord, we thank you for revealing yourself to us, bringing us in.
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We pray now, oh Lord, that we would see this concept of your incarnation, your flesh and your blood and all of the implications as we approach the table and that this will be glorifying to you.
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We ask this all in Jesus' name, amen. To leave you with a word from the book of Hebrews.
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I want you to think about these points in history. There's a speaking the world into existence.
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There's a last day declaration, the arrival of the king.
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Hebrews 1 says, God, who at various times in various ways spoke in time passed by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the worlds who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.
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Hallelujah, amen. Let's continue our worship with the presentation of tithes and offerings.
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Please stand and let's pray together. Oh Lord, we thank you for the privileges of adoption of sons.
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We thank you that you've given us a stewardship over life and time and talents.
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And we ask that you would receive these offerings for the advance of your kingdom, for the making of disciples, for the glorification of your holy name.
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We ask this in Jesus name. Let us respond to these things by the passionate singing of the
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Gloria Patri. Lift up your hearts.
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Let us give thanks to the Lord. It is right and a good and joyful thing that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you.
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Oh Holy Lord, father almighty, everlasting God, because you sent your beloved son to redeem us from sin and death and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.
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Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we praise and magnify your glorious name evermore praising you and singing.
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Please be seated. Let's pray together.
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We believe that you are the incarnate word. We believe that you have lived a sinless life and that you have offered yourself as the sacrifice for our sins.
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And so Lord, we grant that you would set apart and consecrate these ordinary creaturely elements of bread and wine that for us sacramentally, they would be the body and blood of Christ and him crucified for us.
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And this would be a great source of our comfort and joy, knowing that he died that we may live, that he gave himself that we might have righteousness and atonement for sin and be in perfect communion with God.
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Oh Lord, we rejoice in the salvation you have supplied. We give thanks in Jesus name.
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Our Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread, this is my body.
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Likewise, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
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Drink from it all of you. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, proclaim the
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Lord's death until he comes. Therefore we proclaim the faith.
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Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Let's approach the table now with both humility and expectation.
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We do not presume to come to this, your table, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies.
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We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, who always shows mercy.
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Grant us therefore gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear son,
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Jesus Christ, and to drink of his blood, that our sinful bodies may make clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood in that we may evermore dwell in him, in us.
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Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us. The gifts of God for you, the people of God.
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Let us now make this commitment together in unison.
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Almighty and ever -living God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of your
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Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the body of your
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Son and heirs of your eternal kingdom. O Lord, grant us this other benefit, that you will never allow us to forget these things.
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For having them imprinted on our hearts, may we grow and increase daily in the faith which is at work at every good deed.
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And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our
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Lord. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, in honor and glory now and forever, amen.
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Please stand. So I withheld the cup from a few people there at the end of it.
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Everyone get the bread and the wine. Everybody, I'm so sorry. Praise the
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Lord. Let's sing now the doxology. Praise to our
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Father. Receive now the blessing.
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Now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you what is well -pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.