Essential Truths - The Pre-Existent Christ (The Logos)

Essential Truths - Jesus Christ, The Logos - February 3, 2019 Sermon for CATM

We are about 1/3rd of the way into our current teaching series on Essential Truths: The Triune God.

We have been exploring in some depth, over the past month or so, the nature of God, what the Trinity is, what the Bible reveals about Who God is.

We started with looking at God the Father, the fact that God is Spirit and God is a consuming Fire.

Then Pastor James Cheyne spoke about God the Father, that God is light. Then Pastor Arlene spoke, again about God the Father, that God is love.

Today we move to talking about the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. And since we like to go, when we can, in chronological order, today we going to talk about Jesus Christ,

and particularly what the Bible says about what Jesus was doing

BEFORE He became incarnate, before He came to us in the manger, before in Jesus God took on flesh and existed among us.

So we’re talking today about the pre-existence of Jesus. Let’s get started.

In the history of good ideas what do you think is the best idea that mankind has come up with?

End of slavery, Democracy, Free market, Equality for all/Feminism or Technology. These are all great ideas.

When I was growing up the very idea of having a personal computer in your home was unthinkable. Let alone the idea of having a mobile laptop computer to carry around with you. That was completely unimaginable.

If a personal laptop computer was incredibly unlikely, the idea of having a super computer that is so common that it’s just called a phone (show my phone) that gives you immediate access to all of the collective wisdom of mankind over all time, based just on how good your data or Wi-Fi signal is, was absolutely inconceivable.

Here’s a phone when I was growing up. (Show ancient phone, then 1970’s rotary phone).

We’re talking about the best ideas that humanity has ever come up with.

When it comes to ideas about philosophy, about life and about God, the ancient Greeks had something to offer.

As we think about this, I’m relying heavily on the thinking of William Barclay, a note Biblical scholar from the 20th century.

For the Greeks, their best idea was something they called the logos. For them, the Logos was divine wisdom.

In Greek it means two things--it means Word and it means Reason.

At the same point in history that the Greeks existed, the people of Israel also existed and were familiar with the all-powerful word of God: "God said, Let there be light; and there was light" (Gen.1:3).

The Greek was familiar with the idea of reason.

They looked at this world and he saw order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity.

The year kept its seasons; the stars and the planets moved in their paths; nature had her unchanging laws, like the law of gravity.

What produced this order, asked the Greeks?

The Greek answered without a pause: The Logos. For them that meant that the mind of God is responsible for the majestic order of the world.

The Greek-influenced thinker of that day went on: “What is it that gives man power to think, to reason and to know?

Again he answered unhesitatingly, The Logos, the mind of God, dwelling within a man makes him a thinking rational being.

Let’s stop and just note that Jesus and all the first disciples and first believers, many hundreds and then thousands, were Jewish.

But since the message of the gospel for not only for the Jewish people, that means it was for the gentiles, which was everybody else who wasn’t Jewish.

Those who were Jewish were influenced mostly by what we call the OT, and what they knew as the Hebrew Bible.

Those who were not Jewish were influenced by the thought of the Greeks, whose way of thinking impacted everybody else in the ancient world in the area of Palestine.

John. who wrote this gospel, jumped on this. He said to the Greeks, "All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God.

I’ve got news for you. Really good, crazy good news: The mind of God has come to earth in the man Jesus. Look at him and you see what the mind and thought of God are like."

John taught that the logos is nothing less than God acting in the form of a man.

John declares that that is what Jesus enables us to do. He is reality come to earth. Jesus is the real light (Jn. 1:9); Jesus is the real bread (Jn. 6:32);

Jesus is the real vine (Jn. 15:1); to Jesus belongs the real judgment (Jn. 8:16). Jesus alone has reality in our world of shadows and imperfections.