Jesus-The Word Of God

January 30, 2000 Jn 1:1-4, 14

Jesus – the Word of God

INTRODUCTION

[begin with one full minute of silence standing completely still] Silence. How do you react to silence? Most of you were probably wondering what in the world was going on. “Did Chris forget was he was going to say? Has he had a stroke? Has he lost the voluntary control of his tongue?” The reason that you had to wonder about what was going on was because there was no communication going on between you and me. Almost a month ago now, we faced a world-wide scare. The scare wasn’t based on a dreaded disease or on a famine or because of the threat of an invading army. The world was scared because they feared that communication from the different computers of the world to one another and the machinery that they control would cease. If that had happened – if this communication had ceased – our world would be a very different place than it is today. Our world relies heavily on communication.

This age that we are now a part of is known as the information age. I would almost guess that the explosion in information is not because we have gotten smarter, but because we have increased the speed at which we can communicate with each other. Think about the changes that have taken place in the field of communication over the past century or so. In the early 1800’s, if you wanted to send a message somewhere, you had to send it by Pony Express or smoke signals. On the morning of the first atomic bomb test near White Sands, New Mexico, two Indian brothers sat looking across the Mesa. Observing the great blast and the resultant mushroom shaped cloud, the one said to the other: "Man, I wish I’d said that!" Then came the telegraph and the telephone. Then came cars and airplanes which can move us and information quickly from place to place so that we can communicate in person with people on the other side of the world in a matter of hours rather than in a matter of weeks. Today, we have e-mail and chat rooms and video conferencing which allows me to not only hear your words but see you as I speak with you even though you may be hundreds of miles away. Advances in communication techniques have brought about tremendous technological and lifestyle changes for all of us.

What would it be like if God was silent? What would it be like if God never took it upon Himself to communicate with us? What if God started the world spinning and then left us to ourselves never to speak with us ever again? There may have been times in your life when you felt like that God was being silent. You were going through some pain or really needed some wisdom on what decision to make. You cried out to God, but as far as you could tell, He was silent. When David wrote Psalm 35, he must have felt like that. (Psa 35:22-23 KJV) This thou hast seen, O LORD: keep not silence: O LORD, be not far from me. Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause, my God and my Lord. But the fact is that God is not silent. He has spoken to us, and He continues to speak to us today. (Heb 1:1-2a NIV) In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. . . Like mankind, God has used many different methods to communicate with his people. He has used angels, burning bushes, signs in the heavens, giant fish, storms, prophets - He even used a donkey. And as appropriate as each of these means of communication was for the time and place, none of them compares to the excellency of the last means of communication – the Son, Jesus. God the Father sent His only Son into the world to bridge the communication gap that separated us from Him in order that the relationship which sin had destroyed might be renewed. Jesus is God’s Final Word to mankind. (Rev 19:13 NIV) He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. He is the completion of the message that the Father had been communicating since the day of creation.

What I want us to do this morning is to see 6 characteristics of Jesus that qualify Him to be the one who finally bridges the communication gap between us and the Father. Turn with me to John 1:1.

Jesus is qualified to be the bridge of communication with the Father because: