Text: John 1:1-3, Title: Jesus, Date/Place: NRBC, 9/18/11, AM
A. Opening illustration: signing a job description of marriage, before you know someone. But after some time, you can’t wait to commit to spend the rest of your life committed to one person.
Background to passage: John was the last gospel written (nearly the last NT book written) by the last living disciple of Jesus. Very different from the other three, and it is steeped in the message of Jesus. So this is what’s known as the prologue of John’s gospel. It is where he introduces Jesus to the world, the Greek and Roman world in particular. One theologian said that these are definitely some of the most important words ever written. There is definitely a powerful link between “knowledge of” and “affection for;” as well as between “affection for” and “commitment to.” My prayer is that all of us as individuals, but together as the church at New River would grow in our commitment to Him, which requires our love for Him, which flows from our knowledge of Him and all His beauty and glory. “…the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.” –Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy
B. Main thought: we must fall in love with Jesus
A. Preexistent, Eternal, Creative Power, & Central (v. 1)
1. John begins with terminology that would have immediately brought anyone who knew the OT back to Gen 1:1. For the Greek and Roman, the Word would have been the inanimate force or wisdom or rationale that governs the universe. John says that in the beginning He “kept on being” or “continued to be.” This is clear language of preexistence. He existed before time existed, so He is timeless and eternal. He has no beginning or end, never a time when he was not. He was the vehicle by which God created time. The Word was the creative force or power, or the breath of God. Christ’s power is that of the intentions and force of God the Father. And know that John makes Jesus the center of everything.
2. Rev 1:8, Jer 32:17, 27,
3. Illustration: “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like…” –Tozer, “I have a picture in my mind of the majesty of Christ like the sun at the center of the solar system of your life. The massive sun, 333,000 times the mass of the earth, holds all the planets in orbit, even little Pluto, 3.6 billion miles away. So it is with the supremacy of Christ in your life. All the planets of your life—your sexuality and desires, your commitments and beliefs, your aspirations and dreams, your attitudes and convictions, your habits and disciplines, your solitude and relationships, your labor and leisure, your thinking and feeling—all the planets of your life are held in orbit by the greatness and gravity and blazing brightness of the supremacy of Jesus Christ at the center of your life. And if he ceases to be the bright, blazing, satisfying beauty at the center of your life, the planets will fly into confusion, and a hundred things will be out of control, and sooner or later they will crash into destruction.” -Piper
4. We don’t even have a category from an uncreated thing. Nothing to compare it to, nothing that we can imagine it’s like. Everything in our experience has a beginning and or end. You serve a God and you can’t fully explain or understand. You can know all you need to know, but know that God is so much more that even the bible commends him to be. Know that He is incomprehensible. Not so much in the fact of what He has said of Himself, but of what He has not said. There is nothing too difficult for Him to make, sustain, or deliver (which by the way, is another connotation of this word). He is preeminent in your home, marriage, job, finances, hobbies, thoughts, worship, parenting, serving. He is the Sun in the midst of your solar system. And don’t just feel “He is not the center of mine, and he should be,” let me assure you, we all feel that way. But feel “I truly desire that He would be” for that’s where true joy is found—actual desiring Him to be your Sun holding all your planets in place. Know that He would be the best Sun, and your life would best reflect this biblical model, best honor Christ, best sufficiency, best minister to others, fullest joy, fullest peace, fullest satisfaction, the best everything, fulfilling your created purpose. Long for Him, don’t just feel bad about it.
B. Divine Self-Revelation (v. 1)
1. The words for Word in the Heb and Gr both speak about the breath of God, a wind blowing from heaven, conveying the inner most thoughts, intentions, and expressions of God. It is very intentional that Christ is called “the Word.” This is God’s most clear revelation of Himself. It shows us that it is at the core of God’s nature to be a revealing God. This truly elevates everything that Jesus did or said far above the words of simply a prophet. This is not to deny that the words in black (as opposed to the ones in red) are any less inspired than the words of Jesus, but the truth is that Jesus is the final and greatest of God’s self-revelations.
2. Heb 1;2-3, Col 1:15, Philip 3:10
3. Illustration: speaking of the changes to his native Great Britain after returning from 40 years of missionary service in India Lesslie Newbigin says, “…the idea of a personal, self-revealing God has become incomprehensible to many.” “In short, God’s ‘Word’ in the Old Testament is his powerful self-expression in creation, revelation and salvation, and the personification of that ‘Word’ makes it suitable for John to apply it as a title to God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son.” –D. A. Carson,
4. We serve a God who desires to reveal Himself to you! God wants you to see Him just as He is. He has designed numerous methods, but Jesus Christ is the fullest. God wants to speak to you everyday. He wants to fellowship with you everyday. He wants you to know more about Him everyday. And he has also given a book whose depth will drown the deepest theologians. He wants to be known!!!! Did you know when you came here today, God has something for you? Receive what He says! Be thrilled that He wants to reveal Himself (the greatest, most satisfying being in the universe) to you.
C. Relationship to the Father (v. 1)
1. “In the beginning…the Word” and “in the beginning God…” The language the John uses appears convoluted to some, but is exceptionally clear. Jesus is co-eternal with God. He was “with” or “near” or “face to face” with God. There was/is/will always be intimate inter-trinitarian fellowship. John has taken great pains to make the Word of equal essence with God the Father AND of separate person. Jesus is God, and that is clear from this text, and numerous others. The word “was” is in the imperfect, translated kept on being, or continually was/is.
2. John 8:58, 5:18, 23, Mark 14:62, Rev 19:16,
3. Illustration: “The scandal that must never be compromised is the nature of Christ and His relation to the Father,” “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father…” Nicene Creed,
4. I know that this may seem complex, or it may seem boring, but this is extremely important. Here’s why: when churches begin to be slack on doctrine, they begin to lose their picture of who God really is, and fads and worldly trends tend to invade the church or be adopted outright. The truths about God that have been passed down for ages, cease, and error more readily invades. And the trinity and the relationship that the Father has with the Son is important; which is demonstrated in the care that John took to explain it. And there is mystery in the trinity, and we won’t ever fully understand it, but we must know what we can and stand on it. But know, maintain, teach, and ponder on two equal in essence persons of the same being who are face to face and having intelligent conversation, and that creating and sustaining and governing everything that there was, is, or ever will be.
A. Closing illustration: “A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well…The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God.” -Tozer
B. Recap
C. You are commanded to love the Lord your God with all your heart. But I am begging you to lovingly embrace the most valuable Treasure of Christ, because you desire Him in all His beauty. Repent, believe, trust, embrace, follow, enjoy Him, because He is oh so worth it!
