Bob Marcaurelle homeorchurchbiblestudy.com
GOD’S BEST WORD TO MAN
John 1:1,14,18
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God / “The “Word became flesh and lived awhile among us / No man has seen God. The uniquely begotten Son has brought Him out into the open.”
If I pass your house for years you will know a little about me; size, race, weight, etc.; but you do not know me. Am I Billy Graham or Adolph Hitler? You do not know.
You can only know “me” when I open up allow you to get to know my personality, who I am and what I am all about. I will use “words” and these words come from my inner word or being.
That part of the mysterious God that we human beings can relate to and begin to understand is what John calls the “Word”. And the Word, who became Jesus, speaks to us in many ways:
THE WORD OF MYSTERY (1:1-2)
1. The Mystery of His Eternal Existence
Close your eyes and picture God. Anything you come up with is wrong. A. W. Tozer said, “We ask what God is like and the answer is that He is not like anything. All we can describe Him with are things that came from Him but are not Him”.
This is the mystery of the uncreated God who brought forth the whole universe out of nothing.
As to His EXISTENCE, we need no proof. The first words in the Old Testament and in John's Gospel, "In the beginning" ASSUMES Him.
Belief in a personal Creator is NATURAL. The Bible dismisses atheism with one verse, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” (Psalm 19).
E.Y.Mullins said, “He said it in his heart his head knew better.”
To almost everyone atheism is an absurdity. Belief in God is basic to human nature.
The atheist has not been born yet who can convince us that the courage of a soldier and the laughter of a baby are the products of time and slime.
A young Communist girl wrote on her test that Lenin’s Tomb was inscribed, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” When she learned she was right her first thought was, “Thank God.”
It is a matter of FAITH (Heb. 11:1-6) Augustine in the AD 400's said, "Arguments for the existence of God for the believer are unnecessary and for the unbeliever they are unconvincing."
We have faith in an uncreated Creator and an atheist has faith in an uncreated creation of matter that is complex enough to produce the eye of a gnat and the wings of a butterfly. Neither one makes any sense rationally. They are both "beliefs" (faith).
The same is true with arguments with SCIENCE. If someone tells you they believe in the “big bang” tell them that’s OK because we know the BIG BANGER.
A man said to a little girl walking to church, “I’ll give you a dime if you show me where God is.” She replied, “I’ll give you one if you show me where He “isn’t”.
2. The Mystery of His Plural Description
John says the “Word” WAS God and was WITH God. This introduces us to what the church calls the “trinity” (Three in one).
No one verse specifically teaches it. It comes from the way the Bible speaks of the Son, the Father and the Spirit as distinct, separate individuals (Matt. 28:18-20) and also as being the same (Jn. 14:8-9; 16,18 / Acts 5:4 & 8, etc.).
This cannot be explained intellectually because it is something we experience. It is HOW WE EXPERIENCE GOD.
We know there is a Creator above, beyond and totally separate from our universe. We know that God came to earth and now lives, personally and visibly in heaven. And we know God speaks to us from the depths of our souls.
A little girl was asked, how big is God. She said He is so big the universe can’t hold him and He is so small that I can hide Him in my heart.
THE WORD IN HISTORY
1. Creation (1-3)
In creation we see God’s POWER and WISDOM. Job 12: 13 says, “With Him there is wisdom and strength.”
He has the power to create a billion blazing suns (Isa. 40); and the wisdom to put one just the right distance from earth to sustain life. (Job 40-41).
The Psalmist adds all this up and uses the untranslatable term GLORY. The heavens, he says, “reflect the glory of God.” (Psalm 19)
2. Conscience (4-5)
God shows Himself as a MORAL Person through the inner “LIGHT” of conscience, to us who have the special “LIFE” of being created in His image.
God comes on the scene in the Bible telling us there are lines we should not cross; there are fruits that are forbidden to us.
Rom. 2:12-16 calls conscience God’s “laws written on our hearts”, and says it will speak “for and against us” at the Judgment Day (Mt. 25). We will be our own judges.
One glory of being human is that we cannot do wrong without feeling bad. No animal feels bad about the food it has stolen and brings it back.
A dog kills its puppy and we say that is sad, but if a man sells his child into slavery so he can buy a new car, we say he is bad and what he did was wrong.
The IRS has a “conscience fund”. One man wrote them without giving his name, “Here is $5,000 I didn’t pay you. If I still can’t sleep at night I’ll send you the rest.”
3. Chosen People (1:6-9)
Hebrews 12:1-3
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways / but in these last days He has spoken to us through His Son / He reflects the brightness of God’s glory and is the exact likeness of God’s own being.” (TEV)
Creation and conscience do not tell us if God loves us and will forgive us. Emil Brunner said, “The universe with a million fingers points to God, but not one tells us who He is.”
We talk of seeing God’s love in the Spring rain that grows beautiful flowers but that same rain can was a busload of people off the road to their deaths.
Emil Brunner says, “The universe, with a million fingers points to the fact that God is; but not one tells us if He cares.”
Conscience tells us we are GUILTY and will answer one day to a powerful, moral Ruler who takes wrongdoing seriously.
This is why the early nature religions made carvings of a Creator who was hideous looking.
This is why God gave us the CHOSEN PEOPLE and their BIBLE. John the Baptizer is mentioned here because apparently some people, 60 years after Jesus rose, believed he, and not Jesus was the true Messiah. But in this context of revelation it points to the OT witness that ended with John. The OT said God was coming and John said, “He is here“ (1:29).
From the Garden of Eden to Abraham around 2000 BC God revealed Himself through creation, conscience and personal contacts with people like Adam, Eve, Enoch and Noah.
He told Abraham He would bless the whole world through his descendents, the Jews (Gen. 12).
He revealed Himself to them for 1600 years and led men to write down an accurate RECORD and INTERPRETATION of His dealings with them. This produced the Bible.
As every Christian knows, the Old Testament is hard reading, so God came to us Himself.
4. Christ (11-18).
Two thousand years ago God stepped out of heaven and was born in a barn. That part of God we human being can relate to; who He is as a person; His personality and character, the “Word” who WAS GOD, became a HUMAN BEING (flesh). Jesus is fully God and fully man. Tony Evans calls Him history’s only two hundred percent man- one hundred percent man and one hundred percent God.
Jesus is as much God as if he is not man and as much man as if he is not God. He does not do some things as God and some things as man. We call him the God-Man but this is misleading because it seems to put Him somewhere between and different from God and man. All we can do is believe the mystery and say,
I know not how that Bethlehem’s Babe
Can in the God head be
I only know that manger child
Has brought God down to me.”
HUMANITY
If you hit Jesus He would bruise; if you cut Him he would bleed; and when we reject Him and choose to keep on running our own lives and refuse His forgiveness, it breaks His heart.
Jesus did NOT disguise himself a a human being, He became a human being. Hebrews 2:17-18 / 4:14-16 says He is like us. This is true with two exceptions. He was not born with a SIN NATURE. The angel told Mary he would be the “holy” one.
And though He was tempted “in every way we are” He NEVER SINNED.
Philippians 2 says He “emptied Himself”. It is not so much that He gave up the powers of God, but chose not to use them.
In a “three legged race” a champion athlete ties his leg to that of his three year old daughter and he obeys the rules and voluntarily ties himself to the limitations of a three year old.
If a rabid dog comes towards them he breaks the ropes and picks up his daughter and runs. This is what Jesus did by working miracles. God wanted him to do this to give evidence that He was truly the Son of God. (Hebrews 2)
When Peter drew his sword to protect Jesus, He told him to put it away. He said he could call tens of thousands of angels to rescue him. But as the song says,
"He could have called ten thousand angels, to destroy the world and set Him free, He could have called ten thousand angels, but He died alone for you and me."
DEITY
The OLD TESTAMENT said God was coming. His name would be “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father” (Isa. 9:6). He also said (Ch. 40:3-10) the one who announced him (John the Baptizer) would say: “Prepare a way for the LORD / a highway in the desert for our GOD.” (Isa. 40:3,10).
JESUS claimed equality with God. When Philip asked Him to show them the Father, He said,
“Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know me? The Father and I are one. He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14)
He did what only God was supposed to do: He forgave sins (Mk. 2:5); said he would be the judge all men (Mt. 25) and accepted the worship of Thomas when he said, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28). If He was not God; this was the ultimate blasphemy (Acts 14:14-15).
The NEW TESTAMENT sees Him as God. John says here that he is the creator (Jn. 1:2) and the same as God (1:1). Yet he knew he was human; someone they heard, saw and touched (1 John 1:1-3).
Hebrews 1 says He the outshining of the inner glory of God.
C. S. Lewis reminds us we cannot say Jesus was a good man but not God. A good man, he says, does not claim to have no sin; to have the right to forgive ours (Mk. 2:5-7); and to claim that one day He will Judge all men. He says, “Call him a fool; or a charlatan; but don’t call him a good man if you don’t call him God. That is one option he has not left us.”
It has been said, “Jesus is either a legend; a liar; a lunatic; or the Lord God He claimed to be.”
5. Conversion (10-18)
We don’t know what marriage is like until we are married. We don’t know what parenting is like until we become parents. And we don’t know who God is like until we receive His Son and make Him our heavenly Father in salvation.
THE GIFTS OF SALVATION
1. The Sin Revealed
The human race not only REJECTED Jesus, we stripped Him naked, beat Him until He did not look human (Isa.52), and handed Him back to God on a bloody pole. In this we reveal our awful sin. Two monthss after the cross Peter told people who weren’t even there, “You crucified Him” (Acts 2). In each of us are the same sins that nailed Jesus to the cross.
2. The Savior Received
When we receive Him we have the right to become children of God, one of almost one hundred descriptions of salvation in the Bible.
Three terms tell us how to receive Jesus: turn (convert); repent and believe. We turn from sin to Jesus for salvation asking Him to forgive us on the basis of His sacrifice (faith) and help us be the kind of person He wants us to be. We give Him our sins to forgive and our life to change and control.
Acts 2:37-38
“The people said, ‘What must we do?’ And Peter said, ‘REPENT and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (the new birth) – Save yourselves from this crooked generation.’”
Acts 3:19
“Repent then and TURN (convert) to God, so your sins can be wiped away.”
Acts 16:20
“BELIEVE on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”
3. The Salvation Received
The term “save” means to be delivered or rescued. We speak of a fireman saving someone from a burning building. Jesus saves us from three things:
1) Sin’s Condemning Penalty (Forgiveness)
Romans eight says, “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8) God tells us through Jeremiah, “I will remember your sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34).
2) Sin’s Controlling Power (The New Birth)
God said though Jeremiah, “I will give them a heart (inner character) to know me.” Jesus called this being “born again / born from above” (John 3). Paul, who murdered Christians, (Acts 9 / Galatians 1) called himself a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5).
3) Sin’s Contaminating Presence (Heaven)
There will be no sin IN US, for when we see Jesus we will be “made like Him” (1 John 3:2). There will be no sin AROUND US for Scripture says of heaven: “Nothing impure will enter the city.” (Rev. 21:27).
Vance Havner said, “In the first two chapters of the Bible there is no sin, no suffering and no devil. In the last two chapters there is no sin, no suffering and no devil. I love a book that does away with the devil.”
THE GRACE OF SALVATION
John says salvation does not come from us but from God. Romans three says “no one looks for God”. Adrian Rogers says a sinner no more looks for God than a mouse looks for a cat.
Coming to God for salvation is because of God’s work in us. It is a gift and the world for gift is “grace”. The Father draws us to Jesus (John 6:44); leads us to repentance (Hebrews 6) and give us faith (Eph. 2:8-10). All we have to do is reach out, give Jesus our sins to forgive and our lives to change and control.
