When You Get It, You Will Worship Him

Sermon Title: When You Get It, You Worship

Text: John 1:1-6

Date: 11/20/07

By Dcn. Chris Nerreau

INTRODUCTION: Today we celebrate the final Sunday in Ordinary time with the feast of “Christ the King”. This feast is a time of reflection on the magisterial aspects of Christ, but it’s also a great time to take spiritual inventory as next week is the beginning of a brand new year.

ILLUSTRATION: Keeping this feast in mind, I want to share a story with you. Last month, our president was visiting a dignitary in Russia. I was appalled to learn that the dignitary was 20 min. late for the meeting, he did not engage the President in any conversation and when our president extended his hand, the dignitary refused to shake it! This was very frustrating for me, how does this make you feel as an American, that your president was insulted in such a manner?

Actually that is a fictitious story, but I told it to help make sense of what I am about to say. You may not know it, but many of you here today are just like that dignitary. And so am I! We stand before the King of Kings, the Lord of glory who is to be forever praised, one who opens His Kingdom to us and extends His hand and we snub Him. Mt. 15:8 “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”

You may be thinking, “That’s not true!”, “I do not do that!”, “what are you talking about?” Well, how many of you show up for church late? How many fall asleep during times of prayer, or ever during a sermon? How many, during the praise and worship time are thinking about something completely unrelated to Christ?

Please don’t misunderstand, I am not condemning you, I do it myself! But I think our behavior illustrates a greater point, maybe from time to time, we need to be reminded of whom it is we are actually worshipping.

Today, being the feast day of Christ the King is a perfect time to jog our memory!

PROPOSITION: True worship of Christ comes as response to (1) who Christ is and (2) what Christ has done for us. If we miss place either of these, we have misplaced proper worship.

TRANSITION: So today let’s spend a few minutes reminding ourselves who Christ is and what Christ has done for us in order that proper worship be the overflow…

I. Who Is Christ – (John 1:3)

ILLUSTRATION:

Did you know there are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ; I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond what any single name could express, apart from “I am”.

Let’s look together at what this means (Read John 1: 1-3)

EXPOSITION:

V1. “In the beginning” - Christ is eternal and self existent

As far back as the human mind can conceive, parallels (Gen. 1). We see Christ as beyond linear time, space and matter. At whatever point the world began, Christ already existed.

This means that the Christ we worship is both infinite (outside of time, space and matter) and self existent, not dependant upon any created thing to sustain His existence.

ILLUSTRATION:

To understand self existent – He is the very first cause and nothing caused Him and nothing is required to sustain Him.

To understand eternal – Consider all the sand on the beach, then think about a bird picking up 1 grain every 10,000 years and flying away with it. When all the sand has been removed, not a blink of the eye has passed in eternity.

V2. “Was the Word” - Christ is the very “Word of God”

This also makes reference to (Gen 1), when God spoke creation into existence saying “Let there be…” Christ was God’s creative word. This is why vs. 3 teaches (all things were made through Him…)

It is impossible to consider a time when thought did not exist, if God is eternal then He has been in thought eternally.

Christ is that eternal thought. The Gk. Word used to describe this is Logos – This was an amazing choice of words by John because it united the 1st century minds of both Jews and Greeks:

For the Greek – Logos means the reason or logic of the universe

For the Jew – It is the creative and sustentative power of God

So John, when using the word “Logos” bridges the two, showing Jesus as the logic and sustaining force behind all of creation.

Christ is not just the creative power of the universe; He is the logic behind it. This means that He developed the human cell, matter and the laws that govern our universe. He is also responsible for the redemptive plan of salvation, Heaven, Hell, all things!