The Eternal Word

I'd like you to turn with me in your Bibles to the book of John, john's Gospel, chapter 1.

John's Gospel, chapter 1.

And I will introduce our series here in a moment.

But John 1, beginning in verse 1, the first three verses of the Gospel according to John.

If you don't know these verses, these are some of the most fantastic statements in the entire Word of God about our lovely Lord Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.

Let's read verse 1 again In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Father, i just bow my mind and heart before the incredible revelation of these verses.

We sang it this morning, lord, that You are everything to us, and these verses certainly say that and more So.

I pray this morning that Trinity would be taken by God's Spirit and grace to the heart and core of the revelation of the person, of the Lord Jesus.

We pray that Jesus would become larger and larger on our scope, that He in His all of His glory and magnificence would be known to every man or woman.

And at the end of these days, when we're done looking at this chapter, we would say, indeed, that He is everything we need.

So now, lord, open our eyes to behold wonderful things in Your Word.

We ask it in Jesus' name, and everyone said Amen.

I read a story that really blessed me.

That is a good way to begin this time.

In John's Gospel, peter Lewis tells the incredible story of being in a small Welsh congregation one summer morning When he and the entire congregation witnessed an incredible event in that remote spot.

Wherever they were and I can't remember the area in Wales they had gathered to actually listen to a very distinguished preacher who was well known in the district And, as Lewis reports it, the service was very ordinary that day.

But how the preacher closed that service, he said, was far from ordinary.

Now, as the sermon was coming to an end, the preacher, he said, leaned over the pulpit and asked if he could end the sermon with a personal testimony.

And this is what he said, quote when I was a boy of about 12, i had a great hero.

My hero was a local sportsman who achieved the rare distinction of gaining a cap in rugby for playing for his country and who played cricket to county standard.

I so admired this man that I papered the walls of my bedroom with press cuttings and photographs of him and love to talk and hear about his exploits on the field.

He was my great hero.

Then, when I was 14, i actually got to know my hero personally.

He was a keen angler and I used to go fishing with him.

On those occasions I was able to observe him from an entirely different viewpoint and got to know the man and not merely the image.

At this point the preacher paused, looked closely at his congregation, shook his head slowly from side to side and, with an air of considerable authority, said in emphatic tones and the nearer I got to my hero, the smaller he became.

In a few sentences he sketched the young boy's disillusionment as he discovered the true character of the man whose public image had so captivated him.

No doubt everyone in the congregation that morning recognized the experience and sympathized with the preacher.

But a tenet as they now were, we were hardly prepared for what followed Eventually.

In a rising voice and with arms outstretched, voice breaking with emotion, he cried out.

But God eventually led that downcast schoolboy to a new hero And I have walked with my Jesus for 35 years now.

In that time I have often disappointed him, but he has never disappointed me.

I have got to know him better and the nearer I get, the bigger he becomes.

I'm sure many of us in this room can relate to what that preacher said.

That I certainly can, because this coming Wednesday I will have been a disciple of Jesus for 40 years And in that entire time that I have come to know him, i stand here and tell you that the more I know him intimately, the bigger he has become, and I believe that is the experience of all that know him.

Unlike so many so-called human heroes who, the closer we get to, the smaller they become, because we witness their quirks and their sins and their blemishes.

The closer we get to Jesus, the bigger he becomes, for the simple reason, folks, he has no quirks or sins or blemishes, and for 2,000 years Jesus Christ has rightfully occupied the highest place no one else ever occupies in the church, and he occupies it not because the church decided he deserves it, but because Jesus himself insisted on holding that place.

Are you aware that during Jesus' earthly ministry he kept saying things about himself that are either the height of presumption or else the absolute truth.

In fact, you could say it this way Paul did not preach Paul, peter did not preach Peter, but Jesus Christ preached Jesus Christ, and all through his earthly ministry.

He said things like come unto me, believe in me.

I am the way, the truth and the life.

Except you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins, and for that reason.

That's why the one thing we can't do with Jesus is set him among the various religious teachers throughout human history.

That's the one thing you cannot do with the man Jesus of Nazareth.

I love the way CS Lewis said it in his incredible way.

No one could say it like Lewis.

He said, quote people often say I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.

That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.

You must make your choice Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something else.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.

But do not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us.

I wish I had said that.

I take that back.

I wish I had thought that Now we've been engaged for many weeks in a study of the nature and attributes of God called a God worth knowing.

And this month of November we actually continue that series, but turn our attention solely upon the Lord Jesus.

And I want to preach four messages to you in the month of November, all from this first chapter of the Gospel of John.

Next week I will talk to you about the incarnate Word.

The following week I will talk to you about the crucified Word and finally, the Word proclaimed.

But this morning I want us to focus on the eternal Word.

And, by the way, in December we will continue to look at the Lord Jesus as we unpack the events surrounding his glorious birth in celebration of Christmas.

But here this morning we start where we must.

We start where John starts not with the babe of Bethlehem, as important as that is.

You see, matthew and Luke tell us about Christmas and we thank God for their accounts.

I love the stories of the Nativity of Jesus from Matthew's Gospel and from Luke's Gospel.

And Mark starts not with the birth of Jesus but with the beginning of his Galilee and ministry.

Almost a year into the ministry of Jesus is where Mark begins his account.

But John starts where none of us would ever start when thinking about Jesus of Naples.

Because for the majority of us, the place where we start in terms of our thinking about Jesus is in his role as Savior.

And we are right to do so because we are sinners in need of reconciliation.

So it is right for us to think of Jesus properly as our glorious Savior, the only one who could reconcile God and man, and he did so through the work of the cross and his resurrection.

What could be sweeter to us than the knowledge that Jesus of Nazareth came to seek and to save that which is lost and to redeem them by his death?

But there is a problem if you start there and never move beyond that, because it is possible to think of Jesus only in terms of our need as sinners and nothing more.

Now don't misunderstand me this morning I am not, god forbid, diminishing the work of the cross, and we now, as sinners, reconciled to God through the cross.

Never forget it.

Yet John's prologue, which is his first 18 verses, generally believed to serve as a prologue to his whole gospel.

John's prologue forces us to realize that if we really want to understand Jesus of Nazareth properly, we must not ask the question who is Jesus to us?

But first, who is Jesus to God, who is Jesus in terms of his Father?

That's why these words of John's gospel are so vitally important, because they tell us that the man, jesus, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, existed in eternity path.

Now I need to tell you something that you at least need to know if you've never known this, and that is it is believed that John wrote this gospel entirely, and especially the prologue, the first 18 verses.

He wrote it that way because many heresies were abounding in the first century church in Asia when he wrote these words.

There were a lot of false teachings and distortions being spread in Asia Minor and throughout the early church about the person of Jesus, and one common heresy which is still around under new names is that Jesus wasn't the eternal Son of God, the Christ.

He was just a man.

But when he was born at Bethlehem, the spirit of the Christ came on Jesus and for 33 years the spirit of Jesus, or the spirit of the Christ, animated Jesus of Nazareth.

And these heretics.

Many of them were under a brand of teaching known as Gnosticisms, or they were Gnostic, and they taught that when Jesus died, the spirit of the Christ left him.

So he was a mere man endowed with the spirit of Christ at his birth and then, when he died, the spirit of Christ left him and returned.

And John's gospel, among other things primarily, was written to refute this, but especially the prologue, the first 18 verses, because John is telling us here that, far from being just a man endowed with the spirit of Christ, john wants us to know, jesus didn't get his beginning at Bethlehem, when he was born of a virgin.

Jesus Christ existed eternally in the Godhead before time began.

That's how the prologue begins.

You've heard these words, all of us have read them.

John starts his prologue in the beginning and when I read that, i suddenly think of what?

What book do I think of?

when I read the words in the beginning, i think of the book of Genesis, the creation story, but John isn't referring to that beginning.

John isn't referring to the beginning of creation.

He's telling us that there is something that predates creation itself.

What John is referring to in the prologue is not the beginning when God first created, but that which existed even before creation and that which not only existed before creation, but church, that which governed creation itself.

In fact, if you don't understand the Godhead, you won't understand creation and why God brought into being this material universe.

You know, when I read this week again and again and again, trying to get ready for this Sunday, i realized that many stories start, you know, with the words once upon a time.

But really John starts with this phrase once before time, because John is telling us that there was a moment and Genesis tells us this as well when nothing existed and the Word of God spoke it into existence, so that out of nothing everything comes.

The technical term in theology is ex nihilo from nothing, everything by the creative Word of God.

Yet that's not the beginning John is referring to when he talks about Jesus Christ.

He is talking about that which predates time.

Now you may be here this morning and saying that's interesting, but why do I need to know that?

This isn't merely mystical, this is pastoral.

Look at what John calls Jesus.

Look at the phrase that he uses.

In the beginning was the Word.

Now, i'm speaking this morning to you and I'm part of you and you're a Western, modern Christian congregation.

Honestly speaking, what comes to mind when you hear the phrase the Word?

What do you think of first?

Most of us would hold up our Bibles, and you are right to do so, because this is the infallible, inerrant Word of God.

But that is not what John is referring to.

He calls Jesus the Word, and John is not referring to the Bible, god's Word written.

He's talking about something that predates Scripture, but when we hear the phrase Word, we automatically think of the Bible.

Now there's a lot of debate as to where John got this phrase the Word.

It is the Greek word logos, and there is so much been written.

There are volumes that have been written on why John refers to Jesus Christ as the Word.

Some say it was borrowed from the Greek world, because the Greeks had this idea that behind everything that can be seen, there is the ultimate wisdom or the ultimate reason, and behind that and for the Greeks, it wasn't a person, it was the ultimate wisdom.

They said, behind the physical and tangible universe there is this divine reason.

But they never personalized it.

And then along came the Hebrews And they had a similar idea.

They had a Hebrew word, memrah, which was word.

But the Hebrew people went beyond the Greeks because they thought about it and said wait a minute, if you have behind everything that is visible, if you have thought, then you must have a thinker.

You can't just have impersonal reason or wisdom.

Where there's thought there is a thinker.

And so for the Hebrews, this idea of the word ultimate wisdom, reason behind everything created, was not impersonal, it was personal, which is why the Hebrews had statements like this The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Because for the Hebrews the logos was not an impersonal reason or wisdom or force, it was a person.

Now there's a simpler way to grasp why John is referring here to the word or Christ as the word.

There's a simpler reason.

Let me demonstrate it this morning.

I'm thinking of the word right now.

Would you please tell me what it is And we could start guessing.

And we'll be here till 2041.

Come on, tell me what my word is.

Will someone please tell me what my word is?

No one can, because thought is invisible.

You don't know what I'm thinking And you could guess, and perhaps in several years of trying, but no one knows still what I'm thinking, because thought is in the realm of the invisible.

But the moment I speak it, what happens?

And, by the way, here was my word lunch.

Can you tell what I'm thinking about?

I'm thinking of Sylvia back there in all the good food, lunch.

And the moment I spoke the word lunch, what happens?

Everyone suddenly gets it.

Intangible.

Thought becomes real.

You know what I was thinking.

John is telling us something profound and absolutely essential about the second person of the divine trinity, and it is what word is to thought?

Jesus Christ is to God.

In fact, paul will say it a little different, similar vein.

He is the image of the invisible God.

John and Paul are telling us the same thing No one can ever know God apart from the word who reveals him?

Listen to Paul again He is the image of the what, the invisible God.

Now you might be sitting here and thinking, yes, once Jesus was born of a virgin, once Mary brought him into this world at Bethlehem, that's when he began to reveal God.

But that's not what John is saying in his opening verse.

He's not saying that Jesus began to reveal God when he was born of a virgin in Bethlehem, john, he is telling us that no one has ever known God at any time, apart from the word, which is the only way that God can ever be known.

In fact, i think I have it on the screen In a few verses.

John will say it this way Look up at the screens, you'll see John 1.18, and he says it this way No one has ever seen God, the only God and some of the margin of your Bibles will say the only Son.

It's talking about the Son No one has ever seen God, the only Son who is at the Father's side.

He has made him known.

Wow, that means, if that's true, that throughout the entire Old Testament era, when men saw God guess folks who they really were seeing The Word who reveals the Father, who is at the Father's side, he alone has always been the one to make Him known.

That means, by the way, that when we were the life of Moses and all the events in chapter 33, where Moses cried out show me your glory, and God put him in a rock, moses saw the back parts of God as God passed by.

But guess who he was looking upon God the Son.

And one evidence of that that blows my mind is in Isaiah, and we spent two or three weeks in Isaiah 6, isaiah saw God sitting on a throne high and lifted up with all the seraphim around him, and Isaiah cried out woe is me, i'm ruined.

And when John records Isaiah 6 in the 12th chapter of John's gospel, guess who Isaiah said.

Guess who John says Isaiah saw when he saw the Lord high and lifted up on a throne.

John 12, john includes a little phrase Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.

John 1.18, along with John 1.1, tells us that from eternity past, god has only had one means of revealing himself.

Now he tells us that before creation there was this person called the Word.

But then look at the next phrase, and the Word was with God.

And I love that phrase because it now clues us in that there's more than one person in the Godhead.

We may have concluded that this was the Godhead.

John 1.1, in the beginning was the Word, but now we are told there is at least two people in the Godhead.

We will know shortly, of course in Scripture that there's actually three, but we know of two right now There's God and there's the Word.

And John says that the Word was with God.

And in the Bible, in Greek, this phrase is a lot more expressive than just he's with God.

The literal Greek reads the Word was right beside God, and that means more than the Word was just standing there next to God.

It speaks of interpersonal relationship.

In the beginning was the Word, but this Word had a relationship with God in the Godhead.

And this phrase right beside God implies something much more than physical proximity.

It's not he's not saying he's just physically standing there next to God, but it's talking about intimacy.

I have a question tonight this morning Where does the idea of fellowship come from?

Where did the idea of fellowship of persons intimately involved in sharing life together?

It started right here in eternity in the past, in the Godhead.

That's, who invented fellowship?

God invented fellowship.

I had somebody say once I asked the question what was God doing before he created?

and somebody said he was bored.

How many discern?

that's not the right answer.

But right here we are given a glimpse of what existed before creation itself the Word right beside God.

It is the optimum Word that describes how the Father and Son relate together in the Godhead.

By the way, church life is not a bunch of people getting together just to have services and do religious duty.

Church life is men and women who are partaking of the life of the Godhead, who understand that as the Godhead fellowships together, they are brought together into the miracle of mystery of fellowship, so that what we experience called church life is an extension of the fellowship that is going on between the members of the Godhead in the Godhead.

Wow, so if your relationship with the church is you dart into a service, sit in the back, look at the back of someone's head only and go home and don't get involved, that's not church life.

Church life is intimately more.

It is being involved with people, it is experiencing the extension of the Godhead in your relationships.

Here's how John writes about it In the prologue to his first letter.

First, john, he says quote that which we have seen and heard.

We proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, jesus Christ.

Get a picture of this In the beginning was the word the only one who can reveal the Father, and he was right beside God from eternity past, intimately experiencing fellowship with God.

There's a picture of this in the book of Proverbs.

It's one of my favorites, proverbs 8.

And Solomon's talking about wisdom and then, all of a sudden, solomon personifies wisdom.

Whoever this wisdom is, it's a person, not just impersonal reason or wisdom.

And listen to what he says.

I think we're picking it up in verse 22.

He says the Lord possessed me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old Ages ago.

I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth, when there were no depths.

I was brought forth when there were no springs abounding with water, before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills.

I was brought forth before He made the earth with its fields or the first dust of the dust of the world, when He established the heavens.

I was there.

When He established the foundations of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit so that the waters might not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him like a master workman and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him, always rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of men.

Look at that phrase.

Then I was beside Him.

That's exactly the idea in the Greek phrase in John 1.1, and the word was right beside God.

I was beside Him like a master workman and I was daily His delight.

We are getting here, folks, glimpses, snapshots into the eternal relationship between the Father and the eternal Logos.

Not only do we learn that there are at least two people in the Godhead from verse 1 of John 1.1, but we learn that they were sharing this incredible relationship called fellowship.

And what we learn also is the word is a distinct personality in fellowship with God.

But John goes further.

We're not done.

In the beginning was the word and the word was right beside God.

And finally, this morning we'll end on this note and the word was God.

Lest we should think that this one called the word was sort of a secondary or lesser being than God.

Notice, it doesn't say he was made God, as it will state next week when it comes to John 1.14,.

The word was made or became flesh and blood.

It doesn't say that.

It states without any exemption, he was with God, but he was God, very God of God in the highest sense, as evident by some of his names, such as Isaiah, calling him wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.

He is the word.

He was always besides God and he is God of God's, lord of Lord, light of light.

He is, in substance and essence, god, possessing all the attributes of divinity.

You know, if you read the New World translation which is I hope you don't it's the Jehovah Witness translation they read it this way In the beginning it was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a small g God, wrong error.

Oh, they admit that Jesus was a God, but in the same way that human beings are gods, he's not the almighty God of Scripture, but a lesser God.

But that is wrong, not only grammatically, it is wrong biblically, for Scripture asserts without any hesitation that Jesus of Nazareth is the word of the Father, very God of God's Himself.

So you have all these statements brought together.

Let's review them for a minute.

Before creation, there was a person known as the word, the embodiment of all wisdom and reason, and he is more than impersonal thought or reason, though, because he's standing right beside God as a distinct person, in fellowship with him from the beginning.

The one who is right beside him, in fellowship with him from eternity.

Past is not only the one who has perfect fellowship with him, but he is not a lesser being.

He himself is very God of God's and Lord of Lord's.

And so where we start in John is with this incredible revelation that if we want to know Jesus properly, we can't just start with our knowledge of him as a Savior, although we all must start there if we're going to be saved.

John takes us further back into the ages upon ages before and tells us that he who predates eternity or creation, who is from eternity, is therefore the head of creation and the very God of God's.

You see, john goes on to say all things were made by him.

Unless you understand the words relationship to God, you will never understand creation, because Jesus not only is with the Father as the Word, but he is the creative agent by which everything in heaven and earth was brought into existence.

Now we are going to start next week with those incredible words This is my favorite section of John 1, and the word became flesh and took on the characteristics of a human being.

But before we can get there, we have to start where John has taken us this morning.

He is the eternal Word of the Father, and there's a reason John starts there.

Again, it's not mystical, it's pastoral.

Folks, we don't make Jesus have the highest place in the universe.

He already does.

People are always talking about you got to make Jesus Lord.

You got to make Jesus Lord.

I understand what they mean.

You have to live a life of obedience, but you don't start making Jesus Lord by a human work that we have to do.

You start by having your eyes opened to the Father, showing you who he already is.

He is the Lord of glory, he is the eternal Word.

He is the one through whom the universe was spawned.

And it's when you understand the centrality, the supremacy, the glory of the Son of God from eternity past that you begin to understand that you were created not so he would fulfill all your needs and benefits, but you were created to bring him glory and reflect his image.

The New Testament is not about what we get, though God knows what we get is amazing in the grace of God.

The New Testament is about the place the Father has given to the Son and what he gets by having a church of redeemed men and women whom he has called and transformed.

It's what he gets.

He does have the highest place in the universe And if you didn't know that before, john 1-1 should tell it.

You see, john's philosophy is what predates time, is supreme and central.

It's not merely it happened before time, it is before time and it governs time.

It's what history is about.

History is about the unfolding of the ages so that more and more are brought into the kingdom and Jesus Christ gets more and more glory.

Last week we will talk about how that happened, when the Word became flesh and blood.

But this morning I want you to relish, as I bring this to a close.

I want you to relish and glorify God for the place he has given to the Son in the divine economy.

I have a question Is Jesus that to you this morning?

So many of us have grown up since childhood with Christmas stories and thank God for Christmas, and I love the story and we will unpack it here in December.

But start where John starts this morning, in the beginning, before all, before time, before creation.

The Word, the one right beside God, the one who is God.

Someone asked me do you worship Jesus Christ?

My answer emphatically was yes, i worship him.

He is very God of God's.

He's not only my Savior, he's the means, the one, the agent through whom God reveals himself.

He is glorious beyond words.