requests too. This morning I'll open us up by reading from John chapter 1 and then we'll pray. 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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we praise You, Lord, for Your mercy to us through Your Son, the Lord Jesus. There is absolutely no hope apart from Him. Lord, we are mindful that we are sinners and left to ourselves. We have no hope, and yet you have sent the hope. You have sent the light. That one true light is the Word, the Lord Jesus. And we give you glory and honor through Him this morning. Even as we come to you, we're reminded of the continuing effects of sin on our bodies, that we will not overcome that until your son returns. And so, Lord, we ask your mercy upon us. Many among us are dealing with the ailments of the body. This season of sickness and time of sickness, Lord, these things tend to happen. But they are an effect of sin on the whole of the creation, including our bodies, our remaining flesh. Lord, be merciful to us. We pray for those who are in need this morning of encouragement and strength. Continue to pray for the Muscle family. Rennie, his mother, has been ailing for some time and we ask your mercies upon her in this upcoming surgery. We continue to lift up Bethany to you, Lord, and ask your mercies upon her body and may the doctors Have some clarity concerning her situation. And Lord, we ask that you would continue to strengthen her body in days ahead. Lord, we pray for Michael Brown and lift him up to you and ask your mercies upon him as he's continuing to work through some health difficulties himself. Lord, you know each and every need among us, even the ones that are not spoken. You know everyone's concerns, you know our minds, you know our worries, our anxieties, our difficulties, everything that causes us stress, Lord. So we come before you. We bring these things before you now and ask your mercies upon us. Lord, we pray for the Watts family as they're at home dealing with illness and the Wright family as well, Lord, as they are at home dealing with these different ailments and illnesses. Lord, we just ask that you would be merciful to us and you would bring us back together soon for those who are not able to be with us today. Lord, others will go on into the work week and have difficulties ahead that they don't even know anything about. Will you be merciful to them today? Will you give them strength today? Will you gird them up today that they will trust in you tomorrow or the next day? We thank you for your kindness through your son. It's in his name we pray, amen. The last time we met in dealing with Sola Scriptura, we were looking at the idea of recognizing the unfolding and progressive nature of His Word. Recognize the unfolding and progressive nature of His Word. We said God specifically and progressively gave His law to Moses. We took a moment to consider the law being given, not that the law had not been in existence before, but God gave it specifically in the time of Moses in a written context that it would be written down for the people to see it, read it, know it, and to hear it read unto them. Secondly, God specifically and specially used his subsequent prophets. The prophets were those that went about speaking the law of God properly, and there were times they were given very specific messages to the people of God. One thing when you read through the prophets, don't always first try to figure out how they given some new revelation, because that did happen. But read the prophets recognizing that a lot of times any new revelation they were given was built upon revelation that had already previously been given to the people of God. They were building upon the law. They were building upon the context of the law and what the law actually meant versus what they were doing with the law. And when we see the Lord Jesus as a prophet, what does he do? He builds upon the law. Is he in and of himself special revelation? Yes. Yeah, thankfully so. But notice how these building blocks continue from the law of God being given and the prophets continuing that work. And then we said God exclusively and singularly manifested the fulfillment of His Word. God exclusively and singularly manifested the fulfillment of His Word. Now we kind of ended there. We didn't get a chance to kind of unfold some things there because we were nearing the end and I was afraid if I said any more I would go way over time. Which is likely that would have happened. So I want to continue there in John chapter one this morning. God exclusively and singularly manifested the fulfillment of his word. In John one, one through four or five, in the beginning was the word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. Here John starts his gospel in the context of something very particular. This is special revelation given in the time of the Apostle John. He's witnessed the special revelation. All right, now that becomes important because in John's letters, what does he do in 1 John 1 and verses 1 through 8 or 9 or so, especially verses 1 through 5? He testifies to what we have seen and heard and touched. He's saying, here's the testimony. And what is the testimony? Or who is the testimony? Of the Christ, specifically. And so here, he starts his gospel in the same way, to give us a context to see specifically, okay, I, John, was able, by God's appointment in providence alone and nothing else, to witness in person See, touch, and handle, notice, hear, pay attention to, walk with the Messiah, the Christ. And so in the gospel, he's saying, Here's what I witness and know to be true, and upon the work of the Holy Spirit in me, I'm testifying to you. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. What's the first thing he testifies to as to who the Christ is? Deity. He's eternal. He testifies specifically to his eternality, his deity or deity. He speaks very pointedly. Now, if anyone, there's some Greek here we can get into, but if you're not a Greek person and you're concerned about how do we know this is about his eternality and his deity, let's just look at the context of verses two and three that add to verse one. Because some people will say, well, in the beginning was the word, that could mean at some point he came about at that point, but what was it before? Well, no, because verse two says, he was in the beginning, all things came into being through him, and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. This is the ideology very clearly of the eternality of the Christ. There's never a time when he was not. Now, in the context of that, he wants to point to something very particular and he calls him, I mean, literally John is saying he's the eternal word. That's what the context of these verses and the usage of that word word there, and you see it capitalized for very important reasons. He's saying, Jesus is the eternal word. Jesus is the eternal word. That being the case, Jesus being the eternal word, he starts on the outside by saying, This Christ brought about all of creation, and there's absolutely nothing that has come into being that came into being apart from Him. Now that goes along, now that's John's testimony, okay, right? That's his first testimony in these first three verses of who the Christ is. And we read the rest of John's gospel. What are some of the quotes that John gives from Jesus himself? I and the Father are one. He's saying, okay, here's my testimony. I witnessed, I saw it, I'm giving it to you, and furthermore, I'm gonna build my testimony of what I saw upon the words of who? The Messiah, the Christ. So you see, John is layering and building the case for the Christ as this one true, specific, special revelation in and of himself. All of those things that God used the early fathers for. Noah and Abraham and so on, all the things that he used Moses for, all of the things that David was used for, the major and the minor prophets, all of those individuals mixed into that Old Testament, they were all pointing to this special revelation. Because in and of themselves, what was happening to the people in every single generation leading up to the time of Christ? What was the witness of mankind? All right, they're idol worshipers. I mean, Genesis 6 shouldn't be just related to what was happening before the time of Noah. Do what now? They were rejecters of God. Has mankind ever since the flood, has mankind gotten better? So what was happening before the flood? Why was God concerned? What did he say about mankind? Okay, he said that, but what else did he say about them particularly? Every inclination of their heart is wicked. They're continually working evil. Well, that's the story of the whole of the Old Testament concerning mankind. Even in the context of what God is doing, he continues to show mankind. You can't fix yourselves. You can't make yourselves holy. You can't make yourselves better in and of yourselves. You can build everything you want to. You could build great, huge buildings. You can invent and build great towers. You could try to come to me through molding your languages in similar fashion. You can do all of these things, but you can't do what? Fix yourself. You cannot make yourself holy. So what's the one thing that people need? They need to hear of something that's special revelation. This is one of the reasons John refers to the Christ as the Word. He is the special revelation. Everything else has been building up to a point. And when he came, he is that fulfillment of special revelation in and of himself. And John now is testifying to that truth and saying, I saw him. I witnessed it. I heard him. I even touched him. He's real. And not only did he come and dwell among us in flesh, but he is the word that is eternal, eternally begotten of the Father. He goes on to show these claims time and time again of this special revelation of Jesus himself, the words of the Lord Jesus, the public ministry of the Lord Jesus. Everything that he does is recorded in these gospels. I'm pointing out John because of the way his gospel starts, but you can see this evidence in Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well, okay? When you see the identification here of Christ being the word, That special revelation is saying he is the word, the message, the Messiah. He is everything we need and he is in the context of the one true living God having dwelt among us. It makes the unfolding of the birth of Christ even greater. Because when he comes into the world, and the world that he came into was not just speaking of, once again, every individual, but what does it say in verse 10? He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. Now, why did the world not know him? They love darkness rather than light. That's evidence of verse five and onward. That's also evidence in 1 John 1. Really, the whole of 1 John is about the difference between those who love the light and those who love the dark. So this world that God created, the Son in and of himself being eternal, one with the Father in essence, always is, He created. And the world that He created, He came into it and the world did not know Him. We went through the birth of Christ and the idea of the Bethlehem, you know, that very small, out-of-the-way place that very little was thought of. But think about it, even the whole of the context. All the world went about doing what? What they normally did every day, and they thought little of it. And yet, God came and dwelt among men. Now most of the time when somebody really important comes around, it doesn't matter who you are and people try to act like it, you know, oh that's not me, whatever. You want to know somebody important even if you meet them for five seconds. It's just human nature. If you can just, somebody really important, you just want to know them even just to meet them for five seconds. I'm not saying we all want to get to know Taylor Swift. I'm not even sure she's important. I'm talking about somebody really important. If there's somebody really important, you want to get to know them. And here's somebody really important because it's God himself and the world did not know him. The other question is, what does the scripture say? It gives evidence of the fact that they really didn't want to know him. because that's the darkness of their hearts. When John opens his gospel this way, he's giving us evidence of something that is so magnificent and beyond our comprehension, that the very God who created the whole of the universe is the same very God who came and dwelt among men. And men normally would recognize greatness But they didn't even know him nor want to know him. Now, John, the opening of his gospel, not only gives his own eyewitness testimony through the whole of the gospel, he not only unfolds Christ's witness of himself, but in the opening here, he gives another eyewitness testimony, which we talked about last week in the message. Who is that? John the Baptist. So you see he's building this case saying, look. Now, how does John the Baptist, and we didn't really go over this as much, but how does John the Baptist see himself? Does he see himself as somebody extremely important? Not necessarily. But what does he do when he's questioned about who he is and what he's here to do? Alright, he does point to Christ, but he does something very specific and it's in the text. Okay, he denies that he's the Christ. Alright, he says I'm the one crying in the wilderness, but where does he get that? Okay, here's John's testimony of himself. How does he pull his testimony out? He doesn't pull his testimony and say, I'm reinventing the wheel here, right? What does John say? I am attached to the prophecies of old to be the one crying out in the wilderness saying what? What? Make way. He's coming. Now, that's interesting, isn't it? Because some of the last prophecies you had of the Messiah was when? How many years ago approximately would that have been? over 400 years ago. By the time we get to this place, John's an older, well, he would have been an older man for that time. We might consider him a younger man, but he was an older man for that time. So it's a little over 400 years by the time he says this. But then he's saying this at the very opening of the ministry of Christ. So you have old prophecy being pulled forward, spoken in time by John the Baptist saying, I am the one fulfilling that prophecy. And he's doing it as though it's near prophecy because the Messiah is already among them. You need to see all these connections. This is why if you start divorcing yourself from the Old Testament, you just might as well throw the Bible away. And quite frankly, we've got some churches out there that I don't even know that they have a Bible anymore. They certainly don't have the Christian Bible. They basically have just become chicken soup for the soul. And they take some Bible passages out and throw it at people and then say, Jesus loves you. And it means nothing without the connections and the context. John is saying, I am the one coming to preach to you of that special revelation of old and now he has come and he is here and he says, Not only that, but I have eyewitness the account. I have the eyewitness of John the Baptist who tells of who he was and what he did. And he came in that time and he preached this message. And by the spirit of God, he was able to recognize who he was and what he was doing to say. What Isaiah said here, I am now fulfilling. Now this becomes important not only because of the Messiah himself and the message of the Messiah himself, because as we said last week, there's places in John's gospel where John records the Lord Jesus like in chapter five, verse 46, for if you believed Moses, you would believe me for he wrote about me. If you have any question about what the Lord Jesus thought of the Old Testament writings, well, the first five books are given to us by Moses, according to the Spirit of God dealing with him. And Jesus says, well, you know what? If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. Now for the Jewish here at the time, that would have been really hard if they weren't thinking properly by God's mercy and grace to their soul. This is an identification that Jesus continues on throughout his ministry and then even after his resurrection, which we talked about previously. Even we looked at some verses in the end of Luke, but in John 21, 24, 25, it says, this is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. We get every sign and every wonder and every preaching excerpt that we need to believe the truth of the Messiah. And yet there were many other things done specifically in the context of the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus that had it all been written down it would have taken up volumes and volumes and volumes. It's not saying that none of that was important. It's just saying the most important things about the word are given to us by God himself through the work of the Holy Spirit, through these eyewitnesses. Now that becomes important for little number four here. God particularly and personally called his apostles to propagate the gospel. Now when you read the gospels, you need to recognize what is each apostle, what is each disciple apostle doing with their gospel? What are they doing first and foremost? All right, they're bearing witness of the Christ. That's the first and foremost thing they're doing. They're bearing witness of the Christ. All right. Secondly, though, how are they bearing witness of the Christ? Say it again. Yes, true. Each does it in a different way, but there are things that each one of them does that gives us very particular identifications with and of the Christ. OK, they recount his life, but how do they recount it in what kind of sections? OK, they give evidence. from the Old Testament of the prophecies he fulfilled. They give evidence from the Old Testament of the prophecies that he was preaching and said he himself fulfilled. All right, and this goes to, and this is gonna walk into all these things with 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. This may sound a little scattered to you, but it's not. Okay, what's one of the biggest problems, and we're going to open this up a little bit this morning in an introduction of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, what's one of the biggest issues among the Corinthian church? These spiritual gifts, the sign gifts, tongues, healings, gifts of prophecy, gifts of revelation. Well, this is what the apostles were using were these gifts of revelation. They eyewitnessed these things and the Spirit of God was bearing them along and carrying them along to give these things, to preach and teach these things, to write them down. When you see the context of it though, you have to recognize that these are very particular, personally called men to propagate this gospel in its first initial thrust. Think about it for a minute. Jesus didn't say, all who ever said in my hearing, you're free to write whatever you want to and God will recognize whatever you write. Is that how it happened? I don't think so. Let's turn to Acts. The apostles are found in their gospels to use the Old Testament properly. to give evidence of the Christ because Christ himself was using the Old Testament to do that, right? So they were following in the footsteps of Christ in his revelation, the special revelation of himself, and then the way he carried that special revelation out. When Christ preached, he used the Old Testament in a proper manner, showing this is who I am from the Old Testament. The Old Testament talked about there being signs used of the Messiah. So what did the Messiah do? He performed signs and wonders. What we see in the opening of Acts after the ascension of Christ is they walk through a time of trying to take in what's happened in chapter one. And then it says in chapter 2 verse 1, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind. And it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit was giving them utterance." Now, who's the one giving the utterance? The Spirit is. You need to recognize here that God is making sure we understand that whatever utterance is about to come from these apostles, this utterance is not in and of themselves born first and foremost of these apostles. It is the utterance of who? The Holy Spirit. This is of God. It says, now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred and the crowd came together, they heard it. The crowd came together. They were bewildered because of each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. They were amazed and astonished saying, why are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? Now, whatever this utterance is, it's coming in known, intelligible languages. Yes? Evidence of that, look at all the nations and places mentioned in verse 9. Look at all the languages that were spoken. Yes. Yep. So in those verses, you see it. All right? I can't speak Italian, but if I had been there and all of a sudden I'm speaking in Italian and then Italians are understanding what I'm saying, I'm just a southern man. It just, Italian's not happening. I mean, I did sing some songs in Italian when I was in college as a music major, but I have to be honest with you, I don't really know a lot of times what I was singing. Um, it sounded good. You know, I knew there were some words about love in there. So I was hopeful that one day I would be able to sing them to somebody. Sorry, babe. I forgot those songs. Um, I'll sing you some others later. Yeah. English. Okay, good. Thanks. See my wife's forgiving. So thankful. But you have the ideology that, Hey, this is what's happening. It's amazing, it's a miracle, it's a sign, but this is not gibberish or some unknown language here. Look at verse 14 though. But Peter, taking his stand with the eleven, raised his voice and declared to them, Men of Judea, because these are Jews hearing this, and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give heed to my words. For these men are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel. So what's the first thing that happens After Christ ascends and the preaching and teaching ministry of the apostles, the very first thing that happens, yes, there is a sign, there is a wonder, okay, this wonderment of gift that they could speak these known intelligible languages so that all those present can hear from these different regions But in doing so, what's the first thing that he connects himself to? The Old Testament. Very first thing Peter does is connects himself to the Old Testament. Why? He didn't want them to think this was of themselves. All right. He did not want them to think this is of ourselves. We've just created this in and of ourselves. All right. He didn't want to think it was something other than the worship of God. All right, he wanted to make sure that they understood this came from God and God alone. This is not something we conjured up in and of ourselves. Yeah? This becomes really important, and we see this later in the book of Acts. Later on in the book of Acts, when Paul is preaching and some of the Gentiles are just amazed at the preaching, All of a sudden, as the signs, wonders, and this preaching continues, these Gentiles, all of a sudden, they want to begin to worship Paul. And Paul says, no, no, no, don't do that. We're men. And he begins to connect himself, even to the Gentiles, to the history of what God had done through his word. Even when Paul goes to the Gentiles, he never disconnects himself from the Old Testament. That's interesting, isn't it? All these people want to talk about, we need to have the ministry of the early church. We need to have the ministry of Paul to the Gentiles. Okay, but I'll divorce myself from the Old Testament. You just want to look at those people and go, what are you saying? were looking for this Word. They knew of the Scripture. They knew of this prophecy. They were waiting. They were looking. That's who God had gathered. Worshipping God. That's right. Praying for His commitment. They were devout men ready to hear. God brought them together, and then they could hear. Yes. Very good. Yeah, Brian. I was going to say, one of the other reasons that they taught like this is how Jesus taught them. Yeah. And that was my point from the beginning. The very first thing is they saw Jesus do that. And so here's the very first thing they do is they connect themselves to the old Testament self, to the ministry of Christ himself while he was on the earth. Yeah. It's not word, and that's where authority is established from. And that's one of the things he points out in verse four. It says, in human's life, life was the life of man. It's establishing that Christ is authority. And the Jews, they look back on the Old Testament as the authority of word. And therefore, if you accept the Old Testament, you accept me. So he's always pointing back to the Old Testament. Yeah, and those connections are throughout the whole of the scripture. And we can't forget that even when we get into things like sign gifts. Okay, the sign gifts are not separate from the whole of the scripture. That becomes important for us to recognize. When you see the apostles and their particular ministry doing these sign gifts, tongues, in the particular case of the day of Pentecost, healing, okay, we know there are places in the book of Acts where we see healing that goes on. When you see these types of sign gifts being worked out, Notice how that's very particularly tied to the substance of God's Word throughout the whole of its context. It's not as though these sign gifts are something that the apostles showed up and said, hey, we got a new little toy to play with here. Who had they seen work these sign gifts? The Lord Jesus. And did the Lord Jesus just do sign gifts and never give teaching? You always notice with the Lord Jesus the signed gifts are always associated with teaching and that teaching that he's giving is coming from scripture. Even when he's revealing himself. Which is a historical record of what God had done in the Old Testament and Christ continues on in the New Testament. You go back to the prophet Elijah and Elisha. There were sign gifts that followed along with their preaching and their ministry. And yet at the same time, it was never divorced from the context of who God is and what he's doing among his people. The identification here in these first few chapters of Acts, when you read this first sermon of Peter here, it's just filled with Old Testament quotes. Paul, as he's preaching, he's never leaving the Old Testament behind, even to the Gentiles. There's never a point at which any one of the sign gifts is divorced from special revelation. And that becomes really important because there are people out there today who take the sign gifts and separate them from special revelation and say, oh, no, no, we're just doing these gifts because God gave us the ability to do it. Not recognizing that every time that these sign gifts were used with the Christ and in the context of the burgeoning church of Christ after his ascension, they were all done in the context of special revelation, which is always new revelation. So ultimately, anytime someone says they're performing a sign gift today, they're actually telling you, I am giving you special and new revelation. What they're giving special and new revelation. Whoa, wait a second. We better stop. Because that means the actual canon of scripture is not closed. We ought to be adding new material to the scripture. The signed gifts were always associated with special revelation. Okay, I've got to close there. I know there's a couple people who want to make a comment. If you can make it quickly, I'll allow it. Pat? I wanted to say that it came to mind how those devout men that ended up talking about Andrew at that time knew the scriptures. Many were saved and dispersed back out to where, before Paul went out to the Gentiles, through those men, and then dispersed back to Stephen, got the word of the scriptures in the Old Testament, so the Gentiles knew as well as the gospel people. Yeah, the dispersion is very important in the context of the gospel going forward. The dispersion of the Jews. And that's why when Paul goes and starts preaching to the Gentiles, what's the first place he starts? In the synagogue. Yeah. Ryan, quickly? Nothing? Scott, quickly? I was thinking that Jesus never wrote a thing. His apostles were the agents of the special revelation. And so with the death of the apostles Yeah, and yes, I completely agree with that. And hopefully by the end of Chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians, whenever that comes. Don't let us down, brother. Lord willing, I'll keep preaching until he takes me home. Let's close there, close in prayer. Heavenly Father, be merciful to us. We are so in need of special revelation, the whole of it. Let us see, Lord, that we are not a people that can call ourselves the people of God and yet walk away from your word in part or in whole. We need your word each day. Lord, in the busyness of our world and our minds, will you have us at some point during our day, sit down and read some of your word for the good of our souls, that we would worship you rightly and give thanks to you. And we would be drawn more and more to trust in you, the one who granted us the gift of faith. You alone are good and right and holy. You alone deserve all our worship. And we worship you in and through your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray, amen.