Friends, would you please stand with me as we read the Lord's Word. We're beginning the Gospel of John this morning. I'd like to read for us verses 1-18. We will be looking at verses 1-5. Again, listen now to the Lord's Word. 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. There came a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. There was the true light, which coming into the world enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and cried out, saying, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I. for he existed before me, for of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. This is the Lord's word, would you please be seated, friends. Our Father in heaven, we do thank you for this word and pray now that your blessing will be upon it, that your blessing will be upon your servant, that I will be faithful and plain with your word, that it would be understandable. We pray, Lord, that you would give us ears to hear. And I pray, Lord, that partial understandings, misconstrued understandings, warped ideas concerning Jesus Christ might be lifted away, stripped of us, that we would have our hearts, our minds informed by your word. We thank you for this and pray now your blessing be upon it. We pray that you would cause the kingdom of Satan injury and that you would advance your kingdom, the glory of Jesus Christ. In whose name I pray, amen. In Mark chapter 8, Jesus went out, we are told, along with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way, he questioned his disciples, saying to them, who do people say that I am? They told him, saying, John the Baptist. And others say, Elijah. But others, one of the prophets. What I recognize is that some things never change. There are yet, even though 2,000 years have gone by, a host of opinions about who Jesus Christ is. I got into a little bit of a debate with somebody over Twitter. Not much, because I don't much care for it. But he was maintaining that of Muslims and Mormons and of Christians, we're all basically saying the same thing. That's what he said. We're all basically saying the same thing. And it makes you wonder, oh, what's his definition? And what's his idea of what the Mormons believe, or the Muslims believe, or what the Christian believes? In Islam, and so when I say these things, understand, please understand, I'm not up here just grousing about people. But truth matters, friends. And if we're all saying the same thing, what are we doing? I mean, I don't even know algebra. I shared this at the men's breakfast this past Wednesday. I really don't. Tim's trying to convince me I do know it inherently a little bit at least. But I know this. You can't have A and non-A. You can't have a round square. There are some things they don't compute. Either Jesus Christ is who he says he is, or he isn't. And I find it a bit disingenuous for people to claim Jesus Christ as this magnanimous being, and yet we don't want to listen to anything he has to say about himself. That's problematic. I hope you see that. So I'm not up here just grousing against people. But truth matters. And in our culture, truth doesn't seem to matter. People make whatever truth they want, they make it their own truth. And my question is, it may look like a boat. The question is, does the boat float when it gets out on the seas? What are you resting in? And what are you trusting? And listen to the Muslims here. To the Muslim, to Islam, Jesus Christ is nothing more than a prophet of Allah. Muhammad supersedes Jesus Christ. Jesus is not the son of God, nor is he a part of the Trinity. That's Islam. That's what they say concerning Jesus Christ. A prophet! And yet a prophet who can't be trusted. Because he can't believe anything he has to say. What kind of prophet is that? That would be called a false prophet, wouldn't it? To the Jews, and I'm getting this from a Jewish website, now I asked, did the question, who do the Jews say Jesus Christ is? They say, and I'm quoting, they do not consider Jesus to be a prophet, the Messiah, or the Son of God. Some, however, consider him a failed Messiah. That is, he made a good effort, but he was one who didn't attain the goal. That's what the Jews would say. The Roman Catholics will call Jesus Christ the Christ, yet he is subservient to Mary. This most, and I'm reading here from Lorraine Bettner's Roman Catholicism, this most blessed of women, the mother of Jesus, is thus his chief rival and competitor for the loyalty and devotion of the human heart. In Romanism, Mary becomes the executive director of deity. the one through whom the prayers of the people are made effective. So they have a view, what we would call an orthodox view of Jesus Christ, right? They would say the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, but someone is bigger and better in the Roman system, and that would be Mary. And so Jesus takes a second seat, and yet, it's interesting, friends, past Acts chapter one, verse 20, you will find no mention of Mary. Even in the New Testament, Mary is not extolled like she is in the Roman Catholic Church. The Mormons. Jesus is one among many gods. The Mormons have a full pantheon of gods. Jesus, who before his incarnation was the spirit brother of Lucifer, was also a polygamist, the husband of the Marys and Martha, who was rewarded for his faithfulness by becoming the ruler of the earth. I've heard a number of people, even Christians say, Mormons and Christians, well, we believe the same thing. Friends, no, we don't. Same vocabulary, different dictionaries. The Jehovah's Witnesses say that the true scriptures speak of God's Son, the Word, as a God. Notice the indefinite article. He is a mighty God, but not the almighty God, who is Jehovah. In other words, he was the first and direct creation of Jehovah. The Buddhist Jesus was an enlightened master. We hear in our days that Jesus Christ is a teacher, a moral leader, a counter-revolutionary, a good man who set a good example for us in which to walk. I wanna ask you, is he? Does it matter who Jesus Christ is? Can we just assign any definition to him, ascribe to him any attribute we want? Is that what we've come to? Does that make us arrogant if we start speaking quite definitively, dogmatically, absolutely? In our culture, that makes us arrogant. But the scriptures do not allow us to assign him any other attribute than what he has revealed to us in his word. And we have to be very careful. Now, a famous trilemma postulated by C.S. Lewis, he said that Jesus Christ is either a lunatic, a liar, or a lord. He must be one of these, and he cannot be all three at the same time, or a combination of any. In other words, we are not free to assign to him whatever belief we want. Now, as we come to John's gospel, it's a very interesting gospel because it's different than the other three. John's gospel is different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They are called the Synoptic Gospels because they share content, style, and the order of events. John's approach is very different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. One commentator put it this way, I believe he's a Puritan. He wrote, the fourth gospel was not written until the other three had become the household words and daily bread of the Church of Christ, thus preparing it as babes are by milk for the strong meat of this final gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he says, are like milk for babies. John is meat. And the other three prepare us for what John brings. In this gospel, John says that he has written it with this purpose in mind, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. That's John 20, verse 31. John has, by God's grace, placed here in the scripture his very purpose statement. Let me read that again. Why the Gospel of John? So that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. You may be here this morning and you have no idea who Jesus Christ is, or you may be here and have a warped and partial view of who Jesus Christ is. Regardless, if we have an incomplete and an unbiblical view of who Jesus Christ is, we are hurt. For many, as we've just heard, he is little better than an example for you to pattern your life after. And salvation, therefore, becomes dependent upon you and your performance, which, friends, is not good news. Is it? Anyone happy with your performance this week before the Lord? I dare to say if you're awake, you're not happy with your performance. John will not allow his readers to have a wrong idea of Jesus Christ. He will not allow them to think less of him than what he truly is. Verses one through 18, which we just read, serve as a prologue to the rest of the book. John is telling us who Jesus Christ is, who this person is who took upon himself human flesh. This is our goal, the same as John's, that you too may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. As we look first, we've divided these first five verses into three points. First, verses 1 and 2, we see Jesus in relation to God the Father. Now keep in mind, again, that everyone wants to assign this image, this idea of who Jesus Christ is. And typically, we fall or our culture falls into this idea, well, he's the son of God. But that doesn't necessarily mean God, understand, to many binds. They call him, he's the son of God, he's secondary, he's a creature, he took upon himself some Christ consciousness, that he's like a Buddha in some way, and that if you just follow him, if you just follow his moral teachings, your life will be better off. John says, not a chance. That's not a chance. Listen again. To what John writes in verses one and two in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God He was in the beginning with God Now it's interesting as you compare Matthew Mark Luke And then John, Matthew begins his gospel with the record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And then he traces, Matthew traces the Lord's biological lineage down from Abraham to Joseph, showing that Jesus is the promised one. the rightful king of Israel. Mark begins with the prophetic word of Isaiah, speaking about John the Baptist, saying, Behold, I send my messenger ahead of you. You will prepare who will prepare your way. In Mark's gospel, when we are introduced to Jesus, he is already beginning his ministry. Luke begins with the birth of John the Baptist being foretold, and Luke writing so that most excellent theophilists may know the exact truth about the things that he has been taught. But John's gospel notice begins much further back than the genealogy or history and the beginning of the lives of John or the descent of Jesus from kings. We read here, in the beginning was the Word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Who is this Jesus Christ? Who is this one that we continually hold up and call all men and women to look to? What does John tell us about him? John says that Jesus Christ was in the beginning. What comes to mind immediately as we hear this word, in the beginning was the word, what comes to mind immediately is the first verse of Genesis where we read, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. One commentator said, both in Genesis and here, the context shows that the beginning is absolute, the beginning of all things, the beginning of the universe. So many think that Jesus Christ's beginning occurred when the Holy Spirit overshadowed the womb of the Virgin Mary, that there was a time when he was not. Remember Arius, your church history, the heretic who said, well, Jesus became God later on. Same heresy of the Jehovah's Witnesses. There was a time when Christ was not. That's heresy according to the scriptures here. Jesus has always existed. My friend, Jesus Christ has existed from all eternity. He is eternal. He is not a creature. He is not the first act of God in creation. Jesus himself said this concerning himself. Now, Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was, in John 17, five. Again, in the beginning was the word. He is the Word, that is, He reveals to us who God is. What do words do? And you could very easily over-philosophize this, I believe. What do words do? They communicate ideas. They inform. They impart knowledge. Scholars point out that there were many ideas of what word meant, what the word word meant, during the first century when John wrote. The Stoics understood logos to be the rational principle by which everything exists, in which the essence of the rational human soul. Some have suggested that John is writing against a background in Gnosticism where the word is an intermediary power between God and the world. Some think John borrowed from Philo. For Philo, Logos can refer to the ideal man, the primal man from which all empirical human beings derive. The word sometimes has been translated as reason or speech or message. Is John borrowing concepts from the world? I would say most certainly not. Again, same word, though a different definition. When John writes, in the beginning was the word, John is not slapping a worldly concept upon Jesus, but is rather explaining to us who Jesus Christ is. One summary given, which I found helpful, was this, that God's word in the Old Testament is this powerful self-expression in creation, revelation, and salvation. And the personification of the word makes it suitable for John to apply it as a title to God's ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own son. All things, said Jesus, Matthew 11, 27, all things have been handed over to me by my Father, And no one knows the son except the father, nor does anyone know the father except the son and anyone to whom the son wills to reveal him. Again, in Hebrews 1.3 we read, and he is the radiance of his glory. and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. And in verse 18 of chapter one, we read here, no one has seen God in any time. The only begotten God who was in the bosom of the father, he has explained him. This one who is the word from before the creation of the world was, is God. And he was with God. We read this furthermore. As John is speaking about Jesus Christ, he says that he is with God. He is distinct from God the Father, but existed in the closest possible fellowship with the Father, and that he took supreme delight in this communion with the Father. And this word, says John, was God. That is, Jesus Christ, the word is fully God. He didn't take on deity at some point after he was born. He did not achieve some Christ consciousness, nor does the scripture allow us to translate this as the word was a God, a translation derived by the Jehovah's Witnesses on a faulty understanding of Greek grammar and a theologically untenable idea that there are more gods than one. If there's more gods than one, then we live in a polytheistic universe, and the Romans and the Greeks may have been on to something, and yet they weren't. Do you understand what John is saying about Jesus Christ? All of our ideas that are floating around out there in our culture about who this Jesus is, most of them are wrong, because they're unfounded in scripture, And John does not allow us, does not allow anyone to think ill of Jesus Christ. Again, we are told that he was with God in the beginning. William Hendrickson said this, this fully divine word existing from all eternity as a distinct person was enjoying loving fellowship with the father, thus the full deity of Christ, his eternity and his distinct personal existence are confessed once more in order that heretics may be refuted and the church may be established in the faith and love of God. And therefore, my friends, we are not at liberty to assign to him a lesser role, position, or status. He is very God of very God. He is not merely a teacher, a prophet, an individual showing us how to live a good life, or some enlightened individual. You see, we cannot accept anything less that Jesus Christ from all eternity has been, is, and always will be fully divine. Does it matter? Well, again, does it matter whether the boat floats? I'll just ask you that. I talked to a man once who was a Jehovah's Witness. He was convinced I should have him baptized. And he said, I want to be baptized. I want you to baptize me. And I said, but you don't believe in the Lord. Well, I believe in the Lord. But you don't believe he's God. He goes, no. I said, well, then what kind of savior is he? How can he save you if he's not God? You see, and this is the thing. Oh, go out there and follow Jesus, the enlightened master. Go ahead. Try to live your life perfectly like he did. Go ahead. Do it. Try it. How is it going to work for you? It's not going to work for you, is it? It's going to be like somebody I heard who was on Oprah's book club. Remember this? She would read her books, and then she'd implement the ideas in her books. And people say, oh, we find Oprah's book club, and we're going to read Oprah's ideas. And this lady finally, after doing this for a year or two, reading every book that Oprah recommended, finally said, you know what? I need to quit reading Oprah's books and just live my life. Because you can't possibly do everything, this lady said. You can't possibly do everything that's in these books. It's unreasonable. And this is the problem. If Jesus Christ is something less than God, my encouragement to you, friends, is you're on a ship that's gonna sink and it's not gonna hold you. But John doesn't let us think this about Jesus Christ. You're not supposed to be looking at him as though he is just the moral teacher telling you how to tip your waitress. You're supposed to be looking to him as God, as the one who holds his people and carries his people. who speaks and reveals God to us, who delivers his people and brings salvation to them. That's what John would have you believe about Jesus Christ. I'm almost 6'2", and some people would look at Jesus and say, well, he's a little bigger than me. My Jesus is about 6'4". Me and Jesus are gonna get it done. That is a blasphemous idea, friends. Jesus is no mere man. He took upon himself human flesh, as we will see in the weeks to come. But understand, his origins didn't begin in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He was with God in the beginning, and he reveals God to us. Secondly, look at verse three. Jesus in relation to creation. All things came into being through him, and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. John here states both the positive and the negative. All things came into being through him. My friends, who made the heavens and the earth? When you look up, who made the light? Who placed an expanse in the midst of the water, separating the waters from below from the waters which were above? Who separated the waters below and made dry land appear? Who made the land to sprout vegetation? Who made the stars, the sun, and the moon, and placed them in the sky as signs, and for seasons, and for days and years? who made the waters teem with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens, who created the great sea monsters, who created Leviathan, the great humpback whale, or the monster squid, who filled the earth with animals, with wild horses and cattle, and every variety of creeping thing, who created man and woman, who fashioned them after his own image, Fearfully and wonderfully, we are told that he made them. Who made you, friends? Who made you and who made your babies? Those unplanned by you, but fully planned and designed by God. He has made all things that have come to be, and nothing that has come into being apart from him. It doesn't take much thought to see why evolution is such an abhorrent theory, and it strips life of wonder and purpose and reduces the wisdom of God to happenstance and chance. A blasphemous doctrine, theory. Paul says in Colossians 1, for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He himself was created by nobody, but he has created all things. John, again, does not allow us to think of Jesus as a creature. but as the one who has created all things. And finally, consider this in verses four and five, Jesus and his relation to man. We read, 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. From that of creation, John now advances to a higher idea, the communication of life. This is where John's gospel becomes really interesting because it takes on a very much deeper purview of what Jesus Christ has done. We know that Jesus is the creator of all life. John is speaking here of life of a different quality at a different level. Again, David Brown wrote, it is remarkable how frequently in scripture, light, and life, on the one hand, and on the other, darkness and death are associated. John 8.12 says, I am the light of the world, said the Lord. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. From the broader context, we must understand that what John refers to here, light and life, refers to the spiritual sphere. The Lord made man and breathed into him the breath of life. And as he walked in obedience, he had light. He knew what was right. There was order. There wasn't chaos, confusion, or death. But what happened when he disobeyed? What came upon this earth after Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord? Do you remember what occurred? They recognized that they were naked, and they were ashamed, and they tried to hide themselves. there was a fundamental shift in something that occurred in the garden. A man had fallen out of fellowship, broken fellowship with God, and darkness came upon him. Sorrow and suffering came upon him. The world was cursed, according to Romans chapter eight, because of this sin. Creation groans. awaiting the day for its redemption. In other words, something very bad occurred in the garden when man sinned. Death came into the world. Man died spiritually, and physical death came as well following that. As long as man remained in that state in which he was created, there was life to the fullest. Imagine Adam and Eve in the garden and how sweet everything was. There was no shame as there was no sin. They were going along, obeying everything the Lord said. That's the way God created man. That was the relationship that we were intended to have in the garden, where you could go to bed at night and have peace in your head. You wouldn't be worrying about the headlines in the news or whether or not you were gonna have enough money for your bloated taxes. That all changed. While they had physical and spiritual life to the fullest, it was sin. Sin ended all of this. The relationship was broken, and death and darkness ensued. Listen to me, friends, John is making a point here, a very substantial point, and one, a theme, light and life, that will continue to show up throughout the gospel of John, that apart from Jesus Christ, there is no life. Apart from Jesus Christ, there is no life. You can mention the name Jesus, you can say, I'm gonna model my life after Jesus, but apart from Jesus Christ, there is no life. My concern in the Lord's Church is that there are many people who name the name of Jesus Christ, but they are not resting in Jesus Christ. To them, he is just an example of what we need to do. This is the problem with all these other models or all these other religions that I brought up. Who do they say Jesus Christ is? What kind of savior can he be if he is not exactly who John says he is? We were not made to be apart from our God, and Satan does all he can to keep you from knowing Jesus Christ. We are told the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. The light of who he is, all of creation, all of the scriptures, old and new, his words, his miracles, his sacraments, all these things by which he makes himself known to us, these are light, they are shining and directing us to Christ, the source of life. These shine, they stand out in the midst of this evil world, men thinking that they could have life apart from the Lord. Though there is this light shining, the darkness did not comprehend it, we are told, In other words, this darkness, this world is hostile to this light. It hates it, it rejects it, and battles against it. And that is what you find. Everyone is okay with God. And most religions are quite fine with Jesus Christ. But watch what happens when you make the exclusive claim that Jesus Christ is it and there is no other. How does the world react to that? Anyone? Favorable. Oh, gee, we just love how narrow a road you have painted for us, right? No, you know what they do. All of a sudden, you're a hater, you're a bigot, you're judgmental, you're all these other things. I'm sorry, friends, but that's the only hope. And it's the only hope because of who Jesus Christ is, the everlasting, eternal God who reveals the Father to us, who brings about salvation, who has spoken all things into existence, and through whom we are saved alone. He brings life and light because in Him, we are saved. All of a sudden, everything else makes sense. I was thinking about fourth grade, back to mathematics. My times tables were not too much of a problem, right? 9 times 6, 9 times 7, 9 times 8. I could get through all those. When we went into the doubles, it was just miserable. I couldn't do it. And I remember coming home with my dittos, and I had to do my homework. And my mother would sit there, bless her soul, she was trying to be so patient with me, tapping my paper with the pencil. No, it's here, here, this, this, do this, do this, do this. I could not get it. It was days, I think, weeks of tears for me trying to figure out my doubles times tables. And I remember the day. that I had that aha moment, where it all clicked, and the light came on, and I went, oh, now I get it. That's the light. But in a spiritual sense, what Jesus Christ has done for the sinner, many people fight against it, and yet, those whom do believe it, it's because it's a gift from God. And we come to that moment, we recognize that Jesus Christ is the life, and we come back to him, we turn to him, and all of a sudden we experience his light and we no longer fight against it. The light is that light of salvation, of recognizing that Jesus Christ, see friends, you were made to have a relationship with God. And Jesus Christ came to accomplish that very thing, to restore you to that right relationship with God. And until you come to that place, you remain in darkness and you remain lost and you remain left to your own devices to try to save yourself. And this is why John is writing again. He writes so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God. And listen, that believing you may have life in his name. He came to save and he came to secure life for us. And this supper in front of us today demonstrates this very thing, that in him, his body and his blood, what he accomplished on Calvary's cross, these are where we find life and we find them in no other. Would you bow with me and let's pray. Father, we do pray that your word would have its full effect in us. She will bless and encourage your people. For those who may not know you today, Father, we pray that they would wrestle, that you would bring them to an end of themselves and help them see their need of you. We praise you for your kindness, for your mercies. We thank you for your son, the giving of him that we might have life. We pray that your blessing now be upon us as we enjoy this meal. And we ask it all humbly in Jesus' name, amen.