April 19 Sermon

 

 

For seven weeks now we have been examining the last words of Jesus uttered from the cross.

The final word was “It is Finished”, paid in full.

The debt we owed God, the debt we could never pay was now completely paid.

We as Christians have placed our entire trust in that man who hung on the tree.

But calling Him a man seems so inadequate because He was so much more.

I want to take a few weeks to examine this man called Jesus.

 

While we have four gospel accounts of this mans life, they are all quite different in how they portray who Jesus is

Mathew presents Jesus as the Jewish Messiah who fulfills all the Old Testament prophecies

Mark portrays Jesus as a perfect man which would have appealed to the Greek world of the first century

Luke portrays Jesus in a way that would appeal to Jew and Greek and Roman alike

But the apostle John presents Jesus as fully man and fully God.

That is the account I want us to look at in the weeks to come.

Let’s begin with Johns opening comments

John 1:1-5 (NASB)
¹  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
²  He was in the beginning with God.
³  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
⁴  In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
⁵  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

 

John begin his gospel the same way Moses began the Genesis account – In the beginning.

Moses begins Genesis from the beginning of creation and curiously John does as well

Mathew, Mark and Luke begin their gospels with Jesus

Mathew and Luke with His birth and Mark with the beginning of His ministry.

But John begins right where Moses did, the beginning of creation

 

This is extremely important f we are to fully know who this Jesus is that we all follow and serve.

But John does not use Jesus’ name

Instead he uses the term The Word. In the beginning was the Word

But what word?

The written word? The spoken word?

John uses a very obscure Greek word – the logos.

The word logos can be translated as a message, a statement, or simply a word.

But in classic Greek the word logos carries a deeper meaning

It is were we get our English word logo from

 

Scripture tells us that no one has ever seen God and lived and that is true

But Jesus is according to John the physical representation of God who cannot be seen

Just as our logo’s represent the physical manifestation of a product, golden arches – McDonalds, red headed pig tail girl for Wendy’s, or Colonial Sanders for Kentucky Fried Chicken

Jesus in His physical body is the exact representation of the unseen God of the Bible

 

John tells us that this logos, this word was with God and was in fact God in the flesh.

While it is true that the man Jesus was born on earth in Bethlehem, the logos, the word has existed for all eternity

He was with God and was in fact God.

 

Growing up I had always thought that God created the heavens and the earth and by this, I mean God the father.

Genesis 1:1-2 (NASB)
¹  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
²  The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

I just assumed this was God the father and the Holy Spirit because the Son was not born yet.

Then there is Genesis 1:26 (NASB)
²⁶  Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

I remember being told that here God is speaking with the angels but as I began to study the scriptures, I knew Angels could not create anything

Perhaps God was speaking with the Spirit who was moving over the surface of the waters but then I read Johns gospel

John 1:2-3 (NASB)
²  He (the logos or Jesus) was in the beginning with God.
³  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

So, in fact Jesus was the creator of all that there is.

I know it gets challenging when we begin to speak about the Godhead for so many reasons

Actually, we cannot say Jesus created because He was not named Jesus until He was born in Bethlehem

This is the logos or the second person of the Godhead

Some scholars believe that whenever we read about the “angel of God” in the Old Testament we are seeing the same physical representation of the unseen God

The child born in Bethlehem was only the latest of quite a few appearances of this person John calls the logos

 

The Hebrew and the Greek words for angel literally mean messengers which is a pretty generic term

That said, there are instances in the OT where there is a specific “Angel of the Lord” and he is treated quite differently than general angels

 

When Sarah drove Hagar out into the wilderness to die we read this

Genesis 16:7-10 (NASB)
⁷  Now the angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.
⁸  He said, "Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from and where are you going?" And she said, "I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai."
⁹  Then the angel of the LORD said to her, "Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority."
¹⁰  Moreover, the angel of the LORD said to her, "I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count."

Could a regular angel multiply her descendants?

And He uses the same language used in the promise made to Abraham

Then listen to what is recorded after the promise

Genesis 16:13 (NASB)
¹³  Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, "You are a God who sees"; for she said, "Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?"

Hagar knew this was no ordinary angel

 

Abraham was commanded by God to take Isaac to a certain mountain and offer him as a sacrifice

 

 and this is what we read right before Abram was about to slay the child

 

Genesis 22:10-12 (NASB)
¹⁰  Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
¹¹  But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
¹²  He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."

Listen again to that last statement

now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."

This was not an ordinary angel

 

When Moses fled Egypt for his life he settled in Midian and became a shepherd and one day he saw a miraculous sight

Exodus 3:2-6 (NASB)
²  The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.
³  So Moses said, "I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up."
⁴  When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
⁵  Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
⁶  He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Good translations will have the word Lord in the title Angel of the Lord in all capitol letters signifying Jehovah

But then the language changes in verse 6 from the angel of the lord speaking to God Himself

But there is no change of character

In other words the one speaking in verse 4 and 5, the angel of the Lord, is the same one speaking in verse 6 who identifies himself as the God of your fathers

Not an ordinary angel

 

The logos or the second person f the Godhead has been with us always and has taken on many different appearances.

Back to Johns gospel

⁴  In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.
⁵  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Nothing is sadder than a person thinking that either everyone gets to heaven or that all roads lead to heaven

Clearly the scriptures teach a different lesson for us all

The words in Him in the Greek are absolute

In only Him is there life

We just celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ

Can any other religion claim that for the one they serve?

No!

Only Jesus rose from the dead and only Jesus is the giver of life everlasting

 

This light, this life was a light for all mankind but sadly those in darkness did not comprehend that light.

The word for comprehend in the Greek is “kata lombano” and means to literally seize or to lay hold of

Perhaps they could not lay hold of it because in their darkness they could not see it.

Perhaps in their darkness they cannot even recognize it for what it is

Isaiah 5:20 (NASB)
²⁰  Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

 

Or perhaps they just didn’t care

 

Isaiah 9:2 (NASB)
²  The people who walk in darkness Will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them.

 

But for those who know the true ligh, for them there is nothing to fear

Micah 7:8 (NASB)
⁸  Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; Though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.

 

the same apostle John who wrote the gospel later wrote this

 

1 John 1:5 (NASB)
⁵  This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

 

And again in his gospel

John 8:12 (NASB)
¹²  Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life."

 

And then this

John 3:19 (NASB)
¹⁹  "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

 

John uses the term light for Jesus in many of his writings

Sadly he tells us that men would rather walk in darkness.

Today that would certainly be true but surely Gods chosen people had a better understanding of the scripture’s, didn’t they?

John 1:9-11 (NASB)
⁹  There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.
¹⁰  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.

We have already determined that part but then there is this

¹¹  He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.

How is that possible?

Notice it does not say they did not recognize Him

Rather it says they did not receive or accept Him for who He really was

We know that much from Good Friday

His own people, the very ones He was sent to, and promised to, rejected Him

 

But that is the negative part of Johns testimony, here is the positive

John 1:12-13 (NASB)
¹²  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,
¹³  who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Verse 13 is very important and actually can be seen as an accusation

Not born of blood, flesh or the will of man

These were things the Jews prized above all else

What tribe were you born into, who was your father, are you truly Jewish

But that is not the kind of birth John is talking about here

Those who may become a child of God must be born of God

Remember what Jesus told Nicodemus the night they met

Unless a man is born again (or more literally from above, from God) he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven

So not everyone will get to spend eternity with God

And no, all roads or religions do not lead to heaven

In fact, all of those are a part of the darkness John condemns here

 

But only those who are in the light

Only those who are born of God

Who believe on His name and obey His commands

Only they will see the kingdom of heaven

Jesus Himself said as much in

John 14:6 (ESV)
⁶  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

 

Jesus did not say I am a way, or a truth or a life

In the Greek the definite article “the” is emphatic

Jesus is “THE” way truth and life

He is the only way, truth and life

And then adding No one comes to the Father except through me.

 

John continues in John 1:14 (ESV)
¹⁴  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

 

The word, the logos, became flesh

Became one of us

And dwelt among us

Think about that for a moment

The creator God who created all that there is left His throne to become one of us.

Why would He do this?

What is there about man that God would sacrifice so much to live among us and risk rejection and even abuse?

John 3:16 says it all

For God so loved the world

 

Look at Johns words about Jesus in John 1:18 (ESV)
¹⁸  No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

This is an explanation of that word logos that John uses

No one has ever seen God, but Jesus has made Him known

Jesus as I said earlier is the exact representation of the unseen God

 

This is the God we worship and the savior we serve

In the weeks to come we will examine just how much Jesus loved His creation

We will examine why we are so drawn to Him and willing to forsake everything to follow Him

We will examine why so many are willing to risk everything and surrender to His Lordship

We have placed our hope in Jesus, not blindly, but based on scriptural evidence

 

And that evidence proves that Jesus is in fact God Almighty

LET US PRAY