All Authority | John 1:1-14

Today we’re starting a new series called The Great Commission where we’re gonna take a deep dive into what we as Christians call The Great Commission. Have y’all heard of the Great Commission? Let’s turn to Matthew 28 verse 18.

This is Jesus’ last words to the 12 disciples before He ascended to heaven. At this point, Jesus had died, resurrected from the grave 3 days later, and walked with the disciples for a bit, and these are His final words.

Matthew 28:18–20 NLT

18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

We’re gonna spend 8 weeks dissecting these 3 verses. Today we’re focusing on all of verse 18.

Matthew 28:18 NLT

18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

So today is all about the authority of Jesus. And the passage we’re gonna use to take a deeper look at His authority is John 1.

[Scripture Reading]

John 1:1–14 NLT

1 In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God. 3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. 4 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. 6 God sent a man, John the Baptist, 7 to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8 John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. 9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. 14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

As I’ve grown up in church over the years, I’ve heard the word “glory” so much. And for a while as a kid I didn’t even know what it meant. I’d hear it thrown around in church all the time. I heard phrases like “the glory of God” and figured this word “glory” was just somehow associated with God. Didn’t ever think to ask what it meant.

And most of my life passed by without ever understanding what this word meant. As I began to really invest in my relationship with God in high school, I’d hear sermons where definitions would be thrown out, but didn’t even really understand what the definitions meant.

It was like I had lived in a cave my whole life and someone from the outside world walked into the cave and described to me what wind was. Even if they gave me a definition of what wind is and what it felt like, I’d have no clue what wind actually felt like. I hadn’t personally experienced it.

Then I became an intern at Connection Church Dublin, and I personally experienced and understood what it meant to give glory to God. Then I moved to Athens, Georgia and became a pastor and really began understanding what it meant. And I discovered that I had been glorifying God throughout my life at different moments, I just didn’t know it.

The topic today is the authority of Jesus, but the reason I’ve been talking so much about the word glory is because this is our response to the authority of Jesus. We glorify Him.

And so today I want us to walk through what it means to glorify God. I want to show y’all the authority Jesus has and how we glorify Him.

1. Jesus is the eternal Son of God (vv. 1-2).

John 1:1–2 NLT

1 In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He existed in the beginning with God.

Now in the first 14 verses of John 1, John doesn’t specifically name drop Jesus. Instead he uses “Word” and “He” to refer to Jesus. When John says “word” he is using this greek word “logos”. Logos is a word used to describe God revealing Himself, or divine revelation. So Jesus is the revealing of God to the world. We also hear the Bible referred to as logos. So both Jesus and the Bible are ways in which God has revealed Himself to the world.

And we see here in verses 1 and 2 that Jesus, or the Word, already existed before the world came to be. Now we actually see God describe Himself this way many times in the Old Testament.

Exodus 6:2 (NLT)

2 And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the Lord.’

This is actually God revealing His name Yahweh to the world for the first time.

The name Yahweh is interesting… because it literally just means “I Am”. So God basically just told Moses, “my name is I Am.” Which sounds weird, until you think about the implications of that.

God is not a created being, He is eternal. And when you think about the name “I Am” it’s describing God as an eternal being. He wasn’t created, He didn’t pop into existence one day, He just is!

And there was someone else in the Bible that called themself by this name.

In John 8, Jesus is talking to a group of Jews. Jesus just said that He Himself has seen Abraham. They asked Him how He can say He has seen Abraham because Abraham lived thousands of years ago. And Jesus responds with this

John 8:58 (NLT)

58 …“I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I Am!”

So Jesus says here that He also wasn’t created. He just is! He has always existed because He is God.

This shows us Jesus’ authority! This shows us why Jesus is worthy of us glorifying Him!

He showed up as a human as the eternal Son of God. Think about that. What if someone walked up to you and said He is the eternal Son of God? You’d call Him crazy! But what if He was right, and you knew He was right? You’d fall down on your knees and pledge your life to Him. You’d give Him anything He asked!

But that’s not even the only way we see the authority of Jesus in our passage tonight.

2. Jesus is the Creator of all things (vv. 3-5).

John 1:3–5 NLT

3 God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. 4 The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

So not only is Jesus the eternal Son of God, but He is the Creator of all things. It says here that God created EVERYTHING through Him.

If y’all remember from a few weeks ago when we finished out 1 John, we learned that God is life. Here we see Jesus described in the same way. It says that Jesus gave life to everything and that His life brought light to everyone.

Now if Jesus’ life being a light to Creation sounds a bit confusing to you, let me explain it another way.

There’s a famous quote from C.S. Lewis that says this, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

So imagine for a moment that we lived in a world with no sun. It would be impossible! Because of the sun we have warmth and we can see things, without it we couldn’t survive; the planet couldn’t survive.

But we do have the sun and we get to enjoy it. I mean during the summer time people will literally lay on the beach just to enjoy the warmth of the sun. So the sun in itself; great thing to have. But the sun also makes everything else great.

Without the sun, we wouldn’t have power or even be able to make fire (cause fire needs oxygen, plants make oxygen, plants need the sun to live), so we couldn’t have good warm food without power and without fire. We also wouldn’t be able to see anything. Have fun trying to Volleyball, Football, or even Crossnet on Wednesdays without the ability to see anything. So the sun also makes everything else great.

And God is the same way! It is through Jesus that we can enjoy anything. Jesus created all things and Colossians 1:17 even says that He holds all creation together. He created it, and He keeps it from falling apart.

And this only scratches the surface. I could be up here for hours talking about how glorious our Creator is. But I don’t want you to miss the point of why I’m telling you this.

Jesus, being the Creator of all things, is your Creator. He created everything you enjoy, He holds everything you have together. Does that not give Him complete authority in your life? Does that not make Him worthy of everything you are and have? It does mean that. He’s worthy of it all. For from Him are all things, therefore to Him are all things. To Him be the glory.

Even if we stopped there, that would be plenty reason to glorify God with our entire life. But then we continue on in John 1. We saw this incredible open to this gospel that Jesus is eternal and Creator and the Light of the World. But now John starts the story of the gospel.

John 1:6–14 NLT

6 God sent a man, John the Baptist, 7 to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8 John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. 9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. 14 So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

3. Jesus is the Savior of the world (vv. 6-14).

Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the Creator of all things, stepped off His throne in Heaven. He was already infinitely glorious, yet He stepped of His throne and humbled Himself. He took on flesh, which means He became a human. God became human. Have you ever thought about how crazy that sounds? That God, infinite in glory, humbled Himself and became a human.

John told the world about Him. Prepared them for the light to come. And the world didn’t even recognize Him as God. We rejected Him. That really sheds a light on how deceived we are in our sin. Our sin makes us believe that we deserve glory, that we deserve happiness, that we deserve everything to go our way. So much so that we didn’t even recognize God.

But then we see verse 12. All who believe and accept Him are given the right to become children of God. They are reborn as children of God. Why is that? Because of verse 15. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. He was and is the glorious Son of God.

Man we just saw how infinitely glorious Jesus is. How His authority over everything is completely deserved. Then we see the most glorious act we have seen from God.

And this was all for His glory. Jesus coming to this Earth to die and rise from the grave for your sins was for HIS glory. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve wrestled with that statement for many years. You’re telling me that Jesus didn’t do this for me, He did this for Himself? I really struggled with that.

I wrestled with this idea that God is selfish. Because I thought that Jesus doing this amazing act for humanity just to bring glory to Himself meant that it wasn’t because He loves me. So I had this question mark in my brain, did God die for me or for Him?

The answer to that question, to this day, there hasn’t been anything that has blown my mind more. I’m gonna ask that question one more time, then I’m gonna give you the answer.

Did Jesus die on the cross because He loves you or because He wanted glory for Himself? [Repeat that] The answer is yes.

I could preach a whole sermon on this, but let me try to explain this in a couple of minutes.

So we know God is completely righteous, He has never sinned, He is eternal, He is Creator, and many other things. He is actually worthy of having authority over all things. You and I are not. We’re sinful. We’re kinda the worst.

So when you and I do something to bring glory to ourself. Like let’s say a year from now this student ministry grows to like 50 students. And I go around saying, “Yea I’m really killing it as the Student Pastor right now. I got so many students to start coming to church.” I don’t deserve that glory. God does. He’s the one that worked in students’ hearts, used each of the leaders (myself included), and brought us all together. He actually deserves the glory.

And God is most glorified through our enjoyment of His grace. [Repeat that] A man named John Piper brought up a good point to prove this. He said that God is more glorified through His grace than His wrath. Otherwise, He wouldn’t have sent Jesus to Earth to die and rise from the grave for our sins. He is brought more glory having reconciled us to Himself.

And that works the other way around as well. We are brought the most joy through the glorifying of God. We experience the most joy possible when God is glorified. Don’t y’all see how awesome that is? Not only was Jesus’ death and resurrection to bring ultimate glory to Himself, but it was also to give ultimate joy to us because our joy in Him brings the most glory to Him and glory being brought to Him brings the most joy to us.

Are y’all now seeing why Jesus says that He has all authority in Heaven and on Earth? Jesus prefaces our purpose on Earth to make disciples of all nations with the statement that it is through His authority that His disciples can have eternal joy in the glory of God.

To circle back to the beginning of this sermon, what does it mean to glorify God? It means having such a supremely high view of the eternal Son of God, that your entire life is devoted to Him. It means to live your life in devotion to your Creator. It’s to realize how sinful you are and to walk in humility to the one who died for your sins.

So I want to ask you. Are you living your life for the glory of God? Are you prioritizing God above everything else? You can probably tell what the answer to that is through how much time you’re spending in your Bible, or how much time you’re in prayer, or in community with other believers. Are you living your life for the glory of God?

We’ll talk about that more in small groups. Let’s pray.