Jesus, the Divine Word

Jesus, the Divine Word – Manuscript Our Scripture today is John 1:1-18. Today, we are beginning a new sermon series. Our last series looked at songs praising Jesus, the savior. Now, I want us to look at who Jesus says he is and so we’ll be looking at a series of statements Jesus makes that are regularly called “The I Am Statements”. In these statements, Jesus makes some incredibly radical claims; claims that challenge us. Today as we start this series, we’re going to look at the beginning of John’s gospel account and see how Jesus is the full revelation of God. (Read John 1:1-18) Prayer for Illumination: Lord, before this world’s days even began, your Word was in the beginning, and it was with you and it was you. The mystery of that brings us to our knees. Yet today you allow us to open your Word and know you better. So we ask that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Give us hearts open to your Spirit as we seek you. Amen. I think many of you know that I am incredibly passionate about soccer. One of my favorite soccer players is Andrea Pirlo. He retired a couple of months ago. But he had a stellar career. He was one of the central midfielders of all time. He was renowned for his passing. He could pick out a pass forty yards away and put it on a dime. I tried so hard to play like him despite the fact that I was really a winger and not a central midfielder. Recently, I got a copy of his memoirs, “I Think Therefore I Play”. I have been devouring it. Now if someone were to ask me if I knew Pirlo, I would have to say no. I don’t know him. I know a lot about him. I know that he grew up in Brescia, northern Italy. I know that while he is famous for his free kicks, he imitated the style of another famous free kick taker. I know that one of the darkest days for him was May 25th, 2005, when his club side Milan gave up a three goal lead and lost the European Cup. But I don’t know Pirlo. I have never seen him play in person. I have never passed the ball with him and learned how to control the ball like does. I have never shared a glass of wine with him and talked about life. I don’t know him. The way you get to know someone is through their words. It’s not essential to knowing someone to know what they look like. Just because we see someone doesn’t mean we know them. We see people on TV all the time and we don’t actually know them. The way we know someone is through their word. Words are how we learn about someone and get to know them. If you want to get to know someone, do you just sit there and stare at them? Probably not. You talk with them. You say, “Tell me about yourself”. Words reveal a person to us. The way we get to know God is through his Word. We know God through his Word. Often when we say God’s word, we mean the whole of Scripture. Before I read Scripture, I regularly say “hear the word of God”. We can call Scripture the word of God because he has revealed himself through it. John tells us that the final word of God, the fullest revelation of God is Jesus. He begins his gospel account with that famous line, “In the beginning was the Word”. Jesus is the Word of God. He is the way in which we get to know God because he reveals God in the fullest sense. Maybe you’re thinking, “That’s fine that you find God in Jesus and the Bible, but I find God in nature. I find him when I’m sitting in my tree blind; I find him when I’m hiking through the mountains”. While God certainly has his fingerprints in and through creation, can you really know God if you only experience his creation? You might be able to deduce things about God; you might be moved to praise. But you won’t really know him. It’s the same issue with me and Pirlo. Can I really know him if I’ve only ever seen him play soccer on TV? No. Until someone speaks, until someone reveals themselves through their word, we don’t really know them. John is telling us that God has revealed himself through Jesus. To know God, you need to know Jesus. You need to know who he is, what he does to know God. To do that, you need to read Scripture and pray. It’s a new year I would encourage you if you haven’t already to begin a Bible reading plan. If you need help picking one out, I’d be more than happy to help you. We also have Sunday school classes where we engage with God’s word and seek not just to know facts about him but to actually know him. In those classes, you get the benefit of listening to others who have spent time in the Word and know God who can help you learn to know him. Jesus doesn’t just reveal things about God; Jesus reveals God because he is God. John tells us that “in the beginning was the Word”. He’s making an allusion to Genesis 1. In Genesis 1:1 it says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. Both passages begin the same, in the beginning. John is drawing us back to the beginning of creation when it was only God. This is before the universe came into being, before time, when it was only God. John is telling us that when it was only God, Jesus, the Word, was with him. He writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”. This is an explicit statement that before time began the Word was alongside of God. That means before the creation of time, before the creation of the universe, before the earth, the sun, the moon, and stars, Jesus was there. Jesus pre-existed creation. There was never a time when he was not. People throughout history even through today deny the pre-existence of Jesus. Often they will say that at creation Jesus came into existence; that he came into existence as “a kind of intermediate being to act as a medium through whom he created all things”1. But John is making it clear that before time began, Jesus was. Jesus was there in the beginning with God, alongside of God. The reason he was there is because Jesus is God. The Word is God. He is not a created being but God himself. Jesus is not the first created being through whom the rest of creation comes into existence through. Jesus is God. This is beginnings of Trinitarian theology. Jesus is distinct from God the Father. One commentator puts it: The ‘Word’ does not by Himself make up the entire Godhead; nevertheless the divinity that belongs to the rest of the Godhead belongs also to Him’.2 There are distinctions within the Godhead, we call them persons. There are three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus, the Word, the Son, is the Second Person of the Trinity. The persons within the Trinity are as distinct as you and I. The Father is not the Son, nor the Spirit; the Son is neither the Father nor the Spirit; the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are distinct, different persons. While they are distinct, they are one. Jesus is one with the Father and Holy Spirit. Sometimes we use the phrase “one with” to mean someone stands with someone else; that they are united in cause. That is not how Jesus is one with the Father and Holy Spirit. They are one in essence, one in being just as I am one in being. The God of the Bible is one with three distinct, co-eternal, co-equal persons. It is a great mystery how God is one and three. John goes on to tell us that Jesus does what God does; he creates. John tells us that all things were made through him. In Genesis when God creates, God does so by speaking. Ten times Genesis 1 records God speaking and that spoken word creates. God speaks and things come into existence. God says, “Let there be X” and X comes into existence. “Let there be light” and there is light. Creation comes about as a result of God’s Word. The word through which God creates is Jesus. It is through Jesus that God accomplishes creation. He is the Word that God speaks that causes creation to come into existence. The Apostle Paul puts it like this in his letter to the Colossians: For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.3 Both John and Paul are saying that Jesus is the personal agent by which all things come into being.4 While this is hard for us to understand, I think C.S. Lewis does a wonderful job of describing this. In his novel The Magician’s Nephew, a prequel to The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, he describes the creation of Narnia. There are a few characters present as they watch Aslan bring Narnia into existence. This is first time that Aslan is seen in the novel. And he walks around this empty world and hums. He’s humming a tune and plants begin to spring up; then animals. And the two children that are present seem to understand the song he’s singing without fully knowing it. While Jesus probably doesn’t sing creation into existence as Aslan does in The Magician’s Nephew, he does speak and creation comes about. Everything comes about as a result of him. He brings about God’s purpose in creation. Jesus reveals God’s purpose in creation. But Jesus also reveals God’s purpose in redemption. In verse 14 John writes that Jesus took on flesh and dwelt among us. We’ve spent the last five weeks looking at Jesus taking on flesh, so I’m not going to spend much time on it. What I want you to see is that John is using two words here to talk about Jesus’ incarnation. He took on flesh and dwelt among us. There are many words John could have used to tell us that Jesus dwelt among us. But the word that he used is frequently used when someone pitches a tent. It is regularly used to describe the tabernacle in the Old Testament. The tabernacle was the place where God met his people before Solomon built the temple. This was the place where God chose to dwell amongst his people. When Moses had the tabernacle built, he would enter the tabernacle and the glory of God would it. It was from that place that people could come and seek the God. They would meet him there. This is where they could hear God’s word to them. In using this word for dwell, John is telling us that God has chosen to dwell in flesh just as he dwelt in the tabernacle. Jesus is the place where God meets man. We don’t have to go looking anywhere else to find God. In Jesus, God became flesh, he was incarnate and he dwelt among his people, he tabernacled amongst us. John’s use of this word also signifies the end of temples. The ancient world understood temples to be places where the gods met mankind. These were special places where the earth and the world of the gods met. Usually, they were these impressive structures that were the biggest and most ornate buildings in the city. These temples would be filled with priests who made sacrifices to the gods. But in Christianity, we don’t have temples or priests. The Church has never had temples. Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered why it is that we have churches? It’s because Jesus is our temple. He is the place where we meet God. He is where enter into the presence of the divine. It is in him and through him we have access to God. If you want to enter God’s presence, you enter through Jesus. Jesus is also the priest of that temple. Jesus is our priest. He is the one who mediates between us and God. That’s what the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us. Jesus is the dwelling place of God. It is because Jesus is God and that he dwelt among us, he tabernacled among us, that we see the glory of God. Until this point in history, the glory of God has been veiled. Not long after Moses finished the tabernacle, he asked to see God and his glory. Do you remember what God said? God told Moses that Moses cannot see his glory and live. But God told Moses to go up into the cleft of the rock, God would pass by and Moses could see his back. We’re not exactly certain what that means other than Moses saw only a very brief glimpse of God’s glory; he didn’t see it all, he couldn’t see it all. The same is true of Isaiah when he has vision of the seraphs. Isaiah doesn’t see God, he sees the hem of his robe, some older translations will say the train of his robe. Still, neither of these men actually saw God and his glory. Why is that? It’s what God told Moses, no one can see the glory of God and live. That’s why there was a veil in the tabernacle separating the holy place from the holiest of holy places. Seeing God in glory was instant death to sinners. And yet John tells us that in Jesus we see the glory of God. He writes that when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us we were finally able to see his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”5 That means that finally we were able to look God in the face. God took on flesh, tabernacled amongst and we finally able to see the glory of God. But how come we can see the glory of God and not die now? Because Jesus died. We can look at Jesus and see the glory of God without consequence because he died. That is redemption. Jesus reveals God to us; that’s what Jesus means when he says later on in John that if you see him you see the Father. He reveals God to us. He reveals God’s creation and redemption. He reveals creation by being the one who created all things; the one through whom all things came into existence. He reveals the redemption of God by making it so that we can see the glory of God without fear, without consequence. He is the full revelation of God. Someday I would like to meet Andrea Pirlo. I would like to knock the ball around with him, learn how to take free kicks the way he does. But I probably never will. So I’ll have to settle for knowing about him. You don’t have to settle to know about God. Do you want to know God? Know his word. Read it, study it. We have excellent Sunday school classes that can help with that. Read it and see how Jesus is the full revelation of God. For the next six weeks, we’ll continue looking at who Jesus says he is. Hopefully you see that he reveals God, he also reveals himself to be God. He reveals himself as distinct from God and at the same time one with God. Let Jesus reveal the God who is One and three; let him reveal the Trinity to you. Let him reveal the glory of God to you; that through him you might lay eyes on God.