Sermon Tone Analysis

The Word Was God

April 13, 2008

*John 1:1-18*

* *

Before I begin today’s message I’d like to share with you the reading from the April 6th devotional in “Experiencing God Day-by-Day.

It spoke to me; I hope it speaks to you too.* *

*It’s entitled,** Faithful in a Little*

Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and whoever is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much.—Luke

16:10

God rewards those who are faithful.

Throughout your life God will seek to grow you in your faith.

He will continually bring you to times when you must trust Him.

He will lead you into situations that require a “little” faith, and if you are faithful, He will then take you into situations that require even greater trust in Him.

Each time you are able to trust God at a higher level, God will reveal more of Himself to you.

Your faith and experiencing God are directly linked.

The best way to tell if you are prepared for a greater revelation of God is to see how faithful you have been with what God has given you.

This is a foundational principle in God's relationships with us: If you have been faithful with the little He has given you, you are ready to be entrusted with more.

If you failed to trust God with the little He gave you, He will not trust you with more.

God will not lead you beyond your present level of trust and obedience to Him.

He will return you to your area of unfaithfulness until you are prepared to trust Him.

The children of Israel were unwilling to trust God to lead them into the Promised Land, and their generation never again was able to move forward with Him.

You stand at an exciting new door of opportunity to know God more intimately every time you believe Him.

Every step of faith leads you to a deeper relationship of faith with Him.

It is an open invitation to know God more intimately.

The beginning of John's gospel is of such importance and of such depth of meaning that we must study it almost verse by verse.

It is John's great divinely inspired revelation that Jesus is none other than God's creative and life-giving and light-giving Word, that Jesus is the power of God which created the world and the reason of God which sustains the world come to earth in human and bodily form.

\\ \\ Here at the beginning John says three things about the Word; which is to say that he says three things about Jesus.

And all three things are in John 1:1: /In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

/

Firstly, the Word was already there at the very beginning.

John's echoes the first verse of the Old Testament of the Bible.

/"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"/ (Gen 1:1).

What John is saying is --the word is not one of the created things; the word was there before creation.

Jesus was not created.

Jesus was the creator.

The word is not part of the world which came into being in time; the word is part of eternity and was there with God before time and the world began.

John reveals the preexistence of Christ.

“/In the beginning was the Word.”/

In the beginning was Jesus.

\\ \\ In many ways this idea of preexistence is very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to grasp.

But it does mean one very simple, very practical, and very tremendous thing.

If the word was with God before time began, if God's word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always with Jesus and like Jesus.

Jesus said, /“I and the Father are One.

If you have seen me, you have seen the Father”/ John 10:30; 14:9-11.

Jesus tried to make abundantly clear to His followers that He and the Father were inseparable – seen one; seen both!

Know one; know both!

Sometimes we tend to think of God as stern and avenging; and we tend to think that something Jesus did changed God's anger into love and altered his attitude toward men.

The New Testament knows nothing of that idea.

The whole New Testament tells us, this passage of John especially, that God has always been like Jesus.

What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.

\\ \\ We may well ask, "What then about some of the things that we read in the Old Testament?

What about the passages which speak about commandments of God to wipe out whole cities and to destroy men, women and children?

What of the anger and the destructiveness and the jealousy of God that we sometimes read of in the older parts of Scripture?"

The answer is this--it is not God who has changed; it is men's knowledge of him that has changed.

Men wrote these Old Testament accounts because that was the stage which their knowledge of God had reached.

And remember, all Scripture is divinely inspired (2Timothy 3:16).

Men wrote what God laid on their hearts to write.

\\ \\ When a child is learning any subject, he has to learn it stage by stage.

He does not begin with full knowledge; he begins with what he can grasp and goes on to more and more.

When he or she begins music appreciation, he does not start with a Bach Prelude and Fugue; he starts with something much more simple; and goes through stage after stage until his or her knowledge grows.

It was that way with men and God.

They could only grasp and understand God's nature and his ways in part.

It was only when Jesus came that they saw fully and completely what God has always been like.

\\ \\ It is told that a little girl was once confronted with some of the more bloodthirsty and savage parts of the Old Testament.

Her comment was: "But that happened before God became a Christian!"

When John says that the word was always there, he is saying that God was always a Christian.

He is telling us that God was and is and ever shall be like Jesus; but men could never know and realize that until Jesus came.

In the beginning was the Word! \\ \\ Secondly, John goes on to say that the word was with God.

What does he mean by that?

He means that always there has been the closest connection between the Word and God.

Let us put that in another and a simpler way--there has always been the most intimate connection between Jesus and God.

That means no one can tell us what God is like, what God's will is for us, what God's love and heart and mind are like, as Jesus can.

See one; see both.

Know one; know both! \\ \\ Let us take a simple human analogy.

If we want to know what someone really thinks and feels about something, and if we are unable to talk to the person ourselves, we do not go to someone who is merely an acquaintance to someone who has known him or her only a short time; we go to someone whom we know to be an intimate friend of many years' standing.

We know that he is more likely to be able to interpret the mind and the heart of the other person.

\\ \\ It is something like that here! in what John is saying about Jesus.

He is saying that Jesus has always been with God.

John is saying that Jesus is so intimate with God that God has no secrets from him; and that, therefore, Jesus is the one person who can reveal to us what God is like and how God feels toward us.

The Word was God.

\\ \\ Finally John says that the Word was God.

John did not say that the Word was identical with God.

He said that the word was theos --which means that the word was of the very same character and quality and essence and being as God.

When John said the Word was God he was not saying that Jesus was God’s identical twin; he was saying that Jesus was so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in him we perfectly see God.

Identical twins may be difficult to identify because they are so alike.

But, regardless, they are separate and have their own identity, while Jesus was not separate.

He and the Father are One! \\ \\ So right at the beginning of his gospel John lays it down that in Jesus, and in him alone, there is perfectly revealed to men all that God always was and always will be, and all that he feels towards and desires for men.

Looking at one verse of Scripture closely is like examining a work of art with your nose, practically touching it.

Now let’s back up and look at the big picture.

If you have your Bible still open, please turn to John, chapter 1, we’ll read verses 1 through 18: /“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 nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and 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.'"