In The Beginning - The Eternality of Christ

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 100

Scripture Reading: Advent 1 (Triano)

Sermon:

GMC! I was Glad when they said to em let us go and worship in he hose of the Lord!

Well Thanksgiving has passed and you can probably tell from the lighting of the first candle earlier that we are officially in Advent. And with starting Advent comes the starting of an advent Series.

Each time we start a large series, Go through a book of the Bible, I take two options to the elders and let them vote. So before We studied Isaiah I took to them Job and Isaiah, and what they voted on, well that should be obvious. And before we started Matthew I told them I want to do a Gospel, so we voted between Matthew and John. But what I knew all along is that whichever one we did not do would become our advent series this year. SO if we had voted for John then we would be looking at the birth narratives in Matthew. But since we have already done that we are instead going to be spending the next four weeks looking at Johns prologue. Possibly the most intricate and technical and in all honesty important passages in all Scripture. For john develops what we would call a “high Christology” a high view of who Jesus was, what his work was and what it meant. And all this is couched in his thought of Jesus being “The Word”

We will be looking in detail at different facets and thoughts here, But I would like to begin today, and really begin the whole series, by reading all that we will be looking at.

John 1:1–18 ESV

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 were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 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 have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

These are the words of the Lord for us this morning, lets begin with a word of PRAYER

PRAY

John 1:1 opens, very intentionally, the exact same way as the book of Genesis, with the same words, what we read in our English translations as “In the Beginning”. So just to give us some Biblical context some really big picture Context, for those of you who don’t know Genesis 1:1 starts with: IN THE BEGINNING GOD. Famously people have said if you can believe all that is contained in those four words you can believe anything else in the bible. For it starts with a thought: there was a beginning, and not only did Go cause it, he was there before it. and even this you have to start with this belief, that there is a God. Genesis 1:1 tells us some important theological truths. Well so does John 1:1. again the same first three words: In the beginning. But interestingly in John The word “God” is replaced with “was the Word”.

Not technically speaking “the word” is LOGOS greek, Logic, but more importantly here it is a name. It is the name that John has gioven Jesus. If you look in your bible the word “word” is capitalized as all proper names should be. but john starts by saying “in the beginning was the word and by replacing “God with “the word, John is telling us something really important about Jesus.

Shows us Christ’s DIVINITY

Our Hope in this Advent season is then that:

He is eternally BEFORE …

… and eternally AFTER