Our First Love: God the Son (2)

So Far

Welcome and Thank you again for joining us this morning in person and on the livestream. Our hope is that wherever you are, you are safe. This first month of the year we’re taking the time to consider our first love. But, what does that mean? Is this first love our parents? Is it a pet? Is it a person we have a romantic relationship with? while many of those are valid answers, what we want to dive into is this: Who is our real love? While other loves grow and wane with time, god’s love is unchanging. Something I had mentioned last week was tha in order to grow in love for someone, you have to grow in knowledge of them and spend time with them. likewise, we want to setup this foundation of core christian beliefs to help us get to God better and consequently grow in love of him. We’re spend the time learning about the persons of the Trinity (god the father, the son and God the Holy Spirit), Scripture and the church.

Pre-existence

John 1:14 NASB95

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.

Last week we learned about God the Father, his love and his provision for us. How God as our father knows us intimately already and He has loved us first.

This week we will dive into getting to know God the Son. A few things we do know about him is that He is our prophet, priest and king. He came to earth and fulfilled these rolls since we could not do so perfectly. For more on that please check out our advent series from 2021.

In our verse today we see that the Word became flesh. As many of us may know, that word is Jesus, the Son of God. Earlier in this chapter, right at the beginning we read that The Word was with God, Meaning that before becoming flesh he already existed. We see his interaction in the creation of the world. As God spoke, so it was done. Let there be light, Let there be an expanse, Let the waters gathered and so on. The Word of God is the Son of God in action in creation.

Genesis 1:26 NASB95

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.”

God is not here speaking to the angels, but to The Godhead; Father, son and Holy spirit. Another instance that people believe that God the son is in the picture is when Adam walked with god through the garden in chapter 2 v.8. This is the first theophany in the bible, but definitely not that last. It is believed that every theophany is in fact the Son of God interacting with humanity.

John 5:37 NASB95

“And the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form.

In Jude, Jesus is attributed with saving the people of God out of Egypt.

Jude 5 ESV

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

The Son of god came to earth to be our mediator, because he has always been our mediator. In all the OT theophanies we see a foreshadowing of the things to come, they were prophetic. In the ultimate theophany, the incarnation, we have fulfillment.

We see again in John that the son of God existed before time began.

John 17:5 NASB95

“Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

This all means that as the father and son have existed before all time and they have an intimate relationship.

Jesus addresses God as father.

Matthew 11:25 NASB95

At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

Not only that, but Jesus addresses god as specifically his father:

Luke 2:49 NASB95

And He said to them, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?”

This comes after Jesus earthly parents leave him behind in the synagogue.

This intimate knowledge means that Jesus perfectly reveals the will of God and who God is to us all. As look at christ’s life and ministry, we can see who God is. He is holy, good, sovereign , Just and and gracious.

The beauty is found in that as the father and son have this special realtionship, in jesus we have a special relationship with god as well. That because the Son died in our place we have been adopted through blood of christ.

It can get so easy to neglect our first love. As believers, as people who serve in church, outside of church we can get caught up with getting things so right that we forget why we’re trying to get it right. Last week I mentioned Revelation 2:4 and how Jesus pointed out that the church of ephesus was getting things right in their minstry as a church, but neglecting their first love, their reason, God. That can be us, I know sometimes that’s me. So focused on the doing forgetting what’s been done for me. That can be us as Horeb Baptist, that can be us as the global church.