We begin today a study of the gospel of John,
and I'm so delighted to do this. This was really the first book that I taught. I did some series when I first came in 1969,
preliminary to this, and we did a few book studies which were redone as the years went
by. But this was the first book of certainly any
length that I taught originally way back in 1970, and what a joy it was at that time and
the Lord has used even the messages from that series through the years to be a blessing
to other people. But I'm really thrilled to be back at the
gospel of John. I love the author, John himself, who never
refers to himself in his gospel. In fact, none of the four gospels identify
inside the gospel the author. Church history tells us who the author is. It's universal history going way back to the
apostolic era, so we know it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And while John is mentioned twenty times in
the other gospels, he's never mentioned in this gospel at all by name. However, he chooses to refer to himself in
another way. He calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus
loved." And if you had the choice between calling
yourself "John" and calling yourself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," that's not a tough
call. He was always in wonder and awe over the fact
that he was so loved by Christ. He is the one we find leaning on Him, as it
were, at the end of life. He starts out as the son of thunder. He has a brother, an older brother named James. They are called boanerges , "sons of thunder." They want to call down fire from heaven on
some people who are mistreating Jesus. They needed to be tempered. And obviously, over the years, John was wonderfully
tempered--so much so that he is known in history as the apostle of love. And the reason he's known as the apostle of
love is because he makes reference to love eighty times in his writings, eighty times. So he is genuinely to be identified as the
apostle of love. It's also true about John that he was concerned
concerning the truth. He mentions truth twenty-five times in his
gospel and twenty times in his epistles. So forty-five times he talks about truth,
eighty times he talks about love. But one hundred times in this gospel he uses
the word believe , believe . Putting that all together, he wants us to
believe the truth so that we can enter in to a relationship of love with the Lord. That's...that's really tying John together
with the use of his most familiar vocabulary. John has a father named a Zebedee. They run a fishing business in Galilee. His mother's name is Salome, and according
to John 19:25 she may have been a sister to Mary, the mother of our Lord, which would
make him a relative of Jesus. Small group up there, folks, who knew each
other well, and intermarriage over the years could have led to that kind of relationship. As I said, he starts out pretty radical and
severe and self-serving, even as his mother asked Jesus if he and his brother can sit
on the right hand and the left in the kingdom. Over the years the work of the Lord on his
heart, the Holy Spirit further working on his heart, a few years with the beloved apostle
Peter, and he becomes the apostle of love, the apostle of truth, and the apostle of faith. And that's what we're going to find as we
meet him in this wonderful gospel. Now the gospel of John is in itself identified
by many through the centuries as the holy of holies of the New Testament. It's the most sacred place you can go. In fact, if there's a most sacred chapter
in the entire Bible, it would be the seventeenth chapter of John where our Lord Jesus prays
to the Father in that intimate inter-Trinitarian prayer, the likes of which appears nowhere
else in Scripture. That might be considered to be the very mercy
seat of the holy of holies. But John is often called the holy of holies,
because in this gospel the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ is fully displayed. And what was not accessible to people in the
Old Covenant, namely the Holy of Holies, has become accessible to us in the New Covenant
because the veil is down, the way is open, we come boldly into the presence of God. And as we enter the gospel of John, we--like
a priest of old on the Day of Atonement--have access to the Holy of Holies to see the glory
of Christ. In this gospel, we will fellowship in the
deepest way with the Lord Jesus. We will hear His beating heart. We will touch His wound prints and hopefully
with Thomas we will say, "My Lord and my God." In some ways, John's gospel is simple enough
for a child. In other ways, it is sublime as an angel. It is both as gentle as a lamb and as bold
as a lion, as deep as the sea and as high as the heavens. And yet its truths must be and can be contained
in one human heart. It is an amazing account. John's message is simply this: the eternal
God Himself has become human. That is John's message. The Creator has become a part of His creation,
fully God and fully man. And why? In order that He might save sinners from their
sin, death, judgment, and eternal hell. That's the message of the gospel of John,
that the eternal God, infinite, transcendent, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, everlastingly
unchanging, that one true and living God who is at the same time one God and yet three
persons has become man. In verse 14 of John 1, the phrase establishes
that when John writes, "The Word became flesh." "The Word became flesh." "The Word" is a title given to Jesus. In Matthew 1, at the birth of Christ, the
angel says, "Call Him Immanuel," which is "God with us," because that very baby is indeed
God with us. In Luke 1:32 and 35 He is to be "called Son
of the Most High," Son of God because He is deity in human flesh. This, the essential truth of the Christian
faith, that Jesus is God in human flesh, God the eternal, infinite, transcendent, all-knowing,
all-powerful, all-present, everlastingly unchanging God has come into His creation in human form. That massive reality is the foundation of
the Christian faith. There are four gospels that tell the story. Three of them, Matthew, Mark and Luke, give
us the earthly history. Three of them look at the birth and the life
and the experiences and the travels and the calling of Jesus upon His followers, and the
teaching and the parables and the events of His life, including His arrest and His trial
and His execution and His resurrection--and many of the features with which we are so
familiar in those so-called Synoptic Gospels, because they're the synopsis of His earthly
life. John doesn't give us the earthly story. John doesn't give us the historical view of
the life of Christ. John gives us the heavenly story. He gives us the supernatural view of Christ. And in that way, John is unique. Ninety-percent of what is in John is not in
Matthew, Mark, or Luke. Ninety percent of this is John's alone to
declare under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing in John's gospel about the
birth of Christ. There is nothing about the early life of Christ. There is nothing about the baptism of Christ. There is nothing about the temptation of Christ. There is nothing about the transfiguration
of Christ. There is nothing about the travels of Christ. There is nothing about the garden of agony
of Christ. There's nothing about His ascension into heaven,
because John is not focusing on the history of His life. There are no parables. Parables were earthly stories. There are no earthly stories. This is a heavenly book. This is a heavenly look at the Lord Jesus
Christ. This is the most heavenly of all the gospels
by far. The purpose of John is to convince the sinner
of the true person of Christ, the true person of Christ. "That you might believe," John 20:31, "that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have salvation in His
name." This is a salvation book. This is an evangelistic book. And in order to have salvation, you must believe
in the true Christ. Write it down somewhere, John 20:31, "These
things are written that you may believe"...There's that word that he uses a hundred times..."that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life"...eternal life..."in
His name." To have eternal life, you must believe in
the true Christ. You must believe in the true Christ--not a
false Christ, not a misrepresentation of Christ, not the Christ of human intuition, human philosophy
and false religion, but the true Christ. John, therefore, gives us this immense treasure,
twenty-one chapters demonstrating in every paragraph that Jesus is God in human flesh,
that He is true God and true man, fully God and fully man. That is the Christ who is the true Christ;
that is the Christ that must be believed on in order for one to be saved. John supports that fact about the identity
of Christ by showing His divine claims, supporting those claims by the record of divine works,
miracles, divine words, divine titles, and divine worship. John pulls all of that together to demonstrate
that we are talking about a divine person, a divine person. And that's the objective of John. John authored three epistles at the end of
the New Testament and, of course, received the glories of the book of Revelation. But here in this book he gives us his great
evangelistic tract, if you will. Only when you understand Christ to be who
He is and understand His person first, and then His work, is there any possibility that
you could be saved. You must believe. You must believe the truth. You must believe. When we go through this together, we're going
to have reasons to affirm what we already believe as Christians. And it's going to arm us and equip us to declare
the truth concerning Jesus Christ. I told you last week that it seems as though
this is under assault and always under attack. People wanting to talk about Jesus but they
don't want to define who He is. This week that came to light when Billy Graham
met with Mitt Romney in a private meeting. And the next day the Billy Graham organization
removed Mormonism as a cult from their website. Really unimaginable. You can see it on the website. It's their proclamation, with a statement
that they didn't want to get into theological issues that have political overtones. So we give honor to the false Christ of Mormonism
and dishonor to the true Christ? How can that be? People play fast and loose with the glory
of Christ, don't they? In the most amazing ways. How sad. The message of the New Testament, the message
of the Old Testament, as we saw from Isaiah 52, is that Jesus is God. He is nothing other than God, nothing less
than God. He is not a created spirit-brother of Lucifer
and Adam as the Mormons say. And there are many, many other aberrant views
of so-called Jesus Christ. The New Testament is full of evidence that
He is God. I don't need to parade all that before you;
you know that. It's everywhere in the New Testament. Philippians 2 would be a good place to start. "He thought it not something to hold onto
to be equal with God, but humbled Himself, took on the form of a man." You know that great passage. We just read from Hebrews chapter 1 that He
is the exact representation of God, that God says to Him, "O God, Your throne is established
in heaven," as we read in Hebrews 1. The Scripture is loaded with evidences that
He is God. If you just take titles given to Jesus and
also given to God, you can see the equality there. God and Jesus are both called Shepherd, both
called Judge, both called Holy One in Scripture, both called First and Last, both called the
Light, both called the Lord of the Sabbath, both called Savior, both called the pierced
one (in the same verse, Zechariah 12:10), both called Mighty God, both called Lord of
Host, both called Alpha and Omega, both called Lord of glory, both called Redeemer, and I
can go on. Titles are given to Jesus that belong only
to God. Our Lord Jesus is described as eternal, omnipresent,
omniscient, omnipotent, immutable, unchanging, sovereign, all glorious, and eternal. Jesus did works that only God can do--He created;
He raised the dead; He overpowered the kingdom of darkness; He forgave sin; He received worship
on many occasions through His life and ministry. He declared that He had a right to be worshiped
after His resurrection. He says in John 14 that He is the one who
is the qualifier for all prayer, that is to be accepted by God and answered by God: "If
you ask anything in His name, He hears and does it." He answers prayer as God alone can do. He does works that only God can do. He receives worship that only God can receive. He answers prayer that only God can answer. And we're going to see as we go through the
gospel of John evidence upon evidence, upon evidence of His deity. The summation of what John is going to show
us in this gospel is found in verse 14, "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among
us." That's the most concise statement in the Bible
on the incarnation. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." "The Word" is none other than Christ, and
I'll explain why that is the term John uses. But the Word, who is Jesus Christ, is God
who took on humanity. The infinite becomes finite. The eternal one enters time. The invisible one becomes visible. The Word--He is called "the Word" in verse
14 and three times in verse 1, three times in verse 1. John doesn't explain that. John does not explain that. You might ask, "Well, why doesn't John explain
it? Doesn't it seem a little bit oblique? Why doesn't he just say 'Jesus,' it might
simplify things." He says the Word because that was such a perfect
term to use to identify Christ on the supernatural side, on the supernatural side. There was a philosophical understanding of
the word, that's the Greek term logos . The philosophers talked about logos as the
reality that was visible in creation. They believed in a logos spirit, some non-personal
power source, some non-personal energy entity. They believed in some abstract kind of principle
of reason, they called it, or principle of order and structure--some non-personal force
floating around in the universe, some non-personal entity of wisdom, because they understood
that you couldn't have the creation in which they lived without having some source for
it. But they believed it was impersonal, or even
better, non-personal. And even the common people saw the logos¸
the philosophical identification of this powerful, non-personal force in the universe as being
responsible for the way things were. John comes along and says, "Let me introduce
you to the fact that the logos is not an impersonal force; the logos is a person. The logos is a person, not an impersonal reality,
but a personal God who came into the world in the man Jesus--not just a concept but a
person. And then even beyond that, for the Jewish
people, they didn't need an explanation because the phrase "the Word of the Lord" appeared
so many times in the Old Testament, and the Word of the Lord was simply the revelation
of God. You wouldn't know anything about God if He
didn't speak, and that's why Hebrews 1, I read earlier, begins this way, "God who in
time past, by the fathers and through the prophets, spoke in many ways in many portions,
has in these last days spoken to us by His Son." As the Old Testament is the written Word and
the revelation of God, the New Testament is the account of the incarnate Word in the person
Jesus Christ. So He is the Word, in that in Him God speaks,
and that concept was well established among the Jews--"The Word of the Lord came to So-and-so,
the Word of the Lord came to So-and-so." You read that through the Old Testament. The Word of the Lord came often to the prophets,
and it often came to the fathers, and it was the will of God expressed and communicated
through Revelation. So the Word of the Lord is the expression
of God to people. There's no greater illustration of that, there's
no greater representation of that, manifestation of that, demonstration of that than Jesus
Christ. He is God speaking to us. If you want to hear from God, you can read
the Old Testament and you will hear what God spoke to the fathers and the prophets who
wrote that. But if you want the fullest revelation of
God, you go to the New Testament because God most fully spoke in Christ, in Christ. So John is telling us that Jesus is the incarnation
of God. As I read, He is the exact representation
of the nature of God. God speaks in Christ most clearly, most fully
and savingly. So "the Word became flesh"--"became," ginomai. Though God is immutable, God is pure eternal
being and is not becoming, that is he's not changing, developing, growing. He is pure, eternal, constant, immutable,
unchanging being, yet He becomes...He enters in to creation and takes on humanity which
is in the process of becoming. And He starts out in a womb and He becomes
a child, and He grows in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. The One who is pure being becomes a man, becomes
flesh--that's what that means--and dwelt among us. He's not a vision. His humanity is not an apparition. His humanity is not a phantom, as we pointed
out last week. Some people have said--the Docetists, namely
that group of heretics. He didn't take on the appearance of humanity
or some apparition of humanity, or some illusion of humanity. He actually took on flesh and dwelt among
us. Philippians 2, He was made in the likeness
of men. He partook of flesh and blood, Hebrews 2:14
says. For thirty-three years, the fullness of the
Godhead, Colossians 2:9; the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily, fully God and
fully man. Not half God, half man, fully God and fully
man--that's John's message through this book. You must be right about Christ, fully God,
and fully man. Any assault on His deity is a heresy; any
assault on His humanity is a heresy. Now, in order to demonstrate that Jesus is
fully God in human flesh, emphasizing the deity aspect, John takes us through three
very important truths. If you remember back Christmas a year ago--I
didn't know I was going to go into the gospel of John--and we looked at this chapter and
saw some of these things from a little different approach. There are three things that demonstrate the
deity of Christ: His preexistence with God, His coexistence with God, and His self-existence
with God. He is pre-existent, co-existent, and self-existent. I don't want you to get tangled up in terms. Those are not complicated, and I'll hope to
be able to make them easy for you to understand. Here's John's message: "In the beginning was
the Word," simple statement. "In the beginning"--What beginning; the beginning
of what? In the beginning of Genesis 1:1--that's the
beginning. If you don't qualify "the beginning," then
it's "the beginning." "In the beginning"--the same beginning that
is Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In that beginning, the Word was. What is the importance of that? The Word was already existing. That is to say the Word who is none other
than the Son of God, Jesus Christ, was already in existence when God created everything that
exists. Now, if you're not a part of the creation,
you're not a part of time and space. If you're not a part of time and space, then
you're eternal. That's a very important statement. John affirms His preexistence. He existed before the beginning of everything
that exists. He was already existing. It's the imperfect tense of the "to be" verb,
the verb eimi . The imperfect tense means continuously. He was continuously existing already when
the beginning began. He didn't begin with the beginning. He's not a part of the creation. He's not a created being. He's an already existing being. Time began with creation. Time began on the first day when God created,
and the second day, and the third, and on time has marched until time will one day end
and we will live in eternity, without time. But since time began, with the starting of
time was the starting of creation; this Being, the Word, existed before time and therefore
is outside of time, and therefore is eternal. At the point that everything began, He already
was, describing continuous existence before creation--the eternal pre-existence of the
One called the Word. So very important and unmistakably clear. That is why Jesus, and we'll see this all
the way through the gospel of John, borrows a title that God uses to describe His own
eternality. When Moses wanted to know the name of God,
God said, "My name is I AM that I AM. My name is the verb 'to be.' My name is Eternal Being." And repeatedly in the gospel of John, Jesus
will say, "I AM, I AM, I AM, I AM"--the verb "to be"--and He will even be so bold as to
say to the Jews, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58), I AM. He only speaks of Himself in the present,
continuous tense because there never was a time He didn't exist. This then is also reinforced in verse 1, "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." The Word was with God--that's repeated in
verse 2, "He was in the beginning with God." It's interesting that that's said twice, "the
Word was with God," verse 1. Right back, "In the beginning with God." Repeats twice: "In the beginning was the Word,
the Word was with God." He was in the beginning with God. This is an emphasis to make sure we don't
miss the point. Now listen to this. When the beginning began, He already existed. He existed as God. He's outside time; He exists as the eternal
God. But listen to this: He not only exists as
the eternal God, and it says it in verse 1, "The Word was God," but He existed eternally
with God. This is very, very important because what
it tells us is that not only is He the eternal God, but He is distinct from the eternal God. And this is where we come to understand that
there is one God and yet there are three persons. And here we find two of them, He is God, the
Word was God, but the Word was also with God. How can you be God and with God? Only in a Trinitarian way can that be explained--to
be God by nature and yet be a distinct person, being with God. There's a beautiful illustration of this relationship
that could well be the intention of the writer of the Proverbs, if you listen to the eighth
chapter of Proverbs where there's a record of creation from a most wonderful perspective. This can be the testimony, perhaps, of the
Son of God, who is God and yet is with God, verse 27, "When He established the heavens,
I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the
skies above, when the springs of the deep became fixed, when He set for the sea its
boundaries so that the water wouldn't transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations
of the earth; then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was daily His delight,
rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight
in the sons of men." Could this be the testimony of the One who
is the Word who was with God when God was doing the creation? We know from Genesis 1 that the Holy Spirit
was there brooding over the face of the waters and bringing shape into the creation. The whole Trinity is involved in this creative
work. Yes, God the Father is the Creator, of course. Yes, the Holy Spirit participates in creation,
of course. The Holy Spirit is the One who moves over
the inanimate creation and brings life to it. But listen again to the explanation of how
they work together, from Hebrews 1 that I read you. It simply says this, verse 2, God "has spoken
to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the
world." God is the Creator, but the agent of creation
that He uses is the Son, the Word. So what we have here then is a very important
distinction that answers the Sabellianists, the Modalists--the people who say God is only
one--like the oneness pentecostals I told you last week. There are about 25 million of them who believe
there's no Trinity but there's only one God, and sometimes He acts like the Father, sometimes
He acts like the Son, and sometimes He acts like the Spirit. And they have no idea what's going on at the
baptism when you have the Son being baptized, the Father saying, "This is My Son in whom
I am well-pleased," and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove--What is that? Of course there are many other questions they
can't answer, but they didn't come to their heresy by reason. They came there by demonic revelation. It is He who is the agent through whom the
Father creates. God in the Old Testament, for example, is
the God...is the Judge of all the earth. And yet in the New Testament, the agent of
judgment is clearly Christ, 'cause He's committed all judgment to Him. Now you're getting into the inner workings
of the Trinity. Not important for me to sort all that out,
only to the degree that we know Scripture, what it's saying to us. Can we do that anyway? But the point I'm making is simply that while
He was God, He was also with God as a distinct person, as a distinct person. So we have His pre-existence. John starts with the fact that when you're
talking about Jesus, you are talking about a pre-existent, eternal God, not a part of
creation, not a part of creation. By the way, in Mormonism they not only believe
that Jesus is the created spirit/brother of Adam and Lucifer, but they believe the God
of the Bible is created by another god. Alongside the truth of pre-existence comes
the second truth of co-existence. And we already established that just by making
a comment on the last phrase of verse 1, "the Word was God," "the Word was God." If He preexisted time and space, if He preexisted
creation, if He existed already before anything was created that was created, then He has
to be uncreated. If He's uncreated, He has to be God. All angels were created. All fallen angels fell from a creation in
which God had made them holy, and they defected and rebelled and fell. Every person in the universe, every person
in the universe is a created being except the Creator Himself. This is a powerful expression, by the way,
a very powerful expression. "The Word was God"--four words: theos an ho
logos ; literally in the Greek, "God was the Word," "God was the Word." Powerful Greek expression. Jesus in John 17 talks in His prayer to the
Father in verse 5 about the glory that He had before the world began when He was pros
ton theon , "on equal level with God." Something, as I said, in Philippians he says,
He did not hold on to but gave up for the sake of incarnation. Colossians 2:9, "In Him the fullness of the
Godhead dwells bodily." He is full deity; God was the Word, God was
the Word. Four words in Greek: the clearest, most direct
declaration of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ in all four gospels--God was the Word. So He is preexistent, outside time and space
before anything that is made is made. And He is co-existent, He is fully God. These are essentials for salvation faith. Thirdly, His self-existence; He's self-existent. This is obvious. If you're not created, then you've existed
outside creation. You must be self-existent. Pre-existent, co-existent, self-existent. How do we establish that? Verses 3 and 4, "All things came into being
through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." This is a reiteration essentially of what
I read to you in Hebrews, that God made all things through Him. In Him was life, and we'll stop at that point. Here is the proof of His self-existence. Everything that exists came into being through
Him. That's a positive declaration, simple, clear,
flawless evidence--not even arguable--that the Lord Jesus Christ is eternal deity. Everything that exists, He made. It all came from Him. He didn't come from anyone, or anything. Everything came from Him. Listen to 1 Corinthians 8:6, "There is but
one God, the Father, from whom are all things...and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things,
and we exist through Him." It's the same thing--God is the Creator; the
Holy Spirit is an agent in creation; but at the end, God does all His creating through
the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. This doesn't deny God as Creator. It doesn't deny a role that the Holy Spirit
plays in bringing order to the creation. But it says that the Son of God is the agent
by which the creating is done. We know the Old Testament says that God is
Creator. You can read it all through the Psalms. Read, for example, Psalm 102, a wonderful
testimony of God's identity as Creator. Read Isaiah 40, Isaiah 42, Isaiah 45--lots
of places in the Old Testament talk about God as Creator, to say nothing of Genesis
1 and 2. Mark 13:19 speaks of God creating. Romans 1:25 talks about God as the Creator,
and all through the New Testament God is referred to as the Creator. And so, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ
by whom God made everything that He made, as we read here and in Hebrews chapter 1. The positive confession is that "all things
came into being through Him." The negative confession is, same verse, "apart
from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." That's the negative declaration. You have the positive declaration and the
negative. Not one thing--that's the literal Greek--not
one thing exists that He didn't make. The Creator of everything that exists, listen,
must necessarily then be uncreated. If He's not a part of the creation, then He's
uncreated, right? This is necessary. Only the eternal God is uncreated. The Jews would agree with that. Only the eternal God is uncreated. If Jesus is the Creator of everything that
is created, then He too is uncreated and therefore He is the eternal God. Jesus is God; you can't escape His deity. And yet while He is God, He is with God. He is God and yet is distinct from God. He is God and yet is the means through which
God creates, which again emphasizes His distinction. Again, the argument is simple. Since God the Son is the Creator of everything
that exists, He has to be outside the creation and that would be to be uncreated. He has to be outside time and that would be
to be eternal. Now this also leads to another conclusion--very
obvious conclusion--stated at the beginning of verse 4. "In Him was life," "in Him was life." He didn't get life from someone; nobody gave
Him life. In Him was life. Now this starts to get...this starts to get
you in places that you can't escape from. You start thinking about God being eternal
and being eternally alive, never a moment when He did not exist. That's more than your feeble mind can handle,
or mine--the eternality of God. But as an essential part of His eternality
as evidenced by His creation, was life. He was alive and the source of life. That is such a profound statement. "In Him was life." And the word used is not bios , 'cause He's
not just talking about biological life, which is one form of life. But the word is zoe, which has to do with
spiritual life, the life principle, the reality of life. When a little baby comes into the world, that
baby has biological life and that's the functioning of the human body. But there's another kind of life existing
in that little baby that can't be quantified; it can't be found and can't be located, and
can't be tied to DNA--it's a spiritual life. It's an essential life that is not observable,
and that's the life that comes from God. Of course, as in Himself, the components that
create biological life at every level--all the way from the simplest one-celled animal
to the most complex being, the human being, and even a more amazing and complex being,
the supernatural realm of angelic beings. God has the power in Him for all of that kind
of life, including and stretching to the reality of spiritual life. And spiritual life lasts forever. So in Him is biological life and spiritual
life by which He can create the physical world, which will die and by which He creates eternal
being so we'll never die. In Him is life. When you're looking at the Lord Jesus Christ,
you're looking at the one who is Himself life. He said that, "I am the way, the truth and"...What?..."and
the life." He can't look at Christ in any other way. It's a massive, massive statement--massive
statement. He is life. He is the fundamental reality of all that
exists. It's in Him we live and move and have our
being, have our existence. All that exists, exists because they have
life from Him. "In Him was life." People come along with some nonsense about
Jesus being a created being. This is where you want to take them. He is not the Jesus of the cults; He is not
the Jesus of the liberation theology realm; He is not the Jesus of liberalism. He is the Jesus who is fully God, fully Man,
who is the means by which everything that exists. And not only is He the means that came into
existence, but Hebrews 1 says, "By His power He upholds all things." He not only gave life, but He sustains life. He not only created, but He sustains the creation
because in Him was life. And then John makes a wonderful statement,
"The life was the Light of men." And while you might distinguish between life
and light, you can't do it here. What John is saying is the life is the same
as the Light of men. It's the same phrase--the life was the Light
as the Word was God. It's the same Greek construction. And John is connecting life and light. The one who was the life became the Light
of men. That's why He was incarnate, right? That's why He came into the world, to shine
light into the darkness, to reveal God. The life was the Light. That's an equal statement; that's a parallel
statement. The life and the Light in this case are the
same, the same. The Light is the revelation of the life. Jesus said in John 8:12, "I am the Light of
the world," right? Whoever "follows Me will not walk in darkness,"
John 8:12. "I'm the Light of the world"--we'll see that
when we get to John 8. It's an amazing statement. He is the life manifest, and the life manifest
is called Light, the metaphor of light against the darkness of fallenness. Jesus is the eternal life source, the eternal
divine life, manifest in the world like light shining in the darkness. Amazing. And "the Light," verse 5 says, "shines in
the darkness." Verse 9 says, "The true Light comes into the
world and enlightens every man." "The Light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness didn't comprehend it." You probably have a marginal reading. I don't know why they don't replace this word
"comprehend" because comprehend is an old English word. For us it means to understand, and that's
not what this is saying in the original language. What it is really saying is the darkness doesn't
katalambano . Katalambano , the most vivid way to explain
that would be "to pounce on and overpower, pounce on and overtake, overcome." And what it's saying is the one who is life
has come into the world and is the Light of the world and the darkness cannot overpower
it, cannot overwhelm it. You know that, darkness cannot overcome light. Light always overcomes darkness. You go into a pitch-dark, isolated place in
a room and light is one candle, and the light will overpower the darkness. The life of God, the eternal one, the eternal
life--Jesus--comes into the world as light and He lights the world and He's continuing
to light the world. And notice this, the darkness can't overpower
it. What is the darkness? What's it referring to? Well, if you go to Luke 22:53, Jesus was coming
to the cross and He said, "This is the hour of the power of darkness." "This is the hour of the power of darkness." This is when hell is going to throw everything
they've got at Me. The darkness refers to Satan, demons, and
the whole complex of darkness. All that the domain of darkness, Colossians
1:13, has to bring against the light. Satan's world, Satan's realm of which all
men are a part of your father, the devil, he is the prince of darkness. This is the kingdom, or domain of darkness. That's what it's talking about. The demon-darkness cannot overpower the Light,
cannot overpower the Light. Darkness has tried to do it. Satan tried to destroy the Messianic line
many times. Satan tried to kill all the babies and catch
the Messiah in the slaughter when Jesus was just a child. The demons came after Jesus again and again,
and again, and again. They tried to get Him every way they could. Satan himself comes at Him at the temptation
to get Him to bow down, to get Him to violate God's Word. Satan does everything he can in the garden,
as you know, to get Him to go the other direction from the will of the Father and the sacrifice
of the cross. Jesus through His travels ran into demons
everywhere He went, who came after Him, assaulting Him for all time, you could say. Since the promise of God to bring a Redeemer,
Satan has done what he could to extinguish the Light, the light that has now come in
Christ. But the darkness, all the demon darkness,
all the forces of hell and all their accommodating human evil, cannot successfully shut out the
Light. The Light still shines. The Light still shines. This opening of the gospel of John is such
a powerful statement of the person of Christ and His impact on the world. The demon darkness cannot extinguish the Light,
and the Light is shining in the world, it is shining in the world--it has been shining
in the world for a long, long time. It has been available to any who would listen,
who would hear. You know, in Romans chapter 10 we are reminded
of the fact that God says to Israel, "All the day long I have stretched out My hands
to a disobedient and obstinate people." "All day long I have stretched out My hands
to an obstinate people." You should have heard and believed. Verse 18, "Surely they have never heard, have
they? Indeed they have; their voice has gone out
into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." The message of the light has gone out to Israel,
to the end of the earth. The darkness can't extinguish the message. But you must believe it--"faith comes by hearing
the truth concerning Christ and believing." A final verse, John 8:24; Jesus said this,
"I say to you, you'll die in your sins unless you believe that I am He, you will die in
your sins." You don't want to die in your sins, dear one. You don't want to die in your sins and go
to everlasting hell, but you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am He, that
I am the one described here in these opening five verses and proven in the rest of this
amazing gospel. Do you believe that Jesus is God in human
flesh? That's the foundation of saving faith. If you don't believe that, you will die in
your sins, unforgiven, and bear the full punishment for those sins. Put your trust in Him and His sacrifice on
your behalf, and your sins are forgiven. Verse 12 says, "As many as received Him, to
them He gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who"...What?... "believe"...What?..."in
His name"; His name meaning who He really is. Father, we thank You again this morning that
we've been able to come together to worship, worship You and to worship You, O Christ,
and You, Father, and You, Holy Spirit. Lift up our songs of praise and hymns of praise
and prayers of petition, adoration, gratitude. We're thankful that we have been exposed to
the wondrous, amazing, divine text of Holy Scripture which gives us the most profound
and comprehensible truth in language that even a child could understand. The simplicity of this, the economy of it,
the clear power of it is evidence that we're dealing with a supernatural book and not the
efforts of men. What it says is true. What it says about our Lord is true about
Him. May we believe that with all our hearts, believing
have life in His name. Father, we thank You for the grace that has
extended itself to us. We are unworthy. We don't deserve to be a part of Your kingdom. We don't deserve to be called Your children,
to have the right to be the children of God. What an amazing gift, amazing gift, to live
in your eternal heaven with all its glories and joys forever. If this is what you give to the one who believes
in Your Son, I pray, Lord, that You will work a work of saving grace in the hearts of many
today who would turn from their sin and turn to the only hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank You for the clear Word that You've given
to us. We express our love and gratitude in His name. Amen.
