Jesus, the Creator of All

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John chapter 1. I hope you’ve turned there already. You know, we tend to freeze people in circumstances we feel comfortable with them in.

We do it with our children, don’t we? Some of you probably look back and your fondest memories of your kids are when they were babies. Not to say you didn’t enjoy them at other times, but some of you may think, man, I wish they were that small again.

I know, you know, Benjamin is still little, But I remember when he first started getting teeth, and it just tore me up because I thought, I’m going to miss that toothless little grin. And I was so excited when Madeline was born, and now she started smiling. She doesn’t have teeth yet, and so I could see that little toothless grin again.

There’s just something about seeing them smile at you and not a tooth in their head that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I miss that. As much as I love that Benjamin’s growing up, Part of me wishes he wasn’t mobile yet, for starters.

And he started talking, and that’s cute. Part of me is going to wish in a couple months he wasn’t talking yet. But we tend to look back and say, those were fond memories.

I wish my kids were still that small. I miss when they were babies. I don’t want my kids to grow up.

I don’t want them to move off. My mother knows something about that. It still refers to when I got married as the time I ran away from home.

We don’t want our kids to grow up. We don’t want friends to move away. We don’t want the Lord to move somebody to another church.

We tend to freeze people in roles and places in life where we’re comfortable with them. And we get comfortable with those things and we expect people to just stay there. And we hope that they’ll stay there where everything is unchanging and what we’re used to.

And it’s normal and it’s natural to feel that way, I think, with our kids and with our friends and our loved ones. It’s a problem, though, when we do it with God. It’s a problem when the world looks at Jesus Christ, and what they think of a lot of times is a baby in a manger.

Now, it’s not a problem that they know He was born and He was laid in a manger. It’s not a problem that the world knows that story. But for much of the world, the only time that they think of Jesus Christ is at Christmas time.

Wouldn’t you say that’s the case? For much of the world, the only time they hear anything about Christ, the only time they give Him much thought at all is at Christmas time, and for them he’s always just the baby in the manger. The world has frozen him in that role because that Jesus is comfortable.

That Jesus is easy to deal with. We can all get together in December and feel warm and fuzzy about the Christ child in the manger. See, if we just keep him in our minds, the child in the manger, then we don’t have to take any of that other, you know, I am the way, the truth, and the life stuff seriously.

We don’t have to think about the crucifixion and the resurrection. We don’t have to think about the implications of what that means for us. why he came and did those things.

We don’t have to take any of the other teaching that he gave us about how we’re to live. We don’t have to take any of that seriously. We don’t even have to think about it if we just freeze him in the manger where he’s in the nice little box and he’s manageable.

He’s just a cute little baby that we think about in December. For that reason, as we got close to December, I thought, I really don’t want to preach a series of messages on the manger. Not that it’s not important.

It is vitally important. As far as I’m concerned, it is the second most important thing that has ever happened behind the crucifixion and resurrection. I mean, it’s an incredible story, the fact that God entered human flesh and was born, and that He was born of a virgin.

I mean, when has that ever happened? And yet it happened. It’s an incredible story.

But I thought, we’re going to get together for four weeks or so in December, and we could talk about the story of the manger. That’s fine. You know, I might preach a Christmas message about the manger at some other time.

I think July sounds good to remind us that it’s not just December we think about that. But especially as we get to this time when everybody’s going to be thinking about the baby in the manger, and we may have visitors from time to time, and we may have people in our midst who’ve never trusted Christ as their Savior, I certainly don’t want to just have them in here and think, oh, the baby in the manger, that’s good, that’s a comfortable message and we’ll leave. And so rather than look at what Matthew had to say about when Jesus came the first time, and rather than look at what Luke had to say about when Jesus came the first time, both important passages of Scripture, and we talked about them at length last year around this time, I thought let’s look at what John has to say.

Because John does mention Jesus coming in human flesh, and we’ll talk about that on December 23rd as we go through this series down into verse 14 where he talks about, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among them. But John, in talking about Jesus’ first coming, doesn’t just talk about how He came, as important as that is. We all know the story of how He came.

John talks about why He came and that He came at all. And so the next three weeks, we’re going to go through John chapter 1 and look at what John has to say about the reason, about the importance for why Jesus even came in the first place. Because it’s a nice story, and I don’t mean to sound like it didn’t really happen.

It’s a nice true story, but if we don’t understand why it happened, It does us no good at all. Does us no good at all. John says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And John bare witness of Him, and cried, saying, This was He of whom I spoke. He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for He was before me, and of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. Ladies and gentlemen, the Sunday mornings and Sunday nights for the next three weeks beginning today, this is the passage we’re going to study.

We’re not going to look in depth at all of this this morning, just to give you an overview of what the whole chapter says, or not the whole chapter, but the first part of this chapter says in context for when we look at the first two verses as we will this morning. or actually I believe the first three. It starts out, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

You’ll notice, if you’re reading in the King James Version, you’ll notice the Word, Word, is capitalized. Now that wasn’t by accident. I’ve seen some older texts.

You’ll notice in the Declaration of Independence, I think a lot of the nouns are capitalized. The Geneva Bible, a lot of the nouns are capitalized. There’s not really any rhyme or reason.

They were a little more careful this time, And when they capitalized that word, that indicates that they’re talking about somebody important. That Greek word there is logos, spelled like Legos, except an O instead of an E, logos. And that word logos is a word that means word.

There are a couple different Greek words that mean word. The other is rhema. But this word logos means a written word, a spoken word.

It’s something that they would have understood. it’s not a word that he chose by accident because, as I said, there were at least two words that mean word. John picked this word on purpose because it’s a word that his Jewish readers and his Greek readers would have both understood.

From what I’ve read and studied to the Jewish readers, the word logos in Greek, they understood it to mean the spoken power of God, His revelation, His direct revelation to mankind. To the Greek readers, they would have understood it in philosophical terms, that it meant the intermediary, the creative force between heaven and earth, what was used to create. And it was something that both groups of people would have understood in terms that it needed to be understood, that the word John speaks of is the revelation of God and the force by which everything was created.

Now who’s the word he’s talking about? If you read down to verse 14, part of the reason I read through the whole thing this morning, when you get to verse 14, there’s really only one person he could be talking about when he says the word, and that’s Jesus Christ, God who had become flesh. And so it’s not by accident that he picked the word logos because he needed the Jewish believers, the Jewish readers needed to understand that Jesus Christ was not just any man, he was that by which God revealed himself.

He was in fact the revelation of God. It says later on that no man had seen God, no man had seen the Father, but Jesus Christ had declared or revealed Him. The Greek readers needed to understand that Jesus Christ was not just any other person, but He was the creator of the universe.

It was by Him that all things existed. And so it’s a word that was chosen, I think, very carefully, very precisely, and very intentionally to convey what the people needed to know and what we need to know today about who Jesus Christ is. Ladies and gentlemen, He is not just the baby in the manger.

He was the baby in the manger, to be sure, but he’s not just the baby in the manger. He’s so much more than that. And even when he was the baby in the manger, he was still so much more than that.

John calls him the Word. In the beginning was the Word. The beginning of what?

At the beginning. At the beginning of creation, yes, Jesus Christ was there. It says in the beginning was the Word.

Because later on it says that by him all things were created. At the beginning of creation, Jesus Christ was there. But you know what?

It says that he was with God and he was the same was in the beginning with God. He was not just there at the beginning of the creation. He was already there at the beginning of creation.

Well, going back, if time indeed existed before creation, He was there then too. Before there was a beginning. Now, why does He say that the Word was there at the beginning?

It doesn’t mean, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and some other groups would tell us, that Jesus Christ is a created being, that God the Father created Him first and then used Him to help create all other things. It’s because there’s not really a word for what there was before there was. But you think about the beginning of all that was and He was there.

And you know what? He was even there before that because Jesus Christ is one with His Father. In the beginning was the Word.

The same was in the beginning with God. We need to understand and we need the world to understand that far from being just the baby in the manger, that this passage points to the fact that Jesus Christ is one with His Father. He is and He was.

That it’s not just a baby born, but it was God, God the Son born in human flesh in that manger. And we can realize, we can fully realize the importance of the manger. We can fully realize the importance of His coming when we realize who He was and what He shares, what He has in common with the Father.

The first thing that this passage teaches us about that is that Jesus Christ shares the Father’s eternality. And I had to look that up because that word came into mind and I thought, I’m not sure if that is the word. I’m not sure if that is the real word.

And I looked it up and finally found it in a dictionary that is a real word, eternality. They also substituted eternalness or eternalhood or some other things that sounded even less like words. So we’re going to go with eternality.

Eternality just means He’s eternal. As God the Father is eternal, God the Son is eternal. They share that. They have that in common. In the beginning was the Word.

The same was in the beginning with God. He was there in the beginning with God the Father. Now, it’s a pretty tall claim for John as somebody who wasn’t there in the beginning or before the beginning to make on Jesus’ behalf.

And there are people who will tell us that, yes, the Bible was written down later on by people who wanted us to believe Jesus was God, but Jesus was just a good moral teacher, never claimed to be God, never claimed any of these things. Baloney. It says it in what he says.

You know, they’ll tell us Jesus, even in the Gospels, never claimed to be God. Yes, he did. We’re going to look still in John again.

If you want to, mark your spot here at John chapter 1, because we will be back. But John chapter 8, this is just one of many places where he makes the claim. John chapter 8 verse 51, Jesus is speaking and says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death. So when Jesus had said, they keep my word, they keep my sayings, they won’t die, they won’t taste of death, and they said, well now we know you’re from Satan, because all these good men that we follow have died.

Art thou greater, verse 53, than our father Abraham, which is dead, and the prophets, which are dead, whom makest thou thyself? Do you really think you’re greater than these men? Jesus answered, verse 54, if I honor myself, my honor is nothing.

It is my Father that honoreth me, of whom ye say that he is your God. So he claims there to be the Son of God. Yet ye have not known him, but I know him.

And if I should say, I know him not, I shall be like a liar unto you. But I know him and keep his saying. So he tells the religious leaders who thought that they knew God, they didn’t know God, and that he knew God.

And if he said he didn’t know God, he’d be lying to them. He says, but I know him and I keep his saying. Verse 56, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.

And he saw it and was glad. What does he mean by that? From the beginning of the written scriptures, from the earliest things that were written down, you can go back through as we did last fall, fall of last year, and you can see how all of the scriptures point to Jesus Christ. It began in the earliest chapters of Genesis when talking about how he would crush the serpent’s head and the serpent would bruise his heel.

And talking about all the nations of the world being blessed by Abraham’s descendants. Now those were in very general terms but it got more specific as time went by. All the prophets foresaw the coming of Christ. And Jesus says, Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.

Then said the Jews unto him, so he’s claiming there to be the Son of God, he’s claiming to know God the Father in a way that they don’t, and he’s claiming to be the prophesied Messiah of the Old Testament. Pretty strong evidence for people who claim that he never claimed to be God. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?

So they’re kind of laughing at him at this point. You’re not even 50 years old. How is it that you know Abraham?

How is it that you’ve seen Abraham? It’s like Friday night, I think Ray asked me if I remembered such and such. I said that was a little bit before my time.

Was it you who asked me that? Somebody asked me if I remembered something back in the 50s or 60s. I said that was a little bit before my time.

It may not have been you. I’ve slept since then, so I don’t know. That was a little bit before my time.

How would I have seen that firsthand? Well, Jesus here, we’re talking about a little over a thousand, close to two thousand. That’d be more than a little over a thousand, wouldn’t it?

Close to two thousand years difference between his time and Abraham’s time. And Jesus, you’re not even 50 years old. How is it you’ve seen Abraham?

And Jesus said, verse 58, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am. Before Abraham was, I am. So he’s not only claiming that he existed before Abraham.

It’d be easy to miss there, but he says, I am. And that’s a statement that the Jewish leaders would have understood that he was hearkening back to what God said to Moses when Moses said, What shall I tell the people your name is? And he said, Tell them I am that I am.

Jesus was not only claiming to have seen Abraham, but he was claiming that he was the great I am of the Old Testament. Jesus himself claimed to be God and to be eternal with God. And so we see from the passage here and we see from John chapter 1 that Jesus Christ shares His Father’s eternality.

When He was born in the manger, it wasn’t just another baby born. It was the eternal God. Now, I don’t completely understand how that worked.

I believe it because I read it in Scripture, but some of the nagging details in my mind, I wonder when He was a baby, did He know everything and just pretend He couldn’t talk? I don’t know. Are there certain things He had to suppress and make himself not remember?

I don’t know. Did he grow up realizing he was God? I don’t know.

But what I do realize is that the eternal Son of God stepped into human flesh. And that baby was something special because he was the eternal God. And Jesus Christ shares his Father’s eternality.

Second of all, Jesus Christ shares the Father’s divine nature. He’s not just some created being that God created early on. And so, yeah, he’s old and he’s been there with God all this time.

It says not only in the beginning was the Word, but it says, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, if we don’t come with an understanding of the Trinity as it’s taught in the Bible, I know you won’t find the Word in there, but you’ll find the concept in the Bible because we’re taught that there is one God, only one God, and yet three persons who rightfully claim to be God. And that’ll mess you up if you try to think too hard on it too and try to figure it out.

It’s one of those things I can’t completely wrap my mind around it, but it’s taught in Scripture, and so I just go with the understanding that God’s understanding of Himself is greater than mine ever will be. And that’s what He says about Himself. But to think, okay, He is God, but He’s also with God.

Well, we can understand that if we come to it with the understanding of the Trinity. One God revealed in three eternally distinct and co-equal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

There’s no claim of any difference in the nature between the Father and the Son here. Now, we should not take from this what some people do that that means Jesus is the Father, Jesus is the Son, Jesus is the Holy Spirit, and He just reveals Himself in different ways at different times. I’ve got friends, again, of the Oneness Pentecostal persuasion that believe that.

They don’t believe in the Trinity. Folks, He was still with God. They’re talking about more than one person here.

He is God, and He’s with God. And He’s of the same nature as His Father because He is God. We’re also not talking about three different gods.

To say that would be a complete contradiction of everything else that the Bible teaches. But to realize we’re not talking about just one person, and we’re not talking about three different gods, we’re talking about one God revealed in three eternally distinct persons, tells us there’s no difference in their nature. There’s no difference in their character.

God the Son shares the divine nature of His Father. You can turn with me to John chapter 14. I think just about everything we’re going to look at today is going to be in the book of John.

John chapter 14 starting in verse 6, starting with one of my favorite verses of the Bible. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

If ye had known me, ye should also have known my Father. And from henceforth ye know him and have seen him. And Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us.

And Jesus saith unto him, verse 9, have I been so long time with you? And yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, showest the Father?

Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very word’s sake.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do, shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father. And we could spend some time explaining verse 12 and maybe will at some point. But from verses 6 to 11, you get the very real sense that there is unity.

By Jesus’ own claim, there is unity between Him and God the Father. That’s because they’re of the same will and nature, essence, character. When we see the three persons of God, we don’t see them fighting amongst themselves about what needs to be done because they share the same nature.

They share the same will. God the Father didn’t have to put Jesus Christ into a headlock and make Him come down to earth and put on this awful human flesh. No, God the Father said, this is the plan and the Son said, I’ll do it.

When He sent Him to the cross, He didn’t do so at bayonet point. Now Jesus prayed, if there’s any other way, let this cup pass from me. But ultimately said, whatever your will, your will and not mine be done.

And Jesus went willingly and obeyed His Father, did what the Father said. We’re told in the Bible that we can follow the Holy Spirit as our teacher. God the Father doesn’t have to step in and correct Him because He’s taught us wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is complete, absolute unity of nature, of character, of will among the three persons in the Godhead. And when that baby was born, when that baby was born, He shared the divine nature of God the Father. Shared the divine nature of God the Father.

And third of all this morning, Jesus Christ not only shares the Father’s eternality, and shares His divine nature, but He also shares the Father’s power and authority. Now at different times it seems they have different roles that God the Father would say would send the Son to do this and the Son would obey. The Father and Son would send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit would.

. . But again, that comes from their oneness, from their unity.

But Jesus Christ is God and shares the power and authority of God. It says here, all things were made by Him in John chapter 1 verse 3, all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. That means if you see it around you, it was made by Jesus Christ. Even if you don’t see it around you, it was still made by Jesus Christ. He’s the Creator.

You know, I don’t subscribe really to all the early Christian creeds that they call them that they had with the councils and stuff when they were slowly on their way to becoming Catholic. But one thing that was said very well in one of the creeds is that He’s the Creator of all things seen and unseen. If we look at, you know, I don’t tell you that He made these pews.

Obviously, somebody made these pews, but somebody made the tree. Somebody made the seed for that tree. Somebody made the tree that bore that seed.

Somebody made the water that nourished that tree. Somebody made the sun to give light to that tree. Everything we see around us was brought into existence by Jesus Christ. And even the things that we don’t see that are around us, He brought into existence.

Can you imagine the amount of power? I can’t. Can you imagine the amount of authority that God has?

That He didn’t have to sit down with raw materials and with His hands as we would have to, forge things and make things with His hands. He spoke and the universe leapt into existence. It’s here because He said it.

He said, let there be light and there was light. God didn’t have to go design the light bulb. God said, let there be light and there was light.

He speaks and even the very atoms that make up our universe obey Him. We’ve known about the atoms for quite a few years now, and we still can’t make them do what we want to do. We can harness power for a little bit, but I was reading the other day about the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 86.

Here we thought mankind in all its infinite power had harnessed the power of the atom, and yet we were doing a test, and one little thing went wrong, and the nuclear power plant exploded, and atoms that we had tried to harness went everywhere and killed things and killed people, and they’re still suffering the ill effects of it. And we think we’re so powerful and yet we can’t control the tiny little Adam. And yet God speaks.

God opens His mouth and the universe bows to His will. Imagine if you can try to wrap your mind around it, the power that God has. The infinite, matchless power of our God.

And then imagine that power being put into something about this size. No, this was no ordinary child that was born in the manger. John chapter 3 tells us, The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. That’s from John chapter 3, verses 35 and 36. God the Father has given all things into the hand of the Son.

Not just the physical universe, not just the things that we see, not just even the physical things that we don’t see, but He’s given the power of life and death to the Son. It’s the Son that will judge the quick and the dead. It’s the Son that made atonement.

It’s the Son that died for our sins to bring us eternal life. All power that there is, is given to the Son. And you know what?

That doesn’t diminish the power of the Father in any way, shape, or form. That doesn’t mean God took all of His power. God the Father took all of His power, boxed it up, handed it to Jesus and said, Now you deal with it because I gave you all my power.

I’m powerless. God’s power is so infinite. He gives the Son power and authority over all things, and yet He’s not diminished at all.

So many things about God, if we tried to wrap our minds around, we’ll give ourselves a migraine headache. But the Bible says, The Father loves the Son and has given Him all things into His hand. It’s little wonder that Paul tells us in the book of Philippians.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. All things belong to him, and all things will belong to him.

And even when he was born in that manger, all things belong to him. Now again, did he have the option on that first night of zapping things and making things? I don’t know, but it still was his power and still belonged to him.

We do ourselves and we do the world a great disservice. Not by telling them the story of the manger. That’s a story that needs to be told.

But we do ourselves and we do the world around us a great disservice when all they ever see, all they ever hear of Christ from us is the story of the manger. There’s a lot of talk about putting Christ back in Christmas, but that entails talking about the manger. We ought to put Christ back in the year, back in the calendar, and talk about Him at all times of the year.

Because what the world needs is not a baby in a manger. Initially, we needed the baby to come and be born in the manger because of what he would do later. But the world needs to understand that that baby was born in the manger for a reason, that that was God in the flesh who was born in the manger, that he came not to just be a wonderful story for us to tell people in December, but that he came so he could live a sinless life.

He could live a life in total and complete obedience to God, something that no one else before his time or since has managed to accomplish or even come close to, that he lived a life in total obedience to God the Father, including the fact that he would go to the cross, and make no mistake, he knew before he came here that he would go to the cross, that he would come and go to the cross, be nailed to that cross, to be tortured beyond recognition, that he would shed his blood and die as a payment for my sins and for yours. Again, he lived his life in complete obedience to God the Father. He had nothing to pay for.

And yet you and I, each and every one of us in this room, each and every person you’ve ever met, we have all disobeyed God. And it was for our sins that He went to the cross. It was not just a baby born in a manger.

He was God in the flesh, come to be born so that He could die for us. And when it says, when I say that He has