John chapter 1 verses 1 to 5. 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 nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for giving us your word, for giving us Christ. Lord, we thank you that you have blessed us for our eyes have seen and for our ears have heard. Lord, heard and seen things that many prophets and righteous men desired to see but did not see it. Lord, we thank you that you have indeed opened our eyes, unstopped our ears, Lord. Father, I pray that even as your word is preached today, that more eyes will be open to comprehend this light. Lord, may your light shine through, shine through the darkest recesses of our hearts. O Lord, may it expose sin, may it bring righteousness, and may we, O Lord, increase in our love for you. I pray that you would be with Scott as he brings this word. Enable him, Lord. Give him the unction. Pour out your Holy Spirit upon him and upon us, the hearers. In Jesus' name, amen. Here we are finding ourselves in some of the most remarkable verses in the entire Bible, really everything hinges upon how you relate with these words, how you feel about them, what they are to you, because really everything in life hinges upon our worship. And this is a...these sets of words here are designed to draw us into the worship of Jesus Christ. to know Him as He really is. This is the most important thing in life. It's the most important thing in our church. You can get distracted by 50 things in a church, but this is the most important thing. It's the most important thing in your heart. It's the most important thing in your family. And so we come to this amazing passage. You have an outline in front of you that will help you see the logic and the flow of how I want to speak about this this morning. I want to deal with some just sort of introductory matters before we dive into the text. First of all, the purpose of these words. Secondly, the structure of these words, and then the theology that's here, and then I'd like for us to go into this text. Of course, the purpose of the Gospel of John is declared in chapter 20, verses 30 and 31. John wrote all these things, and these five verses were written for this very specific reason, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that in believing you might have life in his name. In other words, that God would take you from just believing in the facts to something far deeper, to having life in his name. That is the purpose of these words. And, you know, I just can't help but continue to think, what would it take to cause anyone here to believe and have life in his name? What would it take to draw us into deeper worship of Him. What would it take for us? How much love? How much wisdom? How much divinity? How much power? What would it take for us, as we look at Jesus, to truly draw Him into us even more and more? And that's the purpose of John's writing, is to draw us into Jesus even more. And in this passage we see Who is He? Where did He come from? And the big question always is, do you know Him? Do you love Him? What do you think about Jesus? Everything hinges upon that. Your disposition towards Jesus determines everything in your life. And so John states that purpose. And, you know, all of us should be asking, do I know Him? And the other question is, if you do know Him, are you going deeper in Him than you ever have before? Those are the two great questions that the gospel of John proposes. The second is the structure of the gospel of John. These first 18 verses are what is called the prologue of the gospel of John. It's an introduction. The first 18 verses are an introduction. Think of these first 18 verses as like a window. You're standing at a window and the first 18 verses sort of give you a snapshot, but you haven't proceeded out of the window to see the details. He's just giving an introduction to the glory of Jesus Christ here in the Gospel of John. And so, in this prologue, we learn who is Jesus? What kind of being is Jesus Christ? And after the prologue, in the rest of the Gospel of John, we learn what he did and what he was like. So the first 18 verses cast a vision. They set us on the right course to understand how is it that he could do that? How is it that he turns water into wine? How is it that he heals a nobleman's son in a paralytic and feeds 5,000? How is it that he stills storms and heals blind people and raises Lazarus from the dead? How is it? How could anyone say, I am the bread of life? How could anyone say, I'm the light of the world? I am the door. I'm the resurrection and the life. I'm the way, the truth, and life. How could anyone say, I am the vine? Well, the first 18 verses answer that question very, very clearly. And so, in the prologue, we see how Jesus did what He did. In the rest of the Gospel of John, we see what He did. And then the third thing I want to just mention is the theology that is in these first five verses. These first five verses became the great discussion of the first four centuries of Christianity because so many heresies were popping up after the resurrection. These four verses were the cause of many councils in the early And I wish we had time to detail those things. We just don't. But, you know, rest assured that what is here describes Jesus Christ in three frames. First, before creation, the pre-incarnate Christ, verses 1 and 2. Verses 1 and 2 speak of Jesus before His incarnation. Verse 3 speaks of Jesus as the Creator, the uncreated Creator. And then finally verses 4 and 5 actually speak of His impact in His incarnation. The Word became flesh and there is light and there is life in Jesus. And so that's how it spreads out. What you have here is the doctrine of the Trinity, three persons in one, one essence in three persons, not three gods, three hypostases of God. So you have the deity of the sun. These verses expose the major heresies that have afflicted the church from the beginning of Christianity, expressed today in Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, and what's also called Modalism or Oneness Pentecostalism, which goes way back to Sibelius, Sibelianism. These heresies are addressed right here in this passage of Scripture. The prologue, you know, was the focus of the Council of Nicaea in 325, the Council of Constantinople, the Council of Chalcedon. These words were the heart of the great controversies of the early church. There's a term that I hope children will learn here. in our studies in the Gospel of John? How about this? The hypostatic union. Do you know what the hypostatic union is? Well, we'll get to that in a minute. But every child needs to understand the hypostatic union for sure, absolutely. Here's another thing. Altering a single word in the first five verses of John opens the door to false teaching about Jesus Christ. That's the amazing thing. It's so dense, it's so clear, it's so carefully worded. It's a description of the Word and who is Jesus Christ. Children, if you want to know who the Word is in John 1, 1 through 5, the Word is Jesus Christ and that who is the Word. as I've prepared for this and recognized how vast it is and how difficult it will be to try to capture it all. I really am approaching it this morning in terms of a guide to worship God through the Lord Jesus Christ. There are...as you can see in the outline, there are six things that we learn about Jesus Christ. These are six reasons to believe. These are six reasons to pursue Him for your life. These are six reasons that ought to form the center of your worship of God and really everything you do in your life. And I pray that these six things would help us to worship Him more fully, more deeply, more joyfully, that they would take us deeper into the worship of Jesus Christ. You can look at these as these theological categories. Don't do that. Look at them as reasons. to worship Jesus Christ and give every ounce of your being to Him. He deserves every ounce and He deserves to be worshipped. And so these six things I want to bring out as reasons to believe and to have life in His name and to dedicate everything to Him. So that's the purpose of what I want to try to communicate today. First of all, the first reason to believe in Him is for the eternity of the Son. As you can see, there are six things, the eternity of the Son, the communion of the Son, the deity of the Son, the creative power of the Son, the life-giving presence of the Son, and the constant shining light of the Son. These are reasons to worship Jesus Christ. And so the first is the eternity of the Son. And these first few words, in the beginning, was the Word. John begins at the beginning. In contrast to all the other gospel writers, The other gospels begin in different places. Mark begins at the River Jordan. Matthew begins with Abraham. Luke begins with a baby in a manger. But John, he goes back to eternity past. And that vision of Jesus Christ in eternity past should draw us to worship Him. I'm going to get to an application of this first point, but I want to tip you off about it first. And it's this. Because He is eternal, our confidence should be great in Him. And our confidence in earthly things, loss of earthly things, should fade. His eternity should deliver us from our obsession with what's temporal. That's one application. Now, let's work through these words more deeply here. First, John begins with language that we all recognize in Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is the same language that he uses. He's mirroring Genesis 1. He's pointing to the timelessness of Jesus. Before the beginning, Jesus was. Jesus is the uncreated creator. You know, I said that around our dinner table the other night, and one of the children said, I don't understand that. And I said, praise God. I don't understand it either. How can anything be an uncreated creator? How can anything not have a beginning? Because we relate with life as things with beginnings and ends. Here is why it's a blessing. Here's why we can praise God that we cannot understand that. God is infinite. God is perfectly wise. He's perfectly good. He is so far beyond us, we can't even understand the most fundamental thing about Him, that He is eternal. that he has no beginning, and that Jesus himself is the uncreated creator. No one has ever been able to understand that. So, for the little ones here who say, I don't understand that, praise God. Now you know that there is someone so much wiser than you, so much more powerful than you. He is so wise and powerful, there are things about him you can't even understand. If you could understand him, you would be God. But we're not God. We're creatures made in the image of God. And so John is clearly teaching that Jesus is the eternal God, that Jesus was already in existence. The Word of God, Jesus, did not come into existence at the beginning. Rather, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, predates the creation. He is not a created being. And so the Word was already in existence. at creation. This is continued existence. John is using verbs here that speak of continuous action in the past. And when he gets to verse 14, in the incarnation, he speaks...he uses a verb form that speaks of a point of time when he became flesh. That's not the same kind of becoming that Jesus was before creation. He always was in eternity past. There is no point of time in His eternality, obviously. And soon after the Lord Jesus Christ was resurrected, a man by the name of Arius began to teach that the Son had a beginning and that He was a created being. That's a lot easier to understand, isn't it? People want a God they can understand, but that's a God contrary, really, to the Bible. Arius said, there was once when He was not. That contradicts John 1.1. And the other Arian theologies that exist today are Jehovah's Witness, which deny the eternality of the Son, The Mormons, Jesus is very much the same. The Mormons say, as man is, God once was. As God is, man may become. This is a complete contradiction. These heresies that began with Arius continue on to this day. And it hinges upon the eternality of the Son, whether Jesus Christ was a created being or not. Jesus is the uncreated creator in the first phrase in John 1.1. And then We also have this language of the word. He is the word, logos. This word, logos, appears 330 times in the Greek New Testament alone. And just for just a note, people use this word, logos, often in Christian circles, and sometimes they say logos. And that's not how you say it. It's Logos, okay? Everybody have that straight? He is the Logos, and specifically, the Logos, Jesus Christ, the Word, was made flesh. And what does this word mean? Logos means the voice. maybe smallest category. It is the voice of God. It is the voice through which God communicates. And this voice, this person, this Jesus Christ, the Word, declares and explains the Father, which is why Jesus said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. It's interesting in Calvin's commentary He continually refers to the Word as the speech. The speech became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word, it is the communication of God. Jesus is the communication of God Himself. And this is God's creative power in creation, in redemption, and in everything. The Word of Jesus Christ is the mechanism behind everything that happens in this world. He is the Word of God. He speaks the Word of God. He is God. And so the Word is the self-expression of God in creation, in salvation, in revelation, and the personification of the Word is Jesus Christ Himself. And so let's apply this, this first point. He is the eternal son. Why should you run to him? Because you need an eternal security. Jesus Christ is the only eternal security in the universe. He always has been. and he always will be and he's the only one who can give you sure footing in this life and in the life to come he is everlasting he is an infinite rock upon which to plant your feet he is everlasting life and We ought to believe in Him and follow Him because He is the only eternal security. There's something everlasting and true and absolutely reliable for all eternity. You know how the trends ebb and flow in this world, how the fads rage through the ages. You know, I'm old enough to have seen a lot of fads roll through this world. but there is only one thing that you can rest your whole weight upon and that is Jesus Christ the eternal son of God. Jesus said in John 6 verse 47 and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. He said in Matthew 25, 46, these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. He is the eternal Son of God. We ought to worship Him and love Him and follow Him and give everything to Him because He is eternal. We should worship Him for that reason. Let that be the obsession of our church. Let that be what gathers us together. Let that be the thing that we long for the most, is to see Jesus Christ in His eternal glory. The second, the communion of the Son, is the second part of the first verse. And the Word was with God. The key word is the word with. The Word was with God. This communicates the eternal communion of the Son with the Father. The Word of God, Jesus Christ, is personal. in his relationship with his father. And I'll just tip you off on an application before we get to it more deeply. But the foundation of the being of Jesus Christ and his father is love. It's community. It's connection. The father is toward the son and the son is toward the father. now, this word with. It means face-to-face. He is face-to-face with God for all eternity. There are two distinct persons here, but the force of this word is that someone is inclined toward It's to...it's to bend toward someone rather than to shrink away, rather than to go another direction. This is what the devil wants to do in this world, is to separate believers, separate husbands and wives, separate children with their parents. But in the kingdom of God, it's toward, it's not away. Whenever you find yourself turning away, you have to understand what kingdom that is coming from. In all of eternity, the great unstoppable force is love. It's the communion of the Father and the Son. And that has implications in everything. In fact, the Apostle Paul said, husbands should love their wives like Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. These images are critical that we understand. There are at least two things that we should conclude from this. First, there is an eternal communion between the Father and the Son. It is a fellowship of perfect unity and of love. And the Father is speaking to the Son and delighting in the Son. And the Son delights to do the will of the Father. And the Son says, I only say what I hear my Father saying. I only do what I see my Father doing. This is love. This is communication. This is community. This is the kind of community that God wants to establish in His church that began in heaven. And the second thing He is saying here And he's saying it in no uncertain terms, and that is this, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is distinct from His Father. God the Father and God the Son are not a blur of sameness. Rather, Jesus is distinct as He is with a different person. He is with a different person. And this takes us into the whole doctrine of the Trinity. A distinct person from God is Jesus. He is a different personality. We even find this in the narrative of creation where And God said, let us make man in our image. There are two persons. There's an us. There's a unity, but there are two personalities. And this is contrary to the whole doctrine of what is called modalism, or Sabellianism, Oneness Pentecostalism, or the Jesus-only churches of the United Pentecostal Church. They say that there is this oneness rather than three persons in the Trinity. Sabellianism, one is Pentecostalism, teaches that there are three different aspects of God. There's three different expressions of one person. But that's not what this is teaching here, that there are actually three persons. The modalists say that Jesus is the Father, and the Father is Jesus, and the Spirit is the Father and Jesus, and they're all one person with three different faces. That is not the language that John is using here. There are three different persons with different personalities. And Jesus is making...John is making it clear that Jesus is not the Father. Jesus is before the face of the Father. And there are many examples of this in Scripture. There are so many examples in Scripture where you can't even understand what's being said unless you can see that there are actually two persons being talked about. I'll just give you two quick examples. In John 17 verse 5 or verse 4, Jesus says, I have brought you glory on earth. by finishing the work you gave me to do." And then he says, now, Father, glorify Yourself with the glory that I had with You before the world began. These are two different persons relating with each other. And there are many places where it's obvious there are two persons here. There are not three modes of one person. In John 5, verse 26, we read, for as the Father has life in Himself, So He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself. And He has given Him authority to judge. There are two different persons here. And so what does this mean? It means that in the relationships that we see in the Godhead, the primary characteristic of that relationship is love. And the foundation of the being of Jesus is love, and that's why we should run to Him. That's why we should worship Him more deeply, because the foundation of His being is love and communion and unity and delight in His Father. That's why we should run to Him. What would make you want to run to Him? And I would just suggest that His love in community is is one of those reasons. Love is the center of eternity with God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, which is why John later, near the end of his life, would write, or the Apostle Paul would write, without love, you are nothing. Without love, you're nothing, because the foundation of everything is love. And it is something that will prevail, and everything that contradicts it will not. You know, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever should believe in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life. And let me just add, everlasting love in eternal life. That's the essence of heaven. People think, oh, well, I don't know if I want to go to heaven. You're just around playing harps. Well, some people think that would be really great. But, you know, heaven is a world of love, primarily. That's what it is. You will never experience love like what is in heaven on this earth. Never. You ain't seen nothing yet. So, we see these marvelous categories We ought to go deeper and give ourselves more fully because of the eternity of the Son, because of the communion of the Son, and then thirdly, because of the deity of the Son. And the Word was God. That's verse 2. The Word was God. Now, Jesus Christ is God. And let me just tip you off in an application before we get there, after I walk through this verse, these words. Jesus is God. Jesus is not a cartoon character. He is fully God. He is fully man. He is the self-existent Lord of all. He is God. And I don't I don't know what your image of Jesus is, but I hope it's not a cartoon character. I hope it's not that guy in the little Jesus books that completely mislead you. He is God. Jesus Christ is God. That is why we should worship Him and turn to Him. Now, Jesus reveals God to us. That's one thing that is very clear here. If you've seen Jesus, you have seen the Father. Jesus did not give up being God in His incarnation. And this is what the theologians called the hypostatic union. The hypostatic union is a term that came out of the Council of Chalcedon where they gathered to describe the humanity and the deity of Jesus Christ to offset the heresies. Now, what's the hypostatic union? Are you listening, all you who are five years old? You need to know this because you really can't, it's so hard to understand. Here's at least a word to help you sort of grasp at least part of it. The hypostatic union is the personal union of Jesus two natures as man and as God. It was a union of the two natures, the human and the divine, which were united into one person. Now there's a name of a marvelous believer by the name of Athanasius. Athanasius made this argument at the great councils of the early church. And he spoke of the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ, full deity and full humanity. And so the Chalcedonian Creed and the Council of Nicaea speak of these two natures as being without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. Jesus is one. He is God in the flesh. That's the incarnation. That's what the whole Christmas season is about. It's to point to the incarnation that Jesus became a man. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And He was fully human, and as a result, He understands our weaknesses, and He's fully divine, able to save sinners in their weaknesses. And so the hypostatic union is critical to understanding the glory of salvation and that you can be united with God through Jesus Christ. Christ in you, the hope of glory, is a gift of knowing Jesus Christ. You can know God, you can be connected to God through Jesus Christ. There's a hymn that we sing, that I should gain. There's a misleading phrase in that hymn. Emptied himself of all but love. Did he empty himself of all but love? No. No. He emptied himself, he humbled himself because of love. He took on human flesh and he remained fully divine. There's much to say about that, but Jesus Christ is God and He reveals God to us. And the second is that Jesus is not a God. He's not a God. He is God. In Islam, in Jehovah's Witness, in Mormonism, He is a God. He is not God. And the Jehovah's Witnesses particularly argue that this verse teaches that He is a God primarily because they don't understand the construction of simple Greek sentences. That's why. And that's a longer discussion. I want to try to refrain from that, but recognize that this phrase says that He was God. The placement, the Jehovah's Witnesses argue about this for the placement of the article, and they really neglect how the article is used in the Greek language. But Jesus is the ultimate self-revelation of God. Now, I've used the word pre-incarnate, I believe. I think children need to understand the word pre-incarnate. Pre- meaning before, before coming to earth, before the incarnation. Incarnation means flesh, before becoming flesh. You have Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate, before He came to the earth, when He was with His Father in His heavenly glory, and then He came to earth. That's the incarnation. Now I'm going to read you just a little bit from the Nicene Creed, just to help us see how this was applied. We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end." And then there's another statement about the Holy Spirit. I'll stop with the one about the Lord Jesus Christ because that's our focus here. And then after the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Constantinople clarified and added a few more words just to make it a little bit clearer. But the force of this verse is that He is truly man and He is truly God and the two natures exist in a perfect unity. They have one will with no mixture. I like the way that Matthew Henry speaks of this in his commentary. Not...in other words, He created, not by Him as a subordinate instrument, but as a coordinate agent, God made the world. Not as the workman cuts by His ax, but as the body sees by the eye. In other words, Jesus wasn't an instrument in creation, He was the Creator. Not as like somebody holding an axe and the instrument is the axe head. No, He was the Creator Himself. What's the application? What will we do to exalt Jesus? How will we worship Him more deeply and fully? He's not a cartoon character. He is fully God and he's fully man. And whatever it is that could mislead you about the person of Jesus Christ is really the most dangerous thing to you because it deceives your worship. But Jesus Christ is God. You know, when Isaiah saw the Lord, he said, Woe is me, for I am undone, for my eyes have seen the King. And you know, as I was preparing to come and speak of these things this morning, I was asking, Lord, do I see you as you are? When I consider you, when I pray to you, am I relating to you as the eternal Son of God, as having communion with your Father as full deity? Am I worshiping you that way? Do I need to have a consciousness of you greater than I have now? Jesus is God. So we should believe in Him and have life in His name because of His eternity, because of His communion, because of His deity, and then fourth, because of His creative power. His creative power. He made everything. All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. Here's an application real quick. There is someone there in this universe. You're not alone. This world is not just matter. There is a person, a creator behind everything. There is someone there. God is there. He's real. And it's so critical that we understand that. Man has a soul. Man is not an animal. We're spiritual beings. Well, let's go into this text here. First of all, a positive statement. All things were made through Him. And then a negative statement to make it clearer. And without Him, nothing was made that was made. He created all things, everything. You know, the things in the created world are mind-blowing in their complexity. You know, with all of our sophistication, you know, man can't even create something as despicable as a fly, okay? Try to create a fly. Have you ever looked at a fly under a microscope? I don't think so. It will never happen. It's impossible because God is absolutely, magnificently infinite and perfect in His wisdom. And He creates a fly on a whim. He is the creator of all things. All things were created. He made everything out of nothing. The theologians call that ex nihilo, out of nothing. And John uses the word made, which means come into existence. Put it into existence and to receive being. God gives being to certain things. You know, man creates things borrowed, right? You know that old joke, you probably heard it a long time ago. The scientist, you know, comes to God and he says, you know, we scientists, we figured out how to make life from dirt and, you know, just like in Genesis, we can do that, too. And the scientist says, yep. And God says, well, why don't you just show me? And the scientist says, no problem. And so the scientist starts gathering some dirt, and he's about to start working with it. And then God says, hold on, hold on. And the scientist says, what? And God says, what are you doing? He says, well, I'm gathering some dirt to generate life, just like in the book of Genesis. And God says, go get your own dirt. Because man only uses God. Man doesn't create anything. Man comes off of what God has put in the created world because He created all things. His design of water and fire and dirt and plants and animals, it's actually one of the most wonderful things to consider, you know, and when you have little children in your house, you're just always looking at animals and you're seeing things that are just marvelous. Fill your family with the doctrine of animals because God created all these things to point to his absolute marvelous wisdom. You know, man is so proud of his robots. Man is so proud of his cars that keep getting cooler and cooler, you know, every few years. But, you know, man is really just banging rocks together like a caveman. our cars and our planes or phones. It's like banging rocks together in a cave, really. It's nothing. It's absolutely nothing. God created everything that there is. And behold your God. Everything was made by Jesus Christ. When you think of Jesus, does your Jesus that you picture in your mind have himself as the creator of everything? Jesus created everything. That's your Jesus. You know, he is a baby in a manger, but boy, he's a lot more than that. Don't fix your mind on the baby Jesus. That's only one, that is the most, one of the most remarkable earthly miracle probably. But he manifests himself in his glory in so many ways. Everything was made by Him, through Him, and for Him. Whether things on earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church. He holds everything together. Wouldn't you want to pray to the One? Wouldn't you want to follow the One? Wouldn't you want to love the One that's holding everything together? Why would you not believe in Him? Why would you harden your heart against such a One? He holds everything together. You should worship Him and follow Him. The fingerprints of Jesus are on every atom. every molecule, every fiber, every wave that's in creation. This destroys evolutionism. There was a creative act by Almighty God. God directed a process. This destroys materialism. Materialism says that matter is all that there is. But in John 1, we're led to believe something very different. There is someone there. God is there. He made everything. The world is not an impersonal place. And it's not a place of just impersonal matter. Man has a soul. God creates absolutely everything. Every throne, every dominion, every spirit, everything. And He's a God of love. And He loves to save sinners. And creation is actually accountable to God. So how do you apply this? Well, when you pray to Jesus, about what's happening in your body. Remember, He created your body. He created everything that's affecting your body. And when you pray to Jesus about what's happening in your family, remember, He created your family. He put you there. It was not an accident. And when you pray to Jesus about your future, remember that He made you in His sovereign wisdom and He has determined your future. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The beginning of all created things and the end. He is infinite in all of His ways. And He can create anything He desires. He can do anything He desires in your body, in your mind, in your relationships, in your family. But He puts these things down for you for His own glory. So we should love Him more, we should worship Him more deeply because of His eternity, because of His communion, because of His deity, because of His creative power, and then fifthly, because of the life-giving presence of the Son. Verse 4, in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. So do you notice how this works? There's life, but the life becomes something inside of a person. Like his life lives in a person, but it's light inside that person. That's what Jesus does. He puts light in the place of darkness in your life. And, you know, Just a tip of the application, how does the light shine in a dark world? It is through those who have life in Jesus, and they reflect His light. They have His light, they have His life, which creates light, and they reflect His light. That's what it means to be a Christian in the world. And here we recognize there's only one source of light in the world, in the physical world, at least in our system, and that's the sun. There's one light. It's 93 million miles away. That's the sun. And then there are these lesser lights. But Jesus says that He is the only light. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He is the only true life and the only truly beautiful light that exists in the world today. And there is only one light for the soul of man, and that is Jesus Christ alone. And so the life of Jesus makes men light up. I hope you're memorizing this in your families. In Him was life, and the life was the light. Make sure everybody understands that, how that works. What does Jesus want to do with you anyway? He wants to give you light. It's amazing. It's wonderful. You know, Malachi talked about the Son of Righteousness. who will rise with healing in his wings. You know, John, you know, the Lord tells us about those who sat in darkness and upon them a light has dawned in the valley of the shadow of death. Light and life are prominent words that you're going to find in the gospel of John. We're not done with light. We're not done with life. We're going to continue to go back to it and expand the doctrine of light and life. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The light of life. There's light in that life that Jesus gives to the human soul. You know, people, we look for light and life in all the wrong places. But the light of Jesus and the life of Jesus is the true light which enlightens every man. So much to say about light and life. And so, why, by way of application, would this spur us on to love Him more, to worship Him more? Because of a dark heart, that's why. Because our hearts have darkness in them. And we need light. We need the light of Jesus Christ to fill up our darkness. And when we do that, we become lights to the world. It's a way that we not only love God, but it's also a way that we love one another and we love the world. We become lights for one another. To be guiding lights of blessing toward one another because of the life of Jesus so that the life of Jesus would be made known like a fragrant aroma like the Apostle Paul says in the second Corinthian letter. And so we we worship him by walking in the light as he is in the light and we become children of the light or children of the day literally. And then, sixthly, the final reason to worship Him more deeply, more fully, more happily, more intently, is because of the constant shining light of the sun. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." Now there are two...I think there are two streams of meaning to this word comprehend. That's the critical word. Next to the word shines, it's shining, it continues to shine. It's in the present tense, it's always shining. Light is always shining. Nothing can put out the light. It's deeper than that, though. The light is shining is in the present tense. But it's like casting light into the world. The light has been cast into the world. You know, John uses this really interesting word of like throwing something, throwing light out there. You know, if you deal with light, you talk about what's the throw of that light. If you've ever bought lighting, you know that they talk about the throw of it. But this light is always shining. Now, there are two issues. One is that the light creates conflict in the world. The light is always shining. The word that he uses here is to grasp, to take hold of, to take over. The light shines, but the darkness doesn't take hold of it. The darkness doesn't get it. The darkness doesn't understand it. The darkness doesn't want it. The darkness just can't even hardly recognize it. They can't grasp it. They don't get it. The light shines, but people don't get it. That's one stream of the word. And you have people, they'll hear preaching, they'll read the Bible, they'll have a personal Bible study, but they just don't get it. They just can't relate to it. The light is shining, but the darkness can't get it. That's the most tragic state to be in, in the world. To not have the light light you up. You know, Somebody said that the soul of man is the candle of the Lord. To not have the light, the candle burning, and to know that it's not burning is the most tragic state of being. But man's heart is hardened, the devil's blinded eyes, and fallen man is in conflict because the light comes into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, says John 3 verse 19. But everyone who practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." So you have the light creates conflict. People see the light, but they don't come to the light. They don't go to the light. They want to get away from the light, but they can't. You can never get away from the light, because some of the other translations say that the light is not overcome. It's not overcome. You cannot overcome the light. You can do whatever you want to try to stamp out the light of Jesus, and it's always gonna shine, and it's always gonna affect you in some way. Your conscience may be seared, but nobody gets away from the light. The light cannot be conquered. It's everlasting light. And so that's why he says, the light shines, it continues to shine in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it or comprehend it. I think those two words are legitimate to use. They don't get it, but they can't overcome it either. It's gonna keep shining. you know, governments try to stamp out the Word of Jesus. It will never happen. It'll never happen. The light shines in the darkness. So, Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. He has communion with His Father. We see the deity. We see His creative power. We see His life-giving presence. And we see the constant shining of the Son of God. Behold your God. Behold your Jesus. I just want to give you five quick statements that I respond to this stuff with. First of all, Jesus is the Word. We can only be sustained by the Word of God. It's our only help in this world, the Word of God administered by the Spirit of God. You know, if your life is dry almost all the time, it's because you're not filling up the well with the Word of God. It's almost always like that. Secondly, The light shines. We cannot escape Him or overcome Him. No one can escape Him. No one can overcome Him. He exists for all eternity. Everyone will meet Him. Everyone has an appointment with Jesus Christ at His throne. Everyone will keep that appointment. Everyone. Because no one can overcome His eternal power and plan. And He's declared that He will meet every soul. and you cannot escape Him, and you cannot overcome Him, so you might as well turn to Him. You might as well turn to Jesus and worship Him and follow Him and love Him. And the third is, Jesus is not who people think He is. He's the exalted Son of God. And the fourth is a question, what are your sources of life and light? That's really where we get ourselves into trouble. when our sources are the wrong sources. But Jesus is the source of life and light. And we look to this world for things that it cannot supply. But when you look at Jesus, you get supply. He's a river of living water. And then, just finally, I pray that God would just use this to help us worship His Majesty. He's the King eternal, invisible, the only wise God. He's the King of glory. He is full of splendor and majesty. Moses said that He was majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders. And I pray that These words here and the words that we're gonna continue to traffic in will make us like Mary. Mary, who had the Son of God. You remember what she said? My soul exalts in God my Savior. And so let's have everything with a center. of Jesus Christ in all of his attributes, and you know, we're gonna take the Lord's Supper now, and we're gonna sing again. Let's pour out our whole souls to Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, in communion with his Father and with us, and that we would exult in God our Savior. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for our Lord Jesus, We thank you, Jesus, for who you are, how you exist, and you are the eternal one that we need in this world of shifting sands. Oh, Lord, I pray that you would help us to fix all of our hearts on Jesus in this church and in our homes and in our hearts. Amen.