Take your Bibles out if you would, turn to John chapter 1, verse 1. I'm in the Sermon on the Mount if you've been coming and following along. Problem is, is I didn't time it well at all because on Sunday, Christmas Sunday, I was going to be on Do Not Commit Adultery. And that just doesn't, it's from the Word of God, but it just doesn't fit with Christmas. Do you agree? I didn't want to do that anyway so we're going to do a couple weeks talking about the Christmas passages and today we're in John 1 right before Jesus is born. That's what Christmas is as you know it's a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Why is that a big deal? Why should we celebrate the birth of a child if it's not our own? Why should we make the big deal that we make about it? Well, I'm going to show you today if you don't already know. And if you already know, I hope that you're blessed by God's Word again. John's purpose and he tells us in his gospel at the end of his gospel he tells us exactly why he's writing in chapter 20 verse 31 he says John says these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name John's whole point is so that we will believe that Jesus is the Son of God he is the Christ and that by believing you will have life in his name By believing you'll have life. Not by believing you'll reject it. Yeah, I understand that, it's true, but I reject it by believing. His goal is that we have life in His name. For those of us who already have life in His name, having believed upon the name of Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross and His subsequent resurrection from the dead, His sitting at the right hand of God the Father, interceding with the saints, awaiting for His return, we come to remember that again and worship because of that. John was an eyewitness. He speaks of himself as the things that are written that you may believe. He saw. John lived with Jesus. He touched Jesus. He heard Jesus. He saw Him. He was first-hand eyewitness to Jesus. He's the perfect one to write. And he's writing so that we will have life, not so that we'll have entertaining reading. Before we get into it, let's pray. Lord, thank You for Your Word. You have lovingly passed it down to us so that we can have life. And for those of us who have already received Christ and have life, we celebrate that life today. We mourn for those who do not have life, eternal life in Christ. For the hope that they lack, Lord, I pray that if any of them be among us today and hear Your Word, that they would be unbelievably, awesomely, absolutely transformed through the medium of preaching. where Your Word and the truth goes out, it pierces into their souls, brings them to an alertness of their lostness and their sinful state and the rejoicing of what it means to receive Jesus Christ by faith and by faith alone. and to receive eternal salvation in a moment, in a millisecond. That is what we pray for the lost. For those of us who have it, Lord, I pray that we would be all the more fueled and filled with Your Word and the excitement that it brings to us. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. John 1.1 I'm reading from the Net Bible today, so it might be a little bit different if you've gone out and bought a New American Standard Bible to follow along with me, or an ESV, all of which are excellent translations of the Bible. Don't ever let anyone tell you that all the translations out there aren't good. 99.9% of them are. There are some that have been butchered quite well, but you can't find those mostly, and you're going to get those from people knocking on your door handing you a copy versus finding them in the store. John starts off and he says, "...in the beginning was the Word, The word is capitalized, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Or in the Net Bible, was fully God. The word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by Him, and apart from Him, not one thing was created that has been created. In Him was life, and the life was the light of man. And the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it, or not overcome it, or not understood it, depending upon your translation of the Bible. You see, the Christmas season, as you know, is a time when we celebrate the birth of Christ. And when we have a baby, all babies, every baby that's ever been born, other than Jesus, was a baby that came into being. We were conceived in our mother's womb, we were given birth, and we began to exist. When Jesus was born, He only began to exist in flesh. He has always existed. And I hope you'll stay with me as I explain this because it's powerful to me. And if you stay with me, it will be powerful to you too. I recognize that there can be some technicalities in this, so stay with me. Ready? Put your seatbelts on. Sit up straight. Clear your throat. Go ahead and pull out that piece of candy. Get it in your mouth so you're not wrapping it around while you're trying to get through this. An English Bible is all a person needs to read and know and learn about Jesus and know exactly who he is and be saved. So in no way... That's a grammar teacher that just said amen there. She's good with that. And she should be and that's right. You don't have to know Greek. I'm going to go through an intricacy here of the Greek language to show you what is not seen in English that's very powerful. So stay with me. It's not that hard. It's not that big a deal. For some of us, you're going to get lost in when I say the word, the phrase, predicate nominative. If I say predicate nominative, how many of you are in a world of hurt right now? You remember falling asleep in fifth or sixth grade when the teacher started talking about the predicate nominative. Here is your lucky day. The predicate nominative is this. It's two nouns or pronouns connected by a be verb. Got it? What's a be verb? Am, is, are, was, were. Lance is a pastor. The predicate nominative. Lance doesn't hit a ball. Lance doesn't run down the street. Lance is a pastor. That's a predicate nominative. Lance is the subject. And how do we know that's the subject in English? Because it comes first in the sentence, right? In English, we know what the subject is. You remember this? It's the first part of the sentence. It comes right before the verb. Are you with me? Very, very unconvincing. After the verb is what's called, what's that part of the sentence called? The. Starts with a P. Predicate. The predicate. Now I've only gone for 30 seconds. You can't be asleep yet. The subject, there's a verb, a predicate. When it's connected by a be verb, it's the predicate nominative. And the predicate nominative in this is that word was. In the beginning was the Word. Now here it is. And the Word was with God. Here's the predicate nominative. And the Word was God. The Word was God. By the way, the Greek text for Word is the word Lagos. Lagos, L-O-G-O-S. It's where we tack on to theology. The study of God is theology. Angelology, the study of angels. Lagos, ology, is the study of something. In the New Testament it speaks of discourse and dialogue, reasonings of the mind, sayings and truisms. That's what the Lagos speaks of in the New Testament. at least partially. To the polytheistic Greeks, of which the New Testament is written in, they believed it was the all-encompassing force of the universe. The Lagos is that force that makes everything happen. They didn't see it as God. They saw it as many gods and this force that brought all things together. The Jews, however, believed the Lagos to be God Himself. that the Lagos is God and God is always surrounded by His angels and His powerful forces as a king is surrounded by His servants. You still with me? I need this kind of interaction to make sure you're not completely off in left field. I really can't make sure of it at all. I hope my excitement for it brings about that in you. But you've got the Lagos God surrounded by His angels Whereas when you get to the Gospel of John, John speaks of the Logos as a man. A man that he knew. A person. This Jesus of Nazareth called the Christ. The Messiah. So for the Greeks it was this all-pervading force. To the Jews it was God Himself. And it speaks of sayings. When I talk, my discourse right here can be called Logos. The Logos of Lance, the sayings of Lance, the reasonings of Lance from the scripture. That's what the Logos is. When you go to the beginning you think of maybe Genesis 1 chapter 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. You'll note though in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 it begins with the beginning of all things and goes forward. John however begins in the beginning but goes backwards. And he's going to tell us that the little baby that we celebrate born today has always existed. He didn't come into existence when he was born. If he was born on December 25th or July the 6th or any date in between, he was born but he was always existing. And I want to show you from this text that this text proves it. And I love bringing out the Greek here because I love when it was brought out to me because it proves things that people today fight and argue about. Remember last week Jesus said, we're in the Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus said, I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. And he speaks of not one jot or one tittle which speaks of an apostrophe or just this one little horn on the back of a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Nothing will pass from the law until all is fulfilled. This is Jesus our Lord speaking. In other words, everything said will be fulfilled in Him. Everything that he's saying, since he's God, will also be true, and that which is written down about what Jesus said is inerrant. That means it has no error. And at this church, we firmly hold to the doctrine of inerrancy. That this Bible, insofar as it is accurate to the original text of Scripture, is inerrant, infallible, and absolutely life-transforming because it's God's words to us. You want to know what God says? Open this book and He tells us. So in the beginning, sparks our understanding of Genesis 1, but John's going backwards and he's saying, in the beginning, was the word. The word for was there, it's a be verb, and I'll get back to the predicate nominative in a second, but that word there for was is an imperfect active verb that's talking about existence. It was always existing. This is different, mind you, when you get down to say verse 3. When it says all things were created by Him or came into being by Him, it's a different word. And it is a word that means to absolutely come into being. Except that this word in verse 1a, the first part of that phrase, it was always existing. So you could translate it as saying, in the beginning the Word was existing, has always been existing, was always there. It did not, in the beginning, come to be. God didn't create it on day one. It was existing when the beginning came to pass. And the Word, the logos, was with God And the Word was God. Look over at verse 14, where John says, Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. He says, We saw His glory. Again, it's a His. It's a Him. John is clearly speaking, no question about it, that the Word is a Him. And He will name Him as Jesus in verse 18. The Word existed, always existed. It became flesh. That is, it took on... Jesus' flesh actually did have a beginning. Don't miss that. He hasn't always been in flesh. His flesh became. And that's the verb use in verse 14. And yet, He has always existed. He was existing in the beginning, and His flesh came into existence. We see that this is talking about Jesus. The logos is a man. When he says there in that third phrase of verse 1, and the Word was God, You have this predicate and nominative. Now, I said earlier that when you want to pick out the subject in a sentence, it's a word order. Greek, however, is maddeningly terrible about word order. You find a verb at the end of the sentence, everything gets swapped around. In the Greek language, many times when the word order is messed up, we say it's messed up, it's emphasizing something. What it wants to emphasize, it puts first in the sentence, and it's not always reflected in the English text. To emphasize this, it says in the Greek text, "...and God was the Word." Every English Bible says, "...and the Word was God." Because it's awkward in English, because that's not the subject. How do we know what the subject of the sentence is in Greek if it's out of its word order? I'm glad you asked, class. That's a great question. I was anticipating that question. How do we know what the subject is in the Greek language when it's out of order? That's easy. There's a THE before the subject. There's a THE. It's called the definite article. It's before the subject of the sentence. Where is the THE in the Greek text? It's before word or logos. We know from the Greek text, this is important, stay with me, I promise you this is of utmost importance for you. The THE is in front of the word. God has no THE. In the Greek text, you know that it's a predicate nominative because there's word endings. The way that you put the word God, for instance, if it's the subject of a sentence, is theos. It ends with OS. If it's the direct object, it's theon. It ends with ON. God here is theos, and logos is lagos, not lagon. So both of them are what we call nominatives. They're subject. Which one is the subject? We know it's the Lagos because the V is in front of it. You're thinking, did I come to grammar school today or church? Can we not celebrate the birth of Christ? I'm getting there. I just want you to make sure, as best you can, stay with me. The reason this is important, it's important because God has no the in front of it. If it said, the God was the Word, then it would be an ancient heresy. It would actually, that heresy wouldn't be a heresy anymore. It's called Sabellianism, or more modern called Modalism. Modalism you'll find in Pentecostal churches mostly. Modalism is that God is one and He manifests Himself as He feels, sometimes as a Father, sometimes as a Son, and sometimes as the Holy Spirit. Depending upon the audience, depending upon the mood, God will appear in different modes of thinking. If John 1.1 said, the God was the Word, then it would equate God with the Word, but it doesn't. Therefore, the entire argument of Sabellianism, modalism, the Bishop T.D. Jakes adheres to modalism, as do many. John 1.1 absolutely abolishes it. It does not equate God with the Word. It would be saying, God the Father is God the Son, and they're different. It also, because of the Word order, as I told you earlier, the emphasis is God. And it says, God was the Word. That means this is against the ancient form of heresy called Arianism, which is found today in the Jehovah's Witnesses and many other cults that deny the deity of Christ. Arianism said that Jesus is a created being. He's not God. He came into existence and he's very special, but he's not God. The problem with that is that the word order mitigates it. In fact, it abolishes it. The fact that it says, God, the emphasis is God, and He's not even the subject, was the Word, means that the Word, Lagash, Jesus, is God. Martin Luther says this as a result, the lack of an article is against Sabellianism, the word order is against Arianism. If Sabellianism or Modalism was true, the Greek text would say, the Word was the God, but it doesn't. If it was Arianism, it would say, the Word was a God. But it doesn't. It says, God was the Word. Why is this important? Why did you tell us this, Lance? I'm already bored out of my mind and we've got like 30 minutes left. The point being is that there is no point in celebrating the birth of our Lord if He's not the Christ. If He's not God. He's just a baby. We've got this cute little manger scene and the little baby Jesus is sitting there and he's as cute as he can be. And in all pictures of the baby Jesus, it's a cute little child and we just want to pinch his little cheeks, don't we? That little baby, that child is the awesome unseeable God that you meet in Exodus 19 on Mount Horeb, where the people turned away and begged Moses, Moses you speak for God, we don't want to hear him. Not because they were rebelling against him, but because they couldn't stand the holiness. He is the all-consuming fire. Our consuming God is that little baby Jesus. That is what we come to celebrate today. That is who God is in the Bible. It's not who I think He is. That's who He is. God was the Word, or is existing as the Lagos. I love that. I hope you love it too. You'll see throughout the New Testament that John the Baptist says, I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God. John 134. Nathanael in John's Gospel says, Rabbi, you are the Son of God. John 149. Jesus says this in John 517, My Father is working until now, and I am working. And because of this, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. People will say in the Bible, the people that I get that knock on my door will say, Jesus never said He was God. Then why did these people pick up stones to kill Him? He was equating himself with God by calling himself the Son of God. Jesus says Himself, I and the Father are one. Now that doesn't go against what John says that Jesus the Son is not the exact same thing as God the Father. It's saying that they are God. And he's saying Jesus, I, and the Father are one. So the Jews picked up stones again to stone him, saying, it is not for a good work that we're going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus says in John 14, 9, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Does that mean that Jesus the Son is the Father? No. We see in verse 18 that Jesus is the explanation of God the Father. God the Father has no form. You don't see God the Father. Jesus is the one with the form. We see Jesus and we understand God. And John makes it very clear in verse 18. We'll get to it in just a minute. The Jews said in John 19, 7, He ought to die because He made Himself the Son of God. And Thomas, upon seeing the resurrected Lord, said, My Lord and my God. Remember, Thomas doubted it until Jesus appeared to him. Probably stretched out his hands. Check this out, Tom. Put your fingers into the holes in my hands and my feet. Look at the side over here. Probably lifted his shirt up. Check this hole out. I'm that guy." And Thomas cries out, literally, the Lord of me and the God of me. Both of which have that definite article saying you are the Lord and you are the God. And Jesus doesn't say, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. You can't equate me with God. I'm just a servant. He receives the worship because He is God. Has always existed, is eternal. Going back to the first part of verse 1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word is with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by Him. Well, that changes Genesis 1, doesn't it? All things were created by the Word. Genesis 1-1 in the Hebrew text speaks of Elohim, which is a plural word. Anytime you see the word I am on the end of an English word in the Old Testament, it's a plural form of the Hebrew. Cherubim are multiple angels. A cherub is an angel. Cherubim are plural angels. Seraphim, same way. Seraph versus Seraphim. Elohim is this plural God in the beginning. Except in Genesis 1.1, it has a singular verb. When the verb is singular, that means the subject also takes the singular form. Elohim is one God. Does Genesis 1.1 teach the Trinity? No, but it certainly allows for it. that this plurality, this plural God who is one, exists eternally not as three gods, but as three distinct persons. One of which was God the Son who is doing the creating. Don't you love that? Jesus did not come to being at his birth through the Virgin Mary. He has always existed and was forming the earth. He is absolutely the first cause of all things. Got up this morning, and I get a regular blog sent to me from an atheistic forum, and I read a whole list of reasons why people are atheists. And I just shaked my head at it. There's no good arguments, there's just angry arguments about it. And I thought, okay, these are so easily refuted, nothing says from their words that God doesn't or can't exist, it's just that they don't want Him to exist. The logic of it, putting aside your faith in Christ or non-faith in Christ, the logic is this. For in order for anything to exist at all, anything, there must be a first cause. Okay, where did I come from? I came from my parents. Where did they come? From their parents. Where did they come? From their parents. And on and on. Where was the first parent? The Bible says it was a woman named Eve and a man named Adam. who were created by God all at once, by God. In the beginning, God was existing. If you have no first cause, how did anything come into being? It's illogical. It's ridiculous. That's why evolution is so silly. There must be a first cause. The Bible is telling us the first cause is not just God, Elohim. It's a designation for God's mighty power. His name is Yahweh. His designation is God. And we see here in the New Testament that it was Jesus was existing to form something. You might say, OK, maybe the earth formed itself. Bad idea. A really silly thought. It's amazing the things you'll read in atheistic forums. They're maddening. It's something I've got to tone my own sarcasm down. I've done that in the past. I know. You're very surprised that I get sarcastic. But it happens. But I think, you know, if you don't have a first cause, then the earth had to exist prior to itself in order to create itself. Did you hear what I just said? In order for something to exist without God, it has to first exist in order to create itself. And that's absolutely absurd. That makes no sense. It's against all forms of logic. And it's interesting that that word logic that I keep using is the word logos. What has to exist? If you want to carry on a conversation with anyone about anything, you begin, we all begin with this assumption that we're going to talk logically. Why? Why is that a rule? Who makes that rule? Who says we have to begin with logic? Well, should we begin with gibberish? Should we begin by just making up just sentences that mean nothing? Well, that gets us nowhere. Everyone with any common sense knows you begin any conversation with a logical foundation. Who says, and where did that logic come from? To begin with logic, you have to assume logic already exists. The laws of logic. Where did they come from? What does every law demand? Answer class, a lawmaker. God is encompassed, or one of His essences is logic. He was existing, has always existed, and that is why we begin with God. That's why the best arguments for God are what's called the transcendental argument for God, and that is we assume God exists in order so that we can say He doesn't exist. And you've heard me say, it's like saying that I'm going to make an argument that air doesn't exist. And I'm going to breathe the air that I'm going to tell you doesn't exist, to tell you it doesn't exist. It's absurd. In the beginning, the Word was existing. In fact, He is the first cause. Who created God? That's what you want to know, right? And yet, by definition, that which is eternal has no beginning, has no creation. If it's labeled eternal, if it is eternal, no one created God. Everything that we see demands a first cause. And nothing that we see is eternal. Therefore, it cannot have created itself because it's not eternal. Everything is going to a state of disorder and will fade away. Our God has always existed. The birth of His Son was because He always existed. Why did He get born? That's a lousy way of putting that. Why was He born? He was born because that beautiful, wonderful, created earth God made was corrupted by His creation. And so Jesus was born to live our life, to accomplish everything the law says to do, because we can't. to do everything we couldn't do so that He did it. And He could say, I did it, I won it, anyone won on my team, receive me by faith and my victory is your victory. That's why He was born. He was born to live and He was born so that He would die our death. He is the Creator. Hebrews 1.2 speaks of the world being created through Jesus. Colossians 1.16 says all things were created by Christ and they are held together by Christ in Colossians 1.17. In John 1.3, all things were created by Him. Snapshot action. Bam! Came into being. And apart from Him, not one thing was created that has been created. And that has been created speaks of the existence of all things continuing to exist. Everything you see, every person you encounter, every personality, every tree, every blade of grass, every piece of tinsel created by God. In other words, everything you see and the fact that you can see it all is a prompt for worship. Based upon this baby we celebrate being born. Who created it? You ever done something and you wonder, is anyone ever going to notice what I've done? You ever done something, maybe you painted a picture or something, and you just stuck it in a file, and if you stuck it in a file and you wonder why no one complimented you, you know the reason. You didn't put it out for anyone to see. But if you put it out on the wall, and you painted it, and it was beautiful, and you put Waldy, you know, by Lance Waldy, put it up on the big mantle of my picture, what are you expecting? Or better yet, let's put it in the modern day. You post a picture on Facebook of a particularly good selfie you took and you're hoping to get a bunch of what? There you go. And you'll check Facebook over and over to see how many people saw your smoking hot photo. Right? You want to be noticed. You want it noticed. Well, that's just pure, unadulterated, selfish arrogance to want that. It's also human. God, however, created everything and has displayed it for all to see and given us eyes to see it, ears to hear it, so that we will worship Him. And we write atheistic forums that say there is no God. Maybe not you. Verse 4, in him that is in the logos was life and John is speaking about eternal life that's what he speaks about throughout the gospel of John and the life was the light of mankind and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not mastered it or not overcome it. Remember we talked about Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 verses 13 to 16 Jesus said you're the light of the world His men, His people, are the light of the world. He also says in John 8, 12, I am the light of the world. Jesus is like the sun at the center of our solar system, which is a light-giving, burning ball of fire, reflected by the moon. Moon has no power in and of itself, but it reflects the light of the sun. You and I are that reflection, reflecting the light of our God. We are, as He is, the light of the world. John is saying, into the darkness, and he speaks of darkness as evil. Into the evil, the light came. The light didn't understand it. The light did not comprehend it. The light didn't, or the darkness, I should say, did not understand it. In other words, evil continued to exist to the point where they killed the light. At this point, I'll run through this part. A man came, sent from God, whose name was John. This is John the Baptist. John the Baptist is distinct from John the Gospel writer. A man came sent from God. That word for came means John the Baptist is different than the word. The word was existing, John came into existence. Two different verbs. Shows that John had a beginning, the word did not. He came sent from God. He came as a witness to testify about the light, that is the word, and everything so that everyone might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light who gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was created by Him. Even John the Baptist is saying, I know who created the world. John the Baptist understood that the Son of God has always existed. How do we, as humans in the 21st century, have the gall to disagree with someone who knew Jesus firsthand? It's like getting in a car wreck, having a police report, this is a random example, And there was a car wreck. Your car was smashed. Your insurance went up. Your neck was hurt. And someone comes along 50 years later and says, there was no car crash. What do you mean? There was a car crash. There's a police report. The people that were in the car crash died and all, but there's a police report. In fact, I knew someone that knew the person that had a bad neck all the time. They were always griping about it. It happened. No, it didn't happen. In the 21st century, we're like 2,000 years after what happened, and we can be safe cowards and say, that's not true. Paul didn't know what he was talking about. John didn't know what he was talking about. Even though he walked with Jesus, saw Him, felt Him, and they knew each other, I wouldn't believe any of that. Is there a nice word for that? We're so smart in the 21st century. We seem to know what these guys tell us is fact. We have the gall to disagree with John the Baptist. He was the one who created all things. But the world did not recognize Him. He came to what was His own, but His own people did not receive Him. But note this in verse 12, But to all who have received Him, those who believe in His name. How do you receive Jesus Christ? John is very clear. It's those who believe in His name. But you can't just believe in any old to be a created being, that's not who He is. If you want Jesus to be your genie, and you pray for anything you want, and He gives you everything you want, that's not who He is. You'll be disillusioned by all of these false beliefs. And you will punt your faith. You will take it like a football, and you will kick it as far away from you as you can, because the false versions of Jesus are all very disappointing. But for those, as John says, who have received Him, those who believe in His name, He has given the right to become God's children. We have the right to be called a child of God because of that little baby born 2,000 years ago. I have no right to call myself a child of God otherwise. What, because I'm a good person? I'm not even sure that's true. I can do some good things and I can put on a good show and make it look like I'm a good guy, but I'm not and neither are you. It's a shame that we get on to each other about that when we're all sinners. We're all putting on a bit of a facade, aren't we? God knows who we are. God knows everything going through our head, on the ticker of our head, all the filth that goes through our mind, all the things that we don't say to people that we want to say, all the hatred in our heart that makes us want to kill another human being that we don't, all the lusting in our heart that makes us want to be adulterers, But we don't. God knows it all. He knows more of it than we know. And yet, by believing on the name of Jesus Christ, it is that simple. He gives us the right to be called the children of God. I am proud of my mother and my father. They are good people. They are heroes to me. The word mom and the word dad, they have, see I'm already cracking here, they have sacredness to me, a mom and a dad. I was loved as a child. I was spanked as a child because I was loved as a child. I was disciplined. I was given everything I wanted and then some love was modeled to me in the love my parents had for each other, still have for each other. and I am honored to be called the son of Dave and Janet Waldie and they're just people and I know their faults and I can expose their faults I can you can't right that's kind of where we are with our loved ones I'm honored to know them but I'll tell you this I'm not worthy of them and I'm certainly not worthy to be called a child of God this Creator and yet he says no Lance that's what I want you to warm up to that's what I want you to I want you to make sure you convince yourself of this Lance you are mine I'm your daddy I love you and you will never ever be cast out by me and all of us who have trusted in Jesus Christ have that same little lecture from God you belong to me though unworthy you are mine why because Jesus was born the Word became flesh, dwelt among us, lived our life, died our death." He said, you want eternal life? Believe in me, I've got it. Verse 13, children not born of human parents, or by human desire, or a husband's decision, but by God. Well, I'm certain that mom and dad decided to have children when they had me. That's not what he's talking about. We choose to have children, well, And then God has a sense of humor, right? Some of you have had children and you weren't trying to have children, right? And you think, how'd that happen? You might even tell your child, you were not my decision. God made you be born and we love you all the more. I hope you give that caveat. We choose to have kids, we choose to not have kids, and sometimes there's big surprises, right? John's not talking about that at all. He's talking about not two people that come together that are saying we want to have kids, don't want to have kids. It's God's decision. That we're born and that we're born again. That's what He means. Children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband's decision, but by God. Children born by God. Therefore, we belong to Him. Therefore, we believe in Him. Verse 14, Now the word, the logos, became flesh. There's your Christmas Day right there. There's your Luke chapter 2 when the shepherds run to meet a virgin who's had a child, searching. In and around Bethlehem, for this child, the Word became flesh. God, existing for eternity, took on human flesh. And John says, the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. He lived among us. We, John and his brothers in Christ, the apostles, we saw His glory. The glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. Again, we see this eyewitness account of John who's saying, look, we're just telling you what we saw. And in the outset, in John 20 verse 31, he's saying, I'm writing these things so that you'll believe what I'm saying. Who are we going to believe if we're not going to believe an eyewitness? And if it's just one eyewitness, that would be a little bit sketchy. But there were not only 12 eyewitnesses, there were multiple others hanging around with the 12. And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul speaks of over 500 at one time saw the resurrected Lord Jesus. How much more evidence do we need? We believe everything else in history based upon what someone tells us. Why would we pick and choose and say, I don't believe the Bible, that's all made up. Why is that made up? How can that be? If you're going to be consistent with your history books, We have to take this from the eyewitness account. It's attested by everyone else who lived in that day. What glory is it that John saw? Well, we know that Jesus took Peter, James, and this John, the Gospel writer, up on the mountain. It's called the Mountain of Transfiguration. And he showed his glory. John the Baptist heard the voice from heaven, this is my son. You see Peter, James, and John up on the Mount of Transfiguration. They see Moses, and they see Jesus, and Elijah, and they bow down to the ground in horror. When they look back up, it's only Jesus, and they hear the voice from heaven. This is My Son. Listen to Him. Or, My Son, in whom I am well pleased, listen to Him. What better way can we say it? Listen to Him. This is the glory John, Peter and James saw, the glory of the one and only. John verse 15 says, John testified about Him and shouted out. Now there he's talking about John the Baptist. He says, and he cried out or shouted out, this one was the one about whom I said, he who comes after me is greater than I am because he existed before me. We can see here a little bit of John the Baptist ministry. Back then, they didn't have a cordless mic or a big huge sound system. The preachers of the day, if they wanted to be heard, they shouted. They cried out. And if they were passionate about their message, they yelled it. They might have found acoustically conducive places to have their message go out. John was probably a rock star looking guy. Never cut his hair, ate locusts, wore camel's hair and ate wild honey and had a leather belt. We know that about him. And he cried out. John testified about him and shouted. You see, when you know Jesus, and I didn't know him as John the Baptist knew him, obviously. I didn't see him come out of the water and hear the voice from heaven. I didn't stare into the Messiah's eyes. Well, that would have been beautiful, wouldn't it? Or old Simeon in Luke chapter 1 or chapter 2. Old Simeon's holding that little baby, knowing that he's staring into the eyes of God. Because he says, O Lord, thank you. You have now shown me your salvation. He had prayed that God would let him see his salvation before he died, and he was an old man. And on a particular day, in that temple, Mary and Joseph showed up with their baby, eight days old. And Simeon saw it. Must have been kind of spooky to old Mary. And Joseph, some old crotchety fella coming up, give me that baby, staring into the eyes of the Messiah. John saw it. And when you've seen it, and you've experienced it, you shout it out. And he tells everyone, probably his own disciples of that day that followed John, this is the one about whom I said. And his previous message was saying something along the lines of, a man is going to come after me that's greater than I am because he existed before me. Mind you, John the Baptist was about six months older than Jesus, was born six months prior to Jesus. And here He is. I get the six months and three months mixed up. It's either six months or three months. And no matter how many times I go back and memorize and get it straight, I get to preach, I forget which one it is. So, if you know, you come up and tell me, I'm going to go, I know, I know it now, but I don't know it right now. John was born before his cousin Jesus was, but John knows who He is. And he's saying, He existed before me. Verse 16, For we have all received from His fullness one gracious gift after another. This is John the Gospel writer saying this now. We have all received from the fullness of the Logos, from the Word, from Jesus, one gracious gift after another. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ. Law and grace. Law and grace. You know, if you lived in the old days of the Old Testament, and the way of salvation to you was the law, And every single person that lived in the Old Testament dies and goes to hell, don't they? Because no one is fulfilling that law. No one. But that's not how they were saved in the Old Testament. In fact, you only need to go to Hebrews chapter 11 and read what you might call the Hall of Faith, where you read one Old Testament saint after another from Enoch or Seth and Enoch and Noah who existed before the law, and Abraham who existed before the giving of the law, and then Moses is spoken about, and then David with all of his adulterers and murderers, and the judges that preceded David, Jephthah is even listed there, and Gideon, and Barak, and Deborah. All these people that existed during the time of the law who couldn't keep the law were saved and they're being promoted in Hebrews 11 as the saints. How were they saved if they couldn't keep the law? Because no one's ever been saved by keeping the law, because no one can keep the law. We've always been saved by grace. Jesus is saying this, as he said last week when we looked at Matthew chapter 5 verses 17 to 20. Jesus said, I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill the law. What the law pointed to was this. Put up a copy of the Ten Commandments in your hand, and just look at it and say, I'm a sinner. There's no way you're getting past the first one. If you want to skip down and start at the bottom, thou shalt not covet, you failed there too. Move up a little bit, never committed murder, yes you have. You've hated people in your heart. Haven't committed adultery, yes you have. You've lusted after another person. Haven't lied, okay, you just lied. Haven't taken the Lord's name in vain, yes you have. You do it every day. You sang those songs up there with sourness or bitterness in your heart? You're using the Lord's name in vain. You're worshipping a God in your heart or with your mouth and in your heart you're hating another human being. We have blasphemed. We've committed adultery. We've committed murder. Oh no, you're not in jail because you committed murder but you are murderers every one of you and I am right there with you. All of us. The law exposes us as sinners. Jesus pays that fine. He lived that law and never ever sinned. What man can do that? No man can. Jesus is God. 100% God, 100% man. He is God to make an accurate or an acceptable sacrifice because He's the perfect Lamb of God without blemish. And yet He's a man because He lived our life and He did what we can't do. We get what He did The law came through Moses. We might say, to expose us as sinners. And that's the bad news. Here's the good news. But grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ. Those Old Testament sinners know they didn't know a man named Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah. But they looked forward to Him. They looked forward to Him by believing God's promise. And by looking forward to Him and trusting that God would send Him, they were saved. I haven't seen the Christ either. But I look backwards and believe that what God did Said He would do, He did. They were saved by looking forward, you and I are saved by looking backward. And we are all saved for the same reason, by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. For we have all received from His fullness one gracious gift after another. All the gifts you have, if you think, from verse 16, that you are blessed because you're a good person, there's bad news for you. You might be good, but you're not good enough. You're not good enough. If you hurt another human being, let's just say you go out and you really hurt another human being. Maybe you insult them, or betray them, or maybe you kill someone that they love. And then you follow it up with a bunch of good works. Does that prove? Do your good works somehow prove that you love the person you betrayed or killed? What does that do? It's just confusing at best. Our good works cannot make up for the fact that we are sinners. They cannot do anything good for us. God is the one that's good. God is the one that accomplished it by becoming a man. The Lord became flesh. The Lagos, the Word, became flesh. Dwelt among us. The law was given through Moses. Grace and peace came through Jesus Christ. That's the first time He's named. Earlier I said He's not named until verse 18. I was wrong. He's named in verse 17. This is the first time He's named. He is the Lagos. He is flesh. And now He is Jesus Christ named. Verse 18, no one has ever seen God, John says. The only one, Himself God, who is in close fellowship with the Father, has made God known. That's pretty awkward, really. The one, no one has ever seen God, the only one, Himself God, speaking of the Logos, speaking of Jesus, In other words, living Bible translation without having a living Bible up here? The only one who's ever seen God is Jesus Christ, our Lord. And He came to explain God. That word for explain or made known is the word from which we get exegesis. If you're a Bible student and you study preaching, you learn how to do an exegesis. It's not exegesis. It's exegesis. It's bringing out, looking at a text and drawing out the meaning. Exa. Bringing out the meaning. If I do an exegesis, I don't come up here before... I never come up to preach unless I've done a thorough exegesis of any given text. I've studied it. I've looked at it. I've looked at everything I could possibly find to bring out the text, the meaning, and to preach it to you. Jesus is the exegesis of God. He is the explanation of who God is. You can't know God unless you know Jesus. And you cannot know God, unless you understand exactly who Jesus is, false views of Him do not bring you into a relationship with God. How do I know about Jesus, Lance? I'm glad you asked. Because that's an easy one. No, it's not that easy. I was just going to say read your Bible. But there's a lot of cults that read the Bible. There's a lot of people that read the Bible, spend a lot of time reading the Bible, who keep missing who Jesus is. To understand who Jesus is would be to read the Bible in a whole new light. First time I went to Israel, I could not wait to get back and read my Bible again. And if you ever go, and please, I encourage you to do it, save your money up. It's nothing like what the news depicts. My wife and I went to the West Bank. We're walking around, talking to kids, and it's just a normal place. It's like Houston. It's better than Houston. Who wants to go to Houston? You go to this place and you say, I'm in Bethlehem. I'm not going to go back and read Matthew 2 now, and I'm going to see Matthew 2 completely different now. I've walked on a temple mount. I've walked out and I've seen the area called Armageddon or the plains of Megiddo. I've stood on Mount Gilboa. I've stood on the mountain where Elijah stood, Mount Carmel, and wielded his sword and saw this power of God come down. I've stood there. I've been there. And when I read it, it just has a whole new light. That's not me boasting. That's me telling you how privileged I am. Now I see the Bible through different eyes, more educated eyes. When I know who Jesus is, this is my parallel, when I know who Jesus is, when I've encountered Him, experienced Him, I read His Word completely different. So it's not just about reading it. It's about understanding who Christ is. No one has ever seen God. And so God became a man so that we could see God. That baby that was born 2,000 or so years ago, that's who He is. He was the eternal God. He is the eternal God who has always existed. When a point in time became a man, a baby grew into a man. And over the course of 30 some odd years, He lived our life, and He died our death. Why does that matter? Well, it matters for this reason. By believing in Him, everything you've done, all of your sins, everything, no matter how horrible you are and have been, Jesus is perfect. By believing in Him, all of your sins are washed away. All of your sins are washed away. It's so difficult for people who are filled with sin to grasp, and I'm one of them. I'm filled with sin. Was, is, and always will be. And I feel like I spend my life getting used to my justification, warming up to the fact that God loves me, calls me a child of God. Lance, you're forgiven. How? Because I became a man, Lance. Lived your life. Died your death. When you've had a particularly horrible moment, when you have lived a particularly horrible week or year, and you have convinced yourself God cannot love you, remember, Jesus lived the perfect life. His victory is our victory by faith. Do you believe it? When you begin to doubt it, all you have to do is go back to the truth. of what is not what you feel. The truth is God became a man and lived our life and died our death and nothing changes that. You might have had a bad day, bad week, bad ten years, but that doesn't change that truth. And that offer to connect your pathetic life with His perfect life insofar as you are alive and drawing a breath remains yours to take. What are you waiting for? Christmas is a celebration of what God did Now, what are you going to do? Well, let us pray. Lord, Your Word, powerful, revealed who You are like a painting on the wall displaying all Your greatness, wanting us to look at it, marvel at it, praise You for it. To look at sinners made clean by the blood of Jesus, that's the greatest thing we can see. As beautiful as your creation is, as wonderful as the fish of the sea may be and the animals that roam the earth, the sunsets, the grass, the trees, as beautiful as that may be, a sinner saved by grace. That's a wonderful picture. May we delight in it. May we pray for the joy that accompanies it. Fill us. Fill us with You. And during this Christmas season, when there is stress, running out of money and wondering where we're going to get that money, wondering why we have to buy so many gifts, maybe there's the joining of families where there's pain between members, hatred, At the end of that darkness, there's the light. Maybe run to that. Get rid of our bitterness. Revel and rejoice in the fact that you became a man, lived our life and died our death. You have always existed. You came from heaven, came to earth. endured this garbage because you loved us. May that be our prompt for worship, Lord. Send us out of here, Lord, rejoicing in the season, knowing the reason for this season, namely Jesus Christ. May He not be a curse word to us. May He not be a bad word or a bad thought. Let the fruit of everything we do. The root of all that we do. Certainly pray for me. Send us out of here different people, Lord. People who love you. People who rejoice in you. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. My friends, Merry Christmas. We'll see you next week. May God bless you as you go. you