Join us now for the chapel hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Today's message was preached during the 2006 Bible Conference. Following the introduction by Dr. Bob Jones III, our speaker will be Dr. Kevin Bowder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota. The title of his message is, Oh Come Let Us Adore Him. The text is from John chapter 1, verse 1. It is my pleasure to be able to introduce the speakers this week. In trying to bring the speakers, we do our best to pray over the matter and to try to find a good variety of men with different backgrounds and ministries, different styles, all capable of handling the Word of God. Dr. Kevin Bowder, since 2003 has been the president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, a sister institution in whose company we take great delight. Dr. Bowder has been a personal blessing to me. Every time I've ever heard him, I've been enriched. And I found myself thinking deeply upon the scriptures following his preaching and speaking. He's a Renaissance man. He's not just a seminary president. He is far from one dimensional. He's a sportsman. He loves the fine arts. Prior to becoming involved with Central as a faculty member and then as president, He was a youth and music director earlier in his preaching ministry. He was a pastor in Iowa. He was a church planter in Texas. He's a very thoughtful man, a very pleasant man, and a man who exercises great courage in handling the Word of God and in applying it. I've admired some stands that he has taken in these three years that he has been president of the seminary. He's a man committed to doing the right thing, the scriptural thing. He is not motivated by religious political aspirations. He is a man who is honorable in doing what is right. And it's required of any leader of any Christian organization That when the truth is at stake, you take his stand with the scriptures. And sometimes that means parting company with lifelong ministry friends. It means doing the hard thing for the sake of the purity of the institution or the church. And he has done that and he will, by the grace of God, as a leader of an institution, be required to do that repeatedly as long as he serves in that capacity. I admire him for what he believes, what he preaches and for living what he believes. And we are blessed to have him here. Dr. Bowder will be our preacher tonight. Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation, O sing, all ye bright hosts of heaven above. Glory to God, all glory in the highest. O come. Let us adore him. Come. Let us adore him. Come. Let us adore him. Christ. The Lord. From one cover of the Bible to the other, Every page of Holy Scripture seeks to set before our eyes the Lord Jesus Christ in His beauty and in His glory so that we might adore Him. All of this display, this magnificent, radiant display about Jesus Christ comes to a focal point in the Gospel of John. where John, as it were, thrusts before us the incarnation of the Son of God and shows us God-made flesh living out a human life among us. And from the very first verse of his Gospel, John's purpose is to issue to you and to me exactly one invitation. O come, let us adore Him. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. We know that this verse is about the Lord Jesus Christ. Because verse 14 informs us that the word was made or became flesh. He assumed a human nature and dwelt tabernacled, pitched his tent among us, and we beheld his glory as it were the glory of the only begotten of the Father. Oh, come. Let us adore him. That's my invitation to you this evening. I would like to ask you to take a few moments of your time and let us together enter the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ using this first verse of John's Gospel as our lens to direct and focus our attention upon Him and let us together adore Him. Christ, the Lord. In this verse, the Apostle John, the beloved disciple, states three reasons for which the Lord Jesus Christ deserves our adoration. and because of which the adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ is a fundamental moral obligation for every one of us. The first reason is found in the first clause. In the beginning was the Word. Why should we adore the Lord Jesus Christ John first suggests that we ought to adore Jesus because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word, is the Eternal One. In the beginning, the Word was. It does not say that in the beginning the Word came to be. I realize that there are verses in the Bible that speak about the Word or about the Lord Jesus Christ being begotten. But please, register this in your thinking. Begetting does not mean beginning. For the Lord Jesus Christ to be begotten does not mean that He came into existence. In fact, I can show this to you very quickly. If you will, take just a moment and glance over at Acts 13. We'll take only a moment to go here. Acts, chapter 13, verse 33. Says God has fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he has raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the Second Psalm, quote. Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Now, according to the book of Acts, when was the Lord Jesus begotten? Answer, on the day of his resurrection. The second Psalm, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. That verse is fulfilled when Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. Now, Does anybody care to argue that the Lord Jesus Christ came into existence on Resurrection Day? Well, of course not. Everybody admits that He was alive before then. You see, the point of begetting is not beginning. Begetting has to do with the public declaration of His station and His office. There was a time when He was publicly declared to be the Messiah of God with power. In that sense, he was begotten. But he never began. In fact, the grammar of John 1.1 is very careful not to specify what beginning is in view. The beginning of which it speaks could be any beginning, simply anything that has the quality of a beginning. Think of any point in time that you care to regard as the beginning. Think of the time when Israel crossed the Red Sea. That began something. The word already was. Think of the time when Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek. That began something. But the word already was. Think of the time when, in the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth. That certainly began something, but the Word already was. If it is possible to imagine a beginning before creation, at that point, the Word already was. It doesn't matter what you are conceptualizing as the beginning. Whatever it may be, the Word was. He never, ever began. When I was pastoring at Iowa, I had a man who was a member of the church who was also on the police auxiliary in our town. Late one night, actually early one morning, he called me on the telephone. He said, pastor, I'm down at the police station. He said, we've got a man we're about to put in jail. He said, you better come down here right away. This man needs help. And so I pulled on my clothes and went down to the police station. And here was a fellow who had been in some pain. And one of his friends gave him what he thought was a pain reliever. And it turned out to be a muscle relaxer. And he didn't have a prescription for it. He got in a fight with his wife and punched her. And the police were called. And here he was. He'd been arrested. He was being thrown in jail for assault and battery, for domestic abuse, for possession of a controlled substance. All of a sudden, his life was coming apart on him. And he was absolutely beside himself and still on the drugs besides. So I sat and talked calmly with him for a while until he began to calm down a little bit. I've always made it a rule of thumb not to try to lead anybody to the Lord while they're inebriated. And so I told him tomorrow I'm going to come back and see you. Is that OK? He said, please, please come back. And so I did. And the next day I sat there in the police station with the man and shared the gospel with him. First time he'd ever heard it. And he received the Lord Jesus as a savior. And I went and visited with his wife, wondering what am I getting into here? She's the one who got beat up last night. How is she going to feel about this? When I appeared at the door, I informed her who I was. She said, oh, she said, I need to talk to somebody. I want my husband back. And so I sat down with her and I visited with her and her little children were around and opened the word of God and again shared the gospel with her. First time she ever heard the gospel, she received the Lord as her savior. And this couple, eventually, he was released from jail. The judge was very lenient with him. The couple was reunited. They began attending our church. And after a few weeks of attending our services, I was, after the sermon, standing at the door of the church, greeting people as they left. And this couple came past, and she said to me, Pastor, we've been arguing. I need you to tell me something. And I thought, oh no, they've been arguing again. She said, we've been arguing. We need you to answer a question. Where did God come from? Now, how do you answer that at the door? And of course, the answer is, and what I told her is God didn't come from anywhere. God always was. And it was fun to watch her face and his face as they stood there and thought about that for a moment. And you could almost see the wheels turning and then you could almost see the little wisps of smoke beginning to emerge from the years. And then all of a sudden, both their eyes got big. They said, that's impossible. Everything has a beginning. I said, not God. Not God. There was never a time when he began. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the Word. He didn't come into being. Whatever beginning you choose, the Word already existed. Now there are some theological implications to that truth. The main one is this. It implies what is sometimes called self-existence. None of us possesses self-existence. We all depend for our existence on someone or something else. Every one of us in this room was born at a particular day, at a particular time, in a particular place. And in living our lives, we have found that our lives constantly have to be propped up in emergency services training. They teach you that in an emergency, you have three minutes to find air, you have three days to find water, and you have three weeks to find food. And if you cannot find air in three minutes, water in three days, food in three weeks, you are likely to die. We are very fragile creatures. It doesn't take much to extinguish our physical lives. We constantly depend upon something from outside in order to keep us alive. Jesus Christ is not like that. He depends upon nothing outside of Himself. His life grows out of His own being. In fact, it's no accident that in verse 4, the Apostle John says, in Him was life. And the life was the light of man. Life flows from Jesus Christ. He is not one whose life needs to be propped up. Rather, he is a source. He is the source of life. It is an eternal life. And it's his own. Now, that has very practical ramifications for you and for me. If He is the one who has life in Himself, then if we want life, particularly if we want eternal life, if we want to taste of His own life, then there is only one place that we can go. And that is to Him. Christ is the only one who can give us real life. Any life that we get from anywhere else merely prolongs our animal existence. Job understood what that was like. He understood that life as we know it here and now can become a burden, and he longed for death. But there is a kind of life that never gets old, and it never wears out, and it never grows stale. It's eternal life. It's zoe. And it is a gift of Jesus Christ to those who trust in Him. It's new life. It's eternal life. He tells us in John 28 that he gives life to his sheep. And they will never perish. Why? Because he is the eternal one. In the beginning was the word. That's eternity. John gives us a second reason that we ought to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to adore him. Not only is he the eternal one, he is, and you will think this is strange. He is the other one. He is the other one. I'm looking at the second clause of the verse. And the word was with God. The word was with God. Now, I'll alert you to something. John, as he writes this verse, is walking a theological tightrope, and we will not understand all of the dangers of this tightrope until we have reached the end of the verse. I will simply say right now that he is in grave danger if he if he takes a step to one side or the other of plunging into a heresy on either side. And he has to include this clause in order to guard us from one particular kind of heresy. The word was with God. What does that mean? At minimum, it implies this. There is something that we call God. Something that is God. That is not. the word. Something that is rightly called God cannot be called the word. Now, we can simplify this very quickly. What is called God? What is God that is not the word? Well, let me ask you, is the Father God? Nod your heads yes. Is the Father the Word? Shake your heads no. Thank you for your good response. Is the Holy Spirit God? Of course. Is the Holy Spirit the Word? Certainly not. This does not suggest that the Word is anything less than God. In fact, in the next clause, we will discover that He is God. What it does mean, however, is that you cannot draw a simple equals sign between the word God and the word Christ. Christ is God. But that does not mean that everything that God is is also Christ. Because the Father is not the sun and the Holy Spirit is not the sun. We are, in fact, discussing the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, that's not a biblical word, but it's a very biblical concept. It's simple to state and almost impossible ultimately to understand. Trying to understand God's Trinity is like trying to understand His eternity. How can you have a being who never began? We don't know, because God is the only one of that kind. How can you have a being who is a Trinity? We don't know, because God is the only one of that kind. We never meet a Trinity in day-by-day life. But the Bible teaches us about a Father who is God. The Father is God. It teaches us about a Son who is God. The Son is God. It teaches us about a Holy Spirit who is God. The Spirit is God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. And yet the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. Now, in trying to find ways to explain this, we resort to language about essences and persons. We say that God is one essence or one substance. There is one and only one true and living God. That's a fundamental of the faith. In fact, that's the most fundamental fundamental of the faith. And yet this one true and living God subsists in three personal distinctions. It is not merely that God appears to us at one time as Father, and at another time as Son, and at another time as Holy Spirit. No. In His innermost being from all eternity, God has always been Father, Son, and Spirit. Three persons, but only one being. Three intelligences, but only one substance. How can we explain this? Simple. We can't. We can't. We don't meet anything like this in day by day life. But it is nevertheless absolutely crucial to our faith. In order to understand why, you must first understand the position that the Son occupies with respect to the Father. It says in the middle clause of verse 1 that the Word was with God. Now, there are lots of ways of being with something, and as a matter of fact, the Greek language of the New Testament has a whole range of prepositions to express different ideas of withness. The preposition en, has the idea of with as an instrument. The preposition soon means in accompaniment with, meta, a step behind with, para, side by side with. The preposition that John chooses here is the preposition pras. The preposition pras has the thrust of face to face with. It is the closest and most intimate preposition for being with. that you can choose in the Greek language. I think theologically that this begins to give us a glimpse into the life of the Lord Jesus Christ before His incarnation, and indeed, a glimpse into the life of God Himself. Have you ever wondered, what was God doing all that time? If he's existed forever and ever and ever, then really creation is a relatively recent innovation. What was God doing for all that time? Well, we can suggest some things that God does even now with respect to creation. You think of Genesis chapter 1, verse 31. God saw all that he made. And he said that it was very Good. In other words, God delighted himself in his creation. And by the way, that's father and son and spirit from the very end of creation week. God, the son, has been delighting himself in creation. In the very early verses of Genesis chapter two, you discover that on the seventh day, God rested. What does that mean? God rested. Was he tired? He had to rest up after a tough week at creation. Well, of course not. God wasn't tired. He has no limit to his power. What could it mean for God to rest? The answer is, it's very much the kind of thing that you fellas do when you've spent a whole Saturday mowing the lawn and edging the walks and trimming the bushes. You've got it all done. Now, what's the next thing you do? You plant a lounge or a hammock or a chair in the middle of the yard, you get yourself a tall, cold lemonade, you sit down in the middle and you look around and you say, wow, this is good, man, I am good. And that's what God did when he had made the world. He looked at it, he beheld it, and he said, oh, this is good, I am good. And it wasn't in the least vain for God to say that, because you know what? He really is good. Now when did God stop resting? On the eighth day? Started to work again? No. God has never halted his Sabbath rest. God is still enjoying the creation that he made. God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son. Delighting in the created order. ever go camping and in the evening you built a fire you've got a campfire out and it's dark out in the shadows but here's the fire in front of you what do you do I heard a guy one time say something like this he said oh yeah he said the campfire that's that's what we call wilderness TV said it's only got one channel but everybody watches it and that's true isn't it As long as that fire is there, you're going to sit there, you're going to look at it, you're going to gaze into it, because it's changing, it's shifting, but it's always beautiful. You ever get in a quiet, calm, dark place in the middle of the night and just lay down on the ground and look up at the stars? Lose yourself in the Milky Way. Pick out the constellations. Try to spot the things that you know. and just gaze and delight yourself in the nighttime sky? You ever wander through a pleasant garden and delight yourself in the flowers, the greenery, the well-manicured lawns? You ever stand beside a tall mountain and look up at it and just admire its grandeur? Have you ever done that and then climbed the mountain and looked down and enjoyed the view from on top? Do you realize that God enjoys all those things every moment of His life? God is gazing into every campfire. He is seeing the starry sky. He is delighting Himself in the beauty of the flowers. and in the grandeur of the mountains. He is in all of those places at all times, and he sees them from every perspective. And not only those, he is there and sees what is going on in the jungles and in the deep caverns with the stalagmites and the stalactites, and he doesn't even need a light. And He knows what's happening in the deepest oceans and in the furthest flung planets. He beholds the nebulae and walks among the galaxies. And He knows what's behind the black holes. And He enjoys all of it. Every moment of His existence. And He sees it all from every possible point of view. And it delights Him. You begin to understand why God is not going to be easily rattled by some little thing that we may do on earth. He's a very big God. And He's a very happy God. And this is the life of Jesus Christ. But there's more than this. There is so much more than this. Because creation came into being at a point in time. What was God doing before He made those things? Tuesday morning, I'm going to have to leave. I wish I could stay for the entire week. But Wednesday, I have some obligations that cannot be avoided. Tuesday afternoon, I anticipate being home, and I will have the opportunity to see my wife again. She's unable to be with me this trip. And when we see each other, at some point, we will take one another in each other's arms And we will gaze into one another's faces. And I will have a chance to look at her. Now, I have her face memorized already. I can tell you where each line is, each freckle. I can tell you just what her hair is like. I can tell you just exactly how far her ears stick out. I can tell you all of those things, but there is no substitute for being face to face. And as we are face-to-face, close to one another, simply enjoying one another's presence, we will begin to talk. And we will remember what we have been doing. And we will think about things that we have to do. We will make plans. She will disclose to me some of her hopes, some of her fears. I will disclose to her some of mine. And we will enjoy one another. Can you imagine what it would be like to be face to face with an infinitely fascinating, complex, interesting person and to have all eternity to explore one another's minds? This is what the Father and the Son have enjoyed from eternity past. From all eternity, they have been face to face, for the Word was face to face with God. They have been revealing themselves perpetually to one another, infinitely accepting of one another, celebrating each other's being, planning with one another and loving each other. And the Holy Spirit has been the love between them. And those three have never needed anything else. The Word was with God. Now, why is this crucial to us? Because God made us and he legislated a standard of righteousness to which he expected us to conform. And he pronounced a penalty. He said that if we wouldn't do that, then the penalty would be death. And we didn't do it. and we deserve the penalty, and so God now appears to us as judge. God, if he is just at all, must condemn our sins. The only hope that we have is for an intercessor, a mediator, someone who will step in between us and God and who will plead our case before him. That is what the Lord Jesus Christ did on the cross of Calvary. On the cross of Calvary, he paid the sin debt of all of us. having risen from the dead, having defeated death, He offered to us eternal life as a free gift, so that if we would believe on Him, we would have life. And now, He stands before the Father. And if any man sins, if any Christian sins, we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous. You see, we need someone who is God, but who can stand between us and God. We need someone who will answer for us to the judge. There has to be God who is the Word And there has to be God who is not the Word. And if we don't have both God the Word and God not the Word, then we cannot be saved. You understand, the Trinity is not merely an incidental philosophical speculation somewhere on the perimeters of Christianity. It is at the heart of the faith. It is one of the fundamentals. There's no hope without it. I love one of the songs that we sang earlier in the service, and we skipped one of my favorite stanzas, but I'm going to give it to you now. Five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary. They pour effectual prayers. They strongly plead for me. Forgive him. Oh, forgive, they cry. Nor let that ransomed sinner die. God, the Word, pleading my case before God, not the Word. How can He do it? Because the Word was with God. That is Trinity. So we worship the Lord Jesus Christ. We adore Him for His eternity. He is the Eternal One. And we adore Him for His Trinity. He is The other one, according to the final clause, we also adore him because he is the divine one. We adore him for his deity. And the word was God. Now, you know, as well as I do, that in certain circles there's considerable controversy about that verse. That controversy began with the presbyter by the name of Arius in the fourth century who attempted to say that Jesus Christ is the first created being whom God made. That there was a time when he was not and there was a time when he came into existence because God made him and then Jesus Christ made all other things. And so it's appropriate to speak of Jesus Christ as a God, small g, but certainly not as God, capital G. That's a teaching that's been around since the fourth century. And of course, it's a teaching that comes up repeatedly today. A few summers ago, I was out in the yard one afternoon mowing the lawn. It was a hot summer's day. I was kind of grubby. Looking down the street, I noticed two women working their way down the street, going from side to side of the street and knocking on doors. Now, I knew they weren't Mormons because they weren't on bicycles. So I figured, here's either a delegation from the local Independent Baptist Church or from the Kingdom Hall, one or the other. Now, I make it a point, I never, in my home, discuss theology with a Jehovah's Witness. I think 2 John tells us exactly what we need to do with respect to our houses. We do not argue with them and we don't even bid them Godspeed. We don't even bid them Kyrene. But I will go after them if I can find them someplace else. And so, I saw them coming down the street And I shut off the lawnmower and headed down the street towards them. And as I drew near to them, I said, ladies, I see that you're going from door to door here. The older one said, yes, we are. I said, well, let me tell you something. I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses. She said, oh, are you really? I said, yes, according to Acts 1.8, Jesus said you shall be witnesses unto me. And she got a puzzled expression on her face. I said, of course, when I witness of Jesus, I'm witnessing of Jehovah. She said, well, I suppose so. I said, may I show you something wonderful that I have discovered about the Lord Jesus Christ in the word of God? She said, I suppose so. I said, do you have your New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures with you? Oh, yes, she said, and she pulled it right out. I said, open it to the first chapter of John, and she did. I said, let's look at John 1.1. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was, oh, I said, look here, it says a God and it's got a small G. I said, have you ever wondered why the New World Translation does that? She said, well, we know the answer to that. It's because in the Greek language, there is no definite article with the word God. And so it has to be indefinite, a God. It can't be God. It can't be Jehovah. It has to refer to a lesser being. I said, I've heard that lots of times before. I said, you don't happen to have your emphatic diglot with you, do you? Now, for those of you who don't know, an emphatic diglot is not a congenital malformation. It's a Greek-English New Testament that Jehovah's Witnesses use and frequently carry with them. Well, on this particular day, I'd evidently caught her on a bad day, and she had no idea who I was still at this point. Perhaps she thought that I was somewhere up in the hierarchy of the watchtower, and she blushed and apologized and said, no, I forgot my emphatic diaglot. Well, I said, let's talk about some things. And when you get home, you can check your emphatic diaglot and see if I'm right. I said, look at verse three. All right, she said. Excuse me, verse 6. So look at verse 6. I said, read the verse. She said, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. I said, now, what God are we talking about in verse 6? Is this some lesser created being who is a God or is this the God? She said, oh, very clearly, this is the God. This is the true and living God. I said, you mean this verse is talking about Jehovah? She said, yes, certainly. I said, there's no possibility it could be talking about anyone else. No, she said, this is definitely about Jehovah. I said, here's something I want you to look up when you get home. If you look it up, what you will discover is that there is no definite article in front of the word God in this verse. Isn't that interesting? And she paused a moment. She didn't know what to say. I said, would you like to know why there is no definite article there? She said, I really would. I said, it's because when Greek doesn't have a definite article in front of the noun, it doesn't make it indefinite. It emphasizes the quality. of the thing. So in this verse, what it's saying is that John was sent from a being who had all of the qualities or characteristics or properties of God. I said, does that sound like Jehovah to you? Oh yes, she said. That makes perfect sense. I said, look at verse 12. But as many as received him to them, gave he authority power to become the sons, children of God. I said, what God is that talking about? Is that talking about the true and living God or is that talking about some lesser being? She said, oh, that's the true and living God. I said, Jehovah. She said, yes, that's Jehovah. I said, this is really, really interesting because this is the second time now that we've found a verse that's talking about Jehovah, but it doesn't have a definite article in front of the word God. Do you know what that means? I said. It means. that it's talking about the quality of being God here. That as many as received Him, to them He gave authority to become the children of a being with all of the attributes and powers and properties of God. I said, does that sound like Jehovah to you? Oh, yes. Good, I said. Let's look at verse 18. So she went to verse 18. No man hath seen God at any time." I said, stop right there. What God are we talking about? Could this be a lesser being? Could this be a lesser God, a God? Well, by now she was getting used to this. She said, no, this is God, the true and living God. I said, Jehovah? She said, Jehovah. I said, guess what we don't have here? She said, we must not have a definite article here either. And what does that mean? She said it's emphasizing quality. The quality of the being. That's right, I said. In other words, what the verse says is that no one has ever seen the innermost being of the one who has all of the attributes and natures and qualities and properties of being God. Does that sound like Jehovah to you? Oh yes, she said. That sounds like Jehovah. So, I said, in verse 6, It says God with no article and it's about Jehovah. And in verse 12, it says God with no article and it's about Jehovah. And in verse 18, it says God with no article and it's about Jehovah. I said, if we take all of that back to verse one, we may be in a position to draw some conclusions here in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was and I paused and said, wait a minute, we haven't figured out who the word is, have we? Oh, she said, that's easy. The Word is Jesus Christ. Ah, how do we know that? Well, she says, verse 14 teaches it. Okay. Well, if the Word is Jesus Christ, and if the Word was the One who had all of the qualities, properties, attributes, nature of being God, who would that make Jesus? There was a very long pause. And she said, I don't understand. All right, I said, let me ask it again. We agree that where the word God appears without an article, it means a person who has all of the qualities, attributes, properties of being God. So, if the Word has all of these qualities, attributes, and properties, and if the Word, you just told me the Word is Jesus, right? Yes, she said that's right. If Jesus is the Word, and the Word has all the qualities, attributes, and properties of being God, what does that tell us about Jesus? There's another long pause. And then her eyes got really big. And she said, you believe in the Trinity. I said, you know, that word doesn't even occur in the Bible. Let's forget about the word Trinity for a moment. In fact, let's just focus on this verse. If Jesus is the word. And if the Word possesses all of the qualities and properties and attributes of God, then who must Jesus be? She said, I think this conversation is over. I wish I could tell you that she believed. But at least for that moment, She closed her heart to the truth. The word. Was. God. By the way, there's a reason that John could not put the word the in front of God here. If he had, it would have turned the is into an equal sign, and it would have meant that everything that is the word is everything that is God and everything that is God is everything that is the word. And as we've already seen from the second clause, that's not true. There is God, the word, and there is God, not the word. And so John chooses to express it qualitatively. The Word was the One who had all of the qualities of being God. Now we say that so easily. The Word was God. And we believe it so glibly and so tritely. The Word was God. And it's true. But what does it do to us? What should it do to us? Well, if the Word is God, then that places upon us an obligation. If He is God, then we are morally bound to trust Him and to love Him and to obey Him and to worship Him. All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels' prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him Lord of all. Ye chosen seed of Israel's race, ye ransomed from the fall, hail Him who saves you by His grace and crown Him Lord of all. every kindred, every tribe on this terrestrial ball. To Him all majesty ascribe and crown Him Lord of all. Oh, that with yonder sacred throng we at His feet may fall. We'll join the everlasting song and crown Him Lord of all. There is coming a day when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But we don't need to wait for that day. Jesus Christ is Lord here and now. And He is among us in this room. He is with us. Oh, come let us adore Him. You've been listening to the Chapel Hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Our speaker was Dr. Kevin Bouter, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota. For a cassette or compact disc copy of today's message, send a check for $6 to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614. Be sure to mention the name of the speaker and today's date. The Chapel Hour has been sponsored by Bob Jones University.