We're going to talk about the eternal word this morning. Now, when you read the first three verses of John chapter 1, if you had never been taught in the church life or had never been taught maybe in Sunday school, whatever the case may be, who the Word was, then you would wonder who the Word was or what this Word is. Later on in John's chapter 1, the Bible does tell us or describe to us who or what this Word is in John's chapter 1 and verse 14. And the Bible says, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Now we have some more insight on who or what this word is, and I believe that most of you in the room are very aware that the word being talked about in John chapter 1 is none other than the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, right? But we're kind of used to the other Gospels, how they explain and describe Jesus. Like in Matthew chapter number 1, it's very clear. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Mark chapter 1 and verse 1. the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Then in Luke, you got to read a little while to know where we're going because there's some background with John, I mean with John the Baptist's parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. And finally, you get down to verse 31 of Luke chapter 1, and the Bible says, and behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shalt call his name Jesus. And so Matthew and Mark and Luke are very clear that this gospel is about Jesus. And then we come to John. And don't forget, all four gospels were under were were were given by Holy Spirit inspiration. All four of them were. And so why does then John have to use by Holy Spirit inspiration the word word? I'm going to say the word, word, so many times this morning, it's going to confuse you and confuse me. Why the word, word? Joel just said word. Why the word, word? Well, what do words do? They help us to communicate. They help us to express ourselves. Before you could talk, all you could do was point and cry. Go with it. Right? I know that some of us still do that, don't we? Point and throw a fit. But you can talk now, and you can use your words. Our words are used as a wonderful tool of communication, and they're the thing that God has given us if we're able to speak. Not all are, but if we're able to speak, they're a way that we can express our emotions, to express our thoughts, to express our intentions, and on and on and on. We have this tool in our circle of Christianity called the wordless book. How many of you ever heard of the wordless book? Most of you have. The wordless book, we use it in Sunday school. But if I just showed you the different felt pieces here, the different colors, it'd be hard for you to really know where we're going with this. You need words even to describe the wordless book. The words are this. Well, black is a picture of our sin. For all have sin and come short of the glory of God. That's what the black one means. So black means what, saints? Sin. The red is a picture of the blood of Jesus Christ. And the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. It imputes the righteousness of God upon us. And so the red felt is what? Blood. Or Jesus, yeah. Sin? Savior. White is obviously surrendering. No, it's not. It's salvation. White is salvation. You were washed whiter than snow when you got saved. We need words to describe the wordless book. Do you see where we're going this morning? Gold. This is actually yellow, but gold. Streets of gold. Heaven. In heaven there is a street of gold. Do you believe that? That's where the saved people go. Amen. And then green is money. I mean, no, it's not. It's growing. Green is a mixture of growth. And how do we grow? By reading our Bible and by praying. Read your Bible and pray every day and you will grow, grow, grow. You know the Sunday School song, don't you? But we need the words to even understand the wordless book. Now, here's God in the heavens from, this is gonna blow your mind, we're gonna blow your mind a lot this morning with this thought. Here's God way back before the beginning. We know there's a beginning. But God, he's eternal, he's ever-existent. And so he's back before the beginning. And He has a way of communicating with people once the world is formed and when people begin to populate the earth. I want you to look at the two different in the beginnings that we have in the Scriptures. John chapter 1 and verse number 1 says this, In the beginning was the Word, and we know the Word was who? Jesus, right? Right? Okay, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Are we okay so far? In the beginning was the Word, We can say Jesus, we can even say God the Son, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We go back to Genesis chapter 1 and verse number 1, the very first verse in the Bible, and it says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. It's interesting, when God inspired Moses to write Genesis 1-1, in the beginning that Moses was writing so we could have for all perpetuity, preserve forever in heaven, His beginning was what's going to happen after the beginning. After the beginning, that's when God created the heaven and the earth. Once that beginning was done, then time entered into the equation. We have descriptive terms that say like, the evening and the morning were the first day. So now we're getting like these 24-hour days. We're getting units of time that you and I can relate to and you and I can adjust to. Are you following me so far? So when Moses was inspired to say, in the beginning, he was going to talk about everything that happened after that beginning when God spoke the world into existence. When John was inspired to say, in the beginning, here's where we're going to go, he's talking about everything that happened before the beginning. I have a hard time trying to, in my mind, consume that there's a before the beginning. But eternity cannot be measured on a linear scale of time. Eternity is absolutely limitless and boundless in its scope. And there is no time in eternity. There aren't days. There aren't nights. There aren't hours. It even says in the Bible that a day to the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. view and perspective of time is very different than ours is. We try to give it to you in a very, in a humorous way. A man was kind of, he read the Bible that to God, there was a thousand years were like a day, and a day like a thousand years, and he started to do some math in his mind, trying to figure some things out. And so he figured this out. I'm just going to give you a number. I didn't do the math, and I'm sure Vern can do it in his head right now, but we don't want to challenge him. But he came up and said, man, if a thousand years is like a day, then a minute is only like 100 years, 80 years, something like that. Right, Vern? He's doing the math. What is it? Okay, an hour will be 41 years. So, okay, an hour. You'll say an hour. That's not long enough. Okay. So, it's not going to make my illustration work at all. Thanks for blowing it, Vern. You know, I just, I want to praise God for eggheads, amen? Mathematicians, but anyway. So, a day is how, I mean, an hour is how long? Not 41 years, say it's 41 and two-thirds years in his head. Somebody say, oh man, amen. So anyway, so 41 and two thirds years. So this man decides he's gonna talk to God about something that he has figured out. He said, Lord, I've read the Bible. I have figured out that for you, a thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years. He said, so that means in your sense of time, that an hour is like 40 years. We'll just say 40 years. God said, yeah, that's right. He said, so if I use the same equation when it comes to finances, to you, a million dollars is like a dollar for us. I said, yeah, that's right. He says, for me, time is no issue. And for me, I have inexhaustible resources. And so the man says, okay, Lord, could you give me a dollar? And God said, give me an hour. All right. Now we're on the right page, aren't we? Okay. I'm glad you brought your imagination and sense of humor. You're going to need it this morning. Amen. In the beginning, God created in the heaven and the earth. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And so after the beginning, the earth was formed, and then eventually people were placed upon the earth, two specific people that we know as Adam and Eve, and the first time God speaks audibly to any human form is going to be in Genesis chapter 1 and verse number 28. And God blessed them, being Adam and Eve, and God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." So do you have this picture in your mind of two people on this giant expanse that we call the earth, and they hear the voice of heaven talk to them audibly, and the voice of heaven, the voice of God says this, I need you two to do this one thing. I need you to be fruitful and to multiply so that the earth can be replenished if I put this way the earth can be filled with other human beings other Living souls. That's the first time we have any audible communication between God and mankind still okay All right, later on in Genesis, God uses a very familiar phrase that you're going to see over and over in the Old Testament dispensations. It says, After these things, the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. This is the first time we see this phrase, the word of the Lord came. And we're going to see it 245 times in the Old Testament. The various prophets, even Moses himself is going to receive some kind of tap on the shoulder, some kind of audible voice from God saying, the word of the Lord came. And the whole idea was this, is that God was giving His message and His word to His people, His prophets, to get it out to all of mankind. The ones that were a product of being fruitful and multiplying up until the time of the flood, and then even after the flood. He said, I'm going to speak to you, and when I speak to you, I want you to speak to all of the people in your sphere of influence, I want you to speak my word to them. And so as he was doing this, he was giving them divine revelation. We have the divine revelation forever preserved in God's word. We have the divine revelation forever preserved in God's word. And so he says, I want you to take my word and tell the people what my plan is, what my expectations are, and to reveal to the people what I, the great God of heaven, am like. Follow me. All right. So that went on. for a whole lot of decades of God giving His Word to prophets. And one of the things that God expected of the nation of Israel was that the nation of Israel would be a light to carry the true message of God to the ends of the earth so that the world population could be educated and even evangelized as to what God is like, who God is, and what His plan might be. Follow me so far. Guess what? Israel didn't do so well in that task. They did horribly. Matter of fact, they did so poorly that God turned out the light and turned off the volume for 400 years. After the prophet Malachi was the last prophet in the Old Testament to get any new revelation from God, we go through this 400 years of silence, even some call it the 400 years of darkness between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Now, I'm telling you this right now, God's not wondering how he can communicate himself any more clearly to people. But God has a plan how he's going to communicate himself ever more clearly to people, how he can express himself. He's tried prophets. He's tried having the word preserved. He's tried these things and now we're going to go into a new trying a new dispensation a new way of looking at things and God is going to send his only begotten Son who has existed from before the beginning To be born in Bethlehem And he's going to call his name Jesus. And Jesus is going to save the people from their sins. He'll also be called Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God with us. And so that's how he's going to be introduced by Matthew and by Mark and by Luke under Holy Spirit inspiration. And God gets the attention of John and says, John, here's what I want you to write. Write down this. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I want them to know that when they are looking at Jesus, they are looking at the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth, and the perfect expression of who I am, what I'm like, what I can do, and also the perfect expression of my glory. And so all those things are going to come true and to come to pass in the person of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Here's what it says in Hebrews chapter 1, along the same parallel line of thought. God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets. Can I just say this? By His Word. hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Word." Same, same. Whether it's a prophet speaking the Word, or it's the visible manifestation of the Word, it's the same idea, it's the same concept that Jesus is the perfect manifestation of God's Word so we could behold Him full of grace and truth. Amen. Now you're not with me, it's okay. "...hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds," watch now, "...who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person." The express image of His person. God says this, I want to express myself to mankind. So He puts this call upon a prophet like Jeremiah. We're preaching from Jeremiah right now on Sunday nights. I'm going to put my call on Jeremiah and I'm going to give Jeremiah my words. I want Jeremiah to give my expression of myself and my plan and my goodness and my goal to people. You're killing me with your nodding and your yawning right now. You're killing me. Amen? I'm going to give my expression, and it's going to come from my inspired Word. Now, here we are in the New Testament, and I have a different expression that I want you to see, a different expression I want to lay on you, that I want to expose you to. And this expression is my only begotten Son, and by the way, I call Him the Word too. So now we've got a visible expression, Jesus, backed up with the literal inspired expression, the word of God. And they all line up perfectly in beautiful biblical harmony. It is glory. It's wonderful because you wouldn't really know what God was like if you didn't really know Jesus. And Jesus came and He was humble. He humbled Himself. He was condescending when He took on the form of human flesh. Philippians 2, verses 5-8, Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. Why would it say that He thought it not robbery to be equal with God? Because He was God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You say, oh, is there more than one God? If you're going to think about it that way, there's God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. One God, three distinct personalities. They call it the triune being. We are triune beings also. We have a body. We interact with the physical world. We have a soul, which is our emotions and our personality is in our soul. And then we have our spirit, how we communicate with spiritual things. So we have body, soul, and spirit. So we are like God because we are created in His image where He is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Alright, same page so far? No? Oh, I thought I heard a no out there. I'll go back and do the thing over again. I was going to keep you short, but you're making me keep you long. Amen. But who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God because he was God and still is God and still is God. but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That's what Jesus did. That's his life summed up in just three or four verses in the scriptures that he took on the robe of human flesh and he went all the way to the cross of Calvary, which covered a span of about 33 and a half years. not very long at all in earthly terms, but knowing this, that He lives forever. He lived in eternity past as God the Son, and He lives today as the Lamb of God who gave Himself for our sins. Somebody say, Amen. Yes, now we're getting somewhere. All right. I know this is hard stuff right here. I'm trying to make it as simple as I possibly can. I've read all kinds of different ideas of why God used John to pid the word, word. Say it. You're not going to say it now? All right. Okay. Word. All right. He said word again. Okay. So anyway, so why did he pen that? Well, because God wants us, God wants to express himself with us. He's given the perfect expression of himself in the completed canon of scripture, the completed revelation of him. And now he's given us something we can look at and behold with our eyes. Even John said in first John, We have handled the word of life with our hands. We've actually touched him, and we put our hands upon him. And so not only do we have this narrative, we also have the physical manifestation, and now we're coming to the point where we are no longer with any sort of excuse. No longer. with any sort of excuse, because God says, I've revealed Myself to you in My Word, I've revealed Myself to you in My Son, and now I want you to take heed to His words while He is on the earth, And then His words, His word even, after He ascends into the heavenlies. While He was on the earth, in John chapter 2, there's this marriage feast at Cana. That's the place where the miracle of turning the water into wine took place. And so, in John chapter 2, I think it's verse number... I've got to look over here and get the right verse. Verse number five said, well, let me go to verse number three. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, they had no wine. Verse four, Jesus saith unto her, woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. And then verse number five says this, his mother saith unto the servants, whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. Whatever Jesus says to do, the mother of Jesus, the earthly mother of Jesus said, I want you to do it. I want you to perform what He says with obedience and without question, without trying to reason these things and to put them into practice in your own lives. And I want to say that while Jesus walked the earth, some people did the things that He commanded them to do, and other people chose to reject and go their own way concerning the things that Christ said to do, right? How about after he ascended up into the heavens and we had the completed canon of Scripture, the 66 books complete, not looking for any extra biblical revelation. Here's what James wrote in chapter 1, again under inspiration of the Spirit. But be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, He being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." Here's the thing. when God sent His only begotten Son into the earth and He wore the robe of human flesh for thirty-three and a half years and said all of these wonderful heavenly truths starting with the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes and all the things that are contained therein and then throughout His life giving the discourse on the Mount of Olives and the other Wonderful truths that he said it wasn't enough that Jesus just said them but that Jesus Followers would also say this. Yes, you said them and now I'm finding it my joy to do them Because God sent you He gave it to us. He wants us to know these things. He doesn't want us to be confused about it. He doesn't want us to contemplate our navels every day and wonder why we're here. He wants us simply to read the Word, to know the Word, and to do the Word. And just as a reminder, it doesn't matter if you are saved, if you are lost, if you are an atheistic God-denier, it does not matter because Jesus is the Word, you have life this morning. All these things, all things were made by Him. and without Him was not anything made that was made." Do you have any biblical reference to the fact that Jesus Christ helped or assisted or was there in the creation? Well, I can go back again to Genesis 1 in verse 26 where God says, And God said, Let Us make man in Our image. Who is He talking to? He's talking to Himself. as in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. They all had a hand in the creation of the world and the formation of mankind. And mankind is the only part of God's creation that He physically put His hands upon and breathed into them the breath of God, and they became a living soul. And somebody said, Amen. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." For the believer, we already know this, that Jesus Christ is the central figure of our faith. We call it Christianity for a reason, right? The Christian faith, things of that nature. We know that Christ in you, the hope of glory, all those different things. He's the central figure of our faith. But Jesus Christ, the Word, is the central figure of all creation. And so, anybody who's breathing air today is doing so because Jesus Christ, as the Word, has allowed it and made it to happen for that individual. Every person, whether they believe in God or not, matters not. Because Jesus Christ was there at the beginning of the creation. He had a hand in the creation. And even today, He ensures that the creation stays together by the purity of His person and by the manifest, omnipotent power that He is, Jesus the Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Colossians chapter 1 and verse 17 says this, And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. By Him. You say, well what if I don't believe in Him? It doesn't matter. By Him all things consist. But I don't believe in Him. But you're breathing. Do you think it happened by accident? Do you think it happened by random chance? Do you think just all this chaos one day decided to line up like good soldiers and to get in order and to produce this beautiful world? Is that what you believe? Or do you believe this? That it was done by a Creator God who, blow your mind, who simply spoke the worlds into existence and is keeping it in order and decency and perfection until the day that He decides that we're going to need a new heaven and a new earth. And when He decides there's going to be a new heaven and the new earth, I'm pretty convinced, I think you are too, He will take care of it. A lot of you know I have a hobby of photography. I took this picture last summer at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. That's a picture of what they call the galaxy core. We describe it as the Milky Way. Here's the thing that I want to bring up. I have an app on my phone. that tells me exactly when I can see the galaxy core, at what time of the night it will be visible if you're in a dark enough place. The North Rim is a very dark place to go. It's a beautiful spot to go. You should go there and enjoy the unbusy side of the Grand Canyon. Really, you really should. But Kathy and I went up. We knew that the Milky Way or the core of the galaxy would be rising at about, I think it was 9.27 p.m., which was three minutes before my bedtime. So I had to stay up a little bit later that night, set up a camera and a tripod, and to start to get some light measurements. This is a 15-second exposure. So it's really gathering all the light that camera can see in 15 seconds time. But again, it's gonna be in the same place or in a predictable place. No, in a perfectly 100% predictable place every time, every day without fail. Not because it was random, but because it was created by the omnipotent God of the universe and the omnipotent God of the universe cared enough about your individual soul to send his only begotten son as his express image. He's my word, he says. I want you to know Him, and I want you to be acquainted with Him, and I want you to no longer be afraid to die, because Jesus Christ will save your soul. And if He saves your soul, you're promised, you're promised a home on the streets of gold in heaven. Promise those things. If anybody comes to Jesus, He will in no wise cast them out. But we have to get a hold of this concept that Jesus Christ is the perfect, inspired, infallible, express image of God the Father and God the Son, the eternal word. And everybody said.