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TEXT: John 1:1-5
TOPIC: THE CHRIST OF CHRISTMAS
Pastor Bobby Earls, First Baptist Church, Center Point, Alabama
December 25, 2005
Nobody can be so brutally honest as a child.
One child wrote a letter to his aunt that went like this:
Dear Aunt Sarah:
Thank you for the Christmas present that you sent to me.
The present you sent to me for Christmas was almost as good as the one I really wanted!
When God gave us his Christmas present in the form of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, without question He gave us a greater gift than we could have ever imagined or wanted.
In these few verses we are going to study, John gives us the theology of Christmas.
Unlike the other gospel writers, God was not concerned so much about the where and the when of Christmas as he was the who and the why of Christmas.
John assumed the reality of the manger, but he wanted us to understand the revelation of the
manger.
When you compare John to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you will discover quickly that John was not the broadest writer, but he was definitely the deepest.
You read nothing in John's gospel about the birth of Jesus.
You do not read about the manger, the
angels, the shepherds, nor Bethlehem.
John does not talk about the baptism of Jesus; the temptation of Jesus.
You read nothing about the garden of Gethsemane.
Not one of the thirty-nine parables that Jesus told are found in John's gospel.
Bible scholars tell us that in the original language John only used a total of 600 different words to write his gospel, and he wrote on a seventh grade reading level.
Yet, John, without question, was the most profound theologian of all of the gospel writers.
In these five short verses of sixty-five words, John gives us enough truth and enough theology about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ to fill up five books and 65,000 words.
Unlike Matthew and Luke who look at the birth of Jesus primarily through the eyes of man, John looks at the birthday of a king through the eyes of God.
It is my prayer that the Holy Spirit will help all of us to appreciate the greatest Christmas gift ever given: the Christ of Christmas.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2He was in the beginning with God.
3All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
4In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
! I.
Who Jesus Was, John 1:1
/"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."/ Now we know who John meant by the "Word" because in John 1:14 he tells us,
"And the Word became 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."
!! A. He Is Eternally God, John 1:1
John begins by telling us "In the beginning was the Word."
Now this phrase does not refer to a start, it refers to a state.
The Word did not have a temporal start; he existed in an eternal state.
The first three words are very recognizable because they also begin the first book of the Bible.
But there is a major difference.
In Genesis you look forward from these words to the creation of man.
But in John you look backward from these words to the existence of God.
The word "was" in the Greek language is in the imperfect tense which signifies an action of the past that continues into the present.
You could translate it this way: "In the beginning was the Word, is the Word, and always will be the Word."
Like God the Father, God the Son never had a beginning and will never have an ending.
The Lord Jesus eternally existed in a time when there was no time, and now lives in a place where there is no time.
Jesus had his birth in Bethlehem, but not his beginning.
In other words, there never was a time when Jesus was not God, and there never was a time when Jesus was not.
Think about this, Jesus is the only person ever born who, at the moment of his birth, was older than his mother, and as old as his father.
A few years ago, a couple of months before Christmas, the wife of a mail carrier had been killed in a car accident.
This mail carrier had been overcome with grief and was trying to work through his sorrow, and he had stayed late at his post office sorting through the mountain of mail that always comes through at Christmastime.
His job that day was to go through the mail that had been lost and to find out where it should be re-routed.
Well he opened the letter that was addressed to "Santa Claus" and he noticed that the address at the top of the letter was his own address.
Looking down at the bottom of the letter he saw that it was his only daughter's signature, and the letter read:
Dear Santa:
My Mommy died two months ago and since then my Daddy has been
crying himself to sleep every night.
He says only eternity will heal him.
Would you please send a little bit of eternity to my Dad this Christmas?1
Well God not only sent us a little bit of eternity, He sent us the very heart of heaven.
Not only is He eternally God, he is Equally God.
!
B.
He Is Equally God, John 1:1
The reason why Jesus is called the Word is because He was a perfect expression of God, being God Himself.
A word is the visible expression of an invisible thought.
You can see what I am thinking by what I am saying.
Jesus was the visible expression of the invisible God.
But this word was /"with God."/
The word with literally means "toward" or "facing" and could be translated "face to face."
The word was "face to face" with God.
Now this is a reference to the Trinity.
This reminds us that God is one God manifested in three persons.
When you study the Bible you find out that the Trinity is as old as the first verse in the Bible.
Genesis 1:1 tells us that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
The word for God is Elohim, which is plural, but it carries with it a singular verb.
In Genesis 1:26 when God decided to create man, He said, /"Let Us make man in Our image,"/ for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all involved in the creation.
Now there are those who immediately accuse us of worshipping three Gods.
They say, "1 + 1 + 1 = 3." Well, their math is right, but their theology is wrong.
Because 1 x 1 x 1 = 1.
We worship one God, but that one God has manifested Himself and expressed Himself through three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Even the universe in which we live expresses the triune God we worship.
This is a triune
universe.
It is made up of space, matter, and time.
These three things are also made up of threes.
Space is length, breadth, and height; matter is energy, motion, and substance;
time is past, present, and future.
Man himself is body, soul, and spirit.
Jesus is Eternally God.
He is Equally God, which means He is essentially God.
!
C.
He Is Essentially God, John 1:1
The latter part of verse one is the plainest statement in the Bible on the deity of Jesus, /"the Word was God."/
That is why Jesus could say, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."
That is why Jesus could say, "I and my Father are One."
He is the only son who could ever say that of his father.
Over and over and over Jesus proved that He was God in the flesh.
He was God in his power.
He could say to the wind and the waves "peace be still," and they would lay down like wipped puppies at his feet.
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