Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. If you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from John chapter
one, the gospel of John chapter one. And the title of the message
is Christ, the eternal word, Christ, the eternal word. And
of course, if you're familiar with the Bible, most people are
familiar, really familiar with these first verses. of the Gospel
of John where it says in verse one, in the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And then
in verse two it says the same was in the beginning with God. And then verse three, all things
were made by Him. This person who John, by inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, is describing as the Word who was in the beginning
and who was God, all things were made by Him, the Creator. And without Him was not anything
made that was made. Now, of course, this is speaking
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity,
the eternal Son of God. And that's, He's the eternal
Word. He's identified here as the Word. And so I want to talk
a little bit about this. This is the glory of the person
of Christ. And we'll go through several
verses here in the book of John. But you know how the Bible is
just an amazing book. And so many people misunderstand
it and abuse it. For example, we know there are
four gospels. Now when I say gospels, I'm not
talking about the message of the gospel, the good news of
how God saves sinners by His grace through Christ, because
that is the Bible. That's what the message of the
Bible from Genesis to Revelation is, the gospel. And that's what
Paul said in Romans 1, 16 and 17 when he said, the gospel is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. to
the Jew first, the Greek, or the Gentile also, for therein
is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is
written, the just or the justified shall live by faith. So that
is the gospel of God's grace. God saves sinners by his grace,
his sovereign grace, His sovereign will in mercy, according to His
strict law and justice, all conditioned on the Lord Jesus Christ, who
is the eternal word here. And that's why John starts it
out here. But there are four, in literary terms, there are
four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And these show
us some things about the life of Christ in his earthly ministry,
mainly concerning his birth, and then mainly concerning his
earthly ministry from his baptism, which was the beginning of his
public ministry, all the way up to the cross and the resurrection
and his ascension, And that's what these four gospels, these
literary gospels, do. And they give us the truth from
various points of view. Matthew is a very Jewish gospel.
There's more Old Testament quotations out of Matthew because it's mainly
written towards the Jews. Now, I can read it, you can read
it, Gentiles can read it. You understand what I'm saying.
But it's a very Jewish gospel and it emphasizes Christ the
King, the King of Kings, the Messiah King, the Lord. King
of the Jews. And then Mark is a very Gentile
gospel. Some people call it the Roman
gospel because it was written like addressing the Roman world. And it's a very short, simple,
to the point, gospel, and one of the main words in the book
of Mark is the word immediate. It doesn't give a lot of background,
just simply states the truth of his life. And then you have
the book of Luke, which is also a very Gentile gospel, but in
the book of Luke, that aspect of Christ as the son of man,
his humanness is emphasized. God manifest in the flesh without
sin. Now that doesn't mean that Luke
doesn't speak of his deity, Christ's deity. He does. But there's an
emphasis on Christ the Son of Man. And then in John, as we
come here, the emphasis is on his deity. And again, it's not
that John doesn't mention the humanity of Christ. He does,
often. Because you can't preach the
gospel without relating and communicating the truths of the glory of his
person, which is God manifest in the flesh, God-man. God, very
God of very God, as one old writer said. The eternal word here,
in the beginning was the word. What do I mean in the beginning?
Well, whenever God began this whole thing, of creation, and
even before that. So Christ in His deity had no
beginning. And this is important. I know
it's a mind-boggling truth, but it shows you the awesomeness
of the Savior. And a lot of people misunderstand
this. There are whole denominations who call themselves Christian
who deny the deity of Christ. And they're false Christians,
false Christianity. You cannot believe the gospel
of salvation by God's grace and truly biblically call yourself
a Christian if you deny either the deity or the sinless humanity
of Christ. Because that's the kind of person
that it took to save us from our sins. He had to be God manifest
in the flesh. Years ago, a friend of mine,
a brother in Christ, was talking to a co-worker of his, and they
got to talking about things around relating to Christmas, you know,
and how the Son of God was born in human flesh. You know, the
Bible says, unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given. That's back in Isaiah chapter
nine and verse six. And what it says there is the
child, that speaks of the humanity of Christ. It was born. His humanity
had a beginning because He was conceived in the womb of the
Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. But the Son was not born. The Son was given. The Son always
was. As the book of Revelation said,
He's the Alpha and the Omega. No beginning, no end. He's eternal. And that speaks of His deity.
But this dear brother of mine asked his co-worker, who claimed
to be a Christian, he said, do you believe Christ is God? And
the man hesitated. And he said something like this,
he said, well, he's the son of God. Well, that's true, he's
the son of God, but the man was saying it as if that was some
kind of a lesser God. And the son of God, you see,
we have the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the
Holy Spirit, And that's not three gods. You know, the Muslims accuse
us of believing in three gods. We don't believe in three gods.
We believe in one God. Our God is one God. But He reveals Himself in three
distinct persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And that's for the salvation of His people. But here's the
thing about it. Each person of the Godhead, The
Father, the Son, and the Spirit are co-equal in every attribute
of deity. There's not God the Father, who
is the biggest God, and then God the Son, who is a lesser
God, and then God the Spirit, who's even lesser than him. No,
they're co-equal. He's the express image of the
Father, the scripture says. That means he's equal. Over in
Philippians chapter two it says, he thought it not robbery to
be equal with God. Now what that means is this,
if you or I claim to be God, obviously, that would be robbery. What do you mean robbery? It
would be like stealing from the glory of God, trying to, we wouldn't,
it wouldn't be successful, but trying to steal God's glory.
But when Christ claimed to be God, when he called himself the
I am, And you see that in the book of John all the way through.
He said, I am. He told the Pharisees, if you
don't believe that I am, you'll die in your sins. And I know
the King James Version adds the word he, I am he, but in the
literal Greek original, it was, if you do not believe that I
am, I am whom I am. Remember, God told that to Moses. Whom should I say is sending
me into Egypt to bring the children of Israel? I said, I am that
I am. That's God's eternality. And the Son of God is co-equal
with the Father. Now, well then why is he called
the Son of God often, which he is, but he's also called God. And why is the Spirit, you know,
all of that? Well, in office, now in the glory
of their persons, co-equal. in deity, but in their offices
for the purposes of the salvation of God's elect people. The Father
represents the authority, the sovereignty of the Godhead. The Son submitted Himself to
the Father for the salvation of His people. The Father gave
Him a people And He agreed to be their surety, their substitute,
their redeemer, their keeper, their Lord, their governor, all
of that. And He submitted Himself to the
Father. That's why you'll see passages
in the Word of God, especially in the book of John, where He
said, I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that
sent me. Now the Father's will and the Son's will and the Spirit's
will are the same. But the Son, God manifest in
the flesh, the word here, the eternal word, submitted himself
to the will of the Father for the purposes of saving his people
from their sins. And he said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. And so Christ, in doing the work
of a surety, a substitute, a redeemer, and his death on the cross, He
brought forth what is called the very righteousness of God. Not the righteousness of a lesser
God, but the very righteousness of God. And that's the entire
merit of His whole work of redemption on behalf of His people to put
away our sins on the just ground of satisfaction, propitiation. And that's the righteousness
that God the Father has imputed, charged, accounted to His people
for their salvation. And so understand that. Don't
hesitate. Somebody says, do you believe
Christ is God? Yes. Yes, He's God, but He's also
man. You remember in Matthew chapter
one and verse 21 when the angel Gabriel was communicating with
Joseph to not put Mary away because she was with child. He said,
she's having a child by the Holy Spirit. And he says, his name
shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their
sins. Well, the question would arise,
Is He capable of doing that work? Saving His people from their
sins. Because that's what the name Jesus means. It actually
is the Greek, and we're talking about transliteration here. Taking
the languages and transliterating them into words that we use in
our English language. So Jesus would be like Joshua
or Yeshua, which means God saves, or God our Savior. And so is
he capable? Well, Matthew 1.23 says this,
his name shall be called Immanuel, which being interpreted is God
with us. So Christ, Jesus Christ is God,
and here he's the eternal word. And this word word, it's the
Greek word logos, or logos, however you want to pronounce it. It's
the word we get our word logic from. Christ is the Word of God. He's the Logos. He's the logic
of God. What does that mean? Well, you
know what logic is. It means it makes sense. Something makes
sense. It's not out of kilter. It's
the only way it could be. This is logical. And what it's
showing us is that in the person of Jesus Christ, as the living
Word, the eternal Word, who is, and later on we'll see in verse
14, well let's read verse 14, listen to this. And the word
was made flesh and dwelt among us. So the word was made flesh,
that's God man. So in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and based upon the work that he alone accomplished
as the representative of his people, as the high priest of
his people, As the surety, what does a surety do? A surety takes
responsibility to pay the debt of somebody else. Well, as the
surety of the covenant of grace before the world ever began,
God the Father appointed him to be the surety of his people,
his elect, his church, his sheep. And the Lord Jesus Christ, even
before he became incarnate, made flesh in time, he agreed to take
that debt, to be the surety of the people of God. And he agreed
to do what was necessary to obtain their complete salvation, which
was to come and become incarnate, made flesh, to obey the law perfectly,
to go to the cross and die for the sins of his people, to satisfy
God's justice. You see, the wages of sin is
death. God forgives sin. God, he has mercy, but not at
the expense of his justice. Christ is the one who obtained
it. It was all conditioned on him. The sins of God's people
were imputed, charged to him. He was made sin. That's what
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5.21. And He came and He died on that
cross. He suffered, bled, and died. And that suffering, the bleeding
and dying, is to be attributed only to His sinless humanity,
but it was an act of His entire person, and it's amazing. But
in that one act, the Bible says in Hebrews 10, 14, by one offering,
He, Christ, the God-man, Jesus, Emmanuel, By one offering, he
hath perfected, completed, finished, forever, them that are sanctified. And that's an amazing thing.
Those whom God set apart in divine sovereign electing grace and
gave to Christ. By His one offering, He completed
the work. He satisfied justice. He made an end of sin, and He
finished the transgression, and He brought in everlasting righteousness
whereby God is just to justify sinners like me and like you.
And so he did all that. He brought in that perfect righteousness,
the righteousness of God. And the proof that he finished
the work is that in his death, he was raised from the dead.
Raised from the dead. You see, sin demands death. Well,
in his death, he finished it. He put it away. He purged it
and redeemed his people and established righteousness. And righteousness
demands life. Romans 5.21 tells us that, as
sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. And
so, that's the only logic of God. The only logical thing. This makes sense in God's mind.
Now, by nature, it doesn't make any sense to us. By nature, we
don't know that. All we know is that if God's
gonna save me, I gotta do something to earn it. That's what we think
by nature. And my friend, that's so wrong.
Salvation's not by works. It's not conditioned on us. Salvation
is by the work of Christ, conditioned on Him. And that's the only logical
thing because you see, in order for God to accept us, we must
somehow be made perfect. complete without any flaw. And
we're sinners. So how can God look at a sinner
like me and accept me and bless me, save me, fellowship with
me? It's only through the righteousness,
the perfect righteousness of Christ accomplished on my behalf
and imputed, charged, accounted to me. That's the only way God
can accept a sinner. The Bible says that in Ephesians
chapter one, that we're accepted in the beloved. And the beloved
there is Christ. Remember when the father in his
baptism said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.
You see, that's why the Bible tells us that without Christ,
it's all sin. And that's the word that is communicated
to us. Christ, the eternal word, Christ,
the living word, Christ, the word made flesh, the incarnate
word, and he is the subject of the written word, and he ought
to be the subject of the preached word. We see that. So go and
look back at John one again, verse one, in the beginning was
the word, And some translations say that in the beginning and
ever has been. Now again, this is speaking of
Christ, the eternal word. He is eternal. He had no beginning
and no end. You know, when they talk about
Christ's birthday, you know, well, again, his humanity had
a beginning. And we don't know what day that
was. I'm sure it wasn't December 25th. We don't know, but there
was a day. that Christ was born, the child
was born, his humanity, sinless humanity, and he united himself,
his deity, with his sinless humanity. And we don't know the day that
that happened, but it was a time, there was the fullness of time.
Galatians 4.4 says, in the fullness of the time, God sent forth his
son, a son given, made of a woman, a child born, made under the
law, all salvation conditioned on his law keeping, his justice
satisfaction, just satisfaction, that made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law. That's Galatians four and verse
four. Well, in beginning was the word and the word was with
God, that's speaking of the office of his sonship. Okay, that the
Trinity, and again, I know this is mind boggling. But you know,
when we come to passages of the scripture that we cannot wrap
our minds around, or that seem unfair to us, I tell people all
the time when they read Romans nine, they talk about God loving
Jacob and hating Esau, neither of which deserve God's love.
Both deserve God's hatred as we all do. But God chose to love
Jacob and hate Esau. And somebody says, well, that's
just not fair. Well, my friend, what the Bible tells us to do.
Now, you say, well, it's not, it's unfair, but that's what
God said. That's what he said in Romans nine and other places.
God chose a people to save and he didn't choose everybody. And
people say, well, that's unfair. Well, you know what the Bible
tells you to do when you come to passages like, and incidentally,
if you're reading Romans nine, Paul anticipates those objections. Read it again, read it over and
over again and pray that the Lord will reveal himself to you.
But what the Bible tells us to do in places like that where
we read something that maybe seem unfair or unjust to us,
or something that just so mind boggling we cannot wrap our minds
around it, it says it, it says, trust in the Lord and lean not
unto your own understanding. What does God say? That's the
issue. It's not how I can understand
it. It's not how it seems unfair
or even fair to me. Trust in the Lord and lean not
to your own understanding. So the word was the, in beginning
was the word, the word was with God, the word was God and always
has been. That's what he's saying. He didn't,
when Christ came into the world, he didn't stop being God. Now,
it says down here that His glory was hidden for a while. When
you look, if you were alive when the Lord Jesus Christ was made
flesh and you saw Him as a child and saw Him as a teenager, and
we don't have much in the scriptural revelation of His youth, have
a little bit. And if you saw him at his baptism
and in his earthly walk, there's nothing about his person, his
humanity, his visage that would immediately tip you off and say,
oh, that's God walking in the flesh. In fact, the book of Isaiah
53 tells us just the opposite. If you're familiar with Isaiah
53, which is a prophecy of Christ, and listen to this. Isaiah 53
in verse one. Now this is speaking of the word
of God, the eternal word, Jesus Christ. And it says in verse
one, who hath believed our report, or our doctrine, and to whom
is the arm of the Lord revealed, the power of God, for he shall
grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a
dry ground, he hath no form nor comeliness, no outside beauty,
and when we shall see him, there's no beauty that we should desire
him. He's despised and rejected of
men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were
our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed
him not. Sometimes I see these pictures
that people have painted and they put a figure in there with
a robe and long hair and a beard and they say this is Jesus. Well,
it's not Jesus. Nobody knows what he looked like.
There were no photographs back then. All we know of the person
of Christ is what the Bible describes in him in doctrine. And that's
one of the things I always tell people. I said, if you want to
do a real self-examination, there's really only two things that you
need to know. Number one, if you claim to be a Christian,
that is, am I trusting the true Christ of the Bible as he's identified
and distinguished in this word? according to the doctrine of
Christ, who he is. And then at the same time, what
did he accomplish on Calvary's cross? But these pictures, they're
not Jesus. They're just somebody's idea
of who Jesus is. He's the eternal word. And we're
not to make replicas of him. In these movies, you know, people
say they'll have actors come up and they'll look at him, they
go off. That's not the way it was. Not the way it was at all. By nature, we esteemed him not.
By nature, there'd be nothing about Him, but He revealed Himself
to some of His people as the Eternal Word and the Savior. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. 317-07. Contact us by
phone at 229-432-6969 or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.