I'll write a few and open your
Bibles to the Gospel of John, the very first chapter. John chapter 1. Wednesday night in our study I referred to this
scripture and was kind of caught up as I spoke about it and I
said to the people I just might preach on that on Sunday and
sure enough that's what I intend to do. It is a remarkable statement
concerning our Lord Jesus Christ found here beginning in verse 4 it says, in him was
life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the
darkness but the darkness has not understood it. Now we need
life. Of all the things that a natural
man needs, he needs this life that is being spoken of here,
when it says, in Him, in Christ Jesus, is life. We need life because we're dead. Dead with regard to this kind
of life. Now, we have a sort of life, a natural life, We have
a consciousness. We have an intellect. We have
a will. We have all these things. But
we are still considered to be or declared to be dead in trespasses
and sins. We need life because in Adam
we died. If Adam is a fiction, And there
are many in broad Christianity that's saying, oh, he's just
a myth. I understand the world thinking
that. But if Adam is a fiction, so is our sin. Because it says
that death came into the world through one man because sin came
into the world through one man and death came by that. And therefore
we all died because in Adam we all sinned. You see the opening chapters
of Genesis are not to be cast aside as though it's all right
to believe them or not. because they lay the foundation
for the very gospel we believe. It's written, in Adam all die,
in Christ shall all be made alive. Well, if Adam isn't real, then
neither is Christ. If there is not a single man,
if the human race does not all devolve eventually down to a
single man who stood as representative of the entire race before God,
then nothing else in this Bible means a thing. And so we died in Adam. And the
scriptures make it very clear that this is not a metaphorical
death, it's a real death. When the Lord gave the command
to Adam in the Garden of Eden, it says, in the day you eat of
it, you will die. Actually, it says dying, you
will die. Now, did Adam, did his body, fall down dead the
moment he ate of that fruit? No. He lived, I think it's 930
years. Now that's a long life, isn't
it? But, the Lord said in the day
that you eat it, you will die. And he did. He died spiritually
that day. And so did Eve. And because they
died, all the rest of us, as we come into this world with
this natural life, we are dead in regard to spiritual life. But not only do the scriptures
teach this, our own experience teaches us this if we're honest. We prove that we are dead by
the very fact that we do not naturally Respond to the stimulus
of this life. You know, if someone looks like
they might be dead and they're not sure, one thing you can do
is you poke them. Try to, you know, give them some
stimulus. Shout at them. Shake them. something
that a living person would respond to. And if they don't respond, then we say they must be gone. And the stimulus of this life
that's being spoken of in John chapter 1 is the truth of God
revealed in Christ Jesus. It's the gospel. Now the gospel
is preached. And when I say the gospel, I
don't mean everything that everybody calls the gospel. I mean the
gospel found in this scripture. And it's preached and people
do not respond to it. And seeing that they do not respond
to it, we must assume they don't have the kind of life that would
respond to this stimulus of spiritual life. Now, that doesn't mean we're
going to quit preaching. You know, we preach the gospel
and people don't respond. Well, we're not going to say,
OK, I guess everybody's dead and there's no use preaching.
No. Here's the mystery of the gospel, one of the mysteries
of the gospel, that the very word that people cannot hear
because they're dead in trespasses and sins is the very word that
God uses to make them alive so they can hear. And so we just
keep telling them and keep telling them. And when God is pleased
to add life to the word that we preach, life invades their
hearts and they suddenly understand what's being said in a way they
never did before. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
meant by the new birth. They are given a life they did
not have. And it's that life that responds
to the gospel. So we are dead and we prove it
by the fact that we don't respond to the gospel until such time
as new life is given to us. We need new life from another
source because we can't produce the life that we need and no
one else can produce it for us. Now our parents, they could produce
the life that we have naturally. When a child is born into this
world, the life they have, they got it from their parents, who
got it from their parents, and so forth. You all understand
that. That's a pretty easy thing. But the life that we need, nobody
can give us. We can't get it for ourselves,
and no one else can give it to us. Now, scientists may have convinced
themselves that life sprang from non-life. I mean, that's the
general theory of how things got to be as they are. And they
may want to just accept that startling mystery that that which
was not alive somehow organized itself into life. But nobody's
ever witnessed that happening. You can't make life out of non-life. And what is true in the physical
realm is equally, maybe even more true in the spiritual realm.
That which is non-living cannot become living of its own accord,
of its own will. Nor can other non-living things
produce life. Therefore, we need someone to
give us life. Moreover, we don't need a better
version of the life we already have. Now, there's a lot of Christian
religion that when you look into their message, that's essentially
what they're offering. And I remember being told. you know, as a young person in
church and all the way through my college career, because I
was going to a college associated with the same kind of religion,
they would refer to that scripture where the Lord said, I have come
that they might have life and have it more abundantly. And
you'd have one of these guys that's just always acting like
he's so full of happiness he's about to explode. And he'd say,
wouldn't you love that abundant life that's in Christ? And their
idea of abundant life was happy life. Their idea of abundant
life was an emotionally prosperous life. In other words, their idea
of abundant life was really what they had naturally. Now we know
that naturally speaking there are people more prone to being
upbeat and positive and those of us more prone to being pessimistic
and depressed and that kind of thing. That's just natural stuff.
That has nothing to do with the life spoken of here. And there
are people whose lives seem to be full of success of one form
or another. And that is very appealing and
there's nothing wrong with success. That's not what's being spoken
of when our Lord says that they might have life and have it more
abundantly. No, we need a life that we did
not have when we were born into this world and we need it to
the full. That's why our Lord said, I've
come that they might have life. And that necessarily implies
they didn't have life until he came. And he says that they might
have it to the full. Why? Because that life, in less
than full measure, just won't do. The life we need is called spiritual
life. Natural life, the kind we got
from our parents, doesn't enable us to know God. Now, it can enable us to know
about God. It can enable us to know there
is a God. Common sense will tell you there's
a God. But the natural life that we
have cannot really give us an understanding of that God. And
most importantly, it cannot enable us to know God as one person
knows another person. We know one another. I don't
just know that you exist. And I don't simply know some
facts about you. And you, same with regard to
me. know each other. Why? Well first of all we know
each other because we've had contact with each other. We know
each other because despite whatever cultural differences there may
be we're all human beings. And therefore we have a commonness
that enables us to know one another. Now when God made man He said
let us make man in our image. What did He mean by that? It
seems to me almost everybody thinks that it has to do with
that man has a moral sense. Well, that'd be a little bit
hard to prove right now, but, but he was born with a sense of right
and wrong. Here's something that science is showing. Even other
animals have moral codes that they follow. So that's not it, because they
don't bear the image of God. Others say, well, God's a creator,
so he made a creature that could create. Well, I appreciate the
creative abilities that humans have. I'm amazed at the artistic
talents that some people have. I've told you before, at one
time I thought I might make a career out of music, and then I heard
what professional musicians sound like, and the things they're
able to do, and I said, wow, between me, who is a reasonably
good amateur, and them, people who can make a living at it,
is thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of practice,
and also a natural gift for it. And I didn't have the gift, and
didn't have the ambition to put that many hours into it, so I
gave up on that idea. Artists, and I have no talent
when it comes to graphic arts. It amazes me. I watch some of
these things on YouTube. These guys, they're painting
and stuff like that, and I'm thinking, boy, how do you do
that? It amazes me when I saw one guy a few weeks ago, and
he painted, and I go, what's that, what's that, what's that?
And it all seemed really weird, and then he gets the end, and
he flips it over, and as soon as he flips it over, you see
what he was painting. It was somebody's face. You couldn't
tell while it was upside down. And I'm amazed by those creative
abilities. But those creative abilities
are practiced by people that don't know God. So that can't
be the image of God. There's all kinds of things that
people attribute. I think it's very, very simple. Our Lord Jesus
said to that woman at the well, God is spirit and they who worship
him must worship him in spirit and truth. And therefore, in order to know
God, to worship him, to believe him, to love him, to have a personal
relationship with him, you must have the same kind of nature
that he has. Now you say, what is spirit?
I don't know. I know what it does, but I don't
know what it is. But I know that the scriptures
say there are spiritual beings and there are animal beings.
And then there are plant beings. There's all different kinds of
beings. But so far as I can tell from
the scriptures, the only being in the entire universe who has
both an animal nature and a spiritual nature is a human being. But that was only true when God
created Adam. Because once Adam sinned, that
spiritual nature died. Angels are just spirits. Our dogs, as much as we might
like them, they're just animals. But as God made Adam and Eve,
they were a combination of animal life and spiritual life. And
on the day that Adam sinned spiritually, He died, and every one of us
have been born spiritually dead since then. Therefore, we need
this spiritual life. We need the image of God restored
in us if we are ever to know God. Well, where is this life
to be found? Obviously, we need it. We can't
produce it. No one else on earth can produce
it for us. Where can we get it? It says, in him was life. Everything that it means to be
a living human being was in Christ. Every kind of life that could be called human life,
as God created it, is in Christ. Spiritual life is in him. When
he came into the world, he came in not only as a living spirit,
but as a life-giving spirit, says the scriptures. The Lord
Jesus said that he has power within himself to give life. Now, I can't do that. Nobody else in all creation can
do that. Only Christ has life within him,
spiritual life, which he has the capacity to give to whomever
he will. In him was life. Who is this
him? Well, it tells us this in verse
one, in the beginning was the word, it calls him the word,
and what does the word mean? Well, the Greek word, translated
word, is the word logos, and it actually had very broad meaning
in the Greek mind, because it meant more than simply a word,
such as you might write down, but it meant just about everything
that has to do with rational thought and knowledge. It's actually found in our language
a lot. Our word logical comes from it. And all those courses you take
in college like archaeology and thisology and thatology, well
the L-O-G-Y comes from this word. And so when it says that Jesus
is the Word. It means that Jesus is the full,
complete revelation of God in truth. That's what He's talking
about. Now, we believe a doctrine called the Trinity. I say we
believe it, we don't even understand what it means once we've said
it. God is a being beyond our ability to grasp, and we try
to define Him, but every time we do, we stumble all over ourselves.
But we know that there's Father, we know that there's Son, and
we know that there's Holy Spirit. We know that all three of them
are God, and yet there is only one God. You say, how can that be? Don't
know. But that's the way it is. I can
believe that's so, I just don't understand it. But we also know
this, that when it comes to God communicating with us, it has
always been through that one called the Son. And therefore,
John gives him this, this name. He's the word from God. If you're
ever going to know anything about God and if you're ever going
to know God as person knows person, it's going to have to be through
Jesus Christ. He is the revelation of God. He didn't just bring a revelation
of God. He is the revelation of God. Everything that you and I need
to know about God is in Christ. Knowing Him is knowing God. Believing Him is believing God. Loving Him is loving God. In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God. And in case anybody was going
to misunderstand what he meant by that, when he said he was
with God, see, there are some that say, well, yeah, he was
with God, but he wasn't really God. No, the next phrase. and the
Word was God. In fact, John actually did a
little trick here in the Greek language and flipped the word
order around. In Greek, it actually says, and
God was the Word. And what he is saying, by flipping
the natural word order around, he's emphasizing the Godness
of the Word. That this word is essential godness. That's why in the book of Philippians,
Paul could say, concerning Christ, who being in very nature, God. Everything that it means to be
God is in Christ. And that's the one in whom this
life is found. Verse two says, he was with God
in the beginning, Our Bibles begin with the words, in the
beginning. And right then, the word was
with God, because the word is God. It says, through him, all
things were made. Without him, nothing was made
that has been made. So whatever you see existing,
it was Christ that made it. you know, science in terms of,
you know, accumulating scientific facts. I mean, the curve is just,
you know, getting steeper and steeper. They're learning faster
and faster. And we know a whole lot more about the universe now
than we did when this was spoken. We know that it's a whole lot
bigger than men thought it was. In fact, when I was a kid, I
remembered doing some reading and they were estimating that
the universe was about 5 billion light years in radius, I think
it is, not diameter, but radius. So, you know, more or less like
a sphere, 5 billion light years in radius. Well, now they say
it's 14 or so billion light years. Huge. We can't even conceive of how
vast this universe is. And yet, with a word, Jesus Christ
brought it all into existence. And in him is life. Now, if you come to me and you
point maybe to what humans would be considered a virtuous and
wise man, and said, in him is life, I might say, well, he kind
of looks alive in the natural sense of the word, but I'm not
going to go to him to get life, because he's got no life to spare,
and he doesn't have that kind of life that I need. But if I
can look to him, who by the word of his mouth spoke the worlds
into existence, who commanded who spoken it was, who commanded,
and it stood firm. That's the way the psalmist puts
it. I can look to such a one as that and say, now in him is
life. In him and from him comes all
life. Then it goes on to say now back
in verse four, in him was life, and that life was the light of
men. Now he's using the word light
here in the sense of knowledge. We talk about a person who understands
things, he's been enlightened. And so this light here that's
speaking of it says, and this life was the light of men. In other words, if you're ever
going to be enlightened concerning the things of God, That enlightenment
is going to come through gaining or receiving this life. It is the kind of life that enlightens
the mind and the heart concerning the things of God. So this life is in Christ. This life is that which enlightens
a man, gives him an understanding so that he can receive the things
of the Spirit of God, and they'll appear to him to be wisdom rather
than foolishness. It enlightens him. And then we see the power of
this light. The light shines in the darkness,
but the darkness has not understood it. Now, that word translated
understood, there's two ways, at least two ways that it can
be taken. It can mean to understand something as to grasp it, to
comprehend it, and that's true. The darkness, darkness can't
comprehend light. But it also can be used to mean
to overcome. And it says, this light shines
in the darkness and the darkness has not and cannot overcome it
or withstand it. We live in a world that's quite
naturally dark. Our minds, as we were born in
this world, were darkened. But when God sent his Son into
the world, and when by his Spirit he gave us spiritual life and
revealed the Son to us, the light shined into our dark hearts and
the darkness couldn't stop it. Isn't that good to know? Can
you imagine being in a very dark cave? I don't know how many of
you have actually been back in a cave where there's absolutely
no light. You know, we go to sleep at night
and we think, wow, it's dark in here. Well, there's a lot
more light in your bedroom at night than you might think. But
we used to go to a place in Kentucky, Carter Cave State Park, and there,
as you can imagine, lots of caves. And we go crawling back in those
things, and you get back there far enough, and then, you know,
if you have a guide, they'll say, all right, everybody turn
off their flashlight. Boy, what a darkness. I mean, it's a darkness
you can almost feel. And it doesn't matter how hard
you stare or how wide you open your eyes, you're not going to
see anything. And you almost immediately become
disoriented because you don't have any kind of reference. The
only thing that will tell you whether you're standing upright
or not is the things in your ears. And they're not used to
operating by themselves. Absolute, total darkness. And yet, you just strike a match. And the darkness cannot withstand
the light produced by a match. Now, a match doesn't produce
a lot of light, but you'll be amazed how much you can see.
The darkness cannot say to that light, I'm a whole room full
of darkness. a whole cave full of darkness,
and this is just a little bitty light, and therefore I'm not
gonna let it shine. No, the darkness cannot extinguish
the light. It cannot make it so that you
cannot see by that light. And when the word of the light
goes out, later on they're talking to John, It's regarding John
the Baptist that he came to testify of the light. He wasn't the light,
but he came to testify of it. Well, we as believers in our
Lord Jesus Christ, we go out into the world and we testify
concerning that light. We shine the light the best we
know how. Now, if that light went out in
our energy, I think the darkness could overcome it. But we rejoice in this, that
this light, which is essentially that life
found in Christ, when Christ sends it, the darkness cannot
withstand it. I remember you know, early in
my preaching career, I thought it was particularly virtuous
and showed some seriousness and gravity to bemoan the state of
the church and the state of the world and how it looks like things
are getting worse and worse. You want to know something? The
light of Christ is shining into this dark world. And the darkness
of the world has done everything it could to stop it. But that
light got turned on 2,000 years ago, and here we are 2,000 years
ago, and it's still here. And all those who tried to extinguish
the light and cover the light and deny the light are dead. And Christ yet lives, and Christ
continues have the life and give the life that enlightens His
people. Well, if life is in Him, what
should I do? Well, I should go to Him for
life. Now, someone who wants to be very theological exacting
might say, well, how can I go to Him if I don't have that life?
Well, I understand that argument, but I also know this. The Lord
Jesus said to those Pharisees, you search the scriptures, for
in them you think you have eternal life. They are the scriptures
that testify of me, but you won't come to me that you might have
life. So I'm going to ignore what seems
like a theological inconsistency, and I'm simply going to say to
you, if you want this life, go to Christ in whom all that life
is deposited. That's the only place you can
get it. And he is not the least bit reluctant
to give it. In our bulletins, I've got a
quote from Martin Luther. I was actually looking for a
different quote and just going through this long list of quotes,
and I saw that one. It says, prayer is not coming
up against the reluctance of God. It's laying hold of the
willingness of God. And you know that I firmly believe
in what is called sovereign grace or the five points of Calvinism.
You know, I believe all that. I also believe this. You come
to him wanting his salvation. He will give it to you. There is no unwillingness on
the part of God to save those who come to him through Christ. You don't have to argue with
him. You don't have to cajole him. You don't have to go to
him for life thinking that he might not give it to you. Go to God through Christ and
find that life you desperately need. And secondly, If we know
that life is in Christ and it's been given to us, how much we
should rejoice that we have it. There are billions of dead men
walking in this world. And the thing about the dead
is they don't even know they're dead. God leaves, it would seem to
me, leaves most of them in that condition. And they are born
spiritually dead. They live their lives in, you
know their natural lives, entirely in spiritual death. And then
when they leave this world they go to meet God and they enter
into eternal death. Their entire existence is characterized
by death. But we, not because there is
anything more I almost said more better. Maybe that works. Anything
better about us, more intelligent about us, anything more worthy
in us, we've got life. I had a little bit of fun this
past week because I turned 65 and that's kind of one of those
important birthdays, you know. this I'm a whole lot closer to
the day that I'm going to die than I am to the day that I was
born." You see that as you get older
you know you start to say, oh this road ends down here a piece,
just stops. But you know something? Are you
in Christ? You're alive. And even though
this body keeps breaking down and gets weaker and sick more easily and gets well
more hardly. And one of these days it's going
to get so sick it can't get well. And yet you will not die. Why? Because you're in Him and in
Him is life. Our Lord Jesus said as He was
approaching Lazarus' house and the sisters came out to Him and
He said, he that believes in me shall never die. I can't think of a better thing
that a person could ever hear. You're never going to die. If you went to the doctor and
he diagnosed you with a disease that was normally a terminal
disease and they worked on you and lo and behold, the therapy
worked, And you go in there for a checkup, and they do the screening
and everything, and they say, you're disease-free. You're not
going to die. Wow, all at once, all that stress
from wondering during all that time of medical therapy, suddenly
it's lifted. Suddenly you feel free. I'm alive,
and I'm not going to die. Of course, that's only partially
true, because even though you might not die of that disease,
another one will eventually get you. But when the Lord Jesus
says, he that believes in me will never die, it's just a stop
right there. You'll never die. You haven't
just fended off the most recent attack upon your life. You have
been given a life that cannot die. And in case those sisters
misunderstood him, he says, and he that lives and believes in
me, even though he dies, yet shall he live. Said that to them because their
brother had just died in the natural sense of the word. And
he says, but he didn't really die. If I'm last here, you know, and
I don't know how much longer I'll be the pastor here. I'll
keep doing it as long as I can and as long as you're willing
for me to do it. I'll bury some more of the congregation. I mean, the statistics, that's
just the way it is. It's the way this life goes.
But not one believer in the Lord Jesus Christ will die. Their bodies will be gone. We'll
lose contact with them for a while. But they go on to live better
than they ever lived before. They go on to experience the
fullness of this life. We've buried a few of our brethren, but they didn't die. They just
moved. And someday we'll move. and we
shall be forever with the Lord. And one last quick point, if
we believe that in Him is life, how anxious we should be to tell
that to everybody we can. It's something, you know, somebody
invents a new vitamin pill and people get excited about it and
they'll have parties at their house, they'll do everything
they can to get their friends and relatives to take it. And there's nothing wrong with
that. But here we know where eternal spiritual life is. That truth ought to burn in us.
It ought to be in us with such a pressure that it just can't
help but get out. In Him was life and is life. And this life is the light of
men. This light shines in the darkness,
and not the darkness of a person's heart, nor the darkness of this
world, nor the darkness of spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places
can overcome it. It is the invincible life and
light of God. Heavenly Father, bless these
words. I can talk about life, but only
you can give life. I pray that you'll give that
life today. If there be some here who don't
have that life, impart it to them and strengthen that life
which you have already given. Encourage it in our hearts. In
Christ's name we pray, amen.