Who is Jesus really?

The Gospel of John begins by presenting Jesus as more than a teacher, religious leader, or historical figure. Jesus is the eternal Word, the Creator, and the One who makes the invisible God known.

In the opening message of our Come and See series, Dr. Gregg Marutzky explores John 1 and the meaning of Jesus as the Logos—the personal bridge between God and humanity. He explains the incarnation, what it means for Jesus to be full of grace and truth, and John’s invitation to believe in Jesus and receive life in His name.

This series invites us to do more than know facts about Jesus. It invites us to encounter Him, believe in Him, and grow in our relationship with Him.

In this episode:

• Why John begins differently from the other Gospels
• What it means for Jesus to be the Word
• How Jesus makes God known
• The meaning of the incarnation
• Grace and truth
• Believing and becoming children of God
• The signs and “I Am” statements in John
• Why John wrote his Gospel

Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome

00:27 Introducing Come and See

02:02 Knowing About Jesus vs. Knowing Jesus

03:41 A Little Translation Humor

07:50 Why John Begins Differently

11:26 What Does “The Word” Mean?

13:29 Jesus Makes God Known

19:57 The Word Became Flesh

22:22 Full of Grace and Truth

25:08 Believing and Becoming God’s Children

28:09 Who Is Jesus?

31:19 Signs and “I Am” Statements

32:52 Why John Wrote His Gospel

34:41 Final Blessing

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OC Church of Christ

Dr. Gregg Marutzky:

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Good morning, church.

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Good morning.

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Wow, it's a good crowd this morning.

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Bunch of young, good-looking

people right up front here, too.

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Now smile at me.

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Smile at me.

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All right.

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There, there's a, there's a, a c- a, some

guests visiting here for the first time.

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I met them this morning and I told them

I'm gonna be looking at them, and s-

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here they are, looking back, smiling.

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Amen.

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Amen.

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Amen.

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Come and See.

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Written by the Apostle John.

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That's our series, and the reason

this is so important, I feel a

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heavy burden in some ways, is

because John was the beloved.

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John felt the love of Jesus so strongly,

and he was so in love with Jesus,

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that he called himself the beloved.

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Now, we know that Jesus was

the one and only, the begotten

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Son of Jesus, the beloved

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of God, I mean.

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Jesus was the beloved of God.

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And you and I, there's a prayer

called the beloved that eventually

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even gets to us, and we're to claim

that we're the beloved of God.

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But the goal of this series is if Jes-

if John was so in love with Jesus,

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then hopefully after this series,

we'll be so in love with Jesus, amen?

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Yes.

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Can you fall more in love with Jesus?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, we all can, and we

should, and we want to.

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And that's why we constantly strive in

our relationship with God to give more and

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more of our heart to Him, to understand

His will, and to seek a relationship.

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Not just to believe, not just to know

the right things, not just to understand,

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not to just have rationality or logic,

but to truly have a connection with

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God and a relationship with God.

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Yeah.

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There was a time when I was…

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I became a Christian, I was connected to

God, and I got baptized and I got my sins

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forgiven, and that was such a relief.

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Such a great feeling to be forgiven.

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And it was such a great feeling to

have the Holy Spirit and have power

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to change, and I started changing

some radical things in my life.

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But then later on in

my Christian life, I…

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it just seemed like I was going through

the motions, and I needed to fall

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deeper in love with Jesus and with God.

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And Jesus is my very best friend.

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I love Jesus with all of my heart.

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I need Jesus.

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My…

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I have two of my beloved here

on the front row, my wife and my

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daughter, one of my daughters.

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And my daughter gave me

a big hug this morning.

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And I don't know why she did.

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She must have thought I needed it.

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But oh, it felt good.

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And so as I'm thinking about beloved,

I thought, "Oh, she's so beloved."

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And my wife, it just shocks me

sometimes that she still loves

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me so deeply and loves me more,

and that we have a good time.

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I mean, we're such good friends, and

we, we, uh, took a couple days and went

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to the mountains on Monday and Tuesday.

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And it was just so fun, 'cause

when you're with your best friend,

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I mean, it, everything's fun.

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And, and just eating a breakfast sandwich

a- at a, at a mountain cafe is fun, amen?

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So but we need to start with

just a little bit of fun, okay?

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So I was looking up, and I wanna

say things, uh, well this morning.

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I wanna say them well, because when

you don't say things well, then

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you can get yourself in trouble.

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And there were some translations

of the scripture that weren't

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done well and really gave some

false meaning to the Bible.

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Listen to this.

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Uh, in, uh, 1832, uh, a certain Bible

read when Rebecca came out of the

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tent to meet Isaac, it's supposed

to say that, uh, her and her damsels

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came out to meet him, but it says her

and her camels came out to meet him.

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And another one, it says, uh,

"If any man would come after me,

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he must," uh, you know, uh, uh-

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Uh, hate his own life, right?

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And instead of life, it

says, "Hate his wife."

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Not good.

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And another translation, 1716,

says that we should sin no more.

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Well, it didn't say that.

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It said, "Sin s- sin on more."

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Sin on more.

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And another one, instead of, uh, uh,

the King Charles translation, instead

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of saying, "Thou shall not commit

adultery," they left a word out.

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"Thou shall commit adultery."

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Ooh.

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That's not a good one.

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And then, uh, this one, nobody understood.

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Uh, in the 16th century, a

translation came out, says Jesus

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was, was, bl- bless the peacemakers,

and it said, "The placemakers."

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I don't know what that means.

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And then, uh, this is a funny one.

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One translation came out in 1702,

the Parable of the Vineyard, it

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said, "The Parable of the Vinegar."

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That, that was a funny one.

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You know, you gotta be careful,

especially as a preacher.

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There was a preacher that, uh, his

car broke down, and it was out in

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front of a 7-Eleven, and he, uh,

went in to, to call for some help.

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That was before cell phones.

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And, uh, a fellow was, was right outside

and was, was asking for some help,

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some money, and he recognized him.

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And he says, "Frank, what's going on?

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You were so successful.

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You're so wealthy and so rich.

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What's happened?"

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He says, "Oh, I made some

really bad investments.

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I've lost everything."

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And so, so he gave him some, some money

and he said, "I wanna pray for you, and

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I want you to go home, and I want you

to just open up your Bible, let it fall

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down, and put your finger down, and

whatever it says, claim it and live it.

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And I think God will bless you."

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And so months later, he saw Frank again,

and Frank was in this Gucci suit, and he

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was looking all good and feeling all good.

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And so the preacher went up to him.

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He says, "Frank, it all turned around.

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What happened?

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What, what verse did you find?"

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And he said, "I put my finger

down," and it said, "Chapter 11."

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If you know business, you know what

that, the, the punchline there.

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My a- my wife asked me, "What,

what joke are you telling?"

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She wants to screen them nowadays.

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And, uh, she said, "Don't tell that.

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I don't get it."

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I told her and then she

thought it was humor.

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She still said, "Don't do it."

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But let's dive in.

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This is the commentary I'm gonna be

using and the staff will be using as

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we're preaching through the Gospels.

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It's a concise commentary on

the Gospel of John by the fore-

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one of the very foremost, uh,

scholars of the Gospel of John.

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He wrote a commentary, very thick, very

scholarly, in the Anchor Bible Series.

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But, uh, this one, he's written a

concise one, and it's really good.

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Raymond Brown.

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I read his commentary, uh, years

ago, probably about 30 years ago, and

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that's what, uh, caused me to start

really pursuing the Gospel of John.

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So I wanted to share that with you.

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But in the beginning, in the

beginning, in anchen, in anchen.

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We know where that comes from, right?

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In the beginning, God created.

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In the beginning, God created

the heavens and the Earth.

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God created something from nothing.

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So John begins his gospel,

"In the beginning."

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Why doesn't he do it like

Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell

us a, a, a genealogy story.

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They tie Jesus into the history of the

Jews and the history of, of, of people.

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He really is giving us a genealogy.

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He's tying it all the way back

to creation and beyond creation.

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That's right.

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That Jesus has existed

forever because He's God.

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And so even though we read His birth

story, that's just when He became

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human, that's not when He became.

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That's right.

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Because He's always been in the beginning.

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And so that's why people look at John,

oh, my goodness, John is so audacious.

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He starts with the beginning of the Bible.

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I mean, h- h- why does he do that?

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For a very good reason.

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Because his audience is non-Christians.

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His audience aren't people

that believe in God.

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His audience have a Roman and Greco

culture, and they're very worldly.

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And the, the Roman a- a- and Greek culture

had so many temples and so many deities,

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and they just worshiped everything they

could see and everything they could

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touch and everything they could create

and everything they could make up.

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And John wants them to worship and

fall in love with who he's fallen

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in love with, the eternal one.

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That's right.

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The eternal one, the

true one, the greatest.

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And so he starts out very

boldly, "In the beginning."

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And he says in verses one through five,

"In the beginning was the Word-" The Word.

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And in the Greek, this is Logos.

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In the beginning was the Logos, and the

Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.

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And He, and He shifts there He

was with God in the beginning.

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Through him all things were

made that without him nothing

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was made that has been made.

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In him was life, and that life was the

light, the guide, the path, the direction,

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the beauty, the heat, the energy of men.

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The light shines in the darkness,

in the wickedness, in the evil of

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this world, but the darkness has

not understood or overcome it.

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Yes.

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I mean, we could just stop there.

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There's so much profundity there.

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There's so much meaning.

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There's so much depth that that

tells us so much rich theology,

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and there's books written just on

these first five verses because

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they have so much foundation for us.

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But this morning I just wanna

introduce the Gospel of John and

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hopefully wet our appetite for

all the coming attractions, right?

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All the things that we're

gonna see through the chapters.

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But this idea of Jesus as the logos,

let's dive into it just a little bit.

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We won't spend a lot of time on it, 'cause

we're gonna go in depth on Wednesday.

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But in Greek philosophy, the logos was

what everyone was pu- pursuing, what Plato

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and Aristot- Aristotle and Heraclitus

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was after.

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The logos described the rational, the

governing principles of the cosmos.

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Logos was the knowledge to

transcendence, to eternity, to

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live forever, to know the answer.

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All right?

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So if you wanted to know the

answer in the ancient world,

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you sought and studied logos.

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You became a Stoic or, or these

different k- types of philosophies

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tried to explain the logos to you.

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In Jewish thought, the, uh, the Jewish

writer Philo used the term and des-

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used it to describe God's mediating

power and active presence in creation,

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and especially from Proverbs chapter

8, that the artist, the designer,

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the actual Hebrew words there,

uh, the designer of the universe.

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And, and we know he's talking about

Jesus now looking back, and we put

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it in context, but at the time, Phi-

Philo thought, well, the logos, that

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creative power, has made the universe.

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And then John makes it all clear for

us just in these few verses, and he

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says he applied the logos to Jesus, a

transformed and impersonal philosophical

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idea and force into a living, personal

being who entered human history If your

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faith, your religion, your beliefs just

stay mental, stay in your head, it's not

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really gonna help you, folks You need to

connect Right You need to connect to God.

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You need to connect to other people.

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I, I pray for the young people because

of all the screen time and the way

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that they've been raised, w- They're,

they're not, they, they're, they're

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not as relational, people are saying.

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Now, our kids are.

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They're very relational.

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They're always smiling

at me and saying hi.

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They're cool.

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All right?

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But that's probably 'cause they've

been going to church and because

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they've connected to God and connected

Je- to Jesus, but that's not common.

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In p- most places, you walk

around, you see young people that

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aren't talking to each other.

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They're just looking at their phone.

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Yeah.

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And, and when I catch myself,

like Cathy and I at a restaurant

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and we're both looking at our

phone, I think, "Uh, put it down.

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Talk."

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Mm-hmm.

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"Be a good husband.

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You know, connect.

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You know how to do it, Greg.

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You've even taught people to do it, so

just remind yourself and do those things."

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All right?

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So this is a very important thing.

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It's basically saying, I'll put in

simple terms, Jesus is the bridge.

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Amen.

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He's the bridge-

Yeah … between humans and God.

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Yeah.

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Between this world and the next,

between the physical and the spiritual.

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He's the bridge.

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Yeah.

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All right?

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He's the bridge for you and me.

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The religious word is priest.

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He's the intermediary.

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He's the interceder.

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He's the one that inter- does

intercession for us to connect to God.

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He's the connection, and that's why it's

so cool that he's the Logos, 'cause I

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want connection with God, don't you?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Yes, we do.

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We want it.

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We need it, 'cause we know

that's where the power is.

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We wanna be plugged in.

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Don't you hate it when you turn on

the light and it's not plugged in?

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Yeah.

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We, we moved into our house,

and there's a light we haven't

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even put into the plug yet.

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It's behind the sectional.

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We'll have to move the sectional

out, so we just use the other lights.

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And I told myself yesterday,

"I need to get under there

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and just plug in this lamp."

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But I, we've lived there, what?

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Two months?

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Haven't done it yet.

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Haven't done it.

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If you wanna come over and

help, come on over and help.

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All right?

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What a servant thing to do.

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He goes on.

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Jesus the Logos.

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It means God is with us.

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Guys, that's the greatest

feeling in the world.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And it's the worst feeling in the world

to be lost, for God not to be with you.

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I became a Christian

a- as a freshman in…

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Well, I started seeking

as a freshman in college.

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I became a Christian as a sophomore

in college 'cause that first year

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of college beat me up, broke me.

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And I remember a cold winter

day, one evening coming out,

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unfortunately of a bar- And just

feeling so lost, so disconnected.

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Not connected to my family,

not connected to anyone.

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And I was on the football team, and I

was, I was in a fraternity, and I was

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popular, but I wasn't connected to God, my

source My energy, my hope, my salvation,

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my forgiveness Yes And I started seeking.

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God with us is so, such a blessing.

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This is so good.

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Jesus, the eternal Word, the logos

means that Christ is divine reason

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and divine wisdom as an expression

of God who has existed forever

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and became human in Jesus Christ.

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On Wednesday night we're gonna talk

about two of the, the great heresies

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of Christianity, Aaronism and, uh,

uh, Gnosticism, and they argued

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over the deity of Jesus Christ.

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If we can get it right,

it's gonna keep us on track.

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And a few of the scholars of the

1st century, I just wanna read this

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real quick, some good stuff that,

uh, what they thought about logos.

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Justin Martyr says he was a

philosopher, he turned Christian,

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and he said, "The idea of logos is

spermatikus, a seed-bearing word."

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He argued that a seed of the divine

logos was planted in all humans,

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and ancient thinkers like Socrates

and Plato grasped fragments of that

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truth, but Jesus came and brought the

entire logos in physical human form.

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Irenaeus said that writing

against Gnosticism, he claimed

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the physical world was, was evil.

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See, see, the, the, the ancients,

they thought there was this dualism,

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the, everything physical was evil

and everything spiritual was good,

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so it didn't matter what you did in

the body because that's evil anyway.

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And so, and that dualism mindset still

is in our mindset today, all right?

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That we can do whatever we want as

long as we, we believe the right things

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or have the right heart about things.

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But Irenaeus used logos

to prove the unity of God.

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He explained that the Word who created

the world is the exact same word who

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redeemed it in the flesh, marrying

creation and salvation, human and divine.

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Can we get an amen?

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Amen.

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And Origen said he helped formalize

the concept of eternal generation.

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He explained that the Father did not

create the logos at some point in

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time, and, and that's one of the false

teachings of the 1st century, that Jesus

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was created, that he was an emanation.

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That's Gnosticism.

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But, uh, uh, he…

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it's just like a light bulb

that cannot exist without light.

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God is a light bulb, and

h- the light is Jesus.

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The Father is eternally

generating light in the Son.

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It's good to read those ancient

scholars to truly understand.

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This idea of logos, guys, take

a picture of this, if you will.

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I'm not gonna spend much time on

it, but as far as nature, instead

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of a cosmic force, it's a person.

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As, and as far as function, it,

it, it, it's, it's an illustration.

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It's not just a thought.

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And materially, he became flesh,

and he became relatable to be known

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and loved and followed, and it's

all throughout the Gospel of John.

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Unless we understand this, we won't

understand the Gospel of John.

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Jesus' incarnation.

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You know, as an early Christian,

I was a cross man, and I still am.

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I think the cross is the,

the fulcrum of Christianity,

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the turning point of history.

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It's the most important

event that's ever happened.

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But the incarnation was

pretty important, too.

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Jesus becoming like me

and like you, human.

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The incarnation.

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The eternal Word becoming

flesh and dwelling among us.

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This is 1 John 1 through 4.

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His eternal existence, "In the beginning

was the Word, and the Word was with God."

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Deity, "The Word was God."

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The Creator, "All things were made

through the Logos," and then the

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ultimate revelation that Jesus shows

us the true message in human form.

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You know, sometimes getting into the

Greek is just showing off, all right?

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Somebody studied Greek.

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I studied it for two and a…

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A year and a half, and so I

know enough to be dangerous.

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But there's a couple of words here in

the first chapter of John that really

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have made some stuff come alive for me.

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The incarnation is the embodiment of God

in human form in the person of Jesus.

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The Word, Jesus, became flesh, sarx,

and dwelt, tabernacle, Shekhinah,

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which means pinched His tent among us.

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We wouldn't know God unless Jesus pitched

his tent here, camped out with us, came

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and lived with us, and became like us.

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In John 10:10, one of my favorite

scriptures, "The thief comes only

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to steal and kill and destroy, but

I have come that they may have life

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and may have it to half a tank."

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That's not what it says.

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That you may have life to the full.

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You don't have to just exist.

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You don't have to just

settle for the life you have.

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You can have abundant, thriving,

prosperous life in Jesus Christ.

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Amen?

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Amen.

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Amen.

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That's the promise of God.

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Let's claim it, folks.

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Let's claim it.

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And then just a couple more

verses from this, uh, chapter.

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It's, uh, so good.

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In J- John 1:14 is one of the key

verses, one of the paradigm-setting,

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uh, scriptures of the whole book.

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"The Word became flesh and made his

dwelling, his shekinah, among us.

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He- we have seen his glory, the

glory of the one and only, the

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begotten Son who came from the

Father full of grace and truth."

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Full of grace and truth.

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You know what that means?

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There's enough grace for you and me.

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You're not gonna run out of grace,

'cause Jesus is full of grace.

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He's overflowing with grace.

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In fact, the, the Greek term is, is,

is, uh, is, is, uh, is, uh, the idea

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of it, of it being pressed down, shaken

together, and overflowing, that Jesus'

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grace is just overflowing from him, and

his truth is just overflowing from him.

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Haven't you been around

some people like that?

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Kindness just overflows from them.

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Amen.

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Happiness just overflows from them.

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I know I'm not one of those people, but

don't you love those people that are?

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Yes.

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All right?

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That just, it just overflows from you.

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You just wanna be around them some more.

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You just wanna hang out with them.

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Or, or people where humor just

overflows from them, that everything

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they say, you just crack up.

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You, you act like a child

again all of a sudden.

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You just laugh so hard.

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Some people just crack, crack you up.

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It's, that's what it means,

so full of grace and truth.

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And w- 1:17 says, "For the

law was given through Moses."

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What's the law good for?

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Romans 7 says it tells us

what's right and wrong.

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You gotta know what's right and wrong.

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I want law.

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I want truth.

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I want r- you know-

Amen … protection from evil.

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I don't want people doing evil

against me, and I don't want

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to do evil against others.

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So it's good to have law.

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But grace and truth came through Jesus.

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Yes.

423

You know, if you ever have been

in a legalistic religion, you get

424

burned out quick- Yeah … just doing

what's right, not doing what's wrong.

425

Yeah.

426

You know?

427

You need a religion where you

connect- That's it … with that

428

bridge, where you become the beloved

disciple, where you're so in love

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with Jesus that you're connected.

430

It's not just legalistic.

431

It's not just doing what's right.

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"Oh, I just want a better life."

433

We all want a better life.

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Even non-Christians want a better life.

435

Yes.

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But the way to get it is the connection.

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The connection, the logos of God.

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How do I know that?

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Well, this next verse, it's a good one.

440

Says in verse 12 and 13, "Yet to all

who did receive Him, to those who

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believed in His name, He gave the right

to become children of God, sons and

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daughters of God, children born not of

natural descent nor of human decision,"

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not just 'cause you chose God, "or a

husband's will," not just 'cause of the

444

family you're in, "but born of God."

445

And we're gonna have a little sermon on

that in John chapter 3, being born again,

446

how awesome it is to be born again.

447

But this is just coming attractions.

448

This is just preview, but you

get the right when you what?

449

Believe.

450

I believe, Lord.

451

Do you really believe?

452

Jesus was always challenging people

when they started following Him.

453

Yeah.

454

Why are you following me?

455

Yeah.

456

You know?

457

And when His disciples

say, "I believe," they…

458

He, "Do you really believe?

459

Foxes have holes and birds of

the air have nests, but the Son

460

of Man has nowhere to lie down."

461

Do you really wanna follow?

462

Do you really believe?

463

Yeah.

464

We gotta get to that point when we

are, we believe 'cause we're- Yeah

465

He's our beloved.

466

Yeah.

467

Because we love Him so much.

468

Yeah.

469

Not just 'cause we, we got

the, the knowledge, but because

470

we got the relationship.

471

Yeah.

472

See, I got the relationship with the Lord.

473

I didn't think I'd make it, and with

knowledge I wouldn't have just made it.

474

And I can say that 'cause

I got a lot of knowledge.

475

But you're not gonna make

it with knowledge only.

476

My knowledge has helped me, but

it's my relationship with the Lord.

477

It's that bridge.

478

It's that connection.

479

That's that being born again.

480

Yeah.

481

And that renewal over and over again.

482

Good stuff.

483

What's He promising you?

484

What's the Gospel of

John promising you guys?

485

Full life.

486

Abundant life.

487

If you don't have full life,

then come to this series.

488

Because here's the promise.

489

We're gonna focus on Christ until we're

just so in love and he's our beloved.

490

Yeah.

491

We're gonna focus on Christ.

492

We're, we're gonna g- we're gonna get rid

of that guilty, shame, legalism in our

493

life, and just be connected to the Lord.

494

Amen?

495

Amen.

496

We're gonna be led by truth, not all the

waves and philosophies and thoughts and…

497

coming at us from every direction.

498

We're gonna focus on what the God's

word says- Yeah … and his truth.

499

Yeah.

500

And we're gonna let him love

us and just like he loved John.

501

Yeah.

502

Just like he loved everybody he

connected with in this gospel until we

503

feel that grace through and through.

504

Just a preview of coming attractions.

505

That's what all the first chapter is.

506

It's telling us what we're

gonna see throughout the book.

507

And he first starts with logos

here, and then secondly he says

508

that this is the life, that he's

the life and the light of the world.

509

And then he says that, uh, he's the Lord.

510

One of the testimonies, witnesses

in the first chapter says, "No one

511

has ever seen God, but the one and

only Son who is himse- is himself

512

God, is in the closest relationship

with the Father, has made him known."

513

Verse 23, and same thing the

whole book of Hebrews tells us.

514

All right?

515

And then the Lamb of God.

516

Oh, I love this in verse 29.

517

"The next day, John saw Jesus," John

the Baptist, "saw Jesus coming toward

518

him and said, 'Look, the Lamb of

God who will take away the sins.'"

519

The whole book of Revelation

is about the Lamb of God.

520

Who can take us away the sins of

the world, the evil of the world?

521

And then all of a sudden, into

the throne room comes the lamb.

522

The Lamb of God, and the, the figure there

is this, this lamb and its wool is stained

523

with blood, the sacrificial lamb of God.

524

That's a huge thought right there.

525

And then he's a leader.

526

Says in Deuteronomy 18 and then in verse

45, "Philip found Nathanael and told him,

527

'We found the one Moses wrote about.'"

528

And what Moses says in Deuteronomy 18

is a prophet, the Prophet is gonna come.

529

The Messiah, the Chosen One will come.

530

On whom the prophets also wrote.

531

It's Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.

532

You know what's gonna hit you somewhere

along in your Christian life is,

533

"Oh, I'm glad I'm looking back.

534

I'm glad I didn't live in the time of

the Old Covenant before Jesus came.

535

I'm sort of glad I wasn't there

right when Jesus was alive,

536

because I w- might have missed it.

537

I might have not recognized

that he was the Son of God.

538

I'm so glad I've, I'm now looking

back in hindsight and see who Jesus

539

really is, the Prophet, the One, the

Messiah, the Chosen One, the lovely

540

One, the King of Israel, the Rabbi."

541

He says in verse 49, "Then Nan- Nathanael

declared, 'Rabbi, you are the Son of God.

542

You're the King of Israel.

543

I have seen and I testify that

this is God's Chosen One.'"

544

I hope that's what you get

out of the Gospel of John.

545

I hope you fall so in love with him.

546

I hope you see all these things, and

you believe with all of your heart.

547

I believe with all of my heart.

548

When I made my confession of faith,

I believed it with all my heart, and

549

I still believe it with all my heart.

550

I still believe Jesus Christ

is the Son of God- Yes … and

551

God raised him from the dead.

552

I still want Jesus to be Lord of my life.

553

I don't wanna be mastered by anything, by

any sin, by any possession, by anybody.

554

I'm in love with the Lord.

555

Amen.

556

Amen?

557

Amen.

558

Amen.

559

And then just to, to give you a, a

few points in, uh, uh, Signs Point

560

to God, so throughout this book,

we're gonna be pointing to God.

561

In John 2, the water to wine,

all these seven miracles.

562

In John 4, when he get…

563

the nobleman gets…

564

huh, son gets healed.

565

In John 5, the, the paralytic healed.

566

John 6, the multitude fed.

567

John 6, the walking on water.

568

John 9, the blind man healed.

569

John 11, Lazarus, the

big one, resurrection.

570

And then the seven I Am stories.

571

You've heard series on this.

572

We're gonna hit on this stuff,

but we don't wanna miss the

573

point, that Jesus is the beloved.

574

The seven statements, "I'm bread,

I'm light, I'm door, I'm gate, I'm

575

shepherd, I'm resurrection, I'm way,

truth, and life, and I'm the vine."

576

And then don't miss the seven sermons.

577

Oh, we like the signs, we like the

metaphors, and in fact, in John, he

578

has these metaphors and these signs and

these, these miracles instead of parables.

579

Isn't that interesting?

580

Matthew, Mark, and Luke have parables.

581

In this gospel, we don't have parables.

582

We have these other things.

583

But in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he had

sermons, and in John, he has sermons.

584

He has seven of them.

585

Be born again, be true worshipers,

be true disciples, bear fruit.

586

You're gonna get the Paraclete.

587

Be unified, and last of all, follow me.

588

We'll look at all this stuff.

589

But the…

590

This is the theme verse, not

the theme verse, but this

591

is the purpose of the book.

592

But I, I hope I've helped

you see that it's a little

593

deeper than just these words.

594

Says in John 21:30-31, "Jesus performed

many other signs in the presence of

595

his disciples," a lot of miracles,

"which are not recorded in this book.

596

But these are written that

you and I may believe."

597

Believe what?

598

That Jesus is the Messiah, the Chosen

One, the Anointed One, the greatest.

599

Yes.

600

The Son of God.

601

It will make all the

difference in your life.

602

Yeah.

603

And that by believing, you may have what?

604

Life.

605

Life.

606

Amen.

607

Any good preacher wants

good for his, his flock.

608

I want us to have abundant life.

609

I, I love doing the Gospel of John 'cause

I believe in this promise, and I believe

610

that God gives it to us if we find Him.

611

And there's a simple outline I

made years ago that I still…

612

I've seen what all the scholars' outlines

are and everything, but I like mine,

613

one I made when I was just in love

with the Lord as a young Christian.

614

You know, all my learning

hasn't made me mad and crazy.

615

This is my outline: John 1 through to

chapter 4, Jesus is the Son of God.

616

John 5 through chapter 12, Jesus is Lord.

617

John 13 through 17,

what is a true disciple?

618

And then John 18 through 21, the

Passion of Christ, the Cross of Christ.

619

Why?

620

So we'll be full.

621

That's His promise.

622

So that's a big burden for us preachers

up here to give you, that in, at

623

the end of 12 weeks, you'll be full.

624

But God's good, and you'll be full.

625

God bless.

626

Amen.