Food
for Thought:
Behold the Glory
of Jesus
A Summer
Sermon Series: The Jesus I Want to Know
June 24 , 2007
Dr. Mark Ruppert
John 1:1-14
One of my favorite times of the year is sitting in this sanctuary
on Christmas Eve amidst a filled sanctuary, the beautiful
surroundings of candlelight and poinsettias, one large decorated
Christmas tree that is set over there, the choirs, the singing of
Christmas carols and the reading of Holy Scripture. I think, if I
am not mistaken, that every year since I have been here, the last
scripture reading that is shared is our passage today for John’s
Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word became flesh
and lived among us.” Jesus Christ is The Word. Even though this is
a popular passage read at Christmastime what is said about The
Word is not just about the Jesus of Christmas but the Jesus that
we are invited to follow all year round.
If you look at all 4 of the Gospels you will notice that the
Gospel of John is distinctly different from Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Matthew begins with a genealogy that starts with Abraham. Luke gets
things started by talking about the birth of Jesus’ cousin, John.
Both Matthew and Luke deal with the circumstances leading up to
Jesus’ birth. Mark begins with Jesus entering His ministry and His
cousin John who had a message of repentance as he was preparing a
way for Jesus whom then bursts on the scene with His baptism. John
also includes John the Baptist and his testimony and then proceeds
to embark on the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But before John gets
into all of this, he spends the first 14 verses setting the tone of
his book. It is basically the Gospel message that tells the world
that Jesus is the Son of God who came to save us all.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the
Word was God.” Jesus is the Word that John speaks of and God and
His Word, Jesus Christ, they are eternal. They have been here from
the very beginning, and this is even further back than Genesis,
which tells us how God created, but what John is saying goes before
the creation. So Jesus was eternal, He coexisted with God, and He
was God. Now that is heavy.
So the first picture that we have of Jesus is this- Jesus
is God. Jesus is the Creator, for we read in John 1:3, “All
things came into being through him, and without him not one thing
came into being.” And this Jesus, the Word, is uncreated,
there has never been a time and place when the Word was not.
This is what is known as the pre-existence of Christ, which
is not an easy concept to grasp. What I am trying to say is that
the Word is not one of the created things, the Word was there before
creation.
But look back with me to verse 1 as we see a second picture of
Jesus. The Word, Jesus Christ, was there at the beginning was and
is God and at the same time He was with God. How is
it that Jesus can be God and be with God one at the same time?
Well, because we believe that the Word, Jesus Christ, and the Father
are one and yet are not identical. There is an intimate connection
between God and Jesus, and yet, and yet, they are not identical.
John is saying that Jesus was so perfectly the same as God in heart,
mind and being that in Jesus we see what the perfect God is like. (The
Gospel of John, Barclay, p.39)
Which brings us to our third picture of Jesus, the Word. The
Creator actually came into the creation, the world that He had
made. How did God come? He came in the flesh. He was
and is Emmanuel, which means God with us. The Word,
Jesus Christ, became one like us but was still God- 100% man and
100% God. God came in the form of a human being, a baby, and He
lived among us for 33 years. The last three comprised His earthly
ministry. That’s all, 3 short years. It hard for me to fathom this
but just think about it. The Word, Jesus Christ, the One who owns
the universe came into this world as a baby born to poor parents-
His father was an honest working carpenter who also happened to be
of the house and lineage of David. Jesus, who is the Son of
Almighty God, needed to be carried, burped and have His diaper
changed. Jesus, the Word, who is Lord over all came into a world
were He was despised and rejected by people. The Word, Jesus
Christ, humbled Himself and became one like us. The great reformer,
Martin Luther said, “the mystery of the humanity of Christ, that he
sunk himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.”
But He did.
A fourth and picture that is both promising and sad is what we
read in verse 11, “He came to what was his own.” God
desperately desired a relationship with us and He desperately wanted
us to be His children, which we read about in verse 12. This love
of God for the world was so strong and powerful that God sent His
only Son into this world, thereby showing to what lengths God would
go in order to have fellowship with us. God was willing to do
whatever it took, even sacrifice His only Son on a cross to bring us
into a right relationship with Him through Christ’s dying on the
cross for the forgiveness of our sins.
To put this act of love into more modern day terms, the great
Danish religious thinker and philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, told
the following story. A prince wanted to find a maiden to be his
queen. One day as he was on an errand for his father in the local
village, he went through a poor area. Looking out of his window, he
saw a beautiful peasant maiden. During the ensuring days he often
passed by the young lady and soon he fell in love. But there was a
problem. How would he seek her hand? He could order her to marry
him. But even as a prince he wanted his bride to marry him freely
and voluntarily, not through coercion. He could put on his most
splendid uniform and drive up to her front door in a carriage drawn
by six horses. But if he did this he would never be certain that
the maiden loved him or was simply overwhelmed with all of the
splendor. The prince had anther idea. He would give up his kingly
robe. He moved into the village, entering not with a crown but in
the garb of a peasant. He lived among the people, shared their
interests and concerns, and talked their language. In time the
maiden grew to love him for whom he was and because he had first
loved her.
And so it is with the Word, Jesus Christ and what John is trying
to tell us. Emmanuel came to us, He became one of us. “The Word
became flesh and lived among us.” The verb here means, “Pitched his
tent.” This is truly amazing and this is one of the things that
separates Christianity from all the other religions of the world-
God came to us in Jesus Christ. While the other religions are
seeking to find God, God came to us in Jesus Christ.
But there is also sadness here. For verses 10-11 say, “He
[Jesus] was in the world, and the world came into being through him;
yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and
his own people did not receive him.” What John is saying here is
that the Word came to His own home and His own people did not
welcome Him. The Word did not come to Greece or Rome or Athens or
Egypt but to Palestine- to the land that was God’s land, where His
people resided, where the Jews lived. The Word came to God’s land,
to God’s people and instead of welcoming Him rightly as the King,
they rejected Him. He received scorn and hate and was despised when
He should have been hailed and adored. I wonder, have we, in our
lifetimes, ever rejected Jesus, the Word? Have we ever been ashamed
that we were, a Christian? Have we ever been in a conversation
where the words were in that gray, maybe even dark area where
off-colored humor was intended but that put down the Christian faith
or Christ and we forced a half-hearted chuckle when we should have
either shared our displeasure or walked away? I’ve been there in
all of the above and I am not proud of it. Do we need to stand up
more for Christ and His Gospel and not be ashamed to be counted as
one of His?
And a final picture is one that we all can be in, one that we can
be proud to put a frame around and hang from one of our walls. And
the picture is this- by receiving the Word we can become
Children of God. Verses 12-13 says, “But to all who receive
him, who believe in his name, he gave power to become children of
God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of
the will of man, but of God.” The Good News is that not everyone
rejected Jesus. Friends, we are not naturally children of God, we
must become- did you catch that? We must become children of God.
Scottish theologian William Barclay put it best when he tried to
explain this becoming children of God. He said, there are two kinds
of sons. There is the son who never does anything else but use his
home. All through his youth he takes everything that the home has
to offer and gives nothing in return. His father may work and
sacrifice to give him his chance in life, and he takes it as a
right, never realizing what he is taking and making no effort to
deserve it or repay it. When he leaves home, he makes no attempt to
keep in touch. The home has served his purpose and he is finished
with it. He realizes no bond to be maintained and no debt to be
paid. He is the father’s son; to his father he owes his existence;
and to his father he owes what he is; but between him and his father
there is no bond of love and intimacy. The father has given all in
love; but the son has given nothing in return.
There is another son who all his life realizes what his father is
doing and has done for him. He takes every opportunity to show his
gratitude by trying to be the son his father would wish him to be;
as the years go on he grows closer and closer to the father; the
relationship of father and son becomes the relationship of
fellowship and friendship. Even when he leaves home the bond is
still there and he is still conscious of a debt that can never be
repaid. One son grows further and further away from the father, the
other closer. Both are sons, but the relationship, the sonship is
different.
You see, everyone is either a son or daughter of God because He
created us and gave us live. But only some become sons and
daughters of God in an intimate, personal relationship. It is only
through Jesus Christ that we can have that kind of a relationship.
We can either accept being a son or daughter of God or reject it.
Do we trust in the name of Jesus? Do we trust in what and who He
is? Unless we see in Jesus what God is like we will never become
children of God. To believe in the name of Jesus is to believe that
God is like Him; and it is only when we believe that, that we can
then submit to God and become His children.
Today, is “Come Home to Jesus Sunday.” He desperately wants an
abiding relationship with each and every one of us. Do you have a
relationship with Him? Behold His glory and commit or recommit your
life to Him today.
I leave you with this true story that happened this past Palm
Sunday. On that day at Dr. Robert Schuller’s church, the Crystal
Cathedral in Orange County, California, Robert “Evel” Knievel told
the congregation that he had refused for 68 years to accept Jesus
Christ as Lord. But to his astonishment, his heart suddenly changed
during Daytona Bike Week this past March. “I don’t know what in
the world happened. I don’t know if it was the power of the prayer,
or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving
or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it just- the power of
God in Jesus just grabbed me…. All of a sudden I just believed in
Jesus Christ, I did, I believed in him!” And that day at the
Crystal Cathedral after hearing “Evel” Knievel’s testimony people
began sobbing and, at the before you knew it people began coming
forward and between 500 to 800 people committed or recommitted their
lives to God.
Come Home to Jesus and commit or recommit your life to Him
today. Will you pray with me…Amen.
Key Points
Introduction: One of my favorite times of the
year is sitting in this sanctuary on Christmas Eve…
John’s Gospel is distinctly different from the
others
John 1:1-14
The first picture wee have of Jesus is this-
Jesus ____ God Jesus, the Word, is _______, there has never
been a time and place when the Word was not- this is known as
the pre-existence of Christ
A second picture of Jesus- He was _____ God
A third picture of the Word- He came in the _______. He was
and is Emmanuel, which means God _____ us
A fourth picture that is both promising and sad is He came
to what was His _______
And a final picture is one that we all can be in, one that we
can be proud to put a frame around- by receiving the Word we
can become __________ of God
Everyone is either a son or daughter of God
because He created us and gave us life. But only some become sons
and daughters of God in an intimate, personal relationship. It is
only through Jesus Christ that we can have that kind of a
relationship
Do we trust in the lane of Jesus? Do we trust in
what and who He is?
Conclusion: Dr. Robert Schuller, Robert “Evel”
Knievel and coming to Jesus. Come home to Jesus…
Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.)
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