Men, we're here in John chapter 1 and the ironic thing about the Gospel of John is that
it's considered the most basic book of the New Testament or even just of the Bible in
general.
When we win someone to Christ out soul winning or we get one of our buddies saved and want
to start them reading the Bible, we would often skip that bookmark in the Gospel of
John and say, hey, here's a great place for you to start reading because you start reading
this and it's clear, it's basic, it's concise and it kind of stays that way all throughout
the Gospel of John.
It also really hammers some key foundational truths about Christ's deity, the fact that
Jesus Christ is the son of God, that salvation is by faith.
I mean, at the end of the book, it even says that these things are written that you might
believe on the name of the son of God and that believing you might have life through
his name and of course salvation is the most basic foundational important doctrine and
the Bible says this is the book that's there to teach you that and of course over 90 times
it mentions the word believe because that's the big colossal word associated with salvation.
But the thing that's ironic about that is that although it's known as the most basic
book, it also in some ways feels like the most advanced book because it is so deep in
its truths and so of course that's the beauty of the word of God that as you read it and
as you grow, the book of John grows with you because the book of John is so deep that we
will never be able to search out its depths in our lifetime.
Now it starts out in verse number one here, in the beginning was the word and the word
was with God and the word was God and of course this is a powerful verse.
It's an important statement and the thing that I want to point out here of course is
that we know that the word is Jesus because this is used interchangeably for the Lord
Jesus Christ or for the son of God, right?
If we jump down for example to verse number 14, it says the word was made flesh and dwelt
among us and we beheld his glory, the glory is of the only begotten of the father, full
of grace and truth.
So when the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, then it goes on to describe Jesus
coming into this world and doing his ministry and so forth.
Also in another book written by John, 1 John chapter five, we have this famous verse for
there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word and the Holy Ghost and
these three are one.
We would expect that to say the father, the son and the Holy Ghost and these three are
one because throughout the Bible, that's the formula that we see a lot baptizing them
in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Ghost but yet we have son and word being
used interchangeably because the word is Jesus, the word is the son of God, the son of God
is the word, these are interchangeable.
Now when we have an is or a was statement, it's not always reversible like that where
it's just a direct apple for apple.
For example, if I said cat is mammal, you know, that's a true statement, right?
But is it necessarily true if I say mammal is cat?
No, that's not necessarily true because mammal may be dog, mammal may be mouse, right?
So we don't always get to reverse these type of statements when we have an is statement,
right?
If we said the pastor is Steven Anderson, yeah, that's reversible, right?
Steven Anderson is the pastor, okay?
But there could be other pastors that are not Steven Anderson, you know, so you got
to be careful with these kind of statements, you got to interpret them in context.
So when the Bible says here that, when the Bible says, for example, Jesus is the son
of God, well, the son of God is Jesus, that's clear, okay?
But when the Bible says here in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the
word was God, okay, it is true that the word was God but you can't necessarily flip that
over and say, well, God was the word, why?
Because of the fact that God could also be referring to God the Father or God the Holy
Spirit, okay?
So Jesus is God but every mention of God is not necessarily Jesus because sometimes we're
talking God the Father and that's why when we're reading our New Testament, sometimes
it will specify this, it will say God even the Father.
If Jesus weren't God, you wouldn't have to say that but because Jesus is God as well
as the Father being God, you have to clarify sometimes, say, well, God, and I'm specifically
talking about the Father right now because, of course, God could refer to the Holy Spirit,
God could refer to Jesus and God could refer to the Father.
And so we want to make sure that we understand that when the Bible says the word was God,
that is saying that Jesus was God, it's saying that the Son of God was God.
So Jesus Christ is divine, Jesus Christ is divinity and, in fact, he is just as divine
as God the Father.
He's not a lesser deity, he doesn't have less divinity than the Father because Jesus and
the Father and the Holy Spirit are all equally God.
There's one God in three persons and this doctrine is known as the Trinity.
Some people will try to say that this is an unbiblical made-up doctrine that was developed
hundreds of years after the New Testament was written but yet just glancing at John
chapter 1, you can already start to put together the bare bones of the Trinity pretty easily
when you see that, okay, the Word was with God and the Word was God.
So apparently there's more to God than just the Word.
Jesus is God but there's more to God than just Jesus because not only was Jesus God,
Jesus was also with God.
Who was he with?
He was with God the Father.
He was with the Son of God.
And it's also interesting how the Gospel of John starts out in a way similar to the Book
of Genesis because, you know, the Book of Genesis starts out, of course, in the beginning,
God created the heaven and the earth and then we have here this idea of in the beginning
was the Word.
And then John chapter 1 starts giving us the teachings of the Trinity.
No man has seen God at any time but the only begotten Son which is the bosom of the Father,
he had declared him and then even in Genesis 1, we also have a foreshadowing of the Trinity
because we have God saying in chapter 1 of the Bible, let us make man in our image after
our likeness.
That's plural.
But then in the next breath, it says God made man in his own image.
That's singular.
So you have this idea that God is both plural and singular.
And so you already are seeing the Trinity hinted at there even from chapter 1.
People will say it's the royal we, let us make man in our image.
We are not amused or whatever.
But first of all, that doesn't exist in the Old Testament, number 1.
But we're not in medieval England here.
But number 2 is that first of all, he says let's make man in our image.
So he couldn't be, it's, you know, sorry, I got ahead of myself.
In chapter 3, he says this, behold, the man has become like unto one of us.
That's not the royal we.
Like the Queen of England never says one of us.
That would be freaky if she said that because she's just one person.
But for God to say the man has become like unto one of us, that's really showing us that
it's not a royal we but that we're literally talking about three persons here.
And of course we know later that it's the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The other thing I wanted to get at with the let us make man in our image is that some
people will say, well, you know, it's just God talking to the angels or something.
But he's not making man in the image of the angels, though, is he?
He's in our image.
He doesn't share his image with some angel that's got six wings or four wings, you know,
all these just totally different look or totally different image than man.
And so the Trinity is very biblical.
It's very easy to derive from scripture.
And so we don't need Catholics from the fourth century to tell us about the Trinity.
We would have figured it out on our own with the Holy Spirit and just reading the New Testament
right here.
And so the Trinity is biblical.
So we know that the word is a name for Jesus.
It's interchangeable with Jesus.
It's interchangeable with the Son of God.
It says the same, meaning the word, was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him.
So of course the word is a person because it's Jesus.
And without him was not anything made that was made.
So the person who literally created this world is Jesus, the Son of God.
This is why the Bible says later in the book of Colossians that God made all things by
Jesus Christ.
So yes, God is the creator.
Even God the Father is the creator.
But in a sense you could look at it as him delegating creation to the Son or using the
Son as his actual agent to do the creating literally.
And so Jesus Christ is the creator.
Colossians chapter 1 identifies Jesus Christ as the creator.
And so it's pretty hard to get away from Christ's deity when you realize that he's the creator
of the whole world.
And we know it's in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And so this ties in nicely with Genesis 1 in a lot of ways.
Now it says in verse 4, in him was life and the life was the light of men and the light
shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.
Now darkness represents ignorance, not understanding, right?
And all throughout the Bible it's used this way.
And so it says the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.
And this speaks to the fact that unsaved people who are dwelling in darkness because they're
ignorant in their carnal mind and their unsaved mind and their unregenerate just natural state
as a just normal human, they're in darkness.
They don't understand or grasp the things of the Spirit of God.
So the light that shines in the darkness, this is the knowledge of God, the knowledge
of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, right?
The darkness cannot comprehend the Word of God.
And because the darkness comprehended not the light that God sent into the world, the
Bible says there was a man sent from God whose name was John.
So why was the man sent from God whose name was John?
He came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe.
Why do we need him?
Why do we need John to come bear witness of the light that through him, that by him
all men might believe?
Because without him, man cannot comprehend the light of God's Word, the light of the
gospel.
The unsaved man cannot grasp the gospel without some spirit-filled human being explaining
it to them.
The Bible says the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for their
foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they're spiritually discerned.
And so you have to be saved to understand the gospel.
Unsaved people are in darkness.
They need someone to explain.
That's why the Ethiopian eunuch said to Philip, when he asked him, understandest thou what
thou readest, he said, how can I except some man should guide me?
I need someone to explain this to me.
He's reading the Bible, he's sincere, he wants to know the truth, but he needed a saved human
to explain the gospel to him.
Philip then explains the gospel to him and then he gets saved right there on the spot.
Now once you're saved, you don't need a human to explain the Word of God to you because
now you have the light inside of you.
You have the Holy Spirit as your teacher yourself.
You have that anointing of the Holy Spirit that will guide you into all truth and you
need not that any man teach you.
But before you're saved, you don't have that unction and so you do need a man to teach
you.
And so the Bible is not just changing the subject here when it says there was a man
sent from God, his name was John.
He just finished saying, the light shineth, present tense, the light shines in the darkness.
It still today shines in the darkness.
That's just an all time statement.
The light shines in the darkness, right?
But the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God to bear witness of the light that all men through him might
believe, right?
Now obviously we're specifically talking about John the Baptist.
This is confusing because when you first read the book of John, like when I read it when
I was a kid, this kind of confused me.
Probably new believers get a little confused because they're reading a book called John
and then they get just a few verses in and it's like there was a man sent from God whose
name was John.
You're probably a little surprised at first to realize that's not the guy who the book
is named after, right?
Because there are two Johns, right?
You got the apostle John, one of Jesus' 12 disciples that we're going to meet a little
bit later on and then you have John the Baptist, which is a totally different person, right?
So John the Baptist is who we're talking about.
Now obviously John the Baptist is not the only one through which people could believe
on the word of God, but he is a symbol of that.
He's an archetype of that.
He is just a quintessential person sent from God to explain or bear witness or testify
to God's word because without such a person, people will not get it.
People will not understand it.
Now you and I, we're like John, right?
We are sent into this world by Jesus Christ to bear witness of the light, right?
We got the Bible in our hand.
This is a source of light and we bear witness of the light so that people through us will
believe on Jesus Christ.
Now there's a wrong doctrine out there called Calvinism and it teaches that we have nothing
to do with salvation.
It's just God does everything and it's all faded beforehand.
It's all predetermined and nothing we do can change anything because God's already settled
it and he chooses who goes to heaven and he chooses who goes to hell and that's just
the way.
It's not up to our choice whatsoever.
This is garbage.
It's a false doctrine.
They also teach that Jesus didn't die for everybody, that Jesus only died for the people
who get saved when in reality the Bible says he tasted death for every man and of course
I'm not even going to rattle off all the verses that say that.
There's so many verses that say that he died for everybody.
That's another sermon for another time.
But this same type of mentality, this Calvinist mentality will sometimes even creep in amongst
Baptists that are not Calvinists.
This kind of idea that tries to take the human element out of salvation in every way.
Now first of all, we of course know that salvation is not by works.
So in that sense, yes, salvation is not by our deeds and works and we don't earn it.
It's a free gift, right?
But it still has to be received by human beings.
But not only that, there are three parties involved here with a person getting saved.
It's not just the unsaved sinner and God and salvation occurring.
No, no, no.
There's a man sent from God whose name was John that all men through him might believe.
You see, Calvinism wants to cut out this middle man, this through man, but it's there.
It's in scripture.
And it's not just in John chapter 1 about John the Baptist.
I mean, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians when people are getting a little bit too cultic
or sycophantic or they're getting a little bit too factional of, well, I'm of Paul, I'm
of Apollos, I'm of Cephas.
And they're making too big of a deal about human preachers, human leaders, human apostles.
And instead of understanding that we're all one in Christ Jesus and we shouldn't be so
fixated on personalities and breaking into factions based on personalities.
And Paul says in that context, who is Paul?
Who is Apollos?
But ministers by whom ye believed even as the Lord gave every man.
See, every single person who's saved had some John in their life that bore witness to the
light that they might believe in Christ.
You know, I didn't just get saved just by myself, me, God, the Bible.
I couldn't have.
I never would have figured it out.
I couldn't comprehend it.
I needed somebody to bear witness of the light.
I was like the Ethiopian eunuch.
I need Philip to explain it to me.
I was like the people here where John the Baptist had to explain it to them in 1st century
A.D. Palestine.
You see, we all have ministers by whom we believed.
And when we say minister, it doesn't have to be some kind of a church worker, clergy,
pastor, deacon.
That's not what we mean by that.
Just any servant of God by whom we believe.
For me, it was my mom who gave me the gospel as a six-year-old boy and won me to Christ,
so my mom was the minister by whom I believed.
But everybody had somebody or maybe lots of somebodies explain the gospel to you.
You might have heard preaching from several preachers before getting saved, and one sowed
the seed, one watered it.
God gave the increase.
So let's not get too obsessed about who is of who and who got one to Christ by who.
At the end of the day, God gets the glory.
God gave the increase.
But at the same time, the Calvinists want to just take man out of the equation and just,
oh, it's just all God.
God does it all.
Well, God does it through humans.
God uses John.
God uses Philip.
I mean, why didn't God just show up and just illuminate the Ethiopian eunuch himself?
Instead, he picks up Philip, and actually, Philip was already busy doing something else,
doing great works for God in Samaria.
He comes and tells Philip to go out in the middle of nowhere, out in the middle of the
desert, to go meet up with this one chariot out in the middle of nowhere to witness to
this one guy.
Philip kind of had other things to do, but God knew that that eunuch needed to get saved,
and Philip had to be there to explain it.
Somebody's got to explain it.
Even the apostle Paul, who saw the light on the road to Damascus, was told, go into the
city and go find a man named Ananias.
He'll tell you what to do.
And then Ananias preaches him the gospel and tells him, because we need that person to
explain us the gospel before we're saved.
Once we're saved, now we have direct access to the throne room of God.
We have the built-in tutor, the built-in teacher of the Holy Spirit.
But unsaved people do not comprehend the light, and that's why John was sent.
And so it's not a coincidence that verse 6 follows verse 5.
It's following up with the same thought.
The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might
believe.
Now, here's the thing.
When the Bible says that all men through him might believe, obviously, this did not happen.
Did every person under the sound of John the Baptist's voice get saved?
Did all men through him believe?
Did the whole world get saved?
Did all the Jews get saved?
No.
This is an intention.
What's the purpose?
Why is he being sent?
He's being sent so that all men through him might believe, meaning that God is not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
God will have all men, will meaning wants to.
God will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
And so that's John's goal.
You know, when we go out sowing, what are we trying to do?
We're trying to get everybody saved.
We're not out there saying like, nah, I'd like to get him saved.
I'm not too sure about him.
He might as well just go straight to hell as far as I'm concerned.
No, when we go out sowing, we want to get everybody we can saved.
There's not a person where we'd be like, I don't want to get that person saved.
I want that person to remain unsaved.
Now, there are some people that it's too late for them, but it's not that we don't want
them to get saved or something, right?
We're out there trying to get everybody saved.
But does that mean we're going to get everybody saved?
Not by a long shot.
John the Baptist didn't get everybody saved, but that's the goal.
And that's what the Bible is saying here is that God is willing and we should be willing,
and that's the mission.
Go get everybody saved, right?
Reach everybody with the gospel.
But obviously, at the end of the day, it has to be their choice whether to accept and reject
the gospel.
That's why later in the book of John, he's going to say to the unsaved, you will not
come to me that you might have life, meaning you don't want to come to me that you might
have life.
That's the problem.
He says, whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
We've got to make sure that when we understand the word will in this more archaic form of
English of the King James Bible, will is not just future tense.
It's like want to frequently.
We've got to understand that difference because today, we say, I will go to the store.
I'm just saying I'm going to, whereas in the Bible, I will go to the store is like I want
to go to the store.
And we still have the remnant of that with words like willing.
I'm willing, meaning I want to.
So the Bible says here that he came to bear witness of light that all men through him,
I believe.
He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.
That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Now, what is meant here?
What can we learn from this statement that the true light lights every man that comes
into the world?
Well, again, we can see the fact that God wants everyone to be saved, you know, because
the light lights every man that comes into the world.
What does that mean?
Illumination happens for every single person that is in this world.
That doesn't mean that they're going to get saved.
It doesn't mean they're going to comprehend it.
It doesn't mean that they're going to accept it.
It doesn't mean that they're going to receive it, but the light shines on everyone.
There's no person in this world upon whom the light of the gospel does not in some way,
at some time, in some form, shine upon them, okay?
When the Bible says that was the true light that lighteth every man that comes into the
world, it'd be sort of like if I have a flashlight, right, and I could use that flashlight to
light something, to illuminate something, right?
We talk about lighting, okay?
What do we mean when we talk about lighting, you know, the lighting guy in a movie production,
right?
What's he doing?
He's lighting things up.
He's illuminating them.
How does he do that?
By shining the light on things.
So if I said, oh, excuse me, lighting guy, you know, we need to light this guy.
This guy's not being lit right now.
He needs lighting.
That means we're going to take a light and shine it on that guy, right?
So the light of the gospel, the light of the truth of God's word, the light of God's word
itself lighteth every man that cometh into the world, meaning that it shines upon them.
Not necessarily that they receive it, understand it, comprehend it, believe on Christ.
But again, this goes to a few things.
Number one, that God wants everybody to be saved.
And number two is that no one has any excuse for not being saved.
So people aren't going to someday say, well, it's not my fault that I'm not saved because
people didn't tell me the gospel and I never heard about any of this.
I had no clue about any of this.
So therefore, you know, it isn't fair that I'm being damned.
You see, the true light lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
And this is part of why all men are without excuse before God.
Romans chapter 1, of course, goes into great detail about all men being without excuse.
And so when we think about this idea that everybody at some point gets some light shined
upon them, then what we need to understand is that what you do with that light will sometimes
determine whether you get more light or not.
You know, if God shines a light on you and you reject what little light you're given,
you might not get any more.
Now does everybody get the same amount of light?
No.
If you're born into some Christian family in America, you're going to be getting tons
of light.
You're going to spend your whole life hearing the word of God and the gospel and you're
going to spend hours in church and so forth.
Whereas if you're born in some Hindu family or born in some Buddhist family in a foreign
country or you're born into some, you know, bone in the nose type of a family, you know,
you're not getting as much light.
But I promise you, you're getting some light because John chapter 1 says you're getting
light and Romans chapter 1 even says the invisible things of him from the creation
of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even as eternal
power and Godhead so that they are without excuse because when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God.
You know, when that light comes, you better respond and you better not go scurrying into
the shadows like a cockroach because that might be the only light you get.
Some people are going to get a lot of light.
Some people are going to get a little bit of light.
It's not necessarily fair, but everybody gets a shot.
Some people get 20 shots.
Some people get one shot, but everybody gets a shot.
You say, well, I don't like that.
You know what?
I don't like it either, to be honest with you.
I don't like the idea of people only getting one shot or two shots even.
You know, I don't like it any more than you do, but you know what?
I'm going to go do something about it and I'm going to go shine the light and I'm going
to give somebody another shot and another shot and another shot because I'm not a Calvinist
that just thinks, oh, well, whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
I'm just going to bury my head in some book written by some dead, tired Puritan from 400
years ago.
Maybe I can just geek out on theology every day.
No, I'm going to get out there and get my hands dirty actually out there preaching the
gospel to the lost.
And I'm all for study.
But you know what?
You got to be a key component to study that's absolutely necessary.
You got to be a doer of the word.
You're not a doer of the word.
Your study's in vain.
Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel.
And that's not just talking about preaching the gospel to the people that are already
saved that are coming to church.
It's talking about getting out there into the highways and hedges and preaching the
gospel to the lost out there where they are.
Folks, I don't think that it's predetermined.
I think we're determining it right now.
And when you choose to sit on your butt and do nothing with the gospel, you know what?
Then people aren't getting as much of a shot as they would have if we just kept bringing
them the gospel and kept bringing them.
We all agree that the kid who grows up in a Christian home is more likely to get saved
than the kid who grows up in a Hindu home.
It's kind of a no-brainer, isn't it?
Everybody agree with that?
Okay, well guess what?
That shows that the more exposure you get to the gospel, the more likely you are to
get saved.
So why don't we give the Hindu guy the gospel a second time?
Let's give him the gospel a third time because we want him to go to heaven.
And so the Bible says, that was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world.
Make no mistake about it, there's nobody in this world that's just in total darkness that
has not received any light from God.
God is reaching out to people all over the world tonight.
God's word and God's messengers are all over the place and people are hearing things and
seeing things and they have to respond to the light that they're giving.
Billy Graham famously gave this interview where he talked about how people who don't
believe in Jesus, they might still be in heaven because they're just sort of following the
light that they have.
You know, all Muslims, you know, hey, they're following, you know, I believe that we'll
see many of them in heaven or, you know.
Joel Osteen is like, ah, it's so tough, you know, with the Hindus, you know, they love
God so much.
Their God is literally one of the final bosses on Mortal Kombat.
Okay, that's the God they love so much.
Well, you know what?
I enjoyed kicking that guy's butt too in Mortal Kombat but I'm not going to worship him, okay?
But the thing is, you know, you got these guys like Billy Graham and Joel Osteen like,
oh, you know, they're following the light that they have or whatever.
But here's the thing about that.
If you follow the light that you have, you end up at Jesus in this lifetime, my friend.
So it's like, oh, they're following the light that they have.
Well, if so, that means they're ultimately going to end up believing in Jesus and being
saved.
But if they die without Christ, you know what that tells me?
It tells me they were not following the light that they had.
It tells me that they decided to remain in the darkness and they will go to outer darkness
and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The Bible says he was in the world, verse 10, and the world was made by him.
You know, isn't that interesting?
Jesus Christ made the world and yet he was in the world.
He entered into his own creation.
He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not, meaning
that in general, this world did not recognize Jesus Christ as the creator living and dwelling
among them.
But that's what he was.
He came unto his own and his own received him not.
Now, who is that when it says he came unto his own?
It's referring to the Jews, right?
Jesus Christ was born, obviously, into a Jewish family in the sense of the biblical meaning
of being Jewish in the sense of he's from that southern kingdom of Judea, right?
That kind of physical, ethnic sense, right?
Not in the sense of the religion of Judaism that's a Christ-rejecting religion.
That religion hadn't been invented yet.
The Christ-rejecting religion of Judaism that we know today, rabbinical Judaism, that comes
after the destruction of the temple when they had to rethink their whole religion.
So we don't want to anachronistically attribute today's, like you'll speak against the wicked
religion of Judaism.
Well, Jesus was a Jew.
No, he wasn't that kind of Jew.
He wasn't one of these kind of Jews, you know what I mean?
He was actually just Jewish by ethnicity, what the Bible called Jews by nature.
He's born into that southern kingdom of Judah, and he was born under the law, you know?
He's born an Israelite.
So he's in Israel, he's a Jew ethnically, and he's a Jew in the sense that he is following
the religion of the Old Testament.
Again, not the religion of today, but the religion of the Old Testament, which is heavily
based upon animal sacrifices that today's religion has nothing to do with, right?
Jesus, when he was born into this world, he was circumcised on the eighth day, just
as the law would prescribe.
That's something that today's Jews would still do.
But then his mother went down to the temple and offered an animal sacrifice for her purification.
Is that what they're doing today?
No.
So Jesus was born into a different kind of religion, an Old Testament kind of religion,
and so the Jews are his own people in the sense that, you know, he's coming to, first
of all, Jesus is God, and so the Old Testament nation of Israel, being God's chosen people,
are Jesus' chosen people in that sense.
Christ is the one who brought them into the promised land, you know?
It was literally Joshua who brought them in, but Joshua pictures Jesus because the rock
that followed them, the Bible says, was Jesus Christ.
When they were wandering in the wilderness and went to the promised land, the rock that
followed them was Christ.
Christ was with them.
So they're Christ's chosen people as well in the Old Testament.
And so both from a perspective of Jesus Christ as being God, they're his people, Israel,
the Jews, right?
And then even humanly speaking, he's born into this home, physically speaking, where
he is one of them, and he came unto his own, meaning his family, his friends, his neighbors,
his nation.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
Now if Jesus' own received him not, should we be super surprised when many times our
own receive us not?
What did Jesus say later on when his brethren did not believe on him or when his hometown
of Nazareth did not believe on him?
He said, a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own house.
You see, many times we will preach the gospel and be greatly used by God among strangers,
even among foreigners, even in a foreign country, among people that we don't even know at all,
whereas sometimes our own family and friends will not receive the gospel that we preach
or will not receive even just us as people.
They'll just even reject us.
You know, you might have experienced in your Christian life being rejected by loved ones
because of your Christian faith, people not wanting anything to do with you because you're
a Christian, because you're serving God, because you believe the Bible, people just not wanting
to be your friend anymore, family just not wanting to be around you, not wanting to have
you.
Hey, rejoice because this is what happened to the prophets of the old and this is what
happened to Jesus Christ himself.
He came unto his own and his own received him not.
His own brethren are mocking him and ridiculing him and not believing on him in the book of
John itself.
I believe it's the beginning of John chapter 7.
And so we see that he came unto his own, his own received him not.
This also may end up being your story in many ways.
In fact, it's almost guaranteed to be your story in some way, shape, or form where your
own end up not receiving you at some point.
But as many as did receive him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name.
And this is part of the problem with this idea of lifestyle evangelism, which tells
us that our primary mode of evangelism is with family and friends.
And look, I am 100% for you winning your family and friends to Christ.
And I think that it's one of the greatest things ever when you can get a friend or a
loved one saved or a family member saved because you often have a really good chance at discipling
that person because you have a relationship with that person, you're seeing that person
all the time, and you can help them grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.
Hey, that's great to be able to reach family, but the problem is that often our own receive
us not.
And so this attitude that says, well, here's how I witness, I just witness to my family,
I just witness to my friends.
First of all, that's not going to be enough.
We got 8 billion people in the world.
Your little circle of family and friends is a great start, but it's just not enough.
We're just not going to get the job done for Christ unless we go outside of that.
But another thing we need to realize is that we're often going to have more success getting
strangers saved than getting the people we love saved.
That is the reality.
It's just true.
Like, man, we would rather get people that we love saved, people that we're close to
saved, we'd rather get them saved than strangers, right, because those are the people that are
really on our mind.
But who do we end up having more success with?
Just going out and knocking a door and getting strangers saved.
You know, if you talk to the people in this church who are really successful at winning
souls and they're out there knocking doors and they're out there getting a bunch of people
saved, now ask them how well they did at getting their siblings saved, their cousins saved,
their parents saved, their friends saved.
They're not just going, oh, they're all, I got them all saved.
You know, many times they're going to be like, yeah, I'm not succeeding at getting this person
or that person or this person saved.
And you know what's funny is that if you think about the Apostle Paul, who's the big time
missionary of the New Testament, right?
And who did he really want to get saved, according to Romans chapter 10?
He said, man, I really want to get Israel saved.
I really want to get my kinsmen, according to the flesh, saved.
And what do we see in the book of Acts?
Him continually being rejected by them.
But who is he super successful at reaching?
The Greeks.
He's getting the Greeks saved.
He's getting the Macedonians saved.
He's having all kinds of success amongst strangers.
So don't be shocked if that's what happens in your life as well.
He came into his own.
His own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave you power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name.
Of course, the way to salvation is by believing on the name of Jesus.
You believe on the name of Jesus, you become sons of God, meaning that you weren't already.
You start out not being a son of God.
You believe in Jesus, and you now have that spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
And so we are the sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ.
It says in verse 13, which were born not of blood.
Now what does that mean, which were born not of blood?
This is saying that being a son of God is not something hereditary.
It's not because, oh, you're Jewish, or oh, you're an Israelite, you're a Hebrew, you're
a child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Oh, well then you must be born again.
You must be saved.
You must be a son of God.
You must be a child of God.
Folks, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God.
Israel, according to the flesh, the state of Israel over there in the Middle East, the
Jews that are down there, you know, stimming at the synagogue and going like this, you
know, they are not the children of God.
Why?
Because the new birth, being born again, being a child of God, is not of blood.
And by the way, that means that my children are not automatically the sons of God.
Your children are not automatically the sons of God.
They must believe on Jesus Christ for themselves because they're not born of blood.
And then the Bible says, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God.
So the creation must be according to God's will, not man's will, meaning that you don't
do this on your terms, you do it on God's terms.
See Cain, he tried to please God on his own terms.
He said, oh, God wants an offering?
Well, I'm going to offer God my best.
I'm a farmer.
I have a green thumb like nobody's business.
And so I am going to offer God fruits and vegetables.
And God said, no, it's not on your terms, Cain, it's on my terms.
And Abel's offering was accepted by God because it was what God wanted, which is the blood
of the lamb.
You know, the Bible says, later on in the book of John, this is the will of him that
sent me, that everyone who believes on the son of God would live.
And I believe I'm paraphrasing that.
But he's saying, look, he wants everyone who sees the son of God to believe on him
and have life.
It's God's will that people would believe on Jesus and be saved.
That's the will of God.
God's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
In the context of salvation, that repentance has to do with believing on Christ, turning
from unbelief or turning from believing in Hinduism or believing in Buddhism or believing
in some other false pagan deity, turning from idols to the living God.
And so repentance with respect to salvation has to do with, I didn't used to believe in
Jesus, but now I do.
Repentance has to do with, I used to think it was by works, now I'm believing in Christ
for salvation.
I'm fully trusting what he did for me on the cross, the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ.
It's God's will that all men who would see the son of God would believe on him and have
eternal life.
That's what he's going to tell us later in the book of John.
That's the will of God.
The will of the flesh is, well, I want to earn it on my own.
The will of man is, I want to go light a candle and genuflect.
I want stained glass.
I want incense.
I want a religious experience.
But yet, the will of God is that we would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ through faith
in the heard word of God.
And so we're not born again by blood, by our ethnicity.
We're not born again of the will of the flesh, where we basically do it the way that we want
to do it, or according to man's desire for a relationship with God.
But it's got to be by the will of God.
God has told us, this is what it takes.
This is your pathway to heaven.
You're going to come into heaven on my terms, not man's terms, not your terms, my terms.
It's God's way, or it's the highway to hell.
So the Bible says in verse number 13, it's not of the will of the flesh, not of the will
of man, but of God.
And the word was made flesh and dwelled among us, and we beheld his glory.
The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John bare witness of him and cried, saying, this was he of whom I spake.
He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me.
Here's the significant thing here, is that John the Baptist is actually physically three
months older than Jesus, which isn't really that significant when we talk about age of
Jesus.
Like, hey, I'm older than you, buddy, because I'm 42 and three months, and you're 42.
And so I could tell you a little bit about life, buddy.
But the reason why this is significant, even though John the Baptist and Jesus Christ are
both 30 years old, approximately, the Bible doesn't give an exact age, but the Bible says
Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his ministry.
And so John the Baptist and Jesus are about 30.
Why does it matter that John the Baptist is three months older?
Is because John the Baptist says Jesus was before me.
How could he be before, how could Jesus be before John if John's three months older?
Because Jesus Christ was in the beginning with God, and Jesus Christ was God.
And so that's why he was before John the Baptist.
We need to understand that Jesus pre-existed.
He has always existed.
He always will exist.
He is eternal because he is God.
God eternally exists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
These three are one.
The Bible says in verse 16, and of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace,
for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
No man has seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Now when the Bible says no man has seen God at any time, it's saying no man has ever seen
God the Father at any time.
But the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Now there's a teaching out there, there's kind of some strange teachings out there,
and it's, you know what, it's these geeked out theological types.
And you know, they're usually Calvinists, and they're all geeked out in theology, and
they've got all these dumb Protestant and Catholic ideas that come from all these like
medieval scholars and Renaissance scholars and so forth, and it's just unbiblical stuff.
But what it comes down to, and I figured out why I hate theology.
I figured it out, because you know, you kind of think it would seem like theology would
be perfect for me, because you know, I love the Bible, I love Christ, I love Christianity,
I love church, but not only that, I'm also kind of an academic guy.
Like I'm kind of a guy who loves to learn stuff.
So it's not that I'm against learning or being intellectual or studying.
You know, I can geek out with the best of them, but yet I never geek out on theology.
I hate theology.
Why?
Because I figured out what theology is.
Theology is philosophy, worldly, secular, or even pagan methods of philosophy superimposed
on the Bible or applied to the Bible.
That's what it is.
That's what theology is.
And the Bible warns you not to be spoiled by philosophy.
It's exactly what's happening in Christianity when you have a bunch of pagan philosophy
from Aristotle and a bunch of Roman Catholics who are all into Aristotle in the Middle Ages,
and then a bunch of Protestants trying to keep up with their Catholic buddies and trying
to make sense of the Bible using man's wisdom, man's logic, human reasoning, and they come
up with all these doctrines that just aren't in the Bible.
You know, one of these doctrines is this idea that basically God has no appearance.
You know, that God has no image, that God has no form.
And that somehow, you know, God doesn't have a face, there's just nothing there as far
as that we could look at or see.
Now, you know, there are whole volumes written on this by a bunch of geeked out theologians,
but I don't care because, you know, I have the Bible.
And here are some problems with that according to the Bible.
The Bible says that no man shall see God's face and live.
How can you not see his face and live if he doesn't even have a face?
Well, it's figurative.
Look, there's got to be something where if I look at it, I'm going to die.
You see what I'm saying?
Oh, man, you can't see my face and live.
Oh, just kidding.
I don't have a face.
There's nothing to see.
There's literally no way you could look at it.
That doesn't make any sense.
The other problem with that is that Jesus clearly said, you have not seen his form,
you have not seen his shape, but I have.
He whom the Father has sent, he has seen him.
So Jesus Christ said that he had seen God the Father.
He said, you haven't, but I have.
How could Jesus see that which wasn't there?
Well, you know, seeing God's face is more, it's just like you understood him.
What, so you just understand God and you just die?
And here's what I want to know.
If God has no form nor shape nor image, then here's what I want to know.
What was Moses looking at when he was in the cleft of the rock?
When Moses was told by God, you know, no man shall see my face and live.
And then he says, you know, I'm going to put you in the cleft of the rock.
I'm going to cover you with my hand.
Just kidding.
I don't have a hand.
And then he says he's going to pass by him and then he's going to remove his hand.
And then Moses will see his hinder parts and when Moses actually saw the hinder parts
of God, his face shone and it wasn't figurative because they didn't put a figurative veil
over his face.
He came down from the mountain.
People couldn't look at Moses because his face was shining.
He had to put a veil over his face because his face was glowing because he had seen just
the rear parts of God as he passed by.
Now look, I'm not saying, of course I'm not saying that God the Father has a physical
body or that the Holy Spirit has a physical body.
That's not what we're saying.
But to sit there and say that he has no body, no face, no hand, so then who's Jesus sitting
at the right hand of is what I'd like to know.
But they'd say, well, that's figurative.
Well that's funny because when Stephen's being stoned, he looks up and sees Jesus standing
at the right hand of God.
Is he seeing metaphors?
He's dying and looking at something.
I mean it's pretty clear, my friend.
If you get your head out of the theology books and get your head in this book, you're not
going to walk away saying God doesn't have a hand, doesn't have a face.
And again, it's kind of back to the same modalist garbage of there's only one guy sitting on
that throne.
Wrong.
Jesus is up there sitting with his Father in his throne.
Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God, and there's God the Father up there, and there's
Jesus sitting at his right hand.
Well, it's just figurative.
No it isn't.
Jesus is literally sitting in heaven at the right hand of God, period.
Here's what I want to know.
If the Holy Spirit has no bodily presence whatsoever, then how did he descend in bodily
shape like a dove?
That's a direct quote, by the way.
You know, he descended in bodily shape like a dove.
And again, Jesus Christ is the one who is a flesh and bone body.
I'm not saying that God the Father and the Holy Spirit have a physical body, but here's
the thing.
Jesus is the express image of God's person.
Riddle me this.
How can Jesus be the express image of God's person if God doesn't even have an image?
How can Jesus say, well, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, if God doesn't even
look like anything?
You want to know what God the Father looks like?
Jesus.
You see, we're all made in the image of God, but we're not in the express image of his
person.
I can't say, hey, if you've seen me, you've seen God the Father.
Now let's say I had an identical twin, and it was like, man, I really want to see your
identical twin.
I could say, well, if you've seen me, you've seen him, because I am the express image of
his person.
But I'm not the express image of God's person, but Jesus was the express image of God's person.
And again, there's all kinds of philosophical problems with what I'm saying.
And you know what?
I don't care, because philosophy sucks, and I don't care, because all I care is what the
Bible says.
And your human logic is going to perish with this world.
And the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
And so I'd rather just stick to what the Bible says, and what the Bible says can never
be heresy.
That should be our motto.
Anything the Bible says cannot be heresy.
Jesus sitting at the right hand of God.
And by the way, one day, moi, I am going to look at the face of God the Father.
And so will you if you're saved.
That face that he supposedly doesn't have, I'm going to look at it, and so will you.
Because in Revelation chapter 22, after the last enemy is destroyed, after death is destroyed,
after death ceases to exist, after the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, we will see his face,
speaking of God the Father, and his name will be in our foreheads.
That's what the Bible says.
And so I am looking forward to that day.
What a day that will be, to actually see the face of God the Father and live.
So far, only one person has seen, which is Jesus.
And so the Bible says here, no man has seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he had declared him.
The way that Jesus is able to declare him, or explain him, or expound him to us, is because
Jesus has seen him.
And later on, he's going to say that he has seen him.
And so that's a key point to make right there.
I've got to hurry up because I'm almost out of time, but it says, this is the record of
John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who art thou?
And he confessed and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ.
And they asked him, what then?
Art thou Elias?
Elias is Elijah.
And he sayeth, I'm not.
Art thou that prophet?
Now what does he mean by that prophet?
Well, there's a prophecy in Deuteronomy about a special prophet that would come that would
be like unto Moses and so forth.
And that's a prophecy of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
And so he's not that prophet because Jesus is that prophet.
And so, hey, art thou that prophet?
He said, no.
Verse 22, then said they unto him, who art thou that we may give an answer to them that
sent us?
What sayest thou of thyself?
He said, I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord,
said the prophet Elias.
And they which were sent were of the Pharisees.
And they asked him and said unto him, why baptize us thou then if thou be not that Christ
nor Elias, neither that prophet?
John answered them saying, I baptize with water, but there standeth one among you whom
you know not.
He it is who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoes latch it I'm not worthy
to unloose.
These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan where John was baptizing.
So the question is asked, art thou that prophet, art thou Elias?
Now Elijah, they're expecting to come before the Messiah comes because the Bible says in
Malachi chapter 4, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible
day of the Lord come.
And so later on, Jesus' disciples are going to ask him, why did the scribes say that Elias
must first come?
And Jesus is going to say to them, well, Elias must truly first come and restore all things.
But I say unto you that Elias has come already.
Then they understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.
So here's the question.
If later on, Jesus is going to explicitly say, John the Baptist is Elias, which was
for to come, why is John the Baptist here when he's asked, are you Elijah?
Art thou Elias?
Why does he say no?
Well, here are a couple of possible reasons.
One possible reason is just that when he's asked, are you Elijah, he's just saying that
he's not literally Elijah.
And then when Jesus says, this is Elijah, he is saying that he came in the spirit and
power of Elijah.
Because that's what Jesus actually expressly says when he explains this in one of the passages,
he says that he came in the spirit and power of Elijah.
That's one explanation.
Another explanation is that John the Baptist just doesn't realize that he is Elijah.
Because this is asking a human being.
Now everything in the Bible is true.
Here's why this verse is true.
Because they really did ask John that, and John really did say no.
That doesn't necessarily mean that John is right when he says no.
Because we know that in one sense, he's for sure wrong, because Jesus says, this is Elijah.
If you're able to receive it, this is Elijah, which was for to come.
And they're like, are you Elijah?
No.
Not knowing that you're Elijah does not prevent you from being Elijah.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
Because John the Baptist is not infallible.
John the Baptist is a human being.
When John the Baptist opens his mouth, he can be right, he can be wrong about something
of this nature.
So those are two possible explanations.
I think both of them could be valid.
You know, you could take whichever one you like, because you could either say, well,
in one sense he is, in one sense he isn't, and that's why the answers are different.
Or you could just say, well, John the Baptist just didn't realize that he is Elijah, although
he really is Elijah.
And then they're saying, well, then, you know, well, who are you then?
You know, we want to put you in a category, you're not the prophet, you're not the Messiah,
you're not Elijah, well, who are you then, because you seem like a pretty significant
guy.
Now, of course, this question is misguided, because the answer is he's Elijah, you know,
according to Jesus.
But his answer is also accurate when he says, I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet, Isaiah.
His job, John the Baptist's job, is to go before Christ and prepare the way before him,
meaning he's going to start sowing the seed, he's going to soften people up, he's going
to get Israel ready for Jesus to come on the scene, so that Jesus Christ's ministry
could be as effective as possible.
John the Baptist comes before him and kind of gets the spiritual ball rolling, so that
Jesus Christ can then come on the scene and, you know, come on to some fertile ground.
You know, when Jesus Christ's recruiting his disciples in this passage, we see him recruiting
disciples from followers of John the Baptist.
So John the Baptist has already been teaching them and training them, and then Jesus comes
along and grabs these disciples, and they're not as wet behind the ears, because they've
already spent time learning from and following John the Baptist.
And so John says, I baptize with water, but he who's coming after me is preferred before
me, whose shoes latch that I'm not worthy to unloose.
And of course, after this, Jesus shows up, and John points him out and says, behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
And so we'll stop there tonight, but it's a powerful passage here, laying down some
key teachings about the fact that Jesus Christ has come into this world in order to save
everybody.
That's the goal, that's the plan.
Jesus Christ is God, in addition to being the Son of God, because you've got the Father
the Son and the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ is the express image of God's person, meaning
that if you've seen him, you've seen the Father, because he is declaring the Father, and he
has seen the Father in order to be able to declare the Father.
Also that Jesus Christ is the one who has that true light in him that lights every man
who comes into the world, but even though the light illuminates everybody, shines on
everybody, it's not going to do people any good unless that man is sent from God, or
that woman is sent from God, that boy or that girl is sent from God, right, to bear witness
of the light.
That saved Christian has to come along, and that's you, that's me, that would come along
and explain the Gospel to the lost so that they could be saved.
Now, if the person who is unsaved gets that little bit of light and they respond to it,
then God is likely, just like he sent Philip to the eunuch, to send us two people that
are ready to hear, right?
So if I go out soul winning, I might just randomly be like, eh, I think I'm going to
go down this street, but in reality, God has led me to that street, because somebody on
that street is kind of following the light that they have, kind of responding, and God
knows that that's a receptive soul, and he's got a plan.
And so when I go out and knock doors, when you go out and knock doors, we're stepping
into God's plan.
We're entering into other men's labors.
We're jumping in and finishing a job that's already been started by somebody who sowed
the seed, somebody who watered it, or just there's some person out there who maybe no
one has given them the Gospel yet, but God has noticed them responding to the light that
they've been given, and so he wants to give more light.
We show up to give more light.
We show up to give another shot.
But guess what?
God can't lead you if you're not doing it.
If I go soul winning, God can lead me, but God can't lead me if I'm sitting on my butt
at home.
You can steer the car because the car's moving.
If I just sit in the driveway and just turn the steering wheel, the car doesn't go anywhere.
It doesn't change.
It's not like the car just, like if I'm just sitting in the driveway and I turn the steering
wheel, the car doesn't just go, the whole car doesn't just like start rotating.
Like I just start turning the wheel to the left and the car's just like woo, like a bumper
car or something, right?
The car's gotta be moving for the steering wheel to work.
Look, you want God to direct your life, you gotta start moving, and God will lead you
just as he led Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch, just as John the Baptist preached unto the
people whom God intended him to preach to.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this great passage, Lord.
Powerful, powerful words from the Gospel of John.
So simple, so basic, and yet so profound, Lord, that every time we approach them, we
can always learn something new and get a deeper understanding of your truth, Lord.
Bless us now as we go our separate ways, as we go out into this world.
Help us Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to bear witness of the light, to friend, loved one,
and co-worker, but also, Lord, help us to bear witness of the light even unto strangers
who may even be more likely to receive our words than those that are close to us.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.