Dennis Tuuri

better for him. He’s passed into glory and rejoices with Christ now in his presence. And I thought Friday evening about our church and when we first got started, the zeal and enthusiasm we had for reforming our world based upon a worldview. And while the coffee house demonstrated a worldview really not informed by the scriptures, another authoritative word that they’re using apart from the word of God, still, one has to admire the zeal and ardor of people who are inspired by a worldview and then see it as central to all that they do.

We talked about years ago about having a Christian coffee shop or a reading room with books and materials and I hope that we haven’t totally lost that ardor that all those of us who were here for many years received from R.J. Rushdoony and his explicit founding of his worldview upon the word of God and calling us to remember that this word is a sure and relevant word. Rushdoony in speaking of John chapter 1 in the prologue wrote this prologue rolls out like thunder and it rolls out like the music of the spheres.

In this prologue we really find all that we need to know. In the beginning in Genesis we read all we need to know and here in John we find what we need to know. The mission for today from this text is a simple one. The mission is to read our Bibles to pray and to walk in the light. To read our Bibles, pray, walk in the light by obeying God and repenting when we do wrong. I think this text gives us that.

Last week we kind of did an overview of the prologue and I’m going to spend three weeks going through these three spirals that we talked about. Three waves as it were that break upon the shore from this prologue that describe the rest of the book. Remember we said the verses 1:5, 6-13 and 14-16 of the prologue all have a declaration at the beginning of something about our savior. This declaration is seen then in terms of an effect upon mankind and then there’s a response for mankind as Jesus interacts with his created order and that produces a response.

We’ve also said that the prologue contains a summation of the entire book. I provide you a chiastic outline done a little differently than the way you normally see us here. This is from a man named Culpepper. I’m sorry I didn’t put the reference to him on the outline, but that’s what that is. And I think he’s correct. We talked last week about how verse one and verse 18 sort of obviously go together. In the beginning was the word. The word is with God. The word was God. And then at the end it talks about nobody has seen God at any time but the Son reveals him. So we have the word and God here and we have the Son and the Father here and those kind of form the bookends of this prologue. And as we’ll see as we go through it the next couple of weeks, there are more connections to be made. And I’m convinced that the center of this prologue is indeed found in verses 11 and 12 as a way of outlining the book that I provided on the outline for you here.

He came to his own in verse 11, but his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become sons of God, even to those that believe on his name. So he comes to his own in chapters 1-6. His own receive him not in chapters 7-12. There’s the rejection of Jesus. But as many as received him are described in John 13-17. Jesus working directly with his disciples in the last half of the book.

His ministry to his own. He washes their feet. He teaches them in that long discourse recorded in chapters 13-17. He prays for them. And then the book concludes with them going out and dying that these might be born again and might be the children of God. So if we see that then this prologue really the pivot point of the prologue are the children of God. So the Son is coming into the world to affect something and that something he’s going to affect is this new creation and the center of that new creation are the children of God that he will beget as it were by his word of power, life and light.

And so we in a very real sense are at the center of this prologue. We’re the pivot of the prologue. Jesus has come to affect a new humanity. We are that humanity. And so this is his purpose. And we’ll understand who we are as we look at the prologue in terms of that Jesus comes to effect this pivot point of a new creation. And the new creation specifically in terms of this new humanity that are born not of our will but of the will of God.

We have in the prologue really all the essentials of the faith laid out. The sovereignty of God, election, predestination, depravity, the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, his incarnation, his life-giving power, etc. And in fact, we have in the very first opening verses here, as we’ll see as we go through them verse by verse, really the marching orders for our life to live a radical in the sense of at the root of worldview life based upon the root of the Lord Jesus Christ and the preeminence of his word in terms of everything we do and say that there’s no life, there’s no knowledge, there’s no light outside of a commitment to the word of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this term word, as we’ll see, floats back and forth. Want to tie it down. What is it? Is it the metaphysical substance of Jesus? Well, Jesus is called word. And the word is his word, the word of the Lord, as we’ll see as we go through this. And that’s why the centrality of this mission is to understand this word. And you’re not going to understand it if you don’t read it. So the centrality of the mission today is to read the scriptures, continue in wellbeing, training up your children with the knowledge of the word and we’ll see as we go through this that prayer is an important part of this as well and then walking in the light.

So the center of this is the new creation and Jesus it is us and having given that as the center or the pivot point of the prologue what we’ll notice is in each of these spirals and as aspect of the Lord Jesus Christ is stressed its effect on mankind and then a response. So at the center of the prologue is the new creation in Christ but it’s also those who reject him. Every bit of the gospels to be read in the context of the prologue.

Every bit of this gospel is a call to you to decide to choose one way or the other. The way of light or the way of darkness, the way of life or the way of death, the way of freedom or the way of enslavement. The way of peace or the way of disorder. The pivot point is that there’s two responses going on here. Now, as we said, by the end of the prologue, the response is totally positive because the only ones that count ultimately is this new creation that’s being affected.

If you can’t read an eschatology of victory from the prologue of John, I don’t know what hope there is. And we’ll see it even at the end of this first cycle when really the world is described as total darkness. And yet, the darkness doesn’t hold back the light. The light shines. Okay. Well, let’s go through these verses one by one. And on your outline, this first point I’ve put as the pre-existent relational word of God.

Pre-existent relational word of God. And what I mean here is that there’s three clauses in verse one, three statements. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God. And as John noted in our question and answer time last week, the order of the terms actually is different than your English translation. God was the word. So there’s linkage here. Beginning word, word, God, God, God, and then God was the word.

So Jesus is deity. He was in the beginning with God. So there’s linkages drawn it’s kind of a stairstep fashion in this opening verse to link these concepts together one by one. And each clause is important. First, we notice that the first clause here in the beginning was the word. This speaks of the preexistence of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, he is before everything else. Now, right away, we talked about there’s linkage in John 1 to Genesis 1.

But now we see a point of departure immediately in Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So he starts at the beginning and he says what happens after the beginning. Day one, day two, he speaks things happen, right? It’s a historical account beginning at the beginning. But here in John 1, in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. By implication in eternity, the word was God.

So here in John, we start at the beginning, but we go now before the beginning. We go back to the pre-existent Lord Jesus Christ existing in the context of the Trinity. So, it tells us something deeper, more profound under the foundations, the basis for what happened in Genesis 1. We’re finding out more information here, and that is that the Lord Jesus Christ was pre-existent, and he was the creator God.

So, his pre-existence is spoken of in this flow of verse one. Secondly, this pre-existent word, there’s a relational aspect that’s stressed here. What do I mean? In the beginning was the word and the next clause, the word was with God. Now, the preposition with here is in a particular form that indicates movement or motion. So, the implication of this text is that this word moves toward is inclined toward has an attitude toward God which is by way of correlation with the last verse the Father.

So when we read this simple phrase in the beginning was the word and the word was with God the implications in the Greek are more profound and that is that there’s relationship between word and God here and Son and Father in the eternal Trinity that pre-exists prior to the creation of everything else that has no beginning or end. So Jesus is put in relationship to the Father. Now this is important because if we’re going to be children of God, then what it means is that Jesus in the new creation will create children whose movement is also part reflects that fellowship of the Trinity.

We’re not God. We never will be. But we do reflect the relationship with God, the inclination to love God and to seek the Father through the Son’s word by the illumination of the Spirit. Our inclination is toward God. And when we keep inclined to that inclination, then we’re moving in the context of life. And when we move away from it, we move in the context of death. So Jesus is the pre-existent word. He is relational.

He’s the relational word and he is identified as the word of God in the third clause. The word was with God and the word was God. God placed for emphasis. And as we said last week, the important thing here is that the definite article is not attached to God. So it doesn’t draw in a complete and no other thing to be said identity between Jesus the word or the Son and God. It’s not as if Jesus is the only God or comprehends all that God is.

He is God. The statement makes that clear. But the statement the way it’s written also makes clear that there is other there’s there’s other there’s more to God than just the Son. There’s the Father and the Holy Spirit. So in this opening phrase opening verse we have the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ clearly established by his pre-existence his relationship which when we get down to 18 he exists in the bosom of the Father in relationship to him and his identity now as divine.

The word was divine is one way to put that there. So the word is pre-existent relational and it is as the word of God. Now, as R.J. Rushdoony points out in the context of his excellent important book, Foundations of Social Order, this is a very, very important concept. And it’s important concept to affect what we just sang about. We just talked about might God give us his word by his spirit and light that we can move away from bondage and into freedom.

What’s the relationship? The council of Chalcedon met in A.D. 451, the year 451, to define who Jesus was in terms of his relationship to God and his relationship to humanity. And these this opening verse that rolls out like thunder that Jesus is God is the death now to human oppression in terms of false worldviews that declare something else is divine. It’s always a source of divinity. The question is, do we bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God or do we seek to divinize to make godlike some aspect of humanity?

The old phrase is vox populi vox deus the voice of the people is the voice of God and that’s what we believe in this country basically when people decide something that determines reality. If people decide that this is theft it’s theft and if they don’t then it’s not theft. Legal Positivism grew out of this doctrine that we can by laws frame reality as God. This was the same thing true with the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire saw itself as the divinization of man. Man becomes God. Well, here you see if Jesus if this man Jesus who’s going to be described in the Gospels starts out as a man, it’s not pre-existent and by the end of the Gospels is raised up from the dead and becomes God. Then you see we’re on a totally different path. We’re in a totally different worldview now because that means that you and I can become God just like Jesus.

Okay? So if Jesus starts as humanity and moves to deity, then it says people can move from humanity to deity. And what people always do when that possibility is opened up is it means the guy with the biggest gun gets to determine who’s God. The state becomes God walking on earth. R.J. Rushdoony spoke this word into the Christian world 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and things changed in this country. The right-wing, the religious right, had at its think tank, according to Newsweek magazine, the Chalcedon Foundation, was funny little old odd Armenian guy with his idiosyncrasies and his difficulties like all men have, but he understood the implications of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the pre-existence of the Lord Jesus Christ. He read his history and he read of men who 1550 years ago understood the radical importance to declare that Jesus is God in terms of what happens in governmental structures. If Jesus is God and he’s the word, then what it tells us is that his word is the canon. Canon means a standard, a ruler. If Jesus isn’t God, then we have no standard and the standard becomes vox populi vox deus voice of the people is the voice of God or whatever you know the Supreme Court decides that’s reality today men are oppressed if Jesus is not deity at all of course then we have another problem if he starts out as human and becomes divine then that opens up the idea that man can ascend by his own powers somehow and can become divine.

We never become divine. When we partake of communion, we’re not eating God to become God. We’re not eating God at all. We’re feasting on the we’re in union with the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ as represented in the elements. And through that humanity of Christ, we have relationship with God the Father. But we never have the same being as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. What’s pointed out here in verse one is the absolute well actually in verse two and His creation being accounted for is the complete separation of the created and the uncreated.

Only the triune God is uncreated. Everything else is created. And because it’s created and because it’s created by this personal God who has relationship in the context of eternity, the Son moving toward the Father, inclined toward him at all times because that relationship is what creates the world. We have a totally personal universe. So these are concepts that we can rush right over or we can pause.

And R.J. Rushdoony was used by the spirit of God to cause his church to give pause 30 or 40 years ago to hear again the voices of the historic church that came rolling like thunder down from the council of Chalcedon down from the creed that Chalcedon developed down from the Athanasian creed to declare the complete deity and yet total humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ and no intermingling no movement of humanity to divinity.

No chain of being by which we can become God. No, we find our rest and our peace in correct submissive relationship to the Son and through the Son with the Father and the Spirit. Jesus has absolute authority because he is the second person of the Trinity. And because he’s the second person of the Trinity, his spoken word becomes the canon for mankind. This spoken word frees us from concepts of deity that focus upon the state and its abilities.

So the pre-existent Jesus is important. The lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ is important and is stated here. And the fact that his canon, his word is the standard by which we must understand reality and conform ourselves to it. This is so very important for us. This is such a very practical thing. On the other hand, that’s the beauty again, right? The beauty of this prologue. There is profound to it and there’s simplicity to it.

All that stuff that I just said in a way for a lot of us for everyday lives it’s not something we’re supposed to think about a lot. It forms the foundation. But what do we do with it? We very simply say that the word of the Lord, the word that is God’s word that spoke reality into being, this is the word that is the canon or standard for our life. I’m never going to become God. But I am made for delightful relationship with God.

And that relationship finds itself expressed as I expose myself to and understand the word of God. The simplicity of the opening verse is that we’re supposed to read our Bibles and we’re supposed to read them a lot and we’re supposed to avail ourselves of opportunities to get together and to encourage each other in understanding of what this word is and what it means. Read your Bibles. It’s as simple as that.

Now this is the same thing that’s belted out from one end of the scriptures to the other. Psalm 119 beginning at verse 97. Oh how I love your law. Now what’s see there’s this there’s this easy movement in the scriptures. Jesus is the word and here he’s loving the law. Does he love the law as an abstract conceptual judicial pronouncement? I don’t think so. He loves the law as a reflection of the person of Jesus or the person of God Yahweh.

That’s why he loves the law. It’s a reflection of God. We don’t want to get the law separated from the person of Jesus. You know, Jesus upgraded the Pharisees. You search the scriptures thinking that in them you’ll find life. But they testify of me, a person, and I am here and you will not learn from me. You see, we never want to abstract the word away from Jesus. When we read the word, we’re hearing his voice.

The scriptures are God breathed. We read in Paul’s epistle to Timothy and it means if I went up and blew on your face, well, if I took a breath first and then blew on your face, you’d feel his breath, right? Well, that’s the scriptures to us. It’s God speaking to us. We do not want to take the scriptures as an abstract truth away from the personality of Jesus. But on the other hand, we don’t want to downplay them and think that somehow this mystical relationship as we meditate on them, as we walk in the garden, is what it’s all about.

The word has a tremendous importance to us. And we should be like the psalmist. We should say, “Oh, how I love Jesus. And because I love Jesus, I love your law.” And actually, because I love your law, I know I love Jesus because that law speaks of him. Jesus told the disciples at the end of the road to Emmaus that all of the Old Testament, all the scriptures spoke of him. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day.

Well, you know what? Do we do with that verse? Is this guy maybe he’s just a preacher, a pastor, and so that’s why he’s thinking about it? No, no. This verse is a verse that should characterize the Lord Jesus Christ, loving the Father’s word, but it should characterize us. These scriptures should be our meditation all day when we get up, when we have our food together, when we see each other and greet each other and our families, when we go to work, when we drive around, when we go to our recreations, there’s no area in which this word should not be our meditation.

The word of God has to be our meditation all the day. You through your commandments make me wiser than my enemies. Now, this general word is now portrayed as law and commandments. And this is the way wisdom comes is through the application of God’s word. You can’t get wise. There’s no automatic wisdom. We were looking for birthday cards for Steve on Friday. coming 50 and you know a lot of cards about how you get wise when you get old and said that’s not true you don’t get wiser as you get old older not necessarily you do if you’ve been studying the word of God and have filled your heart and mind with meditation of it then you become wiser you see how it relates to the world around you and believe you may if you go to look for birthday cards these days you’ll see there’s not much wisdom from certainly the people publishing these cards my it’s a mess toilet humor everywhere it’s just awful you know reflects our culture.

Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies. They are ever with me. See, again, commandments of God are with him always. I have more understanding than all my teachers. Your testimonies are my meditation. Again, meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep your precepts. So, he doesn’t just meditate them. He loves them. Because he loves them, he meditates on them. And he knows that by meditation, he brings himself to fuller obedience to them.

Right? This is the goal of the reading of scripture to hear God’s word to us to hear the word of Jesus. I have restrained my feet from every evil way that I may keep your word. That’s interesting because we usually think that well we’ll keep God’s word and as a result keep ourself from every evil way. But notice what he says here. He puts the ethical component first. I keep away from evil ways that I might keep your word.

See, it’s that pivot point in the as begin are you going to receive or not receive Jesus’s word? You see, well, to receive Jesus’s word, you forsake evil. And as a result of that, then you end up keeping God’s word. So, the point here is I think that the psalmist is putting the ethical content of the scriptures prior to understanding. It’s just what we said last week. Augustine said, “I obey in order that I might understand.” Okay?

I keep away from the false way that I may keep your word. I have not departed from your judgments. You for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. The word is correlated to fine food throughout the scriptures again because Jesus is the manna come down from heaven. And when we eat tasty food, we should think about how tasty that word should be to us.

The tastiest thing in our lives should be the word of God to us. Jesus later in the book of John will say that his food was to do the will of the Father. The word of the Father will of the Father is what his necessary food was to finish his work. Through your precepts and get understanding. Therefore I hate every false way. So now it goes the other way. We’re supposed to hate evil. How do we do that? By getting understanding.

By exposing ourselves to immersing ourselves in reading, meditating on the word of God. Psalm 119 verse 113. I hate the double-minded, but I love your law. You are my hiding place and my shield. I hope in your word. Not only is the psalmist ethical relation ethical activities determined by the law, not only is his intellect, his wisdom grown from that word, but the word of God is his source of hope in the context of the world.

We live in this world that’s darkness and light mixed. Darkness is despair and hopelessness. But in the context of darkness, the bright light of God’s word shines through whatever situation we find ourselves in. This word brings hope to us. We seek hope and comfort, you know, and all kinds of other things. You know, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping or whatever it is. You know, we find pleasure in food and we find our hope in the material things around us.

And those things are good and proper as a reflection of the goodness of God and his word. But ultimately, our source of hope in the midst of the dark situations we sometimes find ourselves in must be centered upon this word of God. You are my hiding place and my shield. I hope in your word. Notice how he doesn’t make a distinction between God and the word. You know, we’re I’ve been accused before of being engaging in Bible idolatry. The Bible is an idol or an icon to me, an idol. Well, that’s not true. But in order to say that’s not true, we don’t want to distance ourselves from the word. The psalmist had no problem saying in you. You, God, the person I’m praying to here, you are my hiding place and my shield. I hope in your word. Just as verse one of this prologue draws this identity between Jesus and the word. God doesn’t want us to break that apart.

You know, you think about it too much, you try to get these exact understanding of what everything is. And that’s not the point. The point is he’s communicating here in big broad terms that Jesus is the word of God. He’s the word of the Lord that spoke creation into existence. His word is what spoke you into existence. His word is equated with the scriptures. And you’re supposed to keep that linkage in place.

I want to hear Jesus’s word. I read his word in the scriptures. Depart from me, you evildoers, for I will keep the commandments of God. Ethical obedience. Again, Psalm 119 verse 161 and following. Princes persecute me without a cause, but my heart stands in awe of your work. You heard. Get the picture here. Difficult time. Guy’s being persecuted by some ruler or authority. And what’s he doing in the midst of this persecution and difficulty?

He’s standing in awe, reverence of God’s word. You see how he’s totally he’s not ignoring what’s happening, but he’s interpreting it wisely based upon the word. And it brings him to a point of reverence or awe for the word of God. See, again, this is because the word of God is equated in John 1:1 with God, with Jesus. He stands in awe of the word. I rejoice at your word as one who finds great treasure. So, you know, ethical standards, deliverance, reverence, hope, joy.

All of these things in Psalm 119 find their focal point in Jesus and Jesus’s word to us in the scriptures. I hate and abhor lying, but I love your law. God’s law is truth. When you lie, children, you’re breaking the truth. We should hate lying and we should love God’s law. Seven times a day, I praise you because your righteous judgments. Seven times a day. Can we read this psalm and say it of ourselves?

Well, sometimes we can. It’s not that difficult. You don’t have to have an hour worship service every time you praise God. You get up in the morning, you praise him for seeing you through the night and for giving you a new day of grace. You go and wash up and you praise him for the cleansing work of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have your food in the morning and you praise him that he’s feeding you with your word and that he also provides tasty things to eat to remind us of how good that word is.

And you talk to your family and you praise his name for the provision of company and family. Or if you’re solitary, you think of your friends and your relationships. You think of the church and you praise him for those things. And if you go to work then husband or a woman working, you praise him for the vocation that he’s called you to do. God calls us into relationship with him to work. He made Adam to work.

Work isn’t a bad thing. It’s something to praise God for that we get to work for the beauty of the Savior and his word. We stop in the midst of the day for lunch and we praise him for the rest he gives us in the context of our day and the refreshment of food. We think of his word again and read his word and refresh ourselves as we feast upon the food. We feast upon his word and we’re brought back together in the evening, our families or friends, and we praise him again for fellowship and for the encouragement to stay on the path that our family and friends provide to us.

And we praise him for the way we can encourage each other. And we go into our evening recreations and we praise him that he gives us minds to think Christ’s thoughts after him, to take every thought captivity to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to analyze the world around us, our recreations, and our enjoyments based upon his word. And we go to our bed at night praising his name, for seeing us through the day, confessing our sin and praising him for the forgiveness of Jesus.

It’s not hard to join with the psalmist and saying, “Seven times a day, I praise you.” That’s what our life is to be. Statements of praise to God as his word shines through our darkness to illuminate us and cause us to praise him because of his judgments. It says, “Great peace,” verse 165, “great peace have those who love your law and nothing causes them to stumble. All too often we think of that as well, yeah, we can get to a point of some peace today.

We can kind of work things out and make it think through the problems we have and make it seem okay. And not a lot of things cause us to stumble. But the psalmist says, “Great peace have those who love your law and nothing causes them to stumble. What’s caused you to stumble this past week? These scriptures say that if you love God’s law, are meditating on the word of God, praising him in the context of your day, nothing really has the ability to cause you to stumble.

We have the same thing repeated in Corinthians. God produces no temptation, but such as is common to man, and with it he provides the means of escape. And that means is delineated here as the law of God that we love God’s word. If you say you love your wife but never want to be around her, it’s obviously untrue. Or you put in a different definition for love. If you say you love your children but don’t want to be around them, that’s untrue.

If we love Jesus, we’re going to want to be hearing what he has to say to us by reading his scriptures. We’re going to want to know his word and we should know that our joy, our hope, our deliverance, our reverence and awe and here our peace and our not being swept aside by the world that is in opposition to Christ and the difficult things that happen to us. You know, the ability to stand and to have peace in the context of difficult situations is given to those who love his law, who love this pre-existent eternal relational word of God portrayed for us in verse one of this prologue.

Lord, I hope for your salvation and I do your commandments. I hope that you’ll see me through. Not wishful thinking, but based upon the sureness of your word that is a sure and relevant word. It’ll produce deliverance for me. And while I hope in that for the outcome, I do what your word tells me to do. Simple obedience. That’s what we’re called to. My soul keeps your testimonies and I love them exceedingly.

I keep your precepts and your testimonies for all my ways are before you. The word of God big mission today is read your Bibles. Meditate on your Bible. Know what the Bible says. Understand that the scriptures say this is the word of the Lord to you. Read your Bibles. We’re children of God. And if we’re going to be children of God, we want to read the Bible. The word is the Lord Jesus Christ. This word had no beginning.

This word moves towards God the Father and he creates in his people the movement of life toward the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in terms of a movement toward his word. Okay. Secondly, this word is a personal word and we’ve already kind of hinted at that. The text has because of this movement of the word. The word was with God. But in verse two, opening word, personal pronoun, he. So, we’ve had this word and now we want to make sure John does as he writes this.

We don’t think of it in abstract fashion. He was in the beginning with God. So now this word is seen as a personal word. He was in the beginning And as I said, if we look at the correlation to this and that using that chiastic outline there in verse 18, the Son reveals the Father the way the word is with God. He. So we have here a personal word. We have not abstract concepts. Again, we don’t have a deal of ideas are not what we’re talking about here.

Principles are not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about here is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ultimately, it is showing people Jesus that changes the world. And we show people Jesus through our actions and through bringing his word into their life. If all they do is have an encounter with an outlined piece of scripture as a set of abstract principles and conceptions and truths, then all we’ve done is spoke in Greek terms.

And that’s not the terms that John speaks in here, he speaks in strongly Hebrew terms, so to speak. He speaks of a personal God. And this word has a personal source and has a personal implication to us. Now, I think that one of the ways that we want to train ourselves to think of this way to keep ourselves from an abstraction is prayer. You know, we know that the word of God speaks to us. How does God speak to us. He speaks to us in his word. Well, how do we speak to him? Well, that’s what prayer is, speaking to God. If the word becomes to us an abstract thing, our prayer life goes away. If all it is a series of concepts and ideas, why would we pray? It’d be an odd thing to do to pray to a concept or idea. And yet, if we use the other way of doing that, how would we analyze our lives? Each of you individually, how would you analyze your relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ and his word?

By means of your prayer life. How is your prayer life? Do you pray? Do you pray regularly? Do you pray to some kind of unknown abstraction? Is the word of God simply a thing for you to study like the Pharisees studied it, not realizing that it all spoke to Jesus? Now, I know that’s not true in the ultimate sense, but we slip into that, don’t we? We slip into thinking, particularly, I think in reformed circles, we slip into thinking of these things as intellectual ideas, and they’re not.

The intellectual idea of someone dying on the cross for us is not what brings salvation. The person Jesus takes on human flesh in that flesh dies in our stead. That’s what frees us from sin and its effects. The person and as we pray to God, we are reminding ourselves that this is a person with whom we have to deal. A person expressed in the word. Don’t want to break that connection. But a person whom we should have relationship with.

It takes its form as it were in prayer. Prayer third this is a creative word in verse three. All things were made through him. Without him nothing was made that was made. So God’s word brings creation. This is the word of God in Genesis 1 eight times in the context of the creation story. “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’” And the Lord said this and the Lord said that. So we can see the word of God bringing creation into existence.

And this is Jesus. Jesus is that word correlating with those statements of God that spoke creation into existence. So we have a personal God here who is a person who has relationship in the context of the Trinity who pre-existent and divine. And he is the basis for the created order. And he’s word. He is in his pre-existence word. His being is to reveal himself. And to reveal himself means he totally knows who he is.

In other words, this whole weird idea in the last 150 years in Christianity that God is somehow becoming conscious or becoming conscious of who he is and has this relationship that reveals but can’t quite reveal. The fact that God is unknowable is what the neoorthodox tell us today is driven a stake through that heart of that demon or monster by these very verses that Jesus’s word. He is revealing himself and he reveals himself in the created order.

He spoke it into the world the revelation of God spoke existence into a spoke creation rather into existence. It is a revelation of him. You know, here’s another problem we have in reformed circles. We have this big distinction of general revelation and special revelation, the word of God and the created order of God. And I understand those categories and there’s a lot of truth to looking at it that way.

But it seems like we give a lot of short shrift to general creation. Doesn’t it seem that way to you sometimes? The created order is a revelation of God. The same Jesus who will now penetrate the darkness of fallen man said, “Let there be light.” And spoke creation into existence. This creation testifies to him loudly, not, you know, kind of subtly or, “Oh, it’s hard to no., apostate man has no excuse by not having the word of God.

He’s got the word of God in the created order, which is a revelation, a clear and understandable revelation of who God is. It must be because that’s what the scriptures tell us here is that the word brought all this into existence. The other thing that tells us is as Pastor Wilson spoke on several months ago. This created order is not some kind of impersonal deal. Now there’s no you know there’s no being to this wood that sits here but this word is not to use Rushdoony’s words or Van Til’s words there’s no brute factuality in the world.

There’s nothing created that doesn’t have a purpose ordained for it by the great creator, the person of God existing in the three persons of the Trinity. Everything is created by him. Everything’s a revelation of him and everything is therefore related to him. He owns it all and it is personal. He takes it personal when you mess with his personal stuff. It is his personal stuff. So the created order has great significance to us.

It’s not impersonal. There’s no brute facts. Everything testifies to the reality of God. This word is a creative word. Fourth, this word is a life-giving word. So verse three describes the creation of things and then verse four moves to the life-giving aspect of who he is. In him was life and the life was the light of men. So now, like I said, in this cycle, what we have is a presentation of some truths of Jesus.

He’s word, he’s divine, he’s pre-existent, and he’s relational, and he’s personal. And then he’s what brought creation into being, and he has this relationship to mankind in that all men receive life from him. And then the last sentence will tell us what men do in response to that life. But here we have in verse four that he is a life-giving word. His word brings life. The scriptures tell us that not only does Jesus Christ create all things, but in him all things subsist.

All things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things consist. So Jesus is what holds everything together and gives meaning and purpose to it. These truths of the creation being the work of the Lord Jesus Christ are reiterated in Colossians 1:12-18 in which we read this. We’re to give thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.

Terminology very akin to the center of John 1. He has delivered us from the power of darkness. We’ll see that in verse 5. He’s conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. By him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.

All things were created through him and for him. So how much has he created? Everything. Every last thing is created by Jesus. Every created thing. How many things are there that Jesus didn’t create? None. None. He created it all. He is before all things, his pre-existence again. And in him all things consist. He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence, the deity and pre-existence and creation of the Lord Jesus Christ is given to us in John 1, but certainly here in Colossians 1, as well as talking about the providence of God.

And specifically, the goal of all this is that He may in all things have the preeminence. This is the life-giving word. In John, this was a major theme throughout the rest of John. In John 5:24, most assuredly I say to you, he who hears my word, believes in him who sent me, has everlasting life, shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death into life. So all men abide in death.