The one everybody's singing about

One of the great messages of Christmas is that Jesus Christ’s life DID NOT begin with the babe in the manger. Mary, the virgin, gave birth to His humanity but His person as God had been there ALL along. Before the beginning ever began, God the Father and God the Son were in a personal, face-to-face, intimate relationship loving one another.

As John 1:18 says, [18] No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

Preacher Richard Jordan explains, “When it says ‘no man hath seen God at any time,’ John’s talking about God the Father. How are you going to have God revealed to you? It’s going to be by God the Son. He’s the spokesman of the godhead. He is the Word, capital ‘w’ for a proper name.

“That verse means that every time God appeared in the Old Testament, who was it? It wasn’t the Father; it was the Son. There are places where people in Old Testament saw God—Moses, for example. But who He was seeing was God the Son. Why? Because God the Son is the revealer. He’s the Word. He’s the one who COMMUNICATES to us from the godhead.

“Someone once said the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who ‘brings God out from behind the curtain.’ That’s what that word ‘exegy’ means. You take the godhead out from obscurity and put them on stage and put the lights on them. That’s what Christ does.

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“In John 20 is one of the most marvelous statements in the Scripture about the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The passage says:

[24] But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

[26] And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

[27] Then saith he to Thomas, reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

[28] And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

[29] Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

“Thomas is not going to believe unless he can see. They’re in the room, the doors shut. It doesn’t say ‘for fear of the Jews’ like it did back in verse 19, when they were assembled because of being afraid.

"He told them ‘Peace’ back then and that peace had taken care of the fear but here they are still in that room and Christ repeats the miracle from before by appearing again in their midst, doing it for Thomas’ benefit. Thomas is the doubter.

“Now, that statement by Thomas, recognizing him as 'My Lord and my God,’ is one of the great statements about who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Here’s somebody who knew Him, was conscious of who He was, was able to identify Him when he saw Him.

"Thomas looks at Jesus; he’d seen Him dead, he understood His death had to do with the Crosswork, he understood He’d been nailed and had the spear in His side. He understood death and said, ‘Before I’m going to believe that He’s alive, I’m going to have to see the physical evidence to the fact.’

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“What you’ve got here is another one of these tremendous eyewitness testimonies based on personal knowledge that Jesus Christ is resurrected. What Thomas is saying is, ‘He’s the resurrected one. He’s Jehovah, my Lord, and the resurrected Savior.’

“Like I said, that’s one of the great deity statements in all of the Bible. The new bibles often leave out terminology that exalts the Lord. It’s fascinating in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John how often the new versions just leave out the title ‘Lord.’ People don’t think anything of it but that’s a terrible thing to do. Oftentimes they’ll take the verses that describe His deity and water them down.

“But here’s one that nobody’s ever messed with. The Book of John does that all the way through. Verse 30 of that same passage in John 24 says, [30] And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.’ The Book of John is written to convince people to believe, as verse 29 says.

“That’s who Peter talks about in I Peter 1 when he writes, ‘Whom having not seen yet have ye loved.’ Hebrews 11 talks about Moses ‘seeing him who’s invisible.’

“In other words, faith resting in the truth of God’s Word is where faith comes; eyewitness accounts aren’t always that reliable. Faith in a reliable, trustworthy report—a book, a message—is where faith has its real foundation.

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“I talked to a Jehovah’s Witness once, and of course, they don’t believe in the deity of Christ. They believe He’s an angel; a created being.

“That verse in Colossians 1 where Paul says that ‘all things were created BY him,’ their bible says ‘all OTHER things were created by him.’ In other words, God the Father creates the Son and he creates everything else. It’s called Arianism and it goes all the way back to the early days of church history and that’s the idea; that Jesus isn’t an equal member of the godhead, He’s a created god.

“This Jehovah’s Witness told me, ‘You know, I go around all the time asking people who believe in the deity of Christ to show me a verse of scripture that says He’s God and they don’t have verse for it.’ I thought, ‘Well, I’m glad you asked me that, because I’ve got half a dozen verses.’

“John 1:1 says, [1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. When it says ‘the Word was with God,’ it’s talking about how they had this face-to-face relationship, but that makes them two different people.

“There’s a thing in theology called ‘modalism.’ The mode in which God manifests Himself. He’s the same person manifesting Himself in three different modalities. But that’s NOT what the Bible teaches.

“The Bible teaches that in the beginning was the Word, the second person of the godhead, and the Word was with God the Father. They are a separate, distinct entity from one another with a face-to-face fellowship. When it says the word WAS God, that makes Him equal, co-substantial; co-equality of essence and rank. He always was who He is.

“John 1:3 says, 'All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.' That last part--‘without him was not any thing made’--is added in there so you can know that He’s not a created being. He’s not a creature. He’s the one that made everything that’s made.

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“There’s not any religion on the face of the earth that does or ever has had anybody like the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s not a philosophy, not a system of economics, or politics, or academia that has anything like Him. No religion.

“One of fascinating things about all this is humans are always talking about, ‘How do you know something’s true?’ There are a lot of evidences that God is--not just direct ones, but just common sense evidences that come along.

“I was reading a book where the guy made the point, ‘Where’s anybody who ever sang, ‘Oh how I love Buddha, oh how I love Buddha.’ Nobody sings, ‘Allah paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; Allah washed it white as snow.’

“Do you know there are thousands of songs written about one person, the Lord Jesus Christ? Love songs. Do you know that’s the kind of songs people write? I mean, whether they’re hillbilly songs, rock songs, contemporary music, people write songs about what they love; what they value and esteem, what captures their heart.

“The last thing John says in the Book of John is, ‘And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.’

“The songwriter says, ‘Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.’

“How in the world do you explain the fact that no religion in the world has anybody writing love songs about their religion and how much it’s done for them and then along here comes the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 69 says He’s going to be the song of drunkards. Even drunks write songs about Him.

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“You get out there in the world and listen to the songs. You know the Sinatra lyric, ‘Chicago, Chicago, the town that Billy Sunday could not shut down.’ You know that line? Why? They’re bragging about the fact that Billy Sunday went all over America preaching the gospel and getting people saved and yet he couldn’t . . .

“In northwest Alabama, there’s a little town called Reform. The Billy Sunday of the South was a man named Sam Jones. He did in the South what Billy Sunday did in the Midwest and East. Jones went into that town and it was a mecca of gambling and the liquor trade.

“He preached the gospel for about three months and people got saved left and right and the newspaper accounts of it are that by the time Jones got through with that revival . . . They said if you wanted to cuss you did it under your breath. All the liquor establishments were closed down. All the bars were closed down. All the gambling houses were closed down. The city council voted to change the name of the town to Reform!

"What is that?! That’s the power of a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 20:28 says, [28] Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

“Who was it on the Cross shedding His blood? Christ. But whose blood was that? Who really was that on the Cross? It was God. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. It was God’s blood that flowed through Emmanuel’s veins.

“Just about everything you can think of, you can think of a gospel song or hymn that takes any experience in life and relates it to a love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the Word; He’s the one who brings God into every aspect and facet and experience of our life.

“I John 4:7 is a fascinating verse of scripture: [7] Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

“If you’re going to love people, you’re going to have to know God. And if you don’t know God, you’re not going to know how to love people. You go out into the world we live in and it’s filled with strife, envy, hatred, violence, crime, on and on.

“People say, ‘If we could just take that away and let us have peace.’ You know the only thing that will satisfy that? ‘Love one another.’ It’s the only source to get rid of war, all this opposition.

“People think if you just have an egalitarian society where everything’s equal--love everybody, accept everybody, let everything be okay. Don’t call evil ‘evil’ or good ‘good,’ and that way you get rid of all the conflicts. And if you can get rid of conflicts you can get rid of war, right? Wrong.

“Look at what God says: ‘[2] And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Paul writes in Romans 3:25, [25] Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

“Love is associated with God coming down into our humanity and sacrificing Himself for our sin. ‘He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.’ Love has to do with dealing with SIN.”