The Wold Became Flesh

[0:00] The title of the message this morning is The Word Became Flesh. And if you take a look in the bulletin also, you'll find a passage from the Gospel of John.

[0:21] And this morning we'll be reading this responsively, verses 1 through 18.

[0:35] And I'll read the first verse, you read the second, and I'll read the third, and so forth. So the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 1 through 18.

[0:52] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

[1:06] All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was light, and the light was the light of Him.

[1:22] And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was God.

[1:33] The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through Him might believe.

[1:45] 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.

[1:58] He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.

[2:13] But as many have received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. And the Word was made flesh and wealth among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

[2:47] 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.

[3:04] And of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but the grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

[3:19] No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. Certainly one of the more remarkable passages that one could commit to memory, because it is just so filled with the exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was in the beginning.

[3:49] When the beginning began, He already was, is the way one translator renders it. And that's probably as good as any I have seen. So, in the beginning, in the beginning of what?

[4:02] This, of course, harkens back to Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And what the text is telling us is that when the beginning began, the Word had already been in place.

[4:19] And the Word is a curious expression that is given in connection with the person of Jesus Christ. He will be referred to as the Word also in the book of the Revelation.

[4:32] And why do you suppose that designation is chosen? Why would Jesus bear the name, the Word? And He has, of course, a great many names that are attributed to Him.

[4:46] But this one is one of the most mysterious. What is the Word? Well, I want you to think in terms of our own usage of words.

[4:58] A word is the essence of communication. And perhaps next to the subject of truth itself, language is humanity's most valuable asset.

[5:17] And, of course, I'm discounting air and water. But from the standpoint of the mental, there is the Word. And can you communicate without using words?

[5:31] I don't see how. Can you even think thoughts without using words? I'm not able to do so. I remember sharing this concept with a group of youngsters in high school, one of our schools.

[5:47] And I said, I challenge you to try to think, to try to use your mind, to make your mind blank so that you aren't thinking of anything.

[5:59] I don't think you can do it. Try. And, of course, after about 15 or 20 seconds, somebody raised their hand and said, well, I was able to do it.

[6:09] And I said, really? How did you do that? And he said, well, I just closed my mind, closed my eyes, and tried to blank out everything.

[6:22] And all I was thinking was blank, blank, blank. And, of course, all the kids got a big laugh out of that. And somebody pointed out to him, well, blank is a word, you dummy.

[6:36] Because only kids can be so polite and kind one to another. But you cannot think. You cannot think of a word without using a word.

[6:48] And even if you're trying to communicate in sign language, and we have some folks who are rather proficient at doing that, and every now and then we see somebody making an important announcement or describing something significant that has happened, and there's an interpreter standing alongside and is going through the sign language motion so that somebody who is deaf can understand what's being said.

[7:12] But even that is communicating with words. You just cannot get away from words. And I am confident that the reason that Jesus Christ is referred to as the Word of God is because he is the essence of communication.

[7:29] Think of it this way. That God the Father took everything that he wanted us to know and he wrapped it up in a person and called him the Word and sent him down here for the express purpose of manifesting the Father.

[7:48] And that's what this passage says in John 1, verse 18. That he is in the bosom of the Father. He has explained him. And the word that is used there in the Greek is the word from which we get the word exegesis, and it means to take something that is written and explain it, and you read out what is in it.

[8:13] And we talk about exegeting the Word of God, which is what a pastor is supposed to do. He takes the Word of God and explains it, exegetes it.

[8:23] Well, when Jesus is referred to as the Word of God, that he has explained him, or he has declared him, or he has made him known, it simply means that Jesus came for the express purpose of making the Father and his will known.

[8:40] I do always those things that please him. And here the text is saying in verse 18 that Jesus explained him. And this is what he meant also when he said, he that has seen me has seen the Father.

[8:55] Now that's a rather puzzling kind of statement to make, isn't it? Because we tend to think of there being a different person involved, and in fact there is a different person, but there is but one God.

[9:07] And this essence of communication and the Word is a he. The Word is not an it. The he, the Word, is referring to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[9:20] And it is also, from the Greek, the word logos. If we spell it with an English word, it would be L-O-G-O-S. The logos. It's the word from which we get the English word logic.

[9:35] And logic has to do with the realm of reasoning and understanding. And you may also think of Jesus Christ as being God's logic.

[9:51] It seemed good to the Father to send the Son to do what he was commissioned to do, and God did that out of a sense of logic and rationale that occurred to him in his infinite mind.

[10:10] The text tells us in verse 14 that the Word, in reference, of course, to Christ, became flesh. That's just another term for saying the Word became a human being and dwelt among us.

[10:24] And there, the Word in the original is tabernacled, which means that he was just here for a temporary purpose for a certain length of time, and then he would be returning after his mission was accomplished.

[10:38] And the text uses the word that he tabernacled among us in verse 14. Dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. Of whom is John speaking when he says these things?

[10:52] And we beheld his glory. You know, it is surprising how many Christians would read that, and they think that if you are a Christian, you belong everywhere in the Bible, and that the we is the Christian community, and we have beheld his glory.

[11:07] But just stop and ask yourself now, from a translating and understanding standpoint of this, Have you seen his glory? I haven't seen his glory. What John is talking about is someone who has seen his glory.

[11:24] He dwelt among us. We beheld his glory. And we're right next door, so just come back a few pages, if you will, to Luke's Gospel, chapter 9.

[11:37] Luke, chapter 9. Just back a few pages. We have a very interesting event that transpired, one that still has a great deal of mystery about it, even though it is spelled out in some detail.

[11:53] And I'd like to begin reading with verse 27. Jesus is talking to his disciples. As far as we know, they are probably all there, which would likely mean all 12 of them.

[12:04] And in verse 27, Jesus says, But I tell you truly, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

[12:19] That's quite a statement to make, because most of those who were there with Jesus at the time he said this was probably in their 30s, possibly even in their 40s. Some might have even been in their 20s.

[12:31] John, we believe, to have been the youngest of all of the apostles and was the last one to leave this earth. He may very well have been in his 20s. And for Jesus to have made a statement like that, they would not see death until they saw the Son of Man come in his glory.

[12:47] And it's a puzzling passage to a lot of people because so far as many people are concerned, Jesus hasn't come in his glory yet and won't until his second coming. So whatever can this mean?

[13:00] And some interpreters have actually gone to the extreme length of thinking that some of these people somehow are miraculously still alive somewhere. Well, that's stuff and nonsense. Of course, they've all passed on. They're probably in glory themselves now.

[13:13] The text goes on to give us what the information really requires until they see the kingdom of God and some eight days after these sayings.

[13:24] You see, you've got to keep these verses and the content together. Don't disturb the context. It came about that he took along Peter and John and James and went up to the mountain to pray.

[13:40] Exactly why it was that Jesus on more than one occasion selected these three for some special kind of benefit or blessing we do not know.

[13:51] But he does that a number of times. And these three are Peter and James and John. James and John are brothers, sons of Zebedee, and Peter is Andrew's brother, but Andrew is omitted from this triumphant here.

[14:04] And we find these three going up into the mount with Jesus, and the others are remaining below. And obviously, these are the three of whom he was speaking when he says, there'll be some of you standing here that will not die until they see the Son of Man coming in his glory.

[14:23] Then they probably went on and talked about something else and were not told here because I cannot read in the white spaces between 27 and 28. But eventually, eight days later, after these sayings, he took Peter, John, and James went up into the mountain to pray.

[14:42] While he was praying, the appearance of his face became different, and his clothing became white and gleaming.

[14:55] And behold, two men were talking with him, and they were Moses and Elijah. What? These fellows have been dead for hundreds of years.

[15:07] At least their body has been. And now Moses and Elijah show up. And by the way, Moses made it to the promised land after all, didn't he?

[15:19] It had to be by way of a special kind of arrangement because he wasn't allowed to go in. So that fell to Joshua to fulfill that. Moses and Elijah, who appearing in glory, what must they have looked like?

[15:41] Can't imagine. Just can't imagine. Because the text makes it very clear. It says that they appeared in glory. They didn't appear as usual.

[15:54] They obviously didn't appear just as they looked when they were here on earth. There was something changed about them. Yet, they were identifiable.

[16:06] Moses and Elijah. And they were speaking of his departure. That is, Jesus' departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

[16:19] That wasn't too much further in the distance and he would be going to Jerusalem for the last time. Now, Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep. But when they were fully awake, they saw, and here's that word again, his glory.

[16:34] And the two men standing with him. One of the texts says that the appearance of Jesus was whiter than the sun.

[16:47] Brighter than the sun. And his garments were whiter than any fuller's soap could whiten a garment on earth.

[16:57] Now, you ladies are familiar with Grandma's lye soap and Fell's naphtha soap and all that good stuff that you used to use for wash day and how you ladies would hang things out on the line and then they would stand back and admire the brightness and the whiteness and the cleanliness of it.

[17:13] Well, the garments of Christ were so brilliant and so white and so glorious, they were absolutely dazzling, stunning. This is something unlike anything that they had ever seen before.

[17:27] And this is what the text is talking about when it says it's in his glory. Read on. In his glory, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.

[17:41] And it came about as these were parting from him, Peter said, Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles and so on and so on. Well, this is beside our point so we're just going to stop here and not expound on the transfiguration.

[17:54] But this is exactly what John is talking about in chapter 1 when he says, and we beheld his glory. He's reminiscing and looking back on that day when Jesus was transfigured before him and Peter and James.

[18:12] And what a thrilling thing that must have been. And Peter will refer to that also in one of his epistles as he closes out. So, where or what was the word before it became flesh?

[18:28] The text says, and the word became flesh. What was the word before it became flesh? Something to think about.

[18:43] Jesus began to be in Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.

[19:00] But the word existed before Jesus. Now, this is a conundrum and it kind of escapes our human thinking, but the Bible is very, very clear about this.

[19:12] The word had to have existed prior to this time in order to become flesh. In what form was it? Jesus has always existed as the eternal son of God.

[19:28] But not always as Jesus. And he didn't become Jesus until Bethlehem. And the angel gave Mary specific instructions that you shall call his name Jesus.

[19:42] He wasn't known as Jesus before. He was known as the eternal son of God. But here's another problem. If the word became flesh in Bethlehem, what was the word before it became flesh?

[19:57] It had to have been spirit. it. Jesus didn't have, or let me put it this way, the son of God did not have a physical body when he was in eternity past with his father.

[20:17] The father does not have a physical body either, even though our Mormon friends think that he does because the Bible does use certain indications that God has a body and it talks about his arm is not shortened that it cannot save and so on.

[20:35] But these are all mere expressions, poetic expressions that are designed to bring God down to a level where we can understand something about him.

[20:46] We are not, God does not have hands like we think of hands, but the text says in the Psalms that we are written in the palms of his hands. Well, how can that be? This is poetic language and the Bible uses many, many times it's a common literary tool where you give human attributes to that which is divine and you give human emotions to that which is divine and the Bible talks about God having a heart.

[21:13] God doesn't have a heart like we have. Our hearts are blood pumps. God doesn't have a heart like that. God is what Jesus said he is. God is spirit and they that worship him in spirit and in truth.

[21:31] Folks, these are not just words. These mean something. What does that mean? God is spirit. This means that God is intangible.

[21:46] Our bodies are physical and our bodies are made out of stuff. Flesh and bones and blood and all kinds of material things like that that God wonderfully put together in our first parents when he created Adam and out of Adam, Eve.

[22:06] We are physical beings and we live in a physical world. We are told in Genesis 1 that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

[22:16] All that means is in the beginning, in the beginning of what? In the beginning of matter. can you think with me for a moment, and if you can, let me know how you do it, because I'd like to be able to do it too.

[22:31] Can you think when there was no planets, no earth, no heavens, no materiality at all, no anything, yet there was God?

[22:48] Little girl, seven years old, ask her Sunday school teacher, well, if there wasn't anything, where did God stand? Well, God didn't stand on anything, dear, because God doesn't have a physical body that he needs to stand somewhere.

[23:02] You see, when God decided to create human beings, he had to accommodate them with something in which they could function, and that's called space and time.

[23:15] But God does not dwell in space and time. We are told that God inhabits eternity. And we've explained before that eternity is not time stacked on top of time.

[23:28] Eternity is timeless. There is no time with eternity. So I want you to think in terms of the Father and the Son and the Spirit of God, and don't ask me how the Holy Spirit differs from the Father being Spirit.

[23:45] I don't know. All I know is this is what the text says. And the Son was not Jesus, but he was the eternal Son, and he was Spirit. So we have these three Spirit beings, one God subsisting in three Spirit beings, existing before anything was ever created.

[24:10] One of the characteristics of God, among several others, is referred to as God's omnipresence. and the word actually comes from a Latin and the word omni just means all.

[24:23] It means all. And when you add the word present to it, it means that God is all or everywhere present. Have you ever wondered how it is that God can indwell you and the person next to you and the person in China, in Asia, who is a believer, how God can do that?

[24:44] Have you ever wondered how God can be everywhere, all at one and the same time, and yet he is not divided up in minute parts, so there's a tiny bit of God here and a tiny bit of God there, and it's kind of like he's salted all over everywhere, and yet there is one God.

[25:00] This is because God is spirit, and he is omnipresent. He is everywhere present at the same time. Spirit can do that because spirit is without confinement.

[25:14] You see, we are creatures of confinement. We are confined to this body in which we live. And I say, we live in this body because that which is really living in this body is my intangible part also.

[25:34] God put part of what he is made of, which is nothing, into each of us, and it's called spirit.

[25:45] spirit. It isn't exactly nothing. It is something, but it isn't material. And we all possess this. It's a non-physical part of our being.

[25:57] And when Jesus said, God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. That means you don't worship God with your body. I mean, there are worshipful things you can do with your body.

[26:10] You can kneel to pray, and you can praise the Lord with your body, and so on. But how is it that you actually worship and connect with the Lord? You do that mentally.

[26:21] You do that with your mind. And where is the mind? Because the mind is not the brain. The brain is physical and the mind is not. So we worship God with our intellect, our mind, our will, our emotions.

[26:38] All of those things come into play. And that's what enables us to connect with him. And his being spirit is just completely beyond our ability to fully grasp at all.

[26:51] And yet, this is how God can be everywhere at one and the same time because God is without limitation. He is the infinite God.

[27:03] And we can't comprehend that either because every way we look, we've got limitations imposed upon us. There are so many things we cannot do. but with God, all things are possible.

[27:16] He is a God without limitations. And that means he can be everywhere all at one and the same time. And he knows what every one of you is thinking right now.

[27:31] How can that be? God is because he's a God without limitation.

[28:00] God is not confined. We talk about someone is guilty of a crime and goes before the court and the judge sentences him and says, I'm sentencing you to confinement.

[28:16] That means you're going to be put in a prison and you're going to be kept. And if it is solitary confinement, it means you're going to be there all alone. We are creatures of confinement.

[28:29] confinement. But God has no confinement about him. He is free and he exercises his will everywhere.

[28:40] And he knows what everyone is thinking and doing. He even knows what you're going to do because he is without limitations. And this is what we call the omniscience of God.

[28:51] Now we've got the omnipresence, which means he's everywhere at one and the same time. and he isn't distributed in parts. He is omniscient.

[29:04] And that word simply means all knowing. It comes from the same word that we get the word science, which means to know. It means that God is all knowing. Someone says, well, how can God possibly know everything?

[29:17] Well, that's part of his job description. I'm not really convinced that God does know everything, but I am convinced of this. God knows everything that he chooses to know.

[29:29] There may be some things that he just says, I don't care to know about that. I mean, God may deal in trivia too that he just dismisses. So he is omnipresent and he is omniscient and all knowing and he is omnipotent.

[29:46] Do you realize that the power that it takes to generate the lights here, we call electricity and we channel it, it comes from God. All power resides in God.

[30:01] And all power and all energy on the earth, no matter whether it's me exercising enough energy to scratch my head, or whether it is a caterpillar tractor that is moving earth around, all of that power and all of that energy comes from God.

[30:19] He is the source of all light and the source of all power. All power of any kind, whether human power, horsepower, machine power, whatever it is, it derives its energy from him.

[30:33] He is the source of all power. And he is the source of all authority. The all power is the dunamis, that means the actual energy, the hardcore stuff that it takes to move and do things and to do work.

[30:45] It all resides in him, all comes from him. And the authority is the word exousia, from which we get the word executive. And it means that all judicial executive power resides in God.

[31:00] You know, you almost get the impression that he is everything, isn't he? He most certainly is. He is the all in all. And everything that is derives its being, its energy, its power, its everything from him, that one source.

[31:18] This is amazing. And this one source exists in three persons comprising one deity, one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[31:31] And one day, and I hesitate to use that term day because that puts a time frame on it, and God doesn't operate in time frames, but I'm trying to communicate. So there was a time in eternity past when it pleased God, which is the only reason we have, the only rationale we have for there being anything, is that verse in Revelation 4.11, when the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him and said, Worthy art thou, O Lord, to receive glory and wisdom and honor and power and majesty, because you have created all things, and by your will, they were and are created.

[32:20] So the Father and the Son and the Spirit held a kind of council among themselves when they decided to create angels. And angels are spirit beings.

[32:34] Angels don't have bodies like we do, but angels may assume bodies. And there are a number of times in the Old and New Testament where angels show up and they appear to be human beings.

[32:47] They look just like angels. The angels look just like men. And they are even called men by those in the text. But when you continue reading, discover they're not human at all.

[32:58] They are angels. But they are made to look like men. They are spirit beings. And spirit beings have no bodies, but in this case, they can assume bodies.

[33:10] And they do on occasion. Gabriel appeared to angels, appeared to Mary. And Gabriel appeared to Joseph and gave the announcement about the birth. And Daniel had contact with angels.

[33:22] And the book of Revelation is going to see a plethora of angels involved in many activities in the last days. So there was a time when there was absolutely nothing.

[33:34] There's no earth, no anything. And by the way, that creative energy that we're talking about, when there was absolutely nothing, and God decided to create, we are told, that he created the heavens and the earth.

[33:49] That's ex nihilo. That means out of nothing. When we go to do something, we almost always have something to work with.

[34:02] We have building materials. We make things. We build things. But creation is something different. creation does not use pre-existing material.

[34:14] It creates, well, God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. He made stuff out of nothing. You just can't conceive of that.

[34:27] That completely goes against anything and everything we know about science and making and everything. And this is to say that God should be thought of as being the altogether otherness.

[34:46] That's the only way I can describe him. He is the altogether otherness. He is not similar to us. He is totally apart and distinct from us.

[35:00] He is transcendent from us. That means we cannot know this being except by his being pleased to reveal himself.

[35:14] And that's why the word was made flesh. And we beheld his glory, John says. And when Jesus was made flesh, he exegeted the father.

[35:26] He read him out. He explained him. He told us what the father is all about. God is merely a grand extension or exaltation of humanity.

[35:42] He is the altogether otherness. And our friends who embrace the Muslim faith have a great deal of difficulty with the Christian God and the Christian concept of God.

[35:54] And if there is anything that really irritates them, it is the Christian insistence that God has a son. And the reason, and by the way, this is a faulty assumption on their part, the reason they are offended at that idea that God has no son is because they assume that in order for God to have a son, he had to have had some kind of a sexual interaction with a female in order to produce a son.

[36:27] Whereas the angel Gabriel makes it quite clear that the Spirit of God will come upon you, and it is not a sexual act at all, it is the implantation of a seed.

[36:42] And that seed implanted in the Virgin Mary is going to develop and grow into Jesus, our Savior, so that he comes from God through Mary, and he is a direct result of the Father implantation into the womb of the Virgin Mary.

[37:02] And she was completely perplexed by this, as well she should be. How can this be? I know not a man. The angel said, the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, and that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

[37:16] God. So it has nothing to do with God having some kind of sexual relation with a man, because they are thinking strictly in terms of humanity.

[37:28] This is the way humans are procreated. Male and female have a sexual relationship, and the result is a child. It doesn't work that way with the deity. He is the altogether otherness.

[37:41] Jesus the baby, who became Jesus the man, were the cooperated design of the Trinity to bring God himself down to us in a form and being that we could at least comprehend on some level.

[38:00] God went to great extreme to humanize the situation as much as possible so that we would be able to connect with our finite minds.

[38:11] this is why we can never begin to really plumb the depths of who God really is. He is that altogether otherness. And the Savior we serve in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ is referred to as the theanthropic.

[38:30] It's a big word, but just break it down. And the first part of the word is T-H-E-O. It's the word from which we get the word theology. And it refers to God.

[38:43] And the anthropic is the word from which we get the word anthropology. And that of course refers to the study of the science of men. And you put them together and you have the God man.

[38:56] He is the theanthropic person. No one like this ever existed before or ever will exist again. He is completely singular.

[39:07] He is the God man. This is the meaning of the word Emmanuel which means God with us. Amazing.

[39:19] Absolutely amazing. So we have this immaterial being who has created matter and he has created matter to accommodate human beings who are going to be made of matter, physical matter.

[39:33] We need time and space to dwell in. And that's why God created the heavens and the earth because he made a place of habitation that would accommodate us human beings and were sprinkled all over the planet.

[39:47] And then one day, and I use that term advisedly again because it is dealing with a timeless time, a timeless era. Well you can't even use the word era because you know what era is?

[40:00] It's a time, isn't it? So we're really struggling for terms to even describe what we're talking about. That's because it's completely otherworldly. It is out of our sphere of understanding and appreciation.

[40:14] So we grasp and we stumble around and we look for terms and we try to come up with explanations and we fail because we just cannot do it.

[40:26] This God is inexhaustible and inexplicable and yet he has stooped. he has stooped and I don't know a better word to use.

[40:37] He has stooped to reveal himself to us and to accommodate us in ways that we can at least get some understanding, some appreciation of who and what he is.

[40:53] The greatness of God transcends our wildest imagination. salvation. And when the text says in 1 John that God is love, think of the capacity of love that an infinite being without limitations must have.

[41:15] Well, that's what he spent on us. When he sent his son into this world, and as I pointed out before, when God gave Christ, the father gave the son, gave the only thing that meant anything to him.

[41:32] This one that had the ability to create worlds, to create universe, plural, to create whatever he wanted, there was one thing that he could not create, and that was he could not create eternal son.

[41:48] Jesus is not created. I know our Jehovah's Witnesses friends say that Jesus was God's first creation.

[41:59] No, he wasn't. The father and the son and the spirit are eternal, and none of them was created. They always were, subsisting as one God in three persons.

[42:12] persons. And in that triumvirate, in that union of three, it was deemed that one of them should take upon himself the form of a human being, and come down here and tabernacle among us, and go and pay an ultimate price for the rebellion of the creatures that God placed on this earth.

[42:41] I don't understand any of this, really. I don't understand why God gave us volition so that we could rebel against him, other than the fact that the only other choice he had was to not give us volition.

[42:54] And if he didn't, then everybody does what they're supposed to do, automatically, like a robot, and nobody sins and nobody disobeys, and it seems like things would have gone a lot more smooth, wouldn't it?

[43:07] But love has to be voluntary, and obedience has to be voluntary, and you cannot have voluntary love and voluntary obedience if it is automatic and people are programmed to do it because they can't do anything else.

[43:22] And where is the value in that? So we've got this incredible thing called creation, and angels and human beings that are a part of it, that God brought into existence, knowing full well what the outcome would be, knowing there was going to be a fall, there's going to be sin, there's going to be death and destruction and ruination and heartache and disappointment and disease and everything that goes with it, but along with all of that, he also provided a vehicle for redemption of this fallen world.

[44:03] and I have no idea why God ever started this whole shebang off except to say that it pleased him. It was the father's good pleasure.

[44:15] It was something that he did because he wanted to. And some people I've heard talk about this nonsense that God created humans because he was lonely.

[44:25] Oh my dear. If God created us because he was lonely, forgive me Lord, but he could have done a much better job, couldn't he?

[44:40] Yes, could have. God created us because he just chose to do something. You know what? He doesn't give us his reasons. He doesn't owe us an explanation. He doesn't tell us why he did what he did.

[44:53] He just said that he did it. And if we don't like it, God says, well, I want you to put yourself in the position of that pot. You know the one on the potter's wheel? The guy spinning this wheel around and creating this pot?

[45:05] Can you imagine that pot that is made out of clay rising up and saying to the potter, why have you made me thus? You've got a lot of nerve turning me out to be a pot like this. Does not the potter have power over the clay to make of it the lump, whatever he will?

[45:22] Can the potter say, why hast thou made me thus? How can we call God into question? Why have you done this? Well, God has his reasons, and he hasn't told us what they are, but he has his reasons.

[45:33] And they ought to be good enough for us because I am convinced that God does all things well. Cannot have any other kind of God than that. He does all things well.

[45:45] And you know, in the final analysis, where everybody ends up, and we talk about the eternal state, and we talk about heaven and hell, and people and theologians argue over whether the flames of hell are literal or whether they're figurative, and what heaven is going to be like.

[46:10] And I just have one word that I think can be applied to the whole thing, and I don't know what else to call it, is the only word that seems to me to be fitting. And that is where everybody ends up, how everybody ends up, in whatever condition everybody ends up, in whatever state, it's going to be absolutely, totally, appropriate.

[46:38] Appropriate. It's going to be, and everyone is going to be, as they should be, appropriate.

[46:49] The word appropriate means apt. It means fitting. Appropriate. Now, let's ask this question.

[47:00] Appropriate according to whose estimation? Be appropriate according to the estimation of the only one whose definition matters.

[47:12] It's God. it'll be appropriate according to him. And there won't be any recourse, and there won't be any backlash, and there won't be any objection, because everybody, wherever they are, whatever their state, is going to know that it is absolutely appropriate.

[47:34] Amazing. entwined in all of this, embedded right in the very heart of it, is the word that became flesh, dwelt among us.

[47:54] Well, once again, we are well in over our heads, aren't we? But if you are not in over your head with the Almighty, then you just don't have a proper concept of him.

[48:14] You've got to be in over your head. Wow. Well, let's have a word of prayer. Father, we are at a loss, too. at a loss to understand so many things about yourself, and we fully confess we would not know what we do if it were not for revelation that you've been pleased to give in this marvelous book.

[48:42] In all of our limitations, we take great comfort in the fact that you have none. You are the infinite eternal God without limitations. don't understand that?

[48:55] We take great comfort in it. We're just thankful that you are the God that you are, and we are so thankful that for whatever reason you had that satisfied yourself, you chose to bring angels and humans into existence and to give us a tremendously responsible thing called volition.

[49:21] you empowered us with a will to make free moral choices. And all of us have made wrong wins during the years. And yet, despite that, despite our disobedience and sometimes flat-out rebellion against you, you never stopped loving us, never stopped caring for us, so much so that Jesus died for us.

[49:46] And we don't understand that either, but we're so grateful for it. Thank you for this season of the year, for these wonderful things that you've penned here in this very first chapter, which we've just scratched the surface.

[49:58] We bless you for it. In Christ's wonderful name. Amen.