The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God Ministries is available
at www.DesiringGod.org John chapter 1, verses
1 through 18.
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and
apart from Him nothing came into being that
has come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was
the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness did not comprehend it.
There came a man sent from God whose
name was John.
He came as a witness to testify about
the light.
So that all might believe through Him.
He was not the light, but He came
to testify about the light.
There was the true light which, coming into
the world, enlightens every man.
He was in the world, and the world
was made through Him, and the world did
not know Him.
He came to His own, and those who
were His own did not receive Him.
But as many as received Him, to them
He gave the right to become children of
God.
Even to those who believe in His name.
Who were born not of blood, nor of
the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us.
And we saw His glory, glory as the
only begotten from the Father, full of grace
and truth.
John testified about Him and cried out saying,
This was He of whom I said, He
who comes after me has a higher rank
than I, for He existed before me.
For of His fullness we have all received,
and grace upon grace.
For the law was given through Moses, grace
and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
No one has seen God at any time,
the only begotten, who is in the bosom
of the Father.
He has explained Him.
Lord, there is a weightiness about these words
as John begins his gospel that is so
glorious and so needful in our chipper
hearts.
We need the weight of glory.
America doesn't do much to help us feel
the weight of glory.
Everything around us seems to be silly.
Everything is a stick figure, a cartoon.
Everything is light and fluffy.
Be happy.
Lord, grant, I pray, that there would rest
upon us now the weightiness of what we're
about here in this message and in this
service, this communion table.
And before this text of Your Word, and
before the vision of education for exaltation.
I pray for Your help now.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
We began the last decade of the 20th
century by building a building for exaltation.
That's this building right here.
Exaltation.
And God willing, we will begin the first
decade of the 21st century by building a
building for education.
And that's the order of importance, but not
the order of life.
I say the order of importance.
First, exaltation and education.
Second, in importance.
The most important thing in the world for
humans is that they exalt in God.
And as a means to that end, subordinately,
it is also important that they be educated
about God.
But the order of preeminence is first exaltation,
then education.
In importance.
In preeminence.
But that's not the order of life.
The order of life goes like this.
True education precedes true exaltation.
Learning truth precedes loving truth.
Right reflection about God precedes right affections for
God.
Seeing the glory of Christ precedes savoring the
glory of Christ.
Good theology precedes great doxology.
That's the order of life.
So, on that little bookmark, you will notice
when it says, in that little banner around
the tree, education for exaltation, the little word
for is out there significantly.
We will teach our children and our youth
and each other and anybody who will listen,
for a reason, in order to bring something
about.
Education is never an end in itself.
Ever.
Or it gets rotten, like the Dead Sea
gets rotten because it's an end in itself.
No fish live in the Dead Sea.
And no souls flourish in education when it's
an end in itself.
It's moving toward something and we say it
is moving toward exaltation, last week, in God.
So let me rehearse last week for just
a minute.
A lot of you weren't here.
This is an 11 part series on education
for exaltation.
And as I contemplated, where do you begin
a series like this?
The answer was obvious, you begin at the
beginning.
You begin at the foundation and so we
began with God.
Education for exaltation in God.
And we began at the bottom of God.
Namely, the sovereignty of God.
And we took as our text, Isaiah 43,
10 to 13, which include these words.
You are my witnesses, declares Yahweh.
And I am God.
Even from eternity, I am He.
And there is none who can deliver out
of my hand.
I act.
And who can reverse it?
And we took the words, I am God.
And I act and who can reverse it?
And said the two points are deity and
sovereignty.
And they are not two points, they are
one point.
Because you can't be God if you're not
sovereign.
And you can't be sovereign if you're not
God.
And so last point, last week was to
lift up this truth that Yahweh is God.
And God is sovereign or God is God.
Now what do you add to that this
week if you preach the second sermon in
a series?
And my answer is this, you add one
short, huge truth.
Yahweh is God.
God is sovereign.
And today, Jesus is God.
That's today's point.
Jesus is God.
So let's go to our text.
Chapter 1 of John.
And let's read again verses 1 to 3
to make our first of three observations.
Number 1.
The observation is Jesus Christ who is called
the Word is the eternal God.
Jesus Christ who is called the Word is
the eternal God.
In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God and the
Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him.
And apart from Him, nothing came into being
that has come into being.
Now the most important phrase in those verses
is at the end of verse 1.
The Word was God.
We're going to see a name put on
the Word when we get down to verses
14 and 17.
But for now, let's just say the Word
was God.
Then, verse 3 clarifies what it means to
be God.
What does it mean for the Word to
be God?
Verse 3 says, all things came into being
through Him.
Apart from Him, as if to clarify that
first sentence and make sure we didn't miss
it.
All things came into being through Him.
And apart from Him, nothing came into being
that has come into being.
In other words, He didn't come into being.
All things that came into being, came into
being through Him.
Therefore, He did not come into being.
Therefore, He is God.
That which has always been is God.
That which came into being is not God.
All that came into being, came into being
through the Word of God.
Therefore, the Word of God did not come
into being.
Therefore, the Word is God.
But it also says the Word was with
God.
So the Word is not the Father.
We'll be made clear in the subsequent verses.
The Word is not the Father.
The Word is the Son.
And so we have at least two pieces
of this grand doctrine of the Trinity before
us.
The Word is God, and the Word is
not the Father.
And so, you don't have much left to
add.
Sometimes people will say, well, the word Trinity
doesn't occur in the Bible.
Well, that's true.
But we're talking reality here.
And a little reflection on John 1, 1
-3 does not take a rocket scientist to
figure out that if the Word is God,
because everything that came into being, came into
being through Him, and He is with God,
then you have the Word who is God,
and you have that with whom He was
who is God, and two of the persons
stand forth as the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit comes later.
That's the first observation.
Jesus Christ, who is called the Word, is
the eternal God.
Observation number two.
The Word became flesh.
That is, God was united with the human
nature in one person, and was truly man
and truly God as the man Christ Jesus
in history.
The Word became flesh.
I get this from verse 14 and 17.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And we saw His glory, glory as the
only begotten from the Father, full of grace
and truth.
And then verse 17 puts the name on
it.
The law was given through Moses, grace and
truth realized through Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the Word.
The Word is God.
Therefore, Jesus Christ is God.
And if you don't worship Jesus, you don't
worship God.
And He became flesh.
That's observation number two.
I worship a man, the man Christ Jesus,
who is God, over all, blessed forever.
Amen.
Observation number three.
If you receive Him as He really is,
you become a child of God and the
satisfied beneficiary of everlasting waves of grace.
Verses 12 and 16.
Verse 12.
As many as received Him, to them He
gave right to become children of God, even
to those who believe in His name.
And then I link verse 16 with that
because of the word received, so that we'll
really feel the force and glory of what
it means to receive Christ, who is God.
Verse 16.
For of His fullness we have all received.
So if you've received Christ, you have received
of His fullness grace upon grace.
I call them waves, waves of grace.
And I stuck in the word everlasting waves
of grace.
Is there textual warrant for sticking in the
word everlasting waves of grace, breaking over your
life forever and ever and ever and ever
without end?
Is there warrant for that?
Well, whose fullness are we talking about?
What kind of fullness does it mean when
it says fullness?
It's the fullness of the word, and the
word was God, and therefore it's an infinite
fullness, because it is what Paul called it
in Colossians 2.9. All the fullness of
deity dwells in Him bodily.
It's the fullness of deity.
So if you come to Him and you
receive Him into your life, and as it
says in Ephesians 3.14 and 15, He
lives, the Christ of God, the word of
God who is God, lives in you with
all of His infinite fullness, you become the
beneficiary of everlasting infinite waves of grace.
And I want to push it even farther
than that, because if you meditate for just
a moment on the word infinite, which He
is if He's God, and then you contemplate
the nature of the fullness that spills over
onto you out of infiniteness, you can put
away forever the fear that I had as
a nine year old that heaven was going
to be boring.
I just thought, sameness, ooh, oh no, perfected
in the twinkling of an eye, seeing as
I have been seen and knowing as I
am known, it's all over, nothing more to
learn, nothing new of God to experience.
It's boring, this little nine year old thought
and scared of heaven, not as much as
hell, but still scared that it was not
going to be as good as blackie and
baseball.
And now I've grown up a little bit,
put away childish things, and I have meditated
a while on the meaning of grace upon
grace, breaking over my life out of the
fullness of infinite deity forever.
And I no longer think in terms of
boredom because now I realize that I am
finite.
God is infinite.
A finite being cannot receive all at once
the fullness of grace.
Therefore, it's going to take how long to
receive it?
Forever, which means it's going to be new
every morning.
The steadfast love of the Lord and his
mercies are going to be new every morning.
There will be a new delight, a new
ecstasy, a new vista, a new glimpse, a
new terrain of mountains to climb over every
morning forever and ever and ever and ever.
And that is incomprehensible as it ought to
be because God is God and God is
sovereign.
And now I add Jesus in all of
his fullness of grace is God.
Those are my three observations, and I do
hope you will receive him.
Now, next week, I'm going to talk about
why he came, and the most important event
in history, the cross.
What I want to do for the rest
of our few minutes this morning is to
sober you up with regard to what it
will mean in this church or your church
if you take seriously what I have just
said, preach it, teach it to your children,
to your youth, and say it in a
multicultural, pluralistic society.
What the cost will be.
I want to tell you the cost.
Because I have this notion that whenever you
get into a vision process in a church
leading toward a building, the idea kind of
in the church is, all right, now I've
got to get everybody happy, got to get
everybody happy here, get everybody happy, exaltation, give
a lot of money.
And I thought, you know, really the reality
is this is scary.
And we better say it so that people
can leave now while the getting's good.
And here's what I mean.
If you believe that Jesus Christ is God,
and you draw out of that the implication
of John, who wrote it, He who honors
the Son honors the Father, and he who
does not honor the Son does not honor
the Father.
He who has not the Son has not
the Father.
If you believe that, you will either be
killed in some cultures, or deeply criticized in
other cultures.
Why?
2 Timothy 4.3 The time will come
when they will not endure sound doctrine.
Acts 20, verse 30 From among your own
selves the elders will arise, men speaking perverse
things, trying to draw away the disciples after
them.
1 John 4, 1 and 2 Beloved, don't
believe every spirit that gone out into the
world.
Test the spirits.
By this we know the spirit of God.
Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has
come in the flesh is from God.
In other words, as soon as you begin
to announce that Jesus is God, and not
to have Jesus is not to have God,
and not to honor him as God is
not to honor God, a cleavage happens in
the world, and often in churches, and the
price will be very high.
In our culture.
Not just if you go and say it
in Saudi Arabia, but if you say it
here.
Give you an illustration.
And I do this mainly to heighten the
stakes of those who will be around in
education for exaltation.
I could wish, oh how I could wish
we could move always directly from education to
exaltation.
Wouldn't it be great without the intervening disputation,
controversy.
Why is it that we have to move
from education, often through the shark infested waters
of disputation, on the way to exaltation.
Because it can become so easily perceived that
on the way what you really love is
disputation.
It's not what we love.
I long for the day when this will
be gone.
It will be over.
There will be no disputation.
No controversy.
No arguments.
No heresies.
No false teaching in heaven.
I'll be corrected.
Everybody will be fixed.
And we will be one mind completely.
And there will be exaltation and learning and
exaltation and learning and exaltation forever and ever
with no intervening step of controversy.
But here it won't happen.
And if you try to make it happen.
If you say I'm not going to be
a part of that.
Our church is just going to go straight
from education to exaltation.
And we're not going to be a part
of controversies.
You may last one generation or two.
It's cheap to let everybody else do the
dirty work and preserve the precious truth on
which you stand.
And it won't last.
It won't last.
Every one of Paul's letters is called forth
by disputation.
We wouldn't even have a New Testament if
people acted that way.
So here's my illustration.
Last September, as most of you know, the
Southern Baptists called for prayer that Jewish people
would believe in Jesus as their Messiah and
be saved.
And did that ever hit the fan?
Editorials in all the leading newspapers.
Controversy everywhere.
So I, in response to the lead editorial
in the Tribune, wrote a counterpoint for the
Tribune.
Never dreaming they'd publish it.
Because they never have published any letter I've
written in 25 years.
And they published it.
Every word of it.
So let me read one of the paragraphs.
According to the New Testament, Jesus is the
fulfillment of all the hopes of Israel.
He is the yes to all God's promises.
He is the Messiah.
To reject Him is to reject God the
Father.
And to confess Him as Lord of your
life is to be reconciled to God.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the
Father.
The one who confesses the Son has the
Father also.
Even though it is perceived as offensive by
many Jewish people, the call for prayer that
Israel should believe on her Messiah is a
profoundly loving act.
For he who has the Son has life,
and he who does not have the Son
of God does not have life.
Well, they printed it.
And the response was significant.
The Tribune received a letter from four clergymen,
three Protestant, one Catholic, of major churches in
the cities here to this effect.
And I'll just read one of the paragraphs.
They printed part of it, not all of
it.
The Reverend Piper claims that the appeal to
pray that Jewish people accept Jesus as their
Messiah is a profoundly loving act.
But genuine love does not harbor the kind
of aggressive agenda that is implicit in visions
of Christianizing the world.
Love, including the agape that lies at the
heart of the Christian gospel, is more respectful
and less intrusive, more open and less controlling
than that.
Unfortunately, arrogant is the right word to describe
any attempts at proselytizing.
In this case, the effort of Christians to
win over their Jewish brothers and sisters.
Thoughtful Christians will dissociate themselves from any such
effort.
Close quote.
Now, the saddest thing about that quote is
not that it puts you and me, at
least if you were among the ameners so
far, not that it puts you and me
in the category of unthinking, unloving and arrogant.
Those three words.
You are unthinking because thoughtful Christians dissociate themselves
from churches like this.
And you are unloving because love doesn't harbor
that kind of Christianizing agenda.
And you are arrogant because that's the only
word that can describe proselytizing efforts that tries
to win Jews to be Christians.
So you're unloving and you're arrogant and you're
unthinking.
Now, the saddest thing is not that that's
true.
We can handle that.
That's good for us, probably.
To hear criticism, to search our hearts, to
see whether these things are so, to humble
ourselves, to test all things, that's okay.
We can handle that.
The saddest thing is that these are four
shepherds of four huge churches leading Christian congregations
away from the uniqueness of Jesus as essential
for salvation.
That's the sad thing.
And they're all over the country.
So let's be very clear as we move
towards education for exaltation.
We love exaltation, do we not?
I love worship.
These are the high days for me.
When we gathered at the breakfast table this
morning and I bowed in prayer with the
family, I just heard coming out of my
mouth, Lord, I love the Lord's day.
I love the Lord's day.
I get to go worship at Bethlehem.
What a treat.
I love exaltation.
And I know it's always in jeopardy and
could be lost so quickly and so easily.
Paul said, I am in prison for the
defense and confirmation of the gospel.
Defense and confirmation.
Not just celebration.
Defense and confirmation of the gospel.
So God is sovereign, we said.
Now Jesus is God.
And that tremendous implication, if you don't have
Jesus, you don't have God.
So in the coming weeks, as you see
this little brown thing in your Bible, and
you see education for exaltation and you remember
this sermon.
Oh, not just education for exaltation in God,
but education for exaltation in Jesus, who is
God.
You can write on the back here.
Yahweh is God.
God is sovereign.
Jesus is God.
And God help us when the trouble comes
to remain meek.
I send you out as lambs in the
midst of wolves.
George Otis said, Jesus never called his people
to a fair fight.
Ever.
Don't stomp your feet when language is manipulated
against you.
And emotions are used to blackmail you.
Don't stomp your feet and say, that can't
be, that can't be, this is America.
Well, so what?
Of course it can be, and of course
it will be.
This is the world.
And the world lies under the darkness of
Satan.
And our own flesh is cropping up all
the time with false ideas and rebellion.
So we add, God help us.
One last word from John Owen.
So helpful.
I love John Owen.
I love lots of people.
They help me so much.
Oh, my.
Most of them are dead.
But I love them anyway.
When we have communion with God in the
doctrine we contend for, then we will be
garrisoned by the grace of God against all
the assaults of men.
You see that little phrase?
There's the key.
When we have communion with God in the
doctrine we contend for, oh, brothers and sisters,
if there's a doctrine like Jesus is God
that's worth contending for, don't make it mainly
something that you contend for, but mainly something
through which you commune with the living God.
Because if that's not the main thing that's
happening to you, all your contending will go
awry.
All your contending will be arrogant.
There will be more self in your argumentation
than God if you're not humbly drinking of
the fountain of Jesus who is God and
thus full of grace, thus satisfying all your
broken heart.
There will be a flavor about the contention
and the disputation if you are communing with
God through Jesus Christ when you celebrate Him.
And by all means, let us celebrate Him.
Let me remind you of how right Charles
Wesley got it.
Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my
great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my what?
God.
That's no accident that he said God.
My Redeemer is my God.
My gracious Master and my what?
God.
I'll be here at the front to pray
with any of you who'd like to pray.
You're dismissed.
Thank you for listening to this message by
John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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