Exploring the Gospels 1: Who and What Was Jesus Christ?

Do any of you recognize this particular photograph?

Not surprised here. And by this, I recognize this photograph. I'm not talking about the subject matter, which is obviously a photo of much of the universe, but this particular photograph, do you recognize it? Do you understand or have you ever heard the story behind this photograph? This is one of my favorite all-time photographs for a decade or more, maybe 20 years. It was the screen saver on my laptop and my desktop computer because of what it signifies here. And I'd like to tell you the story about it. This is probably the most famous photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. But before I tell you the story, what I'd like you to do, group exercise here, I'd like you to take your fingers and pinch your index finger and thumb as closely together and hold it up to one of the lights here, any of the lights here. And don't worry about looking dumb. Everybody looks dumb as you're doing this. But do that and then and hold it out as far as you can at about arm's length. And what you should see is just a tiny pinprick of light against one of the lights here. And remember, remember that size there.

On in December of 1995, 24 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope, and this is a photograph of the Hubble Space Telescope, most of us don't realize how big this is. It's about the size of a school bus orbiting in space above the world here. But in December of 1995, this telescope was pointed at the darkest patch of sky that astronomers could find, which happened to be in the northern sky near the Big Dipper constellation. They chose that area because they wanted a dark patch of sky with the fewest stars, nearby stars or galaxies in the way to obstruct the view. So they chose the darkest patch of sky they could find. And the angle of view that the telescope was set to photograph was about that size, about the size of a grain of sand held out at arm's length. And what they were trying to do is to see how far back in time they could photograph.

And they kept the Hubble Space Telescope focused on that one spot, about the size of a grain of sand, for 10 days while they took 342 digital exposures with the telescope's cameras. And those exposures averaged 15 to 40 minutes each. 15 to 40 minutes. Not seconds, not fractions of a second, but 15 to 40 minutes each. And what they were trying to do was record light that is 4 billion times fainter than what can be detected with the human eye. And that's why they took 10 days and 342 exposures to try to capture light that would never be seen by the human eye. And they were trying to answer some fundamental questions, trying to find answers to fundamental questions such as, is how big is the universe? How far back in time might we be able to see with the Hubble Stelloscope? Could they find any clues to the origin of the universe? Or for that matter, to our own galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy? And after they took all these exposures over 10 days, it took them another lengthy time, weeks, maybe months to go through and process all of those images and combine them into one specific photograph. And when they were finished, this was the result. This one photograph here. This is what they saw in that tiny speck of sky about the size of a grain of sand, held out at arm's length. And looking through this tiny, tiny speck of sky there, they started counting the galaxies.

They ended up counting more than 1,500 galaxies in that little speck of sky about the size of a grain of sand, held out at arm's length. They concluded that the faintest galaxies that they saw in this photograph were more than 10 billion light-years away.

So this, when I say they were looking how far back in time, the fainter, the further away the stars are, that's how they measure time there in a photograph like this. And if you look at this photograph carefully, you can see some pretty obvious spiral-shaped galaxies like this one down here. Here's another one where the shape and form is quite obvious. Another one up here. There's several in here that are on edge, like this right here. Another one right here that just looks like a straight line. That's because we're viewing it from the side. And Stida, instead of from the top, there's another spiral one down here, another one down here. So more than 1500 galaxies in this one photo. And you can see the different colors of these two. Some are yellow, some are orange, some are red, some are blue, some are green, some are purple. Just an amazing variety. And this is why it's just one of my favorite photographs ever, ever taken. So what they did after saying, well, let's see, there's 1500 galaxies in a spot of sky this small. Well, what if we extrapolated that out to all of the sky, 360 degrees in every direction, including behind and underneath us? And they concluded that the universe contains far more galaxies than we can possibly imagine. At least 100 billion, 100 billion, and perhaps far more. How big is that number? 100 billion. Well, to put that in perspective, if you counted galaxies at the rate of one per second, one per second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, one per second, it would take you almost 32 years to reach one billion. 32 years, counting one per second. One, two, three, four, five, and so on.

And again, that's only the estimated number of galaxies in the universe. When you consider the individual planets and stars and so on, you just simply can't begin to fathom numbers that high.

Because the average Milky Way-sized galaxy, like ours, is thought to contain 200 billion stars and an uncountable number of planets there. So multiply that 200 billion stars in an average galaxy and multiply that by 100 billion galaxies. Again, the numbers just become unfathomable.

We can't comprehend numbers that large. But there was a problem because just a few years ago, another group of scientists went back and re-crunched that data with some other new data they had been analyzing, and they concluded they were a little bit off. That the universe contains not 100 billion galaxies, but they were actually off by a factor of 20 to 30 times.

That there were actually 20 to 30 times 100 billion galaxies. So that little speck of sky at arm's length did not contain 1500 galaxies. It actually contained about 40,000.

So again, just a little exercise. Hold it out. And in that speck, that little tube of sky, about 40,000 galaxies. Galaxies, not planets, not stars. Galaxies. 40,000. Again, it's just unfathomable. Unfathomable. The magnificence, the greatness of the universe. So why start a study on the galaxies, on the Gospels, rather, with an astronomy lesson about the size and scope of the universe? Well, the simple answer is that in the Gospels we're going to be studying the being who created all of this. Who created those billions and trillions of galaxies and stars and planets and countless worlds out there. And that is the same being who created all of that. The same being who wants to have a personal relationship with you, with each and every one of us here.

And who came to earth to die so that we could inherit all of this. Let's notice a few scriptures that demonstrate this. Hebrews 1 and verses 1 and 2. It tells us, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his son, whom he is appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.

Worlds, plural. So this tells us clearly that God, God the Father, in this case made or created the worlds, not just our planet earth, through his son, Jesus Christ. It was a joint effort, in other words. God the Father did it, but how did he do it? He did it through the one we know as Jesus Christ, who did the actual creating. Let's notice also Colossians 1, beginning in verse 16, referring to Jesus Christ as, for 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. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And 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. A tremendous amount of information crammed into these three verses here. Let's go back and dissect those verses just a little bit. First of all, verse 16, it says, for by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth.

And heaven, I should mention here, heaven, when you read heaven in the Bible, don't think of heaven where God lives. That's not generally what the Hebrew and Greek writers were intending when they used the word heaven. They think sky. They think of everything that's up there, the sky in which the birds fly and the clouds form and so on.

And beyond that, extending the sky pretty much to infinity, up into the realm of the stars and the planets and the galaxies and so on. Of course, they didn't really have a concept of galaxies and so on at that time. But the night sky filled with those bright lights, when they used the word heavens, that's what they're generally referring to, the sky and the heavens, the outer space as we would call it today.

So Paul goes on to explain that the being who became Jesus Christ created all things that are, as he next says, visible and invisible. Not just, in other words, what is visible. Visible is the physical world, the physical realm in which we live, the earth, the ground, the trees, the sky, the birds, the animals, the mountains, the streams, all of that.

That is the visible part of the creation. But he also mentions whether visible and invisible. He's talking about another completely different realm there, what we would call the spirit world, a kind of a parallel... The best way I can put it is kind of a parallel dimension to ours, a spirit dimension, an invisible dimension that we cannot sense with our physical humans. We can't see it, we can't hear it, we can't touch it, we can't taste it, that kind of thing. But it is there, it is very real.

It exists more or less alongside. And in the Bible there are times where that spirit world overlaps, and beings move from that spirit world into our physical world. And it struck me going through the Gospels how I think every time that happens the human beings are just drunk, scared, spitless, to put it in modern vernacular here. They fear greatly is the kind of phrase that is used when they encounter this spirit dimension there. There's a dimension of power in something that humans innately sense or experience when that happens, and it terrifies them. We'll see a number of examples of this as we go through the Gospels here.

Then he goes on to say the next phrase he mentions that was created is dominions or principalities or powers. Here, dominions, principalities, or powers. This is a particular phrase that Paul uses elsewhere in the book of Galatians to talk about, again, about the angelic realm. It's referring to different ranks and kinds of angels, like the covering carabinet, like seraphim, things like that, other kinds of spirit beings, the demonic world, fallen angels, and so on. This particular phrasing, dominions, principalities, and powers. That's specifically what Paul uses that phrase to refer to in the book of Galatians.

You can look that up yourself. We don't have time to do that now.

Continuing the last part of verse 16, he says, all things were created through him and for him. So again, who is the one who created all of this? Jesus Christ is. He created all things in the physical universe, in the spirit universe as well. The dominions, principalities, and powers, the invisible spirit world, was created by him as well. Continuing on, verse 17, and he is before all things, before, in this context, he's talking about time. In other words, he existed before all things.

And if he created all things, then obviously he had to be there to create them. He had to be there before they existed to be able to create them. Verse 18, and 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. So we see again that this is clearly talking about Jesus Christ, the head of the body that is his church, and the firstborn from the dead through his resurrection from the dead.

And I wanted to read these scriptures to you here to get this clear in our minds before we actually begin reading the Gospels starting in John 1, which is chronologically the beginning of the Gospels here. We'll see in just a few minutes here. Because most people see Jesus as a wise man or a great teacher who happened to have found what became a great religion.

When we really understand who and what Jesus Christ was—and that's the title of the message today—we come to understand there is a whole lot more to the story than that. He was not just a great teacher. He was not just a wise man. Anything like that. There is so much more to the story.

And that lies at the very heart of what true Christianity is all about. And if we understand that, it explains so much more of what he did and what he said during his lifetime on earth.

So this involves the understanding that Jesus was not just a great teacher and not just a great rabbi, not just a great human being, but it involves who and what this rabbi from Nazareth really was. So let's go through what the Gospels and what the rest of the Bible, for that matter, tell us about who and what he was—the true identity of Jesus Christ, who and what he was.

So now let's begin over in John 1 and verse 1. And here we go back to the very beginning, even before the beginning that we read about in Genesis 1. So let's pick it up here. It begins. How does John begin his gospel? I've given a message. How many of you have not heard the message I gave on Rimes? How many of you have not heard that? Okay. Okay. All right.

Yeah. So you're familiar with Rimes, where part of an Old Testament verse is quoted as a way to point the readers to that particular verse. And John starts his gospel with a Rimes, pointing his readers back to Genesis 1-1. Incidentally, Matthew starts his gospel with a Rimes, too, but it's fairly complicated. Now it'll take some time to explain that we don't have time to get into now. But John starts with a Rimes back to Genesis 1—the very opening words of the Bible, the exact same words here. And he tells us, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So this being called the Word was both with God and was God, as we read here.

And this is difficult for some people to wrap their minds around, but it really boils down to how you define God. Because if you define God as one being, you can get yourself twisted into theological pretzels, which is actually part of the conundrum early theologians were facing, and out of that grew the Trinity doctrine—how to have what are clearly multiple beings, as mentioned here, but one God there. But if you define God as a kind of being—and we know that Eloam, the word that is used for God there in Genesis 1.1, and dozens of other places, is a plural word—a plural word, including more than one—then you don't really have a problem. The problem goes away, and Scripture is consistent. And we know, of course, that when you put all this biblical teaching together, that God is a family. God is a family that God is creating, currently consisting of the Father and the Son, as we have just seen and as we see throughout the Gospels. And we have a whole booklet titled Who is God? that goes into this in a lot more detail, as well as a Trinity booklet. So if you want to learn more about that, see all of that demonstrated, you can go through that. So having read this, let's turn back to Genesis 1 and take a quick look there. We just refer to this, in the beginning, God, Elohim, created the heavens and the earth. And this word, God, is again Elohim, which is plural, meaning more than one. If you know anything about Hebrew at all, when you find a word that ends in I-M, that's a Hebrew word, a Hebrew way of making the word plural. In English, we add an S on the end of it, in most cases. But we're familiar with carob. Carob is singular. Carobim is plural, adding the I-M on the end. It's the same thing with Elohim. There's L, which is one name or title for God. Elohah, another name or title for God. But Elohim is a plural form of that. And when the Bible uses this word Elohim, it is referring to more than one divine being. And we see this brought out and proven several places in the book of Genesis. Actually, in the first chapter, talking about the creation of man, Genesis 1.26 tells us, then God, Elohim, said, let us, not let me, but let us, plural, make man an hour, plural, image according to our plural likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So again, we see a plural use there. We see the same type of pattern at Genesis 11, the incident at the Tower of Babel. So let's read there. Verse 1, set the stage, Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. Skipping down to verse 4, And they, mankind, said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower, whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

And the Lord said, Indeed, the people are one, and they all have one language. And this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let us, plural, go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. So again, we see God plural. Let us go down, and there confuse their language. So this again proves that Elohim is plural. There is more than one being, just as we see there in John 1 and verse 1. And the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God. So here we see a being whom the apostle calls the word, and we see that this word was with God, with another being who is also God, and was himself God. So how many beings? Obviously two.

Obviously two beings mentioned here. What is the relationship of these two beings? The Bible doesn't explicitly tell us. Are they in a father-son relationship at this time, in the beginning?

May sound surprising, but no, they are not. We don't know explicitly what the relationship was, but let's look at a few passages. Let's notice something over in Daniel 7 verses 13 and 14, and Daniel here describes a vision he had. He says, And obviously this sounds very familiar to anyone at all familiar with Bible prophecy, because who receives an everlasting kingdom that will never be destroyed or pass away, and that kingdom includes all nations and peoples and languages of the earth?

The answer is obvious. It's Jesus Christ. We're familiar from many, many prophecies about that.

And what is he referred to here? How is he referred to here? He's referred to as one like the Son of Man. One like the Son of Man. What title does Jesus Christ use of himself?

84 times in the Gospels. Son of Man. Son of Man. So it's obvious who this is talking about. So, if the being whom we know as the Son of Man, as Jesus Christ, is given an everlasting kingdom that will never be destroyed, who gives him that kingdom? Well, as stated here, a being called the Ancient of Days. The Ancient of Days. So, if the Ancient of Days gives the Kingdom to the one we know of Jesus Christ, then who is the Ancient of Days? Well, obviously it's the one we would know is God the Father. So, why doesn't Daniel just call him that? Why doesn't he call him, call them God the Father and Jesus Christ? Well, the answer is actually very simple. They're not in a father-son relationship yet. Not at this point of time. Because when does Daniel have this vision?

About 550 BC. Can we take a decade or so in there? About 550 BC. When is Jesus Christ born as the Son of God? As near as we can tell, about 4 BC. So, when Daniel sees this vision and two beings, the Ancient of Days and one like the Son of Man, he sees this vision about 550 years before Jesus Christ becomes the Son of God, born in the flesh. So, that's why Daniel doesn't refer to them as father and son. They're not in the father-son relationship yet. Therefore, Daniel describes them as the Ancient of Days.

I looked up the Hebrew in that, and that's what it means. Actually, Aramaic. This portion was written in Aramaic. Yeah, it means Ancient and Days. Ancient of Days, dear. So, that is what is going on. They will not be in a father-son relationship until Jesus Christ is conceived in the womb of Mary and therefore becomes the Son. We read about that over in Luke 1 and verse 30.

Where the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, and the angel said to her, Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest. Skipping down a few verses, then Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I do not know a man?

Since I am a virgin, I have not been intimate with a man. So, how am I going to give birth to this one who will be called the Son of the Highest? And the angel answered how this will happen. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you. Therefore also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. So, notice a couple of things here that even Gabriel's message here talks about this in a future sense. Because, again, Jesus has not been conceived, has not been born. So, notice how he says it. You will conceive. He will be great.

He will be called the Son of the Highest. That Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. So, he is not the Son of God yet. He will not be until he is conceived and born through the natural birth process. Now, let's go back to John 1 again and pick up on something else.

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. So, here we see a phrase used twice. In the beginning, he was in the beginning.

And, again, this is a reference back to the beginning from Genesis 1.1, where God created the heavens and the earth. So, this is referring to a time before the creation of the universe, described here in Genesis 1.1. These two beings, the Word who was with God and was God, these two beings exist before the beginning. Before the beginning, we read about in Genesis 1.1. Where God, Elohim, created the heavens and the earth. So, we're going back to a time before anything existed. We're going back to a time before time existed.

Now, try to wrap your minds around that, because time isn't something we can hold in our hands.

It's not something we can touch. I started to say it's not something we can feel, but we feel the passage of time. But time itself is not something that's easy for us to wrap our hits around. We can measure time, but how do we measure time? How do we measure a day? We measure a day by the time it takes for the earth to rotate once in its rotation as it goes around the sun. How do we measure a year? A year is a time it takes our planet to orbit the sun one time. So, we measure time by the movement of the heavenly bodies that God created. But what did time mean when there were no heavenly bodies? When there wasn't a universe? When there wasn't a planet earth? When there wasn't a sun? Or our galaxy? Or the Milky Way galaxy? Or our solar system? Or anything like that? Time was essentially meaningless when there is no physical creation to measure time by. So, both of these beings existed here in the beginning. Before there was a physical creation. Before the universe was created. They were both themselves uncreated.

One did not create the other. As we see here in John 1, verses 1 and 2, both of them existed in the beginning. And the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.

So, they existed before there was any physical beginning of anything.

As a parallel to this, let's notice the description of Melchizedek. It's given in Hebrews 7 and verse 3. Melchizedek we understand to be the one who would later exist in human form as Jesus Christ. But he lived on earth as a priest during the time of Abraham. Approximately 4000 BC, to round it off. Notice how he is described in Hebrews 7 and verse 3. He's described as without father, without mother, without genealogy, or ancestry, in other words, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God.

And he remains a priest continually. How do you have a being who has no beginning?

No beginning of days or end of life. Again, these are concepts that are hard for us to understand. That's why I'm addressing them here, so we can think and meditate about what we're being told here in the Word of God. I don't know about you, but I can wrap my mind around living forever.

But I can't wrap my mind before around the concept of something existing before time began. I can try and it makes my brain hurt. It's just hard to comprehend there. How do we conceive of a being who existed before time began? How do we conceive of a world of anything before time began? Before there was anything other than God and the one who had become Jesus Christ? But that's what we're being told here. This being who is described as being made like the Son of God remains a priest continually. How does he remain a priest continually? He lived, we know from the biblical records, in the time of Abraham, again about 4,000 years ago. And yet he remains a priest continually.

How does he do that unless he's a being who has no beginning of days or end of life?

He's an eternal, immortal being there. He was uncreated. That's what I mean when I mentioned earlier. He's uncreated. He lives. He's uncreated just as God. The Father is uncreated. They don't live in physical time and space. They're not bound by those constraints. Again, the closest thing I can parallel it with is another dimension. Not the twilight zone, but maybe the God zone or the spirit zone where it's different. They're not bound by time and space as we human beings, as our physical beings are. And that existence is very different, very different from our physical human existence. Let's notice another passage that tells us here that they existed in glorified form together before the one being was born in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. And this is over in John 17, 1 through 5. And this is where John records some of Jesus Christ's last teachings to the apostles on the night before he was arrested later that evening and then executed the next day.

Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you.

And then skipping down to verse 4, I have glorified you on the earth.

I have finished the work which you have given me to do. He knows his mission is rapidly drawing to a close. Within about 12 hours he will be dead and laid in the tomb. And then notice verse 5. This is what I want to focus on. And now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.

So notice what Jesus asks his Father to do here shortly before he is betrayed and sentenced to death and executed. He asks the Father, Glorify me together with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world was. Or before the world existed. In other words, so he asks the Father, to restore him to that glory that he shared with the Father before the world existed, before the creation of the universe that we read about in Genesis 1.1. At the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So these two beings, the Father and the Son, now existed as glorious, eternal, immortal, all-powerful, all-loving beings. And one became flesh on earth as a physical human being who was now about to die and three days and three nights later be resurrected from the grave to be restored to the glory that he shared with the Father before the world existed. Let's notice another passage here that also talks about this, Philippians 2, verses 5 through 8, and it describes, again, the one who became Jesus Christ, describes some of his existence before he became flesh. And in context here, Paul is talking about the importance of humility and unity within the church, within the body. And it's all rooted and grounded in humility. Of considering others better than yourselves. So Paul here then talks about the ultimate example of humility, which is Jesus Christ. And he writes, verse 5, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation taking the form of a bondservant. This word bondservant literally means slave in Greek. A little political correctness in the translation here. And coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

I want to draw our attention to several words because, again, there's a huge amount of information packed into this passage here. I want to first draw our attention to the word form that appears twice in here, being in the form of God and then contrasting that with the form of a slave here. This word form is the Greek word morphae. And talking about the essential nature of something. Well, what it is, both internally and externally. What is it? It's the nature of that thing. So this tells us, Paul tells us here, he went from having the morphae, the form, the nature of God. And we use the word morph today to change into something.

What Paul is telling us here is God morphed, Jesus Christ morphed from being God into a physical human being. We use the same word. We don't use it in quite that we use it as a verb as opposed to a noun. But it's essentially the same meaning there. The nature of something, the change. We use the word morph to describe how something changes from one thing to something else. And that's essentially what Paul is telling us here. He changed from being God to being a physical human being. And not just any physical human being, but a slave. The most humble and humiliating kind of person that could be at that time. Next word I want to look at here is robbery. Being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. This word robbery is harpogmos, which means it can mean robbery, but the meaning is more to grasp something and to hold on tightly and not let go. And what's the connection with robbery? Well, if you rob somebody of something and you're making your getaway, what are you doing? You're going to grasp what you've robbed and you're not going to let it go. So there is that overlap in meaning there. It's not talking about motive to steal something from somebody, but it's talking about the action of holding on to something tightly and not letting it go. And also there's connotations of something that is valuable that you're holding on to and not letting go. And that's partway where robbery ties into that. You rob, you don't steal stuff that's not worth anything. You rob somebody of something because it is valuable, and then you hold on to it and don't let it go. So these are some of the connotations of the wording here. So this is what he is talking about here. Paul tells us that Jesus Christ was not going to hold on to his existence as God.

But was willing to surrender that and to give up that glorified state of existence to become something else. And what was it? He gave up. Well, as it tells us here, Paul tells us here he didn't consider it robbery to be equal with God. To be equal with God. And this word equal, you can look it up, it's isos, which means equal in quantity and numerically the same, or quality. It does mean equal. So this tells us that Jesus didn't consider equality with God as being something that he had to to tightly hold on to and never give up. Continuing in verse 7, Paul says, he made himself of no reputation. And I'm not going to share with you all the Greek words. It just becomes confusing. And many of these don't correlate into English like morph does. But of no reputation, he made himself of no reputation. What is being described here? The word means to make empty, or to empty himself. And so he emptied himself of what he was as God.

In other words, he emptied himself of his power, of his glory, of his splendor, of his majesty, that we talked about early. The glory that he had with the father before the world was.

He emptied himself of those things. And notice also how this is worded.

He made himself of no reputation. In other words, this wasn't forced on him. He did it himself. He did it voluntarily. He made himself of no reputation.

And continuing that thought, taking the form, the morph, the essential nature of a slave. But notice this, taking the form. And the Greek word means took, as in you reach out and you take something. So he reached out and took the form of a physical human being. Even though he was God, glorified, immortal, eternally living, all-powerful God, he reached out and took on himself the form of a human being. Not just any human being, but a slave. A slave. And coming in the likeness of men.

I should mention, too, taking the form of a slave. Who is he a slave to?

In a sense, well, we see in the Gospels, he did come to serve all mankind. He is the ultimate example of a servant. But he becomes a slave of the Father. He is totally submissive, totally subservient to God the Father throughout his ministry. We see that theme again and again and again throughout the scriptures. So he became a slave, totally obedient and subservient, to the Father to carry out the plan and the purpose of God. And then it says, and coming in the likeness of men. Here this word likeness is quite different from form. We would tend to more or less equate the two words likeness and form. Because in form, in English, it has the connotation of the shape or the appearance of something and not necessarily the substance. But in Greek, it definitely means the substance. The emphasis is on the substance. So we would tend to equate likeness and form as meaning kind of the same thing in English. But that's not the case in Greek. Again, form, morphe, means the substance, the in and out. That's what it is. That's the substance of it. But likeness is different. Likeness here means to be made like something or to have the appearance of something. Why does Paul use this word here after having emphasized that he has morphed from God to man? But it says here, he came in the likeness, the appearance of man. Well, Paul is letting us know here that although Jesus Christ had emptied himself, verse 7, made himself of no reputation, he had emptied himself of his godly power and splendor and majesty and greatness and all of that. But that he came in the likeness of a man because he was still God. And again, this can be kind of hard for us to wrap our minds around this because we're talking about a spirit world and spirit existence and a physical existence, and they are very different things. What Paul is telling us is that he did still have his divine nature. In other words, he didn't cease being God when he came in the flesh. He was a different kind of God, you might say, because he had emptied himself of his power, of his glory and majesty, of his immortality and all of that. He became flesh, but he still had the essence of the nature that is God. He was just God in the flesh, emptied of the power and the glory that he had had with the Father before becoming a flesh and blood human being. So this is what Paul is talking about conveying to us when he talks about coming in the likeness of men. And being found, and he kind of reinforces that in the next line and being found in appearance as a man. What Paul is saying here is that by all outward appearances, he's not God, he's a man. He's a physical flesh and blood human being. He gets hungry, he gets thirsty, you cut him, he bleeds, he gets hot, he sweats. In an emotional situation, he cries, he weeps, he is physical. By every appearance, he looks like any other human being there.

But he's different inside because he still maintains that divine nature.

And in conclusion, Paul writes, and being found, in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to whom? Obedient to the Father, to the point of death, even the death of the cross. And this is all quite straightforward to us here. Having emptied himself of his glory and power as God, he showed the ultimate example of humility in submitting to the most humiliating and agonizing death one could experience at that time, with his death by crucifixion as a common criminal. And notice again the way Paul words this. He humbled himself.

God the Father did not force him to become humble. He did it himself. He did it voluntarily. And Paul uses that same wording throughout here. He made himself of no reputation. He took on himself the form of a bondservant. He humbled himself. He does all of this voluntarily in submission to the Father to carry out the will, carry out the will and the purpose and the plan of God.

We're told this again and again, that these were his voluntary actions. With all of that in mind, I would like to read this section from several other versions that I think word this a bit better. I'll start with a new international version. And to me, and I'm doing this, spending a lot of time on this, because this is one of the most magnificent and meaningful sections of Scripture where God became flesh. And why? And the whole point is, let this mind be in you. This is the kind of attitude you should have. And that's why I'm reading these other other versions.

And also the Christian Standard Bible.

And last, the New Living Translation, most recent edition of that.

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges. He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.

And these all convey the same essential thoughts, just in slightly different words. Some use the phrases a little bit better than others there, which put all of these together.

And this is telling us a profound lesson about the attitude and the example of Jesus Christ. How do we kind of sum up this section here?

When this being who chose to come in flesh to earth, how did he come?

How could he have come? Could have come any way he wanted. Could have come as a conquering general like Julius Caesar, the head of legions, Roman legions, to march into Rome and to take over the Roman Empire, the superpower of the day. He could have done that. He could have come as a great, great philosopher, teacher that everybody would want to hear his teachings, like Plato or Socrates or one of those, who would explain the meaning and the purpose of life and how it all tied together and so on. He could have come in a blaze of glory and majesty and splendor, so everyone would recognize his divine identity and bow down and worship him and follow him.

But he didn't come in any of those ways. How did he come? He came as a tiny, helpless, physical, human baby, a baby boy that had to be burped, had to be fed, had to be nursed, had to be washed, had to have his diapers changed, and grew up as a child and a man to die the death of a criminal. That's the way he chose to come. He laid aside his glory to splendor, his majesty, his power to come to earth in that way to teach us the kind of attitude we should have. What it means to be the ultimate kind of servant, to esteem others, is better than ourselves. And he did that to carry out the plan that had been worked out between him and the Father from before the foundation of the world. How do we know that plan was determined then? Well, several verses tell us. Revelation 13 and verse 8. This is breaking into a thought here. But notice it talks about the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Foundation here in Greek is talking about the establishing of something. You don't build something without putting down a foundation first. And the Greeks understood that, and he built or knows that. You build a foundation, then you build on top of that. But he was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.

1 Peter 18 verse 20, 18 through 21 also tells us this. You were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers. But with the precious blood of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot, he indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world. Forordained for what?

Well, as we read here, to give his blood by which we could be redeemed like a Lamb without blemish and without spot. That's what he was foreordained for before the foundation of the world. But was manifest in these last times for you, who through him believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. So we see the same time frame mentioned in both of these passages that this was planned. His sacrificial death as a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind was foreordained from before the foundation of the world, from before the creation of this vast universe and galaxy that he talked about in the beginning there. And because of this, what is his status now? I'll pick up where we left off there in Philippians 2 with verse 9.

Therefore, because of what he did, therefore God also is highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven what's that talking about? Who were the ones in heaven? Well, the angelics world, the spirit world, and of those on the earth, those living on the earth, and of those under the earth. Who are those under the earth? Those who are in the grave. They too will be resurrected as we just celebrated with the Feast of Tabernacles and the eighth day. They too will be raised and they too will bow their knees to Jesus Christ. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. What does Lord mean? It means master. It means ruler. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is master and ruler to the glory of God the Father. I want to move on now and cover very briefly a couple more verses to reach a good stopping place in today's study. So going back to John 1 again, in the beginning was the word. The Greek word here, translated word, is logos. It's an unusual word. It doesn't have any direct English equivalent. It can mean speech. It can mean report. It can mean an agent acting on behalf of another. It can mean one who reveals something. And this is why we've often kind of used a shorthand of spokesman for that. And that's certainly within the range of meanings of this word logos. In this word, this logos is the one who came to reveal God, as we'll get to in the Gospels. And Jesus Christ did come to reveal the Father. But He also came to reveal something else, which we'll talk about. So verse 2, He was in the beginning with God. We've talked about that. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. So again, He is doing the creative work of the physical universe here. In line with this, if He is the Word, if He is the one who reveals the Father, the revelatory agent, and He came to reveal God, we see something else here that's easy to skip over here and not grasp. And that is that, what is one of the major ways that Jesus Christ revealed God? Well, through what was made, as it says here? In other words, He revealed God through the creation.

Does it bring any scriptures to mind? One that should come to mind is Romans 1 and verse 20. Read from the New Living Translation. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see His invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God. So what Paul is telling us here is that one of the most obvious ways of knowing about God and knowing that God exists is by the things that He has made, by His creation. And this tells us that creation reveals His invisible qualities, which are His eternal power and divine nature. In other words, we can tell what a great and powerful and awesome and incredible God we worship by looking at what He has made. And again, this is why I talked about the scope of this universe, just unfathomably huge and magnificent. And that's just as far as we can measure. We know it goes on further beyond that.

That's just as far as we can measure, looking 10 billion years back in time.

And it's just staggering there. So this tells us that the Word, the one who reveals, the one who became Jesus Christ, revealed the greatness and the power and the glory and the grandeur of Almighty God by the creation that we see around us. So yes, Jesus Christ did reveal the Father through His teaching while on earth. That's very clear. We'll see that a number of times. But He also revealed a great deal about God through the things that He made and the astounding creation and His creative work of creating all things.

And continuing with verse 4, I want to touch on one more brief aspect of this. Here John explains with the explanation. He continues with the explanation of the Word who was God and was with God, the one by whom all things were made. And continuing in verse 4, he says, in Him was life. In Him was life. And a few thoughts here. If Jesus Christ was the Creator, what is the most amazing aspect of His creation? Yes, He made the stars, made the planets, made the galaxies, the seas, the heavens, the skies, the trees, the plants. But what is the most amazing creation of all? And what has scientists stumped the most? If you've looked at the latest issue beyond today, it's a whole cover theme on this. And that is that science has no clue as to how life began. The impossibilities of it. Just go through and read some of those articles. And it is a mathematical impossibility, millions of times over, for life to have evolved. It cannot happen.

That's why scientists, their latest way to get around it, is the multiverse theory. How many of you have heard of the multiverse theory? Quite a few of you. Basically, scientists confront the odds and they realize evolution is just a mathematical impossibility. It cannot happen.

The odds of it happening are one in billions and trillions of times. I mean pages and pages of zeros. The odds for evolution happening because the Earth's life is so complex. The molecules, all of this coming together to form life. It's a mathematical impossibility. So now, scientists, they try to find a way to beat the odds. So they came up with a theory of multiverses. In other words, there's not one universe. There's countless universes out there. So they have to multiply the number of universes so that somehow the odds can become reasonable for evolution to happen. So there is no evidence of a multiverse, none whatsoever. But they have to do it to try to justify their belief in evolution. And they think we're the crazy ones for believing in the Bible. It's just nuts. It's just nuts. But scientists have tried everything they can think of for decades now to create life. And they have no clue. Only God can create life from non-living matter.

So we see here that Jesus Christ is not just the creator of all things, but he is also the creator and giver of life. And also the way John words this, in him was life. I've talked about God the Father and Jesus Christ having life inherently in themselves. Nobody created them. They had life. In them was life. And they are the only ones who can miraculously create life or set in motion the processes that create life, as with human birth and so on. And not just physical life, but something on a scale far more vast. And that is spirit life. Because Jesus Christ says three times in John 6 that he can give eternal life to those who follow and accept him.

John 6 and verse 40, and this is the will of him who sent me that everyone who sees the sun and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Raise us up and give us eternal life so that we can live forever as Jesus Christ and God the Father live forever. Verse 44, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. I've just heard about these themes at the recent holy days.

Skipping down to verse 54, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood, talking about the symbols of Passover, has eternal life. And I will raise him up at the last day. So what Jesus tells us here is he can give not just physical life, since he was the Creator who made all of these things, and even raised people from the dead during his ministry, but he can also give the gift of eternal life to his followers, to those who obey him. So yes, in him was life on multiple levels.

Physical life, animal life, plant life that he created, but beyond that, eternal spirit life as well, so that we might receive that wonderful gift of eternal life. One more quick thing I want to mention here in closing out with verse 4.

And the life was the light of men. Life and light are two of the major themes that show up in John's Gospel. Life appears 39 times, and that Gospel and light appears 16 times. So that's a total of 55 times and only 21 chapters. So these themes will pop up again and again and again because they teach us so much about Jesus Christ and God the Father, about life, about light as well. And what is light? Light, as John uses it, often is a synonym for God's truth, God's way of life.

And this is something that the Logos, God's Word, came to reveal, the light of God's truth, God's plan, God's way of life, God's plan of salvation, God's light in everything. And verse 5, And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

And this word comprehend is not a good translation. Other versions translate this as the darkness did not overcome the light or overtake or overpower or extinguish the light. In other words, the darkness that John is talking about here is a very real and very active force that opposes God's light in everything. In other words, it's saying that it is an active force of opposition, something very real, something very powerful, that tries to overpower and extinguish the light. Was such a force at work during the lifetime of Jesus Christ? You bet there was! What's about the first thing we read about Jesus Christ? When Herod the Great tries to kill him? When he's an infant?

One of the very first events. From the beginning of the Gospels to the end of the Gospels, what do we have? People trying to kill him, trying to extinguish the light, trying to put out the light.

Beginning with Herod when Satan the Devil influences to slaughter the baby boys at Bethlehem, and his parents are divinely warned in a dream to flee to Egypt to escape that. What force was behind that? Satan the Devil, the same force that at the end of his life was influencing Judas Haschariot to betray him and to have him crucified. So there is that very powerful force of darkness that is at work, and that is a theme we see throughout the Gospels. The forces of light, of truth, of God's way of life, and the force that is trying to extinguish that light and that life.

So as we know, though, we know who wins. In the end, the dark side cannot conquer the light that Jesus Christ has brought and revealed. So we've actually just scratched the surface of who and what Jesus Christ was and is. So we'll be continuing with this not next week at combined services, but in two weeks, and go into much more and much more of the reasons as to why they want to kill Jesus Christ, the light of the world.