Before the World Existed

From the mouth of babes, Jesus called it. Hey, would you if you have a Bible, would you turn with me to John 17 we are going to Begin an Advent sermon series one week already into Advent That will take us through to Christmas Eve. So join me in looking at John 17 1 through 5 if you're using one of the Bibles that we have underneath the chair in front of you. It's on page 1149. Here now God's holy, true, and life-giving word. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. Since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. The Word of the Lord. Let's pray. Definitely, Father, we do thank you for your word and its power. We thank you for the promise that it never goes out and returns to you void. It always accomplishes the purpose for which you send it. And as we look at this part of Jesus' prayer not long before he was taken away and tortured and killed for our sins. As we look at this, would you help us to see the significance and what it shows us about Christ and how it helps us to have a deeper and richer understanding of Christmas, of the first coming of Christ? Would you use this time now to strengthen us if there are any here without faith? Would you give them the gift of faith this morning? And Lord, would you strengthen us and embolden us to be able to bring the gospel to our neighbors and to the nations for it is in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Advent is a word that really means arrival. And so when we celebrate Advent, the weeks leading up to Christmas, we're celebrating Jesus' first arrival and we're thinking forward to his second coming, which will come at some point in the future. You know, we're going to now this sermon series is short. It's just going to be a few weeks leading up to Christmas and it's really designed to help us learn or remember some things that will hopefully help us have a deeper and fuller and richer understanding of the incarnation of when the Son of God took on flesh became man so that he could die for our sins. And it's interesting because if you look in this passage, which is not necessarily one of the ones that we would say is a Christmas passage, maybe, but there are some things in here that really are powerful and that we need to see. For example, think about in verse three how he says this is eternal life that they know you the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So really it's in preparation for for even eternal life that we would know God and no Christ more and in a deeper way and we can do that by looking at some of the things in this passage. One of the things that we want to know and focus on for this Advent season is that the Son of God was bringing about our salvation long before he was born in a manger. In fact, there's an interesting moment in the Gospel of John. In the Gospel of John, there's a moment where John the Baptist is speaking and he says speaking about Jesus, he says this was he of whom I said he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. In fact, what he's actually saying there is when he's speaking about Jesus, he's saying this is the one who comes after me, but he's above me. He ranks way above me because he was before me, meaning he existed before me. Now, if you if you know the story of John the Baptist and Jesus, who was born first? John the Baptist, yeah, at least six months older than Jesus. So here he's saying that the Son of God that Jesus was before him and what he's getting at is that that Christ has existed for all time that the Son of God was at work, bringing about our salvation way before he was born as a man in Bethlehem. Bethlehem. So we're going to dig into this a little bit by looking at what we see in this passage by talking about the Son of God before time and then throughout time and then also in the fullness of time. So if you're making an outline, that's what you'd want to write down before time, throughout time and in the fullness of time. So take a look at verse five, verse five, he says something that's really powerful. Speaking of before time, he says in his prayer, father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. And so plain and simple, he's saying that he existed before anything else did before the world was created. The Son of God has always existed. The person of the Son of God has always existed. He is one of the three persons of the Trinity. God exists one God and three persons, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. And what's highlighted here in this part of his prayer is that he has always existed. He's always been the Son of God. And it's not only here that we see this, the New Testament, this makes very, very clear that Jesus, the Son of God has always existed. Consider John one, one through three and then also verse 14. Here John says 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 were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. And then he says a few more things, but in verse 14, make sure that we understand who he's talking about, that he's talking about Jesus, the Son of God. And here's what he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. There are other places in the New Testament as well that a test to the fact that the Son of God has always existed that he was present at creation. Paul says that in Colossians 116, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth. Jesus, his own testimony in John 8.56 and following, he's talking to some Pharisees and he says something that almost gets him killed right there. He speaks to them and he says, your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day, Abraham from generations before Jesus came on the scene. He says, your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So now the Jews said to him, you're not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham. And Jesus said to them, truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hit himself and went out of the temple. So it's this moment where Jesus is referring to Abraham who lived generations before the earthly life of Christ. And he's saying that he existed way before that, even before Abraham existed. He also says, uses very intentionally the phrase, I am, which was God's name and the Old Testament. That's why they picked up stones to throw at him. They thought he was blaspheming, but he was just talking about who he is. And so the reality is so the Bible makes very clear that the Son of God has always existed. And I think we understand that. I think a lot of us know that. But one of the things that can help us understand the glory of the incarnation is what was happening or what did happen before creation. Look at verse two, verse two, he says again, speaking to the father, Jesus says, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And so what we're seeing there is there was at some point the father chose a people out of the world to give to the Son. And this we see happened before the world was even created. In fact, in theology, we call it the Pactoom Saludist. That's the Latin or the Pact of redemption. That there was this inner Trinitarian Pact or plan promise that the world would be created. There would be a fall and then the Son of God would redeem a people that the father would give a people to the Son. In fact, one of the ways to remember it would be to see that before the world was created, the father agreed in this pact to appoint a people for salvation. The Son agreed to accomplish their salvation in his life, death, burial and resurrection and then the Holy Spirit agreed to apply that salvation to believers. The father appointed a people, the Son accomplished their salvation, the Spirit applied that salvation to them. This was all planned before the creation of the world. We read you a quote from Herman Bobbink. It's kind of long, but listen, this is beautiful. He says with respect to the incarnations origin, beginning and effectiveness, it is a work of the whole Trinity Christ was sent by the father and conceived by the Holy Spirit. He goes on to talk a little bit about that, the Pact of redemption, which I mentioned and then he says this, the entire work of recreation, so what Christ has begun by his finished work on the cross, the restoration of the world, he says the entire work of recreation is not just a decree of God, it is rooted in the free and conscious consultation of the three persons of the Trinity. It is a personal, not a natural work in the Son, the father is from all eternity, the father of his children, the Son is eternally their guarantor and mediator, the Holy Spirit is eternally their comforter, not just after the fall, not even first at creation, but in eternity the foundations of the covenant of grace were laid. How amazing is that? And the incarnation is not an incidental decree that emerged later, it was decided and determined from eternity. So the study, there's a study that says that the average human being spends about 12% of the day thinking about the future. That every any given day, 12% of our thoughts are going to be on the future, it's actually the study is actually about one of the differences between human beings and animals, animals don't think real far into the future, but you and I, sometimes it's one of the sources of a lot of our worry. And what's powerful about this revelation and God's word of what happened before the world even created is that it's given a gift that allows us to think back into the past, into eternity past, to get a little glimpse of the trinitarian decision that all who believe would be saved, that the father would appoint those people, that the Son would accomplish their salvation, and that the Spirit would apply. It is absolutely amazing that we can see these things and be comforted by these things. Our salvation was decided before we were ever in existence, before we ever did anything right or wrong, and that they would all be because of the finished work of Christ. Bobby also says if, however, Christ is the incarnate word, then the incarnation is the central fact of the entire history of the world. Then too, it must have been prepared from before all ages and habits effects throughout eternity. That kind of helps us to begin to put things in perspective. This is when Jesus came, when he became man, it's something that was planned from all eternity, and it affects all eternity as well. So this is, before time, what about throughout time? The Son of God, throughout time. Sometimes I think that we tend to think, or even celebrating Christmas the way we do, gets us to think that the Son of God was sort of waiting on the bench for his time to get in the game, and it's so much more glorious than that. He was actively involved in preparing the world for his own arrival. Look at verse 4. Let's talk about the Son of God throughout time. Notice that he says in verse 4, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. So he's acknowledging that there was things that he was to do, and most likely this is probably primarily referring to his earthly life, but the reality is the scriptures show us the New Testament reveals to us that the Son of God was active all through history, all through the history of the nation of Israel, all through the Old Testament, along with the Father and with the Holy Spirit as well, but the Son of God was actively involved. In fact, there's a number of moments, as you read through the Old Testament, when the Lord appears to someone, and it's, he does so either as a man or maybe as an angel, and there are scholars, many, most scholars believe that these are pre-incarnate visits of Christ, that's his activity. So, for example, like in Genesis 18, the Lord appears to Abraham, but he does so as a man, or in Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with, it says, a man. But then he later says that he has seen God face to face, and so there's a number of these moments when God appears to the people in the Old Testament that scholars really believe were probably pre-incarnate visits from Christ. And then what's really, really amazing is whether those are or are not Christ, we know for sure that Christ was spiritually involved in providing for the people of Israel, he was active in moving them along through the wilderness. And we see that in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 through 4, thinking about this, in Exodus 17, there's a moment where the Israelites are desperately thirsty, Moses strikes a rock, water comes out, and then Paul says this, he says, for I do not want you to be unaware of brothers, that our fathers were under the cloud, our fathers referring to those in the Old Testament, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and they all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ. And so what Paul is acknowledging there, what God is revealing to us through what Paul says is that all through the Old Testament Christ, the Son of God was actively involved in caring for the people of Israel, caring for the people of God. Bobbing again says it was the Son himself who thus immediately after the fall as Logos and as Angel of the Covenant made the world of Gentiles and Jews ready for his coming. So he along with the father and with the spirit was very active in preparing the world for his incarnation. There was in 1911 a man named Roald Omninson became the first person to successfully travel to the South Pole and in order to do so, he did some things to prepare himself. And when you first look at what he did, it does not seem to make as much sense like for example, one of the things he did to prepare himself to go to the South Pole was he rode a bike from Norway to Spain. It was about 2000 miles. There's no biking at the South Pole. So I'm not, you know, at first you're kind of like what is going on there, but that's one of the things that he did. He rode a bike for 2000 miles. He also began to eat raw dolphin all the time. Sounds yummy. And he also began to move very slowly and he trained himself to move slow no matter what he was doing. And it's all because he had an understanding of what he would need in order to be prepared for this journey. For example, the reason that he rode from Norway to Spain on a bike was his philosophy is you don't want to wait until you're in an unexpected storm to discover that you need more strength or more endurance. So he one of the reasons he biked all that ways to make sure that he had as much strength and endurance as possible. He ate the raw dolphin because he didn't want to wait till he ended up shipwrecked to find out that he could actually eat dolphin and that he could eat it raw if he didn't wasn't able to cook it. And then the reason that he began to learn how to move really slowly is he was aware that Eskimos apparently live in a way in which they tend to move slower so that they don't break a sweat because if they break a sweat in sub-zero temperatures that can end up being really bad as you could imagine. And so he went through all these things that didn't seem to make a lot of sense made perfect sense to him because he knew what he was preparing for. Now when we think about the activity of the son of God throughout history he obviously wasn't preparing himself but he was preparing the world he was preparing the people of God and he was preparing the world for this unbelievably momentous occasion when he would come the person of Christ the son of God and add to his divine nature a human nature to unite God and man together. He was preparing himself one of the things that's really interesting is if you think about that his activity even involved selecting his own mother one last time from Bob and he says Christ himself desired Mary to be his mother who conceived him by the Holy Spirit who carried him beneath her heart who nursed him at her breast who instructed him in the scriptures in whom in a word the preparation of the incarnation was completed. So it was God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit involved in preparing the world for this absolutely momentous occasion that we celebrate on Christmas. So what does this tell us about how we even read the Old Testament. I think one of the things that we fall into is we read the Old Testament like we're supposed to be looking for moral lessons. What should I do what should I not do and what when we understand the work of Christ all throughout redemptive history we can see that what we primarily want to do when we're reading the Old Testament is see the ways in which Christ along with the Father and the Spirit were preparing the world for his arrival. It's like the Jesus story book Bible which I love we use that with our children many of our families do that Sally Lloyd Jones wrote the Jesus story book Bible and the tagline is that every story whispers his name because it does so he was involved before time in this decision to die in the cross to pay for our sins after having become man he was also involved in bringing the world to the point where it was ready for his. For his arrival and then he came in the fullness of time in the fullness of time look at verse one Jesus prayed Father the hour has come glorify your son that he may glorify you that your son may glorify you now he's praying that's not long before he's going to be arrested and tortured and crucified. One of the things that's just mind blowing about that is that it's showing us that the glory of Christ the glory of the son of God is revealed in his suffering on the cross to pay for us to see how merciful God is to see how gracious God is that we see that we see that glory as we see him on the cross. The son of God's glory is revealed through the cross and that's what Paul says in Galatians 4.4 when he's talking about the fullness of time when the world was ready at the appointed time after all of the different things that God had planned would happen when the world was ready then at the fullness of time Christ would come to show us his glory so in Ephesians. I'm sorry Galatians 4.4 Paul says but when the fullness of time had come God sent forth his son born of a woman born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons and he says similarly in Ephesians 1 he says in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him things in heaven and things on earth and so that's think about that and the way that then the incarnation is this it's the fullness of time it's after everything has been prepared. And now in Christ all things can be united and have been united so the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. Before the creation of the world made this plan the father and the son and the Holy Spirit involved in bringing things about preparing for his arrival. And then the incarnation takes place in the fullness of time and when you think about why one of the reasons why this means that we can trust Christ that we can run to him to know that he really does forgive us so know that he really can fix us. We can see those things in the fact that he was there at the beginning he was there all the way through he knows exactly what needs to be done in any situation because he's the designer Henry Ford ran into a problem one day while they were making model tees there were you know pumping out these model tees on this assembly line that had been built and things were going well until one day the assembly line just completely shut down. And Henry Ford's workers spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get it back up and running they tried this they tried that it was just something they just weren't able to do they couldn't figure it out so after a few days Henry Ford decided well I better call Charlie Steinmetz Charlie Steinmetz was the man who had actually designed and built the assembly line for him. And so Charlie Steinmetz comes he walks into the factory he goes over to part of the assembly line he gets his tools he tinkers for about three minutes and then he steps back turns on the power and the things running again. And everybody was so excited because now they're back in business and they can keep on making model tees so the next day Henry Ford walks in and on his office on his desk in his office is a bill for $10,000. Now $10,000 is a lot of money now and back then it was an incredible amount of money so he gets in touch with Charlie Steinmetz and he says just kind of thinking that's maybe a lot of money for a little bit of tinkering and Steinmetz says okay I'll send you a new bill. So a few days later Henry Ford gets a new bill and it said tinkering $10 knowing where to tinker $9,990. Now you think about the brokenness of the world you think about the brokenness of your own heart where else would we go who else would we want tinkering in us but the designer because in his infinite knowledge and in the fact that he was there at the beginning he designed it he created of course he's the only one we can go to who knows exactly what to do. For humanity in Christ dying on the cross to pay for our sins to give us his righteousness that we can be right with God and also in our individual lives he always knows exactly what to do and the beautiful thing is two things one he did a lot more than tinker didn't he in those short 33 years if you think about the whole span of time it was only a short period of time that he was here but he did so much more than tinker. And he also didn't put the bill on our desk did he he paid the bill himself in full by bleeding and dying on a cross so that you and I who believe could know for sure that all our sins have been forgiven that we've been declared righteous that we have power to fight against our sin and that one day. We will have eternal life we will know God even more than we can possibly imagine and we will know Jesus Christ whom he sent so as we celebrate Christmas this year let's remember where everything began and let's remember he's been involved the whole time preparing the world and is now preparing the world for his second coming when he will come to make all things. He is the designer he knows exactly what to do and when so we can trust him with everything let's pray. Father son and Holy Spirit we want to be a people that increasingly knows you increasingly grabs a hold of the eternal life that we've received for free by grace through faith in Christ. We thank you Lord for revealing things to us for showing us that we can always trust that you know what to do in our hearts in our lives just like you knew exactly what was necessary for us to be reconciled to you as a people of people and their God we were enemies and now we are friends because of the finished work of Christ and so we celebrate that we praise you and we ask Lord. As we prepare our hearts to celebrate the Lord's supper would you help us to remember the son of God working before time through time and coming at the fullness of time and would you help our hearts long for the day when he comes again to make all things new we pray in Jesus name Amen.