January 2, 2023 - John 1:2

In this episode, Jori discusses with her listeners the gospel writer John's opening words about the Lord Jesus being in the beginning with God. 

Scripture translation used is the English Standard Version.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture References:
John 17:17
John 1:2
Matthew 4:20-22
Mark 3:17
Luke 9:28-29
Matthew 3:1-12
John 20:30-31
1 John 5:13
John 3:16
1 John 1:9
1 John 1:1-2
Romans 3:23
John 14:6
Hebrews 10:29
John 1:1-5
Genesis 1:1
Hebrews 9:22
Revelation 22:13
Ephesians 1:3-4
Ephesians 2:4-7
2 Corinthians 5:17
Isaiah 1:18
Ezekiel 36:26-27
Colossians 1:27
Psalm 107:19-21

Email: awordforthisday@gmail.com

Podcast website:  https://awordforthisday.buzzsprout.com

A link to the transcript of this episode is found below. Please note, it is a word for word transcript of the show and will be different than if reading a book. Voice inflections, pace, etc. that are conversational in nature are lost in the transcription. Some words or phrases that may have been repeated within the audio recording may have been removed to make it easier for the reader to understand.
AWFTD23Jan2.docx

Transcript

AWFTD23Jan2

 Hello and welcome to A Word for this Day podcast. I am Jori Shaffer, the show's host and creator, and I want to welcome you today. Welcome back to all you regular listeners. Welcome to anyone who has found us and who is listening for the first time. It is no accident that any of us are here, friends, and so I am so thankful for you. I want you to know that I continue to pray for you all, that the Lord would draw you closer to Him, that he would give you a desire to be in His Word, that he would give you a hunger and thirst for His Word and a desire just to know Him more. Scripture says that we abide in Him by if His words abide in us. And so, the more that we spend time in His Word, the more we meditate on His Word, which is truth, by the way, the more that we draw closer to Him. 

There is so much Biblical illiteracy, especially among people who claim to be Christ followers today. And friends, there's no excuse for that. So, I want to encourage you, I want to encourage you to take that time, make it a priority today and in the days to come and in the year to come, to know more of your God, to spend more time with Him. Don't just know about Him, know Him. And the way that we do that is that we spend time in His Word.

 I want to let you know, that I was able, after much difficulty because it's a new program, to get transcription of yesterday's episode. And Lord willing, I'll be able to have transcripts of each of our daily episodes in the event that something is wrong with the audio, or for those who just like to read the transcription, or for those who are hearing impaired, there will be a transcription of the audio. You can find that within your app. So, if you look where the show notes are, there will be an area that will probably say “Show Notes”, and then next to that may say transcript. If it doesn't, I also have a link within the Show notes that you can click on and a word document will pop up. Now, let me just tell you that because it is a word for word transcription of this podcast, it doesn't read like you're reading a book or a chapter or something like that. When I read back through it yesterday, I was like, oh, dear, this is hard to read. But we lose the voice inflection, we lose the pace. You lose that conversational style when it's just a transcription, but it will be there just in case. And  this transcriber, which is an automated transcriber, sometimes does not say what I said, and it's partially because I have a very Southern accent. So I go through and try to correct some of the mistakes, but hopefully it will be a helpful tool for those who may need it. Yeah. Also, I have to tell you, I can't blame this all on the devil, but it seemed like it was major difficulties yesterday trying to get these tracks uploaded, getting the sound right, but it's a learning curve with this new recording software that I have. I was listening and doing show notes and out of the blue some music tracks popped in and I had to do that redo that about two or three times. And I know it's all operator error. I would appreciate your prayers for that as I try to make this better. I'm trying to get it more clear, easier for you to follow, but it's a learning curve. And so, I appreciate the continued prayers.

 I want to encourage you to share this podcast with friends, family, neighbors, relatives, just anyone who you think may receive a blessing from it. Even if you just share with one or two people a day, it will be a blessing. And it's not to share me, it's to share God's word. Even if you don't feel compelled to share the podcast, please share with someone 1s what you learned in God's word today. It's such a blessing. And friends, the more we read it and study it and share it and live it, the more people will see Christ. And so I just encourage you to do that. And as always, know that I love to hear from you. 

So, if you feel so compelled, so inclined, please send me a message sometime so I can hear what God is doing in your life as you spend more time in His Word.

 Well, our verse for the day, for January 2, 2023, comes from the Gospel of John.  John chapter one, verse two. And it reads as follows from the English Standard version:  “He was in the beginning with God.” You know, we touched on this yesterday when we were in Genesis one. One about how 1s The Trinity was there at creation. But we'll dig into this a little more today, and I'm so excited to do that. But before we do that, as you know, if you're a long-time listener to this podcast, I think it is very wise for us to get background of the book or letter in which we're studying to talk about the author, talk about context. And so let's do that now. That allows us to better understand, better interpret the Scripture and to rightly handle this word of truth that the Lord has given us. And, oh, friends, we certainly want to do that.

 So we know that the writer of this gospel is John the Apostle. There are four gospels in the New Testament. Well, four gospels, I should say, in the canon of Scripture that we have.  The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And these were written by the men for whom each Gospel is named. We don't see within these Gospels anywhere in which it says, “I, Matthew wrote this. I mark wrote this. I john wrote this.” But the earliest church historians, those who would have received these Gospels, confirm that the name that is on each Gospel, that they were named for the men who wrote them. We know that Matthew and John were apostles who walked with the Lord Jesus. They walked with Him, they talked with Him, they broke bread with Him. They saw his miracles in person. 2s They saw his crucifixion. They saw Him be placed in that tomb. They saw him after He was resurrected, and then they saw Him ascend back to heaven. And so they knew, and they wanted to tell what they had seen. And so it's such a blessing that we have that. Luke and Mark's gospels were written by men who did not walk with the Lord Jesus day by day as far as during His earthly ministry. But they received their information from the ones who did. And all of the gospels, when we take these together and look at the picture of Jesus in His ministry as we take them together, we can see a fuller, richer picture.

 We know that the gospel writer John had a brother named James. And James and John were sons of Zebedee, and they were fishermen, and they were working with their father on his boat when they were called by the Lord Jesus to come with Him. And they did just that. We know that they had some what appears to be very strong personalities originally because the Lord called them the “sons of thunder.” He nicknamed them that. We read about that in Mark's gospel. But we also know that John especially was very close to the Lord Jesus. James, Peter, and John. Actually, all three were. And they were kind of in that inner circle. It was Peter, James and John that Jesus took with Him up on the mountain when He was transfigured before them. Now, we know that this gospel writer John also was different than John the Baptist. It's not the same person. And if you all have been on this journey with me over the past year, you've heard me remind you about that. And the reason I say that is not because I think you don't know. But I know that when I first started studying and even much younger in Sunday school, it was kind of confusing to me. I thought that John the Baptist and John the gospel writer were the same, and that was just because I hadn't spent much time. But of course, John the Baptist had a very specific purpose. He was sent to prepare the way for the Lord. It was prophesied in the book of Isaiah, and he did that. But then as Jesus's ministry came into full swing, John the Baptist faded out and he actually was martyred by Herod. We know that John was probably the longest living apostle, the longest surviving apostle. History records that pretty much the others were martyred or were killed for their faith. 1s The Gospel writer John describes himself, or described himself in his works as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I don't think that was to be arrogant or to think more highly of himself than he ought. I think it's because he just realized the gravity and the depths (or as much as he could) of the grace and the mercy of the forgiveness that the Lord Jesus had for him. And he wanted everyone to know. He wrote the gospel of John. He wrote the letters of first, second and third John in the book of Revelation. And we see in John's Gospel toward the end, he gave us a reason that he wrote the Gospel. And I love that he was really good about doing that with his letters and the books that he wrote. And I think that is such a blessing when we can find those purpose statements or the theme statements or whatnot.

 But we see in John, chapter 20, verses 30 and 31, he says, “Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.” He had a purpose. And it was to tell people about Jesus so that they could believe, so that they could have eternal life. Because, friends, this lifetime is short. It's but a vapor, and then it's gone. I love what he wrote in his letter of 1 John. In 1 John, chapter five, beginning in verse 13, he says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”  He wanted people to know. And if you ever wonder about that, about whether or not you're saved, whether or not you have eternal life, go back to the truth that is found in the Scripture, in one of the places that you can park is in that letter of one John. He so wanted people to know. He wanted them to have that blessed assurance. And I know there are many denominations and religions who think that we cannot know, but the Scripture tells us otherwise. 1s The scripture says in John 3:16 that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever whosoever believed in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.” We also read in John's letter of First John about how we can know the faithfulness of God and that he is faithful to forgive our sins and from all unrighteousness if we will confess our sins to Him. Our God is faithful, friends. And that is a theme that runs from Genesis to Revelation. And I just love that we know that this gospel writer John, as I mentioned before, I think perhaps earlier or yesterday, walked daily with the Lord Jesus. He was one of those apostles. He was appointed by the Lord to be a messenger. And when we read in First John, he says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it, have testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.” He saw Jesus. And we are able to read these writings of men who were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write these, but in this case someone who walked with Him daily (And I think we shouldn't take that lightly as we pick up this wonderful word that has been so graciously given to us). God didn't have to give this to us to tell us about Him or His Son or the plan of salvation, but He did. He loves us, so He makes a way for us to know how to know Him, how to walk, how to live, how to act, how to seek Him. And He tells us so much so that we will be able to have eternal life. And I just don't want us to take that for granted. I want us to be thankful for that. I encourage you to be thankful for that, to be in awe that the Creator of the universe would love us so that He would come to us, that He would reach down to us.

 I may have told you this before, but I heard many years ago at a church that I was attending when I lived in Nashville a wonderful pastor made this statement and it has stuck with me. He said this,  “Of all the world religions, Christianity is the only one in which God came to man.” And it's true. In all the others, you know, it's this continual man striving to get to their god or gods and friends while we are encouraged and compelled to seek the Lord, He came to us first. He came to us. He created us and then came to us. He made a way for us to have relationship with Him. And so may we not forget that we cannot do enough. We can't be good enough. We can't do enough mission trips, give enough food to the hungry. We can't say enough kind words. We can't do anything on our own to be seen as righteous because we're all sinners. Scripture says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But he made a way for us to be covered in his righteousness. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. And no man comes to the Father except through Him. It's the only way. And it's not Jesus plus anything else. It's faith in the Lord Jesus. And that's all you need. But as far as needing to do something, to go through someone else, to go through an earthly mediator or anything like that, no, He made the way. And to think that we have to do extra things, to say that we have to go through someone else to get to God the Father other than the Lord Jesus, I'm afraid, puts us in danger if we do that, if we say, “Your sacrifice Jesus was not enough to save me. So I feel like I have to follow these rules. I feel like I have to go through an earthly mediator, I have to jump through all these hoops, I have to do all these things to be righteous.” No, I'm afraid if we follow that, if anyone follows that, that they are like what we read in the letter to the Hebrews: in danger of trampling underfoot the Son of God and profaning the blood of his covenant by which we have been sanctified. And we're in danger of outraging the Spirit of grace.

 This gift of salvation that we have is by faith through grace. You can't do it on your own. You can't be good enough on your own. And I don't want that to sound like I'm discouraging you. That should be liberating. It is a free gift. We just have to accept it. But in accepting that, then we say thank you. dear Lord, for doing this for me. And I, in return, even though I don't deserve it, because of what You've done, I want to serve You, I want to follow You, I want to submit to You and be obedient to You. And the way we do that, friends, is we're in His Word. We know Him and we know what He wants us to do. We know what He wants us to act by reading and studying and living and then sharing His Word. And so I just want to encourage you about that.

 It's very important for us to remember that we humans have in our mind, (and then that old devil comes up and tries to say the same thing) of well, you're not good enough. You have to do, do, do to be good enough or God's going to just strike you down or He's not going to love you enough. We do that because we are looking from the fleshly side. But God's grace is totally different than that. It is a free gift. It has to be accepted. We have to realize how spiritually bankrupt we are without Him, we don't have anything in our account but sin. But He loved us so, and that's what's so important.

 And so you may think, “well, how in the world does this tie and into the verse for the day?”.  Well, when we go back here and we look at John and I want to read the verse before and in our verse for the day at John one,  “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And here's our verse, “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jesus was there, like we talked about yesterday in the beginning.  When we talked about in Genesis, it said, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That God there, the Hebrew translation of that word is Elohim, which is plural. There was more than one there. It was God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Jesus was there in the beginning. He was that word. He's that word that was made flesh to dwell among us. He came to us for a very specific purpose. He didn't have to, but He did.

 He was in the beginning with God. He knew the purpose all the way from before the beginning. And He has already won the war, friends. He did that on the cross of Calvary when he sacrificed Himself as a spotless lamb on that cross to pay the penalty that we owe by giving His blood. We read in Hebrews that without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. And all of the animal sacrifices, all those sorts of things that were called for in the law were not enough to cleanse the heart, to cleanse the conscience. And Jesus did it one time for all. He was there in the beginning. He knew what had to be done and he was obedient to the Father's will. But let me tell you this: He is there at the end. He's going to be there for eternity. And because of that, we can also be with Him. And I want you to really park on and think about the significance of this, the weight or the gravity of this. When we're talking about eternity, we're talking about forever and ever. And we humans really can't even wrap our minds around that. It's going to be after the end of time as we know it, and it's going to go and go and go and go. And because He has been there before time and will be there at the end, (He's the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Almighty), because He's fully God- one with God the Father, He made a way and He's already done it. And just like when we talked about yesterday, where we talked about God being the creator of all and how we needed to just think about that and meditate on it, sit on it, even though we talked about something similar yesterday, it is so important for us to think about Jesus being there too, being in the beginning and what the implications are.

 And I want you to hear this from Ephesians. This is part of what these implications are, friends. It says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” This was done, this was chosen before the beginning, when He was in the beginning with God. Can you kind of start? I don't think we can fully wrap our minds around that, but can you just sit on that for a minute and think about it? And then look over here. In Ephesians chapter two, the Holy Spirit gave the apostle Paul such clear understanding it seems, of this. And I just love that it says, “But God”, in chapter two, verse four, “but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

 This was planned before the beginning.    God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit were in the beginning of all that we know or all of our history. But this plan of salvation was set before the foundations of the world. And as far as God sees it, it's already been done. It was done when Jesus went to the cross, because from the perspective of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they're not bound by time like we are. So, if they see the end from the beginning and do you see that? And raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, as far as God is concerned, it's already been done, for those of us who are believers. And just like we talked about yesterday, that when we see what God did as Creator God, when we look at what Jesus the Son has done as our Savior, that should make us want to just pour forth praise, to be obedient to Him, to love Him, to follow Him, and then to tell others about Him. It's not enough just to hold it in and then not want to talk about Him. He has made a way for us to be new creation in Christ. He's made a way for us to be sinless, for our sins to be though they were as scarlet to be white as snow. He's made a way for us to have those hearts of stone changed into hearts that would love Him and serve Him and honor Him and follow his commandments. And oh friends, that should just make us want to just bow down and worship and praise and just be so grateful for what He's done. Because when we talk about salvation, if you are new to this podcast or checking out Christianity or new to that, what's the big deal?

 The big deal is there is an eternity for every one of us. There's going to be this short time that we know, and then there's an eternity after that. And all of us will spend it in one of two places. We will either spend it with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit in heaven with new bodies, with no pain, no crying, no suffering, no death, or we will spend it separated from Him in hell in a life of torment 1s from the time that you enter there till forever. And friends, it's not one of those places that you go and just burn up and then the suffering is done. 1s It's eternal separation, eternal torment. And I don't want that for you. I don't want that for me. We don't want that for anyone.

 So, we must stand boldly for the Lord and share what He has done for us, share that salvation. You know, unfortunately the scripture says that not all will believe, and we see that now. But I think there's always hope. Jesus is our hope. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. There is always hope as long as there's breath. And so may we pray for family and friends and neighbors and strangers. May we pray that they will know the Lord.

 But I just want to close with this 1s how we talked about in the verse, right before our verse for the day in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And we know that that Word is Jesus, that He was there in the beginning. And we also know that God sent Jesus to the earth. He was fully God, yet fully man. And He came here, He lived a sinless life, He was tortured and crucified, He was placed in a tomb. He rose on that third day in full bodily form, defeating death and hell and sin and the grave. He ascended back to heaven and He's coming again. 

But he did that in obedience to the Father's will, even though He was fully God. He did that for you and He did that for me. And I'm so thankful that He was there in the beginning. I'm so thankful that He was there before the beginning. I'm so thankful that He was part of the plan and that God had a plan.

 But I want to just close with this Psalm. It's one that I read frequently. And of course I have lots of favorites. And you know, I love all the words and all the verses. But in light of what we know about what Jesus did, about Him being in the beginning, about Him coming for a specific purpose for you and for me, I want you to hear these words in Psalm 107, verse 19. It says, “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from all their distress.” That's what our deliverer did. “He sent out His Word and healed them and delivered them from their destruction.” Now, when the psalmist wrote this, he didn't know about Jesus, but because this is a Holy Spirit inspired book and God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are one, think about this psalm in relation to what Jesus did. He sent out His word. God sent His word. The Word made flesh to dwell among us and healed them and delivered them from their destruction.

 If we accept this gift of grace, this gift of salvation, we will have ultimate healing and we will have ultimate deliverance. And so let us then thank the Lord, for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man, that's you and that's me. Blessings to you, friends. Until next time.