The Three Beginnings Part 2A

PART 2A  'The 3 Beginnings'

Hello everyone, welcome to this Bible study devotion from the Elders of Clovis Christian Church. My name is Randy Puckett and I am one of the elders at Clovis Christian and I'm glad you're here.

Today we will be continuing a study today on the 3 beginnings.  ‘The Three Beginnings’ is a study on the three instances where a book in this collection of books that we call the Bible begins by speaking of  'The Beginning'.  Today we will be covering part one of a two part study on the second of the 3 beginnings. So go ahead and turn to the Gospel of John, the 4th book in the New Testament portion of your bible. We will begin at verse 1 in chapter 1 in just a minute but first let’s recap what we have learned so far:

If you were with us last time you will recall that we were in the book of Genesis - the first book of the bible- at the first three verses of the book. We spoke about how these verses show us a couple of things. First, that God was already existent when the beginning of all things began! He had to be because the creator can't be part of the creation. Second, we saw that God created light first; he began to bring order to disorder with light and this light is also the beginning of the story of the gospel, that God will bring light to a dark world. And that brings us to where we are today: the gospel of John in the new testament of the bible. 

So, let's begin today’s study as we look at the first verse of the gospel of John and see what else we can learn from the 2nd of the 3 Beginnings! 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (Joh 1:1)

This first verse in the gospel of John may well be one of the most familiar verses in the whole bible. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God , and the Word was God.' Talk about deep, this verse takes us to the beginning, but it also introduces us to the Word, which this verse says was not only in the beginning but was with God in the beginning and is God himself! The reason I say 'Himself' is because the very next verse says 'He was in the beginning with God.'  So, who is this He that this Word is referring to? Well lets see if we can find out: we will skip down and look at two verses that show us. The first is verse 14, take a look:

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. 

(Joh 1:14)

Now what I want you to see here is that the Word that we are discovering 'became flesh and dwelt among' John and the others that were there at the time. It also says when describing this Word, that when they saw him they saw one who had the glory of the only 'Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." Now this is amazing, that this Word becomes flesh and radiates the glory of God and is full of grace and truth. 

Now look at verse 17 and 18:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. 

(Joh 1:17-18)

These verses finally tell us the name of the Word that was in the beginning with God: its Jesus the Christ. (Just a side note here, you will notice that I said 'Jesus the Christ' . I said it that way because Christ wasn't the last name of Jesus, it was who he was, Jesus was the long awaited messiah of the Jewish people. Jesus was probably referred to in the community as Jesus son of Joseph- as most jewish men were referred to at that time in relation to their Fathers house; however, you will notice that in scripture, Jesus never refers to himself by that name, instead he calls himself Jesus son of man (another connotation of his messiahship and deity) and never rebukes disciples, religious  leaders, demons when they call him - Jesus the son of God! and even God the Father refers to Jesus as his own Son in Matthew 3:17! Now that is another amazing thing to notice here!) But, getting back to the text in question here, what we find is that Jesus is this Word and this brings something to the forefront that we need to see, if Jesus is the Word, then Jesus was 'in the beginning with God' and Jesus is God! And if you remember last week we said that another person of the Godhead that was in the beginning was the Holy Spirit, and since we have seen that Jesus is God's only son, we can now conclude that the Father was also present 'in the beginning'. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all present at the beginning of everything: when we read last week that “God” was in the beginning creating all things, this is the God it was referring to: The Godhead consisting of the Father, Son and Spirit, which is commonly referred to as The Trinity: 3 distinct persons existing in one Godhead- same yet distinct. We may not understand this fully, but we accept it because it is taught throughout the scripture which we believe to be inspired-breathed out- by this very God we are speaking of. 

We will dig deeper into this next time but that is about all the time we have for today's study, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you will be ready for the rest of this 2nd beginning as we continue this study in the Gospel of John chapter 1. I’m so glad you could join us for this study and until next time, be studying the scripture and may the Word dwell in you richly. Goodbye everyone!