The Cosmic Christ

God is coherent. God is consistent God orders his creation in a meaningful way that life and the universe is not ultimately absurd. It is not ultimately illogical because ultimately there is the logo's as that of an explosion. The Big Bang, as many people call it just happened before my but it was all a fluke.

So, in their view, life is void of any ultimate plan for meeting welcome to Renewing Your Mind of this Thursday blindly today. Dr. RC Sproul continues his series your Christ is too small is going to examine Christ as the logos or the word we will see that he is the ultimate meaning and significance. That's interesting to me that when a person knows an evangelistic meeting or something and makes a profession of faith as is common practice in American evangelism to hand that new convert a copy of the gospel of John Dennis & Alyssa, the first thing you should read as you get to know who Jesus is. Read John's Gospel. There's a reason for that because the gospel John is so delightful and there's so many stories and dialogues with real people and you get a feel for the earthly Jesus in John's Gospel and the irony is at one in the same time, the gospel of John is the simplest gospel yet. It's also the most difficult is the most profound is the heaviest as the one that is preoccupied with theologians for 2000 years and were you run into that heaviness.

But in the very opening versus what's called the prologue. Let's look at it. Most of you are familiar with the frolic and recited from memory, and it begins like this in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the word was God. They have a literary award in publishing that's called the dark and stormy night award which is given annually to the author, who has the worst opening line in the book. It is called the dark and stormy night award because the joke among writers is that all the old thrillers would begin. It was a dark and stormy night all. I think in all the annals of history you can think of Moby Dick. Starting out, call me Ishmael or Dickens.

It was the best of times it was the worst of times, but never devising a book, start with the more startling, confusing, first sentence in the gospel draw in the beginning was the word okay so far so good, and the Word was with God, still okay. And the word was God just doesn't compute. How can something be distinguished from God to be said to be with God and then in the very next breath be identified as God. We can see how the ancient philosophers of the ancient theologians would jump on this right away with this use of the term word and the Greek word for word. The Greek word that is here is the word love God's success in the beginning was the logo loss below Goss was with God and the logo loss was God philosophers look at that and they had a field day reasons. We will see where the interesting footnotes. The church history is that in spite of the fact when the New Testament talks about Jesus overwhelmingly favor title uses Messiah second one is Lord and Son of Man. Way down at the bottom of the list of terms of frequency of titles applied to Jesus is this title, logos, and yet if you would study the early church fathers great theologians and philosophers of the Greek world. So on were wrestling to understand the identity of Jesus that the study of Christology in the first 300 years of church history was not only dominant way but almost exclusively focused on this concept of the logos and there was a reason for because the title logos is one of the most philosophically waited titles that you will ever find the title itself. Let's look some more. Some of the strange ways in which it spoken of here in the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God, and the logos was God that with and was is the one that I want to look at for second you look in your Gospel of John word says the word was with God is a harmless word in their word we use every day to be on Groucho Marx.

You bet your life, say the magic word $100 of dot-coms… The word there is the word with everyday work.

Nothing philosophical about that word is or is the problem in the Greek language. The Greeks had three words three distinct words, each one of which is translated by the English word with the Greek mind understood that their different ways that you can be with people and those three words are the words soon. The word Mecca in the word processor you have to remember them but I'm just illustrating the word soon. You have heard in English.

This way if you have a pyramid in the synagogue or syncopated rhythm that prefix sin, which is come over to our language counselor, Greek someone, which means with synagogue day, the synagogue was a place where people came together to be with each other, then the second way which one could be with somebody is that way the Greek use the term map. And that means to be along side up. When my wife and I walked down the street hand-in-hand, and the shoulder to shoulder. She is with me. That's meta-but the Greeks had 1/3 way of speaking about with mass and for that they used a little word in Greek called cross. I was interesting in the language is that the Greek word for face was the word processor poem and what process means is to be with someone in a relationship of face to face intimacy. It's the closest possible relationship that people can the be in a cross relationship.

So what John is saying is that in the beginning there was the logos and the logos was cross face-to-face so close so intimate so narrowly connected, they could barely be distinct.

In fact, not only were they with each other. They were that's a philosophical concept of the highest possible magnitude might just take off on that for just a second, because, but also the relationship between the human nature of Jesus in the divine nature was that kind of intimate face-to-face relation to think like a Jew from the greatest future desire of a Jew is to be able to see the face of God. When the biggest problems we have as Christians in living out our faith is that God is invisible we can talk about him and we can talk to him, but his face shall not be sent and when the Jew would express his hope he would do it by way of benediction. He would say. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace that you assign. I want to be so close to God that I look at things and what the Scriptures are saying about the logos is that that's exactly the relationship that the son has the father face to face. Now the flip side of that the worst thing that could ever happen to a Jew in the Old Testament was to have God turn his back forgot to turn out the lights of the light of his countenance in graphic terms.

The worst thing could happen to a Jew. In fact, the worst image of damnation for the Jew, would be for God to turn his back to that person think for a moment the cross. What happens on the cross. When Christ calls out my God my God why has Stouffer's what happens to the Earth's slickest solar eclipse happens in the record teaches us. Suddenly darkness came upon the I don't even think Jesus noticed that the darkness because there's a very real sense to her friends that on the cross. If Jesus was to be forsaken, truly forsaken by God. God had to turn his back that cross relationship had to be broken for next and if you think about that and any deaths you get a deeper appreciation for the cosmic drama that was going on at Calvary or what was it that the philosophers found in this title, logos, the preoccupied probably the oldest question of me.

The oldest philosophical question that there is is what's it all about. How does it all fit together as a philosophical problem of unity and diversity that I will get abstract target specific. You look at your life in a given day. Look at the places where you go, you go to the market you go to the bank you or even just go to market Missy apples and you see strawberries and you say lettuce and you see cheese and use the roast beef and you say hole I got a have a varied diet and that's just one part of your life. You have a biological dimension figure like a psychological dimension to your life a medical dimension to your life a social dimension to your life.

Life is full of wry, thorough, trace their own trace their peanut bushes. There is a kind of roosters 20 birds, there's the chocolate chip cookies all the specific particular parts of data bits of human experience. A question-and-answer philosopher would ask is this is any rhyme or reason to lie.

How does this stuff fit together. How can we make sense out of all these different parts of human experience. In other words, they were asking this question does life make sense. Is there any ultimate coherency by your living in a time when the average answer that question is no. There is no ultimate coherence. It's all meaningless. There is diversity but no unity where one why the universe is called a universe very word is a mongrel eyes were the word universe come from two separate words.

Unity and diversity use are squishing together and you get universe and when you study about the universe were to go to the University where you try to find some kind of sense or coherence out of diversity but the skepticism of our age says there's nobody home up there. There is nothing that will bring ultimate sense or coherence of these individual pieces of our experience and so the ultimate answer is we live in a universe that is not a universe. It's a multi-verse, and it's ultimately chaos and if you think about that for five minutes just for five minutes doesn't think any longer. You understand the bottom line. That means that your particular individual life is utterly meaningless.

You were just one single data bit of ultimate incoherence, ultimate disunity ultimate diverse effects when existentialism is all about a social but the ancient thinkers were quite that cynical, they were convinced that if science was going to be possible if human progress is going to be possible there must be something that makes sense out of this.

And so the early philosophers were seeking for what they called ultimate reality, ultimate unity so some of them speculated about how the world was put together and sometimes they will the whole world is made up of seeds or the whole world is made up of atoms or the whole world's medical waterholes made up of air that pick a substance and that you have a piece of air that looks young and pretty over here and you have a piece of air that is not so young and not so pretty up here, but are still all area. I gotta find some way to work it out to try to find the order behind the facts. The logic of the facts. If you will, and that assumptions find the skepticism of philosophers is still the daily working assumption of every scientist.

It's a necessary assumption of every size precisely map without it there to be most by early philosophers understood that so they kept looking for what they called on reality and give different names to one ancient philosopher in the name of Anaxagoras said the point of unity that makes everything hang together we call that simply the Greek word for mind so there has to be some principle that they can think of a person they thought of some abstract principle would bring order and harmony are familiar with Greek painting and Greek art.

The Greeks had a passion for order for harmony for coherence superiorly Greek philosophy with the work of a memo named Heraclitus, and later on to the Stoics. They came up with an idea that the ultimate principle but ties it all together is what they called the logos you ever heard this expression, there's a spark of divinity and everybody never comes from cousin Stoics still explained on reality was fire and that every little bit of reality you as a person or a piece of reality.

They said every person has a spark of that ultimate far in the they call it the logo's spermatic cord because the ultimate far was the low-cost fermata cost now use the term. For this reason they were calling it the seminal bluegrass for like the ultimate genetic code that makes it all work and put together, but again that's what people interested. How does it fit together so the Greeks developed sophisticated philosophies really had this principle abstract principle of unity of order of harmony of beauty of coherence and it was called the low-cost city see the bombshell that fell on the playground of the philosophers and theologians of the first century when John picks up a pen and says in the beginning was the logos, the logos was with God, and the logos was God. He goes on to say what all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was Mary, the cosmic logos you could translate this work in the beginning was logic, and logic was with God, and logic was God number that would cause a reaction church ratifies the God was logic would kill really what that means is God is coherent.

God is consistent God orders his creation in a meaningful way that life and the universe is not ultimately absurd.

It is not ultimately illogical because ultimately there is the logos but the thing that is so radically now here in this teaching of the Jews that no Greek ever dreamed of is two things that are radically new. The first thing is that the logos is a person the logos is not just some abstract principle or impersonal force. The logos is not in it. The low-cost is a he I have a hard time relating to its what the seminal flyers, but this logos who runs everything has personality which means I can have a personal relationship to impact the radical innovation of the Christian concept of the logos that radical innovation number one radical innovation number two was this as you read further on in the text and the word became flesh and dwelt among you talk to modern person about the claims of the New Testament for Jesus. The first thing that you are asked about site.

What about the resurrection. I think the teaching of Jesus is incredible. It's interesting fast days was profound. We are really asking you to believe the guys that for three days and comes back walking out of the great the scandal to modern intelligence into modern sophistication is the scandal of the empty tomb.

We just cannot get past the idea of the finality of physical death. That's not what bothered to Greeks. It wasn't the resurrection of the body that drove the Greeks up a wall.

It was the incarnation of the logos.

If you are hereby Greek philosophy know that the Greeks had a rather disparaging view of anything physical. I was utterly unthinkable to the Greek philosopher, that the supreme idea the spiritual being could ever stoop so low the risk the pollution of his purity by taking upon himself the human body. That's why there were those who said that Jesus didn't really have a block so-called Dawson to Sue who came by simply just was a fan. He looked like he had a body he seemed like he had a body.

He appeared like you really have a body. What is strong sales for his right.

He who denies that Jesus came in the flesh is the antichrist versus all about, because that was the antichrist mentality of the first century they were denying the fact of the physical incarnation that God could take upon himself human nature and enter in to the scene of history.

I love the way John says it there and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us that were dwelt among us is a mistranslation.

It literally is and will logos became flesh starts and pitched his tent in our next tabernacle among that's the way the Hebrew semi nomad talks the way Greek for hospital, but God came down and persistent in our village where we can see with emotional. He put himself inside a body now. If you see what it says earlier in the text in him were all things. Nothing was made that was made except by the logos you see that John starts his gospel with exactly the same words that the book of Genesis begin in the beginning and the astonishing thing that John is saying is that the logos is the creator not only is he the ordering principle and the one who brings harmony and coherence to all things, but he is the actual creative force of the universe. Usually we think of creation as being exclusively the work of the father, but if we look at the whole teaching of Scripture we see that the work of creation is Trinitarian, just as the work of redemption is Trinitarian. Well I just got the father is he active in creation, but the sun is active as well. The logos is the one in whom my whom and for whom all things exist you want to know the reason for your existence, you want another goal of your humanity is Christ. That's what the Bible say the Bible is not introducing Jesus as a religious teacher, or even as a prophet but the very ultimate meaning and significance of your life. The meaning of the universe is found in the logos Dr. RC's role helping you see the majesty and glory of Jesus you're listening to Renewing Your Mind as we are the series, your Christ is too small. He taught these lessons in 1986 and we've never heard them before, but there great example of the depth. RC always brought to his teaching series connotes it's been such an encouragement to hear from so many of you tell us of the impact of our seas to drink. For example, Brian remembers the first time he heard RC on the radio talking about know what no one else was about predestination or election incredible and it sparked an interest in me. I started reading Romans Romans nine Ephesians 1 and I started reading things like a W paint and all these other theologians and he ignited a passion immediately understand the historical context of why Protestant separate from them and how I could side with Luther because I had similar conversion experiences.

Luther and I became really passionate and numb.

It wasn't her RC Sproul and his teaching is the Ali. No one else is teaching theology on everyone else because the Bible Bible sought no one was teaching systematic theology known was tell you what to believe and why apologetics it was a Bible college and seminary came through the airwaves and reached me, even though I never went and I've been eating his material have ever spent the night still tuning.

I still purchase material and it really keeps me rooted and grounded passionate my faith keeping me growing, so that I can disciple those around me and Brian story is possible only because of the financial gifts of listeners like you. The series were hearing this week as part of a large library of exclusive messages reserved for litigators, ministry partners, it's a good example of the extra discipleship resources that are made available to those who commit to supporting Wegener's gospel outreach on a monthly basis.

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