Turn to John Chapter 1. We are going to read the first seventeen verses of the chapter, because I just want to focus there tonight.
Who are You, Lord? The reality of God in Jesus Christ.
John 1:14. I think you all know it; some of you may have memorized it:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us
(and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth.
But let us look at the whole context of that. Let us begin in verse 1 and read right through verse 17.
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 came into being through Him,
and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life,
and the life was the Light of men.
The Light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.
There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
He came as a witness, to testify of the Light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the Light,
but he came to testify about the Light.
There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.
He was in the world,
and the world was made through Him,
and the world did not know Him.
He came to His own,
and those who were His own did not receive Him.
But as many as received Him,
to them He gave the right to become children of God,
even to those who believe in His name,
who were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man,
but of God.
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,
and we saw His glory,
glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
full of grace and truth.
John testified about Him and cried out, saying,
“This was He of whom I said,
‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I,
for He existed before me.’”
For of His fullness we have all received,
and grace upon grace.
For the Law was given through Moses;
grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
Then, if you will go to the very end of Chapter 20—actually, turn to John Chapter 21 and just go back—I want to read two verses, John 20:30-31, to see John’s original purpose for writing his Gospel.
Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples,
which are not written in this book;
but these have been written so that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God;
and that believing you may have life in His name.
Surely the Gospel of John is a Gospel. He wrote it so that you could believe that Jesus is the Son of God and receive life in His name.
I am sure, as you have read the Gospel of John recently over three times, you have realized that this Gospel is really a lot different from the Synoptics—and that means Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They are called the Synoptics because they see together: the biographical story of Jesus.
But John also saw Jesus. All four Gospels have the same sort of fivefold division: the beginning of Jesus, His anointed ministry and preaching and miracles, His calling of disciples, His passion—meaning His death—in Jerusalem, and His resurrection and appearances. So all four Gospels have these things in common.
Each presents a different testimony and angle on Jesus. Peter was the background for Mark. Mark wrote Peter’s stories of Jesus, and Peter starts right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He comes in, gets baptized by John the Baptist, and then He is off and running. He is a powerful Messiah, and He dies on the cross to be our Savior. It is a wonderful Gospel.
Matthew comes along with a Jewish slant, showing Jesus as the new Moses, bringing the new covenant by His precious blood. Luke shows Him as the Son of Man, who came to seek and to save that which was lost. John comes from the divine side, to show the Son of God coming in human flesh.
All of them had the purpose of saving people, so that the people who read might be saved. But John is unusual, as you recognize, and I want to go into the background of why that is the case.
You might think, when you begin reading John Chapter 1, this prologue as it is called, that John was trying to clothe the Gospel in philosophy—that he was some kind of philosopher and wanted to appeal to the Greeks, who love philosophy. So he presented this Logos, this light, and all these abstract concepts in the beginning.
But that is not at all what is going on here. John is a fisherman.
But he is up to something different, something deeper. It comes out of a long life of living with Jesus for many, many years.
You have probably heard of the three great apostles compared together in their ministries. Peter was the first one, the great fisherman, seen casting his net into the sea. Peter did a great job at the very beginning of the church’s life, gathering people in by preaching the Gospel. Many people came into the kingdom through Peter’s net-fishing ministry.
Then along came Paul. Paul was a maker of tents, and there is Paul building the church as though it were a living tent, the body of Christ—Paul’s emphasis. Then the bride, and all these wonderful things Paul talks about.
But John came last, maybe almost a generation after the day of Pentecost. He came with a special burden.
He was first seen in the Bible mending the nets of his father by their boat. It is a picture of what turned out to be John’s overall ministry: he was trying to mend the tears and holes that had developed in the church.
You cannot throw out the net; you cannot throw out the church. It is still there, but it needs mending. John was sent by God to live much longer than Peter and Paul, and to come toward the end of the first century and say, “You know what? It is time to bring repairs into this whole situation.”
The Synoptic Gospels shared the biography. They had many more biographical details about Jesus, more of His messages and preaching, and all those kinds of things. It is quite different from John, because John was trying to deal with the problems that had arisen in this second generation of Christians.
What had happened? They had begun to lose the inner reality of their life, but they still had the outer form.
They were Christians. They were going to church, as we would say. They were taking communion, hearing messages, and doing Bible studies. Their outward Christian life continued, but their inner reality was going dry.
This is what happens in our life—even your life and mine. Why? Because even though we are Christians, our life remains moist with the life of God as long as our spirit is in communication with God.
But our souls usually dominate our lives, and our souls see things outwardly. Our spirit sees things inwardly. Eventually our soul takes over, and things get kind of dead.
Now I am doing all this stuff. I am worshiping, but I am not really worshiping from the heart. I am worshiping because everybody else is singing, so I am also singing—and not too loud; I do not want to ruin my vocal cords, you know. But still, I am involved.
It is like Jesus said to the Jews: this whole Jewish thing is an old wineskin. New wine is pouring out, and the old wineskin cannot contain it. Christian churches and Christian saints can become like old wineskins. They simply cannot handle this reality.
I will mention this as a sideline. I do not know whether anybody here has ever read First Clement and Second Clement. Clement was one of the brothers, an overseer in Ephesus. After Timothy died, Clement became the next overseer, as it were, in the city of Ephesus.
He wrote two letters to Christians, much like Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. But when you open them up, they are so much more religious. You would have to read them to see it. By the end of the first century, Christians were getting much, much more religious.
Outward righteousness. “You can tell I am a Christian, right?” How can you tell? “Because I wear a Hawaiian shirt, I do not let my beard grow too long, and I stopped chewing tobacco.” That is how you can tell I am a Christian.
Outward righteousness, and outward knowledge: “I know this about Jesus. I know that about Jesus. I know Matthew, Mark, Luke, and—what is the fourth one?” You see, we have outward righteousness, outward works, outward doctrines, outward forms of worship, and eventually outward buildings and outward organizations.
As the church gets outward, something gets lost in the shuffle.
It comes to the point where, when the real Jesus shows up, the church says, “Who are You, Lord?”
Is it possible to be a Christian and be so out of focus with the reality of Jesus that, when the real Jesus shows up, you say, “Who is that guy?” “No, no, no. I know the religious Jesus, the comfortable Jesus.”
I have been chewing on what Jim Bogstad said today: this lusting after the flesh is wanting a comfortable thing. Christianity gets so comfortable. Jesus is not comfortable. He comes and shakes things up. You better know that. That is the reality.
Maybe we get to the place where we are afraid of the real Jesus. We want to calm Him down and make Him a good Methodist. It is not going to really work.
What John is doing behind this Gospel story is bringing Christians in the church back to truth—reality.
Truth has two sides to it. There is outward, propositional, objective truth: the truth of who Jesus is. The Word of God says that He is the Word of God, and so on. Truth involves outward, propositional, objective facts.
But truth is not full truth unless it also involves the inner reality of that outward thing.
When it says that Jesus was full of grace and truth, what John emphasizes in his Gospel is what we might translate as reality. “I saw Jesus full of grace.” Well, we all understand that. And reality.
I saw Jesus, and I understood reality. I understood what a man is supposed to be. I understood who God was. I saw reality in Jesus—not something fake.
My wife and I once took a trip to Ireland. Ireland has a Staffordshire china plant, I believe; anyway, they have fine china there. We went on a little tour, and the guide showed us two champagne glasses.
He said, “What is the difference between these two?” They looked exactly the same. He said, “One is fine china. The other is just mass-produced.”
“How can you tell the difference?” Everybody said, “Ugh.” He said, “Here, I will show you the difference.” He took one and went, “Bing, ying, ying.” Then he took the other and went, “Thud, do, do, do, do.”
They looked exactly the same, but the reality was that the fine china rings. That is the one you can move your hand around when water is in it—ooh, ooh—because that is the reality.
Reality involves not only an outward look, like the glass, but the inner fine china—what is going on inside. Truth is always twofold.
You read the Word of God, and it says something about you or about Jesus, and you take it by faith. “I believe that.” It is an objective truth, and I stand on that truth. If you stand by faith on that truth, at some point God will bring you into the reality of what you know by faith.
You know the Word of God, but now you see the reality of what you know in the Word of God. That is where we are going. Oh, another miracle.
Having said that, we are going to look at this beginning section in the Gospel of John with this definition in mind:
The truth of the Word, plus light, brings reality.
Here is the outward truth of the Word, and then the light shines on it, and whoa—now I really see what it is all about.
When we look at the beginning, you are all familiar with it. How many memorized the first couple of verses? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Probably you never got to Chapter 2, did you? No, I am just kidding. Josh, I believe you did your homework.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
La, la, la, right? John is up to something here. I do not know if you see it yet.
By the way, he does not mention Jesus’ name until verse 17. If you are reading this for the first time, and you are not a Christian—you just picked up John’s Gospel somewhere—you have no idea who this is. But this Somebody is incredible.
Let us pretend you were a Christian living in A.D. 75, and you had become a little external. You were proud of your nice self-righteous smock, your holy way of living, and the nice holy Jesus who is your best friend and buddy.
Then somebody says, “Hey, you know John the apostle? He just wrote a book about Jesus. Check it out.” You check it out, and he says, “In the beginning was the Logos.” Who?
The Logos is a huge Greek concept. It means more than just “the Word.” It means conceptual communication. If you were to read that in A.D. 75, you might say, “Whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. Who are You, Lord? Who is this talking about?”
Even if you understood these first two verses, you might say, “Wow,” and get mind cramps—or even fall down dead like John did when he saw the real Jesus.
Remember Revelation 1? He saw the real Jesus and could not handle it. He fell down as though dead. If you understood who you were dealing with, you would know you are not dealing with a pussycat.
We have reduced Jesus down to somebody sort of like us, and John is trying to recover us from that kind of stuff.
It is a general truth that, in the New Testament, the size of Jesus kept expanding as the revelation of the Spirit introduced Jesus to us deeper and deeper.
Mark pulls back his camera and takes snapshots of Jesus: doing miracles, going from town to town, dying on the cross, resurrecting again. You say, “Wow, that man was some kind of Savior, some kind of Messiah.”
Matthew says, “Hold it. Cut. We have to move the camera back. I have discovered that this Jesus was virgin-born—most unusual—and His lineage goes all the way back to Abraham.”
Luke says, “Cut. We have to move the camera back.” Jesus was not only born of a virgin; the circumstances of His birth were miraculous. His lineage goes back to Adam. He represents all mankind. Jesus is the Savior for all mankind.
Paul says, “Cut. We have to take it back.” All things were created by Him and for Him. All things cohere together in Him. He is the reconciler of all things. He is God’s eternal purpose.
John says, “Cut.” I do not know how much further you can go, but John says, “In the beginning.” Another one of his phrases is, “Before the foundation of the world.” There was Logos—God’s communication. A giant of divinity. He was God. He was the Communicator.
As the church and Christians get outward and lose that inner reality, John is trying to bring you back to the size of who Jesus really is—much bigger than you could possibly imagine.
Now we are going to read verses 3 through 5 and verse 9, because he takes it another step. There is a Greek word here that does not come out very well in English. I do not know about the Chinese; anybody reading Chinese tonight? Okay, a couple of people. I have no idea what the Chinese says.
Basically, this is going to say—and I want you to listen to this—the Logos is a generator. He is the Generator. Put a capital G in front, like the Terminator. He is the Generator.
The first book in the Bible is called Genesis in Greek: genesis. Do you know what that word means? It means generating, generating. The Book of Genesis contains genealogies, starting from Adam and then Abraham, and so on. There are twelve genealogies that make up the rough outline of Genesis.
The Hebrews do not call it Genesis at all. They call it Bereshith, which means “In the beginning,” because they name their books by their opening words. But we named it Genesis because it is about genealogies. It is about generating.
It is the same word Matthew uses when he says, “Here is the genealogy of Jesus Christ.” Somebody begat somebody. That is this Genesis word: begat, begat, begat—genesis, genesis, genesis.
I want us to read this, and I am going to put “generated” in there so you can see my point.
All things were generated through Him,
and apart from Him nothing was generated that was generated.
In Him was zoē,
and the zoē was the light of men.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.
This was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.
Who knows what zoē means? Life—eternal life, God’s life—not bios, human life. In Him was zoē. The Greek word for light is phōs. We get photography and all that from phōs.
Wait, wait, wait. What is this saying to an outward and shallow Christian? You mean Jesus, my Savior, is actually the Word-Generator?
That is to say, He generated me by speaking, and I was. Then He breathed zoē into my mouth—zoē breath—and I came to zoē life. Then He shone the phōs on me so that I could see.
My Word-Generator—that is who Jesus is. This is really something. John has not even mentioned Jesus’ name yet, because he does not want you to get too human on Him. He wants you to see this Being with whom we have to deal.
It already sounds like He is some kind of superhero: the Logos Generator. He has two guns: the Zoē Zapper and the Phozer. He hits you with the zoē, and you are alive. “Phew! Let me get you with the Phozer,” and you see.
This is a powerful Being. Why is John bringing in Jesus this way? There is a very real reason.
He is trying to change the picture in our minds from being saved to being recreated.
He is trying to recover the truth that we were born—we were generated—by Jesus, and that He is our very source of life.
Here is the problem with the phrase “saved.” When I studied in Bible school, we studied what they called the punctiliar fallacy: “I am saved. I have been saved.”
Have you been saved? Praise God, I hope you all say yes. You have been saved. But actually, what the Bible says is bigger than that: you have been saved, you are being saved, and you will be saved.
Salvation began when we say you got saved. But some people stop right there and say, “Praise God, I am saved. That is it. End of story.” It becomes very static.
“I got saved April Fool’s Day, 1964. That is when I got saved.” Oh, yeah? Well, John says, “Let us take it back.”
If you notice, the Gospel of John does not use “saved” very much. We just read one of the few times it mentions that word. John does not want to use that terminology because you may get stuck with, “Oh yeah, I am saved.”
John wants you to think about this: I have been created, and the creation process is still going on.
You are now a created being. That is why John likes to say not, “He got saved,” but, “He was born again.” That word “born,” by the way, is that same word: generated.
Here comes Jesus. He is the Generator. He has His Zoē Zapper and His Phozer out, and He is coming after you. If He comes near you, watch out—you are going to get life. You are going to get phōs.
You get too close, you had better stay away; you had better hide in the darkness. People like darkness. They like to hide in it. But watch out when Jesus brings out that light gun. You cannot stay in darkness where that light shines.
You may be dead as a doornail, but just one touch of the Zoē Zapper and you are alive. This is what He is trying to show us.
When He gives you generation—when you are generated by Jesus Christ—that does not mean you are an animal. You were generated by the Generator to make you a man in reality.
He did not create you to be a sinner. You are a sinner, but He did not create a sinner. He zoēd you as a new creation.
Do you know who you are? That is the problem with our reality. We not only do not know who God is and who Jesus is; we do not know who we are.
We think small thoughts about ourselves: “I am just a lousy sinner. I am groping in the dark. I am not destined for anything but death.” Forget that small stuff. You have been generated for big reasons—big reasons.
Forget being Prime Minister of Canada. Small stuff. This is big.
Now we go on with John 1:10-13. We are going to see that the Generator zaps, breathes, gives light, and becomes your Salvinator.
Now, it is true: He saves you. John wants to make it clear that He is your Generator, your Phozer, and your Zoator, but He is also your Salvinator. We shorten “Salvinator” to “Savior,” right? That is who He is.
He was in the world,
and the world was made through Him,
and the world did not know Him.
How could you not know the One who generated you and shone His light on you? Easy: you are hiding in the dark shadows somewhere.
Then verse 11 says, “He came to His own.” That means the Jews. They had what? The Word of God. What is the Word of God? The truth. They had the truth, but they had no light on the truth.
And those who were His own did not receive Him.
Oh my goodness. You mean you can have the Word of God and still reject Jesus? That is what the Jews did.
But as many as received Him,
to them He gave the right to become children of God.
What is He doing? He is making sons.
This is what John wants you to know: you are not just saved to escape from hell. God is making sons. He sent Jesus to generate you—born again.
As many as received Him, He gave them the power to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were generated not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
All those times, that same generation word is used—that being-born word. As many as received Him, he says, you were generated a child of God. That is now your regenerated identity.
That is another way of saying you were saved, of course. As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even those who believe in His name. And you are a child of God.
But I want you to see: if John can help us understand that we have been generated and created as a new creation for something absolutely wonderful, then we begin to see what this means.
Most people refuse to acknowledge that He is their Generator. They refuse to acknowledge the light He shines. The Jews refused Him, even though they had the Word of God shining with Jesus all over it.
But there are some who received Him. You heard the Logos. Hey, you heard the Word. Then—psst—you got zapped. You saw the light, and now you are a child of God.
What a tremendous thing this is, being born again. It is a theme throughout the whole Gospel of John. Wonderful—generated by God. Now, in His genealogy, you are in God’s family. Is that not wonderful?
Jesus is bringing many sons to glory. You can talk about getting saved, and all that, but each writer has a particular emphasis.
Luke likes the contrast: saved or lost. Paul uses justified or condemned. What is John’s emphasis? Generated instead of dead. You are alive instead of dead.
You are alive by the generating power of Jesus Christ, who came as the Word of God.
Now we finally come to verses 14 through 18, where the Logos has a name: Jesus Christ. This is the first time His name is mentioned.
John hopes that you are already catching on to something very divine, powerful, and transcendent that is involved in Jesus.
And the Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us.
And we saw His glory,
glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
full of grace and truth.
The Word was generated in flesh—same word again—and dwelt among us.
John testified about Him and cried out, saying,
“This was He of whom I said,
‘He who comes after me is higher in rank than I,
for He was before me.’”
For of His fullness we have all received,
and grace upon grace.
For the Law was given through Moses;
grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
Grace and truth—grace and reality—were brought out through Jesus Christ. My New American Standard says grace and truth were “realized” through Jesus Christ.
I do not want to confuse you any further than I already have, but what I am trying to say is that Jesus has done something glorious in your life.
The miracle of miracles is that this Word, this Communicator-Generator, came down in human flesh so that we could behold God’s reality—His grace and His reality.
John says, “Of His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” How many of you have received grace upon grace?
John does not say that we have received reality upon reality because that is the second stage. First, we are saved by grace, and then His reality begins to be worked into our lives.
Christ has become our new reality.
What is life like? Look at Jesus. What is a man like? Look at Jesus. What is God like? Look at Jesus. How should you walk? Look at Jesus. How are you empowered? Look at Jesus.
Jesus is now our reality. He is our reality check.
If we want to see reality, forget looking at some bozo over here. “Ah, yeah, he looks good. He is president or something; he is the CEO.”
Two weeks ago, some of you from Canada might know, they put a guy in the White House communications office. His name was Scaramucci. Scaramucci was a multimillion-dollar man—successful, companies, everything. They put him in the White House, and he lasted about four days. They kicked him out because he was saying nasty things.
The point is that this was a man of supposed success. Even while he was going into the White House to be a communicator, he was divorcing his wife, who had a baby at that very moment. He had millions and millions of dollars. Is that what you call a man?
I tell you, that is somebody who is dead, who needs generation. He has no idea what he is doing with all those millions, and he could not even hold his office for a while. Everybody comes to moments when they blow up and everything goes wrong. This was one of his moments—which can happen to us except by the grace of God.
So who is going to be your standard? Who are you looking to if we are going to deal with reality?
The Christians were losing their living, effervescent reality. What is John doing? He is bringing us to these first verses—creation redux.
“I want you to see creation. ‘In the beginning’ sounds like Genesis, but no: ‘In the beginning was the Logos.’”
I want you to see life and spiritual life on the basis of generation: God’s ability to give you His life, and then, having received His life, to live by that life. That is the reality for Christians today.
If you go through the Gospel of John, you see all those Gospel interviews. He talks to the woman at the well, Nicodemus, the woman caught in adultery—all of these things. They are Gospel episodes where people are generated by talking to Jesus.
In some ways, it is the best of the Gospels for seeing interviews where Jesus talks somebody into the kingdom.
Let us look at the second layer of the stories reported in John’s Gospel. Did you notice that there is something more behind those stories? What is that all about?
Look at John Chapter 3. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. I am just going to touch on a couple of things here.
Nicodemus was a Pharisee. We know all Pharisees had a Pharisee shield of self-righteousness. But somewhere along the way, Jesus was talking, Nicodemus was listening, and somehow a Phozer ray glanced off his self-righteous shield and left a hole in it.
Nicodemus said, “Whoa. There is something that guy has.” So Nicodemus came seeking Jesus at night.
He was a lifelong student of kingdom-of-God studies. He studied the Bible, the kingdom of David, and the prophecies of the coming King. He wanted to know more about the kingdom.
After hearing Jesus talk about the kingdom, he came and said, “Master, I know You are a great man of God. Nobody could do these miracles unless You came from God.” He was truly a seeker.
There are people who seek and come into the light. They see something and come into that light. If they come into the light, they get regenerated. That is what happened to Nicodemus.
What did he have? A well-marked Bible—lots of Bible truth. Nicodemus knew much of the Bible and had memorized much of it. He really had Bible truth. But he came in darkness at night.
He said, “Jesus, You are a great Teacher, and everything—I would like to know.” Jesus said, “Whoa, whoa. I am sorry, you have got the cart before the horse. You want phōs, and you do not have zoē.”
You cannot have phōs until you have zoē. You have to be zapped with zoē before you can receive the Phozer. You want knowledge, truth, light. You cannot have light. You are not even born again.
Jesus says in John 3:3:
Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Unless one is generated again, or generated from above—it depends on your translation—you cannot see the kingdom of God.
Why do you want to talk and study about the kingdom of God? You are not even in it. You cannot see it anyway. To know the reality of the kingdom, you have to be born into the same. You cannot just talk about its doctrines.
I am not going to give you a bit of phōs zapping until I give you My zoē zapper.
In John 3:5, He says:
Truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born of water and the Spirit,
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Kingdom phōs comes only after the zoē zapper. First there has to be life, and then there can be light.
All of Nicodemus’s religious truth in the Word lacked revelation. So Nicodemus says, “How can these things be? What are You talking about—born again? Can I enter into my mother’s womb?”
Of course, Nicodemus knew Jesus did not mean that. He simply did not understand what He was saying.
The interview goes on into John 3:16, and we come to the end of John’s Gospel. Guess who has been zapped? Nicodemus helps put Jesus’ body in the tomb.
What happened to Nicodemus? He thought about what Jesus said. He came to God and said, “God, I do not know what that man has, but I come and humble myself before You.” He got zapped with eternal life, and the light began to shine.
He began to see who Jesus really was. He became one of the secret disciples of Jesus, even as a Pharisee and ruler among the Jews. Is that not a wonderful story? Yes, it is a wonderful story, but it has a point for us.
One of the greatest problems in the church is unregenerate membership. Do you know what that means?
The church has, according to everybody’s tallies, 2.2 billion Christians in the world right now. It is amazing, right? But how many of them are really born again?
One man tried to survey it—fool that he was—and figured 37 percent. So 37 percent of those who call themselves Christians are actually born again. That is, they have been generated. They are born again and have life. The rest are what they call confessing Christians.
Churches come up with this whole idea of the visible and invisible church. The visible church is everybody who is a member, but the invisible church is the real Christians.
It is a tremendous problem in churches today. Somebody signed on a line, became a member, went to a baptism class, got baptized, and has never been born again.
Here is my question: some of you have grown up with Christian doctrine and Christian knowledge. You have heard about Jesus. Have you ever been generated? Has life hit you—His life? That is all that counts.
If you do not have the Zoē Zapper, you can know everything you want about Jesus, and you are going to hell. Have you been zapped? Generated by the loving Generator?
Only you will know. If all of you are confused and say, “Hey, wait, I do not think I am in,” well, let us calm down. I am just saying.
First John continues this matter. In 1 John 5, John says:
And the testimony is this,
that God has given us eternal life,
and this life is in His Son.
Eternal life is in His Son. You get it?
Then he says in 1 John 5:12:
He who has the Son has the life.
My question is: is the Son generating in you? Can you sense generation? Can you sense the ferment, the effervescence? Is there something in you? It may be small, but something changed. You were generated.
You once were blind, and now you see. The phōs has begun to shine. I am not saying everybody will have a lightning experience and everything like that. But here is the point: do you have the Son?
Do you have the Son? Not, “Do you want the Son?” Not, “Do you like the Son?” Not, “Do you love the Son?” Do you have the Son?
If you have the Son, you have life. That is an important lesson to learn.
The church forgot that lesson. By the third century A.D., churches were baptizing people by saying, “Okay, we have captured this town in southern Germany. Here is the deal: line up. Either you say, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ,’ and we baptize you here in the river, or we cut your head off. Which way do you want to go?”
Most people said, “Ah, gee, I believe in—what is the guy’s name again? Oh yeah, Jesus. Yeah, yeah, I believe in Him, and I will get baptized.”
A lot of people got baptized who had never been touched by the life of God. It is still that way in the church today.
Oh, how the church needs to have that net mended. The only people in the church are those who have been gathered in by the Zapper—by the zoē of God, by the grace of God coming into their lives. They are born again, generated again.
The other final story is John Chapter 9. If you turn to John 9, you know that is the story of the man who was born blind.
It says the man was generated blind. Oh boy, God made a mistake. He generated somebody blind. Everybody should be perfect. This man cannot see; something is wrong.
The disciples knew exactly what was wrong, right? They said, “Hey, Jesus, who sinned—him or his parents—that he was born blind?” They knew it had to be one or the other. Whenever you see skullduggery, sin is in there somewhere. Who did it?
They took this as a classic example: some poor guy is hopeless. “Who sinned anyway?” That is the only thing they wanted to know.
What did Jesus say? Basically, He said, “You know something? You guys are blind. You disciples—born-again disciples—are blind.”
This man was not blind because of sin. This man was blind because God wanted to do a work in his life.
Then the holy Generator took two balls of clay, put them in the man’s eye sockets, and said, “Go down there and wash in the pool of Siloam.” The man came back seeing—phōs. He came back seeing light.
The disciples were blind, but the blind man saw.
Now you have to get to the end of the story to see its punchline. Go to John 9:39. Actually, let us go back to John 9:35.
The man had been hit with light, with phōs, and now he saw. But he had not been generated yet, as the story goes. People asked him how he got healed, and in the end he was kicked out of the synagogue for saying, “This guy did it. He is a prophet. I do not know who He is.”
Then Jesus came to him.
Jesus heard that they had put him out;
and finding him, He said,
“Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered,
“Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”
Jesus said to him,
“You have both seen Him,
and He is the one who is talking with you.”
And he said, “Lord, I believe.”
And he worshiped Him.
It was the first time he had seen Jesus. When he went away to the pool and came back, Jesus was not there. Jesus said, “Now you have seen Him, and now you have heard Him.”
That man fell down and worshiped. He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he was zoē-zapped. Now he was Phozered and zoē-zapped. He was fully in.
But what is the story behind this? What is John trying to convey through this whole thing? It is a story of a man getting healed, and a story of a man getting saved. But here is the lesson.
And Jesus said,
“For judgment I came into this world,
so that those who do not see may see,
and that those who see may become blind.”
The punchline is that those who think they see are blind, while those who know they are blind see.
Then the Pharisees heard that and said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You are not saying we are blind, are You?”
Jesus said:
If you were blind, you would have no sin;
but since you say, “We see,”
your sin remains.
“Oh, I know the doctrine. I know what God does. I know who God is. I know everything.” Jesus says, “Yeah, well, you are blind.”
Here is a blind man who sees because he sees that I am the Lord.
Once again John is trying to say, “Do we want reality?” If we want reality, we need vision. We need our eyes opened. There are things, levels, depths, realities that we do not know. We need our eyes opened.
Do not say your eyes are already open. You probably do not see as you should.
Sing, “Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see Jesus,” because nothing gives greater reward than that.
There we are. It is a simple story, but there is a deeper message behind John, and I hope you are picking it up.
The outer is one thing. Reality is what you need.
You start by seeing Jesus full of grace and truth—reality. Then He begins to work that reality into your life by generating you, regenerating you, causing you to be born again, giving you phōs so that you can see, and working you into the reality of the things you see in Jesus.
My last question to you tonight is this. I am done, but I want to pray for a moment, because some of you may be here and know that you have not been generated. You have not been born again. You do not have Jesus.
Whatever else you may have—churchianity and things—you do not have the one thing you really need, which is Jesus.
Let us pray. Everybody bow your heads.
If you know somebody here who really needs to be born again, pray for them right now.
Lord, we bring everybody here to the great Generator, the Lover of our souls, who came down into this world just to generate us so that He could have a family. He wants sons. He wants children.
He has come as the Generator, so that those who accept and receive Jesus might be born into the family, might have eternal life, and might begin to walk with Jesus in a new creation and a new reality.
We pray for those who are right on the edge tonight, Lord. We pray for those who are listening, maybe even convicted. Maybe their hearts are pounding. Maybe they feel something and do not know what is going on.
But in the end, Lord, we pray that all they need to do is reach out and say, “Jesus, I want You. You are my Generator. You are my life. You are my light. I want You.”
If you are here in this room tonight and want to ask Jesus into your life, that is all you have to do right now in your heart. You can silently pray this prayer:
Jesus, I see that You are a Generator. I want to be generated to eternal life. Show me the light. Give me Your life. I come and bow before You. You are the great God in the flesh. I see who You are, and I bow down and believe.
If you prayed that in your heart, then you will experience the generation that comes through the grace of Jesus Christ.
While we are praying, I want to ask whether any of you feel that transaction going on in your life. If you are willing, raise your hand so I can see who you are. Anybody here tonight? You feel you are sort of on that border. You want to be generated, even tonight. Anybody?
Of course, this is a Christian conference, and I know that most of you have been generated, thank God. Okay, I see one hand sort of halfway up. I think maybe there are a couple of people here.
Dear brothers and sisters, you can open your eyes now. Look up.
Simple word: talk to somebody in your room. Talk to somebody. Talk to the dorm RA, or whatever it is, and say, “Could you pray for me about this? I just want to be sure.”
If you have doubts about it, the only way to be sure is to go on through with Jesus. “Jesus, I believe in You. I want You to give me that new life. I want to live in that new life.”
God willing, next time we will look at how that new life is worked into us—how that reality is worked into us as His reality. That is what we need.
Is it not wonderful when you actually meet real Christians? You go, “Bing,” and they are the real thing. It is so wonderful.
There are many people here tonight who are the real thing. Some folks have a little “thud” going on because you have lost some of your reality, and you need to rediscover it. It is just under the surface, where Jesus is—always regenerating.
A new creation is a created process going on in your life. It is not static anymore. It is a process. John wants you to be in that process.
Amen.
Mary Anne, thanks for giving me back my thing.