Text: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)
Intro: Genesis
So many truths that have their genesis in Genesis.
I. The Foundation of the World
II. Proverbs 8:22
Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. (ASV 1901)
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. (NASB 1977)
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. (NASB 1995)
“The LORD created me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. (NASB 2020)
Wisdom personified
“In the beginning was the Word…”
III. Summary
God before the foundation of the world
There was a time, if "time" it could be called, when God, in the unity of His nature (though subsisting equally in three Divine Persons), dwelt all alone. "In the beginning, God." There was no heaven, where His glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage His attention. There were no angels to hymn His praises; no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing, no one, but God; and that, not for a day, a year, or an age, but "from everlasting." During a past eternity, God was alone: self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied; in need of nothing. Had a universe, had angels, had human beings been necessary to Him in any way, they also had been called into existence from all eternity. The creating of them when He did, added nothing to God essentially. He changes not (Mal 3:6), therefore His essential glory can be neither augmented nor diminished. - -Arthur Pink
Why then? John 1:14-18
Distinction: God’s essential glory; God’s declarative glory
Application 1: Does God need us?
Application 2: Living for God’s glory
Application 3: Correcting our thinking
The vastness of the universe
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. … Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear. The long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.
Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.
The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him - and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise. --A. W. Tozer