The DivinityCode -- Jesus, The Divine -- John 1:1

Introduction
Book and Movie phenomenon
Bestseller
Even though it is fiction, it is a deceptive book in terms of the so-called facts that it presents.
Because of this phenomenon, there has been another wave of controversy surrounding a group of bone boxes known as ossuaries where they have found the bones of people with the following names: Jesus, Mary, Judas, and Joseph. These are names that are very common in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus. Oh, did I mention this mass grave was found in Jerusalem? Did you know that Jesus was a Galilean and would have been entombed in Galilee if he was to be buried with His family? The strongest point that there is to prove that this is the Jesus of the Bible is that the DNA evidence shows that the bones in the Jesus box are unrelated to the bones in the Mary box.
Isn’t it funny how it is okay to try and disprove and to ridicule the Christian faith.
The Da Vinci Code is just such an attempt as well.
It is cleverly disguised as a novel with a very engaging plot and story.

Describing the Biblical Text
Some of the premises that are raised in the book are some of the very same things that John wrote his gospel to dispute.
It centered on a heresy called Gnosticism.
It was a first century cult that focused on knowledge.
Gnostics are really hard to pin down or to define specifically because they had beliefs that were all over the place.
The word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge.
One thing that can be said is that the Gnostics did not believe that Jesus could be of the same nature and the same essence as God because all things that were matter were not spirit and were thus evil or bad.
So, John opens with a direct affront to that thinking.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
Narrate the Contextual application
John’s point?
Jesus is eternal; Jesus is divine.
How we live our lives as followers of Jesus depends on our understanding of Him.

Life Application (thesis)
What is the truth that we see here?
Jesus is God.

SO WHAT!! (Outline)
Let’s take a look at this passage this morning and see what attributes are covered here.
The first attributes we will see here is that Jesus is eternal.
This week, we have seen two news events take place. The first was the dropping of the charges against the Duke Lacrosse players. The second was the firing of Don Imus. All week, these stories have dominated the news. But that is how the news works. Something is found that will appeal to current popular culture and the journalists run with it; the talk shows talk about it; and the panel discussions wear it out. I want to just mention a couple of things to you and see if you remember them when they ere the big thing. William Jewell; Catoe Cailin; Claus von Bulow; El Niño. All of these were fly by night huge stories of their day.
William Jewell was wrongly accused of being the Atlanta Olympic bomber. Catoe Calin was living in OJ’s house when murders took place. Claus von Bulow was accused of killing his wife and El Niño was the Pacific Ocean phenomenon that let to freakish weather in 1998. Some of these things, so huge in the news at the time, are so far removed from us now that we don’t remember them.

That is because they are temporal things.
But, Jesus is eternal.
When we look at our text this morning we see something that is really intriguing.
First of all, John uses a really unusual term to refer to Jesus.
In the beginning was the word.
This was a term that was borrowed from the philosophers of the day and it was used in a variety of ways.
But, as we see it used here, it referred to that which is absolute, something the Gnostics who were the object of the teaching of John would readily understand.
The Word was in the beginning.
John was saying that Jesus existed even before the creation.
He was not speaking of the incarnate Jesus that was born in the manger.
He was speaking of the eternal Son of God who has eternally existed in the heavens as the second person of the trinity.
Genesis 1 refers to Him when God says let Us make man in Our image.
We see Him in Colossians, Hebrews and in the third verse of this very chapter as the force and the impetus behind the creation.
And, we see Him described as the eternal plan of God for our redemption.
In Revelation He is called the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

The lamb slain refers to the death of Jesus for the penalty of our sins.
The Bible says that we are separated from God because of the things that we have done to displease Him.
But, God loves us and sent His son Jesus to pay the price of our sin.
The wages of sin is death but eh gift of God is eternal life.
Jesus received our wages that we might receive His life.
To have that life, the bible tells us that we need to receive Jesus into our hearts and make Him the master of our lives.
If that is your desire this morning, you can pray to receive Jesus.
All heads bowed and all eyes closed.
If it your desire to know Christ and to follow Him today you can pray this prayer.
Dear Lord, I know I have done things to displease you. I have done things worthy of eternal condemnation and death. I am sorry for those things and desire to follow you. I receive you Jesus into my life to be my savior and my Lord. Thank you for dying for me on the cross and saving me today. Amen

If that was your prayer this morning, then Jesus, the divine, the eternal Son of God now resides in your life.
This then would take us to our second point whis is the same as our thesis statement.
Jesus is God.
As we begin to look at this point, we will need to examine some church history.
In AD 325, the emperor Constantine called for a council of church leaders to commence in a city called Nicea. In the early 4th century there was a theologian named Arius who was teaching that Jesus was not of the same essence and substance as God and this teaching was creating problems in the church. There was doctrinal disagreement that needed to be settled because it was disrupting the Roman Empire. 318 theologians and elders attended the council and discussed the deity of Jesus Christ.

According to the novel, the scholar professor Teabing it was at this meeting that Jesus’ status was upgraded from a mere mortal man and great teacher to being the son of God.
Unfortunately, the history in the novel is as much a work of fiction as the novel itself.
At the time Nicea was called, Arius was viewed as the heretic
His was the disrupting teaching.
Let’s look at the real evidence.
The Gospel of John which we have opened before us this morning is dated around AD 95.
He verse that we see this morning opening this book says that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God.
If it stopped there, we would be in trouble.
But it continues to say, “And the word was God.
John is not mincing words.
He is absolutely positively declaring the divinity of Jesus in this verse.
If that is not enough to be convinced of John’s point, in John 10:30, John records Jesus saying this, “I and the Father are one.”
The book of Philippians, written about AD60 has this to say in chapter two. “HHHHHk
Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus who did not consider his equality with God something to be grasped.”
The books of Colossians and Hebrews describe Jesus as creator and specifically give him the divine attributes of God.
Paul quotes Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:13, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” The word Lord in Joel is the sacred tetragramaton, the four letter sacred name of God. The context of Romans clearly makes the object of that statement Jesus.
In Romans, Paul is clearly equating Jesus with the Lord Jehovah.
All of this is in the first century and Nicea does not take place until the fourth century but the novel says that until Nicea Jesus was viewed as a mortal man.

What was the conclusion at Nicea?
Their conclusion was that Jesus was of the same essence and nature as God.
Here is a quote from the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.
The conclusion of the delegates matched the three previous centuries of Christian thought from the Apostles to church Fathers like Ignatius, Polycarp, and Clement of Rome.

One more tidbit.
Professor Teabing also stated in the novel that the vote on the deity of Christ passed by a relatively close vote.
I am sure that there is someone somewhere who believes that 313 to 5 is close.
By the way, that is a higher percentage vote than the vote calling me here by 1.4 percent.

Anyone who blindly accepts the history portrayed in The Da Vinci Code is unfortunately being duped.
This morning as we see Jesus as the Eternal God as viewed by the early church and her apostles, I pray that we will have the confidence to face each day knowing that the one who died for us and who lives in us is God Almighty.