The Big Promise

Good morning. If you’ll make your way back to your seats. Thank you. Well, I got control this morning, don’t I? It’s like my house. Good morning. It’s good to see everybody.

Well, you’re seeing that number one that I’m up here preaching and talking today. So that pretty much lets us know that something else happened this week. And if by chance you do not know, another little life came into the world. I think it was about Wednesday night, about 11:30. Little Eden came in. Now, I don’t know dimensions. So I don’t know length or weight or any of those kind of things. You know, from us guys, we just want, you know, babies healthy. But you can give probably Becca a call. There might be somebody here that knows how much, how big the baby was, how long it was. What was it? Seven pounds, 13 ounces. I knew one of our ladies would know. But Eden, everybody’s happy and healthy and everything went fine. So, but that’ll be one of our prayer concerns today. So not so much concerns, but just something to pray about.

Jeremy wanted to ask you just to think about your one. Everybody has their one that they want to come to know Jesus. Two of my ones this past year have gone on to be with the Lord. And just to be real honest with you, I’m not really sure where, you know, what happened. You know, where they went or whatever. I have, I shared with them. I was frank with them. I tried to love them through things and answer questions. But my, I would be hoping that they ended up with the Lord. But, you know, that’s one of the hardest things in the world is, especially in the ministry, is to do funerals where you’re not sure or don’t know, you know, or you do know and it’s not good.

I want you to pray for your one. You know, the last thing we want someone to spend eternity with Jesus. I want to see a lot of the folks that I have in my neighborhood and people I’ve grown up with and people in my family. I want them to be in heaven with me, rejoicing with Jesus for eternity. So I want you to bow your heads or get in your groups. And I want you to pray for your one. Pray for little Eden, that everything continues to go well and for Becca and Jeremy. And just thank the Lord what He did in their life this week. But I want you to just bow your heads and just have a time of prayer, rejoicing in Eden, but also to pray for your one. God, do what it takes. Bring this life to you. Let’s do that right now.

Father, thank you. First of all, thank you for life. Thank you for the fact that little Eden came in and is healthy and everything seems to be going well. And Becca’s healthy and Jeremy is just kind of just loving this. And so I lift up their whole family and the kids, Honor and Luke and Annie, and that everybody’s doing well. Thank you for that. My prayer, Lord, is that Your grace will just be on them and this will be just a sweet time as they just kind of come together as a family. So thank you. But then, Lord, also I want people in our lives that mean something to us, whether it’s a friend or a family member, somebody that’s close, maybe somebody we work with. We want to come to know You. They would have what we have. Lord, we pray for that. Thank you just for just being who You are. Thank you for being a God who wants a relationship with us. Thank you for being a God who’s always there and hears our prayers and knows our needs, our needs better than we do, and loves us. Loves us so much that You went to a cross for us and You didn’t have to do that. So, Lord, now open our hearts and our minds to hear You. This is now Your time. Not our time. It’s Your time. They may not so much hear Al Smith, but they may hear You. So change our heart. Change our minds so that when we walk out of here, we’ll be different. Just a few moments. In Your Son’s name we pray. And all God’s people said, amen.

You know, we get a lot of promises in life. I love, what I can do is watch TV. I love when commercials come on and they promise you the world. Now, most of you know Amazon. And Amazon usually makes a number of promises, don’t they? You can go on their site. This is probably 100. I think just about everybody here does Amazon. Probably the biggest company in the world. And one of their big things is they’ll get it to you quickly. And, you know, you can handle it. You know, you put it on there. And sometimes at worst it’s two or three days.

But a couple weeks ago I got on, got on my computer, went straight to Amazon. And I was building some frames and I needed some cardboard backing. You know, if you’re doing like a little picture or painting or whatever, you need to have that cardboard backing at the end. And so I found some and I ordered it. I was going to get a box of five of them. I wanted five pieces of cardboard backing. And they said it would come in two days. Well, it did.

I just want to show you what I got. Now, I ordered three foot by four foot backing. So it’s come in a box. And this came, I don’t know how the driver gets out of his vehicle and goes, I’m going to leave this on their front porch. And because it’s got my address on it, had a packing list with the company’s name on it, what was supposed to be in it, the whole deal. And this was just laying on my, I remember I didn’t see it come. Beth picked it up and says, you’re not going to believe what came today. So if this looks like a three by four foot piece of cardboard, come talk to me afterwards. And we’ll have that discussion.

The interesting thing is I called the company whose name was on the packing list and is also on this little piece of cardboard, who supposedly made, we’ve made these things. And they go as many times. Well, this really isn’t our fault. See, Amazon works with third parties. And so you need to contact the third part. I said, well, do you have their number? And so I called, we called their number. Well, their number had been disconnected. And so I said, do you have, the way we got it resolved, actually, we went, we were going to actually send this back to Amazon. So we went to the UPS store and they said, well, that’s probably not going to work. You can get Amazon’s customer service number over there. And then we resolved it through Amazon and their customer service people.

But I was promised one thing, right? Many likes life. And I got something else that really wasn’t worthwhile. I find sin that way. Sin promises a lot. You know, usually I tell folks sin tastes good, looks good, smells good. You know, all those things. But sin is always temporary. Always over promises. But I want to tell you, there’s one place in Scripture where God doesn’t over promise.

See, God has a lot of promises in Scripture. And I’d like you to turn with me to the book of John chapter 1. We’re going to be kind of going through those first. We got a lot of verses to go through very quickly this morning. There are some passages in Scripture, some chapters in Scripture that I just fall in love with. This would be one of those, John chapter 1. Another would be, you know, Psalms 23. Another would be maybe Romans 8. Another one might be Genesis 1 and 2. You know, John 14 through 17. Jesus talking to His disciples during the Last Supper. There are just some places in Scripture that are almost just magical. This is one of those. This is one that God not only comes in and says, let me share with you how I gave you the promise, and now I’m giving you the result. And that’s what we have here.

The interesting thing about the book of John is it’s one of those amazing books. If I was to tell a new Christian a place in the Bible to go and read, the book of John would be that book. You know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four Gospels all give us a picture of Jesus. And I just wanted to share with you, there are different pictures. There’s some stories that are in all four. There are some that are just in two or three. But that’s okay. I want you to think of it almost like a movie set where the director is trying to get a picture of, show you a picture of this movie or this scene, but he’s got four different camera angles. And so you get one from Matthew, you get One from Mark, another one from Luke, and then you get one that’s almost different. You get one from John. And John is amazing. Matthew was written to the Jewish people. It’s about prophecy. He uses the term that you really don’t find many other places, so it would be fulfilled. It’s about a promise. It’s what Jesus said. Mark is the gospel of action. He’s writing to a Roman audience, which I think is pretty neat. It’s fast-paced. It’s got a lot of it. Many people, many theologians believe it’s almost the gospel of Peter, as Peter transcribed to Mark. But he’s writing to a Roman audience. Luke’s a great physician. He’s writing to Gentiles. Luke likes the details. He wants you to know how Jesus felt. And he uses a term that we don’t see in a lot of other places. He always refers to Jesus as, you know, where Jesus says, I am the Son of Man. Many people believe it was Jesus’ favorite description of Himself, where we see the, the full man of Jesus, 100% man. And they’re called kind of the synoptic gospel. They’re kind of a lot alike.

John emphasizes, though, the meaning of the gospel. Think of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as kind of snapshots of Jesus’ life. Look at John as a full-blown portrait of exactly who Jesus is. We’ll see that, you know, that Jesus will fulfill things. He’s, and the one thing that John wants you to know more than anything else about Jesus is this. Jesus is God. More than anything else, he wants you to know that Jesus is God. Imagine being John for just a moment. You’re one of the inner circle. You’re one of the 12. For the last three and a half years or so, you have walked the earth with Jesus. You’ve watched Him raise people from the dead. You’ve watched Him heal blind men, take leprosy off people. You’ve watched Him literally control nature. You know, He walks on water. And you kind of sit back and go, who is this guy? And then all of a sudden it dawns on you who He is. And that’s who this morning John wants you to know. Okay? So let’s just start with that.

Promises? Oh, there are promises. In just the Old Testament alone, there’s 301 prophecies that are fulfilled by Jesus. The rabbinic guys, the rabbis, would sit there and go back to the Targum, and they would sit there and tell you that there are over 400 references to the Messiah. 39 times the word Messiah even appears in the Old Testament. The Greek word for Messiah, the anointed one, is Christos, where we get the word Christ. So when we read in the New Testament about Jesus Christ, it’s nothing new that wasn’t in the Old Testament. I’ve had people say this to me, Al, what’s Jesus’ name going to be in heaven? Well, I think He’ll answer to a lot of things. I think He’ll answer to Jesus. It was the angel who came to Joseph and said, this is what you call Him, because He’s going to save people from their sins. It’ll be Christ. You can call Him that, the anointed one. You can call Him Yahweh, because in the book of John here, He’ll actually go and call Himself that I am, that I am. But above all everything, John wants you to know that Jesus is God, and God loves you so much that He started making promises all the way back in Genesis, and He fulfills it, the coming of Jesus.

So let’s just look at it real quick. See, when God came down to earth, the apostle John, in just these verses right here, will share with us a five world-changing, life-giving essential that when Jesus came that He brought with Him. The first thing that He brought with Him was He brought heaven down with Him. And what does that mean? Well, let’s look at what the Bible says. It says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And He was with God in the beginning. You might as well go to Genesis chapter one. In the beginning, God. He made the heaven and earth. You know, it’s interesting, Matthew will go, when he does the lineage of Jesus, he’ll go back to Abraham, because he’s looking from a Jewish, I mean, a Jewish Hebrew perspective. So he goes back to where the Israelites or the Hebrews started with Abraham. Luke, Luke goes a little further back than that, when he kind of goes through the lineage of Mary, and he’ll go all the way back to Adam. John doesn’t do that, Because John wants to prove who Jesus is. He goes before Adam. He goes all the way to before time itself. Remember, time is a creation of God. So God creates everything. And the Bible says that Jesus was there. We’ll talk even more about creation in just a moment.

Well, what does that mean? Well, the Trinity existed before time. The Trinity was always there. And it’s not one plus one plus one equals three. You have to think of it more as one times one, times one equals what? One. They’re all of the same essence. They were all there. They were all together. And really, they all only needed each other, which I find amazing.

But here’s the thing about that word, word. In the beginning, before time itself, was the word. Now, who is He talking about? Well, He’s talking about Jesus. Well, what does that word, word, mean? Well, many of you have heard the Greek word, logos, and what that means. Well, let’s go before that. What is the Hebrew word for word? It’s a word called memrah. And here’s what it means. That in the beginning, there was reason, and there was logic, and there was a reason and explanation for our very existence. In the beginning was real. In fact, let’s just read that verse like that. In the beginning was the reason or explanation. And the reason or explanation was with God. And the reason or explanation was God. And He, Jesus, was with God in the beginning.

Now, what’s the reason or the explanation? Everything has to have a reason. With God, everything always has a reason. Everything always has an explanation. The Jews always thought that way. The rabbis always thought that way. Everything begins with the word. The Greeks thought that same way with the word logos. Same meaning, same word. Except Greek philosophers always thought that before there was anything, there had to be a reason for existence. They would look around and say, gosh, look at all this. Look at the designs. Look at the designs of the world. Planets are designed and move on a certain way. The seasons come at certain times of the year. The sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night. Well, how does that reasoning happen? Well, if all that, if we have a great design, that must mean something. That must mean what? There has to be a great designer.

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of the Wistar Institute. The Wistar Institute started in 1892 and literally exists today. They’ve got 30 experimental research labs and about 60 post-doctorate fellows who just study stuff. They do a lot of cancer research and a lot of things. And every summer, they’ll invite a lot of smart academic guys in and they’ll study something. And one summer, they actually brought in about 50 mathematicians. And here’s the question that they posed to these guys that they wanted them to study for that summer. And the whole point was this. Can the natural order of things, the things that exist, if given enough time, can they create what we have today? I mean, what are the possibilities? What are the… I mean, if we just had… Time really wasn’t a problem. Could they create? And at the end of the summer, here’s what those 50 brilliant guys came up with. Can’t happen. You can have an incredible amount of… You can have all the time you need, but you just can’t create. It would be like me taking off my watch, breaking it, and then saying, okay, if I just wait around enough, something can come around and either put my watch back together or create a new watch. There has to be a designer who does this. And there has to be something in creation that does this. And that’s what the word means, that there is a reason, an explanation of something that’s out there that is so beyond anything that we can imagine. Isaiah 55 says the ways of God are not our ways and the thoughts of God are not our thoughts.

In the beginning was the word and the word. He brings heaven with Him. What is heaven? What is the kingdom of heaven? The kingdom of heaven pretty much is this. It’s anywhere God reigns. When you get saved, you get the kingdom of heaven. Do you realize that you don’t have to die to go to heaven? We get some of heaven right now. The kingdom of heaven is wherever God reigns. And the Bible says in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. He was with God at the beginning. He said all things were created through Him and apart from Him, not one thing that has been created has been created. He not only brought heaven down with Him, He brings the Creator down with Him. Look at the word. All things were created. How? Through Him. Apart from Him, not one thing was created that has been created. So Jesus is there before anything is created. John wants you to understand again that He’s God. That He delivers. He brings us what we have. There was a time where God would tell us that He wanted us to be with Him. Which brings us to number three. He not only brings heaven, the Creator, but He also brings life down with Him. God wants to enjoy life with us.

If you go to the book of 1 Kings, chapter 8, verse 27, probably the smartest guy that was ever on the planet, a guy named Solomon, is dedicating the temple. Now, why did God want us to create the temple? It was a place where we came together to worship Him where supposedly He dwelt among us. But in the beginning of Solomon is kind of having thoughts and he’s kind of talking to the Lord. And he says these words, “But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this house that I’ve built.” Solomon goes, will God ever dwell here? Will God actually ever come here? That’s the promise. And what John is trying to tell us in this passage is, yeah, He does that. He cares about you. He dwells here. He came here. He came in human form to be with us. He brought not only heaven with Him, not only brought creation, the Creator down with Him, He brings life with Him. Life that is life altering.

One of my favorite stories, and I think I’ve actually told it from this pulpit, and you’ve probably heard it from maybe somewhere else, is a story of how on one coastline city or little town up around New England, a major storm came in. And it was just, I mean, it just was amazing. It was, I mean, the wind velocity was like a hurricane, and it comes in, and then it leaves. The next morning, a little boy who lived in that town actually goes down to the beach, and all he sees for forever are starfish. Apparently, when the storm came in, it just took and just blew just thousands, as far as the eye can see, all along the beach. And in the middle of it, he sees this old man walking, watching the old guy, and he kind of looks, and the guy will reach down, pick up a starfish, and fling it into the ocean. He then walks a little and reach down, pick up another starfish, and fling it into the ocean. And this little boy is just watching him, and finally goes up to him and says, “Mr., what are you doing?” He says, “I’m just trying to save these starfish.” And then he looks around, and all he sees are like, for as far as the thousands of starfish on the beach. He says, “You can’t save them all.” He says, “It really doesn’t matter, does it? We reach down, pick up a starfish, threw it in the ocean. It mattered to that one.” I see Jesus doing that. But here’s the deal. If God wants everybody, wouldn’t God kind of bring in maybe a big wave or bring in a big wind and just push all those starfish out? I started thinking, could. Not only could, but He did.

See, when Jesus moves to the cross, which we’re going to celebrate in just a little bit, Jesus gives everyone the opportunity to come to Him. He gives everybody the opportunity. When He died on the cross, the Bible says that He didn’t want anybody to perish, but us with our human will and the ability to choose whether we want to get saved or not. And I think God presents everything. God comes into our lives, doesn’t He? God gives us His word. He gives us instruction. God comes in. He motivates our heart. Our hearts on our own. We’ll not go after God. But what He does, He pricks our hearts. He brings people into our lives. He brings us the word. He motivates our thoughts. Sometimes it works in dreams or whatever He does. But God initiates and brings us to a place where there’s a line. And we have to decide whether we want to cross the line or not. And everyone has that opportunity. The question is, do You want to cross the line? I mean, what’s holding you back? Because it’s eternal. But He not only brings heaven, the Creator, life. The Bible says, look what it says. It says, “In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. And that light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.” There was a man sent from God whose name was John. Now, this is not the John who writes this book, the apostle. This is John the Baptist. And he came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was contained, was coming into the world. And He was in the world, and the world was created through Him, and yet the world did not recognize Him. And He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.

God brings it. He takes the big promise, and He says, “I’m here.” There are hundreds of passages in the Old Testament. Thousands of years go by. God starts the promise, and then finally He fulfills it. He comes. He brings heaven. He’s the Creator. He brings life. He brings a light that shines upon everything that’s there. And then the Bible says that we reject it.

The picture here is almost like, you ever woke up early on a morning? Because you say, why would someone reject the light? Well, think about waking up. It’s about 7 o’clock in the morning, 8 o’clock. Maybe you’re sleeping in. Maybe it’s 9 o’clock. And the blinds are drawn, and somebody comes into the room. Maybe it’s your wife, your husband. Maybe it’s your mom or dad. And all of a sudden, remember that time where they hit the blinds, and all that light comes into the room? And what’s your first response? Shut them blinds. That’s what your first response is. And that’s what the world does to Jesus.

It’s interesting. If you look at the original language, it says He came to His own. Well, the “own” there is actually in the Greek, it’s a neuter. It’s not a male or female type of thing. It’s talking about He comes to what He created. His creation accepted Him. I mean, water lets Him walk on it because He created the water. He raises the dead to life. Why? Because death doesn’t contain Him. You know, does not have power on Him. He can take sickness and make people well. Creation grabs Jesus. But if you look at all, but it says, but His own people, the masculine, did not receive Him. The ones that He not only created, but He created in His own image.

But it’s interesting. In the next verse, it says, “But to all who did receive Him, He gave them the right to be the children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of natural descent or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man but of God.”

He brings light. What does light do? Light, light shines. Light opens things up. Light makes us see different things. You know, the one thing that’s going to be amazing in heaven is, is the light we’ll see. Go back and read Revelation where it talks about the one of the biggest things that, that talks about heaven is just the light that’s there. And the light doesn’t come from the sun or the moon. The light comes from Jesus. But light also shows everything. Sometimes we don’t want to see everything.

I’m always amazed when people say, you know, one day I’m gonna get to heaven and I got a lot of questions for Jesus. I’m gonna let Him know something. Say, no you don’t. No you’re not. Makes you think you’re gonna do that. One day we’re gonna stand before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and we’re gonna see that that light is gonna be so amazing, so consuming. It’s gonna show so much of who we are, what we’re about. We’re not gonna say anything to Jesus. We’re just gonna be on our face, on our knees before Him. We’re gonna be pretty happy that because of what He did, we’re there.

He brought light down, and then the last thing I just want to say, which really sums up everything in this chapter, is that He brought Himself down. See, it’s one thing to say, “Here, I’m gonna give you this book, and, and here’s, here’s the list of rules. Just obey this, or just go to your church, or go…”

To your, you know, go to your pastor or sit down with somebody that’s smart and just get some good information on them. They’re trained, they understand the book. Here’s a list of rules, but John wants you to know he just doesn’t give us a list of rules, and that’s what the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is. See, the Old Testament with its rules demands justice, but ladies and gentlemen, we don’t—we don’t get justice. You don’t want any part of justice because if you’ve seen that all in your life, you’re not getting there. But John says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Verse 16: indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from His fullness. And for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Moses says, “Here’s the rules, here are the rules,” and the only reason God gave us a lot of the rules is to show that we can’t live up to them. But then when Jesus comes, Jesus says, “You can’t live up to them. Well, let me tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take your sin on me, and I’m gonna bear it. And if you’ll repent of your sin and you’ll bring Me into your heart, and you will—you will take Me into your life and let Me run your life and not you run your life, it’ll be different.” He brings Himself. It’s one thing to sit there and say, “Just let’s go read the rule book, the manual.” It’s a whole different ball game when He says, “Now you just follow Me.”

I want you to watch a—a video I found. Just kind of—I was just kind of on the—on the computer this week, and this video popped up. It’s an old CBS video that kind of demonstrates this. My question is this: how many of us would have done that? Lady comes into a store—I mean, we—we don’t live there, we’re just kind of—we’re on the road like she is. She just starts yelling, “I’m lost, can someone get me to Cleveland?” And she’s just doing it over and over, and everybody’s kind of—I can imagine folks just going, “No, I don’t think so.” And then all of a sudden, this gentleman comes up to her and starts giving her directions that she’s not grabbing. And when I saw in another—in another little video, he takes her outside and—and he starts giving her and said, “Just go here, go here, go here.” I had a map, the whole—none of it worked until he said this: “Just follow me.” And then he goes 35 miles in the opposite direction that he was going, and from what I understand, he just put his arm out the window and pointed her to the exit, and she got off the exit, and that exit went straight to Cleveland—or straight to Cleveland. How many of us—and then came back, built a friendship.

See, that’s what John wants you to know in this—in these first few verses. See, in the beginning, before there was time, before there was a world, before there was earth, and before there was life, there was Jesus, there was God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then it says a few verses later, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He didn’t just dwell among—dwell among us. It says we observed His glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And this whole section ends with, because He existed before me, indeed we all have received grace upon grace from His fullness. And then 18: the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, He has revealed Him. God has revealed Himself. You want to know what Jesus and what God looks like? His name’s Jesus. That’s what God looks like.

And God fulfilled the greatest promise of all time. In just a few moments, we’re going to observe the Lord’s Supper. God only gave us, you know, two ordinances, two commands to observe. One is baptism, which is a picture of what He does in our life when He comes into it. We die to our old life, and we come up out of water a new creature, cleansed of our sin, once we brought Him into our life. But the other one is how we get There, which is the Lord’s Supper, when we read, when Jesus is having His His last meal with His with those that are closest to Him, He says, “I want you to do this, and I want you to do it in remembrance of Me.” But He said, Paul even goes, he said, “We need to come worthily.” And so I want us to do that this morning. I want us to understand God loves you so much. He loves Al Smith so much that He comes out of a throne room that He didn’t have to. He comes down in human form and go through all the junk that we go through in life, just like Eden came into the world this week. Jesus came into the world. He even started there. He went through everything that that children go through and teenagers go through and all that. He allowed Himself not to be 100 percent divine and of deity, but He He allows Himself to be 100 human. So He has all the emotions that humans have, and He goes through all the pains on the cross because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that you get a second chance. You know, one reason I think Satan hates us, he don’t get a second chance. The demons that followed Satan get no chance. You get a second chance because the Word became flesh. Should bow your heads. You know, this week we say some things, we may have done some things, we may have thought some things that really we need to just say, “God, I am sorry. And before I come to Your table, I just want to say, man, I’m sorry. Would You forgive me? I want to be clean.” And I’m going to give you an opportunity to do that. So let’s just do that right now.

Father, thank You for taking care of our sin. You sure didn’t have to. Thank You for being the reason. Thank You for being the explanation. Thank You for… being the designer. Thank You for existing before there was anything, and yet one word that describes You more than any is the word love. You love us. You don’t have to, but You do anyway, and You came, and He died for our sins, and we’re going to remember that in just a minute. Thank You that when we were asked for Your forgiveness and Your repentance, just do it. You don’t have to. Thank You again for Your grace and Your mercy. Amen.