One of a Kind!

Jesus is the only person who ever lived before he was born.

He's the only person who ever existed before he was born. Now he's going to say that. He's going to say that to the Jewish people who will confront Jesus and on one occasion this is what they say. They go, okay, are you greater than our father Abraham? Remember what he said? Hey, before Abraham was, I am.

And you might go, that's not like good English. Theology before Abraham was, I am. And the Jews knew exactly what he was saying because they picked up what?

Stones to kill him because that was blasphemy. And they said you being a man are making yourself out to be God. Duh. That's the whole point.

That's interesting. Can one be truly unique while blending in with the crowd? Isn't that kind of mutually exclusive?

Well, one thing's for sure. Jesus does not blend in with the crowd. People have tried to get him to do so by saying he was just a great moral teacher or a wonderful philosopher. But there's that whole pesky thing of him claiming to be God in the flesh and being able to back that claim up. It's what makes Jesus truly one of a kind. We'll explore that some more with Skip Heitzig today here in Connect with Skip weekend edition.

But first, let's see what's going on in the Connect with Skip Resource Center this month. Because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Hear more from Lenya as she explores the faith and the failings of four different queens in Scripture. The Queens of the Bible collection of teachings is our way of saying thank you when you give thirty five dollars or more today to support this Bible teaching ministry.

Look, the cost of following Christ is to go wherever he leads. Get your copy of these unique teachings when you call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer connectwithskip.com slash offer. Turn to John chapter one.

And as you do so, we'll catch up with Skip Heitzig as he continues with our study. And this is John saying, I know I'm older. I know I started my ministry first, but you got to know something. This guy, Jesus, is God. He existed from eternity. That's the meaning of that little statement. He is supreme.

Let me give you a little mind bender based on this. Jesus is the only person who ever lived before he was born. He's the only person who ever existed before he was born. Now, he's going to say that. He's going to say that to the Jewish people who will confront Jesus. And on one occasion, this is what they say. They go, OK, are you greater than our father, Abraham? Remember what he said? Hey, before Abraham was, I am.

And you might go, that's not like good English. It's great theology. Before Abraham was, I am. And the Jews knew exactly what he was saying because they picked up what? Stones to kill him because that was blasphemy. And they said, you being a man are making yourself out to be God. Duh.

That's the whole point. And John the Baptist is saying that he is before me. He existed long before I ever came. Greater than everyone and greater than me, this noted preacher in Judea. There was a book put out a few years ago by Michael Shapiro, a Jewish author. It was called The Jewish 100, subtitled A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time. Number one on Shapiro's list, Moses. Number two on Shapiro's list, Jesus. Number three, according to his book, Albert Einstein. Number four, Sigmund Freud. Number six, Paul the Apostle. Number seven, Karl Marx. Number nine, the Virgin Mary.

And number 98, Sandy Koufax, the pitching grade for the Dodgers. Well, if John the Baptist had his list, number one, Jesus. You know why? Because that's God's list. He was before me. He's preferred before me because he was before me. Now Jesus is supreme. Here's my question to you and to I myself this morning. Is he supreme in your life?

I mean, here's John the Baptist, a great guy, a notable guy, a famous guy at his time, and he goes, I got to tell you something. It's all about him. I live for him.

I exist for him. He was before me and he is the supreme one. And so we who claim to be followers of Christ, is he supreme?

Or are we just once a week giving homage to the figurehead of Christ or twice a year? Or is he supreme? John said he is supreme and he deserves honor because of that. Third, Jesus Christ is unique in his generosity, in his nativity, number one. Number two, according to John in chapter 15, his supremacy and now his generosity. Look at verse 16. And of his fullness we have all received and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth. He likes that word grace already four times in this paragraph he mentions grace. But grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Verse 16, I will admit is a difficult verse to translate. And that's because of the word fullness.

And here's why it's difficult. John never uses that word in all of his writings. Play Romata is the word. He never uses it except right here. But Paul does use the term. In fact, it's a favorite word of Paul. Paul uses it a lot.

John never uses it except here. And I think this is what he's saying. He means that Jesus Christ is the unique channel of God's blessing to us and it's based upon grace. It's based upon grace, not what we deserve. It's based upon grace. Now we all receive grace. Of his fullness it says we've all received. Everybody receives what we call common grace.

Whether you're a believer, an unbeliever, a Muslim, a Mormon, a Catholic, an Evangelical, have no faith at all. We all receive common grace. Things like health, air, knowledge, friendship, good times. That's common grace that God gives to all. But once we say I believe in Jesus Christ and we come to him by faith, we enjoy something else. Covenant grace, salvation, Holy Spirit living within us, peace, heaven to boot. All of that is covenant grace.

And listen carefully. Every single resource we need to live the Christian life is given to us when we come to Christ. Everything. Second Peter chapter one. He's given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Everything you will ever need to please him, to live for him and to live victoriously is yours. And you might be thinking, oh, but I failed.

I failed along the way. That's why it says right after that and grace. What? Grace for grace. You know what that means? Grace on top of grace, on top of grace, on top of grace. It means when grace leaves, more grace comes, sort of like the ocean. You go look at the ocean and one wave comes and then it crashes and it recedes. And another wave comes and crashes and it recedes and it comes and goes and more comes and go back in an hour. It's doing this and come back in a week and it's doing this and come back in 20 years. You know what's happening? This keeps coming and send your grandkids in 100 years and it's doing this again. In other words, it's inexhaustible.

That's the point of it. Of his fullness we've all received, he's so generous. Grace for grace. Some of you hearing that might think, Skip, you don't know my problems. You're right, I don't know your problems, but I know Christ and he has no problems. And he has given us everything we need. You might be thinking still, but you don't know what I've been through.

You're right, but I know what he's been through. And what he's been through enables you to have all that he promises. So no matter how bad you are or filthy or vile or hopeless you are, listen, grace can handle you. Grace can handle you.

Oh, but you don't know. Grace can handle you. There's a great text of scripture in Romans 5. It says this, when sin abounds, grace overflows.

How cool is that? Literally when sin reaches the high water mark and you go, this is just so bad, grace comes higher. Listen, I was going to church as a young boy, taking drugs and believing God wanted me to take drugs because it made me happy.

That's how far gone my thinking was. And God's grace could handle me. And so God's grace can handle you. Verse 17, just to continue that thought. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

See what he's doing? He's drawing a line between the old covenant of law under Moses and the new covenant under grace, under Christ. The law did come by Moses, but grace and truth came through Christ. The law just convicted sinners of their inability to keep God's perfect standard.

That's what it did. People looked at the law and said, oh, man, have I blown it. I've done that and I've done that. And it says, Thou shalt not, but I've done it. So all it does is convict sinners of their inability to keep God's righteous standard. It only takes one sin to make a sinner.

That's all. One sin. Yes, people, are you a sinner? Well, I'm not a sinner.

I've just done a few. You're a sinner. One thing wrong takes one sin and one sin under the law is enough to kill you. The law came by Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus.

We could exhaust this further, but I want to move on. Let me just sort of sum it up by giving you the difference. Under the law, God demanded righteousness from man. Under grace, God gives righteousness to man in Christ.

Huge difference. One, God demands it. Second, God gives it and says, I declare you righteous. Under the law, righteousness is based upon good works. Yours. Under grace, righteousness is based upon a good work.

His. His good work on the cross is enough. Under the law, blessing accompanies obedience, but under grace, blessing now flows freely as gifts. As it says here, grace upon grace upon grace. You will never find another system of religious belief in all the world that has this kind of grace built into it. Grace upon grace. Tremendous truths. Here's the bottom line really to sum up these two verses. This is what you need to know.

Ready? It's really profound. God loves you.

A lot. I used to be amazed hearing Dr. Billy Graham preach every couple of minutes. You could almost time your watch to it. He would say, and God loves you. And then he'd say some more truths. And don't forget, God loves you. And God loves you. And he'd keep on.

It's like, OK, I get it. But he wanted us to get it. Dr. Carl Barth, a 20th century theologian, one of the greatest theologians ever. I disagree with a lot of his premises, but nonetheless, a brilliant thinker. And he was interviewed by a reporter who said, Dr. Barth, of all of the thoughts you have ever had in that brain of yours, what is the deepest and most profound truth you've ever come across? And the reporter waited for some deep kind of wordy statement. And Dr. Carl Barth paused a moment and he said, OK, here it is.

Ready? Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so.

Simple that a child can sing it. Profound and deep enough that a theologian could drown in it. It's that deep. Fourth and finally, Jesus Christ is unique in his clarity. Verse 18. What I mean by that is if you want to see God clearly, you look at Jesus. He came to make him clear. Verse 18. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father.

He has declared him. I got to tell you about a translation issue. Some of the better, newer translations render this differently. And some of your Bibles perhaps already render it that way.

The word son isn't in the best manuscripts. It is thought God is. And that is really the thought of John. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father. The word was with God.

He has declared him. It's a very powerful statement that Jesus Christ, who is God, begotten in human flesh, came to make God perfectly clear to the world. What does he mean when he says nobody's seen God?

You know what it means? It means nobody's seen God. Nobody's seen God in his pure essence. Nobody has seen God in his full and undiminished glory. I know Moses had a vision of God and wanted to see the full glory of God. But God said, you know, Moses, if you do that, you know what's going to happen to you? You'll die.

You can't handle it. And other people got theophanies and visions, but they never really saw God in fullness. But the only begotten God, God the son, who's with God, he has declared him. He's made him known.

The word declare means explained. We get our word exegesis from that word. He broke it apart. He came and he explained and he lived and he reflected. And so when Jesus came, people could go, oh, I get it. That's what God is like. He moved into our neighborhood and we beheld his glory.

And now we know what he's like. Now, without Jesus Christ, God would still be fuzzy and unclear and distant and unknowable. So Jesus came in a way that men can understand God. That's the reason for Bethlehem. And that's the reason for the manger.

And that's the reason for Christmas is to make God clear in a package we can understand. He became like us. Now, we asked a question toward the beginning. Why would God ever become a person? What's up with this whole incarnation?

Why would he do that? Now, I want to explain it in closing. You and I are in the natural world and we are bound by the natural world. Our boundaries are time and space. We live in the time space continuum. We don't live outside of that. That's the supernatural. That's where God is. We live in a confinement of space and time.

The natural world. You may want to get out of it, but you can't go into a phone booth and become Superman. Now, I have a super nature. You have a human nature.

Time and space. You're bound by it. Though I do want to escape my natural world, I want to get in touch with God. And every now and then somebody will come by and say something like, Well, if you read the Quran and pray five times a day toward Mecca, you can poke a hole in that box and you'll be in the supernatural. And somebody else will say, No, you can't do that. That's not the way. But if you read the Bhagavad Gita, you can poke a hole through the box and you're in the supernatural. Somebody else will say, Well, that's not true. But if you meditate on these crystals for a long period of time, you can poke a hole through the box and you're in the supernatural.

You know what? You can't poke a hole through the box. The only solution is that God has to crawl inside the box. And did he do that? Boy, did he. He blasted into our natural world as the word became flesh and we checked him out. And he was the only begotten God full of grace and truth.

So he brought the supernatural into the natural world. That's why Jesus could say, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. We have the same nature. I get lots of Christmas cards and eventually I throw them away. You do, too. When I get them, we do pray for the ones that send them.

We make that our policy. But then we throw them away unless it's a very unusual card. And I have kept a couple very unusual cards.

Let me tell you about one. The front of the card is alarming because there's a picture of world dictators. Mao Zedong, Stalin, Adolf Hitler, on and on and on.

That's enough to arrest most people at Christmas. And you open up the card and then is the explanation. It says, History is filled with men who would be God, but only one God who would be a man. Such a powerful statement. There are people who puff themselves up, but there's one God who humbled himself and became a man. And why?

C.S. Lewis said, God, or the Son of God, became a man that men and women might become sons and daughters of God. And that is the truth. That is the truth and it can't be divorced from grace because he's full of what? Grace and truth. And that's mentioned twice, grace and truth. So here's the deal about grace, this generous, unmerited favor. God gives you grace when you believe the truth. If you don't believe the truth, you won't enjoy the covenant grace.

You'll have air to breathe and friendships and good times. But covenant grace comes when you believe truth. And when you believe truth, grace becomes a part of that experience. And that's what makes Jesus truly one of a kind. It wasn't just another historical figure. As amazing as it may sound, he was truly God in the flesh. God walking the earth.

God mingling among regular humans. He wasn't a liar. He wasn't a lunatic. And therefore he was truly Lord, one of a kind. And that's all the time we have for today.

But before we go, here's Skip and his wife, Lenya, with a closing thought. Today we explore a few things that make Jesus unique. Of course he is utterly unique. And he's a unique figure in history.

Why is it so important for Christians to understand this supremacy, this different thing that Jesus is? Yeah, that's really a great word. Unique. You said he was unique. Singular.

I think the Greek word is monogenes. He's the one and only begotten of God. And God singled him out and sent him into the world.

And here's the answer to the question, I think. Why is it so important to understand the uniqueness of Christ and who he is? Because without the Son, you don't have the Father. There's no life in anyone or anything else other than God the Son.

God sent his Son, and he has declared that if you don't have the Son, you have no life, and you can't say, I know God in any capacity unless you trust and believe in Jesus. So that's why it's important to really get a grasp on who he is. Here you have a guy who was born in an obscure village, owned no home, owned no property, had no office, and yet has impacted the world. Greater than any other human being who's ever lived.

And it's good to ask why that is, and not only why that is, but what you should do about it. His life and birth even divided time. I mean, that's what we recently celebrated. There's A.D. and B.C. that he was so unique that it was this beautiful demarcation in the line of history. And in understanding it, I don't think you'll completely grasp it. I mean, there's human limitations to dealing with a person who is totally divine and yet human. And the blending of these characters, fully human, fully divine. But it's important that we believe that. I mean, it's central to the Gospel of John. Nine percent of Americans believe Jesus is divine, only nine percent. And that is because they say he embodies the best of humanity.

That's as good as it gets in terms of what most Americans think about Christ. So the Gospel of John sets him as unique and singular, and the one who is able to deal with all of our issues as the way, the truth of life, the bread of life, the water of life, etc. When we go back to that idea of a unique figure in history, he's not just the unique figure in the Bible. He's the unique figure in history. I mean, it's not a time for comparative religions, but he's different from Muhammad. He's different than Buddha.

He's different. He is completely unique from any human being that's lived. And all Old Testament history anticipated him. All post-New Testament history looks back to him as that central figure because of what he came to do and what he's going to continue to do in terms of wrapping things up. But let's figure out who he is and what he is to us. Well, thanks, Skip and Lenya, for taking time to share with us today.

And as for today's study, we'd be happy to send you a copy of that for just $4 plus shipping when you call us at 1-800-922-1888. We'll continue with our series, Believe 879, a study in the book of John, next time, right here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, a connection, a connection. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.