DIVINE BEGINNINGS

A. M. Brown

John 1: 1–3; Genesis 1: 1, 2; John 1: 4, 5; 3: 16–21; Philippians 1: 3–6

Three of these scriptures refer to the beginning and what has begun. I seek divine help to say a word about that. When God speaks about the beginning He goes back to the very beginning.

Indeed He goes back before the beginning, because the beginning really suggests time, but God was there before time was made. God dwelt in light and in love, for that is what He is, and He had not made time yet. The first three verses of John’s gospel tell us about that. You might say, Surely the very first verse in the Bible, Genesis 1: 1 must be the earliest account of anything that we have in the Scriptures, but it is not. If you read it carefully, it becomes clear that John 1: 1–3 is before the beginning that is referred to in Genesis 1. It says here, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God”. When the scripture speaks about the Word, it is referring to the One that we have come to know as the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That is how He has been made known, but here the scripture speaks of Him as “with God” and “was God”.

He was there before anything had being, because verse 3 says, “All things received being through him”, and if “All things received being through him”. He must have been there before these things received being. So John 1: 1–3 speaks about Persons that were there, blessed divine

Persons that were there, before beginnings were. Before anything had being, God was there.

Nobody gave God being, He is self-existent. God is God, and the Word was there, the One whom we have come to know as the Lord Jesus Christ was there. In the beginning He was with God, He was God. What a glorious One! What a sense we ought to have in our souls of His glory and His majesty and His might and His power. It goes on to say, “All things received being through him”. He is the One who is the source of everything that has being, that one Person by whom also He made the worlds, as the scripture says (see Hebrews 1: 2).

Everything proceeded from His instrumentality (see footnote ‘b’ to Colossians 1: 16). That is, He was the One who acted to give the universe being.

I speak of these things to deepen and enlarge our minds and hearts with a sense of the glory and magnificence and majesty and power and might of the One who is the subject of the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ. I am not saying that He was known as the Lord Jesus Christ then. We have come to know Him in this way, but He is the same blessed Person that the scripture speaks of as giving being to all things. I wanted to emphasise His power and might, how wonderful a person Jesus is. In Revelation He speaks of Himself as “the first and last, the beginning and the end”, and also “the Alpha and the Omega”, Revelation 22: 13. These are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. We might say He is the A and the Z. He is the beginning and the end, there is nothing outside of Him. That is the One that we speak of in the preaching, the Lord Jesus. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, that would reinforce in our minds that the One whom we know as the Lord Jesus is God, because all things received being through Him. There are other scriptures that would reinforce that wonderful central truth in our hearts, that Jesus is God. This passage that we read in the beginning of Genesis would do so too. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face

of the deep” and so on, but “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. That is, that God was in activity seeking a response but what He found was waste and empty.

What I want to emphasise is that this scripture makes plain that it was God who made the worlds. He made the heavens and the earth; they did not come into being through some monstrous accident, some great release of energy in what some scientists call the Big Bang (which they cannot explain, although they assert that their theories are facts). It was God who made the heavens and the earth, really for one reason, and that was to bring man, the top-stone of His creation, into it. It is sometimes said that the heavens and the earth were like a theatre that God brought man into. He made the heavens and the earth as a place where man could be. He did not intend it to be waste and empty. We learn from Isaiah 45 that God did not make the earth waste and empty, it became like that (see Isaiah 45: 18). It says He formed it to be inhabited, God had man in mind. He did not only have man as a race in mind, He had you in His mind. Do you know that He foreknew you? God is God and He is able to see the end of everything from the beginning. He knew then who we are now. He did because He is God. I cannot explain that, but I believe what the scriptures tell me about it. I believe that He made the world—“By faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God”, Hebrews 11: 3. God “spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast”, Psalm 33: 9.

It is a truth that is under great attack.

Young folk, maybe all of us, might feel our faith coming under attack by people who assert with considerable force and apparent confidence that the theories of man, which have been developed on the basis of excluding God from their thinking, are facts. They are not. If people assert them as facts, then they are lying. The truth is what we read in the Scriptures, that God in the beginning created the heavens

and the earth. What is more, God anticipated these attacks on the truth, and you will find scriptures that help you. If you do feel that your faith is being attacked then you can go to the Scriptures. We quoted that verse in Hebrews 11, “by faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God”. If you go to Romans you will find that these attacks are not new. It is not a new theory that the world appeared through some other means or actions.

People back in the time of the apostle Paul had their ideas, and Paul puts things right in Romans 1: 20. I will tell you another thing that he does in that chapter. He shows you what the moral consequences of men setting aside God are, “they did not think good to have God in their knowledge” (Romans 1: 28), which is what marks men as away from God. It is a very serious moral condition.

God would like to take us back to the beginning. He would speak to us about the fact that Jesus was in His mind, and in His heart, and in His plans before this happened, before Genesis 1, before the worlds were made. God had one Man in His mind, Man in perfection, a Man who would work out everything according to His counsels and in the way that pleased Him, that was perfect, and that would secure all that He was looking for in a race that He was still to bring in. God was still to put the race of mankind into His creation, but He had Jesus in His heart and in His mind. God knew before He set Adam up that He was going to bring in Jesus and that Jesus was going to be the answer to everything, He was going to be the beginning. What do we mean by that? It is that God had delight in Jesus. Everything that Jesus did, and said, and thought was delightful to God, because it was precious and pleasing to Him, and sinless; God had full delight in Him. God began with Jesus in that sense.

God made Adam, He made Eve as well, and in a very short time after they were placed in the garden, sin came in, disobedience against God. The devil said to Eve, Has God

really said this? Men are saying that all over the place, what they speak and what they write, Has God really said this? Eve listened to the serpent and she sinned, she was disobedient. She disobeyed God and ate that fruit, and her husband, Adam did the same thing and distance came in, but God had not begun with that. God already had the Saviour in mind, the One of whom we read in these verses in John’s gospel, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men”. God begins with Jesus, the One who gives life to men and the One who brings light.

He sets everything according to God. But He is interested in you too, and He is interested in me, and He wants us to begin with Jesus. How much we get occupied with ourselves, and as we do so and are occupied with what is around us we get away from Jesus.

The gospel preaching is to bring us back to the One with whom God has begun. He would, as it were, plead with us to begin with Jesus. What is at the beginning gives character to what follows. God has begun with Jesus, and His will is that He should have a whole company of people like Jesus. That is what He will achieve, and He is doing it now. He has already achieved, I think, the vast proportion of what He is going to do in bringing saints to glory. He has already done that in two thousand years of operations by the Holy Spirit since Pentecost.

He is still doing it now. He is bringing people like you and me to Himself through Christ, by means of the gospel through belief in His blessed Name, and through the saving power of His blood. God is bringing people to Himself, but we have to start with Jesus. If we do not start with Him there is no standing before God. Dear friend, God stretches out towards us. We sang that,

‘The heart of God is love;

That love extends to thee’ (Hymn 59).

It extends to each one of us. Think of the feelings of God. He is reaching out, beseeching us as it were, holding Jesus out to us as the Saviour. He is the One who loved us, the One who became a Man, who stooped into manhood.

That simply means that One who was God, who was on an equality with God as the scripture says (see Philippians 2: 6), emptied Himself and became Man in conditions of limitation, of poverty too and weakness, naturally speaking, in order that He might accomplish the work of redemption. We know that Jesus is God in His own Person from where we read at the beginning of John’s gospel, and yet He emptied Himself and came into this scene as a Man, a real Man. He came into a condition in which He could die as a perfect sacrifice so that God could, as a result of that sacrifice, confer righteousness on those who believe. God is able to look upon us as being free from the guilt of our sins, that blot, that distance, that weight, that guilt that had lain on every one of us from the beginning of our moral histories. God has provided the answer, provided the solution in Jesus, one blessed Man. What is the beginning of it? The beginning of it is that God’s heart is a heart of love, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”, John 3: 16. What a heart God has! You think of Him so loving the world. The quality, the depth, the extent, the intensity of His love for the world was such that He gave His only-begotten Son, so “that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”.

God desires “that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1

Timothy 2: 4), and He has made it possible. God not only desires it, but He has made it a wonderful effective operating principle of grace towards mankind. He did so by sending Christ into the world, that spotless victim, One, who in devotion to and love for the will of God, suffered on the cross at Calvary. He allowed Himself to be taken by the hands of men and crucified there, lifted up as a spectacle. These were the cruel actions of the men who delivered Him up and crucified Him—the mocking and all these things that happened to Him when He was lifted up and as He hung on the cross. He suffered as the scripture says, “the just for the unjust”, 1 Peter 3: 18. God’s

Man was just. He always was and always will be fully and entirely just, and He suffered for us, the unjust. Why did He do that? He did it because He loves you, and He loves me. God loves us and God has provided a way back into His presence through that work of redemption because Jesus paid the price. He bore the judgment that should have fallen on my head as a sinner, the judgment of a holy God upon sin, Jesus bore it for me. The whole point of us being here tonight is so that you can say, dear friend, young or old, ‘Jesus bore that guilt and that judgment for me’, and He bore my sins, as the scripture says, “in his body on the tree”, 1

Peter 2: 24. I trust that we can all say that; every one who is old enough to understand something of the love of God towards them, can say that Jesus bore my sins. God is pleading with us tonight in His grace and love. He keeps open this period of time in which the gospel is preached so that He can appeal again to our hearts to have to do with this blessed Saviour, His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. What a One He is; God presents His best, God does not have anybody else to present.

The Man that He began with He is also going to finish with in glory, the Lord Jesus. He is the beginning and the end. God has no other offer to make to secure souls for His presence eternally, and for present salvation too. I trust that every one here would answer to that call, to know what it is to have their sins forgiven as a result of the work of Jesus, and to have a personal link in faith with Him. His work is wonderful but the Person is wonderful, and He desires to have you as His friend. Jesus desires that you would confide in Him, put your problems to Him in prayer. He is the One who loved you enough to die for you. You can tell Him about the things that trouble you, whatever they might be. One who loves you enough to die for you, will certainly have consideration for your troubles. What is more He brings in the answer in a limitless supply of love and grace into the souls of those who believe in Him. Do you think that One of whom it is said that “All things received being through

him” does not have the answer to everything? Friend, that One has the answer to everything; He has the answer to every moral problem, He has the answer to the problem of my sins, He has the answer to the problem of your sins. He has the answer to whatever problem it is that might cast a shadow or separate you from the love of God. Whatever it is, Jesus has the answer to it.

I read in Philippians; the apostle Paul is writing here to believers in the Roman colony in Philippi in Greece and he speaks about their “fellowship with the gospel, from the first day until now”. They had begun well, they had had fellowship with the gospel. That means that they had participated in the grace and blessing available from God through the gospel. The gospel had been preached to them and they had accepted it. They had begun in that way from the first day and they were maintained in it “from the first day until now”. It is a tremendous thing to place your trust in Jesus. Nothing is ever the same again; there is a new moral beginning when you place your trust in Christ. God intends that it should be. Nothing is the same again when you realise that the Saviour has died for you, that He shed His blood to save you from your sins, and that by placing your faith in Him you are washed clean from the guilt of your sins in the sight of a holy God. That is the first day. I trust that we have all had a first day.

But then the apostle adds “until now”, and that is something beyond that first day. The intention is that our subsequent days should be like the first day; in other words we should continue consistently in faith, and in giving glory to God and in giving pleasure to Him, and also be growing in our knowledge of the Saviour and in our likeness to Him. I would just seek to encourage myself and all of us, that we might be maintained in the fellowship of the gospel. Scripture speaks about the “joy of thy salvation”, Psalm 51: 12. Sometimes the apostle in writing has to take issue with believers who had fallen away; they had had a very bright

first day but then something had come in and caused them to fall away from the brightness and joy that they had at one time experienced. The Philippians were not like that. They were a very fine company of believers.

There were some very interesting people at Philippi. There was the jailor and his family, and there was Lydia, the seller of purple and her household. There were others as well, who had continued in the “fellowship with the gospel, from the first day until now”, and we are to be like that too. God knows that and He also knows what we are. The Lord Jesus is intimately acquainted with our condition. God knows us from the beginning to the end, and He provides for us. He does not leave us without help in the matter of fellowship with the gospel; He provides help. He provides the Lord Jesus as our Lord, our Shepherd and our Friend. What a wonderful thing it is to go to the Lord Jesus and place matters before Him and ask Him for His help. If you ask in faith and trust Him, then He will come in and help you. He has helped me. He has helped many in this room, and He can help you.

Then God has provided another Helper too, another Comforter. The scripture speaks about the Holy Spirit in that way. God has provided tremendous resource for believers, so that what we enjoy at the beginning of our moral history might be maintained to the end. He intends that the welling-up sense of joy and liberty and deliverance, that we had when we first trusted in Christ, might continue in freshness, and not only continue but grow in depth and in fulness of appreciation in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus actually said, you can read about this in John’s gospel (John 16: 7), that it was profitable for the disciples that He should go away so that the Holy Spirit would come. The Holy Spirit has been here ever since Pentecost, when He came down and His power was manifested by that violent impetuous blowing when He sat upon these first believers in that upper room (Acts 2: 2). The Holy Spirit is here, and His

power and blessedness and the intensity of His help that is available. The Holy Spirit is a Person and He is available to every true believer. Every one who acknowledges Christ as Saviour and Lord your heart has been prepared to receive the Holy Spirit. If you do not know that you have the power of the Holy Spirit within you, then ask for Him; if you ask in faith as genuinely desiring, that prayer will be answered.

What a provision God makes, so that what marks us at the beginning of our Christian history might go on and brighten. Scripture speaks about that too, “the path of the righteous is as the shining light, going on and brightening until the day be fully come”, Proverbs 4: 18. Paul had confidence of this very thing, “that he who has begun in you a good work will complete it unto Jesus Christ’s day”. Do you know that God has begun a good work in you? There is the big question of how we answer to the work that God has begun, but what we can say is that, having begun it, God will complete it. He will complete it to His glory when Christ comes to call His own to be with Himself. Do you know about that? Dear young friend, have you heard of the wonderful fact that, as a believer, your hope and your future are not bound up with this world at all; your destiny is bound up with the Lord Jesus, a Man in heaven. He is not going to leave you here all on your own, He is going to come and call all of His saints to be with Himself. Those who have died and those who are still alive, “we, the living who remain”. He will call us all to be with Himself and we shall be for ever with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4: 17). That is the hope that believers have. Then the Lord will come publicly, He will come publicly, He will come to reign. He will be wondered at in all who believe (2 Thessalonians 1: 10). That will be a time of glory, the day of Jesus Christ, as the apostle says here, “unto Jesus Christ’s day”.

You might say that will be the end, but it will not quite be the end. The scripture says, “Then the end”, when everything has been committed to the hand of that One who

is the Beginning. Everything will be placed in subjection to Him and “Then the end when he gives up the kingdom to him who is God and Father” (1 Corinthians 15: 24), so that “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15: 28). So you can see how God achieves His end. God began at the beginning, and His wonderful work and ways continue all through time, and at the end of time God will achieve His end and He will be all in all. Believers are being secured in this scene of time; God has gathered up, and is gathering and will gather a wonderful company of redeemed saints who are like Christ. He is continuing in grace to appeal to your heart and mine, so that we might answer to His call, and be numbered among those who are Christ’s for ever.

May there be no heart here that does not answer to that call of God, that call of the Lord Jesus Christ in His love. May all of us be included in it, know what it is to be among the ransomed throng, those who are redeemed and love the Lord Jesus. May we look forward to His coming for us and may we love His appearing too. May these things be for our encouragement, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Glasgow
6 September 2009