Title: The Word Was God
Scripture: John 1:1-5
Speaker: Reid Kapple, ReidK@cckc.church

> Who do we say that Jesus is?

“How can [we atheists] be sure that we know enough to know? As twenty-first century neo-Darwinian materialists, convinced that the meaning and mechanism of life have only been fully clear since the year 1859, we hold ourselves categorically wiser than those credulous knee-benders...We are no more evolved, and certainly no more intelligent than them. What convinces us our knowledge is so final?”

-Julian Barnes, Nothing to be Frightened Of

"Some have spoken of the universe spontaneously creating itself: the whole cosmos propped up by nothing, absolutely nothing. As miracles go, this would be unparalleled. Everything from nothing? Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus but this would mean the virgin birth of the cosmos. In fact, it’s the virgin birth of the cosmos but without a virgin, without anything. Here would be the greatest conjuring trick ever pulled: nothing up the sleeve, no sleeve, not even a magician. Just pure magic, out of nowhere.”

-Glen Scrivener, 3,2,1: The Story of God, the World, and You

“Whilst standing in midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration and devotion which fill and elevate the mind. I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”

-Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

“We modernists believe that ‘to think’ is the foundation upon which the house constituting what it means to be human is built. And by thinking, we can accurately and rationally perceive what is good. And once we know what is good, we can rationally decide what is beautiful…We believe that thinking is ultimately more important than what we experience with our physical senses, let alone what we know to be ethically good. And we have applied this no less in our life in the church.”

-Dr. Curt Thompson, The Soul of Desire

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

-Antoine de Saint Exupery

Crown him the Lord of years,
the potentate of time,
creator of the rolling spheres,
ineffably sublime.
All hail, Redeemer, hail!
for thou hast died for me;
thy praise shall never, never fail
throughout eternity.

> Jesus is God or he’s nothing

> Be open to the Word of God

“The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him--or reject him. My God! There was a gap behind me too. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble-but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God-but, by God, there was no certainty that He was not.”

-Sheldon Van Aucken, A Severe Mercy