We began this business sermon series with an examination of the business mindset. Then we looked at resource planning and risk analysis. Last week we took business lessons from the famous Parable of Talents.
To read the previous posts from this business series please go to www.myilluminare.com. Today we’re going to begin to look at the subject of branding. To many people branding a business is no more than the design of a logo. There’s the erroneous belief that once you design a logo you’ve created a brand. But every business has a logo, yet not every business is a brand. Therefore design of a logo is not the creation of a brand. The Coca-Colas, Apples and Samsungs and Toyotas of this world are not brands because they have logos. These brands have solid business operations behind their logos. If you doubt pick any edition of Fortune Magazine. Richard Branson may seem to be having fun jumping out of balloons but he has good business brains running his empire. Branding is not artwork. It is a discipline and principle of power to get wealth. The strength of branding is that it makes people pay habitual obedience to successive stimuli.
Let’s look at the foundational and philosophical framework for the branding of your business. To do this, we need to talk about the unlikeliest person to consider in discussing business brands, Apostle John. Not many people really know Apostle John. Most don’t know him beyond the fact that he wrote a gospel. He also wrote a bunch of three letters in the New Testament, for whose content he was branded Apostle of Love. But lest we forget, John also wrote that most bizarre book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation. John dealt with conceptual revelation of Jesus Christ, whilst Paul dealt with administrative revelation. The only other person who had a similar vision of Jesus as John had was Daniel. Before the Book of Revelation all the appearances of Jesus that we saw in scriptures were “a form of the Lord.” Even Moses was only familiar with God’s similitude. (Numbers 12:8) He never saw his essence. But John did. John wrote, “No man hath seen God at any time.” (John 1:18) But then he goes on to say that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14) “That which we have heard, which we have seen…which we have looked at and our hands have touched.” (1 John 1:1) In other words, no man hath seen God the Father but the disciples saw and touched God the Son. Therefore the God perceived by the senses throughout the Old Testament was not God the Father, but God the Son.
Referring to the transfiguration of Jesus, John wrote, “We beheld his glory.” (John 1:14) On the Mount of Transfiguration, “his face did shine like the sun, and his raiment as white as the light.” (Matthew 17:1-6) The transfiguration was foretaste of Revelation. As was in Revelation, so did the disciples fall on their face. The Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration was another being entirely. Like in Revelation we see elemental form. The world is used to the idea of “Baby Jesus” at Christmas, the one guarded by baby angels with chicken wings. The world has NO idea of who Jesus really is! The real Jesus is the one in the Book of Revelation. The Jesus in Revelation is one whose “head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like flames of fire. His feet like polished bronze refined in a furnace and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. He held seven stars in his right hand and a sharp two-edged sword came from his mouth. And his face was like the sun in all its brilliance.” (Revelation 1:13 -17) No wonder John fell at his feet like a dead man. Daniel’s companions took off at the FEELING of his presence. (Daniel 10:7) One day the world will see this Jesus in Revelation. But for now grace prevails. God is not condemning the world. (John 3:17)
Apostle John however had another revelation of Jesus – the virtual Jesus aka Word. The Jesus he wrote about in John 1:1 is an omnimedia Jesus. It is the principle of this omnimedia Jesus that makes the Word accessible on electromagnetic spectrum devices. “In the beginning was the Word,” John wrote. “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) The phrase, “the Word” in John 1:1 is the Greek word Logos. Logos is a very big concept in philosophy. The first enunciator of the concept of the Logos was an eccentric philosopher named Heraclitus. (c.535-475 BC). This is what Heraclitus wrote about the Logos:
“This Logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out…”
Heraclitus thus presaged the revelation of Jesus as the Logos. The Logos is not just “word,” it has other meanings – account, principle, plan, formula, measure, proportion, reckoning. The intellectual leap of Apostle John was his assertion that this Logos Heraclitus, Plato, etc. wrote about was Jesus. And why did we go into the discourse of the Logos concerning branding? The answer is simple: The word “logo” is derived from that Greek word, Logos. A logo is the graphic representation of a corporation. For example the Coca-Cola logo represents the Coca-Cola Corporation in the market place. And so when Jesus said in John 14:9, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!” he declared himself God’s logo. “The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God.” (Hebrews 1:3 NLT) “He (Jesus) is the sole expression of the glory of God – the light-Being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine and He is the perfect imprint and very image of God’s nature…”
Bottom line, Jesus is the logo of God.
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If you’ll like to give your life to Christ please pray this prayer: “Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus. I know that I am a sinner. I believe Jesus died for me and that you raised him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Christ is Lord and I receive him as my Lord and my Saviour. I am now born again. Amen.”
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com