Glamping

*This episode did not record cleanly due to internet issues*

God didn’t stay at a distance. John 1:14 says the Word became flesh and “dwelt among us” and that word means Jesus pitched His tent with us. We start with a simple camping picture and follow it straight into the heart of the incarnation: the Creator steps into our world, takes on real humanity, and makes closeness with God possible in a way rules and rituals never could. 

Then we connect the dots to the Exodus tabernacle, where God’s presence dwelt with Israel, and we show why John’s wording is a deliberate callback. The tabernacle isn’t random ancient detail; it’s a layered, visual preview of Jesus as the meeting place between God and humanity. We talk about glory that isn’t flashy, Shekinah presence, and why Jesus can look ordinary on the outside while being full of the Father’s heart on the inside. 

Finally, we dig into one of the most practical lines in the Bible: Jesus is “full of grace and truth.” Truth tells us what’s really wrong. Grace doesn’t just sympathize, it heals. We challenge performance-based spirituality and reframe growth as grace working from the inside out through humility and faith, leading to “grace upon grace” for everyday life. If you’ve been stuck trying harder, this will feel like oxygen. 

If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What line or idea hit you the hardest?

Transcript

Camping Into John 1:14

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So, how many of you like to go camping? Like the real deal camping in a tent, right? Some people hear camping and they think beautiful mountains next to your loved one. If you're camping with your loved one, right? You're right next to them. You're close. You're sharing life. You're sharing meals. You're sharing stories. You're sharing space right there. Now, John is going to tell us today that the word, who is Jesus, became flesh and he dwelt among us. And that word dwelt is so really, really important for us to understand. That's what we're going to talk about today. This one verse and really this one word, because that word dwelt is literally he pitched his tent among us. He pitched his tent among us, which is another word for tabernacle. When uh Nate goes and plays at this thing, what is the thing you go and play at? With the cowboy camp, they have the tabernacle where the old people meet, and then the naber tackle, where the young people rock and roll. And Nate leads worship at the nabatle. And I just love that so much. The coolest thing I've ever heard. So um, but that's that's literally what Jesus did. Okay, the creator of the universe moved into a campground when he became a human. The infinite God moved into our neighborhood, right? Jesus burned some s'mores while he was trying to cook up some s'mores. And this is the miracle of John chapter 1, verse 14, which is what we're going to talk about today, which says, The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Thank you. Uh okay, so the word became flesh. What does that mean? Well, we've studied the word. Anyone remember the Greek word for word? Logos. Hey, 32 Jesus points for whoever said that. Good job. Uh, it's logos, okay. So, and it says that this logos, which we'll come back to in just a minute, it it's Jesus and he became flesh. This

Logos Became Flesh And Came Close

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is what condescension. That's what I'm trying to say. See? Okay, condescension of God. So God is God, right? Infinite, powerful, glorious, and then he comes to become a man. And the distance between God and what he travels to become a man is pretty close to the number infinity. It would be like if we saw a colony of ants, and we said, I love these ants, but they just don't know that they're lost and going to hell. Ant hell. And we said, we tried to tell them everything. We tried to yell at them, but they don't understand our language. We tried to flood them like little kids pouring water on an ant farm. They didn't hear. So the only way to save these ants would be for you to become an ant, be born as an ant, live as an ant, and guess what? They would kill you and crucify you on little ant sticks. That's condescension. I'm throwing an N in there, and there's condescension. That's God, how far He He came from being God to becoming a man. Now he didn't cease to be God, he was fully God and fully man. Again, the big Bible word for that is called the hypostatic union. It means he's God, but he has a man nature and a God nature all at the same time. He's fully man and fully God. Why does this even matter? Well, he had the real God experience, he was truly, fully God, but he also had the real man experience. He was fully, truly a man and be one, he will forever be a human. Now, John is writing to two big groups of people. There's only two giant groups of people on the earth at the time when the book of John is there's Jews and Gentiles. Okay, it's like Zeus and um uh Hermes. And to them, these guys were simply supermen. They were just like super, they were kind of like men, but a little higher than men, demigod. He could never be revealed by men. He could never even be understood by men. And so for when they hear the term the flesh, the word became flesh, to them it was mind-blowing for the opposite reason because they're like, there's no way the great God could condescend to us to become one of us. So, what does this all mean? Jesus is God's message, his word personified, given flesh. So then it says, and he dwelt among us. Like I said, this means he dwelt at in a tent or as in a tent or he tabled. God connected the coming of Jesus to humanity with God coming and living with Israel back in the tabernacle. So 3,000 years before Jesus, God chose the nation

Tabernacle Meaning And God With Us

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of Israel to be the family where they come from. And in that nation of Israel, he gave them something called the tabernacle in the book of Exodus. And so when John says Jesus tabernacled among us, this is supposed to be a big reminder to everybody. Go back and study what we learned about Jesus in the, or we learned about the Messiah, or Israel learned about God in the tabernacle. And so I got this picture of the tabernacle for you. Did you know more space is given to describing this tabernacle than the entire creation of the world? Two chapters are given to the creation of the world, while ten chapters are given to showing the wonders of this and how to build it and what it all means. This was a place that God gave to the nation of Israel where God could dwell with them. Okay, it's very special, and there's there's all kinds of parts and pieces that we're gonna look at today. And it's like this multi-level image of the person and work of Jesus just for you. Okay, so when you think of the tabernacle, you have to think this is Jesus, this is him in a picture form. It's like if you were to try to draw a picture of yourself, but not using lines, but using emojis. What emojis would you put? Right? Would you do a grumpy face? Would you do a smiley face? Would you do like yeah, there's all kinds turtle, a turtle, right? Taylor would probably use a turtle or one of her images. There you go. You know, ducks right here. You obviously use some ducks because you like cruising. Right. Well, the the tabernacle is like filled with all these cool images, and every single one of them points directly to Jesus and something that is a part of his identity and something that is about him. Most people never study these chapters in Exodus chapter 23 25 through 40. Um, yet, if we do, the Holy Spirit will teach us how this Jesus uh can work in our lives and how we can properly understand him through this tabernacle. The hardest part is really this how do we organize so many different pictures and types that the tabernacle teaches us? So I'll give you kind of three basic levels that this represents uh God to us. Number one, uh the tabernacle represents heaven. So it's a picture also of heaven. It's a symbolic of heaven. Secondly, it's symbolic of Jesus, like we're talking about today, where it's a meeting place between God and man, and that all happens in Jesus. Again, the Jews didn't come up with this idea. They're not like, let's build a tent for God to dwell in. He gave them everything specific with all these chapters of explaining it, and it all foreshadows Jesus as being uh a man in his tent with us. And then the third kind of picture that this is for us is Jesus in the church, how he communes with us today, uh, which kind of is very related to Jesus becoming a man and living in his tent 2,000 years ago. And I want to read to you this verse in Revelation. So towards the end of the Bible, the very second to last chapter, we get this. It says, And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. What does this describe? It all speaks of relationship. And so I want you to connect the word relationship with tabernacle and tabernacle with Jesus, and then it makes a big circle and it's all about relationship, which is nearness, right? A shared life. So the key to understanding everything about the tabernacle is always Jesus. Okay? It's it's all about his person, his work, each of the parts is to describe different aspects of his character or his ministry or something he does. So don't just think of it as a waste of 15 chapters in the book of Exodus, but it's it's not just history either, it's all a foreshadow about Jesus. And sometimes God like hides these really amazing truths for us in the Bible, and he says, they're there. And you're like, Well, God doesn't ever talk to me. And he's like, I hid beautiful things that I want to open your eyes to. But you gotta read, you need to invest some time, you need to spend time with me alone, and I will speak to you. This is why it's a great encouragement. All the churches will always encourage you to get alone with Jesus, spend time reading the word. Why? Because God wants to reveal himself to you, and he may use the tabernacle, he may use uh something else in the Old Testament or the New Testament, but God Himself loves you so much that you're his child and he will not speak to you. Double negative, he will speak to you, he loves to speak to you, and uh he always speaks with pictures in the Bible before he uses words. So just think of the tabernacle, it's the picture of the gospel before we get the words of the gospel in John or Romans or Ephesians in the New Testament. We have these pictures of it in the Old Testament. So again, our text today is John 1.14, which says the word became flesh, dwelt among us, or tabernacled, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What does that mean that we beheld his glory? Well, John is saying him and the other disciples and all Jesus' friends, it's not just he saw, because he could have used a different Greek word, or he looked, that's a different Greek word, but he beheld, and that means he carefully studied. He carefully studied, and what he saw was glory. What does that mean? Does that mean Jesus was glowing

Beholding Glory As Grace And Truth

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all the time with visual glory? That he just floated wherever he went and is like, ooh, that's glorious. No, Jesus was just as normal in flesh and bone as any one of us. He burped, he had cramps, he had to go to the bathroom every day. He was a real legit person. And so, what are they talking about when they're saying they studied him? Well, they saw something about his character, there was something hidden in him, hidden that they were able to see. And so, in the tabernacle, in those ten chapters, it's full of these descriptions of God's grace and truth. He says, as we beheld his glory, what we saw is he was the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So as we study the tabernacle, we're gonna see these two ideas of grace and truth. And then as we study Jesus, we're gonna see he is full of grace and truth. What are those two things? What does it mean that Jesus is full of truth and grace? Well, if you go to a doctor, they will tell you the truth. Hopefully. Right, Gail? They'll tell you you have this sickness, right? A doctor that's full of truth. Okay, but just a doctor that's full of truth doesn't heal you. Just because they know what's wrong, he can accurately diagnose what is wrong with us. And he says, What's wrong with you is your sin. Your sin has separated you from God, and all men have sinned and fallen short of God, but then he's also full of grace. And that means he has a prescription that can cure the thing that he is diagnosing in us. So he says, Man, you are sick with sin, but I have a solution for you, and that is my own life. He gives his own life as the prescription. So he's the best doctor. We call him the good doctor because he diagnoses our problem, and then he says, the solution is me coming to live inside you, in you, and through you by my grace, through our union together. That's how he fixes us. So, how do we approach if we if we're gonna study the tabernacle and realize what it says, how do we do that with humility and faith? Because that's how God says we relate to his grace and how we receive his grace. God gives grace to the humble and we access his grace by faith. So if you come to God, if you decide you want to study the tabernacle, you're gonna open up the book of Exodus, chapter 25 through 40, and you're gonna read it, but you have to read it not just like with pride and self-sufficiency,

Humility And Faith Over Performance

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but with humility saying, God, speak to me, and faith saying, God, I believe that you are going to speak to me. And that's how we reapproach God at all times, and that's how he says a relationship with him works. So that's having a humble, teachable heart. Um, okay, so this tabernacle is basically gonna be a relationship-building tool. By the way, how is your relationship with God? Do you answer that question when you think about it with thoughts of outward measurements? Well, I I didn't lie yesterday, I gave some money to this person or to the church, I didn't do that or I did do this. Is that how we measure our relationship with God? Is by our works? Well, it's it's what a lot of people tell us to do. Measuring our outward performance, but that's not the way of grace. The only true way to judge our relationship with God is based on inward realities of humility and faith. Those are called heart things or relational realities. You can't you can't see someone's humility on the outside because they could totally be faking it. You can't see someone's faith. It they have to come from the heart, and then they will they will it will produce fruit in their life, but you can't see it even in your own life. Don't be fooled if you're trying super hard to follow Jesus, but it's not working, you're like, but I'm trying my best. Isn't that what God wants from me? No, God wants a heart that is humble and will trust Him, and that's how this all works. So I'm just gonna briefly give you an outline of what we're not gonna study 15 chapters of Exodus this morning. I know it feels like we are, but we're not. So if you were to if you read chapters 25 through 31, you're gonna see that there's this big design of the tabernacle, okay? And that's the design of grace. And what that show is showing us through those chapters 25 through 31, is it's showing us the the relationship God wants with from his perspective.

Grace Works From Inside Out

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So, what does that mean? It starts from the holy of holies, and then it goes out to the holy place, then it goes out to the outer court, and then it goes out to um, I'm gonna get back to the picture. Okay, so it starts in the the holy of holies, which is this place right up here, which is where his presence is, and then this is the the uh holy place where you have uh the um menorah, you know, the lampstand, the table of showbread, and the altar of incense. And then out here you have this is the outer court where you have the altar of sacrifice, okay, where they would make sacrifices there. And and so what is that showing us? Well, uh each of those things talks about Jesus, every single one of them. But all we're gonna talk about today is it goes from in to out. That's how grace works in to out, in and out, in and out. That's why in and out is the best hamburgers in the world, is because you you have in and out is holy, and they even put Bible verses on their stuff. So praise the Lord for in and out. Okay. First, God, this is how grace works. That's the tabernacle teaching us. Grace works from the heart and it works its way out. Okay, so if I meet you and I see that you're struggling with a sin, I am not going to say, you know what, you're struggling with a sin, and you should get that fixed. You should work on that, and then God maybe, you know, will love you a little bit more or he'll help you out. That is not that's working from out in. Okay, so God works from the in out. So, what am I gonna tell you? I'm gonna teach you about your identity in Christ and what he says is true about you. From man's perspective, they build it from the outside in. So they start with the the uh the fence around the outside of it, and they build each part. It says, then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory, the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. So the outside of the tent wasn't super fancy, but God filled the very inner part with his glory. Okay, just like Jesus, uh, but it says he was filled with all with grace and truth. He was filled with it, and as they carefully studied him, they discovered that. But look in Isaiah, it says he shall grow up before him as a tender plant. This is written five years before Jesus, as a root down of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness that when we see him, there's no beauty that we should desire him. So the Bible says that when Jesus came, he was not the most impressive guy. And I think that gives a lot of the guys in here hope, right? It's not about the outside of the tent, what's going on on the inside. And that's what blows, that's what we're seeing here today. Jesus has glory on the inside. About the inner heart of Jesus, that's that shows us that he's the only begotten of the Father. That shows us that he is God because it's the love and the heart that he has that transforms that we see, and it's incredible. So I'm gonna give you 10 real quick things that show that the tabernacle was like Jesus, just to wet your whistle about these things. Now, first of all, it was a temporary tent, right? You don't build a tent to live in forever. Well, just like Jesus was temporarily on this earth less than 40 years, like probably 33, you know. So the tabernacle describes the first coming of Jesus. But then they built a temple, and the temple represents

Ten Tabernacle Clues Pointing To Jesus

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the eternal kingdom of Jesus, the Jesus coming in glory, and it's much bigger, much better, more it's more beautiful. All right. The second thing is that it was used in the wilderness, just like Jesus grew up in the wilderness. He had it says he had no place to lay his head even. He was always in the wilderness. Three, it was it wasn't fancy. The tabernacle wasn't fancy, right? Unlike the Temple of Solomon, which showed up later, um, that does show his glory. The first one, the glory was hidden inside the Holy of Holies. There was a place in the heart of it where the glory of Jesus dwelt. The fifth thing or fourth thing is that God hung out there. And so uh we call this the Shekinah glory. Have you ever heard the Shekinah glory of God? Okay, a lot of times there'll be churches where the Shekinah Church of the Glory. Okay, the Shekinah is a Hebrew word that means the That which dwells with. Isn't that crazy? So Shekinah means it's God's visible presence in one place. And that was hidden in the Holy of Holies, also hidden in the heart of Jesus. And now, where is the visible presence of God? Where is the actual dwelling presence of God? Someone tell me. In our hearts, once you receive Christ, the God of the universe takes up residence in you. You become his tabernacle. Or if you're weird, his naber tackle. So that's what it means that he was full of grace and truth. Everything he did was full of truth and grace. Which, when you combine those two and it leaks out of you, it's called love. It's called love. Why would or sorry, the fifth thing that we see here is that man would meet with God here at this tabernacle. They would meet together. And Jesus is where we meet with God and we commune with him. You know, back then they had to have a high priest that would go between God and man, but for us, Jesus has become the high priest. So we don't even need anyone to go between us. You can go directly to God and have that connection. So all this is again a picture of Jesus. The other thing is that the law, remember Moses brought down the Ten Commandments and then he broke them into pieces. Well, those pieces he collected and he put them inside the Ark of the Covenant, which was hidden inside the tabernacle. And so the law was kept safe there in the heart of it, just like Jesus kept the law in his heart. Right? He kept the law. He always did God's will. He always kept the law. He didn't come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. The seventh thing that we see is that there was a sacrifice made there. There was blood. There was they were always sprinkling blood there. And that's very symbolic of Jesus and the work that he accomplished for us, which is through his blood that he provides everything that he does for us. That's the work that he did. The eighth thing is that it was a place of worship. They were always worshiping God first thing in the morning, at noon, at night, all night long. They were worshiping God. And it's amazing because Jesus also was always worshiping God and always equipping others to do the same. He was always glorifying his father. Everything he said, he's like, God is amazing, God is great. This is why he was able to let that come out of his life. That was the purpose of his life. And guess what? Man's purpose, do you ever want to know what the purpose of your life is? It's to glorify God and praise God. Can you believe that? You've been searching for purpose all these, and all you had to do was come to church, and I tell you, glorify God. That's your purpose in life. You start doing that, you'll find everything else in your life falls into order, starts making sense. You'll see God work in your life if you say, I am going to glorify him in all that I do and all that I say and all that I think from the inside to the out. The ninth thing we see about the tabernacle is there was only one door. There was only one door, and Jesus says, I am the door. There's only one way to the Father, and that's through Jesus. The last thing is that the tabernacle was approached through the tribe of Judah. Okay, so all the tribes would gather around, but down here on this one end on the southern end was Judah. And that was a clue onto the identity of Jesus when he came, because he was born, he was part of the tribe of Judah. All right, so now we understand what the word tabernacle means, how it speaks of Jesus. And so I'm just going to read our verse again, and you're going to see how incredibly beautiful it is to your spirit. Now, watch this. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, or tabernacled among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So I want to leave you with this last question How full of grace and truth is Jesus? How much truth does he have? He knows it all, right? He has all the truth. He's the source of all truth. Well, how much grace does he have? Infinite. He's literally the source of all truth and all grace. So how much grace did it take to

Oceans Of Grace And A New Glamping

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wash away your sins? Well, let's say it was like a spoonful and it washed you clean. Well, then how much grace does Jesus have for you today to walk in his will, to honor God, the grace that we need to be transformed? How much grace does he have? He has oceans of grace. Forgiving you was just the beginning. Our life is to be grace upon grace. We'll see this, grace upon grace. In fact, peek down at verse 16 because it says two verses after this. We're going to look at this more next week. But the word became flesh, dwelt among us, we've full of grace and truth. All right, so the next one says, verse 16, of his fullness we have all received grace for grace. And that's an idiom that means grace upon grace upon grace upon grace and a never-ending cycle of grace, which means God never gets tired of giving you grace. He never gets embarrassed by how much grace you need. You might be embarrassed about what a failure you are, but God is not. You might be embarrassed about how you constantly fail or get confused or mess up. But God says, I love you and I have all the grace. And I'm gonna give it to anyone who will humble themselves and look to me in faith. He is so deadly serious about this promise. So how do I receive what he's full of? This grace and truth by humility and faith. God gives grace to the humble, James 4, 6, and we have access to the grace in which we stand, Romans 5, 2. So what is the lesson for they? What are we gonna do today as we go out here and we probably I don't know about doing a baptism, but as we as we go out from here, what are we gonna do? Number one, we're gonna receive grace as a gift. Okay, because grace is about the finished work of Jesus offered to you, and that's what it's all about. The truth says your sins were dealt with once and for all. You don't have to repeatedly have your sins dealt with. That is the finished work of Jesus. You don't have to repeatedly over and over go back to him. You are good, you are saved, you are, and now it's about number two, we're gonna feed our mind with his truth and with his grace. So he changes, he transforms how we think. Because grace doesn't just cover you, but it re-educates you. So as you repeatedly hear and believe truth, your mind gets renewed. Third, let grace produce the right response instead of trying harder to be a better Christian. Instead of trying harder to fix your life or get clean or do this or that, allow grace to do that work. Just come to him and say, God, I need you. Here's all my problems. I lay them down at your altar, I lay them down at your feet, I give them to you. I can't fix myself. That's what humility is. Then faith comes in and says, I believe that you can fix me, you can transform me. So that is what this whole union with Christ, how it produces response. Now, this was all called glamping, right? What is that? I when I think of glamping, you know, it's like when you go fancy camping, right? But I'm changing the definition today because I'm I'm combining the word glory and camping. Okay, so now when you think glamping, I want you to think of spending time with God and the Him tabernacling with you is to show you the inside glory that he wants to reveal in your life, which is grace and truth. Okay, so grace and truth in your life, that's the new definition of glamping, and that's something I would be into. Let's pray. Father, we worship you and we thank you, and we receive your grace and your mercy and your truth. It is your truth that transforms us, and it is your grace that lifts us up from the pit. God, you you forgive any who will call upon you, and you will set free any who will depend on you. And so, God, I pray that all in here, everyone who hears the sound of my voice, that they would have their sins freely forgiven by simply saying, Jesus, I confess all my sin to you. My identity is now in you, I believe and receive your forgiveness. And then all who are in here who are already forgiven, I pray we would stand on those truths and we would walk in your spirit. Jesus, set us free by your truth and the power of your grace. Help us to walk in it today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.