SPEAKER_00: You have your Bibles, would you turn with me to John chapter 1?
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: Continuing our series on the introduction to the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read verses 14 through 18 together.
SPEAKER_00: God's word says, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me.
SPEAKER_00: For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
SPEAKER_00: For the law was given through Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray to the Lord together.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, this morning, Lord, we are gathered together, Lord, because we believe that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: That he is very God, a very God, that he is entirely man, that he has taken our place and our sins upon himself, and that he could bear those sins because he is your son.
SPEAKER_00: That he has died in our our stead, and that Lord, he was raised on the third day, that he has ascended to the right hand of the Father, that he is ruling over the cosmos, and that all of us, all of us who have faith in him, have eternal hope through him.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Father, I pray that you would renew that hope in us today.
SPEAKER_00: For all of us who are apathetic and sleepy in our faith, I pray that you would awaken us and stir up our affections.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, for those that have never professed faith in Christ, I pray that today you would open up their eyes and they would profess faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, Lord, that you would just allow the suffering saints to take one more step for one more day.
SPEAKER_00: We ask these things now in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: Joan Osborne's song One of Us is a smash hit by virtually any metric that you want to use to measure a song that has more than 150 million plays on Spotify.
SPEAKER_00: And what's unique about the song is that it really does something that pop songs don't normally do.
SPEAKER_00: It gets into the existential and spiritual issues of life.
SPEAKER_00: One of the lyrics goes like this what if God was one of us?
SPEAKER_00: Just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.
SPEAKER_00: If God had a face, what would it be like?
SPEAKER_00: And would you want to see?
SPEAKER_00: That's what's interesting about the song is it's really aiming to answer a really ancient, ancient question, but it's seeking to answer it in a postmodern, innovative way.
SPEAKER_00: The ancient question, a question that is old as humankind ourselves, is who is God?
SPEAKER_00: Where is God?
SPEAKER_00: What is God like?
SPEAKER_00: What does God look like?
SPEAKER_00: And the postmodern innovation, the solution that Joan Osborne puts forward to answer the question, is that maybe we ought to stop looking out there.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we ought to stop trying to revere some God somewhere that we can't see.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we ought to start treating one another with a kind of reverence that we have traditionally and historically reserved from God.
SPEAKER_00: And we could zone out there for a second and say, hey, we can see, remember that secular humanism is its own religion.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a worldview, it's a religion.
SPEAKER_00: And it even comes with its own hymns, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what's interesting about the prologue of John's gospel as he begins to write it is John is answering the question that she asked.
SPEAKER_00: What if God became one of us?
SPEAKER_00: What if God was one of us?
SPEAKER_00: And John is saying emphatically, not only is this some hypothetical that we can theorize about, that emphatically God has become one of us, that this is who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: That in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That what he's saying to us is that we actually can know what God is like, and we can know what God is like because Jesus is God, and Jesus has shown us exactly what God is like.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we kind of round out our time here in John chapter 1 this morning, that's what I want us to see.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to see what God is like.
SPEAKER_00: First, I want you to see that he came to the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: He came to the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: That John is emphatically establishing two things about the person of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: First, he's establishing that he is in fact the creator God, that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he told us that there is nothing has been made that was not made by him, through him, and for him.
SPEAKER_00: That from the beginning Jesus existed, and all things have been made by him, through him, and for him.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now he's kind of put down for a few verses, as we saw last week, this concept of the word.
SPEAKER_00: But when he comes to verse 14, he picks up the thread again.
SPEAKER_00: He's advancing the argument.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God, and then he picks it back up here in verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And the word became flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And so he wants us to see that not only is Jesus the creator God, but Jesus is at the very same time a real man.
SPEAKER_00: That there was never a time in which Jesus, the Word, didn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: But when he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin, he did in that moment become something that he had never been before.
SPEAKER_00: A living, breathing, human being in space and in time.
SPEAKER_00: That John wants us to understand a couple of things about him.
SPEAKER_00: That first of all, he's not half and half human and God.
SPEAKER_00: He's not some demigod.
SPEAKER_00: He's not, he's not Moana, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where he's kind of a God, kind of a man, not really either.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, he was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was entirely God, fully God.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you can say about God, you can say about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But he also wants us to know that Jesus wasn't some superhuman.
SPEAKER_00: He's not faster than a locomotive or able to stop a speeding bullet.
SPEAKER_00: He's not able to do all of those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: No, he is a man.
SPEAKER_00: He took on the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you can say about a man, you can say about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this word flesh encompasses more than just skin on a body.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of flesh, it encompasses all of the human experience, all of human complexity, all of human suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that is true about a human is true about Jesus, minus the sin nature, that all of the experiences that we have, all of the temptations that we've known, all of the sufferings that we've incurred, all of the hungers, all of the thirsts, all of these appetites that are incumbent upon mankind, all of these things are included in this word flesh, and all of them are true about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what becomes a difficult question to resolve, or a difficult tension to resolve, is how is it that God, that Jesus is divine nature, he is creator God, and Jesus is human nature, he is a real man, how do these coexist in a single person?
SPEAKER_00: Now, I believe that question is so profound that we are probably gonna spend all of eternity trying to dive into it and search the bottom of it, and we're never going to find the bottom of it.
SPEAKER_00: We've been searching it for 2,000 years since his birth, and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface.
SPEAKER_00: But if we were just gonna give a really summary explanation of how these two natures coexist, the way that I would frame it up is we would frame it up as forfeiture and acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: Forfeiture and acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: That when Jesus took on his human nature, he forfeited some things about being God.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't forfeit being God, he didn't forfeit the attributes of God, he didn't forfeit in any way his deity.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what he forfeited was his dignity as God.
SPEAKER_00: What he forfeited were his privileges as God.
SPEAKER_00: That he didn't stop being holy, he didn't stop being omnipotent, he didn't stop being all of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he forfeited these things so that now he would have to accept some experiences of human nature that were otherwise foreign to God.
SPEAKER_00: He would accept hunger, he would accept thirst, he would accept the need to be swaddled and fed by his little teenage mama.
SPEAKER_00: He would accept the betrayal and the sadness that would come from having friends on earth, having left perfect community in the triune Godhead to come and dwell among us.
SPEAKER_00: He would accept the brokenness of relationships that would happen here.
SPEAKER_00: He would accept temptation that would be experienced here, he would accept exhaustion that would be experienced here.
SPEAKER_00: That we could summarize it by saying this that the reason that God became a man was really so that he could do what God can't ordinarily do.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what God can't ordinarily do?
SPEAKER_00: He can't die.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus became a man because the wages of sin are death, and the only way those wages were going to be paid was if an infinite God died them on behalf of you and I to resolve an infinite offense that we have brought against him.
SPEAKER_00: And so God became man and dwelt among us that he might die in our place.
SPEAKER_00: I would draw your attention to the word became there.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_00: We had a glitch there.
SPEAKER_00: The word became.
SPEAKER_00: The word became is what we call the heiress tense.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I don't intend to give you grammar lessons every week, but this is significant.
SPEAKER_00: The heiress tense is not a tense that we have in the English language, and it means something more than something that happened in the past.
SPEAKER_00: It sometimes doesn't really revert or talk about chronology a whole lot.
SPEAKER_00: It really means something that is like a completed action.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the significance of that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus became flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Completed.
SPEAKER_00: It's final, it's done, it's it's it's fixed.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Jesus didn't become a man and then re-become a spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus remains a man now for all eternity.
SPEAKER_00: One day, you're gonna enter into glory.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be face to face with your Savior, and he's going to have an actual face.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be able to see the scars and touch the scars.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be able to hug his neck and shake his hand because he is a real man.
SPEAKER_00: And he's still a real man today, and he'll still be a real man forever because he became flesh for us.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not just a real man, he lived a real life.
SPEAKER_00: He lived a real life.
SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting word here.
SPEAKER_00: If you focus on the word dwelt, if you saw this in the original language, what you would see is that this is actually more literally translated as the word tabernacled.
SPEAKER_00: Tabernacled.
SPEAKER_00: That the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.
SPEAKER_00: That's a really interesting way to put it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Not typically the way that we would think.
SPEAKER_00: So it must be that John has something that he wants us to see.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is the significance of the tabernacle?
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle was the forerunner, the predecessor to the temple, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That the tabernacle was what God gave to his people so that they could experience his presence in their midst while they were where?
SPEAKER_00: In the wilderness, right?
SPEAKER_00: In the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Back in the uh the Exodus days when God was leading his people toward the promised land of Canaan, and then then the languishing of the 40 years, there was a lot of vulnerability there in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: You would be afraid of what who might attack you, or what wild animals, or the exposure to the elements that would be quite extreme there.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't know where your food would come from or where your water would come from.
SPEAKER_00: You're in the midst of a desert.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's all of this unsettledness, all of this anxiety, all of this insecurity that would come to characterize the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so what was the hope that they had?
SPEAKER_00: What was it that was meant to alleviate the anxiety?
SPEAKER_00: What was meant to help secure them in the midst of their insecurity?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they were tent-dwelling people at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And there in the midst of the wilderness, the tabernacle was established as a tent.
SPEAKER_00: But it was a tent that was to be right in the middle of the camp.
SPEAKER_00: And so all of the other tents of all the people of Israel would be there, circling around the tabernacle, the tent.
SPEAKER_00: And there in the tabernacle would be the Shechinah glory of God, glowing so that the whole camp, as the vulnerabilities arose, as the insecurities came up, as the anxieties began to press in, as all of the worries of life pressed on, as they worried about where their food was coming from and whether or not they could be attacked from every side, or whether they would be exposed by all of the elements, what they could do is they could look to the center of the camp.
SPEAKER_00: And looking in the center of the camp, they would see there that in their midst was God, the very presence of God, and God would be their provider, and God would be their protector, and God would be their deliverer, that they would know that even though they were where they didn't want to be, that until they got into the promised land and the security that it brought, that there in their midst, wherever they went and whatever they experienced, God was there with them to experience it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, do you see the picture?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the picture?
SPEAKER_00: That in the beginning the word became flesh and dwelt among us, tabernacled among us.
SPEAKER_00: That reminds us that Jesus came and he lived in the wilderness too.
SPEAKER_00: Like this experience that we're all living called life, it's a wilderness, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's a wilderness, man.
SPEAKER_00: And think about what characterizes the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: The wilderness is a place of loss and tears, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that most experts believe that Jesus' dad likely died when he was little?
SPEAKER_00: That we have no, outside of his childhood, we have no mention of the name of Joseph that ever comes back up, either in the scriptures or in church history.
SPEAKER_00: So most scholars are convinced that Jesus' dad likely died while Jesus was a teenager or a young man.
SPEAKER_00: He knew loss.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the the scriptures tell us that his best friend Lazarus dies.
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus dies and Jesus weeps over his death.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the wilderness, you think about the people that are supposed to love you the most or the people that can hurt you the deepest, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Those are real life experiences in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And think about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Think about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came, John has already told us Jesus came to his own people, and his own people did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus would come into Jerusalem and everybody would be throwing a parade and they would be saying, Hosanna, Hosanna, glory to God in the highest one week.
SPEAKER_00: And by the very next week, they were shouting, Crucify Him, crucify him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knew what it was like that the people who loved you the most can hurt you the deepest.
SPEAKER_00: The wilderness is a place where obedience to God can be agonizing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That you can know what God would have you to do and where God would have you to go, and everything in you says you don't want to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Everything in you asks and demands that you do something else, and you're in this agonizing decision as to whether or not you'll actually obey him.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this reminds us of Jesus' experience in Gethsemane, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: When there the cross is in front of him and he begins to see and behold the will of God for his life, and the capillaries burst, and he begins to sweat, great drops of blood, and he prays sincerely, Oh God, oh God, would you remove this cup from me?
SPEAKER_00: But not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus joined us here in the wilderness, brothers and sisters, because he lived a real life that he might offer us real hope.
SPEAKER_00: One of the realizations that I've come in pastoral ministry is that people are often much more comforted by your experiences than they are by your expertise.
SPEAKER_00: That we typically, when somebody's going through a hard time, want to take and throw them our best truth bomb, or we have our little memes that we say, or our Christian cliches that we go to.
SPEAKER_00: And very often, very often, those well-meaning, thoughtful cliches actually inflict more harm than they do good, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it's an honor as a pastor to be able to walk with people through the hardest of the hardest.
SPEAKER_00: And I do everything that I can to sit and weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what I have found inevitably what somebody actually wants is they want to find the person that says experience the loss of a child too.
SPEAKER_00: They want to go and they want to talk with the widow that has had to bury her husband too.
SPEAKER_00: They want to go to the person that has experienced the abandonment of their wife or their husband too.
SPEAKER_00: And they want to hear from them and they want to know how they were able to get to the other side and the hope that's on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: They want to know how it's possible from somebody that's actually been through it.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, that's our God.
SPEAKER_00: That's our God.
SPEAKER_00: He has been tempted in every way that we have been tempted.
SPEAKER_00: He has suffered in every way that we have suffered, he has experienced all that we have experienced.
SPEAKER_00: He has the experience of human complexity and human hardship and human difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: He has walked with us through the wilderness, but brothers and sisters, like the tabernacle, we see in the resurrection the realization that it's all temporary because he has overcome the wilderness on our behalf that he might wipe away those tears, overcome our loss, that we could be secured forever in the promised land with him.
SPEAKER_00: He is in the wilderness because we are in the wilderness, but brothers and sisters, he has overcome the wilderness, and because he has overcome the wilderness, all of us will be overcome it with him if our faith and confidence is in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing I want you to see this morning is that he gives in abundance.
SPEAKER_00: He gives in abundance.
SPEAKER_00: We spend a lot of our lives worried about running out, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have three kids.
SPEAKER_00: I I'm always worried about running out of cereal.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Um but but think about how much of our lives are characterized by the fear of running out.
SPEAKER_00: You're worried about running out of money, you're worried about running out of retirement, you're worried about running out of health, worried about running out of patience.
SPEAKER_00: Humans, because of sin, often have a scarcity mindset that we're always worried about our limitations rather than understanding God in light of his limitlessness, right?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't have a scarcity mindset.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus always has an abundance mindset.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Jesus is literally never worried about running out, and here is John saying this out the at the outset.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you go into John chapter 2, the very next chapter, you're at a wedding.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the wedding in Cada, and they run out of wine.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's panicked.
SPEAKER_00: Mary is panicked, the decide, the wedding party is panicked.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is a lot, hey y'all, y'all, this is okay.
SPEAKER_00: I got this, I got this, and he just makes more.
SPEAKER_00: And it's better than anything that they've had before, right?
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 6, there's tens of thousands of people.
SPEAKER_00: The crowds are thronging upon Jesus to hear everything that Jesus has to say.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples, these men of great faith that would be the starters of the church, they look to Jesus, they're like, What are we gonna feed these people?
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna starve to death.
SPEAKER_00: They're all gonna die out there, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's probably a made up, uh, a made-up crisis a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, hey, guys, do you forget who's with you?
SPEAKER_00: I got this, I got this.
SPEAKER_00: He takes five loaves and two fish and he multiplies it out so that the entire crowd has plenty, and there's basketfuls that are picked up in excess after.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That John is always building up to what Jesus will tell us in John chapter 10, verse 10, that he has come that we may have life and that we may have it abundantly.
SPEAKER_00: That we do not serve a God that operates with a scarcity mindset, but one that has an abundance mindset.
SPEAKER_00: And this is meant to set the anticipation on our experience with who this God will be: that he has abundant love.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice here that this is a very Trinitarian introduction.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: So we've already said this is the this is a reference.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why this is continues to do this, y'all.
SPEAKER_00: Please forgive me.
SPEAKER_00: We have this very Trinitarian introduction, but we've already said this refers to the word, the word refers to the son of God, but then he says it explicitly, the son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And then he talks about the father of God, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, or the father of the son.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have this introduction, again, seeing the father and the son being side by side.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's telling us is that the son is showing us the glory of the father.
SPEAKER_00: The son is showing us something of the resemblance of the father, of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: This is what sons do, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: You you get around a son that has a good dad.
SPEAKER_00: And I understand there's all kinds of you know outliers to this because of a broken world, but you get around a son that has a good dad, not a perfect dad, but a good dad, you'll start picking up the body language of the dad by watching the son, won't you?
SPEAKER_00: You'll you'll start picking up on some of the expressions that the dad uses by what by listening to the son.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see something about the way the dad carries himself by the way the son carries himself.
SPEAKER_00: And John is saying this is exactly what Jesus does for the Heavenly Father that he shows us something of what he's like.
SPEAKER_00: That we can hear in his expressions the expression.
SPEAKER_00: We can see in the way he carries himself, the way the father would carry himself.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he uses some really remarkable language, I think, to really drill down on this.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice that he says, We have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: Glory is of the only Son from the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And again, you'll remember, I've told you every week so far that if you're gonna understand the New Testament, you have to understand that the New Testament is given to us in an Old Testament context, right?
SPEAKER_00: That if we want to understand what's really happening in the New Testament, we have to have the framework of the Old Testament, especially the Exodus, is particularly, especially important in the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is meant to take us back to the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So in Exodus chapter 33 and 34, we have what may be the most audacious request a man has ever made of God.
SPEAKER_00: You'll remember what happens, that God enters into covenant with his people, he gives them the Ten Commandments, and Moses begins to come down the hill, and as he comes down Mount Sinai, what's the first thing that he sees?
SPEAKER_00: They've already begun to be idolaters.
SPEAKER_00: As soon as they get the first commandment, they break it virtually immediately.
SPEAKER_00: They have the golden calf and they're bowing down to it and they're worshiping it.
SPEAKER_00: And God says to Moses, You know what?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll just forsake my people.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll just scrap all the people of Israel and I'll just start a new group with you.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses begins to intercede on behalf of Israel, and he begins to plead with God, and God's anger relents against him.
SPEAKER_00: And the answering of Moses' prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of that prayer, Moses makes this audacious request of God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, God, I want you to show me your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Will you show me your glory?
SPEAKER_00: And God's like, Whoa, bro, you have no idea what you're asking for here.
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea what you're even beginning to tread upon here.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says two things to him.
SPEAKER_00: He says, first of all, my glory is best known by people through the experience of my kindness.
SPEAKER_00: My glory is best known by people through the experience of my people.
SPEAKER_00: But secondly, secondly, here's what I'll do, Moses.
SPEAKER_00: What I'll do is I'll shade you with my hand, and I'll pass by and I'll let you just see the back corners of my glory.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that, maybe that you'll be able to survive.
SPEAKER_00: And so he does.
SPEAKER_00: He goes and he passes by and he shields Moses so that Moses only catches a glimpse of the back corner of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't kill him, it illuminates his face with incandescent glory of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Exodus 34, there's a renewal of the covenant that has just been broken.
SPEAKER_00: A renewal of the covenant where the relationship had been severed because of the unfaithfulness of his people, where God essentially covenants with his people that I will be your God forever.
SPEAKER_00: I will abound with you, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's the refrain that we read.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord passed before him.
SPEAKER_00: This is right here.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding.
SPEAKER_00: There's our word, in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
SPEAKER_00: So he begins this refrain that's going to be picked up over and again all the way through all of the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Let's come back to John chapter 1 and see exactly what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: When he says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, what he is saying is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the request of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Moses makes this audacious request.
SPEAKER_00: Can we see the glory?
SPEAKER_00: Can I see your glory, O Lord?
SPEAKER_00: And God says, if you see my glory, my glory is so holy and so potent, it will incinerate you on the spot.
SPEAKER_00: But now, because God's glory has been cloaked in the flesh, you can see his glory when you can see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is the fulfillment of the glory of God put in human flesh so that we can behold how good and great and holy and mighty God is in a way that all of us can actually survive.
SPEAKER_00: But it gets more beautiful still.
SPEAKER_00: You'll remember the the quote, the famous quote here that I pointed out, abounding in steadfast love that shows up there in Exodus chapter 34.
SPEAKER_00: If you were to have the uh the Septuagint, if you were to have the Old Testament written in Hebrew, if you would translate that into Greek, which is what we call the Septuagint, what you would see is abounding in steadfast love is actually the exact same translation as full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: That God tells his people there in Exodus 34, I am a God who is filled with grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now, do you see what he's saying?
SPEAKER_00: This refrain that has been popping up all the way through the Old Testament, time and again, the sweet refrain that rejuvenates his people and renews his covenant and commits him to his people.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying this refrain has always been about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is the evidence of the abundant love that God has for his people.
SPEAKER_00: Steadfast love is the Hebrew word Hassed.
SPEAKER_00: Hasid.
SPEAKER_00: It's the covenant word of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most common words that comes up again and again.
SPEAKER_00: The whole book of Ruth is about Hesed.
SPEAKER_00: You'll read it again and again throughout the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: You read it here in Exodus chapter 34.
SPEAKER_00: It is the covenant devoting love.
SPEAKER_00: And it means it's it's a word that is so complex and so manifold in its glory that there's really not a human word that or an English word that is a good substitute.
SPEAKER_00: There is a human word, it's a sed.
SPEAKER_00: There's not an English word that is a good substitute for it.
SPEAKER_00: That it means love, but it means more than love.
SPEAKER_00: It means kindness, but it means more than kindness.
SPEAKER_00: It means loyalty and devotion, but it means more than loyalty and devotion.
SPEAKER_00: It's kindness in excess.
SPEAKER_00: It's love irrational.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's devotion all the way to the end.
SPEAKER_00: That it's it's the love of God practically experienced.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just knowing that God has loves you, it's eating your food, recognizing that it comes from God's hand.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just knowing that God is going to protect you, it's living your life without the constant bubbling of anxiety tightening in your chest because you are convinced that God is securing you.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying is, is that Jesus is the clear and practical experience of the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: That when Jesus spreads his arms on the cross and declares that it is finished, that what we are seeing in the price that has been paid for our sin is how deeply and abundantly and profoundly our God has loved us.
SPEAKER_00: He has loved us to the point of laying down the life of his own son, and there is no devotion, there is no love, there is no kindness that is deeper or better than that.
SPEAKER_00: That he wants us to see that he has an abundant love, and because of that abundant love, it brings about an abundant grace.
SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting phrase there at the end of verse 16 where he says, Grace upon grace.
SPEAKER_00: And I think typically when we read John chapter 1 and we come, we love that idea of grace upon grace, we kind of have in our minds that it's like an ocean, it's like one wave of grace after the other, and like the waves of grace are never gonna end.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true, but I don't think that's at all what this is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, the word in upon here, most commentators believe is more accurately translated as instead of grace instead of grace.
SPEAKER_00: For from his fullness we have all received grace instead of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what on earth does that mean, and why does that even matter this morning?
SPEAKER_00: He's clarifying for us when he talks about the law in verse 17, the law of Moses, and then he's talking about what Jesus has come to done as a con has come to do as a contrast.
SPEAKER_00: That when God gives the law through Moses, you recognize the law is a gift of grace, right?
SPEAKER_00: We don't often think of it that way.
SPEAKER_00: But it is.
SPEAKER_00: The law says what?
SPEAKER_00: It says God wants to be in relationship with us.
SPEAKER_00: The law paints for us a picture of God's tangible holiness.
SPEAKER_00: The law actually restrains evil in a sin and sinful and cursed world.
SPEAKER_00: The law actually shows us how far short of God's glory that we fall.
SPEAKER_00: And do you know how many of these disclosures that you were owed?
SPEAKER_00: Not one of them.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't have to tell you one thing.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have to tell you that he existed, he didn't have to tell you that you were a sinner, he didn't have to tell you that he was good, he didn't have to tell you that he wanted relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: He owed you none of those things.
SPEAKER_00: The law is grace.
SPEAKER_00: But the law is insufficient, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's an insufficient means of grace because it can tell you that you're a sinner, it can tell you that there is evil and that God is holy, and that God wants relationship with you, but it can't overcome your sin.
SPEAKER_00: It can't transform your nature, and so it is grace, but it is insufficient to save, and so you don't just need grace, you need grace instead of grace.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus has come to do.
SPEAKER_00: This is the point.
SPEAKER_00: For the law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is that Jesus didn't come and progress the truth, Jesus didn't come and evolve the truth, Jesus didn't come and change the truth, Jesus didn't even come to come and overlook the truth because he thinks you're such a swell guy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and he fulfilled the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to give to you his abundant heart, to make the way, to open up the avenue so that you can actually enter into a relationship with him as a result of your sin being overcome by what his son has done.
SPEAKER_00: I love the picture of verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: He says, No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side, at the Father's side.
SPEAKER_00: The picture here is that you have the Son and the Father up in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And the Son is so close that he's leaned in and he's pulled in by the Father into His Son.
SPEAKER_00: And so the picture here is that the Father has essentially taken and pulled out his own heart and sent it down here to earth to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: That when he sends his son, he doesn't just send some guy from somewhere, someplace to do something.
SPEAKER_00: He's sending his very heartbeat to come and be among us here on the earth in the midst of the wilderness, that we might be able to walk with him and know him and enjoy him and glorify him.
SPEAKER_00: That he's showing us from the outset that we can look to Jesus, and looking to Jesus, we will know the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: John 8's a good picture of this, right?
SPEAKER_00: John 8 is the woman that's caught in the act of adultery.
SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees and the experts of the law, they bring her out and they bring her before Jesus, and the experts of the law, they do what?
SPEAKER_00: They quote Moses.
SPEAKER_00: They say, Moses, the law of Moses tells us that we should stone such a woman.
SPEAKER_00: They're operating on old grace, aren't they?
SPEAKER_00: They're operating on the old grace of the old covenant, and they bring them before Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember how Jesus responds?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus kneels down and he begins to write in the dirt, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now there's a lot of speculation about what Jesus wrote in the dirt, and we'll never really know.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you the one I find most compelling.
SPEAKER_00: The one I find most compelling is that Jesus kneeled down there, riding in the dirt, and then he wrote down all of the violations of every man that was there and how they had violated the law of Moses themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And one by one he walks through the entire crowd showing how they have violated the law of Moses, and one by one, each of the men of the Pharisees, the experts of the law, knowing that they are guilty and undone, walk away until there's no one left to accuse her.
SPEAKER_00: And he looks at her and he says, Where have your accusers gone?
SPEAKER_00: Neither do I condemn you.
SPEAKER_00: Go and sin no more.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the way that ministered to her?
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the way that Jesus met her in the midst of her brokenness and how that would have changed her life forever?
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus offered to her was grace instead of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, we're all that woman.
SPEAKER_00: All of us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it is adultery for you or for you, maybe it's something else.
SPEAKER_00: But as painful as it is, what every single one of us need to do is every single one of us need to go to the moments that most bring shame in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The moment of the sins that haunt us in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you need to go back to what your relationship with your high school girlfriend or boyfriend.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you need to go and revisit the frat houses that created all kinds of regrets in college.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you need to go back to the affair, and some of you need to go back to the divorce, or you need to go to the mistakes that you've made with your kids.
SPEAKER_00: You need to go to all of these things that haunt you, that are in the back corner of your life, that have come to shade everything that you think and everything that you every way that you see yourself and every way that you see others with a sense of shame.
SPEAKER_00: But now you need to bring Jesus with you.
SPEAKER_00: When you bring Jesus with you, and you open up that closet that's been closed for a long, long, long time, do you know what he's gonna say?
SPEAKER_00: I love you.
SPEAKER_00: I forgive you.
SPEAKER_00: I do not condemn you.
SPEAKER_00: Go and sin no more.
SPEAKER_00: And he's gonna offer to you grace instead of grace.