Grace Upon Grace - [John 1:14-18]

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Well, I think Pastor Mike said this morning that I had written and just said, you know, that my...
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I was just being blown away by this passage, and I thought I would kind of give you a peek behind the curtain, as it were, of the inter -pastoral council, you know, before the sermon began.
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What actually happened is I sent him an email. Subject line, nervous. This is what
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I wrote. Just getting 100 % convinced that verse 14 is all
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I will do this Sunday. It's probably the most significant verse in the Bible.
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Without it, nothing else matters. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when
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I say that this verse is probably the most significant in the Bible. Let me put it to you this way.
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What happens if you have a house and the foundation crumbles? Down goes the house.
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And this is a foundational bit of Scripture. There's no getting around it. You have to build on this foundation.
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Get it right, and you can literally build a house of theology on it. Get it wrong, as many have done over the centuries, and you're sunk.
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I mean, as I was going through this passage, I just thought, there is so much here. There's historical theology.
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There's systematic theology. There are grammatical problems. This is just packed and really,
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I just had to kind of edit, cut, and just be done with it. I want to give you another illustration of how central
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I think this is, and how you really need to start right. You know, when I was in the sixth grade, well, let me ask you this.
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How many of you have played flag football? Flag football? Flag football is a little bit different.
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What happens when the ball hits the ground? Fumble, everybody jumps on it? No. At least that's not how it used to be when
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I was a kid. Maybe they've changed the rules. I don't know. When the ball hits the ground, the play is dead.
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It's over. So we came to understand that one of the most significant positions on the team, there was quarterback and everything else, and I was just kind of a scrub.
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I mean, people say, did you play football in high school? And I'm like, no,
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I was too skinny, too weak, and too slow. Other than that, I would have been a good player.
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And I wasn't any stronger when I was in the sixth grade. But I had one tremendous skill.
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I would actually look at the quarterback when I was hiking the ball and make sure he got the ball. It never hit the ground, so I played center.
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Because if the ball hits the ground, the whole play stops. It's dead. You can't go anywhere. We won the city championship, and it wasn't because I was a great player.
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We had other guys who did all the things, but it has to start somewhere. There has to be a foundation. If you don't get the thing started, it's not going anywhere.
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And just to get another illustration, this year at Thanksgiving, since that's coming up here,
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I was just thinking, I'm going, well, what kind of things would we do that would be just totally wrong? How about this?
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How about for the ladies this year, you try this. Bake your pies, and then bake the crust.
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Just kind of put it in there. Bake the turkey, and then stuff it.
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These are just things you wouldn't do, and you can't unpack all the truths in John's gospel without getting this first part of it right.
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You can't understand who Christ is without getting this verse right. These 18 verses here, this prologue is what it's called, the first 18 verses are kind of like a
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Mount Rushmore passage. This is just, if we had four passages,
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I don't know what the other three would be, but this one would go up on there. It is that central.
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It is that vital. Just to kind of catch us up to where we are in the gospel,
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John's gospel is written. Why do you suppose you write a gospel?
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To provide more data? Why would you write a gospel? It's an evangelistic tool.
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You want people to know what? You want them to know who Jesus is and how they might be saved.
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In fact, he says that in John 20, 31. He says, but these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
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Central to gaining eternal life, which is life in his name, that's what it is, is believing everything that is true of Jesus, that he is the
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Christ, the Messiah, the son of God. Everything that scripture says about him, you must believe.
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The last time I preached, we looked at verses 6 to 13. And I called it the
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God who gives or the giving God. I think it was the God who gives. And we looked at the gifts that he gives in these verses, 6 to 13.
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And the first gift I said was John the Baptist. This amazing man, the greatest mere mortal ever born,
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Jesus would call him. And his job was to prepare the way for Jesus. He was the first gift. Second gift was the light of the world,
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Jesus himself. And the third gift was adoption, the opportunity to become the sons and daughters of God.
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I remember, interestingly enough, Luke came in a few days after I preached and said to me, he said, hi, dad.
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And it took me a minute to realize what he was doing, because I gave the illustration last time of the way people preach adoption or the way they talk about adoption is
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God gives you the right, but you have to accept that right and that you adopt, basically you adopt
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God. And I said, it's like people show up at your door and they say, hi, dad. And so he came up to me and he goes, hi, dad. That was pretty funny.
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But if you would open your Bibles to the Gospel of John, in case we are not clear about that, we're going to be looking at John 1, verses 14 to 18.
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I'm going to read that much. And we're just going to zero in on verse 14. John 1.
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And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.
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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.
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For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth come through Jesus Christ.
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No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father's side. He has made him known.
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And again, I'm just going to focus on verse 14. But this evening, I want you to see three displays of the grace of God toward us in Christ Jesus.
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So that the foundations of your understanding of your Savior will form the basis of an even greater understanding of him.
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I want you to believe Jesus is who John says he is.
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It is only by internalizing these truths that you will both realize how great the grace of God is.
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And at the same time, be unable to control your joy over how great he is, over who he is.
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Our first display of grace, of the grace of God. Again, verse 14 is grace incarnate.
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And the word became flesh. Now that word, the
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Greek word is logos. And I'm just going to park there for a minute. Because it's a word that is loaded with meaning.
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And to fully grasp what John's communicating, we need to really look at it for a moment. To Greeks, to the
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Greek mind, the idea of logos would be that of a cosmic force.
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Basically, the most powerful creative force in the entire universe. And a series of Greek philosophers, we're not going to give you a philosophy class tonight.
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But they had used this word and poured their own ideas into exactly what was this logos, what it comprised.
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So in his own way, kind of in verses 1 to 14, as he starts with logos and just continues there.
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And kind of building up the pressure, building up the pressure until he reveals who it is. He's really giving us a bit of a
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Mars Hill experience. If you remember in Acts 17, when Paul goes up to the Areopagus, Mars Hill.
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And he's gone through Athens. And he's walking through it and says, you know, he becomes provoked as he sees all these idols.
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All these false gods that are created by the Greeks. And he stands up on Mars Hill and he gives this sermon.
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He says, look, I know that you're religious people because I see all your idols, all your false gods.
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Now, let me tell you, you've got this one to this unknown God. Let me tell you about this unknown God. And John's saying essentially here, let me tell you who this logos really is.
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Let me tell you about this unknown God, as it were. He goes on to say, the logos became.
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That verb there, became, does not imply a transformation. It's not like, you know, Steve became a
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Christian or Steve became a grown up. We're still waiting on that one. It's not some kind of change.
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It's not a transformation. This is because that's not what happened.
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Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, didn't change into a man. He didn't cease becoming a
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God and then become a man. He took on an additional nature. He never ceased being fully
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God. He also did not merely appear to be a man, although that's one of the kind of false interpretations of this, that he became a man or that he appeared to be a man.
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That is wrong. And that's an ancient heresy known as docetism.
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That's wrong. He became, did not, does not imply a transformation.
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It's an additional nature that he takes on. The logos becomes or became sarks, flesh.
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Now, it's interesting. I'm kind of going word through word for a minute because I'm kind of building up to something. But this whole idea, the logos became flesh.
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Again, that would be just shocking to the Greek mind, to the Greek philosophers and all that they believed.
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They had, you know, when I was a kid, I used to read Greek. What's the word where they have all these gods?
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What is it? See, I keep hearing pathology and I know that's wrong.
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Mythology. Yeah, pathology. Mythology where they have these myths.
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And I used to love that. But, you know, here's the interesting thing about the Greek gods. They would sometimes appear to be men.
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They would take on this kind of form. They would appear to be men. But they were never subject to the limitations, the physical limitations of the world because their appearance was a disguise.
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It was an illusion. They never ceased being who they were. Zeus never stopped being
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Zeus. So when they would hear this, this idea that this all -powerful logos would take on a human form, which they regarded the human form as base, as degraded, as useless, as more of a hindrance than a help, it would be shocking to them.
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And we get into really how good and how careful a theologian and a wordsmith
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John is. Because he didn't write the logos became a man.
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Because then he would use the word anthropos meaning man. And he wasn't transformed into a man.
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That's not what happened at all. He also didn't write, use the Greek word soma meaning body, which would have the effect of meaning that the word, the logos was born into a body.
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He uses flesh, sarx. We would often use that or see that word used referring to the sinful nature of men or even our own kind of sin hangover.
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Don't give in to the flesh kind of thing. But in this case, one man has written this, sarx is all the human person in creaturely existence as distinct from God.
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In other words, the logos without ceasing to be God for a single moment took on all the limitations of humanity in a fallen world.
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Consider that, having no sin, having no sin nature because of the way in which he was physically conceived, brought about with the
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Holy Spirit and not through human means. He had a female and anyway, he had a human mother, but not a human father.
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But having no sin nature, no impact of sin on him, one might expect that he would suffer none of the effects of the fall, that he wouldn't have all the limitations that we experienced, but he did.
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All of them. So let's just put aside the Greeks. The Greeks would be shocked as they read this.
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Now let's look at how Jews would read this passage. Again, this is packed with not so obvious references, at least not obvious to us maybe 2 ,000 years later.
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First, there's the obvious reference. I mean, this one's clear to Genesis 1, starting in verse 1.
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In the beginning, in the beginning, we would understand, you know, those two things, you put them side by side, you can't miss it. But the word of God, that is to say, his command by which he created everything, they would understand that and that would be fixed in the
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Hebrew mind. Genesis 1, they would think of that. And then here in John, it is the logos, the word who is the creator.
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The logos who though God himself is distinct from the Father. And it's interesting, and I've said this before,
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I took a Hebrew reading class, and every time we came to the
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Tetragrammaton, the four -letter word of God, or name of God, Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh,
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Yahweh, we would have to say Adonai. Well, there are other words that they would use when they were reading.
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And one of them, because they, and here's why, because, you know, you didn't want to take the Lord's name in vain, and so they taught that even if you sneezed, or if you mispronounced it, or you hiccup during the middle of it, that you were taking the
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Lord's name in vain. Well, one of the words that they would use instead of Yahweh, is sometimes they would say the word.
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So this idea of logos, the word, equaling
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God, is not that strange to the Hebrew mind. So what does this all mean? We've got the
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Hebrew, we've got the Greek. How does this all work together? One man wrote this, he said,
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The logos, alike for Jew and Gentile, represents the ruling fact of the universe, and represents that fact as the self -expression of God.
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The Jew will remember that by the word of the Lord were the heavens made. The Greek will think of the rational principle of which all natural laws are particular expressions.
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Both will agree that this logos is the starting point for all things.
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So now if you're going to write a gospel tract, if you want to convince people of who Jesus is, this is a very clever way to do it.
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I mean, he's kind of, he's cross -cultural. He's got it going on. I mean, John knows what he's doing.
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In talking about this word becoming flesh, the council of Chalcedon said this.
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It's a little technical and I cut it down a little bit, but listen. Two natures, talking about Jesus.
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Inconfusedly, there's a word we don't use very often. Inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same
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Son, and only begotten God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's pretty long.
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What does it mean? It just means this, God plus man equals the God -man. 100 %
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God, 100 % man. 100 % plus 100 % equals 100%.
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Now, the natural man, the unbeliever, says, that's impossible, I can't believe that. To the believer, we say what?
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I can't fully wrap my head around that, but I believe it. What greater statement of the grace of God toward us could there be that Jesus would leave
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His throne, His rightful place with the Father, and add to Himself a nature subject to the rules of His own creation?
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That is grace. So our first display of grace is
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Jesus Christ is truly the grace incarnate. Second display of grace is grace among us.
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Again, look at verse 14. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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That's an amazing thought. As you read through this, you just think the Logos, second person of the Trinity, takes on a human body and comes down to earth.
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I mean, this is just, the whole passage takes an amazing trajectory. Eternally existent with the
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Father, creator of the universe, the true light, the grantor of eternal life, becomes fully man while remaining fully
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God. And then He lived with the disciples. And as you go through the Gospels, you figure out these guys aren't the best of the best.
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This is pretty much a motley lot. They're not the cream of the crop. These are fishermen. These are
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Galileans. These are not the kind of topper most and the popper most.
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This is the hoi polloi. These are the regular people. And that's the thrust of this idea here.
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It's not His family that John's talking about, although that would be true. He dwelt among His family, right?
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We could say that He dwelt in Israel. He dwelt with the people, and that would be true. We could say
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He dwelt in the world, and that would be true. But that's not the thrust of it. The thrust of it here is clearly us being the disciples, the 12 disciples and then more eventually.
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But this idea of dwelt means to live, to settle, to take up residence, to tabernacle, to pitch a tent.
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In fact, the noun form of this verb is tabernacle. Again, John intentionally uses imagery that would be very familiar to Jewish readers.
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Why? Because he happens to be Jewish. He's reaching out to them. He wants them to believe. Keep your fingers there in John 1.
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Let's look at Exodus 40 verses 30 to 38 for a moment. Exodus 40 verses 33 to 38.
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We see here the completion of the tabernacle.
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And when I say He here, it refers to Moses. Verse 33,
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And He erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar and set up the screen of the gate of the court.
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So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the
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Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the
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Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out.
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But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up.
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For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night.
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In the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
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So they've gone through all the detailed preparation to build this tabernacle, this place for the
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Lord to exhibit His glory in a special way. And He does that. He does it so that the people would be assured of His presence as they go through the wilderness.
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And with the coming of Christ, God made Himself manifest not in a cloud, not in a fire, and not in some temporary way, but in a physical permanent way.
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You can go back to John. But I just wanted us to see kind of the parallel there. But now when
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Jesus comes, He is the permanent manifestation of the glory of God.
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And you say, well, how can that be? Jesus died. How's that permanent? Well, He was resurrected, and He still has a physical body, and He always will have a physical body.
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For all, of course, is glorified now, but for all of eternity, the full glory of God will be on full display in the person, in the physical person of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And we will worship Him physically forever. One man wrote this.
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All the ways of tabernacling of God in Israel had been transitory or incomplete.
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All are fulfilled and superseded by the Word made flesh and dwelling among us.
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This is the final fulfillment. This is the greatest exhibit of God's glory ever.
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Leon Morris wrote this. He said, What had been hinted at and even realized in a dim, imperfect fashion earlier was perfectly fulfilled in the
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Word made flesh. So there we have that.
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But now, I mean, a question that I thought about was, well, why? Why did Jesus come here to dwell on earth?
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I mean, Pastor Mike said this morning, he goes, you know, why wasn't that He had to live His whole life here? Why didn't He just come on Friday, you know, die, be resurrected on Sunday, and that would be that?
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It came up with several reasons. Why did Jesus come here to die?
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Why did He come to the earth? To dwell? Well, first of all, it was the Father's will. I love this.
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John 6, 38. Just even thinking about it in this sense. Listen to this.
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For I've come down from heaven. This is it, right? The great Logos. Come down and taken on a body of flesh.
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Not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.
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He was here to do the Father's will. He says that over and over again. He doesn't even come to say
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His own words, but to say the words that the Father has given Him. Why else would
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He come? Well, to fulfill prophecy. In Isaiah, chapter 48, verses 12 through 13 and verse 16, kind of had to edit it a little bit, but listen to this.
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Starting at verse 12, Listen to me, O Jacob in Israel, whom I called. I am He. I am the first and I am the last.
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Who does that sound like? Who refers to Himself as the first and the last? I am the
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Alpha and Omega. Verse 13. My hand laid the foundation of the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens.
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This is creation. Who was there? Who did this? Jesus. When I called to them, they stand forth together.
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Listen to verse 16. Draw near to me. Hear this. From the beginning I have not spoken in secret.
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From the time it came to be, I have been there. And now the Lord God has sent me and His Spirit, eternally sent from the
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Father. Why else did He come? To fulfill the law on our behalf.
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If God demands perfection, and He does, and we cannot fulfill
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God's perfect law, we are sinners. Every single person here tonight is a sinner. Someone had to do that.
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And Christ did it on our behalf. Matthew 5 .17. Jesus said,
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Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
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And ultimately, not only did He fulfill them, He obeyed them perfectly. Why? Was it for His own good?
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Was it so that He could merit heaven? No. Absolutely not. It was for us.
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Romans 5 .10 says that for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by what?
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By His life. By His life. We could never perfectly obey the law, yet that was what
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God demanded. Perfection. As Mike was saying this morning, it is works that get us to heaven, it's just not our own works.
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We can't do it. Christ had to obey for us. Another reason that Christ had to come to earth.
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Reason number four, so that witnesses, the disciples, those with whom
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He dwelt, could see what? His sinlessness. His sinlessness. It's one thing to say that He was without sin, but how about, how about just the idea,
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I mean just imagine if you had guys, if you had 12 guys or more, however many were around you, watching your every move, how could the disciples possibly be willing to lay down their own lives, both literally in that most of them died violent deaths, or figuratively meaning that they went out and spent their time proclaiming the gospel.
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Why would they do that if they knew it was a fraud? Why would they do that if they had reason to believe that Jesus was not the perfect, unblemished, spotless
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Lamb of God, that He wasn't the one who could die for their sins? How could
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His mother and brothers come to faith in Him if they saw Him sin?
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How could they believe Him? Now I'll admit that that's a bit of an argument from silence, we don't have an exhaustive record of His life, but what we do know is that He never sinned because those who were all around Him testified to that.
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We have eyewitness accounts. Humanly speaking you cannot embolden men and women to exhaust themselves, to risk and lose their lives for something they know to be a lie, that just doesn't happen.
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The disciples were with the Lord every single day of His ministry. They knew not only His teachings but His life.
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Reason number five that He had to come to earth and take on a human nature in addition to His divine nature so that He could be rejected over and over.
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You say, well why is that so important? It's an exhibition of the grace of God. Throughout the
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Gospels, over and over again, Jesus preaches the truth to people and what do they do? They reject
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Him. They love Him when He's feeding them, they love Him when He's doing things for them and as soon as He says, you know what, you need to repent, you need to change, they reject
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Him. They get angry, they no longer follow Him and eventually what do they do? They chant for His death.
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Reason number six, to be the most personal and accessible revelation of God the world will ever know.
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We know general revelation, that is we see creation all around us and Romans 1 would tell us that that testifies that that is enough information to tell us all that we need to know that there is a
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God. We see the organization. We see the intelligence behind creation.
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We say, well I know there's a God, I can't deny it. Some people suppress that truth.
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We also have specific revelation, that is the Bible where God reveals
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Himself in a salvific way, in a way that we can grasp that we're sinners, that we need a
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Savior and who the Savior is. But Jesus Christ coming to earth is the last word
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Hebrews 1 would tell us. It is the final word from the Father. It is the ultimate word. It is the ultimate exhibition display of God Himself.
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God walking, talking, preaching, eating, sleeping, praying, healing, weeping, pleading, rebuking, loving in flesh on earth among men with the disciples, with the masses, with the crowds.
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What greater communication of God could there ever be and the answer is there could be none till we get to heaven.
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What greater display of grace and love could there be? None. So our first display of grace, grace incarnate.
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Our second, grace among us. And our third, grace revealing glory. The glory of God exhibited in a human body.
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Again, look at verse 14. And we have seen His glory. We have seen with physical eyes.
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And the word means to get a perception of something that is transcended, that is something glorious, that is something magnificent.
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And indeed, that word glory, the Greek word doxa, is used for the
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Hebrew word kavod in the Septuagint. And that is precisely the word we saw in Exodus 40.
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It is the kavod of Yahweh, the glory of Yahweh filling the tabernacle, the glory of the
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Lord. Henrickson writes this about that word.
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He says it always, about the word seen, he says it always includes a plus, the plus of calm scrutiny, contemplation, or even, listen, wonderment.
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It describes the act of one who does not stare absentmindedly, nor look quickly, nor necessarily perceive comprehensively.
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On the contrary, this individual regards an object and reflects upon it. He scans it, examining it with care.
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He studies it, viewing and considering it thoughtfully. Thus, while Jesus was among them, the eye and mind of the evangelist and of other witnesses had rested on the incarnate word until, to some extent, they had penetrated the mystery.
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They had seen his glory, the radiance of his grace, and the majesty of his truth manifested in all his works and word, the attributes of deity shining through the veil of his human nature.
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Just as the glory of God appeared in the tabernacle and in the temple, so the glory appeared in the human tabernacle, in Jesus Christ.
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The disciples saw it in the signs and miracles, the wonders that he performed before them. Peter, James, and John even saw the glory of the
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Lord in a special way on the Mount of Transfiguration. And there were more than 500 witnesses to the resurrected
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Christ, certainly his victory over death was a unique exhibition of his glory.
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They saw it. They also saw the glory of the uniquely
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Son of God, and that's kind of a weird way of phrasing it, but I didn't know how else to say it. Looking at verse 14, glory as of the only
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Son from the Father. That word, the only Son, is really, it's one word in the
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Greek, monogenes, and it means or pertains to being the only one of its kind, unique, of something that there is only one example in a category.
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It's in a category all by itself. You know, it's interesting because a lot of ink has been spilled over this word over the centuries, and one need only look at the different translations to see why.
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I'm going to give you three translations. Well, actually, I'll only give you two because two of the three are the same, but King James says this,
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John 1, 14, the only begotten of the Father. NIV says this, the one and only who came from the
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Father. For once, I'd have to say the NIV wins. It's a pretty rare occurrence. There was a man named
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Athanasius. I found his nickname rather interesting.
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Anybody know what his nickname is? What's that? Well, against the world, that was kind of the phrase associated with him, yes.
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His nickname, the Black Dwarf. And you think, well, that's not a very exciting nickname.
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I don't know if I'd want that one or not. Because he was short and dark -skinned because he was from Egypt.
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He was exiled how many times? Once, twice, 30 times.
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I mean, if this was a fight, they would have stopped it. He was exiled five times by four Roman emperors spending 17 of the 45 years he served as Bishop of Alexandria in exile.
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But in the end, his theological enemies were the ones who were branded heretics.
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His main opponent was a man named Arius who said this, if the Father begat the
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Son, this all gets back to that concept of the only begotten. Listen to this. This is what Arius said about that idea of begotten.
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He said, if the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence.
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And from this it follows that there was a time when the Son was not. I've said it before, but I remember distinctly talking to a
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Mormon missionary, a guy who used to be a Mormon missionary, and everything that he said agreed with what
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I said, and that scared me. And so finally I decided, you know what, I've got to come up with a way to make him reveal himself for the heretic that I know he is, because I used to be that heretic.
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I said, was there ever a time when Jesus did not exist? And he thought for a moment, and he said, yes.
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And that's exactly what Arius said. He said there was a time that Jesus did not exist, and that's not what that word means.
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It simply means that he's unique, that there's no other like him. All we have to do is just look back at verse 1.
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As I said a few weeks ago, in the beginning was the
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Word. Well, that was there is in perfect tense, and it means that he was there before anything else existed.
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So that word, monogenes, simply means that Jesus was unique, that there is none like him.
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Just as an example of why that doesn't mean that he was begotten, listen to Hebrews 11, 17.
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Same word. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son.
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It's his only begotten son in some translations. Why? It's the same word, monogenes.
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Well, did Abraham have more than one son? We know if we research it that he had
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Ishmael. So what was unique about Isaac? Why is Isaac referred to here as his only son?
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Because he was the unique one. He was the son of promise. That's what
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Hermon Bavinck, theologian, says. But the name son of God, when ascribed to Christ, has a far deeper meaning than the theocratic, meaning he's not just the mere king of Israel, who in time became an adopted son of God.
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Neither was he called son of God because of his supernatural birth, as the Sosinians held.
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Neither is he a son of God merely in an ethical sense, as others suppose, as we're all sons and daughters of God.
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Neither did he receive the title son of God as a new name in connection with his atoning work and resurrection.
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But he is son of God in a metaphysical sense, by nature. And from eternity he has always been the son of God.
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That's always been his identity. He's always existed as the second person of the Trinity. He is exalted high above angels and prophets, the eternal son to whom the
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Father gave to have life in himself, equal to the Father in knowledge, in honor, in creative and redemptive power, in work and in dominion.
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Because of this sonship, ultimately he was condemned to death. That's Bavinck. Also, how else was his glory made manifest?
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Well, the glory of grace and truth. Look again at verse 14. Full of grace and truth. Jesus personified grace, unmerited favor, just by being there and all the things that he did.
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But he was the very embodiment of the grace of God to sinners. His loving kindness extended to those who deserved his wrath.
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We know the story of the rich young ruler. As far as evangelical encounters go, questionable methodology.
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According to the modern evangelists, those who would be apologists these days, because they say, you've got to convince people how good they are and that God really loves them.
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But if you recall, the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
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And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery.
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Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and your mother. And he said, the rich young ruler said, all these things
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I have kept for my youth. Now, right there, I know what I would have done.
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I would have probably said, okay, well, give me the rest of your testimony. Or are you sure about that?
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Or maybe I would have just given up. But Jesus doesn't stop.
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He goes right to the heart of the matter. Verse 22, he says, when Jesus heard this, he said to them, or he said to him, one thing you still lack, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.
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But when he, the rich young ruler, heard these things, he became very sad for he was extremely rich. It was like he had, you know, one little weakness in his armor.
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And Jesus went, and just pushed on it. And he got sad and left.
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Jesus knew his unsaved status. And being full of grace, he gave him the unsettling news.
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When he spoke, his messages always contained hope, undeserved hope, the promise of demerited favor for belief in him.
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25 times, talking about grace and truth, 25 times in John, the word truth appears.
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It is a central, or a central theme of the gospel, that apart from Jesus, one cannot know the truth.
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In fact, Jesus himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. So again, we have this idea that he is grace and truth incarnate.
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Now, let me ask you this. What is amazing grace? I mean, it kind of drives me nuts when I see, you know,
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I go to unbelieving funerals, and everybody wants to sing amazing grace, because they don't get it. Amazing grace is salvation by death.
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Like, Pastor Mike was talking about this morning at the baptism. People think, well, you know what, they've become an angel, they've gone to a better place, they must be in heaven because they died.
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That's not amazing. Amazing grace is God the
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Son taking on an additional nature, subjecting himself to frail humanity, to rescue the souls of men.
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That is amazing. Is the gospel in these first 18 verses?
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Well, there's one thing I think that's obviously missing. I mean, I could argue about all the other ones. I mean, why send a savior if men aren't sinful and they reject him, they don't like the light, they can't overcome the light, they can't apprehend it.
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But if we consider the words of John, that the disciples beheld the glory of Christ, and we think about all that that entails, what the glory of Christ means,
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I don't think it's a stretch. John 12 verses 23, 24, Jesus said this, the hour has come for the
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Son of Man to be glorified. Well, what did he mean? He meant that he was going to die.
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Listen, he says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
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Another point in the gospel, John 2, 19, Jesus said, I am going to destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He was glorified even in his death.
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So just to kind of summarize and tie this all up to the Greek and Hebrew mind, John introduces this logos, this word,
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Jesus, the unique sin of God, the personal revelation of God to mankind, and if we fail to grasp all the truths of who he is, and why he came, we cannot preach
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Christ and him crucified. Do you want others to know Christ? Do you long to see those you love come to Christ?
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There's only one way that you can see this. You must proclaim him, and to do that, you must know him.
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And there is no more important and clear, really crystal clear portrait of Christ in all the
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Bible than right here in John 1. Let's pray. Our father in heaven, what an amazing thought that you would send your son to leave your side, as it were, to come to earth, to take on the limitations of humanity, to be assaulted, even just by the sin nature that was all around him, that you would do that for your own glory and for our souls is a truth that is too great to contain.
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Lord, I don't know how we even do it. We ought to be the most joyful, happy people when we think every day we wake up aching, hurting, getting older, experiencing all the pain and suffering of creation, fallen, sinful, yet to know that not because of anything we have done, but because of your grace and mercy toward us, you sent your son to live the perfect life, to die on a cross, a death that we deserved, to be raised on the third day, to cause us to be born again, nothing that we could have done on our own.
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That is amazing grace. Father, I just pray for everyone here tonight that we would not be a people that just think, oh, this is some theological exercise, but that we would be exercised to speak of the glories of Christ, to speak of the wondrous
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God who became God and man, that he might redeem us from the penalty we deserved.
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What a great God you are. What an awesome Savior you are. Lord, we just praise you in Christ's name.