Only Begotten God?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 1 and we're going to hold our place at verse 18.
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We have come this morning to the end of what is known as John's prologue, which is the introduction to John's gospel.
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This is the first 18 verses of John's gospel, which lay the foundation for who
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John is telling us that Jesus is and what Jesus came to accomplish.
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And it lays before us a word after word after word message about who
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Christ is in relationship to all other things. It tells us his relationship to time in the beginning was the word.
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It tells us his relationship to divinity. The word was with God and the word was
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God. It tells us his relationship to life and light. It says in him was life and that life was the light of men.
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Tells us his relationship to John. It says there was a man sent from God who came whose name was
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John and he was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light. Tells us his relationship to the world.
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It says he was in the world, but the world did not know him. It tells us his relationship to Israel.
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It says he came to his own people and his own people did not receive him. Tells us his relationship to believers.
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It says, but to as many as did receive him to them, he gave the power to become children of God. Tells us his relationship to the flesh.
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The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Tells us that he had a glory that was his own.
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It says we beheld his glory. Glory of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.
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Tells us his relationship to Moses. It says through the law, or through Moses came the law, but through Jesus Christ came grace and truth.
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And now we come finally to the end of this magnificent prologue where John will tell us three very important truths about this person,
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Jesus Christ, this person known as the eternal logos, the eternal word of God.
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And it's going to take the entirety of our day. Not often do we spend one sermon on, or one whole sermon on only one verse, but I submit to you
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I'm not even certain I'll be able to complete everything today because I have so much to say about even just this one verse.
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So let us stand and read that verse together. We're going to be reading from the
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English Standard Version, which will be unique as we're going to see because there is in this text a different way of translating it and it is translated several different ways in several different translations.
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So if you have a different translation, it will read differently. And the text says this, no one has ever seen
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God. The only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known.
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Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. I come to you,
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Lord, asking that as we seek to understand this text today and as I seek to give an understanding of it, that as I pray every week,
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Lord, and not simply to be repetitious, but Lord, because it is the sincere desire of my heart that you would keep me from error, for Lord, you know,
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I'm a fallible man and I do not want to lead your people into any type of error.
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So Lord, keep me from that. I pray for everyone under the sound of my voice, for the believers that they would be further confirmed in their faith in the word of God and in Jesus, who is that living word.
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And for those who have not yet come to faith in Jesus Christ, I pray that today would be the day that you would, by your miraculous working of the spirit, open hearts and give the gift of life and faith that they may turn from their unbelief and trust in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Father, as we examine today, what some may even say is too scholastic for the pulpit.
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I pray God that you would allow us to be attentive to what the word says and be faithful to the truth of how this word has been handed down to us through the eons.
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For God, it would be easy to simply gloss over the realities of this text, to make some sentimental words and move on or to hold to some traditional position and not deal with the realities.
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And God, you know that it is not within my conscience to do that.
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So I pray, as I preach, as your word is proclaimed, that you would walk with us through this, that your spirit would be the teacher and that we would learn from him.
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In Christ's name, amen. I'm always thankful when
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I look out and I see visitors. So if you're with us this morning for the first time or maybe for the second or third time,
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I'm very grateful that you are here and I'm thankful that you have chosen to come and worship with us today.
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But I must also admit that it is also somewhat intimidating when I look out and see visitors knowing that jumping into the middle of a sermon series or an exposition of a book when you have not received all of the teaching up until this point may be somewhat overwhelming for you.
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It's sort of like drinking from a fire hydrant, which is not easy to do. So I'm going to say that my goal is to try to bring everyone up to speed relatively quickly as to where we are.
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I already did a little bit in the introduction talking about what we have in this prologue. But I want to, again, just remind you that we are at the end of this climactic, amazing opening that John has provided.
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And as I have said in previous weeks, if you get this wrong, you'll get the rest of the book wrong.
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If you don't understand who Jesus is from John 1, 1 to 18, when you begin to study the rest of the book, it will not be a right foundation upon which to build.
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And so it has been my goal and it basically has been the fact that the last two, three months it has been, we have been going line by line through this section.
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It's not going to be that way beginning next week. We're going to take the narrative portions much longer, much more quickly because they come to us more easily.
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But this first 18 verses needs to be understood line by line, word for word.
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Last week I had the opportunity to preach at another church. I was very thankful for Brother Andy filling the pulpit while I was away and thankful to have the opportunity to speak to another church, to preach to them.
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And I preached the entire verses 1 through 18 in one shot.
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Not really, but I did give an overview of it because that's the thing about this text is it can be taken as a whole.
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You can step back and look at it from the 30 ,000 foot view and see the majesty of it or you can dive into and dissect each individual parts.
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And that's what we've been doing. But it's essential that you do not miss the forest for the trees.
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What is the purpose of this prologue? The purpose is to tell us who Jesus is.
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John identifies him as the eternal logos, the eternal word of God. And he is, his purpose is to tell us that this word is
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God. He says that in the very first verse, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was
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God. And that is an essential truth that is hard to understand. And I would say impossible to quantify outside of the doctrine of the
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Trinity, which says God is one in his essence, but three in his person. And these three persons are co -equal, co -eternal and distinct.
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They are able to relate to one another. And there is a relationship, what we call an inter -Trinitarian relationship where the father and the son and the spirit are in relationship with one another.
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And yet they share an essential essence. And this is why we read earlier in the
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Athanasian Creed, there is not three eternals, but one eternal. The father, the son and the spirit are all eternal.
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They're all incomprehensible. They are all God. And yet there is only one God. And we call this the doctrine of the
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Trinity. It has been the standing position of the church since the beginning. It has been fought for and argued for and defined clearly in the early church so that we would be able to ward off the dangers of false teaching and heresy, which tries to creep in.
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And almost every heresy that creeps in, creeps in regarding the person and work of Jesus.
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Whether it be Gnosticism in the first and second century. Or it be Docetism in the second century.
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Or it be Arianism in the fourth century. Or Modalism in the third century. All of these false teachings that try to make their way into the church in one way or another are attacks against the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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We are not the first to fight these battles. We are not the first to have people coming to our doors and trying to convince us that Jesus is not
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God. We are not the first to have to face those who would try to bring us into the cults and heresies of the day.
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But we stand upon the shoulders of giants. Men who came before us who were willing to fight these battles to clarify these truths.
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The creed that we read earlier, the Athanasian creed, Athanasius, fourth century church leader stood for the truth of who
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Christ was. Stood in the midst of the council of Nicaea against the Arians and even after he won the day, for decades after, had to continue to fight the
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Arian resurgence that happened. To the point that he was exiled six different times.
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Under Constantine and Constantius the second, his son, he was exiled six different times to the point there arose a statement,
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Athanasius contra mundum, Athanasius against the world. And yet he stood.
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We are weak today when compared to our ancestors. We are, we are not worthy of their inheritance.
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But we have it all the same. And we should be grateful for it. So again, we come to this prologue.
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It is the foundation for understanding who Christ is. And these last three phrases that we will read today.
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No one has seen God, that is phrase number one. The only God who is at the father's side, that is number two.
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He has made him known, that's number three. That's the three parts of today's sermon.
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We're going to look at all three of those. But I want to give you a preemptory warning.
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The second portion of this, where it says the only God who is at the father's side.
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When that phrase comes up, there is a major historical textual study that we have to at least address.
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For if we don't, there will be much confusion about why it is translated the way that it is.
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But before we get there, let's just begin with the first clause.
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Which is the phrase, no one has ever seen God. Now, right away, this might be one of the more enigmatic phrases in the
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Bible. Because when it says no one has ever seen God, the first thought that probably comes out in your mind is, wait a minute,
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I've read the Bible, a lot of people saw God. Maybe that wasn't what you thought, that's what
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I thought when I read this text and it says no one has seen God. And I think, wait a minute, if you go back to Genesis, Adam saw
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God in the garden. Adam is a someone. Adam is a person.
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Yes, he became a fallen man. He brought us into that sin and because of him, mankind was brought into death, disease and destruction.
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Yes, that happened. But Adam was a man. And the Bible says God walked with him in the garden in the cool of the day.
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And we need only fast forward just a little ways and we see God in other places.
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In Genesis chapter 18, when Abraham was visited by three men and they came and ate with him under the oaks of Mamre, we are told that one of those men was
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God. In fact, we see Abraham engaging in that, and you all remember that amazing dialogue that he had with God where God says he's going to send judgment upon Sodom and Abraham knowing that his nephew
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Lot is there in Sodom says to God, if there be a hundred righteous, fifty righteous, forty righteous, thirty, remember?
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May I ask one more time? What if there be ten righteous? And the
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Lord says if there be ten righteous, I will not bring destruction. You remember this conversation?
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Who is he talking to? He's talking with the Lord. Later in Genesis chapter 32, the grandson of Abraham, Jacob, wrestled with God.
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And he received the name Israel. Israel means wrestles with God.
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Moses, in Exodus chapter 33, was said to have spoken with God face to face, though later it said he actually only saw his hinder parts.
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That's the King James version or his back. We walk through the text, we see over and over men seeing
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God. Isaiah, the great prophet, is in a vision able to see the temple.
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And who did he see? He saw the Lord seated upon his throne, Isaiah chapter 6. And the train of his robe filled the temple and surrounding the throne were the seraphim, the angels who were singing out holy, holy, holy as the
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Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with his glory. And Isaiah covered his mouth and he said,
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Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and yet my eyes have seen the
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King, but no one has seen God, according to John.
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So how do we rectify this seeming contradiction? Well, if you believe the Bible contradicts itself, then you go that direction and you say, well,
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Isaiah was saying something and John contradicted him. Moses was saying something, but God contradicted him.
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But my friends, I hope you realize that here at Sovereign Grace, we believe the
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Bible is inspired of God and it is infallible and inerrant. Meaning that when it says in the
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Old Testament, Isaiah saw the Lord. When it says that Abraham ate with the Lord. When it says that Moses saw the
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Lord. Those are all true. And then when it says in John 1 .18
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that no one has ever seen God, that is also true. And we are not engaging in the ridiculous.
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We are not giving ourselves to believing in contradictory statements. By the way, that is the hallmark of falsehood.
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Logic is based on a simple principle. It's called the law of non -contradiction. Something cannot be and not be in the same way and in the same relationship.
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It can't be and not be. If it is, then it can't not be.
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So how do we rectify this seeming contradiction?
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Well, first of all, I want to remind you that if you go back into the
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Old Testament and you go back into Exodus 33, you will find there that it says the same thing that John says in John 1 .18.
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John 1 .18 says no one has seen God. Exodus 33 says no one shall see the Lord and live.
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So we do not have a contradiction between Old Testament and New Testament, as some people might consider.
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So how do we come to the conclusion that both the Old and New Testament say no one has seen
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God and the Old Testament says no one can see God and live? The answer is actually quite simple and though some may even say overly simple.
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But in the Old Testament, when all of these people have seen
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God, they have seen God in one of two ways. Either they have seen a manifestation of God's presence, which we would call a theophany from the word to see and theos,
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God, a theophany, to see something. And when we look at the
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Old Testament, we see these theophanies throughout. We see the theophany in the Shekinah glory of God, which was when the people of Israel were being led out of Egypt and they were walking through and going into the sea and crossing the
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Red Sea. The Bible says they were led by a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke.
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Now, is that God? That is a manifestation of His presence and we call that a theophany, but it is not seeing
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God in His fullness. It is not seeing God in His absoluteness.
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The Bible tells us God is spirit. Those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
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How can we see a spirit? The Bible says the spirit is not visible to man. So God makes
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Himself visible in these manifestations. One of the most beautiful manifestations in the
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Old Testament is when Abraham was given the covenant from God. In Genesis chapter 15, it says that God had
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Abraham take animals and split them in half because that's the way a covenant was made.
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I talked about this with my daughter and her now husband. I said, you know, a wedding is a covenant.
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I said, so what we're going to do when you're done is we're going to take a big heifer, we're going to cut it in half, and as soon as you're done and we go da, da, da, you're going to walk through the blood.
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And her in her white wedding dress said, I don't want to do that. Well, praise the Lord, we don't do that anymore.
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But that's the way covenants were made. The animal was cut in half and it was separated and there was this pile of blood and people would walk through the blood and the idea was, let it be done unto me as has been done to this animal if I break this covenant.
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And in Genesis chapter 15, Abraham cuts the animals, separates them, and the
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Lord unilaterally not with Abraham, but for Abraham passes through the animals as what?
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As a fiery torch and a smoking pot representative of his presence.
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And we would call that a theophany, a representation, a manifestation of the presence of God passing through, representing
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God making the covenant with Abraham. But then one would say, but Keith, there were times when a person was seen.
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It wasn't a smoking fire pot eating out under the oaks of memory. That was a guy.
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It wasn't merely a crown sitting on a throne in Isaiah 6.
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There was a person there. It is my conviction and I'll show you why from the scripture in just a moment, but it is my conviction that any time the form of a man, any time
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God has taken the form of a man in the old covenant, it is what we call a pre -incarnate visitation of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. We call that a Christophany. Slightly different from a theophany.
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We demonstrate a theophany by the manifestation of God's presence in fire and smoke and lightning and power, but the manifestation of man who eats with Abraham, of man who comes as the angel of the
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Lord to comfort Hagar, as man who does these things, as man who sits upon the throne in Isaiah 6, we say this is
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Christophany, a pre -incarnate visitation of Christ. And I will give you my argument as to why.
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In John chapter 12, we are told in the gospel of John that Isaiah saw his glory and spoke of him.
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This is in, if you want to take a note, it is in John chapter 12 verse 41. It says,
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Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.
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Who is the his and the him in Isaiah 12 41? It is
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Jesus Christ. If you follow back the pronouns and remember back from school when you were taught how to distinguish nouns and pronouns and what we call antecedents.
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When you speak of a noun, speak of who the person is and then later you use the he or the him or the his referring back to the noun prior to it.
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We call that the antecedent. That's referring to the person and the antecedent of the him and the his in that statement is
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Jesus Christ. When Isaiah saw the
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Lord seated upon his throne and the train of his robe was filling the temple and the seraphim were around him, he was not looking at an invisible spirit.
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He was looking at the man, Jesus Christ. The pre -incarnate visit of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, it's notable that the new international version, the
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NIV, which some love and some absolutely hate, but it doesn't matter for the illustration of purposes here.
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In John chapter 12 verse 41, it says, he saw the glory of Jesus.
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And the reason why is sometimes when an antecedent has too many pronouns afterwards, it's hard to follow the pronouns.
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And the translators of the NIV wanted to ensure that it was not missed who is being spoken of here.
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That it was actually the glory of Jesus that was being seen. And that has worked out from the text very clearly.
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So, when the text says no one has seen God, it is telling us not to introduce confusion or contradiction, but rather to state the fact that God is transcendent spirit, invisible to us, but that he has in fact manifested himself to us in different ways is clear from the text.
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And he even says that later in this own text when he says, Jesus has made him known. What is the phrase that we have said about Jesus from the beginning of this series?
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He is God -man. He is the God -man. What the
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Latin fathers called vera homo, vero deus. He is truly God, truly man.
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This is what the name Emmanuel means. I've said this before. He is God with us.
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In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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No one has seen God, but the only begotten, he has made him known. That is
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John's whole point. This last verse is bringing together all of the things he has said before.
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Yes, Jesus is in fact God made flesh. Therefore, we can step back and we can say, those who beheld
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Christ beheld the face of God. Did he not say, if you have seen me, what?
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You've seen the father. If you have seen me, you have seen the father.
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This is a monumentous idea.
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How do we know who God is? We look at Jesus Christ.
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How do we come to know God better? We get to know
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Jesus Christ better. I had this thought last night as often I take my notes out on Saturday night and I begin to read through them again.
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I begin to think about the things I'm going to say and every once in a while I'll go back and I'll scrap a whole section.
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Sometimes I'll scrap the whole sermon and start over. Not often, but it does happen from time to time. But as I was looking over my notes last night and I was thinking about this idea that Jesus gives us the perfect revelation of God, and he does, this is what this should tell us and remind us.
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The God of the Old Testament is not different than the God of the New Testament. Jesus Christ reveals the
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God of the Old Testament as he truly is. And Jesus Christ is as the
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God of the Old Testament truly was. This is why when people say things like, well
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Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. Sure he did when he destroyed Sodom because he was there.
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Think on what I just said for a moment. Nothing the
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God of the Old Testament did offended Jesus Christ. And nothing
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Jesus Christ did was out of character with the God of the Old Testament. Does not the
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Old Testament tell us that God is faithful and loving and abounding in steadfast kindness and love?
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And does not the New Testament Jesus tell us it is better if a man's whole body be destroyed than for his body and soul to be thrown into hell?
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You see, understanding the balance between the New Testament and the
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Old Testament is not saying the Old Testament God is mean and the New Testament God is nice, the
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Old Testament God is vicious and the New Testament God is gracious. No, that is a misreading of both
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Testaments. For the God of the Old Testament is truly gracious and the
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God of the New Testament is truly just. For both are the same God.
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And we have been given the fullness of understanding of who this
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God is through the Lord Jesus Christ. The same Jesus Christ who was tender to the woman who came to him with the issue of blood is the same
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Jesus Christ who fashioned with his own hands, whips and drove men out of his father's house.
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The same Jesus Christ who was kind to Roman soldiers who came to him in faith called the vicious
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Pharisees hypocrites for their treatment of God's people.
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It amazes me when people will say, well Jesus was so kind and was never lacking any kindness and he was so nice to everyone.
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Well, I will say this, Jesus never did lack kindness and for that I will agree. But I wonder if the
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Pharisees in Matthew 23 thought Jesus was being nice to them. When he said, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites.
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He said it over and over and over again. And by the way, the word woe is not simply like we might say today, woe is me.
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Or as the, this I think it's Yiddish, oy vey, you know, woe is me. Woe is a statement of judgment.
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When Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon his throne high and lifted up, he put his hand on his mouth and he said, woe is me.
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For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips and I, my eyes have seen the king.
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Think about every time the disciples got a glimpse of Jesus' majesty, what did they do?
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They wanted to run away. Remember he told Peter, take your nets, throw them out.
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They pulled in the great fish, great collection of fish. They put them in the boat. The boat's about to sink. They have so many fish.
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Jesus looks at, or Peter looks at Jesus and he says, we need to start a business together. You're the greatest fisherman ever.
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No, what did he say? Depart from me, for I'm a sinful man.
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You see, when you're in the presence of God and God's glory is manifested in that moment, you realize who you really are.
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And Peter, when he saw just a little bit of the glory of Christ eek out of him, when he simply commanded fish to go into the net and he looked at him and he said, leave me alone.
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I can't be in your presence. See Peter knew,
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Peter knew this man and his glory will burn me alive.
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If I get too close and yet Jesus said, come, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, come.
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All ye who are broken, come and I'll give you rest.
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The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God and Jesus in his exposition of God shows us who
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God is. And by the way, that's the word, not the exact word, but the word here, when it says in the third clause that he has made him known, that word is the same word where we get the word exegete.
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And if you've ever heard me say that, or maybe one of our other teachers here say that, that's what
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I'm doing. When you open the word of God and you read the word of God and you explain the word of God, it's called exegesis.
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It means to draw out the reality that's there. It means to draw out the truth that's there.
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That's what exegesis is. It's the opposite of eisegesis. Eisegesis is when I have an idea and I read it into the text.
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That's eisegesis. That's to read into something. Exegesis, to draw out.
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Jesus came and he exegeted the
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Father. He made him known to us.
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He expressed his character perfectly. And as we said earlier, he said, if you've seen me, you've seen him.
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To know Jesus is to know God, beloved. And to not know
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Jesus is to not know God. People say, oh, I have a great relationship with God, but I don't need
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Jesus. Jesus said, that's wrong. He says, no one comes to the
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Father except through me. Why? Why is it that no one can come to the
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Father except through Jesus Christ? Because we are sinful.
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We are broken. We are lost. Jesus Christ comes into the world.
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He lives a perfect life. He sins not one time. And yet he goes to the cross and he dies as a substitute for sinners.
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The penalty that the sinner is deserving laid upon Jesus.
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And the righteousness that he possesses by the very nature of being the God -man is given to us as a gift.
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And this is why we are told that we have a righteousness not of ourselves, which comes from the law, but a righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
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The righteousness of God, which is given by faith. We believe in justification by faith alone.
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We are declared righteous because of faith alone and the work of Christ alone. God paid the penalty for us through his
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Son. Now, for just a moment,
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I want to go back to the middle of the text. I promise to not make this as long as I want to, because this is one of my favorite things to teach on.
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And so, I'm tempted to just say we'll do it next week, but I don't think I want to do a whole sermon on this subject.
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In the middle of this phrase, no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the
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Father's side, he has made him known. That phrase, the only God who is at the Father's side, is translated differently in different Bibles.
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In fact, I'll give you a few. The New International Version translates it, but the one and only
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Son who is himself God. The New Living Translation says, but the unique one who is himself
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God. The ESV that I'm holding says, the only God, but in just a few months, a new
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ESV is coming out. It is the fifth edition of the ESV since it was first brought in 2001.
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And it's going to change this line. Instead of saying the only Son or the only
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God, it's going to say God, the only Son. The King James Version says, the only begotten
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Son, which to us should remind us of John 3 .16, because the exact same phrase is used there. But the
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New American Standard Bible, which is one of my favorites, it's the one Brother Mike uses, says, the only begotten
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God. And if you notice in your handout this morning, the title of today's sermon is,
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The Only Begotten God with a Question Mark. Why did I put a question mark on it? Because there is a question mark as to how you should translate this text.
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And beloved, I do not want to bring down the gospel presentation I've already given by turning this into a New Testament class, but this is why
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I do this. I point out these truths to you, because if we don't know the
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Word, and if we don't know these things about the Word, when we are confronted with unbelief, when we are confronted with the things of the world that are coming against the church, and when our kids go out to university and to other places, if they are not equipped with these things, we are sending them as sheep to the slaughter.
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I believe that we should always try our best, even if you're not a person who's given to maybe a lot of study and reading, you should try your best to at least understand how the
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Bible came to us. Because one of the most common arguments about the faith is that the
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Bible can't be trusted. And honestly, is that not a compelling argument if it were true?
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You're believing a pack of lies, and this book is a pack of lies. If someone were to ask you, how did we get the
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Bible? Why do we have 66 books rather than 73, as the
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Roman Catholics do? Or 84, as the Eastern Orthodox do, I think it's around 84.
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So it's a lot more. If someone were to say to you, why are you using a
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English Standard Version rather than a King James Version? And do you know the difference? Would you be able to answer?
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I made it part of my mission here at Sovereign Grace to try to equip you with these answers. We have the
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Academy, which was the mission and vision of the elders here, to provide education in biblical studies and history and theology, to give you the foundation for these things.
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And I pray that you would consider taking advantage of that if you haven't already. What we have in John 1 18 is we have something known as a textual variant.
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A textual variant is any time the manuscripts, upon which our
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Bibles are translated, differ at a certain point.
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A textual variant. This is a place where the manuscripts differ. And sometimes the differences are nothing of concern.
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We call them meaningless variants. Is he Jesus Christ the Lord or the Lord Jesus Christ? It's a variant, but it doesn't matter, right?
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Because it's just word order. Or is it a apple or an apple? We have that. It's called the movable new.
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We do that in English. We put a n in front of a word that has a vowel beginning.
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I can't get my word out. A vowel. And Greek had that as well. And so many manuscripts will have the new missing or added.
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Does that matter? No, it's called a meaningless variant. So if anybody ever tells you, hey, the
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New Testament has over 400 ,000 variants, and it only has, oh, 180, 138 ,000 words.
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So that means there's three variants for every word. Don't let it throw you. Because while those numbers are actually correct, the vast majority of variants are simply misspellings, meaningless variants like the movable new, word order changes, or what we call conflation or diminishment where words are, you know, where he goes from being the
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Lord Jesus Christ to the Lord Jesus Christ Almighty to the Lord Jesus Christ Almighty. It's called expansion, and they expand the sacred name, and we see this a lot as well.
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Most of these things are meaningless variants. In fact, if you take all of the variants that are in the
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New Testament manuscripts, and there are many new, the other thing is we have a lot of New Testament manuscripts. If you compare the
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New Testament to other ancient documents, you will find that it doesn't even compare.
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Here's the list. I know you'll probably have a hard time seeing because it's small writing. But if you look at the other writings of the ancient world,
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Homer's Iliad, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar's Gallic Wars, the Annals of Tacitus, Herodotus, and all of the rest, you'll notice the amount of copies we have, 643 of Homer's Iliad.
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That's by far the highest outside of the New Testament. After that, it's 40, 10, 3, 75, 27.
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But the New Testament has over 5 ,800 Greek manuscripts, handwritten manuscripts, going all the way back into the 2nd century.
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The more manuscripts you have, the more variants you have. Right? Because these are all handwritten.
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Every handwritten manuscript is not going to be a perfect representation of what it was copied from.
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If nothing else, there's going to be scribal mistakes, mistakes of the eyes. There's one manuscript, this is funny, there's a manuscript that it was copied from a two -column manuscript, but the person copying it did not read the original language, and they didn't know there was two copies, so he literally just went straight across the line.
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And he copied it that way, onto the new manuscript. So you can see where the error happened.
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It was an error of ignorance. He didn't know there was two columns. And remember the original language of the
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New Testament, the Koine Greek in the 1st century, was all capital letters, no spaces, no punctuation.
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It just looked like a mass of letters. And that's how it was passed down to us.
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So, John 1 .18. There's a variant on this second line.
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That's why it's translated differently in these different translations. And the variant is here. μηνάγεινις θεός, sun.
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μηνάγεινις θεός, God. The term sun and God were shortened in Greek to two letters.
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It was called the nominous sacra. Any time the name of God was translated, θεός, it would just be θ, σ.
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Two letters to represent God. And any time the word sun, referring to Jesus, was translated, it was ψ, σ, χ.
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So the difference is literally one letter. You can see on the left, on the bottom, that is the nominous sacra for sun.
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On the right, on the bottom, that is the nominous sacra for God. So some manuscripts read the only begotten son.
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Other manuscripts read the only begotten God. Now that's a pretty big difference.
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This is one of the times where we say this is a meaningful variant. The variant actually does change the meaning of the text.
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So we have to step back and we have to actually investigate and try to discern and determine which one did
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John actually write. It doesn't matter what your favorite translation has.
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It matters what John wrote. As I said, Mike likes the New American Standard Bible.
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I have an affinity for that one. It was the first Bible my mom bought me when I graduated seminary. Because she asked what
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I wanted. I wanted a New American Standard Bible. Then R .C. Sproul sold me the ESV and we've been stuck with it ever since.
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I wish that weren't as true as it is. No, R .C. Sproul and a couple other guys came out and were promoting the
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ESV. I read it. I liked it. And I said, well, we can use this one. It's nice. And we did. It's good. Really the
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ESV is very similar to the New American Standard as far as translational methodology. It's still an essentially literal translation and it's a good
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Bible. There's nothing wrong with it. The King James Bible uses the one on the left and it translates it only begotten son.
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But the King James Bible was translated in 1611.
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It actually began a few years before that. It takes a few years to make a translation as you can only imagine. But it was published in 1611 and it was translated only begotten son because the manuscripts that were possessed at that time all read only begotten son.
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But since the 1600s, archaeology has expanded. More manuscripts have been found.
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Entire libraries have been unearthed in the last hundred years. You've all heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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Now those are not New Testament scrolls. Those are Old Testament scrolls. But they still show us the value of archaeology, right?
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And as these manuscripts have been unearthed, many manuscripts were found to say only begotten
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God. Monogenes Theos. And so the debate began.
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Which one is it? Which one is it? The vast majority of the manuscripts read only begotten son.
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That is not debated. It's not any way anyone could argue any different.
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The vast majority of manuscripts say only begotten son. But the vast majority of the manuscripts come to us from later centuries.
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The earlier manuscripts, ones that were written closer to the time of the apostles, the ones that we find back in the time of the 3rd century, 4th century, such as Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus.
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These different ones read differently. So the question becomes, which one should we take?
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The majority report, only begotten son. The minority report, but closer to the original, only begotten
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God. The new
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ESV has tried to split the difference. They said, God the only son. And I said, that's cheating.
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You put both in there. You put Theos and Huos in there. Are you a cheater?
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But the reason why they did is they're translating son from monogenes, which means only begotten or one of a kind.
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That's where they're getting the word son, not from Huos. Now you may be thinking right now, why did he do this?
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His sermon was so good, he could have just stopped 10 minutes ago. My job is to teach and to preach.
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And sometimes teaching is telling you things you need to know even when you don't realize it. Because even if you take the
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King James translation, the only begotten son, the next time you're in a Bible study and you all open your
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Bible to John 118 and it doesn't agree, or you open to John 5 .4 and you realize that there's a translation, there's a verse in the
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King James that doesn't even exist in the NIV, the ESV or the others because it didn't exist in the earlier manuscripts.
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Or when we get to John 7 .53 through 8 .11 and we realize that entire section did not exist in the early manuscripts.
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You need to know why that is. I am not in any way calling into question the integrity of God's word.
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But I am telling you that God has used a vast manuscript tradition to pass his word down to us.
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And because of the vastness of that manuscript tradition, textual variants do exist.
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You ask me? I struggle with this one. Only begotten son certainly parallels
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John 3 .16. Because there, monogamize huos, not doubt, that's what it says.
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So if you ask me what John 1 .18 should be, I say well if we parallel this with John 3 .16,
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it makes sense that it would say only begotten son. However, the point of John's prologue is to emphasize the deity of Christ.
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And therefore monogamize theos seems to fit with the immediate context more than monogamize huos.
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So I would say this. I think theos is a reasonable understanding. That he is in fact a unique God.
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But I'm not going to die on that hill. If you think it should be only begotten son, praise the
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Lord. It's fine. But here's eight things you need to know and this is where I'm going to end.
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Some of you've never even heard about textual variation. You don't know about this stuff and it may be I've thrown you for a loop for this last 10 minutes.
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I remember years ago I was invited to speak at a church. They invited me to come talk about this. I gave a one -hour seminar on textual variation.
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When I was done, the worship leader had smoke falling out of his ears. Like he was so mad at me because of the things that I said.
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I was showing the textual variations, the history of the text, where it came from. And I came down off the chancel, sat down. He came up and smoke falling out.
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He goes, well, that was something. You all need to go home and see if what he said was right.
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And I said, amen. Don't take my word for it. Go home and study. That's fine. But here's the thing.
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When we talk about textual variation, when we talk about these things, if you've never heard this before, it sounds like we're calling into question the integrity of God.
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No, what we're saying is God has given us so many manuscripts that we actually have to deal with all of them. And we have to say
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God has in his mercy provided us. Again, look at this chart. He has provided us with absolutely more than any other historical document.
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He has given a witness to himself over 5 ,000 times. And that does not include the Latin. There's over 10 ,000 manuscripts in Latin, 9 ,800 in Syriac and Coptic, and 36 ,000 patristic quotations.
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That means the quotations of the early fathers, which if you took all of those quotations, you could reproduce the
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New Testament just from their quotes. There's more attestation of the historicity and the veracity of the
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New Testament than any other document in history. It's not even close. God has done a miracle in keeping his word intact.
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So here are eight things to consider. And I'll close with this. Number one, the scriptures are without error in the original manuscripts.
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That's what we mean when we say the Bible is inerrant. As God gave it to Moses, as God gave it to Paul, as God gave it to Luke, it was absolutely without error.
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We no longer have the original manuscripts. And I say, praise the Lord, because if people are worshiping the picture of Mary burnt into a piece of toast, imagine what they would do the original
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Gospel of Luke. What we do have is a text that represents the result of critical study of a vast manuscript tradition.
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Number three, variants do exist in these manuscripts. Yet because of the vast amount of copies, the variants are easily recognizable.
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We know where they are and we know how to study them. We know how to trace them back and even see when they're introduced. Number four, the overarching majority of these variants are either not viable or they are meaningless.
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That should give you great comfort to vote most of these variants don't matter at all. Number five, no one variant changes or distorts any doctrine as no doctrine is based upon one passage of scripture.
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There's no doctrine that's based on one scripture. Therefore, no variant could ever change or distort a doctrine.
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Number six, the New Testament is the single best documented work of antiquity and it's not even close.
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Number seven, the New Testament is the most open religious document, readily acknowledging the textual critical notes in its footnotes.
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I keep my Greek and English translation up here on the pulpit. And in the bottom of my
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Bible are all the notes and it tells you when there's a variation in the text that matters.
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It's right here. You ain't going to find a Quran that has that. The Quran does not recognize its own textual variations and they deny they exist.
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That's a huge point. I don't have time to get into the history of the Islamic text, but it is not as pure as the driven snow as they would have you believe.
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Finally, number eight. God's providential preservation of the New Testament differs from his preservation of the
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Old Testament, but both have been miraculously preserved. The Old Testament was preserved within a religious tradition.
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It was preserved within the Jewish community and it was meticulously copied. And when new copies were made, old copies were destroyed.
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This is why the earliest Old Testament copies we have are 900 years after the time of Christ. Until the
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Dead Sea Scrolls came along. And that gave us a witness to 200 years before Christ. That's why the
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Dead Sea Scrolls matter. But the New Testament was not kept within one small religious community.
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The New Testament was sent out into all the world. It was hand -copied and translated almost immediately into other languages, which gives us one great and wonderful truth.
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It could never undergo wholesale change. Because if it's been sent out to everybody, it's like an email at work.
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You send it out to everybody, once it's gone, you can try to bring it back. You can try to change something, but once it's out there, it's out there.
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And the New Testament was distributed fast and wide. And could not undergo wholesale change.
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Beloved, we have a text that we can trust. Even when these minor variants have to be studied.
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Because God has given us a text that has shown its tenacity, veracity, and historicity for the last 2 ,000 years.
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Now again, I will say this. I realize I tacked a seminar on the end of a sermon.
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But this is all about Jesus. He is the living Word. And He is the one who shows us who
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God is. If we can't trust what's written about Him, we can't trust anything. So my prayer for you is that you do trust
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Him. And you trust what has been written about Him. Because what has been written about Him is the truth.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank
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You for Your Word. Thank You for this opportunity to teach. And I pray, O God, that through the teaching and preaching of Your Word, that You would encourage
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Your people and draw people in who may not know You. I pray, O God, also,
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I pray for this coming time of communion. That we would be reminded that Christ is the one who is being represented in this bread and this cup.
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That His death on the cross, which paid the penalty for our sins, and His resurrection, which showed
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His victory over death, hell, and the grave, is now being placed before us again. So that we might commune with You.