The Prologue of John

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We'll begin tonight, again, reading the entire prologue of the Gospel of John that we began to study last week.
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We'll focus tonight on verses fourteen through eighteen, but we'll read the entire text to begin.
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So in the Gospel of John, chapter one, the word of the Lord says, In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
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He was in the beginning with God.
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All things came into being through him and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being.
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In him was life and the life was the light of men.
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The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.
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There came a man sent from God whose name was John.
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He came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him.
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He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.
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There was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man.
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He was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him.
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He came to his own and those who were his own did not receive him.
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But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
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And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory.
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Glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth.
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John testified about him and cried out saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.
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For of his fullness, we have all received and grace upon grace.
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For the law was given through Moses.
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Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
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No one has seen God at any time.
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The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him.
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You may be seated.
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Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
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God, we thank you again tonight for your word.
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Father, how special it is to the life of a believer.
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And God, we thank you for the divine word, Jesus Christ described in this passage, who came to earth to live as a man, took on flesh, who descended to mankind because we could not reach out to God and made a way for our salvation.
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God, I pray that as we study this passage tonight, you would pierce our hearts with its truth.
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You would give us a great.
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Thankfulness.
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All in respect for Jesus Christ.
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Lord, that it would convict those who have not turned to him in faith for salvation and to those of us who have Lord, that it would encourage us to know the one whom our faith is in or keep me from error.
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And Lord.
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Speak to your people tonight through your word in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Last week, we began our study of the Gospel of John by covering the majority of what is known as the prologue of John, the first 18 verses.
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We covered 13 verses and in those there was a lot to be said, but mainly we'll remember that the passage pointed to the preexistence and the divinity of Jesus Christ.
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Also, we were introduced to a couple of themes, the themes of light and darkness and the recurring theme that will continue to see in John of Christ as life.
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We saw that most rejected the light, but that some received him by the will of God.
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And so tonight we'll continue in our study and consider the last four verses of the prologue that cover the incarnation of Christ, his first coming.
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In our study tonight, we're going to see John continue to lift up Christ and exalt him specifically in five ways.
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They are the glory of Christ, the supremacy of Christ, the fullness of Christ, the gospel of Christ and the revelation of Christ.
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And so these are the five things we're going to look at as we go through the text, as we study this portion of scripture and draw these themes, we need to begin to fully understand that Jesus Christ is the focal point of the gospel.
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If we're going to tell others of the good news and how they might be saved, we must point them to Christ.
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And so as an encouragement to our study, I know we just read a large portion of scripture, but I want to begin by reading another passage that I think speaks to this.
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And it's over in first Corinthians chapter one.
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So we'll begin by reading first Corinthians chapter one, verses 18 through 25.
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It says, For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God for it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever.
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I will set aside where is the wise man, where is the scribe, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.
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God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
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For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom.
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But we preach Christ crucified to Jews, a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.
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But to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
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And so this is our theme, the preaching of Jesus Christ as the central focal point of the gospel.
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We can't understand the gospel apart from Christ.
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And so we need to focus our hearts and minds and ask the Holy Spirit to give us understanding and wisdom concerning Christ.
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And so as we turn to the text in verse 14, the first thing we're going to see is the glory of Jesus Christ.
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And in verse 14, it reads, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory.
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Glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth.
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The very first part of that passage, the word became flesh.
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This is probably one of the most well-known portions of scripture, yet one that is twisted and misunderstood by so many people.
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Christ came to the earth in human flesh and he endured all of the trials and tribulations that come with that.
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He lived and he breathed just like we do.
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He grew, he learned, he matured, he felt joy, he felt pain, he felt love, anger and many other emotions just like we do.
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Yet he never sinned.
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He knew hunger like we do.
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He grew tired just like we do.
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He wept.
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And so Christ was human in every way.
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This is an essential doctrine of the Christian faith, one that we must understand properly to preach the gospel.
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Jesus Christ was fully God, but also fully man.
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And any deviation from that essentially is heresy.
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Jesus Christ took on human flesh to accomplish three things.
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The first thing was that his incarnation made him able to die.
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If Christ was to pay the price for our sins through a substitutionary death and atonement, he had to die.
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And he did that in human flesh.
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The second thing his incarnation did was give him the ability to empathize with us.
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I had to look this up.
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I don't know about you guys, but sometimes I confuse sympathy and empathy.
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Anybody else ever get that wrong in trying to buy a card in the greeting section? Christ was able to empathize with us in that he experienced many of the same things that we do.
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He felt just like we already said, he felt tired.
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He grew weary.
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He needed to eat all of these things.
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And so his incarnation gave him the ability to empathize with us.
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I want to look quickly at a passage in Hebrews chapter four that really expresses this.
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Hebrews chapter four and verses 14 through 16 says, Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin.
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And it goes on to say, therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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Jesus Christ has experienced human flesh just as you and I do.
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And so by his incarnation, he has the ability to empathize with us.
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The third thing that his incarnation accomplished was the ability for him to be an example for our life.
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Christ and coming to the earth and living a perfect, sinless life in every way gave us an example to follow, something to emulate and to try and imitate.
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In first Peter, there's a discussion of this in chapter two, first Peter, chapter two and verse twenty one, for you have been called for this purpose since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps.
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Who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth, and while being reviled, he did not revile in return.
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While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.
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And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
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For by his wounds, you were healed.
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Christ is our example in this life.
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When we look to scripture and look to the life of Christ, to the gospels and the various writings of the New Testament that tell us how he lived, we see things that are an example to us and tell us how to live.
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We don't have to wonder so many people.
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They make it seem like Christianity is so difficult to figure out.
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We're not left to wonder and try and figure out what to do.
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And so Christ became what he was not previously, though he never ceased to be all that he was before.
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And again, this is an essential understanding of the hypostatic union of the union of Christ and two natures, that he was fully God and fully man.
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Both of those we have to have secure in our mind and in our hearts if we're going to preach the gospel, because anything less than that is heresy.
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Back in our text in John, it continues on to say the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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The term here dwelt among us literally means that Christ pitched his tent or tabernacled among us is the way that the original readers would have read this.
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This terminology that John used would have reminded them of the tabernacle of the Old Testament.
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The typology of the tabernacle tells us much about what Christ came to the earth to do.
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First of all, the tabernacle in the Old Testament was the place where the glory of God dwelled.
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We can read of the glory of God, what was referred to as the kind of glory of God descending in the tabernacle and resting between the chair of them.
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And likewise, Christ, as he came to earth as a man, was the very glory of God dwelling amongst men.
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Also, the tabernacle was the place where God would meet with men.
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Christ came to the earth through his atoning work at the cross, became our mediator.
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The only way we have access to God is through Christ.
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And so Jesus Christ spans the gulf between God and man.
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Anything we do, we do through Christ.
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When we worship, we worship because of the mediatory work of Christ.
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When we pray, we pray in the name of Christ because he is our mediator.
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He is the link between God and man.
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Third, the tabernacle was also the place where sacrifices were made.
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We know that Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrifice.
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Not one of the Old Testament sacrifices actually had any ability to remit for sins.
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They were merely a foreshadowing of the sacrifice to come.
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Jesus came to be the only true atoning sacrifice for sins, the once for all sacrifice upon the cross.
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And so in Christ, that type of the tabernacle was filled.
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The act of Christ coming to the earth and taking up human flesh and becoming the propitiation for our sins is what makes Christianity different from every other religion.
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Think about every other religion in the world.
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They're all trying to craft a way for man to reach up to God somehow to gain the attention or the favor, the merit of God to make a way to God.
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But the only true God of the Bible sent Jesus Christ, his son, to the earth to take on flesh, to make a way for us.
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It's not something that we did.
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It's not something we could do.
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It's not faith plus works or any number of things that we could do to reach out to him.
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And so this is truly God's greatness and glory on display for us.
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Greatness is never so glorious as when it takes the place of lowliness.
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And so in humbling himself to become a man and make a way for sinners, God really shows and displays his glory over in the state of Hawaii.
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There's an island known as Molokai.
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And back in the late 1800s, the citizens of Hawaii were facing various outbreaks of diseases that were spreading rapidly among the people.
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One of them is a disease known as Hansen's disease in the Bible.
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It's called leprosy.
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Leprosy is a vicious disease that attacks the extremities of the body and causes victims to lose feeling in them.
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It causes sores and wounds and things that crop up.
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And because they have no feeling, oftentimes they go untreated.
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They don't realize it's there.
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And so, as you can imagine, things go from bad to worse.
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And so in an effort to stop the spread of leprosy on the islands of Hawaii, they created leper colonies on this island of Molokai in a in a very secluded place.
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In 1873, there was a young priest from the Catholic Church who had a passion for missions, and he volunteered to go as a missionary to this leper colony and minister to these lepers.
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And as he arrived, he found a miserable scene.
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Full of suffering and sadness and and really a group of people who seem to have no hope.
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And so he set out to minister to them to try and give them hope to point them to God.
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And he lived among them for years, knowing the inherent danger, obviously, of being in a leper colony was that he could possibly contract leprosy.
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He built hospitals and churches.
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He ministered to the people through the word, and he always began his services by addressing the lepers as my dear brethren.
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And we know from the Bible, the lepers were often treated as untouchables, people set apart.
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They were you crossed on the opposite side of the road.
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So he really showed love in addressing them as my dear brethren.
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And he tried to minister and work among them.
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In 1885, at the age of 45, Father Damien was preparing a bath for himself and he stuck his foot in the scalding hot water and his skin immediately began to blister.
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But the only trouble was he felt nothing.
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He didn't feel the heat or the pain or any of the things we would usually assume.
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And so he knew what was to come from that point.
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The next time he came and addressed the leper colony, he stood before them and instead of his customary greeting of my dear brethren, he said to them, my fellow lepers, I'm one of you now.
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And so it was love for God and for the gospel that led Father Damien to dwell among the lepers and minister to them.
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And ultimately, he he experienced what they experienced in every way.
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And this, unfortunately, is a small explanation and really is incomplete in trying to understand what Christ did and humbling himself to take on human flesh so that he could be our substitute and our sacrifice and pay the price for our sins.
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It really doesn't even come close.
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But what a glorious God he is, that he humbled himself to redeem those who were rebelling against him.
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Back in the text, it continues, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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And we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the father.
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Now, when we read this passage, we should know that John, who was the writer of this gospel, beheld the glory of God at the Mount of Transfiguration.
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And so certainly he could be referring to that.
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We read about that in Matthew chapter 17.
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It says that Christ's face shone like the sun.
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And for a moment, part of the veil was torn back and the glory of God shone from him.
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But I don't think that was the only thing he's referring to here.
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I think also as John walked with Christ through his earthly ministry, they saw him do many things that that displayed the glory of God.
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He performed many miracles.
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They saw him teach as one with authority.
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They also saw on several occasions how he already knew the hearts of men.
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Before they said anything, he knew what they were thinking.
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And so walking with Christ day by day, John was able to see that he was clearly not just a good man, but truly God.
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The next thing we see in the passage, the second point is the supremacy of Jesus Christ.
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And he continues at the end of verse 14 and going into verse 15, we saw his glory.
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Glory is of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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All of the goodness of God's character was displayed in Jesus Christ.
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His grace, which, like his other attributes, is inseparable from his truth.
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The coming of Christ to the earth was a great display of the grace of God.
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The fact that he chose to make a way for us is a display of grace in itself.
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Jesus Christ was in every way full of grace and truth because he is God.
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It's not something that was drawn out from outside forces.
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These weren't things imparted to him.
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They are part of his essential being in nature.
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They exude from who he is, from his essence.
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And so there's a small parenthetical in verse 15 that talks about John and his testimony about Christ, and it says, John testified about him and cried out, saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.
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And so John points out two things.
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First of all, that Christ is supreme.
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This is the key focus of the gospel, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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Apart from him, there is no gospel.
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And so what does this mean for us as believers? Jesus Christ is the focus of the gospel.
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When we share the gospel with someone else, Christ is the focus, not ourselves.
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Certainly, our lives should be a testimony to what God does in the heart of a believer.
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When we turn in repentance to him, our lives should be an example of that and lend credence to the gospel we teach.
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But the focus is not on us.
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Don't think because we're not perfect that precludes us from sharing the gospel.
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None among us are perfect.
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There is no second blessing or later time that will come when it's now time for us to minister and share the gospel.
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If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the time for you to share the gospel is today and every day for the rest of your life, as long as God chooses to let you live on this earth.
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The second thing John points to is that Christ is eternal.
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And this has already been said in different ways in this passage.
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But he reiterates it.
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He says that this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.
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And so we know that John the Baptist was born slightly before Jesus, but also his ministry began.
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He was before Jesus Christ began his public ministry.
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He was there to foretell of the one to come.
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And so, but he points again to the fact that Jesus Christ is eternal.
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And we know that the only eternal being is God.
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So Christ is God.
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We turn to our third point.
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And this is one that we'll probably spend a little bit more time on the fullness of Jesus Christ.
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I want to read verses 14 and 16, skipping across verse 15, because it's kind of a little bit of an aside.
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And I think that the thought flows from verse 14 to 16.
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It says in the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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And we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth for of his fullness.
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We have all received in grace upon grace.
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The good news of the gospel was found in the fullness of Christ as opposed to the emptiness of man.
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When it says for of his fullness, Christ is the one who's full of everything good and perfect.
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He's full of grace and truth.
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That's what it said in verse 14.
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We've already talked about that.
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He's also full of every other good thing.
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He's full of justice.
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He's full of kindness.
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He's full of love, compassion, mercy, righteousness.
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Whatever we may truly need, we can be assured that Christ is the unending source of it.
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But in opposition to that, what do we have? We're entirely empty.
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The only things we have in us are evil, sin.
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And so even more glorious is the gospel because Christ comes to someone who has nothing to offer.
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And chase us from death into life.
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There's a man named Jim Collins, who is a was a famous businessman and market researcher, and he wrote a book called Good to Great.
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And the point of the book was about companies that were good and what they did to become great.
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And he said that greatness is not a function of circumstance.
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Greatness is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
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In other words, what he's saying is that it's not about what's going on around you, it's you choose to do this.
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And while that might be true in the business world, that's not the gospel.
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We can't go from good to great because we're dead in our trespasses and sin.
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We go from death to life and not because we work our way to it or discipline ourselves or do anything.
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It's only by the grace of God.
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And so many churches today are teaching the Christian version of good to great.
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We're going to take your goodness and the things that are within you that are already good.
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We're going to show you how to make them great, how to unleash those things and have all the blessings in the world.
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But that's not the gospel.
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And if we go out, tell people that's the gospel when they when they come and they accept what we've sold them and things aren't as we told them, what will happen? They'll go away and never come back and they'll blame God for the lies that we told them.
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And so we have to point people to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
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It's not about things.
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As a side note, Jim Collins, the great business researcher, he studied all these great companies that went from good to great.
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And he narrowed it down to a list of 11 companies, two of them you may have heard of their Circuit City and Fannie Mae, and that kind of tells you how good he was at predicting the future of great businesses.
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The text says that for of his fullness, we have all received.
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Christ is our only hope and salvation.
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And to those who have believed he's given us every good thing.
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But we don't receive just things from him, and I kind of alluded to this just a moment ago, we shouldn't reduce the gospel to something so trivial as earthly things.
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How unimportant are things in this life when compared to eternity? I don't want to live my best life now.
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What we receive is the very person of Christ, and I want to look at a few of the things that we receive from him that the gospel of John is going to bear out.
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And so over the next weeks, we'll look at these things.
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I'm going to turn very quickly, so so don't feel obligated to keep moving here.
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But the first thing that we receive from Christ is eternal life.
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In John, chapter 10 and verse 28, he says, And I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
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So Jesus Christ gives us eternal life.
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In John, chapter 14 and verse 27, he gives us peace, peace.
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I leave with you my peace.
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I give to you not as the world gives.
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Do I give to you? Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.
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The only true peace is found in the gospel.
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He gives us joy in the very next chapter, John 15 and verse 11.
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These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full.
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You want to find happiness? It's not in the things of this world.
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Many have died trying to get it from the things of this world.
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True joy and true happiness only comes from the gospel.
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In John 17 and verse 14, he says, I've given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
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He's given us God's word.
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He's given us revelation of who God is.
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In John chapter 20 and verse 22, it talks about him giving us the Holy Spirit.
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It says, And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit.
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And so what a great bounty Jesus Christ has given to us who are believers in him, despite the fact that the only thing we deserve from him is wrath and punishment.
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Truly, he is a man full of grace and truth, and truly he is God Almighty.
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And then the text comes down to this phrase that really I spent the entire week trying to wrap my head around.
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He says, For of his fullness, we have all received and grace upon grace.
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Grace is defined in the scriptures as unmerited favor in place of deserved wrath.
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But at this point, John doesn't just say that we've received grace, for certainly we have, but he says grace upon grace.
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And so as I try to figure out how to understand this, what is it getting at? Because so many times we read over these passages, these little clauses, we just grace upon grace.
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OK, yeah, it's a lot of grace, but he had to mean something.
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There's a reason he wrote it that way.
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And so there are several possibilities.
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And even the highly respected commentators disagree on this in many ways.
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So I'll just give you the options that are out there.
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First of all, he could be referring to the grace of Jesus Christ that has supplanted the grace of the law.
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In other words, the grace of the new covenant, as opposed to the grace of the old covenant, you could translate the Greek here as grace instead of grace.
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And so when we think about the law, we know the law certainly didn't show any mercy.
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It didn't have any power of salvation, but we can see that God's giving the law was, in a sense, an act of grace.
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It enabled man to see his exceeding simpleness and his need for a savior.
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It showed us that we needed the gospel.
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So he could have meant grace instead of grace.
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He also could have been using a popular construct in Greek, whereby repeating something like that simply adds emphasis.
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We read all the time that Jesus said, truly, truly.
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Right.
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And so saying something twice, verily, verily, I say unto you, repeating that could just be adding emphasis to it.
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And certainly God has abundantly given grace to believers towards mankind, but especially to believers.
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The third option is this.
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John could be referring to grace that supplies grace, grace that builds grace, grace that builds upon grace and is literally overflowing.
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Think about it this way.
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If you've ever been to the ocean, I'm sure most of you have since we live a few minutes away from it.
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You see the waves coming in at the ocean.
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If you go out there and stand all day long, no matter how long you're there, hours, weeks, years, you're going to see the waves continue to come in and crash upon the shore.
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Sometimes they're bigger and sometimes they're smaller, but there's always waves coming in.
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And if you look out to the distance, you see a point where it appears that there are not waves anymore.
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But if you've ever been out on a boat in deeper water, you realize there are still waves.
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And if you get out even into open water, there are huge waves.
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They're not necessarily breaking in the white caps we see from the shore.
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In fact, if you go out to the deepest points underneath the deep in the ocean, the water rushing across the bottom of the ocean floor is causing these ripples that come and crash upon the shoreline over and over.
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And so if we think of grace in this way, that God has applied grace upon grace, upon grace, upon grace, and constantly, no matter where we're at, this grace is crashing upon the shoreline of our life.
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It's really overwhelming grace because God has given it in such an abundance and it just continues to come despite the fact that we don't deserve it, despite the fact that we do nothing to keep it.
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It continues to come.
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God's grace does several things for the believer.
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It calls us to salvation.
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It regenerates our hearts.
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It justifies us by faith.
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It sanctifies us and preserves us.
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It makes us heirs of Christ and children of God.
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It brings salvation.
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It supplies all of our needs.
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And so truly, grace upon grace begins, just barely begins to scratch the surface of the grace of God to the life of a believer.
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Everything we have is by the grace of God.
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Over in Ephesians, chapter one.
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In that great chapter of the Bible, there's a short passage, verses three through eight, it says, grace to you and peace from God, our father.
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I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong place.
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That's Galatians.
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Ephesians, chapter one, verse three says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.
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In love, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.
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In him, we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us.
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Just in that short section of the book of Ephesians, look at the things that are done for us because of the grace of God.
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He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
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He chose us before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless.
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He predestined us.
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He adopted us.
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He redeemed us by his blood.
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He forgave us of our sins, all according to the riches of his grace, which he has lavished upon us.
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He has poured out grace upon us in such a way that our only response is one of gratefulness and brokenness because we deserve none of it.
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So of the fullness of Christ has been given to all believers and it contains an unending supply of grace.
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We must run to it.
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We must grow in it.
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We must use it continually.
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And I want to talk about two ways that I think we should do this.
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This is going to seem like a contradiction.
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You might think I've lost my mind, but the first thing I want to tell you is this.
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Stop trying so hard.
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Stop trying to earn salvation.
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Stop trying to gain the attention of God or his merit or his love by works.
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We don't need to be running around like spoiled children trying to impress God all the time saying, look at what I did, God.
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Look at what I did.
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I did this for you.
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I did that for you.
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God loves his children with a love so great that he did it for you.
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He did for us what we could never do.
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We were dead in our trespasses and sins, and he sent his son to die and pay the price for our sins.
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We don't have to cry out for his attention.
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The only thing that grabs God's attention in a positive way is the righteousness of his son, Jesus Christ, imputed to those of us who repent of our sins and believe in him for salvation.
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And so we don't need to try so hard.
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I'm not telling you to live a life of license and go do whatever you want to sin.
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We certainly know the passage that says, should we should we continue in sin so that grace may abound by no means.
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But stop trying to work to earn something.
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Now, the contradiction to this after I've told you to stop trying so hard is I want to tell you this.
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Try harder.
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But this is what I want you to try harder to do.
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Try harder to flee to Christ for grace.
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When you sin, run back to him.
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Don't hide away like a child who's dreading their father coming home to punish them.
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Christ has paid the price for our sins that was completed long ago.
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There's no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
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And so the wrath of God has been satisfied upon the cross, but grace remains.
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Try harder to walk in the freedom that we have in Christ.
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You're no longer a slave to sin.
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We impose upon ourselves sometimes this penance when we sin.
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We're going along trying to live our lives in obedience to God's word and to live to his glory in everything we do.
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And then some sin overtakes us and we stumble and fall.
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And maybe our first thought is, God, please forgive me of that sin.
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I really failed.
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I blew it.
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And rather than trusting in the grace of Christ, trusting in the work that Christ has already done to pay for our sins, we impose upon ourselves some burden of shame and guilt.
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Some mandatory waiting period before we can do anything else, some time we must sit in time out.
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But the grace of God is unending.
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We need to flee to him and try harder to rest and abide in Christ.
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And so back into our text in verse 17, he continues this thought.
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He said that for of his fullness, we have all received in grace upon grace.
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And then he says, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
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And so we're into the fourth point, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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You know, he brings up Moses here to answer what probably was a foreseen objection of those who are reading this.
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Moses was considered to be pretty, pretty tall cotton by the Jewish men of the day.
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But he points out the incompleteness of what Moses brought through the law.
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The law doesn't have any power to save.
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Only God's grace can do that.
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And so we already talked about the law briefly, and we said that while it was not a full revelation of God by any means, certainly it did serve a purpose to show us our need for Christ.
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But in the law, there's no salvation.
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The law demands something from us that we can't give.
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It demands obedience.
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And none of us have the power to do that.
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We're bound to sin before Christ.
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The law shows no mercy and it provides no justification.
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None except Christ can meet its demands.
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And so the law teaches us something about God and that it teaches us about his justice, that he is just, that he has a standard, that he will punish sin.
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But it teaches us nothing of his mercy.
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And of his compassion, only Christ could do that.
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And so it continues that while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth, that word comes back, that phrase comes back again, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
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Notice that while the law was given through Moses, it was something given.
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It was external to him, grace and truth came or realized through Jesus Christ.
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In other words, there are things, again, that are intrinsic to Christ.
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They're part of who he is, his essential being.
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Grace and truth are inseparable in the gospel.
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And while we find today that many people are more than willing to receive grace, they bristle at the truth of God.
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Few people who consider the cost of following God are willing to submit to the truth and what that demands.
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Only those enabled by his spirit can do so.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ is certainly one that's full of grace, but it also must be full of truth.
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If we're to preach the gospel to people, we must tell them what it entails.
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We must tell them what it means, that it means repenting of their sins and placing their faith in Christ, not that that's we don't preach easy believism, that the gospel is say this prayer and then go live however you want to and you'll skid into heaven.
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That's not the gospel, there's no truth in that.
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The scripture never teaches that there are also some who teach truth without grace, and this is legalism and is also not the gospel, it's just as wrong.
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Christ did not teach that salvation came by obedience to the law.
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In fact, this very portion of scripture points out how the law is unable to save.
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Scripture constantly tells us that the law can't save us.
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If we're going to preach the gospel, it has to be the gospel of Jesus Christ and it has to be the gospel that contains both grace and truth.
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We have to tell someone they're a sinner and they're condemned to die and pay the price for their sins apart from Christ.
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Finishing out in verse 18, we see the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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And it says, No one has seen God at any time.
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The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him.
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And so we're back to where we started, really, in chapter in verse one of John's gospel.
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Christ is the full and complete revelation of God.
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Jesus Christ, the divine word, is not only God, but he's the way that God has revealed himself to mankind.
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He says that no one has seen God at any time.
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And we understand that all of the Old Testament references to people who saw God really are referring to the person of Christ.
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And the next phrase is one that has lent some trouble to some folks.
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It says the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him.
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That phrase, the same one that appears in verse 14, the only begotten, does not denote that Christ is created.
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Again, this it would be impossible for us to read that into this, as it's obviously been said numerous times that he's both God and eternal.
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Rather, it ascribes to Christ a special place of uniqueness.
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He's the only one of his kind or the only beloved one.
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And so that lends a context to the next clause where it says that he's in the bosom of the father.
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Christ was and is enjoying an intimate, abiding presence with the father, just as in verse one, where we read that the word was with God.
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They're both distinct, but also abiding together.
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The last part of this passage says that the only begotten God who's in the bosom of the father, he has explained him.
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And the word in Greek here is the same word where we draw our English word exegete.
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We talk about exegesis of the scripture, trying to explain what they mean.
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And so Christ is literally explained, expounded and narrated God to mankind.
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There can be no fuller revelation of God, save for that time when we are with him in eternity.
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And so for this reason, we as believers of Christ should be looking with great desire and passion to the life of Christ.
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He is the basis of our knowledge of God.
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And for the same reason, as I've said numerous times, he is the one we should lift up in evangelism.
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If we're going to share the gospel, we have to preach Christ crucified.
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Our message should be the same one which Jesus shared in John 14 and verse six.
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I'm the way, the truth and the life.
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And no one comes to the father but through me.
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And so in these first 18 verses, John has laid forth not only a prologue, but what is really a guide to the remainder of his gospel.
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And as the coming weeks unfold and we look further into this book, you're going to see these things come up again and again.
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And really, as I look at this passage, I see the story of the gospel here in the first two verses, we're told that there is a God who is eternally existent and in verses three through five, we see that in eternity past, he was the one who brought all things into being and he's the light of the world.
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In verses five through 11, we're told that the world, despite the fact that he made the world in great darkness, they rejected him.
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But in verses 12 through 13, we hear the glorious truth that there are some who received him.
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Not by their own will, but because God willed it to be so.
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And then in verses 14 through 18, the ones we've just studied tonight, the story is made more clear as we see the one who is God chooses to come to his creation in flesh and reveal himself to us and to ultimately make a way for our salvation.
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The rest of the gospel of John is going to continue to expound the work of the incarnate God.
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And how he was rejected by many, but triumphed over death and the grave to make a way for salvation.
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And so it's my prayer that through this study, we'll be confronted with the gospel and emboldened to proclaim it to all we come into contact with.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I pray that as we leave this place tonight.
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God, we would have a passion and a desire to tell others about Jesus Christ, what he's done to make a way for salvation.
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And father, that we would share the story of the gospel with all those we come in contact with.
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God, how can we say.
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That we know you and love you and trust in you for salvation, but we don't want to tell others about that.
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Father, let it not be so in our lives.
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Help us to open our mouths and share the words of life to everyone.
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And father, we trust that your Holy Spirit will draw those who are yours and that they will come to salvation.
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Father, we pray that you'll be glorified through our lives.
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Through this week.
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And that we would lift up your name everywhere we go in Jesus name.