John 1:17-18

The Shepherd's Church

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I wanna begin our time today by reading verses 17 and 18.

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Over the last several weeks, we've been in the prologue of John, so we've finished now the introduction to this wonderful book, and tonight we're gonna close out the prologue, and then we're gonna make our way through the rest of the book, but let's start by reading the text.

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It says, for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

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No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who's in the bosom of the

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Father, he has explained to him. Now, John concludes this theological treatise, this wonderful introduction of Christ -centered doctrines with these short, frank, and even terse statements.

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It's not like John is using a lot of words here. He's using three really quick sentences.

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The law was given through Moses, period. Grace and truth given through Jesus Christ, period. No one has seen

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God at any time. Christ has revealed him, period. In some ways, they seem seemingly unrelated to each other, and almost what we would not have expected.

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It's almost like when you watch a movie. I watched a movie, I don't know, last year that was based in Manchester by the

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Sea. I think that's actually the title of it. I don't wanna crack on this movie too hard, but I watched, waiting for it to have this wonderful ending where all the parts of the movie came together all at once, and it was horrible.

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I hate that movie, because at the end, nothing actually was good about the ending at all.

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It was just this awful, not -well -thought -out ending, and it made me frustrated.

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Have you ever had that experience? So when we get to the end of John, we're thinking, really?

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This is how it ends. Like John, I don't know if you've read the surveys here, but the law is not a very popular topic among New Testament believers.

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And you're gonna introduce that at the very end of your prologue. The law was given through Moses. John, I don't know if you realize this, but Leviticus is consistently, it's right in the center of the law, consistently one of the least popular books among Christians.

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Why would you introduce that topic? And you think to yourself, the graveyard of Bible reading plans, have you guys ever tried to read through the

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Bible in one year, where most people fail, if it's not in Leviticus, it's in Numbers, when a genealogical census is given for 10 chapters, and you're like, what is going on?

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So John, why are we gonna end this way? And I think that it's a profound reason.

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I think that once we see it in its context, that it will make sense. And what John is operating under, when he gives these short statements, the law was given through Moses, he's operating under a culture that spent 30, 40, 50 years understanding what that meant.

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In the next 30 minutes, we're not gonna catch up with the amount of experience that they had. But I do wanna focus a little bit tonight on the law, so that we can understand what

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John is saying. And again, this is probably not the most invigorating topic for most of us, we're like, oh, we're gonna talk about the law of God, but trust me, if you see what is going on in here,

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I think that it will be important to you. Now, most sermons are preaching focused.

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Most of the time when we come together, it's preaching that we're doing. And what I mean by that is that a text, no matter who is up here, a text is going to be exposited, it's gonna be research studied, and it's going to be delivered in such a way that's helpful to the listener.

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Maybe it's alliterated, so that every letter starts with the same point, or maybe that there's some other device in which that it can be helpful.

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And that doesn't mean that there's no content, it just means that it's delivered in such a way that's helpful for the listener.

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Now, tonight, we're gonna do something a little bit differently. Tonight, we might be a little bit more on the teaching aspect of that.

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And that is not to say that this will not be a sermon, because both points are equally true.

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A sermon with no content is not a sermon, no matter how many evangelical churches are trying to make this normal.

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And a sermon that is just content is a college lecture, it's a seminary -level lecture.

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So we're gonna try to do both tonight, but this sermon will lean a little bit more in the teaching direction, so I just wanna give you that perspective as we begin.

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Now, tonight, we're gonna be looking intently at the law of Moses, and why does John introduce this topic?

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And the reason that we're gonna be doing that is because I think a great amount of confusion in the

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Christian life, and a considerable amount of unhappiness in our Christianity today comes from a lack of understanding of the law of God.

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75 % of the Bible is dedicated to the Old Testament, and yet we've grown up in a culture in church where almost exclusively it's about the

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New Testament, and almost exclusively it's all about grace. And we would all agree, we are saved by grace.

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We are saved by nothing that we contribute. Jonathan Edwards says, the only thing that you and I contributed to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.

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It is by grace alone that we are saved, amen. Nothing in our performance, nothing in our merit.

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But growing up in the evangelical culture, the law has gotten a pretty bad rap.

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The law is looked down upon. The law is that thing that we kind of avoid, that we don't look at, and it's kind of all about grace.

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And some questions that I wrote down in this regard is, does grace actually nullify the law completely?

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Since we've been saved by grace through faith, should the law of God be thrown away? And if so, why do we even read our

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Old Testament? Maybe that's a question that we should be asking. As grace -filled believers, should we only read the

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New Testament? What value is the Old Testament to us? Many people today, like Andy Stanley, a pastor down in,

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I think it's Atlanta, Georgia, says that Christians really have no reason to be reading their Old Testament, and he uses this term unhitch because he believes that Christians should unhitch their faith from the

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Old Testament because it's entirely irrelevant and unhelpful. Is he right or is he wrong?

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You see, I don't think that the New Testament juxtaposes grace and law in such a way that grace is good and law is bad.

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I just don't think that's what it does. I don't think that Jesus came to throw away the law, to abolish the law, but he says to fulfill the law.

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So when John mentions the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were given through Jesus Christ, he is not communicating from an evangelical 20th century perspective where law is bad and grace is good.

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John is talking as a man who loves the law, who grew up in the law and sees something that we just don't see.

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So as we look at this, we're gonna be asking the question, when

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John says the law came through Moses and grace and truth came through Christ, is John saying that there is no grace in the law?

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Is John saying that there is no truth in the law? And as we start to understand that,

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I think that we will begin to see just how significant Jesus's grace and truth is, and then just how significant

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Jesus's revelation of God is, but we have to do the hard work first. It's like the algebra textbook.

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You can't just go to the back and get the answers. You can, but you won't learn anything. The answers are like the

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New Testament. Every problem that has worked out in the Old Testament, the New Testament is the answer key, but you're not gonna learn algebra if you just go to the answer key.

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In the same way, we're not gonna learn the fullness of what John is describing. If we just run to grace and we don't work through tonight, what

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John is talking about in the law. So with that, let's begin with the obvious question.

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What is the law? And right away, I don't mean to start off with saying that this is going to be confusing, but the

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New Testament offers five answers to that question. When the New Testament talks about the law, it gives five different answers for how that can be used.

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So I wanna give a very quick survey of that. The first, when the New Testament describes this, it's talking about the whole

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Old Testament, Genesis through Malachi. Now, we're not gonna turn there, but in Romans 3, verse 19,

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Paul, in the context, when he says the law, he's talking about the entire Old Testament. That's one way that that term can be used.

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It's the most rare usage. I don't know of another example, but I give it to you as it is an example.

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Now, the second way that the term law used, and I tried to make these in the order in which they are used by occurrence.

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I don't think I got it completely right. But the second way that the term the law is used is a perversion of the law called legalism.

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Legalism is defined as viewing God, a way of viewing God that places obedience to the law over love for the law giver.

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Men and women who treat the law in this way, put their hope, their love and their faith and being able to obey the law and being able to impress

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God with their obedience. In the Bible, the New Testament uniformly says that that's wrong.

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We cannot earn our righteousness before a holy God through obedience to the law. Paul in Galatians 3, 10 is probably, this is one of the greatest verses when it's talking about the heart that thinks that they can obey themselves into right standing with God says, for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.

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It's heavy language. For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the law.

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What Paul is saying, he's not saying that the law is bad and that grace is good. He's not saying that you should throw away the law or that you should distance yourself from reading it or understanding it.

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He's saying that it cannot save you. He's saying that the law cannot justify you before God.

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He's saying that if your heart is to try to earn God's approval through obedience, you're cursed.

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You can't bear that weight. And Paul hammers this point because in his context, thousands and thousands of people were actually trying to do just that.

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They were trying to earn their standing before God. The entire Jewish religion, especially when we see the

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Pharisees, this was what they were trying to do. The Pharisees believed, this is one of the things that got them into trouble, but the

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Pharisees believed that if one man in all of Israel for just one day could obey all of the law of God without one error, then the

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Messiah would come. So that's a heart filled with legalism that we can earn something from God by doing something for God.

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And that actually is a low view of God. Because who are you and I that we could impress him with our minuscule obedience?

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So when the New Testament talks about the law, sometimes it's talking about people who try to obey it all in order to be righteous before God, and that's called legalism.

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The third way that this term, the law, is used is with its ugly twin sister, antinomianism.

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Legalism has an ugly twin sister. In a lot of ways, she is more dangerous than legalism because legalism is at least easy to spot.

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Antinomianism is hard, and I'll tell you what that means. Antinomianism is a word that was invented probably by Martin Luther.

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It's the best that I can come up with. And he jammed two Greek words together that were never together.

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Anti and nomos. Anti means no, nomos means law, so it means living as if there is no law.

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It means living a lawless life where obedience to God is not even considered.

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Because God has given us grace, he must no longer care about what we do.

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Now, it sounds absurd, but we live in an evangelical culture that for decades has said, raise your hand and you'll go to heaven.

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And there's nothing at all about, if you're in Christ, you should bear fruit, or if you love me, you will obey my commandments.

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There's nothing at all about the ongoing life of obedience. It's raise your hand, fill out this form, and you're good.

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And that is not what the Bible says salvation is. Paul says in Titus 2 .14

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when he's talking about this, our great God and Savior Christ Jesus who gave himself for us to redeem us of every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession.

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We're all tracking with this. This is grace that saves us, even though we're sinners, for what reason?

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So that we'll be zealous for good works. The point of our salvation is not that we would be saved from obedience, but that we would be saved for obedience to God.

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Jesus did not die on a cross to create hedonists and people who just love to do whatever it is that they wanna do.

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He died to free us from the penalty of the law so that we could delight in the law of God.

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Again, Jesus doesn't save us from obedience. He saves us for obedience. This means that as a

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Christian, an attitude of antinomianism is totally inappropriate.

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An attitude of let's just unhitch ourself from the Old Testament and let's look down upon 75 % of the

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Bible that God gave to his people as an act of love is totally inappropriate. And it's overly simplistic.

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Because we know God cares about our obedience. Well, where do we learn obedience? Where do we learn

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God's righteous standard? From the law. In fact,

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I mean, as Christians, I don't know if this is true for you. It's certainly been true in my life. The longer that I walk with Christ, the more sin hurts.

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The more sin breaks my heart. The more concerned I am with pleasing the

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Lord and begging and crying out, Lord God, please help me to obey.

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Not because I'm trying to impress him. I know. I know the lump of clay that he's dealing with.

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But as we walk with the Lord, truly walking with the Lord, obedience becomes the cry of our heart, not something that we're flipping about.

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Before Christ, we were powerless to keep the law. In Christ, we are empowered by his grace and the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit to become obedient children of God, predestined for good works. That's what Ephesians says.

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As evangelicals, we don't have the right to simply have this attitude of the law is religion and all

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I need is relationship. That's a very overly simplistic way of viewing the reality of what the law actually is.

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Again, we're not saved by it. We're not justified by it. But now as justified people, obedience becomes growing importance in our life.

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That's the point. And that's the third way that Paul uses this term or the

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New Testament uses this term, the law. Let me go through a couple more verses really quickly just to hammer this point home because I think this one is one of the ones that's central to evangelicalism today.

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Paul says in Romans 3 .31, do we then overthrow the law by this faith? Great question. This is Paul's opportunity to say, yes, we don't need to obey the law, but what does

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Paul say? By no means. Do we overthrow the law by our faith in Christ?

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By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Wow. Jesus said roughly the same thing in Matthew 5, 17 through 18.

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He said, do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets.

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I did not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it. For truly

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I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, I haven't seen that happen yet.

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Have you? Not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until it is all accomplished.

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So Jesus is saying he didn't come to earth with the objective of throwing away the law of God.

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Again, no one can be justified by this law. No one can perfectly keep this law. But Jesus came and perfectly lived this law.

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He loved the law. Why? So that all of his followers could live lawlessly?

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No. So that we could follow him in obedience.

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Holy Spirit is given so that we can walk in obedience to Christ and grow in obedience to Christ.

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So now, recap. The law, three things that we've already discovered is it can mean the whole Old Testament.

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That's rare. It can mean legalism in some cases. And it can also mean this antinomian view of there is no law, there's only grace.

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The fourth point, we'll cover this one fairly quickly, is that individual laws sometimes are referenced in the

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New Testament, especially in the Gospels, and especially when the Pharisees are trying to accuse

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Jesus of breaking the law. Like circumcision or Sabbath. The Pharisees love to accuse

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Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. And if you think about that fact, there's 613 laws in the

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Old Testament according to the Pharisees. And they believe that every single one of them had to be kept for one day, by one single person, and then

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Messiah would come. So what are they accusing Jesus of when they say you're breaking the law? They're accusing him of being just an everyday, normal person, just like them.

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He's not Messiah, he's not God. And if he would just get on board with their religious program, then finally they would see the

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Messiah come. How blind. The Son of God is standing right in front of you and you're accusing him of disobedience because you're a legalist.

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So again, that's one way, that's the fourth way, is that individual laws can be given.

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But by far the majority way that the law is mentioned in the

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Bible is when it talks about the first five books of Moses. The vast majority of instances when a

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New Testament writer says the law, they're talking about Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

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Now, we know that these contain many different types of genres. There's poetry, there's historical narrative, there's songs, and there's legal text.

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But when these are mentioned, that's kind of what the New Testament is talking about, those five books.

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For instance, Jesus, when he summarizes the entire Old Testament, he says, in everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you.

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Why? For the law and the prophets, for this is the law and the prophets.

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He's saying the first five books of the Bible is what is talking about loving God and loving neighbor, and then the prophets, being everything else in the

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Old Testament, is about this same theme, loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself.

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He's saying that the overarching point of the law, Moses's books, Genesis through Deuteronomy, is loving

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God with all of your heart and loving your neighbor as you love yourself. So what he's saying is that in these books, in the 613 laws, there's this sort of joy -filled obedience to God that comes from obeying the law, and there's this sort of sacrificial and beautiful, personal, intimate relationships you can have with others by obeying the law.

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Again, not to justify yourself, not to have right standing with God, because we can't, but obedience to this law, because God is the designer of humanity and he knows what we need.

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If we obey what he has said, we will have more joy. Again, not legalism.

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I want to stress that. What you will not find in the

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New Testament is a flippant attitude towards the law where it throws it aside in the light of grace.

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So that's a little bit about the law, but what question still remains to be answered here is if the law cannot save us and Jesus has fully satisfied its demands, then what is the point for us knowing it?

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Wouldn't it be just as easy to say, okay, I get that the law is good, but I only have a limited amount of time in my day.

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Jesus has done that part, completed that part, so I'm gonna focus on other things. Why is that not what we should do?

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To understand this, we need to move beyond what the law is and now ask the question, why the law was given?

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We've described what the law is five different ways, but now

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I wanna ask the question, why was the law given? John says, for the law was given through Moses.

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Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. It would be easy for us if we don't ask the why question to determine that John is putting these two against each other, that Old Testament is bad, that Jesus came and he gave us grace and truth as if grace and truth just popped into being because of Jesus and there was no grace in the law and there was no truth, so let's ask the question, why?

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Why was the law given? There's several different answers to that question and trust me, I am summarizing right now a lot of data, so we're just gonna cover this in a very, very high level, but the first reason that the law was given according to the

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Old Testament is to display the holiness of God. God says to Moses in Leviticus 19 to speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy for I the

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Lord am holy. So what Moses is saying, what God is saying is that a purpose for the law being given is so that sinful people could know about the holiness of God.

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Now think about this. John says the law was given through Moses, grace and truth through Christ.

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Was it not an act of grace for the holy God to reveal himself to sinful man? When we know that holiness would rip all of us apart without a mediator and yet God is speaking to people who will never obey the law and yet he's doing it out of grace.

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He is giving them grace to be able to understand who he is, he's holy. He's also communicating truth to them that he is holy.

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So we see even in the purpose, the first purpose of the law that there's grace and truth in that, that God is holy.

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The second purpose for the law is that we are not holy.

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Again, Leviticus 19 says, you shall be holy for I the Lord, your God am holy.

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So we see that God has an expectation for his people that being in relationship with him will require that we become holy, that we grow in our obedience to him.

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And again, this is not because God is a cosmic killjoy or he's a pre -Puritan who feared that someone somewhere was having fun, although that was not what the

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Puritans were about. It's not because God didn't want anyone to have joy, it's because God knew that obedience to his law would produce joy in his people's life.

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God knew that that was the most gracious thing that he could do was to require his people to live a holy life so that they could be in relationship with him, the greatest good that they could ever experience.

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It's grace that he's calling them out of a life of disobedience, that's grace.

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It's truth rooted in his character and rooted in his goodness. The assumption that the law makes is that if you know

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God is holy and as you grow in knowing God is holy, you will be concerned with holiness.

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It's been true in my life, I hope it's true in yours. It's both grace and truth.

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The third way, reason why the law is given, I'm going through these quickly, it was given as a blessing.

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Now think about this, we live in a culture where when we read Leviticus, we're like, when is this going to end?

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Same thing with Deuteronomy, same thing with Numbers, same thing with Exodus 20 through 50. And we think that God was giving it to his people as a blessing.

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We think about David sitting on his bed at night. David says, I delight in the law of the

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Lord. You think about David, he can't even sleep at night because he's so excited to read the law of God because in it he sees the heart and the character of God.

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This law was given to the people as a blessing from God. Deuteronomy 6, three through four says, oh

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Israel, you should listen and be careful to do this law, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly.

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Just as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you in the land flowing with milk and honey.

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God is saying if you obey this law, it will be good for you. That it will bless you, that it will multiply you, that it will strengthen you.

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Far from just being an angry God like we hear so many people talk about that just wants us to obey.

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He wants us to obey because it's for our great joy. It's for their good and for their blessing.

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We skip down to verses 24 through 25, we see the blessing of God even more clearly. It says, so the

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Lord commanded us to observe all these statues to fear the Lord our God for our good always.

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What a beautiful phrase. The Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes to fear the

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Lord our God for our good always. For our survival, as it is today, it will be righteousness for us.

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For if we are careful to observe all the commandments before the Lord, just as he commanded.

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God's not creating angry rule following legalists in Israel.

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He's not creating prudes or judgmental do -gooders. He's not creating the kind of men who have a pocket ruler to make sure that someone's skirt is one inch above the ankles.

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I grew up near a church actually, it was called Victory. And every time you would go in there, you'd feel defeated because the pastor would just slam you with how you hadn't obeyed.

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And they actually had a monthly service where parents caught their kids with Britney Spears or whatever.

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This was back in the 90s, so I know Britney Spears is no longer relevant. I'm just sharing my story.

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That he would wear his boots on that day to service and he would stomp them at the front of the congregation while everyone cheered because God must be so impressed with us right now.

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It's not the kind of people that God's creating with this law. He's giving these laws as a means of grace so that they would know him.

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Did you catch the statement in there? This will be righteousness for us. How is righteousness obtained in the law for these people?

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You think about the fact that they're gonna spend their entire lives, not long after this, going into the land of Israel and totally failing and being idolatrous and doing all kinds of wicked things.

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And as you look at the story of God in this part of the Bible, you see that he's not requiring perfect obedience in order to bless them.

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He's requiring that they try. He's requiring that they seek after him.

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And how can a holy God, how can a just God overlook their sin? Even as far back as this time, it's because when you look forward to the pages of the

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New Testament, you see that Christ did not only earn forgiveness for the

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New Testament Christians, but Christ earned such a righteousness that God could credit it to the brothers and sisters in the

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Old Testament who were trying but failing to follow God. Christ could offer them righteousness in the law, even though they didn't know

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Christ yet. Isn't that amazing? God was so gracious in the fact that he gave them the law, but he also gave them the sacrificial system.

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If you sin, sacrifice. There's one sacrifice that's, if you don't remember your sins and if you forget to confess your sins,

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I'm sure you have them. Here's a sacrifice for that. There's so much grace in the law.

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You think about Genesis. All these stories are coming to my mind. God said, in the day that you eat of the fruit, you will surely die.

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But yet they didn't die. They lived another day and another day. And God sacrificed an animal on their behalf to cover them in their nakedness, and it was grace.

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And he communicated truth to them in that they're cursed because of their sin, but it was still grace.

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They didn't die. You look at Abraham and Isaac. You look at Noah. You look at the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.

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You look at God rescuing his people out of Egypt. They were idolaters.

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It says in multiple places that the people of Israel were not following the Lord when they were in Egypt. Moses himself didn't even know who the

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Lord was. Abraham, it says in Joshua, was an idolater before God called him. And yet every time that God calls these people, to obedience to him, he's giving them borrowed grace.

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He's giving them borrowed righteousness because their goodness can't earn it on their own. So he's borrowing it from the credit of Christ.

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It's the only way. The fourth way that the law is given, why it's given, is for the people to know him.

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It's not just given to bless the people, and it's not just given to show them that God is holy and that they must be holy, but it's also given so that they would know who

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God is. The psalmist records this beautifully for us. It says, the law of the

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Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

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The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

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The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. And the rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

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What a beautiful, beautiful picture of a man who loved the law of God. I'm so thankful that Derek chose for us to sing

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Psalm 119. I know it's an intimidatingly long passage, but if you have a chance this week, please read it.

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That is a man who loved his Old Testament and is beautiful. Far from throwing it away because he's a

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New Testament Christian, which he wasn't, but far from that attitude of flippancy, is a man who loved the word of God.

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The law was meant to communicate truth. It's meant to communicate that God, his law is perfect, it's satisfying, it's refreshing, it enlightens, and it's true.

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Again, that's the fourth reason that the law was given. I think the most important reason though that the law was given is that it points to Jesus Christ.

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The law of Moses was never meant to be a permanent thing. It was never meant that way.

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There are many today who will say that Jesus was God's plan B, that the Israelites were supposed to obey, and yet because they couldn't obey, then

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God decided to send Jesus retroactively because of their sin. Absolutely not. Christ was always the purpose.

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Christ was always the salvation mission. The law was not there to justify them and make them righteous.

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The law was there to point to Jesus Christ. It's kind of like a picture.

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Now, I don't want this to happen. I like to think that now I'm too old and too broken down for the army to draft me, but if for some reason something crazy happened and I was drafted into the military, one of the things that I would absolutely make sure that I had with me is a picture of my wife.

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And I'll tell you, I would carry that picture of my wife everywhere that I go. I would look at it and I would remember when she says really, really twangy

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Southern things. And I would look at it when I'm sleepy and she wants to talk, and I would remember those memories.

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And I would remember so much about my wife from that picture that it would probably be raveled all to pieces by the time that I get home.

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But when I get home, it would be inappropriate for me to go on carrying the picture in the same way, right?

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My wife looking at me saying, hey, why don't you look at me right now? Oh no, no, no, it's okay, I'm good,

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I've got the picture. And see, the law was never meant to be the full thing. The law was meant to be a picture that points to Jesus Christ.

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It was meant to be something that was small that could remind people of the coming righteousness and the coming

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Christ that was gonna come. But it was never meant to be the full. It was never meant to be the fulfillment. So if I were to come home from war,

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I'd put the picture on the mantle. I wouldn't throw it away. I'd put it probably in my nicest frame that I had and I would look at it and I'd have fond memories of it.

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But I have my wife in the flesh. Think about the Old Testament people of God who held on to this law for so long, waiting for what it anticipated, not that it was gonna be enough.

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It was always meant to point to Jesus Christ. Paul says this incredibly well in Galatians 3, 19 through 25.

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He says, why the law then? That's the question that we're asking, why the law? He said it was added because of transgressions.

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Having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed came.

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Who's the seed? When I understand that, you gotta go back to Abraham and you have to understand the promise that one of his children is gonna come and he's gonna rescue the human race and he's gonna bless the world.

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You have to go back to Genesis 3 and you have to understand that Eve is gonna have a child that's gonna be born to her who's gonna crush the serpent's head.

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The law was given until the seed came, until the Christ came, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.

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Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Paul says, may it never be. For if the law had been given, which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on the law.

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But scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

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What Paul is saying there is that the law cannot justify you, but it was there to point you to Christ all along.

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But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law. That's a really rich phrase.

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The law protected us from ourselves. Being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed, therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ.

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That's what Paul says. So that we may be justified by faith. But now that we have that Christ, we're no longer under the tutor.

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So now let's get back to the text of John. We've now talked about what the law is and why the law is. Paul has just told us the purpose for the law was to point us to Christ.

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So now what is John saying? Normally I would get to our text for this evening much faster, but I think we had to do some background work before we got here.

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John says, for the law was given through Moses and grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

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Again, John's not saying that the law had no grace and the law had no truth. He's saying it's a wonderful and beautiful picture, but now the person had come.

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Now the one to which all of it had pointed had come. It's kind of like this.

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A candle is incredibly important to you when your power goes out. And in the

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Old Testament, all the lights went out, all the sin had darkened their existence so much that the candle, the light of the word was like a lamp into their path, which is what he says in Psalm 119.

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Thy word is a lamp into my feet and a light into my path. But now that Christ has come, it's like a candle being held up beside of a supernova.

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Christ is bigger and better. He is what the law pointed to, but now it is full. It's like holding a thimble of water, which is a blessing in comparison to the entire

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Atlantic Ocean. There is really no comparison. One is good, but one is infinitely better.

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That is what Christ is. Now I give you all of this because I don't want us to think that law is bad and it's nothing and that Christ is the only good.

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I'm saying that in comparison to the law, Christ is infinitely better, but the law is still has grace and truth.

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But now that Christ has come, we even have an even better grace. And now that Christ has come, we have an even better truth.

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Jesus says, John 14, nine, he's talking to people who love their

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Bibles and who knew God through the scriptures. He's saying, if you've seen me,

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Jesus, you've seen the father. I think that's what John is pointing to.

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Because Christ has given us such infinite grace and such infinite truth. He can make the claim in verse 18, that he is the only one who can reveal the father.

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The law and measures can reveal God's character, but Christ, we see

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God face to face through the God man, Jesus Christ. Do you see the elevation that's happened here?

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So we asked the question, why did John end his prologue this way? He begins with the eternal

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Christ in all of eternity. And he ends with the Christ who came and dwelt among us and showed us who

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God is. Every moment of the prologue has been God -centered and Christ -centered.

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And all of it is advancing John's purpose, that you believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, and you will have life in his name.

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So we talk about this tonight. And my prayer for us tonight is that we would experience and see grace and truth through Jesus Christ.

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That we would get to know who the father is by knowing the son. But I also pray that we would be whole

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Bible Christians, that we would look back at the beautiful picture that he gave us in the Old Testament, and it would cause us to wanna learn about God in the

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Old Testament. It would cause us to wanna look for Christ in the Old Testament. I pray for us as a church that we would not just be like a lot of Christians who wanna unhitch themselves from the

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Old Testament, that we would look at it with a sense of honor and respect for what it is.

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It is the vehicle by which God used to bring about the Messiah. And he is the only reason that any of us in this room can stand.

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And in that, I think we should pray and we should set aside the rest of our evening to praising like crazy this

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Jesus who loves us so much. Jesus, thank you so much for the fact that you came and that you were incarnate.

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Lord, thank you for the season of time that we've been able to examine your prologue and in the book of John that you inspired and that we've been able to look at all of the different facets of your person and of your character.

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We've been able to look at doctrine. We've been able to look at who you are. We've been able to look at what your purpose is. We've been able to look at what the purpose of the book is.

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We've been able to look at the fact that without you, Jesus, there is no hope. Lord, I pray that for the rest of our time this evening that we would see more than ever that grace and truth come from Jesus Christ.

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That without Jesus Christ, there is no forgiveness of sin. But with Christ, Lord, by the power of the

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Holy Spirit, I pray that you would increase our affections for you, you would increase our desire for you, and that,

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Lord, in a decade from now, that all of us would have grown so much in grace that we long to obey you even more than we do now, that we long to please you, not to impress you, but because we are impressed by you, and that we know how much you love us.

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Lord, as we close this prologue together, I pray that you would bless the rest of this series as we examine who

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Jesus is in the narrative portions of these texts, and I pray that you would bless the rest of our time together this evening, in Christ's name, amen.