Now We See God | Sermon 9/11/2022

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John chapter 1. Today we're going to be in verses 14 through 18.

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We are going to finish what's called the prologue of John today. The title of this sermon today, church, is

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Now We See God. Now We See God.

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That'll make sense very soon. Starting in verse 14 of John chapter 1, the gospel according to John.

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And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the

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Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about him and cried out, saying,

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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. 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 is in the bosom of the

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Father. He has explained him. Thus ending the reading of God's holy inspired word, let's pray quickly.

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Lord, I recognize that once again, Lord, apart from you,

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I can do nothing. Apart from you, I cannot exegete your word, teach your people.

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So God, do what only you can do today, edify your church, teach your people,

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Lord. And please help me to decrease and you to increase.

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Help me as always, Father, to speak in a way that is clear and helpful. And let it always, please,

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Lord, be true. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. There is something so innate in humankind that at varying levels of desire, they want to know of some higher power that will provide a deeper meaning to their life.

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We were all like that. Some want to know about God. They want to know if he exists, what he's like.

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And often people want to see him. They want to see what he looks like. Moses said, what name should

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I give the people to whom you are sending me? Who? Who is this God?

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He also asked God if he could see his face. The apostles asked

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Jesus to show them the Father. Just show us the Father and it will be sufficient, they say.

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The people want to see the signs and wonders of God. And yet when they realize who he really is, like Adam and Eve, they hide from his gaze.

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The people couldn't bear to look up at the mountain to see God's glory resting on it, on Mount Sinai.

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They couldn't even move their eyes upward at the Shekinah glory. They were even afraid to look at Moses' face when the residual glory was shining off of him.

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Isaiah got a glimpse of the heavenly throne and the one upon it and he goes, woe is me.

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Look, God's glory is what sets him apart, right? The Bible is clear, however,

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God is invisible. God is invisible. And despite some theophanies, that is maintained throughout all of Scripture.

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From the Old Testament to the New. The Lord even says, you cannot see my face for no man can see me and live.

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Paul calls him the invisible God in his letter to the Colossians and in his letter to Timothy.

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He says the invisible God. John mentions it in his gospel account as well as in his epistles.

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And yet throughout time, from the very beginning, mankind has wanted to see

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God. They want to see God. And so they fashion often gods of their own making.

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Idols to satisfy their desire to see and handle and touch God. They want to bring

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God down to their level of perception in order to worship Him. Just think of what some of these false gods look like.

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Let's consider some of that. Adramelech was a false god. The people of Assyria sacrificed their children to Adramelech.

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He's mentioned in 2 Kings 17 31. There are depictions of Adramelech with a mule's head and a peacock's plumage feathers and man's legs.

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It's amazing to think that that would satisfy their desire to see a deity.

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Then there was, of course, Asherah or also related to Ashteroth.

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The chief female deity worshipped in ancient Syria, Phoenicia and Canaan.

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Asherah was represented by a limbless tree trunk.

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Just this pole in the ground. She was considered a moon goddess and sometimes the goddess of love and war.

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There was a divination, temple prostitution in Asherah's temples.

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This false god simply looked like a strange woman in the carving of a wooden tree trunk.

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They would put these poles in different places. They would build temples around them.

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In fact, do you know that in God's law, the Lord commanded that the people never plant a grove of trees next to his altar, lest they one day turn one of the trees into an

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Asherah pole. So he commands them, don't plant any trees near the tabernacle or the temple or where my altar will be.

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Baal was considered a supreme deity to be worshipped in ancient

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Canaan, Baal. It was strictly forbidden though in God's law and highly detestable to him.

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He hated Baal, this false god. The Israelites would often play the harlot and worship

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Baal. Everywhere from the time of judges through the book of Kings, the

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Chronicles, even up until the time of the exile, there was all these different Baals.

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There was Baals regionally, there was this supreme Baal and they would worship this false god.

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He was a god of fertility, believed to enable the earth to produce crops for people to produce children.

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He was also considered the god of the sun and storms. In fact, he's often depicted holding a lightning bolt.

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But just as the others, Baal worship involved ritualistic child sacrifice and temple prostitution.

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And I find it amazing when you research more of these false religions and these deities in ancient times, it always often included some form of sexual deviancy and child sacrifice.

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And really there's nothing new under the sun. In our country today and in many parts of the world today, you have child sacrifice through abortion by the millions and you have sexual deviancy running wild.

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So Baal worship, Adramelech worship, Ashtoreth worship is still taking place today.

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It just looks a little bit different. So Jesus links

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Baal to Satan when he calls him Beelzebub in the New Testament. And so Baal or Baal typically was depicted with a bull's head and a man's body or sometimes a ram's head with horns always and a man's body.

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Think kind of like even today if you see the Satanic temple, they have that statue of Baphomet.

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This kind of goat, ugly looking ram, goat head and sometimes again a bull for Baal.

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There was also Chemesh who looked like an old man with a beard. Dagon of the

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Philistines who was often a man combined with a fish. The Babylonian deity

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Marduk who was depicted as a human in royal robes who carried a snake dragon and a spade.

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Moloch or Molech also had bull -like features like Baal, but his arms would extend out in front of him,

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Molech, and his arms were made of metal and they would put these great fires underneath Molech's arms and they would heat the arms up and they would sacrifice live babies on top of his molten hot arms and the babies would burn alive there on Molech's arms.

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Truly demonic, demonic. There's much more than even this in the

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Bible. I bring these up, these wooden poles, these bulls, these rams, fish, old men to demonstrate really how foolish it is.

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How do these depictions satisfy these people? And the answer is they don't.

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They don't. These are merely creatures mixed with other creatures.

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But the true Creator God is different than His creation. And those who know the truth understand that.

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And yet there is still something in us that wants to see the invisible

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God. We do. But we don't deserve it. Who are we?

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Who are we to say, God, let me see your face like Moses did? But the amazing thing is,

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John will show us a way to see the fullest and most manifest self -disclosure of God in our text today.

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Our eyes will see things we never thought possible, and it will be in no way like the false deities of ancient times.

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It will be true, and it will be real, and it will be far more glorious. So let's see it.

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Go to verse 14 in our text. Gospel according to John, chapter 1, verse 14.

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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the

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Father, full of grace and truth. So for the first time since verse 1, halagas is brought up again.

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The Word. And bringing up the Word again is intended to bring the reader back to the mindset of the truth of that very first verse.

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That the Word is eternal. That the Word has Trinitarian relationship with the

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Father, and that the Word is God. We're supposed to read this and remember the

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Word. Oh yes, the Word is God. The Word has deity. And so the identity of the

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Word has been slowly building like a Polaroid picture, building more pixelation, gradually developing more, gaining more clarity and stronger lines.

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That is what our chapter has been like so far, and now we're starting to be able to see the image of who the

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Word is. Excuse me. In fact, the identity of the

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Word will be so clear, you couldn't miss it after the prologue is finished. It says the

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Word became flesh. Verse 10 showed that the Word is a him.

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Him. And what's interesting is John didn't say he became aner, which in Greek means often man or husband.

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He didn't become aner. He didn't become Anthropos, a human man, because he didn't want anyone to mistake it.

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John didn't want anyone to think that the Word became a form of an

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Anthropos, a man. He just came down and he had an appearance, but he wasn't fully the substance of man.

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John doesn't want us to think that at all, so he uses one of the most basic and unsophisticated and honestly one of the most crudest ways to say that the

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Word took on flesh. He uses sarx, flesh. Flesh is often used in the

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Bible in a negative connotated way. The deeds of the flesh versus the deeds of the

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Spirit. This would not be the case here. This is more neutral. This at its very basic level means that the

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Word took on bones and sinew and muscle, and the Word has blood, and He has all these things, the full aspects of what it means to be human, the

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Word took on. That's why he uses flesh. He didn't just come in an appearance as a man.

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He came and he became a man. That's the choice of wording he uses here.

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And when you think about it, flesh, the human body is so easily destroyed.

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I can walk outside today and get hit by a car and I'm done. The flesh is over. But the

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Word is eternal. That's what we're supposed to remember from verse 1. So it seems like a paradox in a way.

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It never says that the Word stopped having the being of God or stopped having the nature of eternality.

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And that's the incredible thing about the Incarnation. By the way, when I say the Incarnation, that is the coming of Jesus Christ through the virgin birth.

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That's the incredible thing about it is that even when He took on flesh, He did not cease to be

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God. The truth of His nature in verse 1, in the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The truth of His nature there is upheld and sustained.

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While all at the very same time, verse 14, the truth of that, and the

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Word became flesh and dwelt among us, He became man. That truth, that nature is upheld and sustained.

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At the very same time, they are both true and suspended. He is fully

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God, totally God, and totally man. We see no transition from coming, being

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God, and transitioning into human form. He is completely and totally both at the same time, with no mixture, no fusion of the two natures.

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That's why something like a title, God -Man, G -O -D hyphen capital

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M -A -N, the God -Man, that is a good title, keeping those things almost separate, that's kind of an image for us.

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To deny that would be denying the truth John so intently wants us to understand.

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He didn't want to establish the Word is God, just so that we would forsake that truth a couple verses later.

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He wouldn't work so hard to show us that the Word has deity, just to say, but now

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He doesn't. A full union of the two natures has occurred, with no mixture of the two.

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Flesh isn't attached to some parts of the divine. Some parts of the divine aren't kind of attached to parts of the human nature.

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They remain separate all at once in Him. God's Word has been delivered to man by way of direct revelation, theophany, prophecy, visions, and on stone tablets, but now the fullest self -expression of God, God's Word, has become flesh.

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As I said last time, this is the pinnacle of special revelation of God.

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Hebrews 1 says, God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days, has spoken to us in His Son.

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And oftentimes we don't realize that that verse is also speaking to the incarnation. Prophets were no longer necessary because God's message doesn't need to go through them anymore.

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God would literally come down to men Himself and speak.

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That's what He did. D .A. Carson said, God chose to make Himself known finally and ultimately in a real historic man.

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What is also significant about the Word taking on flesh is that although He was without sin in every respect,

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He came to a place that is at enmity with God. Unbelievable.

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The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but when He came among us,

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He came into a world that is sinful. And that blows my mind.

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The light entered darkness so that the penalty of darkness would fall on Him. He took on the nature of Adam so that He would be the last

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Adam according to 1 Corinthians 15. Think about that.

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God Himself stepped into the fall of man. He got to feel the very effects of it.

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He got hungry. He slept. He experienced the sorrow of one of His best friends dying, Lazarus.

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He saw the sin and corruption firsthand. This becoming flesh is often referred to as His humility.

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His humility. And honestly, Him simply coming into this world is the first sign of His sacrifice.

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The Word has had glory. He has been with God. He needed not to come here.

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He didn't receive anything here that He didn't already have. He had it all, and yet the first picture of the sacrifice of the

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Word made flesh was Him simply coming here. And being among people that would spit on Him and nail

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Him to a cross, and who would rebuke Him and yell at Him and make false accusations against Him.

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To take on flesh is a sacrifice for God. But that's our

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Savior. Amen? He does what it takes to save His people. He'll go through all that for His people, for those whom

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He loves. It says He dwelt among us. It can also be translated

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He made His dwelling among us. And it is literally the word for tabernacle, where it says dwelt among us.

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That is literally tabernacle. He tabernacled among us. And using this tabernacle language,

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John seeks to show Jesus as a fulfillment of the Old Testament. All the

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Old Testament promises of God being among His people is found in the

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Word becoming flesh. And not only a fulfillment, but now

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He would replace it. Because after His work is complete, the old temple would be destroyed and be rendered obsolete.

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The better one has come. In many ways, those old promises pointed to the better one.

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Exodus 25 .8 says, Let them construct a sanctuary for me that I may dwell among them.

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That pointed forward. The tent of meeting in the Old Testament, Greek Septuagint, was he skene martyrio, which is literally the tabernacle of witness.

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The tent of meeting is literally the tabernacle of witness. Witness what?

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There in the tabernacle is where you would witness the glory of God. That's where the glory of God dwelt.

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Ezekiel 37 .26 -28 speaks to the tabernacle being an eternal reality.

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And of course, that has its fulfillment in Christ. It says, I will make a covenant of peace with them.

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It will be an everlasting covenant with them. Pointing to the covenant of grace.

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Pointing forward. And I will place them and multiply them. That's His church. And I will set

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My sanctuary in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will be with them. And I will be their

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God. And they will be My people. And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies

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Israel when My sanctuary is in their midst forever. That was the promise.

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Pointing forward. For the one who would tabernacle among us. And when

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God comes to you, you're going to see glory. That's what it says.

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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw His glory. We saw

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His glory. And that phrase, we saw His glory, is meant to be authoritative.

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It was witnessed by John and other people. He said, we have seen His glory. This is real.

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This is authentic. We have seen the glory of the Word. But what does it mean?

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What exactly did he see when he saw His glory? That phrase, we saw

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His glory, is intended, as I said, to be authoritative. But also maybe

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John is making a connection to the scene of the glorified Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration.

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Is that possible? Is he talking about the whole of Jesus' ministry?

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Or did they see that He was God? It says in John chapter 2, after He did

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His first miracle at the wedding in Cana, when He made the water into wine, that that was the beginning of His signs that, quote, manifested

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His glory. In the

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High Priestly Prayer in John 17, Jesus says, The glory which you have given Me, Father, I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one.

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Glory is doxa in the Greek. And in Hebrew, glory is kabod.

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Kabod. When that word occurred, kabod, it often alluded to a visible manifestation of God's glory.

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It is clear the Eternal Son of God has glory and enjoyed His glory with God the Father before the world was.

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He's always had glory. But now, we see, as John 2 said, we see with His miracles, we see with His death,

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His burial, His resurrection, His exaltation, His ascension, we see

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His glory more up close now. Specifically, John and the others in the first century saw

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His glory and now we see His glory as it is recorded to us. In a sense, the glory of God wasn't complete in the

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Old Testament, but Jesus demonstrates the glory of God in all its fullness.

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Now between both Testaments of God and His work, we will see the full scope of His glory.

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Now all the nations of the world will see His glory. That is the promise. It talks about the glory more specifically, glory as of the only begotten from the

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Father. In the Greek, this word begotten is so much richer and more meaningful.

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Let me explain it to you. The word is monogenes. Monogenes. Monos means one or only and genes points to not a physical begetting through the union of a husband and wife and intercourse, but here genes points to an existence.

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That is to say, Jesus was not begotten in the way that we think of begotten. We view this in light of verse 1 of His eternality and deity.

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So this is saying He is the one and only. The one and only

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Son. The unique and only one in existence. Unique Son or one and only

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Son are the better translations here than only begotten. He is unparalleled, unique, one of a kind.

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That is what the only begotten from the Father means. And by saying from the patros, from the

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Father, we know more about His glory then. This isn't meant to be a contrast of the glory of the

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Son opposed to the glory of the Father, but we are intended to look at this and see His glory as qualified.

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That is to say, Jesus' glory is the very glory from the Father. It is one and the same.

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When they saw the Son's glory, they saw the Father's glory. And Jesus even says that when they say, show us the

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Father and it is sufficient. And He points to Himself. You've seen the Father if you've seen Me. And that glory was full of grace and truth.

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Doesn't grace and truth sum up Jesus Christ so well? Grace and truth.

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He is full of kindness toward those who don't deserve it. He is full of truth as He is truth incarnate.

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He was full of glory and grace and truth. And I already pointed out a text from the

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Exodus concerning the tabernacle, but I think this has even more parallels to the

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Exodus. Just like the beginning of the chapter had parallels to Genesis.

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Excuse me. This has a lot of parallels to things that occurred in the Exodus, the book of Exodus, not necessarily the

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Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt, the book. So Exodus 33, 18 through 19,

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Moses said, I pray that You would show me Your glory. He asked the Lord. And the

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Lord said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before You and will proclaim the name of the

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Lord before You, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show compassion on whom

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I will show compassion. Excuse me.

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Moses' prayer to see God's glory was fully realized in the Word taking on flesh.

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In the coming of Christ. His goodness hasn't simply just passed before us.

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His goodness is now given to us. It doesn't just pass by us as it did for Moses.

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It is given to us. He's gracious and merciful. Exodus 34, verse 5 through 7 says,

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The Lord descended in the cloud. The Lord stood there with him as he called upon the name of the

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Lord. Then the Lord Yahweh passed by in front of Moses and proclaimed the

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Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in grace and truth.

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It says there in Exodus 34 some translations say loving, kindness, and truth, but there's the connection point.

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The Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in grace and truth.

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This is pointing the Word made flesh back to Yahweh who passed before the people, who passed before Moses.

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This is the God who is abounding in grace and truth, full of grace and truth. Direct correlation.

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The glory Moses saw pass in front of him is the very glory that John and the others saw with their own eyes, with grace and truth.

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We could honestly spend a whole sermon on verse 14, but let's go on to verse 15.

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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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So verses 15 through 18 will now serve to introduce us more distinctly to the

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Word made flesh that he's been describing. And the one who will continue to be the main focus through the rest of the

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Gospel account, verse 15 through 18 are really going to describe him more. Some have expressed that verse 16 would be a better verse to follow verse 14.

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Some people think this is out of nowhere. If you kind of read verses 14 through 18, some people have said, what is with this quotation from John the

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Baptist out of nowhere? Now, some have just resigned to say this is a parenthetical.

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It was just put in there by John. But if you realize it, John the

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Apostle has never put anything in the prologue that wasn't intended to be there. So let's look at that now.

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I think this serves a great purpose. It says, John testified about Him and cried out.

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Testified is actually, church in the present tense, as if John continues to testify about the

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Word even after John had died. Okay? And cried out is in the perfect tense, which means in the perfect tense, the crying out was accomplished in history, but its results continue to produce fruit.

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Okay? That's what's going on here. John testified about Him and cried out.

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That is to say, he did that in time and history, but the results continue to go on.

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The testifying continues to produce as a result of his crying out.

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This was kind of what I was talking about last sermon about John the Baptist, that he still has relevance to us, that John the

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Baptist has touched every single believer. And to this day, that is his legacy.

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Now, John's quote is meant to show the reader, really, the superiority of the unique Son.

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This was He, John says. This is the one I was talking about. One commentator said regarding this, the

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Old Testament has crossed over into the new. A new Genesis has occurred. The voice of an

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Old Testament prophet has now become the voice of an apostle. The Baptist and all others no longer look for the coming one, but they look right at Him.

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They don't look for the coming one. They look directly at Him. Now, He is here.

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The Baptist is stating unequivocally that the successor is greater than the forerunner because the successor is the true forerunner.

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I'm not trying to confuse you. John is the forerunner, but there's something that's at play here.

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When it says, He existed before me, that is that word from the first five verses,

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Ein. Ein. That comes from the word Amy. This is being.

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Ein means no point of reference or origin. It points to something that is eternal.

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For He was before me for forever. For all eternity.

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That's what's being said here. The word Ein. But then

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John says, He who comes after me. And that's true.

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John is the forerunner. He comes before the king's procession. So the

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Greek vocabulary and sentence structure is a little bit odd here. In English, this would literally say he who comes after me becomes before me for before me he was.

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Very interesting. He who comes after me becomes before me for before me he was.

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And that is what's so incredible about this statement, about this quote. John the Baptist is in a sense speaking to the two natures of the unique son.

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Jesus is all at once after John in respect to his humanity, but also before John in respect to his deity.

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He is all at once before John and after John. That's why

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John the Apostle would choose this quotation. It goes perfectly in line with his train of thought.

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John the Baptist is the necessary bridge connecting the prophetic nature of the

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Old Testament to the apostolic witness of the new. The word is before and after John the

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Baptist. Both are true, just like Jesus being God and being man are equally true statements.

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And ultimately, John the Baptist wants to make clear the primacy and supremacy of Jesus Christ.

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This will be seen even more later when he says, he who comes after me, I am not even worthy to untie his sandal.

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He continues and we'll see it actually in the next week in the week after. John realizes.

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He needs to decrease and Jesus needs to increase. It's all about Jesus. And that's the appropriate response.

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Who are we compared to the Lord of Glory? Honestly, he must have been incredulous when the

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Jews came to him and said, are you the Messiah? He was probably like, are you kidding me?

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Am I the Messiah? Am I the Messiah? Don't you know that he was before the world was?

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Don't you know? That he is eternal, that he is God? It must have just blown his mind.

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He would not want to be compared to the Word made flesh. Now go to verse 16.

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Verse 16. For of his fullness we have all received and grace upon grace.

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For of his pleromatos, his fullness, his completeness, totality, his full measure, we have all received.

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Paul tells the church in Ephesus that he wants them to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled up to the fullness of Christ.

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Now we can see in verse 14, it said full, and now we have fullness.

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They have the same root word. There seems to be a connection here. His fullness involves grace and truth.

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For of his fullness we have all received. Again, verse 14 said he is full of grace and truth. That involves his fullness.

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And that is likely why it says grace upon grace. Now I know

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I've been, of course, this past couple of weeks fairly technical with the Greek much more than I normally do with the prologue than anything else, but I think it really reveals some deeper truth for us that we need to see.

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Because I have to tell you, there is a dilemma with grace upon grace. There are two camps with grace upon grace.

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And you're like, Pastor, you can just keep going. Trust me, this is significant enough for me to mention.

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Grace upon grace. Let me dive into that for you. That is Kareen anti -Karitas.

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Kareen anti -Karitas. This is what's called a

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Hapax Laganamon. And literally that word means that this only appears once in scripture ever.

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There is no other phenomenon as this grace upon grace. Kareen anti -Karitas is the only time it's in the

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Bible. And so it's called a Hapax Laganamon. And it doesn't really occur in other ancient texts in Greek that we've seen.

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So the problem is with the word anti. A -N -T -I.

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One camp says it is upon or in addition to. And that carries the correct understanding of anti here.

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That's what they would say. And no doubt, there is theological substance to that.

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Grace upon grace upon grace. That is a good principle. That's something that I could get behind.

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I would say grace upon grace. I think that's a great way to say what we have in Jesus.

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But there's another option that I think makes more sense contextually and with the original language.

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In the Bible, the overwhelming use of anti is in place of or instead of.

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Okay? In place of or instead of except this one time upon.

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And typically, if someone wanted to use the word upon, they would use the Greek word epi. E -P -I in our

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English language. Epi. But that's not what's used here. It's anti. Anti.

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In place of something else. Okay? So I think this statement is highly related to verse 17 concerning the law and Moses and Jesus with grace and truth.

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Okay? Kareen Antikaritas is saying grace in place of grace.

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Grace in place of grace. Meaning that the giving of the law was a form of God's grace.

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God making a covenant with his people in the Old Testament was a grace. It was a grace.

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But now in Christ, we receive a new grace. However, those against this view say the law was never gracious.

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What God did in the Old Testament was never gracious. But Jesus never purports that in the gospel according to John ever.

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He affirms the law in all the gospels. In John 5, Jesus even says to the

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Jews, for if you believed Moses and what Moses wrote, you would believe me for he wrote about me.

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Jesus points back to Moses. If you would have believed Moses, you would have actually believed in me. If we say grace was missing in the

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Old Testament, it would be like saying that the manna in the desert wasn't gracious, but Jesus being the bread of life was.

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Okay, so God supernaturally feeding his people in the Old Testament in the desert, in the wilderness, wasn't grace, but him being the bread of life is.

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Or, for instance, God lifting up the serpent in the wilderness to heal them wasn't gracious, but Jesus being lifted up like the snake on a cross was.

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God healing his people wasn't. You see what I'm getting at?

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The giving of the law to a fallen world was absolutely an act of grace, and you won't hear many people say that.

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But it was. In that law, we get to see the very character of God.

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The very character of God. In that law, we get to see what pleases God even if we could never measure up to it.

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Paul calls the law a tutor leading us to Christ. We can identify the giving of the law to God's people as a gracious act even though it wasn't the state of grace or the covenant of grace the people of God are now under.

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That's what I'm trying to argue. The giving of the law was a grace, but it wasn't the covenant of grace that we are now under as people in Christ.

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Everything God did with Israel was gracious. The covenant he made with Israel was gracious.

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Delivering them out of Egypt was gracious. Choosing Abraham out of a polytheistic

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Mesopotamia, out of the land of Ur was gracious. Everything that God did, that is false to say that God wasn't gracious in the

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Old Testament. He was most definitely gracious because the God of the Old Testament is the

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God of the New Testament, Jesus Christ. Hands down. Now it is grace in place of grace.

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Do you get what I'm saying? It is grace in place of grace. A more glorious grace. Grace in truth replaced law salvificly, but now all three are for the people of God in the covenant of grace.

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And the last thing I'll mention about this verse is that when it says we have all received, John intends to not only include himself and first century believers, but even us to this very day until Christ returns.

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Those who believe, those who received, receive the greater grace.

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So let's see how this correlates to verse 17. Verse 17 says,

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For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

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So again, what I'm saying is you have grace and grace in place of grace in the second part here.

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To many in the first century, the law was the end that they desired. For the strives and Pharisees, the law gave them a sense of entitlement.

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Law is what a sinful heart wants to break or pretend it's keeping externally, but internally not.

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And the Jews, of course, considered Moses like a savior to them in giving them the law.

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The contrast John is trying to make is not an antinomian one. That means lawless.

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This is not an anti -law statement that John is giving us here, but trying to show the supremacy of Jesus Christ through His deliverance, through His grace, through His truth.

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He's the true deliverer. Sure, Moses was called the deliverer, but it really pointed to the true and righteous deliverer,

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Jesus Christ. So there is this, as always in this chapter 1, in this prologue, there is this glorious tension.

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You know? I told someone it's like when you flip two magnets over.

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You flip one magnet over, you can't press them together and they're just kind of like suspended there together and they can never touch, they can never mix, but they're just suspended there.

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And that's kind of the glorious tension of the prologue of John, of the nature of the

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Word being totally man and totally God and being before John the

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Baptist, but also being after John the Baptist. There's this glorious tension here and that's occurring in this verse as well.

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So there's a contrast, but a progression. Just like totally

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God and totally man. We could never obtain grace necessary, the grace necessary for eternal life through the works of the law.

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That is absolutely true. By the works of the law, no one shall be justified in his sight.

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But again, just because it says law with Moses and grace with Jesus doesn't mean that understanding of grace and place of grace has changed.

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We have gone from God who has given to His people.

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For the law was given through Moses. Something was given to His people.

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And now we've gone to a God who has come to His people.

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The previous forms of God's favor and grace have progressed and become fully realized in the personal and unique Son of God.

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Fully realized in Jesus Christ. And the thing is, the law is always on the pathway to the light in life.

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Again, not that we can be saved by it, but that as Paul says, without the knowledge of the law, we wouldn't know how dreadfully sinful we were and how needed the grace of God was.

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When I stand next to law, I see someone in myself who falls terribly, terribly short.

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I need a Savior. I told you, that's what happened to me 10 years ago. I had always thought that I was a really good guy growing up.

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My parents took me to church. I would tell people I was a Christian, but I was rotten. That's the truth here.

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I needed that law. I needed to see the righteousness and holiness of our

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God. I needed to see that I offended a righteous and holy God. I needed to see then how wicked

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I was by seeing how holy God was. That's, again, what the law can do for us.

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The blessed lawgiver fulfills the law he gave. Again, the

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Mosaic law, the Mosaic covenant was a grace because within it, within that Mosaic covenant, was the law for Jesus to perfectly obey in his humanity.

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In the Mosaic covenant, a law needed to be fulfilled and completed in perfection.

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Perfect. Jesus came and he did that. And then in the Mosaic covenant, also on top of that, it wasn't just a performance, it was a sacrifice system was built into that Mosaic covenant.

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Because the fact is, if I simply lived perfectly, if I was born into Adam, and then

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I lived my life perfectly, it wouldn't be enough. I'd still be born into sin.

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Not only do we need someone to live this life perfectly on our behalf, to obey the law perfectly on our behalf, it's so impeccable.

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We also need a sacrifice system that in a sacrifice, it takes away sin.

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It takes away our guilt. It makes propitiation. Do you get what I'm saying?

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Jesus lived this law perfectly. And then he also sacrificed himself to take away the effects of the fall and the effects of the sin that we actually commit.

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If you lived perfectly from here on out, it wouldn't be enough. If you were born, on the day you were born, you never sinned, it would not be enough.

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You need a Savior who will also die for you. Because we're born, it says, from our mother's womb in iniquity.

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We're born in a disposition of Adam. Okay? And that's, again, the

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Mosaic covenant, it wasn't enough with just the Adamic covenant, the covenant with Adam, do this and live.

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Now we have a sacrifice system because the fall has occurred. Again, I know I'm getting a little deep talking about covenants and stuff, but it's just amazing.

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Praise God. So, we praise

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God for that law that was on the pathway to the state of grace that we long for. We simply couldn't be the ones to follow through with it.

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And just to let you know, this word realized is once again, egeneto, came into being.

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Grace and truth came into being fully through Jesus Christ. They were fully realized in Him.

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And by the way, this is the last time the word grace will be used in this whole gospel account. This is the last time it will be used.

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And so it stands to say, grace used the last time in this gospel account is used next to the name

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Jesus Christ. That is to say, grace means nothing apart from Jesus Christ.

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Grace separated from Jesus Christ is no grace. And also here you have it, for the first time in 17 verses, the word is identified,

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Jesus Christ. He is explicit here. Jesus Christ is the word.

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The word, the life, the light of men, the unique Son, the only begotten from the

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Father is none other than Jesus Christ. He's identified.

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Now for our final verse, go to verse 18. No one has seen

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God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the

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Father, He has explained Him. So this is going full circle back to my introduction.

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This is going full circle back to verse 1 of the prologue, okay? No one has seen

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God at any time. And that is a truth that hits hard.

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Even children say, but what does God look like, Mom? But what does God look like, Dad? There is a sense in that what we can see, we can love more, praise more or adore more, things that we can see.

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The eternal word who was with God and who was

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God has broken the barrier, so to speak. No one can see

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God, but now with the word made flesh, it is possible to see God. That's the point.

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He has made Him known because the unique Son has seen the

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Father. That's right. No one has seen the Father, but the unique Son has because He's been prostante on,

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He has been face to face with the Father and He is in the bosom of the Father. He has seen

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Him, so He can explain it. So actually, if you will hit the last slide,

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Mo, I want to illustrate something for you. This is really the prologue in a diagram working from the top, verse 18 down to 1.

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We see what has happened here. We see the invisible God now becomes the visible God.

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The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus. Partial was received, now the fullness we have received.

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There was a tabernacle that was always moving and the grace of God, the glory of God was not always manifest there, but now the tabernacle is with us forever.

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We were born of flesh and blood, but now we're the children of God, born of the Spirit, born of God.

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We were of the world, but now we are of a new world. Light was made for us,

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He said, let there be light, but now we walk in true light. Remember, He was called the true light and now we walk in Him.

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Life was given to us. It says the breath of life was breathed into man, but now we're given new life.

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That was said in John chapter 1. He created everything, not anything that was made was made apart from Him, but now

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He's making all things new. He made us new. He is God. Now He is

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God in the flesh. He is with God. Verse 1, and now He is

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God among us. He is before the beginning and now He is our past, present, and future.

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That is the prologue of John. And really, the amazing thing is verses 1 through 5 showed us kind of before it pulled back this veil, it showed us before Genesis and then it kind of showed that Jesus was the creator and so it showed us a little bit of Genesis and it showed us that He was the light and life.

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He was the Zoe and the Photis. And so through Him when God said, let there be light, it was through Jesus that light came.

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So we saw this first Genesis and then verses 13 and onward are supposed to show us a new

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Genesis. That's John's point. There was the first Genesis and now there's this second

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Genesis. We are new creations. We are new.

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And God is among us now. So, we got that glimpse into eternity past.

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This text has shown us eternity past to the time of the first century incarnation to even now as He saves us and it points forward because He's creating all things new.

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So, He's not making all new things. He's not making all new things. He's making all things new.

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There's the distinction there. He's making us new. He's making this creation new. And we always think of Jesus being the creator of the world when it began, but now

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I want you to think of Him as the creator, the creator God when He came to earth. So, He created the beginning and when

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He came to earth in His incarnation, He created again. He adds now, if you go back to the verse, brother.

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I'm almost done with this. He adds theos to monogenes now. Okay? The only begotten

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God. That wasn't in the beginning. Theos wasn't in verse 14.

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The only begotten God. The monogenes theos. This demonstrates, church, that He lost none of His deity after taking on flesh.

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That's the point. He lost nothing after He took on flesh. And He's in the bosom of the

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Father. And in the bosom of the Father reveals more, again, of what it means to be prostontheon, to be face to face.

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This doesn't simply describe His intimacy with the Father, what it was like before the incarnation, but even now.

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And you can see it all throughout the gospel with His loyalty and His allegiance to His Father, His loving prayers with the

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Father and looking to the Father as the one in whom He is primary communion and fellowship with.

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So the intimacy with the Father didn't cease in Jesus' humanity, but it remained steadfast.

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Okay? Some people, they wonder that. Did Jesus lose connection with the

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Father when He came to earth? No. No. This shows that even after He came to earth and He took on flesh,

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He remained in the bosom of the Father. Okay? He has explained

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Him. This is the last thing here. He has explained Him. It would be better positioned to explain or reveal the

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Father, but the unique Son who rests on His bosom. Who would be better positioned to explain

01:01:46

Him than the Son? One could ask, who could possibly describe God? And the answer would be in the person and work of Jesus Christ is the description of God.

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Have you ever seen a small boy explain to others who his dad is? What he does for a living?

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How he loves and provides for his family. The boy will say what makes his dad so cool to him.

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You've got to know about my dad. Right? I've seen that before. I've done that before about my dad.

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It's like this, but so exponentially and substantially greater. Jesus will explain

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His Father to everyone. It says the Son has exegesato

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Him. Okay? And this is from the word exegesis.

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This is literally the word from where we get exegesis. Which means when you exegete the text, it's made up of two words, ek and hegemi.

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And it means to draw out from something with great importance. It means that when we go to Scripture, we draw out the meaning of the text.

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We don't insert the meaning of the text. That's what exegesis means. And so this is where we get the word.

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No one has seen the invisible God, but Jesus is the exegesis of God.

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That's what this is saying. He is the fullest and most manifest explanation and appearance of God.

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Simply put, the coming of Jesus is the exegesis of the invisible

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God. Jesus is the very solution.

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That's what He's trying to show. Jesus is the very solution to the problem in the first clause.

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No one has seen God at any time. What's the solution to that? No one has seen

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God at any time. Jesus is the solution. He is called the

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Word because He is the exegesis of God. You see the correlation now? Church, when

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Moses asked Yahweh to show Him His glory and the Lord passed by Him, it was a promise of this very moment in history.

01:04:08

The Word went from with God to among us. In theophanies, appearances of God never had the essence or being of God in those moments.

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Elijah only heard a still, small voice. Moses spoke before a burning bush.

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But the God -Man makes the invisible become visible. We see

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God in Jesus Christ. That means whether you're a Christian or not, all the longing that you have ever possessed in this life to see and know

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God is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So you want to know

01:04:49

God? Then you need to know Jesus. So you want intimacy with a higher power?

01:04:59

Well, there's only one higher power and you need to know Him. The Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

01:05:05

You need to know Jesus. If anyone tells you, I follow God my way, ask them if that way includes

01:05:14

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, because if it doesn't, they are not even close to knowing or following God if it doesn't include

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Jesus. As I've said before, Jesus is the greatest self -disclosure of God to man.

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You can't touch the divine any closer than touching Jesus Christ.

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And I guess the application I want to present to you today is that just as I said, we saw

01:05:47

His glory, I want you to see His glory today. See, the thing is, we can hear these truths so much that they fall on deaf ears.

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We can hear these truths and realities so much we become jaded to them.

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So don't let this today, church, be something you simply receive as information. Ask yourselves what this means for you today.

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Ask yourselves how this could deepen your relationship with God. With new eyes, see

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His glory. With a new heart, see

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His glory. And let seeing that glory make you fall to your knees in humble gratitude, in awe of our

01:06:36

God, because your most basic desire is now met.

01:06:42

The Creator came to the creature, and you've seen God. Not like a bull mixed with a man or a fish with a man or a piece of wood, but the

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Word became flesh. God became man. The light shined. The life recreated.

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The unique Son exegeted the Father. And even though you may think, how could it get any better than the first 18 verses, the truth is it does.

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Because it says, for the rest of the Gospel account, we will see the

01:07:14

Son exegeting the Father. We will see God reveal to us

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God in the Gospel account of John. Let's pray.

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Heavenly Father, please bless the message that went out today. I pray that it edified your people.

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Lord, I know it grew me, and I know it caused me to see your glory in a new way.

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We thank you, God, that you've given us eyes to see and ears to hear.

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What would we do without you? What would we do if you never came?

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It's the most perfect story in all of history. The most perfect account.

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Thank you, Lord Jesus, for humbling yourself, for veiling your glory, so that you would receive that much more glory when you save us.