Glory, Grace & Truth

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I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of John, John chapter 1.
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And today we are going to be looking specifically at verses 14 through 17.
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Now if you have been with us, or have not been with us, rather, for the last few months, maybe you're a visitor, or maybe you've been away, we have begun an examination of the
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Gospel of John, and we have been taking what is known as the prologue of John, which is the first 18 verses, and we have been literally taking them one verse at a time, sometimes taking one half of a verse at a time, because this particular section of John's Gospel is so rich in the information that it provides, but it is also essential to our understanding of the
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Gospel as a whole. John's Gospel is distinct from the other three Gospels, those three being known as the
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Synoptic Gospels. They tell pretty much the same story, and pretty much the same way, with variations on the information contained within, but John's Gospel is much different.
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Seems to have come later, seems to have been written for a different purpose. Not a different Jesus, not a different story, but focusing on a different aspect of the life of Christ.
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Primarily, we learn from the opening words, focusing on His divinity.
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Focusing on His identity as the logos made flesh, or what we would say, the word made flesh.
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And that's what we've been studying. Who is this logos? What does John want us to know?
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What is the foundation he wants us to understand as we begin to study his important Gospel?
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And so today we are going to read again what we read last week was verse 14. We looked at the first three clauses of verse 14.
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There are four clauses in verse 14. We'll get to the fourth one today. And then we're going to, as time allows, move into verses 15, 16, and 17.
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Will we get to them all? Only the Lord knows. But let's stand together and read them anyway, as we prepare ourselves to hear from God.
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Beginning in verse 14 it says, And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us.
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And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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John bore witness about Him, and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.
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For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
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For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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Father in Heaven, I pray that as we seek to understand Your Word, that You would keep me from error as I preach.
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That You would open the hearts of Your people to understand Your Word. That Your Spirit would be the
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Teacher, and that He would use Your Word to teach our hearts. And Lord, as I pray even now,
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I pray for a refreshment from the Word. And a,
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Lord, a fresh eye opening to the
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Word. As we've heard these texts so many times, Oh God, it is easy for us to allow the familiar to become the mundane.
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And yet it is such a desperate thing that we want to pray against anything in Your Word, particularly these words, becoming ordinary.
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So God, open our eyes to see what we haven't seen before. Open our ears to hear from Your Word.
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Open our hearts to receive it. And Lord, as my brother has already prayed, for the believer in this room,
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I pray that they would be edified, encouraged, and educated by Your Word. And for the unbeliever, whether they be old or young,
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Lord, anyone who is outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is under the sound of my voice, I pray that they would see that the only
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Savior given to man is the God -man Jesus Christ.
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May His name be proclaimed among us today. And may we be moved toward closer love and affection and conformity to Him.
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We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week, as I began to walk through verse 14,
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I made the point that it is the preeminent miracle in all of the
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Bible. I quoted C .S. Lewis who said, It is the miracle that all other miracles either point to or derive from or look back upon.
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It is the miracle of miracles that God became man.
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That the Word became flesh. And I mentioned last week that it is possible when you read
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John 1 .14 that you could go back to John 1 .1
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and you could take out everything in between and you could simply read
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John 1 .1 and then immediately read 1 .14 and it would be as if nothing were missing.
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And that is not to say that verses 12 -13 are not important, they're hugely important, but the point is there is a thread of continuity in this text that holds itself together by the identity of the
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Logos, the Word. In fact, if you would, just for a moment, think of it like this, read this,
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld
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His glory. Doesn't that just sound like it was written that way? Doesn't it just sound like it could flow that way?
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And as I was looking at this this week, and I was reading A .W. Pink on this, and as I was considering more about verse 14, something that Pink said jumped off the page, and I hadn't thought of it this way before, but I thought it would be interesting to share with you.
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As I looked at it more and more, I thought, wow, this is really interesting, is that if you look at it this way, not only can it be read one verse to the next, but it can also be read in a parallelism.
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And this is the parallelism. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh. That speaks of the
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Logos in eternity, and the Logos in time. He was before all time, and yet He came into time in the flesh.
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And the Word was with God, and dwelt among us. The Word dwelt with God in all eternity, but He dwelt with us in the incarnation.
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And the Word was God, and we beheld His glory. What glory did we behold?
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The glory of God Himself. So there's a wonderful parallel in this.
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Not only can it be read one to the next, but it can be read side by side. And we see that John's point is overflowing to us in the information that he's given to us.
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And so today, as we continue our study in verse 14, going on into the verses that follow, we're going to pick up immediately after what we stopped at last week.
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We stopped at last week, and we have seen His glory. Now if you have an
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ESV, then you know right after the word glory there is a comma.
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I'll pull it up on the screen. It says, and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen
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His glory. Comma. Now, in the original language, there was not...
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It's interesting, if you look at the original Greek, it's all capital letters, which makes it very difficult to read.
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There's no spaces between words, which make it even harder to read. And there's very little punctuation, which makes it even more difficult to read when you look at the way
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Greek was written in the first century. But we add these punctuations, and you know me as a grammar nerd.
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I look at these things, and I say, okay, why are we doing this? Why are the translators doing this? Why are we adding these little jots and tittles?
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And it's to make a point. The point is, there is a break here. We have in John 1, 14, we have a fourfold idea.
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And the Word became flesh, that's the first idea. And dwelt among us, that's the second idea.
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And we have seen His glory, or we have beheld His glory. Three clauses with three verbs. Became, dwelt, and beheld, or saw.
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And then there's a stopping point, and what I would say is a commentary on the last clause.
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And that's what the comma separates out for us. It separates out to us a commentary.
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When it says, we beheld His glory, John adds here a commentary on what is this glory?
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What is it that we experienced? What is it that the disciples experienced?
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Whose glory was it? Well, the text tells us.
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It was the glory of the only Son from the Father. The glory of, as the
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King James says, the only begotten of the Father. That's the glory that we're going to talk about today.
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But I want to, before we even go into this, I want us to be reminded that this glory is not different in the sense of quality than the glory of God Himself.
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Because the glory that the logos possesses is the very glory of God.
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In fact, this is one of the reasons we know Jesus is divine.
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Because the Old Testament clearly tells us that God gives
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His glory to no one. He shares His glory with no one.
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If you want verses for that, just look up Isaiah 42, verse 8, and Isaiah 48, 11.
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God does not share His glory with anyone. And yet, when
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Jesus is praying the night before the crucifixion, in John 17.
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By the way, we often call the Lord's Prayer, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be
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Thy name. We call that the Lord's Prayer. That's not the Lord's Prayer. That's the model prayer. That's the
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Lord's model prayer that He gives to us. The Lord's Prayer is
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John 17. Jesus is praying, and He's praying for us.
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Did you know Jesus prayed for you? He said, not only do I pray for you, speaking to the disciples, but I pray for those who will believe on me based on your testimony.
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That's y 'all. Whose testimony do we believe about Jesus? The testimony of the apostles.
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That's what's handed down to us in the Word of God. That's the testimony. That's what we believe in. Jesus prayed for us.
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But in that prayer, in the high priestly prayer of Christ, John 17, in verse 5,
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Jesus says, And now, Father, glorify me with the glory that we had together before the world existed.
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I want to tell you something. There's a lot of places people want to go to defend the deity of Christ.
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Of course, John 1, 1, perfect. Hebrews 1, perfect. All throughout the
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Gospels where Jesus is forgiving sin and demonstrating the power of God, perfect. All of those are great.
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But when somebody asks me, Where do you go to defend the deity of Christ? John 17, 5.
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Because He says there that He had in His possession the glory of God before the world existed, and He shared that glory with the
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Father before the world existed. And God doesn't share His glory with someone who's not
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God. I mean, there's a logical syllogism there. If God does not share
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His glory with anyone but God, and Jesus shares His glory, what does that make Jesus? God.
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I mean, the logical syllogism is absolutely without question. Jesus said, glorify me with that glory that we shared, we had together before the world existed.
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Just a powerful idea. A powerful idea. Is this a lesser glory than the glory of the
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Father? No. Is it functionally different than the glory of the Father? No. Not in the least. It is not a different glory.
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It is a shared glory. But then we have to ask the question. And it's an important question.
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What is glory? We use that word all the time. We sing that word all the time.
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We say it, but I think sometimes we don't really even know what it is.
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And I would add, it's not the easiest word to define. When we're talking about the idea of glory, and we ask, what is glory?
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I just put some notes on the screen for you. What is glory? Glory can be defined in various different ways, depending on the context of the use of the word.
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We often equate glory with praise. Think about someone who wins a title.
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A world champion. They get the glory of having the title.
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World champion. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview a man who was a chaplain for six different Olympic villages.
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He sat in in six different Olympic villages and had the opportunity to pray with those who were believers.
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They would come to the chapel, and he would pray with them. And he said, man, being at the Olympics is like going to ten funerals and one wedding.
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He said, because everybody comes to win, but only one guy wins in each event. There's only one gold medal.
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And that guy is the guy that gets what? The glory. Jerry Seinfeld said that one time.
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He said, I don't know how you can stand to be in the Olympics. He says, you miss by two seconds. Greatest guy in the world?
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Never heard of him. It's like the glory goes to the winner. And so there is a sense in which the word glory is associated with praise for accomplishment.
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That's one of the ways we use the word glory. Men will say, men will climb mountains, and you ask them, why did you do it?
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I did it for the glory. There's no prize to be won.
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I just did it so I could say I did it for the glory of having done it.
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But there is also a sense in which the word glory can be associated with beauty and majesty.
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And we all know this because we've all woken up on a beautiful Florida morning, and we've looked out at the sunrise, and we've seen how the sunrise is bespeckled with all colors as the sun is coming off, and the dew is being melted away, and all of these colors are radiating the sky.
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And we say, what a glorious sunrise.
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Or as the sun sets in the evening, we say, what a glorious sunset. So glory can be associated with beauty, majesty.
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We see a king. We say, what a glorious kingdom. What a glorious crown. What a glorious throne.
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An old home is renovated, and we say it's what? It's being restored to its former glory.
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Glory can also refer to something that is radiant and bright. When Moses went up onto the mountain, and he came back down, what happened to his face?
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It shone reflective of the glory of God, a brightness that was hard to even look upon, and later in the
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Exodus, or during the Exodus rather, the people of God had the glory of God in their presence.
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Many of you have heard of the term Shekinah. The word
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Shekinah refers to the glowing or bright glory of God as it was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
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It's the glory of God manifested in bright, glowing light.
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And yet with all of those definitions, it is still hard to define glory because glory, as John Piper has said, is like the word beauty.
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How do you define beauty? If I said, tell me what beauty is, you'd say,
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I don't know, but I know when I see it. But it's hard to define. It's somewhat difficult to put into words what beauty is.
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If I said define, this is what Piper said, he said, if I asked you to define a basketball, that's easy. It's round, it's rubber, it's got black lines, and it bounces.
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It's easy to define a basketball. But when I ask you to define beauty, you might say, well, my wife, okay, she's beautiful, but what does it mean?
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Right? Beauty is hard to define. Glory, Piper says, is also hard to define because we can say all of these things are glorious, radiance, brightness, beauty, thrones, power, accomplishment.
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But what does it mean? It's hard to put into words. So glory becomes the word.
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Glory encapsulates all of those things. And though it is hard to define, it becomes itself the definition.
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It's the defining word. It's how we describe glory, simply with itself.
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And so, we read that we have seen
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His glory. We've seen it. And I want to remind you,
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I don't remember if I said this last week, and forgive me for too much redundancy, if I am being redundant, but remember that, as I always say, repetition is the key to learning.
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But remember, in this text, it says, we have seen His glory.
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It is the glory of the only begotten of the Son, or the only begotten of the
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Father, the Son. It's His. And for a moment, I just want us to consider this.
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The Son has two types of glory. As you can see on the screen, nothing surprising because I gave you the notes, there are two types of glory when we refer to the glory of God.
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There is the glory that is inherent, and then there is the glory that is attributed. The glory that is inherent is
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God's by nature. God is glorious without us. Amen?
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God's glory exists apart from us. And even had He never created us,
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He would still be glorious, because He has an inherent glory.
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But there is also what we call attributed glory.
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We read this in Scripture. What does the Bible tell us to do with our glory? Attribute it to God.
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It says, ascribe to Him. Does it not? Psalm 29, verse 2,
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Ascribe to the Lord the glory, what? Do His name. Ascribe to the
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Lord the glory, do His name. And we see both of those in the
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Logos. He has inherent glory, and He has attributed glory.
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His inherent glory was demonstrated, as I mentioned last week, on the Mount of Transfiguration. When for a moment in time, the disciples,
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Peter, James, and John, had the opportunity to be exposed to the glory of the Son, and it says that His face shone like the sun, and His clothes were whiter than any bleacher could bleach them.
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That was the inherent glory on display. But we also see in Scripture attributed glory.
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We see people worship the Son. And you know what He doesn't do? He doesn't correct them.
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He doesn't stop them. What do angels do when people worship them?
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Don't do that! We're going to read about that in Revelation. Don't! It's like, get up! Don't!
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I am a creature, you're a creature. Creatures don't worship other creatures. They shouldn't worship other creatures.
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By the way, another way we know Jesus' identity is He received worship. Angels do not receive worship.
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Men should not receive worship. Pope, Mary, we do not worship the saints.
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We can be thankful for the blessing that they were to the world without having to put them on a pedestal and bow down before them.
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But Christ was bowed down to. One of my favorite moments in the
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Gospels is when Thomas finally realizes that he was wrong.
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Because you remember, when they first told Thomas the Savior has risen, he said,
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I won't believe it until I can see the scars in His hand and the riven side, right?
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I won't believe it until I can see it and touch it for myself. We give
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Thomas a hard time, but honestly, a lot of good things said about Thomas in Scripture.
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I don't like calling him Doubting Thomas. I don't think that's fair. But in this moment, he said,
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I'm not going to believe it until I see it. That was on the first Sunday. A week later, they're in the room behind locked doors.
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Jesus appears to them and He says, Come here,
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Thomas. Put your hand here. Know that it is
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I. What did Thomas... How did Thomas respond? Hakodiasmu kaihathiasmu.
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My Lord and my God. My Lord.
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Hakodiasmu. And my God. Kaihathiasmu. I've heard so many ways people have tried to explain that away.
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Oh, that was just an exclamation. Like when you see something amazing, you might say, Oh, God. No.
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It's not a mere exclamation. It's an attribution. This is my
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Lord and my God. And He stands before me in flesh.
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He was ascribing glory to Jesus who deserved it.
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This is the value of glory. We can give it to God.
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That's what He calls us to do. He calls us to live our lives to give
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Him glory. What's the chief end of man? All my good little...
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almost Presbyterians. I always joke. I say we're deep water
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Presbyterians. Reformed Baptists, you know. Glorify God and enjoy
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Him forever. Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That's what we're called to do.
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Paul tells us that. He says everything we do, whether we're eating or drinking or anything else, do all to what?
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The glory of God. If we're struggling with sin, and I know we always are at one level or another, one of the things we can ask ourselves is what
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I'm doing right now bringing glory to God. I was created to glorify
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God. That was the very purpose for which I was designed, made, and produced to glorify
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God in this moment am I glorifying God. That's what we're called to do.
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We have seen His glory, His inherent glory, and because of that we have ascribed
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Him glory and do His name. The glory of the only begotten of the
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Father full of grace and truth. Now I do, again, am
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I even going to get out of verse 14? We'll see. Because we're still in verse 14. Because there's one last line that I haven't really dealt with and that is this last line that says glory as of the only
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Son from the Father full of grace and truth. I'm going to put on the screen here a little note for you.
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This text is translated differently in different translations and not because of a textual variation.
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That's not the issue. It is an attempt by translators to simplify an idea.
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Because the phrase that is in the original when it says glory as of the only
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Son from the Father in the King James Version it says glory as the only begotten of the
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Father. And I believe the New American Standard uses begotten as well. And the
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NIV says the one and only. And the
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ESV simplifies it a step further and just says only Son. I am one who thinks that the word begotten should be there.
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And here's why. The word begotten is our translation of a very important word that John uses of the
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Son. And that word is monogamous or in this sense because of the formation of the sentence monogamous but it's the same.
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It is the idea of there being one and only one like Him.
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He is the only begotten one. The word monogamous comes from a combination of two words.
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The prefix mono means one. We know this because we are monotheists. That means we believe in one
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God. And ganace gets translated into English or transliterated into English as the word genes.
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Not genes like Levi's but genes like G -E -N -E -S. When I say you have your family's genes.
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Think about when you look at your children. You see the genes that you've passed down. There's a 100 % chance that Amy and Steven are going to have a blonde headed baby.
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Because that's the genes they're bringing to this thing. Right? Now it might not be 100 % chance but there's a good chance that that baby's going to come into this world with blonde hair.
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Because that's the genes. Well the word genes in English means it relates to our origin.
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Ganace kind. That's the idea.
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What kind something is. And so when it says monogamous one of a kind.
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One of a kind is a simplified version and that's what the NIV and the ESV are trying to accomplish.
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They're trying to accomplish a simplification of this idea that Jesus is only one like himself.
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Is that true? Is there any other God -man? Was Muhammad a God -man? Was Buddha a
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God -man? Was Confucius a God -man? Was Nietzsche a God -man? One of a kind.
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You may say but why begotten? Begotten is confusing. Begotten seems like the idea of one who has been created and that is the argument for why the easier translations came along.
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Begotten gives the idea of creation and because we want to get away from the idea that the son is created we use the words one and only or one of a kind or only son as the
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ESV and the NIV try. That's the idea. It's a simplification of the idea. But if we go back to the history and I hope, please don't.
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This is important stuff. I know this ain't a normal sermon but it's important because this is why your
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Bible says what it says. We should care why the Bible says what it says and be able to at least understand why these words are used.
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So please don't allow your brain to drift. The word begotten speaks of being of the same nature as the father.
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That's the point. Are you a begotten son of God?
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No, you're not. You're an adopted son of God. There's a difference. We are brought into the family of God through adoption.
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Christ is inherently the son of God because he's the only begotten son of God. You see the point.
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That's the distinction. And this is why the Nicene Creed which we'll read in a couple weeks because we're finally finished with the
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Athanasian Creed so we're going to start again with the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed says we see
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Christ begotten not what? Made. Or as I put on the notes, begotten not created.
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So when the text says glory as of the only begotten of the father it's identifying
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Christ as the unique God -man because there's none other in all creation like him none other no other man has shared the nature of God so no other man can be defined as begotten of God.
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Do we understand now? Why the importance of this word? This is the one.
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This is the king. This is the glorious one. This is the savior. This is the logos. This is Jesus. The only begotten of the father.
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We beheld his glory. Whose glory? Glory as of the only begotten of the father. Nothing should be more exciting than this.
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I know there's going to be something about some pig skins later something about some commercials and maybe even a halftime show that we shouldn't watch.
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Nothing is more exciting than the fact that God became a man. And if we will hoot and holler because somebody got a first down and not hoot and holler over the fact that the only begotten of the father became flesh and dwelt among us then our priorities are wildly misplaced.
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The only begotten of the father of grace and truth.
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That was all introduction. Now let's do the sermon. The sermon is two points, grace and truth. No, I mean there's so much here in just this last two words.
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Full of grace and truth. Full speaks of completeness, lacking nothing.
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Filled up with, covered in every part, thoroughly permeated with. The logos lacks no grace and is deficient of no truth.
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That's what it means when it says full of grace and truth.
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But what is grace? And what is truth? Grace is a central concept in Christian teaching.
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It is defined in scripture by several ideas. Grace is defined by the ideas of kindness, goodwill, favor.
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But most importantly, the idea of gift. Grace is unmerited.
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That's where the idea of gift comes from. You work 40 hours for me as my employee.
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And at the end of that 40 hours you come to me and I hand you a paycheck and I say here's your gift.
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That either means you weren't much of an employee or that means
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I don't understand what a wage is. Because a wage is something that you earn.
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40 hours of work equals 40 hours of pay. That's a wage.
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The Bible talks about wages, but what are the wages it talks about? Sin. The wages of sin is death.
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Every time we sin, every time we sin in that moment, we are demonstrating why death is our right end.
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Because the wages of sin is death.
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But the gift, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. The gift is given without merit.
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The gift is given without earning. In fact, it cannot be earned, it cannot be purchased because God's favor cannot be bought.
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God's favor cannot be purchased. We have purchased our death sentence.
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God has given us life. Grace speaks of God's benevolence,
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His love. God is love, therefore
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God extends grace. Grace is an action that results from the attribute of love.
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God loved the world in this way, that He gave gift,
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His only begotten Son, so that all who believe on Him, that's everyone who believes, will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
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That's the grace, that's the gift that comes to those who believe, all who believe.
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But Jesus is not only grace. Jesus is also truth.
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He defines Himself. How? I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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No one comes to the Father except through Me. The word true is an adjective and its antonym is false.
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So if you say a statement, and it is a statement, a fact, it's either true or it's false.
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But the word truth is not simply an adjective of description, but it is a noun meaning the embodiment of that which is true.
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Jesus Christ is not just one who speaks truth, He is one who is the truth, and something to consider.
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When John tells us He's full of grace and truth, there's actually in this moment a balancing act that is being made, a balancing act that has to be balanced even in our own lives, and this is the balancing act.
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Grace without truth leads to licentiousness.
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Drive down to Riverside. See all the churches with signs on the door.
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What do they say? All are welcome. Well, all are welcome here too, but here's the difference.
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When we see the signs peppered with the rainbow colors, what it means is there will be a welcoming to all with no truth, no call to repentance, no pointing to sin, and no fear of God.
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Grace without truth is licentiousness. But truth without grace is legalism.
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Again, all are welcome here. We will preach the gospel, and we will extend grace to all because Christ extends grace to all.
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We call the sinner to repentance, and we walk with him through his repentance. We love him in his brokenness, and we seek to restore him to Christ.
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That's the goal. But one without the other will not stand.
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So Christ comes, the logos made flesh, who himself has inherent glory and is given glory, and he comes as the one who is full of grace and truth.
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The perfect balance for our desperate need is found in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, for he is full of grace and truth.
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Now, as I said, the possibility of getting to 15, 16, and 17, well, but if I could just for a moment jump to 17, and next week
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I'll come back to 15 and work our way through everything. I just want you to show that the phrase grace and truth comes up again because in verse 17 he says, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ.
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You see, John is reiterating a truth here. He's reiterating a point.
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And the point that he's reiterating is the grace and truth of the logos. And he says here, and by the way, here he defines who the logos is.
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In verse 17, he's been calling him the word this whole time, but now in verse 17 he says who the word is.
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He's become flesh. He's dwelt among us. We've received his glory. He's the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
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Who is he? He's Jesus Christ. And the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus.
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And here's my question that I want you to ponder for just a moment. Does that mean that Moses had no grace and no truth?
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No, it doesn't. Is there grace between Genesis and Deuteronomy?
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Yeah, that's why they didn't all die immediately. I can prove grace from the very moment of their sin.
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Because the very moment that they sinned, they should have died, but God in his mercy extended grace.
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This is one of the areas where I understand the Presbyterian position about the covenant of grace beginning in the garden.
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Now this, I don't mean, again, I don't want to start a new sermon, but the argument of covenant theology says that the covenant of grace began as soon as man sinned because that's when grace entered into the picture and since then we've just seen different administrations of the covenant of grace.
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Now I don't agree with that outline, but I understand how they get there. Because grace existed immediately.
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I understand how they get to that conclusion. But the grace of the old covenant exists because of the new covenant.
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It points to the grace that comes through Jesus Christ. When those animals were sacrificed to cover
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Adam and Eve in their clothes, when those animals were sacrificed so that Adam and Eve would be clothed in their nakedness and not have to wear bare fig leaves but could actually be given the skins of animals, those animals' death pointed to the death of Jesus Christ.
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And every other event in the old covenant pointed forward to the grace that came through the life and death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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So when this text says the law came through Moses, John is not saying there was no grace and no truth in Moses.
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There's a lot of truth in Moses. We point to Moses when we're talking about things like law and righteousness and ethics and things like that.
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There's so much truth there. But it is impossible to rightly understand it outside of Jesus Christ.
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I am an unashamed Christ -centric Bible interpreter. What does that mean?
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That means Christ is my hermeneutic. When I interpret the
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Old Testament, I look through the lens of Jesus Christ. For He is the truth.
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He is the truth. And so, the law came through Moses.
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And I think next week I'm going to dive a little bit more into the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant because that's really the point here. Law couldn't save and law still can't save.
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If you today are hoping to be saved through Moses, you are climbing a mountain which you will never traverse.
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You are reaching for stones that you will never conquer.
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A great film came out a few years ago. And it was a digitally animated version of Pilgrim's Progress.
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And it shows the picture of Christian, the one who's on the journey, coming to Law Mountain.
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And in the digital version, the mountain comes to life and speaks to Christian. And every time
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Christian tries to go over the mountain, he's hit in the face with another law. And it knocks him back down.
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And every time he reaches for something to grab a hold of, the law knocks his hand away. He cannot be saved by conquering
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Law Mountain. But he must find his salvation in the grace of Christ.
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The law truly came through Moses. But grace and truth through Jesus Christ.
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We're going to deal with that more next week. But I hope today, if you are here and you're a believer, you understand that truth, that you're not saved by the law, but you're saved by grace in Jesus Christ.
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And if you are here today and you're not saved, can I tell you that God has given a gift to all who will believe?
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And the gift is His Son Jesus Christ. And the Bible says if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved.
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If you've never done that before, please come and talk to me or Brother Mike or Brother Andy or any one of our deacons after the service.
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And we would love to share with you more about the grace of Jesus Christ. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word. I thank You that the grace of Jesus Christ and His glory has been put on display before us today, but not devoid of truth.
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God, may we be ever enraptured with those important realities of the grace and truth that come through Jesus Christ.
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It's that which He was full of, not devoid of any. Lord, may we learn to rest in His grace and to be confident of His truth.