John 1:14

The Shepherd's Church

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Tonight, we're gonna continue our examination in John's opening prologue, which is the first 18 verses of the gospel.

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And tonight, we're gonna look at verse 14 a second time with a little bit of a different look.

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Last week, we looked at it as the coming of Christ in the incarnation. This week, we're gonna look at it from a total perspective of how this verse interacts with the rest of the

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Bible, and it's actually fascinating. And I think that once you see how this verse interacts with the

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Old Testament and how it brings together all the promises in the New Testament, you'll have a deeper appreciation for what

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God is doing in history. So if you will, let's pray and let's ask God for our time together.

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God, we just ask right now that your word would be illuminated to all of us. Lord, I pray that as I've prepared and studied for this,

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Lord, that you would bring to mind those things that you want me to say and that you would allow to fall at the wayside, those things that you would not want me to say.

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Lord, I pray that you would uphold my voice in that, Lord, as we study your word together, that we would see that it has power, and we would see that it does not return void, and we would see that it's a lamp to our feet and it's a light into our path, and it's a double -edged sword that cuts and heals, and it's there to teach us and rebuke us and correct us and train us up in righteousness.

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Lord, what a privilege it is to open your word. What a privilege it is to examine the word made flesh.

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So Lord, in all these things, we ask that you and your spirit would be very present in this moment as we look at the truth of God together.

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In Christ's name we pray, amen. Amen. If you remember, we have talked about the eternal

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Christ, the one who's been there for all of time in the beginning. We've talked about the creator Christ who fashioned matter and energy, and he made man in his own image.

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He literally knelt down and fashioned human beings according to his likeness. He breathed this breath of life in them and even made a suitable partner for the man so that that original couple were made in the image of God.

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And as we've been talking, John has been highlighting the fact that darkness entered the world, not nighttime darkness because we found out that that was actually a good thing and from the

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Lord, but a spiritual darkness entered the world because human beings rebelled against God.

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And we've also learned that God would be just in destroying those first human beings and leaving them in their sin.

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He said, in the day you eat of the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, meaning in the day that you disobey my command, you shall surely die, but they didn't die.

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See, God is a God of justice and God does not overlook sin, but God is also a

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God of grace. So what we've learned is that God extended to Adam and Eve and God extended to humanity, borrowed grace, and then later the punishment, the justice would fall on Jesus Christ.

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So the justice of God is upheld and the grace of God is upheld. Here we've learned that the original couple, they were allowed to live and have children and grandchildren, they were allowed to multiply and that God even went to great lengths to restore them.

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He didn't abandon them and he didn't leave them to their own devices. Now, last week,

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Derek delivered the word and he showed us that literally all of the Old Testament points to Jesus Christ.

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If you remember a reading ever in Luke 24, Jesus opens up the Bible and he points to his disciples and he says, all of it is about me.

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And if you remember that the Bible Jesus had was the Old Testament, he's saying that every page,

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Genesis two, Malachi chapter three is all about him. Every type, every shadow, every person, every event, all of it culminates in Jesus Christ.

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All of it looks forward to him and foreshadows him. From the grace that God gave to Noah, Noah saved a family by entering into a wooden ship.

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Jesus saves a family by being nailed to a wooden cross. This is not coincidental. The gospel is all over the story of Noah because it points to Christ.

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You think about Abraham, Abraham has promised a child and through that child, the whole world would be blessed.

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That doesn't apply to Isaac. Isaac is the first fruit of that, but Isaac had a child, his child had a child, their child had children.

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And eventually you have Jesus Christ born son of Abraham who would literally bless the entire world.

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So the promise made to Abraham was actually a promise that pointed forward to Jesus Christ. How does that happen?

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Well, Abraham is told to take his son up on a mountain and it just so happens that that mountain is in modern day

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Jerusalem. And he's told to sacrifice his son and God stays his hand because he said, you will not kill your son.

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Why? God is showcasing the gospel. On that same mountain is where Jesus Christ died, on the exact same mountain that Isaac was going to be sacrificed,

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Jesus Christ was crucified. And unlike Isaac, who God held the knife,

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Jesus Christ endured the knife of God's wrath for us. Abraham was called faithful, not because he was.

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This is a man who gave his wife over to Pharaoh as his sister, because he was afraid. This is a man who worshiped idols in his earlier years.

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This is a man who was not biblically faithful, but yet God could call him faithful on borrowed grace, grace that Jesus Christ would one day earn that was credited to Abraham, even before Christ came.

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We look at the law of Moses. God gave the law to sinful people to keep them in right relationship with him, but yet the people couldn't live in relationship with God.

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They couldn't keep the law. They needed a better lawgiver. The law itself points to the need for a savior.

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Think about the judges, the judges themselves at times do okay.

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Most of the time they fail miserably, and it points to the fact that we need a better judge. The priests serve in the presence of God, and they serve on behalf of the people, but my goodness, we need a better priest.

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That system is temporary. The sacrificial system itself, the blood of bulls and goats do not save anyone.

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We need a better sacrifice. All of the Old Testament, even the kingdom, we're given a

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King David. Look at how that turned out. He started out as a man after God's own heart, and then he was a man after someone else's wife.

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We need a better King. Every word in the Old Testament points to the limited nature of those things that all point to Christ.

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It's like breadcrumbs left in a forest. Every bit of the Old Testament is pointing towards Jesus Christ.

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It is intentionally laid out to lead us to him, and that's why as we turn to John 1 .14,

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we'll see all of this culminating in Christ. John 1 .14 is a really, really special verse. I say every week you should commit this verse to memory.

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Maybe eventually we'll have the whole New Testament memorized on my plan, but this one is definitely one that you should commit to memory, because in it, the entire gospel message is there.

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So let's turn to John 1 .14, and let's read, and then let's talk about a few things together. John 1 .14

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says, 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. Now, there's a ton of theology that we could unpack, and we could talk about this one verse for several weeks, but I want us to finish this verse off tonight by talking about an aspect of theology called the presence of God.

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I want us to talk about what does it mean that human beings can be in the presence of God. I want us to talk about what does it mean that God would actually dwell among his people, and we're gonna go to the

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Old Testament, and we're gonna look at some different themes, and we're gonna showcase how Christ is the fulfillment of the presence of God.

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John says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Now, let's stop right there. What does it mean that God would dwell among sinful people?

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What does it mean that God would share his presence with man? Now, scholars divide up the

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Old Testament in several different ways, and there's lots of different ways that you can look at how the books are grouped together.

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We're gonna call it three different groups tonight, from Eden to Exodus, from the tabernacle to the temple, and then after that, what happens in the culmination of the coming of the

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Messiah. So let's look at what does it mean for God to dwell with his people in Eden and then beyond.

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We see that God knelt down and he created the first man to be in relationship with him. He did not create him to be in isolation.

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Created him to live in his presence. In fact, the purpose of creation was that we would live in the presence of God for all of eternity.

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Without sin, without death, we would have lived in perfect relationship with God, basking in his perfect presence.

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We were made to enjoy the presence of God and to live happily in his presence.

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We were never made to feel alone. We were never made to feel unfulfilled or incomplete.

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Those are things that are alien to the biblical creation. Those are things that were never supposed to be in the original design.

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And as we talk about often, the fall of God is what caused everything to go awry.

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When we think about we were made to be in the presence of God, the fall rendered us isolated and abandoned from God.

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Now, if you think about it this way, the Bible talks about being near to God as dangerous because he's so pure and holy.

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So God had to leave his people. He had to pull his presence back or else they would have been destroyed.

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So even in that, God is gracious. But the thing that I want us to see is that the consequence of our sin, past, present, and future is that we lose intimacy and relationship with God.

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Our sin is still serious. We still suffer in our relationship with God because of our sin.

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And that is a result of the fall. Because of the fall, we could no longer be near to God. Because of the fall, sinners can no longer be in relationship with God.

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Because of the fall, children were no longer born in the presence of God. And the elderly no longer died at a good old age in the presence of God.

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Human beings were left destitute. And again, God could have destroyed his sinful people.

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He could have destroyed them and he would have been just for doing so. But that is not what God decided to do. All throughout the

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Old Testament, we see from Genesis to Exodus, from Eden to Exodus, we see

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God reestablishing his presence with sinful people. And the way that we see

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God doing that in the first stages of the biblical history is through isolated events.

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He shows up to a single person or a couple of people and he appears to them.

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So we see as soon as Adam and Eve sin, God appears to them in the garden. And he says, who told you that you were naked?

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God is giving them his presence even after they sinned. He's reestablishing his presence with sinful humanity.

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When Abraham is all alone and wondering if the promises of God are gonna come true, God shows up in the flesh.

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In Genesis 15 and 17, God shows up and encourages Abraham. And he talks to Abraham and he walks with Abraham.

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The very first female that God shows up and speaks to is not even an Israelite, she's an

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Egyptian slave. Because God, even as the earliest pages of the

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Bible is not interested in a national redemption plan, he's interested in a global redemption plan. And Hagar, the

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Egyptian slave gets to see God and she even cries out and she says, you are the God who sees me.

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In her vulnerability, she realized that I should not be able to see God and he should not ever look at me.

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But yet he does and he sees me. We see it with Jacob. He sees this beautiful staircase to heaven.

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And he's puzzled by this. How can God dwell with man? How can there be this staircase or this ladder where God and man are going to be restored and through my family?

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It gets even more personal for Jacob when he wrestles with God. You ever thought about that? The grace that God would come down and wrestle with a mere mortal and let him feel like that he was involved.

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He touches his socket and throws it out of joint instantly just to show him that he is God. He shows up to Moses in the burning bush.

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He shows up to Moses on Mount Sinai. The point that I want us to see in all of this is that human beings broke the relationship with God and God is the one by his own power alone who has to fix it.

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Human beings cannot fix it. Sin rendered us incapable of fixing it. But God is not finished with humans so he decides to show up to a few people for a purpose of revealing himself.

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But it's even better than that. God doesn't just show up to these people to reestablish relationship.

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He shows up to showcase the gospel. Every single time that God shows up and showcases any part of his presence, it always is a picture of the gospel.

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There's never a time in the Old Testament when God shows up somewhere where he is not foreshadowing Christ. I challenge anyone to find an example of it.

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For instance, Adam and Eve. God shows up and he preaches the gospel to them right after they sin.

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This is called the proto -evangelion or in Greek, the first gospel in Genesis 3 .15.

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He shows up, he gives them his presence. Why? To tell them the gospel. I will put enmity between you and the woman.

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He's talking to the serpent. Your children and the serpent, all of them will be at war with one another.

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The children of man will be under a curse. But he, who is he?

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He shall bruise you, the serpent, on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.

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God is speaking to the serpent, proclaiming the gospel, saying that one day, a child of Eve, not a child of Adam, the virgin birth is already there in Genesis 3 .15.

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A child of Eve is going to crush the serpent's head. In that appearing, he is showcasing the gospel.

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He's not showing himself for no reason. He's showing himself to explain to them that Christ, the

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Redeemer, is coming. And think about what this would have done to Adam and Eve.

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If they would have left the garden with no hope, that any hope was ever going to come, what would they have done?

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Suicide? They would have lived utterly dejected and disappointed for the rest of their life, but they left, even though they knew they had sinned, having hope.

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One day, this is all gonna be made right, because when God appears, he always appears to showcase the gospel.

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God didn't appear to Abraham, an old man who needed a child. There were plenty of old men in the ancient world who needed kids.

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There were plenty of old women who were barren and could not have children. He's not just appearing to them to give them a kid.

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He's appearing to them to showcase by the manner of which Christ is going to die. It is no coincidence that on the exact same mountain that Isaac was going to be slayed, that Jesus Christ would one day be slayed for our sins.

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This is not wasted. Every appearance is showcasing something about the Messiah. Moses.

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God doesn't just pop up as a burning bush because he likes to play cool tricks on people or because he wants to just do a magic trick.

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Oh, wait, look, I can light up this bush and it won't be consumed. That's not who God is. Why does

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God appear to Moses? Because he wants him in his dejected state to go back and to bring the people of Israel out of the land.

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Why does he want to bring the people of Israel out of the land? Because his Messiah would be born in that bloodline.

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If God doesn't show up at the burning bush, there is no Messiah because the people would have been killed by Pharaoh.

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Pharaoh was becoming increasingly hostile towards these people and he would have eventually murdered them all. So God shows up.

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God reveals himself to what the world would call a loser and he empowers him to go back and he commands him to get those people out of there because the line of the

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Messiah was hinging upon it. He doesn't show up for no reason.

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He shows up to showcase Christ. He doesn't show up because these people were good.

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The Bible calls them stubborn, stiff -necked, ungrateful, idol -worshiping, God -hating people.

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So their performance wasn't the issue here. He doesn't show up because they were powerful. God says he chose them because they were the weakest.

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They were enslaved. He doesn't show up because they have great potential. At every turn they fail, just like we do.

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God appears to Moses to showcase the Messiah and he appears to Moses to protect the

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Messianic line. That is why God appears. That is why God showcases his presence in the

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Old Testament to push everything forward to Christ, the one who would permanently and ultimately restore the presence of God.

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So from Eden to Exodus, the presence of God shows up a couple times to a couple different people for a specific purpose, to showcase

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Christ. When you get to the back half of Exodus, now God commands them to build a tabernacle, which is actually an improvement.

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God doesn't want just a few people to experience his presence. Remember we said in the beginning, the purpose of humanity was to live in the presence of God.

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So the restoration process of that was he appears to a few. Now in Exodus, at the end of it, he's building a tabernacle so that the many can experience the presence of God.

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It's growing. The tabernacle, if you're not familiar with it, it's a temple.

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It's a tent temple. It's movable and it's portable for people who are on the move. You could set it up on a journey and you could worship the

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Lord where you're at. And God promised that he would come down and he would dwell inside of the temple.

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He promised that his manifest presence would come down in the back room of the temple in the

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Holy of Holies, and that's where he would dwell. Excuse me. Now, the layout of the tabernacle is actually very interesting.

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In the book of Exodus, it talks about how all of the tribes of Israel were to be wrapped around the tabernacle with some on the east and some on the west and some on the north and some on the south.

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All of the tribes were to surround the tabernacle because God's presence is meant to be central in the lives of his people.

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Just like the Garden of Eden where God was in the center of the garden and he met with his people there,

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God is meant to be central in the lives of his people. And this is actually really fascinating to me.

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I hope it is for you. When God shows up and the author of human life shows up, he does things in very similar ways.

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The author of the entire biblical story is God. So it's not surprising to me that the tabernacle looks an awful lot like Eden.

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It's not surprising to me that Eden was this centralized location. Think about it this way. Eden was a three -part structure.

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You had the garden, you had the region of Eden, then you had the uttermost parts of the world. Isn't it interesting that the tabernacle is a three -part structure?

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The Holy of Holies, the holy place, the outer courtyard. Because it's mimicking what we see in Eden.

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When people were cast out of the garden, they had to walk to the west. They had to walk away from the presence of God towards the west.

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Isn't it funny that the tabernacle was designed so that when you enter, you're going to the east?

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Not coincidentally, because it is dramatically showing that everything that was lost in the fall was going to be regained.

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Just like Eden had borders, the tabernacle had borders. Just like you had to perform a sacrifice in order to get into the tabernacle, a sacrifice was performed in Eden as they were leaving the garden.

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Everything that was lost is now being reversed in this tabernacle. The last thing was

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God's sacrifice to cover his people's nakedness and shame. Now, as you enter, you're sacrificing, you're celebrating what

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God has done. I find it interesting that when Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, two fiery angels were outside and they were guarding the presence of the garden so that when you go in, you could not go in and experience the presence of God anymore.

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So it was guarded by these two angels. Did you know that when you walk into the tabernacle, if you're the high priest, as you get to the

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Holy of Holies, there's a curtain and on that curtain is two angels with fiery swords because it's re -enacting the reversal of the curse.

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You are going past the angels that should kill you into the presence of God through grace.

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That's what the tabernacle is demonstrating. I find it interesting that the priest who served in the tabernacle, the word that is used for the priest, kehol, is the same word that's used for Adam and Eve in the garden, to keep it, to work in the garden and keep it.

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This same word is used for the priest to work in the tabernacle and keep it because Adam and Eve were the first priest in the garden temple and now the restoration project is

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God installing a new set of priests. The same word used for God walking is the same word used for God in the tabernacle in the

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Holy of Holies. The same tree of life is often depicted as a golden lamp stand with branches to show that this is the restoration project.

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This is our way back into the presence of God where we can have life. All of the decorations have a garden -like feel.

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None of this is coincidental. And this might not interest you, but I think it's fascinating to me that Eden, where the presence of God was fully manifested, is being re -enacted in this little tent tabernacle because God is writing the story of redemption.

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Everything that was lost is gonna be re -found. But just like Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden for their unfaithfulness, the people of Israel were cast away from the presence of God because of repeated unfaithfulness.

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They experienced divine abandonment throughout their history because of their stubbornness and their propensity towards sin.

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If you trace the history of Israel, they eventually get to the point where God himself departs from their temple in Ezekiel 10.

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He leaves it and abandons it. The shell that was left over, he sends the

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Babylonians to burn to the ground in the exile. And if you're an

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Israelite, you're thinking, my gosh, this place that represented the presence of God, this place where God and man could dwell, this place where redemption could happen is gone.

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What hope do we have? Even when the temple was rebuilt, it had none of the former glory.

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In Ezra, it says that the people were crying and weeping because it did not look like the former temple.

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God was no longer present in that temple. When we get to Jesus in the New Testament, it's called the

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Herodian Temple, which is one of the architectural wonders of the ancient world. And yet, Jesus said, it's full of dead men's bones.

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Because while it was beautiful on the outside and while people would travel thousands of miles to see it, it was spiritually dead.

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It was vacant because God's presence was not there. So what we've seen so far is that God is attempting to reestablish his presence with his people.

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He does it with a few, then he does it with a group. And all throughout the

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Old Testament, all we see is sin, failure, and rebellion. And then we come to John 1 14. So I give you that background for a very specific purpose.

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Let's look at John 1 14 again. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

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The word became flesh and he dwelt among us. This is dramatic. From Ezra, when the second temple was built all the way until Matthew begins his gospel,

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God has not dwelled with human beings. God has abandoned human beings to their own sin. So this verse signals that God is back, that the presence of God has come back to his people.

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And we see that it's because of the only begotten son of God that this can happen.

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Now, if you've been here long enough, you know that grammar is really important to me. And I really appreciate the fact that we can talk about it because it's very important.

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My seminary professors used to tell me and tell all of us to wear your grammar like underwear.

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It's gotta be there, but don't let anybody see it. And I reject that. I think that the grammar is actually really important.

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And I think that the things that we learn from it are necessary. So I appreciate you,

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Dr. Arthurs, if you're listening, but I'm not obeying you right now. This word dwelt is really fascinating.

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The word dwelt is a common Greek noun called skene.

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It's very common in the Old Testament. You know what the word means? It means tabernacle.

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This word dwelt means tabernacle. And while John uses it in the very rare verbal form, what he is essentially saying is that the word became flesh and he tabernacled among his people.

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If you wanna maybe give it a paraphrase, you would say that the word became flesh and he pitched the tent of God's presence in our camp.

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What he's saying is that the same presence of God that filled the

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Holy of Holies has now come in the person of Jesus Christ. It's unbelievable.

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The comparisons are endless. This is not just Eden in the tabernacle. The tabernacle was covered by a flesh covering.

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Why does John say that the word came in flesh? Because Christ is the true tabernacle.

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Why is the tabernacle in the middle of the camp? Because Christ came into the heart of the nation. Why did Christ come to the heart of the nation?

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To die for that nation so that he could come into the heart of the believer in the center of their life.

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Christ is the true and better tabernacle who becomes the center of our existence. The tabernacle is the place where you would go to meet with God.

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Now, where do we meet with God? In the person of Jesus Christ. He's the true tabernacle.

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That same Holy of Holy presence is now available through Jesus Christ. Think about this. When you walk into the tabernacle, you wash yourself so that you can go into God's court as a

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Christian. You go down in the waters of baptism because now you're a part of the kingdom of God.

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You're washed symbolically. Think about this.

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Instead of being a sacrifice of a goat or a bull, now you have a better sacrifice of Jesus Christ who totally washes away your sins.

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What John is saying when he uses this single word dwell is that Jesus is the walking, talking, tabernacling presence of God in the flesh.

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That he alone is where the presence of God dwells. He alone is the one that can bring healing, not through Buddha, not through enlightenment, not through Hinduism, Shintoism, Taoism, Atheism, Judaism, Mohammedism, or any other ism.

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It's through Christ and Christ alone where we can find healing. This Christ who is wrapped in flesh.

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And that's our first point, that the presence of God is reestablished through the person of Jesus Christ alone, the true tabernacle.

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Does that make sense? The second point is that God's not finished there because God not only wants us to experience his presence, he wants us to be safe in the presence of his glory.

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Because if you remember in the Old Testament, glory is dangerous. Glory is something that would consume sinful people.

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So what does John say? The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.

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How is that possible? In the Old Testament, you would experience the muted glory of God through the sacrificial system and it was conditional.

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You had to sacrifice. If you came into contact with sin or with death, you had to sacrifice.

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If you touched a corpse, you had to sacrifice. If you ate shellfish, I don't know why, but you had to sacrifice. If you did all of these things, then you needed to sacrifice or you would not experience the presence of God.

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You would not experience the glory of God. And if the glory of God showed up in your sinful state, you would be consumed by it.

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Sin and death in the Old Testament must be atoned through the sacrificial system or you would not experience the glory of God.

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And that is the point of the entire sacrificial system. The innocent would cover the guilty so that those who deserve to be abandoned by God could experience his glorious presence.

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That is what the sacrificial system is all about, that the innocent would pay for the wrath of the guilty so that a safe space would be created so that humans could step in for a moment and experience the glory of God.

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And it was distant. It was not up close and personal. If you think about the

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Holy of Holies, it's three layers removed from the people. Even four, the people are outside in the world.

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And then you have the outer court and then you have the inner court and then you have the Holy of Holies. Four layers deep is where God had to put his glory so that it would not break out against sinful people.

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It's at a distance. Now, imagine the dilemma. God wants to share his glory with his people.

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But his glory is dangerous. What does he do? He sets up the law to help keep them from sinning.

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That's what the law's point was, is to help them live in right relationship with God. And he sets up the sacrificial system as the whoops

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I sinned I need to be atoned for so that you've got both of these things working together to help these people live in relationship with God.

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The law to keep them morally pure, the sacrificial system to cleanse them when they aren't.

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Now, what I find interesting is that there's a third layer to all of this. In the Old Testament, God has 99 % of the sacrifices in the sacrificial system for known sin, for sin that you're cognizant of and that you're aware of and sin that you know you need to repent of.

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But there's one specific day when it's a day for forgotten sins, when it's a day for unknown sins, when it's a day for I didn't have another bowl to sacrifice because I did something wrong again type of sins.

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You see, when we talk about the glory of God being dangerous, the glory of God is dangerous for both known and unknown sins.

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There are things inside of our hearts, even we don't even know how we've sinned against the Lord. So God puts together an accidental protection plan for those people who are not morally pure and not perfect and cannot remember all of the sins that they need to confess.

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And that's called the day of atonement. The day of atonement was the most dangerous day in all of Israelite calendar year.

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It's the day when the high priest would spend weeks preparing to enter the presence of God. He would go through multiple different sacrifices.

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He would clothe himself with white garments to cover his nakedness. He would go through multiple washings and multiple rituals and multiple cleansings in order to be prepared to enter into the presence of God.

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He would even wear spiritual clothing like body armor so that the presence of God would not break out against him.

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He would tie a rope around his waist just in case he messed up in any of his preparation so that if he died and was struck dead, they could pull out his body.

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This is the most dangerous day in Israelite history, but what the purpose of it is, is that when that man carries in his people symbolically and he represents them before the presence and the glory of God, they are gonna receive pardon for their sins, both known and unknown through the death of the lamb.

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What a picture of the gospel. That Christ, our true and great high priest, carried us into the presence of God and he sacrificed himself on our behalf so that the violent presence of God would not break out against us.

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John said, we have seen his glory. What an astounding phrase. He's talking to unwed moms.

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He's talking to former drug dealers. He's talking to tax a dermis.

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He's talking to every single type of person and he's saying that although you're not a high priest, you have seen the glory of God because of what

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Christ has done. What an astounding thing. That being with Jesus is like being in the back room of the

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Holy of Holies. That's what it means. That when you've seen Jesus's face, you've seen the face of God.

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That the glory of God, if you're a Christian, is no longer dangerous to you because of what Christ has done.

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And you may be wondering, how does this apply to us? John's saying we saw his glory.

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Maybe that just means we, the 12 disciples. Maybe that just means we, the people who saw him living in the flesh.

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Maybe that just means we, the people of the first century who saw him resurrected. How does that we get down to us?

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Well, we have to remember the purpose that John is writing in this book. He says that if you believe that Jesus is the

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Christ and the son of God, you will have life in his name. What John is saying is that if you believe in Jesus as the

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Messiah and if you believe that he's the son of God, you will not only have life in his name, but that life is that tabernacling presence of God in your life.

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And that's our final and third point is that God is bringing about a global indwelling of his presence through the life of believers.

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Jesus's presence was not confined to his physical body. It was not confined to Israel or the first century.

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That was not God's plan. God had a global vision, just like he did back in the days of Hagar, that he is going to save a people who are gonna showcase the glory of God to the ends of the earth.

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John's writing to people who've never hugged Jesus, never seen Jesus, never heard his voice, never saw his resurrected body.

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And yet John is saying, if they would believe in him, that they would have the same benefit of his tabernacling presence that the high priest had when he entered the

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Holy of Holies. That's what John is saying. That Jesus could be at the center of our life, like the tabernacle was at the center of the community.

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That the better sacrifice could be applied to us, that the better priesthood could be applied to us. We could have a high priest who could permanently forgive us of all of our sins.

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And if you remember, as you walk into the tabernacle, the presence of God filled the room like smoke.

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We Christians can be filled with the Holy Spirit of God because of what Jesus Christ has done.

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Do you see what this means? Jesus didn't come just to be a tabernacle.

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He came to make you and I little walking, talking temples. Jesus came to defeat everything that separated us from God to indwell us with the presence of God so that in your heart, if you're a

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Christian, you are a Holy of Holies because the Spirit of God lives in you. So that every single place that you step is

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Holy ground. Every place that you walk is sacred. When you go to work, you are carrying the presence of God.

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You are carrying life to the nations. When you wake up and you fix your kid's cereal in the morning and you've got still stuff in your eyes and you can barely see and you really need your coffee, you are a temple of the

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Holy God. When you wake up and you go to bed and whatever you do, everything is done to the glory of God because the glory of God now lives in you.

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That's what John is saying. The purpose of Christianity is not that we would raise our hand and go to heaven when we die.

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That is part of it. But the overarching purpose of being a Christian is being restored back to our purpose as humans that we would live in the presence of God, that we would love and enjoy

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God and his glory and that we would take that to the ends of the earth. That was the reason we were designed.

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In everything we do, big or small, we showcase the glory of God to an own looking world that needs to see.

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We're temples. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, 16, do you not know you're a temple of God and that the

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Spirit of God dwells in you? That's all of us. If you're in Christ, you're a temple of the living God.

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He says to us as a church, the community, in Ephesians 2, 22, in whom you are being built together into a dwelling of God and the

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Spirit. The church of Jesus Christ is not an insignificant thing. It is not where we just go to hang out and listen to a sermon and sing some songs.

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The church is God's redemptive vehicle for restoring the nations. The church is a collection of individuals who make up the body of Christ who are being woven together into an end time temple that one day will be reunited with its high priest.

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The church is a big deal. So when Paul says, whatever you do, whether you eat, drink, whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God, he's bringing together so many themes and so many things in scripture.

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In John 1, 14, we see a picture really of the whole biblical story.

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Human beings were made to be in relationship with God, but we sinned. So Christ came in the flesh.

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Christ came as the true tabernacle. Christ is the place now where we find healing. Christ is the place where we find relationship with God.

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Christ is the one who has now equipped all of us. I'll say it this way, there is no Christian here who is unqualified to share

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Christ with anyone else. There's no Christian here who's second rate. There's no Christian here who is

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JV. Every single Christian in this room is endowed and indwelled by the spirit of God, which makes you significant, makes you sacred, it makes you holy.

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And as you walk out of here today, I think this has practical implications for the way that we live our lives.

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I've been around for 36 years, and I've seen a Christianity that saves you, but doesn't sanctify you.

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I've been around for a long time to see a Christianity that you raise your hand and accept Jesus as your personal savior, but not your

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Lord. I think that undermines the purpose of what Jesus came to do.

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He came to restore all of us, our emotions, our heartaches, our brokenness.

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He came to make us confident in Him. He came to make us excited and joyful in Him, so none of us should walk out of here with a limp.

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Yeah, we revel in the fact that we were sinners saved by grace. That doesn't mean that we're still broken.

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We remind ourself of our brokenness because of how good He is as a savior. All of this is practical for us because if you're in Christ, walk out with your head held high.

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Walk out with your heart filled with worship and gratitude to God because of everything that He has done to rescue and redeem you.

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If you're not a Christian, none of these benefits apply to you. If you're not a Christian, you're living right now in isolation from God.

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And if you die, you will be separated from the love of God and you will only have His wrath to endure. And where Christ protects us from the glory of God, if you're not in Christ, you will not be protected from His glory.

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You will spend eternity in divine abandonment. And if this is you, my prayer is that you would repent and believe, whether you're listening to this online or whether you're here right now.

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My prayer is that if you have not found Christ as your Lord and Savior, that you would repent and believe the gospel like John says.

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You believe He's the Christ, the Son of the God and receive life in His name. If you are a

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Christian, I pray that you would use this time of prayer and this final time of worship to just praise

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Jesus for what He's done. That, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for the fact that you did not abandon us.

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Lord, thank you for the fact that because of you coming to this earth, dying for our sins, indwelling us with your spirit, that we are now sacred, that we are little temples, that we house the presence of God.

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Lord, thank you for the fact that there is no shame anymore, there is no guilt anymore, there is no standard that is being held over our head.

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Lord, thank you for the fact that all of our disappointments no longer define us. Lord, thank you for the fact that there's no standard that can ever condemn us.

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Lord, I pray in your sovereign purposes that if you would allow this gospel to be preached online or to someone else who does not know

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Christ, Lord, I pray by your spirit that you would quicken their hearts, that they would fall at the mercy of Christ and that they would bow before a savior who can save them.

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He has the power to save them and he will save them if they turn to him. And Lord, I pray for all of us who are in Christ, that we would take all of this energy that we have and that we would sing in songs of praise and gratitude for who you are.

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Lord, you're good and now let's worship you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.