Our Lord said in his prayer,
Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with me
where I am, that they may behold my glory. Now long for that,
don't you? Gospel of John, chapter 1. I like to give titles to messages. But there's so much in these
verses that I could not give an adequate title to it. It speaks
of the word, speaks of the life, the light, speaks of a man sent
from God, the witness, the creator and his creation, sons of God,
born of God. But verse 14 sums up what all
these verses are about. It says, The Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. So that, I suppose,
would be the title of the subject. We beheld His glory. Beholding
His glory. And I hope and pray we behold
something of His glory. Tonight, now we begin with verse
6 tonight. It says, there was a man sent
from God whose name was John. He is the forerunner of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Malachi prophesied of the messenger
that would come to prepare the way for the Lord. And he said,
Elijah will come before that great and dreadful day of the
Lord. And our Lord Jesus Christ called John that man. He said,
He's Elijah. But he was just a man, wasn't
he? A man sent from God. Because that's who the Lord uses
to bear witness of the Gospel and our Lord Jesus Christ. A
man sent from God. A man, mind you. It wasn't a
woman. It was a man. And I'm so thankful that God sent a man
to me to hear the Gospel. I'm like the Ethiopian eunuch.
The eunuch said to Philip, whom the Lord sent out in the desert
to preach to one man. It looks like just one man. If
there wasn't a preacher around, surely he could just read the
scriptures. Does that not tell you that the Lord uses the preacher
of the gospel? The Lord had to send a man all
the way out in the desert. Romans 10, 13, Whosoever shall
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Well, how shall
they call on Him whom they have not heard? How shall they believe? How shall they believe in Him
whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent as a man sent from God? Some people resent this
and don't like this and try to refute this, but it's just so.
And I can't believe that those people have ever really heard
the gospel. Paul said this, he said, please
God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And
when our Lord ascended on high in Ephesians 4, it says he gave
gifts unto men. He gave some prophets, some apostles,
some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Our Lord himself
was a preacher. And so God sends men to preach
the gospel to bear witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is
what God sent men to do. This is how you know them. This
is how you know they're sent. It says John verse 7, came for
a witness to bear witness of the light that all through him
might believe. John was sent to bear witness
of Christ the light that people would believe. on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Go to Acts chapter 4 with me,
Acts chapter 4. Now a witness, I don't know if
any of you have been in a witness in a court of law or not, but
if you have, or if you do, they will make you, I don't know if
I do this enough, put my hand on a Bible, If they make you
do that, I'm sure you could object to that now. But you could say,
I promise. We're not supposed to swear,
are we? But anyway, they'll say, do you swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? That's what you will be called
to do if you are a witness in a court of law. And a witness
of the gospel is one who tells the truth. And God helping him. He tells
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and what
is that? That's Christ. So one who is sent to bear witness
of Christ will preach Christ. Christ is the truth. And a witness
is someone you cannot bear witness of something you haven't seen
or heard. A witness is one who was at the
scene and they heard something and they saw something, right?
Simon Peter here in Acts chapter 4, they threatened him and John
and told him to quit teaching and preaching in this name. And
verse 19, Peter and John answered and said unto them, whether it
be right in the sight of God to heart listen to you more than
God, you judge. They said, we cannot but speak
the things which we have seen and heard. And you read with me, John wrote,
that which we have heard with our ears and seen with our eyes,
that life, that word of life, that is who we preach. That's how you know a man sent
from God. He's heard his voice. He's seen
him. He's seen his glory. Listen to
Simon Peter in his second letter to the church. He says, We have
not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto
you. What, Simon Peter? What do you
preach, Simon Peter? Same as John. Same as all the
apostles. A person. We made known unto
you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We
were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Paul, who was Saul, Saul, who
was a religious man, I guess he went about preaching or whatever
you call it, as a Pharisee did. What did he preach? The law.
He didn't know Christ. But when he met Christ, or that
is when Christ found him, and the light surrounded him, suddenly
a great light shone round about him. He said, I was apprehended. And he bit the dust. And Christ,
the light, shone around him and spoke to him, Saul, Saul, and
gave him his orders to preach and so forth. And then sent a
preacher, Ananias, to preach to him the gospel. And Saul said
this later on, he said, I'm determined Not to know anything among you,
save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. After seeing Christ, after hearing
His voice, Christ was to be preached. Right? Before that is anything
and everything. Why don't so-called preachers
today preach Christ? Why do they preach messages on
social issues and political issues and family-oriented messages
and this and that and the other? Why? Because they haven't seen
His glory. They haven't heard Christ. You
know, Paul was blinded by the light, the sun. He was blinded
by the sun. I know you've done this. You've
looked at the sun. If you look at the sun, you can't
look full on the sun, you'd be blinded. When you look in the
sun and look away, what do you see? Sunspots. Everywhere you look, no matter
where you look, in the center of your vision will be that shining
light. That's what it is when you see
Christ. And so Simon Peter said, we can't
help but speak the things we've seen and heard. And John was
a witness of the light. that all men through him might
believe. And verse 8 says he was not that
light. He was sent to bear witness of
that light. Look at verse 22 and 23. I love John the Baptist. Don't you love him? I love John the Apostle. I love
John Sheasley. But John Davis, But John said
this, they came to him and said, who art thou? Let me give an
answer to them with verse 21. What then, are you Elijah? He
said, I am not. My Lord said he was. He's not
going to claim that. He doesn't want them going away
talking about him, thinking about him. He doesn't want them to
think highly of him. He's not there to bear witness
of himself. Christ is the only one that could
do that. Remember? In John's gospel, he said, if
I bear witness of myself, my witness is true. Everything else
does. But he says, there's another
greater than me that beareth witness, my father, that you
don't know. But John didn't come to bear
witness of himself. He didn't want people to go away
talking about him. He wouldn't even give his name. They said, are thou that prophet,
meaning the one that Moses spoke of? He said, no, emphatically. Now John was a prophet. He was
just as called and just as sent and as
important as Moses. But he said, no, I'm not that
prophet. We looked at that Christ as that
prophet. Well, they said, who are you? What are your credentials? Where did you go to school? What
degrees do you have? Do you have a Master of Divinity?
Are you a doctor? No. I like old brother Terry Wortham.
He said, I'm no doctor. He said, I'm not even a good
practical nurse. Master? No. Call one man master.
Don't be called rabbi. Don't be called master. Don't
be called doctor. Who are you then, John? A voice. Just a voice. I want you to see
me, but I do want you to hear what I have to say. Behold the
Lamb. Behold the Lamb. True prophets and preachers sent
by God come in the name of the Lord. They come in His name.
They speak the Word of the Lord for the glory of the Lord. And
they do not want you to see or hear them, but they want you
to see and hear Christ. Joe, your dad used to say to
me, if he was blessed, he would say, and that was nearly every
time, that he'd come up to me and say, I didn't see you today.
You remember that? That was a real blessing to me
to hear him say that. No, John didn't want to be seen
or heard. He wanted men and women to see
Christ's glory, to hear His voice and follow Him. In fact, one
time, two of his disciples left him and started following Christ. And John thought, hallelujah,
the revival has begun. I'm losing all my members. They're
following Christ, not following me. Verse 9, that was the true light,
Christ the light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world. You know, sometimes you get a little light on a subject,
and I believe I got a little more light on the subject of
light. this birth, now that Christ lighteth every man that cometh
into the world, that he's the ruler, the light, he's the creator,
he's everything. Everyone in him, they live and
move and have their being. He's Lord of the universe. God
has put everything under his absolute control, right? Like
the sun, everything is under the sun. If anybody has any understanding
of anything, any ability at all, they all got it from the Lord
Jesus Christ. Did you catch that? And it's
all for the furtherance of His glory and for His kingdom and
His people. Though they be in the minority,
God, Christ, uses the whole world for His people, His remnant. You believe that? He said that
in Isaiah 43. He said, I gave Ethiopia and
Egypt for you. Ethiopia and Saba for you. Egypt
for your ransom. The whole country of Egypt. existed to serve God's people. Do you believe that God gives
men the ability to do things just so that they can serve God's
people, like brain surgeons? Do you believe that God gives
the light, the knowledge, the understanding to operate on the
brain so that a boy from Carter County, Kentucky, who ends up
in Franklin County, Virginia, needs an operation on his head?
that God gives a man, puts the world in his heart, puts him
in the university to go through all that schooling to get that
degree and get that ability to operate on a brain just with
that one man. You believe that? That's an absolute fact. An absolute
fact. Our heart surgeon, Teresa Patterson,
had heart surgery and on and on it goes. That's a fact. I
didn't make that up. God said that. That's amazing,
isn't it? He's the light. Any light man
have, on any subject, get it from Christ. He gave them that
ability. And certainly, without a doubt, if any man has the light
or the knowledge of the glory of God in the faith, it comes
from knowing Christ. There is no understanding of
anything, anything in the universe, true understanding, apart from
Christ and Him crucified. Go with me to Matthew 6. Matthew chapter 6. Christ is
the light of the world. He said that. I am the light
of the world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness. Matthew chapter 6. Look at this.
Verse 22. He said, the light of the body
is the eye. Okay? What goes into your eye,
that's what you see and understand, how you act and react. If therefore
thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
What's that mean? Well, I just said it. If you
look at the sun, you see the sun. That's all you see. And when Saul of Tarsus saw Christ,
before that, he gloried in the law. He gloried in himself. He gloried in lots of things.
But when he saw Christ, from then on he said, God forbid that
I should glory, saving the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. After
seeing Christ, His glory, he didn't see any glory anywhere
else. When you see the greatness of
our Lord, you won't see any man as being great at all. So when your eye is singled,
if your eye is on crime, read on, verse 23, but if thine eye
be evil, The whole body should be full of darkness. If therefore
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. Now religious people think they
have light, don't they? But if they don't have the light
of Christ, if they don't see everything in light of Christ,
they're in darkness. And it's a worse darkness. A
refuge of lies is worse. Listen to this. David said this,
David knew Christ. He said, With thee is the fountain
of life, in thy light we see light. And in Psalm 119 it says,
The entrance of thy word, give it light. He said, Thy word is
a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. With thee is the
fountain of life, and in thy light we see light. That ark,
Noah's ark, it was one window, right? One window. And that's Christ, isn't it?
One door. That's Christ. Christ is the ark. He's the window. Now, if you wanted to see the
world, you'd have to go up to that window, wouldn't you? One
window. And it was in the top story. Alright, what would you
see if you looked out that one window? What would you see of
the world if you looked at it? You would see a world perishing. You would see a world under the
wrath of God, not the love of God. The wrath of God, wouldn't
you? You would see very clearly through
that one window what the world is, a perishing place, and all
those outside the ark are lost and perishing. And you know what
else you would come to the conclusion, understanding of? I'm so thankful
I'm in the ark. How do you know all that? You
look out that window. And if you were in that ark,
and if you're in Christ, you know how you got there. Your
Noah brought you in. And God shut you in. And we're
shut up to faith. And pitched. And the Lord did it, we didn't
do it. So, He's the light. Verse 10, He was in the world,
the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. Creator
came, and His creatures didn't know Him. They rejected Him. Isaiah 1 says, the ox knows His
master's creature, but my people, the ones I've made, And he's
talking about Israel. And they were religious. They
were supposed to know God. But then they began to worship
idols, didn't they? How could they? How could they? All through Deuteronomy. Many
has been reading through Deuteronomy. All through Deuteronomy, God
keeps reminding them and warning them about images. graven images,
or any similitude of anything in heaven, or the earth, or under
the earth, or in the sea. Are these things harmless? No,
it's idolatry. any kind of images, any kind of similitude of things
in heaven, of God, any kind of picture, so-called, or angels
and all that. It's idolatry. It's an abomination.
It's an abomination to God. And God keeps warning them and
telling them, you didn't, He said, when I was with you, you
didn't see any vision. He kept saying that. You didn't
see any similitude. Beware. You heard a word from
my prophet, from me, and that was it. Because what happens? People
start worshipping these images and not worshipping God. You know, they found the brazen
serpent. Remember? You know what they
were doing? They were worshipping that brazen
serpent. Hezekiah, being a true king and prophet of God, ground
it to powder. And he called it Nahashtan, meaning
worthless brass. And he threw it and made the
people drink the water and threw it on them. I bet if you want to find out what
people really believe, start tearing down their idols. I did
that one time. somebody's house, and they had
this crucifix on the wall. I said, that's an idol. And the
person, no, I don't worship that. I said, well, throw it in the
garbage then. Take it down and throw it in the garbage. Oh,
no, I can't do that. Oh, oh, oh. You do worship it, don't
you? God's spirit, they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit. They don't worship things. And
this is what Romans 1 says, that when they knew God as God, they
didn't worship Him as God, but became vain in their imagination,
and made all sorts of images, and it began with a man, the
image of a man. And all these pictures of so-called
Jesus. He doesn't look like that. There's
a reason why there are no physical descriptions of Jesus Christ. He did not have long hair. I
don't know where they got that. But it's not in the scripture.
It's a shame for a man to have long hair. He didn't look like
a Caucasian. He looked like a Jew. That shroud
of Turah, you know, it's supposed to have that image of him burned
into it. Oh, I wish we could burn that.
Well, let's go on. But he came to his own, his own
received him not. But as many as received him,
now look at this. And I hope you and I can get some great
comfort here. As many as received him, it does
not say accepted him, does it? There's a huge difference. They're
opposites, receiving and accepting. A glass is a receptacle. It's an empty vessel. It's a
dead vessel, right? It does not have the power to
accept or reject. It doesn't have the ability.
I'm going to take some water and pour it in this receptacle. It has no say. I'm the one. If I pour water into that glass,
it has received it, not accepted it. It's a huge difference. There's a reason why accepted
is not in the Bible, because it's a lie. That's the will of
man. That's the will of the flesh,
right? I didn't accept Jesus as my personal Savior. I tell
you what we do do before we're born of God, we reject Him. And
that's just the hardness of the heart. Pour water on it, and
the water of the Word and the Gospel was pouring on my hard
heart for years. It just bounced like water off
a duck's back. Didn't hear a thing. What God's
got to do is make your heart a receptacle. Break it open in
order to pour in this oil and wine. Right? We do not have the
ability. We're dead in trespass. And you
hath he quickened who were dead, as many as received him. Received
the love of the truth. Heard the gospel. Look at it,
verse 12. Glory in this. To them gave he
the power, or that is, the right, the privilege. Power means, I
don't really know what it means, to be a son of God and all that
that means. The rights, the privileges to
become the sons of God, even to believe on His name. How does
salvation come? Those that believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ have life. not work, not do anything, but
just look to Him. And He gives us that faith. We're
receptacle of that faith. And it goes on to say here, verse
13, these were born, not of blood, that is, nationality, not Jews,
because He is not a Jew which is one outwardly, but inwardly,
and circumcision. The operation of God is not in
the flesh, it's on the heart. And only God can operate on the
heart, the spirit of man. They were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh. It's not a decision we make. You don't offer a dead man life. He doesn't have the power to
accept it. Christ said, I have come that they might have life,
to give life. Amen. Not of the will of the
flesh, nor the will of man. No one can will us into the kingdom
of God. Brother Kelly read from Psalm
49. Nobody can purchase the redemption of anybody. They can't do it.
In Catholicism, you know, you pay all these indulgences, and
you pray, and you keep praying, and you might get your loved
one out of purgatory. That's a lie. The only one to keep us
out of hell, Jesus Christ. The only prayer that avails the
salvation of our soul is Jesus Christ. We pray, we pray, but
our prayers don't save people. We pray to the one who does.
And if he's pleased, he'll save us. Okay? That's all we're doing
when we pray, Lord. You have to save us. It's not of the will of man,
but it's of God. Why? Because it is. Because it's so, and because
it's to the praise of the glory of His grace. It's His will. It's His choice. It's His blood. It's His blood. It's His righteousness. And it's
His glory. And it's stealing His glory to
do otherwise. Just the slightest variance of
this is stealing God's glory. This is how you know. This is
a litmus test, an acid test of every doctrine. This is it. Who's
getting the glory? Not some of it, all of it. Our Lord said, I will not share
my glory with another. I will not. And all those who steal His glory,
He's going to cast into outer darkness some day. All God's
people know, and they praise Him for that so great a grace. Verse 14, my, my, what a verse. And so he ends up here in this,
whatever you call it, these two paragraphs, where he started.
In the beginning was the Word. And all this about him. And then
he ends up saying, and the Word was made flesh. And dwelt among us. You read that scripture with
me, Revelation 21, is it God? He said that God will be with
his people, God himself shall be with them. God was manifest
in the flesh without controversy. Don't you love that? Oh, it's
a controversy all over the world, but not with God's people. No,
no, no. We've beheld his glory. The only
begotten of the Father. God was manifest as flesh. There's
no controversy with us in it. There's no doubt with that. I
told you that 64 times in John's Gospel it says, I am. I am, 64
times. The Jehovah Witnesses say that
he never said he was God. He never said it to them. Remember
they came, in John's Gospel, they came to him and said, If
you be the Christ, tell us plainly. He said, I told you that you
believe not. Why? You're not my sheep. My
sheep hear my voice. He that is of God, heareth God's
words. Isn't that what he said? You
therefore hear them not, because you're not of God, he said. And our Lord, and when Thomas
heard his voice, And he fell at his feet. And what did he
call him? My Lord and my God. My God. The Word was made flesh. Why? Because it was born of a woman,
made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were
under the law. This is the second Adam from
above come to reinstate us in God's love because of God's love.
and to reconcile us to God and to pay for our sins by burying
them in his body on the tree. The word was made flesh. We see
Jesus made a little lower than the angels for the suffering
of death. God can't die. Man must. Man can't fulfill the law. God
can and did. So God, the God-man, God fulfilled
the law perfectly. And as a man, he died. He died
under the penalty of that law, death. His soul was made an offering
for sin. He was made flesh for that reason.
We see him made a little lower than the angels for the suffering
of death, but now how do we see it? Crowned with glory and honor. All of us are not going to see
a lowly man. We're going to see a Lord on
a throne. A lamb as it had been slain,
and yet a king on a throne, high and lifted up. The Lord Jesus
Christ. And He dwelt among us. What love,
what mercy, what grace. And this is the glory that John
is speaking of. We beheld His glory. Oh, I'm so glad we're going through
this book. This book has more of the actual words of our Lord
as a man on this earth than the other Gospels. It's just so full,
so full of His blessed Word, words of life. And John and all
the other apostles, they said, we beheld His glory. His person. His glorious person. Now, there was no beauty about
him outwardly. There's no form or compass. There's nothing to
distinguish him from anybody else. But, you see, that's not
the beauty of a person, is it? It's their personality. It's
their character. The way they look, that, you
know, people are taken up with flesh. And that's the reason our Lord
made himself of, you know, without form or commonness, like the
ark, the tabernacle in the wilderness, the tabernacle. The last covering
was of brown badger skin, and the people passing by couldn't
see any. What do those people see in that
whole brown tent? Well, you're going to have to
look on the inside. You're going to have to come hear the message.
You're going to have to hear the Word of God. You're going
to have to be brought in. You're going to have to give
them permission to come. And we beheld His glorious person. The glorious person is power. In his first miracle, I started
reading ahead, and it said, after his first miracle of turning
the water into wine, you know, everybody didn't know who did
that. Servants, the lowly servants knew who did that. Don't you
know they're all standing back, did you see that? While those
drunk lords and kings were, this is good wine, who did this? And his servants said, did you
see what we saw? And it says, and his disciples,
it says, when they saw this, they believed on him. They believed
on him. And from then on, they saw. Oh,
what all they saw. They saw God walking the planet.
They saw God in charge of the elements, in charge of the animals,
in charge of men, reading their thoughts. And they feared Him, but they
loved Him. And they said, like John, we
beheld His glory, His power, His words. Oh my, I have asked you before
if you could live any time in history, when would you live? And one time I said, well, I'd
like to live with David. I'd like to be one of his men,
or I'd like to be wherever. And the thought occurred to me,
no, just give me one week listening to the Lord Jesus Christ, just
following Him around. It'd be a lifetime living, one
day, to sit and hear Him speak. We're going to. His blessed words,
the glory of His words, the glory of His works, the glorious redemption,
the glorious gospel. We beheld His glory. And He's
called the Only Begotten of the Father, isn't He? And this is
what men stumble at. They stumble at God's Word, they
stumble. Word says no man has seen God
at any time, no man hath seen or can see God at any time. But
now, we read Job said, I shall see God. The disciples said they
saw God. And though they called him the
son of God, yet they called him God. Well, he's the only begotten
of God, meaning he's the only, he's the expressed image of God.
He's the only body that God ever assumed. He had to, for man to
see him, right? For man to see God, God had to
take a body. For man to hear God, God had
to assume a flesh and blood and come down here and speak to us. And we know the mind, the will.
We know God. No man knoweth the Father, but
the Son, whom the Son will reveal Him. Right? Only through Christ. See, He's
the light. The knowledge of God. And it says in the last part
of that line, it says, He's full of grace and truth. And that's
our message Sunday. You don't think I'm going to
spend five minutes on that. Grace and truth. He goes on to say,
we perceive of His fullness. Grace for grace. The law came
by Moses, but grace and truth. Oh, the glory of His grace. The
glory of His truth. Lord, we're going to look into
that Sunday. Alright, stand with me.