I'm speaking this morning from
the Gospel of John chapter 1. I would like to look at verses
14 through 18. These verses in my subject are
on this particular theme this morning. The Word was made flesh. Let's begin with verse 14. And the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of Him and
cried, saying, This was He of whom I spoke, He who comes after
me, that is in time, is preferred before me, that is in honor,
for he was before me. And of his fullness have all
we received, and grace for, that has the idea of against, backed
up to each other, grace after grace. For the law was given
by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man
has seen God at any time, The only begotten Son, and some of
the other manuscripts from which the scriptures were translated
actually read this way, and I kind of like it. The only begotten
God, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared
Him. Let's pray. Father, how I pray that You would
bless Your Word. that you would do with them what
they were given for, and that they would honor your word, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now I pray, Lord, that in my
inability, your spirit might be with overwhelming ability
to speak to every heart. I pray, Lord, for everyone who
knows the Lord Jesus Christ, that they may see him high and
lifted up this morning, and that we would be made to rejoice and
rest in him. And for those who are here today
who do not know Him, oh, how the Spirit of Christ, we pray,
would come to them and reveal to them what all this is about
and what our joy is about and what our worship is about. May
we see the Lord Jesus today. For it's in His name we pray.
Amen. This is by far, in my mind, the
most fascinating and the most glorious revelation in the entire
Bible. I can't think of anything in
the scriptures that go so far beyond my thoughts that I have
no way of grabbing hold of them than this, the Word became flesh. This is about the God who created
everything, yet becoming a part of his creation, becoming a man. It's about him having and living
in a body exactly like ours, subject to all the same needs,
all the same weaknesses, all the same temptations that we
know too well. It's about the God who needs
nothing on that day saying, I thirst. It's about the Almighty who needed
help, God Almighty who needed help to carry his cross up Golgotha's
hill. It's my prayer this morning as
I do my best to try to speak on this deep subject that God
might be pleased to reveal himself as both God and man, our all-sufficient
Savior. He's so much a man that we should
be able to find in him our dearest companion, our closest friend. He knows our frame. He's just
like us. And yet He is God Almighty so much that we should bow and
hide our face before Him when we pray. May God reveal Him as
He truly is. You know, there in verse 18,
it says, no one has ever seen God. You know, Adam never saw
Him. You remember the only thing that
Adam knew of God in the garden was this, let me quote this verse
from Genesis chapter 3, 9. And the Lord God called unto
Adam and said unto him, where are you? And he said, I heard
your voice walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was
naked and hid myself. He heard his voice, but he never
saw God, never laid eyes on him. Jacob almost saw him, got really
close. Look in Genesis 32. In Genesis 32, Jacob was very,
very close to seeing God Almighty. Let's begin with verse 24. And Jacob was left alone, and
there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.
And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched,
that is, when he, God Almighty, saw that he prevailed not against
Jacob, he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh. And the hollow
of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And
he said, God said, let me go, for the day breaks, can't see
me. And he said, I will not let you
go, except you bless me. And he said unto him, what's
your name? And he said, Jacob, deceiver, that is the essence
of his name. And he said, your name shall
be called no more Jacob, but Israel. For as a prince, you
have power with God and with men, and that's prevailed. If
we have power with God, it's by his grace. And Jacob asked
him and said, tell me, I pray thee your name. And he said,
wherefore is it that you do ask after my name? And he blessed
him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for
I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. He
saw him, but he saw him in the dark. He was very close. But
no one's ever seen God, but then there are those who have seen
God. And those are those who have been blessed by the Lord
to see God in the gospel, to see God in the Lord Jesus Christ,
to see Him in the scriptures, and to know Him in your heart. Philip came one time to the Lord
and said, Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us. I so much
love his response. Jesus says unto him, He who has
seen me has seen the Father. They are one, and if we have
seen Christ, we have seen the Father. So John 18 says, No man
has ever seen God at any time. the only begotten God who's in
the bosom of the Father, that one declared. Now let's take
a look just at a few things. I want to look at three things
that come out of this chapter to me. First of all, I want us
to take a few minutes and look at the mystery of Christ's humanity. The Word, literally, the Word
became flesh. How can the God who said in Malachi,
I am the Lord, I change not, How can He become something that
He was not before? That's the issue here. How can
God, who is perfect, perfect in His being, perfect in all
of His attributes, perfect in everything He does, how could
He possibly become? To become something speaks of
a change. There was some change. How can
God change? Well, in terms of His deity,
Christ never became God. He has always been God, and I
don't know about you, I still, as old as I am, I have no clear
concept of that which is eternal, that which is unchanging. But
He's always been God and never had a beginning, never had an
end. But in terms of His humanity, He came to be something that
He was not before. The Word, the Bible says, the
Word became flesh. but he never became the Word.
He's always been the Word of God and he always will be the
Word of God. Everything the Father has to
say in the Bible, he combined into this one glorious Word in
that person, that God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if a
word in its essence is nothing more than a carrier of meaning,
then God Almighty put his entire mind into this one word. Everything God is, everything
God knows, everything God has to say, He said it in one word,
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the entirety of God's mind
and God's being and He spoke Himself in the person of His
Son for all of us to know Him. So much so that God put everything
into that one word that He has nothing more to say. There's
nothing else to say. Perfect communication requires
no amendments, no corrections, no additions, no deletions. Christ
is the perfect Word and God only had to say Him one time. One
time. When the Father sent the Lord
Jesus Christ into this world, He revealed the entirety of the
divine mind. And through Jesus Christ, He
has said it all. I know of folks, I've met a number
of them during my life, people who have basically studied all
the religions of the world. They've tried to find truth everywhere. God said everything about the
truth in this word, the Lord Jesus Christ. Though Christ Jesus
is a man, yet in everything in his coming into this world as
a man, He spoke the entire mind of God. And God hasn't spoken
a new word of revelation to mankind since, and he never will. All
the scriptures speak of this one glorious word. God's revelation
is complete in Christ. Now let's talk for a moment about,
that's the part we don't understand, the mystery of Christ's humanity.
Let's talk about something we might have some little hope of
entering into a little bit better, and that is the reality of Christ's
humanity. In verse 14 of our text, it says
the word was made flesh and he dwelt among us. That word dwelt,
as the word is most commonly translated in the scriptures,
is tabernacled. The view is that he came and
he lived in a tent. The flesh was compared here to
a tent. Peter uses this same terminology
when he talks about us as human beings. Let me read what Peter
said in 2 Peter chapter 1. He says, and I deem it right
as long as I am in this tabernacle. He talked about his body as his
tabernacle. As long as I am in this tabernacle. Now, I don't have any real sensation
of being separate from my body. My body's here and I am here
and wherever it is, I hope I'm there. Sometimes you may wonder
if I'm really here. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really
there. But nonetheless, he spoke of it like we feel oftentimes
we're in this body of flesh, we're in this form of being. And he says, I deem it right
as long as I'm in this tabernacle, I deem it right to rouse you
up by reminder, knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle
is soon. And it's interesting that he
didn't talk about the end of his being, he just talked about
the end of his tabernacle. And he said the Lord Jesus Christ
had revealed that to him. The Lord left us the record that
he really was, he really truly was God Almighty in that body. People saw him. Too many people
saw him. Read the Gospels. We ought to read the Gospels
regularly. Too many people saw him and he did too many things
for it to be denied historically or any other way. Look in Matthew
chapter 17 with me for a few verses there. Let's begin there with verse
1. The Lord was transfigured before his Before his resurrection,
on this occasion, look in verse 1 of chapter 17, and after six
days, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John, his brother, and brings
them up into a high mountain apart and was transfigured before
them. That is, he presented an image
to them that was not what they saw when they just looked at
his body. He describes it this way, and his face did shine as
the sun. and his raiment was white as
the light. He, in essence, who he really is, shone through the
flesh that he became. They saw God Almighty inside
that body, and behold, there appeared unto them Moses and
Elijah talking with him. They saw a lot of things that
day. Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, Lord, it's good
for us to be here. I'm thinking that's about my
clumsiness on a case like that. What do you say on a day like
that? Oh, this is a good place to be. Yeah, it was a good place
to be when God Almighty and human flesh revealed his deity to that
few that he'd gathered around him. Lord, it's good for us to
be here. I tell you what we'll do. If
you want us to, let us make you here three tabernacles. We'll
just make you guys another tent, another body to live in. No,
we don't need that. One for you, one for Moses, one
for Elijah. And while he yet spoke, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed
them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud which said, this
is my beloved son. in whom I am well pleased. Let me stop at that little word,
am. Am is hard to translate there into English because it's a word
that, when we say am, it mostly focuses on the present. I am
right now at this moment well pleased. In the language that
this word was translated from, it carries a lot broader, a greater
breadth than that. This word is as long back as
you want to look, God looked at Christ and He was well-pleased. And on this moment, in this present
moment in which this was written, God is well-pleased. And as far
forward as eternity goes, God looks at Christ and He is well-pleased. That's why I want to be in Him.
I can see a lot of reasons why God would not be well-pleased
with me. Matter of fact, I can't find any real reason in me that
God would be well pleased except with my union with Christ. I'm
in union with one with whom he has never been displeased. He
has always been happy with him. And all of us, what a gracious
privilege. All of us who are in him, God's
happy with us. What a thought. What an unthinkable
reality that God's happy with me. I'm not happy with me. And
yet God, for Christ's sake, is happy with me. This is my beloved
son, in whom I was, I am, and I will be well pleased. Hear
ye him. And when the disciples heard
it, they fell on their face and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them
and said, It's okay. Get up. Don't be afraid. Now, Now, the Lord Jesus didn't just
wear human flesh. He talked about His body as a
tabernacle, but He didn't just wear it as a suit. He was in this suit. No, He was,
He is flesh. There's a man in glory right
now. Look with me in Luke chapter 24. Let's read a few verses there
that I find very helpful. Luke 24. Let's begin with verse
36. Let me get the right one. And
as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them. The
disciples were meeting in a closed room, and all of a sudden he
was there. And saith unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were
terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a
spirit, a ghost. And he said unto them, Why are
you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold
my hands and my feet. that it is I, myself. Handle me, touch me, see. For
a spirit, a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones, as you see me
have. When he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and
his feet. And while they yet believed not
for joy and wondered, he said unto them, okay, if you're still
wondering if I'm really me, do you have anything to eat? And
they gave him a piece of broad fish and a honeycomb and he took
it and did eat. Jesus was in a body before his
resurrection and he was in a body after his resurrection. It was
glorified, it was different, but it was still a body. He is
still our representative. The Lord Jesus forever remains
as that being, that man, that God, both before his resurrection
and after his resurrection. He forever remains that one unique
being who can speak for men, and he can speak for God. I love
our pastor. He cannot speak for me. God won't
listen to him. I love my parents. I love you,
who I know you know the Lord Jesus. I respect you greatly,
but you can't speak for me. I need someone who is more than
me to speak for me. I need God Almighty to speak
for me, but I need that God-man to speak for me, who is bone
of my bones and flesh of my flesh. And I want Him to speak for me.
He represents me well. He knows everything about us.
The Bible says He knoweth our frame. I want Him to speak for
me, for God listens to Him. God listens to Him. Those of
us who have the assurance that God Almighty has for Christ's
sake saved us and we rest in that and we find our daily strength
to live in this world in that. Where does that come from? You
know, religion teaches people that they ought to try to, you
know, pray more and read more and, you know, take more classes
and learn more stuff and do better and do more good works and all
these things so you can, God will be pleased with you. I want this one. this man that
God listens to. I want him to speak for me. That's
all I need. I've tried to do a lot of good
works. I thought I did a few, but then
I found out I didn't. But I do not want to present
God any works that I have done. I want God to look at the one
whose work is perfect. And he represents me perfectly.
He's just like me in this flesh. He's glorified now. We will be
as well. God's people will be. But he
is flesh and he is God. And he's perfectly able to stand
before God and vouch for this idiot here. May God bless us
that we may have that assurance this day. He is the one who stands
between us. I like that. I like what Paul
wrote to Timothy. There is one God. and one mediator. It's interesting, even though
Christ is God, he's placed in a different, in that verse, he's
placed in a different category. There's one God, God Almighty,
and there's someone in between. There's one God and one, we'll
call him a mediator, Paul said. One God and one mediator between
God and men. The man, Christ Jesus. We've got a man. We've got a
man. He knows us. and he represents
us in glory. Oh, I don't know about you, but
that just sets me at ease. I can rest with that. Now, let
me finish with this, just a brief look at Christ's deity, because
when God becomes a man, for us as finite creatures, there's
issues with that. When God becomes a man, does
it diminish his deity? Does it make him more than a
man? Is he a man really like us, or is he more than a man
like us? And there's a lot of questions about that, but I want
to preach in finishing this message that Christ's deity was not diminished
in the most minute particle when he became a man. That man is
every bit God Almighty. We should bow. We should bow.
He looks like us, though. He looks like us, and I've seen
too many of us. I know who we are. He looks like
us, but he's just like God. In verse 14, the last half, it
said, and we gazed at His glory. That's the import of this. Glory
as of an only begotten of the Father. We looked at Him. Even
they had the same experience that I've been trying to convey
in this message. They looked at this man and they said, I
can't figure that out. I can't make it clear. I don't
know exactly how to put this down, but I know that man is
God. I know that man is God Almighty.
We gazed at his glory, glory as of an only begotten from a
father full of grace and full of truth. Everything Christ did
serves as a witness as the gracious purpose of him becoming a man.
Grace Grace is for those who have not. The Lord Jesus proved
that in John chapter 6. Let's read a few verses out of
that chapter. John chapter 6 verse 1. Yeah, here we go. After these
things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea
of Tiberias, and a great multitude followed him because they saw
his miracles, which he did on them that were diseased. And
Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples,
and the Passover, the Feast of the Jews, was near. When Jesus
then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company coming to him,
he says unto Philip, Where are we going to buy bread, that these
may have something to eat? And this he said to prove him,
for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, ìWhy,
two hundred penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that
every one of them may take a little.î One of his disciples, Andrew,
Simon Peterís brother, says to him, ìNow thereís a boy here
who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are
they among so many?î And Jesus said, ìMake the men sit down.î
There was much grass in that place, so the men sat down and
numbered about 5,000. And Jesus took the loaves, and
when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples.
And the disciples to them who were sat down, and likewise of
the fishes, as much as they would. Everybody ate all they wanted.
And when they were filled, he said unto the disciples, Gather
up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost, And therefore,
they gathered themselves together and filled twelve baskets with
the fragments of the barley loaves which remained over and above
unto them that had eaten." What the Lord Jesus does is not to
let us find the path to God. He's not trying to show us the
pathway to God. That's religion. You can find
that in every one of the world's religions. They are tracing a
path by which you may, through your efforts, find your way to
God. You don't have what you need to find your way to God. God gives us what we need to
find our way to Him. Isn't it something they start
out with just a handful of stuff and they ended up with all this
excess? What's that show? That shows that whatever God's
people need, He provides. Where'd it come from? It came
out of the will of God. It came out of the mind of God.
The one who spoke everything into existence in the first place
couldn't say, well, instead of just a handful of stuff, I'll
just have a bunch left over. They can take it home with them.
I'm okay with that. No, salvation is not a matter of you doing
something or I doing something and God doing the rest. I heard
that, I grew up with that. Oh, you do your part and God
will do His. You don't have a part. We're not able to do a part.
And who wants a part in salvation anyway? I don't want the glory
for trying to save myself. I'm perfectly content that God
Almighty and the person of this man, Christ Jesus, just saved
me just for no good reason but His own. If I thought I had to do something
or maintain something to keep Him liking me, goodness sake,
I couldn't go to bed at night. No. I just want Him to save me
because He willed to and because for whatever reason He determines
to love this fool. That's, grace is for those who
don't have what they need. Grace is also for those who can't
do what they need to do. Look back in John chapter 5. verse 1. After this there was a feast
of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at
Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool which is called in the
Hebrew tongue Bethesda. It has five porches and these
lay a great multitude of impotent folk. Impotent is powerless. They're unable to overcome some
problem. They were blind and halt, that
is, they couldn't walk well. They withered, they were withered,
had limbs that didn't work anymore waiting all around this pool
for the moving of the water. Here was the tradition of that
pool for an angel went down at a certain season into the pool
and troubled the water. Whosoever then first after the
troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever
disease he had. There's no evidence that that
had ever happened, but there were a lot of people who believed.
It sounds like religion, doesn't it? And a certain man was there
who had had an infirmity 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying and
knew that he had now been now a long time in that case, he
says unto him, what a question, do you want to be made whole?
I like that, this blatant simplicity. the impotent man, the man who
couldn't do what he needed to do, the man who didn't have the
ability to do what was required of him to do. The impotent man
answered him, Sir, I don't have a man. I have no helper when
the water is troubled to put me into the pool. But while I'm
coming, another steps down before me. And here is what the Lord
does for those who can't. Jesus says unto him, get up. Get up. Wrap up that old nasty
blanket and walk on out of here. That's the way the Lord saves
sinners. He only provides grace to those who can't. Don't ever
come to God with something, anything. Doesn't matter how small. Doesn't
matter what it is. Doesn't matter how religious
sounding it is. Don't ever come to God with anything. He will
do nothing for you. He will do nothing for you. But
those who can't do anything, do we have any of those? Those
who can do nothing to please God. Those who can do nothing
to understand the gift of God and the glory of God and what
is it that makes us a saint out of a sinner. Those who can do
nothing. Grace is for those who can't. For those who can't. And
finally, grace is for those who can't because they're dead. they're
dead in sin. Look in John chapter 11. John 11, let's begin with verse
35. Jesus wept, that is after they
told him that his friend Lazarus was dead and someone Someone
came and told him about that, and verse 36, then said, the
Jews behold how he loved him. I tend to think he was grieving
over their unbelief. And some of them said, could
not this man who opened the eyes of the blind have caused that
even this man, even this person right here who's gone, that he
could not have died? Jesus, therefore, again, groaning
in himself, comes to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone was
laid over it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, all of
a sudden, sister of him that was dead, says unto him, Lord,
by this time he's rotten, for he's been dead four days. And
Jesus says unto her, did I not say unto you that if you would
believe, you should see the glory of God? Then they took away the
stone from the place where the dead was laid. Jesus lifted up
his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you've heard me. And
I knew that you heard me always. But because of the people which
stand by, I've prayed this prayer that they may believe that you
sent me. And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud
voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he who was dead came forth,
bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was bound
about with a napkin. And Jesus said unto him, loosen
and let him go. Salvation is for those who are
dead. It's not for the living. It's for the dead. Those who
come to Christ with some sign of life, some practices that
we do, some things that we bow our head and close our eyes and
clasp our hands together every time we eat. And if we don't,
somebody gets smacked. I go to church every Sunday morning,
Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and if they have services in
between, I make those too. And I read my Bible every morning
and every evening promptly, and I don't miss a time. And I do
all these things, and I don't talk dirty talk, and I don't
tell people lies, and I just do what I'm supposed to do, and
I pay my taxes and all that other stuff. God doesn't save people
like that. God saves dead people, dead people. The only thing that I know that
qualifies us for a dead person is that if we are unable, oh
my God, cause somebody even today to realize this about yourself,
unable to produce anything, a thought, a deed, an intention, anything,
unable to produce anything that God might accept as a token for
which he should save you. If you have tokens like that
in your pocket, by all means throw them away. Rid yourself
of that. God saves dead people. I'm a
proud resurrected dead person. And I didn't even know it was
dead. I guess dead people don't know they're dead though, do
they? And Lord Jesus gave me life against my will as that
one has said with my full consent. I'm going to finish this way.
There is a man at this moment in heaven, this morning there
is a man just like us, fully able to understand us and he
represents us so well. There's a man in glory, bone
of our bone, flesh of our flesh, God of very God as the old writers
used to say, and he knoweth our frame. He knows that we are but
dust and he saves us by pure mercy alone. Having been a great
high priest, Having passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of
God, let us hold fast the confession. For we have not a high priest
who cannot be touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, our
inabilities, but was in all points tempted like as we are without
sin. Let us approach. Here's my invitation. Let us approach, therefore, the
throne of grace with confidence that we may receive mercy and
find grace to help in time of need. Let's pray.