These have been declared by people
to be some of the most remarkable words ever penned, and certainly
they give us the most remarkable description of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Of course, you might recall that
John was the apostle, the one apostle that lived. to the full
age of a man. In fact, the stories are that
he lived to be 100 years old. He's the only apostle who didn't
meet a martyr's death, it appears. And so when John was writing
these things, he was an apostle of extraordinary experience.
And he'd seen the church assaulted and ravaged. And he'd seen the
extraordinary grace of God. And as he did at the Last Supper,
he was a man who leant upon the breast of the Lord Jesus Christ. He leant upon him. Such was his
familiarity. And that's how he finished his
days, our Apostle, leaning on the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's
read John's Gospel. And we'll start in verse 10. And he was in the world, and
the world was made by him, the world knew him not. He came unto
his own, his own nation, his own home, that means, and his
own received him not. But as many as received him,
to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on his name. which were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God. 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 bare witness of him and
cried, saying, this is he of whom I speak. He that cometh
after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. have all we received grace for
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, which
is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him. what a glorious, glorious description
of the character of our God. The purpose of all things that
happen in this world is that God would be declared, God would
be declared in His sovereignty, in His immutability, in His power,
but for believers in His grace and in His truth. So let's go back, we're looking
at verse 17. We scratched the surface of verse
15 and 16 last week, and every time I turn to John's Gospel,
I see more and I feel more and more inadequate. And it's one
of those things where you think, well, I've failed before I start. Therefore, we just trust the
fact that God has promised to be the teacher of His people,
and He teaches them to profit. And all that are taught of God,
they come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, in many ways, we just
want to say what God says and get all of humanity out of the
way. So in verse 16, we have, of His
fullness have all we received grace for grace. It is a glorious
description of the grace that we read of in Jeremiah 31, the
grace that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in Luke Chapter 4
and pictured in Luke Chapter 15 in the story of the prodigal
son. to accept God in all of his glory
and all of his attributes. And when you've received grace,
grace flows and grace continues to flow. All the recipients of
God's grace will all be saved. All the recipients of God's grace
were saved from the foundation of the world. All the recipients
of God's grace were one with the Lord Jesus Christ when He
walked on this earth. Everything that Jesus Christ
did, He did as an us. Everything that Jesus Christ
did, he did as an us. Such is his union with his people
that when the Lord Jesus Christ walked on this earth and perfectly
loved his father and perfectly obeyed the law of Moses in every
tiny jot and tittle, all of God's children did at the same time.
All of them did. The law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Grace and truth. And when our glorious Saviour
declared it is finished. All of his people had finished
it. They had perfectly loved God
with all their heart and all their soul, all their mind, all
their strength. They had perfectly loved their neighbor as themselves.
They had perfectly obeyed God. They had perfectly obeyed the
law of God, which is why the contrast is there in verse 17. receive from the fullness of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the fullness of His deity, the fullness of
His sovereignty, the fullness of all of His perfect obedience,
the fullness of His love, the fullness of all that He is and
all that He did, we receive grace for grace, of His fullness. Such
is the infinite fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ that He can
give infinite of His people at all time of
His fullness. And His fullness can never be
depleted. It can never be depleted. That's why grace comes and then
grace flows. It's like the waves that wash
over the shore, isn't it? They just keep coming and coming
and coming and coming. And sometimes they're just a
tiny little ripple and sometimes they're an enormous wave that
no one can ride. Or maybe not ride these days. But nevertheless,
they just keep on coming, don't they? Grace comes. And this is the contrast, isn't
it? This contrast is here, for the law was given by Moses. John's
making it abundantly clear that the law he's speaking of is the
law that was given at Mount Sinai, after the Lord had brought the
people of Israel out of Egypt. and saved them with a mighty
hand, he brought them to Mount Sinai. And here on Mount Sinai,
Moses was given the law. The law was given by Moses. And the contrast, but the grace
in the original, the grace and the truth came by Jesus Christ. Now the remarkable thing is that
this is the first mention of Jesus Christ in John's Gospel. And it's really fascinating.
It's been fascinating to me. Norman Simon mentioned it a couple
of weeks ago, and I thought, that's really interesting, isn't
it? He's given all these remarkable descriptions of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and you keep saying, well, who is it? Who is it? In
verse one, He's the Word. He's the Word who is God, and
He's the Word who is God. In verse three, He's the Creator
of all things. And they're speaking of this
hymn. In verse 4, in him was life. Verse 10, he was in the
world and the world was made by him. Verse 11, he came unto
his own, and his own received him not. He has a possession
in this world. And verse 12, that remarkable
verse, as many as received him, many as received him, gave he
power to believe on his name. They believe on his name, they
believe on all the character of God that's been revealed.
They're born, they're born of God in verse 13. In verse 15,
John bears witness of him. And John says, he was, he is
the eternal existing God, he was before me, he's always been
the great I am, God, this Lord Jesus Christ. This is he. He was. things. He will fulfill all of
these remarkable promises. He will do all the things that
only God can do in this world. All the prophets said is like
this. He'll do these things and you have in Isaiah 53 and so
many other places in the scriptures remarkable And John the Baptist is a very,
very first, because there he is. There he is. That's him. That's him. Behold the Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world. John bear witness of him, and
then in verse 16 we speak of his fullness. And John in a sense
is drawing his head, well who's he talking about? This is remarkable,
isn't it? This is not any ordinary human
being whatsoever. This is the God-man himself. And then in verse 17 he says,
grace, the truth, the truth of who God
is, the truth of how God saves sinners, the truth of all the
fulfillment of all the promises of God in the scriptures. It's
the truth. So the question is why? 16 times
he mentions him in those opening verses. And now he speaks of
the Lord Jesus Christ. In Hebrews, the writer to the
Hebrews does the same. chapters before he mentions this
and then he says we see Jesus he's told you about the fact
that he's God that he makes all things and he upholds all things
and he's so big that this universe can be wrapped up like a shawl
around your shoulders by the Lord Jesus Christ so I We have the answer at the end
of verse 18. He hath declared him. The purpose
of all of this revelation is for a declaration of God in the
face of the Lord Jesus Christ. But also, scriptural writers
want us to know the truth of the character of God. as much and as fully as the Holy
Spirit can describe it, as they pen these remarkable words, and
as much as is necessary for the Holy Spirit to enlighten us and
to cause us to see the Lord Jesus Christ, to see all of his character. See, there's no benefit to anyone
in knowing something about God and then finding something else
about him offensive. God's children are made by the
grace of God to love all of the character of God. and they find everything that
God writes about his son to be for them a sign of his grace
to them. It's the truth, the truth of
his character, and John has given us the most remarkable description
of the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has declared him That's what
this whole purpose is. That's what church is about,
isn't it? It's having the Lord Jesus Christ declared to us.
We actually just hold him out before people in as much glory
as sinful flesh might be allowed by God to speak to other sinners. We declare him. That's what it
is to be a minister. You just hold him out. You say,
this is who he is. That's what John did, didn't
he? He's a witness. He says, behold, the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. There's much talk of grace. People name their churches after
grace, don't they? But grace without truth is not
grace at all. That's what these verses are
saying. If he's full of grace and full of truth, then all of
the grace of God is a truth about his character revealed. I love how the Shulamite in the
Song of Solomon describes him. He's the fairest among 10,000.
He's altogether lovely. He's altogether lovely. And he's taken me into his banqueting
house and his banner over me is love. His love is a gracious
love. His love is a love of truth. Everything that he does, you
can put that beside all the attributes of God and you'll find that it
fits as a remarkably good adjective to them in so many remarkable
ways. So grace, till we go back into
John's gospel, grace in John's gospel is this light that comes
into the world in verse five. It's a light that shines in the
darkness. It shines in the darkness of
our depravity. It shines in the darkness of
this depraved world that we live in. And at the rate at which
the darkness is growing and darkening before our very eyes, of all of this that we see around
us is light that shines, is a light that shines. What grace it is
in verse 7 and verse 15 to have a witness of Him. The only way
you'll know about Him is if God sends a messenger to declare
Him. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the Word of God. And how can they hear unless
there's someone who preaches to them? And how can someone
preach unless they're beset And John's witness is the witness
of all of God's servants throughout history. John's witness is the
same witness as God's servants today. Behold the Lamb of God,
we're saying. Behold the Lamb of God, what
grace. And it's a grace that is an operational grace. Grace is not there as something
that sort of sits there as passive. The grace of God is active grace. The shepherd is an active shepherd. He comes into the world in verse
nine, and he comes to his own. The ones born of God, they receive
him. They don't receive things about
him. They don't receive things that
he might do. They receive him. That's what salvation is, isn't
it? It's receiving him. And it's
to believe, at the end of verse 12, it's to believe on him. in the very character of the
Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures. What grace,
what grace it takes for rebels, the rebels that we read about
in Luke chapter four, who heard the most remarkable stories of
grace and the most remarkable descriptions of the grace of
God, coming in the Lord Jesus Christ, he says, here I am, I'm
God, here's your Messiah, and I've come, I've come, he didn't
say I've come, to criticise him, he didn't say, I've come to condemn,
he said, I've come to heal the brokenhearted, I've come to set
the prisoners free. And he shows how he sets the
prisoners free. Naaman, set free. Go in peace, says God to Naaman. What a remarkable word from God
to us. Go in peace. So if you leave
this hall today with God saying to you, go in peace, I'm relying. I need Him. I need Him to represent me before
God. I need Him to bear my sins and
take them away. I need Him to bear the infinite
wrath of God against all my sins. I need Him. You rely on Him. What grace to be a receiver. We looked at that last week,
isn't it? To be a receiver is essentially not to be a giver.
To be a receiver is to be a beggar. To be a receiver is to be someone
who is in need. And that's what faith is, isn't
it? Faith's the open hand that receives the glory and the grace
of God. To be a receiver. We receive
grace for grace. Grace of God, what an extraordinary
word. What an extraordinary word. He, according to John, is full
of grace and truth. He's full of grace and truth. He's the conveyor of grace and
truth. He is grace and truth itself. Don't forget what it says, but
the grace and the truth. In verse 17, comes by Jesus Christ. So what is grace? It's one of
the things I love doing. I love defining the words of
scripture. Someone just declared preaching
to be defining the words of scripture, defining the Lord Jesus Christ. that sovereign grace would choose
a Syrian to be healed of leprosy and not a thousands of Israelites. It's sovereign grace. Grace is
always eternal grace. The grace of God is sovereign
grace. The grace of God is eternal grace. For those who have received the
grace of God, My activities in this world for
all of those people who have received sovereign and eternal
grace are going to be under the hands of a gracious God. You
see, one of the things that our verses tell us, isn't it? The
Lord Jesus Christ declares God, he explains God, and God is gracious
and God is full of truth. He has saved us, 2 Timothy 1.9. He has saved us, completed activity,
and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works. This
is grace, isn't it? But according to his own purpose
and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus. The grace of God is sovereign, which is why grace
reigns, which is why needy people in Hebrews 4 can go to a throne
of grace that we might find help in our time of need and comfort
in our time of need. The Lord says, I'll be gracious
to whom I will be gracious. So there is a people in this
world who are the recipients of sovereign and eternal grace.
Grace is always electing grace. There is a remnant according
to the election of grace. You can't speak about the grace
of God without talking about the electing purpose of God.
And don't forget, the elect one is the Lord Jesus Christ. God
elected one, and when he elected him, he elected all of his people
in him. We are one with him. It's election
according to the, the remnant, a remnant according to the election
of God. So grace is the free favor of
God. It's to have all spiritual blessings
given to you, all of them, all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places are given to you. Read Ephesians chapter one. But
it's all spiritual blessings, it's all sovereign grace to the
guilty and the unworthy. To be a recipient of grace means
that you have no merit in you. To be a recipient of grace is
that God expects no compensation from you. He's full of grace
and truth. It's only to the ill-deserving
and the hell-deserving. It's unmerited. It's unsoughtful. That's why Paul, the apostle,
is a pattern. He says he's a pattern. God says
he's a pattern of all those who will be saved. And what was Saul
of Tarsus doing on the road to Damascus? What did he have to
merit himself before God? If he could have got his hands
on the Lord Jesus Christ, he would have torn him limb from
limb and put him back on a cross again. He couldn't get to the
Lord Jesus Christ, so he got to his church. That's what it is to be a recipient
of grace. God showed him grace. Unmerited
and unsought for. It just comes from a sovereign
hand of God. And it's unattracted by anything
in them or through them. Grace can't be bought. It can't
be earned. And it can't be won by the creature. Such is the glory of God. The
glory of God is revealed in the salvation of sinners. And the other remarkable thing
which these verses in John's Gospel are wanting us to see
is that there is an absolute antithesis between grace and
works. You cannot mix grace and works. Any tiny mixing of grace and
works is nothing but works. It is all works and grace has
been robbed of what it is. And the gracious Saviour and
the gracious God He has revealed have been robbed of who they
are. As Romans 11.6 says, If it is by grace, then it is no
more by works. Otherwise, grace is no more grace. The simple point of it is, isn't
it, the Lord Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth. If grace
is no more grace, you no longer have Him. You no longer have
Him. You cannot have Him in your works,
in your meeting with God. Like oil and water, they'll never
mix. And wherever works is added to
grace, works will always prevail. But we're saved by grace, and
we're saved by grace without God looking beyond his son. I love what God says of Abraham. It was counted to him for righteousness
before God. Verse 4 of Romans 4. But now to him that worketh,
it is not the reward, is the reward not reckoned of grace,
but as of debt. So people who do things and think
that they can do things that are meritorious are putting God
under an obligation to do something for them. I love verse five,
I still remember when the Lord made this verse powerful for
me. But to him, Romans 4, 5, but
him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly,
his faith is counted for righteousness. His faith is counted for righteousness. We are recipients. God's children are recipients. And the great
question that John raises is what is the relationship between
the law of Moses and the grace of God? What is the relationship
between the commands of God in the law of Moses and the glory
of what John is beholding here? God's children love God's law. God's children love God's law. God's children respect and revere
God's law. God's children do not dishonor
God's law in any way at all. But the remarkable thing about
what John is wanting us to see in this contrast here is that
the Lord Jesus Christ was made flesh and he was made under the
law and he and his people perfectly obeyed it. I love what Isaiah
42 says he said he will magnify the law he'll make the law on Paul gives the description of
his life in Romans 7 and he says the law is holy and the commandment
is holy and just and good. The problem is that the law never
made anyone holy. The law never made anyone just.
The law never made anyone good. Only the Lord Jesus Christ did
all of those things. So the law, man And the one way you can tell
whether the law has done its work in a person's life is if
they are silent about anything they've ever done for God. That's what Romans 3 says, isn't
it? Now we know that what things
so ever the law says, the law is a speaking thing, it still
speaks, what so ever the law says, says to them who are under
the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world
may become guilty before God. That's the one. of anything that you have which
is meritorious before God. The law just declares one thing
to sinners, doesn't it? Guilty, guilty, guilty. That's
all it does. I met my preacher friend down
the road at the coffee shop this morning, and I count the seconds
until he tells me what he's done. And he spent the whole time,
and it was about five seconds this morning, And then he spent
the next two minutes, I was with him, telling me what he does,
what he's doing for God. And he's been doing it for years
and years and years. Every mouth may be stopped is
what the law does. You have no righteousness. You
can do no righteousness. The law says do this and live, the whole purpose of the law.
To expose sin. See the law manifests what man
is, which is sin. Grace manifests what God is. He's love and light and truth. The law demands righteousness
from man. The law says do this and live. The law speaks of what a man
must do for God. Grace tells us of what God has
done for us and in us by His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. and all the world is to be held
guilty. Grace reveals sin put away by
the Lord Jesus Christ. So the law condemns and grace
saves. Grace is the truth of salvation
by the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a grace in which God's people
stand. In closing, let's just turn to
Romans chapter 5. We have so much more to say about
all of this. Lord willing, we might be given time next week. Romans 4 at the end says, the
Lord Jesus Christ was delivered for our offences and was raised
again for our justification. Justification, let me remind
you, is to be before God, not having had done any sin. When God made the Lord Jesus
Christ the sins of all of his people on Calvary's tree, the
sins were his. He owned them as His, they were
transferred to Him, and God punished them justly. Sin cannot be in
two places at once before a holy and just God. He was delivered
for our offences, He was raised again for our justification.
Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. By whom also we have access by
faith into this grace wherein we stand. That's where God's
people stand, aren't they? They stand in the grace of God. We have access. we have access
and we rejoice. Romans 5 declares those who are
the recipients of grace. Verse 8, But God commended his
love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died apart from the living and the
dying and the rising of the Lord Jesus Christ. While we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. Does that describe you? Much
more than now being justified by his blood, we shall be saved
from wrath through him. Verse 10, for if when we were
enemies, were you an enemy of God? Romans 5 says that all of
his people were. We were reconciled to God by
the death of his son. Much more being reconciled, we
shall be saved by his life. And not only so, verse 11, but
we also join in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we
have now received the atonement. we receive. And verse 15 says, But not as the offence,
so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of
one many be dead, the offence of Adam, much more the grace
of God and the gift of grace which is by one man, Jesus Christ,
has abound. It abounds to many. In verse
17, it's called the abundance of grace. We receive the abundance
of grace. John is wanting us to contrast
in our minds the difference between the two covenants. put in and all of Adam's seed
was put in in the garden. They were created under a covenant
of works and there is another covenant, an older covenant. It's the covenant of grace in
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a covenant in His blood.
The covenant is a promise that God made and the covenant in
the Scriptures is a person. It's a person. It is the Lord
Jesus Christ. of the Great Shepherd as he goes
throughout this world and throughout time to gather all of his people
to himself. It's called the covenant of peace.
It's a covenant of grace. It's God's of the grace of God. In verse
Hebrews 13 verse 20, now the God of peace that brought again
from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep
through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Every one of God's
children who is a recipient of the grace of God will delight
in the fact that God is true. And what he says about his son
and the glory of his son is true. He's the great shepherd of the
sheep, who through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good
work to do his will. He is the covenant. We do often read, and it's lovely
to read it again as we close, King David, what was the sentence
of the law against David? What was the sentence of the
law against Bathsheba? It was really simple, wasn't
it? You take them outside this place and you stone them to death. That's what the law says. on the cross of Calvary and it's
gone forever and David on his deathbed said these words in
2nd Samuel 23 5 he speaks of his house he says although my
house be not so with God And you can talk about his house
being the house of Israel, and they were a rebellious house.
You can talk about his house being his family, and they were
one of the most dysfunctional families in all of history, children
murdering each other, and raping their sisters. And it's most likely the house
of his own flesh that Satan's talking about. My house is not so with
God. Is your house right with God? David says, yet, but, nevertheless,
he has made with me an everlasting covenant. That covenant in the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's made with me an everlasting
covenant. This is a covenant of grace. Ordered in all things
and sure. So David wasn't looking to David's
activities. David was looking to the grace
of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was looking in one place as
he rested in peace on his deathbed. And he says, this is all my salvation. And this is all my desire. Although we make it not to grow,
this eternal covenant doesn't need to grow. was perfect when
it was made in eternity, when God the Father gave these people
into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He shook hands, as
it were, with His Father and said, I'll take full responsibility
for them. I'll bring them back to you,
and in bringing them back to you, He says, I'll declare all
of your character. I'll reveal all of your glory. I'll reveal your grace, and I'll
reveal your truth. I'll declare Him. Are you a receiver? Are you a receiver? Grace comes
to receivers. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you might take your words and bless them to the hearts
of your people and cause us To look away, Heavenly Father. Look away to Calvary and see
the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To look to the place
where you are satisfied. And Heavenly Father, Where he
is received and where his name is believed upon, there is now
no more offering for sin. The Lord Jesus Christ has done
it all long, long ago. Oh, Father, would you please,
by your grace, cause us to go from here, beholding him and
knowing to sinners. For we pray in Jesus'
name and for his glory. Amen.