So let's go back to our text.
We have noted earlier that the Word, in verse 14, the Word was
made flesh and we know what the Word is. The Word is God Himself. The Word is God incarnate, that
He might be one with us, that He might be perfectly united
to His people in this world, that God cannot die. God is spirit,
so God cannot be seen and God cannot die. And the Lord Jesus
Christ came to manifest God in all of his glory and all of his
attributes to people. So if you want to know what God
is like, you have to know what the Lord Jesus Christ is like.
If you want to know what he does, you look to what the Lord Jesus
Christ has done and is doing. But also, he became man. He became
man that he might be one with us, that he might bear in his
own body all of the sins of all of God's people on the cross
of Calvary, and that he might bleed and suffer and die. You see, that's what men think
of God, the real and living God. Men are quite happy with a God
that they can manipulate. They're very happy with a God
that they can create to be a little bit like them in all sorts of
ways. But when the true and living God came and lived upon this
earth, not only did he declare who God is, he declared who man
is. Pilate gave them into, gave the
Lord into, of man. As much as we might be
nice and as much as we might be caused to be thankful that
things are not as bad as they are, the reality is that at the
very heart of all human beings is the hatred of God. I remember
it welling up In my heart, years and years ago, and I, like most
of the rest of this degenerate population, used his name as
a curse word, and I expressed openly to anyone who listened
to me how much I hated him, and I used to tell the Christians
who tried to witness to me at university that he's a prop for
weak people. We real men can stand on our
own. We are, by our nature, hating
rebels, and yet our God comes to people who have nothing in
themselves for which to commend them to God. They believe not
on His name, they know Him not, they receive Him not, and yet
of those people he came. He came to his own people, and
they received him not, but as many as received him. He dwelt
among us. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent. A tabernacle. Have you seen the
tabernacle in the wilderness? You wouldn't have had any reason
to look at it and think it was special in any way at all. You
would say, why on earth are all these Jewish people, these Hebrew
people, why are they having at the very centre of their camp
this very, very ordinary tent covered in badger skins? It's
a bit like the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? All the glory wasn't
on the outside. People couldn't see him in his
glory on the outside. All the glory of God is on the
inside. And such is the glory of God
in the salvation of his people that saved people to look very
ordinary on the outside. and the scriptures say that they
grow glorious within. He dwelled among us, he dwelled
among us, he dwelled, as it were, in a tabernacle, and we beheld
his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. The first thing we need to note
is that you will never ever see the glory of God unless grace
comes. And if you ever see God in His
truth, you'll understand that it is grace and truth are proclaimed. He is grace itself and He is
truth itself. When you see the truth you will
see grace, and you will see grace and truth on the cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ most clearly revealed. If you want to see
God, if you want to see what God is like, you go to the cross
of Calvary. you go to the cross of Calvary.
If you want to see that God is absolutely sovereign and moves
all things in this world for his glory's sake, he was put
there because of the determined counsel and full knowledge of
God. If you want to see what holiness looks like, you go to
the cross of Calvary. My God, my God, cried the Lord
Jesus Christ, why have you forsaken me? I'm the only one that's ever
lived. on this planet that's obeyed
you and honoured you and lived in faith towards you. Why have
you forsaken me? And what's the answer of Psalm
22? Because you are holy. The Lord
Jesus Christ on Calvary's tree. was there, cursed of God, forsaken
by God, because God is holy and he must punish sin. We think so lightly of sin and
we think we can get away with it, and even when the pangs of
a guilty conscience come and assault us terribly badly, you
only have to give it a little bit of time or enough time and
it's gone altogether, isn't it? God cannot wink at sin. God will deal with sin. And on the cross of Calvary all
of the judgment of God is revealed. But all of the glorious salvation
of God is revealed. If you are going to be in God's
presence, there is one simple requirement. How good do you
have to be to be in heaven? The answer of the scriptures
is really, really simple. Christianity is very simple.
You have to be as good as God. You have to be as holy as God
is holy. Otherwise you meet God with your
sins on you and God will reveal His holiness in that day. Salvation
is a remarkable gift of the grace of God, and grace and truth,
the truth of God's holiness, the truth of His justice, the
truth of His sovereignty, all of the truth of who He is, is
revealed on the cross of Calvary, and remarkably it's the place
of all the grace of God. He's full of grace and truth,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now what is grace? People say
that grace is unmerited favour, which implies that there's some
neutrality about man. Grace is de-merited favour, where
there are no merits. So if you see someone who's in
need on the street and you give them a $10 note so they can go
and buy a meal, you would think that that was an act of grace. What happens if that same person
on the street had murdered your one and only daughter? Grace
is coming to that person and taking that person into your
home and treating them as you, as your own child. Grace is always sovereign grace. Grace is always saving grace.
Grace is always effectual grace. Grace is always blood-bought
grace. Grace is always going to honour
the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a remarkable
thing that our God is gracious. remarkable thing that our God
is gracious. The wonder of grace, the wonder
of grace and the reason we proclaim grace and the reason that word
is used again and again in our passage here before us is that
grace is God looking to us sinners hidden in his Son. See, God does not need to find
any reason in you to be gracious towards you. We keep thinking,
don't we, that we have to do something to make up for it,
that we have to do something, we have to polish ourselves and
get ourselves right to be in the presence of God. Grace is
saying all you need to be in the presence of God is the Lord
Jesus Christ. nothing in my hand I bring, simply
to the cross I cling. He is full of grace. The Lord
Jesus Christ is all grace and the Lord Jesus Christ is truth.
He is the truth. He's the truth about everything
you need to know in this world, regarding your soul and regarding
your salvation and regarding God. He is the truth. Verse 15 says, John, bear witness
of Him. So this is what bearing witness
is, isn't it? This is what testifying of the
Lord Jesus Christ is. We bear witness of Him. We're
not here to talk about the goodness of man. We're not here to talk
about what man can do to get himself right with God. We're
here to talk about what God does for himself to take sinners like
us into his very presence and crown us with his glory and call
us his jewels and call us his dearly loved children. It's all
of him. We bear witness of him. All witnessing
is of him. All witnessing of him is a witness
of his grace and a witness of his truth. John says, This is
he of whom I spake. You remember what John said later
on, he says, behold, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world. This is whom I spake. He that
cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before
me. He that comes after me had an existence, had a being before
me. Jesus Christ was born six months
after John the Baptist. But in fact, John says, he was
before me. He's preferred before me. I'm
a servant, I'm a witness. What a lovely description of
witnessing. At the end of that verse, he
was. He was, he is always the eternal,
existent, present God. He was before me. Verse 16. So we have a description, don't
we? We have a description of the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ in the earlier verses, and we have a description of
what it is to be a witness to Him. And then we have a glorious
description in verse 16 of what salvation is. Salvation. Here's the word of salvation,
verse 16. receiving activity, not a doing
activity, and of His fullness, of His fullness. He's full of
grace and truth. So what's the Apostle talking
to us about His fullness? He's the fullness of deity. He's the fullness of God. All
you'll ever see about God is Him. He's the fullness of communion
with that God. He is the same in a world where
everything is not the same. He is the same. That's why He's
called a rock. He is the Creator. He's the fullness
of creation. He created it all and He rules
it all. It's all His. He's the fullness of life and
He's the fullness of light and He's the fullness of light shining.
There is in the Lord Jesus Christ a fountain open, eternal streams
of grace and mercy reach down from heaven in light shining
to sinners, to sinners who've got but sin. It's the fullness. Colossians
1.9 is another one of these verses that describes the glory of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And that word fullness is used
in Colossians 1.19 and Colossians 1.9. I'll just read them out
to you in Colossians 1.19. For it pleased the Father that
in him should all fullness dwell. Over in verse 9 of chapter 2,
It speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ, for in him dwells, dwells and
continues to dwell, dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, in a body. Isn't it remarkable? When Mary
nursed that little He was sustaining her very existence,
and yet the glory of the Incarnation is that God was there. Fullness. His fullness. It means
completeness, and it means abundance of His fullness. Fullness. fullness of manhood as we saw
earlier. Someone had to come to this world
to obey and honour and magnify God and His holy law. Someone
had to glorify God in His being. It's the fullness of manhood. It's the fullness of all that
is promised of the Christ to come. He's fully the prophet
of God. He is the word of God. He's the
word of promise. And all of the promises in the
scriptures are all rolled up into one. And the answer to all
of the promises of scripture is Jesus Christ and him crucified. He's the priest. He's a full
priest, isn't he? With his own blood, he enters
into the holy of holies. He takes his own blood into the
very presence of God. and he's the fullness of a king.
He reigns and rules over everyone and everything at all times. People bemoan how bad things
are in this world and we blame it on young people. We've been
doing it for thousands of years. We always blame the younger generation.
It's not our fault. It's their fault. What a load
of rubbish that is. What a load of rubbish that is.
The remarkable thing about the world is given what's in the
heart of men is not how bad it is, it's how good it is. It's the wonder of this world
is that with a God-hating, rebellious population of billions who have
their hearts set against God, that this world still revolves
as it is and we can go home to our houses today. God will one
day hand and then we'll see humanity and it will be horrifying. He
is the fullness of all the promises of God as the Christ. He is,
in his death on the cross, a perfectly successful, complete, full Saviour. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
us. all sin, all sin. When the Lord Jesus Christ died
on Calvary Street, he died there as a representative of all of
his people, as a perfect substitute. In fact, so united are his people
to him that Paul says that when the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified,
he was crucified. Every single one of God's children
suffer all the infinite wrath of a holy God upon all their
sins until God says, I am satisfied, my holiness is satisfied. see, Isaiah 53, he shall see,
God the Father shall see the travail, the pain of the son
suffering and he'll be satisfied. Only infinite humanity and infinite
deity together in one can bear the infinite wrath of our God. And he's a successful Saviour. He's fully successful of his
fullness. So to receive, he has to be full. To be a receiver, he has to do
the work and he has to be the giver. We have fullness. He was raised for our justification. These people, they are the only
people, the children of God, the only people aware of sin
in all of its horror. Because the only place you ever
see sin in all of its horror is on the cross at Calvary. There
you'll see sin as it really is. And God says, their sins and
iniquity will I remember. They're gone. The blood of Jesus
Christ cleanses us from all sin. Right now, he says, God, there
is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Right
now, a present reality. If you're going to behold His
glory, you're going to behold His glory on the cross of Calvary. You're going to behold His glory
bearing all of your sins. The fullness of justification.
He was raised for our justification. He was raised because of our
justification. There's a fullness in the victory
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Any notion that you have ever
had that the Lord Jesus Christ is not a perfectly successful
saviour is a notion that the scriptures never, ever, ever
will allow to have. This notion that somehow the
Lord Jesus Christ loves everyone and He died for everyone and
He wants everyone to be saved and He's running around pleading
with everyone to get them saved is a notion that the Bible knows
nothing of from Genesis to Revelation. It doesn't know a thing about
that. He is God. He doesn't have any unfulfilled
desires. He doesn't have any wants that
aren't satisfied. That's what it is to be God.
When He created the universe, was there an argument? He just
said, light be and light was. He said, let there be billions
and billions and billions of stars and He knows them all by
name and He's counted them all. We'll never ever count on it. He's God. That's what John is
saying, he's God. He's a successful saviour. There's
fullness in His manhood. There's fullness in His deity.
There's fullness in all of His promise-keeping activities. There's fullness of what He did
on the cross. There's fullness in Him of a union with us. That's what that word means,
doesn't it? We. We beheld His glory. John is talking about himself
and every other believer in all this world. We beheld His glory.
Abraham saw the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Noah saw the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a fullness of union.
There's a fullness of responsibility in him. That's what it is for
him to be the surety for his people. God the Father and God
the Son and God the Holy Spirit entered into a covenant before
this world was ever made. And in that covenant, the Lord
Jesus Christ took full responsibility for all of his people. He shook
hands with his father, as it were. He said, I'll take full
responsibility for all their sins, and I'll call them mine. And he does throughout the scriptures.
He says, they're mine. And he says, I'll take full responsibility
for all of their holiness before God. I'll take full responsibility
to bring them all back here into heaven's glory and into the new
creation with you. That's what this creation is
about. It's about God. God, gathering these people,
not to be like Adam and put back in a garden where there are snakes
running around, but to be in a new creation where we'll be
like Him. for a few moments and wonder.
That's what this creation is about. The Lord Jesus Christ's
glory in this creation is to take out of this creation, by
his death on the cross, the people into the new creation, where
righteousness dwells. Fullness of responsibility, there's
fullness of truth. There's a fullness. There's a fullness to behold,
and you'll never get to the end of beholding it. Why does eternity
go on forever? Because there's a fullness, there's
such a fullness in the Lord Jesus Christ, that when we have glimpsed
something of the wonder of His glory, there's another wonder
of glory to glimpse. Again and again and again. There
is, in the Lord Jesus Christ, the fullness of blessings from
God. It's worth reading Ephesians
chapter 1 and we don't have time today, but if you go back and
read it and look at all the blessings you have. Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath, past tense,
completed, continuous activity, blessed us with all spiritual
blessings. There's not a single spiritual
blessing that's missing. All spiritual blessings. Every
blessing that God has is in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's a
blood-bought blessing, and they're blessings that God's children
have. who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. And if you read on, you have
the glory, the glory of being chosen in him, the glory of being
predestinated in him, the glory of him doing all things for the
praise and the glory of his grace. There's a fullness of blessing.
There's a fullness of his glory. But our verse goes on, doesn't
it? Of His fullness have all we received. Received. Have all we received. You notice what the verse doesn't
say? It doesn't say, of all we've received, if we do something.
When were the blessings given to us? We just read it in Ephesians
1, they were given to us before the foundation of the world.
I love the fact that all of the blessings were given before the
foundation of the world. If God didn't bless me before
the foundation of the world, he's not gonna bless me for what
I've done in this world. That all the blessings of God
are eternal, that all the blessings of God flow into all of our activities
in this world. I love the synonym for grace. What's grace? It's the best synonym I've heard
recently is in spite of. God blessing you in spite of
you. The other word that's used in
the scriptures as a synonym for it is freely. Freely. He loves his people freely. That
word freely means without cause. The cause is not in us. The cause
is not in us, brothers and sisters, for God to love us. The cause
is not in us for him to send his son to die on Calvary Street. The cause is in him. Such is
his fullness. All the cause is in him. So there's
no if in our text. It's not in response to our doing.
He creates. He creates the heart that believes. He creates the heart that receives
him. So that's what it is to be a
believer, isn't it? Look at that word there. We all
have all we received. Received. This is the believer's
confession, isn't it? This is our confession of salvation.
We're receivers. We're receivers. God comes and
we are caused to be receivers. What do you have to do? What
do you have to have? The very, very first essential
requirement to be a receiver is that you're not a giver. To
be a receiver is to be empty. To be a receiver is to be needy. To be a receiver is to have no
help within yourself. You're helpless. And you Mark,
don't you? You go back and read the gospel
accounts. When the Lord Jesus Christ walked in those three
and a half years in this world, as God and man together, every
single time he met with a needy sinner, the needy sinner went
away healed, perfectly whole, complete, Every time the Lord
Jesus Christ met someone who went to him and came to him on
the basis of their own righteousness, he told them the truth about
who he is, and he told them the truth about who they were, and
he left them, and he went to needy sinners. So to be a receiver
is to be needy. It's not to be self-sufficient,
but it's to be insufficient. It's not to be able, it's to
be unable. It's very easy for us to puff
ourselves up and be givers and be bearers. It's very easy to
be a giver. It requires a lot of grace to
be a receiver. You have to be emptied. You have
to be brought low. See if you have anything in yourself.
Anything that you've done, anything that you can conceive of doing,
which would commend you to God, in the past, in the present,
in the future, you deserve a reward, don't you? You deserve a reward. Receivers are receivers. We don't deserve a reward. A receiver is a mercy beggar. A receiver is someone who is
receiving love. As that great hymn says, nothing
in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Naked come
to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace. Foul, foul
I to the fountain fly. Wash Job met God, didn't he? Job was pushed to a point where
he defended himself, having lost so much, defended his righteousness,
and he met God. What's the first words that come
out of his mouth? He says, behold, I am vile. A vile person is a person who's
about to receive grace. How I to the fountain fly, wash
me saviour or I die. And what is received of His fullness
of all we received? The answer is not a what we've
received. The answer is a who. Go back to verse 12 with me in
John's first chapter. But as many as received Him. We receive Him in the totality
of His being and we receive Him as He's declared Himself to be. Received Him. We receive Him,
we don't receive a doctrine, we don't receive a creed, we
don't receive a church tradition, we don't receive any of those
other things. We receive Him as He declares
Himself to be. Those that received Him, to them
gave He power. The fullness of power to cause
a dead sinner to have the most extraordinary power
that's on display in this world today, that the Lord Jesus Christ
is taking dead sinners and making them alive again, to receive
power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on
his name. So to be a receiver is to have power given to you
from God on high, and to be a receiver is to believe on his name. to
believe on the character of him as he's revealed in the word
of God, to believe on him as he's revealed in the Lord Jesus
Christ, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. That's what the beholders
have experienced, haven't they? They've seen God in the Lord
Jesus Christ. I want to be a wee. I want the
people I speak to to be the wee beholders, to behold his glory,
to receive him, to believe on his name. That word believe means
to rely on, to trust him, to put all of my eggs in one basket. I am totally relying on my eternal
salvation on the person and nothing else, and nothing
else. Not what he's done, plus what
I've done. Not what he's done, aided by
my doing. This is what he says, isn't it?
You receive him, you receive the fullness of his being, you
behold him, you be held by him, be held by him. He that believeth, I'll just
give you some of his words in John's gospel, in John 6, 47,
he says, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. Right now, as a present possession,
God's children have everlasting life. They're his words, not
mine. We believe him, we believe what
he says. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh
my blood hath eternal life, John 6, 54. Obviously that's not talking
about physically eating the Lord Jesus Christ or drinking his
blood. It's talking about his very life
and death being your very life and death and sustenance. And
he's talking about a union and a communion with his people.
He takes up residence in his people. It's Christ in you, the
hope of glory. He says in John 10, 28, I give
unto them eternal life. It's a great passage about the
shepherd, and the shepherd coming and speaking, and he calls his
sheep, and his sheep follow him by, and he calls them by name,
and he calls them individually. Salvation is entirely in the
hands of our God. There's a lovely psalm that I'll
just read a few verses to you. Psalm 106 speaks of salvation. It says in verse six, we have
sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done
wickedly. They behaved extraordinarily
badly. Our fathers understood not by
wonders in Egypt, even though he'd done the most remarkable
things to show his power and his glory and his sovereignty
and his justice and his judgment in Egypt. And he destroyed a
superpower. Moses went down there with a
stick and he destroyed the biggest superpower he's ever seen. And
the pyramids and all those amazing buildings are left there as a
testament to what God destroyed with a man with a stick. And
a word from God. A word from God. So much for this little Jesus, isn't
it? It was a little Jesus that destroyed
a superpower's army. As that superpower's army thought
that they could replicate what God did for his people by their
own activities. He's doing exactly the same today.
We've sinned wickedly, we didn't understand. They remembered not
the multitude of thy mercies, but provoked him at the sea,
even at the Red Sea. I love this, this is a word of
grace. Nevertheless, Psalm 106 verse
eight, nevertheless, He saved them for His namesake. Why does He save people? He saves
them for His namesake. He saves them so that He will
get all the glory. They receive all the benefits.
They receive the fullness and He gets all of the glory. He
gets all of the glory. He saved them for His namesake
that He might make His mighty power to be known. Behold Him. Behold Him in the power and the
glory of His being and wonder. We've received, what do we receive?
We receive grace for grace. To be a receiver is to be a receiver
of grace. The only people who are receivers
in this world are those who've been granted the grace to behold
him. All the rest of humanity are
doers, God's children. are receivers. So this notion
that Christians can brag about their morality and their other
things and lord it over other people and say, look how much
better than we are than all of you people, which is what goes
on in religion all the time. They have marches and do all
these other things. We're receivers. We're receivers. We don't have
the right to stand like that above other people and think
that somehow we're better than them. It's grace that's made
the difference, not something that we've done. We receive grace,
we need grace, that power from on God, that power from on high
to be a receiver. And when you receive grace, see. No sooner have you been
the recipient of one act of God's grace then there's another one
coming. No sooner have you been lifted
up from some state of despondency and set back on a rock and then
you receive another one and you're knocked down and you receive
another Grace was given to us in the
Lord Jesus Christ from before the foundation of the world.
Grace was given to us and bestowed upon us in the most remarkable
way by our being joined to the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
Grace is received, graceful grace is received because God is gracious
to us. God is gracious. Grace comes
because of grace. Grace comes because he's full
of grace, which means that he can bestow infinite and extraordinary
grace, as he can bestow infinite and extraordinary love upon one
of his children, and still have exactly the same abundance to
the next one, and the next one, and the next one. The Old Testament
speaks of grace and truth as merciful and gracious, goodness
and truth, loving kindness and truth. Mercy and truth, Psalm
8510 says, mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and
peace have kissed each other. And they did it on the cross
of Calvary. All of our blessings. All the blessings of grace, all
the blessings to have light to see Him, all the blessings of
grace to behold Him, all the blessings of grace to be held
by Him, flow from our Saviour on the cross. Just to, I'll just read the last
two verses of this section so that we clearly understand. The
law came and was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by the
Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot go back to the law
of God and you cannot go back to your obedience. The law, simply
summarized, is do. Simply summarized is do this
and live. Grace and truth is the opposite
to that. Grace and truth. says Liv, the law demands from
man and grace is God giving. No man has seen God at any time,
the only begotten which is in the bosom of the Father has declared
him. The extraordinary wonder of grace
is in the him, if he's in the bosom of the Father, it means
he's held in the Father's arms by his children. That's exactly
how all of God's children are held all the time. Are you a
sinner? Are you we beheld his glory. May he grant us to behold his
glory. What a privilege to be one of
the we who behold his glory, full of grace and truth. Let's
pray. Heavenly Father, we do praise
you for the revelation of your son, We praise you, Heavenly
Father, that you have caused these words to be written, that
we might go to your Word and see the wonder and the power
of the promises. And we praise you, Heavenly Father,
that in the Lord Jesus Christ the Word was made flesh. And
we particularly praise you, Heavenly Father, that the blessed Spirit
of God has made a promise has been fulfilled throughout this
world and throughout the time of this age, that the Blessed
Holy Spirit would take the things of the Lord Jesus Christ, his
fullness and his grace and his glory, and he will show them
to us. May you do that, Heavenly Father.
Do as you have promised in the hearts of your people, that we
might see His fullness and the fullness of our salvation and
the fullness of our assurance. that he has done all things well. He cannot fail. He cannot be
discouraged. All that the Father gave him
must come to him. We praise you, Heavenly Father,
that you have written those words and you cause your people to
come. May we go from here, Heavenly Father, beholding his glory. of the Father, full of grace
and truth. Be merciful and gracious, our
Father, for we pray in Jesus' name and for his glory. Amen.