In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through
him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came
as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might
believe through him. He was not the light, but came
to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light
to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world
and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know
him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he
gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God. And the word became flesh and
dwelled among us. And we have seen his glory, glory
as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John
bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said,
he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me.
For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The
only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
Let's continue. And this is the testimony of
John. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to
ask him, who are you? He confessed and did not deny,
but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, what then,
are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the
prophet? And he answered, no. So they
said to him, who are you? We need to give an answer to
those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? He said,
I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight
the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been
sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, then why are
you baptizing if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the
prophet? John answered them, I baptize
with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he
who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy
to untie. These things took place in Bethany
across the Jordan where John was baptizing. Let's pray. Lord,
your word is truth. You reveal Yourself through it. And through it, Lord, we realize
our sin. Through it, Father, we learn
of Your grace. Through it, Lord, You birth us anew and put Your
Spirit within us. Father, I pray passionately and
desperately, Lord, that You would continue to grow us deeply in
the knowledge of grace, in the knowledge of Your glory, and
the knowledge of Your mercies found only in Jesus Christ. And
Lord, that this morning as I speak, Father, that the commentary of
my mind will not overshadow the power of Your Word. And Lord,
that it would do that which it was intended to do, to bring
life to the lifeless. And Father, also at times, harden
the hard. But Lord, we pray that Your will
be done Father, that Your glory be manifested and made much of
throughout all the nations. And Father, that You are worshiped
and that You would grow us as a people as You have commanded,
Lord, and decreed a people for Your glory by the power of Your
grace to be an intimate people, working, seeking, loving. For Father, if we do not love
our brother, the love that You have for us is not in us. That
is clear. Lord, guard us. guard us from
our flesh, guard us from our mind, guard us from the enemy,
and set us right in Christ. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we're going to revisit,
not revisit, we're going to expound a little bit more as we get into
the testimony of John the Baptist, as it relates to the dialogue
that we've seen, this monologue, rather, of text. If we're not careful, I'll remind
you of this, we will forget everything that we've heard in the last
10 weeks. If we're not careful, we will
be subject to this short-term mindset when it comes to the
scripture that we learn every day. If we're not careful, we'll
fall prey into an Americanized individualism that will put us
at the precipice of selfishness rather than intimacy with Christ
and his people. If we're not careful, we'll think
that the very reason we're here this morning is for me and me
alone, for you and yourself. When the very purpose of us gathering
each week is that we are celebrating God together. We are celebrating
Christ together, not ignorant of each other, but intimate with
each other. People often say, well, the enemy's at work amongst
the body. You better believe he is. If
you don't believe that the devil is at work amongst us and in
you and in your life, you have long forgotten what the scripture
has taught us. As a matter of fact, Paul teaches
to that church in Ephesus when he creates that constitution
of proper ecclesiology. He shows us that the enemy is
prowling around and is powerful. He shows us that there is always
a cosmic war going on within our minds and within our relationships. And if you don't believe that
the case, ask yourself this very moment. Is there someone in the
fellowship of this church who you sort of feel frustrated with?
That is your flesh and that is being fueled by Satan himself. Why is it a temptation? Because
it's what we really are. And if we cannot intimately involve
forgiveness and repentance and intimacy with each other, there
is no life in us. So we must understand that it
is the work of Jesus Christ. Because if we were made perfect
and if our righteousness was something that we could do, then
why are we feeling frustrated? Why do we worry? Why do we feel
fear? because there is no perfection
in our flesh. It is the righteousness of Christ.
But beloved, we have not come here as a institution of individuals
gathered together to put a sign on the front window to say, hey,
we're the place called Grace Truth Church. We are the people
of God. And if the people of God and
the spirit of God within us gives us a unique and intimate supernatural
affection that nothing can thwart, no matter how much offense comes
our way, no matter how much spittle may approach our face, no matter
how many punches may take their blow, we love each other. And we love each other at the
cost of ourselves. We love each other at the cost
of our own happiness, at the cost of our own expenses, at
the cost of our own bodies sometimes, at the cost of our time. We love
each other because that's what God has established in His people.
But what do we do when we find that not the case? We rest in
the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. We rest in His grace. And we
devour His Word. And we eat and we devour His
Word. Not that we might be lifted up, but that we may be one who
helps others be lifted up. Because if we do what we are
to do as obligated to each other, then someone else God will put
in your path to do that for you. And selfishness is one of the
most horrible sins of the church. It's one of the most horrible
things that could ever befall a fellowship, because we begin
to close each other out, not share our prayer requests, not
tell people what's going on, not try to mend fences and heal
relationships, because we feel like our offense is more important
than unity of the Spirit of God. As we've come this morning, that
is the main purpose through which this letter was written. Not
just for the intimacy of the church, but that we who are far
from God would have intimacy with Him through Jesus Christ.
So if we have intimacy with God against whom we've sinned exponentially
and eternally, how much more intimate should we be with each
other who have all sinned against God? We had a conversation this
morning about the Lord's Table and the practice thereof. Traditionally
speaking, as I've said to some of you privately over the last
few months, we misunderstand the vast importance of what the
Lord's Table is because in our traditions we have replaced the
love feast with a trinket. with a little tiny cup and a
little tiny piece of toast. Oh yeah, we're remembering Jesus.
When ultimately it's centered around the intimacy in so far
that if you were not at peace with your brother or sister,
God would take your life from you at the time you ate. But
you would die if you took in an unworthy way. Oh, the gravity
of sin and the glory of the gospel of grace, how quickly these things
collide and how easy it is for us to just pacify our own interests
in the context of our spiritual lives, in the context of our
intimacy as a people. Beloved, I pray that God would
protect us from such sin, that He would not lead us down that
path, but He would deliver us from the wickedness of selfishness,
that we might realize that our whole purpose in life, that a
life not wasted is a life given away for someone else, is a life
that is lived every breath, every job, every moment, every aspect
of our being for the sake of some other people who are part
of the body of Christ. After all, we do that for our
own homes, don't we? Jesus even uses that analogy. Even pagans,
he would say, and I paraphrase, will take care of their own children
and their own households. He said the wisdom of God is
seen, as we see in Ephesians chapter 2 and Ephesians chapter
1, in that people who have nothing else in common give themselves
for the sake of each other. That the two people have now
become one body. There is one church and there
always has been one church. These things are written that
you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and in so believing
on his name have eternal life. And the gospel of John and the
prologue that we've been going through over these last 10 weeks
now makes number 11 is the very power of God unto salvation.
It is the power of God unto salvation. God's power is revealed through
the redemption of his people. And when the word of God goes
to your ears this morning, I want you to see the significance of
who Christ really is, because we're about to get into this
testimony of John the Baptist. My question to you as we begin
is what is your testimony of Christ? Sadly, I hear a continual
myopic vein of just selfishness all throughout our culture. Well,
Jesus is my rock, and Jesus is my Savior, and Jesus, really?
What does that mean? Well, Jesus gave me this, and
He did this for me, and He put on my shoes, and He cooked me
breakfast. Is that really why Christ is
glorious? Is that really why we come to
the table of worship? Because God gave us a little
bit of food? Gave us a little bit of income? Gave us a nice
house? Gave us a cool family? Gave us
some clothes and a little bit of beauty that we could walk
around in public without children screaming? No. Christ is worthy of praise because
He's the God of heaven. Christ is worthy of praise because
He is the Word that was in the beginning, who is God and was
with God. And John closes this prologue
out with that exact same thing. And then the testimony of Jesus
Christ, as we see throughout all of this introduction, is
not visible to the man who is lost without a work of God as
a miracle. This is not something that God
has just said, here I am, find me. He says, here I am, see me. Open your eyes. And He commands
it, just like He commanded in the beginning, let there be light
and there was light in the beginning. Let the waters do this. Let the
land do this. Let there be life in the water.
Let there be life in the sky. Let there be mammals and animals
and reptiles and all sorts of things. Then He took the dirt
of the earth and He formed man. And He breathed into him the
breath of life. He spoke into being that which was not. Ex
nihilo, out of nothing, came everything, because God in His
revelatory power, in His divine power, created it all, because
He spoke it into being. Beloved, God's very word that
created the world is speaking to us this morning in the text
of the scripture. And it has been speaking to us
for the last 10 weeks and for the last four some plus years
that we've been on fellowship. And friends, I want you to never
forget the gravity of what it means to assemble together and
come before the Lord of hosts in his word. Yes, we do things
in a traditional way. We do things in a historical
way. We line up chairs and some big guy stands up here and preaches
for an hour and we listen. Friends, there may come a day
when in America we can't do that, lest we all die. This very day,
this very moment, in some parts of the world, people are hiding
in holes and living in squalor and running for their lives,
taking five, six, sometimes 12 hours of riding around and being, what do you call it? Being escorted
around so that they can escape the authority so they can hear
the word of God for an hour. Did you realize that? Yet how
much time have we spent in the 168 hours we had this week, last
week, in the Word of God? It is the power of God. And this
Word, as we'll look here now in verses 17 and 18 again, is
about to be preached by John the Baptist. This living Word,
this Word that became flesh, is about to be testified What
is it? He came to be a witness, to bear
witness about the light. Why? That all might believe through
Him. You understand that God in His
sovereign mercy chose a nobody before the world began to be
a nobody to preach a weird and foolish message so that you and
I could believe. We like to look at the church
fathers of the Reformation. We like to look at the church
fathers of the 2nd and 3rd century. We like to look at the apostles,
rightly so. And we esteem them and we think,
wow, where are the next apostles? There are not going to be a next
apostles. The apostles have done the job. The Word of God is here.
We have it at our fingertips. It's even at gas stations. You
can find little mini Bibles at Parker's. You can go out at the
Cracker Barrel and buy the Bible on audio. You can see it plastered
on the backs of cars. You can see it on signs running
down the road all over the interstates. Yet there are people who die
for that much of the Scripture in some parts of the world. But
no, we keep up with the Kardashians. We keep up with our neighbors.
We covet our time. We invest in things that sometimes
rob us of glory, rob us of power. rob us of intimacy with Jesus
Christ and thus robs us of intimacy with each other because when
we pass and repass, there's nothing to say because there's no unity
of the Spirit. The testimony of John the Baptist
is what brought us to life, beloved. For God brought him to the world
that he might preach, that he might preach Christ so that through
his testimony, God may reveal himself through the Christ. And
we'll see that as the weeks unfold, because there's a lot here on
John the Baptist. And so much that then after John
is preaching and during the times of John's ministry, Jesus comes
on the scene and we see John say, behold, the Lamb of God
that takes away the sins of the world. We see Jesus calling his
disciples and commanding them to follow him. And here we see
who this Jesus really is as a recapitulation of the very introduction of this
prologue. There's a Greek word there. It's pronounced, let me
get it right. Monoyenis. Monoyenis. That's how you say it in Greek.
The G in Greek is like a y. Monoyenis theos. And what it
means is the only God there is. And in verse 18 of this text,
it says, no one has ever seen God. Now we talked about this
last week. No one has ever seen God. We
talked about this last week. We talked about Moses, and we'll
see him again. We see him there in verse 17.
The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. I think I closed last week's
sermon out with this very phrase, is that God gave, God gave, if
we will, the law, which had no benefit to righteousness, but
God sent grace through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is grace. So even the perfection of the
law and what it was purposed for did not reveal God intimately. No one has ever seen God. Because
the sight of God has never been known. Now, people argue, and
especially historians, well, you know, Moses saw God. The
Bible actually says Moses saw God face-to-face, but yet we
see the discourse between God and Moses on Sinai, don't we?
And Moses said, let me see your glory, and God said, no, but
I'll let you see the back end of my robe as I pass by. And someone says, well, Jacob
saw God face-to-face. He fought with him and all, but
yet the Bible says that if anyone sees God face-to-face, he would
die. Because the patriarchs, though
they may have glimpsed God, never saw Him fully. Paul is very clear
at this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, where he says, though we saw
in chapter 3, he talks about the veil of Moses. And how Moses,
even when he peered at God, he saw Him through a veil. He was
looking through a lens that wasn't perfect. He was gazing through
a sackcloth, if you will, or like he was hiding under some
curtain and he could just peer through just a little bit. Or he was maybe like in a hall
of mirrors and he was seeing a reflection of a reflection
of a reflection of a reflection of a picture, not the fullness
of His glory. And the patriarchs of old never
fully knew God. They saw Him through a veiled
lens because God never allowed Himself to be beheld perfectly
and certainly. Moses saw the glory of God in
a shadow. But he peered at the law of God afterward. Have you
ever thought about that? Imagine how the Israelites walked
the world and all of their nomads. What is it? Yeah, that's right.
As nomads, all these hundreds of years carrying around this
golden ark. And inside this ark were the
tablets of the law that God had written. And the law of God and
the command of God said that no one should touch the ark and
live because the ark contained the law which convicted man of
his guilt. So that if anyone touched the
ark, which was a symbol of God's presence and righteousness, he
died because the wages of sin is death. To even touch the article
of the law of God was death. How sad. to esteem the law of
God to such a high degree, to the very tablets to such a high
degree, the Ark of Covenant to such a high degree, which they
were commanded to do because it was representative. It was
not the fullness of the glory of God. It was not a glimpse
of His face. It was a shadow of His righteousness.
It was an illustration of His justice. But they took that and
they carried it on into the first century. When Jesus came on the
scene, the Pharisees and the Jews and the Sadducees, all of
Israel, they looked at the law of God and esteemed Moses above
God. They esteemed Moses above all
things, for Moses was their conduit. Abraham was their bloodline.
And they followed after Moses and felt justified in the eyes
of God because they followed the rules of God. They thought
they had seen God. They never saw God. They thought
they were looking at God when they looked at Moses, but they
couldn't see God. They thought they were following after God
when they followed Moses, but they weren't following after
God. They were following after the prince of the power of the
air for their righteous works were wicked. All of their goodness
was unrighteousness. And that's what this text is
closing out on us for. Because we think that we see
and we follow. How many of us in this room right
now labor passionately every day to live a life that's so
obedient that God would smile? Beware, beloved. Because in your
best of days, God will not smile on your obedience. There's a term called antinomism.
means against the law or no law. We're not those types of people.
The command of God to be holy is on every believer and on every
unbeliever. Every human being, every child,
every child in this room is commanded by God to be holy. And guess
what? None of them are. Do you know that, children? You're
not holy. The only way you have life eternal
is that you trust in Jesus Christ for your righteousness. He lived
and obeyed. He took your penalty and he was
rose from the dead. We think that when we follow
after the law of God and the righteousness of God and obedience,
that we can please him, we cannot please him, we cannot see him.
There is no intimacy with intimacy with God through obedience of
the law. You hear me? It doesn't mean
that disobedience in our life doesn't bring consequence and
friction. It doesn't mean that it doesn't
erupt into a frenzy, our ability to focus and worship and pray.
The scripture is clear that it does. But obeying doesn't make
us more righteous than when we disobey if we're in Christ. Now,
let me ask you, what is your motivation to follow Christ in
the first place? Is it fear? John would say in
his first epistle that God is love. And we love Him because
He first loved us. And perfect love drives away
fear. So what motivates us? We don't
cower. If the Lord were to return today
as the beloved, we don't cower, we don't run, we don't hide.
We don't go, oh no, there's God, I gotta clean up. Like we do
when people come over. There's an apologetic for having
a long driveway. Somebody drove up, let's clean
up. That's not how we approach the Lord. We approach the Lord
as we are. For our righteousness is not
our own. It belongs to Jesus. It's His perfection. I heard
a man last night do a four minute video refuting imputed righteousness. Refuting, saying it was a wicked
heresy. That we must obey the Lord in
perfection and we must become sinless in order to be justified
before the Lord. Well beloved, if you have done
that, raise your hand. I'll cut my hands off in case
you think I'm raising them when I'm scratching my head. How dare
I ever stand before the Lord and say, I have been made right.
Even by your power, God, I'm perfect. That's what the Pharisees
thought. And the Pharisees thanked God
for their righteousness. Thank you, God, that I'm not
like him, the publican. Thank you, God, that I worship
and that I pray and that I live. The gospel is all of grace. We don't follow after God except
through Christ. Show me your glory has been the
quest of men. We're going to peek ahead a little
bit, but look at the testimony of John down there in verses
19 through 28 as it begins. Who are going to John? The Pharisees,
the rulers of Israel, the spiritual heads of the house of David,
if I can. The tribe of Judah, the Jews. And they go to John the Baptist
who is preaching, the kingdom of God is at hand. Behold, see,
look, observe. And they say, who are you? Are you the Christ? No. Are you
Elijah? No. Are you the prophet? That's
referring to the Mishnah and other Jewish writings, thinking
that Jeremiah would come back on the scene. No, I'm not in either of these.
I'm the one who speaks like Elijah. Prepare straight the way of the
Lord. Prepare the way of the Lord. Well, why are you baptizing? Well, I'll baptize with water.
But there is one who will come who
will baptize with fire and with the spirit. You see, people have
always had it in their quest to see God. Have you noticed
that? In our Tuesday night theology class, we looked at some rebuttals
to belief in God. And we saw that there's an agnosticism
that exists and has always existed to say, well, we can know that
there's a God, but we can't know him intimately. We can't know
who he is and exactly what God is the God, the true God. It's what agnosticism says. But
beloved, the scripture says that God has revealed himself perfectly.
Men throughout millennia have looked after God. Some people
say that because people look after God and try to find a God
and try to find a way of worship, that there's some anthropological
proof that God exists. That doesn't mean anything. That
doesn't prove God. It doesn't reveal God in any
sort of way just because there's a desire to know some entity
or to have some spirituality or to have some object of worship. No. Men have always wanted to
see the glory of God. Herod wanted to see the glory
of God. Have you ever thought about that?
When Jesus was born and years and years of prophecy was fulfilled,
and the men from the east followed and found the Christ child, who
actually came to Herod some two and a half, three years after
the birth of Jesus. And they've been following the stars for
three years. And they find Herod. And Herod
says, I don't know. Why don't you report? Find him
and report that I may worship him. And these men, these Eastern
people, these spiritualists, astronomers, astrologers, would
come and seek after the Christ because they'd heard of the prophecy.
And they find the child playing in the room with his mother and
they worship him and they bring him gifts and they escape the
area because they don't want Herod to find him. They were
seeking after the glory of God. The quest of man has always been
able to find and answer the question, who is God and how do I stand
before him and what can I do to approach him? The Old Testament
saints wanted to see God. The Old Testament saints wanted
to see, but they couldn't see. Neither could they seem nor they could
neither seem nor could they proclaim him correctly. I want you to
see this. The reason that they could not
see Him is because He had not revealed Himself this way. The
reason they could not proclaim Him is because they did not see
Him. Why? Because the Scripture would
teach us that no one seeks after God. The Scripture would teach us
that no one can see God and live. The Scripture teaches us that
the wages of sin is death. A judicial blindness is the penalty
of sin. We cannot see and behold and
believe. So how do we see? How do we behold? What does the Scripture teach
us? What have we learned already in this time? I'm getting to the
point, I promise. We've learned that grace and truth is the cause
of sight. Grace and truth. Reiterated in
verse 16, from His fullness we receive grace upon grace. It
is the effectual and continual grace of God that keeps us seeing,
that keeps us believing, that keeps us standing. that keeps
us from apostasy. It's not us. It's not our resolve.
It's not us taking the reins of life or the reins of obedience,
the reins of righteousness and following after it. It is Jesus
Christ alone who reveals God perfectly. Jesus came to overcome the darkness.
He came to give sight to the blind. He came to bring life
through the revelation of himself to us. And in this revelation
of himself, Jesus came to the world to be the visible image
of the invisible God. So that when we see Jesus, we
see God in all of His fullness. And there's no other way to see
God. Jesus says this several times.
He compares Himself, He compares Moses, the law to grace in John
3. As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness. Did I talk about this last Sunday
or was it Wednesday? But as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. See here, Moses
was just a temporary shadow of a vague and veiled revelation
of God that pointed to Jesus Christ, who is the true and perfect
God. He's the truth. He's not a shadow. He's the antitype. He's not the type. He is the
absolute image of God in all perfection and all glory. As
God is, Jesus shows us. Why? Because he is the Word and
he was with God and he is God. Our Trinitarian theology is really
askew. Because we've compartmentalized
God rather than personalized God. What do you mean? Well, God is one being. He is
one being. He's not divided. And all of
His glory, and all of His essence, and all of His attributes, and
all of His character, and all of His nature, all of His works, and all of
His decrees, and everything that He is, is unified. He does not
divide these things out. He doesn't give some attributes
to the Son, and some attributes to the Father, and some attributes
to the Spirit. But God is personified in His relationship and His revelation
to us in three ways, three distinct persons who are all God, who
are all worshipped as God throughout the Scripture, and who all work
equally and simultaneously but differently under the decree
of God the Father. But they're all God. God the
Holy Spirit is God fully, always has been. God the Father is God
fully and always has been. And God the Son is God fully
and always has been. These three are not each other,
but yet they are all just one being. The persons of the Trinity
have been so skewed that we either just say, well, the son is the
father and the father is the son, the spirit is the son. They just
interchange. That's modalism. That's a heresy. It's not true.
Jesus himself, as the son, prayed to the father. The spirit of
God ministered to him at the very same time, numerous times.
But our Trinitarian theology is, is, is sometimes weak. It
was, we try to parse God out and say, well, let's just put
him into a little segments. Let's put him into a little, we talked
about our systematic. Let's put him in a little systems and let's
just make all these mutually exclusive. They cannot be mutually
exclusive. They don't exist apart from each
other. If God is all loving, then God is all justice. Then
God's justice is all loving and God's love is all just. And if
God's immutable, then all those things are never changing. If
God's impassable, And he's impassable. Nothing
moves him. Nothing comes upon him. He exercises
his feelings and his words and his decisions based on his sovereignty,
based on his decrees, not based on what he thinks or feels at
any given time. God is not moved by his emotions. He declares
them. He operates if he chose them
as a way of revealing himself in that manner. These are complex
things that are not necessary for us to grasp. But friends,
I want to show them to you because if we start to kick the can of
theology down the road and we spend so much time just asking
simple questions, sort of like Job. Have you ever noticed the
Q&A that God had with Job and vice versa? And when Job continues
to ask these little simple questions of insignificant reasons, God
just says, let me ask you a few things. Just hold a minute, Job. I'm tired of answering your questions
that are going nowhere, asking me why and why me and what am
I going to do about it? And when, you know, God said,
where were you when I spoke in the cosmos came? Where were you? Where were you when I hung the
planets into place? Where were you when the heavenly lights
swirled into their orbits? Where were you when I did the
math perfectly to separate the infinite universe to build a
planet that would sustain your scrawny little behind? Where
were you, Job? He says, Joe, let me tell you
something. The things of the cosmos you can't even grasp.
He said, let me tell you about some things in this world that
you can't even see, that you can't even imagine. He says,
I created these things. There are things living in the
ocean that by the very sight of them, you would die of horror.
He said, there are things that have walked the earth that the
trunk of their tails could have destroyed cities, could have
brought you to fear. Who are you to question me, Joe?
I am always good. And for those that I love, everything
that I do is always for their good. Grace and truth is the cause
of our sight. We can only see the fullness of God in Jesus
Christ, who is the one I've been talking about for the last 10
minutes. Jesus is God. He is the only begotten son,
as we see in John 3. And here it says, no one has
ever seen God. Now sometimes if you look at
the grammar here, if you look at your Bible, you should see
a semicolon. Do you see a semicolon there? That's a thought. No one has
ever seen God. Thought one. Thought two, the
only God. What is the only God referring
to? Refer to the very next phrase. Who? The only God who is at the
Father's side. You see, some people think, no
one has ever seen God the only God. That's what the cults would
say. That's what higher critics would
say. That's what people who want to thwart the scripture. That's
what scribes thought later in some of the minority texts where
they said right there, oh, we know grammatically it's pointing
to the one at the Father's side, so let's put the word son there,
laos, not theos. But this word here is Theos.
Mono yetnis Theos. The only begotten God. The only
God that there is. No one has ever seen God. Period. New thought. That's what we should
do there. We should put a period there. The only begotten God
that there is who is at the Father's side, another rendering of that,
actually a literal rendering of that in the Greek would be
in the Father's bosom. You can imagine sitting in your
dad's lap. Intimate. Standing there, sitting
there. Who is at the Father's side,
He has made Him known. So the only God that there is,
has made God known, and He, the only God that there is, sits
at the Father's side. Do you see that? This is a recapitulation
of the very first two verses of this prologue. In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning,
because He's God. And the only God, who was at
the Father's side has made Him known." Ever thought about that? How many years have we not read
that correctly? Jesus Christ, the Living Word,
was God, was with God. He's the only God who reveals
Himself to us. God is self-revealing. How do we know God? Because He
shows us Himself. His name is Jesus Christ. We
know God. Now we see we can get confused
because we can hear some of the New Testament dialogue with Jesus
and other people where he says, we know if you've seen me, you've
seen the what? Father. If you knew me, you'd
know the Father. How is it that we are able to
see such things? Whoever believes in me, John
12, 40 something, whoever believes in me, does not believe in me,
but in the one who sent me." That's the words of Jesus. And
whoever sees me, sees the one who sent me. You see, do we see
God? Are you seeing Him today? Are
you seeing Him in Christ? You see, what we've done in our
culture is we've done this. We say, okay, we know Jesus,
the Father, the Spirit, God. But then we've created a second
God that's non-Trinitarian, but there's God. That's what we've
done. We've got the Trinity over here,
it's sort of like a, what do you call those things? Like an
over-screen thing you put on the projector, and you keep adding
layers. We've made the Trinity, we've
made the three persons of the Godhead an overlay of God. And so we've got Jesus Christ,
yeah, he's God, okay, great, we got that. But I wanna focus
on worshiping God. So Jesus gets me to Him. No, Jesus is God. God came down and dwelt among
us. The Creator became like the creation.
And I know this is all redundant. It's very redundant today. But
why do we move on to the testimony of John the Baptist when we're
still struggling with the intimacy of the fact that God came down
as a human being and dwelt among us? and that when people sat
there in the manger and they looked upon this child, they
looked upon the face of God Almighty, when they saw Him grow and exist
in His home, when those ancient eastern worshipers came to worship
Him in the home of His mother and they bowed down to Him, they
were worshiping their Creator as a toddler. When Jesus was in the temple
at the age of 12, and the Pharisees, or excuse me, and the scribes
were amazed. They were dumbfounded. Not, wow,
that's a smart kid. Like, oh my goodness. If this
kid sticks around too long, we're through. They were hearing preaching from
a 12 year old who created them. Every time that Joseph and Mary
instructed Jesus in righteousness, instructed Jesus and taught Him
the Word of God, they were teaching the Scriptures to God. It's crazy. Friends, do not take
lightly this crazy gospel that God has incarnated into this
world so He could save His people. from their sin. How do we see? How do we see this? Some of you
may say, well, I'm having trouble just put my mind around it. Well,
beloved, I can't explain it any simpler. Because. It's just statement of the truth
of what Scripture teaches here is that Jesus is the God who
sits at the side of the father, who's God, who makes him known. And there's nothing else that
we can do. The only way that we can grasp it to a fuller extent
is that God's grace be given to us that we could see it. Do
you see it this morning? I guess another question is,
do you want to see? Do you want to see Christ? There's
not a week that goes by that I don't get prayer requests and
calls and emails and text messages and personal meetings about things
that are going on in our lives. It's life, it's going to happen.
I find it interesting to think that if I approached my Christian
intimacy with you the same way so many people do in our culture,
that you would not tolerate it. But yet there is no double standard
when it comes to what is required of the pastor in intimacy with
the church and what's required with the parishioners of the
church. You know that, right? So any
given time that I decide I don't want to preach or just don't
feel like coming, I could just skip out. It's equally on the
same terms as the rest of us. We are obligated to one another
because Christ is in us. Things come up, things happen,
we get sick. I'm preaching to the choir here. I guess it's a challenge of the
heart. But if we want to see, grace has to be given to us and
grace has to be given to us in power. Grace upon grace upon
grace upon grace is what makes God known, is what makes salvation
known. and it's effectual knowledge,
not just the administrative knowledge of the brain working in conjunction
with what we hear. Some people call me a heretic
because I don't like to say that faith is just cognitive assent. Well, it is cognitive assent
to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But many people
cognitively assented to the fact that Jesus was God, but they
still went to judgment when they died. And we'll leave that right there. But one must be born of God,
not man, not the will, not the choice, but of God. How is that
so? Through the hearing of the gospel,
through the hearing of the scripture, through the hearing of the words
of Christ is the actual translation of Romans 10, 17. Faith comes
through hearing, hearing. Can you hear my voice today?
Yes. But can you hear my voice today?
Hearing comes through the words of Christ. So if I want you to
get it, then I need to teach you the words of Christ. I need to teach you the gospel
that Jesus is the one who shows you salvation. Because He is
salvation. Because God is salvation. It
is the power of God unto salvation. By grace, you have been saved.
It is for no merit in ourselves. There is nothing within us, no
power, we sang it this morning, nothing in me. Songs that I sing,
the dress that I wear, the words that I speak, nothing that I
do, no obedience in me. My righteousness is in Christ
alone and all of His obedience. My hope and my satisfaction and
my sanctification comes in the person of Jesus Christ who took
my sin debt on Himself as a perfect, obedient Son. And He died on
the cross and was vindicated because God raised Him from the
dead. Jesus actually told Pilate, I
have the power to lay down my life and I have the power to
take it up again. And so if we want to know the
real mystery of how God could become a man and still be God,
Jesus Christ Himself laid His life down and Jesus Christ Himself
rose Himself from the dead. That's crazy. Where do we get that? How do
we follow after that? Well, understand what we're going
to be looking at as the weeks come on is the testimony about
what man cannot see. See, John the Baptist is going
to be preaching to people who can't see what he's saying. He's
going to say, Behold! And they're going to look and
they're going to see and they're going to go, Oh, I don't see it. Behold the Lamb of God! And they're going to go, I said,
isn't that a guy from Nazareth? What goods ever come out of Nazareth?
The Lamb of God. Why are you going to call that
trashy man the Lamb of God? You see, don't call that guy... I mean, look at these people
over here from the tribe of Benjamin. Call them the Lamb of God. They're
the ones walking in righteousness. They're the ones that are following
after the Lord. They're the ones who go after Moses. They are
the ones who Abraham is their father. And John the Baptist
with locust legs in his teeth and his hair all wild and honey
and blood and wearing animal skins and coming out. I mean,
we'd have that guy arrested if he walked in here. At least 911. Send an ambulance. Somebody's
just about to die. He was like the Lamb of God that
takes away the sins of the world. What a punch in the gut for Israel. What a slap in the face for the
piety of Judaism. Here's this Nazarene who we know
beyond all things that was born out of wedlock. We know. So much
so that they had to have birth in a stable. That man wasn't
gonna put him in his inn. You think it was just, they'd
have found room for the right people. But you go into a nice
restaurant and you know the owners, they find you a table if it's
full. But if you're a nobody, The bane of society, poor, wretched,
ugly. And you can go in there and eat
the free chips and drink water. They're not going to give you
a table. John the Baptist is about to
proclaim what man cannot see. But he's going to proclaim what
God is revealing in power. God's proclamation. And through
the preaching of John the Baptist, he is going to say, he is going
to enable people to see, because God, the Holy Spirit, is going
to have ears that hear the audible noises we call language, and
He's going to open the heart and mind to see. That's called
the rebirth. That's being born again. We use
the term regeneration. Because until you've been regenerated,
until you've been made alive, you can't comprehend spiritually
spiritual things. You may say from a natural state
of view, oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, okay, okay. I see,
like John 2, the very end of it. Many people believed in the
name of Christ that day because of all the signs and the wonders
He did, but Jesus did not believe in them. That's basically what
it says. He did not entrust himself to
them for he knew what was in man. No one had to tell him about
the heart of man. And then 3.1 says, and there
was a man. So here's the populace and what they do in their fleshly
belief of going, yeah, maybe he's the Messiah. That's cool.
And then Nicodemus from the Pharisees, we do believe. See, they came
to John the Baptist first and said, are you Christ? He says,
no, I'm pointing to Christ. And they couldn't see. And then
they started agreeing with the consensus of the culture. OK,
this is Christ. This is the Christ. Let's go
confess it. Let's tell him that we believe that he's Christ.
But Jesus says, you can't see me. It's the first thing he says
in Nicodemus. Nicodemus makes a profession
of faith and says, we know that you are the Christ. Let's just
put it the way it is. You are the Christ. You're twisting
the word of God. No, he says, we know you are
one come from God, for no one can do the things that you do
except God be with him. That's the literal translation. All
right, who else is coming from God but Messiah? Didn't that,
the Holy Anointed One from God? Okay, Christ. We know that you
are Messiah. And Jesus says, you can't see me. You can't see
me and you can't enter into me, unless you're born from above.
Unless you're born by the Spirit, unless you see, unless you see
through new eyes and believe with a new mind and love with
a new heart. And Nicodemus is dumbfounded.
He says, how am I to be born again? Sarcastically, can I go
into my mother's womb and ta-da, I'm born again. Come back one
more time. And Jesus tells him about the
wind. He tells him about birth and he tells him about the serpent
lifted up in the wilderness. And he says, how in the world,
if you are in literal translation, you are you not the teacher of
all Israel in John three? Yet you do not comprehend these
things. How am I to speak to you about spiritual things if
you can't even understand physical worldly things? See, that's the
point. John the Baptist is about to
begin to preach on spiritual things that everybody who hears
him is going to think in a worldly way. And the only way the worldly
thinking is going to disappear is if the Spirit of God opens
the ears and regenerates the mind and creates someone anew
that they may receive it with spiritual ears and spiritual
eyes and a spiritual heart. You understand that that's not
necessarily the gospel, is it? It's good news for us, beloved.
But the gospel is that Jesus Christ came, and He is God, and
He lived, and He obeyed, and He died, and He took the penalty
of sinners on Himself because of the love of God toward His
people. The problem is, is when we think we can coerce people
into believing that by some action, attitude, or affection. Let God
be the Redeemer. Let God's grace be the one who
opens eyes and hearts and minds. Grace is to know God effectually. Grace upon grace upon grace. See, we, beloved, the church
of Jesus Christ, We are the object of His love. We are the object
of His grace. So we live in that grace. We
love in the power of that grace. We're the people of God's purpose
and His plan. We live our lives together with
supernatural affection, invest in each other's lives because
of God's grace. We live in harmony, forgiving each other, speaking
the truth in love because of God's grace. We work out our
differences. We restore relationships. We understand that we're obligated
to one another. We know this morning, as I've
already said, we're not in a service, but we are assembled together
as God's people. We live for the glory of God
because He is perfecting us in grace in the context of His glorious
purpose. We are empowered by His grace
every step of our lives because it's all about Him and it's all
for Him. He accomplishes all that He wishes
and God declares the beginning from the end and He declares
that His church be a reflection of His power to the praise of
His glorious grace. Are we that type of people? Because
isn't that the outcome of grace? Isn't that what Paul says? Isn't
that what the end of time, when we look at eschatology, the study
of last things, that's what that means. When we look at the end
of time, isn't the outcome of all of history Jesus being worshipped
and glorified by the people that saved him? People glorying and worshipping
and exalting and exalting Jesus. That's the end of it. To the
praise of His glorious grace. See, grace enables us to see
His glory. Glory as, what does it say? The
only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Grace enables
us to worship Him. Grace enables us to know Him.
The only God who is at the side of the Father makes Himself known. We know Jesus Christ, who is
the only God. Because He declares Himself and
reveals Himself. I think something that comes
very easily to us as I opened up the sermon this morning about
not losing sight of what we've learned is that sometimes we
think, well, I've seen Jesus. I've believed already. But love,
belief is not a time in history. Belief is not a place that you
started. Belief is where you are today. You believe today. Let's don't
sing the song of history that my testimony is, well, back in
1983, I believed. What do you believe now? Do you
believe today? Well, I was baptized three years
ago. Whoop-de-doo. Good for you. I'm talking about
believing. Do you believe on Christ today? Well, I joined the church last
year. It's not what I asked you. You may think, what are you saying?
I get these answers every single week. at least from two or three
people a week, I get these answers. And when you question them on
it, they say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it's about Jesus and what He did. That's true. But their faith
isn't in Christ, you see. Their faith is in their baptism,
in their profession, their faith is in their own faith, their
faith is in their church membership, their faith is in their ministry.
Lo and behold, many pastors that I talk to can't give a reason
for the hope they have in Christ. They don't even understand that
Jesus... You know how many preachers in our culture in the Southeast
right now believe that Jesus died as an example, not as propitiation,
not as satisfaction of the wrath of God? A bunch of them. And
some of them hold the form, hold the label, reformed. And many
reformed pastors actually believe in this area that you work your
salvation out by good works and not faith. What is that? and so on and so on. See, seeing
Christ is a daily thing. The grace of God is daily given
to us. The grace of God allows us to
see Jesus daily, to know Him intimately every day. And then
we seek after Christ daily. We constantly look at our affections. We want to give glory in everything
we say and everything we do. Everything, what did Paul say?
You eat or drink, do so for the glory of God. That means we're
mindful of the intimacy we have with God because of His grace.
The fact that Jesus Christ has revealed Himself as God to us
intimately. We have a relationship. I'm going
to be careful how I say this, but don't hear what I'm not saying.
But that we have a relationship by and through grace with the
God of heaven. And it's not that we met Him
and joined in Him. He snatched us out of death and
out of darkness. He came in and deliberately and
purposefully and effectually, that means it actually worked,
saved us, beloved. We peek into the majesty of holiness.
We look into the things that are unseen, and when we do so,
we stare at His grand design for redemption. You know, I've
had conversations with five people in our fellowship just in the
last week about how to look at the Word of God. And you might
say, well, I'm depressed. I want to find passages, I'm
almost finished, but I want to find passages in this text, and
I want to find passages that are about depression. Or, I want
to find passages that help my marriage. I want to find passages that
will encourage me in my job. Or I want to find passages that
will help me deal with something that I'm working through. Well,
friends, listen, as long as we keep going to Jesus and tapping
into his pockets to get what we need out of it, we're never
going to be intimate with Christ. In the midst of our intimacy
with the Word of God, God reveals Himself to us continually, and
He teaches us what's necessary for our salvation, and for the
affection of our lives, and not only for that, but for the sustenance
of our lives as the redeemed. You say, well, sometimes I just
like to get away. I like to get away too. I like
to go to the range. I like to read. I like to watch
certain types of movies. I enjoy playing chess. I can
play chess 12 hours a day. Everybody looks like a chess
piece? And it takes your mind off the
things that are going on and it puts you in a place where
you might enjoy a little season, but when those things stop, when
the brakes go and the engine turns off, guess what? You step
out of the car of relaxation and leisure and all hell breaks
loose because you're still in the world. Well, don't we need
some time apart? Yeah, maybe. I think it's good.
Psychologically, it's good to have some things to do and enjoy
time together as people and as friends and as family. Enjoy
time alone for crying out loud. You have a family like ours and
some of you, you know, just 30 minutes in the bathroom sometimes,
sitting in the floor crying. I mean, reading is often a blessing. But nothing else that we engage
our time with is actually for anything good. And I'm not complaining
about doing these things. It's okay. But don't do them
in lieu of intimacy with Jesus. Because see, I could read a story
and it could take me into a different place. And I could enjoy it and
I close the book and I go, oh, the world's still here. And guess
what? The characters of that story aren't with me. And so in order to get back into
that place where I'm not here anymore, I have to get back into
this message, I have to get back into this life, I have to get
back into this artificial world in my mind. But friends, when
we read the Bible, some people say, well, they're reading the
Bible, it's just the same. No, it's not. You're actually hearing the words
of the living God, and He is with you, and He is talking to
you, and He is supernaturally investing in you, and He is equipping
you, and He is intimate with you, and you are standing up
from that scripture reading with Jesus Christ in you. When we are overwhelmed and we
need help in the time of need, the scripture says to put our
mind on the things that are eternal. That means to think about the
ineffable glory of Jesus Christ who redeemed us through himself.
To focus on the plan that God has done, that the angels look
into every moment. They are so overwhelmed, the
scripture teaches us, with looking into redemption. You find that
in first Peter and other places. They look. And they behold. And they're astonished and they
glorify God for his redemption. Why? For it's the power of God.
We want to see God. We see him in redemption. It's the only way we can see
God, beloved. The only other way to see God, apart from redemption,
is to see him in judgment. No other place. No matter what the world brings
to us, we don't allow a lack of wisdom to override our lives,
but we trust in Christ who has our wisdom. We don't run from
the absolute clear and present teaching of God's word, but we
stand firm, even though everything in our flesh tells us we don't
need to do that or we can't, we stand firm and God's grace
gives us. He fights our battles. When we escape trials in the
scriptures, we are intimate, as I've said, with him. He supernaturally
and powerfully restores our soul. When we doubt, when we have fear,
we have anxiety and oppression, and when our thoughts are inundated
with fear, something is greatly amiss in our spirit. Usually
what we're doing is we're trying to appease God in our self-righteousness
and answer our own questions, but we never can, so grace alone
sets us free. The grace of God through Jesus
Christ, who is the God, the only begotten God of heaven, whom
John testifies about, whom we have heard, and whom we have
believed, overcomes everything. overcomes all fear, overcomes
all grief. Grace alone puts our eyes on
Jesus. Grace alone saves us from our sin. Grace alone gives us
an immediate escape from temptation. Stop looking for a way out, beloved,
and look to Jesus Christ. He brought you into Himself.
So this testimony of God, His revelation then, didn't just
stay with John the Apostle, and it didn't just stay with John
the Baptist, it came to us. Are we living in it this morning?
Are we resting in the only God who is at the side of the Father? In the place of authority, in
the place of highest things. Jesus, though he was equal with
God, took equality with God, something not to be grasped,
but made himself nothing. A slave, obedient unto death,
even obedient to death, even death upon the cross. Therefore,
God highly exalted him. You see this. highly exalted
Him, that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow and every
tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. Friends, there is no higher
authority. There is no government. There
is no judge. There is no Supreme Court. There
is no power. There is no military presence.
There is nothing in this world that is higher than Jesus. And
there is no power that is greater than Jesus. And there is no grace
that is more merciful than Jesus. There is no Lord except Jesus. Yet we look into our own souls
for answers and strength. How silly. So when we find ourselves
in this enamored position of silliness, what do we do? Do we wring our hands and say,
okay, tomorrow I will pull myself up by my boots and I will stand
and I will live for Jesus and it lasts till we get to the car.
Or it lasts till we get to the restroom, see the toilet's fogged
up. Or it lasts till we just give up by lunchtime and quit.
How do we hold? By looking at Christ. He's revealed
Himself to us. He's made Himself known, beloved.
Do you see? Are you holding in Him? Let's pray. How glad our hearts can be this
day. Because nothing we've done this
week has taken your affection from us. Nothing you've done
this week has taken your grace from us. Nothing we've thought,
no sin we've committed, Lord, has put us under your judgment,
for we are in Christ Jesus. And we pray that you'd lead us
not into temptation. We pray that you would deliver
us from the evil. We pray that you would help us walk uprightly. Father, we hope in Christ. Lord, I pray supernaturally,
Lord, with all power and wisdom, Lord, that you would give every
one of us in this room this day peace. Peace to know that we
are yours by faith because of your grace. Peace to know that
we are secure in our salvation because of what Christ has done.
Peace to know that even though we fail so many times that you're
faithful, Peace to know that we are a people who are being
attacked, Lord, many different times throughout every day. But
we will not lose. We will not fail. We will not
be overcome for he for your son, Jesus, who is greater than the
one who is in the world, has overcome, has overcome the world,
has overcome sin, has defeated death. We have nothing to fear,
Father. As we contemplate the gospel
and the proclamation and the witness of John the Baptist and
others, Lord, Lord, we pray that our witness would be just as
powerful as we repeat the gospel, as we state the truth of scripture,
as we read and share the faith. that we would encourage ourselves,
each other, and the lost and dying world out there that needs
to be evangelized, that needs to be told, that through the
telling, Lord, you will be glorified in the salvation of souls. So,
Father, we thank you for this brief moment where we could get
away from everything, where we're able to securely be intimate
with you and with each other. Lord, guard our hearts and our
minds this week. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.