Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sam, what a joy to be together today. Amen.
[00:00:05] We are continuing our series on the Nicene Creep.
[00:00:10] If you weren't here last week and you're like, that sounds like the most boring thing someone could do at church, why, why would you do that to us?
[00:00:19] That's a great question.
[00:00:21] Totally fair to be, to be completely honest with you guys, but I actually, I talked a little bit about this last week, but just to kind of catch us up, I actually think this is a really good subject for us. This, this summer marked the 1700th anniversary of the original adoption of the Nicene Creed. If you go and read about the history, it was updated a few times, kind of over a 50 year period of time. But the original version was originally put together and adopted 1700 years ago this year, which is wild. It's wild that the Creed represents this distillation of biblical doctrine that's written in a way to be memorable and to help Christians simply distinguish between primary and secondary doctrinal issues. And what we mean by that is primary doctrinal issues are the beliefs that make something Christian or not Christian, right? You must believe these things in order for your belief to be Christian. Second, secondary doctrinal issues are things that Christians debate about that there's open interpretation of what the Scripture might be teaching on it. Guys, it's crazy to me that we're talking about a document outside the Bible, right? Not an inspired document that is 1700 years old and that all Christians throughout time in history have fundamentally agreed on the teaching of this document.
[00:01:49] Every Christian movement, every cross, every Christian denomination, across cultures, across countries, across time, even Christian denominations that disagree with the idea of creeds still affirm the doctrines within that I see him creed, which is wild to me. I think it's a really helpful thing for us today to spend time in traditions like the creed, because the first off, they help us do that same work of distinguishing between primary and secondary doctrines. We, we live in a world where most of us are steeped in media and social media that, that gets a lot of its income from getting us angry and divisive, right? And so us nitpicking and fighting with one another is becoming increasingly common in the culture we live in. And the Creed is helpful because it helps you distinguish the things worth planting your flag in and the things that, that really don't matter that much. It's just really helpful in that regard. But it's also helpful because it roots us in the historicity of our faith that to follow Christ, to step into our church in A manual fellowship in St. Louis county in 2025 is not just to step into a thing that is uniquely American or uniquely modern. You are stepping into a tradition that is ancient, that is transcendent, that moves beyond our culture and our moment. And I think there's something really just honestly cool about that, right, to know that you're a part of such a grand movement God is doing in human history.
[00:03:22] So last week we opened this series with an exploration of the biblical teaching on God the Father. And today we're going to talk about God the Son. Next week we'll talk about God the Spirit, the first tenets of the creed. And really most of the creed revolves around the doctrine of the Trinity.
[00:03:41] And it does so because this is wild. Every major heresy in church history, every single false teaching that poisoned or harmed the church for the last 2000 years revolved around dismissing the authority of Scripture and breaking the doctrine of the Trinity.
[00:03:58] Every single one. Go read a church history book. The doctrine of the Trinity is a really important one, one of the most important biblical doctrines to engage. It's the root of, of basically every major false teaching. But more than that, more than that, it's a doctrine that's clearly revealed in Scripture but never clearly defined in Scripture. I think this is why the Trinity causes so many problems and why it has arisen false teachings. Because if you read the Bible beginning to end, it very clearly tells us God is triune. He is three in one. It reveals him that way, but it never really describes how that works, it literal sense.
[00:04:47] Paul says he's surrounded by unapproachable lights.
[00:04:51] When the scripture describes God the Father, it describes his holiness as so palpable that it consumes sin around him.
[00:05:03] He's unapproachable. We can't be near Him.
[00:05:08] So how can we know Him?
[00:05:10] Well, we can know him because Jesus solves the problem.
[00:05:14] Jesus lowers the bar and puts the cookies on the bottom shelf for us. He puts flesh and bones on Yahweh, the Creator, and he hangs out with us.
[00:05:24] The humanity of Jesus makes God knowable to us simple humans. Jesus is God revealed.
[00:05:37] But it still leaves us with a really important question. If Jesus shows us the truth of God, like what's the truth he shows, right?
[00:05:46] Like what is the God that Jesus reveals? Like, I think this passage in John will help us get there. So pray with me and let's dig into this. Jesus, we need you today.
[00:06:00] We need you to be our discipler. We need you to be our teacher, Holy Spirit. We ask that you would Illuminate your scripture today.
[00:06:08] Be our discipler.
[00:06:10] Challenge us, encourage us, remind us. Lord, let us leave this space today having heard from you in a way that our hearts actually need, in a way that actually draws us to you. God, let us exit out of this space today more richly connected to you than when we began.
[00:06:28] God, we love you, we trust you, we need you for this work. So we pray it in your name, Jesus. Amen.
[00:06:34] John 1. Starting in the first verse, we read this.
[00:06:38] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, all things were created through him. And apart from him, not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
[00:07:00] Okay, because the Gospel of John is an interesting book. It's an interesting gospel within the list of gospels.
[00:07:07] I was actually discussing this a few weeks ago with a couple guys in our church. The question we were discussing was, if someone is exploring faith kind of for the first time, what's the first book of the Bible you would recommend to them? We were kind of going back and forth about it, be Mark or Matthew or Luke or John, kind of going around. And really it kind of got down to, for me, at least, between Mark and John. And I feel like those are the first. The best first two places to start. And the reason I would say those two is, you know, Mark is really simple. Mark is easy to understand. It's short.
[00:07:41] It's basically exclusively narrative. It's a great way to introduce yourself to the story of Jesus, but it lacks almost all commentary. It's basically just story. Mark tells you what happened and tells you quickly. John, on the other hand, is much more complex. It's full of commentary.
[00:08:00] It focuses in on these sweeping sermons and speaking moments from Jesus, and it mixes in commentary from the apostle John all the time. And as a result of that, John, I think, is objectively harder to read and understand. I think it's the hardest of the four Gospels to read and really know fully what's going on. But it's also so rich theologically. John is written purposefully to be incredibly invitational and descriptive theologically. Why do I say all that? I say all that because even as we read this first pat, this first passage in John, he's immediately throwing like five metaphors at us, right? Like, the dude can't bother himself to explain the first image before he gives you three more. And so it is easy it's easy to just get lost in John. Okay, so there's light. All right, I've got light. It's unimaginable. And now there's darkness. Cool. But we're backing up to this guy, and now we're doing that. Like, what's the word part? Like, it's easy to get lost in the weeds with John, and so we'll go through him slowly. And if we, as we initially read these chunks, if at first you go, what?
[00:09:09] That's fine. Okay, John. That's just kind of how John writes. So in verses one and two, John tells us that the Word, the Word has been eternally with God and is God. Now, we miss this very easily as modern English readers, but the word Word in your New Testament was one of the early church's titles for Jesus.
[00:09:32] They called him that. Jesus is the Word. And you think that's a weird title, and it actually really wasn't in the first century. See, we miss the nuance of this meaning as modern Western readers, and that's fine. But in the first century, this word logos, Logos is how it looks when you look at it in English.
[00:09:53] It interestingly kind of married together a biblical idea with a popular cultural idea.
[00:10:00] So Logos was a term used by the popular Stoic philosophers to refer to just ultimate reality.
[00:10:08] It kind of became a shorthand for however you understood divinity or God in the culture. To the Stoics, the Logos was the force or the logic or the reason or the person that made all things and held them together. And in the Stoic mind, the Logos was always perfectly reasonable and logical.
[00:10:29] The Logos is what you were seeking to kind of connect yourself with. And so in Roman culture in the first century, because Stoic philosophy was so popular, Logos word, it really became a cultural shorthand word to just mean God. You could just say it in. In replacement of God. Right. But in Jewish culture, it had a nuanced, different meaning. And this is because in Genesis 1 in the creation story, it describes God creating through his voice. He speaks and things come into being. And so in the Jewish mindset, the idea of the Word of God, it began to be a way of talking about God's action.
[00:11:09] In reality, the way God acts and enforces his will within the universe is the Word of God. His Word goes forth and does things and creates and sustains. And so you have this one piece of Roman society kind of using the word word to the shorthand for God. And in Jewish culture, you have this bit where they're using the word word to talk about how God interacts with the physical world. And the Christians saw that and said, you're both kind of right. We're just going to take it. That's our Word now. And we're going to call Jesus that and we're going to mix the two ideas together.
[00:11:43] And so the early church, often it's like if you go and read the early Apostolic Fathers, Word was the most common title associated with Jesus in the earliest church writings we have. And what it comes back to in this is that if Jesus is the Logos, if Jesus is the Word, then he is God. He's in control of creation, but he's also God the Father's active expression within the world.
[00:12:14] He's God's action, God's will put forth into the physical world.
[00:12:20] And this is where we get to a really interesting aspect of the biblical teaching on the Godhead on the Trinity.
[00:12:27] See, according to both the creed and our text, Jesus is the Creator.
[00:12:33] He made all things.
[00:12:35] But wait, those of you who were here last week, then we spend a whole sermon talking about how one of the defining ways we understand God the Father is that he's the Creator and that his role and title as Creator is what grants him authority over us and over this world and over our lives.
[00:12:55] Right.
[00:12:56] That's actually an interesting kind of ramp to help us step up the noodle baking aspect of the Trinity.
[00:13:03] The unavoidable reality of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it is above our ability to reason and understand.
[00:13:09] It is confusing. I want to pre warn you with that. There are a couple doctrines, biblical doctrines, the Scripture hands us. And I think God does this very intentionally. There are a couple of doctrines sprinkled throughout Christian belief that on the surface, on a surface reading, they are either confusing, counterintuitive or downright contradictory.
[00:13:33] And there's only a couple like that. But I think God does that on purpose.
[00:13:37] He hands us a few doctrines. Like a good example of this would be. The Bible describes God as sovereign over all reality. But the Bible also describes humans as having free will and having responsibility and agency for the decisions they make.
[00:13:51] Those two things can't go together.
[00:13:53] God's either in control of all things and makes all things happen and sustains them, or you're in control of the decisions you make.
[00:14:00] You're either a robot or you're not a robot, right?
[00:14:02] Well, the Bible hands you both and just says, and he's got, you kind of got to deal with that.
[00:14:08] God's sovereign and you're also responsible for your actions. The Bible describes That God is perfectly just and all sin will be accounted for and that he lets nothing slip by. He's completely and totally just. It also says he's completely and totally loving and merciful, but he loves to forgive sin. Here's the thing, guys.
[00:14:25] Those don't go together.
[00:14:27] Mercy and justice don't sync up.
[00:14:30] The Bible just hands you both of those things and says, deal with it. The Trinity sits in the same space. The Bible hands to the Trinity and says, God is three and God is one. And you go, three and one are not the same number. I know, Wild. And then it moves on.
[00:14:47] It doesn't take the time to explain it to you. The Bible hands us not a lot, but a few doctrines that exist in this place of tension. And I think it's on purpose. I think God hands us the tension because I think the reality is the Bible describes a God that is beyond human understanding.
[00:15:04] And the limitations of human language and human reason and human logic and human understanding of the world are not enough to encapsulate the reality of God. If you could fully understand God and, and contain the entirety of knowledge about him in your brain, I have news for you. He wouldn't be God.
[00:15:26] Right?
[00:15:28] If you could fully know him and understand him, he wouldn't be above you.
[00:15:33] And so if the Bible is as the God or if God is as the Bible describes him, we should assume that there are facets of him that are beyond our comprehension. Right?
[00:15:43] The Trinity is one of those things.
[00:15:45] And so here's the thing about the Trinity.
[00:15:47] You can take a deep dive on the academics, the study, the thought of the Trinity. My wife just took a systematics class that focused entirely on the doctrine of the Trinity. She had to read some stinking treatises on this stuff. Right? And it's interesting.
[00:16:04] You should do it. If you geek out on theology, you should study. You should know more about God. It's a wonderful practice and exercise, but I promise you, you will not find the guy with enough PhDs that he has figured out the trender.
[00:16:17] You won't. You won't find is. It is a doctrine that the Bible hands us unapologetically that we cannot fully understand.
[00:16:27] And so when the Bible says, God the Father is Creator, that is his identity. That's how we know Him. That's where his authority comes from. And then comes along and says, Jesus was with God in the beginning and all things were created through Him. So Jesus is the Creator. And you stop and go, well, hold on, who's the Creator? The Father or the Son? And the biblical answer is, well, of course.
[00:16:51] Right.
[00:16:52] And you kind of have to just be okay with that.
[00:16:56] You kind of have to just realize the Trinity bakes your noodle. There's not another good way to say it.
[00:17:04] So the Bible teaches us that God made all things and somehow the Father in that the Father is like the genesis of the creation and the Son is the enactor of the creation.
[00:17:19] Right. And there's something going on there that the God the Father is the start of this creation. It's his idea, it's his work, and Jesus is how God enacted that creation. And do I understand that? No. But I think Paul actually says it a little more simply than John does. So over in Colossians chapter one, you can read this in Paul's famous Christology. In Colossians 1, He. He being Jesus, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him, and for him, he is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him, to reconcile everything to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.
[00:18:25] Paul doesn't use as many metaphors as John.
[00:18:27] He says it a little more plainly. Jesus is the Creator.
[00:18:32] We can, and we probably should, nuance the difference between the Father and the Son's roles in creation. And there are theologians who do just that. And if you want to borrow an 800 book, a page book, just ask Kim. She has like five of them that could help you do that.
[00:18:48] Well, the point being made here is that Jesus is God alongside the Father. They are both God and God is one.
[00:18:58] When John says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, all things were made for the Word. He's grabbing a hold of that because God the Father's identity as Creator is one of the primary ways is understood as divine. And so John makes sure to you that you know that Jesus is involved in the creation because only the divine is involved in the creation. And the Word is with God. And the Word was God. Jesus is God, but God is one.
[00:19:21] Okay, right. But it's, it's, it's what we get.
[00:19:26] You have to understand, this isn't polytheism.
[00:19:29] We're not talking about more than one God. Jesus and the Father are one, but they're both the Creator.
[00:19:38] And notice how in our. In. In this text, in Colossians, Paul so quickly moves from Jesus's authority as creator to his role as Savior and Lord.
[00:19:49] Do you see that?
[00:19:50] And we talked about this a little bit last week. But God's identity as creator is what gives him unique authority and claim over the creation. And this is just as true for the Son Jesus as it is for the Father. Jesus has authority over his creation. It was made by him. It was made for him.
[00:20:12] Right.
[00:20:13] Jesus has authority over his creation. That means he has authority over you and over me.
[00:20:19] So his accomplished work, and by that phrase, I mean his perfect life, his unjust death, his supernatural resurrection, ascension to heaven, and his eventual return and judgment.
[00:20:29] His work, his gospel work, he does out of his authority as creator.
[00:20:36] It's his creation.
[00:20:38] He has first place in all of reality. And through him, God is reconciling the sinful creation to himself through Jesus's work, His blood shed on the cross.
[00:20:51] In our text, John says it like this. Jesus is the life of humanity.
[00:20:58] He's the source of our life. This speaks to Jesus's authoritative gospel work. He is the power of life for sinners like you and me.
[00:21:07] He made us, and he has the power to fix what sin has broken in us. He has the power to right all the wrongs done to you and all the wrongs you've done.
[00:21:17] John describes this as the light that Jesus brings into the world. His gospel work is light shining into the darkness of this sinful and cursed world. It's a beautiful metaphor. He brings into this. And look what he says in our text in these first five verses. The darkness cannot overcome it.
[00:21:39] I love that truth.
[00:21:41] And I'll be honest, guys.
[00:21:43] I feel like in this space, there are some of us today where that's really what God has for us today.
[00:21:50] The darkness of the curse cannot overcome the light of the love that Jesus has poured out for you on his cross.
[00:22:01] Listen, I know in a space like this, some of you are going through hell right now.
[00:22:05] You walk into this space today feeling beat down, feeling discouraged.
[00:22:10] You've experienced hurt.
[00:22:13] For some of you, the curse of sin feels as close as your next breath.
[00:22:17] And if that's you today, I urge you to take heart because Jesus came into this world.
[00:22:25] God, your creator, he came into this world to defeat the reality of sin. Hear this in your life.
[00:22:36] Jesus came here to Conquer the curse in your life to rescue you from that darkness that you feel like is beating you down right now. And I know in your day to day life, it's so easy to feel like darkness owns everything.
[00:22:51] It can feel like it's what has power. It can feel like the bad guys always win and things always get worse. But do not forget, beloved, darkness cannot overcome light. Light can't see. Guys, darkness isn't real.
[00:23:10] Darkness isn't a thing.
[00:23:13] Darkness is the absence of a thing.
[00:23:17] Darkness is where light does not touch.
[00:23:19] Right?
[00:23:21] Some of you guys have done the cave tour and they take you down there and they turn off the lights and it's pitch black and you can't see your hand.
[00:23:27] All it takes, one little match to conquer all the darkness of a huge cane.
[00:23:33] Because darkness can't combat light.
[00:23:36] When the light touches it, the darkness flees because the darkness is nothing.
[00:23:41] And that's the metaphor John hands you.
[00:23:44] The curse can feel like it owns your whole person.
[00:23:48] But take heart, beloved.
[00:23:51] The darkness in your life cannot overcome the love of Christ poured out for you.
[00:23:58] Come on, church.
[00:24:00] But if that weren't enough, our sweet Jesus is more than that.
[00:24:04] He's your creator, he's your Savior who came here to ransom you from sin. But he's more than that. Read on with me. Verse 6. In John, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light that gives life to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, but the world was created through him. And yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, his own people and they did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of natural descent or of the will of the flesh, but of the will or of the will of man, but of God.
[00:24:49] And here John gives us some narrative alongside the theology. We're not really going to focus on this, but John the Baptist was a much more influential spiritual leader in the first century Palestine than most of us realize. He kind of seems like a footnote for a lot of us modern believers, but he was really well known amongst the Jewish people at this time. In fact, for a long time, way more people knew about John the Baptist than knew about Jesus. But John's ministry was never about himself.
[00:25:16] John was a herald of Christ. He was announcing Jesus's coming work. He was the rooster crowing to let us know the sun was just behind the horizon.
[00:25:27] Because Jesus's life and ministry was the light of salvation dawning on the dark world.
[00:25:33] And so then John, the author, John, John the Baptist gives us one of the most interesting and necessary truths about God the Son. I love this.
[00:25:42] No one recognized him.
[00:25:44] He comes into the world and no one knows who he is. He's God, He's Creator. He made all things. He steps into his own creation and lives amongst them. He comes to the Jewish people, God's chosen people. He lived with them and no one recognized him.
[00:26:00] This is so strange.
[00:26:03] But guys, this was an intentional part of Jesus's plan for the world.
[00:26:08] He came to the creation in humility and obscurity. He was born to a poor peasant and lived a quiet, rural blue collar life. And he did this on purpose because he wanted to be truly among us, but also because the cross was his plan, right?
[00:26:27] Like he was heading to the cross on purpose. He knew the religious leaders would reject him. He knew that that was actually necessary to bring about the plan of redemption. So the Creator comes to us in obscurity. Obscurity. He wasn't recognized, he wasn't received.
[00:26:43] And through that he's able to adopt us into his family.
[00:26:49] You see that how John kind of flips the switch on the story here.
[00:26:54] His work in the world, his perfect life, his unjust death, his supernatural resurrection and ascension. These are how Jesus defeated sin and death.
[00:27:04] You see, death and suffering was never the plan. It was never the design.
[00:27:08] Those exist because of humanity's rebellion against God. He made us perfect. He. He made us for perfect unity with Him. But we continually choose rebellion and never forget this beloved.
[00:27:20] Like, it's so easy to go back and read the sin narratives like in Genesis 3, and to think, or to look at the way the prophets talk about God's take on sin and to be like man is God, just like, angry and vindictive, like, is that how this works? That's not what the Bible describes.
[00:27:37] If God is the creator and sustainer of life, and if sin is rebellion against him, if it's fleeing him and running away from him, then to sin is to disconnect oneself from the Creator and sustainer of your life.
[00:27:52] It's not as though we sin and God goes, well, how dare you? Now I'm gonna get you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:28:00] When we sin and we rebel, we run away from God.
[00:28:04] We're disconnecting ourselves from the source of life.
[00:28:07] There can be no other outcome from that but death.
[00:28:10] This is a silly analogy, but I think it's helpful. How many of you guys still have to, like, you still have the phone you have to plug in? You know, the thing where it magnets to something? You know what I'm talking about? How many of you are still plugging in your phone at night?
[00:28:21] I'm behind on the technology. Mine still gets plugged in.
[00:28:25] When you unplug your phone, it instantly starts dying, right?
[00:28:29] The more you use it, the faster the battery drains. There's no way for that phone to charge itself.
[00:28:35] When you disconnect it from the source of its power.
[00:28:39] It'll run for a while because it has a good old battery in the back, but eventually it will die.
[00:28:45] Is that because your charger at home is vindictive and angry?
[00:28:49] No, it's because the phone is unplugged, right?
[00:28:54] When we sin and we rebel against God, we're choosing separation from Him. We're rebelling. We're running away from the source of our life. There's no way for that to end besides death.
[00:29:05] And so God is just not content with that.
[00:29:08] Jesus sees our rebellion, sees our running from him, sees us draining down our batteries like fools, is not content to let sin and death have the final word on his creation.
[00:29:21] So the whole of Jesus's life becomes this wonderful cosmic redemptive caper where he sneaks back into his own creation that he already owns. It's already his.
[00:29:33] And he comes along quietly and humbly in ways that no one would have guessed and no one recognized. And in the midst of that, he doesn't just live with us and reconnect with us. He lives this perfect, righteous life.
[00:29:47] He earns a perfect eternity by living a sinless life.
[00:29:52] And then when he dies on the cross, he dies a sinner's death.
[00:29:57] And in doing this, Jesus, not only through his blood, pays the price for our sin, but through his life, earns righteousness and earns heaven and then gives us his reward.
[00:30:12] He exchanges our sin for his righteousness.
[00:30:16] He takes our punishment, which is good enough, but he goes beyond that and says, now you take my reward, which is eternity. He doesn't just forgive our sins, he wins us to himself. He adopts us into his family. He makes us holy sons and daughters. Paul says it like this to the Philippian Church. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of A servant who taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And for this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. So the name of Jesus. Every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue will confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[00:31:15] Jesus wasn't recognized when he came to us the first time, but the cross changed everything.
[00:31:21] Beloved, our sweet Jesus is the reigning king who defeated death and the grave. And when he returns, he will not be quietly, humbly born in a manger.
[00:31:35] When he returns, he will enter his creation in his glory with his power and his victory on full display. And the text says, the whole of creation will bow to him and acknowledge his lordship. But here's the peace church.
[00:31:54] Some will do that in joy and worship, and some will do that in submission and surrender.
[00:32:02] Beloved, do not wait until it is too late.
[00:32:05] Jesus did all this. He did all of this out of his love for you.
[00:32:12] Don't wait.
[00:32:14] Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to bow your knee to Him.
[00:32:20] Don't wait until bowing your knees out of bitterness and surrender, because you have no choice.
[00:32:27] Bow in joyful worship.
[00:32:30] Receive his gift for you. Receive his love for you. Because Jesus really is that good. His gospel really is that wonderful.
[00:32:39] You hear this, beloved.
[00:32:41] His glory really is that powerful.
[00:32:44] It really is. Look how our text continues. Verse 14.
[00:32:48] The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
[00:32:52] We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified concerning him and exclaimed, this is the one of whom I said, the one coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.
[00:33:07] Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
[00:33:16] Hear this church.
[00:33:17] No one has ever seen God, the one and only and the only Son who is himself. God is at the Father's side.
[00:33:23] He has revealed Him.
[00:33:28] Now we get to the peace.
[00:33:30] In typical John fashion, He jumps around here. He goes back to John the Baptist for a minute as if he's trying to confuse us. Before he gets to the point. He alludes to Moses and the Law.
[00:33:41] But the point here is simple.
[00:33:44] We have seen his glory.
[00:33:46] God became flesh and lived among us.
[00:33:52] This phrase that we read as dwelt among us literally translates to, he set up his tent in our Midst.
[00:34:02] That's the actual phrase there. He set up his tent.
[00:34:06] This hearkens us back to the Exodus, to Israel's wandering in the wilderness. There's this point in the story where God has miraculously freed Israel from slavery in Egypt. But they feared that his supernatural holy presence would overwhelm and kill them.
[00:34:22] And God was continually calling them out for their sin and rebellion. And in the midst of this, God says to Moses, you know what?
[00:34:29] I'm just going to jet.
[00:34:30] I'm going to leave.
[00:34:32] I'll send an angel and he'll guide you, because this is not going to work.
[00:34:38] I'm so holy and you're so rebellious that if we keep doing this, you're all going to wake up one morning just burning. It's not going to work. I'll send an angel.
[00:34:50] And Moses comes back to him, and he begs God.
[00:34:54] He says, God, if you don't go with us, don't send us.
[00:34:57] You are our God. We're your people. If you don't go with us, don't. Don't send us to this. We need you.
[00:35:05] Moses understood that God's people were built to live an intimate relationship with him. They need him. They desperately need him.
[00:35:13] But God is too holy and we are too sinful.
[00:35:15] He doesn't work.
[00:35:17] This is perfectly illustrated in Isaiah 6. If you go and read that on your own. I'm not going to read the whole text for us today. But it's this vision that Isaiah received when he was called be a prophet, where he wakes up and he's in the throne room of God. He's standing before Yahweh, and he describes it as this amazing scene where God's glory is filling up the whole space. There's a part of the scene that I think is so powerful.
[00:35:38] He describes these angels that fly around God's throne, the seraphim. They're flying around God's throne and they're singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And they're singing praises to him. And Isaiah is just like, oh, my gosh.
[00:35:51] The word seraphim is not an actual name.
[00:35:55] It's a description.
[00:35:57] He didn't know what to call these things, and so he described them. The word means burning ones.
[00:36:05] What he describes is these angels who are closest to Yahweh, who sit right by his throne, who fly around his head, singing to him that the very glory of God lights them ablaze like the burning bush in the desert.
[00:36:21] They're burning but not consumed, because that's the glory of God.
[00:36:26] And when Isaiah sees it. His response is, I shouldn't be here.
[00:36:33] This is bad. I'm going to die.
[00:36:37] I can't be in the presence of a holy and righteous God.
[00:36:40] And luckily for Isaiah, it was a vision or he would have burned up like toast.
[00:36:46] Because God's glory is too much for us.
[00:36:50] It's too much for us.
[00:36:53] Even when Yahweh hears Moses prayer and says, okay, I'll dwell with you, you know what he does?
[00:36:59] He has them build this tent.
[00:37:02] And in the tent, they put a special room that no one's allowed to go in. And when God enters into the tent, he surrounds himself with smoke and fire and lightning so that no one can see him.
[00:37:15] All they see is the smoke and fire and lightning descend down and enter into the tent. And Moses goes in there to talk to God. But the tent is full of smoke and fire and lightning. And the text says, he talks to God like he's there, face to face with him, but he can't see him.
[00:37:32] He's standing in the middle of the smoke talking to him. And even through that, the glory of God is so powerful that when Moses leaves, the text says, he's literally glowing, and it freaks people out.
[00:37:46] He can even see God.
[00:37:48] When he asks to see God, he says, we've been talking for so long, I just want to see your face. God says, yeah, if you see me, you will drop dead. It won't work. You can't see me as this is our God.
[00:38:01] When. When John, who wrote this gospel, describes God's throne, later in Revelation, he describes a really similar scene. He sees him on the throne, but he can't see him.
[00:38:12] He's covered in smoke, lightning and fire, and rainbows flowing out of the throne.
[00:38:20] The glory of God is too much for us until Jesus.
[00:38:26] So our sin kept us separate from God's glory.
[00:38:30] Our sin made it such that to be in his presence was to be consumed until Jesus.
[00:38:38] Jesus is God.
[00:38:40] And Jesus set up his tent with us.
[00:38:44] No smoke, no lightning, no fire, no rainbows.
[00:38:50] Just a guy.
[00:38:52] A guy that you could share a meal with, a guy that you could hang out with. A guy who had opinions and bad breath.
[00:39:02] Jesus is God's glory, fully a packaged in flesh that we might approach him without bursting into flames.
[00:39:12] Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
[00:39:17] He lets us see God and know God and hang out with him. Later on in the gospel, John records, Jesus is saying, the one who has seen me has seen the the Father. Jesus is God revealed. Beloved Jesus makes a way for you to know your God, your God is so loving, so kind, so wonderful that he wants you to know him. And he knows you can't handle it, so he makes a way for you. This is the essence of our understanding of God the Son.
[00:39:46] Jesus is God's way of making sure that we can know Him.
[00:39:53] You see, the Father is too far above you.
[00:39:56] You simply cannot know him on your own. You need help. Paul says it like this to the Romans. He says, if left to ourselves, we can figure out that God exists and he's powerful, but that's as far as we can get on our own.
[00:40:09] We need God's help to know more about Him.
[00:40:14] I'm going to land with a really weird image, but I think it'll help. If you've ever been to my house, you've met my dog.
[00:40:20] Her name is.
[00:40:22] Her name is Dr. Beverly Bonecrusher.
[00:40:25] She's wonderful. She is a 135 pound Newfoundland.
[00:40:31] And some of you are thinking, that dog is larger than me. She is. Yeah. Yeah, that's her deal. She's huge.
[00:40:38] She's floppy, she sheds, she drools, she loves kids, she's snuggly. She thinks she fits in your lap. She doesn't. She's great. Have you ever been to my house? She's probably leaned on you until you fell over, right? Like that's what she does. She's great. I love my dog. But here's the thing, she's really dumb.
[00:40:58] And here's the thing, I don't mean that as an insult.
[00:41:02] Dogs are dumb.
[00:41:05] They have limitations in their mind and their brain.
[00:41:09] As much as I love my dog Beverly, there, it is simply impossible for her to know me.
[00:41:15] You know what I mean?
[00:41:17] She can't know me the way you guys know me, the way my friends know me. She loves me, I love her. We have a great relationship. She's a great dog. She can't know me.
[00:41:26] In fact, if left to her own devices, she couldn't know much about me, right?
[00:41:33] But in order to facilitate a relationship where she lives in my house, she has to understand some things.
[00:41:40] So what do I do? I do what all good dog owners do. I intervene and I reveal myself to her in ways that she can understand, right? I feed her, I groom her, I take her outside. This is the pee place. House. Not pee place, yard, pee place. Right.
[00:41:57] Bonker on the bottom when she forgets about the P. Place rules, right? All the things you do for a dog.
[00:42:04] And in the course of our relationship, as she eats, treats and pees in the right place and sleeps on my bed and does all those things. She figures out a whole lot of things about me. And she figures them out in her own little dog brain in the way she can understand.
[00:42:19] Beloved, here's the reality.
[00:42:21] You are incapable of knowing God without His intervention on your behalf.
[00:42:28] You are not smart enough to know Him.
[00:42:33] He must intervene to help you know Him.
[00:42:37] He must step in and reveal Himself in a way your human brain can figure out.
[00:42:44] And he has done so through His Son, Jesus.
[00:42:49] Beloved, if you want to know God, you must endeavor to know Jesus, pure and simple. If you want to know God, you must endeavor to know Jesus. Jesus tells us this about himself. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will also know my Father.
[00:43:11] That's it, guys.
[00:43:13] If you want to know God, you must know the Father.
[00:43:17] Ben, if you want to come back up, I'll end us with just this. This one quick thought.
[00:43:24] This is all fine and good for me to say. Jesus is awesome. You should get to know Him. But the problem is he isn't walking around in his body in St. Louis county right now.
[00:43:34] That was great for the apostles because they actually had meals with Him. They could confirm or deny the bad breath accusation, right?
[00:43:41] But we don't have that.
[00:43:43] So how can you get to know the Father through the Son, Jesus, Right. Now, let me give you three thoughts before we continue on with our gathering.
[00:43:51] I think the first one is this simple.
[00:43:54] If you want to know Jesus right now, you must trust him.
[00:43:59] You must trust what he has said about himself.
[00:44:02] You must trust the claim that he has made on your life.
[00:44:06] He claims that his death can save you from your sins. And if you have never embraced that claim, I would encourage you to do that today. You can trust him. You can take him at his word.
[00:44:16] You can receive his work and his salvation and his forgiveness for you. And if you've already trusted him, you can obey Him.
[00:44:24] Jesus tells us, if you love me, you'll obey My commands.
[00:44:28] Well, the only way to do that is to know his commands.
[00:44:31] The only way to do that is to read them in His Word.
[00:44:36] If you want to get to know Jesus, spend time with what he has preserved for us.
[00:44:41] He is the word of God. God's action, God's will brought into this world and it has been preserved. You can know the heart of Christ for you. You don't need a supernatural vision or a dream. You don't need someone to come talk to you. You don't need a sign you don't need to lay out fleece in your yard each night asking for the dew to get on it. You can know God's heart for you because he preserved it for you.
[00:45:07] He made it approachable.
[00:45:10] He supernaturally speaks through it.
[00:45:13] And lastly, this is probably the most important one for most of us in this room.
[00:45:17] Love. If you want to know Jesus, you have to take time to enjoy Him.
[00:45:22] That's how relationship works.
[00:45:24] Your relationship can't be academic. It can't be distant.
[00:45:29] Just take time to enjoy Him.
[00:45:31] Talk to Him.
[00:45:33] Be the kind of person who speaks to Jesus in your mind or out loud throughout your day. Write him notes.
[00:45:40] Like that seems weird. That's not weird.
[00:45:43] Grab a journal.
[00:45:45] Write some notes to Christ.
[00:45:47] Let him know your heart.
[00:45:49] Talk to him throughout your day. When you hit parts of your day that are stressful, when you feel anxiety rising up in your body, when different relationships aren't working, when you feel the effects of the curse, when you experience joys and you celebrate them, how about thanking the Creator who made that moment for you?
[00:46:07] Enjoy Him. Talk to Him. Spend time with Him.
[00:46:10] Worship Him.
[00:46:12] Sing songs about him. And to him. Spend time with brothers and sisters through whom you will hear and receive his heart free.
[00:46:20] That's how you get to know Jesus.
[00:46:24] And honestly, guys, honestly, why would you want to enjoy Christ? Like, why would you want to go through that work?
[00:46:31] Because when you get to know Jesus, what you will realize is that he reveals God and your God loves you.
[00:46:38] And to get to know Jesus is to get to know the lover of your soul, the deepest companion and friendship you could ever know, the most fulfilling, free life you could ever live.
[00:46:49] He really is that enjoyable. He has redemption and restoration in mind for.
[00:46:56] So I'm going to invite us to take a minute in silent prayer.
[00:47:00] Not very long. Just a minute.
[00:47:03] I would encourage you to get in a posture of prayer. You can do that in your seat. If you want to get on your knees or come forward to the altar or grab one of the pastors, you can do that. But take just a minute or two. I want to encourage you to get alone with you and Jesus, connect with him.
[00:47:19] Talk to Him. Maybe it's been a hot minute since you've done that.
[00:47:23] Take a minute to enjoy Him. And for those of us who are in the room who have trusted Christ as our Savior, who have received that, I want to encourage you to end that time of reflection by taking communion.
[00:47:35] We do this every week, and I don't ever want it to become something that you. You can move past and not consider.
[00:47:41] We do it every week because I think it's that good.
[00:47:44] I think it's good for us.
[00:47:46] The scripture says that when we partake of the elements, his body and his blood, that we are proclaiming his death until his return. That's a Bible way of we're proclaiming that what Jesus did, His work was sufficient.
[00:47:58] We believe it. His death really did rescue us from s.
[00:48:03] When we partake in that, we remind ourselves, but we also proclaim it, we experience it, and we say it all at the same time.
[00:48:10] It's how to encourage you after you take a minute in prayer for those of you who are in Christ to continue response by coming forward and receiving the elements and proclaiming the death of Christ, the death of the Son, until His return. That we eagerly await. Beloved, take a minute to connect with the Lord.
