We have a lot to be thankful for. This feedback is pretty intense. I forgot to order a new microphone, which I think might be part of the problem, so that's on me. I made my bet.
But yeah, so it's great to spend time with Northbrook family and worship together and praise God for what he's done. And we're all here by the grace of God, and I think everybody can say this, but me, especially so if the Apostle Paul can say that he's the chief of sinners, I can probably also say the same thing. So I think just maybe the view from the inside is more accurate than the view from the outside. But I'm thankful to God for what he's done for me, and I can tell you honestly that I would find life really, really difficult without Christ.
Of course, eternal life is only possible through Jesus Christ. But I'm also talking about the daily experience of just existing and just getting through everyday life. I'm very, very thankful for the everyday grace of God, and some days can be heard, and that's okay, because having Christ makes all the difference. Salvation makes all the difference.
I often think about my past, and there's an accuser who wants to remind you of your life and your guilt, your life before, but salvation makes all the difference and having Christ makes all the difference. I remember carrying some pretty heavy burdens, but I think running this race now with purpose and knowing the destination, that makes the running all the easier, to know where you're going and to know that there's a reason. Yeah, so with further, the introduction is kind of a non-sequitur, so let's just get into it. Here are the main verses I want to cover today.
So let's begin by reading these verses and then asking God to speak to us from his word in prayer. So this says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about him and cried out, saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me. For of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.
For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen the Father at any time, sorry, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. Or verse 18 in the King James, no man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. So let's pray and ask God to show us something from these verses.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your great love for us. We thank you for your grace, your goodness, your kindness, your mercy towards us and Lord. I pray today that you would help us to open our hearts to your word and that you would give us food for our spirit, for our souls, and that you would encourage us from your word and that you would teach us and sharpen us, Lord, to be effective tools for the kingdom and for your glory. So I pray in your name, Jesus, amen.
All right, so before we dive into the details of these verses, I want to bring to your mind and I want you to bring into sort of the front of your mind your intuitions and experiences about what a human, I'm only talking about like human relationship of a positive, healthy relationship between Father and Son should look like. And this has a purpose, so please just humor me for a moment and just try to bring to your mind what is like a really good situation there. And I mentioned intuition and experience because when it comes to dealing with the complexities of human relationships, I have found that they are best approached through intuition and emotion. And as much as it pains me to say that as an engineer, the empirical evidence is undeniable.
My advice is if you find yourself in an argument with your wife, I haven't forbid, my engineering advice is to abandon analysis, abandon calculation. You cannot calculate yourself out of this situation, just face the reality and get on with it. There's no weaseling out of that kind of thing. And so I think the issues of the heart have to be understood to a large extent with the heart so to speak.
And so moving on today is not Father's Day, that will be next week. Only Father's could possibly forget that because men being forgetful. But every father was once a son and this is supposed to be equally about both. Takes two to make a relationship.
So yeah, this image is supposed to bring to mind visually a lot of the some of the elements of a Father-Son relationship. And I'll provide some suggestions from both directions here. The Father cherishes his son and builds him up. The son admires and respects his father and gradually grows to be his own person but in the image of his parents.
The Father protects the son and the son trusts in the will of his father. And I'm only trying to talk about human relationships. Of course, I think God designed family as something that we can learn from in the natural revelation of God. But yeah, I think we have a sense no matter what our experiences are.
I think we have a sense of what goodness is possible to be there. Sorry, excuse me. So it takes effort from both sides to make this work. And I would say the work of fathers is challenging to do well, impossible to do perfectly.
And in equal opposite measure, the road for boys to become men is also challenging to navigate as well. Especially gracefully and perhaps to become a great man is harder still. But where there's challenge, there's also opportunity for something very good to happen. Yeah, so I just want you to keep in the front of your mind the goodness, the positivity that can happen.
And maybe good examples that you know of or experienced. So let's return to the main scripture and see what we can see here. In verses 1 to 13 of John chapter 1, the apostle John was mainly explaining about the pre-incarnate Christ, the word with God and all these details and we covered that last time. In verse 14, we can see that there's just the transition and the shift where John is now describing specifics about God incarnate.
The word became flesh and dwelt among us. So that's a key turning phrase. The word became flesh where now we're discussing Jesus Christ, the man. And further we can see many qualities of Jesus described here.
He has a unique glory and a unique identity as the only begotten from God the Father. We can see that in verse 14 and full of grace and truth. And we can see that it says that he existed before being born and that's repeated elsewhere in the gospels as well. And what's really highlighted here is the perfect nature of Jesus as a man.
And that's really exceptional. I think you've probably met people who leave an impression on you after meeting them just once. Or you've probably had really great conversations with people and you might come away from that really great conversation or really great meeting with like wow, that's quite the man. That's quite a person.
They're really interesting. They're really whatever. But here is the description of Jesus that is wholly unique, totally on another level. This is someone who would leave an impression on you after just the first meeting.
I think that explains a lot about what happens in the gospels. Like why would people just drop their career and follow him? Well, he must have made an impression. And I think just being around Jesus probably feels like winning.
You're always trading up. You're always learning something new. You're always gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for life. I think Jesus was, I know Jesus is that kind of person.
But I think maybe we can focus on the deity of the pre-incarnate Christ and forget that he's, he walked on earth as a person. He walked on earth just as a man, a remarkable man, but in the flesh. He became flesh. So none of us have had the benefit of meeting Jesus in person.
But these verses show us that Christ is the ultimate spiritual man. Even though he became a visible man, every invisible quality that he had remained perfect. And we know from Isaiah 53 that Jesus was not remarkable because of what you could see. But as a person, he is wholly remarkable because of his invisible attributes.
And I think meeting him in person is going to be quite the experience. So some sort of structural or practical observations about these verses that you can go verify, if you like. The word father occurs twice in this chapter, in verse 14 and 18. And the word son occurs for the first time in verse 18.
So you can use the law of first mention or the, in terms of interpretation. The first time something occurs, try and pay attention. The word translated only begotten occurs nine times in the entire Bible. And four of those are in the Gospel of John.
And two of those are in these verses in this passage. The phrase grace and truth occurs twice in these verses and nowhere else in the Bible. The Apostle John is carefully weaving the introduction of John the Baptist into the prologue. In verses verses six to eight, John the Baptist is mentioned.
And this verse, and then after this sort of at the end of this passage, at the end of verse 18, John switches from sort of just a prologue of explanation into narrative. So this would be the end of sort of the introduction of the book of John, the Gospel of John. But he does a great job weaving in the transition. If you like English and writing and the study of how to write things that flow well, I think this is a good chapter to look at how John does that.
It's quite remarkable. And then John 115 is echoed once more in verse 30. You can look down at your Bible and check that out or look at it later. And the name of Jesus is mentioned for the first time in verse 17.
So again, sort of the showing that this is a very transitional passage. A lot of things are mentioned for the first time in this chapter. And it's a very transitional set of verses. And so the first three observations here sort of set the course for this message.
And at first I wasn't sure if like five verses would generate enough material. But there is always tons of truth, even in one verse, if you just spend long enough looking at it. So it's good to look at the specific words and phrases and the grammatical structure of scripture. Encourage you to take it apart in detail, comb it over for subtle meanings and pay attention to even the verb tenses and things like that.
It's very significant, the words that are chosen, I believe. So moving on again. So we were trying to think about human relationships and we can also think about the perfect relationship that God the Father and God the Son have between them. And without going through these in detail, would you agree that these statements are scriptural?
You can read them up there. The Father and Son are equal in glory. The Father and Son are in perfect relationship. And they're united in their will.
Do you think that that is scriptural? Yes, no? Yes? Great.
Yeah, I agree. Theology would fall apart without these. And it's very familiar because we spend a lot of time thinking about that. But try and shake yourself out of the familiarity and view it fresh because this is really something very remarkable and it informs so much about the impact of the gospel.
And we're going to get into that more. All right, some related scriptures. John 1 16 says, four of his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. We have all received of his fullness and grace upon grace.
The Colossians 1 19 says, for all in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross. So it's an interesting, we don't really like use that word fullness to like, it's not a common thing that we would use every day, but it does give you a feeling or a sense of the completeness of Christ as a person. I think well-rounded people have an advantage in general and Jesus was certainly that. First Timothy 16, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, speaking of God the Father, to him be honor and might forever, amen.
And in John 1 18, it says, no one has seen God at any time. The only the only the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. So I think imagining the person of Jesus is always a productive thing or researching rather since we don't have to imagine. But you can just like, we haven't had the benefit of meeting him, but so you do have to kind of use the Bible to construct and get to know.
I mean, you can get to know Christ personally, certainly, but I think face to face is more clear. And so I'm just trying to say that like, you know, you're very familiar with your favorite person and the good qualities that they have. And if you just like multiply that person by thousand, all the goodness that they have and in every way, now they're off the charts. Now it's someone who you just want to spend all your time with, you just want to follow them, you just want to be around them.
That's Jesus. And scripture seeks clearly of a man, a real man, a human man with hair and teeth and eyes and all that, but also a perfect man. Another related scripture says here, this is relating to John 1 verse 17, it says, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. And Romans 3, 21 says, now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets.
So these are very related. It's, verse 17 of John is clearly set up as a counterpoint. So on the one hand, for the law was given through Moses, counterpoint, grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. And probably nowhere in the Bible compares the law and grace and truth better than Romans.
And I mentioned earlier, the experience of life without salvation, that is life under the law. And I just think it's a real grind. Constantly trying to justify yourself. Well, you can only justify yourself so much.
And then once you do justify yourself and then you're good, then you fall again. That's life under the law. How can you live like that? And sometimes people try and ignore the facts or ignore the burdens and the guilt that they're facing and just try and keep going, just try and keep the party going forever.
And just bury sin with another sin. It's not a good coping mechanism. And also that gets really awkward past your mid-20s, in my opinion. You can't party forever.
And the fact is that you can't ignore the facts. Sin always finds its way to a conclusion. Cause and effect. Action and reaction.
It is as certain as a physical law. And actually it is more certain than physical law. Sin will always find its way to a conclusion. So this passage needs to be read as a whole.
I'll take the time to do that. Because it's so important. Like there's only two ways to live, under the law or under God's grace. That's it.
And there's only one way to go from one to the other. And I think experience bears that out. What do you do with your guilt? Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.
So that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. Because the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested.
Being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. For all those who believe. For there is no distinction.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness.
Because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. For the demonstration I say of his righteousness at the present time. So that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. What a beautiful passage.
So jumping now into this phrase only begotten which occurs not that many times in the Bible. It also occurs in Hebrews chapter 11. This could be I mean I looked in the translation notes for this in my Bible this morning. It says unique only one of his kind.
Only begotten. I think in English it's especially challenging this phrase but I don't really want to get into too much into possible interpretations or etymology of that word. But yeah. So we can see here in Hebrew something of Abraham's thought process during this test.
I'm sure you know pretty well. It says by faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son. It was he whom to whom it was said in Isaac your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead from which he also received him back as a type.
So I mean that is a little bit of insight that we've been given by inspired scripture. So we can take that about Abraham's thought process but I want to think about Isaac's thought process as well. You probably know this story very well. So I won't read it on the screen here and it's probably too small.
But I just want to make some observations about these verses and pick out some specifics. In verse two it says take now your son your only son whom you love Isaac. And based on this I think we can surmise a lot about Abraham's side of the relationship as a father. We do know Abraham had a pretty complicated marriage and family life but it seems that he was a good father.
If you look and I'm not trying to like judge Abraham but just to learn about the history of what happened. If you look in the previous chapter you can see Abraham didn't want to send his first son who's estranged at this point away but his wife and God both said you can send away your first son which was not the son of promise. So he didn't want to do that and so it seems he had a care for his sons and his son Isaac. And I think that helps us understand how stressful this test was for him.
But what about Isaac? Well there's not much to build on. We're not given the same benefit of like seeing inside his head. I don't think anywhere in scripture.
So if you could humor me and surmise a little bit. Of course I'm talking about things that aren't exactly written so take it with a grain of salt. But earlier we looked at that slide about what a good relationship between father and son is and it said the father protects the son and the son trusts in the will of his father. I think Isaac as the son trusted his father in the situation to a remarkable extent.
I believe Isaac would have been familiar with burnt offerings. So when they left their home without a lamb he probably noticed. I think he knew the intent of their trip and when they left the two assistants and the donkey behind he definitely noticed that he had to carry the wood. If you ask anyone to do that work they'll notice.
So after a few days he kept his silence or didn't address the issue directly for days. But after some time eventually Isaac just had to ask. The tension became too much. Dad did you forget the lamb?
No I didn't forget. And I see in verses 8 and 9 and 10 possibly evidence of a very strong father son relationship. It says so the two after this confrontation it says so the two of them walked on together. There's no mention of conflict.
There's no mention of argument. There's no mention of violence. No mention of like an escape attempt and a chase scene. The two of them walked on together.
And the Bible is about real people not so different from ourselves people with wants and needs people to make mistakes people who work hard to make a living. And the sense I get from this passage is I just have to credit Abraham and Isaac both with an immense fear of God and a great respect for God and faith in God. But also I have to credit them a very remarkable trust and understanding between them. And it's obvious that the story of Abraham and Isaac serves to illustrate something about God.
Because God is immortal alone and lives in unapproachable light. No one has seen him or can see him. So therefore we need illustrations in order to understand God better. We need an avenue that we can relate to so that we can understand better.
We need pictures and illustrations. Well, we were given one with Abraham and Isaac. And as I said other interpretations are possible because I'm really just constructing something for myself and trying to understand how did this play out like this and what were the people like so that it could play out like this. Because we're only given the information we're given.
And it certainly is a remarkable story. There's only so much detail there. But even if we assume, if we allow ourselves to assume that this was the best human father son relationship of all time, it would not even compare. It wouldn't even be 1% comparison to the perfect bond between God the Father and God the Son.
That perfect relationship that exists between God the Father and God the Son. Because Abraham and Isaac were sinners and sin causes strain and stress and fractures between people. But God is in perfect unity, perfect harmony. Because him is a great word, he'll just read it.
What was it blessed God? Led thee to give thy son, to yield thy well beloved for us by sin undone. To us love unbounded, led thee thus to give thy well be loved for us. What led thy son, O God, to leave thy throne on high, to shed his precious blood, to suffer and to die.
To us love unbounded, love to us, led him to die and suffer thus. Led him to die and suffer thus. Unbounded has a very specific meaning. It is just incredible.
The fact of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, the fact that we can have salvation, it's incredible. It's amazing. And as a final note of encouragement, I'd like to look at Romans 8 verses 31 to 33. If you have salvation, you already have the best.
Nothing greater is going to happen to you in this life. Like no matter how much you scroll a Facebook marketplace, you're never finding a better deal. You're never going to score bigger than when you accepted salvation from God. It's the best thing that life has to offer.
It's the best thing that existence has to offer. Everything else I promise you, pales in comparison. It endures. And it's like a fountain of life within you that sustains you.
When life wants to grind you down, there's that fountain of life inside. The way that God works that out for me and you is continually amazing. It just gets more amazing the more you look at it. It's continually in every sense.
So Romans 8, 31 says, what shall we say then or what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things?
Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died.
Christ is rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God who also intercedes for us. Praise God for Jesus Christ. I would just be crushed under the weight of my past if I didn't have that justification and that man who stands interceding for me. So that's all I have for today and we'll close with a quick prayer, a quick word of prayer.
And I think what came to mind to me is how deep the fathers love for us as a closing song. So Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love, your kindness, in sending your son and we thank you Jesus for your love, your kindness in stepping out of heaven, stepping down into flesh with the objective of going to the cross. What a love, what grace. And so Lord, we thank you.
We worship you, we lift you up and give you praise and honor. Pray that you would sustain us as those sweet goes. Pray that you would remind us and help us to walk with you in every moment of our lives. Pray that you would help us to have the right focus in life and to be encouraged and to run this race well so that in that moment when we see you that you can say, well done, my good and faithful servant.
Please Lord, help us. We need your help and we thank you for what you've done in Jesus name. Amen.