Sermon Transcript
We’re going to be reading from John, John 1, verses 14 through 18. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of only the 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. God, the only son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. And good morning. Uh, my name is uh, Pastor Joshua, and I am honored to be bringing this sermon from God’s word in this rich, rich passage on our next miracle from the miracles of Jesus.
Dan started last week our series for the fall on the miracles of Jesus. And what he said is that in so far as we think about miracles as a culture, we typically think of them in terms of whether they’re true. And if they are true, if miracles do happen, then it points to some kind of miracle worker, something beyond the space-time continuum that is somehow points to evidence for a God.
And what Dan said and what we’ll see today and what we’ll continue to see throughout the fall is that they do that. That is true, but they do so much more. They do something deeper. Also, in so far as we think about miracles, we may think that they give credibility or credence to the one performing the miracles.
Jesus claims to be God. And so him performing these miracles, maybe we should trust what he says is true. They do that, but they do something so much deeper. They do something so much more profound. And what Dan said last week is that more than pointing to some existence of a God, more than giving credibility to the one performing them, the miracles of Jesus is God’s way of knitting back and putting the creation back together.
Creation is broken. It’s out of joint. And the miracles that we see Jesus doing is God putting creation back to how it’s supposed to be, back to how it was in the beginning. And what we see here in our passage for this morning that John tells us from these verses is that in order for God to fix what is broken, he has to enter into what is broken.
And this honestly is confusing to us. As I was preparing for this sermon, I thought, man, we don’t really get the full force of what John is saying here. And so we need to do some background work in order to understand the gravity and really the shock that his initial hearers would have heard because it’s mostly lost on us, even if we’re Christians.
And so with that, let me pray for our time because I need God’s help as we open God’s word. Dear Lord Jesus, uh, without your spirit here as we’re reading this word, it will not change us. But with your spirit, all things are possible. So we invite him into a place that he already is, for where two or more are gathered, he is presence present.
And we submit to these words. God, humble us, show us, convict us, empower us, show us the glory of who you are wrapped up in the words of the evangelist John. It’s in Christ Jesus’ name. Amen. And when I was preparing on this and I thought, you know, we don’t really get the full shock of what John is saying here, the background that we need to do is to kind of unfetter, uh, filter out how we have little thoughts about big things.
And so half of our time this morning is going to be, and this is your first point in your handout, is to show you how we have little thoughts about big things and to show from the scriptures how big God really is, so that then we can return to verse 14 and see the initial shock that the original hearers would have had.
So that’s going to be our first point. It’s going to be the main part that we stick, uh, that we camp out on, little thoughts about big things and trying to unfetter that so that we can really get the gravity of what John is saying. Once we get that, we’re going to go to my second point and try to read anew the divine becoming human.
And finally, I’ll conclude with how then should we live given that God has indeed come into the world. So, let’s start. Little thoughts about big things. God is bigger than we think. God is more grand, more spectacular, and more awesome than we think. Open up your Bibles or your Bible app and keep it there in John 1, because we’re going to be looking at that verse, verse 14, one of the most profound verses in all the scriptures.
John says, look what he says there, we have seen his glory. We have seen his glory. Now, what what is glory? This is maybe not a term that we use all that often. But in so far as we think about it, um, glory is something that is exalted, something that is magnificent, something that is brilliant or special.
When we think about the glory of a person, we think about someone who is an exalted person, someone who has fame or notoriety. And the glory that in so far as we think about it these days, the glory that we attribute and we think of and that we bring to this text is kind of the glory of our influencer culture, where we have YouTube stars and social media stars.
One example of this, let me share this with you. Darren Watkins Jr. with the handle IShowSpeed, one of the most influential YouTubers of all time, 50 million subscribers on YouTube. He’s his own network, basically. Uh, one of the few YouTubers who have had 1 million views, uh, live streamed simultaneously.
So, so get what is happening. He, this guy, he’s a young 20-year-old, uh, he is streaming something that he’s talking about. He’s videoing himself, and 1 million people from across the world are watching him do this. This is spectacular. In fact, he’s one of the few people who’ve streamed himself constantly for an entire month, including sleeping.
What are we think is going to happen? Like, they’re going to get snore insights or something? But obviously, it’s more than about the snores. It’s more about Darren tossing and turning. There is a kind of glory. There is an ethos and aroma that people say, well, if I just get a little close to it, I can see and I still don’t really know what’s going to happen.
And Darren kind of says in a recent interview in Wired magazine that he’s like, yeah, kind of crazy that people do it, but people did tune in. Now, I have no critique against Darren, okay? The IShowSpeed. I don’t know the guy. It’s more about his subscribers. It’s more about people who are tuning in.
We see something to watch a grown man sleep seven hours in the night and nothing more. There’s something there, some glory. Now, because this is our frame of glory, because this is the kind of presuppositions or baggage that we come when we read the text, the weightiness of the glory that the Bible talks about here in verse 14 is kind of lost on us.
So we need to be recalibrated, and we need the Bible to do that for us. So I’m going to be jumping around, giving you some biblical framework of what glory really is. And I’m going to camp out in the new, excuse me, we are in the New Testament. I’m going to camp out in the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures.
As we look to the Hebrew scriptures, the word glory is the word kabod. Kabod. At kind of the most basic terrestrial level, kabod means something weighty, something heavy. So you can describe it like, look at that stone, it’s kabod, it’s heavy. But more than that, when the scriptures describe the world, when the scriptures describe the glory in the heavens, one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 19, look at the heavens, they are declaring the glory of God.
Psalm 19 is saying, look at the stars, the stars are doing their star-like thing, and they’re not talking about themselves. They’re saying, look at the one who made me like this. My beauty, my radiance, my brilliance points to the one who made me. But more than just simply heaviness, more than the way the world is in its beautiful expanse, glory is used to describe God himself, especially in visions of the prophets.
I’m going to share two with you. There there are multiple here throughout the scriptures. I’m going to share two. Uh, Isaiah, one of the most famous visions in the scriptures, Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah is a prophet of the Lord. and God gives him an imaginative vision. He it’s as if God allows the veil of the normal world to be pulled back to see what he is really like in his heavenly abode.
And he sees angels, angels that we just sung about, circling the throne of God, singing, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The earth is full of his glory. And it’s wonderful, but it’s also overwhelming. It’s too much for him to take in. The overwhelmingness, I I it’s not a candle, it’s the sun.
If you look at it, it burns your eyes. It’s so much for Isaiah. Same thing we see with Moses. Moses goes up to Mount Sinai. He’s receiving the Ten Commandments. And then he says, God, show me your glory. Show me your glory. And it’s too much for even Mo- Moses. And what we start to get a picture of is that glory, much more than just beauty, although it’s that, much more than just radiance, although it’s that too, it’s God’s magnificent.
It’s his perfection. It’s his Godness. When biblical writers try to describe the essence or the core of not only who God is, but what he is, glory is at the top of the list. God is the glory one. There is no one like him. He is altogether wonderful. As we continue our look in the Old Testament, perhaps the most abundant glory language doesn’t revolve around visions, but around the temple, around the Tabernacle.
And this makes sense. Uh the Tabernacle and the temple for both ancient Hebrews and ancient cultures was where God dwelt. It was the point on earth where heaven and earth met. And so there’s all of this glory language around the temple because that’s where God’s special presence is. And so it’s radiant. It shows his divinity. And it’s beautiful, but it’s also dangerous.
It’s also incredibly dangerous. Let’s go back to Moses. Moses could not take all of God’s glory in. He was there, he was asking, he received the Ten Commandments, and he says, show me your glory. And God says, no. You can’t take it in. It’s going to be too much for you. Now, think about this for a second.
This is Moses. He has seen God smite the world power of Egypt through this staff. I will work my wonders, Moses. And he sends these 10 plagues against this superpower that no one had ever been able to contest, and now a man with a staff is making them crumble. Moses is fleeing, God is releasing Egypt, excuse me, releasing the Hebrews from Egypt.
The chariots are at his back. The Red Sea is before him. God has abandoned us. No, look at the wonder of God. And he parts the sea and drowns the Egyptians. And now, when he’s here, when Moses is asking, show me your glory, God is making a covenant with Moses and with Israel, and God says, no, because it’s too much for Moses.
But God doesn’t dismiss Moses’s request outright. He says, Moses, I will show you my back. A a strange phrase, uh hard to take. What what what he’s saying here is, I will show you the glow of my glory, but not my glory itself. I’ll show you the echo of the song, but not the symphony. I’ll let you get to the foothills, but not the summit.
The dawn, but not the midday sun. The aroma of the meal, but not the meal itself. And guess what? It’s still overwhelming. It’s still overwhelmed. This this echo of a song still overwhelms Moses so much so that when he comes down from Mount Sinai, the scriptures say his face was shining like a son of God, and people around him, Israel, fall to their faces in terror.
This is like two steps removed, right? Like he’s only saw the back and now it’s reflecting off his face, and it’s still overwhelming, it’s still terrifying. That is God’s glory. We see this danger of God’s glory or dealing with things improperly that are described as glorious. The Ark of the Covenant, this was the part of the temple or the Tabernacle where God’s presence would reside over.
It was a box or a chest overlaid with gold with angelic features above. And in one sobering and telling description of the Ark of the Covenant being transported in 1 Chronicles 13, the cart that it was being carried on hits a bump. And Uza, one of the king’s servants goes and grabs the ark, Oh, that’s the Ark of the Covenant.
That’s the special presence of God. And he goes to catch it, catch it from falling. God strikes him dead. The Ark of the Covenant was glorious, and this meant both radiance, but also danger. Do not be cavalier with this. Do not be cavalier with the God who it’s, uh, it points to. Isaiah, again, when he sees the glory of God, it’s overwhelming, and then the very next thought that Isaiah has is, I’m going to die.
I’m about to die. I have seen the glory of God, and now I’m about to die. Bridges, we do not think of God like this. We do not think of him in his immensity, in his radiance, in his weightiness and his importance. We don’t think of a glory that verges on the terrifying. Does he elicit awe and wonder in you?
Does he create that sense that this is something bigger that I cannot take in? Our ideas of God are not God-sized. We’ve truncated and domesticated him. The glory that we think of is at our beck and call. The glory we’re familiar with is a glory behind our smartphone screens. We wouldn’t admit this, but our habits say otherwise.
No wonder when we read about what John says in verse 14, it falls flat. So God is bigger than we think. So to the to the unbeliever, if you’re if you’re an unbeliever and you’re listening to this, you don’t really buy the whole Christian message, this is what I want you to hear. God is not some additional piece of furniture in the living room of the universe.
God is the ground of all being. He is the first and the last, the eternal and the awesome. But to the believer, to the one who trusts Christ, what I want to say to you is God is not a teddy bear. He is a grizzly bear. He’s not a kitty cat, he’s a lion. And I fear that some Christians have so emphasized their personal relationship and friendship that the Bible talks about, that it totally obscures how awesome he is.
He is a friend, yes, but he is a friend like no other. Do not mistake him for a common friend. And as I was preparing, so God is bigger than we think. I I I could feel in my bones, you know, we we don’t get the the the profound statement that John is telling us in verse 14. But it’s not only because we don’t see how big and awesome, verging on the terrifying that God’s glory really is.
We also have too little thoughts about what’s really broken about the world. What’s really wrong with the world. It’s worse than we think. We have little thoughts about the big problem with the world. It’s so much worse than we think. You know, if you ask for proposals of what’s really wrong with the world, you’re going to get a long list, okay? Uh that every different person is going to have a different view of this.
We need uh equal rights for everyone under the law. We have it theoretically, but we need it practically. We need the environment to get back in equilibrium. We need more laws to uh to to legislate so that we don’t harm the environment more. We need a more free economy. We need more regulations so that people don’t have monopolies.
We need healthcare and so on and so on. And these are real issues. But they are not deep enough. They’re far too small. We have the tendency of mistaking the cause for the effect. In uh Renaissance Europe, um after the invention of the musket, uh there were kind of new technologies uh developed in order to treat this new battle wound.
And I’m getting into areas that are far outside of my depth. I have my father-in-law here who is both a physician and a history buff. He could tell you this better than I could. But so I am told, in Renaissance Europe, you had this weapon salve that you would apply to the wound. Now, prior to the musket, all the weapon, uh all the wounds would be from swords, okay? But with the invention of the musket, you have a new kind of wound um that you need to treat.
So if you didn’t die on the battlefield, you would be nursed back to health through these treatments. And let me tell you, it is like hard to read how horrifying these treatments are, okay? Uh I’m not going to go into all details because I want you to hold on to your breakfast, okay? But let me just tell you just a little about it, okay?
In order to kind of close the wound, they would pour boiling oil on the wound, okay? That’s bad enough. It gets worse, okay? In order for the wound to fully heal, they would put this weapon salve, this balm, this kind of gooey mixture. And what is in the mixture, it’s like so gross. I mean, there was like animal hair, eggshells, as well as various other moss uh of a dead man’s skull.
I mean, crazy things, okay? And they were wanting the the wound to fester. They thought that was part of the healing process. Well, you can imagine that the death rate was pretty high if you survived the battlefield, okay? It was basically a death sentence. Like, okay, you didn’t you didn’t die, but you are going to now because you have a wound.
Along comes a certain Sir Digby, okay? I called then a natural philosopher, we could think of him as as a physician. And he proposes an alternative. He says, we don’t need to apply the salve to the wound, we need to apply the salve to the weapon and keep the wound basically just wrapped up. And here was his proposal.
He wasn’t the only one, but here’s his proposal. There is some type of link, some type of supernatural or superstitious link between the salve on the weapon and the wound that it caused. Can you guess what started happening? It was no longer a death wish. It was no longer a death warrant. When people were injured, all of a sudden, going by Sir Digby’s proposal, people were surviving.
And what was the reason that he thought? Because we’re applying the salve to the weapon. Now, the salve to the weapon was even more gross than the previous salve. Won’t get into that. But you and I know what the real cause of the healing was. The wound was being kept clean. His proposal, basically, you take a damp cloth, you replace it every day.
This is one of the most common things that we continue to do today. People were getting healed. But the cause was completely wrong. Like Digby, we miss what causes the screw up, what’s really wrong with the world. He thought the cause of infection lied in a failure to apply the salve to the blade. It wasn’t.
We think the cause of the world’s deep problems is economics, healthcare, or the environment, but it isn’t. Our thinking of the true problem is too small. Those are just too small as big as they are. It’s much worse than we think. The real problem is that we are not with God. We were made for him. John 1, the previous verses open up and Dan reminded us that they are echoing Genesis 1 and 2.
And we were made to dwell with the one who made the world. Genesis talks directly about this. It says in the cool of the day, God was walking with them in the garden. God is our life, John 1:4 says, and yet we have lost this life. That we do not live with God, that is our real problem. And it pervades all of these areas that I’ve given and more.
And what’s worse, what’s worse, we’ve contributed to this problem. We are part of the problem. One of the comforts of ascribing the problem to these other areas, uh healthcare, politics, economics and so, it’s always them, that system, that party, that theory. But the Bible turns that on its head. It says, we have contributed to the problem.
John will later say, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. And so this puts us in an awkward position. Our world is far more out of joint than we supposed because sin is so dark and so deep. And God is far more glorious and exalted than we ever dared imagined.
He is the God of glory. No one can see him and live. Now, with those things in mind, I think we can better appreciate the shock of what John tells us in John 1. Open up and look at with me, look at it with me again. He says that we have seen him. So now we’re in the divine becoming human part of your outline.
We have seen him and he dwelt with us. Whoa. We have seen him. Let’s unpack this for a moment. Despite the great gulf between the perfect God and sinful man, John says that he sees the glory of God in the man, Jesus Christ. Wow. God has come, God dwells. God dwells. How is this possible? There is nothing more category-breaking in all of the scriptures, and I would submit to you, all of human history that is as category-breaking as this verse.
The incorruptible dwelling with the corruptible, the immutable becoming changeable, the eternal being born, the unapproachable becoming accessible, the infinite becoming finite, the disembodied becoming flesh. Whoa. But why? And so we can start to grasp and through a glass dimly, start to get a sense of how grand this is.
And then the next question is going to be why? Why has this occurred? John is not writing simply for your ascent, for your intellectual belief. He’s not writing simply so that you believe in some vague existence of an all-powerful miracle worker. That is so thin. That is he’s after way more. What is he after?
John 21 tells us, he’s after that you might trust and through that trust, it bring life, life that is in his name. The miracle of the incarnation, God becoming human, is doing so much more that you believe in a God. It is so that you would trust the God who can give you life. The problem of our separation is such a chasm that God must write himself into history in order to solve it.
That’s what he’s after. But why should you trust this? Why should you trust this man who claims to be God, God coming in the flesh, and in so trusting this bring life? Well, we need to go back to explain that danger of God’s glory. The God of the Bible is not a random God. He always acts according to truth, and truth is his nature.
So, so if you look at the ancient Greco-Roman or Babylonian myths of the gods, you know, if you got on their bad side, you know, if you if you didn’t give the sacrifice in precisely the right way, well, you know, Zeus may pick you off this morning, you know, and just strike you dead, okay? Not with the true living God.
He’s always consistent. He always acts for reasons. So what is the reason that his glory is so dangerous? When we return back to Isaiah, he gives us a hint. When Isaiah sees the glory of the Lord, he gives us a clue. He says, “Woe is me.” He’s about to die. Wow, glory, overwhelming. I’m about to die.
That’s the thought. But why? Listen to what he says. “For I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” God’s glory is dangerous because we are sinful. God’s glory is dangerous because we are a people of unclean lips.
Isaiah cannot survive. Moses cannot see. We cannot take it all in because we are a dark people. We are living in darkness. We see this born out again in the temple. The temple where God resided especially over the Ark of the Covenant was glorious, radiant, beautiful. And that for for that reason the temple was glorious, but the temple was also glorious because God was doing something glorious in the temple.
It wasn’t only glorious because that’s where he resided, but also because that’s where he was doing a glory work. Namely, he was dealing with sin. On the day of atonement, one day a year, the high priest would make the sacrifice so that in dwelling with his people, they would not die. They would be able to dwell with the glory of the Lord and not die because their sin was dealt with.
And John is saying, Jesus is a fulfilled glory of the temple. Not just in awesomeness and radiance, but in God dwelling with sin. For he knew the rest of his gospel that he would write that we’re going to go through this fall. God does not simply come to tell us he’s real. Even the demons believe that he’s real and they shudder.
Rather, he comes to be with us. He’s putting creation back together the way it was supposed to be. But the cost of doing this, the cost of dwelling with his sinful creation is not free. It’s not free. The sinful rebellion that resulted in our separation from God made us in debt to God. We made an affront to the king’s glory, and now it must be repaid.
We’re all in this. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all participated, neglected, and lived in the darkness. Now, God sends his son into that darkness. He sends the light that is uncontaminated into the contaminated world. He does this for us. When Jesus is on the cross, he enters into the greatest darkness of all time. For in that moment, all the sin and darkness of the world, all the filth of the world is laid on him, and Jesus experiences the wrath of God.
And in him dwelling with us as a human, he also inherits our mortal nature and God dies. If he is going to dwell with us as a human, then he also opens himself up to the possibility. He comes and he dies. He dwells and he dies. Why, Bridges? Because of you and me. That’s why. Because he loves you and he wants to dwell with you, but sin must be removed.
Sin must be dealt with. And by trusting in him, you can now dwell with him again. Jesus stands in your place to take your sin you committed so that you might see God, and unlike Moses, and unlike Isaiah, and live, and live. And that’s what you were made for. YouTube stars have not died for you. Don’t give them the glory that is not due to them.
Look to the one who had all the glory and for your sake took on your sin so that you could walk with your maker and see his glory not with terror, but with joy. Now we can understand, I’m only through one verse, okay? We can understand now the end of verse 14, when he says, “He is full of grace and truth.” Jesus has given you freely what you could not do in paying your debt so that you could live with the glory you were made for.
God himself, grace and truth indeed. Grace and truth, grace upon grace. He can’t even get it out. He’s so excited and sees something happening new in history. So how should we live? So we looked at that we have little thoughts about big things, and then we had fresh eyes to see this great claim of God becoming man in verse 14, the divine taking on human flesh.
How should we now live? Can we put our phone down? Not only in this time, I I mean in our life. Can we stop looking for glory in YouTube stars or our news pundits for that matter? Stand in awe of the glorious God. Sit with him, pray to him in silence before an awesome expanse. Pray to him in community.
We got lots of groups here at Bridges. Read his scriptures that tell of his immensity and his grandeur. And once you separate and start seeing the real glory of the world world, that other stuff will start to lose its luster. You’ll start to really see with fresh eyes the depths of your sin and the glorious God who entered into that sin for your sake.
Maybe you need to take a Sabbath from your phone. The supposed glory will start to lose its shine. God is far more grand than you think. He’s traversed the greatest chasm and given you the greatest payment so that creation would be put back together, so that you would be put back together. This is your last point on your outline.
Look to the glory of the incarnation and the cross that puts creation back together. Will you trust him for the first time today? Or again today? Christians need to see this anew every single morning. That’s why a quiet time is so important. He has done it for your sake. Before I pray, I want to read to you a of all things, a famous Christmas carol.
It wasn’t a Christmas carol when this man wrote it, but it’s so telling for our time. Listen to these familiar words. Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning. Jesus, to thee be all glory given. Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing. O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord. I’ll be in the back after I pray if you want to chat more about this Jesus who has entered into the world for your sake, or you have questions about Bridges or anything like that.
Let us pray. Jesus, you are the God of glory. And we know that we think little of your grandeur. Be gentle with us as we submit ourselves to your word. Be gentle with us as we see with fresh eyes the miracle of the incarnation. Thank you for coming, not because you had to, but because you wanted to.
You elected in order to do that because of your great love for us. Ah. We give all praise and honor to you, O God. Thank you for this. It’s in Christ Jesus’ name, our Lord. Amen.
