When I was a bit younger and going to church, I always wondered why it was in John's prologue that Jesus was referred to as the Word, thinking of the Word as being the scriptures. John, of course, is using this in a sense that the people of his day would have known well. The people who lived in Judea around the time of Christ would know exactly what John meant here. They would have understood word in this context. to be a description of God's mighty deeds, his acts on our behalf. The word is God in action. When God created the world, he did so by his word. So Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 3, says, through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. God's creation of the universe out of nothing through his word. Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 2 tells us that God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed Earl of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. So when John wrote here, the word became flesh. His immediate readers knew what he was saying. that God himself had once again intervened in the history of this world, that God had taken action in the person of his son, that God, in his wisdom, in his omnipotence, in his almighty power, became one of us, took the initiative, rushed to our rescue. And so the word became flesh. and dwelt among us. In verse 14, I want you to look just for a moment or two at that and to see some great truths that are revealed here. The first truth that we see, of course, is right at the beginning of the verse, the truth of the incarnation of Christ. Martin Luther talked about this as being the mystery of the humanity of Christ, the mystery that God sunk himself into our flesh. And Luther says this is truly beyond human understanding. I wouldn't even try to explain that mystery here tonight in a short service, but just think of the contrast between what Christ was in eternity before the incarnation and his condition after the incarnation as it is expressed here. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us. In the first verse of chapter one, John explains Christ's pre-incarnate state in these beautiful words. He says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, his deity before his incarnation. if a Jehovah Witness knocks your door and tries to get you to accept some watchtower tracts or tries to sell you a New World Bible, one of the things you can do is you can ask them the question, is Jesus the son of God? And they will say, of course we believe that Jesus is the son of God. But then turn it around and ask them then, Is Jesus God the Son? And when you do that, they must answer no. For in their corrupt theology, they don't believe in the deity of Christ. In a book called The Truth Shall Make You Free, now there is an ironic title, Published by the Watchtower Society, the Jehovah Witnesses state that true scriptures speak of God's Son, the Word, as a God. He is a mighty God, but not the mighty God who is Jehovah. In fact, they consider the Lord Jesus Christ simply to be an earthly name of the Archangel Michael. That's not what the scriptures tell us. The Bible says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Mormons, they don't believe that Jesus is God, from everlasting to everlasting. Mormons believe that God was once a man like us, and was elevated to Godhood, and that Jesus was not conceived by the Holy Spirit, that he is, in fact, the half-brother of Lucifer. Muslims believe in a person called Isa, whom they liken to the Jesus of the Bible, but their false Jesus is nothing like our Saviour and Lord. There are similarities. That's unsurprising. We know that Muhammad met many Christians on his travels. And of course, many ecumenical leaders and many liberal clergy will tell you, oh, but Muslims believe in Jesus too. But the Muslim Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. The Muslim Jesus is just a man. He is, in the words of Islam, the penultimate prophet, and a prophet who therefore was inferior to Muhammad. not the Son of God, and certainly not God in human flesh. They will tell you that their God, who is not the same as the God of the Bible, their God, Allah, has no son. And Muslims, therefore, have no saviour. The Qur'an, written by Muhammad, denies Jesus' deity. and denies his death and denies his physical resurrection, those three absolutely vital elements of the Christian gospel. And that, in my mind, makes Muhammad a false prophet before anything else. One of the most insidious heresies and cults of all. Because of their likeness to Christianity, and their self-proclaimed Christian heritage is Unitarianism. Unitarians don't believe that Jesus is God the Son manifested in the flesh. They think that our Lord Jesus was just a good man, a good example to us. And some of them would even dare to suggest that by his selfless sacrifice, he was then elevated to Godhood. What a dangerous opinion. And even today here in Northern Ireland, there are people worshipping in Unitarian churches. being very greatly led astray by their liberal-minded ministers and leaders who one day will answer to God for their unfaithfulness. But look at our text again. In Christ, flesh did not become God like some of the false cults believe. What happened was that the eternal God became flesh. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Paul would express this well in Philippians chapter two and verse five, where he says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. So before his birth he dwelt in heavenly splendour, seated upon his eternal throne, attended and worshipped by the angels, And the Word became flesh. And at his birth, he became one of us. The Greek word for flesh expresses the weakest part of the human nature. The Greeks, of course, in their worldly philosophy, their godless philosophy, reckoned that flesh is a tomb, a tomb that imprisons our spirit. For the Hebrew, the flesh is like grass. We've already heard James being read and James saying that life is but a vapor. And for the Hebrew, Isaiah 40 in verse 68 tells us that all flesh is grass. And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. In the Old Testament, the Hebrews witnessed the fragility of the plant life of the Middle East. The grass springing up and struggling to survive in the blazing sun of the day and in the freezing cold of the nights, springing up in the morning only to be cut down by the fierce sandy winds blowing off the deserts, and thinking and liking that to the human flesh, beset with illness and pain and misery and death, and yet it was into our human frailty and pain and death that the King of Heaven entered for us. Matthew Henry says, the voice that ushered in the gospel cried, all flesh is grass and Isaiah 40. To make the Redeemers love the more wonderful, who to redeem and save us was made flesh and withered as grass. But the word of the Lord who was made flesh endures forever. When made flesh, he ceased not to be the Word of God. And John tells us here that when the Word became flesh, he dwelt among us. And how mean and how humble was that dwelling. He dwelt among the lowest of men, in the lowest of circumstances. He was born as a baby into abject poverty. He came into this world born in a filthy bar on filthy straw. In the most backward village, in the most despised part of the Roman Empire, God himself entered into the world that he had created. And later he would say, the foxes have their holes and the birds of the air have nests. But the son of man, hath not where to lay his head." The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Doctrine of the incarnation of Christ, that God the Son came into this world for us. And we see here also the doctrine of redemption. Because at the end of the verse, we're told that he was full of grace and truth. When the Lord Jesus came into this world, John notes to you the attributes of God that he brought with him. He brought grace, God's unearned love, God's unmerited favor, That reminding us that we cannot ever deserve the love of God, that we cannot ever earn it, that it is a free gift given to us without any merit on our part. God loving us while we were unlovable, while we were yet sinners, demonstrating the love of God to us in his sinless life, in his atoning death. a very long number of years ago, I was phoned up one day and asked to do a photography job. Well, that happened, thankfully, quite often. And it was a minister who was on the phone. And his granddaughter had been born, a little baby girl. And he asked me if I would be willing to come on a Saturday afternoon and photograph the baby being baptized as a job. I wasn't required to take part in it, thankfully. And of course, I went along, and it was a Church of Ireland church. And after the event, he had mostly family members there, and he had gathered them up at the front of the church. And I wondered what was going to come next because he got out his Bible and he had some notes, and I thought, I wonder what he's going to say now. Very suspicious. And he told that small congregation very clearly, what we have done today doesn't make this baby a Christian. What we have done today doesn't make this baby a Christian. We've only just simply acknowledged the fact that she is brought within the visible church. He says she can only be a Christian by grace through faith. I'm thinking to myself, my goodness, there's a good message for a Church of Ireland minister. And he then produced an illustration. He had two daughters. He says, these are my two daughters. And I thought for a moment, goodness me, he's going to use his two daughters as good examples of Christian living. And if he didn't do that, he says, these are my two daughters. Their names are Grace and Faith. And I called them grace and faith because Paul tells us that it is only by grace through faith that we can be saved. And he began to explain to the people that were gathered there, and most of them weren't believers, he began to explain to them that salvation cannot be merited, that your baptism doesn't save you, that your communion attendance doesn't save you, that belonging to a church doesn't save you, none of those things, not your good works. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, unmerited favor. When Jesus came into this world, he demonstrated as clearly and even clearer than that, God's grace, his unmerited favor for mankind and full of truth. See, one of the essential attributes of God is that he is truth, he is absolute truth. Romans chapter three and verse four says, let God be true, but every man a liar. That's why we must never measure ourselves by the standards of other people around us. God alone embodies all truth and measured by his standards. We always fall short for we are all sinners and we've all fallen short of God's righteousness. So God, coming into this world in the person of his Son, adorned with grace and truth. We're told here that there is a fullness of grace and truth. He was full of it. full of grace and truth. Everything that Jesus said, everything that he did in this 33 years on this earth was full of God's unmerited favor towards us. Everything he did and said reflected the essential nature of God and at the cross, When he died for sinners like us, God's grace and God's truth came together as his love, God's love, satisfied God's justice as Jesus took upon himself all the debt and punishment demanded by the broken law. All my sin, all your sin, relieving us of that guilt, restoring the broken relationship with God that our sin had caused. The Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 1 and 15 said, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. So in this verse, we see great Christian truths, the doctrine of the incarnation, and the doctrine of redemption, and another great truth that we might call the doctrine of revelation. I'm not talking about the book of Revelation, but how God has revealed himself to us. Because it says in the verse that when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father. There's only one way to see God, and that's through the Lord Jesus Christ. He himself said that no one can come to the Father except through him. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. And in this part of the verse, John goes deeper into the great mystery that was the nature of Christ. He was a man. He was one of us. He bore our flesh, our humanity, as the perfect man, and yet he never ceased to be God. He wasn't half man and half God. He was fully God and fully man. And all the glory of God was revealed in him. He was the same as us, only he was different from us. We are the children of God by adoption. We have no right to be in God's family. We are born into the family as the children of our father, the devil. But God, in his grace, redeems us, brings us into his family, and makes us his own children. But Jesus is the only begotten of the Father. That means he is God's only son by divine right. The rest of us are adopted children, but he is God incarnate in human flesh and he never ceased to be. Look at Hebrews chapter 1 with me please for a wee moment. Just turn in your Bible to the book of Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1 because here is the most marvellous Christological description of the Lord Jesus. In Hebrews chapter one and verse one, we read, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners, spake in time passed on to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son, whom he hath appointed Earl of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. When they looked at Jesus, they were seeing God in the flesh and upholding all things by the word of his power. When he had by himself, with the help of no other, purged our sins, taken them away, sat down his glorification on the right hand of the majesty on high. in his birth, in his sinless life, in his atoning death, in his resurrection, in his glorification, Jesus has revealed God to us. In John 14 to Philip, he said, he that hath seen the Father He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. He was the Logos. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us as one of us. He brought us the love of God. He lived to fulfill the law. He satisfied perfectly God's righteousness for us. He showed us who God is, and he showed us what God is like, full of grace and truth.