of John chapter 1, John chapter 1. As I said, we'll be doing a four-part series on the first 18 verses. And I was intending on this morning preaching from verses 9 through 13, but in light of Baptism we have tonight of an adopted baby, little Gideon. The text 9 through 13 fits so perfectly for that. We're going to do that tonight. And so if you're saying, shoot, I wanted to hear that message, well, welcome. It's going to be a great service tonight. Just some special things happening tonight, and I really encourage you to come out. You'll be richly blessed. But that means that we're going to be looking then at verses 14 through 18 for our message this morning. Let's give our attention to God's Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me because He was before me. For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. Let's ask the Lord to bless his word. Oh God, our Father in heaven, thank you that you've revealed your glory in the face of Jesus Christ. And thank you that today by your Spirit, we can see that glory as we open your word. And Lord, we pray that you would give us ears to hear, hearts to receive, and to rejoice at the light of the world that has come to us in Jesus Christ, and the glory of God that belongs to us because of him. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I wonder if you've, if I ask you the question, have you ever seen glory? How would you answer that? Have you ever seen glory? Of course, none of us have seen God, the Father, right? But there are sprinkles of glory scattered throughout His creation. It's one of the primary ways maybe we see the glory of God manifested. I remember clearly a night in, probably 20 years ago now already, where driving through the central plateau of Haiti on just a path. It was probably, I don't know, 11 o'clock at night, pitch dark, no moon, riding in the back of a pickup truck. And above us, nothing but galaxies. It was stunning. There was no light pollution on the central plateau of Haiti. And it was just, it was the universe like I had never ever seen it before. It was truly awe-inspiring. Well, I'm sure you've had certain experiences like that. Glory can show up in unexpected places. I read an article two weeks ago now entitled, Why Was Jack Weeping? And it's an article written about this strange thing that took place in 1973 at a horse race. For those of you who know your horse racing history, you know that Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes in 1973, thus winning the Triple Crown. And he won that race by 31 lengths, completely destroyed the rest of the field. And this in front of 70,000 fans. And those who were there said afterward that most people were just weeping. stunned by what they'd seen. And there was a documentary, actually, on this, and Jack Nicklaus testified, the famous golfer, that he was at home watching the race on TV, and he was standing in the middle of his living room, screaming, cheering the horse on in tears, just running down his cheeks. He said, I was weeping, and I had no idea why. And so the title of the article is Why Was Jack Weeping? And the author says, I think I know why. And he says this, we all have a deep longing for perfection, a world where everything is right and we are right with the world. Every once in a while, God gives us a glimpse into what perfection looks like. These glimpses remind us of what we are missing. It reminds us of our own brokenness and imperfection and we are brought to tears. I think the tears are not just tears of a sense of brokenness. I think it's also tears of joy, a taste of what glory looks like, of what glory feels like. I'm certain you've had some experience in your life, maybe it was the birth of a child, where you were just overwhelmed with joy and tears came to your eyes, and that's what glory will do to you. Well, of all the unexpected places for glory to appear, the Christmas story is one of the most unlikely. In an utterly insignificant little cow town of Bethlehem, in a forgotten part of the world, a teenage peasant girl gave birth to a little baby boy, and it was completely unremarkable. The only thing remarkable maybe is the mild scandal that's associated with it. What the world of that day saw as a complete yawn, John, the gospel writer, sees glory. We saw His glory, he says. Glory is that of the only Son from the Father, that in the Word becoming flesh, John sees glory that is full of grace and truth. And this morning, I'd like to just take some time to look at that glory, the glory of Jesus. It is, first of all, a veiled glory. immediately obvious, at least not the way John sees it. John's gospel is full of the glory of Jesus. He uses the noun and verb forms of glory more than twice as much as any other gospel writer. And the remarkable thing is that John does this without ever mentioning the Mount of Transfiguration. That's remarkable because when the other gospel writers talk about the glory of Jesus revealed on earth, They are always and only talking about the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus was there and the glory of heaven, right, He was beaming. His face and His clothes were pure white. He was shining with the glory of heaven. And when Luke and Mark and Matthew talk about the glory of Jesus on earth, that's what they're talking about. But John talks about the glory of Jesus on earth without even mentioning the transfiguration. He's the only one of the gospel writers who doesn't mention it. And that's remarkable in light of the fact that he was there. Matthew wasn't there. Mark wasn't there. Luke wasn't there. John was there. John saw it firsthand, and yet he never mentions it. Now why would that be? Well, the answer is that John saw the glory of Jesus in another way. He saw the glory of Jesus in the day-to-day life of grace and truth. He saw the veiled glory of Jesus. You see, if you had been alive in Jesus' day and walking the streets of Jerusalem or Galilee, and Jesus walked by, you would not have noticed. If you were just walking, talking with your friends, and Jesus came the other way, you wouldn't have felt a shiver or saw something gleaming. To the casual observer, Jesus was completely like every other man. And even when you step back and look at His life, there's not much there that we would call glorious. His parents were poor. His disciples were fishermen. He spent most of his time with the masses, not with the rich, the mighty. He was routinely mocked and derided, even by his own family, his brothers. The religious leaders of the day, of course, thought he was a heretic. And so Leon Morris points out, we can pick out a few glorious moments, but for the most part, we would not call his life glorious. What, after all, did he do? He preached to a few people in an outlying province of an ancient, long-since vanished empire. Even there, he was not often in the capital, the center of affairs, but in a remote country area. He taught a few people, gathered a few disciples, aroused great enemies, was betrayed by one close follower, disowned by another, and died on a cross. Where is the glory?" And that's what the world sees. There is no glory in the life of Jesus, and yet when John looks at Jesus' life, it abounds with glory. It abounds with the glory of God, the glory of a gracious God. And that reality is captured and revealed in the words, the Word became flesh. As John writes, verse 14, the Word became flesh. When John is speaking about flesh, he's talking about what is, it's just man as man with all of our human weakness and frailty and sin, all of the corruption. It sort of plays off the Greek ideal of the day. The worldview of the day was that there's a fundamental bifurcation of reality where you have a material world over here and then the spiritual ideal world over here. And what belongs to the material, we belong, anything you can see and touch Belongs to the material world and it all falls apart It's all decaying It's saturated with rot and death that that's the material world and the spiritual world is that which is pure and lasting eternal ideal Untouched by all the corruption that we find in the material world and and so you know that's why you'll have in the Greek myth stories the gods inhabit the spiritual world and And every once in a while, they'll come into the material world, but it's always in disguise, right? They look like men, but they're not really men at all. They're spirit beings who've taken on a disguise. They would never dream of actually entering into the material world, becoming material, because, well, it's corrupt. It's decaying. It's rot. It's lower. It's debased. And that's exactly where the glory of Jesus shines. Because the Word became flesh. Didn't visit flesh. Didn't just stop by, enter, and then leave again. But became. And it's not a myth story. Morris again says, He came right where we are. He took our nature upon Him. He underwent all that being human means. He did not play at being man. John marvels in this, that God, the God who created this world, a world that was created beautiful, the material world was perfect and good. It wasn't corrupt. It was only corrupted by man's sin, and yet the God who created it, the God whom we sinned against, that God has entered into, becoming flesh. He's not playing at being man in order to rescue men. And that's nothing, friends, but grace. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, God present with us. The word translated dwelt here is also translated in the Greek version of the Old Testament. It's the word for tent or tabernacle, and so any Jewish reader would be immediately reminded of the tabernacle in Moses' day. That's where God came and dwelt with His people. That's where God revealed His glory, where the cloud would descend over the tabernacle. It's the place where they could approach God in worship through the priests and through the sacrifices. But of course, they could only come part way. The temple said, draw near, but not too close. You were allowed, if you were an Israelite, you were allowed into the outer courtyard. If you were not an Israelite, you could just stand and look from the outside. But if you're an Israelite, you were allowed into the outer courtyard, but only the priest could go into the tent itself, and only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies, and that only once a year. And so there were barriers up, drawn near but not too close. And yet even in that, the tabernacle was the tangible, visible evidence that God was with them. That God was with them, the Israelites. He wasn't with the Philistines. He wasn't with the Egyptians. He wasn't with the Assyrians, He was with them. He was their God, and they were His people, and He was for them, and He had promised great things to them, and He would lead them into that promised land. Well, what the tabernacle was in shadow form, Jesus is in fullness. He is God tabernacling with men. Jesus is the ultimate evidence that God is with us, that God is for us, and Jesus provides access to the Father that an Israelite could only dream, because Jesus invites us into the Holy of Holies. No matter what your ethnicity, no matter what your gender, no matter what your sin, all are invited to come, to draw near, and we find their throne of grace through our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is where the glory of God is revealed. Paul speaks of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And John wants to draw that relationship so tight and close. He wants us to see that when we look at Jesus, we are seeing God, the glory and the grace of God. Notice he says, we have seen his glory. Glory, and he's going to define the glory. It's not a glory like Caesar. It's not a glory of a military general or some emperor. This is unique. This is glory as of the only son from the father. In other words, there is a family resemblance and relationship that can't be broken. And Jesus is the only son. There are not several of them. There's one distinct man, Jesus, in whom The glory of the Father is revealed because He's the Son of the Father. He's the only Son of the Father. And He looks just like His Father. And the glory is also defined as full of grace and truth. Now again, these words would cause a Jewish reader to think back in their mind, back to Exodus chapter 34, where Moses asks to see the glory of God. If you have your Bible, maybe you could just quickly turn to Exodus 34, verse 6. Exodus 34, it's one of the great revelations of God in the Old Testament. Moses is on Mount Sinai, and picking up verse four, Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first, and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, and he took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. God's going to reveal His glory. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord. the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." And it is those last few words there, abounding in steadfast love, hesed, and faithfulness, hemet, or faithfulness and truth. It can be translated as faithfulness or truth. Those are the words that John is speaking of when he talks about grace and truth. The God who revealed Himself to Moses is revealed now fully in Jesus Christ. As Grant Osborne says, Jesus is the embodiment of God's gracious love and the proof of His absolute faithfulness. You see, friends, the wonder of God is that the chief glory of God, or the way God manifests His glory chiefly in Goodness, kindness, compassion, grace. When God magnifies His glory, what He displays here to Moses is mercy and grace, slow to anger, abounding in grace and truth. That's exactly what John says we see in Jesus. If you ask the question, what is God like? It'd be good to ask yourself that question because we all walk around with maybe unspoken assumptions about what God is like. Many of us walk around with unspoken, unconscious assumptions that God is demanding, that God is angry, that God is maybe not angry, maybe just frustrated with us, disappointed with us. But if you look at the Bible, you don't see any of those words related to God. When you ask the question, what is God like? What is His essence? What is His glory? The biblical answer always comes back, gracious love, absolute faithfulness, grace and truth. That's what God is like. And John is telling us, how do we know that's the case? Well, because we know because we see it in Jesus. We see that very same glory in Jesus. The glory of Jesus is a glory of fullness of grace and truth. And from that fullness, John says, we have all received grace upon grace. This is not just a theoretical idea. It's not a theology. It's not a principle. It's an experience people had as they met Jesus. When the, When the sick people were brought to Jesus, he healed them, and they, in that moment, experienced the glory of the grace of God in Jesus. When the blind cried out, Lord, have mercy, I wanna see. Remember, Jesus asked the man, what do you want? I wanna see. And Jesus gave him his sight. That's the grace of God in an incredible experience. To the demon-possessed, Jesus cast out the demons, set them free from their bondage, When the crowds were hungry, he fed them. He taught the ignorant. He was a friend of tax collectors that despised sinful Jewish traders. He freely forgave sinners. Remember the woman who breaks open the—she's a prostitute, and she anoints Jesus' feet with oil and wipes it with her hair. And the men sitting around, the Pharisees around the table, they look at her and they know who she is, and they're watching Jesus. See, is he gonna be a righteous man and recoil from this wicked woman touching him in such an intimate way? No, Jesus just sits there and praises her for it. And the woman is there and she's weeping. Why is she weeping? Well, she's weeping because she knows who Jesus is and she knows perfectly well who she is. And yet she's allowed to come and worship, and she's not cast out. And it's grace more than she had ever imagined. You see, that's what John saw when he saw Jesus. And to help us see the grace of Jesus more clearly, he draws a comparison. The law was given through Moses. Yes, it was, and it was a good law, perfect law. It wonderfully revealed the holy character of God, and it set before Israel the path that they should walk. And it invited them to have a relationship with God through the sacrifices and the ceremonies. But you see, the law lacked power. It had truth, but it lacked power, and it wasn't empowered by grace. You see, the law could not roll back the curse of sin. The law could not roll back the judgment of God upon this world. It couldn't cure a wicked heart. The law could not free anyone from the sentence of death. It could not reconcile a man to God. It simply couldn't do any of that. It could not transform your own heart. It couldn't make a new creation. It couldn't make aliens and strangers sons and daughters. The law could not do any of that. But as Paul says in Romans 8, verse 3, what the law could not do, God did, by sending His Son, His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and four men. What the law could not do, God did by sending Jesus. And so John says, law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, you see, we have the revelation of God when he says, I am slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. In the gloriously obedient life of Christ and his atoning death and victorious resurrection, God, he says, has opened a way for his mercy and his grace, the fullness of it, to flow out upon us, to overwhelm us. As the hymn writer says, on the Mount of Crucifixion, fountains opened deep and wide, and through the floodgates of God's mercy flowed a vast and gracious tide. From His fullness, we have all received grace upon grace upon grace. You think about God's dealing with you. Has God ever once dealt with you as your sins deserved? He's not. He's not, not even once. Why not? Is He unjust? Is He unconcerned about your sin? Does He not care about wickedness? No, none of that is true. God has given you grace upon grace because the punishment for your sin was carried by someone else, by Jesus. And John wants us to see not just, again, the glory of Jesus in this, not the beauty of Jesus, but the beauty of God the Father as well. Notice what he says as he wraps up in verse 18. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. The Jewish conviction, well-grounded in Old Testament scripture, is that it is not possible to see God, both because God is spirit, but secondly, because to see God would mean death, immediate death. Even glimpses of the shadow of the glory of God leave men terrified and undone. Remember Isaiah chapter 6, woe is me, I'm undone. But John says, in Jesus, God is both seen and known. In Jesus, God is seen and known. To look upon Jesus is to see the Father. How do we know that? John chapter 14, Jesus is telling his disciples that he's going to go away. He's gonna go to the Father. And one of the disciples, Philip, said to him, this is verse eight, Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? You've been with me for three years. If you've seen me, if you understand and know me, you've seen the Father and you know the Father. Jesus says it again in John 6, 46, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father, knows the Father. Now that's critically important. Some of us maybe have the sneaking suspicion that while Jesus is full of grace and truth, the Father is much more difficult to please. He's more austere, stern, disapproving. And that is a false image of God that we've created in our mind. It is not so. If you want to know what the Father is like, you simply need to look to Jesus. If you see Jesus in all of His love, in all of His grace, all of His compassion, all of His kindness, all of His power, you've seen the Father. It's the same image. It's the same God. Same character. You see, the glory of Christmas, friends, is that the Father has revealed Himself in the incarnation of His Son as a Father full of grace and love and compassion for you. He so loved you, the Father, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that if you believe in Him, you will not perish as you deserve, but you will have everlasting life as a free gift by faith in Christ. He so loved you, He sent His Son, His only Son, the Son who mirrors the character of the Father, so that you could see and know the Father and receive grace upon grace. And if we understand that, if we come to grips with that, if we face that truth, well then you know you're looking at glory. Sheer glory. The glory of God. The glory of grace. You see, the truth is we do deserve condemnation, and none of us could say that 2022 is worthy of everlasting life, if you look at our life. And yet, in Jesus, we not only see the glory of God, we enter into it. Glory has become our destiny. The glory of God, 1 Peter 5, 4, when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. That's God's gift to you in Jesus Christ. I hope within you somewhere there is a deep hunger for glory. I hope somewhere within you there is a desperate sense that there's got to be something more, that you were made for more than what this world can offer you, and a sense that in truth nothing will satisfy your heart except fellowship with God Himself. Nothing will satisfy your eyes except the beauty of the glory of Jesus Christ. Nothing could possibly make the suffering that you've experienced worthwhile except to enter into the glory of the presence of God in a new heaven and in a new earth. And I hope you want that so badly you can taste it at times. And sometimes you want it so badly you just weep for it. That's an appropriate response, but Christmas, and of course every Sunday, and every time you open your Bible, but this is a time to just take the gift, to receive it. To receive it. So many of God's people see the gift, and they can acknowledge it, and recognize it's good, and there it sits on the shelf. Take it. Receive it. It's yours by faith in Jesus Christ. This is who you are by faith in Jesus Christ. This is your destiny in Jesus Christ. Let that reality, let that gift drive away your fear. Let it drive away your shame. Let it drive away your sadness. Take that gift every time you stumble into those things. This is who I am in Jesus Christ. This is what God has done for me in Jesus Christ. This is what God promises to me in Jesus Christ. Glory is mine. And let that fill your life with joy and light and life and peace. Amen. Oh God, our Father in heaven, Lord, we, so many of us have heard these things a thousand times. and we desperately need to see it and to receive it, to rejoice in it, to saturate our fearful, anxious, despairing souls with the fact that you, Father, have come to us in Jesus Christ, and you've shown the light and life of God in him, and we see the grace and truth of God, and not just see it, but oh God, we can taste it, we can receive it. And I pray, Lord, that for every fearful, sad, anxious, angry, lost heart today, oh, Lord, let the light shine through. And may this, Lord, be the way we live in 2023 as the children of God who've received grace upon grace upon grace and will until we step into our eternal and glorious home. Oh, Father, grant this to us, and we give you the praise in Jesus' name, amen. Let's stand together, and we're gonna sing Light of the World. It's a newer song for us, so we have some folks helping us out with it, but let's worship the Lord with it, and let's stand to sing. And like the stars in the wintery sky, Joy of the Father brings to the darkness, Shadows of sleepers and the shadows to fly. Oh Sing hallelujah for the things He has done. ♪ Alleluia to the Light of God ♪ is a Death is the forerunner, we are the returned by the Christ that He made. Sing hallelujah, sing hallelujah, sing hallelujah for the things He has done. Oh ♪ Soon will he come ye, with light in his eyes ♪ ♪ He will ransom his home ♪ ♪ Through God's he will lead us straight into glory ♪ ♪ And there he shall reign forevermore ♪ ♪ Sing hallelujah ♪ Sing hallelujah ♪ Sing hallelujah ♪ For the things he has done ♪ Come and adore him ♪ Bow down before him Sing hallelujah to the light of the world. And God's people said, Amen. I'd like to invite those, if you'd like to sing in the Hallelujah Chorus, be ready. We're gonna do the benediction and then love to have you come up and we'll have music up here for you and we will close our service by rejoicing in our King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Receive the benediction. Now the Lord bless you and keep you, and the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. Amen. Amen. Please come forward. ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Gloria, gloria, in excelsis Deo ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth ♪ Alleluia, alleluia O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? ♪ And he shall reign forever and ever ♪ ♪ And he shall reign forever and ever ♪ ♪ And he shall reign forever and ever ♪ ♪ King of kings ♪ ♪ Forever and ever ♪ Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia ♪ And Lord of lords ♪ ♪ And he shall reign ♪ ♪ And he shall reign ♪ ♪ And he shall reign forever and ever ♪ ♪ King of kings ♪ ♪ Forever and ever ♪ ♪ And Lord of lords ♪ ♪ Alleluia, alleluia ♪ ♪ And he shall reign ♪ and ever. King of kings and Lord of lords, King of kings and Lord of lords, each and each shall reign forever and ever, forever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! you