Turn with me to John chapter 14. John 14. Look this morning at the face of God. The face of God. John 14 from verse 7 to verse 11. Jesus says, if you had known me, you would have known my father also. And from now on you know him and have seen him. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the father, and it is sufficient for us. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the father. So how can you say, show us the father? Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the father who dwells in me does the works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. The face of God. When I was in primary school, one of the subjects that they still had in the government schools of the day was Bible education or religious instruction, RI. And I remember what we would usually do is they would teach us the story. It was often one of the narratives, the stories of scripture. There'd be some questions that we'd have to answer, and then they'd always make us draw a picture and color it in, which was the worst part for me. I just hated it. I hated it. But anyway, I would draw the picture. And I remember as we went through Genesis, as we went through the narratives in which God would often speak to an individual. He'd be speaking to Abraham or to Noah, to Adam. And then we had to draw that scene. So as a child in standard three, fifth grade, I understood that I was supposed to draw God. No one had ever told me about the second commandment and not depicting God. But what was interesting, and I still remember doing this and I remember finding my book years later and seeing the pictures. When I drew God, I drew him in a humanoid form, colored him gold, but I always left the face blank. It's interesting. I don't really even remember what my reasoning was as a lad, but something always made me depict God as a shining being with no particular face. I wonder how many people really worship a faceless God. And I don't mean now the physical sense of the features, but I mean a God with no particular personality. A God who has no particular personhood, no features, nothing recognizable. In fact, it's very popular today to say that you worship just such a God. People today say, I do believe in a higher power, capital H, capital P. I believe in the maker. I believe in a creator. But you'll notice there's never any particulars about this God. We don't really know what he's like. We don't know if he even likes certain things or even if he's capable of liking and not liking things. We don't know if he's very far removed from us or if he's very close to us. We don't know if he speaks words. Does he communicate? Does he have a mind and a will as we would understand it? And since this being is so vague, so abstract, so theoretical, so faceless, there's no speaking of a relationship with that kind of God. It would be like speaking about having a relationship with a cumulonimbus cloud or the moon. Faceless, impersonal, featureless, unknowable. The Greek philosopher Plato once wrote this, he said, to find out the father and maker of all this universe is a hard task. And when we have found him to speak of him to all men is impossible. That's what Plato thought. Plato thought if you found God, he would be faceless, indescribable, ineffable, incomprehensible, so vast, so glorious, no words could capture him. In fact, you probably couldn't even think of him rightly. Of course, many people wanted that way. Unregenerate man sometimes likes God to be impersonal. Many people prefer a faceless God because a faceless, distant, abstract God makes no demands on us. He doesn't see us. He doesn't examine us. He's not concerned with us. He won't scrutinize us and he definitely won't judge us. And we would have it that way. You know, even Christians, those who name Christ as Lord and Savior, can fall into the trap of worshiping a faceless God. We can fall into the trap of God being remote, distant, abstract, theoretical. We can sadly fall into the trap of worshiping Him by rote, not by relationship. And instead of looking to the revealed nature of God in Jesus, we begin to think of God in the abstract. Many professing believers tend to think of Jesus as a lesser being, a path to God, but not somehow God Himself. The Bible insists on a very different God. It reveals a God who is the ultimate person and who made us persons because He is one, the first one, the ultimate one. He is a person who can be known, communed with, loved and enjoyed. He has features. He is recognizable. He is knowable. And the Bible's grand story is that that God took the ultimate step of making himself knowable to human beings by becoming one himself. The Bible teaches that the search for what God is like is over when you've found Jesus Christ. The bold and scandalous claim of the Bible is that God is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. To look upon Jesus is to see this infinite, omnipresent, invisible God in a finite, visible, physical man. To see God? To see Jesus is to see God in recognizable form. To see Jesus is to put a face on God. Now, Jesus made that claim multiple times in the Gospel of John in various ways. And one of the loudest and clearest is in our passage this morning, found here in John 14, 7 to 11, in a short conversation with one of his disciples, Philip. John 14 is part of this five-chapter section that we call the Upper Room Discourse. It's Jesus' farewell lesson that He gave to His disciples before going to the cross. Before He was going to be taken from them, He explains to them now what the Christian life will be like once He's gone, once He's taken from them. He's no longer speaking in this last section of John to people who doubt Him, people who disbelieve Him. These are people who know Him, who should know Him. They trouble that He's going, so He assures them, I'm coming back, I will receive you, I'm going to send the Spirit in my place. And He teaches them all kinds of fascinating deep truths. Jesus has just told Thomas and the others that he himself is the way, the truth and the life and the only way to the Father. You want to get to the Father? Jesus is the door. Well, now another disciple, Philip, is going to make a comment about seeing the Father, and Jesus is going to respond to that comment. And as he does so, he's going to answer a question for us. And the question is this. What will I see if I see God? What should I look for if I'm looking for God? Where will I look to see God? And in this concentrated section, look out for three deep mysteries that Jesus is going to open up to us about Himself and about God. First, He's going to give us a revelation. And he'll give us the reason and then he'll give us the reality behind all of it. So he's going to reveal something. He's going to give us the logic, the reason behind it. And then he's going to give us what's happening in the universe that explains that. So let's begin as we unpack the face of God with the revelation. The revelation. The formerly unknown sacred secret that is now revealed. The revelation which is this, you already know the Father. Look at verse 7 as Jesus says to His disciples and by implication to us, if you had known Me, You would have known my father also and from now on you know him and have seen him Here's this revelation you already know the father This is a profound statement to know Jesus is to know the father He says to his men Philip and others If you've truly known me as a person then you have already known the father as a person Now, this is not the first time Jesus has made a statement like this. In John 8, verse 19, he said to a group that was debating him, he said, you know neither me nor my father. If you'd known me, you would have known my father also. Remember in John 10, verse 30, that outstanding statement, I and the father are one. And just so we know exactly who we're talking about, in John 8, verse 54, he said to this hostile crowd, it is my father who honors me, of whom you say that he is your God. Wow. The father is the one that Jews up to that point would have understood as God. But now Jesus says to know me is to know him. See, even Jesus' disciples up to this point have not fully understood who He is. Yes, they believe He's the Messiah, believe He's the Son of God, but the full implications of that have not yet dawned on them. To know Jesus is to know the Father. They are looking at, they are listening to, they are speaking to the One who completely reveals the Father. So notice the wording in verse 7, the end of verse 7, from now on, You do know Him. What does that mean? Since I'm now making it very plain to you, you can now say, I definitely know the Father. Have you ever had that experience where you are looking for a particular person, and you don't know everyone in the room, and you start talking to this person, and you say, you know, I'm looking for so-and-so, and I don't know if you could direct me there like this, this, this, and you find out the person you're talking to is the one you're looking for. Ever had that experience? And you feel a little awkward. The person is usually a little bit amused that the person you're looking for is them. And if they really want to play a game with you, they keep acting like they're not that person. Well, here the disciples are finding out that the Father whom they are praying to is explained and revealed in this man in front of them. They already know the Father. And that's not what they expected. It's not what anyone expects. But Scripture says it is so. We began this book with that famous verse, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. that God always had in Himself in eternity past a self-expression, a self-communication, His Word, His Son. Hebrews 1 verse 3 tells us that He is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person. And this self-communication within the triune God took on human form. And to know that man would be to know what a human could know about God. So here's some very good news, friends. If you want to know God and know Him the way you know humans, people in your life, there are four books that record what He was like when He was among us. They're called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read them. Immerse yourself in them. Learn the person and work of Christ. Because to know Him is to know the Father. Now, this is the revelation. This is the sacred secret that Jesus is unveiling. Of course, it needs some explaining, some reasons why knowing Jesus is knowing the Father. So that comes next now as Philip makes his statement. So the revelation firstly is you already know the Father, but now look secondly at the reason. Second, look at the reason. And the reason is this, the Son fully reveals the Father. You already know the Father. Why? Because the Son fully reveals the Father. Look at verse 8. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and yet you've not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, show us the Father? Show us the Father, Philip says, and we'll be content. I think Philip is someone we can sympathize with and criticize. Positively, Philip is like us. He wants to see God. And he's likely asking for a kind of vision, a theophany, an appearance of God, you know? Just open up the heavens for us. Give us an Isaiah-like vision where we see the Lord in His temple, high and lifted up. Let us see the seraphim. Give us that kind of blow-smack-down kind of vision of God that just leaves us breathless. And Philip's a God-seeker, and like us, he wants his faith to turn to sight. I can sympathize with that, can't you? But negatively, Philip is not connecting the dots. And Jesus' answer to Philip is a gentle rebuke. Philip, you've been with me day after day for years. We've walked together in close fellowship. Do you not yet understand who I am? Do you not get it? Do you not recognize me for who I am? Evidently, Philip had not, because he still thinks of Jesus as a kind of messenger. However exalted, Jesus is still the messenger, but he's not the sender of the message. He wants to still get past Jesus to the Father, as if the Father is somehow different and the ultimate goal. And what Jesus says in reply is stunning. I don't need to show you a vision of the Father, Philip, because you've already seen the Father. He who has seen me has seen the Father. It would be just repetition. Now, wait a minute. I mean, surely if Jesus showed them a vision of God on his throne, I mean, surely that would be different, right? That would be more impressive than seeing Jesus of Nazareth in front of them. Apparently not. Yes, it would be different in quality. But don't miss this. If they saw that, they would not be getting more of God in all the important and meaningful ways. See, because the essence of God is who He is. His person, His nature, His attributes. The glory of God is not primarily blinding light, clouds of glory, holy fire, majestic throne room. Friends, even that is just a manifestation of the invisible God for the sake of men and angels. You know what the real glory of God is? It's all that He is. That He's powerful and gentle. He's all-knowing and yet meticulous. He's all-present and yet manifest. He's majestic and meek. He's eternal and youthful. He's pure and forgiving, just and gracious, exacting and generous. The glory of God is the unique holy God that He is. It's His features. It's His person. And all that can be known of the person of God, the character of God, as far as humans are concerned, was manifest in Jesus. Do you remember how the book of John opened? 1 verse 18 had the statement, No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. Why did John bother saying that? God in his essence, Father and Son and Holy Spirit are not visible. And so the incarnate Son in becoming man has declared God to the world. He's made what was invisible visible to us in ways that humans can understand. One of the great combatants for the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century was a man by the name of Athanasius. He fought valiantly for the truth of the Trinity in a time when more and more people believed Jesus was a creature. He was the first thing God made, essentially an ancient version of what the Watchtower Society believes today the Jehovah Witnesses. Athanasius was once told by someone, Athanasius, do you realize that the whole world is against you? And his reply was, then I am against the whole world. Single-minded devotion. And this is what he said about this truth. Listen to this text, this statement. He said, he, that's Jesus, manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen father. He manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen father. When Jesus was amongst us as a man among men, we could understand him in all the ways that men understand men. And all that God was, or the fullness of the Godhead, dwelt in Him bodily, as we read this morning in Colossians. As Colossians 1.15 puts it, He is the image of the invisible God. He makes it known, as chapter 1.14 of John says, And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. You know, I think I'm a lot like Philip. Probably you are, too. We think glory of God and we think brilliant light, overpowering angelic song, triumphant heavenly armies, probably something you've seen in a movie. Did you ever think the glory of God is telling a weeping, sinful woman that her sins are forgiven? Or that the glory of God is taking children in His arms and blessing them. That the glory of God is seeing crowds of lost and confused people and compassion welling up in you. That the glory of God is clearing out a temple of covetousness. The glory of God is healing blind eyes, physical and spiritual, opening ears, physical and spiritual, raising the dead physically and spiritually. Did you ever think that the glory of God is refusing to call legions of angels while hanging on a Roman cross, accepting the burden of other sins? That's why John could write decades later, we beheld his glory. I don't think John is necessarily referring to the transfiguration, though certainly he was there. He saw Jesus face shining. He saw the cloud. And yes, he saw those manifestations. But I think John is far more saying, I saw in human form the character and person and nature of God. And I saw it for three and a half years. Seeing some physical blinding light might be impressive. But let me ask you, if that happened to you, let's assume you got that and you got this incredible vision of blinding light, then what? Would you know God any better? If you had an experience of seeing heaven opened and you heard the music and you saw the sounds, would you love God more? Would you be more grateful to him, more submitted? Would you trust him more? Would you come into a loyal covenant with him? Do you see all the important ways of knowing God are matters of personhood, not appearance? And we know what we need to know about God in Jesus Christ. The great Puritan Thomas Manton said, Christ is the living Bible. We may read much of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We shall study no other book when we come to heaven. So if I had to ask you this morning, what are you looking for when you're trying to see God? What would you say? Are you looking for an impressive sight? Are you looking for something like that? Or do you want to know the person that is God? If you're still looking for some kind of vision, some kind of overwhelming experience of what you think glory looks like, then Jesus' words to Philip are words to you. You already know the Father and you've already seen Him. Because he who sees Jesus has seen the Father. This is the revelation. You already know the Father. Second came the reason, because the Son fully reveals the Father. But now to complete things, Jesus is going to give us the reality behind it. He's going to explain, thirdly, this reality behind this revelation He's given. So look with me thirdly in verses 10 and 11 at the reality. And the reality is this, the Father and the Son indwell each other. The Father and the Son indwell each other, that's the reality. Verse 10, do you not believe? And now this is in the Greek, it's plural. He's not only talking to Philip, he's talking to all of them. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves." So here Jesus begins to explain how it is that you can see the Son and thereby see the Father. He's explaining the reality behind the revelation. I've met people, and maybe you have too, who've misunderstood verse 9. They've stopped there as if Jesus had nothing more to say. To see Jesus is to see the Father. And from that, they conclude Jesus and the Father are the same person. And from there, they go into what's called the heresy of modalism. Modalism, another name for it is Sabellianism, teaches that God is just one person. And sometimes that one person operates in a mode called father, and sometimes that person operates in a mode called son, and sometimes spirit. He manifests, he appears in different ways, but it's just one person. But all you have to do is look at the next verses to see Jesus and the Father are not the same person. The Father gives Jesus words to speak. The Father gives Jesus authority. The Father does works through Jesus. Throughout the book, Jesus keeps saying He's been sent by the Father. He's returning to the Father. They are clearly distinct. So the idea to solve the issue of how is it that if I've seen Jesus, I've seen the Father, how could that actually be? What's the reality behind it? Modalism is not the answer. The reality behind this truth that Jesus reveals God is not that Jesus and the Father are identical. Instead, here is how Jesus explains it. Look at the language of verse 10 and verse 11. Language of verse 10, first sentence. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Last phrase of verse 10. The Father who dwells in me. First phrase of verse 11, believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me. What is the deep reality that explains it? The answer is the Father and the Son indwell each other. Mutual indwelling. The Father, who is fully God, has the Son indwelling Him. The Son, who is fully God, has the Father indwelling Him. The theological term for this is co-inherence. The old Greek term perichoresis. All of that's just words, right? It's language. It's very hard to understand this. I mean, how do you understand things indwelling each other? Usually you have one thing, a big thing, and you have a smaller thing and the smaller thing fits inside the big thing. So how can you have two things that are equal, that indwell each other? Well, this is very hard to understand, but I do believe the Lord has seeded the world with a number of little examples of mutual indwelling. I'll just give you a few. Right now, you're. Your eyes are open, I hope. If you're not, you didn't hear that. And you can see because of light, white light. But you know light, visible light, is actually made up of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Seven shades of light that actually indwell each other. They're inside each other equally, making up a unity of white light. They're distinct. They're different. But yet, because they indwell each other, they bring about white light. This morning we sang songs, and whether or not you realized it, Erin was hitting various notes simultaneously, a C and a G, a D and an F, and she hit them at exactly the same time, and as she hit those notes, they separate distinct notes, but the harmonies indwelt each other. In fact, if you take a machine and you look at the frequencies, you can actually see the frequencies of notes when they harmonize, they overlap, they almost fit into each other. And as she played those harmonies, there were separate notes, but they indwelt each other and they made one unified sound. We can move into the human realm. Paul tells us marriage is a mystery. It reveals a sacred secret. What is that sacred secret? They are no longer twain, no longer two, but one, sacredly one. Human beings in covenant marriage form a union. And as a result, even of the physical union, there's another mutual indwelling. So, two people mutually indwell each other, and a result of that is a child. And a child, by the way, is another example, because you have a child inside the mother, and the mother's life is inside the child. Mutual indwelling. Now, I understand these are incomplete, partial ways, but they have at least given us a hint of the idea that you can have discrete things so closely identified that they are within each other. There are ways of seeing the highest reality of all, that the Father and the Son, though separate, are so closely identified that when one speaks, so does the other. When one works, so does the other. And how you treat the one is how you treat the other. 1 John 2 makes it very clear. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. And he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. 1 John 2.23. In his prayer at the end of this discourse, Jesus is going to say, And this is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent, knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ, one. In Matthew, Jesus says to the crowd, all things have been delivered to me by my father. And no one knows the son except the father. Nor does anyone know the father except the son and the one to whom the son will reveal him. Mutual indwelling. But of course, if you're here today and you're a believer, you're a Trinitarian. So what about the spirit? Which is talking about the father and the son. Well, it's a great quote by, again, one of the early church teachers named Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory of Nazianzus, along with Basil and another Gregory, were great champions of the Trinity in the Eastern Church. And he wrote about how God progressively revealed the truth about himself so as to not overburden us. Listen to this beautiful quote. He says, the Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, but the Son more obscurely. The New Testament manifested the Son and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself. For it was not safe, he says, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son, nor when that of the Son was not yet received, to burden us further with the Holy Ghost, lest people perhaps might, like men loaded with food beyond their strength, or presenting eyes as yet too weak to bear it to the sun's light, risk losing even that which was within the reach of their powers." I think he's on to something. Progressive revelation. God revealed the Father Himself. To Israel, the sun was shadowy in the background. The time came for the sun to be manifest. And as you'll see in the upper room discourse, he starts revealing the truth about the spirit. But God didn't lay it on everyone all at once. Instead, he's let people grow up into this truth. Father and Son indwell, and of course Spirit indwells the Father, Father indwells the Spirit, Son indwells the Spirit, Spirit indwells the Son. Mutual indwelling. That's how you have one God. Monotheism. Three persons. Of course, this does seem like a scandalous claim, doesn't it? I mean, why should Philip, why should Thomas, why should you, why should I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son who indwells the Father, that the Father fully indwells Him? Why should we believe that? Why should we believe that if we've seen Him, we've seen the Father? I want you to look again at Jesus' answer to Philip. Look at verse 10. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. So why should I believe? Jesus, if you don't believe or you struggle to believe that Jesus and the Father mutually indwell, his answer to you is consider his words and his works. What sort of words has Jesus spoken? What sort of works has Jesus done? Do you remember the enemies that were sent to arrest Jesus? They came back and they said, no man ever spoke like this man. Consider his works, turning water into wine, healing a man lame his whole life, feeding 5,000, walking on water, healing a man born blind, raising a man from the dead. Who can do these works? Who's the source of these works? Who can supply this wisdom? Jesus is a man, but he's no mere man. I remember coming across this quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, the great conqueror, great tyrant, emperor. Amazing. He said this, I know men. And I tell you, Jesus Christ was not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the gods of other religions. The resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and other religions the distance of infinity. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself, Napoleon says, founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon sheer force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love. And at this hour, millions of men will die for him. In every other existence but that of Christ, how many imperfections! But from the first day to the last, He is the same, majestic and simple, infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. Everything in Him astonishes me, His Spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and whoever else in the world, there's no possible term of comparison. He is truly a being by himself. His ideas and his sentiments, the truths which he announces, his manner of convincing, are not explained by any human organization or by the nature of things. Napoleon says, I search in vain in history to find someone similar to Jesus Christ or anything which can approach the gospel. Neither history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature can offer me anything with which I am able to compare it or explain it. Here, everything is extraordinary. Napoleon did what Jesus proposed. If you struggle to believe that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, indwells the father and the father indwells him, then at least consider what he said and consider what he did and make your conclusion. If God can become a man and God did become a man, the only man that could ever have been was Jesus Christ. Friends, God is no longer unknowable, no longer abstract, no longer mysterious, no longer unreachable. So this morning, if you ask, how will this God see me if I come to Him? Answer, look at Jesus in the Gospels. How did He receive people when they came to Him? You say, what will God do with my sin? Look to Jesus. What did he do when sinful people came to him weeping at his feet? You say, how will God see my weakness and my confusion? Look at Jesus in the gospel. What did he do when he saw crowds of confused, wondering, uninstructed people? Four Gospels tell us how Jesus treated proud people and humble people, self-righteous people and seeking people, how he treated Jews and how he treated Gentiles, how he treated men and how he treated women, how he treated the elderly and how he treated children. Four Gospels tell you what He does with grief and what He does with loss, what He does with pain, what He does with sickness. Four Gospels will tell you how He worshipped, how He lived, how He died, how He rose. So you see, when you and I pray, when we worship, when we sing, this is the face we are looking at. I don't mean physical features. I mean, the kind of person he is. I mean, what Paul said in second Corinthians four, verse six, the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He is not faceless. We meet him in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our great and living God, we praise You that we can know You as a person. And so, glorious Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we thank You for the mediator, the one mediator, the God-man, Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man, able to mediate and reveal to us the fullness of the Godhead bodily. So, bless this truth to our hearts for the sake of worship, for the sake of our devotion. And for the unbeliever here, may he or she now be drawn to approach the living God in Jesus. May he or she pick up the Gospels and start reading, and start seeing, start learning what this God is like. We love you. We thank you for your self-revelation to us. And it's the name of our precious Savior, Jesus, that we pray in. Amen.