If you have a copy of the Scriptures, I invite you to turn to the Gospel of John. And as is our practice on the Lord's Day mornings, we are working through a book from the Bible, trying to walk through it, listen to it, learn from it. And after completing Ecclesiastes, from the Old Testament, we turned to the New Testament Gospel of John, the fourth Gospel. And for Christians, of course, it doesn't get any more basic than looking at the life of Jesus. What are we about? But wanting to know who Jesus is, wanting to know Him better, wanting to follow Him more nearly, and how, pray tell, do we learn of Jesus? Do we depend on You know, our experience, we try to hype ourselves up into some kind of dream or vision or some mystical experience. No, that's not the way that God has ordained. He has given us His Word. He has given us His inscripturated Word. And within His Word, we learn about who Christ is. So we're continuing our study today, and today we're looking at John 1, verses 14-18. And so let me invite you, as you're able, let's stand again in honor of the reading and the hearing of God's Word. John 1, verses 14-18. The Apostle John writes, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bear witness of him and cried, saying, this was he of whom I spake. He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man had seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. May God bless again the reading and the hearing of His word, and let's again join together in prayer. Let us pray. Gracious God, we thank you for the Bible. We know that this is not a book like other books. It is an inspired book. And we hear in this your God breathed words. We hear in these words the voice of our shepherd. And so we ask that you give us the illumination of the Holy Spirit. We need your help to understand. We need your help not to become bored or distracted. for our minds to wonder today. Give us a few moments here to listen to Your Word and what You are saying to us through it. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. I ask you to be seated. So again, we are at this essential reading for Christians, reading the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is a starting point. Many Christians, this is where it's begun for them. I remember a friend some years back who had a job where he commuted from New Jersey to New York City. And he hadn't grown up in a Christian home, didn't know much about Christianity, but somehow had a hunger, wanted to learn something about it. And he went into a bookstore and bought a Bible. He didn't know what kind of Bible to buy. Even in those days, this was decades ago, he still, there was the proliferation of modern translations. He didn't know what to buy. He ended up actually buying a kind of a liberal modern translation, the Moffat translation. He was sort of embarrassed to have this thing. He put it like in a brown paper bag, a Bible. He didn't want people to see that he was reading the Bible. But he sat there on the train on his commute and just started reading the Bible. And it was through just reading the Bible that his spiritual eyes were opened. Many people have come to know Christ simply by reading the word of God. And of course, reading the Word of God then often urges men on to going to gatherings of God's people on the Lord's Day to hear the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God. And this also is ordained of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 that God has ordained through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. Paul also says in Romans 10, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And so we're doing something elemental, basic as Christians today. We're reading the Bible, we're reading the story of Jesus, and we're asking God to teach us. Some of us know Christ already, but it's a journey where in this life you never reach the destination. Someone said, why are you Christians always studying? Don't you reach a point, Terminus, where you understand and you grasp it all? And the answer to that is no, we do not. We do not. We're always learning. There will come a stage, finally, we're told, the final stage of a believer's life is glorification, where we are either at our deaths or then ultimately at the coming of Christ and the final resurrection. We are in Christ's presence and we are changed see him face to face, though now we understand things dimly, darkly. But in this life, we're always studying, always learning. For some of us, we've read John many times. We're coming back to it again, coming back to this touchstone once more. And again, John famously starts the first 18 verses, sometimes called the prologue. And it's a unique introduction. I've asked before, where do we start telling the story of Jesus? Mark starts with his baptism by John in the Jordan. Matthew and Luke back it up. They started his birth in Bethlehem. His birth to Mary. But John goes even further. Where does he start the story of Jesus? In pre-existence. John 1.1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So before Jesus of Nazareth, there was a preexistent word. And remember, the Greek word for word is logos. And that preexistent logos was the second person of the Godhead who was in the beginning with God and who was and is God. John goes on to say, we've already looked at this, Everything in the world was made by him and without him there was nothing made that was made. The Logos was the creator, was there creating the world. where do we begin telling about Jesus? We have to begin in pre-existence. We have to go to the time before this world was even made. But then, John moves forward, and of course, what's going to be the focus of this book is what happened in the fullness of time when, according to God's own all-wise counsels and purposes, there came a time when the Word was made flesh. And we call this the incarnation. When the word took on the robes of humanity. When the word or the logos was embodied in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. And that word incarnation simply means the enfleshment. The word taking on flesh. This is the stunning declaration of Christians. And we've perhaps, if you've grown up in a Christian context, Christian home, or even in Western culture, kind of second nature to us. But when we think about it, what an astounding message this was for the first Christian preachers to proclaim. That in one man, there was the incarnation of the logos in the man The Lord Jesus Christ. It's a stunning declaration. The man Jesus was God present upon the earth. God in his creation. Now, you may reject that. You may not believe it. You may believe that Jesus was just an ordinary man, maybe a gifted man, a good teacher. a man of high ethical moral values who had a big historical influence or through his followers had a big influence. You may reject that, but you can't reject, I think, that this is what the Apostle John believed and what he declared, and it's what all the first Christians believed. They believed in this declaration that in Jesus the word was made flesh. They believed in it so completely that they were willing to lay down their lives for it. This is one of the stunning contrasts between something like Christianity and Islam. And we repeatedly see and saw again yesterday, Muslims are willing to kill for their faith. Christians are willing to die for their faith. Believers are willing to lay down their lives for the conviction that Jesus, in Jesus, the Word was made flesh and God was present upon the earth in Christ. But we're looking at a passage today which is just fundamental for Christian theology. It's one that believers come back to again and again and again to talk about the Incarnation. This is an inspired reflection on what happened when the Word was made flesh. It's one of the most important, illuminating statements of the doctrine of the Incarnation that we find in Scripture. And so it starts in verse 14, famous verse, and the Word was made flesh. When it says was made, Actually, the word there in Greek, genomai, means to become. The word became flesh. So it's not make in any sense to say that the word was a creature, or that Jesus was merely a creature. But the word became flesh. The word here again is that Greek word logos. This is the pre-existent logos. To say that the Word was made flesh or the Word became flesh is to say that the Word became fully a man. In Hebrews 10, verse 5, the Messiah is cited as saying to the Father at the incarnation, hast thou prepared for me? And so that is another way of saying, I think what John says here in John 1.14. The word, again, we might render it as the word became a man. In fact, there's some modern translations that render it in that way. The New Living Translation renders the opening of verse 14, so the word became human. I told you I'm reading John Calvin's commentary on the Gospel of John as I preach through this book. And Calvin, in his commentary, notes that John, under the spirits prompting, though specifically used the word flesh. In Greek, the word is sarx. And instead of saying the word was made a human or became a human, he specifically uses this word flesh. And Calvin says he did this to stress the wonder of the divine condescension. The Word was made flesh. So Calvin writes, he, that is John, intended to show to what a mean and despicable condition the Son of God on our account descended from the height of His heavenly glory. 4 Calvin adds, when Scripture speaks of man contemptuously, it calls him flesh. Yet, the Son of God stooped so low as to take upon Himself that flesh, subject to so many miseries. Why don't you just take a moment and just reach out. We rarely do this at CRVC, do visual aids. Just reach over and touch your flesh for a moment. I don't see you doing it. Reach over and touch your flesh. Supple, weak flesh. And then take a moment to consider this incredible claim. The Word was made flesh. God took on flesh. God became a man. Again, we may not be as surprised, shocked, scandalized by this as many people in the first century were when the Christians first came and said this. In fact, we know from the rest of the New Testament that there were people who battled against this, who denied it. John, the Apostle John, who wrote the Gospel of John, we know also wrote three epistles, three letters that are also in the New Testament, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. And if you look at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, you will find places there where the Apostle John is combating men, false teachers, who were denying that Jesus had truly come in the flesh. You can listen to this, you can turn to them. I'll read it to you. This is what he writes in 1 John 4, verse 1. He says, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try or test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world." Sometimes people take that term antichrist weave these fantastical, futuristic visions of a diabolical opponent of Christ. But according to 1 John 4, 1, an antichrist, an opposer of Christ, is someone who denies that Jesus had come in the flesh, that he had really been a man. Also in 2 John, the seventh verse, it only has one chapter, a very short book. It says there, John writes, for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, in the sarks. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Here's the interesting thing, in modern times, One of the greatest challenges to the Christian faith are people who deny the full deity of Jesus. They'll say, he was only a man. He was merely a man. They deny that he is God. That's a challenge we face today. But did you know that in the early days of Christianity, the more common challenge was apparently for Christians to refute those who denied the full humanity of Jesus. They didn't think this person could possibly have been a man. He could not possibly have been a person like we are, who had taken on flesh. Aside from those who simply deny that the Word took on flesh, there were other distortions that arose. And if you study the history of early Christianity, you know that there were many battles to attempt to understand biblically who Christ is and what did it mean for Him to be a human being. There was a fellow named Apollinarius who argued that Jesus had a human body but not a human soul. There was a fellow named Nestorius who argued that Jesus was actually two persons in one body. He was a divine person and a human person but not one person in one body. There was a fellow named Eutychius, who said that he was one person, but he had only one nature, and that one nature was a mixture of the divine and the human. But throughout the course of believers studying the Scriptures, and their pastors meeting in councils and pouring over the Scriptures, a consensus emerged and was affirmed among right-believing Christians that Christ was fully a man, having both a human body and soul, and that he was one person, contra Nestorius, with two distinct natures, fully God and fully man, contra Eutyches. And this consensus is reflected in classical Orthodox confessions of faith like ours. This is why it's important to be part of a church that has a confession of faith that's more than six bullet points on the website. To have a historic creed, a historic confession of faith, and in our Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, as in the Westminster Confession of Faith, there's a chapter, chapter 8 of Christ the Mediator, and the second paragraph reflects an orthodox view of what it means when we say that the word was made flesh. And we'll eventually get to this in our Sunday afternoon series. It'll be a while. Let me just read to you what it says there. The second paragraph of chapter eight, the son of God. the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very an eternal God, the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance and equal with Him who made the world, who upholds and governs all things He has made. did, when the fullness of time was complete, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities of it, yet without sin, being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, and so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the Scriptures, so that the two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion, which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man?" That orthodox construal is that in Jesus there is one person with two natures. One person, very God, and very man. And this is also likewise taught in our Baptist catechism, which we teach to our children and teach to ourselves. How did Christ being the son of God become man? The catechism asks and it answers, Christ, the son of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. Again, against that in the background as against Apollinarius. being conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin. If we are to be faithful Christians, we need to get our understanding of Jesus right. Now, when most of us became Christians, we simply, our hearts were changed and we trusted in Christ. But as we grow in Christ, Part of what happens is we pour over the Scriptures, we come to know them better, and we come more clearly to understand who He is. We want to know this One to whom we are giving our lives and our allegiance. And we honor Christ when we think rightly of Christ. John continues, going back to John 1.14, after that opening declaration, the Word was made flesh. Then he says, and dwelt among us. And he dwelt among us. The Greek verb here for to dwell in is skenao. And there's a Greek noun that's related to this, skene. And that word means tent or tabernacle. And so sometimes you'll find a modern translation that renders verse 14. And the word was made flesh and tabernacle among us, cast his tent or pitched his tent among us. And of course, one of the interesting things about this is in the Old Testament, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. But when the early some of the early Christians who were Greek speakers and even some of the Jews before that, the advent of Christ, who were Greek speaking when they translated the Old Testament into Greek, And they came to the descriptions in the Old Testament of the tabernacle. We've been reading that in the afternoons. If you've been listening, we've been reading through Exodus, the instructions for God's instructions to Moses at Sinai about how to build the tabernacle. What do you guess that the word is in Greek that renders the word tabernacle? Skene. And often it talks about when the Israelites travel around and they pitch their tents or they or they camp somewhere that uses this verb, skenao. And so it says very figuratively, a lot of meaning to this. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Calvin notes that it may be stated in this way in part to remind us that the first advent of Christ was not meant to be of continual duration but was only temporary. He would only be here on earth for a limited amount of time. He would only cast His tent among us for a limited amount of time. In His first advent, He came to give His life a ransom for many, but then to be raised and exalted until His second advent when He will come again. And when He comes again, it will be so that He is all in all, so that God dwells with us in a permanent manner. But the first coming was just of a temporary nature. Also, I think we can certainly think that by using this language, describing His sojourn among us as casting His tabernacle or tent among us, that we are reminded that Christ is now the center of our worship, the focus of our praise. I've said this before, that when you look at the pre-Christian religions, the Romans and the Greeks, they loved temples. Man, they built temples everywhere. And if you've ever traveled to that part of the world, you can visit the remains of these great temples. I have had the opportunity to be in Rome You can see the ruins of various temples. And you can go into, what is it, the Pantheon, sort of a temple that was built to worship all the gods. They loved temples. There were temples that littered every city. They thought the Jews were really weird. Why? Because they only had one temple in Jerusalem. And only one place where sacrifice and worship of God took place. And then the Christians come along. And where is their temple? Well, they don't have one. Why? Because Christ is their temple. Christ is the tabernacle. He is the tent of meeting. I was thinking about that. You know, I've been a Christian a long time. I'm a pastor and I've done, you know, even academic work in the study of the Bible. I have never yet had a chance to go to to Israel and to see some of those sites. I was thinking about that the other day. In some way, I would like to go to the town of Bethlehem. I would like to go to Nazareth. I would like to walk by the Sea of Galilee. My folks had a chance to do that years ago, and I know it was meaningful to them. I'd like to go to Jerusalem. It would be nice. But you know what? I don't have to make a pilgrimage there. I don't have to go there. It would be nice. It would be whipped cream or cherry on top. But I don't have to go there to know Christ. Because Christians don't have a geographical place to which we have to make a pilgrimage. We service and we focus our lives upon someone who is accessible to us at any time. He tabernacled among us. He was here among us. And we can meet with Him. We can tabernacle with Him at any time through the work of the Spirit. Christians can meet with Christ in beautiful meeting houses, beautiful church buildings. They can meet with Him in a storefront. They can meet with Him in a home. They can meet with Him in a field, as the old Scottish Covenanters did when they were driven from their churches, and they went out in the fields and worshipped Christ in secret. Well, John goes on to say, after he says, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he says, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. And you'll notice in my translation at least, the King James Version, that is set off with a parenthesis here. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. And I think it's done that way to say, the translator saying is, this is sort of John, the apostles writing this. He's saying something to us, to the people who are reading this and hearing this. And so he's giving sort of his own sort of First person witness. Who are the among us? I don't think he's speaking here just broadly of human beings. He's speaking more narrowly of his own experience as an apostle. We're reminded here that we're reading something that was written by a man who saw Jesus. A man who heard Jesus. A man who had actually handled or touched Jesus, who had put his hand on His shoulder. Jesus had put His hand on His shoulder, on His head. We're told later on that when they sit down for a meal, that John is right there at the side of Jesus. Right there reclining at the couch beside Him. And so when John says, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he's talking about his own first-person experience of Christ. And I talked earlier about the fact that John also wrote the three epistles, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. 1st John 1.1 opens with John also talking about his firsthand experience of Christ. It famously opens 1 John 1.1, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life. Again, consider, we are listening to the account of an apostle who was in the presence of Jesus and who heard, saw, and touched Him. And this man, saw no contradiction. He did not think it was irrational or absurd to say, this man was the incarnation of the preexistent word. Now, you may not believe that. You may reject it. But let's not argue about what John believed. And sometimes it seems like it was so long ago, Thousands of years ago, wasn't that long ago. I've told this story before. I remember when I was in college, there was an elderly professor, retired professor, Professor Emeritus in my college. And I remember one day in a chapel service, he was up in his late 90s. And the minister who was conducting the service said, you know, this brother's nearly 100 years old. It only takes a string of 20 such men with their hands held across the centuries to reach back to the time of Christ. It's not that long ago in some sense. And we're listening now through the power of the inscripturated word. We're listening to not some fantasy or fable, not some once upon a time, We're listening to the first person account of a man who knew Jesus, who saw Jesus with his eyes, who listened to His teaching, who saw Him heal people, who saw Him do miraculous things, who listened to His teaching and knew that there was something in it that was more than what he had ever heard from any other human teacher before. There was a gravitas of power and authority that was like the power and the authority of God. It was like God speaking. Not only that, what was He also a witness of? He saw Him crucified. We'll see in John 19 that the beloved disciple was at the foot of the cross. And what else did He see? He saw Him raised. He saw Him alive. Now, you may not believe His witness. You know, if you believe any fact of history, you depend upon the witnesses of people who lived in past generations. I, some of you know, I sometimes teach a class, college class, called The Life and Teachings of Jesus. And my standard opening lecture is I ask the class, do you believe that there was a 16th president of the United States named Abraham Lincoln? And they'll say, of course, yes, and I'll ask them, Did you ever meet him? Do you know him? No. Do you know anybody who knew him? No. Well, why do you believe? Well, we can read things that people wrote about him and, okay, you believe that because you believe the record of people who wrote about him. Why is it then that people think it's some kind of fantastical, Check your brain at the door when Christians say, we believe what John wrote about Jesus. We believe it is true. He was there. He saw him. He heard him. He handled him. And he could write of him without thinking it absurd at all. he can write of him, the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. The word here for to behold, to see, Liddy, you might appreciate this, is thea omae. It means to see, watch something. The Greek noun theatron comes from it, from which we get the English word theater. We were in the audience, John said. We beheld. We saw his glory. We could reflect a little bit on that word glory as well. In Greek, it's the word doxa. Of course, John, according to the flesh, was a Jewish man. He was a fisherman in Galilee. And he certainly would have been familiar with the Old Testament. He would have been able to read the Hebrew Bible. And in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for glory is shekinah. And it's a word that means we render it as glory. It has a sense of awesomeness, but it has a very literal meaning in Hebrew. It means weightiness. So in the Old Testament, when they talked about the glory of God, they meant that somehow to have some perception of who God is, to understand His glory, is to understand His weightiness, His heaviness. In the Old Testament, people didn't have this flimsy, view of God, God is my best buddy, my friend. You were fearful to walk into the presence of God. You came into the presence of God with fear and reverence. Just read through the Old Testament. Some people don't walk away alive after being in the presence of God. Think about Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10 who offer strange fire before the Lord and are struck down dead. Think about Uzzah who reached out to try to steady the ark and dropped down dead. God is weighty. There's a heaviness about God that elicits fear. And it's interesting to hear John, who would have known all that tradition from the Old Testament, Here he could say, when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, we beheld His, the weightiness, the glory of Jesus Christ. He's transferring here to his description of the logos, the things that were said in the Old Testament of God. We beheld His glory, His weightiness. What's he referring to? Again, John and the other apostles saw the glory of Christ's life. They saw the glory of His teachings. They saw the glory of His miracles. More specifically, it might be referring to the fact that John, along with Peter and John's brother James, were on the Mount of Transfiguration. It's interesting that in the Gospel of John, There's never a narrative account of what we call Jesus revealing his glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, although it's there in Matthew, Mark, and Luke's gospel. And there was a time, actually, after Peter confessed to Jesus, you are the Christ, that Jesus took Peter, James, and John up onto a mountain, and we're told that he revealed his glory to them. He revealed his weightiness to them. Peter gives us a first-person account of this in 2 Peter 1, verses 16 and following, wherein Peter said, for we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with Him in the Holy Mount." Peter, again, like John, is saying, listen, I'm an eyewitness. I saw it with my own eyes. I'm a witness to it. You may reject my witness, but there's no question about what the witness is. And of course, This might also, when he says, we beheld his glory, it might refer to the fact that he and the other apostles saw his death on the cross, and they were witnesses, of course, to his glorious resurrection from the dead, and then 40 days after that, to his exaltation into glory with his promise that he would come again in the same way that he had left. What kind of glory did Christ have? John goes on to say in verse 14, we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. This introduces here in verse 14 a title for Christ that is very important for John. And he uses this title, description of the Logos as the eternal second person of the Godhead, several times within his gospel. And what he wants to say is that this Logos, the second person of the Godhead was the eternally begotten son. It's here for the first time in verse 14, that we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father. It's there in verse 18, when it says, no man have seen God at any time, the only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. And you may know one of the best known verses in all the scriptures, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. It's also there in John 3.18, where it says, because He hath not believed in the name of the only begotten, Son of God. Talking about the person who will be condemned because he doesn't believe in the only begotten Son. From all eternity, the Father has been begetting the Son. The Son has been being begotten. And the Spirit is proceeding from the Father and the Son. What was distinctive about this glory? Let's go back to John 1, verse 14. After He says, we beheld His glory, What was distinctive about it? It was a glory, John says, that was full of grace and truth. It was a glory that was full of grace and truth. What is grace? Well, grace is that fantastic word, biblical word, that Christians love. We name our churches Grace Church. We name our schools Grace Christian School and things like that. We write hymns about it and sing about God's amazing grace. Grace, of course, means God's unmerited favor. It's the favor of God that comes upon believers not because of anything that they have done. You do not become a Christian because you do a series of right things. You do not become a Christian because you read your Bible a lot, or you were baptized, or because you joined a church, or because you filled in a decision card at an evangelistic meeting, or because you tried really hard to have a religious experience. or because you went to a service and you swayed while the praise band sang and you tried to work up some kind of emotional experience. You do not become a Christian because you went to the homeless shelter and fed the poor, or clothed the naked, or visited the sick, or the infirmed, or the imprisoned. You do not become a Christian because of your works Although every person who is converted will have good works flow from his life, to become a Christian is only because of the unmerited favor of God. Because of the grace of God in Christ. That's the amazing thing that John, James, Peter, later Paul, they would just be blown away by this. that in Christ the unmerited favor of God came to them. Full of grace, he says, and full of, as well, truth. Some commentators hold that simply the two words are there really saying the same thing. Full of grace, the reference to truth is simply a restatement of grace. Of course, Jesus will later say in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. What John is saying here is that Jesus was the embodiment of God's truth. He was the embodiment of everything that is right, everything that is accurate, everything that is correct, everything that is reasonable about the Lord. Jesus came full of grace and truth. Well, there's no way we're going to get these verses today, were we? We made it through one. We meditated on one verse. Well, friends, this is our lifelong vocation. It is to meditate upon the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to come to these inspired writings, like the Gospel of John, and to read them over and over again and reflect upon this. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us. I don't know how many of you have had the experience of going to a foreign land to visit. Some of you maybe have gone and lived in foreign lands as I have. I've told people before that, you know, years back when we went to live in post-communist Hungary, And we went to live there. Before we went to live in Budapest, I couldn't have told you three Hungarian words. I didn't understand any of it. I found out later it's a Finno-Ugaric language. It has nothing to do with English. It's not Germanic. It's not even Slavic. It's a completely unique language. The closest thing to it is Finnish. Finno-Ugaric. It's just the vocabulary words have nothing to do with words that are come from Latin or Greek or German as in English and you just when you're you don't didn't grow up speaking you just got to learn everything from scratch and we went there and told the story before we went into the grocery stores not knowing anything at the time this is right after communism and there weren't supermarkets to go to we just would go into stores and point at things you know it would be like you know that's it that was our how we communicated How refreshing it was when you ran into someone who knew the least bit of English. Man, how nice it was when you ran into someone who could speak your language and who could understand you and who could maybe even interpret for you or act as a go-between for you. Well, if I can make a very dim analogy, this is in part what Christ does for us. He shows us in His words and actions who God is and what He has done for us. He communicates things to us that otherwise we would be unable to understand. But He was just not an interpreter who could help us understand another human language and culture, but he mediated to us the infinitely higher reality of a God whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts and whose ways are higher than our ways. It has well been said that for the God of the Bible to commune with men is as ridiculous as a man thinking that he can commune with an earthworm. Let's go get to know the earthworms. It's ridiculous, isn't it? You know what? There's an even greater chasm between how finite, fleshly men would know anything of God. How would this, such a vast chasm ever, ever be crossed? There could not be a ladder that could be built from earth to heaven, could there? It could only come with a ladder being extended from heaven to earth. What happened in Christ was that God, in his mercy and in his grace, condescended and took on flesh, became one of us so that we might know God. And we will never, ever, ever get over wondering about that, being in awe of it, admiring it, and worshiping him because of it. Amen? Let me invite you to stand together.