My friends, in Christ alone let us hear the word of the Lord for
us this morning. And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the 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 at before me, after
me, ranks before me, because He was before me.
For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
For the law was given through Moses.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God, God the only Son who is at the
Father's side. He has made him known, and this
is the word of the Lord. Dear Lord, we do give you thanks
and praise once again for Your word.
And we ask that you would take it, shape it, mold our hearts
with it, We pray in your Son's name.
Amen. Please be seated.
So how do you get to know somebody?
How do you develop a relationship with somebody?
This is fairly you can immediately jump to some obvious
things. You watch what they do, as we
all know why our actions speak very loudly about who we are.
So, and if you're going to develop a relationship with
somebody, you watch what they do.
You of course talk with other people that might know them.
The idea that somebody else would have some insight into
somebody that you're getting to know, that's obviously very
helpful and very important. The idea of connecting with
other people across the board, a great way of getting to know
somebody. But I think most of us would
naturally assume and appropriately so, that if you
want to get to know somebody, you got to spend time with them,
spend time with them, ask them questions, talk with them,
listen to them, share common thoughts and ideas.
That's a natural part of how we get to know somebody.
How do you get to know? One of the perks of my job is
that I get to meet a lot of people.
Folks are often interested in in having me meet their family
members or visitors or friends or something along those lines.
So I get to meet a lot of different people.
And one of the things that you do right off the bat is you try
to find some common ground, because some common ground is
going to help develop the initiative.
And it's again, it's fairly easy for me because a lot of people
that I meet are connected with church or interested in church
or something like that. So immediately whenever we start
talking, we develop a common bond around what church do you
go to or do you have a church background or something along
those lines? Or we talk about Pittsburgh, or
we talk about the Steelers or something along.
We quickly find some kind of a common ground in order to
develop and build upon a relationship with.
About two years ago, this church sent Kelly and I over to the
Central African Republic, where we were speakers at a missionary
conference. And of course it was my interest
to get. When we got over there, I wanted
to get to know some of the people from Central African
Republic. So we talked with them.
We got to know the CAR. That's how we're going to
nickname it. Wanted to get to know the folks
from the CAR. The problem was there was almost
no connecting spot for me. I didn't speak any of the
languages that they spoke. They didn't speak English, at
least not very well. All the cultural experiences
that we might share in common, we didn't have in common.
There was very little connecting spot.
There was very little upon which we could build upon in order to
develop a relationship. And when Kelly and I were over
there for two years, two years, two weeks, and during that time
it felt like 2 years. During that time, we of course,
wanted to get to know people and by God's blessing, the church
leaders took the initiative to invite us over to their home.
And they had to be incredibly accommodating to us because we
didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know how to interact
when we were over there. They were very gracious to us
because we made some social faux pas.
We, they were took time to explain to us what the food was.
They took time to show us around the house.
They took time to show us their family, all the things that were
necessary for us if we were going to build any kind of a
connecting spot, any kind of a relationship at all.
And it was all possible, made possible, simply because the CAR
people went way out of their way to accommodate themselves to our
limitations. We were incredibly limited and
they went out of their way to accommodate themselves.
And if they had not, we would never have developed any kind of
a relationship at all with the people that are there.
We're in the middle of our Advent series, and the Advent
series is, of course, focusing upon Emmanuel, God with us, God
coming and dwelling with us. And specifically we're looking
at what are the gifts that we get from His presence, from the
fact that God is present here or the God has come to earth in
human form. What are some of the gifts that
we receive because of His presence, His Emmanuel with us?
And last week, if you were here with us, we looked at the very
first part of the text in which I read here for us, verse 14.
If you have John chapter 1 open for you, we're going to flip
through a couple different texts, but having John one open
will probably be the best way for you to go.
Verse 14 and the word became flesh.
And here we're talking about that incarnation that that
marvel that that utterly and totally unique action that God
has taken in all creation where God himself takes on human form.
That's what incarnation means. He took upon himself flesh.
This is God coming to dwell with us.
God came, became flesh and dwelt among us.
And last week we looked at that idea of tabernacling, the fact
that God not just lived here among us, but he desired to be
among us, that that was the desire of his heart to
Tabernacle to be with us. In that regard, we have seen his
glory, the glory as of the only Son.
Today what I want to do is I want to look at a separate idea
of that comes from the gift of his tabernacling with us, the
Emmanuel God with us. And that's the idea of God
revealing himself, the revelation of God.
This is the notion of a doctrine of divine accommodation.
The doctrine of a divine accommodation is very similar to
what the CAR folks did with Kelly and I.
They accepted our weaknesses. They accepted our limitations.
They were gracious when we made mistakes, and they lowered
themselves. They humiliated themselves.
They acted humble before us in lowering themselves so that they
could communicate with us on our level.
This is precisely what the Lord does in Emmanuel.
This is one of the gifts of His revelation dwelling with us.
Take a look at verse 18 if you would.
Verse 18. No one has ever seen God.
Now this is just a statement of reality.
No one has ever seen God, period, full stop.
God, the only Son who is at the Father's side, He has made Him
known. Now I need to step aside just
for a second and say this. That right wrapped into this
verse and wrapped into what we're going to be talking about
today is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity describes the
relationship in the one God of the three persons, the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Normally in a setting like this,
my guess is that you along with me, whenever you come across the
idea of the Trinity, that our best defense is simply to say,
well, that's a mystery. That's something beyond us.
Luckily, we don't have to understand it.
We're just going to pass it by. I think that's a bit of a
mistake. Now, today's not the day in
which we're going to tackle the doctrine of the Trinity, but the
doctrine of the Trinity cannot be ignored by God's people
because God has taken the time to reveal it to us once again.
If he has taken his time to show us something of himself, it is
incumbent upon us to try to understand it, to embrace it.
And so this is an encouragement to you that you would encourage
us, the leadership of the church, that we need a Bible
study, we need a Sunday school class, we need an evening
teaching. We need something so that we can
help understand what the Scriptures do tell us about the
Trinity. It's woven here into this
understanding of this passage. And we can't.
We're going to have to do what we always do, just say, well,
OK, it's out there. But it's given to us to
understand, at least to embrace. And so I'm encouraging you to
encourage us to pursue the doctrine of the Trinity here
within this church because we have to.
It's biblical. It is the way our Lord has
revealed himself to us. No one has ever seen the God
that's true. But God, the only Son who's at
the Father's side, he has made him known.
Now the the very end of that sentence, you've got preposition
or pronouns that toss themselves out here.
What are we saying? That he, the Son of God, has
made him the Father known. The Son has made the Father
known. Listen to what we're
articulating here, that one of the benefits, one of the
blessings, the the gifts of Emmanuel, God being with us, is
that he reveals to us God the Father, God the Son.
Being present here reveals to us God the Father.
Now the problem the, the, the reality is that for many of us,
we don't recognize what a marvelous action on God's part
that really is, because we tend to think that getting to know
God is similar to getting to know each other.
OK, We have all these connections.
We have all these connecting spots.
We're a part of the Hebron church.
We're all connected by living close to Pittsburgh.
I can understand most of your jobs.
You can understand most of my job.
We can kind of talk. We, I see your family, you see
my family. There's all these connecting
spots. And so it's easy for us to make
these relation, to build a relationship together.
And for many of us, we tend to think that God is just somebody
else like that, that it's easy for us to make a relationship
with God. All we do is have to build on
all of the connecting spots, completely forgetting that we
hold so much more in common with the people from CAR than we ever
possibly do with God himself. Imagine what we're talking
about. We are talking about a creature,
somebody who is created, somebody who is finite and very
definition thinking that it's easy to develop a relationship
with somebody who is infinite, somebody who is eternal,
somebody who is all knowing and all-encompassing, somebody who
is the creator. We should be astounded at the
arrogance that we have to think that we can easily build a
relationship with a being like that if it were not for the
doctrine of divine accommodation where God Himself accommodates
Himself to our weakness, to our limitations, to our brokenness,
By what? Emmanuel coming and dwelling
here on earth with His people because He has done so.
Now we've talked before about the purpose of the incarnation.
The purpose of the incarnation is the ultimately leads to the
cross of Jesus Christ. It's wonderful that we were
brought to this passage of Scripture by the song we just
sang because it touches on the whole incarnation and it leads
us to the cross of Jesus Christ, the salvation of our souls.
Absolutely the center core purpose of the incarnation.
But you can't deny the side benefits of the incarnation.
And one of them here is this beautiful picture that God
reveals himself. He accommodates himself to our
lowliness by coming to us, dwelling with us, and then what?
Making him known, making God known to us.
There's the idea that in every human being there's a yearning
for God. Now, I know some people would
deny this, but it's an anthropologically proven,
demonstratable evidence. And of course, biblically and
theologically we see that to be true.
Every person in some format or another yearns for God.
John Calvin, the theologian called it the sense of
divinitatus, That is, the sense of the divine that built into
every person. There's a sense a yearning for
God. Saint Augustine talked about a
hole in our hearts, a God shaped vacuum in every human being that
can only be filled properly spoken by God.
And yet that God shaped toll in every heart is yearning to be
filled with something. And everybody reaches out for
something. Even the atheist ultimately, I
believe has a yearning for God, although they might deny God's
existence. All of us have this yearning for
the Lord, and here we see in the midst of the redemptive history,
the story that brings us salvation, the incarnation of
Jesus Christ. We have that wonderful
accommodation of God to fill that very void.
The idea of our salvation is built a course upon the cross of
Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for our sin.
All that is true, but it is not a doctrine that we are supposed
to not know. It is an experience that we are
supposed to walk in each of our lives.
And that's only possible when we know the one who has sent it,
when we know God himself. And so the beauty of this text
tells us that the coming of Jesus Christ, one of the great
gifts of his presence dwelling with us is that we actually get
to see God himself. We do get to see God himself.
The the great challenge here, the opening of this verse.
No one has ever seen God realize that no one has ever seen God.
But the Son has revealed the Father to each and every one of
us. Now that revelation comes, I
think with three understandings, 3 aspects to it.
One, its fullness. Two, it's continual in nature.
And three, it's uniqueness, it's fullness, the fullness.
This is what the passage that Jerry read for us, that he
commented on and that Sue commented on the peace of God
that is built into there. I'm interested in the part where
Phillip says to Jesus, he says Jesus says something that's very
pious and and that frankly, I would expect Jesus would Philip
probably said it with the expectation that Philip would
pat him on the back and say, oh, very good job.
But that's not what he does. Philip says to him, Jesus, just
show us the father and that's enough for us.
You know, this is one of these hyper spiritual religious guys.
Look at how wonderful I am. Just show us the father Jesus,
and that's good enough for us. And I suspect he kind of
expected to be applauded by by by Jesus wife Philip.
That's a great question. That's a great desire.
That's the yearning. That's that that God shaped
vacuum within your heart. Yes, you want to see Jesus, but
that's not how Jesus responds, is it?
Look at how Jesus responds in chapter 14 verses 910.
When whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say show us the father?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in
me? The fullness of seeing God is
found in Jesus Christ. The fullness of seeing God is
found in Jesus Christ, and it's what is what is seen.
If you want to see the love of Jesus Christ, sorry.
If you want to see the love of God, look to Jesus Christ.
If you want to see the wrath of God, look to Jesus Christ.
If you want to see the righteousness of God, look to
Jesus Christ. If you want to see the mercy of
God, If you want to see the goodness of God, the compassion
of God, the peace of God, the comfort of our God, if you want
to see our God, look to Jesus Christ.
The fullness, everything that is there is seen in the fullness of
Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus is
articulating. That's what John is saying here
at the end, that he has revealed him to us so that we can see not
a little bit of Jesus, not a little bit of God, not the parts
that we want to see, not things that we need to supplement.
And that is the damning danger that confronts every one of us.
The damning danger is simply this that will say, yeah, Jesus
is good at showing me some parts about God, but I need something
more. I need something else.
I need something clearer. I need something that scratches
my itch. I need something that satisfies
me. And over and over again the
scripture says the only thing that you need is Jesus Christ.
The danger of saying Jesus plus Jesus and something else is
completely debunked by this. Where Peter where, where Philip
is addressed and Philip says we just want to see the Father and
Jesus says look at me. That is the only response that
each and every one of us can possibly have.
Look to Jesus Christ. Now that's great for Philip,
that's great for the disciples. They had Jesus Christ.
They had Christ before them. What about us?
What about us 2000 years later? And the great scriptural witness
is that that revelatory work of Jesus Christ where He reveals to
us God the Father is ongoing today.
It still goes on even today, the ongoing work of the continual
work of the revelation of our God.
Look at John 14 verses 16 through 17.
Jesus says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another helper who will be with you forever, even the spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees
him nor knows him. But you know him, for he dwells
in you, and he will be with you. The revelation of God for
Jesus's disciples has not stopped.
It's an ongoing work. It's a continual thing that
happens for each and every one of us today.
And it happens why and how through the Word of God.
And so we have the Spirit of God speaking through the Word of God
amidst the people of God. That shows us the Son of God,
whereby we can see the character of our God.
Wow, that was really good. Let's see if we can do that
again. How did I start it?
The Spirit of God using the Word of God amidst the people of God,
revealing the Son of God so that we might see the character of
God. Wow, that's really good.
I got to try to remember that in the next next time.
The continual work of the Holy Spirit in each of our lives is
something that is available and open to each and every believer.
Every follower of the Lord is blessed with the Holy Spirit.
Whose intent? What is the Spirit sent to do?
This is in John 14 and John 16. The Holy Spirit is to tell us
and to show us Jesus Christ and one of the great blessings of
the presence of Jesus Christ. Is to reveal to us the
character, the purpose, the love of God, the Father for each and
every one of us, the fullness of God, the continual revelation of
God, and finally the unique revelation of God, the unique
showing of who we are in Jesus Christ.
Look at John chapter 10. I am the Father, are one, Jesus
says, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in
me and that I am in the Father. The reality is, is there's that
great hole that exists in every believer, in every created human
being, that great vacuum that can only be filled by God, can
only be filled by Jesus Christ. The exclusive nature of our
coming to know God is bound up in Jesus Christ and in him
alone. People don't like hearing that.
People don't like being confronted with an exclusive
option like that, an exclusive choice.
And yet the reality of the Scriptures are that we find
Jesus Christ not by taking a little bit of this and a little
bit of this idea and a little bit of this and a little, but we
find Jesus Christ. We find God the Father in Jesus
Christ and in Him alone. So what?
So I know in a group this size that there are people who do not
know the Lord, who are not following Jesus Christ.
There is but one way to know God.
There is but one way to salvation.
There is but one way truth in the life, and that is in Jesus
Christ and in Him alone. And if you are outside of the
faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, then there is a straightforward
step for you to take at this point, and that is to bow your
head and to say Jesus Christ. Reveal the Father to me.
I know that I am desperately in need of Him.
Show Him to me. That's what it means if you are
separated from Jesus Christ, to hear this word, to hear the fact
that Jesus has revealed the Father to us.
There is but one option for those who do not know Him, and
that is to turn to Him. Dear Lord, I do know that there
are people here that are present that do not know you at this
time. Please call them to yourself.
Speak powerfully to them, open your, open them up to your way
and your love. We pray.
But what about all of those who do know Jesus Christ And they
come here to this place. And we have a reality that there
are so many folks that go through the ritual of coming to
church that have lost that fervor, that have lost the
passion. They, they remember what it was
like last week or last month or last year or last decade.
They remember their passion. They know what it's like to
follow Jesus Christ. And it has fallen off for them.
Now they come here because it's something they're supposed to
do. It's a club in which they belong
to. There is but one response and
that is to look to Jesus Christ. It is through him that you will
experience the, the, the fervor, the passion that you're yearning
for. That doesn't come by ramping
yourself up. That doesn't come by doing more
things. That comes by looking at Jesus
Christ because by looking at Him, we see God.
There is but one option for you and that's the look to Jesus
Christ. Dear Lord, and fought in heaven.
We know that there are so many of us here that are yearning
again to see you more clearly, to know you more faithfully.
And we know that that only comes through the love and care of
Jesus Christ. Reveal him to us more clearly
that we might see you and that we might again feel that passion
and that fervor of following after you.
And there are many of us that experience that passion and know
that fervor and know what it means to follow the Lord.
What does it say to us? Never ever, ever stop looking at
Christ. Christ is where your life is.
Christ is where you're, you're where the revelation of God is.
Never cease looking at Jesus Christ.
Great God in heaven, we pray that you would indeed work
powerfully in our hearts to reveal to us yourself through
Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, who taught us to pray
together, saying, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy
name, thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day Our Daily
Bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors and
lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine
is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen.