In his sermon 'To Know Jesus is to Know His Father', Jason Dohm discusses the inseparable unity between Jesus and God the Father. He emphasizes that understanding Jesus is understanding God, as Jesus is the image of the invisible God and His teachings reveal the Father to humanity. The sermon highlights the importance of knowing Jesus in His godhood, explaining that to know Jesus only as a man is to misunderstand Him entirely. Dohm explores the concept of the Trinity, illustrating how Jesus shares an eternal and unbreakable bond with the Father, and how this relationship is foundational to Christian belief. The sermon also discusses the significance of Jesus’ resurrection as a confirmation of His divine teachings and reflects on the historical development of Christology in the early church. Through various biblical references, Dohm underscores the idea that Jesus' words and works are co-spoken and co-worked with the Father, authenticating His divine nature and mission.

Spurgeon was an enormously gifted preacher. He is known as the Prince of Preachers. But he was a really nervous preacher. It is said that He would say within his own heart, with every step on his way up into the pulpit, I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Spirit.

I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Even though his messages were invariably brilliant. For me, though it's excellent to have confidence in the Holy Spirit, when I stand before you, I'm confident in this. The Lord loves you.

Whether I feel great about the sermon, terrible about the sermon, or somewhere in between, all of that is irrelevant. What's relevant is that it is God who feeds His people. It is God who helps His people. Ultimately, it's God who sends a preacher into the pulpit to bring His Word to His people. So, I believe that God loves you.

So here I am to preach. The title of the sermon this morning is, To Know Jesus is to Know His Father. I think Jesus really presses the truth of this in four slightly different ways on His disciples, His hearers in this text. Really the title says it all. To know Jesus is to know His Father.

When you really know Jesus, you really know God the Father and God the Spirit too. We are getting ready to graduate as we work our way through the rest of this chapter and the coming chapters on extensive teaching about the Holy Spirit too. We really can wrap the Holy Spirit into this too, even though He's not mentioned explicitly in this text. The context for this is the three verses that we were in in detail last week, verses 4-6. Let me just read those again.

Read along with me as I read 4-6 just to set our context. Jesus said, and where I go, you know, and the way you know. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going and how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

For a little bit now in what we've been studying extending to the end of chapter 13, Jesus has been talking about glorious spiritual realities. In talking about the glorious spiritual realities, his purpose is to fortify his disciples against what is getting ready to happen 24 hours from now, going to the cross. And how disheartening, discouraging, disillusioning maybe even the sight of Jesus on the cross would be to these disciples. So Jesus is leading them into glorious spiritual realities which are intended to strengthen them, encourage them, even embolden them, even with Jesus going to the cross. And they're missing it.

They're missing the glorious spiritual realities that He's unfolding before them. Why? Because Peter at the end of 13, and now Thomas, could only think about the immediate physical realities. Jesus is talking about glorious spiritual realities and they can't get past the immediate physical realities. So Jesus is pressing them beyond the immediate physical realities, so that they'll receive the strength and encouragement, and even emboldened from the glorious spiritual realities that he's trying to use to build them up 24 hours before he goes to the cross.

So they knew more than they knew they knew. Jesus says, you know? Thomas says, Lord we don't know. Thomas was wrong. Peter was wrong.

Jesus was right. Today's text picks up midstream with what Jesus has said. Maybe he's taken one breath between last week's text. So we took a week off. Jesus didn't take a week off.

He might have taken one breath and just continued on. So I really want to keep it closely connected with last week's text. And so our text this week begins with Jesus completing his response to Thomas. Let's pray and ask for the Lord's help. Father, Son, Spirit, you are God.

Son, Spirit, you are God. Three subsistences, one God. Here we are standing looking down into a well. The bottom is not in sight. We let down rope, doesn't touch the bottom.

We let down more rope, not to the bottom yet. We let down more rope, not to the bottom yet. We let down more rope, not to the bottom yet. We are out of rope, we still are not touching the bottom. You have such a sense of this in this text.

You are a glorious God. In many ways, you are an incomprehensible God, and yet you have been pleased to reveal yourself to your people through your Son, Jesus. Let the contemplation of it be so sweet to us today. Fill us with joy in your presence God, because of your Word we pray this in Jesus name, amen. Let's begin by looking just at verse 7.

So hopefully you're still there in John chapter 14. I just want to read verse 7, stop, and talk about it. 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." In this verse, Jesus completes his response to Thomas. I'm summarizing the verse not by saying any of the contents in the verse, but by reminding you that this is almost mid-sentence to Jesus.

Maybe he took one breath, maybe he just kept going. One breath, you could say both sentences. He has just said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." Men don't talk like that. No prophet has ever spoken like that.

No apostle has ever spoken like that. They pointed to others, Jesus Christ is pointing at Himself. He is the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. Father, except through Him.

This is Jesus in His Godhood. To know Jesus in His Godhood is to know the real Jesus. To not know Jesus in His Godhood is to not know Him at all. That is what this text is teaching. That is what Jesus is teaching.

To know Jesus in his Godhood. To know Jesus as God is to know the real Jesus. To not know Jesus in his Godhood is to know an inadequate truncated Jesus. A truncated Jesus would be a bit of Jesus. Did Peter know Jesus?

Did Thomas know Jesus? Does Philip in our text know Jesus? Well, they've spent the last three and a half years most waking moments with Jesus. They've seen him walk on water, do his miracles, raise the dead, they've heard him preach his sermons with the exception of maybe his mother Mary. They know Him better than anyone else alive.

So in one sense you would say they know Jesus, and in another sense you would say no, they don't really know Jesus. They are still learning to know Jesus. Jesus says, If you had known me, you don't really know me, until you know me in my Godhood. No man says things like, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is revealing Himself in His Godhood.

It is who He is. If you don't know Jesus in His Godhood, you don't know Jesus at all. You An inadequate, truncated, chopped off Jesus. So there are two essential truths, absolutely foundational truth in this verse. Jesus is God the Son and as God the Son, He is inseparably joined to God the Father.

He is never not joined with His father. The father is never not joined with his son from eternity past through eternity future that has never been a circumstance. John 10 verse 30 Jesus said I and my father are one true in eternity past, true through eternity future. Jesus and his Father are one, were one, will be one, are eternally one. By the way, when Jesus said that in John 10 verse 30, in the next verse they take up stones to stone him.

They understood what Jesus was saying when he said, I am my Father, are one. Two, the second essential truth, the second absolutely foundational truth in this verse. If you don't know Jesus in his inseparable godness, If that's a word, you don't really know him. This is his essence. This is Jesus at his eternal, unchangeable core.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You can tell John was here listening to this. Finally, Jesus says, from now on you know him the Father. From now on you know the Father and have seen him the Father. From now on You know the Father and have seen the Father.

I think the sense is this. Now that you know these things about me because I've just spoken so plainly about them from this time forward, you know the Father and you've seen the Father And you know that you know the father. Remember, this is all in the context of they know more than they know they know. From this point forward, you know the Father and have seen the Father. I just told you in the most plain terms.

Of course, it's going to be driven home and supported by the resurrection in a few days. Jesus is saying this knowing that He is going to rise from the dead in four days. What is the significance of that? Well, in Romans chapter 1 verse 4, Paul says that Jesus has been declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection. The resurrection is a declaration that the things that Jesus is teaching about his inseparable unity with his Father are true.

So Jesus will hammer all this home by rising from the dead in four days. From now on you know the Father and have seen the Father. Verse 8, moving to the next verse. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us. In this verse, Philip asked for the disciples to be shown the Father.

Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us. Just show us the Father and we will be satisfied with that. That will carry us. We won't need anything else if you will show us the Father. Now it is easy to be irritated with Philip.

The first time you read this, you're irked with Philip, aren't you? Until I think about how mind-bending the truths of this text are to me in 2019. Then you have to back off of being irked with Philip. Being irritated with Philip that he doesn't get what is so plainly stated by Jesus just the verse before. Just seconds before.

And yet, you start thinking about this and the implications of this and you begin to understand all you don't understand about this, we lighten up on Philip. I read this and think about this and stare at the ceiling and wonder if I know anything about what Jesus is teaching here. And I have the benefit of God's people having worked out a full, careful Christology. Christology is something I was talking about last week. It just means the doctrine of Christ.

The teaching of Scripture on Christ. Who is this Christ? Well, he's a lot of things. It's a complex doctrine. Well we're in the year 2019 and the church has been at work on this.

The best theological minds throughout the history of the church have been to work on this and they worked out a full, careful Christology. Why is that necessary? Because The doctrine of Christ isn't in one place, it's in many places, Old Testament and New, and you have to pull them together in a way where you have the precision that what you believe about one text on Christ doesn't encroach upon the truth of another text on Christ and it's not as easy as it sounds, and it sounds hard. Most of the 300s were given to this. Did you know that?

Meaning, in 325 AD, the best theological minds, there was a council of the church, not a local church, the universal church, in 325 was the council of Nicaea. They came together to really come against the Arian heresy. And then there was a significant aftermath of that where the best theological minds in the Church Universal were hammering out Christology, the doctrine of Christ. What does the Bible, what does scripture, what do the prophets and apostles say about this Messiah, and how do we understand it in a way where this text, the truth of this text, is so precisely understood and articulated that it doesn't encroach upon the truth of this text about the Christ. This process really concluded in 381 in the Council of Constantinople.

So 325, the Council of Nicaea, 381, the Council of Constantinople, by the way that's Istanbul, 57 years of the best theological mind. So think about that. Who's 57? You're 57. On the dot?

I mean you're 57. So every day of Gary's lifetime the best theological minds taking all of Scripture and hammering out with precision and articulation of Christology. What does the Bible say about Christ? You have that. We've had that for 1500 years now.

So, Go light on Philip. By the way, the Nicene Creed is a Christological creed in many ways, and it actually is the output of the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Council of Nicaea was the kick-off meeting for developing Christology. Looking at it historically, it wasn't necessarily intended to be a kick-off meeting, but that's what it serves as historically. The Nicene Creed, as we know it, is an output of the Council of Constantinople in 381.

So what is Philip asking for? He is asking for a theophany. An appearance of God. Like what? The Lord appearing to Abraham with two angels before he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Genesis 18, you remember that. Abraham sees three men passing through. He thinks there are three men passing through. It's actually the Lord and two angels. The Lord says, should we tell them?

To the angels. And he reveals to Abraham what he is about to do with Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham pleads with him because Lot is in Sodom. Or like the Lord appearing to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3, Moses take off your shoes, you are on holy ground, tell them that I am sent you. Or like Moses saying, please show me your glory.

In Exodus chapter 33 and in Exodus Chapter 34, God passes before Moses, but hides him in the cleft of the rock so that he is not destroyed by gazing upon his glory. I will hide you in the rock, and you won't see my face. I will just let you see my back after I've passed by you, so I don't kill you with my glory. There are others. Isaiah chapter 6.

There's a vision. Isaiah has a vision of God. The train of his robe fills the temple. Holy, holy, holy. These are theophanies.

These are appearances of God. Now, what is the problem with that request? Philip doesn't yet understand the Trinity. Why does that matter? Well, we have John 1, 18.

No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. Or we have what Jesus says in John 6, 46. Not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God. Jesus is speaking of Himself.

He has seen the Father. Now we have 1 John 4 verse 12. Again, John, so far, we've quoted the Gospel of John, now I'm quoting John's first letter. By the way, John is the master of Christology. John has more focus on the teaching on Christ, the doctrine of Christ, far and away more than any of the other gospels.

John is focused on Christology. 1 John 4 verse 12, no one has seen God at any time." So categorical words. No one at any time. John the letter writer there in 1 John 4. Eliminating the wiggle room.

Eliminating confusion and misunderstanding. No one has seen God at any time. What does Paul write to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6 verse 16. It says, God dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. So Paul has John's Christology.

Paul has John's doctrine of Christ. God dwells in unapproachable light. You can't approach the light. No man has seen God. No man can see God.

That is Paul's Christology of God the Father. So looking through a Trinitarian lens, what does that mean? The theophanies of the Old Testament were Christ. They were not God the Father. No man has seen Christ at any time.

Now look through that Trinitarian lens back on what Philip says. Give us one of these theophanies. Here I am! Philip, do that Old Testament thing where people see God. Show us the Father.

The irony is that through the ages, Christ, the Word, Jesus, before He was ever called Jesus, has been the image of the invisible God. Jesus has always been the image of the invisible God. Verses 9-11. 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 of my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works. Believe in me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves." I think it is so interesting that he says twice here, I am in the Father, he does not leave it at that. And the Father is in me.

What I would infer from that is, if he just said I am in the Father, you would have an incomplete, inaccurate view. It is also that the Father is in him. He makes the distinction twice. He offers the clarification, the full view, twice. These verses, Jesus reasserts, meaning He is saying it again, and explains His inseparable unity with His Father.

So if you are filling in blanks, explains and unity, fill in the blanks. Jesus reasserts and explains his inseparable unity with his Father. Again, Jesus insists that he must be known in this way, known as this if he is to be known at all. So this is the second time. He did this in the first verse of our text, and now he's doing it again.

Philip, have you been with me all this time and yet you don't know me? In other words, if you don't know me like this, as being essentially this, then you don't know me at all. To miss this is to not know Jesus at all, even though you might know all the historical facts. To miss this is to miss knowing Jesus. You don't know Him.

If you don't know Him and His godness. I would like to draw out three central truths from these verses. Number one, to see Jesus is to see the Father. The second half of verse nine, He who has seen me has seen the Father. The inseparable unity between Father and Son are such that if you have seen Jesus, the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father, you have seen the Father.

Turn to John 1. We were just here last week. I am going to do exactly the same verses. It is the best expansion and explanation on Jesus' own teaching, so I don't blush about that. John chapter 1.

John chapter 1, verse 14. John chapter 1 verse 14, and the word Jesus became flesh. He wasn't flesh. He became 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. We got to behold God in His glory as a result of Jesus taking on the form of a bond servant.

I'm going to keep using the language of Philippians 2, even though we're not turning to Philippians 2 today. That language is so appropriate. He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. But he humbled himself, took on the form of a bond servant, and became obedient to death, even the shameful death of the cross.

Verses 17 and 18, For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. I'm still in chapter 1. Now verse 18. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.

Jesus came in the form of flesh to make a declaration of God, the unseeable God who dwells in unapproachable light who no man has seen or can see, but you can see Jesus. And in seeing Jesus, you see the image of the invisible God. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 4, Christ is the image of God. That's Paul. 2 Corinthians 4 verse 4, Paul saying the same thing.

Christ is the image of God. Colossians 1, 15, Paul again. He is the image of the invisible God. You say that doesn't make any sense. How can you have an image of an invisible thing?

Friends, I'm taking you as far as I can take you. I don't know what to tell you about that. I'm giving you the words of Scripture. Can you see Jesus? Yes, He is an image that can be seen.

He is a representation of God. In seeing Jesus, you see the Father. Hebrews 1 verse 3. I don't know who wrote Hebrews. I have two guesses, maybe more, but we'll go into that later.

Hebrews 1 verse 3. I thought for sure it was Paul until we preached through Peter. Now I'm not so sure. Hebrews 1 verse 3. The sun is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person.

So this is New Testament Christology, not John's Christology. It's not just John's Christology. We're seeing it's Jesus' Christology. That's why it made it into the Gospel of John. He's quoting Jesus.

But it's all through the New Testament. It's Paul, it's the writer of Hebrews, all saying very, very similar things, drawing upon similar language. It is God the Son's special honor and function to reveal God to man. This is maybe the central truth of what Jesus is teaching. It is God the Son's special honor and function.

Yes, He does it. Yes, it is His function. But it is His function because it is given to Christ as an honor to reveal God to man. It is a place of honor that he takes even though he's humbling himself. He's honored with the place of humbling himself to purchase a people and to reveal God to man.

You have to see that. You have to know that God the Father is exalting God the Son by making this His function. I can know God by knowing Jesus. It's Jesus' function to reveal Him. He is the Word.

He's the Word made flesh, so He did come in time and space. People saw Him. Thousands and thousands of people saw Him. But He is also the Word. He is revealing God to man.

God doesn't have to be knowable. When you look at Psalm 19, there are two distinct portions of Psalm 19. The first portion, the heavens declare the glory of God. In other words, all you need to know to answer the question, is there a God, all you have to do is go out on a starry night. There is a magnificent workmanship.

Someone did that. Paul picks right up on that in Romans chapter 1. You're without excuse. His eternal Godhead is known through His works. But how much do you know knowing that?

Very little of this God. He has to reveal Himself and He has chosen to reveal Himself through His Son. It's His Son's special honor and function to reveal God to man. He is the Word. We have words.

He is the Word made flesh. You can view His life, hear His preaching, see His miracles. He is all that we need. He gives us Words that we can keep reading, memorizing, meditate on. We need that.

But He is also a fleshing out of all those words. He is a fleshing out of it. You can look at that life and say, that's what the words are talking about. That was the first central truth of this section. To see Jesus is to see the Father.

Second, number two, disciples must believe that God the Son, Jesus, and God the Father are inseparably united. Disciples must believe that. It is inherent to being a disciple of Jesus. It is that you are a disciple of Jesus who is inseparably united with the Father. You cannot call yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ if you don't believe that.

Jesus insists on that in this text. Verse 10, Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Verse 11, Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me. Verse 10, You don't believe this. Verse 11, You must believe this.

You must believe this. Jesus insists that we believe this. It is a somewhat gentle rebuke that Jesus is unmistakably rebuking Philip for not understanding and believing this. Why? Because if I took the time to trace it back to the beginning of John, he's been saying this and saying this and saying this, I am inseparably united with my Father.

My Father and I are one. He is saying it different times and in different ways, all with the central truth. He is rebuking Philip for having missed it. Not once or twice, many times. It's gentle.

He's not too rough with Philip. Again, it is because this is essential to knowing Jesus. If you don't get this, you don't get Jesus. You don't understand Jesus. You don't know Jesus.

Why was this such a struggle for Philip? Turn to Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53. The greatest prophecy, I think, about the Messiah in the Old Testament is Isaiah 53. In the beginning verses of Isaiah 53 explain why this was such a struggle for Philip and not just Philip but Thomas and Peter and the rest of the disciples.

And why now when we read this and then stop to think about it we stare at the ceiling for a while. This is a deep well. We let down the rope until we are out of rope and it is still not touching the bottom. Isaiah 53. Who has believed our report?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Just stop there. Isaiah has a sense that he's bringing an unbelievable report. A report that will not be widely believed. Actually the arm of the Lord has to reveal it to you for you to believe it.

To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Two. For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant. Looking back through the lens of the New Testament that we have now, He, Christ, shall grow up before Him, God His Father, as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. Think about a root out of dry ground.

God through Isaiah is saying, Jesus, the Word made flesh is sort of like a root out of dry ground. What do you mean? He has no form or comeliness. Comeliness would be attractiveness, beauty. And when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

He is despised, rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We hid our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." The purpose of his first coming is to be the second Adam. The First Adam plunged our whole race into sin and condemnation. The second Adam is to be a rescuer, a savior, a representative to a people that God is having mercy on and claiming to be his own.

To do that work, he laid aside his marks of glory. He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but humbled himself and took on the form of a bondservant. He didn't consider his glory in heaven a thing to be grasped and held at all costs, but he laid aside that glory to Accept the humiliation of taking on flesh to reveal God to man, and then to die for sinners. Why is Philip struggling? Because He looks like us.

Because He looks like us. He has no form or comeliness. No beauty that we should desire Him. Nothing that would attract him. When God is giving Israel their first king, He gives them Saul, a head taller than everyone else, and handsome.

Now there's the king! Jesus was nothing like that. Jesus was like us. Jesus is coming to be the second Adam and to represent us, to live a life like our life, yet without sin, so that He could go to the cross and represent us. The purpose of His first coming was to lay down his life in the place of us.

By the time John wrote his Gospel, it's almost universally acknowledged to be the last Gospel written. Maybe close to 70 AD He wrote this Gospel. He had a firm grasp on this. It was in the light of the resurrection. He had had decades to think about the things that Jesus was teaching about him.

Then God inspires him to write this Gospel. John has a firm grasp on it. By the way, John was at the transfiguration. Philip was not. Peter and James and John got a glimpse of Jesus with his face shining like the sun.

Revelation 1 says that's how we'll see him next. His face shining like the sun. Peter and James and John saw that. So John our gospel writer saw him transfigured before him. What did Jesus tell them when they are coming down from the mountain?

This is Matthew 17 verse 9, tell the vision to no one until the Son of Man is risen from the dead. So at the time that our text is happening, John had seen Jesus transfigured and Philip knew nothing about it. Philip knew nothing about it. Jesus is not simply a chip off the old block of a son that really reminds you of his father. Oh, he's just a chip off the old block.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That is so inadequate for describing the inseparable oneness between father and son. Look, he looks just like his dad. Same mannerism, talk just like him. Spitting image.

There is so much more here than just that. Jesus is in the Father. The Father is in Jesus. I think it would be right to say, in the same way that Jesus is in the Father, in that same way the Father is in Jesus. They are inseparably unified and infused in one another, and yet they are distinct persons.

I know. We're out of rope, and we haven't hit the bottom. I got it. I'm with you. I've been tormented by it all week.

Three, the third great truth in this section. Jesus' words have been co-spoken. Jesus' works have been co-worked. And the works authenticate the words. I'll say that again.

Jesus' words have been co-spoken. Jesus' works have been co-worked. And the works authenticate the words. The second part of verse 10, the words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority. If you have a Bible that puts in italics words that have been added by the translators, authority has been added.

They think it helps with the meaning. I'm not so sure. I don't like it better without it. Here's what it is without the added word. The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own.

That is actually what Jesus is saying here. I am speaking and my Father is speaking. When Jesus speaks, the Father and Son are speaking. I and my Father are one. When Jesus works, The son and the father are working.

I and my father are one. Do you want to know that you can trust the words even though you might not fully understand them? Do you want to know if they are trustworthy or not? Look at the works. This is crazy talk without the works.

This is crazy talk without some proof that you really are who you say you are. By the way, the word rendered works here. In many places, there is a Greek word rendered signs. King James always renders that Greek word miracles. This is a much more vanilla word in the Greek.

It really just means works. Any kind of production, any kind of output works. His whole life declared the truth of his words. The perfect consistency of his life. The perfect righteousness of his life.

The perfect holding himself back from the things that God has forbidden us to do, authenticates His works. The perfect doing of the things that God tells us to do, authenticates His words. The raising of the dead authenticates his words. The healing of the sick authenticates his words. And on and on and on.

The mundane things that also show his perfections authenticate his words and the miracles that no one else could do. I don't think it's a stretch to call a perfect life a miracle. Since no one else in the history of the world has ever done it or will do it. But Jesus did it. Applications.

I shall give you three. Number one, Jesus will have none of people who admire him as a man. You know Him as God or you don't know Him at all. The world has domesticated Jesus, patted Jesus on the head, and said He's a wonderful teacher. Jesus wanted nothing to do with that in His lifetime.

Jesus wants nothing to do with that today or forever. If you know Jesus as God, you know Him. If you don't know Him as God, you don't know Him. Period. Amen.

You know Him as God or not at all. God or not at all. Number two, God can be known. He has revealed Himself through the Word, the Christ, Jesus. It is Jesus' peculiar honor and function to reveal God to man and has he ever done it.

You got the book. It's His book. He is the Word. And He even fleshed it out for you. You can see what it looks like to embrace and live out these truths by fixing your eyes upon Jesus.

It is Jesus' peculiar honor and function to reveal God to man and has he ever done it? Yes, he has done it. Number three, it is impossible to make too much of Jesus. You just try it. I concede we can make too little of Father and Spirit.

Typically we make too little of Spirit. Well, We have a remedy for that. It's John 14-17. We're entering into it now. We're going to be magnifying the Spirit.

By the way, the Spirit's job is to magnify Christ, so I go back to my original point. There is no making too much of this Christ, this word, this Jesus. The solution to not having thought enough about Father or Spirit is not to bring Jesus down, right? It is to raise our view of Father and Spirit if we've had a diminished view. In Ephesians chapter 3 verse 8, Paul says that a grace was given to him.

A gift was given to Paul. What gift was given to Paul? That he might preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles. God gave me a gift. I love my gift.

What's your gift, Paul? I get the gift of preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles. I get to over and over, city after city after city, I just keep lowering all the rope I've got down into the well to show people it doesn't hit the bottom when we're talking about Christ. The riches are unsearchable. The rope's never enough.

You could give me another million miles of rope and we will keep... The bottom yet? No, not the bottom yet. They are unsearchable riches. Paul just reveled in his gift of preaching Christ to the Gentiles.

Why? Because he viewed them as unsearchable riches. I'll give Ryle the last word. By the way, Ryle is head and shoulders better at explaining the mysteries of the Trinity than any other commentator I've ever read. I read a lot of them.

Head and shoulders better. He's head and shoulders more forward in saying I can't understand it. I can't get it. I'm so far from grasping it. Here's what I deduce from those when I connect those dots.

Okay, so you have two things that I say are true. Ryle's better, Ryle's closer to getting it than the other commentators I read, and Ryle is more forward in saying I'm so far away from really getting my arms around it, I deduced from that, that the closer you get to it, the more you realize how mysterious and beyond us it is. The commentators that speak with confidence, I think, are not that close to actually understanding Christology. Don't expect to study harder, learn more, and feel closer to the truth here. Probably when you make progress, you'll actually realize, I'm further away than I ever thought I was.

I used to have more confidence than you have now when you actually know a little more. J.C. Ryle, these are high things. We cannot attain to a full comprehension of them. Let us however take comfort in the simple truth that Christ is very God of very God.

He who loved us and shed his blood for us on the cross, and bids us trust him for pardon is no mere man like ourselves. He is God over all, blessed forever, and able to save to the uttermost the chief of sinners. Do you see what Ryle is saying? He's saying praise God. This is beyond something that is easily comprehensible.

It means that this Jesus who bids us to trust in Him for salvation can deliver on his promises. He is very God of very God. That's all we need to take away from this. Jesus is God and if he is God and has died, laid his life down for sinners, he can deliver on his promises to save those who trust on him. That is really the importance of what Jesus is teaching here.

He can deliver on his promises to save anyone and everyone who comes to him by faith. God, Thank you for the beauty of this the glory of it We know we're not there. We know one day. We'll see you face to face, and we'll understand more Look forward to that day Help us to know you as God Pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.