In Scott Brown's sermon, 'Full of Grace and Truth,' he delves into John 1:14-18, highlighting the significance of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Brown emphasizes the themes of Jesus' absolute deity, the world's rejection of Him, and His life-giving fullness. He explores how Jesus' incarnation, described as the Word becoming flesh, addresses human insecurities and loneliness. Brown contrasts the law given through Moses with the grace and truth brought by Jesus, underscoring the superiority and completeness of the New Covenant. John the Baptist is presented as a model of someone who beheld Jesus' glory and preferred Him above himself. The sermon encourages believers to prioritize grace and truth in their lives and to behold the glory of Jesus as a transformative experience. Brown also emphasizes the intimate relationship between the Father and the Son, inviting believers to find hope and fulfillment through this divine relationship.

We're going to be reading from John 1. We're going to start in verse 14. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of him and cried out saying, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. Let's pray. O Heavenly Father, Lord I pray that we would listen to these words, that we would apply them to our hearts.

Lord, I pray that we would set aside the distractions of the weak, Lord, and that we would receive what you have for us. Amen. It often amazes me what passages of Scripture we end up landing on on particular days of the year, And here on this day, you know, the evening of the dawn of the new year seems to be such a remarkable moment to experience this passage and also to find ourselves at the end of the prologue of John in his gospel, and this section particularly, which has these words, grace and glory and fullness and truth, you know, and the God who tabernacled among us, These words, you know, to me have been very instructive as I think about the coming year and also our church together and our lives together. And, you know, When I think about the Lord Jesus Christ full of grace and truth, His fullness for our fullness, you know, I wonder if the Lord would grant us mercy and grace and that He would do a miracle in us in this way, that in 2018 we would be less full of ourselves and far, far more full of the fullness of Jesus.

This is the most precious thing that one can ever have in their lives. And so we're here in this prologue. And this prologue, the first 18 verses of John, are the most complete and explicit doctrine of the person and the work of Jesus Christ. These verses that we've been engaged in and will finally complete today make it clear in no uncertain terms of his beauty and his deity and of his goodness. And there are these themes that run through the prologue.

First of all, there's the theme of the absolute deity of Jesus Christ. There's also the theme of the complete rejection of Jesus Christ by the world. And then there is the theme, thirdly, of the life-giving fullness of Jesus Christ. And I think that what is in this prologue is designed to be a source of unmeasurable help and hope for us in 2018. There's a book in my library that I recently got by Hugh Martin called The Abiding Presence, and he talks about the Gospels in a really interesting way.

He says the Gospels are the galleries of the King. And he talks about, you know, going into the gallery, going into the Gospels and seeing the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and walking through and making observations of the galleries that are there, these various manifestations of the glory of Jesus Christ in that gallery. And he says that the Gospels are there to help us to know who Jesus is. And then He says that as you walk through the galleries, you're going to walk out of the gallery, but when you walk out of the gallery, always hear these words, Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. Lo, I am with you.

Now, this gallery of the king in the prologue of John says that in many different kinds of words. He is the word made flesh. And he is the one who says, lo I am with you always even unto the end of the age." And I think this prologue is such a message of hope for us And this is where we ought to hang our hope. And I'd like to just sort of, as you see in your outline, you can see where we've been in the prologue, and I'd like to just sort of walk through it to pick up the context, and then we'll dive in to our text this morning beginning in verse 14. But the first thing we saw in the first verse was the eternity of the Sun.

In the beginning was the Word and That takes care of my insecurity in this life, because I have a secure eternal Savior. And then at the end of verse 1 and the beginning of verse 2, We see the communion of the Son with the Father, that Jesus Christ, the Word, was with the Father, inclined toward the Father. It's a picture of intimacy of God the Son and God the Father. Their love takes care of my lack of love and lack of feeling that I'm not loved. And then we see the deity of the Son in verse 2, and the Word was God, And that takes care of my salvation.

And then we see the power, the creative power of the Son in verse 3. All things were made through him and without him. Nothing was made that was made. And this takes care of my understanding of the world because he made it all and he understands it all and he cares for me in the midst of it all and it takes care of my understanding of the world. And then there is the life-giving presence of the Son in verse 4, in him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And that takes care of my deadness because he is life to me. And then in verses 10 and 11, we see how the world did not receive the Son, and that takes care of our rejection in this world. And then verses 12 and 13, we see the children who received the Son, and that takes care of my broken family because we become sons. We are adopted into an everlasting family that will never be broken. And then we get to verses 14 through 18 and we see first of all in verse 14 the incarnation of the Son.

The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. And that takes care of my aloneness in this world. I'm not alone. And then in verse 11, I'm sorry, in verse 15, we see the superiority of the Son, that he is greater than John. He has greater priority, and that takes care of all my priorities.

And then in verse 16, we see the fullness of grace from the sun, and he shares his fullness. And that takes care of my emptiness. And then we see in verse 17 the grace and truth of the Son, and that takes care of my inadequacy because he has what I need in his grace and in his truth. And then finally we see the revealing of the Father through the Son because in verse 18 we read, "'For no one has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. And this takes care of my idolatrous wrong views of God, because they can be cleared up by looking at Jesus Christ.

He is God in the flesh, and He reveals God the Father. If you want to know God the Father, all you have to do is look at the Son. So these are the galleries of the mercy and the grace of God that are here in this prologue. Now, you know, when we get to verse 19, right after the prologue concludes, we enter into the second section of the gospel of John, and this is the section where the disclosure of the life and the works of Jesus are declared. So in the prologue you get, where did he come from and who is he?

And then after the prologue, from there all the way to the end of the gospel is what did he do and how does his person, which was described in the prologue, be manifested in real life? So that's the very simple outline of the Gospel of John. So when we find these words in verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. These are some of the most clarifying and powerful words in the Bible. You might say that they are the center of the Bible.

You might say the resurrection is the center of the Bible, but the incarnation and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the center of all history. And so when we find ourselves in this verse, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We're finding ourselves in really the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the heart of everything God has been doing to redeem sinners. And so these final words are immeasurably significant. Now, these words also are fighting words because they form the battle lines in the world.

I think that Pew Research Organization came out with a research study that indicated that fewer and fewer people believe in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that he was born of a virgin, and that angels declared his coming, that fewer and fewer people believe that. Interestingly enough, they reported that I believe it was that 81% of Democrats don't believe it. And I think it was 61% or 30% or it was a lower percentage. I'm so sorry. I have it here somewhere in my notes, I've lost them.

But a very low percentage of Republicans have rejected that. But these are fighting words, but they're also the most blessed words in the world because they speak of what should be and what can be the chief-shaping feature of your life, and that is the presence of the fullness of Jesus Christ. This is the most important thing in life, His fullness, His grace, His truth, and the manifestation of those things in our lives as we behold His glory, and as we do that in 2018. And just briefly, I just want to make a comment on the impact of that in the culture of a local church. What is designed to create the culture of a local church?

And of course, You know, the culture of a family or a church or a company, those things are based on values that they hold and traditions that they maintain, things that they do. And we do have that in the church. You know, we have things that we do in the church. We preach, We pray, we sing, we baptize, we evangelize, we take the Lord's Supper. These are the traditions that bind us together and they form the culture of the church.

Every single one of them has meaning and we gather around those and We relish them, we rejoice in those, and those really create sort of the bones of a culture, but the heart and the soul of the culture of a church is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And beholding the face of Jesus Christ, beholding His glory, and becoming like Him, and becoming less like ourselves and more like him that the chief obsession of a local church would be formed by Jesus Christ and the vision of Jesus Christ. There's so many distractions that you can get diverted by in church life, all kinds of personalities and things and structures and wrongs and faults and everything like that, and you can get so wrapped up in that. But if the culture of your heart is turned toward the fullness of the grace and the truth and the salvation that is in Jesus Christ, then the culture of your church will be a continually beautifying culture. That's what we pray for as we go through the gospel of John.

That we behold his glory and we become like him. Now even saying those words I just become so aware of how far short I fall, My family falls, all of us fall in the beholding of the glory of Jesus and manifesting His glory. But yet this is a message of hope that says these things are true and they can be in your life and my life and they can be in this church. This is a passage of Scripture that is full of hope. It's the hope of Jesus and his perfections that we all strive for.

Okay, now There are several more of these elements of the glory of Jesus Christ, as you can see in the outline, and the tenth, or the first that I'll deal with this morning, is the incarnation of the Son, verse 14. And The word 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 So in many ways this is simple. It's as simple as simple can be and it's as marvelously complex and incomprehensible at the same time. God became man. That's the simplicity of it.

And he walked on the earth and he became man with two natures. He had the nature of God and the nature of man. He did not give up any of his divinity, but God became man. And if you can try to understand how to describe that, then maybe you should have another counsel like they had in Nicaea to try to describe that. You had two natures operating in one person as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The catechism, the Baptist catechism says this, who is the Redeemer of God's elect? The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ who being the eternal Son of God became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever and his human nature he was born of a virgin and then the Bible says that he increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man And he felt our infirmities. He was tired like every mother gets tired, and every father and every child gets tired. He was tired and he was tempted just like every human being was tempted and he felt all of our infirmities. I don't know what your infirmities are right now, but we pretty much have generic infirmities.

That's sort of the deal, right? We have human nature and we're all really very generic in our infirmities. We may have some emphatic infirmities at one time or another, but we're all pretty much the same. We have the same infirmities. And what the Bible says about Jesus is that he became man so that he would feel and experience our infirmities and that's that's why in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15 we realize that God gave us a high priest who could sympathize with our weaknesses.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace and help in time of need." God became man so that man would run to God, man would run to Jesus Christ in the midst of his infirmities. What many people do in the midst of their infirmities is they turn away from God, and they turn away from the people of God, when actually the most helpful thing they can do is turn toward Him. And because He is a sympathetic high priest, John explains the purpose of the Word made flesh in 1 John chapter 1. He says that that was which was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the Word of life and the life was manifested and we've seen why, why.

He answers why that happened, and he says that you may also have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write to you that your joy may be full. The incarnation happens so that we would have fellowship with God and also fellowship with one another. So when you read these words, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. It is pregnant with meaning, nine months pregnant.

And He was the man of sorrows who could carry our sorrows. He was tempted so that when we're tempted, we run to Him. And running to Him in our temptations and in our sorrows is the reason the Word was made flesh. It's such a blessing. It's such a passage of hope.

Isaiah says that he carried our sorrows. He carries them. He can relate with them. He is compassionate toward those who are carrying sorrows, but he wants to carry them for you. So then he says the word was made flesh and dwelt.

That word is very important, dwelt. And this is an important distinction that he makes here. The word dwelt is a word that means tabernacled, or he literally pitched a tent among us. When he dwelt among us, it's like he pitched a tent among us. They stopped and pitched a tent.

Remember, Peter wanted to pitch a tent up on the Mount of Transfiguration. But here he pitched his tent among us for 33 years in this world. Now He tabernacled with us because he was the final fulfillment of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the place where God met with his people, and all the families lived around the tabernacle, and they served the needs of the tabernacle, and they were carefully placed to the north and the south and the east and the west in order to serve the presence of God. Now in Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is the tabernacle.

He's the center of all the families, everyone having their eyes on Jesus Christ, not on one another but on Him, serving Him, focusing on Him, and then being bring benefit to one another. That's how it works in with the tabernacle of God. And while he tabernacled among us in his earthly ministry, he tabernacles among us by his Holy Spirit, and even actually through the very presence of his people. When you get together with the people of God, you're also tabernacling with him because he lives in your brothers and sisters. And so this idea of tabernacling is very important.

And the tabernacle was God's presence for his people in the wilderness. You know, this world is like a wilderness wandering. You never know what's around the next corner, and you may be deprived of water and bread and hope and rest and all those kinds of things in this wilderness world, and your only hope is to have a tabernacle that follows you just as the tabernacle followed the children of Israel or they are in the pillar of cloud and and the pillar of fire and now we follow him through this wilderness wandering." And then it says, we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John is talking about his being an eyewitness. We beheld his glory.

It's something that we did. Remember, John is like 80 years old. All the other apostles have been martyred. They're all dead. So many of the brethren that saw Jesus are dead.

But John is alive and he's saying, we beheld his glory. We saw it. He's talking about the past tense. And Apparently there were some still alive, but probably weren't very many that were still alive, but he was able to say, we beheld his glory. He was still with some who were alive during the days of Jesus.

And what kind of glory was it? Well, it was it was the glory as of the only begotten of the Father it was a particular kind of glory and It was a glory as of in the New King James, only begotten of the Father. The term only begotten also appears in John 3.16. We'll go deeper into that when we get there. But it appears in 4.18, in 3.16, and 3.18.

But what does only begotten mean? Does it mean that God the Father created the Son and gave birth to the Son? That's not what this verse means. And only begotten is really one word in the Greek language, mono one, one which proceeds from. It does not mean begotten in the sense of bearing children.

It means having no peer. It has to do with uniqueness, the only one. He is the only one who is fully God and man. This is why most other, many other translations leave out the word begotten and it reads only son. It doesn't read only begotten son.

You find that in the RSV and the NIV and the ESV I believe it translates this better and they just simply say the only son and so it does not refer to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and it does not refer to God giving birth to His Son and sending Him. It has to do with His only Son, and that's why the Nicene Creed reads the way it does. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten not made. Begotten not made. Being of one substance with the Father so the Nicene Creed I think makes it very clear what this means but in other words he was fully God and he was he was fully man he proceeded from the Godhead.

And then there is his glory, and glory is not vague, it's not mystical, it's something that was seen, seen in his words and seen in his miracles. And he was full of two things grace and truth full of two things he was he was full of every grace omnipotence moral purity priesthood instruction He was full of grace in his death and his resurrection and in truth. Grace is favor toward those who do not deserve favor. Grace really is the center of God's being. You've heard the acronym GRACE, Grace is God's riches at Christ's expense.

I think that's true. I don't think it quite gets the full measure of what grace is. Grace is being given what you don't deserve. A.W. Tozer said it Like this, grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits on the undeserving.

This is grace. And the grace that we found in Jesus Christ really is designed to fill our hearts so that we would extend it to one another, so that a husband would extend it to his wife, a wife to her husband, a child to the parents, and vice versa. That the ground of all being is grace and truth. And it's more than unmerited favor. It's greater than unmerited favor, having included unmerited favor.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer many years ago talked about cheap grace and he was referring to grace, people who claim grace but have no turning, no repentance toward God, no hatred of this world. That's fake grace. He called it cheap grace. Romans chapter 5 verse 2 makes it clear that grace is something that keeps on coming and he says that we stand in grace. It's like you're standing in a waterfall.

If you think about grace, children, think about this. When you think about grace, remember this, remember a waterfall. Remember something like standing in grace. It just keeps on falling and keeps on cleansing. That is the grace that is found in Jesus Christ and He is full.

He is infinitely full of grace and truth so that finite beings who are not full can be filled with grace and truth. His grace drives out our gracelessness. He's full and he replaces our gracelessness. Those who have received grace have grace. I don't know if you've noticed that, people who are bitter sometimes are found to be people who haven't ever really received grace, And so they can't have grace for someone else.

Sometimes it's a matter of sanctification and growth, but sometimes it's just a matter of not being born again. But this grace is expressed in so many ways at the cross. It's expressed in his promises. His grace is expressed in his sovereignty that he is in control. His grace is expressed in a thousand ways.

And then truth. This is the absence of error. He's always reliable. Everything that he says is true. You can rest your whole weight on what he said.

Don't rest your weight on the psychologists or the historians or the political folk. Rest your weight on Jesus. Everything that he said was true. And if you're going to emphasize one thing in your life, emphasize those things, because you know you're standing on solid ground. It's nice to contemplate the philosophers and the politicians, but they don't hit no much as they say over in my neighborhood.

But Jesus is full, not partly. In Colossians 2 we learn that for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And then Paul says, listen to this, and you are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power. Know that song we sing, Complete in Thee? He says that all the fullness dwells in Him, and because of that, you are complete in Him.

We can sing that song, complete in me. It is His fullness that fills my emptiness and makes me complete. What does this mean for us? I think it means that for 2018, would it be possible that it would be a year of more intimate and careful beholding the glory of Jesus. And We would have a year that's characterized like this, but we all with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of God.

The Word became flesh and that takes care of my aloneness because he is God with us. So as we consider a new year, let's be careful with what fills us. What fills us is always a result of what we behold. Now after explaining the incarnation of verse 14, John the Apostle shows an example of a real person who beheld his glory. It almost seems strange that John pops up in the middle of this, but I believe what the Apostle John is doing is he's giving an example, a living, breathing example of a man who beheld the glory of Jesus and he rested everything on its glory and that man Was John the Baptist and so that's why we read John bore witness of him and cried out saying This is he of whom I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me." So John the Baptist is an example of a person who did behold the glory of Jesus and he preferred Jesus above himself.

He did not want to be full of himself, he wanted to be full of Jesus. He wanted him to increase and he to decrease. That was John. And so the Apostle John brings John the Baptist as an example in, I think, as an evidence for how this works out. And so John, he says, John said, John the Baptist says that Jesus was preferred before him.

In other words, preferred in rank. He was mightier, he was better, he was greater. You know, he says, I'm not even worthy to even tie his shoes. He must increase and I must decrease. And John is saying, Jesus outranks me.

His voice out speaks me. His mind out thinks me. I need him. He is glorious. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, glorious of the only begotten.

I think John is just saying, that's what I, John the Baptist is a manifestation of that. And he says he was before me. Why does he say before me? Because he's referring back to verse one that Jesus was divine and that he always was. He was before me.

In John 8 we'll encounter the phrase, before Abraham was, I am. So Jesus was far, he came along far before his birth. In fact, John was actually born six months before Jesus. But here John says he was before me. What's that?

He's not talking about physical birth. The Lord Jesus Christ was born six months after John, and yet John says, He was before me. And the reason he says that is he's referring to his pre-incarnate and eternal Godhead. And so how do we apply this? Well, he's greater than John.

And that takes care of my priorities. That should take care of how I rank. How do I rank? And when we wake up in the morning and when we go about our day and when we're talking to someone, Are we thinking, his words rank higher than mine? His thoughts are higher than mine.

Do I want his thoughts? Or am I just going to be myself? Do I just want more of myself? Or am I saying, no, he must increase and I must decrease? That's the point that he's making.

There was a man who was like that, and you can be like him too. And so as we engage in New Year, you know, that we would be the kind of people who would consider his words having the highest priority in our lives, filling our hearts with His words more than any other thing. And what do we spend our time on? What words are we imbibing? Imbibe His words.

Let His words, his thoughts, his glory, his fullness replace our glory. This is the prioritization of the voices of the in the New Year and and to prefer His words above our own words. And then in verse 16 we read, the fullness of the grace of the Son, the fullness of the grace of the Son. And he shares his fullness, and that takes care of my emptiness. And so we read these words, and of his fullness we have all received grace for grace.

Now he's speaking in the present tense, we who are the disciples of Jesus now, this is inclusive, previously he was Speaking of the past, we beheld his glory. Now he's saying, we have received. Now he's talking about now, and he's talking about from his time forward, that we have all received grace for grace. And what have we received? We have received fullness and completeness and totality of what?

Grace. That's what we've received. Grace for grace. Now there are two ways that this can be understood. J.C.

Ryle says that the Greek preposition can be translated in two different ways. First of all, that we've received grace heaped upon grace, abounding in grace. And then secondly, that it can, the preposition can be taken that we have received grace for grace. In other words, that we've received one kind of grace for another kind. A kind of grace that is greater, perhaps even alluding to the fact that the grace of the New Covenant is superior to the grace of the Old Covenant.

I'll get to that later in more detail. But I think the primary, the primary meaning of grace for grace is grace multiplied. And I was thinking about that. I was thinking about Something that's just repetitive and keeps on coming grace just grace Heaped upon grace and I thought about how much I love the waves of the ocean. I love the waves of the ocean I love to watch them.

I want to be in them. I do. I want... But the waves, they just keep on coming. Waves keep coming and they actually cleanse the ocean.

They bring the impurities and they throw them on the beach. And the waves just keep on coming. And it gets cleaner and cleaner and cleaner as the waves come. But they, the waves don't stop. Sometimes the waves are massive, but they never stop because there's always something blowing.

There's always something blowing and it's the, I just liken it to the fullness of the grace of God the waves just keep coming and breaking on you and they don't stop that's grace for grace piled upon grace you know I maybe it's like your favorite ice cream you Just one scoop at a time and it never goes away. Wouldn't that be nice? And you could still eat it and still fit in your clothes. Well that's not the real world. But this is grace.

I believe he's talking about his mercies are new every morning. Like every morning is a new slate. Every morning is new. Every application of the grace of God is new. In fact, you don't even have to wait till morning because you stand in grace.

It's like a waterfall, it's like a wave, And we need it every day. You know, Jesus said that each day has enough trouble of its own. And The truth is also that each day also has enough grace. Each day has enough grace for its own. Don't you love singing, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, all I have needed, thy hand hath provided.

Do you believe that? He's provided everything you need for life and godliness. Christians should be the happiest, most fulfilled people in the world because they have a feeling. And so this, I don't want to be misunderstood here now in applying this, But is it possible that there's somebody in this church that needs to prioritize grace more this year over last year? Is that possible?

To stand in grace, to walk in the grace and the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be so aware of His grace and then to extend it, you know. Is there anyone that needs to prioritize grace? You know, Paul said that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. I think the same thing goes with grace. Grace is good if one uses it lawfully, gracefully, in the way that was intended to be used.

Not for licentiousness, not to escape things that ought to be turned from and repented of. That's an unlawful use of grace. Romans 5 just says it so beautifully, having been justified with faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we also have access by faith into this grace by which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. So his fullness takes care of my emptiness, my insufficiency, my unmet needs, my broken dreams. He takes care of those things because he is full.

And he shares his fullness. And then in verse 17 we encounter the grace and truth of the Son. We spoke of the fullness, now we speak of the grace and the truth. In verse 17 we read, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So he's full of grace and truth and that takes care of my confusion.

Now he's setting grace and truth to compare them. And he's saying that there's a difference between Moses and Christ. There's something different about the law when you compare it to truth and the law. Now I want to make a few points as quickly as I can. He's not disparaging the law of Moses but he's declaring the superiority of grace and truth in Jesus Christ.

We live in a world right now where people feel that you should not preach the law. I don't think that's at all what John is contending for here. The law does not contradict grace. Grace actually fulfills the law. There was grace in the law.

In fact, the law called for grace in the substitutionary atonement system that pointed to Jesus Christ. This is not a diminishing of the law. It's rather, and I want to be very careful with this, it is rather an exaltation of Jesus. Jesus brings a better covenant. So it, there was nothing evil in the law, it's that Jesus provides something more through His grace.

He's not saying that the law and the grace are in conflict with one another. He's not making a comparison of right or wrong or good or evil when he's making this comparison with law and grace. He's not saying that the Old Testament was about laws and the New Testament is not about laws. The fact is there are over a thousand laws, commands in the New Testament, and a little over 700 in the Old Testament. He's not making that distinction.

He's not saying the Old Testament is about law and the New Testament is about grace. This is not the message that he's making. Let me read A.W. Pink. Grace does not ignore the law or set aside its requirements.

Nay, verily, it establishes the law, establishes it because it inseparably linked with truth, establishes it because it reigns through righteousness, " quoting Scripture. Not at the expense of it, It establishes it because grace tells of a substitute who kept the law for and endured the death penalty on behalf of all who receive him as their Lord and Savior, and establishes it by bringing the redeemed to delight in the law. So the law brings people to Christ, and Christ causes his people to delight in the law. That's the logic that he brings. Spurgeon says the law and grace are friends.

He said he would never separate friends because the law points to Christ and Christ fulfills the law. So rather a comparison of right or wrong, It's a comparison of fullness and superiority. It's a comparison of perfection and completeness over against what was a shadow. A.W. Pink illustrates it this way, law manifested what was in man, sin.

Grace manifests what is in God, love. Law demanded righteousness for men. Grace brings righteousness to men. Law sentences a living man to death. Grace brings a dead man to life.

Law speaks what man must do for God. Grace tells what Christ has done for man. Law gives a knowledge of sin. Grace puts away sin. Law brought God out to men.

Grace brings men to God. That's why the Apostle Paul said the laws holy just and good that's why David said the law of the Lord is perfect it's tested ten times there's seven times what Why does John put the law and grace side by side? Because grace doesn't dismiss the law, but I think what he's saying is that the law was not complete. It was not the full revelation. The law was given in types and shadows.

I'm going to give you three examples. First of all, the feasts. Paul says that the feasts in Colossians 2.17 were a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. The priesthood, in Hebrews 8, 5, contrasting the two covenants, the priests are an example of, as a shadow of things to come. In verse 5 and Hebrews 8, they served the copy and shadow of the heavenly things.

The law was a shadow. It wasn't the reality, it was the shadow. The tabernacle as well in Hebrews 9 verses 9 through 10. He says the first tabernacle quote was symbolic for the present time and so what's the meaning of the feast and the priesthood in the tabernacle? They are shadows of good things to come says hebers 10 and they are not the very image of the things they can never with these same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year make those who approach perfectly perfect so what was different what is different comparing law and grace it's it's a matter of superiority And the law is not confined as we thought it was in the Old Testament.

We thought the law was confined to do not murder, don't kill someone. Jesus says the law is not confined to that. It has to do with anger, hatred in your heart toward your brother. It's bigger than the law is not wooden. And Jesus came and gave us an exalted vision of the law, a better, clearer, more beautiful vision.

Not a different vision, but just more. It was wrong to kill and it still is. But Jesus reveals that the law is greater than just the wooden piece of the law that we read in the Old Testament in the Ten Commandments. The law is inferior in scope to grace. With grace you get more of the same thing, but it's more beauty, it's more goodness through the grace of Jesus Christ.

So there are two primary differences. First, Moses was a deliverer of the law and grace while Jesus was the embodiment of the law and grace. In Hebrews chapter 3, we read that Moses, that there's a house, but God is the builder of the house. Moses is the house, God is the builder. The builder of the house is greater than the house.

And that's one way you can think about it Jesus Christ is the builder of the house while the law was the house it's just the house but the but the greater is the designer of it and So we're talking about the very met grace and truth are manifestations of the very nature of Jesus Christ. They are not copies, they're not shadows, they are not types. Jesus is the real. The law was the shadow. That's the difference between law and grace.

And then we come to the final verse in the prologue. This verse sounds very much like the first verse in the prologue, and it really summarizes the whole 18 verses of the prologue and it speaks of the revealing of the Father through the Son. 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." So this is very plain. Jesus reveals the Father.

Jesus explains God. And God sent his Son for many reasons. One reason is to take care of our idolatrous understandings of God, creating God in our own image, making God the way we like Him. But Jesus Christ clarifies all that and He shows you what God is like, not in shadows but in realities. And so Jesus Christ is God and so that's why the Lord Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

Philip asked, Lord, show us the Father in John 14. And Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so he says that he is in the bosom of the Father. Those are really remarkable words. Those should be ready to take your breath away.

He's revealing the closeness and the intimacy of the Father and the Son, and how they do exist together in love. The Father loves the Son. The Son honors the Father. The Son does what the Father desires Him to do. The Father delights in the Son, and the Son delights in the Father.

He's in the bosom of the Father. To hold a baby in your bosom is a picture of this here, And he is in the bosom of the Father. This is about an ongoing eternal intimacy. Says he is in the bosom, not was, is. This is an eternally transpiring reality love is the eternal transpiring reality of the universe because the Son exists in the bosom of the Father.

And who might be along with the Son in the bosom of the Father? All those who are in him, all those who've been adopted, all those who are co-heirs with Jesus Christ. So when you read this, that he is in the bosom of the Father, and you know that you are in him and he is in you, you are also in the bosom of the Father. This intimacy is the eternal transpiring reality of the universe, that God has come to adopt sons and daughters and bring them into his bosom. You remember in the wilderness, Moses said that God carried his children like a father carries his son?

In the New Covenant, he brings them to his bosom, and he carries them for all eternity. And he explains God, and it takes care of my faults, idolatrous views of God. You might not think of God as being the supreme lover of your soul. When you think of Him, you might not think of His love. You might not think of Him being, of your being in His bosom for all eternity.

You might not think of, as He holds, that He's not just holding His Son, but He's holding all of his sons and daughters into his bosom. Is that how you think of God? That He holds you? He walks with you? He talks with you?

He tells you you're His own? And He says, I will never leave you or forsake you. You know, when you're walking through the galleries of the king, you see all these things that you need. You need them more than anything, and as it turns out, they really are the only things you need in this world. So we've seen the incarnation of the Son, and that takes care of my aloneness, and we've seen the superiority of the Son, and that takes care of my priorities in 2018.

And we've seen the fullness of the grace of the Son, and that takes care of my emptiness. And we see the grace and the truth of the Son, And that takes care of my confusion and my lack of grace. And then there's the revealing of the Father through the Son. He explains God. He takes care of all my false ideas about God, that He is a Father, that He is Abba Father, that we have been adopted, that we are sons, that He has compassion on sinners, that we have access by His grace, and that we can say, our Father, you can say, my Father, you can say the Lord is my shepherd, mine.

What a father, what a wonderful son. This is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think it all comes down to the most critical matter every day of our lives, that we all with unveiled face, Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory Just as by the Spirit of the Lord. And this is really the greatest blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because as it turns out, you don't really need more of you.

And As it turns out, nobody else needs more of you. They meet you need, and we all need, more of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. May that be the great reality of all of our hearts. Let Him draw you to Himself. And as we're fellowshipping together, let's be drawn to him and speak of him and glorify him in the way that John did and he said he must increase but I must decrease let's pray Lord these amazing truths eternal pure perfect we thank you for them.

We pray that you would take these words and sink them deeply into our hearts, and that you would give us such a vision of the waves that continue to come in the ocean to cleanse, the breaking of the waves after breaking of the waves, of the waterfall of grace, of this gallery of the King, that we would walk there and that we would remember his words, his last words, Lo, I am with you always. Amen.