Jesus Takes Up Temporary Residence on Earth
Tom Shrader expounds John 1:14-18, unpacking what it means that the eternal Word became flesh and pitched His tent among humanity, drawing on the symbolism of the Old Testament tabernacle to illuminate how Christ fulfills every function it foreshadowed. He explores the meaning of Jesus being the "only begotten" Son, full of grace and truth, and traces those two themes through the rest of the prologue, grounding them in the believer's ongoing experience of grace upon grace. The teaching concludes with a call to receive Christ's inexhaustible grace rather than seeking satisfaction in the deceptions the world offers.
“In the incarnation, we find that the Word did not cease to be God but became God in human flesh.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2003/2004)
Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: grace, incarnation, who is jesus, truth, light, worship, receiving christ, satisfaction, new believer, seeking purpose, feeling empty, young adult, questioning faith, spiritual seeker, struggling with worldly temptation, searching for truth
Scripture: John 1:1-2, John 1:3-5, John 1:12-13, John 1:14-18, John 3:16, John 3:18, John 8:29, John 14:6, Matthew 17:1-9, Philippians 2:6-7, Hebrews 1:1-3, Hebrews 9:22, Hebrews 11:17, Isaiah 65:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 4:9
Theological Themes: incarnation, word became flesh, only begotten son, christology, tabernacle symbolism, grace upon grace, prologue of john, deity of christ
Full Transcript
Who Is Jesus?
I invite you to open your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 1. John chapter 1, verses 1 through 18 provide us a magnificent introduction and help us go a long way toward answering the question: who is Jesus? That may not be a controversial question here on our campus, but it certainly is in the world we live in. What we are looking at, over however long it takes us, is the life of Christ. We could even title this "The Biography of Christ" — God's biography of Christ — because we are looking at Jesus' life through these four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, trying to harmonize them and put them together in chronological order. That is a gigantic task, and one we approach with a great deal of excitement.
John is trying to help us answer the question: who is Jesus? Virtually everybody on the planet acknowledges that Jesus existed. Who He is and what He did is where the disagreement begins. Here is what the culture says about Jesus: that He was a good man, a good teacher, a great prophet, a role model. Some want to take a baby Jesus, as we will celebrate in another month or two, and leave Him in that crib — little baby Jesus, meek and mild — and never really understand who He is or let Him grow up. So what we are really looking at, as we study the life of Christ, is who is the real Jesus Christ?
John's Prologue: The Eternal, Self-Existent Christ
In John's introduction — these first 18 verses — John provides us a magnificent prologue. He immediately introduces us to the eternal, self-existent Jesus Christ, who was with God, separate from Him, but God nonetheless. Look at verses 1 and 2: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God." That is who Jesus is. He is eternal. He is God. He was there in the beginning.
Verses 3, 4, and 5 speak to His creative power. "All things were made through Him. Apart from Him, nothing was made that has been made." He spoke these things into existence. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it" — the darkness could not overcome the light. That is Jesus' introduction to us in John's Gospel, and we begin to unpack who the real Jesus is.
Tonight's Passage: Verses 14–18
What we are going to do tonight is look at verses 14 through 18. Let's read them through, and then we will come back and break them apart.
Verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." Verse 15: "John testified about Him and cried out, saying, 'This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.'" Verse 16: "For of His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." Verse 17: "For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ." Verse 18: "No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."
Revisiting Verses 12 and 13
Before we move into verse 14, let's look once more at verses 12 and 13, which we were examining the last time I taught: "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God." Those are magnificent truths.
Here is something I have observed over time. You can all see me, but what I am not sure you understand is that I can see you. This room is only thirteen rows deep, and I can see almost into the eyes of the people in the back. The last time I taught, we were discussing these magnificent truths — that salvation is not an act of our will, not a matter of our pedigree, but a matter of God saving us, from God, for God — and I could see eyes glazing over. Some students were distracted, and it was driving me to distraction. So I called it and moved on to prayer.
I know that I am inadequate. I have no problem with that — I have that figured out. Any moment I begin to feel a sense of adequacy, you are there to bring me right back to reality. But inadequacy, if you are serious about the work, is coupled with a sense of frustration. The frustration is this: here are some of the most profound and important truths I have ever encountered — how do we make them come alive?
The Word Became Flesh
If that challenge was true of verses 12 and 13, consider verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." That sounds like a ho-hummer, doesn't it? You have heard it a thousand times in a thousand ways. But after doing my own study and then turning to the commentaries, I want to show you what is really here.
Approaching the Incarnation with Fresh Eyes
James Boyce writes about John 1:14: "I wish it were possible to approach John 1:14 as though I was reading it for the first time. The verse contains something that was new and quite startling when it was first written, and yet for us who read it nearly 2,000 years later, it has become commonplace. We read, 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.' This was the great sentence for which the gospel of John was written. It tells us that God became man. Nevertheless, because we have heard this from childhood, we read it and are often strangely unmoved."
At least it isn't just me — James Boyce is finding the same thing. You are in an extraordinary place here at East Valley Bible Church, and I say that not by virtue of anything I do, but simply because this truth is taught here. Sit down sometime with someone who comes in for the first time — perhaps a Christian who has never been around a church like this — and watch how they absorb this. They don't hear it on a regular basis. You do.
The challenge for me in teaching it week after week is that I often feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again. And I presume that if I feel like I'm saying it repeatedly, you feel like you're hearing it repeatedly. And yet, that is what the Word says. So how do we make this fresh? We ask God to make it fresh for us.
Some of you instinctively, the moment you look at that verse, say to yourselves, "I'm way beyond this. I've known about the incarnation since first grade." I pray that God would soften your heart and honestly take some of that arrogance out of you — the arrogance that says you are way beyond the doctrine of the incarnation. For those of you on the other end who are saying, "This is so far beyond me, I'll never get there," that is not true either. As the Spirit of God applies the Word of God to your heart, He will get you there.
My deepest desire tonight is that God would use — not me, but His Spirit and His Word — to move you. Not in some purely emotional way, but moved by the intellectual truth of this, which should then tap into your emotions.
A Testimony from the Early Church
Here is what one of the early church fathers wrote, speaking of this passage:
"My father, who was frequently reading the New Testament and had long observed with grief the progress I had made in infidelity, had put that book in my way in his library in order to attract my attention if it might please God to bless his design. Here therefore I unwittingly opened the New Testament, thus providentially laid before me. At the very first view, although I was deeply engaged in other thoughts, that grand chapter of the evangelist and apostle presented itself to me. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. I read that part of the chapter and was so affected that I instantaneously became struck with the divinity of the argument and the majesty and authority of the composition as infinitely surpassing the highest flights of human eloquence. My body shuddered, my mind was in amazement. I was so agitated the whole day that I scarcely knew who I was. Nor did the agitation cease, but continued till it was at last soothed by a humble faith in him who was made flesh and dwelt among us."
It is an extraordinary truth. Try with me, please, to approach this as though you are hearing it for the very first time.
A Concept Foreign to the Greek and the Jew
This concept, so familiar to us, was absolutely foreign to both the Greek and the Jew. The Greeks believed that gods were distant, intellectual, remote, eternal, invisible beings. The Jews held God in such awe that they were hesitant even to speak His name. Their teaching emphasized that man could never be God — but it never dawned on them that they would also need to emphasize the reverse: that somehow God would become man. That is how radical this truth is.
Let us pray and ask God to open our eyes to see it. Father, would You do that? Would You allow us to see this afresh, as though for the very first time? To those who instinctively say they are so far beyond this, would You let them look again? And to those who say this is so far beyond them, would You open their hearts? God, would You bring them to a point where their body shudders and their mind is amazed and their life is agitated, until they begin to feel the soothing grace of the One who was made flesh? God, would You do that work? That is our prayer, in Christ's name, amen.
The Word Became Flesh
Let us unpack this. The Word became flesh. Jesus Christ becomes flesh. It is the incarnation. The author of Hebrews writes: "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and prophets in many portions and many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature."
In his Study Bible note on verse 14, MacArthur writes this, speaking of the Word becoming flesh: "This reality is surely the most profound ever, because it indicates the infinite became finite, the eternal was conformed to time, the invisible became visible, the supernatural One reduced Himself to the natural. In the incarnation, we find that the Word did not cease to be God but became God in human flesh."
That is what Paul teaches us in Philippians. Although Jesus was God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself. He emptied Himself of what? Not of His deity, but of His glory.
Jesus Pitches His Tent Among Us
He set aside His position in heaven and joined us here on this earth. Probably the key word in this verse is the idea of "dwelt" — the idea of living in a tent, to pitch a tent or to pitch a tabernacle. Jesus took on this earth suit, this body, this earthly body that we have. It is a body perfectly prepared for us to operate on the surface of this planet. It suits us perfectly here.
But the minute we take it off the surface of this planet, it does not work so well. If we take it down into the depths of the ocean, we need tanks and oxygen to help us breathe — we do not move well, we are limited. If we take it into space, we know that we need a space suit in which we put this earth suit for survival. But while we are on this planet, this earth suit works perfectly for us. When God is done with us, this earth suit will go into the ground, it will decay, and we will receive a glorified body. But for right now, this tent, this temporary dwelling, works well.
Jesus leaves His glory and joins us here, pitches His tent here. As I said, it could be called pitching a tabernacle, and that term would mean a great deal to the Jew in particular. The center of Israel's worship and the most important single object in their camp as they were moving in exile was the tabernacle.
The Tabernacle and Its Symbolism
When Tyler taught this summer, he used a graphic of the tabernacle, so let me use it again. The tabernacle itself was 45 feet long and 15 feet wide, and it had a canopy or covering over it that was 175 feet long and 87 feet wide. In the center of the tabernacle you see two sections — not drawn to scale — the holy place and the holy of holies. The holy of holies was 15 by 15 feet, and the holy place was 30 by 15 feet.
This tabernacle is filled with symbolism. Jim Boyce writes: "Everything about the tabernacle — its dimensions, furnishings, colors, functions, and arrangement — was designed to communicate spiritual truth. Hence, many of its functions were previews of the function Jesus Christ would fulfill when He eventually pitched His tent among us." It is a beautiful picture, the tabernacle — a picture of spiritual truths that are ultimately fulfilled in Christ.
Six Fulfillments of the Tabernacle in Christ
Boyce goes on to give us six of them. First, the tabernacle was the center of Israel's camp. It is not a stretch to say that the fulfillment of that symbol is Christ, who is at the center of the Christian life.
Second, the tabernacle was the place where the law of Moses was preserved. Those tablets given to Moses were there in the ark. Jesus evidenced in His life perfect compliance with God's law — John 8:29: "I do always those things that please him."
Third, it was the dwelling place of God. Where did God live? To the nation of Israel, He was there in that tabernacle in His Shekinah glory. Look at the very verse before us, verse 14: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory." Jesus is the fulfillment of that.
Fourth, it was the place of revelation — the place where men met God. It was called the tent of meeting. Jesus now comes, and we talk about having a relationship with Christ, about being able to know the Creator God of the universe through His Son, Jesus Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of that place of revelation.
The Tabernacle as the Place of Sacrifice
Fifth, it was the place where sacrifices were made. As you came into the covering of this tent, the first thing you would see is an altar continually burning with sacrifice. Hebrews 9:22 tells us: "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin." We do not have to kill bulls and goats and sheep and lambs anymore, because when Christ died and said "It is finished," He made the sacrifice once and for all.
Years ago, when we were in Calcutta, we encountered a very strange setting. On one side of the street was Mother Teresa's home for the dead and dying, and right across the street was a temple to the goddess Kali. If you went into this temple, it was a fascinating, ornate, strange, and bizarre place — your skin crawled, it was truly demonic. In the back was a section, perhaps 12 by 12 feet, of solid concrete that ran to the middle, with a large drain in the center. Right by the drain was a post with a Y at the top of it. At the set times, they would bring in a goat, place the goat's head in the Y, cut the head off, and drain the blood down into the center. What they were doing was appeasing the gods.
You understand that still goes on all around the world? And not only in places we might consider distant or primitive — it still goes on here as well, where men and women are trying to offer sacrifices to appease the gods all the time, trying to live a life pleasing enough to become acceptable to them. It is a caricature of God, and they are worshiping the wrong god. Jesus comes, and that picture of sacrifice we see symbolized in the tabernacle is now fulfilled in Christ.
The Tabernacle as the Place of Worship
Sixth, the tabernacle was the place where the nation of Israel worshiped. Where do we worship? We worship in the presence of the Lord today, wherever He is and wherever we are. I want to talk about this for a moment, because it really relates to what we have looked at in the last three or four weeks — weeks that have been very interesting for us as we have talked about worship here.
It has been more of an intramural debate, something discussed more in staff and really more at the level of Gary and me, just trying to work through it. In the process, several weeks ago we changed the order of service a little. It has been very interesting to get your reaction to this — and there is reaction, trust me. I will get an email that says, "This is awful. I hate this. I need —"
Worship Is Not a Warm-Up Act
Families are dividing over this. Wives and husbands disagree, and I'm not about to solve that. But what has surfaced is what a pathetic job I've done talking to you about worship, because clearly we're not getting it. It's not about the order.
To say, "The music gets me ready for the message" — the music isn't a warm-up act. It's not a band you throw up there to get you ready for Seinfeld when he comes on. Worship is an expression of what's going on in your heart, and this gathering, I would hope, is but a small portion of your worship time.
Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most meaningful worship times I've had in my life have been when I've been all alone. I used to drive to Tucson every Wednesday morning, get up at 3:30, leave about 4:15, and some of the most wonderful times of worship I've ever had were driving alone to Tucson with tapes and CDs on — singing, laughing, talking to myself. I'm so grateful there isn't a tape of that floating around somewhere.
I'm afraid we even do a disservice to you when we call this a worship center, because it can communicate the idea that this is the heart of worship. No — your life is the heart of worship. "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, a spiritual act of worship." What we do here is to corporately come together to encourage one another, to lift one another up, collectively as a body to raise our voice to the Lord, to celebrate communion, to study His Word. Those are all acts of worship.
Where do we worship now? There is no longer a single house of God — you are the house of God. The Spirit of God lives in you. Worship is literally a 24/7 process, and this gathering is a small part of that — an important part, a significant part — but please don't fall into the trap of thinking that worship is this song, this song, this song, boom, bang, done. The minute you get a formula like that, I'll guarantee you, you're moving out of worship and into performance.
The Tabernacle Fulfilled in Christ
The tabernacle symbolizes all these things, and Jesus comes along as the fulfillment of all of them. Look back at verse 14: "The Word became flesh, dwelt among us" — tabernacled among us, pitched His tent among us — "and we beheld His glory." We begin to see, in just these glimpses, the glory of God.
Turn to Matthew chapter 17. There is a clear view of seeing this transfigured, glorified body. Beginning in verse one, Matthew writes this:
"Six days later, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here. If You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.' While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, 'This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.' When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, 'Get up and do not be afraid.' And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one there except Jesus Himself alone."
Beholding His Glory
What did they see in that moment? They got a glimpse of what heaven is going to be like — the glorified Christ. And I love their response. I love Peter's response: let's send out for food, let's set up camp, let's tabernacle here, let's stay.
For whatever reason, and I have no explanation for this, for the last two weeks I have missed Larry so much. I can hear his voice, and I have the tapes, but I just want to be with him. I found myself this week saying, "God, I just want to go to heaven to be with Larry." And those words were not out of my mouth before I thought — what a sinful response. I want to go to heaven to be with my friends. How far can you miss the point?
I find that pattern in myself. Business is hard — God, I just want to go to heaven. There's a test tomorrow — oh Lord, come quickly. Some hardship, some difficulty — that's how selfish and how sinful I am. You probably aren't that way, but I am.
I understand the comfort in that motivation. We have a funeral here Wednesday — a tragic story, a young man who was killed — and I know the wife pretty well, and part of the comfort is that she will see him again. That is a motive, but it's really a sub-motive. I ought to want to go to heaven because I am going to see what the disciples saw on that mountain. I am going to be in the presence of the Lord forever. There is the motivation. And yet I am so selfish and so sinful.
"We beheld His glory." They wanted to camp there, and I understand that. When they saw His life, they got glimpses of His glory — they saw the signs and the wonders and the miracles, the deaf hearing, the lame walking, the blind seeing, the dead raised. They wanted that mountaintop, and Peter says, "Let's stay right here."
But here is my experience anyway. Once in a while God is very gracious and will give you a sense of that — a vision of something extraordinary. But you don't live there, do you? We are slugging it out.
The Eyewitness Account of Glory
I think it is good that we are slugging it out day by day. I think it is good that it is hard and difficult, because it just reminds us this is not home. There are times when I just want to make it home.
God lets them see this glory, and John writes about it. The John who is writing about this incident was the John who was there — he is an eyewitness, and this is an eyewitness account. So in verse 14, he beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten.
The Only Begotten Son
John loves this phrase, the only begotten Son. John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." John 3:18: "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe in Him has already been judged because he did not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God." First John 4:9: "By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him."
This idea of the only begotten Son does not mean that Jesus is birthed out of the Father — He is eternal. In Hebrews 11:17, the author of Hebrews speaks of Isaac as the only begotten Son of Abraham, and we know from Genesis that Ishmael preceded him. This phrase carries the idea of uniqueness, of a love like no other love. It emphasizes the exclusive character of the relationship between the Father and the Son — not that Jesus was born or bred by the Father, but that there is a special, unique, singular relationship there. Just as Abraham had a magnificent relationship with Isaac that was separate and different from his relationship with Ishmael.
Filled with Grace and Truth
This Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, of whom we beheld the glory, was filled with grace and filled with truth. Let me spend a moment on those two ideas, beginning with grace. Here are a couple of definitions — certainly not textbook definitions, but ones we would use. Grace is the unmerited favor of God toward men. It is that which God does within you, but does without you — in a sense, in spite of you. Here is the acrostic that was always a favorite: God's Riches At Christ's Expense. Grace is the kindness and the love of God toward man.
Let us go back to John 3:16. If you have ever been to a football game, you have seen the verse at least referenced. "For God so loved the world that He gave." That is what grace is all about — it is God giving, His love in action. If you love something, you will give to it. You will invest your time, your energy, your effort, your money in it. If you love your job, you will give time to it. If you love your kids, you will invest in them. If you love your spouse, you will invest in that relationship. If you love pizza, you will eat it.
If I sit with a husband and wife and they say they do not love each other anymore, she will say something like, "I don't think he loves me." And I will say to him, "Do you love her?" He will say, "Oh, I love her." And she will say, "Yeah, he says that all the time. He says he loves me, but he doesn't show it." It would have been one thing for God to simply say, "I love you." But God showed it — in that while we were yet sinners, He sent His Son to die for us.
Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
Wednesday night I had the privilege of speaking at Rock, and most of you know they are taking a question a week. Tim told me that the question I was given was the most frequently asked of all the questions submitted — and that is, in essence, why do bad things happen to good people? Why does my mom get cancer? Why does my grandpa get cancer? Why does 9/11 happen? I basically spent 45 minutes telling them I do not know, though I tried to do it in a coherent way.
At the core of that question is the feeling that it is not fair. That is what we are saying. I am a young kid, and it is not fair to take my mom or take my dad — and I understand how difficult that is. But life is not fair. If by fair we mean equal, it is simply not equal.
We live in a country that emphasizes equality, but I am afraid what people often mean is not equality but sameness — and we are not the same. Michael Jordan and I did not come into this world with equal opportunity to play in the NBA. I understand tryouts are available for all of us, but no matter how many Wheaties I ate or how many push-ups I did, I was never going to play in the NBA. I am okay with that. I have gotten past it. And it is true in so many different areas — height, appearance, so many things that simply do not shake out the same for everyone.
There are probably around 500 kids in junior high and high school here tonight, sitting with a group of men and women who love them, care for them, and invest a great deal of time in them. But you understand there are 500 kids sitting on the street in Calcutta right now. There are 500 kids in China — this is the Sunday we commemorate the persecuted church — 500 kids who will never, ever hear what you heard tonight. And you have heard it so many times that it can become routine. That is not fair. Is there injustice with God? No, there is not. But let me show you something that looks unfair on the surface. It is Romans 5:8: "God demonstrated His love toward us, and then..."
Grace and Truth in the Person of Christ
"While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." That's not fair. What we're pressing against here is grace. God is going to extend to us either justice or mercy and grace.
There was a man who lived several hundred years ago in England. He was born into a Christian family, but at age six his parents died, and he went to live with his unbelieving relatives who hated Christ and mocked God. He quickly picked up on that. He joined the British Navy, loved sin, and fell into it deeply. He moved to Africa and there, in his own words, he desired to pursue sin to its fullest — to get a PhD in sin. And he did.
He worked for slave traders and ultimately went to work for the captain of a ship, who brought him aboard believing he had ivory to sell. He didn't, but he did have the ability to navigate a vessel, so he became the ship's mate. One night he got into the supplies, found the rum, and drank himself into a stupor. He fell overboard and would have drowned except that the captain saved him — by harpooning him in the thigh. He was pulled back in, and for the rest of his life he had a hole in his thigh so large you could stick your fist in it.
They eventually encountered rough waters, and the ship was about to go down. He was in the bottom of the ship with the slaves, bailing water. It was there that he remembered some Bible verses he had heard as a child. In the midst of that slave ship, he was born again, and God in His graciousness saved him from that experience. He went on to become a highly educated preacher and teacher.
Here is how you know him. He wrote these words: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I'm found. I was blind but now I see." That is grace — the grace that John Newton experienced. It is the grace that you and I experience if we know Christ in a saving way.
Jesus Is Full of Grace and Truth
Jesus is full of grace. Back to the verse: He is full of grace and He is full of truth — verse 14. Isaiah 65:16 says God is the God of truth. Jesus said in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life." The Holy Spirit will come as a helper and will give us the Spirit of truth. He is the truth.
John used the picture a little earlier: Jesus is the light, and light comes and reveals. Jesus reveals things as they truly are to us. When I was in college, we would sit around in the student union — I went to St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, which became St. Ambrose University after I left. Our mascot was the Bees. The Stinging Bees. It doesn't exactly strike fear into the heart of your opponent. And the student union, staying with the theme, was called the Beehive.
We would sit in the Beehive thinking we were extraordinarily bright. We would literally, on a daily basis, sit around with philosophy professors, seniors, and graduate students and ask, "What is reality?" We had not the foggiest clue.
This morning, driving to church — it is a three-minute drive now, so I don't get to listen to much radio, but God is good — they were talking about the Arizona Board of Education coming into schools to teach character. If I were a student and someone said I needed to behave a certain way, my first question would be: Why? Why should I act that way? On what authority do you tell me to act that way? What you're telling me I should avoid sounds like a lot of fun, and I don't think it would particularly hurt anyone, and the other people involved are all for it. Where do I find truth?
Jesus gives us grace — unmerited favor, God's riches at Christ's expense — and He gives us truth. You want to know what reality is? You are never going to find it in the Beehive, trust me. You are only going to find it in this book and in the person of Christ.
John the Baptist Bears Witness
Verse 15 is something of a parenthetical insert. John the Gospel writer says that John — meaning not himself but John the Baptist — bore witness of Him. John the Baptist cried out and said that Jesus was higher ranking than he, for He existed before him.
In his book *The Cross Through the Open Tomb*, Donald Gray Barnhouse writes this: "The history of every human being begins at birth. But the Lord Jesus Christ existed eternally as the second person of the Godhead. Before He was born in Bethlehem, He lived. He was one with the Father in essence and being. Before His birth as a baby, He walked among men and revealed Himself to them. The Old Testament, which was completed four centuries before His birth, contains many stories of His appearing among men before He became a babe, a child, and a man."
He preexisted. That is what we saw in verse 1: "In the beginning was the Word."
Common Grace and the Fullness of Christ
Verses 16 and 17 tell us that of His fullness we have all received grace. When I say grace and you hear that word, you typically think of saving grace — I am saved by grace through faith. But there is also a common grace that all men experience.
Last Wednesday I played golf out at the TPC. It was a magnificent day. The weather could not have been nicer, the company was terrific, and the greens were a little slow. It was an incredible day. And there were people all around us — people who did not know Christ — who were enjoying God's grace in that day.
When my girls were small — and when I say small, I'm talking two and three years old — every Saturday...