Grace and Truth

The best thing I can do to help introduce our text to you this morning is to let you know we are daring up the high dive, preparing to plunge deep into God's great and deep waters of who he is and what he's done for us. Our morning passage that we're studying begins, The word became flesh and dwelt among us. It ends. No one has ever seen God, the only begotten God, who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. These are already great truths. Yes, we hold them without being able to comprehend them, but we hold them with certainty because this is what God has said. We must go and ask God so that we may believe because of believing we might understand. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the word written so that we can know you and know about you and see how you've been working throughout from the beginning of time. To repair us and repair this world for your son. We thank you that we can see that your word was with you in the beginning. Your word was your son. We thank you, Lord, that he has taken on flesh, that he has become like us. We thank you, Father. that he became like us to die for us. As we contemplate these great truths, help us believe, help our unbelief so that we might understand who you are and so that we might then love you and worship you for who you are. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Joining us for the first time in the last few weeks, at least, we have begun studying the Gospel of John, and we are in John 1. We will be ending John's prologue, which is John 1, verses 1 through 18. If you don't have a Bible, please feel free to use the Pew Bible in front of you. Our passage is found on page 886, John 1. Let me begin with the entirety of the prologue. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, has come into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known. Our message this morning is that the father has sent his son to become like us so that we might become the children of God and that is that we might see his glory and his grace and his truth. The father has sent his son to become like us so that we might become like him, which is to see his glory and his grace and his truth. We'll look at four different aspects of this passage. First, God is with us. God is with us. Secondly, we can see the glory of God. We can see the glory of God. And then finally, we have grace in Christ. We have grace in Christ. Let me read our passage again, verses 14 through 18, before we get to those points. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out. This was he of whom I said he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who's the Father's side. He has made him know. The first thing we must see this morning is about God, and that is that God is with us. That's why we sing Christmas songs or songs typically associated with Christmas here in a nice, sunny, warm day with Cascades singing in the what are these called? The buzz. Cicadas singing in the background. It's June, but we are going to celebrate the fact that the father sent his son to become like us, to die for us. Verse 14 is just loaded with a great depth of truth. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Now, we haven't seen the term word since chapter one, verse one. There we had the great declaration in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. He was in the beginning with God. There was a great truth about the Word and it pointed to the fact that the Word was with God and He is not created. The Word is equal with God as the Creator. Here we see our next great truth. The Word has become flesh. And we're working with two categories, Creator Creation, we must have those two categories clear in our mind, because that's the two main basic foundational categories in Scripture. There's God and there's not God. It's hard to remember that we're not God, but there's God and there's not God. That makes it very clear in John one, one, the father and the son, as we know them, they're God. Everything else is not God. What's amazing about John 1.14 is that God comes down to take upon Himself what is not natural to Him. He comes into His creation to redeem it. He, while remaining the God of man, becomes man. He, while remaining the God of creation, takes upon Himself creation. This is a great mystery, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 3.16. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. The mystery begins with the fact that God came down to earth. God took upon himself that which was not God. The Creator took upon himself that which was created. Why did God take upon himself a full humanity? It's because God created humans good. That's how God can actually come and be a true human, a full human. We were made in the image of God and God himself said, I'm going to become like you. I'm going to take what you are and add it to who I am. God did not lose any of his attributes. He did not stop being God. He took upon what we were meant to be. But why did he do it? Because we failed to be who God created us to be. We failed to be who God created us to be. We were sinners. We've rebelled. We were created to worship, but we chose instead to worship ourselves and to worship this creation rather than Creator. In order to be forgiven, our sin has to be punished. In order to be forgiven, God himself had to become like us to take away that which is foreign to us, and that is our sin. He had to live the way we were supposed to, the way we did not, in order to take away that which is dangerous, our sin. And he did so by taking our place in the judgment. See, God became a man so that he would live the righteous life we failed to do and we were meant to do. That way, when God punishes him for our sin, we're forgiven the righteous dying on behalf of the unrighteous. This is why it is a foundational truth. This is why the Athanasian and other creeds were written to protect this central truth. Jesus Christ is fully God able to redeem and fully man able to be our substitute. Let's look at this next phrase. God, the Word became flesh. God, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, he took upon humanity. But here we also see a second phrase, the Word dwelt among us. We saw John 1.1. It led us to Genesis. In the beginning was the Word. There's an echoing, an allusion to Genesis. John 1.14 takes us to Exodus. The word dwelt among us. I believe that the chapters we ended on in Exodus 33 and 34, they are behind. They're in John's mind as he is writing these last few verses of his prologue. We see it here in that really the best Hebraic way of translating what John is saying here is that the word pitched his tent among us. He made his dwelling among us. And that's the same language we see of the tabernacle in Exodus. God said, make a tabernacle and I will dwell there with you in that tent. Same thing is said of the tent of meeting where Moses spoke to God face to face. So a lot of folks debate whenever it says the word came and dwelt among us, the word pitched his tent among us. Is he referring to the tent of meeting or the tabernacle? Well, I think both. Doesn't have to be either or. Both are where God came to meet his people and his people can come to meet God. So why does Old Covenant reference to the exile? Because we see that the creator has come down to redeem his creation. Exodus is all about delivering his people. Now we see that Emmanuel, God with us, he's coming. And he's coming with a specific purpose, to redeem us from our sin. The image is very powerful because it identifies Jesus with the temple. It identifies Jesus with the tabernacle. It identifies Jesus as the central place of worship. Let me walk through some parallels here. The tabernacle in the Old Covenant was in the center of Israel. The camp was built around the tabernacle. Now, Jesus has replaced the tabernacle. He has made His dwelling upon us. And as the body of Christ, we are to gather around Christ. He is our center. We are to gather around Him. The body of Christ has Him at its center. We are focused on building up one another around Him and in Him. What we could do is put ourselves and our opinions in the center. We can put ourselves in the center and say this church needs to be built around my specific opinions. No, Christ is the center as the tabernacle was the center of the body. Secondly, the tabernacle was the place of worship. The tabernacle was the place of worship. Now we worship in Christ. We worship Christ himself as God. When we come together, we We're singing praises of Jesus Christ. We're singing praises of the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. We come with a specific focus, the glory of the one who died for us. And finally, the tabernacle was where God met man. If we want to be reconciled with God, if we want to be with God again, it's only in Christ. It's only the Christ who says, this one is mine. I have died for a sin. This one is mine. I've given him my inheritance. It's only in Christ that we can once again meet God. Throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, for that matter, there's there's a particular phrase that we talked about a lot in Genesis when we were studying Genesis. I will be your God. You will be my people. That's the most basic element of God's covenant. That is what I call the covenant formula. God says, I will be your God. You'll be my people. It demonstrates a number of things. First, God is sovereign in the relationship. He's the one who makes the relationship. He's the one who declares the relationship to be. It also shows he is committed. We are nobody until God says you are my people, and that gives us that identity. He is the one who makes the promise. I will be your God, you will be my people. He's one who keeps the promise. It's interesting, if you think about the language of dwelling and we think about the covenant formula, you can look later, Revelation 21.3. This is the end of the story. This is the final new heavens and new earth. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God. is with man. He will dwell with them, they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. Now that's different from when Jesus came in John 1. When God, Jesus came in John 1, they rejected him. They denied him. They crucified When Christ returns and puts all things back in its proper order, we will not have a son. We will not have a temple. We will have Jesus Christ, who is the light of all that exists. And we will know that we are his people and that he is our God. This covenant, this dwelling will be made perfect. There will be no more sin keeping us from enjoying it. We must long and expect with great eagerness that day. When we know we are God's perfectly and completely without the tarnish of sin in our conscience, we must long for the day when we can confess this in our song in heaven forever. A few applications as we move on before we move on. First, we must confess faithfully and boldly with a great awe and wonder that God became man. That Jesus Christ is God and man. We must confess this boldly. We must confess this truly. We must know that it comes from Scripture. If you have any questions about it, I would love to talk to you about it afterwards. But even though we can't understand it perfectly, how could this be if Scripture says that we believe it and that helps lead us to an understanding? The second application. We matter to God. God cares for us. That's what the incarnation essentially teaches us. God cares for us, for God so loved the world that he sent his son. The son chose to come to us to take upon a form lower than himself, to be beaten and spat upon rather than being worshiped and to die for us. God. cares for humanity. We must know that someone loves us and it is God Almighty who loves us. We know he loves us because of the great sacrifice he made for us. That's how you show love, what you're willing to deny yourself or someone else. We see Christ denied himself the glory for that temporary period so that he could bring us into glory. There's also an implication here that I want to point out. When we sin, we should not say I'm just human. Humanity was created to worship, that is the proper role and function of humanity. Jesus Christ was the perfect man. He was humanity as it's supposed to be, and it was a humanity that worshiped God. When we sin, we don't blame it on our humanity because God made us men and women. Our sin is foreign to us and dangerous. To be human is to glorify God. And so when we sin, we actually say, well, that was rather inhuman or not human of us. Finally, the final application, God should matter to us. We matter to God and God should matter to us. To say this differently would be we love God because he first loved us. We see his great love for us in the cross of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. We have to stop living like atheists. I'm looking at people that all and if you're looking at me you're looking at someone who lives like an atheist. We live our lives at some point in some time in some way everyone as if we doubt God. All of our life is meant to be lived knowing that God exists Knowing that he is a creator worthy of all of our worship, we must stop living like atheists. We must be purified from our sin, seeking to worship him alone. The second great truth we'll see this morning is that God has made his glory visible. God has made his glory visible, continuing in verse 14, and we have seen his glory. Gloria, the only son from the father full of grace and truth. This is these are bold words for John. These are bold words coming out of the old covenant. We have seen his glory. Well, where do they see his glory? We could point to his signs. Whenever he made the water into wine, they glorified. They saw his glory in that action. When he rose Lazarus from the grave, they saw his glory. In his prayer, John 17, he says, Father, restore the glory I had before the incarnation. When I die and rise again, put me back into the proper place of glory. Jesus is glorious, no matter if we recognize that glory. It is the glory that is seen in the Son who has been sent from the Father." Notice this, glory as the only Son from the Father. In John 1.1, all we had was God was in the Word. We saw these two together as God. God and the Word. Here we get better language, I think. We get more distinct, more helpful, more clear language to understand how we confess there is one God, but yet also three who are not more than one God. It's the father and the son. That's why earlier I read back and forth, but I really prefer in chapter one, verse 18, only begotten. That's a better translation. It's a better confession. It's more clear because what distinguishes the father and the son is that the father beget the son. Now, the father did not create the son. It's very important to distinguish that the father did not create the son, but he beget the son. It was an eternal begetting. Is that mysterious? Yes, but does it help articulate who the triune God is? I believe so. His sonship is essential language for the church. We must protect the language of father and son. If we lose the language of father and son from scripture, we lose the identity of Jesus as divine and his distinction. We lose the basis for adoption that we studied last week. Let me look at this last phrase, because this is driving us to John's point. We have seen his glory. It's the glory of the only son from the father. He is full of grace and truth. Now we see his glory and we see his glory in grace and truth. Where have we seen this before? Where have we seen the glory of God in his grace and truth? It's Exodus 33 and Exodus 34. We just studied this. Moses said, let me see your glory. God said, no one can see me and live. I will not show you my glory, but I will let my goodness pass before you. And once the goodness is passing before before that, he says, I will have grace upon who I have grace. I'll have mercy upon whom I choose to have mercy. The glory of God is revealed in his goodness, in his grace and in his truth. As God passes by in Exodus 34, revealing the backside or the afterglow of glory, this is what he says. The Lord, the Lord of God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who by no means clear the guilty. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. Notice the two things that God abounds in in this revelation of his glory. Love and faithfulness, which can easily be translated into grace and truth. Here we see, I believe John is alluding back to Exodus 33 and he's making a clear point. What we see is better than what Moses saw. What we see is a new stage of the redemption of history. What we see is God's glory in a new way with a different grace or a new grace and a better truth. And I believe John is referencing back to this clear, definitive revelation to help us see that this one is special. He's different. He's not like anyone else who's ever walked in the face of the earth because he's God. God with us. We have seen. No one has seen God except for the one except for those who receive the revelation from Jesus Christ. Now, here's the question, how can we see God? How can we see God? You're all here on a Sunday morning, you're taking your day off from where you could be a beautiful day outside to sit in this room with a little cold. Which I appreciate. How can we see God? This is what we should be longing for. First, when we see God and in Christ, we see God and what he took away from us and what he gives us, we see God and that Christ on the cross took the wrath of God. We see that God is holy and just and righteous and that we see that when we know that Christ, the God man, he had to die for us. We also see God. When we know that we're now his beloved children in Christ, we see God when we approach him in the name of Christ and we let we say we want to seek you. We want to know you and reveals himself for those who say, I just want to see God look to the cross. That is where you will see him first and foremost in all of his holiness and righteousness, because he judges sin rightly and then in all his grace and mercy, because he forgives us. Our text points us to two things we typically do not like, grace and truth. Now, many of you say, well, what do you mean? How can someone not like grace? To understand grace, as scripture teaches us, says that we're not good enough. If we truly believe grace, as the Bible says, defines it, we have to accept we are not good enough. All of us, by nature, we think we're good enough. God should love us. We can all think of someone worse than us. But in order to truly get grace, in order to truly see the grace that Christ has brought, we must be ready and willing and eager to confess, I'm not good enough. I'm too sinful. God shouldn't love me, but he does anyway. I am not good enough to please God. I need the gift. Because I can't earn it. The second thing is truth. Because this denies the lie of our autonomy. We want to think we've got everything figured out. We like to think we've got everything figured out. We like to say I have these rules and these principles, but what really happens when we come to God, we realize his word is true. We have to submit to it. I was reading a quote from C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, and it's worth reading if you have not read it. And there's a master demon and a servant demon, and they're trying to give a strategy. How can we keep these Christians from being faithful and working for God's kingdom? And how can we keep non-Christians from knowing Christ? Well, one of the strategies was keep in their minds so many conflicting and contradicting philosophies that they never understand what truth is, and they just give up on it altogether. I believe that's the day and age we live in. Back in C.S. Lewis's day, he actually said the media is credited for this. That's right. We constantly have so much intake, so many different philosophies that are bouncing around in our heads that are contradictory. We must go to God's word and say it judges every thought every idea, every motive, every desire. We must long for the truth that is seen in Jesus Christ, and then we will see the glory of God. As we started a few weeks ago, we grow to see God as we purify ourselves. Two key passages in seeing God's glory. Matthew 5 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. First John 3 2. When Christ appears, we shall see him as he is because we'll be made like him. Everyone who thus hopes purifies himself. Christian, are you longing still to see God and see more of him? Do you have a joy in seeing God and worshiping him and just being in his presence? If you are not having that joy, if you lack the gratitude towards God, what's keeping you from enjoying that is not God. It's your sin. No, it's your entertainment of sin that fills your joy in Christ. As we purify ourselves, as we seek the purity that comes from above, as we seek to remove sin, then we can cast our eyes upon God. When we drive out to the mountains, we don't wear glasses with mud all over them. You want, I wear my glasses going to see them better, but I want them clean. I don't go and I put mud all over my glasses and say, I can't wait to go see the mountains today. When we go, when we try to see God and worship him and experience him while entertaining the proactive pursuit of sin, it's like putting mud on your glasses. Only scripture calls it something else. It's covering our face with filth, hoping that God will let us see him, but all the while saying, I'm going to keep pursuing this sin. But we can't because we've covered our eyes with filth. If we want to see God, we have to stop playing in the filth. Our last point, which will cover the last few verses here. God has established his new covenant. God has established his new covenant. The first thing we want to see, there are three points in this point. God has established his new covenant. First, John bears witness that the old covenant has been superseded, that Jesus Christ is bringing in a new covenant. It's put in parentheses in the ESV. I think that's a good way of portraying what's happening here. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. We have to realize here that John the Baptist is declaring that Jesus Christ is greater than he is. And notice the key terms here, after, before and before. Now, this fits into what John is saying in verses 14 through 18. After, before, before, he says, he who came after me. Now, we know John the Baptist was born before Jesus. So Jesus came after him. He was born on this earth before him. His ministry began before Jesus. So, so temporally he's referring, I think, to his ministry. John the Baptist is a prophet before Jesus in time. But then he says he ranks. Before me, Jesus came after me, but he ranks before me, he is greater than I am. Now, this is where it gets a little interesting if you're an Old Testament prophet, because the prophets who are before are always greater. There is no greater prophet in the Old Testament than Moses. He is the great prophet. Everyone who says anything is just repeating what Moses said for their particular situation. The prophet before always has more glory, always has a higher rank. John is saying he who came after me is greater than I am. And look at his reason. Because he was before me. Because he was the word who was in the beginning that created me. He was the word that was in the beginning that created everything. Now, what John is saying here is that Jesus isn't just a prophet. He's greater than that. He's more than just a prophet. He is almighty God. And John the Baptist, being the last old covenant prophet, is saying the old covenant prophets, they've been superseded. Jesus Christ has come and he is bringing in a new covenant, a new kingdom. He is to be honored more than John the Baptist, more than Moses, even more than Abraham. A couple applications here. First, we must know our Old Testament. It is important for us to appreciate and know what's happening in the New Testament. We must know first the Old Testament. We'll appreciate God's power and love to persist throughout those years, but we also see how the plan has unfolded in perfect brilliance. We almost have to recognize that Jesus is not just a prophet. That's one of the key implications here. Yes, Jesus is a prophet. Everybody likes Jesus as a prophet. Everybody likes to quote Jesus as a prophet. But the issue there is that he's not just a prophet. He's God Almighty. Some of the greatest dangers to the church are those who come in and they want to say, yes, I like Jesus. He was a great prophet. But they've reduced him to a prophet. They've reduced him to a prophet, denying him supreme authority to declare whatever he wants to declare, because usually, just like some of the things Jesus said, most of all, they deny he's God. Some of the dangers that we can see of folks who do this, well, Mormonism. Mormonism denied that Jesus was the God who became flesh. Mormons deny his deity. They make him just a prophet. Jehovah's Witnesses also deny the true and distinct deity of Jesus Christ. Now, these are two groups that claim to be Christian, but they're clearly not. Surprisingly, I've grown to be concerned that one of the most dangerous groups that is threatening the church's distinctive of Jesus being God is actually Islam. They're wanting to come and they're wanting to say, we're a lot alike. We both have Jesus as a prophet. They claim to have Jesus as a prophet. They both say we like the fact that it's all about loving God and loving your neighbor. The problem is there's nothing like us. Islam and Christianity are two different religions. First of all, Muhammad says about himself what John the Baptist says about Jesus. Muhammad says, I am greater because I came after Jesus. And therefore, what I say trumps what Jesus says. We have to recognize that as a false prophet. Anyone who says they are greater than Jesus is a false prophet. Secondly, when they say love God, it's a different God. They deny the deity of the sun. They deny the deity of Jesus Christ. We must be careful of wanting to embrace a unity with Islam. Yes, there are neighbors. Yes, we're friendly. Yes, we care for them. But we do not unite with them as if we have a united or common religion together. The second thing we see here in that there is a new covenant. Jesus's grace is greater than Moses. Jesus's grace is greater than Moses. For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. There's two key words here, the fullness and the received. In chapter 1, verse 13, receive is equated with believing. You receive Christ when you believe in him. So there is a declaration that one must believe the whole point of the Gospel of John. Believe that the father sent his son and that son is Jesus Christ. Receive his fullness. Jesus Christ is the full glory of God and the full grace of God. Now we can drink from the ocean. We can never drink the entire ocean. When we go and we seek to know and see the glory of Christ, we'll never see all the glory, but we can see some of the glory. We can grow in knowing more and more of his glory. The only place we see the glory of God is in Christ. Now, I want to focus here on the laws from Moses and graces from Jesus Christ. Let me be very clear. This is not saying there were two plans of salvation, that the law of Moses was a salvation by works. And the law of Christ is grace without works. That is not setting up this dichotomy. This is dangerous. It is dangerous to think that the old covenant was ever a salvation apart from faith. Abraham believed and he was declared righteous. The old covenant was a declaration that God has made a promise. He will fulfill it. And you believe that promise. And there's a law that you follow because you believe the promise. The New Covenant, we believe God has fulfilled that promise. Jesus Christ has come and there is the law of Christ that we obey because we believe that promise. There is no works salvation. There is no faith that doesn't expect works. The law and the gospel, the Ten Commandments, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, they're both grace. We see this in this very passage. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. I believe what he's referring to there is actually the old covenant grace and the new covenant grace. It's the new covenant grace that is upon the old covenant grace. Another word to help translate this would be instead of. We have received a new grace in Christ that is instead of the old grace that came through Moses. It is grace upon grace. It is the grace of Jesus Christ rather than the grace of Moses. It's a reminder the law is a good gift to us. The law in the old covenant, the law in the new covenant, the law is a good gift and we are to seek to obey it. The old covenant prepared the way and this allows us to know how much great how great Christ is. There's a couple of ways we can compare Moses or contrast Moses with Jesus. First, Moses was a servant of God. Jesus is a son of God. You already see that there's a greater, greater work because he's a greater person. He's a greater identity. Secondly, Moses could only command righteousness. Jesus Christ is able to declare us righteous. Third, Moses could only forbid us to sin. Christ saves us from sin and gives us the spirit of new life that can keep us from sinning. Moses could only tell us about God. Christ is God's own self-expression. Moses could only sacrifice a lamb that covered our sins. Jesus is the lamb that takes away our sins. Moses could not lead the people into the rest God promised. Jesus Christ is that rest. that he has always promised. For that's why reading the Old Testament helps you appreciate who Christ is. We see all of these longings throughout the history of the Old Covenant, and they never were fulfilled until Christ came. We see the beauty of the gospel as we see how it has been played out from God from the very beginning. Finally, our last verse. Jesus is the full revelation of God. No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. God cannot be seen by sinners. It's one of those working presuppositions here. Our sin keeps us from seeing God. It's the filth on our eyes. We cannot see God. And God, by his grace, does not allow us into his presence or else we'll be consumed. But here we see that someone has made him known. Someone has allowed his glory and his grace and his truth to be known in a full way. It's what B.S.V. translates as the only God, but what I think is better is the only begotten God, the one who has always existed as the son of the father. He has come so that when Philip asks, show us the father, he can say, when you see me, you see the father. When you see the glory of Christ, you see the glory of God. The only thing keeping us from seeing that glory, again, is our sin. There's an interesting phrase here, the only begotten God, who is the Father's Son. Really, the literal translation here, who's in the Father's bosom. Again, a begetting language here. It's a gender confusing illustration. But it shows, again, the father and the son, the parent and the child relationship. It's interesting because it's possible here's an inclusio. He's ending 118 of the prelude here. He's ending it, the prologue. He's ending it by saying, God the son has an intimate love and fellowship with God the father. That's what in the bosom language means. He's next to him. He's close to him. Well, John one one, it talked about how he's toward God, how they have a unique love. We see that the one who's made him known is the one who's most loved and known by God. Friends, here's. The charge. We can know God today. If you're not a Christian, you can know him and you can only know him in Christ, you can only know God if you believe in the sun. The son who became like us to die for us, the son who rose again, the son who is exalted. And if you believe in his name and what he's done for you, you become a child of God forgiven and made new by his life. If you're a Christian this morning, we must continue in our pursuit of the knowledge of God. We must continue to pursue him with repentance, with study, with fellowship, By believing this promise. If we seek him, we will find him if we seek him with our whole heart. If we seek him, we will find him if we seek him with our whole heart. Our desires are for other things. We have to repent of those desires and make a wholehearted, desired effort. to love and worship the only One who is worthy of our love and worthy of our worship. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, there are so many things that we do not understand And we seek to praise You because You are beyond our comprehension. Help us, Lord, to have the awe and the wonder that John is writing for us to have. Help us, Lord, to believe the way John has prescribed us to believe. Help us, Lord, to believe in You by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Give us faith. Help our unbelief. Give us more understanding so that we can love You more. and worship you more wholeheartedly. Lord, help us to seek you. Help us, Lord, to find you. Help us to see you more in the power and your glory. Help us, Lord, to see your splendor so that we can worship you, Lord. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.