Jesus is the I Am Part 2 - John 1:16-18

2:07A race well run. Thank you, and thank you for leading. And that's John, right? You can get a picture of John. John was probably about the same age as Clyde or pretty close when he wrote John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, John in Revelation. And so, John, how does one run a race, a good race? How do you run the race that God has set before you? And how do you run it well? And certainly, John, after all these years, and that's one of the things that impresses me about John, is he's still at it. Life has turned out very different than what he thought it would be.

2:47But here he is at the end, just not cynical, but excited and joyful and looking forward, having run his race. But your ability to run well, the race that God has. Put before you is based on two things. It is based on what you see in Jesus and what you receive from Jesus. And as we look at John's life, that is what he is saying in this passage. It is what he saw in Jesus and what he received from Jesus that gave John that strength to run, that endurance, that excitement that caused him to run his race well. We started looking at this last time in these verses.

3:32John makes two declarations. In verse 14 and 15, he says, We saw his glory. In verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory. Glory is the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 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. The word invaded our world, as John says, the word became flesh. The word tabernacled among us. We saw his glory. And it was a glory of the only begotten, the only unique one from the Father, full of grace and truth. And John the Baptist said, I saw his glory, and there he is, that one. That's the one. This is he.

4:20Want to continue looking at this? So that was what John saw. But like I said, it's not just what he saw that gave him life. It was what he partook of. So not only did John see his glory, but he'd make that second declaration, we partook of his glory, in verses 16 through 18. Let me read that to you. Verse 16. For of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father. He has explained him.

5:04So this is not just an exercise as we're walking through this passage. I don't want this to just be an exercise of reading the scripture and trying to understand it and that. I want you to receive what John received. If we go through this, it isn't just a mere academic exercise. And John's purpose for writing this gospel is not just a mere academic exercise. He wants you to receive what he received. He wants you to see what he saw, and he wants you to receive what he received. And he says, we partook of his glory. I've just broken these next three verses, verses 16 and 18, down into three sections. And to break this glory down and just deal with each, further describe John's or the glory that he partook of. First of all, look back and I want you to see the fullness, the fullness.

6:00The glory. We all saw the fullness of his glory. Look at verse 16. For of his fullness we have all received. So John continues this thought. He's full of grace from verse 14. The word became flesh, and it is his fullness that we have received from. It's the same word. You remember when the 5,000 were fed, and Jesus fed this huge crowd, and they picked, after they got through, they all ate and they were all satisfied. And in Mark, it says they picked up 12 full baskets of broken pieces. The fullness, the leftover, the abundance. And so Jesus, what took place on the feeding of the 5,000 is that this crowd was able to take of the overflowing abundance of Christ's provision of physical food. And what John is saying here is that I have partaken of Jesus' overflowing abundance of spiritual food. That's what he's saying.

7:10I mean, think for a moment about this overflowing abundance. Think about the sun. The sun, it shines upon everyone. It doesn't matter who all's out, right? It shines. It's like it can shine upon everybody. Or if we all wanted to be like mole people and go live underground. It doesn't change or diminish or add to the sun's capacity to shine. The sun can shine on everybody and not be diminished one bit. And the same is true about Jesus. In fact, Martin Luther said it like this: The Sun is not dimmed and darkened by shining on so many people or by providing the entire world with its light and splendor. It retains its light intact, it loses nothing, it is immeasurable. Thus, Christ our Lord, to whom we must flee, and to whom we must ask of all, ask for everything, he is an endless well, the chief source of all grace. Even if the whole world were to draw from this fountain enough grace and truth to transform all people into angels, still it would not lose as much as a drop. The fountain of grace constantly overflows with sure grace. You see, Jesus's supply of spiritual vitality is sufficient for every single individual whoever lived and whoever will lived. The division of humanity is not based upon the sufficiency of Jesus' fullness, but upon the reception of who Jesus is and what he gives. And John is saying, I personally took of his overflowing abundance. For of his fullness, look back at 16, we have all. Received. We have all received. The we there certainly includes John and the apostles and probably the entire believing community. We have all received. It's an abundance. And the word received is an active word. It's not just like you don't think as a word received is passive, like, okay, I was, I received this. But it's more active, it's an active word. It's like, I partook, I took this. In fact, this last week, you remember, I sent out an email to everybody. I'm giving away all my Rambo food. You remember Albert Rambo and all the food years ago, Vietnam vet, for those of you who don't know, named Rambo, who was ready for Armageddon and had came to this church and gave us a whole bunch of food. He had stacked his whole house with an overflowing abundance of gold, guns, and food, and lots of food, false walls, and everything. It's a great story. I'd love to tell you more about it. But after trailer full after trailer full, and some of you were involved in that, as we loaded out and emptied his house as he was approaching death and we sent that stuff all over to Mexico and all over the place, well, a whole bunch of that landed up in my garage. And this week, as we're getting ready to move our, or try to sell our house, we decide, okay, we need to start moving some stuff out, put this advertisement out and to get rid of all this Rambo food, all this survival food.

10:30And I think about four or five people or more came and they got their fill. And then the next group came and they got their fill and they got their fill. It was that much stuff. But notice that everybody came, they partook. They didn't just come. It's not like they just, but they came and took of it. And that's the sense of the verb here. John is saying, we partook, we took from his overabundance. He gave, yes, but we took, we received it. That's the idea. And John is saying that many other received Christ, received Jesus. And that means they received him for who he is.

11:13They received him for who he is, and along with him, everything that comes with that. You don't have the prerogative to accept part of Christ. You accept him for who he is, or you don't accept him. And that was certainly true of John's day. He came to his own. Verse 11, those his own didn't receive him, but as many who did receive him, verse 12, to them he gave the right to be the children of God.

11:41So those who were born not of blood or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God. It's interesting in those three verses, in verses 12 and 13, really 11, 12, there were those who did not receive him, but there were those who did receive him, past tense. And those who did. Receive him are the ones who are currently believing in him, present tense. You want to know who's in the family of God? You want to know who's truly received him? Those who are believing in him. And then he goes on to say, and those who are believing him are the ones who were born of him. Past tense. So the ones who received are the ones who were believing, are the ones who were born. That's how John packages the whole sovereignty of God and salvation of man and responsibility into a bundle. And we get in trouble when we start trying to pull that apart. Those who received are the ones who are believing, are the ones who were born, not of blood, that is not of family lineage, not of the will of the flesh, that is not by self-effort, and not by the will of man, that is not by the efforts of others, but by grace. That's how they are born. So we looked at this overflowing abundance, this fullness of Jesus' glory. Next, I want you to see the description of this glory. I mean, if you're going to run the race, you must receive what Christ has for you. If you're going to run the race that God has marked out for you, you must receive Christ and receive what he has for you. So I want you to see this glory, the description of his glory, verse 16. So John already in verse 14 started describing his glory. He's the glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. But then in verses 16 and 17, John adds a couple more. More thoughts that add to the description of Jesus' glory. And first, in verse 16, Jesus' glory is a glory abundant in grace. Look back at verse 16. Jesus' glory is a glory abundant in grace. Look at what John received. Look at what he received from his overflowing abundance. Grace upon grace. Literally, grace in place of grace. It's like John is describing his life as a series of expressions of God's grace. It's like hardly one expression of God's grace has come until another expression of God's grace has come. And that's how John describes his life. My life has been just receiving one wave of God's grace after another. I see this in several of the, and the way it's translated. One version says one blessing after another, another grace for grace. Another version says, blessing upon blessings heaped upon us. Another one, one gracious blessing after another. You get this sense of waves, like waves of the sea. One of the things I really loved about my time in California and any place when I'm near a coast, I love to just go out and watch the waves come in, one after. I love to go out and stand in the waves. I love to watch them come in. I know, like. It's really popular because in Southern California, a lot of other people like to do the same thing because they have this highway that runs right up and down the coast, and they make these little parking lots overlooking the bluffs so you can just come out there and park and watch the waves come in. And a lot of people, I mean, it's hard to get a parking place some days because people just like to go out there and just watch. It's even better to go down and just sit out there and just watch wave after wave come upon, and it's never diminished. In fact, one of the most beautiful sights was whenever you go out there at night, and sometimes when the red tide has come in, and this beautiful neon color, just wave after wave of beauty. Not neon in the sense of radioactive, but in a natural healthy cause, but just beautiful. The whole coastline, just this neon, it's just an incredible, beautiful sight. One that you could just sit there and you just don't ever get tired of it. And that's the picture of life in Christ. It is one wave of grace after that's how John says, This is what my life, and his life was not easy, but and it's an incredible testimony that here he is. My life has been one experiencing one wave of grace upon another. It's a limitless reservoir of God's grace, just like the ocean. Never goes. But a good question to ask is. What is grace? What is it really?

16:34I just want to say a lot. Of course, we can do a series on it. I just want to give you two key concepts that stem from this context. But two concepts. First of all, what is grace? Well, the first concept is it involves freedom. Freedom. Grace, and I'm talking about the freedom on the side of the giver. That's a critical element of grace. Grace, it stresses that all that God does on our behalf is done freely without compulsion. It's opposed to works. It's opposed to response.

17:13It's opposed to what's due or what's mandated. No, freedom. It's not grace. If God is not free, it is not grace. If it is owed, it is not grace. If it is earned, it is not grace. If it is coerced, it is not grace. No, there's a freedom. There's a freedom on the side of the giver. In fact, in Exodus 33, you remember in verse 18, when Moses said, Show me your glory, it's interesting what God says. He says, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you. In other words, his glory is his goodness. I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord. I will proclaim to you that name. We're praying in the name. I will proclaim that to you. Wow, so we're tracking really well. Like, okay, I can see that. I could get that. And then he says this: and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I show compassion. You're kind of like, well, what? That's kind of. But here, at the very outset, as God is revealing himself, he's saying, Look, I am free to do as I please.

18:29My glory is of my goodness, and I am absolutely free to do as I please, and no expectation and no sense of man's justice or no sense of fallen man's concept of what is right and wrong is going to drive me to do anything. Why is Moses up there, not anyone else? Moses saying, that's in my mind. But freedom, freedom is at the very beginning of grace, if there is any compulsion. So from the side of the recipient, grace is something completely undeserved. From the side of the giver, grace is something freely given, or it's not grace. But there's a second key concept involved in grace. It's not only is it there freedom on the side of the giver, but the second concept is joy. Joy. The word for grace in the Greek is karis. The word for joy is kara. And it doesn't take a Greek scholar. To tell these two are related, very closely related. Cognates would be the word. But grace is something that causes joy.

19:41It's the basic meaning, that which causes joy. One commentator likened it to a ballet dancer when we say gracefully, there is something that joy-giving about something that is full of grace or a graceful performance or something, there's something that brings about a joy. And so grace comes to us with this idea of freedom, joy, and bounty. But that's what is really important to understand here. And it's not just the joy of the one receiving, but the joy of the giver. The giver enjoys giving expressions of favor, and the recipient enjoys receiving expressions of favor. It's something that causes joy on both sides. And you need to understand this about God. He is free.

20:42And he does things that causes him joy. And he delights to give expressions of favor to his people simply because he loves to do it. It causes him joy. In fact, yesterday, okay, we now have four teenagers. In my house, my 12-year-old son is now my 13-year-old teenage son. So, we had a great day, usual thing. We got up early, snuck out, and had breakfast, and came back and did some things, and opened some presents. He got a present from us, and it was a card, and he opened it up, and there's a big wad of cash. And he pulls it out and he says, Wow, you finally paid me for the work I did.

21:33Of course, my wife is quick, nope, nope, nope, that's a gift, that's a gift. And then he's like, Sweet, sweet. Well, we can kind of think about God's grace, it's a free expression of favor, and it brings joy to those who receive it. It's not grace. All of a sudden, that gift is something very different. If it's like, oh, yeah, that was your payment for your that's not grace. Nancy wanted to make it very clear, that's a gift, it's grace, and she was delighted. We were delighted to be able to give, and he was like, Sweet, he was delighted to receive.

22:14So, when John says, For of his fullness we have all received grace upon grace, he is saying that one expression of God's undeserved favor in Christ is hardly gone before another one comes. You know, and I can look at this over my life, and I can see. See how this is true of my life. I can think of just the very fact that I am here, just the fact that you are very here, is an expression that one of God's waves of grace has already come over you. The fact that you are, that he thought through your existence and he put you in your time and place. You've already seen grace. And even as a young boy, as I went my own way, ah, there was that grace, that wave of patience, that patience, right? Many of us are still just that wave of patience. It's grace. It's grace. That wave of provision that God provides. He gives us time. He gives us good things. It's a wave of his grace. And then, as I drew me, then that wave of grace where he drew me in and he made me willing when I wasn't even interested in the things of God. And he, that was his grace.

23:28And then, and then that moment when my chains are gone and he sets me free and that wave of grace, that wave of justification comes over me. Oh, and I'm going to say something about that. That's my that's past grace. He has justified me. He said, you know what? You know what Tom Baber needs? He needs a righteousness, a righteousness that I can get excited about. And so he says, here's my son. And he gives me his righteousness so that I can come before him with the righteousness, not my own righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ. He says, Tom Babor needs this.

24:15And he gave me his grace. And he was excited to give it to me. That's the point. Just like we were excited to give our children good gifts. Here is your heavenly father saying, I am excited to give my righteousness to you. Jesus was excited to give his righteousness to you. Oh, but then I can think of another wave of grace, that future grace, that he has laid out for me a heaven, a city, a place, a dwelling, to where it's like in scripture, it's hard to even, very few times do you even see words given to it. It's hard to even express how great and how wonderful.

25:01And he's got that. So I can think about the grace of my past is there. I can think about the grace for the future. And then let me put myself in the present. And there is present grace. And he isn't reluctant to give us what we need, past. He's not reluctant to give us heaven. In fact, he is very joyful in giving us heaven. That's grace. He is free, and this is what he wants to do. And in our present circumstances, He gives us the grace for all of our present needs. We know he is taking care of the past. That was costly. We know he's preparing an incredible future. That is costly. It's incredible. Do you think he's not going to give us anything in the present?

25:51Of course. He gives us grace for everything, and he is transforming us into the image of his son. Well, I've got to keep going. It's a grace, a grace that is abundant in grace. But there's a second aspect: a glory. As John is describing Jesus' glory, he describes it as a glory abundant in grace. But second, he describes it as a glory superior to the law of Moses. Look back at verse 17. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth were realized for Jesus Christ. The law was given, that it is set forth. Truth came, truth was personified, law was inscribed. And a lot of people will see that there's this disjunction here, that somehow John is setting law and grace at odds with each other. Well, if there had been a big conjunction here, strong conjunction, they might have a case. In other words, if it read, for the law was given through Moses, however, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Or if it said the law was given through Moses, but contrary to that grace and truth, yeah, there might be a case. But there isn't that conjunction there because there isn't a disconjunction or disjunction between law and grace in John's mind. He doesn't see law and grace pitted against each other. But he does see that there is a limitation with how far law can go.

27:32The Old Testament God is not different from the New Testament God. It's the same one. In fact, John has already made it clear that the word, that self-expression of God, all things came into being through him, including the law. All things, the law. So the same word that gave us the law is also the same word that was in flesh and dwelt among us. The word is not at odds with himself. And John, just the very fact that he says was given, recognizes that the law itself was a gracious gift. It was given. However, it had limitations. And there are two of them that I want to make sure you get. First of all, the law was only given to announce what God righteously demanded from people. It was not given to them to help get them there. It was to lay out God's righteous standards. It wasn't given to help people meet them. The law. Had binding commandments. It had demands of righteousness. It was the standard, but that's all it was. It demanded obedience. It required strict obedience on an ongoing fashion. Cursed is anyone who doesn't continue to do all these things. It was inflexible in its penalty.

28:54And he despised it. He who despised it, as Hebrews 10, 28 says, everyone who set aside the law of Moses died without mercy. And in Hebrews 2, 2, every transgression received a just penalty. You see, the law was given to expose, to reveal God's righteousness, but it was never given to justify the sinner. It was never given to justify the sinner. It's completely incapable of giving life, atoning for sin, justifying, sanctifying, raising the dead. It was never intended to do these things.

29:32It was intended to point to man's, to raise the standard of God's righteousness, to show man's inability to meet such, and to point man in the way of where that righteousness is to be found, in the perfect sacrifice, in the perfect Son. And as John is going to go on to say, the only God, the I am. So the first limitation. Of the law was that it could only raise God's standards. It wasn't intended to help us meet God's standards. But the second limitation of the law was its inability, its inability to fully reveal God to us.

30:17The law was true, yeah, but it wasn't the full expression of truth. Likewise, one can certainly look back in the law and see grace and see the grace of God, yet it could not be the full expression of God's grace. And so we needed flesh. We needed someone to show us. The law could make known the heinousness of sin, it could condemn the sinner, it could exhibit God's righteous hatred of sin, it could expose the guilt of the sinner.

31:01But Romans 8 says it well, for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. You see, we needed flesh and blood to give us that ultimate expression of grace and truth. Grace and truth cannot be encoded in law. It had to be demonstrated. And yet, without the law, we would have no ability to measure the degree of God's love for us.

31:41It's his hatred of sin that also gives us the depth of love that he has for us. You know, perhaps the picture that best sets in my mind of what the law's limitation was. You remember in Acts or in Exodus chapter 20, right after they had received the law? All the people perceived in verse 18, right after they heard the law being given, the Ten Commandments, all the people perceived the thunder and the lightning, the flashes, and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. That's what the law does, is it exposes there is a glory associated with the law, but it's a glory of thunder and lightning and fire and blackness and largely ignorance of who God is.

32:37One theologian, I think, said it well in comparing law and grace. He said, law addresses us as members of the old creation. Grace makes us members of a new creation. Law manifested what was in us, and that was sin. Grace manifested. What is in God, and that is love. Law demanded righteousness from us. Grace brings righteousness to us. Law sentences a living person to death. Grace brings a dead person to life. Law speaks of what we must do for God. Grace tells us of what Christ has done for us.

33:30Law gives us a knowledge of sin. Grace puts away sin. Need to keep going. We've looked at the fullness of Jesus' glory, looked at the description of Jesus' glory. Next, I want you to see the identification of his glory. Look at verse 18: No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. And John makes three statements, and I'll just walk through them because, like everything else in John's, in these first 18 verses, if you change one word, you enter in all kinds of heresy into the church. I mean, it's so wonderfully written, so simply written. As I said, it's probably written on a third or fourth grade level. Very straightforward. But this is what John says.

34:25No one has seen God at any time. The Greek is, it's, it's, it's More emphatic, God no one has seen ever. Very strong statement. Now we know that Moses is said to have spoken face to face with the Lord, right? But that's a Hebrewism, that's a Hebrew way of describing a personal communication. You remember in Exodus 33, it's spoken that Moses spoke face to face, but then shortly after, just a couple of verses later, after Moses says, I want to see your glory, God says to him, I'm going to have to hide you because you cannot see my face and live. That was he said in verse 20. So even in that context, what Moses saw was really the afterglow of God's glory. He didn't see him face to face.

35:22There's a diminished sense in which Moses actually saw him. And I believe here, Moses saw the one that John is speaking about, the word made flesh, the self-expression, the name. John understands it. Moses saw a pre-incarnate glory of Christ. John will too, as we get a little bit further. But that's what John is saying. We've seen him. But look at this. Look at this expression. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in. The bosom of the Father. He has explained him. But the only begotten, the only unique one of God, the only beloved one that is intrinsically beloved by him, the special one, the only one, the only unique God who is in. And there's a participle there, and you've got to stop there because the Greek, this is how I would literally translate this, and did translate it as I first went through. The only unique God, the I am, in the bosom of the Father. That's the one who has explained it to me. The I am. It's that same expression. You remember when Moses is on, when he says to God, who shall I say sent me when you send me back to Egypt? Who should I tell sent me? God said to Moses, I am who I am. And thus you shall say to him, I am has sent you. Two times, John picks up this expression, the I am, the one who is, the existing one. That's what it means. The one who is, the only begotten God, the existing one. This is the one who has explained him. And he is in, he is at the heart side of the Father. And the preposition is very unique there, too. It's like he's saying the only begotten, or the only unique God, the I am. Am the one who is oriented toward the heart of the Father.

37:40The one who is in the bosom, at the side, close to proximity, intimate, and enjoys the present. This is the one who has explained them, explained him to us. And John is saying, that one. It's a demonstrous pronoun for he. He's saying, the only begotten God, the I am, that one. He has explained him. And John makes it clear. And the word for explain is the same word for exegesis. It's the same word for narrated, told, explained. That's what I'm doing here. I'm explaining the meaning. Well, this is what John is saying, that this one, this one that became flesh, dwelt among us.

38:26This one has explained God to us. This one can explain God to us because he was in the bosom of the Father. This is the I am. This is the self-expression of God. This one can. And John is saying, keep reading the gospel because if you want to know the I am, I'm going to declare him to you. That great I am, that mysterious, shrouded God who is largely unknown in the Old Testament, John is saying, We have seen him. He is the one who has explained God to us, and he has provided us that ultimate expression of grace and truth. He came to die, and it's in that that this ultimate expression of grace and truth is going to be realized.

39:35Him, when Christ, when this, when the word became flesh, that was the gateway to the cross. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these words, and as we now prepare our hearts to receive the Lord's Supper, Father, we just thank you for it. We thank you for your grace and what is represented in these elements. In Jesus' name.