We Have Seen His Glory

Reference

John 1:14-18

Sermon Notes / Outline

Would you rather look at a map of the ocean, or visit the beach in person?

Would you rather study a cookbook of Italian cuisine, or eat freshly made ravioli?

Would you rather contemplate the nature of love, or be in love?

Of course, we all would rather have the experience over the analysis. Who would rather look at a map over actually visiting the ocean?

Sometimes, this is how people feel about theology. We want an experience of God, we want that oceanic, transcendant experience…and talking through doctrine and dogmas feels dry.

Euguene Peterson’s window analogy on Pharisees

But…what if you want to explore the ocean?

Maps suddenly become very useful
Plus, what are maps if not hundreds of other people’s experiences, recorded for our benefit?

Theology is a map

C.S. Lewis (from whom I have stolen this map-ocean illustration) on vague religious feelings: “It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.”

John’s primary aim in writing his gospel is to lead us into an experience of Jesus Christ: he has written this book that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing find eternal life in His name (John 20:30-31). But notice that experience (eternal life) comes through certain doctrinal commitments (believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God).

And in our passage today, John has left us some remarkable coordinates to lead us to experience God.

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14 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. 15 (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.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

John 1:14-18

John’s main aim in writing His gospel is to put forward who Jesus is, what he has done, and how we respond to it.

Who He Is

Who is Jesus? Why do we even need to ask that? We all know who Jesus is, right?

Our danger is always in diminishing the true glory of Jesus.
- The danger of daytime-television-Jesus.
- Clark Griswold: “Christmas means something different to everyone.”
- “Faith” is merely a feeling, a hope for good outcomes, “everything will be okay”
We will always err on the side of making Jesus too small, too quaint, too common.
- As we move through what this paragraph tells us about who He is, try to confront whatever mental image of Jesus you have.

Let’s follow the logical order of the verse, starting from what is most modest, to what is most staggering.

Before John

(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.’”) -John 1:15

He who comes *after me—*John was born before Jesus was
Ranks before me, he was before me—the Son of God pre-exists John

The Word

And the Word became flesh…- John 1:14

John 1:1-3
All things were made through Him

The Son

…glory as of the only Son from the Father…- John 1:14

the only *begotten (*μονογενής) **Son
- Whenever this word is used in the NT, it is used to describe a child of a parent.
“Begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father” - Nicene Creed
When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers, and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set…What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. - Lewis, Mere Christianity

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. - John 1:18

John can speak about God as μονογενής—only begotten
- This God “is at the Father’s side”
- The Word was with God and the Word was God.
“the Father’s side” - literally, “in the chest of the Father”
- When we encounter Jesus, we are getting the clearest disclosure of what God’s heart is—who He is.

The Glorious One

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 1:14

What is glory? God’s glory takes two basic modes in the Bible.

On the one hand, it refers to the honor which God deserves.
- “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!…Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! 8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name. (Ps 96:3, 7-8).
- What must someone be or do to have honor, fame, reputation owed to them?
But there is another mode of glory, and that is of literal brightness or luminescence.
- The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. - Rev 21:23
- Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. - Isa 60:1-2
- 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - John 1:4-5

This Person, is a glorious person. That which makes God so honorable is of such a quality that it shines. This radiant glory emanates from the presence of God, Himself.

Think of Moses’ shining face after speaking with God (Ex 34:29-35)

In fact, there are several connections in this whole paragraph that draw our minds back to this section of Exodus (Ex 32-34). In Ex 32: Golden calf; Ex 33: Moses’ intercedes on behalf of Israel; Ex 34: God renews the covenant that was broken; in Ex 35 and on, we get the details about the construction of the tabernacle, the way that God can physically dwell with His people.

He mentions Moses by name in 1:17, specifically how “the law came” through Moses.
- In Ex 34, God renews the covenant of the Law with Moses.
“Dwelt among us” — tabernacled among us (σκηνόω)
- Moses’ shining face doesn’t only occur when he descends from Mt. Sinai, but also from when he leaves the tabernacle after speaking with God. (Plus, Immediately after Moses’ shining face in ch. 34, we are told about the construction of the tabernacle in ch. 35-36).
“we have seen his glory”
- Nestled in the middle of this story of Israel’s failure and restoration, we learn about Moses’ personal request: “Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”” - Ex 33:18
- And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”
  - “No one has ever seen God.” - John 1:18
  - What Moses longed for most, but was given only partially, we have been given.
“full of grace and truth”
- “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” - Ex 34:6
  - Steadfast love and faithfulness, a hendiadys: the essential character of God. This is what He abounds in, what He is full of.
  - And were you to translate those Hebrew terms into Greek, you would get John’s “grace and truth.”

Who is Jesus?

The One who was before John the Baptist, who created John the Baptist,
- Herod the Great, Pontius Pilate, Caesar, and Charlemagne, George Washington, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and the oil tycoons in Saudi Arabia. They all are sand in his pocket. Your neighbor, children, parents, bosses, friends; mountains, rivers, stars, trees, animals, music, mathematics, physics, marriage—He made it all.
The only begotten Son of the Father, “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power,” (Heb 1:3).
The God who dwelt in fire upon the top of Mt. Sinai; the God who spoke out of the burning bush; who parted the Red Sea; the God whose presence dwelt in the tabernacle, in the temple; who not even Moses was capable of seeing face to face, lest the unmediated sight of His glory kill him.
Jesus is not a figure that you can casually respond to on Good Morning America, speaking in safe and politically correct terms of how meaningful “faith” is for all of us. He is not saccharine, He is not a Splenda packet, He is not the theological equivalent of a kitten poster telling you to “Hang in there!”
- He is the One who kills and makes alive; He is the King of all kings; He is the Lord of the Universe; He is the foundation of Reality itself.

What He Has Done

Became flesh and dwelt among us

We will reflect on this at our Christmas Eve service.
- Humbly He lay, Creator come as creature Born on the floor of a hay-scattered stall True Son of God yet bearing human feature He entered earth to reverse Adam's fall In towering grace, He laid aside His glory And in our place, was sacrificed for sin

16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. - John 1:16-17

Verse 15 is a parentheses, 16 is grounded in vs. 14: “…full of grace and truth…For from his fullness we have all received…”
- Out of the storehouses of God’s abundance, He has provided
“grace upon grace”
- Why not “truth”? Just shorthand for “grace and truth”
- Vs. 17 comes back to “grace and truth”
A contrast between Jesus and Moses: For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
- We might be tempted to read this as a criticism of Moses and the law, especially because it is contrasted with “grace and truth”
- God’s law isn’t legalistic, God’s law was a gracious gift (Deut 10:12-13)
- This isn’t a contrast of bad vs. good, but of good vs. better
  - “Grace in place of grace”
- This isn’t a disjunction: God was doing one thing with Moses (the law), and then decided to do something different with Jesus (grace).
How is Jesus superior to Moses?
- Moses led Israel out of temporary bondage in Egypt; Jesus came to lead us out of eternal bondage to sin and hell.
- Moses gave the Israelites bread from heaven; Jesus is the bread of life
- Moses struck the rock to give the Israelites water; Jesus is the Rock who was struck so that we could drink of living water.
- Moses longed to see the invisible God; Jesus has come to make the invisible God known.
- Moses gives people God’s Word; Jesus is God’s Word
The contrast that John wants to emphasize is particularly “grace and truth.”
- Steadfast love and faithfulness was revealed through Moses (Ex 34:6), but grace and truth was revealed in its fullest expression through the ministry of Jesus Christ.
The inherent tension between “grace and truth”
- “…keeping steadfast love [to the thousandth generation], forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” - Ex 34:7
- How can God show steadfast love to the 1,000th generation, yet punish the guilty?
In a relationship, we understand that no one is perfect, so we know we need to give each other grace. But we realize that showing grace shouldn’t come at the expense of telling the truth, we should do both. But we tend to oscillate back and forth: sometimes we are gracious, sometimes we are truthful.
- If we have grace without truth, it is just flattery. If we have truth without grace, we can be crushed.
- Jesus is full of grace and truth
  - Truth about us: we are sinners.
  - Grace: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son to suffer in our place so that whoever would believe in Him wouldn’t perish but have eternal life.

How We Respond

What does John show us in this paragraph concerning how we respond?

See/Know

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. - John 1:18

“…we have seen his glory…”

Well, that’s great for you, John! But we can’t see him!

“sight” in John’s gospel as a metaphor of belief
- Jesus’ first words “Come and see”
- “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” - John 20:29
John wrote his gospel for those who could not see Jesus physically, but who could come to believe nonetheless. You can see Jesus with the eyes of your heart.
- Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. - John 20:30-31
How? First, evaluate the evidence that is given. Come and see.

Receive

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. - John 1:16

What does it take to receive?
- You admit you lack and He has. He has fullness.
- Kids, one of the reasons that Jesus taught that grown-ups need to learn from you if they are to enter His Kingdom, is because you are experts at receiving. You know that you need your parents; you can’t do it on your own.
  - What does it take to receive a Christmas present?
- Receiving puts us in a place of weakness. And to receive grace from Jesus is to put us in the most vulnerable of all places—we are admitting need and helplessness at the most fundamental place.
  - You can’t be self-important, strong, clever, cool.
  - You can’t be self-righteous, you can’t be right all the time
…

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs! “I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”