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Again, it is our privilege to be with you. My wife and I always count it a privilege. Will you turn to the Gospel of John, the first chapter, beginning with verse one. John, the first chapter, beginning with verse one. we shall read from one through fourteen. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not, or did not take hold of it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. He which was, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of, uh, men, but of God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt in the midst of us, and we beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Shall we pray? How thankful we are, our Father, that thou hast given a twofold revelation of thyself. Thy Spirit, who dwells within those who have embraced Christ as their personal Savior, and thy Word, thy Spirit within us, and thy Word before us. And we pray thee this morning, as, uh, many things will make inroads into our minds as the word of God is given, we pray that the Spirit of God might hinder any other thoughts than the thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
We wait upon thee expectantly, for we ask it in the name and for the sake of thy dear Son, our Savior. Amen. There are two particular verses that stand out, uh, to me, and they are John the first, and the first chapter, verse one and the fourteenth verse. Coming back to verse one again, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And we would ask ourselves, why does the Spirit of God, through the writer, open this gospel with this verse, in the beginning was the Word? And we ask ourselves, what does it mean when it says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. What helped me in contemplating this verse of scripture was this truth, that what a word is to a thought, Jesus Christ is to God.
Just as a word explains a thought, so he, the Word, speaks out and shows forth and ex- explains God. And then again we say to ourselves, why open it in this manner? The Greeks always sought after wisdom, and there is a phrase concerning the Greeks of that time, and it comes down to our day that the Greeks had a word for it.
No matter what one would speak of, no matter what one would think on, the Greeks had a word concerning it that would explain it. And as the Greeks sought after wisdom and used the wisdom of words, I believe that the spirit of God comes along and tells us that the quest for Greek wisdom is ended, because he is the final word who explains, who speaks out, who reveals God himself.
In Acts, the seventeenth chapter, when Paul was on Mars Hill in Athens, he saw there the Epicureans and the Stoics, two classes of philosophers. And as they, uh, philosophize concerning life, concerning man, concerning God, they, in thinking about God, reasoned from man to God. And as they reasoned from man to God, they ended up with a, an altar to the unknown God.
So when man reasons from himself Godward, he still is faced with the fact that God is unknown, regardless of all his wisdom. So the Spirit of God takes the writer of this gospel and shows him that the quest for Greek wisdom is found in this word. He speaks out God, he manifests him, he makes him known. But is, is that all that the verse conveys?
Not at all. In the ancient synagogues of a, a millennium and a half ago, in the ancient synagogues, the Hebrew scholars had a word, a Hebrew word to describe God, and they called him the Maimar, Maimar. And as they used that word, they said it was the Maimar that, um, brought them out of Egypt.
It was the Maimar that took them to the Red Sea. It was the Maimar who took them through the wilderness, and it was the Maimar who brought them to where they are now. Now that Hebrew word Maimar means the word. So it was the word that delivered them from Egypt. It was the Word that took them to the Red Sea. It was the Word that led them through the wilderness, and it was the Word that made of them a nation.
Now, when the Hebrews reasoned, they didn't reason like the Greeks from man to God. They reasoned from God to man. And whereas the Greeks sought after wisdom, the Hebrews sought after truth, especially at that time concerning the Messiah himself. So what the writer is doing is bringing these two cultures together, Greek wisdom and Hebrew truth, and in the search of both of them, he conveys to us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the word, the final word that gratifies the seeking for wisdom, and he is the Word for the Hebrews who fulfills all the messianic aspirations.
But that is not what I am desiring to bring before us. What I am thinking of especially is in verse fourteen. This one who can gratify human wisdom for which man seeks after and finds the fulfillment of it in himself, and the Hebrews wanting the truth concerning Messiah and are able to find it in him. What I am concerned about is verse fourteen.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So you see, after dealing with the Greeks and dealing with the Hebrews, of which Paul, through the Spirit of God, brings forth as an issue that Christ is made wisdom unto us, whether Greek, whether Jew, and he is also the truth.
He is nevertheless, in verse fourteen, full of grace. The most rudimentary definition of God, by declaring him to be a spirit, immediately does this. It at, at once and forever dissipates the hope of being able to see him with the bodily eye as we see one another. For we do read in the, uh, third chapter of John, God is a spirit.
But how can I, with the bodily eye, be able to see a spirit? Then, on the other hand, if we were able to be projected into other worlds, being that God is a spirit, we would never see him in human form, and never would we see him occupying any place at all, if God is only a spirit. And the most painful and baffling thing in the world is this, that whatever man is, he is primarily God conscience, conscious, and he tries to drown that God consciousness with the everyday things of life that makes inroads on his thinking and feeling.
If the situation is well with him, he feels that he is being gratified. When the situation is not well with him, he wonders, and the first one whom he blames for all his troubles is God himself. Job sympathetic. sympathetically reaches to such people's hearts when, in the twenty eighth chapter of Job, he cries out, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him and that I might come to his very seat.
Behold, I go forward, and he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him on the left hand where he works, and it's impossible to see him with mine eyes. Then he goes on to say, he hideth himself on the right hand so that I cannot really see him. But when we read the fourteenth verse of John, the first chapter, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt or pitched his tent in the midst of us, that is his bodily tent, wherein his glory was held.
The glories of the only begotten of the Father, there, says the writer, we saw him as full of grace and true. In the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, what right there, when he became incarnate, he made God visible. And as he made him visible by taking a human nature to his divine nature, as he made him visible, we have right there a response from God to our heart's longing, that we might be able in our craving to find him, to see him, to know him.
That is why the writer in the first epistle of John mentioned this truth. In the first chapter and verse one of the first epistle of John, he says, that which was from the unbegun beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have discerned or looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life. But there are some sitting here who say to themselves that they cannot find any tangible manifestation of God in, uh, the incarnate one, the one who took a body unto himself, the one who laid aside his glory, the one who manifested God in the flesh.
And we ask ourselves, why do such people, even being here this morning, why there is not a sufficient manifestation of God for themselves through the Lord Jesus Christ, who manifested himself. Well, the only answer is that they are looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing. And along that line, what are they looking for? Probably they are looking for one of great power, of great stature, one who would dazzle the human senses and excite them.
That is why Thomas, in the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John, said, not until I see the wounds in his hands and put my finger there and thrust my hand in his side, I will not believe. And the living Son of God, who after purging us from our sins at Calvary, was buried, he arose from the dead, he's on the right hand of God, and ere he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, he manifested himself to the disciples.
Thomas was with them, and the Lord said, Thomas, you refuse to believe unless you saw, unless your senses were gratified. Go ahead, thrust your finger into my hand and thrust your hand into my side. And Thomas said, oh my Lord and my God, oh Thomas, because you have been gratified sensually, that is by your senses, you believe. Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed.
So we notice, what are you looking for as you're listening to the word of God? Something or someone who would dazzle your human senses, someone who would so manifest himself that you would be overawed, overcome, someone of great size, manifesting great power. Might I say this? That that is not the kind of God you need, not at all. What you really need is the God who possesses the highest moral attributes, and the moral attributes are of such quality that it could meet you in every need of your life.
And might I say, after forty three years of knowing him, that is exactly what he has done for me and for myriads of others down through the ages. For when God created man, he did not create him in a physical image, for God is a spirit. Being a spirit, what kind of spirit is he? He is a moral spirit with attributes that are absolute, an attribute that meets man who has a sin nature within him.
This God is able to meet him in every vestige of his life while he is going through his pilgrimage journey upon the earth. That is why they who reject the manifestation of God as seen in the Lord Jesus Christ, such people have already been conditioned to accept the Antichrist. If it is not Christ, it will be Antichrist or anything that is contrary to and against Christ.
That is why our Lord in the fifth chapter of John, and verse forty three tells us this: I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not. Another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. And that one who will be received will have myriads, myriads, millions, billions of people who will worship him. Why?
Because he will be able to dazzle their senses. He will be great in his power, and being what he will show to be and manifest to be, they will follow him. Whom will they follow? What will he manifest? That's why, in Revelation, the thirteenth chapter and verses eleven through fourteen, I will not read it all, but here's what we read. In verse eleven: and I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
Just a slight commentary on this verse. The Lord said to Nicodemus, I am the one that came down from heaven, and I am in heaven. In other words, he was everywhere at one moment of time. He fills heaven and earth. But this one, this beast, will not come down from heaven. He will come up from the earth, see. And just as the sphere of his dwelling with his eternal father was in heaven, and all that it stood for, this one shall come forth from the earth and all that the earth stands for, or rather the cosmos, or the world system that became a chaos when man had sinned.
Now listen, in verse twelve, and he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He will also, so to speak, uh, be resurrected from a deadly wound. But listen to this. And he doeth dazzling things. He will do great wonders so that he maketh fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.
And he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth that they should make an image to the beast which had the wound by a sword and did le- live. So I say, if you will not accept the incarnated Christ who took a body to himself for the sole purpose of manifesting his Father, and then with that body offering it up for your sins and my sins, as your heart becomes hardened, what is happening without your being aware of it, and it might be too late if you continue thereby, what is happening is this: you are being conditioned to accept that which is antichrist.
But that is still not what I want to say this morning. In the manifestation of, uh, the Lord our God, the second person of the Godhead, in the manifestation of God in Christ, we see what God is. He is full of grace. As we would listen to the news, I hear that there's a shortage of gasoline. I hear there's a shortage of, uh, o- oil. I hear there's a shortage of so many things.
And I say to myself, life down here, should the Lord tarry, will be reduced to the fact of great need. But what gives me enablement and strength is this: there is no shortage in the grace of God. He is full of grace. That's what we are told here. We have sinned, and we have felt that the Lord God was in our way, and we tried to get rid of him. We saw him as an obstacle to that which we desire to attain.
And yet, in spite of all this, he came out to us full of grace. And where is that verse that conveys it so marvelously? It is found in the book of Romans, the fifth chapter, verse eight. But God commended his love toward us, in that while we were neither righteous nor good, but while we were ungodly, Christ died for us. And that's where we see him, full of grace.
When we come to Matthew, the twenty eighth chapter, verses eighteen through twenty, the last thing our Lord there in that gospel mentions is this: And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. It will the, the power of electricity be depleted, this, that, and the other, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and as you go, disciple the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always to the end of the age. What do we see here? We see here that the attribute of God's power establishes the character of his grace.
Is the character of his grace fullness? How do we know that he has that which will constantly make his grace full toward us? The word tells us, all power is given unto me. When Solomon was dedicating the temple. That temple for which David, his father, gathered all the wealth from the victories that he had over his enemies, and he turned it over to Solomon.
And finally, the temple was built. We read there in the eighth chapter that Solomon stood with his hands outstretched, godly, and as he did so, he was reminding God of his grace, his mercies, how he chose Israel as his people. And as he did so, and we read of that dedicatory prayer, it ends with not Solomon standing with hands uplifted, but Solomon was kneeling.
He was kneeling. And what was it that brought him to his knees? For as he rehearsed before God of what he knew in the book of Genesis, in the book of Deuteronomy, in the book of Joshua, it weighed him down to really worshiping, and the king who stood up uprightly with hands outstretched, God's word, we find in the end thereof he's in a kneeling position. Why? A recognition of the fullness of God's grace.
And here's what he says in uh, one Kings, the eighth chapter, verse fifty seven: The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. And then he says, let him not leave us nor forsake us. As he knew what the Lord God did for others, saying, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, he was praying that that constant manifestation and attitude toward the people of Israel might be manifested in his time as he's dedicating this temple.
Let him not leave us, let him not forsake us. When you come to Genesis the twenty eighth chapter and verse fifteen, that truth, I will never leave thee, I will never forsake thee, was made to Jacob. And will you turn to Genesis twenty eighth fifteen? And in verse fifteen, it was God who broke in upon Jacob. Jacob had no thoughts of him, but God broke in upon Jacob.
Why did he do so? Because God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham with regard to his seed, and that he would make a great nation from, uh, bring forth a great nation from him. That is why, on the basis of God's mercy that rests on an unconditional covenant, the Lord God said to Jacob while he was asleep, in verse fifteen, and behold, I am with thee and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land, for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
And so we see the first manifestation of this promise was to Jacob concerning saving grace. Then it was made to Israel, where God promised preserving grace to them, and that is found in Deuteronomy, in the book of Deuteronomy, the thirty first chapter, and in Deuteronomy thirty one, we see it quite clearly manifested in verse six. For in verse six we read, be strong and of a good courage.
Fear not, nor be afraid of them, for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee. He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Then again, after showing saving grace toward Jacob and a preserving grace toward Israel, he manifests himself to another servant of his, and we find it in Joshua, the first chapter. And in Joshua, we see there that God promises him overcoming grace.
Joshua one five. and in verse five, there shall not a man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so will I be with thee. And read it together with me, the end of the sentence. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Whereas to Jacob, saving grace, to Israel, preserving grace, and then to Solomon worshiping grace.
And we find that in First Chronicles, the twenty eighth chapter. And in First Chronicles, the twenty eighth chapter, will you notice verse twenty? We read there, and David said to Solomon his son, be strong and of a good courage and do it. Fear not, nor be dismayed, for the Lord God, even my God, will be with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.
Having seen all this in the Old Testament economy, how much more true for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, not made up of denominations, but made up of those believers in no matter what denomination who are members of the body of the Lord Jesus. And what is the promise for the believers, the church? It is grace while under pressure. Turn with me to Hebrews, the thirteenth chapter.
And in Hebrews chapter thirteen, we see that in verses five and six, Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as ye have. For he has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that we may confidently say, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace. The Word of God opens in the New Testament with the fullness of God's grace, and the last verse of the last chapter in that New Testament ends with God's grace. For there we read in Revelation, the twenty second chapter and verse twenty one, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
How marvelous, how incomparable to anything that the richest, the wisest, the most affluent man, the most educated man will try to convey to us, to draw our hearts away from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. How inadequate are these over against what is said of him, full of grace. And that is why, in the book of Hebrews, the fourth chapter and verse sixteen, he bids these Jewish believers to come confidently to the throne of grace, that they might find grace in the time of need.
May the Lord have spoken to your heart and afresh to my own heart as to what the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ meant when he emptied himself of his glory, became a man, seeing himself in the fashion of a man, he became a servant and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every other name.
And should you be here and have never personally for yourself embraced Christ as your personal savior. Don't forget this, that as you refuse to worship him now, in a lost eternity, apart from Christ, for having rejected him, you will bow the knee. For we read there, God has given him a name which is above every other name, that as the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, whether in heaven, whether upon the earth, and even those under the earth.
They will acknowledge the one whom they had rejected. They will acknowledge his truthfulness, that he is Lord. And may the Lord help you as you are here to personally embrace him as your savior. Shall we pray? Our Heavenly Father, thy word is quick and sharper than any two-edged sword, and we pray that thy spirit will do his work by using this word for the conviction of the sinner who is lost without faith in Christ, and for the child of God who, in spite of the fullness of thy grace in their behalf, refuse to yield themselves to thyself, that they will be brought back into the fold.
We ask it, our Father, in the name and for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.