Advent Sermon-John 1:14-18

Last week we saw that what we celebrate today—the Son of God coming into the world as a little baby—was not disconnected in the Bible, but rather a continuation of a story. That is, the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, continued the story of God dwelling with his people. Just as God dwelled with Adam and Eve, just as God dwelled with the wandering Israelites in the tabernacle, just as God dwelled with settled Israelites in the temple, in the same way Jesus Christ was God “tabernacling” among his people. The Word became flesh and pitched his tabernacle in our midst. And just as the glory came down to the ancient dwelling places, God’s glory was evident as John and others saw Jesus.

But why did he come? Why did God the Son put on human flesh and humble himself to be born in a feeding trough? Hopefully the first answer that comes into your mind is, “He came to save us! We were lost in our sins and he came to die on the cross and rise again for us so we could be forgiven and have eternal life!” And that would be a fantastic answer. Only 2 verses before this morning’s text, in John 1:12, we hear that “to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Jesus came to open the way for all God’s enemies to become his children. If you walked into this room as God’s enemy our prayer is that you would confess your sins and believe in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, and you can walk out of this room as God’s child.

So one reason Jesus came is so God’s enemies could become his children, that those relationships could be reconciled through Jesus’ death and resurrection. But what happens after you become a child of God? Do you go on about your life as before? Of course not! God is no longer your enemy—he is your Father now! So how do we get to know our new Father? Do we walk outside and yell to the sky, “Here I am, Daddy; talk to me!?!” Do we sit in our room and clear our minds until God speaks quietly to us? How do we know God? How do we interact with him?

These are the deeper questions that are answered when John tells us why Jesus came. Look with me at verse 18, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” No one has ever seen God—that creates a bit of a problem if we want to know God, doesn’t it? The only God—don’t miss that this is Jesus; John is clearly saying, Jesus is God—who is at the Father’s side—the Word was both with God and he was God—he, that is Jesus, has made him, that is the Father, known.

I want to do something a bit unusual and work backward through our text this morning. Verse 18 is the most concise summary of John’s prologue—these 18 verses of chapter 1. And the summary is simple. Jesus came to make God known. He came to show us who God is. He put on skin so that we could understand the divine. But how did he do that? And hadn’t God already made himself known through the prophets in the Old Testament?

Absolutely. Just like verse 14—the Word became flesh and dwelt among us—is part of the bigger story of the Bible of God dwelling with his people, verse 18 is part of the bigger story of God making himself known to his people. We are going to go into more detail about this story next week, so let it suffice for now to say God has been revealing himself to his creation from the beginning, but on this side of heaven his revelation reached its apex in the person of Jesus Christ.

So as we work back to verse 17, we see one of the great prophets of the Old Testament—Moses. It is so appropriate that John is talking about Moses here, because Moses was God’s means of making himself known to Pharaoh and Israel. It was Moses who wrote down Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It was Moses who was on the mountain with God and came down with the 10 commandments and blueprint for the tabernacle and other laws for God’s people. He was God’s main man after the Exodus for God making himself known to his people.

But look carefully with me at verse 17. Look at the verbs John uses to talk about Moses and Jesus. “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Let’s look at these verbs—“the law was given through Moses.” Moses was the messenger. He was God’s representative. He was the delivery guy, the courier. God gave his law to Israel through Moses.

Now look at what it says about Jesus: “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” I know the difference between these verbs is subtle, but I believe it makes a world of difference. When God wanted to make himself known through Moses, he sent his message with him. When God wanted to make himself known through Jesus, he sent him as the message. In other words, Moses arrives on your doorstep saying, I have a message from God. Jesus arrives on your doorstep saying, I AM the message from God.

This is how John talks about Jesus in this passage. He doesn’t say, “Jesus gave us these messages from God…” though teaching was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. But look at verse 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.” John is telling us, “this Jesus was a spitting image of his Father. He perfectly conveyed God’s glorious grace and truth.” John isn’t merely recording the things Jesus said, he is recording who he was.

This should make sense to us. There is an unusually high number of couples in this church who had long-distance relationships, and we all know the difference between a letter and a loved one, don’t we? We know the difference between getting an e-mail or birthday card or even a phone conversation with the one we love and sitting across the table from the one we love. There are all kinds of nuances and character traits that cannot be known except in person.

So it makes sense that when God wants to give the ultimate picture of who he is, he doesn’t merely send a messenger: he sends himself. Jesus Christ came to show us what God is like, through his reaction to society’s outcasts, through his treatment of children, through his confrontation of the religious leaders, and in his death and resurrection. Jesus himself gave us much more than the words of God—he showed us the character of God. He was God in person.

John likes this word “full” to describe Jesus. In verse 14 he says Jesus was “full of grace and truth,” then in verse 16 he says, “and from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Jesus came exuding the character of God. He was like a sponge that was full of grace and truth, and when he was squeezed, grace and truth came out. And John is saying, “we were the ones who were blessed enough to receive the overflow—from his fullness we have all received.” When John experienced Jesus, he experienced God.

In talking about this, John describes his receiving from Jesus’ fullness as “grace upon grace.” What does John mean by this? We always want to stay true to the context of the Bible, so look at the words that come after “grace upon grace.” “For, the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The word “for” is very important in understanding what an author is saying—it gives us the reason. So what is the reason that makes John describe his experience with Jesus as grace upon grace? “For, the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

We already looked at the difference between Moses and Jesus: Moses delivered the message while Jesus was the message. Or to say it another way, it was gracious of God to communicate to his people through Moses. But it was more gracious of God to communicate to his people by coming to them in the person of Jesus Christ. It was grace upon grace.

John has more examples of this later in his gospel. In John 3 Jesus refers to the time when Israel was grumbling in the wilderness and God sent serpents to punish the people. When they repented, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and whoever looked at that serpent would live. That was a gracious thing for God to do through Moses. But in Jesus we have a better grace. He told Nicodemus, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” This is grace upon grace. That is, Jesus replaces God’s grace through Moses with a better grace—himself.

We see the same thing in John 6 after Jesus feeds the 5,000. He talks about how God fed the Israelites with manna during Moses' time. Every day they would wake up with enough of this white stuff to make it through the day. This was a gift! It was gracious. But Jesus said, “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world…I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Manna was a grace. But like the serpent, it was only a temporary grace; it was a shadow that pointed toward the greatest grace God has given us—himself! The Word become flesh! Immanuel, God with us! Not a piece of bronze on a pole, but the Son of God hanging on the cross for the sins of his people. Not white dewy stuff on the ground that gets us through the day, but the bread of life that eternally satisfies our spirit. Jesus Christ is the fullness of all that God is, and he is the climax of God’s revelation of who he is. He replaces all the great things about the Old Testament with the substance they were pointing toward—himself!

So we close with the question we opened with—why did Jesus come? He came to show us who God is by being God in skin. Why? So that we might know God. God is the greatest being in the universe, and knowing God, worshipping God, serving God, resting in God, pursuing God, adoring God; all that is entailed with being in relationship with God, this is the greatest experience a human being can have. Jesus Christ came not only to make that relationship possible by his life, death, and resurrection, but he came to show us who this God is that we who believe will know forever.

So let us soak in this book and get to know Jesus as well as possible. Let us live lives with singular focus—to know Jesus Christ, which is to know God. And after the Christmas lights are down let us continue to talk to others about this Jesus who came to show us who God is.