The True Dwelling | John 1

Trace the powerful connection between Exodus and the Gospel of John, where the shadows of God's presence in the Old Testament find their substance in Jesus Christ. Move beyond recognizing the patterns to embracing the person, Jesus, the one who accomplishes the greater Exodus, bringing us out, bringing us in, and bringing us near to God forever. Well, today is the first week of what will be an eight-week series in the book of John, so welcome to that.

I want to welcome not only all of you in this room, all of our campuses and various locations, and especially a number of guests today. A holiday weekend like it is, folks travel through, they stay with family, they pop in and visit, and so we've met a lot of new people this morning who are just kind of in the area from other places. I want to just welcome you here and thank you for joining our faith family here for this service.

I think we would all agree that there's a significant difference between sending information and sending yourself. Your mind, perhaps, right now is thinking of situations where you send information, but it went a lot better when you went yourself. Some of them may be good, some of them could be bad.

I thought of one that's not the best analogy, but when my mom and dad would say to me, don't make me come back there, that's back when you could sit in the back seat without a car seat or a seat belt, when you could sleep in the floorboard, even up and behind the back seat. We'd rather have our information then than the real thing, right? But think about it, there's a significant difference between sending information and sending yourself. You can send a text, you can write a letter, you can send someone to say it for you, but when you say, I'm coming myself, it sends a more powerful message.

Church, that's the breathtaking announcement at the beginning of John's Gospel. God said, I'm coming myself. Now, hear that correctly because God had spoken for centuries.

He sent prophets, He gave His Word, He revealed His law, He displayed His glory. God had given His people true revelation about Himself, but not ultimate, final revelation yet. And that's what He did in an unprecedented fashion.

When He didn't just send more information, the Father sent the Son and the Son became flesh, a man who lived among us. You see, that's God not simply telling us from a distance, that's God showing up, moving in the neighborhood, pitching His tent among us. That's exactly where John begins.

Have your Bibles, I hope. John chapter 1, open them to that chapter and put your eyes and a finger on verse 14. I want to focus on this verse.

We'll look backward and forward from this verse within this chapter to make sure we understand it in a full fashion. But I do want to just focus on this verse and I want to also say I'm so grateful for our worship team. Much of the song study, of course, just really zeroed in on this very concept, this doctrine we're going to kind of open up.

That's in verse 14. So thankful that we could just draw a line already to this doctrine in our voices and in our musical moments. Here this verse does make two emphatic statements.

It assures us with two other principles as well. I'll kind of get to all of that. But I want you to see this singular verse, John chapter 1, verse 14.

I'll show it to you on the screen behind me and we'll stay here for a bit and just kind of unpack two important statements. Here's the verse for us out loud. In fact, will you read this with me? Here's John 1 14.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. When you said that and heard that, did you hear Exodus a little bit? Perhaps if you're new and just visiting today that didn't make sense to you, but our normal and regular attenders and members, they've been studying Exodus together for 25 weeks.

I imagine they heard Exodus echoing in that verse. You heard words like dwell, glory among us. You were thinking that's tabernacle language.

And what we're seeing here is now John hearkening back, bringing up what was to highlight what now is. Something, someone greater than the temple or the tabernacle. And he's highlighting the Word that was made flesh, Jesus, the ultimate, the true tabernacle, the true temple, the ultimate place where God would dwell.

And in this verse, he does make two emphatic statements. Let me just bring them to your attention. They reveal to us some truths, some doctrines, some theology that is of eternal significance.

So let's kind of dig in for a bit. First of all, the first emphatic phrase, the Word became flesh. Quite an interesting way to describe the coming of Jesus.

It simply means that God dwelled with man. And before I get to the word dwelled, I want to examine the idea of who became flesh, who did the dwelling. If we go back up to verse 1, we'll know who the Word was that was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Look at verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Notice verse 2, now it's a pronoun. He was with God in the beginning.

He's speaking here of the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, the eternal Christ, who was known as Jesus when He was born on the earth. This is the He of verse 2. It's the Word of verse 1. And clearly the Word was with God. And this verse says the Word was God.

So Jesus is God. He was with God in the beginning, the eternal Christ, the Son. Notice verse 3, all things were created through Him and apart from Him not one thing was created that was created.

So this gives us more insight into why He's called the Word because through Him, the Word, which God spoke, He said, let there be light, through the Word, the Son, God created everything. So often we say, you'll see this in Genesis, that the Son's the agent of creation, the Holy Spirit, which is hovering over the waters, the power of creation. God's the author of creation.

Three persons, one God. And I hope that you are falling more and more in love with Trinitarian doctrine. It's one of my favorite, I don't even want to say rabbit holes, but it's one of my favorite things just to kind of dive into because it's impossible to understand.

Our triune God is impossible to grasp as a finite being, but I'm so thankful for it. And here's one reason, because God came to dwell with us in the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. So the eternal Word who was with God and was and is God is Jesus Christ.

He became flesh, meaning He took on humanity. This is what the verse clearly states. Notice what the verse does not state.

John 1.14 does not say that the Word merely appeared to be flesh. It doesn't say the Word temporarily disguised Himself as a human being. There's nothing here to say that people saw what they thought was a man, or they had the perception or the image of a man.

The Bible clearly and succinctly says the eternal Christ, God, became man. Now when it says the Word became flesh, this is incredible. And I don't want you to lose the magnificence of this statement because here's what it's saying to us.

And I need you to just try to latch on to this theological truth that's sometimes difficult to not only understand, but to verbalize. Jesus, without ceasing to be what He eternally was, became what He previously was not. Christ Jesus, without ceasing to be who He eternally was, God the Son, became what He previously was not, a man.

This is why the Nicene Creed says He was very God of very God, and yet He was very man. And so two natures in one body, not partly God or partly man, but truly God, truly man. Hypostatic union is the big $10 word for that.

This is fundamental to our doctrine. Jesus Christ, God among us, God with us. And this is why Paul would say in Colossians 2.9, the entire fullness of God's nature dwells bodily in Christ.

This is what we call the incarnation. And so the incarnation really points us to the next word of this phrase that God became flesh, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. That's what the incarnation is.

It's the enfleshing of the eternal Christ, named Jesus, and then He lived among us for 33 years. Now the Greek word here for dwelled is fascinating because it is really the same word as the word tabernacle. So you see what John's doing, don't you? John's forcing you to think back to Exodus at the shadows, at the things that pointed to Christ, the temple, the tent.

But here he's saying that Jesus pitched His tent among us, and because He was God, now God's ultimate presence with us is Jesus Christ. Just to make sure you hear the Exodus, I want to make sure you understand this, Exodus 25.8, God said there to make a sanctuary for me so that I may dwell among them. There's that word.

Transport yourself now to John 1, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So there's an escalation here. There's a theological escalation.

There's a literary escalation. John's doing this on purpose. He wants you to hear Exodus.

He wants you to think about the current. It's escalating from this. The temple displayed God's presence.

Yes, the tabernacle displayed God's presence symbolically and locally. Do you remember the many, many chapters where we went through the golden lampstand, the altars and the different places? They all symbolize some things, right? And it was in one place. Symbolically and locally, the tabernacle, the temple was God's presence.

Jesus embodies God's presence personally and perfectly. No symbolism. It's present, perfect and personal.

That's Jesus. And so he is the true, ultimate dwelling of God. This is why if you read in John further, in John 2, Jesus makes this astounding statement.

He says, destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. And to every Jew who heard that, they're either frustrated or angry or mystified. Like, have you seen the temple? It's a pretty massive structure.

Destroying it and then rebuilding it in three days. Like there's no way. Who do you think you are? But as you read on in John 2, he clarifies what he was saying.

He says this, John 2, 19 and 21, Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. So in clear terms, Jesus says, God is dwelling in me. I am God among you.

And he's pointing to his resurrection. And so the tabernacle and the temple, they were not ultimately about a building. Both were pointing forward to the reality that the presence of God would come to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

So if you ever wonder, where does God dwell? Look at Christ. That's the first declaration that John is making in this verse. This astounding, simple verse, the first emphatic statement.

God dwells among us in the person of Christ. But he's not finished. He goes to another emphatic statement.

It really answers this question, this is God among us. What is this God like? Notice the second statement, we observed his glory. We'll just stay right here in this verse.

Let the Lord keep pressing in on us through His word. And if the first phrase was about God dwelling, the second phrase is about God revealing. Something's being manifest through the incarnation, through God in the flesh, the word may flesh.

Glory is being manifested. We're observing that. Now the language again is very tabernacle-ish.

It's very Exodus-ish. Just the word glory would signal that to us, wouldn't it? Remember Exodus 40 just last week? The glory filled the tabernacle. It was so consuming that Moses could not even enter the tabernacle.

So here now, when John says we observed his glory, any reader of that time would think back, oh, this is tabernacle language. This is temple language. What we experienced then, now we're saying this is in Christ, in Jesus.

God's glory is now revealed in His Son. But John expands the statement a bit. He doesn't just say we observed His glory.

He further defines it. Look what he says. We observed His glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father.

So it's the Father's glory through and in the Son. Now often we hear this and think of this, we think of the word bright or we imagine something bright like glorious. It's glorious and we think, oh, it's so bright I can't look.

And that's true, but it's not the whole truth. I think a better, if I can use that word, way to see the word glory is the word weightiness, not brightness. Because Christ's manifestation of the glory of the Father was weighty.

Now maybe you're wondering why was it weighty? Because Christ was manifesting who He was, His identity, God among us. That's a weighty moment when you realize God is in human flesh living among us. This is what the book of John really is all about.

We're not going to spend a lot of time in the book. It's a little bit of a regret for me, because I like to preach through things expositionally. We're going to spend only eight weeks and we'll do that.

It's the right thing to do, but I want to spend more time. But what you'll find is if you read the book just verse by verse and just follow it, the trajectory is the glory of Jesus being seen in His signs and sacrifice. In fact, the next chapter, His first miracle, the wedding at Cana, the end of this story, here's what the Bible would say to us.

I think it's around verse 11. John writes, Jesus revealed His glory and His disciples believed in Him. This first miracle was a moment for Him to show people God is among you.

It turns the water to wine, the whole timing of that, just the entire miracle, God is among you. That continues through the book through various signs and moments and intersections and encounters and conversations until it culminates at the end of His life. Listen to the wording in John 12.

Now, pause for a minute. John 12 is halfway through the book, so to speak. But keep in mind, the book of John spends half of the book is on the last week of Christ's life.

So when I say to you halfway through the book, it's actually the end of Christ's life. So John spends most of his book in the last week and only half the book in the first two years plus. So if you get to the end of the life or the halfway through the book, here's the verse.

The hours come for the Son of Man to be glorified. This is John 12, 23, to be manifest for the weightiness of who Christ is to really be evidenced. So from signs to sacrifice, what was the world seeing when God was among us in flesh? They were seeing Jesus, the God-man, identifying Himself with the Father's glory through signs, sacrificing Himself for the Father's glory.

All of this was evidence God is among us in the person of Jesus Christ. Now, John expands this statement yet again. He says, we observed His glory.

Then he describes the kind of glory, the Father's glory in and through the Son, manifesting the weightiness of His identity. And then watch this. He gives us some more descriptors.

He says, full of grace and truth. So in that moment, we have a very succinct declaration of what God is like. But I want to say to you, as an American reader, you may read that and think those are two great traits.

But as a Jewish reader, they would have thought immediately of the moment that Moses asked to see God's glory. Remember that in Exodus? Exodus 33, Moses' request. He says, Lord, let me see your glory.

He pressed in deeper. And God said, OK, I'll grant you that request. And Exodus 34 is the fulfilling of that request.

When God puts Moses into the kind of crack of a rock, shields him, passes by him, and Moses sees the remnants of that experience. In that moment, here's how God showed Moses His glory. Let me quote for you Exodus 34.

Here's what the Lord said and did when he passed by. Quote, The Lord, the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth.

I'll read it again for you. This is the Lord's name. If you read Exodus 34, he said, I'm going to declare this to you, Moses.

And he says this, The Lord, the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth. That's what he said when he showed him his glory.

So when John says we observe his glory, glory as of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth, what is every reader thinking? This is where God is dwelling. This is the glory of God right in front of us in Christ Jesus. So God was embodied in his Son.

That's where you see perfectly presented for us grace and truth. If you move on in chapter one in verses 16 to 18, this point is made even more abundantly clear. Look at these verses.

John would say that we've received grace upon grace from his fullness. And then he contrasts this with the law of Moses. He says the law was given through Moses, yes, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ in its fullest form.

And he then says no one's ever seen God, but the one and only Son, that's the Word made flesh. Listen to this phrase, who is himself God and is at the Father's side. And here's the climax of this entire prologue.

He has revealed him. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. So where does God dwell? Look at Christ.

What is God like? Look at Christ. This is the moment in the chapter that we clearly see doctrinally, theologically, definitively that the invisible God has made himself known in the person of Jesus Christ. Listen to how the writer of Hebrews accents this.

Hebrews 1.3, the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature. Church, Jesus doesn't merely give us information about God. Jesus reveals God fully, personally, because Jesus is God.

He's God the Son. He was sent by God the Father, empowered by God the Spirit. And this is exactly why later, listen to this, Jesus tells Philip, this is in John as well.

He says, no one has seen me, excuse me, he says, the one who has seen me has seen the Father. Now you may think that's odd because later he says no one has seen God. Doesn't he say that at the same time? But he's distinguishing here between the persons of the Godhead and then God.

So Jesus is not the Father. The Father and the Son are distinct persons within one triune God, but the Son perfectly reveals the Father. So I want to say again to you, if you ever wonder what God is like, look at Christ.

He's the express image of the glory of God. And he became flesh, took the name Jesus. He embodied personally, fleshly, and fully the grace and truth that we see in God.

If you want to know what holiness looks like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what God's compassion looks like, look at Jesus. How God views sin, look at Jesus.

You want to know how deeply God loves sinners, look at Jesus. You want to know whether God has power over death, look at Jesus. You see church, Jesus is not just one clue among many about what God might be like.

He is God's decisive self-revelation. And this is why, after examining these two emphatic statements of John 1 14, we can say with great clarity and great courage and great conviction, our presence principle for today. Summary of John 1 14, this message kind of in a nutshell.

Will you read this with me? Here's our presence principle. God's presence is perfectly embodied and has been fully revealed in Jesus Christ. Again, this is the incarnation.

That's the doctrine that this verse really teaches us. And I want to say to you, this is a doctrine of first importance. Are you hearing me? Sheep, are you hearing me? This is a doctrine of first importance.

Guests, drive-bys, out-of-towners, longtime members, are you hearing me? As one of your pastors, this is a doctrine of top-level priority. I mean, we can disagree about school choice. We can have different eating preferences.

We can argue about pharmaceuticals. We can have different preferences on music, and we can still go to heaven. Amen? You disagree about this, it will cost you your soul.

John said, if you read on in his epistles later, 1 John, I think it is, he says, if anyone does not believe that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, he is not of God. So I want to pastorally appeal to you, whether you know me or you don't know me, whether it's your 115th time here, 600th time, or your first time, based on the authority of the Word of God, believing that Jesus Christ is God is eternally consequential. You can't take a pass on this.

There's not an option B or C. Either you believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and has come to redeem us and reconcile us, and you're part of God's family, of believing in Jesus alone. If you don't, you're not. There's no middle ground.

That's why this doctrine is of high priority importance. We've been pretty meaty this morning. We've still only scratched a little bit of the surface.

We've thrown some big words out. We've talked about fundamental things, but because they matter. So I want to say again to you, our presence principle, that God's presence is perfectly embodied and has been fully revealed in Jesus Christ.

That's why we preach Christ crucified. Now, I want you to stay with me just for a few more minutes, because I want to think about this presence principle, John 1, 14, not only from the angle of two emphatic statements that show us exactly what is priority in our doctrine, but I want to bring you two assurances, two things that can anchor you. They'll cause some other questions, but they are two assurances that I want to share with you.

First of all, based on the fact that God's presence is perfectly embodied in Jesus Christ, and that's a truth from Scripture, here's assurance number one. The incarnation is a continuing reality. This is quite amazing, but it's beautifully assuring as well that the risen, ascended Jesus remains today the incarnate Son.

So when we say God's presence is perfectly embodied in Christ, yeah, that's present tense. That's happening today in heaven, Jesus Christ is in bodily incarnate form, the right hand of the Father. So yes, the incarnation happened at a moment in history.

That's an event, it's historical, but the incarnation wasn't a, it was not a temporary condition that Jesus eventually discarded. It wasn't just a seasonal thing so we could see God and then it disappeared. Jesus didn't put on humanity a Bethlehem and then took it off at the ascension.

The Word became flesh and the Word remains flesh. The incarnate Son of God is in heaven today, ruling and reigning and interceding. Now let me give you a chronological proof of this based in Scripture.

Follow me quickly. I won't read all the verses. I'm just going to mention them to you, the references and the flow of the timeline.

At His resurrection, Jesus said, this is Luke 24, He asked Him to look at His hands and His feet. He made this statement, a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have. After the resurrection, He appeared in bodily form, yet He had some ability in some way to transport over a distance quickly and through a door and a wall, and yet He had a body.

It's a glorified body after He arose. So He maintained that for His 40 days of appearances. He ascended, here's what was said at His ascension.

He was taken up as they were watching and the cloud took Him out of their sight. So they weren't watching like a cloud or a spirit, they watched the bodily Jesus ascend out of their sight. The angels say this in Acts 1 following that ascension, that this same Jesus who was taken from them will come in the same way that you've seen Him go.

So we can expect a bodily Jesus to return, consummate the kingdom, new heavens, new earth. Those are three chronological events in sequence that show us Christ retained His physical body. The Incarnate Son is reigning today.

And here's what I think is the most fascinating verse, it's years later. Paul would write this, and just latch onto this with all of your spiritual teeth. Be a bulldog about this.

Listen to this verse. Paul would say there's one God and one mediator between God and humanity. Listen to his wording here, the man Christ Jesus.

He did not say the spirit, the appearance, the phenomenon. He said the man, indicating the bodily enfleshed God known as Christ Jesus. He's the only mediator.

And so you may have a question right now because hearing that the Incarnation is not just a beginning, but it's an entirety, there's no ending to it. You may be wondering, well then if He ascended, how can we say that God is present with us now? It's a good question. And the answer is through His Holy Spirit among His holy people, the saints.

Because when Christ ascended, He and the Father sent the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead. He promised this in John 14. Perhaps the most astounding verse in this section of His promises about the Holy Spirit is this verse here.

Listen to it, and I hope it confuses you because it should, and it should bewilder you and then it should beautify itself in front of you. Listen to this verse. Jesus says to His disciples, I will not leave you as orphans.

I'm coming to you. Now is He meaning His second coming or is He meaning as God, the Holy Spirit is coming to them? Because prior to this, He talks about giving another counselor to live, to be with them, the Spirit of truth will be in them forever. Do you see what Christ is doing here? He's saying, I am God, the Holy Spirit who's coming, He is God.

I'm not leaving you as orphans. You will not be alone. The Holy Spirit will be with you.

He says about that very moment that that is to our advantage. This is in verse 7 of chapter 16. And you may think this is hard to believe.

It's even harder to preach that it is better now that Jesus Christ has gone. I almost feel blasphemous saying that. All right.

But the scriptures say that Jesus said, listen, it's for your benefit that I go away because if I don't go away, the counselor will not come to you. So Christ in bodily form has ascended. He's in bodily form, the incarnate Son in heaven reigning.

But God, the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, as Paul would say, Christ in you, the hope of glory lives in every believer worldwide. That is far better. Amen.

So church, never think you are alone because of the incarnation and the bodily ascension and reigning of Jesus. The Holy Spirit has been sent and lives in every believer. This is a better today.

So the incarnation matters. It's not just a Christmas doctrine. It matters on Monday morning.

It matters when you're sitting alone in your house as a widow or a widower. And you're thinking, no one knows me. My life is over.

Lost my best friend, my partner. What do I do now? The incarnation matters then because the Holy Spirit is with you. It matters when you're walking to the doctor's office, you're not sure what the prognosis or diagnosis is going to be.

It matters when your family's unraveling and there's strife and there's tension and kids are wayward. Marriage is tense. Matters when you're trying to resist a temptation that nobody even knows you have.

It matters when you gather here in this building and hear God's word and sing with God's people. Because in every one of those moments, because Christ, the incarnated and risen Son is reigning in heaven bodily, the Holy Spirit is indwelling you. Church, you are not following the memory of a dead leader.

You and I belong to a living incarnate reigning Lord. That's because of the incarnation. So that is our first assurance.

It is a continuing reality. But there's one more. One more assurance we have because of the verse in John 1 14.

And that's this, that the incarnation is a completed revelation. The incarnate Son actually shows us the Father in a decisive way, a very definitive way. He reveals God's glory without shortcomings or any need for more.

This is why I love the way Hebrews begins. Hebrews is a long treatise on the beauty of Jesus and the magnificence and superiority of Jesus. Here's how the book begins.

Long ago, God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. Now watch this phrase. In these last days, he has spoken to us by a son.

You can see the gavel dropping down, can't you? You can just picture like this is the definitive moment, the verdict's in. Jesus is God's son revealing to us what the father's like. Yes, God has made himself decisively known in Jesus Christ.

So we're not waiting for somebody to discover a better picture of God. We're not waiting for another religious teacher to improve upon Jesus. We're not waiting for the culture to update Jesus to 2.0 and download that version.

We're not waiting for some private spiritual experience to take us beyond Jesus. None of those things. We have received from God the definitive, decisive understanding of who he is.

It's Jesus. Jesus is enough. This may raise a second question in your mind.

If that revelation that happened 2,000 years ago is enough and it was in the past tense, how do we see that today? If he ascended and it's continuing but he's not here, then how do we see that revelation that was completed today? I'll bring you back to a similar answer as before, through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Word. You see, his continuing presence is through his Holy Spirit among his holy people. Now we understand that his Holy Spirit and his Holy Word helped that completed revelation in Jesus be seen and understood today.

The Holy Word and the Holy Spirit. Let me give you some verses to explain this briefly. Here's what Jesus said he would do, the Holy Spirit, once Jesus ascended.

He said, the Holy Spirit will glorify me. Now that's interesting. It's the same word, isn't it? Jesus Christ came to glorify the Father.

The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus. In other words, he manifests who Jesus is to people. He brings clarity to the identity of Jesus.

That's the Spirit's job. He will glorify me because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. He says, essentially in his verse, that the Spirit and Jesus are not in competition.

We're not in a battle between who gets attention. The Spirit always shines a light on Jesus. He glorifies Jesus.

He doesn't move us beyond Jesus. He opens our eyes to Jesus. He doesn't reveal a different Jesus or a better Jesus.

He gives us the Jesus in the Word. And so this is what's revealed to us. The Christ of the Word is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

This is exactly what Paul is referring to in 2 Corinthians 4, 6. Listen to this verse. God who said, let light shine out of darkness, this God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. So how do you see God's glory? Looking at Jesus.

And how does one actually and accurately see Jesus? Through the Holy Spirit's power. You see, listen very carefully, church. I can't verbally or humanly convince you to believe in Jesus.

I am to persuade you. I am to speak with you according to the epistles in ways that represent an ambassador. I implore you be reconciled to God, but I can't make you.

I can't turn the switch. Only the Holy Spirit of God can take your heart of stone, which is cold and dead, and make it a heart of flesh, which is living and breathing. That's why Ezekiel and John 3 talk about the wind of the Spirit.

Only the Holy Spirit can enable you to see Jesus Christ for who He really is, God in the flesh, and then believe the truth about Him. This is how the Trinitarian, our Trinitarian, our triune God works. God the Father sent God the Son.

God the Son and God the Father sent the Spirit. And the Spirit is convicting and drawing people to Christ as God's people lift up Christ. When people come to Christ, God the Father receives glory.

This is the work of God. So church, I just want to encourage you. How do we see this complete revelation today? It's through the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

When we preach Christ, the Spirit does the work and draws people. I was trying to think of a way to illustrate this, and I came up really short, because we're trying to explain and illustrate a supernatural surgery, and we just don't have a lot of things that correlate. But I did think of one that could correlate by contrast.

Can I take a shot at it with you, knowing that I'm probably going to fall way short? But I was thinking about when Jewel and I visited New England a few years ago. We visited some of the places that had a lot of American history. We started in Boston, took some tours through different places up in that part of the country where there were wars like Lexington, Concord.

We really enjoyed it. And to be frank with you, we were there not only for the American history side. We wanted to kind of see what part different Christians of that age played in that, such as Roger Williams.

I think he was the founder of Rhode Island, if I'm not mistaken, and some of those stories like that. We wanted to see where was Christianity founding of our country? How do they emerge in real life? So we walked through a lot of those places, had a great time. And here's what we discovered.

As we would visit some battlefields or monuments, we'd read documents, we'd see artifacts, we'd be in houses that were hundreds of years old. We'd walk on streets that they would say this cobblestone was hundreds of years old. We felt like, man, we felt like we were part of it in some ways.

It kind of made things come alive. Now, they didn't come alive. Are you with me? But you felt closer to them.

In fact, you realized how small you were. Often we'd comment to each other like, man, this is amazing, all these things that happened. And here we are 250 years later.

And some of these things like Plymouth Rock were in the 1600s. And so we just were looking at so much history and you feel so small. And then I told her one day, I said, yeah, it's like when I was in Egypt at the pyramids, I felt microscopic.

These were things 4,000 years old. And you're just a speck on this timeline. But being in those places, monuments, documents, artifacts, like objects, they make things come to life.

In other words, the past, what occurred naturally when you visit it, it can mean something in the present naturally. But here's what happens spiritually. When we visit the past through the Word and Christ's life and His death and His resurrection, God supernaturally brings that to life in the present.

He doesn't do it naturally. It's not what happens. It's supernatural that the gospel takes root and we believe because the Holy Spirit opens our eyes and we believe Jesus is who He said He was, God's son.

He did what He said He would do, died for our sins and was raised from the dead. And only by that can men and women have eternal life. That's what happens.

The moment we see that, the moment the Holy Spirit awakens our heart to see that truth and we trust and repent and believe that, that's called the moment of salvation. That's why Jesus Christ's life on earth as a man matters. Because He was the one.

He was the one enfleshed. He was the one who became man. He was God and only Jesus could do what's necessary to redeem us from our sin.

And He did. That's why we say again, God's presence is fully embodied and fully revealed. It's perfectly embodied, fully revealed in Jesus Christ.

And the minute you see Jesus for who He is, for all He is, every bit of who He is, and the lights come on by the Holy Spirit, and man, life changes. My pastoral spidey sense says that's happening in this room right now and across many of our campuses. The Holy Spirit is blowing.

He's breathing upon dead hearts that never saw Jesus the way God's Word presents Him and describes Him truthfully. But for the first time you see it, you get it. The Holy Spirit is breathing on you.

He's blowing upon your life. And what do you see in this Jesus? Just what this verse says. He is full of grace and truth.

First of all, He's full of truth. The fact that He came is an indictment in some sense because we could not get to God. You realize that, right? Every religion says you got to get to God, and they devise a system by which that can happen.

Christianity says, no, God came to us. Hallelujah. We don't climb to God.

God comes to us. The Incarnation is a beautiful picture of God addressing the truth that we are separated from Him. We're alienated from Him.

Our sin has caused this insoluble gap. And you may think, well, I'm going to work my way there. I'll buy my way there.

I'll find some way to bridge this incredible canyon. But even the best you can do is going to fall short because the best you've got is corrupted by sin. On your best day, you've got motives that aren't right.

In your best moments, there's still some areas that are like, that's a little defect there. So you may build a really nice bridge, and it's still going to fall a little short. Most of us, we can't even build a bridge.

But no one wants to admit that. We love to say, I think I'm good enough. Let's just say it.

There is none righteous, no, not one. No one seeks after God. There's none that are good.

So what do we do? We trust the grace of Jesus because Jesus stood in for us. He paid the price that we should have paid. He was our substitute.

So the truth and the grace are so beautiful together. It's called the gospel. And Jesus did die in our place.

He rose again. So now God says to all men and women everywhere, repent and believe the gospel. And when you do, the bridge you've been trying to build, get rid of it.

Jesus is the bridge. And you just become one with Jesus, union with Christ. God sees you through Jesus, and he declares you righteous.

Not because you are, because Jesus is. That's what happens when you see Jesus. You see him in all of his grace and truth.

And the one who revealed God's glory through his life on the earth, he also bore God's judgment against our sin and his death on the cross. And then he rose from that borrowed tomb. It was proved positive he was God, that the father was satisfied with that payment.

My friend, that's the gospel. And the center of that gospel is the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the true dwelling of God's presence. And you want to respond to that? You don't have to even leave John 1. I love the way verse 12 tells us how to respond to that.

To all who received him, he gave them the right to be the children of God, to those who believe in his name. Very synonymous words, receive, believe. And right now, if you're seeing Jesus as the Bible presents him and the Holy Spirit's opening your eyes, then just simply receive and believe that Jesus is who he said he was.

God will save you from your sins. You say, Todd, how do I do that in this room? I'm looking at you. There's people around.

I'm in a chair. Yeah, just like that. With your eyes open, looking straight at me, whether you're at one of our campuses, you don't have to close your eyes.

After all, what's this? Prayer doesn't save you. God saves you. Prayer is a way to respond to God, but you can respond to God with your eyes open.

Your heart is hungry. You're repentant. You're submissive.

God saved me through Jesus. I believe he's your son, my savior, the only one who died and rose again. God saved me through Jesus.

God will hear that and he'll save you. That's the Holy Spirit breathing in upon your life in this moment to bring you to Christ, the very presence of God, that complete revelation, that continuing incarnation. Now, beautiful truth that we just, we built our life on it.

Now, if you're here and you're thinking, well, Todd, I'm born again. I'm already a Christian. I don't want you to think this truth has no relevancy for today.

I want to say to you, just as I close, the incarnation, God's presence, perfectly embodied and fully revealed in Jesus. It's got great currency. Here's the currency.

He's the one you should lock your spiritual gaze on because he is incarnate reigning in heaven today. Hebrews says, fix your eyes on Jesus. So I want to encourage all my believing friends, lock your spiritual gaze on Jesus.

Here's why. Life is often like piloting a plane in dense fog, heavy cloud cover. We may have some pilots in the room.

We did at 830. I know there are times that you have no orientation, no horizon, no landmarks. There's no visual sense of whether you're climbing or descending or drifting.

In that moment, pilots will tell you this. You can't trust what you feel. You've got to lock onto instruments, the fixed reference points that tell you what is actually true.

Well, Christian, listen, without Christ, our spiritual visibility is poor. I'm not telling you it gets poor. I'm telling you it is poor without Christ.

Without Christ, circumstances are cloudy. Emotions are noisy. God can seem distant.

You may not be able to see what he's doing. That is not the moment to stare harder at the fog. Rather, lock your eyes on Christ.

He's the fixed point of your life. Here's how. His incarnation tells you that he came near.

His cross tells you he will forgive your sins. His resurrection tells you death does not win. His attention tells you that he reigns bodily.

His spirit tells you that he's not abandoned you. So because you can't read circumstances, but you know those truths, read Christ. Because you can't trust your feelings, but you can trust those truths, trust Christ.

Because everything around you will seem disorienting, because perception is unreliable, but Christ is not unreliable. He's not disorienting. Anchor yourself to the fixed reality of Jesus.

Lock your spiritual gaze on the one who does not move and will never leave. Fix your eyes on Jesus. And you can, because he's bodily reigning in heaven today.

Interceding for you, my fellow sheep, God has come near. The ultimate dwelling of God has appeared once and for all, definitively, decisively. Not a cloud any longer and not a tent, but the Son, Jesus Christ.

Let us draw near.