The Word and His Witness: Testifying Faithfullyto the Truth of Christ - Mike Riccardi
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00:00:10.000 | Let's find our seats and stand together.
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00:00:37.660 | Isaiah 12, verses 5 and 6 says, sing praises to the Lord,
00:00:45.180 | for he has done gloriously.
00:00:47.720 | Let this be made known in all the earth, shout.
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00:00:54.780 | Some of you guys really need to hear that, shout.
00:00:56.960 | And sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion.
00:01:02.340 | For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
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00:01:11.200 | It's not the ending you'd expect.
00:01:14.340 | But after that message, it is the ending we'd expect.
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00:01:20.980 | Let's remind each other of what we just heard.
00:01:25.680 | The holiness of our great God.
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00:05:37.260 | Reminded that none of us could join the song that the seraphim were singing.
00:05:44.260 | That Isaiah couldn't, we couldn't.
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00:05:49.260 | But brothers, we have had our sins atoned for.
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00:16:35.260 | >> Lord, we come to you out of great need, knowing that we are not what we ought to be.
00:16:45.260 | But Jesus is our only plea.
00:16:49.260 | My hope is only Jesus.
00:16:52.260 | He is all that we are not.
00:16:57.260 | I pray that you would fasten our eyes upon him and grant that we would receive from his fullness grace upon grace.
00:17:10.260 | Amen.
00:17:13.260 | Well, it is a joy and a privilege to be with you here at Shepherds Conference,
00:17:18.260 | gathered around the theme of proclaiming Christ to the ends of the earth.
00:17:25.260 | That's what we do, isn't it, brothers?
00:17:28.260 | We preach Christ.
00:17:31.260 | His glory is worthy to be proclaimed throughout the nations.
00:17:38.260 | And so we gather to exhort one another and to equip one another
00:17:44.260 | to put the glory of Christ's person and work on display
00:17:50.260 | to every tribe and tongue and people and nation in every corner of the earth.
00:17:58.260 | And this morning I want to proclaim Christ to you here in this corner of the earth.
00:18:08.260 | So please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John and chapter 1.
00:18:15.260 | John wastes no time in displaying the Lord Jesus to us in the fullness of his glory.
00:18:26.260 | His prologue, the first 18 verses of chapter 1 of his Gospel,
00:18:32.260 | is a wondrous introduction to the person and work of our Savior.
00:18:39.260 | John ravishes us with the richness of his beauty
00:18:45.260 | as he dives in at the deep end of the theological pool.
00:18:51.260 | John introduces us to him as the Word.
00:18:55.260 | He co-ops the extremely pregnant Greek term logos,
00:19:01.260 | not only to identify Christ with what the Greeks thought was the supreme ordering principle of the universe,
00:19:09.260 | but also to identify Jesus as the supreme revelation of God the Father to mankind,
00:19:17.260 | the pinnacle self-expression of God to man.
00:19:23.260 | In the first five verses of the prologue, John introduces us to the divine Word.
00:19:30.260 | He is the eternal God, distinct from the Father, yet consubstantial with the Father,
00:19:38.260 | with God, and yet God himself.
00:19:43.260 | He is the creator of all things, the self-existent fountain of all life and being.
00:19:54.260 | He is the light of all men, the only hope of those who walk in darkness.
00:20:03.260 | And he is the victor over darkness, who triumphed over all the forces of darkness
00:20:09.260 | when he condemned sin by his death and conquered death by his resurrection.
00:20:17.260 | And then, as if John couldn't bear to speak of the glory of this divine Word
00:20:22.260 | without introducing us to the one who would proclaim that glory,
00:20:27.260 | in verses six to eight, John introduces us to the Word and his witness.
00:20:33.260 | And John the Baptist serves as something of a prototype of all Christ's people
00:20:39.260 | who are tasked with proclaiming his glory throughout the earth,
00:20:44.260 | testifying to the truths of his person and work on behalf of sinners.
00:20:51.260 | And then, verses nine to thirteen, speak about the Word in his world.
00:20:58.260 | John declares that the true light has come into the world
00:21:02.260 | and that the world has responded in one of two ways.
00:21:07.260 | Sinners either disbelieve him and reject him and continue to walk in darkness
00:21:15.260 | or God shines spiritual light and life into their hearts
00:21:21.260 | and raises them from spiritual death in the new birth
00:21:25.260 | and grants them the gift of saving faith in this Word.
00:21:32.260 | And to those who receive him by faith, the Word himself sovereignly grants the right
00:21:40.260 | for those believers to become the adopted sons and daughters of Almighty God.
00:21:48.260 | And then, in this majestic mountain peak verse of verse fourteen,
00:21:55.260 | John displays the glory of the incarnate Word.
00:21:59.260 | He tells us that the divine Word became flesh,
00:22:03.260 | that the eternal second person of the Trinity took on a full and true human nature
00:22:10.260 | into personal union with the unchanging divine nature.
00:22:16.260 | John tells us that in Jesus, the eternal, infinite God
00:22:21.260 | tabernacles among sinners and is himself the nexus of God's fellowship with man.
00:22:30.260 | The eternally begotten Son, he says, the only begotten from the Father,
00:22:35.260 | is the one by whom spiritual orphans are adopted as sons
00:22:43.260 | because they are made to see his glory.
00:22:48.260 | And he is full of grace and truth, saving us by his grace
00:22:53.260 | and guiding us in the light of his truth.
00:22:57.260 | And so we have the divine Word in verses one to five,
00:23:01.260 | the Word and his witness in verses six to eight,
00:23:04.260 | the Word in his world, verses nine to thirteen,
00:23:08.260 | and the incarnate Word in verse fourteen.
00:23:12.260 | Now, in verses fifteen to eighteen, John fixes our eyes upon the excellent Word.
00:23:20.260 | The excellent Word. Let's read John 1, 15 to 18.
00:23:27.260 | John testified about him and cried out, saying,
00:23:30.260 | "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I,
00:23:37.260 | for he existed before me.
00:23:40.260 | For of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.
00:23:47.260 | For the law was given through Moses.
00:23:50.260 | Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
00:23:55.260 | No one has seen God at any time.
00:23:58.260 | The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father,
00:24:03.260 | he has explained him."
00:24:07.260 | John closes his prologue by speaking of how this eternal Word made flesh
00:24:13.260 | excels and surpasses all others,
00:24:17.260 | even the greatest and most significant figures of redemptive history.
00:24:23.260 | Who is the Christ that we proclaim to the ends of the earth?
00:24:29.260 | He is the excellent Word.
00:24:33.260 | And I want to proclaim him to you this morning
00:24:35.260 | as you prepare to proclaim him to the ends of the earth.
00:24:40.260 | In John 1, 15 to 18, we find four excellencies
00:24:44.260 | that set the Lord Jesus Christ far above anyone and anything.
00:24:50.260 | Four excellencies that exalt the glory of our Savior,
00:24:55.260 | that feed our faith, and that strengthen our souls
00:24:58.260 | to declare his excellency through all the nations.
00:25:03.260 | In the first place, this excellent Word
00:25:06.260 | surpasses the greatest man who ever lived.
00:25:10.260 | He surpasses the greatest man who ever lived.
00:25:14.260 | Look at verse 15.
00:25:17.260 | "John, that is John the Baptist, testified about him
00:25:20.260 | and cried out saying, 'This was he of whom I said,
00:25:23.260 | 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I,
00:25:26.260 | for he existed before me.'"
00:25:30.260 | The Apostle John quotes the words of John the Baptist
00:25:33.260 | exactly as he said them in John 1, 30.
00:25:38.260 | And he testifies to the supremacy of Christ.
00:25:44.260 | "He who comes after me has a higher rank than I."
00:25:47.260 | Or some translations have, "He has surpassed me."
00:25:52.260 | Jesus was born six months after his cousin John,
00:25:55.260 | according to Luke 1, 26.
00:25:58.260 | And, of course, Jesus began his ministry
00:26:00.260 | after John had already began to be engaged in his.
00:26:05.260 | And theirs was a society in which,
00:26:08.260 | as one commentator put it,
00:26:10.260 | "age and precedence bestowed peculiar honor."
00:26:17.260 | That's why in the case of Jacob and Esau,
00:26:19.260 | it was such a scandal for God to tell Rachel
00:26:22.260 | that the older shall serve the younger.
00:26:26.260 | Chronological priority meant superiority.
00:26:32.260 | But John says Jesus, who comes after him,
00:26:36.260 | has surpassed him, has come to outrank him.
00:26:42.260 | Literally it's, "He who comes after me has become before me."
00:26:49.260 | John says, "He is the king.
00:26:52.260 | I am just the forerunner who announces the king's coming.
00:26:57.260 | He is the bridegroom.
00:26:59.260 | I'm just the friend of the bridegroom
00:27:01.260 | who rejoices to hear his voice.
00:27:05.260 | I'm the lamp who, for a little while,
00:27:08.260 | lit up the path where you should walk.
00:27:11.260 | But that path leads to him who is the light of the world.
00:27:17.260 | I baptize in water, but he who comes after me
00:27:21.260 | baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
00:27:26.260 | And I'm not worthy to untie his sandals."
00:27:32.260 | Remember who's speaking.
00:27:35.260 | In Matthew 11:11, Jesus says,
00:27:37.260 | "Truly, truly, I say to you, among those born of women,
00:27:41.260 | there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist."
00:27:46.260 | Jesus himself, the eternal word,
00:27:49.260 | the light of the world, God the Son,
00:27:53.260 | is saying John the Baptist is the greatest man who ever lived.
00:27:57.260 | Why?
00:27:59.260 | Because God chose him to perform the most important task
00:28:03.260 | to that point in human history,
00:28:05.260 | to be the forerunner of the Messiah.
00:28:10.260 | He was the last of the Old Testament prophets,
00:28:12.260 | even as Jesus says in Luke 16:16,
00:28:15.260 | "The law and the prophets were precursors of the new covenant."
00:28:25.260 | He himself was the pivot point of all biblical history.
00:28:30.260 | So the greatest man who ever lived up until that point
00:28:33.260 | was John the Baptist.
00:28:35.260 | And John himself says,
00:28:37.260 | "This one who comes after me has surpassed me.
00:28:41.260 | He's come to outrank me.
00:28:43.260 | He has excelled me in every way."
00:28:47.260 | He said, "I'm the greatest?"
00:28:49.260 | Well, he is greater than the greatest then.
00:28:55.260 | And why is that?
00:28:57.260 | What is the ground of Jesus' supremacy over John the Baptist?
00:29:02.260 | Why does he surpass the greatest man who ever lived?
00:29:05.260 | Look at it again.
00:29:06.260 | "He who comes after me has come to be before me
00:29:10.260 | for he existed before me."
00:29:13.260 | Literally because he was before me.
00:29:18.260 | And this is that famous being versus becoming contrast
00:29:22.260 | that John is so fond of throughout his prologue.
00:29:25.260 | The contrast between "A me," the verb "to be,"
00:29:29.260 | and "ginamai," the verb "to become."
00:29:32.260 | He has become or come to be before me
00:29:37.260 | because he was before me.
00:29:39.260 | He comes after me because according to his humanity
00:29:43.260 | he was born after I was and began his ministry
00:29:46.260 | after I began mine.
00:29:48.260 | But he was before me because according to his deity
00:29:52.260 | he is the uncreated, eternal God of heaven and earth.
00:30:00.260 | He was before me.
00:30:02.260 | He has been existing from eternity.
00:30:06.260 | John 8:58, Jesus says it himself,
00:30:08.260 | "Before Abraham was, I am."
00:30:14.260 | The apostle Paul says in Colossians 1:17,
00:30:16.260 | "He is before all things."
00:30:23.260 | Matthew 3:1 says, "Now in those days John the Baptist came.
00:30:28.260 | Paraginamai came along."
00:30:32.260 | But Micah 5:2, "His goings forth are from the days of eternity."
00:30:40.260 | John says, "I am of yesterday.
00:30:43.260 | He is from eternity."
00:30:47.260 | Yes, my father prophesied over me at my birth, Luke 1:76,
00:30:51.260 | that I would be the prophet of the Most High.
00:30:56.260 | But the angel Gabriel promised to Mary, Luke 1:32,
00:30:59.260 | that he would be the son of the Most High.
00:31:05.260 | I am and am honored to be a minister of the new covenant,
00:31:09.260 | a herald of the dawning of the new covenant.
00:31:18.260 | Hebrews 9:15, "His blood is the blood of the new covenant."
00:31:23.260 | Hebrews 13:20, "This is the one of whom I spoke."
00:31:29.260 | Brothers, this is the one of whom we speak,
00:31:32.260 | the one who surpasses the greatest man who ever lived.
00:31:41.260 | That brings us to a second excellency of this excellent word.
00:31:46.260 | I'm going to break the rules here and skip verse 16
00:31:50.260 | and come back to it at the end.
00:31:53.260 | We've seen Christ's supremacy over the greatest of the prophets in verse 15.
00:31:59.260 | We come to see Christ's supremacy over the lawgiver in verse 17.
00:32:04.260 | Number two, Christ supersedes the glorious mediator of the old covenant.
00:32:10.260 | Christ supersedes the glorious mediator of the old covenant.
00:32:15.260 | Verse 17, "For the law was given through Moses.
00:32:20.260 | Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ."
00:32:26.260 | Now, the law was a wonderful gift from God to his people.
00:32:32.260 | It was a gracious gift for God to reveal his mind to his people,
00:32:38.260 | to direct our steps, to guide our path into the path of blessing.
00:32:46.260 | That's why Psalm 119.29 says, "Remove the false way from me
00:32:51.260 | and graciously grant me your law."
00:32:58.260 | The law of God is the delight of the child of God.
00:33:03.260 | David says, "Oh, how I love your law.
00:33:07.260 | It is my meditation all the day.
00:33:11.260 | The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces."
00:33:21.260 | The law was given through Moses.
00:33:23.260 | How? How was it given?
00:33:25.260 | It was given in glory.
00:33:28.260 | 2 Corinthians 3.7 says, "The ministry of death in letters engraved on stones
00:33:33.260 | came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses
00:33:39.260 | because of the glory of his face."
00:33:44.260 | Aside from the fact that at the giving of the Mosaic Law,
00:33:48.260 | Mount Sinai was covered in smoke and Yahweh descended on it in fire,
00:33:53.260 | that there was thunder and lightning and the mountain quaked,
00:33:56.260 | and that the glory cloud covered the mountain for six days.
00:34:00.260 | Aside from all of that, when Moses went up to the mountain to speak with God
00:34:04.260 | from the sheer reality of being in the holy presence of God himself,
00:34:08.260 | Moses' own face shone with the radiance of God's glory.
00:34:14.260 | So much so that he had to put a veil over his face so as not to terrify the people.
00:34:21.260 | This was a glorious ministry with a glorious mediator, literally.
00:34:30.260 | In fact, in Numbers 12, verses 6-8, God says,
00:34:34.260 | "If there is a prophet among you, I, Yahweh, shall make myself known to him in a vision.
00:34:38.260 | I shall speak with him in a dream.
00:34:40.260 | Not so with my servant Moses.
00:34:42.260 | He is faithful in all my household.
00:34:44.260 | With him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings.
00:34:49.260 | And he beholds the form of Yahweh."
00:34:55.260 | God speaks to Moses, literally the text is, mouth to mouth.
00:34:59.260 | We might say, face to face.
00:35:02.260 | God even says, "Moses beholds the form of Yahweh."
00:35:05.260 | We're going to hear in a moment, we've already heard in the past addresses,
00:35:08.260 | that no one has seen God at any time.
00:35:13.260 | But here we're told that Moses beholds the form of God.
00:35:17.260 | It's unbelievable.
00:35:20.260 | The mediator of the old covenant was glorious.
00:35:27.260 | But John's point in verse 17 is the same as Paul's point back in 2 Corinthians 3, verses 7-11.
00:35:35.260 | "If the ministry of death and letters engraved on stones came with glory,
00:35:39.260 | so that the sons of Israel couldn't look intently at the face of Moses
00:35:42.260 | because of the glory of his face fading, though it was,
00:35:47.260 | how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?
00:35:54.260 | For if the ministry of condemnation has glory,
00:35:57.260 | much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory."
00:36:02.260 | Paul says, "Indeed, what had glory in this case has no glory
00:36:06.260 | because of the glory that surpasses it.
00:36:10.260 | For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory."
00:36:18.260 | The ministry of condemnation was glorious.
00:36:23.260 | The Israelites beheld the glory of God himself reflected on the face of Moses.
00:36:30.260 | But Moses couldn't justify his people.
00:36:36.260 | Why?
00:36:38.260 | Because when the law confronts sinful human nature
00:36:42.260 | that fails to meet its standard of perfection,
00:36:45.260 | it pronounces upon us a sentence of death.
00:36:50.260 | The law can't change hearts.
00:36:54.260 | It could never provide the power for the obedience that it demanded.
00:37:00.260 | For that, only the grace of the new covenant would suffice.
00:37:04.260 | Galatians 3.22, "But the scripture has shut up everyone under sin
00:37:09.260 | so that the promise," that is the new covenant promise,
00:37:13.260 | "by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe."
00:37:19.260 | Galatians 3.24, "Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ
00:37:25.260 | so that we may be justified by faith in Christ's works,
00:37:31.260 | not by the doing of our own works."
00:37:36.260 | The law points to the need for grace.
00:37:41.260 | But grace comes in the person and work of Jesus
00:37:45.260 | who has instituted the new covenant,
00:37:48.260 | whose great promise is what?
00:37:50.260 | "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
00:37:55.260 | I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."
00:37:59.260 | Those who believe in the name of Jesus, John 1.13,
00:38:03.260 | have been born of God.
00:38:06.260 | Their hearts of stone have been transformed
00:38:09.260 | and brought to life by the grace of regeneration.
00:38:16.260 | Moses was not the mediator of a ministry of righteousness.
00:38:22.260 | Oh, but the Lord Jesus Christ, friends, He can justify His people.
00:38:29.260 | Hebrews 8.6, "Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry
00:38:33.260 | by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant
00:38:37.260 | which has been enacted on better promises."
00:38:42.260 | The glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth,
00:38:47.260 | the one in whom grace and truth are realized,
00:38:52.260 | His glory supersedes and far outshines
00:38:56.260 | even the glory of Moses in the old covenant.
00:39:01.260 | The glory of the law revealed in the face of Moses
00:39:06.260 | is no match for the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.
00:39:14.260 | As one preacher puts it, "Moses points to grace, but Jesus performs grace."
00:39:20.260 | Moses reports the words of God. Jesus is the Word of God.
00:39:25.260 | The law mirrors the light of God. Jesus is the light of God.
00:39:32.260 | And as the author of Hebrews put it, Hebrews 3, 5-6,
00:39:37.260 | "Now Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant
00:39:44.260 | for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later.
00:39:48.260 | But Christ was faithful as a son over his house."
00:39:54.260 | Moses was a faithful servant, but Christ was a faithful son.
00:39:58.260 | This excellent Word supersedes the glory of the glorious mediator of the old covenant.
00:40:06.260 | He far excels Him. He outshines Him.
00:40:13.260 | And that brings us to a third excellency of this excellent Word, number three.
00:40:20.260 | He shows the glory of the unseen Father.
00:40:24.260 | He shows the glory of the unseen Father.
00:40:28.260 | Verse 18, "No one has seen God at any time.
00:40:33.260 | The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him."
00:40:41.260 | No one has seen God at any time. He is, Colossians 1, 15, the invisible God.
00:40:49.260 | He is, Hebrews 11, 27, "Him who is unseen."
00:40:56.260 | In 1 Timothy 6, 15-16, Paul says,
00:40:59.260 | "The blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,
00:41:03.260 | is the one who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light,
00:41:09.260 | whom no man has seen or can see."
00:41:14.260 | Seeing God does not only not happen, it's impossible.
00:41:21.260 | But what about texts like Numbers 12, 8, which says, "Moses, behold the form of Yahweh,"
00:41:26.260 | or Exodus 33, 11, which says, "Yahweh used to speak to Moses face to face,
00:41:31.260 | just as a man speaks to his friend."
00:41:35.260 | Well, these have to be figures of speech that signify a special closeness.
00:41:41.260 | Moses did not see God in His essence,
00:41:44.260 | precisely because these categorical statements of God's invisibility preclude that possibility.
00:41:51.260 | In fact, while Exodus 33, 11 says, "Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face,"
00:41:56.260 | just nine verses later, in Exodus 33, 20, we heard it last hour,
00:42:01.260 | God tells Moses, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live."
00:42:08.260 | So it's plain, it's figurative language.
00:42:12.260 | But John's reference to Moses in verse 17, and then God's invisibility in verse 18,
00:42:18.260 | is pointing us to Exodus 33.
00:42:22.260 | Moses prays that God would show him His glory, and God says in verse 22,
00:42:26.260 | "I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I've passed by.
00:42:31.260 | Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen."
00:42:38.260 | And, of course, because God is spirit and does not have a body,
00:42:42.260 | He does not literally have a back or a face.
00:42:46.260 | It's the Shekinah glory of God that Moses sees,
00:42:49.260 | a physical, visible manifestation of God's presence, His back, if you will.
00:42:56.260 | But the actual, infinite, incomprehensible essence of God, what He calls His face,
00:43:02.260 | not even Moses can see that.
00:43:07.260 | But this excellent word, "He has seen God."
00:43:15.260 | John 6:46, Jesus says, "Not that anyone has seen the Father,
00:43:20.260 | except the one who is from God."
00:43:25.260 | God has seen the Father.
00:43:28.260 | Why? John 1:18, "Because He is the only begotten God."
00:43:35.260 | John uses the same word as he does in verse 14, monogamous,
00:43:39.260 | which is, rightly translated, "only begotten."
00:43:43.260 | It's a reference to the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son.
00:43:47.260 | What it means for God the Son to be Son is that He is eternally begotten from the Father.
00:43:54.260 | Just as a son bears the same nature as his father,
00:43:59.260 | and yet has that nature from his father,
00:44:03.260 | so also the eternal Son is consubstantial with the Father,
00:44:07.260 | having the identical nature that the Father does, but having it from the Father.
00:44:14.260 | And so to call Him the only begotten God is to identify Him as the eternal divine Son.
00:44:22.260 | To speak of the only begotten God is to speak of God the only begotten,
00:44:27.260 | or God the Son.
00:44:31.260 | And who is more likely to know the Father than His Son,
00:44:37.260 | the one who subsists in the identical nature?
00:44:41.260 | When the Father acts, He acts by the principle of the divine nature.
00:44:46.260 | When the Son acts, He acts by that very same divine nature.
00:44:51.260 | If the Father is saying or thinking or doing anything,
00:44:55.260 | the Son is right there with Him, subsisting in the identical essence.
00:45:01.260 | Matthew 11, 27, Jesus says, "No one knows the Son except the Father,
00:45:06.260 | nor does anyone know the Father except the Son."
00:45:10.260 | The eternal divine Son knows the Father in such comprehensive intimacy
00:45:16.260 | that compared to that knowledge, no one else knows the Father at all.
00:45:24.260 | And still further, back to John 1, 18,
00:45:27.260 | this only begotten homoousios Son is in the bosom of the Father.
00:45:36.260 | To be in someone's bosom is to be the object of their special and tender love.
00:45:42.260 | The King James translation of Deuteronomy 13, 6 speaks of "the wife of thy bosom."
00:45:49.260 | The NAS translates that "the wife you cherish."
00:45:53.260 | So to be in someone's bosom is to be cherished.
00:45:58.260 | John is saying that there is a closeness between the Father and His only begotten Son
00:46:03.260 | that surpasses even that of the one who beheld God's glory on Mount Sinai.
00:46:10.260 | Jesus stands in the closest possible relation to the Father
00:46:16.260 | in His bosom from all eternity.
00:46:21.260 | But also, to be in someone's bosom meant to be privy to their most secret thoughts.
00:46:27.260 | The idea is that the things that we keep to ourselves we hide in our hearts.
00:46:32.260 | And so Calvin observed, "The breast is the seat of counsel."
00:46:38.260 | To be in the bosom of the Father is to say, as Matthew Henry put it,
00:46:42.260 | "Christ was privy to the bosom counsels of the Father."
00:46:46.260 | The prophet sat down at His feet as scholars.
00:46:50.260 | Christ lay in His bosom as a friend.
00:46:55.260 | The only begotten Son knows the Father's mind
00:47:00.260 | because the Father's mind is the self-same mind as the Son's mind.
00:47:05.260 | And the beloved Son knows the Father's mind because He is in His bosom,
00:47:12.260 | aware of the most hidden and unseen counsels of His heart.
00:47:18.260 | Which means what?
00:47:21.260 | That He is the most qualified one that there can be
00:47:26.260 | to reveal the God that no one has seen at any time.
00:47:31.260 | The infinite, incomprehensible God whose gracious revelations of Himself
00:47:36.260 | in His Word and in His world are only the fringes of His ways, Job says.
00:47:43.260 | Matthew 11, 27, again, "No one knows the Father except the Son
00:47:47.260 | and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."
00:47:54.260 | Jesus is the revelation of God.
00:47:57.260 | The revelation of the God who would otherwise remain unknown to men.
00:48:04.260 | "He has explained Him," verse 18.
00:48:09.260 | "Exegeomai," the word from which we get our term "exegesis,"
00:48:15.260 | which means to read out of a text as opposed to reading into a text.
00:48:21.260 | Jesus is the exegesis of God.
00:48:26.260 | Which is to say this Jesus shows the glory of the unseen Father.
00:48:31.260 | He is, Colossians 1, 15, the image of the invisible God.
00:48:37.260 | He is, Hebrews 1, 3, the exact representation of His nature.
00:48:44.260 | This is not a fading reflection of the Shekinah glory on the face of Moses.
00:48:49.260 | As marvelous as that was, this is, 2 Corinthians 4, 4,
00:48:54.260 | the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.
00:49:00.260 | This is, 2 Corinthians 4, 6, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
00:49:07.260 | Moses caught a glimpse of the back of God's glory.
00:49:11.260 | Jesus is the embodiment of the fullness of God's glory.
00:49:18.260 | And so Jesus Himself can say to Philip in John 14, 9, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father."
00:49:25.260 | Not because Jesus is the Father, but because Jesus is everything that the Father is.
00:49:31.260 | Because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.
00:49:34.260 | Because the only begotten Son of the Father is of the same nature as the Father.
00:49:40.260 | He is the perfect, visible exposition of the invisible Father.
00:49:48.260 | No one can see My face and live.
00:49:52.260 | In Christ, brothers, we behold the face of God and can do nothing but live.
00:49:58.260 | Nothing but rise from the dead because everyone who beholds the Son
00:50:03.260 | and believes in Him will be raised up by Him on the last day, John 6, 40.
00:50:11.260 | If you want to know what the unseen Father is like, you look at Jesus.
00:50:17.260 | He is God incarnate.
00:50:20.260 | He is the Word of God, the ultimate and pinnacle self-expression of God.
00:50:27.260 | And so in John 2, when you see Jesus turn water into wine,
00:50:33.260 | you can know that God is the omnipotent Lord of all creation.
00:50:39.260 | When you see Jesus make a whip and overturn tables in the temple,
00:50:44.260 | you can know that God is holy and that He hates blasphemy
00:50:50.260 | and He desires to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
00:50:54.260 | And when you see Jesus go out of His way to meet the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4,
00:50:59.260 | you know that God seeks and saves that which was lost.
00:51:05.260 | When you see Jesus heal the nobleman's son and the lame man at the pool of Bethesda,
00:51:11.260 | or when you see Him feed the thousands who followed Him,
00:51:14.260 | grieved because they had nothing to eat,
00:51:17.260 | you can know that God is a God of compassion on sinners.
00:51:23.260 | When you see Him silence the mob ready to stone the woman caught in adultery,
00:51:29.260 | you can know that God delights to forgive the worst of sinners.
00:51:35.260 | When you see Him weeping over Mary and Martha's grief,
00:51:40.260 | you can know that God hates sin
00:51:44.260 | and that He cares for His children who've grown under sin's curse.
00:51:50.260 | When you see Him, the Lord and the Teacher, washing the disciples' feet,
00:51:56.260 | you can know that God loves His unworthy servants
00:52:01.260 | and delights to serve them as an expression of His overflowing fullness.
00:52:08.260 | And when you see Him betrayed and arrested and bound and interrogated and disowned
00:52:20.260 | and crowned with thorns and mocked and slapped in the face and condemned and crucified,
00:52:34.260 | you can know the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the love of God
00:52:43.260 | for hell-deserving criminals like you and me,
00:52:47.260 | a love that surpasses knowledge.
00:52:53.260 | And when you see Him risen from the grave and ascending into heaven
00:52:59.260 | and seated in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority,
00:53:05.260 | you can know that God has conquered sin and death
00:53:09.260 | and rules the world in uncontested majesty and sovereign blessedness
00:53:15.260 | and will keep His promises to bring every last one of His children safely home to Him.
00:53:30.260 | Now we come back to verse 16 to find a fourth excellency of this excellent word.
00:53:37.260 | "He surpasses the greatest man who ever lived.
00:53:40.260 | He supersedes the glorious mediator of the old covenant.
00:53:43.260 | He shows the glory of the unseen Father."
00:53:45.260 | Number four, "He supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner."
00:53:52.260 | "He supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner."
00:53:57.260 | Verse 16, "For of His fullness we have all received and grace upon grace."
00:54:07.260 | Verse 14, "Told us that this glorious one, only begotten from the Father, is full of grace and truth."
00:54:14.260 | And here John says, "Every one of us who belongs to Him by faith has received from His fullness."
00:54:23.260 | Oh, the fullness of Christ.
00:54:26.260 | The fullness of our Savior.
00:54:29.260 | In Ephesians 4.13, Paul speaks of the fullness of Christ.
00:54:35.260 | In Ephesians 3.19, he says, "Knowing the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge
00:54:39.260 | fills believers up to all the fullness of God."
00:54:44.260 | Colossians 1.19 says, "It was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Christ."
00:54:50.260 | Fullness of grace.
00:54:55.260 | You and I, friends, we are spiritually empty.
00:55:01.260 | We have fallen short of God's righteous standard of perfection.
00:55:05.260 | And there is nothing that we can do to satisfy divine justice but go to our everlasting misery.
00:55:13.260 | We are spiritually destitute with no resources of our own to commend ourselves to God
00:55:18.260 | or to save ourselves from our just condemnation.
00:55:21.260 | Oh, but here comes our Savior.
00:55:24.260 | God the Son incarnate.
00:55:26.260 | And He is full of grace.
00:55:28.260 | He is full of unmerited favor to be bestowed upon poor sinners
00:55:35.260 | who could do nothing but go to their ruin.
00:55:39.260 | There is no other way for the nations to fill the emptiness of their spiritual poverty
00:55:46.260 | except through faith in this one.
00:55:50.260 | Calvin says, "As soon as we have departed from Christ, it is vain for us to seek a single drop of happiness
00:55:57.260 | because God has determined that whatever is good shall reside in Him alone.
00:56:02.260 | Accordingly, we shall find angels and men to be dry, heaven to be empty, the earth to be unproductive,
00:56:10.260 | and, in short, all things to be of no value
00:56:13.260 | if we wish to be partakers of the gifts of God in any other way than through Christ."
00:56:20.260 | It is of His fullness that we all receive.
00:56:25.260 | He and He alone is full of the grace upon grace that we so desperately need.
00:56:31.260 | And so if we seek it anywhere but by faith in Him,
00:56:34.260 | we will find ourselves just as poor, just as destitute, just as bankrupt as we were when we began.
00:56:44.260 | But in Him, dear brothers, drawing from His fullness,
00:56:50.260 | we will find the fountain of grace upon grace to be inexhaustible.
00:56:56.260 | We will find that He supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner.
00:57:02.260 | Matthew Henry wrote, "As the cistern receives water from the fullness of the fountain,
00:57:07.260 | the branches sap from the fullness of the root, and the air light from the fullness of the sun,
00:57:13.260 | so we receive grace from the fullness of Christ."
00:57:18.260 | He is an inexhaustible fountain, an ever-plenteous rich root,
00:57:24.260 | a superabundance of light from the sun.
00:57:29.260 | This is the testimony of every one of God's people.
00:57:34.260 | We who have feasted upon this Savior by faith
00:57:37.260 | have received nothing but the gracious dispensations of a loving shepherd,
00:57:43.260 | nothing but grace upon grace, literally grace in place of grace.
00:57:51.260 | What's that mean?
00:57:52.260 | It's just this never-ending supply of grace after grace after grace from Christ our dear Savior.
00:58:00.260 | There is the grace of atonement, of a full and perfect redemption that rescues us from the wrath of God.
00:58:08.260 | There is the grace of regeneration, the sovereign miracle of the Holy Spirit
00:58:14.260 | where He births in us who were dead the fullness of the divine life.
00:58:20.260 | And that gives way to the grace gifts of repentance and faith.
00:58:24.260 | We turn in disgust from the filth and fruitlessness of sin,
00:58:29.260 | and we rest our souls upon the blood and righteousness of our perfect substitute.
00:58:34.260 | And we're united to Him so that all that is His becomes ours.
00:58:40.260 | And that's followed by the grace of justification
00:58:43.260 | by which we, guilty sinners, are justly declared righteous
00:58:49.260 | solely on the basis of the obedience of Jesus in our place,
00:58:54.260 | imputed to our account apart from any works of our own.
00:58:59.260 | And then the grace of sanctification sets us apart to be God's own possession.
00:59:05.260 | It frees us from the dominion of sin
00:59:08.260 | and then progressively transforms us into the very image of Christ Himself.
00:59:15.260 | And the grace upon grace doesn't stop until glorification,
00:59:19.260 | when every trace of sin is eradicated from us,
00:59:24.260 | and we are raised to live in sinless freedom with the triune God forever.
00:59:32.260 | John MacArthur says grace upon grace is like wave upon wave.
00:59:37.260 | It's like waves of grace rolling in on the seashore.
00:59:41.260 | When one wave of grace breaks onto the shore and then washes back out,
00:59:45.260 | there's just another wave right behind it with a fresh supply of grace.
00:59:51.260 | John Gill paraphrased it as "heaps of grace."
00:59:55.260 | It's just the language of abundance, of profusion, of limitlessness and boundlessness.
01:00:03.260 | And friends, who needs grace upon grace?
01:00:07.260 | Sinners need grace upon grace.
01:00:10.260 | And it's not just grace for regeneration and conversion and justification.
01:00:15.260 | Praise God for those.
01:00:17.260 | But it's the ongoing grace, isn't it, of fresh pardon for sins.
01:00:23.260 | We who have received such boundless grace in our conversion,
01:00:28.260 | I mean justified freely, adopted children of God,
01:00:32.260 | surely we, among all people, know better than to go on sinning against our Lord
01:00:41.260 | in our thoughts, in our words, and in our actions.
01:00:48.260 | And yet we hate and we covet and we lust and we envy.
01:01:01.260 | We complain and we gossip and we lie and deceive.
01:01:10.260 | We manipulate, mistreat, sow dissension, and are lazy.
01:01:20.260 | We commit idolatry as we worship the idols of our hearts above our great God and Savior.
01:01:30.260 | God help us.
01:01:31.260 | We prefer other lesser beauties over Him, the loveliest and most beautiful of all.
01:01:43.260 | And we think that sinning so grievously against grace poured out so lavishly upon us
01:01:52.260 | disqualifies us from more grace.
01:01:56.260 | Our flesh, stirred up by the enemy of our souls, says to us,
01:02:02.260 | "How can you be a Christian when you still sin like this?"
01:02:07.260 | I mean, every day.
01:02:11.260 | And we're tempted to think that ones so vile as we are need to spend time away from Christ.
01:02:20.260 | We put ourselves in spiritual time out.
01:02:24.260 | We make ourselves go sit in the spiritual corner until we can perform the penance
01:02:29.260 | of feeling bad enough about our sin.
01:02:34.260 | I'm not saying don't mourn over your sin.
01:02:36.260 | Go and mourn over your sin.
01:02:38.260 | Let repentance be heartfelt.
01:02:40.260 | But know this Savior is full of grace.
01:02:45.260 | And from His fullness we all receive ongoing present tense grace upon grace.
01:02:53.260 | And so though our heads hang in shame, brothers, over committing the same sins
01:02:57.260 | against the same Lord who deserves better from His people,
01:03:02.260 | nevertheless we go to Him every day, every hour for forgiveness.
01:03:12.260 | We don't wait in the corner at a distance from Jesus
01:03:15.260 | until we can satisfy some sort of self-imposed standard of self-atonement.
01:03:21.260 | We don't let our spiritual emptiness drive us away from His fullness.
01:03:27.260 | The recognition of our bankruptcy propels us to flee unto Him
01:03:34.260 | where we may draw once again from the fullness of His grace.
01:03:39.260 | And because He is full of grace, when we come to Him in repentance,
01:03:44.260 | we find nothing but a sympathetic high priest who loves to forgive.
01:03:50.260 | And can you believe this, is not ashamed to call us brethren.
01:03:57.260 | My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
01:04:01.260 | But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father,
01:04:05.260 | Jesus Christ the righteous.
01:04:09.260 | And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins
01:04:15.260 | and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
01:04:19.260 | You see, we can live upon this Christ who is so full of grace.
01:04:26.260 | We never need to fear that we'll deplete His fullness.
01:04:29.260 | You may draw grace from the fullness of that fountain
01:04:33.260 | and you will never exhaust His supply.
01:04:37.260 | Our Savior is more full of grace than you are of sin.
01:04:44.260 | There is more grace in Christ than there is sin in us.
01:04:48.260 | More grace in Christ than sin in all of the members of His body.
01:04:56.260 | There is deeper grace in Christ, friend, than there is sin deep inside your heart.
01:05:04.260 | Even the deepest sins that you commit, the darkest sins that you keep hidden from others,
01:05:13.260 | there is no cavern of sin so deep in your soul that the grace of Christ is not deeper still.
01:05:21.260 | And so you may come into the light in freedom because there's forgiveness within.
01:05:27.260 | If only you come and draw from this fountain,
01:05:30.260 | you will find grace upon grace upon grace upon grace.
01:05:36.260 | It's not as if your drawing from the well of grace that is in Christ
01:05:39.260 | somehow diminishes His supply of grace in any way,
01:05:43.260 | whether for you or your fellow believers.
01:05:46.260 | His fullness of grace is like an ocean, again,
01:05:50.260 | that just keeps washing up grace onto the shores of your heart,
01:05:54.260 | wave after wave after wave.
01:05:57.260 | And you have as much chance of exhausting Christ's grace
01:06:00.260 | as gathering up the Pacific Ocean a thimbleful at a time.
01:06:07.260 | And in fact, so far from diminishing Him or bothering Him or annoying Him,
01:06:15.260 | when you fly to Him for fresh grace, you magnify His fullness.
01:06:21.260 | You glorify Him as one who is so sufficient to supply your every need.
01:06:26.260 | I mean, this is truly astounding.
01:06:28.260 | Psalm 50, verse 15, God Himself urges His people,
01:06:32.260 | "Call upon Me in the day of trouble.
01:06:35.260 | I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me."
01:06:41.260 | In other words, your calling upon Me in the midst of your trouble honors Me
01:06:47.260 | by demonstrating that you believe that I am sufficient and strong enough
01:06:51.260 | to rescue you when you call.
01:06:54.260 | Isn't that glorious?
01:06:56.260 | I mean, isn't it wonderful to worship a God who is honored
01:06:59.260 | by supplying to us what we lack?
01:07:03.260 | That's a good deal.
01:07:07.260 | "Worship Me by being needy." Yes, Lord.
01:07:13.260 | John Newton understood this.
01:07:15.260 | He wrote a beautiful hymn called "For Mercies Countless as the Sands."
01:07:21.260 | And he's asking, "What can I give back to God for all these mercies I receive?"
01:07:27.260 | And at first he laments.
01:07:29.260 | He says, "Alas, from such a heart as mine, what can I bring Him forth?
01:07:35.260 | My best is stained and dyed with sin.
01:07:39.260 | My all is nothing worth."
01:07:43.260 | There's nothing I can give Him to show my thanks
01:07:46.260 | because everything I have is tainted with sin.
01:07:51.260 | But later in the hymn, he recognizes that the best kind of worship
01:07:56.260 | from one so vile a sinner is to magnify God's sufficiency
01:08:01.260 | just by asking Him for more grace.
01:08:04.260 | He says, "The best return for one like me, so wretched and so poor,
01:08:13.260 | is from His gifts to draw a plea and ask Him still for more."
01:08:21.260 | The best praise from unworthy sinners who need so much grace
01:08:27.260 | is to go to Him trusting that His fullness will supply even more grace.
01:08:36.260 | What a Savior He is.
01:08:38.260 | What an excellent, excellent Word He is.
01:08:42.260 | You may come and drink and drink and drink
01:08:46.260 | and you will never exhaust His supply.
01:08:50.260 | If you are hungry, He tells you, "I am the bread of life.
01:08:55.260 | He who comes to Me will not hunger."
01:08:59.260 | If you are thirsty, He tells you, "If anyone is thirsty,
01:09:02.260 | let him come to Me and drink.
01:09:04.260 | The water that I will give him will become in him a well of water
01:09:07.260 | springing up to eternal life."
01:09:10.260 | If you're blind, He says to you, "I am the light of the world.
01:09:15.260 | He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness,
01:09:18.260 | but will have the light of life."
01:09:21.260 | If you are lost, He tells you, "He is the good shepherd," John 10, 14,
01:09:26.260 | "who came to seek and save that which was lost,
01:09:29.260 | who leaves the 99 in the open pasture
01:09:32.260 | and goes after the one of the lost until he finds it."
01:09:36.260 | If you are dead, He says to you as He said to Martha,
01:09:40.260 | "I am the resurrection and the life.
01:09:43.260 | He who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
01:09:46.260 | and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die."
01:09:51.260 | Dear friends, this Jesus supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner.
01:09:58.260 | As Sinclair Ferguson said, "He is more full of joy than you can be full of sorrow.
01:10:04.260 | He is more full of light than you can be full of darkness.
01:10:08.260 | He is more full of strength than you can be full of weakness.
01:10:13.260 | And He is more full of life than you are of death.
01:10:16.260 | Everything we could wish to have is in Him."
01:10:21.260 | This Jesus, brothers, this excellent Word,
01:10:25.260 | this is the Christ that we proclaim to the ends of the earth.
01:10:30.260 | Bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty,
01:10:33.260 | light for the blind, healing for the sick, life for the dead.
01:10:38.260 | We tell sinners in every nation of the world,
01:10:41.260 | "Your idols, friend, the things that you seek satisfaction from instead of Jesus,
01:10:47.260 | they do you no good.
01:10:50.260 | They are of no profit to your soul.
01:10:53.260 | Sure, there may be some certain fleshly pleasure in them for a moment,
01:11:00.260 | but it's only for a moment.
01:11:02.260 | Your soul wasn't designed to be satisfied by drunkenness and drugs
01:11:08.260 | and fornication and adultery and money and power and fame and adulation
01:11:15.260 | or any of the rest of the false gods of this world."
01:11:18.260 | We tell them, "They don't satisfy."
01:11:22.260 | Which is why you have to go back to them again and again for your next fix.
01:11:29.260 | Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
01:11:32.260 | but whoever drinks of the water that Jesus gives shall never thirst,
01:11:36.260 | because water from the fountain of the living waters satisfies.
01:11:42.260 | Your soul is restless and in turmoil because you're seeking satisfaction in every place
01:11:48.260 | but in the one person you were created to find it in.
01:11:52.260 | It's like filling your gas tank with olive oil and being frustrated that your car won't start.
01:11:58.260 | Augustine put it well when he said, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord,
01:12:03.260 | and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."
01:12:09.260 | And so, dear unbeliever, Christ calls you,
01:12:12.260 | "Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."
01:12:17.260 | You will find rest for your souls.
01:12:21.260 | Here is a Savior who has lived a perfectly righteous life,
01:12:25.260 | who has obeyed the very law of God that you have broken and by which you are condemned.
01:12:31.260 | Here is a Savior who died the very death under the heavy hand of the wrath of God,
01:12:36.260 | which you deserve to die.
01:12:39.260 | Here is a Savior who is risen from the dead in victory over sin and death
01:12:44.260 | that presently hold you in bondage, the sin and the death that have a grip on your soul.
01:12:49.260 | Here he is who can free you from these things,
01:12:52.260 | turn away from your sins, turn away from yourself,
01:12:56.260 | and put all your trust in your righteousness before God
01:12:59.260 | squarely upon the shoulders of Jesus alone.
01:13:03.260 | And if you do that, you will find all the fullness in him that we have found in him.
01:13:12.260 | That's what you tell the world.
01:13:16.260 | And then I say to you, my brothers and fellow ministers,
01:13:20.260 | who have come to him in repentance and faith,
01:13:22.260 | who have found rest under his easy yoke and light burden,
01:13:27.260 | dear friends, fly to Christ every day of your life.
01:13:31.260 | Drink from that fountain.
01:13:34.260 | Draw from that fullness.
01:13:37.260 | Live upon the grace of Christ.
01:13:40.260 | And so fill your heart with satisfaction and joy and love
01:13:46.260 | that you seek it no more in sin, where it's not to be found,
01:13:52.260 | but only in him, where it is full,
01:13:55.260 | where love and satisfaction and joy are full every morning.
01:14:04.260 | The words of a 19th century hymn by a woman named Ora Rowan
01:14:08.260 | form a fitting conclusion for us this morning.
01:14:13.260 | She writes, "Hast thou heard him, seen him, known him?
01:14:19.260 | Is not thine a captured heart?
01:14:23.260 | Chief among ten thousand, own him.
01:14:26.260 | Joyful, choose the better part.
01:14:30.260 | Captivated by his beauty, worthy tribute haste to bring.
01:14:35.260 | Let his peerless worth constrain thee.
01:14:39.260 | Crown him now unrivaled king."
01:14:43.260 | His peerless worth constrains us to crown him
01:14:47.260 | as the unrivaled king and lord of our lives.
01:14:53.260 | She goes on.
01:14:55.260 | "What has stripped the seeming beauty from the idols of the earth?
01:15:00.260 | Not a sense of right or duty, but the sight of peerless worth."
01:15:08.260 | You hear that?
01:15:10.260 | It's not the sense of mere rightness or duty
01:15:13.260 | that causes us to turn from our idols,
01:15:15.260 | that causes the nations, the pagans of the world,
01:15:18.260 | to turn from their idols.
01:15:20.260 | It's not merely the principle that it's wrong for us to worship these idols.
01:15:24.260 | It's the sight of the peerless worth of the excellent word.
01:15:29.260 | It's the sight of the word that excels all others.
01:15:35.260 | And so she continues.
01:15:38.260 | "'Tis that look that melted Peter.
01:15:43.260 | 'Tis that face that Stephen saw.
01:15:47.260 | 'Tis that heart that wept with Mary, can alone from idols draw.'"
01:15:55.260 | And then she finishes by calling us to drink from his fullness
01:16:00.260 | and be compelled by that fullness to faithful allegiance to him.
01:16:05.260 | "Draw and win and fill completely, till the cup o'erflow the brim.
01:16:13.260 | What have we to do with idols who have accompanied with him?"
01:16:20.260 | Let's pray.
01:16:25.260 | O Lord Jesus,
01:16:29.260 | O that there were words that we could pour out from hearts as wicked as ours
01:16:35.260 | to extol your grace upon grace to us.
01:16:40.260 | What have we to do with idols who have accompanied with you?
01:16:46.260 | We who have seen your peerless worth, we testified to it, we have seen it.
01:16:53.260 | And yet we turn our eyes away from it.
01:16:57.260 | And we allow ourselves to be allured by what is filthy,
01:17:03.260 | by what does us no profit.
01:17:06.260 | O wretched men that we are.
01:17:09.260 | But thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
01:17:13.260 | that there is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
01:17:20.260 | And that justification seals us up for sanctification
01:17:24.260 | so that we can actually, practically put these things away in our lives
01:17:30.260 | and become more like you.
01:17:34.260 | We are not what we ought to be.
01:17:38.260 | But Lord, we trust in the grace of your Son.
01:17:45.260 | And we pray that you would have pity on us
01:17:48.260 | and that you would, in zeal for the glory of your own name,
01:17:52.260 | pursue our sanctification
01:17:57.260 | with the same zeal that you regard for your own holiness.
01:18:02.260 | That we might be ministers fit for the Master's use.
01:18:07.260 | That we might see Christ on the path of obedience
01:18:11.260 | and fellowship with Him and commune with Him,
01:18:15.260 | who is the fountain of life.
01:18:18.260 | So that we might live the pleasantest life that there is with Him.
01:18:24.260 | And come to that great day and have no need to be ashamed.
01:18:28.260 | No need to shrink back.
01:18:31.260 | But to boast, as Newton said,
01:18:36.260 | that I've got nothing to give,
01:18:40.260 | but would I glory in the thought that I will owe Him the most.
01:18:45.260 | That's what each of us feels.
01:18:50.260 | God, would you use your word, by the power of your Spirit,
01:18:56.260 | to fasten us upon Christ and sanctify us.
01:19:01.260 | Burn away the dross in our hearts.
01:19:04.260 | Make us spiritual men,
01:19:07.260 | so that you would be exalted among the nations.
01:19:11.260 | We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
01:19:16.260 | [applause]
01:19:28.260 | Thank you, Mike, for that excellent opportunity
01:19:33.260 | for us to see how Christ can be exalted for your passion,
01:19:40.260 | for your clarity, and for your excellence.
01:19:45.260 | Well, we have certainly -- where are you guys going?
01:19:48.260 | [laughter]
01:19:50.260 | Wait, wait, wait, I've got a lot of things to say here.
01:19:52.260 | Come on, give me a second.
01:19:53.260 | Obviously, they're hungry, and it's okay.
01:19:55.260 | We've just had our souls fed, so now it's time for our stomachs.
01:19:58.260 | I get that.
01:19:59.260 | You know, one of the biggest blessings we've had here
01:20:01.260 | at Grace Community Church started in the 1970s
01:20:03.260 | when the Lord placed an In-N-Out burger
01:20:05.260 | a half a mile down the street from our campus.
01:20:08.260 | But now one of the best blessings
01:20:10.260 | that Shepherds Conference has received is, as of today,
01:20:14.260 | the In-N-Out burger is just really 200 feet that way.
01:20:17.260 | And so we're going to go there in just a moment.
01:20:20.260 | You also need to know, 1969, when John MacArthur got here,
01:20:23.260 | Burt Michelson was already here, and he was making hot dogs.
01:20:27.260 | And so you can also go to Burt's Famous Dogs
01:20:30.260 | next to the north side of the book tent.
01:20:33.260 | And if that's not enough, stop by the ice cream station
01:20:36.260 | and enjoy your ice cream with warm cookies
01:20:39.260 | or make an ice cream sandwich.
01:20:41.260 | So look, life is uncertain, so have dessert first
01:20:44.260 | and then do everything else.
01:20:46.260 | But that's all for you.
01:20:49.260 | Now, on a serious note,
01:20:51.260 | there are two special lunch seminars at 1 o'clock.
01:20:54.260 | One, the pastor-theologian serving the church
01:20:57.260 | through faithful scholarship
01:20:59.260 | has moved to the tower building, the 370s room.
01:21:02.260 | So just know that it's in the tower room, 370s,
01:21:05.260 | and the entrusted and entrusting
01:21:08.260 | how to raise up future elders in your congregation
01:21:11.260 | is still in the Family Center.
01:21:14.260 | Also, many of you have asked about purchasing additional copies
01:21:18.260 | of the limited edition Shepherds Conference
01:21:20.260 | LSB MacArthur Study Bible.
01:21:23.260 | Well, just after our dismissal,
01:21:25.260 | we will have a limited number for sale
01:21:28.260 | in the book tent at 50% off retail.
01:21:31.260 | So visit the Thomas Nelson table
01:21:34.260 | and pick up a copy while it lasts there.
01:21:37.260 | And then just one more announcement, very important.
01:21:40.260 | Please avoid parking on Roscoe Boulevard,
01:21:43.260 | otherwise your car will be towed.
01:21:46.260 | And I was just informed that if your vehicle
01:21:49.260 | is parked in a red curb in the north lot,
01:21:52.260 | you're about to be towed.
01:21:54.260 | So let's pray quickly.
01:21:57.260 | [laughter]
01:22:01.260 | Father, bless this time of feasting and fellowship
01:22:04.260 | and allow the flavors we taste to remind each man
01:22:07.260 | of your great common grace to all men,
01:22:10.260 | grace that comes to us by your unrivaled goodness.
01:22:13.260 | In Christ we pray, amen.
01:22:16.260 | [silence]
01:22:19.260 | [silence]
01:22:22.260 | [BLANK_AUDIO]