Let's find our seats and stand together. Isaiah 12, verses 5 and 6 says, sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth, shout. Some of you guys really need to hear that, shout. And sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion.

For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. It's not the ending you'd expect. But after that message, it is the ending we'd expect. Let's remind each other of what we just heard. The holiness of our great God. Reminded that none of us could join the song that the seraphim were singing.

That Isaiah couldn't, we couldn't. But brothers, we have had our sins atoned for. And we can sing. >> Lord, we come to you out of great need, knowing that we are not what we ought to be. But Jesus is our only plea. My hope is only Jesus. He is all that we are not.

I pray that you would fasten our eyes upon him and grant that we would receive from his fullness grace upon grace. Amen. Well, it is a joy and a privilege to be with you here at Shepherds Conference, gathered around the theme of proclaiming Christ to the ends of the earth.

That's what we do, isn't it, brothers? We preach Christ. His glory is worthy to be proclaimed throughout the nations. And so we gather to exhort one another and to equip one another to put the glory of Christ's person and work on display to every tribe and tongue and people and nation in every corner of the earth.

And this morning I want to proclaim Christ to you here in this corner of the earth. So please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John and chapter 1. John wastes no time in displaying the Lord Jesus to us in the fullness of his glory. His prologue, the first 18 verses of chapter 1 of his Gospel, is a wondrous introduction to the person and work of our Savior.

John ravishes us with the richness of his beauty as he dives in at the deep end of the theological pool. John introduces us to him as the Word. He co-ops the extremely pregnant Greek term logos, not only to identify Christ with what the Greeks thought was the supreme ordering principle of the universe, but also to identify Jesus as the supreme revelation of God the Father to mankind, the pinnacle self-expression of God to man.

In the first five verses of the prologue, John introduces us to the divine Word. He is the eternal God, distinct from the Father, yet consubstantial with the Father, with God, and yet God himself. He is the creator of all things, the self-existent fountain of all life and being. He is the light of all men, the only hope of those who walk in darkness.

And he is the victor over darkness, who triumphed over all the forces of darkness when he condemned sin by his death and conquered death by his resurrection. And then, as if John couldn't bear to speak of the glory of this divine Word without introducing us to the one who would proclaim that glory, in verses six to eight, John introduces us to the Word and his witness.

And John the Baptist serves as something of a prototype of all Christ's people who are tasked with proclaiming his glory throughout the earth, testifying to the truths of his person and work on behalf of sinners. And then, verses nine to thirteen, speak about the Word in his world. John declares that the true light has come into the world and that the world has responded in one of two ways.

Sinners either disbelieve him and reject him and continue to walk in darkness or God shines spiritual light and life into their hearts and raises them from spiritual death in the new birth and grants them the gift of saving faith in this Word. And to those who receive him by faith, the Word himself sovereignly grants the right for those believers to become the adopted sons and daughters of Almighty God.

And then, in this majestic mountain peak verse of verse fourteen, John displays the glory of the incarnate Word. He tells us that the divine Word became flesh, that the eternal second person of the Trinity took on a full and true human nature into personal union with the unchanging divine nature.

John tells us that in Jesus, the eternal, infinite God tabernacles among sinners and is himself the nexus of God's fellowship with man. The eternally begotten Son, he says, the only begotten from the Father, is the one by whom spiritual orphans are adopted as sons because they are made to see his glory.

And he is full of grace and truth, saving us by his grace and guiding us in the light of his truth. And so we have the divine Word in verses one to five, the Word and his witness in verses six to eight, the Word in his world, verses nine to thirteen, and the incarnate Word in verse fourteen.

Now, in verses fifteen to eighteen, John fixes our eyes upon the excellent Word. The excellent Word. Let's read John 1, 15 to 18. John testified about him and cried out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.

For of his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him." John closes his prologue by speaking of how this eternal Word made flesh excels and surpasses all others, even the greatest and most significant figures of redemptive history.

Who is the Christ that we proclaim to the ends of the earth? He is the excellent Word. And I want to proclaim him to you this morning as you prepare to proclaim him to the ends of the earth. In John 1, 15 to 18, we find four excellencies that set the Lord Jesus Christ far above anyone and anything.

Four excellencies that exalt the glory of our Savior, that feed our faith, and that strengthen our souls to declare his excellency through all the nations. In the first place, this excellent Word surpasses the greatest man who ever lived. He surpasses the greatest man who ever lived. Look at verse 15.

"John, that is John the Baptist, testified about him and cried out saying, 'This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.'" The Apostle John quotes the words of John the Baptist exactly as he said them in John 1, 30.

And he testifies to the supremacy of Christ. "He who comes after me has a higher rank than I." Or some translations have, "He has surpassed me." Jesus was born six months after his cousin John, according to Luke 1, 26. And, of course, Jesus began his ministry after John had already began to be engaged in his.

And theirs was a society in which, as one commentator put it, "age and precedence bestowed peculiar honor." That's why in the case of Jacob and Esau, it was such a scandal for God to tell Rachel that the older shall serve the younger. Chronological priority meant superiority. But John says Jesus, who comes after him, has surpassed him, has come to outrank him.

Literally it's, "He who comes after me has become before me." John says, "He is the king. I am just the forerunner who announces the king's coming. He is the bridegroom. I'm just the friend of the bridegroom who rejoices to hear his voice. I'm the lamp who, for a little while, lit up the path where you should walk.

But that path leads to him who is the light of the world. I baptize in water, but he who comes after me baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And I'm not worthy to untie his sandals." Remember who's speaking. In Matthew 11:11, Jesus says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist." Jesus himself, the eternal word, the light of the world, God the Son, is saying John the Baptist is the greatest man who ever lived.

Why? Because God chose him to perform the most important task to that point in human history, to be the forerunner of the Messiah. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets, even as Jesus says in Luke 16:16, "The law and the prophets were precursors of the new covenant." He himself was the pivot point of all biblical history.

So the greatest man who ever lived up until that point was John the Baptist. And John himself says, "This one who comes after me has surpassed me. He's come to outrank me. He has excelled me in every way." He said, "I'm the greatest?" Well, he is greater than the greatest then.

And why is that? What is the ground of Jesus' supremacy over John the Baptist? Why does he surpass the greatest man who ever lived? Look at it again. "He who comes after me has come to be before me for he existed before me." Literally because he was before me.

And this is that famous being versus becoming contrast that John is so fond of throughout his prologue. The contrast between "A me," the verb "to be," and "ginamai," the verb "to become." He has become or come to be before me because he was before me. He comes after me because according to his humanity he was born after I was and began his ministry after I began mine.

But he was before me because according to his deity he is the uncreated, eternal God of heaven and earth. He was before me. He has been existing from eternity. John 8:58, Jesus says it himself, "Before Abraham was, I am." The apostle Paul says in Colossians 1:17, "He is before all things." Matthew 3:1 says, "Now in those days John the Baptist came.

Paraginamai came along." But Micah 5:2, "His goings forth are from the days of eternity." John says, "I am of yesterday. He is from eternity." Yes, my father prophesied over me at my birth, Luke 1:76, that I would be the prophet of the Most High. But the angel Gabriel promised to Mary, Luke 1:32, that he would be the son of the Most High.

I am and am honored to be a minister of the new covenant, a herald of the dawning of the new covenant. Hebrews 9:15, "His blood is the blood of the new covenant." Hebrews 13:20, "This is the one of whom I spoke." Brothers, this is the one of whom we speak, the one who surpasses the greatest man who ever lived.

That brings us to a second excellency of this excellent word. I'm going to break the rules here and skip verse 16 and come back to it at the end. We've seen Christ's supremacy over the greatest of the prophets in verse 15. We come to see Christ's supremacy over the lawgiver in verse 17.

Number two, Christ supersedes the glorious mediator of the old covenant. Christ supersedes the glorious mediator of the old covenant. Verse 17, "For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ." Now, the law was a wonderful gift from God to his people. It was a gracious gift for God to reveal his mind to his people, to direct our steps, to guide our path into the path of blessing.

That's why Psalm 119.29 says, "Remove the false way from me and graciously grant me your law." The law of God is the delight of the child of God. David says, "Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces." The law was given through Moses.

How? How was it given? It was given in glory. 2 Corinthians 3.7 says, "The ministry of death in letters engraved on stones came with glory so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face." Aside from the fact that at the giving of the Mosaic Law, Mount Sinai was covered in smoke and Yahweh descended on it in fire, that there was thunder and lightning and the mountain quaked, and that the glory cloud covered the mountain for six days.

Aside from all of that, when Moses went up to the mountain to speak with God from the sheer reality of being in the holy presence of God himself, Moses' own face shone with the radiance of God's glory. So much so that he had to put a veil over his face so as not to terrify the people.

This was a glorious ministry with a glorious mediator, literally. In fact, in Numbers 12, verses 6-8, God says, "If there is a prophet among you, I, Yahweh, shall make myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses.

He is faithful in all my household. With him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings. And he beholds the form of Yahweh." God speaks to Moses, literally the text is, mouth to mouth. We might say, face to face. God even says, "Moses beholds the form of Yahweh." We're going to hear in a moment, we've already heard in the past addresses, that no one has seen God at any time.

But here we're told that Moses beholds the form of God. It's unbelievable. The mediator of the old covenant was glorious. But John's point in verse 17 is the same as Paul's point back in 2 Corinthians 3, verses 7-11. "If the ministry of death and letters engraved on stones came with glory, so that the sons of Israel couldn't look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face fading, though it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?

For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory." Paul says, "Indeed, what had glory in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory." The ministry of condemnation was glorious.

The Israelites beheld the glory of God himself reflected on the face of Moses. But Moses couldn't justify his people. Why? Because when the law confronts sinful human nature that fails to meet its standard of perfection, it pronounces upon us a sentence of death. The law can't change hearts. It could never provide the power for the obedience that it demanded.

For that, only the grace of the new covenant would suffice. Galatians 3.22, "But the scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise," that is the new covenant promise, "by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe." Galatians 3.24, "Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith in Christ's works, not by the doing of our own works." The law points to the need for grace.

But grace comes in the person and work of Jesus who has instituted the new covenant, whose great promise is what? "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." Those who believe in the name of Jesus, John 1.13, have been born of God.

Their hearts of stone have been transformed and brought to life by the grace of regeneration. Moses was not the mediator of a ministry of righteousness. Oh, but the Lord Jesus Christ, friends, He can justify His people. Hebrews 8.6, "Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises." The glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, the one in whom grace and truth are realized, His glory supersedes and far outshines even the glory of Moses in the old covenant.

The glory of the law revealed in the face of Moses is no match for the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. As one preacher puts it, "Moses points to grace, but Jesus performs grace." Moses reports the words of God. Jesus is the Word of God.

The law mirrors the light of God. Jesus is the light of God. And as the author of Hebrews put it, Hebrews 3, 5-6, "Now Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later. But Christ was faithful as a son over his house." Moses was a faithful servant, but Christ was a faithful son.

This excellent Word supersedes the glory of the glorious mediator of the old covenant. He far excels Him. He outshines Him. And that brings us to a third excellency of this excellent Word, number three. He shows the glory of the unseen Father. He shows the glory of the unseen Father.

Verse 18, "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him." No one has seen God at any time. He is, Colossians 1, 15, the invisible God. He is, Hebrews 11, 27, "Him who is unseen." In 1 Timothy 6, 15-16, Paul says, "The blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, is the one who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see." Seeing God does not only not happen, it's impossible.

But what about texts like Numbers 12, 8, which says, "Moses, behold the form of Yahweh," or Exodus 33, 11, which says, "Yahweh used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend." Well, these have to be figures of speech that signify a special closeness.

Moses did not see God in His essence, precisely because these categorical statements of God's invisibility preclude that possibility. In fact, while Exodus 33, 11 says, "Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face," just nine verses later, in Exodus 33, 20, we heard it last hour, God tells Moses, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live." So it's plain, it's figurative language.

But John's reference to Moses in verse 17, and then God's invisibility in verse 18, is pointing us to Exodus 33. Moses prays that God would show him His glory, and God says in verse 22, "I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I've passed by.

Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen." And, of course, because God is spirit and does not have a body, He does not literally have a back or a face. It's the Shekinah glory of God that Moses sees, a physical, visible manifestation of God's presence, His back, if you will.

But the actual, infinite, incomprehensible essence of God, what He calls His face, not even Moses can see that. But this excellent word, "He has seen God." John 6:46, Jesus says, "Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the one who is from God." God has seen the Father. Why?

John 1:18, "Because He is the only begotten God." John uses the same word as he does in verse 14, monogamous, which is, rightly translated, "only begotten." It's a reference to the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. What it means for God the Son to be Son is that He is eternally begotten from the Father.

Just as a son bears the same nature as his father, and yet has that nature from his father, so also the eternal Son is consubstantial with the Father, having the identical nature that the Father does, but having it from the Father. And so to call Him the only begotten God is to identify Him as the eternal divine Son.

To speak of the only begotten God is to speak of God the only begotten, or God the Son. And who is more likely to know the Father than His Son, the one who subsists in the identical nature? When the Father acts, He acts by the principle of the divine nature.

When the Son acts, He acts by that very same divine nature. If the Father is saying or thinking or doing anything, the Son is right there with Him, subsisting in the identical essence. Matthew 11, 27, Jesus says, "No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son." The eternal divine Son knows the Father in such comprehensive intimacy that compared to that knowledge, no one else knows the Father at all.

And still further, back to John 1, 18, this only begotten homoousios Son is in the bosom of the Father. To be in someone's bosom is to be the object of their special and tender love. The King James translation of Deuteronomy 13, 6 speaks of "the wife of thy bosom." The NAS translates that "the wife you cherish." So to be in someone's bosom is to be cherished.

John is saying that there is a closeness between the Father and His only begotten Son that surpasses even that of the one who beheld God's glory on Mount Sinai. Jesus stands in the closest possible relation to the Father in His bosom from all eternity. But also, to be in someone's bosom meant to be privy to their most secret thoughts.

The idea is that the things that we keep to ourselves we hide in our hearts. And so Calvin observed, "The breast is the seat of counsel." To be in the bosom of the Father is to say, as Matthew Henry put it, "Christ was privy to the bosom counsels of the Father." The prophet sat down at His feet as scholars.

Christ lay in His bosom as a friend. The only begotten Son knows the Father's mind because the Father's mind is the self-same mind as the Son's mind. And the beloved Son knows the Father's mind because He is in His bosom, aware of the most hidden and unseen counsels of His heart.

Which means what? That He is the most qualified one that there can be to reveal the God that no one has seen at any time. The infinite, incomprehensible God whose gracious revelations of Himself in His Word and in His world are only the fringes of His ways, Job says.

Matthew 11, 27, again, "No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." Jesus is the revelation of God. The revelation of the God who would otherwise remain unknown to men. "He has explained Him," verse 18. "Exegeomai," the word from which we get our term "exegesis," which means to read out of a text as opposed to reading into a text.

Jesus is the exegesis of God. Which is to say this Jesus shows the glory of the unseen Father. He is, Colossians 1, 15, the image of the invisible God. He is, Hebrews 1, 3, the exact representation of His nature. This is not a fading reflection of the Shekinah glory on the face of Moses.

As marvelous as that was, this is, 2 Corinthians 4, 4, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. This is, 2 Corinthians 4, 6, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Moses caught a glimpse of the back of God's glory.

Jesus is the embodiment of the fullness of God's glory. And so Jesus Himself can say to Philip in John 14, 9, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." Not because Jesus is the Father, but because Jesus is everything that the Father is. Because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.

Because the only begotten Son of the Father is of the same nature as the Father. He is the perfect, visible exposition of the invisible Father. No one can see My face and live. In Christ, brothers, we behold the face of God and can do nothing but live. Nothing but rise from the dead because everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will be raised up by Him on the last day, John 6, 40.

If you want to know what the unseen Father is like, you look at Jesus. He is God incarnate. He is the Word of God, the ultimate and pinnacle self-expression of God. And so in John 2, when you see Jesus turn water into wine, you can know that God is the omnipotent Lord of all creation.

When you see Jesus make a whip and overturn tables in the temple, you can know that God is holy and that He hates blasphemy and He desires to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And when you see Jesus go out of His way to meet the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4, you know that God seeks and saves that which was lost.

When you see Jesus heal the nobleman's son and the lame man at the pool of Bethesda, or when you see Him feed the thousands who followed Him, grieved because they had nothing to eat, you can know that God is a God of compassion on sinners. When you see Him silence the mob ready to stone the woman caught in adultery, you can know that God delights to forgive the worst of sinners.

When you see Him weeping over Mary and Martha's grief, you can know that God hates sin and that He cares for His children who've grown under sin's curse. When you see Him, the Lord and the Teacher, washing the disciples' feet, you can know that God loves His unworthy servants and delights to serve them as an expression of His overflowing fullness.

And when you see Him betrayed and arrested and bound and interrogated and disowned and crowned with thorns and mocked and slapped in the face and condemned and crucified, you can know the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the love of God for hell-deserving criminals like you and me, a love that surpasses knowledge.

And when you see Him risen from the grave and ascending into heaven and seated in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority, you can know that God has conquered sin and death and rules the world in uncontested majesty and sovereign blessedness and will keep His promises to bring every last one of His children safely home to Him.

Now we come back to verse 16 to find a fourth excellency of this excellent word. "He surpasses the greatest man who ever lived. He supersedes the glorious mediator of the old covenant. He shows the glory of the unseen Father." Number four, "He supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner." "He supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner." Verse 16, "For of His fullness we have all received and grace upon grace." Verse 14, "Told us that this glorious one, only begotten from the Father, is full of grace and truth." And here John says, "Every one of us who belongs to Him by faith has received from His fullness." Oh, the fullness of Christ.

The fullness of our Savior. In Ephesians 4.13, Paul speaks of the fullness of Christ. In Ephesians 3.19, he says, "Knowing the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge fills believers up to all the fullness of God." Colossians 1.19 says, "It was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Christ." Fullness of grace.

You and I, friends, we are spiritually empty. We have fallen short of God's righteous standard of perfection. And there is nothing that we can do to satisfy divine justice but go to our everlasting misery. We are spiritually destitute with no resources of our own to commend ourselves to God or to save ourselves from our just condemnation.

Oh, but here comes our Savior. God the Son incarnate. And He is full of grace. He is full of unmerited favor to be bestowed upon poor sinners who could do nothing but go to their ruin. There is no other way for the nations to fill the emptiness of their spiritual poverty except through faith in this one.

Calvin says, "As soon as we have departed from Christ, it is vain for us to seek a single drop of happiness because God has determined that whatever is good shall reside in Him alone. Accordingly, we shall find angels and men to be dry, heaven to be empty, the earth to be unproductive, and, in short, all things to be of no value if we wish to be partakers of the gifts of God in any other way than through Christ." It is of His fullness that we all receive.

He and He alone is full of the grace upon grace that we so desperately need. And so if we seek it anywhere but by faith in Him, we will find ourselves just as poor, just as destitute, just as bankrupt as we were when we began. But in Him, dear brothers, drawing from His fullness, we will find the fountain of grace upon grace to be inexhaustible.

We will find that He supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner. Matthew Henry wrote, "As the cistern receives water from the fullness of the fountain, the branches sap from the fullness of the root, and the air light from the fullness of the sun, so we receive grace from the fullness of Christ." He is an inexhaustible fountain, an ever-plenteous rich root, a superabundance of light from the sun.

This is the testimony of every one of God's people. We who have feasted upon this Savior by faith have received nothing but the gracious dispensations of a loving shepherd, nothing but grace upon grace, literally grace in place of grace. What's that mean? It's just this never-ending supply of grace after grace after grace from Christ our dear Savior.

There is the grace of atonement, of a full and perfect redemption that rescues us from the wrath of God. There is the grace of regeneration, the sovereign miracle of the Holy Spirit where He births in us who were dead the fullness of the divine life. And that gives way to the grace gifts of repentance and faith.

We turn in disgust from the filth and fruitlessness of sin, and we rest our souls upon the blood and righteousness of our perfect substitute. And we're united to Him so that all that is His becomes ours. And that's followed by the grace of justification by which we, guilty sinners, are justly declared righteous solely on the basis of the obedience of Jesus in our place, imputed to our account apart from any works of our own.

And then the grace of sanctification sets us apart to be God's own possession. It frees us from the dominion of sin and then progressively transforms us into the very image of Christ Himself. And the grace upon grace doesn't stop until glorification, when every trace of sin is eradicated from us, and we are raised to live in sinless freedom with the triune God forever.

John MacArthur says grace upon grace is like wave upon wave. It's like waves of grace rolling in on the seashore. When one wave of grace breaks onto the shore and then washes back out, there's just another wave right behind it with a fresh supply of grace. John Gill paraphrased it as "heaps of grace." It's just the language of abundance, of profusion, of limitlessness and boundlessness.

And friends, who needs grace upon grace? Sinners need grace upon grace. And it's not just grace for regeneration and conversion and justification. Praise God for those. But it's the ongoing grace, isn't it, of fresh pardon for sins. We who have received such boundless grace in our conversion, I mean justified freely, adopted children of God, surely we, among all people, know better than to go on sinning against our Lord in our thoughts, in our words, and in our actions.

And yet we hate and we covet and we lust and we envy. We complain and we gossip and we lie and deceive. We manipulate, mistreat, sow dissension, and are lazy. We commit idolatry as we worship the idols of our hearts above our great God and Savior. God help us.

We prefer other lesser beauties over Him, the loveliest and most beautiful of all. And we think that sinning so grievously against grace poured out so lavishly upon us disqualifies us from more grace. Our flesh, stirred up by the enemy of our souls, says to us, "How can you be a Christian when you still sin like this?" I mean, every day.

And we're tempted to think that ones so vile as we are need to spend time away from Christ. We put ourselves in spiritual time out. We make ourselves go sit in the spiritual corner until we can perform the penance of feeling bad enough about our sin. I'm not saying don't mourn over your sin.

Go and mourn over your sin. Let repentance be heartfelt. But know this Savior is full of grace. And from His fullness we all receive ongoing present tense grace upon grace. And so though our heads hang in shame, brothers, over committing the same sins against the same Lord who deserves better from His people, nevertheless we go to Him every day, every hour for forgiveness.

We don't wait in the corner at a distance from Jesus until we can satisfy some sort of self-imposed standard of self-atonement. We don't let our spiritual emptiness drive us away from His fullness. The recognition of our bankruptcy propels us to flee unto Him where we may draw once again from the fullness of His grace.

And because He is full of grace, when we come to Him in repentance, we find nothing but a sympathetic high priest who loves to forgive. And can you believe this, is not ashamed to call us brethren. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You see, we can live upon this Christ who is so full of grace.

We never need to fear that we'll deplete His fullness. You may draw grace from the fullness of that fountain and you will never exhaust His supply. Our Savior is more full of grace than you are of sin. There is more grace in Christ than there is sin in us.

More grace in Christ than sin in all of the members of His body. There is deeper grace in Christ, friend, than there is sin deep inside your heart. Even the deepest sins that you commit, the darkest sins that you keep hidden from others, there is no cavern of sin so deep in your soul that the grace of Christ is not deeper still.

And so you may come into the light in freedom because there's forgiveness within. If only you come and draw from this fountain, you will find grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. It's not as if your drawing from the well of grace that is in Christ somehow diminishes His supply of grace in any way, whether for you or your fellow believers.

His fullness of grace is like an ocean, again, that just keeps washing up grace onto the shores of your heart, wave after wave after wave. And you have as much chance of exhausting Christ's grace as gathering up the Pacific Ocean a thimbleful at a time. And in fact, so far from diminishing Him or bothering Him or annoying Him, when you fly to Him for fresh grace, you magnify His fullness.

You glorify Him as one who is so sufficient to supply your every need. I mean, this is truly astounding. Psalm 50, verse 15, God Himself urges His people, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble. I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me." In other words, your calling upon Me in the midst of your trouble honors Me by demonstrating that you believe that I am sufficient and strong enough to rescue you when you call.

Isn't that glorious? I mean, isn't it wonderful to worship a God who is honored by supplying to us what we lack? That's a good deal. "Worship Me by being needy." Yes, Lord. John Newton understood this. He wrote a beautiful hymn called "For Mercies Countless as the Sands." And he's asking, "What can I give back to God for all these mercies I receive?" And at first he laments.

He says, "Alas, from such a heart as mine, what can I bring Him forth? My best is stained and dyed with sin. My all is nothing worth." There's nothing I can give Him to show my thanks because everything I have is tainted with sin. But later in the hymn, he recognizes that the best kind of worship from one so vile a sinner is to magnify God's sufficiency just by asking Him for more grace.

He says, "The best return for one like me, so wretched and so poor, is from His gifts to draw a plea and ask Him still for more." The best praise from unworthy sinners who need so much grace is to go to Him trusting that His fullness will supply even more grace.

What a Savior He is. What an excellent, excellent Word He is. You may come and drink and drink and drink and you will never exhaust His supply. If you are hungry, He tells you, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will not hunger." If you are thirsty, He tells you, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.

The water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." If you're blind, He says to you, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life." If you are lost, He tells you, "He is the good shepherd," John 10, 14, "who came to seek and save that which was lost, who leaves the 99 in the open pasture and goes after the one of the lost until he finds it." If you are dead, He says to you as He said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die." Dear friends, this Jesus supplies the grace sufficient for every sinner. As Sinclair Ferguson said, "He is more full of joy than you can be full of sorrow. He is more full of light than you can be full of darkness.

He is more full of strength than you can be full of weakness. And He is more full of life than you are of death. Everything we could wish to have is in Him." This Jesus, brothers, this excellent Word, this is the Christ that we proclaim to the ends of the earth.

Bread for the hungry, water for the thirsty, light for the blind, healing for the sick, life for the dead. We tell sinners in every nation of the world, "Your idols, friend, the things that you seek satisfaction from instead of Jesus, they do you no good. They are of no profit to your soul.

Sure, there may be some certain fleshly pleasure in them for a moment, but it's only for a moment. Your soul wasn't designed to be satisfied by drunkenness and drugs and fornication and adultery and money and power and fame and adulation or any of the rest of the false gods of this world." We tell them, "They don't satisfy." Which is why you have to go back to them again and again for your next fix.

Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that Jesus gives shall never thirst, because water from the fountain of the living waters satisfies. Your soul is restless and in turmoil because you're seeking satisfaction in every place but in the one person you were created to find it in.

It's like filling your gas tank with olive oil and being frustrated that your car won't start. Augustine put it well when he said, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." And so, dear unbeliever, Christ calls you, "Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." You will find rest for your souls.

Here is a Savior who has lived a perfectly righteous life, who has obeyed the very law of God that you have broken and by which you are condemned. Here is a Savior who died the very death under the heavy hand of the wrath of God, which you deserve to die.

Here is a Savior who is risen from the dead in victory over sin and death that presently hold you in bondage, the sin and the death that have a grip on your soul. Here he is who can free you from these things, turn away from your sins, turn away from yourself, and put all your trust in your righteousness before God squarely upon the shoulders of Jesus alone.

And if you do that, you will find all the fullness in him that we have found in him. That's what you tell the world. And then I say to you, my brothers and fellow ministers, who have come to him in repentance and faith, who have found rest under his easy yoke and light burden, dear friends, fly to Christ every day of your life.

Drink from that fountain. Draw from that fullness. Live upon the grace of Christ. And so fill your heart with satisfaction and joy and love that you seek it no more in sin, where it's not to be found, but only in him, where it is full, where love and satisfaction and joy are full every morning.

The words of a 19th century hymn by a woman named Ora Rowan form a fitting conclusion for us this morning. She writes, "Hast thou heard him, seen him, known him? Is not thine a captured heart? Chief among ten thousand, own him. Joyful, choose the better part. Captivated by his beauty, worthy tribute haste to bring.

Let his peerless worth constrain thee. Crown him now unrivaled king." His peerless worth constrains us to crown him as the unrivaled king and lord of our lives. She goes on. "What has stripped the seeming beauty from the idols of the earth? Not a sense of right or duty, but the sight of peerless worth." You hear that?

It's not the sense of mere rightness or duty that causes us to turn from our idols, that causes the nations, the pagans of the world, to turn from their idols. It's not merely the principle that it's wrong for us to worship these idols. It's the sight of the peerless worth of the excellent word.

It's the sight of the word that excels all others. And so she continues. "'Tis that look that melted Peter. 'Tis that face that Stephen saw. 'Tis that heart that wept with Mary, can alone from idols draw.'" And then she finishes by calling us to drink from his fullness and be compelled by that fullness to faithful allegiance to him.

"Draw and win and fill completely, till the cup o'erflow the brim. What have we to do with idols who have accompanied with him?" Let's pray. O Lord Jesus, O that there were words that we could pour out from hearts as wicked as ours to extol your grace upon grace to us.

What have we to do with idols who have accompanied with you? We who have seen your peerless worth, we testified to it, we have seen it. And yet we turn our eyes away from it. And we allow ourselves to be allured by what is filthy, by what does us no profit.

O wretched men that we are. But thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, that there is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And that justification seals us up for sanctification so that we can actually, practically put these things away in our lives and become more like you.

We are not what we ought to be. But Lord, we trust in the grace of your Son. And we pray that you would have pity on us and that you would, in zeal for the glory of your own name, pursue our sanctification with the same zeal that you regard for your own holiness.

That we might be ministers fit for the Master's use. That we might see Christ on the path of obedience and fellowship with Him and commune with Him, who is the fountain of life. So that we might live the pleasantest life that there is with Him. And come to that great day and have no need to be ashamed.

No need to shrink back. But to boast, as Newton said, that I've got nothing to give, but would I glory in the thought that I will owe Him the most. That's what each of us feels. God, would you use your word, by the power of your Spirit, to fasten us upon Christ and sanctify us.

Burn away the dross in our hearts. Make us spiritual men, so that you would be exalted among the nations. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Mike, for that excellent opportunity for us to see how Christ can be exalted for your passion, for your clarity, and for your excellence.

Well, we have certainly -- where are you guys going? Wait, wait, wait, I've got a lot of things to say here. Come on, give me a second. Obviously, they're hungry, and it's okay. We've just had our souls fed, so now it's time for our stomachs. I get that. You know, one of the biggest blessings we've had here at Grace Community Church started in the 1970s when the Lord placed an In-N-Out burger a half a mile down the street from our campus.

But now one of the best blessings that Shepherds Conference has received is, as of today, the In-N-Out burger is just really 200 feet that way. And so we're going to go there in just a moment. You also need to know, 1969, when John MacArthur got here, Burt Michelson was already here, and he was making hot dogs.

And so you can also go to Burt's Famous Dogs next to the north side of the book tent. And if that's not enough, stop by the ice cream station and enjoy your ice cream with warm cookies or make an ice cream sandwich. So look, life is uncertain, so have dessert first and then do everything else.

But that's all for you. Now, on a serious note, there are two special lunch seminars at 1 o'clock. One, the pastor-theologian serving the church through faithful scholarship has moved to the tower building, the 370s room. So just know that it's in the tower room, 370s, and the entrusted and entrusting how to raise up future elders in your congregation is still in the Family Center.

Also, many of you have asked about purchasing additional copies of the limited edition Shepherds Conference LSB MacArthur Study Bible. Well, just after our dismissal, we will have a limited number for sale in the book tent at 50% off retail. So visit the Thomas Nelson table and pick up a copy while it lasts there.

And then just one more announcement, very important. Please avoid parking on Roscoe Boulevard, otherwise your car will be towed. And I was just informed that if your vehicle is parked in a red curb in the north lot, you're about to be towed. So let's pray quickly. Father, bless this time of feasting and fellowship and allow the flavors we taste to remind each man of your great common grace to all men, grace that comes to us by your unrivaled goodness.

In Christ we pray, amen.