John 1:14 - He Lives with Us!

To take your Bible and turn with me over to the Gospel of John, the Gospel of John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

This morning for Christmas Eve, I want us to turn over there and to look at the prologue of the Gospel of John.

The prologue, which is the first 18 verses of John chapter 1, is a masterpiece of literature.

John 1 · chapter mention

And here at the beginning of the Gospel, John handles some very deep and complex ideas, and he handles these matters of profound importance with the greatest ability.

He discusses divinity and humanity.

He discusses pre-existence and incarnation.

He discusses revelation and sacrifice all with poetic ease.

In fact, some people have said that this might even itself have been a hymn.

For this morning, I want to draw our attention just to one verse out of these 18 verses in the prologue, and that's verse 14.

It says this the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Within those few short words are two concepts that would have startled and stunned the whole world, whether you were a Jew or a Gentile.

For the Greeks, finding the idea of a divine logos being brought into human existence would have been impossible for them to comprehend.

And for the Jewish people to hear these words about the glory of God being seen in a human, not in the temple, would have shocked and astounded them.

But here Paul or John makes this bold and shocking declaration that not only was the divine word made flesh, but he was also the visible expression of the glory of God.

And so this morning I want us to draw our attention to this passage in just two ways.

I want us, first of all, to see the Christmas miracle, and then to understand the Christmas message.

The Christmas miracle is wrapped up in those things that John says here.

He said, the word became flesh.

Well, we have to ask ourselves, who is this word that becomes flesh?

Was he some prophet, some designated voice from God, some messenger who is going to bring God's word to us?

Yes, but more than that.

Was he some being, maybe more than a man?

Um, someone who was created just for the purpose of being a messenger of God, to declare God's will and authority to us better than any of us as humans could do?

He's more than that.

Was the word some great angel, a dweller in the secret places of God on high?

Was it Gabriel who stood in the presence of the Lord?

Was it Michael who was the prince of the angels?

Was it one of the seraphim who surrounded the throne and cried out, holy, holy, holy?

No, more than that.

Was it some specially created heavenly being?

Something higher than all the angels, even the archangels?

Um, was it one created almost from eternity, a companion of the Godhead on his eternal throne?

Is this one just a created being by whom God created all things, a revealer and utterer of the mind of God?

No, more than that.

More than that.

Who is this word?

John tells us.

Right at the very beginning.

In the beginning was the word.

He says, at the very start of his gospel, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

The word was God.

This is he of whom it is said in verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is why Carl Barth said that Christmas can only be understood as a wonder.

And this is why C.S.

Lewis called it the grand miracle.

This is the mystery and majesty of Christmas, the incarnation.

Incarnation is a word maybe you haven't heard or perhaps hear very little.

What does it mean?

Well, we understand what being carnal means.

It means to be fleshly.

And if an animal, for instance, is carnivorous, they're a flesh-eating animal.

And so we can see that to be incarnate means for God to be clothed in flesh.

This is Jesus Christ.

This is the one where, speaking of the day he was born, his mother brought him forth and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.

This is God in a basket.

The Son of God, the only begotten, equal to the Father, ever with the Father, by whom he made the worlds, as we say in our creedle statements, God of gods, light of lights, very God of very God, of which the scriptures say the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, in human flesh.

This word is not named among the angels, because the angels were made by him, and the angels worship him.

Paul said that he is far above all principality and power and might and dominion in every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in the world which is to come.

Then you have to grasp this Christmas miracle that he's nothing other than God.

That's why we call it a Christmas miracle.

God has taken on human nature.

I love what Augustine said many, many centuries ago.

He said, The word of the Father by whom all time was created was made flesh and born in time for us.

He, without whose divine permission no day completes its course, desired to have one day for his human birth.

In the bosom of his father he existed before all the cycles of the ages, but now, born of an earthly mother, has entered into the course of years on this day.

The maker of man became a man, that the ruler of the stars might be nourished at his mother's breast, that he the bread might experience hunger, that he the fountain might thirst, that he the light might sleep, that he the way might be wearied on the journey, that he the truth might be accused by false witnesses, that he, the judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial before a mortal judge, that he justice might be condemned by the unjust, that he who is disciplined might be scourged with whips, that he who is the foundation might be suspended on a cross, that he who is courage might be weakened, he who is security might be wounded, that he who is life might die.

This is the Christmas miracle.

That he who existed before all ages without a beginning consented to become a man on a day.

And he did this for our sake.

And this is the second part of this glorious Christmas story that John tells us in John chapter 1 and verse 14.

John 1 · chapter mention

Not just the Christmas miracle and the word became flesh, but it also tells us here that he came to reveal, reveal something to us.

This is why John calls him the word, after all.

He calls him the word because it's a special way of saying that Jesus is the one that makes God known.

Do you want to know what God is like?

Then have a good long look at Jesus, and you'll know.

You know, by our words we make ourselves known.

By our words, we express our thoughts, we express our desires, we we reveal our will.

And similarly, the word is God expressing himself, the God of heaven coming into relationship with us, created things, and revealing himself.

And so all of humanity, instead of wishing for a God who understood, now comes before a God who has made himself known to us.

And Jesus does that.

Because only he knows the secret thoughts of God, because he is God.

He is one with the Father.

He has seen the Father and makes the Father known.

He dwelt in the glory with the Father before the world ever began.

John later in verse 18 says, No one has ever seen God.

The one and only Son who is himself God is at the Father's side.

He has revealed him.

And so from the glory in the bosom of the Father, the word comes, born in Bethlehem, the city of David, and he's come to reveal God to us.

But what is it that he's revealing to us?

There's several things that are deep and precious in his revelation to us.

And one of the things that he reveals is God's desired intimacy with humanity.

There was a time when God freely communed with humanity.

Adam and Eve were created and put into the Garden of Eden.

And the scriptures tell us that the Lord was heard walking in the garden in the cool of the evening.

It would have been nothing for them to spend time together.

God communing with humanity freely, without hesitation, without barrier, perfect unity, perfect communication.

With unfallen humanity, that communion was sweet and intimate indeed.

But then we rebelled.

Sin entered this world, and it destroyed not only that idyllic garden, but it also destroyed our interaction with God.

And a great gulf opened up between us rebels and God, who is infinitely pure and our creator, leaving us with a dilemma.

And the rest of Scripture begins to show not God in the garden with us, but we banished from the garden to a place of thorns and sweat and death and God above.

And the rest of the beginning chapters of Genesis show God looking down on humanity and bringing a flood and looking down on humanity and destroying the Tower of Babel.

We're no longer with God, we're separate from God.

And if it weren't for the amazing goodness of God, all of our rights would be as nothing, and we would only rightfully be banished forever from his presence.

But the scriptures reveal that God's design and desire is to recapture that intimacy with humanity.

And so he made a promise to Abraham and to his children and to his children.

And for generations they held on to the promises of the fathers until a deliverer, Moses, rose up.

And instructions were given to Moses and to the people as they came out of Egypt to build a tent, to make a tabernacle.

And there God would put his presence, even call the tabernacle a place of meeting.

And he put it into the very center, the heart of the camp.

And so the people would be able to see the tent from every angle.

They would see its curtains of goat's hair.

They would understand it in the center of their encampment.

Nearly all of them couldn't look inside of it.

But they could imagine its splendor as they heard the revelation of how it was to be built, luxuriously manufactured with precious wood and pure gold and tapestries of many colors.

And within it, in that sacred spot, would be a light shining between the wings of the cherubim, a symbol of the presence of the Lord, once again among humanity.

And though they couldn't look inside the tent, they could look above it.

And when they looked above it, they would see a cloud arising from the top of the tent.

And it would expand like a vast tree covering over the people of God to protect them from the burning sun of the desert.

And when the sun went down, that same cloud would become luminous and would guard them from the darkness and whatever there might be out there.

The Lord said to this nation and only to this nation, I will place my residence among you.

I will not reject you.

I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people, Leviticus 26, 11 and 12.

The day of the tabernacle is over.

The day of the shadow, the day of the type, the day of the figure that that tabernacle was and the temple was is over.

The day when God would say only to one nation, I will be your God and you will be my people, is over.

Because God does not restrict Himself just to one dwelling place and one people any longer.

The Lord Jesus said to the woman of the well in a few chapters beyond where we've just read in John 1, believe me, an hour is coming when you'll worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

An hour is coming and now is here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him.

You see, there still is a place, and there still are a people, but it's not one place and one people.

It's all peoples who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, because there is one dwelling place of God for humanity.

There's one real temple to meet him in.

There's one living abode for us as a place of meeting.

And that place is Jesus Himself.

The place is the person of the Lord Jesus in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.

You see, Christ is the fulfillment of that tent of meeting in the center of the camp.

Because God is in Christ, and Christ is in God, and in his blessed person, God meets with us.

The word was made flesh and tabernacled among us.

That's exactly the word John uses.

This is a direct reference back to the tabernacle temple of the Old Testament.

The word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

He dwelt with us.

He dwells with us as closely, more closely, than he might have dwelt in that sanctuary in the midst of the camp of the people.

That tabernacle was a tent to which people would go if they were to meet with God.

But now Christ is that tabernacle.

And it's in Christ that God meets with us, and we meet with the Father.

This is why Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

This is why Peter stood up in the middle of Jerusalem and said, There's no other name given among men under heaven whereby we must be saved.

I know in our pluralistic age that grates on the ears of all of us.

How could we say this singular way to God?

Because he is the meeting place of God.

He is the designated spot.

If any of the nations were to meet with God, they would have to come to the nation of Israel.

They would have to come into the center of the camp.

They would have to go through rites and sacrifices.

And then only then would someone go on their behalf into the presence of God once a year.

But now all peoples, everywhere in Jesus Christ, have a meeting place with God.

This is what he came to reveal.

He came to reveal God's desired intimacy with humanity.

But he also came to reveal God's divine majesty to humanity.

Listen to John 1.14 again.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

We observed his glory, the glory as of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John is not just haphazardly choosing words that somehow align with the meaning of the tabernacle and the glory of the tabernacle.

He is making express declaration that Jesus is the fulfillment that the tabernacle was just a sign of that he has been made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory just like the people in Israel's time would have seen the glory of the Lord over the tent and over the temple.

When Solomon made his dedicatory prayer of the temple that was built in replacement of the tabernacle, the scriptures tell us that fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices.

And it says this, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

John is telling us here that God's glory has come to earth in all of its fullness in Jesus Christ.

What is he saying here?

The Old Testament was good.

The law was good.

Moses was good, but Jesus is better.

Moses asked to see God's glory, and God told him, You cannot see it or you will die.

John tells us here, no one's ever seen God.

The only, but Jesus, the one and only Son who is Himself God, He has made Him known.

He has revealed Him.

See, not only has Jesus told us of God's desired intimacy with humanity, He is the manifestation of God's glory to humanity.

John tells us in the rest of his gospel of what God is like as he unfolds the sayings and signs of God through Jesus Christ.

There we're receiving a declaration of all of God's glory, full of grace and truth.

This is why John said, and we we observed his glory.

We saw his glory.

But in this room, sitting perhaps next to you.

Is someone who has also observed his glory.

Now, your friend, or perhaps your loved one, has never seen Jesus raise the dead, has never seen him cast out devils, has never seen him hush the winds and calm the waves.

But your beloved one sitting among you in these pews has seen through the written testimony of the apostles the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Your loved one is seen with the eye of faith, Christ's spotless holiness and his boundless love and his superlative truth and his wonderful, wondrous heavenliness.

He's seen, she's seen, the fullness of grace and truth.

We rejoice in the fact that tabernacling among us is God Himself in Christ.

And among us is a real manifestation of the glory of God, more glorious than all the brilliance of light and the glow of flame that hovered over the tent of meeting.

Because the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is not just an outward appearance to be held with our eyes, but it is more than the pillar of cloud and fire.

It's the abiding, steady luster, the holy, gracious, truthful character of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul said, For God who said, Let there be light, has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ in 2 Corinthians 4.

You see, the glory of Christ is more glorious than the pillar of cloud.

And our Lord's self-sacrifice is more excellent than the pillar of fire.

And when we think of those mysteries of the Old Testament, we think of this cloud covering the tent of the congregation and the glory of the Lord covering the tabernacle.

We see something better in Jesus Christ.

You see, the glory of the God in the sanctuary was not seen.

Only manifestations that gave it some idea that the presence was there.

The glory of God and the face of Christ is seen by all of us who believe.

The glory that the high priest would understand was seen once a year.

But we behold in a mirror, face to face, the glory of God in Christ, and we are transformed into that image from glory to glory, Paul said.

What has Jesus come to do?

What is this beautiful Christmas message?

He's come to reveal the Father's desired intimacy.

He's come to reveal the Father's divine majesty.

But he's also come to reveal God's determined interest in us, humans.

The word became flesh.

Not to govern us as a ruler, not for us to see him as high and lifted up, but he came meek and lowly and called himself a servant.

He doesn't capture our attention with startling power, he captures our attention with his loneliness.

And he didn't just assume a body as though he took on a shell.

The mystery goes far deeper than that.

The great wonder is that God became human in every way that we are.

The writer of Hebrews said, For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.

We can sort of get our words around it, but to express it perfectly, I'm not sure we can.

But these words that are written in the Word of God tell us that the Lord has truly come, really, as a man.

Why?

He became like us to be close to us.

Here on earth, the word faced a whole range of new experiences.

Taking on a human body, he experienced human pain.

He experienced human temptations, he experienced human poverty and loneliness and humiliation.

He experienced death.

Our Lord came into this world with all of its hardships, with all of its sweat, with all of its trouble.

He came into the sphere of sorrow and suffering.

He submitted himself to travel through the terrain of temptation and to feel the burden of the oppressed.

He walked among us as we lived and as we loved and as we lost one another in a death-enslaved humanity.

All of this he bore on his shoulders.

He came why?

So he could understand our sufferings, our sorrows, our pain, our anguish, our darkness, our emptiness, our sadness.

He witnessed with human eyes and was touched with human emotions the things we experience.

He came and gave himself the title and the experience, the man of sorrows, so that he might be acquainted with grief.

Why?

Prior to the incarnation, Christ knew, of course, as a divine person, our condition on earth.

And he not only knew it, he knew it with tenderness.

The Old Testament is filled with statements of the compassion of God.

But it's one thing to look on suffering and to feel compassion for it.

It's another thing to suffer.

Christ not only pitied us in our misery, but he came down and took his abode among us, and clothed himself with our nature, and lived among us, and felt with us, and wept with us, and suffered with us, sin accepted.

And in so doing, he acquired a new experience, which saturated the infinite compassion of the Godhead with the glow of human tenderness.

Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says.

The children, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

For surely it's not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect.

Why?

So that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest and the servants of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

He knew the state of humanity under the fall, but he made himself as one of humanity in a fallen world, to qualify himself to be a merciful and faithful high priest, to enable him to know the experiences that we experience, to know the weariness and the disappointments and the misunderstandings and the pain of life.

What a wonderful Savior this is.

This Christmas miracle comes with a message to all of us that God has come in Christ to express his desired intimacy with us, to express his divine glory to us, full of grace and truth, to express his earnest interest in us.

But one last thing, to accomplish and to reveal God's undeserved generosity to sinners.

When the Apostle Paul urged the Corinthians to be generous in their giving and show the sincerity of their love, he wrote these words in 2 Corinthians 8 9, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich for your sake he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.

Jesus came to accomplish and to reveal the undeserved generosity of God to sinners.

And when you read the prologue of John's gospel here, you will see a pattern that's a pattern picked up from the Old Testament, where the main point sits in the center.

And you pick up in verse 6 a statement about John, and then you look at the end of his prologue and you see a statement about John.

Then you see a statement about Christ a little deeper at the front end, about the light who is Jesus.

And then you see something a little bit near the end of it about the glory who is in Jesus.

And in this sandwich of words are two main points.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

But juxtaposed to that, in contrast, are these words, the center of the prologue.

All who receive him, he gave them the right to become the children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural descent or the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.

Christ is come to give life.

This is God's heart seen in the heart of a man.

This is true love.

What kind of love?

A love to traitorous people, a love to those who could never repay the debt of their rebellion, to those who crucified the Lord of glory.

Paul said, While we were still enemies, Christ died for us.

A love defined by self-sacrifice.

Christ renounced his crown and his specter.

He laid aside his royal robes.

He left his father's house, his father's palaces, he left his honor and became a person.

A poor man, a despised and afflicted man, a man who was obedient to death, though he didn't deserve it, a death on the cross, though he had done no wrong.

You could read every inscribed word of human history that anyone has ever penned from the day of our creation until now, and you would never read of a sacrifice like this.

And if you were to sum up the whole history of Jesus in a word, it would be this.

He saved others.

Himself he did not save.

The praise of heaven in its eternal unfolding surrounded him.

But he'd rather have our salvation.

He came so that we might see him mocked and yet never reviling, spit upon, but never spitting back, not even a word of venom.

We see him despised, never attempting to clear himself.

We see him accused but silent before the judgment seat.

And he never stopped until he could cry out, It is finished, it is accomplished.

Why did he do that?

So that he might gain and give God's undeserved generosity to sinful people.

And here we are at Christmas Eve, the day before the Christmas miracle, ringing in our ears this Christmas message, a message of what the word meant to reveal, about God's desire to be intimate with us, about his glory being seen among us in flesh and not in a tent, of his interest in who we are and what we experience, so that he might faithfully comfort and encourage all who are his, and for him to grant us something we don't deserve, the right to be called the children of God.

And we're made that way, not because we've been born that way or because we earned it or we willed it ourselves simply to be, but because God designed and desired it to be.

And you stand there like a stick of wood.

When the ringing sound of the Christmas miracle and the glorious Christmas message has gone into our ears, and we stand before Almighty God, and he says, What did you do with Jesus?

And the only thing you have to say is, I ignored him, I despised him, I disobeyed him.

What will you do on that day?

If you're here this Christmas Eve and you sense yourself a poor sinner, realizing you're full of sin and deserving of nothing of judgment, know this the message is a message of hope and of life.

That Jesus came to accomplish and to reveal God's undeserved generosity to sinners, not the self-righteous.

He became incarnate to accomplish that.

He became incarnate to give you that.

J.I.

Packer in his book, Knowing God, wrote this.

He said, The significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in a sequence of steps to Calvary.

And we don't understand it until we see it in that context.

The taking of manhood by the sun is set before us in a way that shows us how we should always view it, not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather a wonder of grace.

This is Christmas.

It's a wonder of grace.

And I pray that as we hear John speak at the beginning of his gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, he says, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the one and only of the Father, full of grace and truth, that we would feel deeply within our hearts joy in this Christmas miracle and delight in all that Christ came to reveal, of his desire for intimacy, of his glorious presence, of his interest in each of us, and of his gift of eternal life.

May we hear those words and believe and sing with joy.

Let's pray.

Oh Father, I pray that all of our hearts might respond rightly to this glorious message wrapped up in a few words.

This astounding miracle, a wonder of nature, yes, a marvel of it indeed.

But beyond that, a wonder of grace, that you would come to disobedient people desiring to be with us, to gather us to yourself, to manifest your glorious self to us.

To know us, to save us.

This is why we sing at Christmas.

What a glorious, glorious Savior we have.

What a wonderful message to receive.

What a beautiful miracle to behold.

Lord, move in all of our hearts that we might respond as we should.

May we not be a stick of wood or stone, unmoved, untouched, unchanged.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.