Father, it is because of your love that we come into your presence today, and it's because of your love that we have been brought to you to begin with. Become as your people on the first day of the week, Lord, aware that we've lived the last six days in real need of you. And Father, we've prayed, and we've read your word, and we've leaned upon you, but we needed to gather together today to be reinforced with who you are and who we are. You're the God of the universe who created us and loves us. You're the one who redeemed us and Christ, you're the one who sent your Son for us, for your glory and for us. And we have been thinking about your grace, and Lord, as we bow in your presence this morning, we have so much to remember. Father, we humbly bow before you because you are great, because you are mighty and because you are the majestic God of the universe. Every generation is going to praise you, Father, because your riches are so unsearchable, no one can ever completely list them all or understand them all. Father, your acts are awesome, your acts of creation and the act of salvation in Christ, the way you provide for us every day of our lives, your acts are awesome, because you are an awesome God. And we have been touched by you, you're graceful, you're merciful, you're slow to anger, Father, you think about us so many thoughts per day that we couldn't even count them. Father, you're good even to your enemies and your kingdom is going to last forever and we're going to be a part of it because of Jesus. So today, Lord, we pray that you would reassert your Lordship in our life as we worship you and look to you for who you are, we pray that you would touch us in the very core of our being. That we would be reminded of your grace and all your grace upon grace in our lives and so that we would remember that you are our king and our master and we would yield to you. Father, you know us and you know everything about us, you know, the thoughts that we have thought this week, the fears, the loneliness, you know, the people in this room who are grieving, of our loss of loved ones, over the fears of a loss of a loved one. You know those who need to be healed. Father, this week you healed grace parks by bringing her home and we pray for their family and pray, Father, knowing now that she's experiencing your riches, we pray for those who are left and pray that they would be comforted and know your goodness and your kindness. Pray for healing for Matt, Father, we pray for healing for Monica. Father, she struggles now with recently diagnosed cancer, Lord, we pray that you'd heal her and Lord, we pray that you would do what only you can do, touch her. Father, meet each one of us though and we need to meet you, we need to have a sense of your reality in our lives and so we pray for those who feel that you're very far off, Father, be near today, teach us and meet us. And so we pray for the one who will open your word and pray you'd forgiven his sins. Lord, use one who is finite to communicate your truth that can change us from the inside out. We commit ourselves to you and pray that you would meet us, we pray that you would receive these gifts now as we give and we give not to impress you but because we love you as we give in the strong name of Christ our Savior. Come in today and that song fits perfect what we're going to be talking about this morning as we look grace upon grace. Kids, you may now be dismissed for children's worship. And while they're going, would you turn in your Bibles, please to John, John's Gospel, John chapter 1 verses 14 through 18 is our text for today. As we conclude our series that we've been calling the Modern Mystics series and we are looking forward to moving into the Advent season. We've got a new mini series coming up starting next week and then we move into the Advent where we reflect upon the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So John 1, 14 through 18 is our text today, one of perhaps the most familiar passages in the whole Bible. Where we read John saying this and the word became flesh and dwell among us and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father full of grace and truth. John bore witness of 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 man has seen God at any time, the only begotten God who was in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him and some of you are saying, wait a minute the text up there is different from the text here, right? Is it a little bit sustained? Good, I just had an awful plot, I use the new American standard, we usually put the NIV and you guys are going to be freaked out the rest of the sermon. But you're so talented that I knew you would be able to adjust. John 1, 14 through 18 in the new American standard text of the Bible and today we conclude the modern mystics series and it's really been kind of a follow up to the revelation thing. We've been studying Revelation for most of the year and we we wanted to in Revelation layout clearly that big point, the big reality that Jesus Christ is coming again. If you miss that when we studied the book of Revelation you need to get the take series because Jesus is coming again and at the very end of that series we talked about the new heavens and the new earth and how great it's going to be. What is going to be relationships restored, we're going to be walking with Jesus much like, he walked and dwelt with us on earth, it's going to be great. And so in Revelation we ended by looking at is coming but in modern mystics we've been talking about the reality that heaven is going to be so great then what about now? I mean can we taste heaven at all now and the answer has been of course, how do we do that? Well, well we experience that closeness with the Lord by the doing and by the being in our relationship with Him. There's a lot to do in life. You guys are busy. I was amazed to have the guys that came to the men's conference able to come because everybody's so busy and you wives are very gracious for letting them go. But we are busy and Jesus spent a lot of time on earth. He said that his need in his drink was doing the will of his father in heaven. He loved doing the father's work and it fulfilled him just in much the same way as it fulfills us. I don't know about you but when I get used by God in somebody's life it makes me feel deep down in the very core of my being that I have fulfilled what I was created to do. And I hope you feel that too. Some of you are involved in our youth ministry. Such an important ministry in our church is dynamite youth pastor and good stuff happening. Pete's doing a great job and to see lives changed for the future. That's powerful. Some of you are good listeners and you're in the connections ministry and you sit and listen as people pour out what's going on in their lives. And when you're when you're done after listening and God has done something for you, you say, man, this is great. It's so fulfilling. And so in doing the work of the kingdom, we're fulfilled. But also we said in this mystic series that it's not just the doing, it's the being. That it is so very easy for us to get wrapped up in the doing that we miss the being with him. And so in this series we talk about how we can enjoy him more. I love the guy who walks into the post office one day to see a middle-aged, balding man standing at the counter. And this guy is methodically placing love stamps on pink envelopes with hearts all over him. And this guy stands here and watches him for a while. And then he watches as the bald-headed man takes perfume and starts spraying it all over these envelopes. And curiosity gets the best of him and he goes up to him and he says, what in the world are you doing here anyway? He says, I'm sending a thousand Valentine cards outside. Guess who? The man says, why are you doing that? And he says, because I'm a divorce attorney. The reality. You know, if you have any other good attorney jokes, I'd love to have them. You know what you call 100 attorneys at the bottom of the sea? A very good start. But the reality is that there is a whole lot that conspires against us in our, sorry, Jeff. There's a lot that conspires against us in our relationship with the Lord, simply being with him. There's a lot of other relationships that conspire against getting deeper with him. Sometimes we do too much doing and not enough being. So that's why in this series we talk about prayer. We've talked about how we can experience the Father and just enjoy the relationship we have with him more, vice-bending time and prayer. By meditation Dr. Mark Futato spoke on that as we meditate upon the words of scripture, God gets into our heart and we connect with him in a deeper way. We talked about waiting on the Holy Spirit and listening to the Holy Spirit. We talked about waiting on God last week. And so that's why we wanted to connect. With the Lord in that relational sense. Thinking back to when it all was new, do you remember? I remember when it was new for me in Christ. And I remember how one day driving to college and I'd been raised in the church, but it was all new to me. And I'd seen the reality as I was driving to school that day. That I was a mess, that there was a lot that needed to take place in my life. That I needed to change a whole lot. But I remember just feeling so glad that I understood the gospel, that it was all taken away, that Jesus had paid for all the stuff that I'd done bad, that he'd accepted me, and that he was just there with me in the driver's seat. You know, I remember just turning over and talking to him. I remember when it was fresh and when it was new, when there was wonder. And then do you remember that? And then somehow in the putting one foot in front of another in life, in the going on, the wonder wears away. We lose it. We lose the reality of the incredible majesty of Christ and all that he's done lacrosse. And it all becomes so profunctory. We're no longer the mystics that say, I don't know how he did it, but he forgave me. I understand the cross. I don't understand grace, but it's real because I feel it. We lose that. Jesus put his finger on it in the parable of the sower. Because he said using the parable of a farmer, he said a farmer, a sower goes out and he casts some seed out there. And some of the seed fell on the road and the birds came and picked it up. Then he cast some other seed out there and it fell on ground that looked good, but it was real rocky underneath and so that fruit grew up but didn't have deep roots and it died off. Then somebody else went out and then he cast seed among where there were thorns and the thorn was came up and it grew good. It grew good at first, but then the thorns choked out the life of the plant. Then he said, well, then there are some, but the seed gets to the good soil and it grows and it bears fruit. 30, 60, 100 full. And then he explains it, he says this, Matthew 13. Here's the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in the heart. This is the one on whom the seed was sown beside the road and the one on whom the seed was sown on the rocky places. This is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no firm root in himself, but he's only temporary when a fliction or a persecution arises because the word immediately falls away. And the one on whom the seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word and the word of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, choke it, then it comes on fruitful. Then the seed was sown on good soil. This is the one who hears the word, understands it and bears fruit and brings forth all of that fruit. 30, 60 and 100 full. Guys, I was wondering, what is it about those people that keep growing? What is it with those Christians where you look in their life that it seems like they continue to bear fruit?
Where the root goes down, because it's so easy for us to get that root, choked out most for us. It's the anxieties of the world, the deceitfulness of riches. I mean, what things say is, hey, we'll offer you this if you get it, but it doesn't deliver. Most of us fall into that category. Some of us are simply the kind of people that don't take the time would become Christians, but we never go deeper. We never laid that foundation after the seminar man came up to me afterwards because we had some discussion times around the table. He said, you know, I've never done that. I said, what? He said, I've never discussed the Bible with any other Christian man. It was good, and I want to do that some more. He'd never laid down the foundation. When guys, if we don't do that, when the struggles come, we're going to be in trouble. So think with me just for a minute about how the people who continue to bear fruit do it. How do they do it? How do they bear fruit 30, 60, 100 full over years and years over the long haul? Let me suggest to you this is how they do it. They never lose the wonder of Jesus. They never lose the wonder of Jesus, and John helps us retain that in these words. So let's take a quick look at these words that he tells us about. The first thing he says is he calls Jesus the word. He says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. He tells us in verse 14 that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. I love the prayer. Heather McWinney gave me. God grant me the sonility to forget the people I never liked anyway. The good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the difference. I love that. You know, people can be the most awesome or awful influence in your life. Can't they? They can be awesome. They can be awful. Sometimes they're both in the same day. But the reality is that when God sent Jesus into the world, He sent the word. And the word became flesh and the word in the Bible and in the ancient times had an incredibly rich meaning to it. It doesn't mean what you and I think a word for us is just sort of an abstract expression. In the ancient times, in this time, when it says that Jesus was the word, it means that Jesus was the power of God. A word back then, you see, had great power. Let me illustrate that by saying this. When the Brits, Sir Adam, Sir George Adam Smith was traveling in the east, a bunch of Muslims came up to him and gave them his greeting, their greeting, the common greeting of the ancient world of the Muslims, peace be upon you. Now, they didn't find out ahead of time that he wasn't a Muslim. When they found out that he was a Christian and therefore an infidel, a pagan, knew what they did. They went running back and they said, would you give us our blessing back? You say, how in the world is that possible? It was possible because those in the ancient world believed that a word represented not just a concept but power. Remember the story of Jacob and Esau? When Jacob, the mama's voice, swindled his older brother out of the blessing. He got the blessing of his father and then Esau comes running back in and says, father, who's got a blessing for me? And Esau starts whining. So I want a blessing too. Father says it too late. It's gone out. How do we understand that unless we understand that a word meant power? And this, of course, is true in the Bible. Genesis 1, 3, then God said, let there be light. And there was light. Then God said, verse 6, then God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, let it separate the waters from the waters. It was the expanse. Verse 11, then God said, let the earth sprout forth vegetation. Was there vegetation? Yeah. God said to spoke. And it was done. Psalm 33, 7, he gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps and storehouses, let all the earth fear, the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him for his spoke. And it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. Isaiah, Isaiah 55, 11, so shall my word which goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty. Without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the manner for which I sent it, both to the Jews of John's day and to the Greeks in Ephesus where he was a pastor. The belief was that a word was power and the word of God was the power of God. And you maintain a sense of wonder about Jesus when you understand that he is the word is the power of God. People were amazed when they saw Jesus. I mean, people who listened to Jesus, even those who never believed in him or amazed at him, weren't they? When they listened to his words, what did they do? A lot of people walked away and said, who is this man? The space was such authority. They were amazed at his words. Who is this man? Who do everything I ever did? Said the woman at the well. Who is this man who heals somebody born blunt? Who is this man? He is the word, the power of God. Guys, if you want to maintain a sense of the wonder of God, if you want to maintain that newness and freshness, then you simply, and I simply have to keep thinking about Jesus as the word, the power of God, who squeezed his divinity into a human body. And then when you believe in him, he squeezed it down even further into your human heart. The power of God is in you. I think the Christians who are able to bear fruit maintain this mystical sense, they don't allow to understand how it happens, but that the word is in them. When you feel like you have no power to make it through, you've got to remember that the word of God is in you. And then behold his glory. That's the second thing that John said in verse 14, we beheld his glory, his glory. And we do great things with heaping glory upon people who do wonderful things, but here, John is talking about the glory of God, and he had this rich background of understanding the glory of God from the Old Testament, didn't he? Exodus 25, 8, then let them construct the sanctuary for me that I may dwell among them. Has it ever shocked you at all that God said he could dwell among his people? Many close me away that God would ever think that we could ever think that a building could contain God. It doesn't, of course. It didn't, of course. God, the tabernacles did not contain all of who God was. God is bigger than everything that is, but he dwelt there in a very powerful way. And the sign of his presence was his chicana glory. Listen to Exodus 24. Now the Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and remain there. Remember this? Moses had his face altered, sort of a facelift when he went up there. Come up to me to the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with a law and the commandments which I have written for their instruction. So Moses arose with Joshua as servant. He went up to the mountain. He told the elders to wait for their down. Then Moses went up to the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. And the glory of the Lord rested upon Mount Sinai. Covered it for six days. On the seventh day, he called to Moses from the midst of the cloud. And to the eyes of the sons of Israel, the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the mountain top. And Moses entered the midst of the cloud as he went up to the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. And when he came down, what do you look like? Precisely. And that's the glory of God. And the disciples saw the glory of God. When John said, we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten. Did they ever see that glory? Yeah, they did. Remember on a mountain one day called the transfiguration. When Jesus allowed his divinity to just crash through his flesh. And the disciples were in absolute awe. John says, we beheld his glory. I don't think there's any three tricks to maintaining the wonder of God. But I do think we need to focus upon the glory of Christ. The chicana glory of God that burst through him. And it was seen in his sermon, the Beatitudes, blessed are the pure and spirit for they shall see God. Blessed are the pure and heart. Blessed are those who mourn. The glory of God comes through his messages. The glory of God came through when he healed the leper. You know, if you were a leper back in the first century, and thank goodness we don't have much lepercy in America, hardly any at all. But if you were a leper in the first century, and you had to live pretty much outside the town, but if you did come into town, you had to wave your hand when you were walking up to people say, unclean, unclean to let them know that you were a leper. You were awful. You were awful looking and you smelled and imagine that it was Jesus who came up and touched the leper and healed them. And there they saw the glory. They saw the glory and taking the most red tag group of men you ever see and developing them into men who changed the world. The glory. They saw the glory. And I think that's how we maintain it, too. Recognizing his glory. And when they looked at him, they saw it more and more. And like the song we sang this morning, we saw that he was full of grace and truth. Everywhere he went, he was full of grace and truth. Jesus could nail you now, couldn't they? There were some times that he would just pierce people right between the eyes, like in the whole issue of Corban, the Jewish practice, if you were a good Pharisee, you could take all of your belongings and you could dedicate them to God. That was called the practice of Corban. Then if your parents needed any of your money or any of your stuff, you couldn't give it to him because you had given it to God. You couldn't take it away from God and give it to them. And when Jesus found out about that practice and when he confronted it, he nailed those guys right between the eyes. I love the Kathy Dunlap called the office this week with a story from her daughter. She'd been teaching Amy about the Samaritan woman and the woman at the well. And when Jesus said to the woman, Jesus said, give me a drink of water. Amy interrupted her mother and said, Jesus didn't say please. If you're the sovereign God of the universe, you don't have to say please. Jesus often just took the truth and put it straight to the heart and straight to the mind. And the truth exposed the gameplay. They saw his truth in a hard way, but they saw his truth in a great way that whenever you applied his truth, you were applying the principles of God and it changed your life and it made it all that much for you to apply the principles of God. You're going to be successful. You apply problems. You'll be successful just because that's the way God says things ought to be done. His truth liberates you and it shows you how to live, but it could be very, very straightforward, full of grace and truth, full of truth and grace. I love that. Whenever you see Jesus, you see grace. This past, not this weekend, weekend before, I was flying back to Orlando and I'll ask the leg back here and I was tired. And you know, you always look for that seat. You sit down. You pull out the book first so nobody talks to you because you're tired. God put me next to two extroverted women reading new age books. And I pulled out my book and they're reading theirs and they asked me what I was reading and I had to tell them it was a Christian book. I wanted to, of course, I wanted to witness. But all right. So I was pulled into that kicking and screaming that time. But then I saw the new age book and I said, I got to say something here. And so we started talking about that and about the gospel. And I got them into the Bible and then I said, okay, bottom line. It's all about truth and it's all about grace. And the older woman sitting next to me looked at me and she said, Pete, really? Is it really about grace? Is it all about grace? And I said, yeah, why wouldn't it be? And she said, I was raising the church. You don't know. 40 years ago, I committed a sin. I'm still in that. I committed a sin. I got divorced. I got remarried. And they have never let me forget that. I've never been able to do anything significant in this church. And so she had gone to the new age group to find love. She got a new age to find love. She's reading this love, new age and love. I think I was a title book. And so when I said it was about truth and grace, she said, really? And she meant it. And I said, yeah, and I meant it. There is no truth other than Jesus. He is the way and the truth in the life. And it's all about grace. It's not about what we do. And when the people of soldiers with Jesus, they saw grace as a living example. And they felt it. See, we talk about it. But they felt it from Jesus. It really was all about. I've been reading The Chronicles of Narnia. I told you about that last week. And I won't use an illustration every week. I got to tell you one more. It was so good. In the magician's nephew, Diggory was the one that brought evil into the world, into the new world. Narnia, that Aslan, the lion, the Christ figure was creating. And finally, Aslan, Aslan turns to Diggory. Listen to this dialogue. Please, Mr. Lion. Aslan, sir. Could you, may I please, will you give me some magic fruit of this country to make my mother well? She's sick. He had been desperately hoping that the lion would say, yes, he'd been horribly afraid. He might say, no, but he was taken aback when he didn't either. This is the boy said, Aslan, looking at Diggory, not looking at Diggory, but looking at his counselors. This is the boy who did it. Oh, dear, thought Diggory. What have I done now? Some of Adam said, Lion, there's an evil witcher brought in my new land of Narnia. Tell these good deeds how she came here. A dozen different things that he might say flash through Diggory's mind, but he had the sense to say nothing except exactly. I brought her, Aslan. He succeeded in answering in a low voice for what purpose? I wanted to get her out of my own world back into her own. I thought I was taking her back to her own place. How came she to be in your world, son of Adam, by magic? The lion said nothing, and Diggory knew that he had not told enough. It was my uncle, Aslan. He said, he sent us out of our own world by magic rings. At least I had to go because it sent Polly first, and then we met the witch in a place called Charon, and she just held on to us when you met the witch, said Aslan in a low voice, which had a threat of a growl in it. She woke up, Diggory said, wretchedly, then turning very white. I mean, I woke her, because I wanted to know what would happen if I struck a bell. Polly didn't want to. It wasn't her fault. I thought her. I know I shouldn't have. I think I was a bit enchanted by the writing under the belt. Do you? Ask Aslan still speaking very low in the nose of Diggory. I see no, I wasn't. I was only pretending. It's a long pause. Diggory was thinking all the time. I spoiled everything. There's no chance of getting anything from mother now. When the lion spoke again, it was not to Diggory. You see, my friends, he said, that before the new, clean world I gave you is seven hours old, a force of evil has already entered it. Wake it and brought hither by this son of Adam. The beasts even strawberry to horse. All turned their eyes on Diggory until he felt he wished the ground would swallow him up. But do not be cast down, said Aslan still speaking to the beasts. Evil will come of that evil, but it is still a long way off, and I will see to it that the worst falls upon myself. It is so hard in dealing with Jesus because he looks at us and he makes us see our sin, like he did Diggory. The truth cuts to the very core of our being, but once we've done that, he says, I will remedy this situation and make the worst of it fall upon me and guys he has. And that's why when you see Jesus, you see that he's full of grace and truth. You and I don't have any right to bear the guilt of our sins upon ourselves. We only have the right now as children of God to understand that he paid the price and that he is full of grace and truth and he's not ticked off at you. And the wonder continues when we understand that the pre-existent one is also the one who gives us grace upon grace, wave upon wave, just like at the beach. The waves never stop, and so neither does the grace of God. Guys, this is what gets the mystic at the heart because he sees that the grace of God continues to lap up onto the shore of our life. It just keeps coming in. Would you look at your life sometime and you think of all the bad stuff but think of all the grace that has come and that continues to come. The grace upon grace upon grace. He gave it in the law and he has given it pre-eminently in Christ. Some of us don't like the reality that the law came for Moses and we think, gosh, the law is that a grace? It really is. You know, when I got my Jeep, I got it used and I didn't have a motor owner's manual and it took me days to figure out how to reset the radio until I got my son in there. He did it like that. I couldn't figure out how the alarm worked. I finally figured that out and I didn't know where the jack was. It's under the back seat in case you have one. It was the owner's manual that I could have used to help me figure out how to make it work. The law is the owner's manual to help us see how life works. It is a grace of God. But that grace is revealed and realized even more in Jesus Christ, seeing even more in Jesus Christ. And so the reality is that God has always been straight with truth but he's always been full with grace. And it continues to flap up upon our lives. Little girl heard someone teaching about how people in the Old Testament times were killed and died bloody deaths. And she spoke up in defense of God and she said, oh yeah, but that was before God became a Christian. God has always been a God of justice and he's always been a God of grace. You can see it in the Old Testament and you can see it in your lives. And Jesus, Jesus defines God. And so I don't want to give you any quick, fast three things to do. I want you to give, I want to give you things to think about. I want you to think about the word who became flesh and it's packed into your life. I want you to understand that the power is there when you feel very inadequate because you are when you feel that way. And that he has come and would be held as glory full of grace and truth. And it's people who simply keep reflecting on who Jesus is. It's God's people who keep reflecting on Him, who stay watered in here, who are able to keep the balance between the doing and the being and who when they hang out with God. Find out that they are met in here in a deeper way than ever before and maintain the wonder that will carry you until you get home. Take it to heart. Father, take your words into our hearts. And Lord, if we're dried up, we pray you'd water us. If we're coming out of a crisis or in the middle of a crisis, Lord, don't ever let us go until we see the wonder of your power packed inside us. Father, if we don't know you and we've been seeking after you, I pray that you'd make yourself real to us this week. Take the abstract concepts of the Bible, the propositions, and show us the power. And for those of us, Father, who know more truth already than we're applying, help us to take it and to live it as we again remember the power of the word in us. And Jesus will give you the praise and the honor as we behold you and experience your grace upon grace as we pray in your holy name. Amen. If you haven't met Jesus yet and you'd like to talk about that, come on up afterwards and let's talk. And now I'm in the amazing grace of the Master Jesus Christ, the outrageous love of God the Father. And the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, go with you this week as you remember His deep love and concern for you.