Transcript

Good morning, church. It's great seeing all of you here this morning. And it's a great day. It's the day that we celebrate Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem and remembering that next week, next week, we're in our Easter countdown. It's one week from Resurrection Sunday, one week from Easter.

And it's an important day in our church calendar because it's a day that we make much of every Sunday as the day that Jesus was raised from the grave, but especially at Easter Sunday. And it's a day when people are more likely to attend church when we invite them. And so at first service, I already met a couple of people that received one of those invite cards that you have in your seats. One of them told me that a co worker had given them that card. They had just moved here from out of town.

And so right away attending church. And so those cards are tools for you to use. And so this week is our final week. Praying for inviting people. Here's the thing.

We know that we can do all kind of advertising on social media, we can put yard signs in our yards, we can have invite cards. But the most powerful thing we can do is personally invite someone, hey, come to church with me. We can sit together, maybe we could go to lunch afterwards, those kind of things. And here's the promise I'll give you. If you'll invite someone to church, I promise you that they'll hear a clear, clear presentation of the gospel, that they'll clearly hear about Jesus and have an opportunity to respond to the gospel.

And so especially next Sunday, we're gonna have special music. We're gonna have baptism. We're gonna have so much. We're gonna have personal testimony time so much that you're gonna not wanna miss it yourself, but especially you're gonna wanna bring somebody. So we're praying for guests to be here not just because we care about a crowd, but we care about changed lives.

We care about seeing people come to Jesus. And if you've never checked out the other room, like if you're in the gathering place right now, maybe you'd like to attend the worship center that we're in right now, or vice versa. Because when you come back next week, one or the other might be full. And so be willing to check out either place next week. Because we do have two services in two locations in our Wilson campus.

And so we encourage you to find a seat in one of those locations. If you're on a service team. We really, really, really need you next week for guest services. And all those locations. So we're encouraging you to be prayerful.

Be ready to serve next week. Now, we've had a busy weekend already. A week ago, we went around Wilson and we hung bags on doors, inviting people to fill the bag with non perishable foods that we could donate to the Hope Station. And so then last week we did that. We said, if you'll put it on your front porch, we'll come back around on the next Saturday, which was yesterday, and we'll pick it up and deliver it to Hope Station for you.

And I'd like to just share with you what we did together. Partnering with our neighbors in Wilson, we were able to collect 369 bags of food yesterday in Wilson and 137 bags in Rocky Mount for a total of 506 bags. And if you just kind of weigh that out, that's over £10,000 of food that we donated to these two food pantries. Amen. Praise the Lord.

And so I was going through the food pantry there at Hope Station yesterday, and I met with Bonnie, who's the director of the pantry, and she was just so thankful. She said, you just don't realize how much we rely on Eastgate Church doing this annual food drive. I think we're in our 21st year of doing it. We started doing it in 2005. And so she said she didn't have to tell me because I went and looked around the pantry.

The shelves were barely empty. I mean, they just barely had food. And we were loading the shelves up. We had a team in there, not only out in the city, but we had a team in there organizing the items and putting them on the shelves. So we're so thankful for what God did.

And at the same time, we put door hangers on every door, inviting them, guess what? To Easter Sunday next week. And so thank you for your obedience to show up and work hard these past two Saturdays, helping feed the hungry, but also working hard so that those that are hungry for Jesus will have an opportunity to come. Easter is coming. It's next Sunday.

Keep it in your prayers. Keep inviting. Well, let's dig in. We're continuing our series entitled the Story how the Bible Explains Everything. We're convinced that the Bible is.

Is not just a group of disconnected stories, but it's really one big, overarching, metanarrative one story. And we're looking for Jesus on every page because we're convinced that every great story has a hero. And the hero of the Bible is Jesus. He's the hero of the story. And that's what we're talking about today.

And over the past eight weeks we've been in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and last week we read the last words of the Hebrew Bible. And I would remind you if you weren't here last week, the Hebrew Bible is organized differently than our English translation of the Old Testament. In the English translation of the Old Testament, the last book of the Bible is the prophet Malachi. That's our last book in the organization of the English Bible. But the Hebrew Bible is ordered up a little differently.

In the last book of the Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, they have the same books just in a different order as Second Chronicles. And the last four words are Let him go up. We talked about that last week. And so they went up and King Cyrus of Persia sent them out of Babylonian captivity, set them free, said anyone who would go back up and rebuild the temple of the Lord God.

And they did. But when they rebuilt it, we talked about this last week. The glory of the Lord did not fall upon the temple as it had during Solomon's Day. In fact, Ezekiel saw a vision that the glory of the Lord, the spirit of Lord, had departed from the temple, had departed from the city, and paused on the threshold and went out to the Mount of Olives and had left. And between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, it's often referred to as 400 silent years.

And so they're waiting, they've gone up. But God had not come down until Jesus comes. You see, we can try to go up, but we will fail to go up unless he comes down. And that's where we're at in the story, man. We've been eight weeks getting here and we're finally to the New Testament.

We're in the Gospel of John. The silence has been shattered. The author of the story has written himself into the chapter. He's put himself into the story. Not only that, it's Palm Sunday, as we mentioned before.

It's the triumphal entry. And the people during that time when they received him, they cried out, hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And it was a mixed crowd. I'm sure it was on a Sunday, first day of the week. And they were receiving him.

They're waving Paul Branch and they're probably looking for many of them, looking for a revolutionary, a king to overthrow the Romans that were over top of them ruling over them. They were looking for a revolutionary, but instead they found something better, a revelation of God himself.

And indeed, we can see what a mixed crowd it was, because perhaps in that same crowd, there were people who said hosanna on Sunday, who said, crucify him on Friday.

Not everyone understood that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world. That raises a question for us today. If God has come down, if he has come near, do we recognize him? Do we see him for who he really is? Because it's possible to know the story and miss the Savior.

It's possible to know the Scripture and miss the Savior. It's possible to be religious and not have a relationship with God.

And that's the tragedy of the first century. But it's also the danger of the 21st century that we could know much doctrine. We could know about Jesus and not know him, not be in relationship with him. And what we need today is not more information, but we need an introduction to God through the person of Jesus Christ. And that's exactly what the Gospel of John gives us.

It does, not surprisingly, begin as some of the other gospels do. It does not begin with a manger, but it begins with majesty. It begins with King Jesus in the beginning. And so in the Gospel of John, we see presented a beautifully poetic, a theologically rich prologue that declares Jesus as the eternal word of God who became flesh and tabernacled among us so that he reveals God's glory and inaugurates the fulfillment of the story, which is God's story. I believe as we look here and see Jesus as the eternal Word who came down to dwell among us, that we will see four revelations that portray and show us that Jesus is the hero of God's story.

So let's dig in. Gospel of John, chapter one, starting at verse one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made.

That was made in him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name.

He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out. This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.

For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known.

This is God's Word. Amen. We're looking for four revelations of Jesus as the hero of God's story. Here's the first revelation. Jesus is revealed as the Sovereign Word.

As the Sovereign Word, the King of glory, the God of very God. It begins as the Book of Genesis. Does I remind you that this is one book. It's called the Bible. Greek is biblos.

It literally means the book. It's one book written by over 40 human authors over a period of 1500 years, organized in 16 or 66 books rather. But it makes up one book. And here we see the Apostle John clearly connected to the first three words in our English Bible. The Book of Genesis.

In the beginning. In the beginning. That's how he begins. In the Greek, it's arche. He says in the beginning, archeological.

And then he speaks of Logos. It's where we get the word archeology, by the way, the arche and the Logos. It's the study of first things, the study of beginnings or foundational things. And he begins it like this. And this word Logos in the Greek was very well known in Greek philosophy as a founding principle, the thing that underlines.

It's the unseen truth that embodies everything. And so he's clearly. Here's John. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he. He's connecting the story of Christ to the whole story, all the way back to the Book of Genesis, right in the beginning.

No one can miss this, that he's beginning at the beginning, before all time. He's connecting Christ to this and as the organizing principle of reality, using this philosophical thing. But he's embodying it with even more saying he's gone God, a very God, that he's the Creator God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. Well, there's the Trinity.

He is God, but he's also has his. He's his own person. So there's the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. He's revealing something about the Trinity. Verse 2.

He was in the beginning with God. He's making sure we didn't miss that. And then he clearly says, he's God's agent of creation. He's the Word that says let there be light. He's the very word that causes all creation to come into being.

All things were made through him. And without him was not anything made that was made. He's the Creator God. He's the Sovereign Word. And in him was life.

He's the source of life. He's the one who breathed into Adam and made man a living soul. He's the creator of God. He's the source of life. We're only in verse three now, verse four.

That life was the light of men. Here again we see the echo of Genesis 1, chapter 1. Let there be light. And light was separated light from darkness. And there was night and there was day.

And this is Genesis stuff, verses one through four. He's saying there's Christ at the beginning and he's active in creation. He's the Sovereign Word. He's making a clear claim here that everything, the long awaited Messiah that they've waited for is actually here. He's come down.

He's become one of us. He's the sovereign God, the creator God, the source of life. When Paul's writing to the church at Colossae, he says something amazing. He says that everything was created by Christ, through Christ and for Christ. Listen to what he says in Colossians.

For everything was created by Him. All things have been created through him. And for him he's before all things. In other words, his existence is not dependent upon creation. He's the Creator who stands outside of creation.

And by him all things hold together. He's the sustainer of all things. So all things are held together by Him.

Are you in charge of your next breath? Are you in charge of your next heartbeat? Everything is sustained by him, held together by Him. And here's the thing, the clarifying thought here. Created through him and for Him.

He made it for Himself. He made you for Himself.

Now my wife and I have three kids. And via our three kids we have 10 grandchildren.

Sometimes when we first had our kids, I guess parents, I don't know what we're thinking. When we have kids, we're like, we love each other and we want our love to grow and so we have kids. I don't think we think about it a lot. We had our kids in our 20s. We weren't thinking very clearly about a lot of things in their 20s.

And you're so blessed. You're so excited. You bring the baby home. There's baby showers, and there's joy and there's wonder. And then by night three, with sleeplessness and dirty diapers and everything, you go, why did we make this baby?

I'm kidding, right? We know why we did.

We made these children because it's an expression of our love. And we made it because our loved ones. You know, it's a philosophical question. You can answer it later. But we don't have to answer it on behalf of God.

Why did God make you for Himself?

He made you for Himself. Was he lonely? No. He lives eternally in the Godhead. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit in perfect unity.

Never lonely, never sad. But he wants to grow. He wants to share his glory. And so he creates everything. And he creates us in his own image for himself.

What?

Because he loves you?

Made us for himself. I can't get past it. I could just stop here and go home. He made me for himself. And then I rebelled and so did you.

He came and died for me. To buy me back. Oh. And therefore Paul says in Philippians, God exalted him to the highest place. He was already at the highest place.

But because he went so low to the cross and to obedience and to the grave, that he raised him to an even higher place and gave him the name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus. Every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. He made us for Himself.

He's the Creator God who made all things.

Do you remember the story in the Book of Mark, chapter four? It's one of my favorite stories. Jesus was tired. He'd been working hard, preaching. He asked the disciples to move out to the Sea of Galilee.

I think Jesus loved boats and water. I can relate to that. I love to get out on a boat too. I love to get out on the water. Something about it is calming.

Unless a storm comes up. That's what happened in Mark, chapter four. A storm came up. He was out there with seasoned fishermen who grew up in the city of Capernaum. And that was a fishing village.

They knew storms. But this storm, the way you read it in scripture, it was unlike any storm they'd ever encountered. It was like a hurricane gale that came up. And there's Jesus. He's tired.

He's asleep in the boat. They don't want to wake him up. He's tired. But the storm got so bad that even Peter, James and John, the four professionals, we better wake Jesus up. We're going to die, Lord.

Don't you care that we're about to die? And they wake him up. And if you see it depicted in some movies, they'll dramatically have him stand up in the boat. Peace, be still. You know, and maybe that's how it happened.

I don't know. I have more of the idea that he raised upon one elbow and very quietly said, shh. Peace, be still. And the disciples that were terrified by the storm, the scriptures say they were terrified by what was on the outside of the boat, were now terrified by the man in the boat. And they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him?

I'll tell you who he is. He's the Sovereign Word. The wind and the waves obey him because he created them. He made them for himself. All he had to do is say, shh.

And there was complete silence. Oh, he's the Creator God. So here's the question today. If the wind and the waves obey him and recognize him as creator, why don't you, and many of you are going through a storm in your life today, and you're crying out, just like the disciples, lord God, don't you care that I'm going to drown, that I'm going to die here? Don't you care?

And he does. But the question is, who's in your boat? Is he in your boat? Is Jesus in your boat? And have you called out to him as Lord?

He's the Sovereign Word. That leads us to the second revelation. We're at verses six through nine now. The second revelation is this. Jesus is revealed as the sent word.

He's the sent word sent of the Father. We see in verse 6 that the gospel writer, the Gospel of John, who is John the Beloved, one of the 12, is now writing not about himself. And this John is not John the Beloved. This is John the Baptist. Okay, Verse six.

There was a man sent from God. So God sent John the Baptist, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light. Who's the light? Well, the light is the Word and the word is Jesus.

Okay, so he came to bear witness, to be a forerunner, a proclaimer of the Christ. And to be clear, he was not the light, verse 8, but came to bear witness about the light. That was his purpose. He was sent of God to do that, to bear witness about the light that people might believe. It's kind of like this.

If you go to a courtroom, and I hope you don't have to, but if you go to a courtroom, someone comes out and precedes the judge and say, hear ye, hear ye. The Honorable John Smith is now presiding. All rise. And you rise and he comes in. He takes a seat in his black robes and.

And then you can be seated. Or when the president or the governor or whoever comes in, somebody always comes in first and makes a proclamation. And then everybody recognizes this person of authority. That's what's going on here. The king of glory has come down.

And of course, there needs to be a forerunner that comes ahead of him. Now, this John the Baptist was sent by God. We see John say. And he goes on to say that he's not the light. Verse 9 clarifies that the true light, speaking of Jesus, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

So he was sent by God, too. He was coming. He was sent by the Father to be the light. Let me give you a few verses to consider. Malachi, the prophet is the one who foretold that one named Elijah would come again.

Elijah, and if you'll remember, didn't actually die, but was carried to heaven in a fiery chariot. And so to this day, the Jews, when they do the Passover meal, they save a seat for Elijah because they still are looking for him. They're still looking for him, and they're still looking for the Messiah. But Elijah has already come, and so has Messiah. And so we see in Malachi, we see chapter three and chapter four.

I've put them together here in chapter three. Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. That's what John claims. He says, I'm a preparer of the way. We see in the Gospels.

And then verse chapter four, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And so we see that they were looking for Elijah. And some of the people that were following Jesus came to him and said, hey, wait a minute, you know, we thought Elijah was going to come first. And Jesus said, you're right. And in chapter 11 of Matthew, he says, for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.

And so Jesus identifies John the Baptist as the Elijah fulfillment. And so it's clear. He also says about John, he says, john is the greatest who's ever been born. Of woman until this time. But the least of these in the kingdom will be greater than John.

John is really the last Old Testament prophet. Now, you might say, well, he's in the New Testament, isn't he? He is, but he's really the last with the Old Testament anointing prior to the fall of the Holy Spirit and the creation of the church. And so he's the greatest prophet up until then. And so we've already got Genesis in verses 1 through 5, now 6 through 9.

We have the prophets. We have the greatest prophet. Did I tell you it was one book? One story? What a beautiful.

What a beautiful first chapter. John is getting ahold of everything back here, and he's saying it's all fulfilled in this hero of the story, Jesus. He's the sent word. And so we read Paul in the book of Galatians who says, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son. That idea of the fullness of time is the idea of a woman who's expecting that there's a place of fullness when the baby must come.

And there was a ticking clock in the fullness of time. And God only knew the time when it was time for his Son to be sent. And so he comes. And then when he comes, he doesn't come the way they were looking for him. The people are confused about it.

Even some of his disciples were confused. If you'll remember, in the book of Luke, chapter 24, after Jesus was crucified, after he was buried and raised from the grave, there were a couple disciples who didn't know. They hadn't got word yet that Jesus had been resurrected. And they're leaving Jerusalem. They're on a road called Emmaus.

I don't know where they're headed, but they are depressed. They're just like, oh, man, we thought he was the one. Now what are we going to do? It really seemed like he was the one. And I think Jesus really enjoyed this.

By the way, the resurrected Lord, he just pops up next to him. What are y' all talking about? I'm like, that had to be fun, you know? And they said, have you been living under a rock? You don't know about what happened to Jesus?

We thought he was the one. They crucified him. And he began, the scripture says, to explain to them from the law and the prophets how the Messiah had to suffer and die and be raised again. And the scripture says their heart started catching fire. And they were just.

And they said, please stop. Night's coming. Let's Go over here and get a meal. And he was like, I've really got to go. He's having so much fun with this.

You know, he is. And they please come. And he comes in and he breaks bread with them, and they still haven't recognized him. And they ask him to say the Baruch, the prayer over the bread. So he takes the bread and as he breaks, breaks it.

Baruch hata adonai elohim alach ha' alam hamasi lehim minha eretz amin. And as he does that, they go, it's the Lord. And then he's gone. And instead of checking into the hotel, they run back to Jerusalem to tell everybody. You know, we learn something about Jesus.

He's raised from the grave. He's the scent word. He's the sent word. And he tells them everything. Now we get it.

We get it was back there. We just missed Isaiah 53 that said he would suffer. We missed Psalm 22 that quoted verbatim what he would say from the cross. Eloi, eloi lama sabekthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

We didn't connect the dots, but he just did it. They're fired up. He's the sent word, you see, they had the scriptures, but they missed the Savior. And so do you. You know the stories.

You know about Jesus. Do you know Jesus?

And that leads us to the third revelation of this hero, the great hero of God's story. And it reveals him as a saving word, as the saving word. Verses 10 through 13.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him. He's in the world that he made. He's crucified on the tree that he created by the people he made. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him. Yet the world didn't know him.

The world didn't recognize the One who made them. Worse than that, though. This is worse than that. He came to his own, to his own chosen people, his own people. To the Jewish people who had the book.

They had the first 39 books. They had the book that told all about him, and they missed it. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right, the authority, the right to be adopted into his family. This Word is powerful.

This word, the right. It's the Word has the idea of the privilege to call God Father and to be adopted into his family because you've received and believed in Jesus the Son. This is The Savior. His word. His name means salvation.

He's the saving word. As we.

These pages sometimes just stick together, y', all, as we consider this. It reminds me of a story in the Book of Acts, Chapter 3, Book of Acts. The church is founded. Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father. Peter and John, they're preaching, and it's time for the time of prayer in the Jewish temple.

And they go up and they get ready to enter through one of their favorite gates. It's the gate called Beautiful. They're about to go up, and there's a man there, a lame man, lame since birth, who's collecting money, alms for the poor. It's his job. His parents probably drop him off every day since he's been grown because he can't work.

He's lame. He's not able to walk. And Peter makes a mistake. He makes a mistake, and you know it's a mistake because he looked straight at him, and we all know don't look at somebody when they're asking for money. We know that, right?

Yeah, we know. Don't look at him. Because if you look at him, I'm kidding, right? Peter looked right at him. He said, silver and gold have I none.

But what I have, I give to thee. Rise up and walk. And here's a man that never had to learn to walk. A lot of us got a lot of bruises from how, you know, learning how to walk. This man jumped up and started dancing, leaping in the air and chased after Peter and John as they went in and.

And started here. Listen to these two guys. They told me I could walk in the name of Jesus. And, boy, it created a crowd. Before you know it, the temple guards are trying to figure out what the ruckus is all about.

And they report to the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, which is the political leadership of the Jews, have them arrested and thrown in jail overnight. Then the next morning, Peter and John appear before them, and they say, we thought we told you guys to stop talking about Jesus. And what name did you use? You begin talking about Jesus.

How did this man get healed? And. And you'll see in your notes how Peter responds. Let it be known to you all and to all the people of Israel by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead by him. This man stands here before you whole.

This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone. Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And here Peter is quoting the Psalms. So we had the book of Genesis, we had the prophets. Now we got the Psalms.

Psalm 118, verse 22. The stone which was rejected by you builders speaking of Jesus, and he's saying you rejected him. But his name is a saving word. Even his name, Yeshua, Jesus, means God's salvation. His name is a saving word.

And there's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. That's the third revelation that we see. And now we come to the fourth and final one. And that is Jesus is revealed as the supreme Word. He's the final word, the ultimate word, the last word.

No other revelation needs to be said. He's the fullest expression. You want to know what God's character looks like? You want to see God? Look at Jesus.

He is. In him is the fullness of God. And so we look at verses 14 through 18. Now these final verses, and we see this exclamation. And the Word became flesh.

This is the incarnation. There never was a time when Christ was not. But there was a point in time when the author wrote himself into the story and became one of us. Never was a time when Christ was not. But there was a time when Jesus, the man, the man, the human, 100% human, 100% divine, a little over 2,000 years ago, came into this world.

Cyrus told them to go up. They couldn't get it done. So he came down. The Word became flesh and dwelt. The word here in the Greek, you'll miss it in English.

Dwelt literally has the idea to pitch a tent or to tabernacle. The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The temple they built held no glory. But the glory of God came and he tabernacled among us. And Peter says he became the cornerstone.

And he not only became the cornerstone, but the apostles and the prophets, the foundation. And we as believers become living stones in this new temple which is called the Church. We are his body and he is the head. He's the supreme word. Then we have that.

He's the one that shows us this glory. And here we see in verse 14 that John the Beloved, the author here by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not John the Baptist, but John the Beloved, who's writing this. We see him in the Word, we. And we have seen because he saw him. We've seen his glory.

He was upon the Mount of Transfiguration when he saw him revealed. He saw the risen Jesus he saw his glory. Now, glory is hard to define. We know it when we see it, though. When we see a beautiful sunset, we go, that's glorious.

When we see a newborn in the arms of, of a new mama, we go, that's glorious. We look at a scene with mountains or of a beach and we go, wow, that's glorious. And so it's kind of like beauty or majesty. You can't find it in a laboratory. You can't really scientifically define it, but you know it when you see it.

We've seen his glory as of the only Son, literally the. The only begotten. Begotten, not created. There never was a time when Christ was not. He comes from the Father.

He's full of grace and truth. And then we have this little parenthetical comment, verse 15, John. Now we're not speaking of John the writer, the author. Now we're speaking again about John the Baptist. Okay, we're back to John the Baptist.

John bore witness about him, about Jesus, and he cried out, this was he of whom I said. And now this is a mouthful right here that John declares because it sounds a little bit like a sci fi episode. It sounds like some sort of strange time warp situation here, but let me help you with it if I can. He who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. He was after me, but he was before me.

Actually, this is what he says. Here's what John's referring to. He's related to Jesus. You remember, He's a son of Zechariah the priest and Elizabeth in their old age. And it was a sign given to Mary when she conceived.

Hey, here's a sign Gabriel gave, gave her. Your relative Elizabeth is six months along. And then that's John the Baptist. And so you see, cousins keep up with stuff like this. I'm six months older than you.

And so John is saying what he's saying. He's saying this like I'm before him. He who comes after me ranks. You know, he comes after me, so I'm six months older. So he comes after me.

But actually he ranks higher than me because really he came long before me. He came in the beginning because he's God. Now does that make sense? It makes sense to me now. Still kind of hard to get a hold of.

From his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. And now we've got the law. Verse 17. John's trying to grab everything back here and put it all inside of Jesus because that's where it belongs.

And he says the Law was given through Moses. But I'll tell you what. Grace and truth came through Jesus. He's superior to the law. He's the supreme word, the last word, the final word.

Grace and truth are in him. The law was a tutor, a servant, to direct us to see how sinful we are so that we would recognize that we need a savior. He is the Savior. And then we have this closing statement. No one has ever seen God.

Somebody like I thought Moses saw him. Yeah, well, if you go back there and look at that closely again. God hid him in the cleft of a rock and allowed him to see the backside of his glory. And then he came down the mountain and his face glowed so much that the people couldn't look upon him because the glory of God was still reflected on his face. That's where the hymn writer writes that beautiful hymn, right?

Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Let Me Hide Myself in Thee. Talking about that rock, that cleft, where Moses was hidden by God. And he said, let me see your glory. I just want to see your glory. He said, well, you can't see my glory and live, but I'll let you see part of it.

But there comes a day when we'll see him face to face. Because of Jesus. No one's ever seen God, but the only God. Verse 18. The only begotten, the only Son who was at the Father's side.

He's made him known. You want to know God? Know Jesus. You want to know about God? No.

Know about Jesus. You want to be in a relationship with God, get in a relationship with Jesus. Call on him as your Lord and Savior. Paul writes in the Book of Hebrews. I say it's Paul.

We're not sure who wrote the Book of Hebrews other than the Holy Spirit. We know the Holy Spirit wrote it. It's either Paul or. I'm also a proponent of the possibility of Luke being the human author. I'm not sure which, but I know this.

Here's what the author says. In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by His Son. The Son is the radiance of God's glory in the exact radiance representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. The name he has inherited is superior to their names.

So here he is. He's the last Word we heard from the prophets. We heard from the ancestors. But in these last days, we've heard from the final Word, the supreme Word, the Last word, the ultimate word, and that's Jesus. It reminds me of a story from 1961.

The Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, he was the first human in outer space. First, first human to orbit the earth. And a famous quote was attributed to this atheist cosmonaut. He says, I looked and looked, but I did not see God in outer space. I didn't see God in the heavens.

CS Lewis, who was still alive during this time, famously responded. He argued that looking for God in space is like Hamlet looking for Shakespeare in the attic of his castle. He said, shakespeare isn't a character in Hamlet's story. He is the author who created both the castle and Hamlet himself. Hamlet will never find Shakespeare by exploring the stage.

The only way Shakespeare could ever. Excuse me. The only way Hamlet could ever meet Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes himself into the play and church. That's exactly what John is telling us. No one's ever seen God.

You can walk all over life stage, and you'll never find him through your own human effort. But if you look to Jesus, he's already been written into the story. The author has already written the hero into the story. If you want to know God, you must know Jesus. Today we've seen that Jesus is sovereign.

He's sent. He's the saving word, and he's the Supreme Word. Last week we ended with Let him go up. The people were called to go up to rebuild the temple to seek God. But we see that they were unable to seek God and find God on their own effort.

But God has come down in the person of Jesus. We saw on Palm Sunday that the people cried out, hosanna. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. But they were a confused crowd. They welcomed him as king.

And by the end of the week, another crowd said, crucify Him. I guess the most important question for us today is found in verse 12 of our reading today. But to all who did receive him, to them who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Have you ever made that decision? The King has come.

The Word has spoken. The glory has returned. The author of the story has stepped onto the stage. Will you let him write you into his book, his book of life, into his story? Let's pray.

Lord, thank youk for Jesus. We've been preaching and studying for eight weeks. And finally, in this ninth episode, we see him revealed in full glory. And I pray for that person that's here today. And you've never recognized Jesus.

He made you for Himself, and you've never received Him. You've never believed in his name. He made you for himself.

Would you do that today, right where you're at, right in your seat? Prayer's just talking to God. Would you talk to the Father right now and pray with me? Pray like this. Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner, but I believe you died on the cross for my sin.

I believe that you were raised from the grave and that you live today. I believe that today I humble myself and I ask you to come into my life and forgive me and adopt me into your family. I want to be a child of God. I recognize you as my Savior and Lord, and I want to follow you all the days of my life. If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing the Bible says if you confess him with your mouth that he is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved right where you are right now.

Just pray. Lord, thank you for saving me. I want to follow you now. Help me to grow in following you. Others are here, and you're praying for someone that you've invited to church, and they haven't come yet.

I just want to pray with you right now. We've got this whole thing of cards in front of us that we've been writing names down for people, people that we're inviting this week. So, Lord, I pray for these names. I pray, Lord, that you would move their hearts to come to church and to hear the gospel. I pray for us as people who are talking about Jesus, that you'd give us clarity of thought and clarity of voice to talk to people about Jesus.

And we pray that many would come to Christ not just in our church, but in all the churches in Wilson County, Nash County, Edgecombe county, where our two campuses are preaching. But, Lord, recognizing that we want to see the gospel saturate our whole Judea, Lord, we pray it now in Jesus name, Amen.