John 1:1-18
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of God’s Word to the Gospel of John. Our reading
again this week and for one more week after, as well as Christmas
Eve, will be the first 18 verses. Today, we’ll look at the Word
made flesh in verses 14 through 18. On Christmas Eve, we’ll consider
the last statement. No one has seen the Father, but
Christ in his person has revealed him. And then next week, as we
look for a new year, a brighter new year, we’ll look at Jesus
as the light and life to all men. So let’s now give our attention
to the reading of God’s word. John chapter one, beginning 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 that came to bear witness about the
light. The true light, which enlightens 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. And 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. Amen. The word of the living
God, pray with me. Lord, let this word today be
a light to our feet, a lamp to our paths, so that as we receive
it, as we believe it, as our faith is strengthened and exercised,
We might live not as children of this world, but as children
of the light. Help us in Christ’s name we pray,
amen. You may be seated. I have a question for you, actually
several. The big question is this, where
is the temple? Where is the temple? Well, some
of you smart ones are asking, well, which temple? Is it Solomon’s
temple built in the 950s BC? Would it be Zerubbabel’s temple,
the second temple built after the exiles returned from Babylon,
built by Zerubbabel and company around the year 516 BC? Or, big
question, the Messianic temple, the temple yet to be built. Where is the temple? Where is
the temple? Whichever one, where is it? Well,
here’s the best answer, the simple answer. The temple is wherever
God’s glory exists. The temple is wherever God abides
with his people. Now, some of you doubters will
cast that doubt away in just a moment. Ask another question. have God’s temples been throughout
the history of his people? Bet you haven’t thought of this
before, but Eden, the garden of Eden was the first temple. It was where the glory of God,
it was where the presence of God abided with his people, beginning
with Adam and Eve. And then from that point forward,
we see Israel worshiping at altars. We see the people of God gathering
at the mountain of Sinai. They built a tabernacle, as we
just read. And then we remember David, who had built a palace
for himself, said, God, it’s not fair that I live in a palace
and you still dwell in a tent. Let me build a house for you.
And God said to David, you’ve got too much blood on your hands.
Your son Solomon will build the temple and build it. He did.
Jerusalem at the height of the kingdom of Israel under Solomon
was great. It was massive. And the temple
of almighty God at Jerusalem built by Solomon was splendid. We know that later, 400 so years
later, the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. About another
70 years later, 80 years later, it was rebuilt by the exiles. But I want you to think through
God’s history with his people very specifically for a moment. Where is the temple? The temple
is wherever God’s glory exists, wherever God abides with his
people. I want us to think as we ease
up on John 1 and 14, we’re not going to get to it to the very
end. And I think you’ll see again, the method to the madness after
a few moments, but I want us to think about the presence of
God on earth. what it means, and before sin,
what God intended for it to be. Think about Adam and Eve for
a moment. Go back to the beginning of the Bible, the book of Genesis.
Adam and Eve were made by God, and he put them in a garden.
He put them in that garden to work, to keep, to make it fruitful,
to multiply, and their job, this is something I bet you haven’t
thought too much of, Their job was to extend the borders of
Eden until the whole earth was full of the beauty of the garden
and the presence and the glory of Almighty God. Now we all know
what happened along the way. We know that Adam and Eve were
tempted by Satan, that they fell into temptation. They sinned
against God by eating the forbidden fruit. And we know that as soon
as that happened, their eyes were open, they saw their nakedness,
they saw their shame, they attempted to cover it, they hid from God,
they fled from His presence, and we have the first exile.
We have the first exile, the first banishment where God had
put His people in a favorable, wonderful, blessed condition,
and their sinfulness, their unfaithfulness lost it. and caused them not
to live in the garden of paradise with the presence of God always
there, but they were sent out from the garden into the jungle. And as we know from the story
of Adam and Eve, sin began to escalate. Their own son, Cain,
killed their other son, Abel, and that over worship. that over
religion. And from Cain who killed Abel
came Enoch and Lamech. And we read of Lamech’s bragging
in his ostentatious attitude in the book of Genesis. He says,
if revenge is on Cain sevenfold than Lamech, big bad Lamech. You hurt me, it’s gonna be 70
fold. And not only would you see the
escalation of sin and violence, we see it in polygamy and we
see the mixture of the sons of God and the daughters of men. We see wickedness, wickedness,
wickedness until we get to Noah. Now back up from Noah for just
a moment. In God’s grace, after Cain killed
Abel, Adam and Eve had another little one named Seth. And from
Seth came Enosh, and from Enosh came a handful of generations
until you land at Noah. And Noah was living a righteous
life in the midst of Lamech. whose revenge was 70 fold. You touch me, I’ll touch you
and avenge 70 fold. And so the people of God were
living outside the garden. They were living in the jungle.
Well, much like we just paused and prayed for a few moments
ago in our pastoral prayer. We’re a A God-fearing people
living in a dark world. We need God’s help. We need God’s
grace. That’s exactly the way life was for Seth and Enos and
Noah. Well, we know the story of Noah.
God spared his family in the ark. They lasted a year in the
ark. They were spared from the flood.
They got out. And where did God put his presence? Well, they built an altar. and
they worshiped God. And so we see God’s temple moving
from the garden, moving to the altars of the patriarchs. And
you had Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. And from Shem,
if you read those, oh, what do we say? Those boring genealogies.
Those of you who are gonna start reading through the Bible again
in January, you get to Genesis and you read about all these
names that you can’t pronounce. They’re important because who
came from Shem? Eber. And who was Eber? He was
the father of the Hebrews. And who came a couple generations
after Eber? Abram. And who was Abram? The
father of our faith. And so we began to read that
God dwelled with his people in the garden. He dwelled with his
people at the altars where they worshiped him. And then we read
of Abraham. We read of Isaac. We read of
Jacob. We read of Joseph. We read of
Israel growing into a great nation in Egypt. They leave Egypt and
go into the wilderness. And that’s where we landed a
few moments ago when we read Exodus 25. God wanted to dwell
in the midst of their camp. And so what did he ask them to
build right in the center of the assembled 12 tribes, but
a tabernacle? a temple, if you were, a place
for his presence and his glory to dwell in the midst of his
people. And the history of Israel goes
on. They enter the promised land. They take the tabernacle with
them. And we just mentioned a moment
ago, David desires to build God a permanent house, but it’s his
son Solomon who builds the grand temple, no more tabernacle. And
for nearly a millennia through, Solomon’s temple through Zerubbabel’s
second temple rebuilt after the destruction. We read of the worship
of the living God through the temple, through the priests,
through the Levites, through the sacrifices, through the rituals,
through the offerings, the incense, the showbread, all the workings
of the temple we read of. And that’s where God dwelled
in the midst of his people. We also read in the scripture
that though God dwelled with his people in Eden, though he
dwelled with them at their altars and he lived amongst the camp
of the saints in the tabernacle and even made his glory known
on the grand mountain of Jerusalem, his people were still unfaithful.
They were sinners. And over and over we see God
putting his people out of his presence, not just Adam and Eve
from the garden, not just his people from the promised land,
but we see the great cataclysmic moment in the sixth century when
God promises through the prophets, Israel, if you continue in your
apostasy, if you continue in your idolatry, you continue in
your injustice, your unfaithfulness, not heeding my word, I will cast
you out of the promised land. The temple will be destroyed
and my presence will depart. And that’s exactly what happened
in the year 586 when Babylon came. They laid Jerusalem and
the temple to waste. The people of God were hauled
off into Babylon. and they were living in exile
out of God’s presence, out of the presence of his glory. But there’s always hope, isn’t
there, in the gospel. There’s always hope in the Christian
life. God was specially present in Babylon with the remnant of
his people, and he moved in their hearts for them to return to
the promised land. He moved in their hearts for
them to return and take the treasures of the nations back to the promised
land and to rebuild Jerusalem, its walls, and its city. Now stop for just a moment. Some
of you are thinking, this is a lot of history, a lot of Bible,
a lot of old Testament. And, and yes, it is. And jump
to today. How does God deal with his church? Maybe in a similar way as he
did with his people, Israel and the old covenant. Well, we read
in the book of Revelation, We read Jesus in the seven letters
to the seven churches. And we read that Jesus walks
among the lampstands. He walks among his churches.
He walks among his congregations. And should they be faithful,
their lampstands are bright. Should they be unfaithful, he
threatens to remove their lampstands because they are not a faithful
witness to almighty God. But one of the things that we
read of in the Old Testament is God’s people returned from
exile. They returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple. We read
of an account in Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah. We read
of an account where as they are laying the foundations for a
new temple, there were old men in the church work day, as it
were. And there were old men who were
old enough to remember 70, 80 years ago, when Solomon’s temple
was still standing and they looked at the foundations of this new
temple and they wept. And they said, this little building
does not reflect the splendor and the glory of Solomon’s temple. And what did the prophets say?
They said, do not despise the day of small things. And then
we begin to see a series of prophecies through Haggai, through Zechariah
and through others who said, God, when he rebuilds his temple,
and he was not talking about the bricks and mortar one that
they were building at the time, when God rebuilds his temple,
it will be beyond all glory, beyond all splendor, beyond all
imagination. And so these exiles began to
catch a glimpse of what we now see today. the true temple of
Almighty God. Their return, their rebuilding,
it was small, it was slow, and they were spiritually lazy. But they were told by the prophets,
something greater is going to be built by Almighty God. A greater
temple, an end times temple, the Messiah’s temple. but it
won’t be bricks and mortar. It won’t be stone upon stone.
It won’t be hewn out of the rocks of the Middle East, but something
greater is coming. Again, let me ask you the question,
where is the temple? The temple is wherever God’s
glory exists. It’s where God dwells amongst
his people. And so we come to John chapter
one, particularly verse 14 today, and it says of Jesus, and the
word became flesh and dwelt among us. It literally says the word
became flesh and tabernacled among us. He tempted among us. Where was the presence of God?
Where was the temple of God? It came into a manger in Bethlehem. It grew into a little boy. It
grew into a grown man. He became the four of the eyes
of the people. As John says, the word became
flesh and dwelt among us. And we, John, the apostles, we
have beheld his glory. Glory as of the only son from
the father. Jesus is the temple. Jesus is
not the Solomon temple built by bricks and stones. He’s not
the second temple of Jerusalem. He is the messianic temple. And
how do we know this to be true? Some of you are scratching your
heads, wondering about all of these things. Well, we see, we
see in the old Testament, we see in the new Testament predictions
of a greater priest, a greater prophet, a greater King, but
we also see predictions of a stone. A stone rejected by the builders. They picked up the stone, which
was Christ, and they rejected it and cast it aside. They kept
building their man-made religion. And the word of God says Jesus
is the rejected stone, the cornerstone. And from Jesus, that rejected
cornerstone is the first building block of a bunch of stones. In fact, Peter, what does he
call us? He calls us living stones. And so we will not see a temple
made with human hands. We will not see a temple built
on the Mount of Jerusalem in the Messianic age. You, each
of you by faith in Jesus is a living stone. And you were laid stone
upon stone upon Christ, the rejected cornerstone, but beautiful in
the eyes of his father. And God himself by his word and
by his spirit is building his temple in each of us. You remember in the book of Corinthians
when the apostle Paul is, well, he’s taking to task the Corinthian
church for all of their mess, all of their wickedness. There’s
a lot of immorality and immorality, he says, of the kind which would
even make the pagans blush. That was in the church. And he
says, do you not realize that your bodies are temples of the
Holy Spirit? Where is the temple? Is it on
a hill in Jerusalem? Is it in a lost garden called
Eden? Is it at a place called Bethel
in the land of Israel? Well, that’s where temples were.
But the temple is where God dwells and His glory is presented in
the midst of His people. And now in this present age,
through Christ, through his life, his obedience, his death, his
resurrection, and his ascension, he is the cornerstone, the stone
once rejected by builders, but precious in the sight of God.
And we, by faith, are living stones, stacked and built and
hewn into the living church, the temple of God, the Holy Spirit. So where is the temple? The temple
is in our midst. God is in our midst. We are the
temple of almighty God. This passage not only tells us
that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, but verse 16
says, from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. We have received grace upon grace.
I think I mentioned this week in the newsletter, something
of the idea, What else could happen? It just
keeps coming. You know, bad things happen. I think I mentioned to
y’all, the sink went out in the laundry room and the sink went
out in the kitchen. And I kind of put my hands on my hips and
discussed what else bad could happen. It just keeps coming.
Right? And we use that phrase for negative
things. Bad things just keep happening.
Flat tires, you know, sinks clogging, whatever. But don’t we need to
think of God’s blessings in our lives. The grace upon grace upon
grace upon grace. Some of you will eat out from
time to time. If you’re like me, you keep a
waitress busy. I drink a lot, especially, you
know, once I paid $2.50 for that thing, I want to get my $2.50’s
worth. So they got to keep me refilled. And if you’ve got a
good waiter, waitress, they’re going to keep the cup full. As
soon as you take a sip, it’s back full again. But you get
a dud of a waiter. You know, your cup’s empty and
you have to look around with a look of disdain, you know, make sure
they see that they’re sitting down on the job, but not Jesus.
Not God Almighty, grace upon grace upon grace, your cup, as
the Psalmist says in Psalm 23, it runs over. And why does that
take place? Why do we pray in the Lord’s
Prayer, for example, give us this day our daily bread? I think one of the things that
we have to see in a passage like this and gaining a perspective
like we ought to have of who Christ is, what he’s come in
the world to do, and our part in his mission is that when we
pray for daily bread, it’s not that so we won’t run out of Cheerios. I mean, that would be a tough
thing not to have food, but we pray for daily bread attached
to all the other prayers. Our Father in heaven, hallowed
be your name, your kingdom come. Why don’t we pray for Cheerios?
So that we can eat and we can pray And we can worship and we
can grow and we can serve and we can bear witness. So every
time you eat a bite of your Cheerios or your Wheaties or whatever
it is you eat, your oatmeal, and you’ve prayed, God, give
me this day, my daily cereal, my daily lunch, my daily breakfast. It’s not just so that your tummy
won’t ache. It’s so that his kingdom will come through your
labors. It’s so that his will will be done through his word
and spirit. It’s so that the name of Jesus
will be made known to the ends of the earth. Where is the temple
of God? Well, it’s right here. God is
in our midst. He dwells in our hearts and in
each of our lives. But friends, this isn’t the end.
This isn’t the end of the temple for we go to the book of Revelation
and we read in the last chapters, chapters 21 and 22, we read of
Eden restored. Remember God’s original intention
for the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were put there to
work. to make it productive, to keep it, to protect it from
slithering, lying, deceiving snakes. Their job was to be fruitful
and multiply and have children. And so that the whole earth and
that wonderful garden would extend to the ends of the earth. So
the glory of God would fill the whole place. And that was stopped
by sin. But Jesus has come to make all
things new. And as he builds us into his
church, his living stones into his grand temple, we realize
there is yet one more temple. And the book of Revelation in
chapter 21 and 22 says that in the new heavens and the new earth,
the new Jerusalem will come down and the new heavens and the new
earth will be filled with the glory of God. And at the center
of that garden, at the center of creation, there will be the
glory and the presence of God. and the sun will light up the
universe. There will be no sun, no darkness,
and no night. And so when we come to a little
passage like John 1, we say, oh, we heard it last year. Oh,
we’ll hear it again next year. I hope that when you read the
little phrase, and the word became flesh, and dwelt among us will
reach deeper into your hearts and minds when you realize all
of the obstacles, all of the sin, all of the exile and banishment
and all of the warfare of Satan to keep this from coming true. What a blessing we have that
God himself in the person and in the work of Jesus has come
into our midst. It’s not just something we should
wonder at. There’s a mission for you. When you go out these
doors, it’s a dark world. When you go outside these doors,
this culture hates Jesus. This culture hates truth. This
culture hates life. How will they see the goodness
of God in Christ if you, as a tabernacle of almighty God, aren’t living
faithfully spirit-driven lives for him. So there’s something
to think about. Does your life, by faith in Jesus,
reflect the presence of God as you go into this world? That’s
not a mystical question, that’s a real question. God uses you
to make his light known to the ends of the earth. Let’s pause
and pray together. Our Lord, we give you thanks. for these wonderful truths that
remind us that no matter how much we sin, how much we fall,
how much we stumble, how much we raise our fist in your face,
how much we desire idolatry over true worship, how much we desire
apostasy over faithful living, you keep coming, you keep making
yourself known, you keep making a way through your son, the Lord
Jesus, for the dwelling place of God to be with your people. And we bless you this day for
this truth. And we pray that as we go outside
these doors, that our witness and our words would be effective
to tell others of this great truth, which can save our world. Hear us and help us. And we make
our prayer in the name of Christ. Amen.