In the book of John, first chapter, verses
14 to 18, inclusive.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, full of grace and truth.
And we beheld his glory, the glory as
of the only begotten of the Father.
John bare witness of him, and cried, saying,
This is he of whom I speak.
He that cometh after me is in time,
is preferred before me that is in honor,
for he was before me that is in
rank.
And of his fulness have all we received,
out of his fulness have all we received,
grace following grace.
For the law was given by Moses, but
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No man hath seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, which is in the
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
I remember years ago, I think I mentioned
this before, reading somewhere a great literary critic
comparing two men, Milton and Shakespeare.
He said that Milton was great, but unquestionably
Shakespeare was greater.
He said that Milton had imagination enough to
select for his great work a theme as
vast as Paradise Lost and Regained, which gave
him full sweep from the dim dawn of
empty nothingness through to the triumph of Christ
after his resurrection.
And Milton says, when he starts out, that
he is going to soar above the Aeolian
mount and justify the ways of God to
men.
Now, said the critic, Milton boldly declares that
he is going to soar high and do
amazing things.
Then, says he, he astonishes us by doing
exactly what he set out to do.
What he said further, so much mightier and
so much more brilliant, was the imagination of
the man Shakespeare that he limited himself deliberately
to small subjects in short sections of history.
He said, if he had attempted anything as
vast as Milton, that is, the sweep of
time from timeless yesterday to timeless tomorrow, as
Milton did, he would have died of plethora
of thought.
He'd have had a brain hemorrhage.
It would have been too big for him,
because the vastness of it would have called
so much out of the man that he'd
have exploded.
Now, that was one man's opinion.
It sounds pretty good, and I introduce it
here only because I feel, in selecting this
passage of scripture so completely inadequate, that if
I blow up even in a mild attempt
to expound what is buried here, you will
know that it's only a normal, because John,
this mighty man who was infinitely mightier than
even Shakespeare, takes us up into the Godhead,
where no Milton could go, and certainly no
secular Shakespeare could ever go, and introduces us
to spheres and circles of deity so high
and lofty and noble that, if we follow
him, we'll certainly die in the attempt.
But all we can hope to do is
to toddle along on our short legs and
gaze heavenward like a goose that's had her
wings clipped and whose heart is in the
skies, but whose wings just won't take us
there.
Now, I've said all this because my best
faith, my loftiest expectations, could not possibly allow
me to believe that I can do justice
to a text that begins, And the word
was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and
ends, No man has seen God at any
time.
The only begotten Son, which is in the
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
We will do this, then, tonight.
We will walk along the broad seashore of
God and pick up a shell here and
there, and hold it up to the light
and admire its beauty, and then turn away
and say we've only picked up a shell
again, and have a pocketful of shells maybe
to take with us.
But on all sides there stretches the vastness
of the seashore round the great lip of
the ocean, and there is far beyond anything
that we can ever hope to see yet
buried here.
Now, we notice, first of all, that he
says the word became flesh, or the word
was made flesh.
And I would point out that we have
here, stated in four words, one of the
darkest mysteries of human thought.
How the deity could cross the wide yawning
gulf that separates what is God from what
is not God.
For in the universe there are really only
two things, God and not God.
That which is God and that which is
not God.
And all that is not God was made
by God, and God was made by none.
So we have God and not God.
And the gulf that separates between God and
not God, that is between the creator and
the creature, between the being we call God
and all other beings, is, I say, a
great and vast and yawning gulf.
And how God could bridge this, how he
could do this, I say, constitutes one of
the profoundest and darkest mysteries that human thought
can ever give itself to.
And how God could join the creator to
the creature.
If you have never thought very much about
this, it may not seem so amazing.
But if you have given it a little
thought, you will see how astonishing it is
that that unbridgeable gulf between God and not
God.
For the very archangels and the seraphim and
the cherub that shield the stones of fire
are not God.
So that there is a gulf fixed, a
vast gulf, and a gulf of infinitude.
And how God managed to bridge that, and
how he could join himself to his creatures,
and how he could limit the limitless.
Or in the language we hear more popularly,
how the finite, the infinite, could ever become
the finite.
And how that which had no limit, which
is God, should deliberately impose upon himself limitations.
And how God and why God would favor
one order of being above another.
For if you read your Bible, you will
discover that man is not the only order
of being.
Man, in his sinful pride, thinks he is.
We don't even believe in angels anymore.
We think angels are simply sandy closets with
wings.
And Protestants don't believe in angels anymore.
Foolishly they don't believe in angels.
Nor we don't believe in cherubim, nor seraphim,
nor creatures, nor watchers, nor holy ones, nor
any of these strange principalities and powers that
walk so darkly and brightly through the passages
of the Bible.
We don't believe them as much as we
should at any rate.
And yet they're there, and mankind is only
one order of God being, of creatures.
And how, God and why, God should favor
one above the other.
For it's written in the book of Hebrews
that God took not upon him the nature
of angels, but he took upon him the
seed of Abraham.
Abraham certainly was not equal to an angel.
One would suppose that God, in stepping down
should step down as little as he dared,
or could, that he would stop with an
angel or a seraphim, but instead he came
down to the lowest order and took upon
himself the nature of Abraham, the seed of
Abraham.
Paul throws up his hands, even that man
Paul, who was declared to be one of
the six greatest intellects of all time, that
great man of God threw up his hands
and said, Great is the mystery of godliness.
God manifests in the flesh.
And I don't know, but what this is
the most becoming approach to the whole subject,
is to throw up our hands and say,
O Lord, God thou knowest, for there are
so many more things in heaven and earth
that are known in our theology, so that
it's all a mystery.
And I would quote Wesley here, at least
the gist of what he said, when I
pointed out that it's a dark mystery how
God could stoop down and become man and
bridge the yawning gulf and join himself and
limit to flesh and limit the limitless.
Wesley said, Distinguish the act from the method
by which the act is performed and do
not reject the fact because you do not
know how it was done.
I think that's very wise and we would
come, it would be very becoming to us
if we should enter the presence of God
reverently bowing our heads and singing these carols
and saying that it's so, God, but we
don't know how.
We will not reject the fact because we
do not know the operation by which it
was brought to pass.
Now, this much we can know at least.
We can know that the incarnation required no
compromise of deity.
Let us remember it, that when God became
incarnate, there was no compromise there.
The gods of the Roman pantheon, the gods
of Greece and the gods of the Scandinavian
regions were gods that would compromise themselves.
The old Valhalla was full of gods that
were compromisers.
And the Elysian fields and the pantheon and
all that, wherever the gods were, they always
were gods who had compromised themselves one way
or another.
But the Holy God, who is God and
all else not God, that God, our Father
who art in heaven, could never compromise himself.
So that the incarnation was wrought and accomplished.
This deep, dark, yawning mystery of incarnation was
accomplished without any compromise of the deity.
God did not degrade himself by this condescension.
He did not, in any sense, make himself
to be less than God.
He remained not God, or God, and everything
else remained not God.
The gods still existed, even after Jesus Christ
had become man and had dwelt among us.
So that instead of God degrading himself when
he became man, he, by the act of
incarnation, elevated mankind to himself.
He did not degrade himself to mankind.
That's pointed out in one of the old
creeds, the Athanasian Creed, pointed out very carefully.
The old church fathers were very cautious here,
and they would not allow us to believe
that God, when he became flesh, became flesh
by a coming down of the deity into
flesh, but by a taking up of mankind
into God.
And thus, we do not degrade God, but
we elevate man, and that is the wonder
of redemption.
Now, we can know this again, that this
unison or union with man and God is
effected under perpetuity.
God can never back out of his bargain.
God can never cease to be, in that
sense, man.
The second person of the Trinity can never,
what should we say, un-incarnate himself or
de-incarnate himself.
He became incarnated forever, and the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us.
Now, at first, God dwelt with man.
I like to dream over the past.
There is a book written called Earth's Earliest
Ages.
I have never read that book.
I have looked through it, and I have
concluded that the man knows more about the
antediluvian days than Moses did.
And when I discover a man who knows
more than Moses on a subject on which
Moses is a specialist, then I shy away
from his book.
But I confess that those early ages have
a great fascination for me, and one of
the passages that greatly charms my heart is
that one that says that God came and
walked in the garden in the cool of
the day and looked for Adam, and Adam
wasn't there.
Without reading anything into it, I think it's
safe to assume that that had been a
common custom there, that that wasn't the first
time that God came to take a walk
with Adam.
In the cool of the day, in the
midst of birdsong and the fading light, God
and man walked together.
That was common.
It was to be because God made man
in his image and would not degrade himself
by communing with man.
He found Adam gone.
But there was God with man.
Originally, God dwelt with man.
And then when man sinned, God rejected him,
drove him out, and set up a flaming
sword that he might not return, sent him
away from his presence.
And after that, you will find through the
Bible that God never dwelt with man again.
Quite the same.
He dwelt in the Shekinah, hidden in the
fire and the cloud.
Occasionally he would appear in what theologians call
a theophany, an appearance of the deity.
And God would walk with a man briefly
or speak with a man as he did
with Abraham in the tent door or at
Gideon there in the threshing floor.
But never did he stay long, and always
was he veiled and cautious.
And even when he showed himself to Moses,
it was in the fire of the bush
or it was while Moses was hidden in
the cleft of the rock, and God allowed
only the hindered trailing parts of his garments
to be seen.
For sin had unfitted the eyes of man
to look upon the majesty of deity, so
that the God who once was with men
dwelt only intermittently with men.
And then suddenly he came, and the word
was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.
Now he is here again to dwell with
men in person.
And they call his name Emmanuel, which means
God with us.
So I want you to take three prepositions
here.
I'm not a prepositional preacher, I'll have you
know.
But occasionally a strong preposition will do for
us, even when it's the end of a
sentence.
What you can't get any other way.
Notice.
When he appeared as man, he appeared to
dwell with man in person, and to be
united to man, and then ultimately to dwell
in man forever.
So it's with man and to man and
in man that he came to dwell, to
dwell among us.
And says the Holy Ghost, we beheld his
glory.
Now it's right that we should inquire, what
was this glory which the man John said
we beheld, or they beheld?
We beheld his glory.
Or was it the glory of his works?
For Jesus was a worker.
And he was not only a worker, he
was a wonder worker.
Our Lord, from the first miracle at Cana
of Galilee, to that last miracle.
Wasn't that the last miracle I was trying
to recall tonight before I came downstairs?
I said to myself first that I would
say that last miracle was when he cursed
the fig tree, but it struck me he
performed at least one after that.
Maybe I'm wrong and have forgotten a more
recent one, but it seems to me the
last miracle our Lord performed was when he
undid that bit of impulsive ear cutting that
Peter had done when he took the sword
and whizzed it past the servant Malchus' ear
and cut it off.
Jesus grabbed it and put it back on
and said, that's no way to act.
Put up your sword.
But all the miracles that lie in between
were dramatic miracles, colorful, significant, whirlwind miracles in
some instances.
For our Lord was a wonder worker.
Every part of nature had to yield to
him.
He turned the water into wine, and men
have been arguing ever since whether it was
Welch's grape juice or wine with alcohol in
it.
It mattered little.
He turned water into wine, and the miracle
was that he could do it.
And when our Lord came to the sick,
he healed them.
When he came to the devil-possessed, he
commanded the devils to go out.
When our Lord stood up on the rocking
deck of a tiny boat, tossed by the
buoyancy of the waves and blown by the
fierceness of the winds, he spoke to the
water and he rebuked the wind, and there
was a great calm.
Everything our Lord did was wonderful.
The tenderness of a son when he gave
the widow back her boy when they were
on the way to the graveyard, the tenderness
of a brother when he gave back Jairus,
his little twelve-year-old daughter, handed her
with a smile back and said, Here she
is.
Sit up, daughter.
Time to go to school.
He used the simple language they say that
they used in those days to call children.
You called your child in the school time,
and Jesus used those words.
And with the tenderness of a brother, he
called his little sister up from her bed,
Sleep.
And all down through his ministry, what he
did was wonderful.
How tender and how kind when the woman
who was bleeding over twelve years received a
sudden deliverance, and with a word he staunched
the debilitating flow of blood.
And she went away with a shining face
to tell everybody that the hem of his
garment had healing power in it.
So the works of our Lord were always
dramatic works, always they were amazing works.
I wonder if John had it in mind
when he said, We beheld his glory, we
beheld him still the waves, we beheld him
cast out devils, we beheld him give sight
to eyes long blind, we beheld him as
you raise the dead.
I wonder, I think not, my friends.
I'd like to agree with you.
I hear sermons on the radio sometimes that
make the physical body everything, and works of
miracle everything, and I wish that I could
go along with such interpretation and say the
glory of Jesus Christ lay in his ability
to cast out devils, that the glory of
Jesus Christ lay in his ability to heal
the sick and raise the dead and still
the waves.
Undoubtedly that was wonderful, and he did get
some praise to himself from these necessary acts
of miracle.
But I believe that there was a greater
glory than merely works of wonder which our
Lord manifested there.
For always remember this, friends, that what a
man is, is always more important to God
than what he does.
Remember that if a man were able to
stand up and create pine trees and lakes
and hills and were not a good man,
he would still be of no value to
God.
And let us remember that if a man
were a good man, through and through a
good man, and had no power at all
to do any miracle, he would still be
one of the sweetest treasures of God, and
God would write his name on his own
hands.
For it is goodness that God is looking
for, it is being and character and personality
that God is looking for, not ability to
do amazing things.
So it was what Jesus was that was
glorious, not only what he did.
In fact, what he did was secondary, what
he was was primary.
So Jesus Christ's glory lay in the fact
that he was perfect love in a loveless
world, that he was purity in an impure
world, that he was meekness in a harsh
and quarrelsome world, that he evinced humility in
a world where every man was seeking his
own place, that he showed boundless, fathomless mercy
in a hard and cruel world, that he
evinced selfless goodness in a world full of
selfishness.
It was the deathless devotion of Jesus and
the patient suffering and the unquenchable life and
the grace and the truth that were in
Jesus that they beheld.
They beheld his glory, the glory as of
an only begotten Son from a Father full
of grace and truth.
And so it was this that made Jesus
wonderful.
As little as the world knows about it
today, in all their wild money-inspired and
profit-inspired celebrations, as little as the world
knows about it, even the poor blind world
is not celebrating turning water into wine.
They are not celebrating healing the sick nor
raising the dead.
They are not celebrating the cursing of fig
trees or the sticking on of cut-off
ears.
The poor blind world, with what little bit
of religious instinct it has left in it
yet, is this season celebrating what he was,
what he was.
And as we sing our songs, we read
of the editorials and scripts about him in
the magazines and papers.
Little is said about what he did, but
everything is said about what he was.
For the amazing thing was that it was
God walking among men.
Here was something other than man, and yet
man.
Here was something that was not man and
yet was man.
Here was God among men.
Here was a man acting like God in
the midst of sinful men.
And this was the wonder of it all.
And this was the glory that Alexander never
could hope to reach.
For Alexander, that wild boy, the son of
Philip, leaped, as Daniel would call him, like
a goat, and trampled the civilized world under
his feet and conquered it and wept because
there were no more worlds to conquer.
But Alexander never conquered himself.
And Alexander died a disappointed profligate and spoiled
baby, a genius on the field but a
baby in his own house.
And all together apart from his miracles, the
glory of Jesus Christ shines like the brightness
of the sun.
For what he was has astonished the world.
What he said has been amazing.
What he did was wonderful, but what he
was is the crown upon all the doing
and the saying.
So that we celebrate today a man who
was.
We celebrate today a God who became flesh.
We celebrate this season the miracle, the deep,
dark mystery of the miracle of that which
was not God, being taken up into God
and being enfleshed, so that we now have
Jesus Christ who is God and yet also
who is man.
It says, The man of God, here of
his fulness, have all we received in grace
for grace, out of his fulness have all
we received.
Now, what does that mean?
Does it mean that everybody is received of
all the fulness of Jesus Christ?
No, it can't mean that.
It means that Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son,
is the only medium through which God dispenses
his benefits to his creation.
And because Jesus is the Eternal Son, because
he is of the eternal generation and equal
with the Father as pertaining to his substance,
his eternity, his love, his power, his grace,
his goodness and all of the attributes of
deity, he is the channel, he is the
medium through which God dispenses all his blessings
of his fulness, of all we receive out
of his fulness.
Ask the row that goes down to the
edge of the lake and drinks, have you
received of the fulness of the lake?
And the row might answer yes and no.
I am full from the lake, but I
have not received of the fulness of the
lake.
I did not drink the lake, I only
drank what I could hold of the lake.
And so of his fulness, out of the
fulness of God, he has given us, through
Jesus Christ, grace upon grace, so that the
only medium through which God does anything is
his Son.
Whether he created or whether he is creating,
it is all through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If he speaks, it is through the Eternal
Word.
If he reveals himself, it is because he
who was in the bosom of the Father
has revealed him.
If he provides, it is through the medium
of Jesus Christ.
If he sustains, it is because it can
be said that he upholds all things by
the word of his power, and in him
all things consist.
Alexander Patterson wrote a great book that is
now, I think, out of print, unless Moody's
have brought it out recently.
I think I heard they did, called The
Greater Life and Work of Christ.
My old brother Gillespie gave me a copy
of it years ago, and I still have
it.
And in it, this great Baptist preacher attempts
to go back to the basic foundations of
things and show just what I am giving
you now, that Jesus Christ is more than
simply the redeemer of man.
He is the sustainer, the creator, the upholder,
the holder together, the adhesive quality of the
universe, the medium through which God dispenses grace
to all his creatures, those that will be
redeemed and those who do not need to
be redeemed.
For there are orders upon orders and ranks
upon ranks of creatures that do not need
to be redeemed, and yet they live by
grace as well as the lowest sinner who
is converted.
Grace must operate wherever that which is not
God appeals to that which is God.
Wherever the voice of the creature crosses the
vast gulf to the ears of the Creator,
grace must operate.
We have limited grace.
To John 3.16, we must forget that
everything God does is out of grace, of
his fullness.
How do the angels get their broad wings?
Out of his grace.
How did that covering cherub who had built
into him pipe organs and who was wiser
than the sons of men, how did he
get his wisdom and his beauty?
Grace out of grace.
How do the principalities and powers and mights
and dominions and the ranks and the files
and the columns of shining creatures that are
marked through the pages of the Bible, how
do they get what they have?
Grace upon grace.
Everything God does is by grace, for no
man, no creature, no being deserves anything.
Salvation is by grace, but creation is by
grace.
And all that God does is out of
grace, let's remember.
And every human being has received of his
fullness.
What have you received?
Even though you may not be saved tonight,
you have yet received out of the ocean
of his fullness.
What life, for instance?
You have received the light that beats in
your bosom.
You have received the brilliant mind that lies
inside your head under the protective covering of
your skull.
You have received a memory that strings the
events that you love as a jeweler strings
pearls around a necklace, and keeps them for
you as long as you live and beyond.
And all that you have is out of
his grace, so that Jesus Christ, the Eternal
Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us,
is the open channel through which God moves
to give all of the benefits that he
gives to saints and sinners, and all the
continued existence that may yet be yours.
Don't think you've earned it.
Don't imagine it's because you're good or not
so bad.
Remember, it's out of grace.
And the whole universe is God's beneficiary.
The whole universe joins to give praise to
the Lamb who was slain.
And under the earth and on the earth
and above the earth, John heard preachers praising
Jesus Christ, and all joined to say, Worthy
is the Lamb, for all things were made
by him and for him they are created,
and are made and were made.
So that the whole universe is a beneficiary
of Christ.
And when we present Christ to men as
Lord and Savior, let us remember that they
have already been beneficiaries, and we're only presenting
Christ in the new office.
When we go to a man and say,
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we're only
saying, Believe on the one who sustains you
and upholds you and has given you life
and pities you and spares you and keeps
you.
Believe on the one out of whom you
came, for apart from Jesus Christ, God never
did anything.
Stars in their courses, the frogs that croaked
beside the lake, angels in heaven above, man
on earth below, all came out of the
channel that we call the eternal work.
All of this fullness we have received, or
we have received out of this fullness.
We only present Jesus as Lord and Savior.
I said some time ago, I don't remember
where, and then I wrote it into an
editorial, that there was no Saviorhood without Lordship.
Somebody in the East cut out a paragraph
from Sunday School Times and sent it to
me and said, Read this.
And I read it, and I had never
seen it.
It was written by the man who used
to be pastor of the Wheaton Bible Church.
I never can straighten that name out, although
I know the man quite well, McCulley.
And here condensed into a paragraph, he said
what I took an editorial to say, exactly
the same thing, which appeared in the Sunday
School Times, that Jesus Christ is both Lord
and Savior, and he is Lord before he
is Savior, and that he is not Lord,
he is not Savior.
And when we present this Word, this eternal
Word who was made flesh to dwell among
us, when we present him to men as
Lord and Savior, we present him only in
his other offices.
Previously he had been creator and sustainer and
benefactor.
Now we present him and ask men to
believe on him as Lord and Savior.
But it's the same Lord Jesus.
And he says, Grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ.
Now, this is not to contrast, that is,
grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
The law was given by Moses.
This is not to contrast a contrast between
the Old and New Testaments.
The theory that pits one testament of the
Bible against the other is a false theory.
The idea that the Old Testament is a
book of law and the New Testament a
book of grace is a theory completely false.
There is as much about grace and mercy
and love in the Old Testament as there
is in the New.
There is more about hell in the New
Testament than there is in the Old.
And when it comes to judgment and the
fury of God burning with fire upon sinful
men and sinful creatures, it is found in
the New Testament, not in the Old.
And if you want excoriating, flagellating language that
skins and blisters and burns, don't go to
Jeremiah, go to Jesus Christ.
Don't go to the book of Jeremiah, don't
go to Elijah, go to the twenty-third
of Matthew.
Oh, how much often does it need to
be said that the God of the Old
Testament is the God of the New.
And the Father of the Old Testament is
the Father of the New Testament.
And the Christ who was made flesh to
dwell among us is the Christ who walked
through all the pages of the Old Testament.
Was it law that forgave the Lord David
when he had committed his noble sin?
No, it was grace.
It was the Old Testament.
And was it grace that said, Babylon is
fallen, the great harlot is fallen, Babylon is
fallen?
No, it was law.
So there is no contrast, as we falsely
assume.
God never pits the Father against the Son.
He never pits the Old Testament against the
New.
What he says here is, and the contrast
is between all that Moses could do and
all that Christ could do.
The law was given by Moses, that was
all that Moses could do.
For Moses was not the channel through which
God dispensed grace, Moses was the lawgiver.
And Moses did all Moses could do.
For God did not choose Moses as the
channel through which grace should flow to the
world.
He chose his only begotten Son.
And so the contrast, the law was given
by Moses, but grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ, means only that all Moses could
do would be to command righteousness, but Jesus
Christ produces righteousness.
All that Moses could do would be to
forbid us to sin, but Jesus Christ came
to save us from sin, not pitted against
each other, but one doing what the other
could not do.
For Moses could not save, but Jesus could
save.
And the Holy Ghost in Romans says the
law that Moses gave was holy and just
and good and must not be spoken against,
but it could not save.
But because Jesus Christ is the eternal Son,
the channel through which God dispenses grace to
the world, grace came through Jesus Christ.
And I ask you to notice, my brethren,
that grace came through Jesus Christ before Mary
wept in the manger.
Grace came by Jesus Christ before he became
flesh to dwell among us.
For it was the grace of God in
Christ that saved the human race from extinction
when they sinned in the garden.
It was the grace of God in Jesus
Christ yet to be born that saved the
eighth person when the flood covered the earth.
And it was the grace of God in
Jesus Christ yet to be born, but existing
in pre-incarnation glory, that forgave David when
he committed his sin, forgave Abraham when he
lied, that enabled Abraham to pray God down
to ten when he was threatening to destroy
Sodom.
It forgave Israel time and time again.
It was the grace of God in Christ
yet before the incarnation that made God say,
I have risen early in the morning and
stretched out my hands unto you, and made
him say, As a father pities his children,
so the Lord pities them that fear him.
Jesus is the channel through which grace comes.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, and
he said, I am the truth.
And it is through him that grace is
released to the world, released through the wounded
side to sinners like you and me.
And all the grace of God anywhere comes
through Jesus Christ.
Then he says, No man has seen God
at any time, but the only begotten Son
who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him.
I get quiet amusement out of the problems
of the translator, not being a translator or
ever attempting it.
I get a lot of, I don't know
whether it's completely holy or not, but it's
fun.
I enjoy the frustrations of the translators.
God's words are just too big for them.
They just can't make it.
They come to this word here in the
Greek, but the only begotten Son who is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him.
In English, in this King James, it's declared.
But in other versions, they skirt it, they
go around it, they plunge through it, they
use two or three words, and then they
back down to one, and they do everything
they can do to try to say what
the Holy Ghost said.
And then they give up.
They can't say it.
Our English just won't say it.
We get to it and try to say
it, and we use a dozen synonyms, and
when we've used up our words, we still
haven't said all that God has said when
he said that nobody had ever looked at
God, nobody had ever seen God, but Jesus
Christ, when he came, showed us what he
was like.
And I guess that simple farmer language is
as good as any.
No man has seen God at any time,
but the only begotten Son who is in
the bosom of the Father, he has shown
us what he's like.
He has declared him, he has set him
forth, he has revealed him, the translators say,
shifting their language to try to get at
this wondrous miracle of meaning.
The man who walked in Galilee was God
acting like God, was God limited deliberately, having
crossed the mysterious, yawning gulf between God and
not God, God and creature, taking upon him
the form of a man to become flesh
to dwell among us.
No man had seen God at any time,
but it says, the only begotten Son who
was in the bosom of the Father.
I want you to know this, it's not
who was in the bosom, who will be
in the bosom, but he is in the
bosom.
It's in present perpetual tense, continuous tense, I
think the grammarians call it.
It's the language of continuance.
And even when he hung on the cross,
he did not leave the bosom of the
Father.
You say, how then, Mr. Tozer, how could
he cry, my God, my God, bestow forsaken
me?
Was he frightened?
Was he mistaken?
Never, never.
He was never mistaken about anything.
Then what was it?
You say, he never left the bosom of
the Father, and he said, why hast thou
forsaken me?
The answer is very plain.
The answer is this, that even when Christ
died on the unholy, high infested cross for
mankind, he never divided the Godhead.
You cannot, says the old theologians, divide the
substance.
Not all the swords of Nero could ever
cut down through the substance of the Godhead
to cut off the Father from the Son.
But it was the man who cried, why
hast thou forsaken me?
It was Mary's son who cried, it was
the body which God gave him, it was
the Lamb about to die.
It was the sacrifice that cried, it was
the human Jesus, it was the Son of
Man that cried.
But the ancient and timeless deity was never
separated.
And he was still in the bosom of
the Father when he cried into thy hand,
I commend my spirit.
For Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are forever
one, inseparable, indivisible, and to never be anything
else.
So the Eternal Father never turned his back
on the Eternal Word, for he was always
in the bosom of the Father.
But the Eternal Father turned his back upon
the Son.
It was Mary, the Son of Man, the
sacrifice, the Lamb to be slain.
And in the blind terror and pain of
it all, the sacrifice, the Lamb temporarily become
sin for us, knew himself forsaken.
God dumped all that vast, bubbling, boiling, seething,
dirty, slimy mess of human sin on the
soul of his Son and then backed away.
And in that moment of anguish he cried,
why have you forsaken me?
But in the next breath he could say,
Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit.
So the cross did not divide the Godhead.
Nothing could ever do that.
One forever, indivisible, the substance undivided, the persons
unconfounded.
Oh, the wonder of the ancient theology of
the Christian Church.
A little we know of it in our
day of light-minded shallowness, and how much
we ought to know of it.
No man has seen God at any time,
but the Only Begotten Son, who is in
the bosom of the Father, he hath shown
him forth.
Now, the mystery of atonement had to be
performed.
Why in the Old Testament, why in the
Old Testament did the priest go behind the
veil, perform the ritual of atonement, and then
come out from behind the veil, and priests
facially prepared rushed to close that thick veil
and hide the holy place?
It was God's saying in beautiful symbolism that
there would be a day when another priest
with other blood should enter into a realm
where the mind of man could never penetrate,
and therein a mystery too deep and dark
and wonderful for man to understand.
All alone, with none to help him, not
David his lover, not Abraham his friend, not
Paul.
No one alone in the silence and the
darkness should make atonement for sin.
And that's what happened.
God stepped back and allowed him to die.
But briefly and quickly his heart was joined
again to the love of God.
Three days later he was raised from the
dead and ascended to the right hand of
God the Father Almighty, from which he shall
come to judge the quick and the dead.
Now the closing line, he hath declared him.
What is he declared about God?
There are profundities that he could never declare.
There are depths that he could never declare.
But there are some things he could declare
and did and does.
He declared God's holy being, and above all
for us poor sinners, he declared his love
and his mercy.
So he set him forth.
Jesus Christ tells us in his tender human
being that God has a care for us.
I remember hearing years ago of some boys
at that time.
I didn't understand it as I might understand
it now.
Four or five sons had been reared in
a home, and the old folks were wordless,
they didn't say much, they didn't show much
affection.
Nobody did.
And the boys didn't.
After they were babies, they quit kissing their
parents and quit using words of affection, and
grew to be strong men, and married and
separated and got away.
Seldom came home and seldom wrote.
And then Mother's time had about come, they
thought, and they sent for the boys.
And they said, if you want to see
her, come.
And they came, big fine fellows now, each
with his own home and his own business
and job.
They stood around her bed, and one of
them said, We want you to know that
you've meant a lot to us, boy.
We haven't been unappreciative.
We've loved you, and we thank you.
Then they separated, and when they were gone
from her, she turned and said to someone
by her side, Oh, if they'd only told
me before.
These years I wondered if I'd meant anything
to them.
These years I thought I'd failed them, and
now they tell me we're so.
If they'd only told me.
You know, it's possible to feel a lot
you don't tell.
It's possible to have fine intentions you never
make known.
And how easy it might have been for
God to have loved us and never told
us, to have been merciful toward us and
never revealed it.
But the scripture says nobody ever saw God
but the only begotten Son.
Some translations say the only begotten God, who
was in the bosom of the Father.
He told us.
He came to tell us what the silence
never told us.
He came to tell us what not even
Moses could tell us.
He came to tell us God cares, and
God loves, and God has a plan.
And God's carrying out that plan.
Before it's all finished, there will be a
multitude that no man can number, redeemed out
of every tongue and tribe and nation.
That's what he told us.
He set him forth.
He revealed God's being, God's love, God's grace,
mercy, good intention, redemptive intention, saving intention.
He set it forth.
He brought it.
He gave it to us.
Here it is.
It's ours.
Now we have only to turn and believe
and accept and take and follow.
It's all ours.
Well, I think that's what I want to
say tonight.
May God bless us.
Our wings aren't very broad, but by flapping
them real fast, we can at least get
off the ground.
Thank God for the truth, for the word,
for the eternal Son, for the one we
present to you is Lord and Savior.
Is he your Lord and Savior tonight?