James Cash Penney was a teenager working in a grocery store in Hamilton, MO. He enjoyed the work and was planning on making it his profession. One day, he came home and laughingly told his dad how the owner of the store was mixing lower quality coffee with the better quality coffee and selling it for the premium price. But his dad didn’t laugh, and he had to quit the job. He came that close to being a grocer for the rest of his life.
In 1899 he opened a butcher shop in Longmont, CO. It failed almost as quickly as he opened it. Later on, he opened a dry goods business that saw some success. Then came 1929, and the business became unstable - so did James. His worry over his business got the best of him, and he contracted a bad case of shingles. He was put in the hospital. They gave him tranquilizers to calm him, but still he worried. One night, he started writing farewells to his wife and son and friends. It was the next morning when he heard singing from the hospital chapel next door: "No matter what may be the test, God will take care of you." He went to that chapel service and left a changed man. Finally he realized "God really does care for me." He regained his health, and taking his new outlook on life, his business thrived. When he died in 1971, Penney left an empire of 1,660 J.C. Penney stores, with an annual income of $4.1 billion for its owners.
I enjoy rags to riches stories -- the guy who works his way up from the pits - it offers us hope. But the story of John 1is a most unusual change of status story. It’s a rags to riches story. It’s the "out of the ivory palaces" story. We wouldn’t have done things the way God did.
This morning, we’re introducing a new series about being forever changed. It will take us through the first 1/2 of John’s account of the life of Jesus – “the gospel acc. to John,” or simply “John.”
Taken as a whole, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar in many ways. They’re sometimes called the “synoptic gospels” – because they see the life of Jesus “together.” John is unique.
Matthew, the tax collector, writing to a Jewish audience, starts out with genealogies and historical data: “I want you to get the lists right. Jesus is the King.”
Mark doesn’t mess around. He gets right to it with his in-a-hurry Roman readers. He skips all that background stuff and goes straight to the point. “The gospel of Jesus...” - boom. “I want you to see that Jesus is a doer.”
Luke, the doctor, is a researcher. He’s done all the studying and investigating. In his Illegible handwriting he starts out by assuring his intellectual Greek readers that he has done his homework. “I want you to see that Jesus is for real. What He says is true. What you’ve heard about Him is true.”
John, on the other hand, goes clear back to the beginning. “I want you to see that Jesus is more than a man. This is an eternal being here. I want you to read this and know Jesus.”
At the start, John invites us to step back in wonder at the mystery of God becoming flesh. Go ahead and try to explain that to me. We come up with a big word for it – “incarnation.” That’s a word to say that God became flesh. That’s it. We can’t really explain a lot about it. We can’t explain how God can become human and still be God. We can’t explain the process or all the implications. Still, we can stand in wonder at the mystery. Without really explaining “how” John starts his gospel by telling us: The Word became flesh. Be amazed by it. Sure, you can’t explain how, but you can pause for a moment and chew on the thought. And even if you can’t tell me all the technical implications about the incarnation – for instance, what was Jesus’ blood type? – we can still leave the pages of this book better knowing Jesus. That’s what we’re going to have as a goal as we go through a series from the gospel of John -- that all of us would better know Jesus – not just know about Him, but know Him.
So we start this morning by asking, why flesh? Why did God choose to enter the human scene as a man and walk and talk and eat and grow up among us? Let me tell you, there are some important reasons -- reasons that have bearing on all of us, how we live our lives, what we think of ourselves, and our hope for the future. 3 outcomes were accomplished when God became man:
I. He Let us Become the Children of God (v.12-13)- because there was no other way to become His children.
-Ill – Several years ago, Dolly Parton thought she’d be a smart aleck and entered a D.P. look-alike contest in Florida. The funny part of that story is that she lost! That’s funny…when it happens to Dolly Parton.
But some of the most tragic words in Scripture:
John 1:10-11
“He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.
His mother had no fitting place to give birth to Him. The local authority tried to have Him killed. He was forced out the synagogue in His home town. At one point, His own family doubted His sanity. Finally, His own people had Him crucified, and He was buried in a borrowed tomb.
Quote - C. S. Lewis - "The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab."
There had to be some reason more than earthly. There had to be some reason bigger than the 3 year ministry he spent traveling around the land of Palestine. It’s easy to get caught up in the detail and mystery of Jesus and forget this main point: Jesus came into the world so that you and I could become the children of God! Look at it again:
John 1:12-13
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Not because of who we are; not because of who our parents are; not because of any work that man does. Non of that makes us children of God. It takes something much more radical than that. The Son of God became man so that man might become children of God. "He who never began to be, but eternally existed, and who continued to be what he eternally was, began to be what he eternally was not."
1 John 3:1-3 (HCSB)1 Look at how great a love the Father has given us, that we should be called God’s children. And we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know Him. Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure.
Jesus became a man so that we could be the children of God.
II. He Brought Grace and Truth (v.4,17) - Because no other person or thing could bring it
I know I keep saying it, but we have got to understand it – one of the great shapers of our current day, one of the features that is shaping people’s thinking and attitudes above most others, is what people think of truth. Does truth matter? Does truth depend on what I believe, or is it true whether I accept it or not? And, if it is out there, where’s the reliable source for truth I’ll have to have?
Story - At a funeral in South Africa, the preacher was giving the eulogy, and suddenly, the “guest of honor” popped up out of the coffin! He was Talayi George Sogcwe. He had faked his death as a test. He said, "I wanted to know what people say about me when I’m dead.” So, he faked his death. Now he says, “I’m satisfied they spoke the truth about me and not lies." George says he going to keep the coffin for his real funeral ... which may be sooner than he thinks, if he ever does something like this to his friends again.
That’s an extreme, but who wouldn’t want to know? George is just one example of how much people want to know what’s true – in at least some areas of life.
When it comes to grace, we’re all interested in that too, whether you realize it or not. When the policeman pulls you over, grace sounds pretty good. When the teacher says your grade is borderline, you’d like to hear about grace. When the bill is overdue, you’re interested in the “grace period.” And, when it comes to the scene of you in front of God’s throne, grace matters.
A. The OT Law couldn’t do it
John 1:17 ”For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
See the contrast. Something better happened because Jesus came.
James 2:10
for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.
Grace says,
Isaiah 1:18
…Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.
Law says,
Romans. 3:20
…by works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight…
Grace says,
Ephesians 2:8-9
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.
The Law didn’t bring life, it brought condemnation. It didn’t bring truth - didn’t lead people into true love and relationship with the Father. It was only a blurry reflection of the good things to come through Jesus. The Law couldn’t bring grace and truth, partly because of the way our own lives have distorted those things.
B. No other person could do it
John 6:63
It is the Spirit Who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life.
John makes it clear: The Word became flesh. Jesus wasn’t a great man who became so good that He became a God. He was God Himself, The Agent of creation, Who became flesh. The God of the universe Who put Himself inside the body of a helpless infant and grew up to be the man of sorrows. The reverse success story, now the greatest success story. -He was God in the flesh, and His perfect blood was the only blood that guarantees my eternity today.
I could die for one of you, but it wouldn’t do any good because I already deserve to die. I’ve sinned, Jesus didn’t. His blood is the only thing that can give life to everyone.
God became flesh to bring grace and truth to our world. Yes, people really are interested in those things. Most won’t put it into those words, but you live grace, you speak of truth and speak the truth, and others are going to be making notes about you.
III. He Explained the Father (v.18) - because no one else can explain God
John 1:18
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
God said "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Is. 55) He’s too high for us to understand! No man has seen God because no one can even look at Him and live. Moses asked to see him, but was allowed only to see His back as He passed by.
The OT Law couldn’t explain God. The stodgy rabbis of the 1st century couldn’t explain God. JB couldn’t explain God. but: “ but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”
The word John uses there is v18 is a word that means “to interpret.” Jesus has explained the Father.
S.D. Gordon: "Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that men can understand."
Ill - Nebuchadnezzar, when he had a dream, needed someone to interpret it for him. The Ethiopian Eunuch, as he read from Isaiah, couldn’t understand unless someone explained it to him. That’s where mankind is, separated from God by sin. It made God and His character like a note that we have but can’t read until someone interprets it for us.
Creation shows me a lot about God. That general revelation teaches me to revere and respect and fear Him. It teaches me to seek for Him and to long for Him. But, when there’s a powerful thunderstorm, and it tells me there’s a powerful creator, what does it tell me about Him? Is He loud and angry? Is He brilliant and fast? Is He distant or close? Is He eternal, or short-lived? Is He personal, or just some force?
We can never understand God or know what He wants from us until we look at Him in the person of Jesus; can never fully appreciate just how much He loves us and how much we mean to Him, nor can we appreciate how much other people matter to Him, until we see Him through the Son.
Hebrews 1:1-2
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…
So John calls Jesus God’s "Word" God became flesh! One effect of God becoming man is God showed us what He is like by coming and living among us. Once the Law was a list of rules and regulations that man looked at and kept for no particular reason except that he had to, but Jesus taught the spirit of the Law. Once God had been mysteriously hidden in the temple behind a veil, but Jesus fixed that.
At just the right time in history, when man needed something to see, Jesus “pitched His tent with us.” (v14) He "secularized the sacred" - made something that was too high something within our reach.
Application - God secularized the sacred. So must we. We need to show the world of 2007 that God isn’t so far out of reach. That’s what Paul did
1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (HCSB)
For although I am free from all people, I have made myself a slave to all, in order to win more people. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win those under the law. To those who are outside the law, like one outside the law—not being outside God’s law, but under the law of Christ—to win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by all means save some. Now I do all this because of the gospel, that I may become a partner in its benefits.
What was Paul doing? Simple: following the example of God in Jesus! God explained Himself so that people would understand what they need to do to live forever. We need to learn to explain God to people in the same way! Jesus wasn’t willing to hang onto His equality with God and forget about us. He let that status go for our sakes.
You see, if Jesus can give up what was truly His like that, we ought to be willing to give up what we call our own too. We need to be willing to give, not in areas of essential truth, but in areas of tradition, custom, comfort, what we’re used to, or what we personally prefer. We need to be willing to change, not because change is easy, but because the world is constantly changing and we need to keep on top of it. We need to be willing to become like other people so that they also will listen to what God is really like.
"Be in the world but not of it? Associate with people who are wrong, but not sin? That’s impossible!" No. It’s not. And if you doubt it, look at Jesus! He was a perfect man among men.
Quote - Stephen Brow - "He didn’t come to keep us from suffering; He came to suffer as we must suffer. He didn’t come just to keep us from being afraid; He came to be afraid as we are afraid. He didn’t come just to keep us from dying; He came to die as we must die. He didn’t come to keep us from being tempted; He came to be tempted as we are tempted."
Conclusion:
It seems to me that many of the most important decisions we make in life come from “breakthrough moments”; those times of “Aha!” when the light suddenly flickers on, and for the first time some things starts to make sense. Helen Keller in her book The Story of My Life, tells of the breakthrough moment when Annie Sullivan first made it through her dark, silent world with the concept of language:
"We walked down the path to the well house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word “water,” first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w a t e r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
God became like us, so that we could become like Him. He came to let us become His children. He came to bring us a grace and truth that could come by no other way. And Jesus came as one Who was closest to the Father, Who knows Him like no one else, to explain Him to us, to remove the barriers we build between ourselves and God.
Friend, we’d love for you to suddenly realize that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father - that in Him, all the fullness of God dwells, and you can know Jesus, not just know about Him…
