Reality 101—The Ultimate Revelation of God
John 1:6-18
I had been a Christian only a few months when I felt compelled to witness to my father. In the midst of the discussion, I remember a question which he blurted out in frustration. He said, “Well, if God exists, why doesn’t He just blow a big hole in the ground or something?” In other words, why doesn’t God just do something so big and so grand that his existence would be so obvious to everyone that no one could deny it?
And I remember thinking to myself, well, that’s a good question. Why doesn’t God do something like that? Why doesn’t he ultimately reveal Himself to us once and for all in an absolutely unmistakable way? And if he has, why don’t we know about it. And if he has, what’s he got to say to us. What’s He got to offer. And how did do it?
And this is actually what the Gospel of John is all about. The Gospel of John is all about telling us that God has indeed done something so great and so grand that nobody should ever doubt that God not only exists, but he offers us the solution to the biggest problem we have—the fact that we all inevitably in inexorably die. And John also tells us exactly how and when God made this ultimate revelation of Himself—and it is remarkable, it is truly astounding. And it is truly good news.
And it is this: The Eternal Creator has ultimately revealed himself by becoming one incredible man, Jesus Christ, who demonstrated the truth about God---that He is gracious & willing to save us from our sins.
Now that is incredibly great news for us. Of all possible core realities behind this vast universe in which we find ourselves living, there could hardly be any better news than this. Because, isn’t it possible that God could be a devil of a being, someone like the Allah of the Muslims who promises only to reward people who sacrifice themselves in order to kill and destroy other human beings. Or isn’t it possible that God could be an impersonal principle, like the Hindu’s karma, that just simply governs the fate of human beings and is not even able to care about each individual’s struggles or ultimate fate. Or isn’t it possible that the Ultimate Being could be the God of the agnostic who doesn’t even care enough to reveal Himself to man, and leaves man in the darkness to flounder and fail and die in a very confusing and evil world?
The Apostle John at the outset of his Great Book tells us He knows better, and what He knows and Why He knows it. He has already told us that there is an Eternal Creator who has revealed Himself in Jesus, and that this Eternal Creator who is Jesus of Nazareth is the both the light and the eternal, holy life that mankind needs.
Now He is going to tell us how he knows, and why so many people don’t know that the true God is this kind of God, the very kind of God that we desire.
And the first reason he knows is because of another man, a contemporary of his, whose name is also John. We know him as John the Baptist. From the perspective of Biblical history, this man was the last of the Old Testament Prophets. Old Testament men who revealed what God had to say to the people of Israel. Old Testament prophets who consistently and persistently pointed their people toward the Ultimate Revelation of God—the coming of the Messiah. But this Old Testament prophet would be different from the rest of the Old Testament prophets—He was different in this respect—that He would be a contemporary of the Messiah Himself. That he wouldn’t point people to the Messiah from hundreds and thousands of years before the Messiah would come. But He would uniquely be the prophet who see, hear, even touch and point out the Messiah, the Ultimate Revelation of God, in the presence of the people who be part of Messiah’s Generation.
How did John the Apostle know the Ultimate Revelation of God was the God-man—Jesus of Nazareth. In part because the great prophet, John the Baptist, told him and everyone us that Jesus was the Messiah—the light and the life of mankind.
That’s our first point this morning. The Great Prophet John the Baptist pointed John’s generation to Jesus as the God-man.
John 1:6-9: The Apostle John simply says, “There came a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him.”
Now the Apostle John has already told us that the Word, or Jesus, was the Light of the World. He’s already told us that Jesus is the very one who reveals the way to go to find eternal and perfect life. He’s told us that not only Is Jesus the light of life, but that Jesus is Himself the life that all men ought to seek. He is the life all men should seek both quantitatively and qualitatively. He is the life that is eternal. He is the life that is holy, beautiful, satisfying in terms of its quality. If we want those things, and we do, then Jesus is the way, and the truth and that very life that we would all want.
Now John the Baptist came from God, very specifically as the final prophet from God whose entire purpose in coming was to point mankind to his contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth and reveal him as the Messiah, that deliverer, that light and life of God that all men seek.
Now John, in verse 8, pauses to make a careful distinction. The prophet, John the Baptist, Himself, was not the Light himself, but He came, verse 8, to testify or witness about the Light. In other words, God was making Himself as clear as possible. He sent one final prophet before He revealed Himself in the most ultimate way. This prophet solitary purpose was to point men to the God-man Himself, the Messiah, the Light and the Life.
Now as it turned out, John was such an incredibly powerful prophet, that confused men were so confused that they would be tempted to follow John himself, rather than the Messiah he pointed them to. You see, this John was so powerful in His mission that thousands of people traveled from cities and great distances to repent of their sins in the middle of the wilderness at his preaching. So powerful was his preaching that 20 or 25 years later, the Apostle Paul would come across people in modern-day Turkey, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Israel, who were still following John and John alone, who had no knowledge of Jesus. In fact, there is still a cult in Iraq, just south of Baghdad, which follows John the Baptist and somehow managed to become hostile Christianity. Just to be clear, and just to prevent if possible this sort of error from coming to pass. John the Apostle makes it crystal clear that John the Baptist was not the light or the life to follow. Rather, he point all mankind to the man who was the ultimate reality, who was the source of all that existed, who was himself the light and the life all mankind should follow and seek—and that one was the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, the God man.
So John the Apostle knew, in part, that He had encountered ultimate reality, God in the flesh, when he encountered Jesus—he knew because this powerful prophet whom he had previously followed, John the Baptist, told him so.
And John the Baptist still speaks today, because John the Apostles tells us today what He said: Jesus is the light and life of mankind. Jesus is the Messiah. Follow Him. Jesus is the Ultimate Revelation of God--A person who explains God far better than any hole in the ground ever could, for God is a person, with a mind, with a will an with feelings, just as we are.
So why is it that so many men don’t know this? So why is it that in a discussion of Jesus Christ between two men, that one of them says, if God would only do something to prove his existence, why doesn’t he do it? And the other man, a self-professed Christian agrees with Him. Why don’t we get it? Why don’t we get it that God has done the one thing, the greatest thing He could ever do, to prove His existence, and show us more than that, exactly what He is like in terms we could understand.
Guess what? It’s something about man that he doesn’t get it. It isn’t that God has failed to do what is necessary to show Himself and prove Himself mankind. It has to do with that statement back in verse 5. That there is darkness. And that the light shines in the darkness. It is in truth that man is in darkness. That man loves darkness and loves darkness and therefore rejects and suppresses and denies the light on purpose—so that he doesn’t have to come to the light. It’s the fact, that man lives in part in a self-imposed darkness that usually and regularly rejects and suppresses the light and the life and the truth.
Verse 9: John tells us this: “There was the true Light, which coming into the world, enlightens every man.” What He’s saying is this. Though John the Baptist was not the Light, but only a witness to the Light. There was and is indeed the True Light. Don’t be disappointed that John Himself was not the True Light. Rather rejoice that there was the True Light which he testified. And that this true light does indeed, despite the darkness enlighten every man.
Now we know or will come to know in this passage that the true Light is indeed Jesus of Nazareth. He is the God-man. He is the Messiah. He is the light that leads men to the life, and he is also Himself that life that all men desperately need.
But we ought to ask ourselves how is it that this Light enlightens every man? Does every man accept the Light and the Life.? The next two verses make it clear that every man does not accept or belief in the Light and the life, who is Jesus. So then how does the Light, or Jesus, enlighten every man. I take it that every man who hears the Gospel—the fact the Jesus Christ himself died on the cross for our sins and rose again—is enlightened at that moment. He’s enlightened in that He has heard the truth. And for a moment, at least, He considers it. He has therefore been enlightened with the truth and for that moment that He considers this truth, He has the light to do with as He pleases.
The fact is, though, not every man accepts the Light. Not every keeps the Light. In fact, sad to say, by and large, the majority of men reject the light, and though having been enlightened, re-enter the darkness, not knowing the truth, not knowing the light that would them to the life, the eternal life who is Jesus Christ Himself.
Verse 10 and 11: “He, the True Light, was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.” John describe a sad irony. The very Creator of the World, that is the world of mankind, himself invaded human history, human existence as a human being. He was incarnated. God became flesh. And yet, incredibly, that very world of men whom He created did not recognize Him. Or if they recognized Him, they refused to acknowledge as God.”
And more than that, He came to his very own people, his very own nation, the nation of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and though this nation had been prepared through 15 hundred of years of prophecy from God, and were expectant of the Messiah’s come, this nation did not receive. They rejected Him, and they so rejected Him, that they, with the world’s help, the help of the Gentiles, even the Romans, murdered Him on the cross.
How could this happen? How could the world not recognize its creator. How could Jesus own nation, His own family, reject Him despite the pleas of the prophets that they recognize Him as their Messiah and Savior.
Well, it again has to do with that darkness, a darkness from Satan, the great fallen angel. And self-imposed darkness due to man’s own sin. A darkness that Jesus explains to us in John 3:19. A darkness that men by and large seek to avoid, because they seek to avoid being exposed for what they are—great sinners. For Jesus said in John 3:19: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil, hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
So why is it that God’s Ultimate Revelation of Himself is not so obvious to everyone? Why is it two men talking about Jesus don’t recognize that Jesus was himself the ultimate revelation and proof of God’s existence and nature? It is because of the darkness most men prefer. It is because men are evil, and as the Romans chapter one reveals, men rather than propagating the Light by and Large suppress it in their unrighteousness.
So don’t be ruled by this darkness. Don’t let it discourage you from receiving the light. Darkness is evil. Darkness suppresses the truth we all want to know. Darkness causes those who are enlightened to reject the Light of the Life—the Hope of all mankind. See beyond it. Let it expose the way, even if it exposes your sin, because great blessing is at hand, and it can be yours.
And even as we saw Jesus speak of exceptions to the rule in John 3, so John the Apostle speaks of those exceptions, and he talks of the great blessings the few experience who actually come to Light, and receive the Light and the Life it points men to.
Verse 12: “But as men as received Him for who he was, as many as, whoever accepts or receives Jesus as the God-man, the Messiah, the Savior, the ultimate and eternal life—to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.
Now let’s ponder this verse for a moment. It’s an incredible promise. Those who receive Jesus for who he really is, Messiah, Savior, God-man, the Truth, the Life we all desperately need. Guess what happen to them. They are given the right, the authority to become the children of God. Think of what it means to become a child of God. It means that in some sense that God becomes your Father. It means that you have been adopted into his family. It means that in some sense he now loves you as He does His own children, and according to this passage and others, He has only one genuine, after his own kind, Son—the eternal Son of God Jesus. The rest of us who become his children by adoption he will and does love as He loves His own genuine, unique Son. And interestingly this is precisely what Jesus tells us about the love of his Father. In John 17:23, as Jesus prays to His own Father He acknowledges that the Father has “loved them, even as He has loved Jesus.” And so what an incredible privilege this is. You receive Jesus for who He is—the Light and Life of the world. And you become a child of God the Father, and you loved precisely as the Father loves Jesus, his only unique and eternal Son.
Wow! What an incredible privilege. You not only have a relationship with God the Father, you become His child, loved just as much as the God the Father loves God the Son—Jesus.
And you know something else this implies. That you are also an heir, right along with Jesus, of all the belongs to the Father. You become an heir of the eternal Kingdom of God right along with Jesus. Oh yes, this Jesus becomes king of that kingdom, but you inherit that Kingdom right along with your “elder” brother, to enjoy it’s blessing forever.
Wow! All that for just simply overcoming the darkness and actually coming to the Light. Receiving the light and the life—the eternal life—that Jesus himself freely offers. You have the very love of the Father even as Jesus does for the rest of your eternal and blessed life.
All it takes is receiving Jesus for whom He claims to be: God in the flesh, the Messiah, the Savior, the Creator, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lord, and the sacrifice for your sins.
Oh, this morning if you’ve been in the darkness and you haven’t know the truth—the Light—the Ultimate Revelation of God, of his existence, his nature, and his blessed desire for us, won’t you receive Him, won’t you even believe and trust on his saving name—Jesus, the Savior, Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, as your Messiah, trust Him this morning.
And John is very careful, here, to make it known, that this is the work of God, not the work of man, not something that comes to pass for anyone on the basis of his ancestry, or the will and work of men. For this is what the Jews commonly thought. They thought that on the basis of the fact that they were merely descendants of Abraham that they qualified for the Kingdom. NO, that wasn’t, you instead, must be born of God, it must be work of God, to become a child of God. And so he says in verse 13, tha those who believe in Christ’s name, who trust in Him as their Light and the Life, it this those who are born of God, not those who were born of the blood of Abraham, or the will of the flesh, or of the Will of man. This new birth, this being born of God is the work of God that happens when men believe in the God-man, Jesus, as their savior.
How does John know all this? Not just from John the Baptist, whom He followed and knew well, who pointed Him to Jesus. But it was from knowing Jesus, the Word, the All-encompassing mind that controls the Universe who became a man. John the Apostle, in fact, knew Jesus for 3 ½ years. He himself stopped following John the Baptist at John’s urging and started following Jesus as early as any of Apostles did. And this is what He learned from gazing at Jesus, wondering at his true nature, becoming lost but found in Jesus’ Glory. And He himself now testifies and John the Baptist once did—that the Word, God Himself, Second person of the Trinity, Jesus, became man. “And the Word became Flesh.” In other words, God saw man drowning in his own sin, and he did not stand idly by. He did not merely send someone to save us. Nor did he merely throw a life-ring into the muddy and dark waters of this world of sin. Rather He jumped in him those dark and harrowing waters himself, and at the risk, no even the expense of his own life, he saved us.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That is he camped among us. The word dwelt actually means he tabernacled with us. He tented with us. The tabernacle of course was the mobile version of God’s temple, God’s dwelling, as Israel traveled through the Wilderness for 40 years. It was tent of meeting, the tent where God and man met. It was where God manifested Himself to man, where the ark of the covenant was kept and from which God spoke to man. That was who Jesus was. He was God who temporarily tented, or camped among mankind as Jesus of Nazareth. And John’s authority for testifying about Him, about who He really was, and what He can do for us, is that He was among those eyewitnesses who saw His glory for themselves, He was specifically one of those that Jesus Himself commissioned as eyewitnesses of His glory, of his crucifixion, of His resurrection and finally His ascension into glory, who recognized he was the one unique eternal Son of God, as opposed to all of us adopted children. , and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten form the Father, full of grace we so desperately to experience, and full of the truth about reality, that we all so desperately need to know. Yes, verse 15, John the Baptist testified about Him, and cried out saying, “This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before Me, He is existed eternally. And now all of us apostles and eyewitnesses, we now testify, verse 167, for of his fullness we have all received and grace upon grace, grace after grace, forgiveness for sin after forgiveness for sin. For the Law was given through Moses, but now something grater has come—the revelation, the ultimate revelation of God’s existence and nature, and hallelujah—God is gracious and God is real He is truth, He is the ultimate in truth and reality and He has been revealed ultimately in the man Jesus Christ.
NO one has seen Got at any time, the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, Jesus Christ has explained and proven God to us.
If only God would do some thing to prove himself to us, to reveal the truth to us?
Oh great fool that I was. Great fool that my Father was. God has, in his infinite wisdom, shown exactly that He is and how wonderful He is He has revealed the truth that all so desperately need to know—He is gracious, and He will forgive and save any and all that come to Him through faith in Jesus. This is the ultimate truth. And God has revealed Himself to us, in Jesus, once and for all.
The story is told of Hindu who was being witnessed to by Christian missionaries. He wondered at this strange concept he was told of that was called the incarnation—the claim the missionaries made that the Great God who created the world entered human history as a man. He wondered why that was so necessary until one day he came upon an ant hill. And of course Hindus believe that all creatures are a part of God. And he noticed that there was a stream of water approaching this ant hill, a stream most assuredly would fill the ants’ home, their hole and their hill and drown them all. And he didn’t want to see that. And he said to Himself if only He could become one of the ants so that he communicate to them and warn them if the impending disaster that was about to come their. And all of sudden the light bulb went on. All of a sudden he understood the incarnation and why it was so necessary. Because indeed there is a great caring God above, who cares for His creatures and sees that they are about to drown in the darkness and death created by their own sin, and so God who is able to do all things, became a man himself, and thrust Himself into that darkness to warn of the impending doom and enable his creatures, mankind to escape, not merely die another day, but in this case to live, and live forever as children of God blessed in every way by God for ever, and ever.
Why hasn’t God done something so great and so grand that no one could ever deny his existence, much less His love?
If you ever ask that question again, it’s only because you have also rejected the Light, and re-entered the darkness of your sin.
Instead, this morning, acknowledge that God has ultimately revealed Himself for all He is and all He will do by receiving Jesus, believing in His name, as the One who died for your sin so that you could also become a child of God and inherit His Kingdom with Jesus forever and ever. Amen!
If this morning, you have been enlightened, don’t allow the darkness to overcome you once more. Come into the light, receive it, all of it. Confess your sins now exposed and become an eternally blessed child of God, inherit you heavenly Father’s Kingdom and know that He cares for from this day on, just like he loves his only begotten Son, his only eternal Son, Jesus Christ.
Pray this prayer with me: Oh father. I now come out of the darkness into the wonderful light of your life. I accept the life that is in your Son and now is in me. I believe that When Jesus died on the cross, it was for me sins, and that I am now clean for forgiven and I belong to you as your child, forever. Now make me like your Son Jesus. Thank you for the forgiveness of your sins. Thank you that I am born again with the life from above, that life that is Jesus and I will be your child in Your Son’s kingdom, enjoying His fellowship forever, and ever. Amen!
