Jesus Through John's Eyes (1 of 5)

Today begins our 20th annual Bible conference. God has been very gracious in bringing to us a number of men who have opened the Word of God for us and have preached and shown us Christ. And I love our Bible conference. I always do. It's my privilege to introduce to you today Pastor Paul Phillips, who is pastor of Christ Community Church in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Pastor Paul actually started or was one of the group of guys that started that church in 2001. And he has led that congregation since then. You ask me, how did you get to know this guy? I mean, Wilmington, North Carolina isn't exactly on our radar. Well, actually, he's my son Calvin's pastor. And I have to say that he proved to be an answer to prayer seven years ago when Beck and I were praying that God would lead Calvin to a Bible teaching, Bible obeying church.

And we were praying fervently for that. And God answered our prayer. And Pastor Paul is part of that answer to the prayer that we were praying many years ago. And when we would visit Cal, we would go to Christ Community Church, of course. And there we would hear good, expositional, understandable, enjoyable preaching. I just loved to go there and listen to Pastor Paul preach.

My heart was refreshed. Now, you know something? You all know how loyal my dear wife Becca is to me. There's no one more loyal, but I'll tell you right now. if there was a day somewhere, someplace where Pastor Paul was preaching nearby well she'd be there oh frankly and I not trying to build Paul up again we were talking about this in Sunday school I want to boast in the Lord The Lord has raised up a servant who who when I would listen to his preaching I was refreshed I love to hear him preach and God used him in those times when we were down there So, not because of Paul and not because we organize a Bible conference, but I expect God to bless us greatly this week just because the Word of God is going to be preached.

And I'm looking forward to it. Paul? Thank you. Thank you. Well, if I can live up to just half of that introduction, I'll feel very pleased. If you'd open your Bibles to John, the Gospel of John, chapter 1, and just in terms of orientation, a couple of years ago I was going through the gospel of John and Tim obviously came during that time and my goal was to try to bring the congregation through the gospel chapter by chapter, not verse by verse for the purposes of them understanding sort of a broad perspective of John so that they could sit down and talk to somebody about the gospel themselves As opposed to when you meet somebody and they don't know Christ and you say, well, gosh, you have some good questions, let me get my pastor, which is typical.

But we were trying to say, no, you can sit down. You can sit down with a person. You can go through the Gospel of John. And if you can sit down and go through the Gospel of John with somebody, I have no doubt that the Gospel itself will have a power and you, having the Holy Spirit, will be able to answer some of those questions. And so I think what we're going to do is just try to like skip a stone across a pond.

We're just going to be, you know, touching on certain pieces. We obviously can't get the whole gospel done in five sermons in four days. But I've tried to cram in as much as I can. And perhaps at the end you'll say crammed in a little too much. But let's hope not. But that's sort of where I'm going.

And today I want to look at chapter one. and we don't have time to read the whole passage, so it'll just be better. A lot of this is going to be familiar to you so I just point out where I am in my reference and then you can follow along and hopefully we get through the whole chapter this morning In 1985, I graduated from Furman University, which is a small school in South Carolina, and I immediately moved to Atlanta to work for the Atlanta Braves. I was in a sports marketing major, and then I went to Atlanta to work in their public relations department for the Braves. and what would happen is on game days, I'd be there all day.

I'd get there maybe 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, and the game would start at 7 or 8 o'clock at night. It'd be shown on TBS, and then you'd get out at 11 or 12. And so it was a long day, and usually in the middle of the day, I'd take a break, and I would do some kind of exercise. They had some weights and stuff there. You could run around the field or just something like that, and so I would have this gym bag with me, and after the game was over, I would exit, and I would exit sort of in the old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium.

There was a tunnel underneath, and you came out of this tunnel, and you came into the player personnel parking lot. And everyone after the game, all the people that were either players or personnel, would come out of this tunnel, and they would go to sort of a marked-off parking lot. And so I came out, and I had my bags, and sometimes players were walking alongside of me. and as you came out the tunnel you might imagine the fans would line sort of the sides of the tunnel and hoping they could either get a picture an autograph a handshake and and they'd be looking down into the tunnel and they'd have their programs and they'd be you know who's that guy and who's that guy and so I was 22 and I'm walking out with my gym bag and I see all these people they're looking at the program they're looking at me and they think he sure looks like a baseball player but golly, I can't find him in the program.

And so I usually walk by, just kind of chuckle. And then one time, one night, this lady grabbed me and she shoved her teenage daughter next to me. And then she gets out her camera and she's, you know, I'm walking and she's, hold on, stand still. And she's trying to put her daughter, and the daughter's kind of awkwardly standing there, you know. And I said to the lady, I said, look, I'm nobody.

I'm nobody She said yes but you'll be somebody someday Little did she know Well so here I am 28 years later and I am somebody by the grace of God and I would much rather be here than where she probably thought I was going to end up somewhere and it really is a privilege it's really an honor to to be here I consider it an honor to be before the Lord and to preach and to teach. And my hope is just really the same as yours, that you would know more about Christ at the end. He would be bigger, you would be smaller.

That would give you some courage to move out into some relationships, into a conversation, maybe somebody with your family, maybe somebody that's a neighbor, somebody who needs to meet Christ. And you could feel a little more confident that you knew something. You had a tighter relationship which allowed you to open up. I would just want to say by observation, this morning it was sort of just sprinkling snow and in Wilmington, and Calvin will know this, we would have canceled church this morning.

So we are not in Wilmington here today. I think there's a little stronger timber up here in Ohio than there is down in the beach community that I'm in. Well, like I said, I began, when we began the church, I had been involved in a high school youth ministry called Young Life. And we did a lot of relational contact work and built relationships with high school and began to communicate the gospel.

But ten years ago when I started the church, I sort of switched my evangelistic method to sitting down with somebody and talking to them about the gospel of John. So I would run into somebody. Somebody would come to my church. I'd meet somebody somewhere, like I met somebody in a bagel shop, and I'd just keep going back to that bagel shop. I'd learn their name, and then I'd say, hey, you want to sit down and talk about the Gospel of John together?

And frequently they would say yes. And so what I would do is I would sit down over the course of five or four, five, six meetings, and we'd just try to go through three, four, five chapters at a time. And we'd sort of skip across. They would read. I'd give them something to read. They would read it, and we would come back.

And there was all kinds of reasons people got together with me. One guy said, you know, I'm just meeting with you because I'm dating a Christian girl. And so the Christian girl said, hey, you need to become a Christian, and this guy is, and maybe he can help you. So that was one reason. I sat down with somebody, and they said, you know, I don't want you to think I know anything. about the Bible.

Can you tell me the difference between the Old and the New Testament? I went to church in high school, but then I went to college. I started believing in evolution, and I dumped God, and now I don't know what to believe. That's what one guy said to me. I went to this one guy's house, and he said, he was so excited, he said, you're giving me such great information.

I've never heard this kind of thing before. Or should I give you some money? I was pretty tempted to say, well, you know, now that you're saying that, no, no. Aren't all religions the same? I mean, how can you be sure Christianity is true? Are you sure it's true?

One gentleman said, I'm a Scientologist. Scientologist. Scientologists. One, I grew up Jewish. One lady said, my grandmother's Catholic, so I think I'm Catholic. One man said, does it matter if I'm gay?

One woman said, I believe in Jesus, but I also like things about Hindus and Buddhists. One college kid said, do you believe in aliens? Do you think it's possible aliens had something to do with the origins of humanity? and so when you sit down with somebody they're going to ask you questions that are going to be difficult but that's that's the life that we live that's the culture that we live in and they want to know if the gospel can address those particular things and somebody has to sit down next to that person and begin to unpack the gospel and help them to say it does intersect or it does answer or it does redirect whatever the question may be and so again my hope or my goal is really the same as John's goal if you look with me in chapter 20 verse 31 he tells you at the very end of his letter what his goal was for writing the letter and that's obviously my goal as well chapter 20 verse 31 chapter 20 is sort of the end and then chapter 31 or 21 is sort of an addendum to the end and he says this now now jesus did many other signs chapter 20 verse 30 jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written so that or for this purpose that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.

So John tells you what his purpose is. He sends you through 20 chapters, three years of Jesus' ministry, hoping that as you've gone through, as you've sort of lived this life through John's telescope and you've been able to see Jesus, you would come out at the end and say, I believe in Jesus as well. Now, it's not going to take much courage, I don't think.

I hope it's not going to take much courage for you to sit through this sermon. Maybe it'll take a little more courage than I think. But I don't think it's going to take that much courage to do that. I don't think it's going to actually take that much courage to come back tonight. It might take a little bit more courage to come back on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

But it's going to take a lot of courage for you to sit down next to somebody who doesn't know Christ and say, would you like to read through the Gospel of John together? That takes courage. And I think the courage is bolstered by your certainty of who Christ is in yourself. So I want to look through chapter 1 just this morning and see how far we can move. the outline of John's gospel I think is interesting just to know in a big picture.

John chapter 1, verse 1 through verse 18, John tells you what he thinks of Christ. And so you might think of a typical CSI or murder mystery or something. You watch this hour-long show. The beginning of the show, they show you that something's happened. You can tell something's happened in the dark. A car has speeded off.

Somebody's laying on the ground. whatever the case may be, and then for 45 or 50 minutes, they draw out the clues, and at the very end, they tell you what happened. But John doesn't do it that way. He tells you right at the beginning, I want to tell you who I think Jesus is. And I want to make sure you understand in no uncertain terms who Jesus is. And he kind of plunges you into the deep end of the Bible and of understanding who Jesus is.

And then he pulls you back out in John chapter 1 verse 19, and then he just sort of quietly, mercifully, slowly, just walks you along the life of Christ until chapter 20 So he tells you everything he thinks is really critical It very deep And then he brings you back to the shallow end And says hey let walk slowly now that you seen the depths Let's walk slowly from the shallow end to the deep end. And then he gets to John chapter 20 and says, Okay, now that I've told you who I think he is. Now that I've spent 20 chapters telling you my experience with him.

Now do you believe? and so when I get to the end of the conversations my meetings with people I'll say I'll say this I say hey in our last conversation what I'm going to ask you is do you believe in Jesus Christ so they know where I'm going I'm trying to be up front with them as much as I can and I think John's doing the same thing for us he's he's trying to be up front and so when we we look at John chapter 1. Let's just look at the first four verses. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And 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. Now notice, immediately, you may be familiar with this language, but if somebody who doesn't know Christ reads this, they have no idea what you're talking about. Because John's just plunged you into the deep theological end.

He's starting off in that particular place. And I think he's doing it in a way to kind of shock you, to try to say, hey, I want you to understand the person that I'm about to tell you about is deeper and more infinitely marvelous and bigger than you could possibly imagine. I don't want you to think I'm pulling out a photo of my grandmother and telling you about my grandmother.

I mean, I love my grandmother, but she's not infinitely marvelous. I'm going to tell you about somebody that by the time you get to chapter 20, you're going to go, I can't believe this person actually existed. And not only did he exist, he existed from the beginning of time. So let's just look at a few of these statements quickly. In the beginning was the Word.

And the most important thing to know about the Word is found in verse 14. And that is that the Word became flesh And that referring obviously to Jesus And in order to understand what we might expect from this Word that has become flesh John would want us to recall what was said about the Word from the Old Testament Here are just a few things. Psalm 33, we read it this morning.

By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made. So the Word creates. Jeremiah chapter 1, 4. The Word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you. So the Word reveals things to people. Psalm 107.19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble and He saved them from their distress.

He sent forth His Word and He healed them. He rescued them from the grave. So the Word creates. The Word reveals. The Word brings salvation. Well, that's exactly what Jesus does. that Jesus creates and He recreates.

He reveals things about your heart, about yourself, that you wouldn't even imagine. He rescues. He brings salvation. Then the Word was with God and the Word was God. Let's just stop there just for a moment. Again, we in the church community get so familiar.

Jesus is with God. Jesus is God. Jesus is God, yet Jesus has a separate personality from God. Jesus is God, yet Jesus has a relationship with God. Jesus is God, yet Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. Again, when you talk to somebody who doesn't know about Christ, man, you're talking in circles.

And so you've just got to be able to anticipate, gosh, how would I explain this? When somebody sits next to you and they've done this to me and they say, look, just in these first few verses, they seem confusing. Can you take a moment and can you explain to me how Jesus can be both with God and be God? Now, we said it, I think it was, in our confession or one of the readings here, that.

But, you know, you get familiar with it and you don't think anything about it, but how would you explain that to somebody? Just, you know, in 60 seconds. You should know how to do that. I mean, that's a difficult thing. And at least you would say, hey, to your friend Tom, we're in the deep end. in, Tom. Be honest.

Hey, this is a deep in. This is, we've gotten to the big deep in and I'm not going to be able to really unpack it in all the ways you might have a question. I still have some questions about how that looks myself, but at least what I would want you to know, Tom, is that somehow embedded in what I'm going to call the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, there's a relationship in there and that's what this God would like to have with you. he would like to have a relationship because he's established himself as a relational god he's not somebody who just exists apart and he needs his creation to have a relationship no he's in a relationship and he's hoping to get you involved in this divine dance and the best way i can describe it to you tom is that it's like a marriage it's like two people who get married and then when they get married you know what the preacher says at the very end they become one flesh.

Well, are they one? Well, yeah. But no. But yeah. So is Jesus God? Yes.

Is Jesus separated from God in a certain sort of relational way? Well, yes. Well, how does that make sense? Well, that's a tough one, Tom. That's a tough one that theologians have been rolling around with all the time. But we can be sure that part of that toughness is showing us something so beautiful that Jesus would want to have a personal relationship with you.

And He's inviting you into that. All things were made by Jesus. Without Him, nothing was made. Verse 3. Colossians 1.16 For by Jesus all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible, invisible, thrones, powers, rulers, authorities, everything. Jesus is not created.

He's eternal. Again, you may say, okay, sure, I know that. But, you know, you talk to a Jehovah's Witness, that's not what they think. And I don't know if you have Jehovah's Witnesses up here in Ohio, but we have them in Wilmington. and when they come to your door what they think is that Jesus was a created being and then through that created being everything else got created And that got fought out in 325 at the Nicene Council and that's why you have the Nicene Creed.

And so when somebody, again, when you're talking to somebody, you want to say, hey, Jesus is eternal. It's not something that got created. He's eternal. And that's important. And that's why John is plunging the reader into this deep end. There's some huge things, and he's going to unpack them as he goes through the gospel, but he's just giving you a glimpse right now.

Verse 4, in Jesus there was life and light. You'll see these themes all the way through John. John 11, 25. I am the resurrection and the life. John 8, 12. I am the light of the world.

So, in here, Jesus is clearly saying that if you want to have life, if you want to be walking in the light then you need to know Jesus and so you want to again you want to be honest with your friend if you don't know Jesus you don't have life I mean it may look like you do but you don't you're not doing what you were created to do you don't have light you're walking in darkness you're just guessing at what you should do based on what you think or what Dr. Phil says or what your uncle said. That's not life.

That's not life. We have an eternal God who created you very specially for a purpose. And when you're in Him, you have life and you have light. You know which way to go. And then if you look in chapter 1, verse 19 through 51, you begin to have these encounters with Jesus and other people. And there's so much here.

We can only go through just a few pieces. But there's a number of titles that are used in these verses for Jesus. And I want to point them out to you. And what I want you to think of, and possibly Tim has used the same picture before, is the Old Testament is a book of shadows. And when you look at the Old Testament and you see a shadow of like a tree, you could guess a lot about what the tree looks like by looking at the shadow. but when you see a tree oh it's infinitely more valuable than its shadow it has a lot more texture to it than you could have guessed and so when you look back at the Old Testament there these shadows and all the shadows are pointing you to hey something about ready to come that is the real thing that casting this shadow And so, John pulls out these shadows all the way through the book, but especially here in chapter 1, he pulls out these shadows to say to these people, hey, this isn't something I'm just making up right now, I'm pulling these historical shadows and saying, see, this is Christ.

I'm going to introduce you to the real person. Jesus does this. You remember in Luke chapter 24, after the resurrection, these two disciples are wandering off on a road to a town called Emmaus. You remember this? And He comes up to them sort of in some kind of disguise or they couldn't see Him. And the three of them walk along and they begin to have this conversation.

And they don't understand who Jesus is. and he's asking these questions, what's going on? And they're saying, have you not been around? And he then looks at his two disciples and the disciples said, we're talking about Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prophet. He was powerful in word and deed and before God and all people. And the chief priest and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death and crucified him.

But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. We had seen these shadows and we looked at him and we thought that's who he was, but, you know, now he's dead. And Jesus looks at his two friends and he says, oh, how foolish. How slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and enter into his glory?

And then beginning with Moses and the prophets. I mean, here's the seminary class you all want to be in. Jesus walking along the road, and he scoops up all of the Old Testament, and he says, it's me. It's me. And when he gets to the end, they go, it's him. Why were we so slow of heart to believe?

And so, in a sense, that's what John is doing. He's scooping up these huge Old Testament pictures, and he's just trying to say, oh, what a great picture, but what a greater picture in Christ. And we see this a number of times. Chapter 19, or verse 19, John the Baptist. People come to John the Baptist and they asking who John the Baptist is And I just love John the Baptist Imagine someone coming to you and saying are you the Christ?

I mean, what a temptation. I mean, you look like the shadows. Are you the Savior? imagine the hunger that's coming out the emotion that's coming out of somebody that's asking that kind of question imagine the temptation just for a moment to say well i don't know i mean just i mean just to step into that eternal limelight for a moment michael jordan is i'm sure you know who michael jordan is but you really know him if you live in wilmington because he went to high school in Wilmington.

And there's been a lot of information about Michael Jordan recently because he just turned 50 in the basketball world and all that kind of stuff. And I read an interesting article on him. And it talked about how difficult it is for Michael Jordan to live as a mortal man. But they talked about how the way he operates in his world protects him sometimes from seeing who he really is.

And one of the ways they described that was he has a personal security team when he travels overseas. Okay, that's understandable. I mean, you're Michael Jordan. You can't just go walking through an airport. That's understandable. And then the security has different names that aren't real names.

They're like pet names for the people that travel with them. So this one guy who apparently helps Michael do a lot of stuff, his real name is George, but they call him Butler. and they have these different names, and the little tag name for Michael is Yahweh. Imagine that. Hey, is Yahweh on the move? You got your eyes on Yahweh? Yahweh.

Now, that seems... I mean, you know, I think the first time I read that, it seemed repulsive. I mean, there was something. But then I thought, you know, every time I sin, that's really what I'm doing. Isn't that what I'm doing? I'd like to be king right now, God.

I mean, I know what you say. I just don't feel like doing it right now. So let's just call me Yahweh for the next 15 minutes. John the Baptist says, no, no, I'm not. And I love his description. I'm a voice.

I mean, I'm just a voice. You don't come to the voice. the voice is telling you somewhere to go. And I'm just a voice. I'm a voice calling out in the wilderness from Isaiah 40. And I'm saying, make straight the way of the Lord. And that picture is like the king is coming to a small town and the roads are bad.

And so the advance team comes out and paves the way so when the king or the governor or the prince or whoever the VIP comes to town, the way to the town is straighter. And so basically what John the Baptist is saying is, hey, I'm just the road crew. I'm just the pavers. But I'm paving on the way for the real king to arrive. You can't wait to see him. I'm just part of the paving crew.

And I remember I sat down in a restaurant for several weeks and I went through the Gospel of John with this gentleman. And he got to the end and I said, hey, do you believe who Jesus is? Yes, I do. In fact, Paul, I've given my life to Christ over these last four weeks. Paul, I cannot thank you enough for what you've done to get me into the kingdom of God.

I understood his compliment. But I said, you know what? I can show you the door, but I can't get you through the door. That's the work of the Holy Spirit in you. That's just one thing I can't do. He said, yeah, but you know what?

There was a lot of furniture in the way, and you moved away a lot of furniture so I could get to the door. And see, that might be you. You're just moving furniture. Somebody's got some pain in their life. Somebody's got some question in their life. And as they come towards God, they can never get there, and they need somebody to sit down and say, hey, can you just move this refrigerator out of the way? because I can seem to get to God because I keep coming to this point and I need somebody to help me move it And so that what John is doing And then he says in the next day verse 29 Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world And you know this Old Testament phrase.

It carries this enormous amount of Old Testament freight. And you know that it comes from Exodus chapter 12 when the Passover lamb is part of this last sign from Moses in Exodus chapter 12. This is what it says. This is what the Lord says. About midnight, I'm going to go throughout Egypt, every firstborn son will die. the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on the throne the firstborn of the slave girl see I'm coming and it doesn't matter who you are or what your status is so tell the whole community in Israel that on the 10th day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family and the people of Israel must slaughter them at twilight and then take some of the blood and put it on the side and the tops of the door frames.

And on that night I will pass through Egypt. I'll strike down every firstborn. I will bring judgment. I am the Lord. Notice it's important to note that when the Lord's judgment comes down, it comes down on everybody. when God looks down on Egypt, when He looks down on the earth, He doesn't see the good people and the bad people. Why?

It's only bad people. He doesn't see the Egyptians and the Hebrews. He says, everybody down here is guilty, whether you're a Hebrew slave or whether you're an Egyptian pharaoh. So you must have the lamb that's going to take away the death sentence above your door. and so Jesus is now the lamb he's the final lamb that's going to take away the sin of the world John says finally verse 51 chapter 1 Jesus has this little conversation with Nathanael and he says this to Nathanael verse 51 Truly, I truly say to you, you will see heaven opened, and angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

That's an Old Testament reference. that carries an enormous amount of freight with it that if you don't know anything, you just miss it. You read by it all the time. Jesus is the Son of Man. That's from Daniel chapter 7. It says this, I saw in a vision there came one like a Son of Man and he came to the Ancient of Days, that's God, and was presented before him and to the Son of Man was given dominion, glory, the kingdoms, And all peoples, nations, and language should worship Him.

And His dominion is an everlasting one. His kingdom shall not be destroyed. So Jesus is telling Nathaniel, Nathaniel, you know about Daniel. You know about that vision. You know about somebody coming called the Son of Man who's going to come to the Ancient of Days and the Ancient of Days is going to give Him people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

Nathaniel, I'm it. The real thing has showed up. It's not a shadow anymore. It's me. And then he says, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending. And Jesus tells us something very important about himself applying this picture to himself.

And the picture is that, Nathaniel, the worst kinds of people now can come into heaven. Liars. Thieves. Cheats. people who are running away from God. Those are the people that are going to be able to get into heaven. And we know that because this reference, you know it, is from Genesis chapter 28.

Remember, Jacob is running away. Jacob has just lied to his father. Jacob who just cheated his brother Esau out of inheritance. Esau is now so angry, he's trying to kill Jacob. So in chapter 28, Jacob cheats, then he runs away. He's running away not only from his family, he's running away from the promised land.

Chapter 28 Genesis 28 11 Then the sun set on Jacob I think it a literary device to say the sun going down on Jacob It's getting dark for Jacob. And then it says Jacob used a stone for a pillow. I mean, he doesn't have enough resources to find a pillow. I'd find a shoe or something than a stone. so jacob is running he's cheated and he's running jacob has lied and he's running jacob has stolen and he's running jacob is in a place of darkness jacob is in a place where he has nothing to offer and he has a dream and you know the dream he sees a ladder and it's between heaven and earth and don't think of like a painter's ladder think of like a majestic staircase It's not something that one guy who's under 250 pounds is shimmying up and down.

That's not what we're talking about. Huge staircase. And on this huge staircase, massive amounts of activity. Angels coming down to earth. Angels going back into heaven. And it's a way that God is helping Jacob understand that, Jacob, even though you're asleep, even though you're in the dark, even though you're running away, I'm on the move. it may not look like I'm on the move.

It may not look like I'm on the move in your life, but I am on the move. And I'm doing things that you can't even imagine, and you're asleep. And so the most frightening part about the dream is that when God shows up, He's standing over Jacob. And He says this, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, Abraham and Isaac. Now, if you're having this dream and you've just cheated your family, you're running away, you have nothing to offer, the sun has gone down in your life and God shows up next to you and says, hey, I'm the God of your father, what would you anticipate may be coming?

Not something good. Man, not something good. Here comes the hammer. This isn't a dream. It's a nightmare. That's what a lot of people think about God.

Oh, but I've had an abortion. I struggle with sexual identity. Have a problem with alcohol, pornography, or... I mean, you can just... The list is endless. And what they think is if God actually came down to me, which I don't think He would, but if He did and He stood right next to me and said, Hey, I'm God, what do I think I'm going to get?

A big hammer, a big mallet, a big lightning bolt. Jacob, Jacob, I'm going to give you this land see Jacob you think you don't have anything I'm not the kind of God looking to get things no I'm the kind of God that's trying to give things away that's a big difference in the way some people see God we have a God who's coming to give things away he's not looking to get things he doesn't need anything that you have Jacob verse 15 chapter 28 I am with you oh wow you know Jacob it doesn't matter how dark it gets for you it doesn't matter how far away you go I am going to be with you Jacob I will not leave you until I done what I promised Jacob you think heaven is closed to you You think that because of your sin there no way No, Jacob, there is a way. And I'm going to make sure that what I've promised comes your way.

And I'm going to make sure you understand that before you make the slightest move towards me, that I'm coming towards you. See what Nathaniel learns about Jesus? what John is trying to tell us about Jesus? And Jesus says to Nathanael, you will see angels ascending and descending. What does it say? Verse 51. You will see angels ascending and descending on the ladder?

No. On me. in other words the only way to get there is through me i'm the ladder the ladder is a shadow and i'm the reality the lamb is a shadow and i'm the reality and and jacob and nathan and the worst kinds of people in this room or in your community heaven is open to you god is on the move he is coming towards you would you hear Him would you hear about Him would you receive Him well that's just a little flavor we could have taken a lot more time of how John's trying to unpack this enormous person of Jesus Christ and he's trying to put it down in a little package that a person like me, a person like Jacob, could really understand. So let's just pray together that that would happen.

It would happen, our confidence would be bolstered and that would cause us to turn and move out to the people that God's put in our way. Let's pray together. Lord, it's really unbelievable what You've done. That the Creator of the universe squeezed into the person of Jesus Christ. And He made Himself vulnerable. He made Himself known He made it in such a way that He made it possible as we could walk alongside and we could know that he loves us That he's welcoming the worst kinds of people into heaven.

And then to give us the honor to sit next to somebody and be an ambassador so that when they hear us, they would say, I hear God speaking through you. What an unbelievable opportunity. So I pray if it's just this one sermon or it's every one in the series that you would strengthen your people here. That you would give them greater courage, greater certainty of who you are and that would help them turn towards a family member, turn towards a neighbor, turn towards somebody they work with, turn towards somebody who has a lot of furniture in the way and begin to move that away and help them see who Jesus really is.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.