Jesus, the Greatest of All

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How many of you remember that show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Some of you watched that? I think it’s been off the air for a while, but we’ve discovered that there’s one of these free streaming channels online that you can get on the smart TV that’s smarter than we are, where they show reruns of this in the evenings.

And so Charla and I, after we put the kids to bed here lately, we’ve been sitting there watching, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? And sometimes we are and sometimes we’re not. But she gets frustrated with me because when I was in junior high and high school, I did academic team where you buzz in and we won state one year.

But she said, you get three words into the question. I’m still reading the question. You’re blurting out the answer.

So I’m under instructions to keep my answers to myself until we’re done. Some of those questions are incredibly hard. There was one that we were watching a few days ago They were asking about Greek mythology, and they said something about the name of the two-headed dog that guards the gates to Hades or something like that.

Like, I don’t know what that is. I don’t want to know what that is. I’m glad I don’t have to find out what that is because that sounds horrifying.

But some of these questions. . .

What’s that? Cerberus. That was the answer, yes.

Did you look that up? I don’t know whether to say good for you or bless your heart or what. They probably did teach it in school, but I don’t remember that day.

Excuse me for just a second. I’m going to keep talking, but I just realized my shoe is untied, and I’m going to step on it and break my neck if I don’t take care of it. So we’ve been watching the.

. . I know this seems so unprofessional, but this is life.

We are not a perfect church, and we’re not here putting on a show. So we’ve been watching this show, And one of the things that I’ve noticed is it’s almost like Jeff Foxworthy tries to talk these people into dropping out. I’ve wondered if on some of these game shows, if the host, if their commission is based on how much money is left on the table.

But he’ll tell them, you know, you can walk away right now with this amount of money. Hey, $25,000 beats your best day at work ever. and that I mean that’s true but more often than not these people keep going because they’re there that they want to win the million dollars and as I understand it only two people ever did but they want to win more because yes $25,000 is great if you come and offer me $25,000 no strings attached that sounds like I’m probably not going to say no you know that that would be nice to have I think we all wouldn’t mind having $25,000.

But they’re thinking there’s something better on that board. $25,000 is nice, but $50,000 is even nicer. And then $100,000, and then $175,000, and $300,000, and $500,000.

There’s a million dollars on the board, and so they keep going because they know there’s something better out there. And as we continue into the book of John this morning, We’ve been looking over the last several weeks at the introduction to the book of John. This will be the last message in this series, because after this he moves on from the introduction.

And the goal here was, starting at Christmastime, to talk about John’s explanation, not of what happened at Bethlehem, but why it was so important. We’re finishing that up today, a week later than I plan to, because of the weather. But as we look at that, John comes to make the same point about Jesus.

He comes to make the point that you can look at all this stuff that has come before, all of this stuff that his Jewish readers in particular would have been familiar with before, and said these things are good, but you’ve got to understand God has now provided something even better. And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning in John chapter 1. If you would, turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 1 this morning.

If you don’t have a physical Bible with you, if you have a device that you’re using, there’s a link in our bulletin that’ll get you right there to that verse, or it’ll be there on the screen. but we’re in John 1. We’re going to start in verse 15.

And if you’re able to without too much difficulty, if you’d stand with me as we read from God’s Word together. But starting in verse 15, and I want to be clear too, when it says here John in verse 15, this is John the Apostle writing the book. And John the Apostle is talking about John the Baptist. So when he says here John, he’s not talking about himself.

He’s talking about the forerunner of Jesus. So he says in verse 15, John bore witness of him and cried out, saying, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has declared him. And you may be seated.

so john here john the apostle is using the the ministry of john the baptist to point at jesus and say that jesus is even greater than all of these things that have ever have ever come before and as we go through these things and I’m going to talk about the law and I’m going to talk about the prophets and I’m going to talk about the spiritual experiences that they could have had when I say jesus is greater than these things don’t get the idea that that sometimes people get that it’s Jesus versus the law or that it’s Jesus versus the prophets or it’s Jesus versus these experiences. Sometimes people will try to pit, in particular, will try to pit Jesus against the scriptures. This happens sometimes in more liberal faith traditions where they want to make it as though Jesus and the scriptures are opposed to each other.

And so we’re just supposed to follow Jesus and ignore the scriptures when they don’t line up with what we think about Jesus. Now, the The big problem with that is you and I are not eyewitnesses and don’t really know anything about Jesus other than what is revealed and recorded in the Scriptures. As a matter of fact, Jesus, in referring to the Scriptures they had at the time, the Old Testament, Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees, you search the Scriptures, but the Scriptures testify of me.

The Scriptures are about Jesus, and so we can’t really pit them against Jesus. It’s just that as time went on, God revealed more and more of His nature and His character and His will. And Jesus was the ultimate revelation of that.

And we see that borne out in the New Testament. And so we have to understand what came before in light of who Jesus is. So understand when I say Jesus is greater than the law, I’m not saying that Jesus and the law are at odds with each other.

I’m saying the law was good and served its purpose in its time. And then Jesus came as an even greater expression of who God is and even greater revelation of what it is that He wants from us. Jesus clarified some of the questions that were left because of the law.

But we start looking through this and what John the Apostle records here, and we see that Jesus is greater than the prophets. Now, Jesus Himself said that John, John the Baptist, was the greatest of all the prophets. He said that in Luke 7.

28. So Jesus said John was the greatest of all the prophets that have ever lived. And yet John the Baptist said himself, and John the Apostle records it, I realize it would be so much easier if God had given them different names, but we’ve got two guys here with the same name and we just have to try to keep them straight.

John the Baptist was, according to Jesus, the greatest of all prophets. And John the Baptist said, Jesus is even greater than I am. So what do they call that in math, the transitive property?

You apply that. If John is greater than all the prophets and Jesus is greater than John, then Jesus is greater than all the prophets, right? And what John says here, he who comes after me is preferred before me.

This is in verse 15, for he was before me. When he says he who comes after me, he’s talking about Jesus. He’s talking about Jesus.

We know this from context. We know this from reading in the other gospels. He’s talking about Jesus coming after him, not coming after him like in a violent way, but in a chronological way.

He’s coming after him because John was sent here to prepare the way for Jesus, to prepare people to receive Jesus. Jesus’ ministry started after John’s chronologically. Jesus was born about six months after John.

So when he says, he who came after me, he’s referring to Jesus, but he said, he is preferred before me. Now this phrasing preferred before me in Greek means he outranks him. He’s higher than him.

my mother-in-law was listening to her church in my office when I came in from Sunday school, and the preacher that was preaching there, I overheard a story he told. I’m going to share it as though I thought of it. But he was telling the story of Billy Graham being in his office praying when President Eisenhower called, who before he was president was, what, a four- or five-star general, whatever the highest number was at that time, called and the secretary interrupted Billy Graham’s quiet time and said, she didn’t normally do that, but said there’s a call from President Eisenhower, and he said, tell him I will call him right back, which Eisenhower was not used to having to wait on other people.

So he called him back and said, I’m sorry, Mr. President, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have kept you waiting, but I knew if you were calling me, it had to have been an important matter and I needed to be spiritually prepared. You see, I was in a meeting with God.

And he ended the story by saying for the first time in his life, Eisenhower was outranked, right? Kind of hard to argue with, hey, you need to put God on hold and talk to me. When John says he is preferred before me, he is saying he outranks me.

He is more important than I am. He’s of a higher nature and character than I am. And this is unusual because throughout human history, and especially in their day, the firstborn was preferred.

They were of a higher rank. They were entitled to more of the inheritance. I pull this with my children all the time.

Every night I brush Carly Jo’s teeth and she’s getting into the terrible threes. She’s getting to be a challenge. But she wants to brush her teeth herself.

She doesn’t really know how. She just sucks on the toothbrush and that’s not going to work. That’s not going to do anything.

So she’ll try to take the toothbrush for me. And I tell her, no, you can do it, but I get to do it first. Why? Because I was born first. I’m not going to argue with a three-year-old and explain because I know better what I’m doing.

Because I’m older than you. I just went straight to that. And so now all the time we have this conversation.

I do it. Yeah, I get to do it first because I’m older than you. Right?

That’s how this works. And it’s just the nature of it. the older kids get privileges sooner because they’ve earned it or they’re just mature enough for it.

And so for him to say, yes, I came first, but in spite of everything we’ve ever known, in spite of every social convention, he still outranks me even though I came before him. And he explains why. He says, for he was before me.

Now that’s not a contradiction in your Bibles when he says he came after me, but he came before me. He’s saying in terms of his physical birth, yes, he was born after I was. He started ministry after I did.

But really, he came before me because you go back to the beginning of this chapter and John says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. Before there was anything, there was Jesus there with the Father and with the Spirit.

So when he says he was before me, he’s pointing to the eternality of Jesus Christ. Him being eternal and tied to him being eternal is the idea of him being God. He can’t be God if he’s not eternal. And this ties in with what Jesus said about himself. Before Abraham was, I am.

He told the people in his day, how do you know so much? You’re barely even 30 years old. And he says, before Abraham was, I am.

He said, not only did I come before the guy that you look to, who was here 1,800 years ago, but before he even came, I was I am. He was identifying himself as the God of the Old Testament. And that is what John the Baptist is doing here when he says he was before me.

So we see all this, and we see what John says about Jesus in relation to him, that he’s higher than I am. He has more authority than I am. He has more understanding than I am, than I have.

He has a clearer picture of who God is. He has the clearest possible picture of who God is to reveal because He is God. When John says that, he’s saying that Jesus is greater than all the prophets.

Now that is not to say that the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New Testament, it’s not to say that these who spoke under the inspiration of God do not matter. It’s not to say that their messages do not matter. It is to say instead that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of those messages.

And without Jesus Christ, those messages would not matter. Let me tell you, without Jesus Christ, everything that was revealed by the prophets would be useless to us. Because without Jesus Christ, listening to everything the prophets said would just result in us doing religious things and trying to live upstanding lives until we entered eternity separated from God.

And so yes, the prophets are good. The messages they brought were good. The messages that they brought were edifying.

we can learn from them even still today, but apart from Jesus Christ, we don’t even understand the full meaning of them. And so Jesus Christ is greater because He gives us the context we need. And there’s no message.

Some people have, even today, there are people who claim to speak for God, just like they did in that day. Throughout history, there have been people who claim to speak for God, and some of them have even been right, like the prophets we see in our scriptures, but Jesus is the ultimate revealer of God’s truth. And when it comes to their messages, there’s no message that can bring us fellowship with God like knowing Jesus can.

So if we want some idea of what it means to have a relationship with God, we can learn that from the prophets. But if we want the full picture, we go to Jesus and understand the prophets through the lens of Jesus. We also see here, if we look at verse 17, that Jesus is greater than the law.

It says in verse 17, the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, the law was given through Moses in the Old Testament or in Old Testament times, because until he revealed it, there wasn’t an Old Testament. Back in those days, God spoke through Moses. Back in those days, God at times even carved his word into stone and handed it to Moses.

God used Moses to reveal the law, and the law was a conditional covenant. What that means is God said there are conditional covenants in Scripture and there are unconditional covenants. The unconditional covenants, God says, I’m going to do this and hold up this, my end of the bargain, regardless of what you do.

And conditional covenants, God says, I will do this if you do this. The law was a conditional covenant where God promised blessings, God promised all sorts of things, if you do all of these things. And people were counting on that law, on that covenant, as the basis for their knowledge and relationship with God.

That’s why the Pharisees got so freaked out when Jesus came and corrected their understanding of the law. It’s not just a difference of opinion. It’s not just a doctrinal dispute.

You know, if my wife and I are discussing something that happened and she clarifies something I was wrong about, I may not like it, but I’m not going to lose my mind over it. But this was central to their understanding of how they could know God and how they could have a relationship with Him. They had everything wrapped up in the way they understood the law.

This was vitally important to them. In Jesus’ day, there were still people who were saying, if I’m going to get to God, it’s because I’m going to check all the boxes of the law. There are people today who say, if I could just check all the boxes of the law, then I’ll have a relationship with God.

Then I’ll know God. And if you don’t do like me and check all the boxes of the law, then you can’t know God or have a relationship with Him because they’re counting on the law. And here John says, John the Apostle now, says the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The way he says but there, the way he structures this, He’s saying, yes, we have the law and that was good and it served its purpose, but there was something even better that came.

Jesus Christ came and He brought grace and truth. The implication of this is that Jesus brought a better way, a better way to know God, a better way to relate to Him. And grace here, what He talks about in verse 17, this stands in contrast to the demands of the law.

Because if you follow the law, it’s all about these religious rituals and do this and do that and don’t do that and earn this and deserve that. It’s all about what we can do and how we can perform and what we can earn. But really, because none of us are able to keep it perfectly, we’re barely able to keep it outwardly just in our behavior.

But Jesus looked at the most religious people in His day and pointed out that they didn’t have a prayer of keeping it inwardly in their hearts and attitudes. In their hearts, they were so far from God’s law, they couldn’t even see it. None of us are able to keep God’s law.

So what God’s law ultimately does is shows us all the ways we fall short. In the classroom at home, Charla has all these spiral-bound books that when the kids turn in their work, you’re able to go and open that book, and it’ll show you all the places that they’re wrong. It has all the answers in it.

And you compare their work against that, it shows all the places they’re wrong. I know that’s not unique to them. That’s in every teacher has something like that.

But that’s what the law does for us. We hold ourselves up against the law of Moses and we see all the ways we fall short of God’s holiness and His standards and who He is and what He expects for us. And so if we’re looking to the law to bring us a relationship with God, all it does is show why we don’t have one.

But through Jesus, we have a relationship with God that’s based on His grace rather than our performance. Because all the ways that we’d fallen short of the law, all the sin, all the rebellion, all the wickedness, all the disobedience, whatever word you want to apply there, Jesus took responsibility for every bit of it. And He died in our place so the slate could be wiped clean, so that we could be forgiven, so we could have a fresh start with God.

And He promises us that if we’ll receive it by faith. And then He promises that His grace is sufficient. And He promises us forgiveness when we continue to slip and fall, when we continue to mess up.

His grace is sufficient for us. See, we don’t have a relationship with God that’s dependent on what we can do for Him and what our performance is. We have a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ that’s based on grace, God’s kindness, God’s willingness to forgive because the price has already been paid.

It says He brought grace and truth. And that reminds us that Jesus is the truth personified. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word truth lately, and I keep thinking of the question Pilate asked when he was trying Jesus right before the crucifixion and said, what is truth? And I’m kind of struck by the irony of that because truth stood right in front of him. The better question would be, who is truth?

And the answer is right there. Jesus Christ is the truth. He’s the truth personified.

And while we could look at the law and we could know some things about God, Like you read what God says about murder in the law and you realize that God is a God who places value on human life. That tells us something about God. You can look at what God says about adultery and you can realize that God is a God of faithfulness.

You can look at what God says in the law about defrauding other people and you can realize that God is a God of truth. We can look at the law and we can know some things about who God is, But you know as well as I do, there’s a difference between knowing somebody and knowing things about them. I’ve gone to funerals before for people that I’ve never met, but I knew the family, and so I’ve gone in support, and you hear the obituary, and you hear the biography presented, and you feel like you know some things about the person, but it’s not the same as ever having met them and spent time with them.

Through the law, we can know some things about God. But Jesus Christ showed up and showed us exactly who God is. He revealed the truth right in front of us.

of who God is so we can have a fuller understanding of Him. And there is no amount of work or religious effort that could bring us that kind of fellowship with God. So the law was good.

The law served its purpose, but Jesus, in terms of being able to bring us into a relationship with God, where we are held secure and where we can know Him, Jesus Christ is greater than the law. And then we need to look in verse 18 that Jesus is greater than any spiritual experience. He says in verse 18, no one has seen God at any time.

Now here he’s talking about the Father. And we could talk about the physical seeing of God. But I think this means something more, maybe than the way I’ve used it in the past. When you look at this word seen in Greek, it looks like the implication there is a full, long look.

And so what John appears to be saying here is that nobody has really comprehended the Father. Nobody has really grasped who the Father is like they think they have. Up until the point when Jesus came, people were just kind of glimpsing, catching glimpses of who God is.

And again, I’m not talking about physically seeing Him. But have you ever dealt with a concept, maybe in school, maybe even now somebody’s trying to explain something to you, and every time you think you’ve just got the slightest grip on it, maybe you’re kind of holding on by your fingertips here, and just when you think you’ve got the teeniest grasp on understanding it, there it slips away from you again. Anybody ever done that?

I was at a meeting this week for the Pregnancy Resource Center, and they were talking about the intake forms, and I felt that way. Got all these forms to fill out, and they were talking about them, and every time I thought I had the slightest understanding of what we were supposed to do, it was gone again. I have no idea.

So I’ll either learn or I’ll just mess it up and somebody else can fix it. That’s how the understanding of God was. Despite all the spiritual experiences that people had had, despite all the feelings and all the miracles that they had witnessed, he said no one has seen God at any time.

Nobody has really understood who God is. We’re just glimpsing who God is. But he says here at the end of verse 18, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father he has declared him.

A lot of people had had spiritual experiences. They had witnessed miracles. They had felt the stirring of the Spirit.

They had any number of things where they thought they knew or understood or had experienced God, but they only thought that. They only got it in part. The real knowledge, the real understanding, the real experience of God came with Jesus Christ. He calls him the only begotten son.

And God has a lot of children by adoption. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, you are God’s child by adoption. He says to those who believed, he gave the power to be called the sons of God.

And so if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ today, you’re his child by adoption. God has many children by adoption, but God the Father only has one son by nature. And that’s Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only one who shares his nature.

He’s the only begotten son, and it says He is in the bosom of the Father, that indicates a closeness and intimacy. Yesterday at the free lunch, we were talking about personal space and our differences of personal space. And mine is about 18 feet.

I’ve had to learn to get over that in ministry. I love you, but I’m over here, you’re over there, and we’re talking, and it’s good. But sometimes people want to get this close.

Not so much since COVID. But if you think that’s not real, Wait for a stranger to carry on a conversation with you and come sit next to you and lay their head on your chest while they talk to you. Would that be awkward?

I mean, my skin is crawling just thinking about that. And I love y’all, but it would be awkward for any of you to come lay your head on my chest or on my shoulder while we’re having a conversation. I mean, I love you, but I love you over there just as much, right?

And yet there are about five people on this planet that I’m totally okay with that, as long as they don’t get so heavy that they’re going to crush my lap. that I’m going to be okay with them climbing up in my lap and laying their head on my shoulder or my chest or whatever and tell me about their day or tell me why they’re crying. Because they’re my children.

There’s a level of intimacy there. So when it says He’s in the bosom of the Father, it’s not referring to His location though. It’s talking about the relationship that Jesus Christ has to God the Father.

So not only can He help us understand and experience God because they share a nature, Because the Father and Son share a nature, but also there’s this intimate close bond there that nobody else has. And so Jesus is in a unique position to be able to show us what the Father is like. And it says here at the end of verse 18, He has declared Him.

And maybe this won’t mean much to you, but I got excited when I saw this word declared this week. I’d never noticed it before. But the word for declared is a Greek word that comes from the same word exegete.

And you may have never heard that term before, but that’s what we’re supposed to be doing when we preach or when we teach the Bible, is to exegete the Scriptures, to draw out the meaning. If somebody stands in front of you and reads a verse and then spends 30 minutes giving their opinion, run. If somebody opens up a magazine and begins to talk about it, or a book, and gives their opinion from the pulpit, and that’s their message, run from that.

The job here is to exegete the Scriptures. and that means we go through a whole list of the if you’ve ever been in my office you may see it if I haven’t had time to clean up littered with sheets of a legal pad where you’ll see it divided into four squares because my first thing I do in preparing a message is to work my way through these these four questions that I have to try to understand what is this text about how would the people who originally read it understand it and what did the people who originally wrote it intend to say, how does it point us to Jesus? And how does that apply to our lives today?

I’m working through those four steps in order to exegete, in order to draw out the meaning so that I can then make you as familiar as I possibly can with the meaning and purpose of that scripture in the time we have allotted. It’s to take the truth of God’s Word and draw it out so you can understand it and relate to it. Not just what I want it to say, not just what I think it should say, but what it means.

What this word says here is that Jesus Christ exegetes who God is. Jesus Christ draws out the meaning, lays it out very plain so that we can understand it and so that we can relate. That was mind-blowing to me.

Jesus Christ does, for our understanding of God, what a good Bible teacher is supposed to do with the scriptures. Just lay it out and make it plain. When Jesus came, We’ve got the ultimate expression of who God is.

And there’s no spiritual experience we could have. There’s no upwelling of emotion. There’s no swaying back and forth during worship with fog machines.

There’s no sign that we could experience. There’s no nothing as far as a spiritual experience that could help us understand God and who He is and what He wants for us like a relationship with Jesus Christ can. And because of that, John teaches that Jesus is the greatest of all spiritual blessings.

He says in verse 16, and I’m wrapping up here, of His fullness we have all received. He says we have all had the privilege of witnessing and experiencing all that Jesus Christ is. That fullness of God that was there present in human form in Jesus Christ, that’s been laid out for all of us.

Fortunately for them, they got to be there and experience it in front of their eyes. We can experience it too, but in a spiritual way. He said the fullness of God is right there for us.

And we’ve all received. He says, and grace for grace. And the way this is phrased, it’s talking about an ongoing abundance of God’s grace and blessings that just are poured out over and over and over and over.

And one commentator compared this to the manna from heaven, that God sent it in abundance. So they didn’t have to stockpile it. They didn’t have to go through scarcity.

It was just always there in abundance when they needed it. and that’s how the grace of God is and the blessings of God, the spiritual blessings of God are for us in Jesus Christ. That everything we could ever need from God, everything we could ever need to know about God is right there for us in Jesus Christ. And writing this, writing this introduction, John calls on us to accept Jesus Christ for all he claimed to be and to trust him as our Savior. See, John didn’t just write this to adva