Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Let's all turn our attention to John
Chapter One. John One verses forty three
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through fifty one. This is the
end of this chapter. John is the
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Fourth Gospel and the New Testament,
and if you happen to have one of
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the black bibles from the cart,
I mean you want to read along,
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you'll find this on page eight hundred
and eighty seven. So in this passage
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we are introduced to two new disciples
and we learn more about who Jesus is
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what it means to follow him.
Let's give our attention to God's word now.
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First John, or sorry, John
One, verse forty three. The
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next day Jesus decided to go to
Galilee. He found Philip and said to
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him follow me now. Philip was
from Betsidah, the city of Andrew and
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Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said
to him, we have found him of
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whom Moses and the law and also
the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth,
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the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said
to him, can anything good come out
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of Nazareth? Philip said to him, come and see Jesus. Saw Nathaniel
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coming toward him and said of him. Behold in Israel, lighte in whom
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there is no deceit. Nathaniel said
to him, how do you know me?
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Jesus answered him. Before Philip called
you, when you were under the
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fig tree, I saw you.
Nathaniel answered him. Rabbi, you are
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the son of God, you are
the King of Israel. Jesus answered him,
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because I said to you, I
saw you under the fig tree.
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Do you believe you will see greater
things than these? And he said to
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him, truly, truly, I
say to you, you will see heaven
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opened and the angels of God ascending
and descending on the son of man.
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May God bless his word to us. You may be seated. As I
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mentioned before, I read this book
that we just read from is called John,
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or the Gospel according to John,
and the Gospels, as we are
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learning, or perhaps you already know, are like little biographies about Jesus.
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Gospel means good news. It's the
good news according to John, about Jesus,
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and so from the very beginning,
from verse one of Chapter One all
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the way here to the end of
this chapter, John has been telling us
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about Jesus. He's been telling US
why. That is why that news about
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Jesus is is Gospel. Why?
That is good news. And so,
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as we come to the end of
chapter one, I want to take a
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moment and review with you some of
the things John has told us so far.
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Right, what is it? Who
is this Jesus that Andrew and Peter
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and Philip and Nathaniel are following?
What have we learned about him so far?
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Want to mention five things and I'll
mention them very briefly. Number One,
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John tells us that Jesus is called
the word of God. He comes
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from God, the father, as
his eternal and fully divine son. He
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makes the father known. He is
the word of God. Number two,
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John has told us in this chapter
that Jesus is the lamb of God.
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He is like a sacrifice. He
is a sacrifice, he takes away the
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sin of the world. Through Moses, God gave the law, but through
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Jesus we receive grace upon grace and
a greater knowledge of God. Number three,
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John has told us that Jesus is
the Christ, the Messiah, words
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that mean the anointed one. They
point to one that was process prophesied about
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in the Old Testament, in the
law and in the prophets, as we
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read here in our passage this morning. He is the one who would be,
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who would come and who would reign
as God's King, as God's son,
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over his people. So Jesus is
the word of God, he is
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the lamb of God, he is
the Christ of God number four. He
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is the Eternally Begotten Son Whom God
has sent into the world as a light
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to overcome the darkness, to take
away the sins of men, and he
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does this by becoming man. And
finally, we see that the way that
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we come to benefit from this gift
that God gives to us is through the
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use of people who spread this gift, who, by spreading the message,
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in other words, were not just
recipients of this amazing grace that God has
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brought, but we come to be
used as tools for God's grace. God
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first invites us. Come and see
Jesus, says to these men that are
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following him, and pretty soon those
men are saying, in turn, come
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and see a two other men,
and that's what happens in our passage to
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day. All of these things are
piling up and growing and growing and leading
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into something really wonderful. Jesus is
forming a church. Jesus, who is
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the light of the world, Jesus, who is the word of God,
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who is the son of God,
Jesus, who is the lamb of God,
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who takes away our sins. Andrew
hears this word from John The baptist,
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who then tells his brother Peter.
Then these brothers Tell Philip, their
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neighbor, who then goes and tells
nathaniel. You see how it's happening.
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The word of God is fretting and
in this way the number of people following
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Jesus continues to grow and grow and
grow. It's like if you take a
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light, that the light is shining, and then you take a mirror and
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you reflect that light, and then
you take another mirror and reflect that light
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and you take another mirror and reflect
that light and you keep doing that and
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the light keeps bouncing and bouncing and
bouncing and it's shining in some ways brighter
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and brighter as it's reflected, but
it's still the same light every time,
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that same grace, the same God. This light, however, we are
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learning in this passage, comes in
a very particular form. This light that
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comes into the world comes and is
shared from one person to the next through
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words, good words, Gospel Words, a Gospel that is shared from one
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person to the next, to the
next to the next. You are here,
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every single one of you are here
today because somebody shared that word with
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you. They shared that light with
you. That news about Jesus and God
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worked in it. As we read
earlier in the Propheti is ekially called these
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bones. He testified to these bones
this good news about God's promise, and
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what happened? That came to life
and do an exceedingly great, army and
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amazing thing. This is how God's
Word Works. This is why Jesus is
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called the word of God, and
the word is continuing to spread in the
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same way today. Jesus told his
disciples before his ascension in Matthew, Chapter
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Twenty Eight, go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in
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the name of the father and of
the son and of the Holy Spirit,
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teaching them to observe all that I
have commanded you. So can you see
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how this command that Jesus gives to
us at the end of his earthly ministry
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is connected to the things that he's
doing here in the very beginning of his
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earthly ministry? The mission Jesus gave
his disciples before his ascension to heaven is
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connected to the mission that Jesus gave
when he descended from heaven. This means
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that what we do is a body
of Christ what we do as we share
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the Gospel, what we do is
rereceive the Gospel. Isn't some kind of
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extraneous thing, this kind of busy
work that we add on or just decide
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to do. We do it because
of who Jesus himself is. Or,
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to put it another way, who
Jesus is determines who we are. What
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he does determines what we do.
Well, that takes us up to our
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passage today. Then in our passage
today, John Testifies again to some of
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these things he has been saying before. He reminds us, in Nathaniel's words,
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that Jesus is the son of God
and the Messiah, the expected son
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of God, the King of Israel, and another old thought, that Ge
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that has been mentioned before, is
made more explicit that the Old Testament testified
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to this one who is coming and
is now here. If you don't know
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much about the Old Testament, Nathaniel's
reaction and the reaction of the disciples may
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seem a kind of confusing. Imagine
if somebody comes up to you and says
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we found the Messiah, but you
don't know what a Messiah is. You
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would kind of shrug your shoulders and
say what are you talking about? But
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if you understood that for a long, long time, for generations after generations,
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God had promised this anointed person,
this special son, who would come
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to rule and reign in his kingdom, and this son, this son of
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David, this anointed chosen one,
would not just rule in an ordinary way
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but would establish God's kingdom forever and
ever, that he would be anointed by
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God's spirit himself and that in this
kingdom the world would be changed. Through
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this kingdom, God's work would be
done. And somebody came up to you
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then said we found him, totally
different reaction right. And that's why these
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words are so powerful and so meaningful. When John the Baptist points to Jesus
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as he walks by and says behold
the lamb of God who takes away the
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sins of the world, or when
Philip goes to Nathaniel and says we found
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him. Whom Moses in the law
and all the also the prophets wrote Jesus
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of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Well, tell me about him,
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help me to understand him. Nathaniel
is confused on some level. Their commentators
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disagrees to whether he's negative or positive
in the question he asks. But Nathaniel
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asks, can anything good come out
of Nazareth? Is this nathaniel being a
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studious theologian who's saying, wait,
how does that fit with these other things
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I've learned? Or as Nathaniel being
knit very negative towards Nazareth and saying can
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anything good come out of Nazareth?
It's a little hard to say, and
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commentators disagree. But no matter what, Nathaniel's thinking through this problem. At
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some level or another he's trying to
decide how is it that this one that
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you're telling me about comes from here? We'll come back to that in a
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moment. But Philip says, come
and see this is important. Nathaniel goes
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and he encounters Jesus and he what
he finds is amazing. What does he
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find? What do we learn more
in this passage about this amazing Messiah who
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has come, this son of God, this lamb of God, the light
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of the world? Well, if
that's not enough, if what John has
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already said is not enough. He
adds more and if I may, I
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think we can put a few different
ideas together, all under this word surprise.
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Three things I'll mention. You know
what a surprise is, right.
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A surprise is something that you weren't
expecting. Right. A surprise is something
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where you are expecting one thing and
you get another. You expect to walk
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into an empty room on a normal
day and what you get as a room
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full of people singing happy birthday.
Right. A surprise is thinking your tax
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return is going to be this big
and then finding out it's this big surprise,
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something unexpected. There's several surprises here
in our passage and it helps us
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understand the reaction that these these people
are happy having, the things that we
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learn about Jesus. The first thing, the first way this surprise comes to
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us comes in the form of geography. Right now, you might not think
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geography is a very surprising thing,
but maybe it is if you put it
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in a certain way. If I
told you that the president was going to
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instead of take his position and do
all of his work from the White House,
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but instead was going to do it
in a in a farmhouse in Yuma.
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You might find that surprising, right. Or if I told you that
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a person was going to decided to
direct great films and be a game changer
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in the film industry and they were
going to do all of that from Green
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Valley, you might say, well, that's a surprising choice. Right,
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location often matters right where you do
what you do these kinds of things,
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and that's not true just for professions, but it's particularly true for for leaders
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and for kings. It's I think, and almost an arguable point, that
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leaders lead from places of leadership.
Kings live and rule from capitals and if
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they don't want to do that,
they move the capital or they create a
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capital. Jesus, by every expectation, should be going to the capital,
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should be going into Jerusalem, and
yet here he is out by the Jordan
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River. He he receives and the
people receive this word from God, the
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Father in heaven, that this is
his son and whom he is well pleased.
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Here is John, in the Line
of the Old Testament prophets, pointing
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to this Jesus and saying here is
the light of the world, who comes,
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who shines in the darkness, and
on and on. These things that
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we've already talked about here with the
disciples, are recognizing this is the Messiah,
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this is the anointed one. Every
expectation that the king has come would
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lead you to believe that he is
about to go into Jerusalem, where the
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temple is, where the capital is. And then we read that the next
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day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. To Galilee. Why would Jesus go
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to Galilee? And then we have
these other place names to there's a lot
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of geography here. Philip was from
Best Cida. Jesus is being pointed out
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as from Nazareth. These are not
important places, these are outskirt towns,
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unimportant places, the really the regions
on the edges. This is not what
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you would expect. Now this becomes
a surprise for an important reason, because
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what Jesus is doing here is not
an accident. Jesus is doing something that
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is consistent with his ministry from beginning
to end. It reminds us of one
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of the Central Aspects of the gospel
of the good news about Jesus, and
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it's this that Jesus chooses what is
weak and unimportant and foolish and struggling and
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sinful and sick, but to save. Finds the dry bones and he works
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with those. That's the good news
of the Gospel. Everyone expects him to
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simply take humanity at its best and
kind of level up just cause it to
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level up. We're going to just
move to the next level, take humanity
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and make it better. Right.
He's going to go to the best people,
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and this is what you often do
if you're running a business or something
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like this. You Go and you
find the best talent you have and you
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gather together the most important people and
you get the best connections and you pull
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it all together to create the best
thing you can. And then Jesus,
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though, he goes to piles of
bones, to Bethsaida, to Galilee,
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to tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners
and fishermen and these kinds of things.
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The King of glory, who is
so glorious, this eternal son of God
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who comes into the world to bring
light to all of the world, he
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bypasses all that we think is glorious
to take the inglorious things and make them
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shine with the glory of God.
That's what Jesus does. This is who
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he is and it's marked even by
his very footsteps as he goes into Galilee.
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God does not descend to take people
at the highest levels who are important,
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or at least so they think they
are. You take us at our
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best and then just sort of give
us a little boost. The physician comes
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to heal people who are sick,
for struggling, who know themselves to be
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weak. God descends a doesn't doesn't
doesn't descend to just level up our humanity
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a little bit. God descends to
bring us up into his divinity, to
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make us children of God. And
for those of us who know ourselves to
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be, if I could put it
in this way, a people of the
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outskirts, if we know ourselves to
be not important, people who struggle with
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sin and suffering and weakness, then
the fact that the king of glory,
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the Son of God, the light
of the world, comes to you,
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well, that's good news, isn't
it? Yes, good can come from
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Nazareth. As it turns out,
our Lord comes from Nazareth and he goes
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to best CIDA and to Galilee.
This is surprising news and it is very,
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very good news. The second surprise
that we have is Jesus's miracle.
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Here we have testimony in proof of
Jesus's divinity. That's as if we didn't
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have enough already. But God is
gracious, right, and he gives us
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a bountiful feast of his revelation.
What's the miracle? Well, after finding
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the Fanuel Jesus, Nathaniel goes to
Jesus, Jesus sees him and says,
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behold in Israelite indeed, in whom
there is no deceit. Or maybe you've
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heard that in older translations. No
guile. Now, imagine you meet someone,
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meet someone from the first time,
and the very first thing that they
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say to you is something very personal
about you. Right, none of the
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sort of normal, ordinary greetings,
but I see that you are like this
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in your kind of inmost being.
How would you respond to that? Now,
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maybe you'd say thank you or something
like that, but my guess is
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most of us would probably sort of
cut to the chase and before quickly say
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something exactly like what Nathaniel said.
How do you know me? What's going
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on here? I came to meet
you, I came to find out about
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you, know you as the Messiah
and these sorts of things, and all
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of a sudden you're addressing me in
this extremely personal way. How do you
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know me? Jesus, then shows
that this statement about him wasn't just a
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lucky guess or information that Philip had
supplied him. Hey, I want to
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tell you about my friend thaniel.
Doesn't have any guy. I just thought
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you might like to know. I
know, like you know, he doesn't
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have sort of the lowdown or the
profile on Nathaniel, and he shows this
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to nathaniel and to us by saying, before Philip called you, before he
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came to you, before he came
to me, when you were under the
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fig tree, I saw you before
Philip call all do you? This is
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a way to reveal, to say
this is something that Philip couldn't even have
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known. He didn't get his information
through another person. And this is remarkable
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right. This is surprising. Imagine
if somebody came up to you today and
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says I saw you and the number
of how long you brush your teeth this
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morning, like, how do you
know that? Who told you? How
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does this man, this person from
Nazareth, know something about me that nobody
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could know, because he's not just
a man, he's the son of God.
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Now, as a side note,
I'll say if you're smart, for
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the rest of your life. You
will try to be as quick a study
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as Nathaniel is. Is Nathaniel gets
it fast. He's got these questions,
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he's trying to connect the dots.
How could anything good come from Nazareth?
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How do you know mean? Jesus
tells him. He says, before I
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saw you. I saw you,
you under the FIG tree. And Nathaniel
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answers, rabbi, you are the
son of God, you are the King
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of Israel. Right, like I
said, if you're smart, you'll try
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to be as quick as nathaniel is
in learning your lessons from Jesus. But
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this is all really marvelous, isn't, to God reveals himself and Nathaniel starts
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exulting, starts praising, starts confessing. This isn't, ultimately, this isn't
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because Nathaniel is just this amazing man. And Nathannuel is amazing, but he's
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amazing because Jesus is amazing, because
he takes dry bones who have ignorance and
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confusion and sin and all the rest, and he puts sinews and flesh and
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skin on them and he breathes life
into them so that they then confess with
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their own breath and the spirit that
is working in them. You are the
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son of God, you are the
King of Israel, and now I'm going
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to follow you. I wish that
every time God revealed himself to me in
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this way, as he is even
right now in the scriptures, that I
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would be like nathaniel, proclaiming and
Exalting and confessing. What about you?
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Have you seen Jesus? Have you
heard of his miracles you just did?
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What are you doing? What's in
your heart? Do you confess him,
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praise him, exalt him? That
is the appropriate sponse response when you come
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into contact with God, when he
reveals himself to you and it's message of
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salvation and the things that he is
going to do, you don't sort of
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give a disinterested strug. You don't
say, well, I don't to think
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about this some more, I just
don't know. No, he praises name
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and you follow him. Well,
now we come to our final surprise.
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As amazing as the All seeen knowledge
of the Divine Jesus, Our divine Jesus
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is, as we see it here
in this event. Listen to what Jesus
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says next, he says truly,
truly, I say to you, you
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will see heaven opened and the Angel
Or, I'm sorry, you will see
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heaven open and the angels of God
ascending and descending on the son of man.
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You think it was impressive that I
saw you under the fig tree.
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You believed with that. Guess what, you are going to see much greater
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things than these. And then this
image that he gives them, this thing
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that he tells them. You will
see heaven opened and the angels of God
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ascending and descending on the son of
man. If I could speak in a
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very familiar way, does this blow
your mind? If not, you you
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do work on your imaginations. What
does this mean? The angels of God
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ascending and descending on the son of
man? I don't think methniel went.
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Oh, okay, that sounds really
neat. I'm looking forward to that.
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He probably did what all of you
do and what I do, which is
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what is that? How do we
make sense of that? What does Jesus
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mean? How we know, we
can be certain about this, that it
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is a reference to what the man
Israel, also known as Jacobs, saw
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when he met the Lord at a
place called Bethel, where he saw something
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like this. But honestly, it
doesn't give us a whole lot more information
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other than what we read right here, that Jacob saw the angels and angels
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descending and descending on this ladder up
up to heaven. Ironically, I think
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that this off when we read things
like this, it really bothers us.
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God promises us this amazing thing,
promises Nathaniel in particularly here, this amazing
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thing, that he's going to see
this, and then we get bothered by
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our confusion, even maybe a little
bit upset at God. Why does what
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are you do? What are you
talking about? How could this be true?
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I don't understand stand this. Right, we like to sort of stand
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over God and say, you know, he sort of reveals us to one
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miracle and we say wow, that's
really impressive, and then he shows us.
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He says, I'm going to show
you something even greater, and we
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say, I don't know, I
just don't really understand what you're talking about.
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If you would let me Yank the
cover off of our pride and sin
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for a moment, I would like
to do that. Why do we,
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in our hearts, read something like
this and scoff at it or or somehow
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blame God for our confusion ask for
more proof, when what he's doing is
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he's giving us the thing that we're
always asking for, which is a sense
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of his transcendence and his greatness and
his presence. Right people ask all the
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time for I want a miracle,
I want to know something about God,
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I want him to reveal himself to
me in some way. And then he
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said he does that, and then
he promises US something even greater and we
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say, well, I just don't
know. I don't think I understand that.
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How prideful we are, God reveals
to us I'm going to show you
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something, so I'm going to show
you something that so clearly shows you how
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far I am above you, and
we kind of go. I don't know,
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I just don't really get it.
I think I'm going to go do
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something else. How earthly we are, how simple minded, how foolish?
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Do you really want to worship a
God who is everything that you always expected
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him to be, or will you
worship a God who can never be fully
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comprehended by you, who promises to
reveal things to you in the future that
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you can barely even understand what he's
saying right now? I think there are
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a lot of things that we might
be able to learn and pull from this
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vision. But I I only want
to say this today, that when the
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Lord promises us these things, this
revelation about himself, that he gives himself
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to us in this eternal son of
God, his word, our response isn't
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to stand over him and say,
well, let me think about this and
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analyze this more and I need to
know more and give me more details.
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When the transcendent God of the world
descends into the world to save you from
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your sin, you throw yourself at
his feet. Do you say, save
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me, Lord, I am yours, I belong to you. He is
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surprising us. He has a surprising
God because he is infinitely beyond us,
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and yet he has descended that far
to save us, to save you,
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to love you. In these descriptions, that that we are I'm getting from
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John Here, in this Gospel,
and the ways in which Jesus is revealing
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himself to his disciples and to you. As these are recorded by the spirit
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and given to us today, we
come to know our king better in these
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descriptions. I need you to see
that your king, who goes out to
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the outskirts and to the poor and
to the broken into the sinners, is
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not merely the king of Israel.
He is the King of Heaven, he
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is our God to worship and glorify
and praise and repent before and to be
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saved by these angels of God that
are sending and descending to heaven. Do
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you know what they are? Do
you know what the Bible says they are?
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He says they're ministering spirits for you, his children. This Jesus,
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who descends all the way down to
Earth to take on the form of a
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man to suffer and die on a
cross. He does that so that heaven
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itself can be opened up, so
that you can be exalted into it to
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live and do well with our Lord
forever. So, whether you have known
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Jesus for one hour or for a
hundred years, you will never be able
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to take in all the splendor of
his dignity, the grandeur of His Majesty,
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The glory of His grace. I
beloved, you don't need to.
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It's not your job to take in
everything that God is and master him.
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It's your God. It's your job
to trust him, submit before him,
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bow before him. You don't need
the supersede God to be blessed by him.
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Why? Because God comes to you. He comes so far down that
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he could, that he would,
and he did, establish a Kingdom of
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love by His grace on a cross
for you. That's who Jesus is and
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that's who you are in him,
and that's what we enjoy as as we
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follow him. Let's pray and ask
that God would help us to do exactly
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that.
