Jesus is God in the Flesh

The main point is that we can see and be close ti God in Jesus

ME

I don’t know about you but there are some moments in our walk with the Lord when I just feel like I can absolutely feel his heartbeat. There is zero doubt what God wants me to do next with my life, and not even in my life but in the very next moment… I feel like almost with every single breath I know exactly what God wants me to do I can know and anticipate his very next move for me.

But there are other times where I feel like I am so far away… his voice feels like it has been silent for decades or years and I feel like I cannot really sense where he is in anything that is to come next.

I remember a time like that very clearly, when I was a youth pastor I had found some questionable material on my pastors computer in his office, see his was the only one we had to print anything off of so I always had to use it. and it was just bad… and I eventually had to figure out what to do about it… and i contacted the superintendent of the independent fellowship we were part of and he knew the church and the people well.. and he asked me to tell the head of the board… anyway… the pastor showed up to my house and told me that he and the president decided that I need to keep it quiet or find a new place to work…

And I was terrified… I couldn’t lose the job because it helped to provide for my family… so for the next few months I just felt like God had left me and I was wandering in the wilderness… kI had done the right thing and I was being punished… and I was left wanting a sign from God that he was still with him

I realized as I was writing this and I looked back on it that really it was probably my own fault, I had decided that God had left me so I was not allowing myself to hear his voice…

WE

Maybe you haven’t experienced something to that extreme but there are moments in your life when you can relate… you just feel like God is so far away you couldn’t even begin to imagine how he could hear you… and really today as we look at the question that Phillip will ask we see what Bruce Millner says is “…the longing of the heart of humanity across all the ages to see and to know the living God.” and thats the problem in our would today… so many want to see and know the living God that they invent new ways and places to find him…

And in todays scripture we have to remember Jesus has told the people following him over and over again who, or even what he is and what he plans on doing… and over the past few weeks we have seen Jesus say that he would leave them to a place they can’t go, that he was going to prepare a place for them in his father’s house and he would return from that place to bring them back there himself, and then he also says they know exactly how to get there. Thomas is the one that comes through this time instead of Peter with the honest spirit and tells Jesus he has no idea how to get to the place where Jesus is going… which took us to last week where Jesus had claimed that he was the way the truth and the life…

And Jesus comes back with the famous

John 14:7 ESV

7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

And this can almost be sort of hurtful if you let it, he’s kind of giving it to them in this little spot, but I love the way that Leon Morris put this

“They had known him well enough to leave their homes and friends and livelihood to follow him wherever he went. But they did not know him in his full significance.”

And what a crazy thing to say right, because I think there are some of us that are in that same boat… we have known Jesus well enough to maybe leave some of our other worldly things behind, but the real question for us, is are we like them and do not know him for his real significance… do we not truly see who he is and what he has done and what that means for us… its not just what he has did and done… thats the catalyst, but what that means for us…

The good news here is the people that hear these words who are in this place of not really understanding are about to see something that will change that for good. They are about to truly see Jesus for who he is in the glory of the crucifixation, and we can too…

And here we see Jesus teaching doesn’t motivate Peter, or Thomas to speak, but this time its Phillip…

John 14:8 ESV

8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”

And I think this is a moment unless we stop we truly miss. It is almost certain in this moment what Phillip was hoping for was to see a moment he had read about and been handed down through scripture… he was wanting a moment like Moses…

Exodus 33:18–19 ESV

18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” 19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

and may e he was even thinking about Elijah who after confrontation with Ahab and Jezebel ahd went away and almost given himself up to self pity. So he goes and he lies down and he tells God to just take his life… and the Lord basically tells him he’s hungry to get up and eat… and so he arises… and it says on the strength of that food forty days and nights he travelled to Horeb… and sat in a cave… and the Lord is like, NOw what Elijah? and Elijah is like…. I have done everything the Lord wanted me to do… and the sons of Israel are awful… they are breaking altars and killing your prophets and now I am the only one left and they mean to kill me… and I can almost imagine his exasperation… and tells him

1 Kings 19:11 ESV

11 And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

… and as you follow the story… after the earthquake… a fire… not the Lord… after the fire a gentle blowing wind… adn this makes Elijah leave the safety of the cave… and the Lord speaks to him again…

And it is most likely this that Phillip is waiting on… this is what he is telling Jesus… Lord… show us the Father and that will be enough… we don’t have to know where you are going or what is going on we will believe and everything else will be good.

And we can’t get too judgmental… we have to realize we are the exact same way… there are moments in our lives when we want God to show up so we can truly believe in him and make a deal with him that way we will know that he is real. Maybe you don’t do that so much anymore if you have walked in your faith for a long time, but there are moments when you are young in your faith or maybe before you ever really come to faith you have said, Lord if you make the third car that passes by be mustard yellow I will know that you are real and I will believe… we want all the signs… because much like Phillip we believe that seeing is believing. However, we forget how much Phillip has already seen as he walked with Jesus and this has obviously not been enough for him… and as we talked about it would never be enough for us either because believing doesn’t start with the eyes it starts with the heart….

And look at how Jesus responds…

John 14:9 ESV

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

And Jesus is again trying to show them how connected he is to the father… how interconnected the two are and Jesus is trying to say look you have already seen him… you’ve seen everything that Ive done, I have told you time and again who I am and you are still missing it… and I can almost hear the tone of Jesus voice here… its hurt almost… disappointment.. how can you say that to me… How can you not see by now… and we see the disciples that walked with Jesus and we think how in the world is it that these guys walked around with him for so many years and they still didn’t know him… how is it they could have seen everything he did and still don;t truly know Jesus…

And if we are being honest this is the thing I tell you about I worry most as a pastor… people who have been in the church for years and decades and come every time the door is open and they still don’t truly know Jesus… its as Leon Morris said… we know him enough to leave things behind but we don’t truly know his significance… and I can say all this because It was my experience…

And what I know is if these guys can walk with Jesus for all those years and see firsthand all of the miracles and still not know him there is no question that I can do the same. I know… I did…

And THen Jesus makes his main point next

John 14:10–11 ESV

10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

And this is great because Jesus isn’t saying that he has done a lot of studying on the father and that is why he can talk so clearly about him and how he will respond and who he is… He is not saying he got his doctorate in the father… in fact he is also not saying he is a puppet and the father is pulling his strings and telling him what to say and asking him to speak and speaking for him… that is most certainly not the case… he is saying the father is in him and he is in the father… and he is again speaking of this trinitarian view that we hold and how they are all one and he is wanting us to see it clearly… and it is most important for us to realize this because it is because of the unity we are able to see the father in Jesus…

If they weren’t separate but the same three in one one would not be able to clearly reveal the other… But because the son and father are unified one can reveal the other…

And when Jesus tells us that we are to believe he isn’t just meaning for us to make a head knowledge, no, what he truly wants is for us to take it and revolve our life around it….

ANd look at what peter says 2 Peter 1:17-18

2 Peter 1:17–19 ESV

17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,

And Peter is telling us… we don’t need a sign, what we have that is of much more value is his word… that lights the way for which we are to live…

YOU

ANd here is the question for you… this morning as you are looking… in the hard times when you are questioning and searching for God and you are wondering where he is, are you looking for a sign like Phillip? Are you waiting for God to do something completely Miraculous, or is the life of Jesus enough for you? Are you able to live and breath and fill yourself off of his word. And my friend I understand that is no easy task. We must truly seek him and believe his words and live as if he is true.

WE

Can you imagine you life if you believed his word and lived it out as if it was the provision the Father gave you for your life like it is? Or could you imagine the difference we could make in the world if all of us that professed ourselves as his lived a life where we lived a life like the Bible was the word we needed in the difficult times