God revealed in Christ
Hebrews 4:12-16
John 1:10-18
OR
18 No one has ever seen God, but His only begotten Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.
Sermon
Today’s reading from John tells us that no-one has seen God, but Jesus has made Him known.
AT the same time Hebrews tells us God knows everything about us and nothing is hidden from Him to whom we will have to give and account for our lives.
DO you remember the days of Springbok radio? AS kids on a Friday night we would gather around what my dad called “The Wireless” to listen to Squad Cars and Men from the Ministry.
I would picture burly inspectors with gruff voices and police haircuts. I could imagine the police driving Ford Cortina 3 litres with flashing lights and squealing tyres.
I always pictured “The men from the Ministry” looking like butlers with bowler hats and crisp suits. They were tall and slender.
When I was about 7 we went to the SABC studios in Durban, to sit in the audience as they recorded “The Men from the Ministry”.
It was nothing like I expected. The actors looked nothing like the picture I had in my head. They wore casual clothes and were friendly, not stuck up at all.
Today most of us watch TV, and those radio shows have faded away into memories.
The main difference between TV and radio, is that on radio you had to imagine what the actor looked like, on TV you can see them clearly.
Maybe the Old Testament is like Radio, where men and women listened to God but had to do a lot of guessing to fill in the blanks.
But Jesus coming to earth was like someone inventing colour TV.
In Jesus, we can see God as He really is.
Or in the words of John, “No one has ever seen God, but Jesus, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.”
In John 14 Jesus said, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father”.
There is a whole lot I could say this morning about the Father that we learn from the Son, but I want to focus on God’s capacity to judge as He saves.
Grace and Truth
John says that Jesus was full of grace and truth. A few lines later he said that grace and truth came into the world through Jesus.
If Jesus came to reveal the Father, and Jesus was full of grace and truth, then God the Father must be full of grace and truth too.
Marcion
In the second century a theologian called Marcion struggled to understand God as a God of Grace and Truth. His conclusion was that the God of the Old Testament must be a different person the God of the New Testament.
Marcion felt the God of the Old Testament was a God of wrath and revenge, a God quick to punish.
By contrast Marcion saw the God of the New Testament as a God of Grace, who forgives everything, who does away with all punishment and Law.
PAUSE
Marcion was a heretic.
Because as John says, Jesus reveals God as the God of Truth and Grace.
We know lots about Jesus’ Grace.
He forgave sinners,
he healed the sick,
He healed lepers,
He ate with sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors.
Sometimes as Christians, we focus on grace and don’t know how to reconcile truth and judgement.
God is full of grace, but He is also full of Truth.
When they brought to Jesus the woman caught in adultery, Jesus forgave her sins, but He also said, “Go and sin no more.”
After Jesus healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, He said, “Stop sinning or something worse will happen to you.
Do you remember how blunt Jesus was with the Pharisees? He called them children of the devil. He told them they were white washed tombstones.
In Marcion’s thinking, Grace and Truth were opposites which were mutually exclusive, but they are actually wonderful partners.
MOM
About 2 years ago my mom went to the doctor because she felt something was not right. She went through some tests and was told that she had cancer. The course of treatment was that she underwent chemotherapy, then surgery and finally radiation.
What the doctor brought my mom was truth and grace. It was the worst news she ever heard, and it saved her life.
If she never received the truth, my mom could never have received the grace, in fact she would probably be dead.
Today my mom experiences life, but the cancer which lived in her body has been incinerated. It was thrown into a fire.
The surgeon distinguished between my mom, and the cancer, and the cancer was judged and condemned, but my mom was set free to live.
I think Jesus comes to us like that doctor. He comes to us and points out the sin in our lives. He points out where things are going horribly wrong.
He tells us our eternal lives are at risk and how to He has paid for our salvation.
Last week we did an analysis of our lives according to the Ten Commandments, and I know just how difficult it is to hear that truth, that we all have sinned and turned away from God.
But that truth does not need to drive us away from God, instead it should make me turn to Him and ask Him for grace.
The diagnosis is the start of the healing.
Jesus tells the truth. Jesus doesn’t sweep things under the carpet and pretend everything is going to be OK. Jesus doesn’t leave us to believe in positive thinking.
He speaks the truth in love.
But here’s the thing, when Jesus brings truth, it is not to condemn, but His Truth brings life.
The imagery of Hebrews 4 is of a doctor, and God is the doctor who knows and sees everything. Before Him everything is exposed. God knows the truth and is able to separate even to the level of bone from marrow.
If the writer of Hebrews wanted to emphasise that today, he may have said, “God knows every gene in your genetic code, and His word is sharp enough to separate the gene that makes you a protective mother from the gene which makes you a jealous wife.”
God doesn’t want to condemn all of you, your whole person.
God wants to condemn sin in us so that the person He created us to be may be saved.
Immediately after the writer of Hebrews speaks of how God knows everything about us, he says that Jesus is our high priest, and because of Him we can approach God’s throne of grace with confidence.
I think what Jesus shows us about God, is that He can’t tolerate sin, but that He separates the sin from the sinner.
This image grew on me over the past few months.
AS a surgeon works, every stroke of the scalpel is an act of judgement. With every stroke of the scalpel the surgeon needs to distinguish between good and bad, healthy and sick, life giving and death inducing.
Every stroke of the scalpel is an act of truth, and an act of grace.
In the bright light of reality, Jesus condemns our sin, and then He offers us life.
If we never accept the guilt of our sin, we can never experience the joy of God’s grace.
The most dangerous place on earth is denial.
I have heard it said, and maybe even said it myself, that when Jesus came 2000 years ago, it was only to seek and save the lost, with no judgement involved. And that when He returns, it will be to judge the living and the dead.
But Jesus’ life was an act of judgement; Romans 8 tells us that God condemned the sin of the world when He sent Jesus.
When Jesus came to someone who was sick, or blind, or demon possessed, He judged the infirmity, the sickness, the blindness, and He condemned it and chased it out - so that the person could be made whole.
Like His Father, Jesus separated the sin from the sinner, in truth He judged the sin and extended grace to the person.
So often when we face the truth about our sin, we get defensive and think “God wants to harm us”.
But actually when God is stirring in our spirits, it is because He wants to set us free.
The other day I read a magazine article where the author asked, “How can a loving God condemn people to torture in hell?”
The first thing to remember about God is that He is Holy, and He will not tolerate sin in His presence.
The second thing is that God never prepared hell for people; Matthew 25 tells us that hell was prepared for the devil and his demons.
It is God’s will to separate the sin from the sinner, and condemn the sin to hell and the redeemed sinner to heaven.
But to come back to my surgery metaphor, sometimes God convicts us of our sin and offers to remove it, but we choose not to have surgery, we choose not to have our sin cut off. Some people cling to their sin.
And here’s the tragedy, their sin kills them.
God is full of truth and grace
Justice and mercy
Jesus said that after He had ascended to the Father, He would send the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, and the Holy Spirit will convict of sin and righteousness.
When God prods you, He isn’t condemning you, in fact the opposite, He is throwing you a lifeline.
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4 v 16)