Introduction:
Psalm 115:8 – Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.
Ephesians 5:1 – Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
Hebrews 10:28 - Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
John 8:1-11
I Want to Be Like God (John 1:14–18)
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Grace without TRUTH = Not like Jesus.
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Truth without GRACE = Not like Jesus.
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GRACE and TRUTH = Like Jesus.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
Small Group Discussion
Read John 1:14-18
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Define “glory” (John 1:14). What did John actually see when he says “we have seen His glory”?
Do you tend to lean more towards “grace” or “truth” when dealing with someone’s sin? Why? What do you need to do to be “full of grace and truth” like Jesus?
Breakout
Pray for one another.
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Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1.
While you're turning there,
just going to ask,
we pause for a second and I would ask that you would
please pray for me to be faithful to communicate God's word.
I will pray for you to have a heart open to receive
what it is God is telling us here tonight in this passage.
All right? Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word.
It's easy tonight to get so caught up in,
I guess the decorations and the sentimentality and all of that.
But God, this is really no different to what we normally do.
We come to worship you, come to know you,
come to hear from your word.
I just ask Father that your spirit be at work with your word today.
In a profound way,
make us into the people that you've called us to be.
We pray in Jesus' name.
And all of God's people said,
"Amen, you become like that which you worship."
It's a true statement.
"You become like that which you worship."
You know, it's really obvious in children.
I mean, just looking back at my life,
if you would have found me in the late 70s, early 80s,
I would have been walking around with torn pants
and a torn shirt because I was the Incredible Hulk.
Remember that show, "Lufa Rigno"?
That was me.
"Aah!"
Oh, then you go forward just a couple of years
and I would have been running around the house
with a sword fighting Skeletor.
By the power of Grayskull, I was he-man.
Right?
And then you go forward a few more years,
early 90s, grunge.
Ironically, I once again had ripped pants on
and the flannel shirt, the mop hair.
And you can laugh and make fun of me all you want,
but I know some of you got hammered pants in your closet.
Some of you ladies back then had a Debbie Gibson haircut
because you become like that which you worship.
It wasn't even my idea, actually.
The Bible says this.
Psalm 115 verse 8 says, "Regarding idols,
it says those who make them become like them.
So to all who trust in them,
you become like that which you worship."
And then we come to church.
We come to church and the truth is still the same
because Ephesians 5:1 says, "Therefore,
we imitators of God as beloved children."
Like, well, how do we imitate God?
By worshiping Him.
That's how.
It starts with worshiping Him.
You're like, "Okay, all right, but how in the world,
even worshiping Him, how can I imitate God?"
And you know, I think that's one of the most awesome things
about the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
What we're celebrating at Christmas, God became a man.
And I think that's one of the most awesome things.
One of the most glorious things is that we get to see
what God's holiness and love looks like in a human
on this planet interacting with other humans.
It's not conceptual. We've seen it.
Yeah, the Christmas story. It's a familiar story, right?
You know, you've got the manger and the shepherds and the light.
But that's Matthew and Luke's version.
Matthew and Luke in your Bible give the historical version.
But we're looking at John this year.
And John gives the theological version.
That God became something He's never been without ceasing to be
what He's always been.
It's the miracle of Christmas.
God entered the world through childbirth,
becoming a real human being while remaining God.
So, what do you want for Christmas?
When we started this series, we said, "I want to know God."
The only way you can know God is through Jesus.
Jesus is the revelation of God.
He is the living Word of God, right?
Then on Sunday, Pastor Taylor gave a message,
"I want to belong to God."
The only way you belong to God also is through Jesus Christ.
It's through Jesus, through His death and His resurrection,
that our sins can be forgiven,
that we can have the promise of eternal life,
that we can be adopted children of God.
Tonight, I want to be like God.
What do you want for Christmas?
Really, all I want is to be like God.
This section we're looking at talks about the glory of Jesus Christ.
Those who received Him get to know how glorious our God is.
And when we worship Him, we do become like Him.
Look at verse 14 in John chapter 1.
It says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we have seen His glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father,
full of grace and truth."
Mark that.
Grace and truth.
Full of grace and truth.
Verse 15.
"John bore witness about Him and cried out,
'This was He of whom I said,
'He who comes after Me ranks before Me,
because He was before Me.'"
And from His fullness,
we have all received grace upon grace.
I love that last phrase, "Grace upon grace."
It's just waves and waves and waves of grace.
That's Jesus.
He's not stingy with His grace.
And He tells us in verse 16 that
we've received from His fullness.
We've received from the fullness of grace.
You know what that means?
We're always in,
if you belong to Jesus,
you're always in the waves and waves of His grace.
Meaning, I can't say,
"Well, I came to Christ in 1995.
Boy, you should have seen me back then.
I really needed His grace back then.
I need His grace just as much today
as I did then.
And if I live tomorrow,
I'm going to need His grace just as much tomorrow
as I do today and as I did then."
But that's the good news.
He says, "Grace upon grace upon grace,
that if you're in Christ,
you're always in it."
He just keeps on giving it to us.
"On your best day, you're in His grace.
On your worst day, you're in His grace."
Look at verse 17.
He says, "For the law was given through Moses.
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
There it is again.
Grace and truth.
Grace and truth.
The law though, he mentions the law.
The law came through Moses.
There was no grace in the law.
Like you read your Old Testaments.
There's only judgment.
You break the law.
You're guilty.
In fact, the New Testament talks about that
in Hebrews chapter 10.
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses
dies without mercy in the evidence
of two or three witnesses.
There's no mercy.
Just guilt.
That's what the law does.
The law kills.
The law only shows you that you are a sinner.
Yet, through Jesus comes...
Did you see it again?
Grace and truth.
What's showing us is that there's a stark contrast
to the law with what came in Jesus Christ.
Verse 18 kind of sums up the whole passage.
It really sums up everything
that we're celebrating at Christmas.
Here it is.
No one has ever seen God.
The only God who is at the Father's side,
He has made Him known.
God the Son has made God known.
One is saying, "We saw everything that is God.
We saw that in Jesus Christ."
So what's He like?
What has God shown us
of His character in Jesus Christ?
I mean, what's He like?
Well, you notice in this passage,
He said it in verse 14,
and He said it in verse 17.
If you were to say,
"Describe God in two words."
He does.
He says, "Here's what God is like."
Two words.
Grace and truth.
Those two words exemplified
who Jesus Christ is,
who is the perfect expression
of who God is.
Grace and truth.
I want to talk about grace and truth
for a few minutes.
What is grace?
Well, grace is compassion.
It's mercy.
Grace is kindness and patience.
Grace is forgiveness.
Read your Bibles.
Jesus always manifests
just a tender, loving grace.
So He's full of grace,
but it also says He's full of truth.
Truth.
Jesus always spoke the truth.
Read your Bibles.
Jesus always upheld the authority
of God's Word.
Jesus never told half truths.
Jesus never minimized the truth.
Jesus never downplayed Scripture,
contradicted the Old Testament.
Jesus never sugar-coated it.
He never watered it down.
And He never, not once, ever did He
apologize for what the Bible says.
I want to be like God.
And when we look at this character of Jesus,
it is astounding, full of grace and truth,
simultaneously, full.
And we could have this temptation
to just kind of step back
and admire that like, "Wow, isn't that awesome?
Isn't that an awesome representation of God?"
But you know, and we should do that, yes.
But the Bible doesn't tell us
that we should just admire the character of Jesus.
The Bible tells us that Jesus' character
isn't something just to impress us.
The Bible says that we should imitate His character.
I mean, so many times, right,
we are called to imitate Jesus.
Matthew 11, Jesus says, "Learn from Me."
John 13, He was washing the disciples' grimy feet.
And Jesus said, "I'm doing this to show you an example
that you should do the same."
Philippians 2, Paul says, "Have this mind,
which is yours in Christ Jesus."
1 Peter 2, 21 that Pastor Rich just read,
says that Jesus is an example,
and we should follow in His steps.
And then we turn to John 1 here,
and it says, verse 16, "From His fullness
we have all received
that we don't worship a distant God.
We worship a God according to this
who is to be received."
You see, I can stand up here,
and I can talk for hours about Grace and Truth.
Don't worry, I know it's Christmas, I'm not going to.
But I could.
But unless you've received Jesus Christ,
this isn't going to matter.
Because the Bible tells us that when we truly receive Him,
God puts His Spirit in us
so that we are able to imitate His character.
So that we can truly be His image-bearers.
That Jesus was full of Grace and Truth,
perfectly full of both 100% Grace and 100% Truth.
And this is the profound thing.
Jesus was never one or the other.
Never lopsided, never compromising one over the other,
never wanted the expense of another.
John makes it clear, he says,
"This is what God is like, Jesus Christ."
And if there are two words that sum up
the kind of God we worship, it's Grace and Truth.
And we have to get that,
because if we're to worship God
and therefore imitate God,
if we're to represent God to the world,
we have to imitate Grace and Truth
as displayed by Jesus.
So you know what our problem is.
Our problem is we are not perfectly full of Grace and Truth.
And the reality is each of us have a tendency to lean
more towards one than the other.
Some of you are more Grace people.
And some of you are more Truth people.
And I just want to show you tonight that
you can't be content to lean in one direction or the other,
because that's not like Jesus at all.
Like, well, can you give me an example?
Yeah, there is an example I want to show you.
Look at John 8.
He just turned over in your Bibles a few pages.
I want you to see.
We're just going to read this and reference this.
But if there's one story from Jesus' life
that demonstrates this full of Grace and full of Truth
at the same time, character,
if there's one story that would show that, it's this one.
John 8 says,
"They want each to his own house,
but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
Early in the morning, he came again to the temple.
All the people came to him and he sat down and taught them,
the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman
who had been caught in adultery.
And placing her in the midst, they said to him,
'Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.'
Now, in the law, Moses commanded us
to stone such women.
What do you say?'
This they said to test him
that they might have some charge to bring against him.
Jesus bent down and wrote with His finger on the ground.
And as they continued to ask Him, He stood up and said to them,
'Let him who is without sin among you
be the first to throw a stone at her.'
And once more He bent down and wrote on the ground.
But when they heard it, they went away one by one,
beginning with the older ones,
and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before Him.
Jesus stood up and said to her,
'Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?'
She said, 'No, Lord.'
And Jesus said,
Look at this.
Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you.'
'Go, and from now on sin no more.'
So if you have an outline,
and you're taking notes which we always encourage you to do,
I want you to jot a couple of things down here.
I want to be like God.
Number one, grace without truth is not like Jesus.
Grace without truth?
That's not like Jesus.
Grace without truth is weak enabling.
Never holding people accountable.
You ignore the transformation power of the Holy Spirit.
You disregard the truth that God says in His Word
that we are called to righteousness and holy living.
People who lean more towards grace
care more about being liked than they care about what's right and wrong.
But I want you to see in this account in John 8,
Jesus wasn't just grace.
He didn't say to the woman,
'I affirm you.
You do you, ma'am.'
And look, don't worry about what the Bible says.
I mean, they're quoting the Law of Moses.
That was a long time ago.
That's not really for us.
'I affirm you, ma'am.'
He didn't say that.
He wasn't just grace.
You see, Jesus brought truth into it.
Jesus says, 'Go, and from now on sin no more.'
What Jesus said was,
'Adultry dishonors God.'
Hey, stop living like that.
Okay?
Stop living like that.
And church, when we are content to overlook sin,
when we're content to avoid the hard conversations,
when we're ready to affirm people in their sin,
that's not like Jesus.
And now the truth people are like,
'Yeah, give it to Him.
Give it to the grace people.
Hang on, truth people,
because truth without grace is not like Jesus either.'
Now look, I know the truth people.
We've been around some truth people, haven't we, Aaron?
Right now the truth people are like,
'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.'
How in the world could it be?
Like, I thought Harvest Bible Chapter,
I thought Bible was your middle name.
Like truth is all that matters, right?
Truth.
It's truth that matters.
How in the world could you have truth without grace?
We realize in John 1.17 he told us.
He told us again, John 1.17,
'For the law was given through Moses.'
Do you know what that is?
Do you know what the law is?
It's truth without grace.
So let me ask you, was the law truth?
This is a shouted out verbal reply question.
Was the law truth?
Yes, it was.
It is.
No, it was, it is.
The law is truth.
100% every letter of God's law in the Old Testament is truth.
But there was no grace in the law.
We referenced this earlier.
This is how the law works.
Oh, you broke the law.
You're guilty.
Now it's time for your punishment.
Next, that's how the law worked.
And truth without grace leads to cold, detached transactions with other people.
That's truth without grace.
You messed up.
You're done.
You're done.
It leads to harsh judgment.
Truth without grace leaves no room for mistakes.
There's no second chances.
There's no invitation to repent.
There's no encouragement to turn it around.
Listen, people who lean more towards truth than grace usually care more about their convictions
than they care about actual people.
And that is a problem.
But you see in this John 8 account with the woman caught in adultery, do you notice Jesus
wasn't just truth with her?
Do you notice that?
I mean Jesus didn't say to the woman, they bring the woman before Him, Jesus didn't say,
"Hey lady, you know what the law says.
You're guilty.
There's nothing to discuss."
He showed her grace when He says, "Neither do I condemn you."
No good lived differently.
That's grace.
In church when we condemn people, when we are one striking you out, when we refuse to
allow people the opportunity to change, that's not like Jesus.
So we imperfect people tend to fall on one side or the other.
So now that you've heard, I just want to ask you just for fun, which way do you lean?
Show of hands.
Many of you would say that you're more grace people.
Put your hands up if you're more of a grace person.
All right?
Now raise your hand if you're more of a truth person.
I have a note written from the first service.
When I asked you the truth people were, they were a lot more bold to put their hands up
than the grace people.
I think there's something to that.
That'll be a sermon for Easter.
Anyways, grace people, look, I love you, but you typically care more about the relationship
than any sin issue.
And that's not good.
And truth people, you care more about upholding God's Word than loving someone in the relationship.
And that's not complete either.
And you know, I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of weeks.
While you do what you do at work, this is what I do at work, I was thinking so much,
like what is it that causes people to lean one way or the other?
And I was thinking about that, like whether you sit down with a grace person or you sit
down with a truth person, either way.
But I was just thinking, like, if you set them down and said, what makes you lean in
the direction that you lean, what would they say?
And then it hit me.
Do you know what it is?
And I'm sure of this.
They think they're being loving.
I mean, think about it.
You sit down with the grace person.
Why do you lean more towards grace?
Because it's love.
I'm loving.
That's why my heart is so full of love.
I'm so full of love.
That's why, and you can't just discard the relationship just because of something the
Bible says, I'm just so full of love deep in my heart of heart of hearts.
I'm so full of love.
That's why I'm more of a grace person.
But then, you know, if you sat down with the truth person and said, why do you lean more
towards the truth?
Do you know what they'd say?
It's love.
Because what is more loving than giving people the word of our Lord?
I mean, come on, Pastor Jeff, you're a pastor.
You know this.
The most loving thing you can do is tell somebody the truth, right?
So that's what I do.
I don't mince words.
I tell them the truth.
That's how I show love.
That's how I love them.
That's nothing more loving than that.
I'm more true because that's the loving thing to do.
There's a huge mistake in that line of thinking, isn't there?
It's a mistake to think that grace is love because it's not.
And it's a mistake to think that truth is love because it's not.
You know what is love?
God is love.
And as a man, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, showed true love by being full of grace and
truth both.
Well, that's number three.
What do you want for Christmas?
I want to be like God.
Well, grace and truth is like Jesus.
And see, that's the point of the story of the woman caught in adultery.
Jesus showed her grace and truth at the same time.
Grace, he forgave her.
He says, "Neither do I condemn you."
That's grace.
Truth at the same time.
Jesus said, "Your lifestyle is wrong.
Go and sin no more."
Jesus gave both.
He says, "I forgive you.
Now let's do better."
In church, we need to learn this.
We need to be people who represent Jesus accurately, full of grace and truth.
Not a group of people that enable in the name of love, not a group of people who condemn
in the name of upholding the Word.
We need to be a people who demonstrate acceptance and accountability at the same time.
Whereas John Piper put it, people who say, "I love you, but this is wrong."
Parents, you're going to get that with your kids.
Some of you parents need to sit down with your kids and say, "Look, I love you.
I accept you, and nothing will ever change that.
But this habit you have is wrong, and you need to stop this, and I'm going to help you stop
this because I love you."
Do you see that?
That's grace and truth both.
Some of you have family or friends that are stuck in a sinful lifestyle.
Maybe it's an addiction.
Maybe they're in an unbiblical relationship regarding marriage and sexuality.
You need to sit down and say, "Look, I care about you, but what you're doing is dishonoring
the Lord.
Come on, let's get on a better path here.
Let's get on track."
For some of you, maybe it's even in church.
Maybe it's in your small group.
Maybe flagrantly in sin, and you're like, "I don't know what to do here.
I don't know how to handle them.
Here's how you handle them."
You pull them aside, and you sit down with them, and you say, "Look, what you're doing
is wrong, but I'm going to do everything that I can to help you get on track because I care
about you so much."
You see, it's grace that refuses to beat people down, but it's truth that refuses to overlook
sin.
But what do you want for Christmas?
I want to imitate God.
The only way to imitate God, to demonstrate a love for God's Word and a love for God's
people is being like Jesus.
And according to the Bible, it's full of grace and truth.
Our worship team would make their way back up, and our candlelighters would come forward.
We're going to close our service by singing to candlelight.
Why on Christmas Eve do we sing by candlelight?
Because it's pretty, right?
It's so pretty.
And it's a tradition, but this year, there's another reason that we're doing this.
This year, thank you, Ashley, this year, it's also an illustration.
In anticipation of this service, you know, I was looking at the order of service and
thinking about this moment actually right now.
And I was thinking about this flame.
I thought, you know what is that flame?
But two things perfectly.
The flame is light and heat.
Right?
You can see the light.
You'll just have to trust me on the heat.
You can try it out if you like, but it's hot.
But you see that flame?
It's not one or the other.
It's light and heat.
It can't be one or the other.
If you're going to have the flame, you're going to have light and heat both.
You could say it is full of both aspects, light and heat.
And as we sing, I just want you to look down at that flame and recognize how perfectly
full it is of both light and heat.
Then as you sing, I want you to think about grace and truth.
It's like the flame imitating Jesus.
You are to be full of both at the same time.
We want to thank you for coming out and worshiping our Lord.
And it is my prayer that your worship is genuine because then your imitation of Him will also
be genuine.