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!
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00:37-00:39
Turn in your Bibles to John chapter one.
00:41-00:50
And while you're turning there, just gonna 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.
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And I will pray for you to have a heart open to receive what it is God is telling us here tonight, this passage, all right?
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Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you for your word.
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And 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 than what we normally do.
01:21-01:26
We come to worship you, come to know you, come to hear from your word.
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I just ask, Father, that your spirit be at work with your word today in a profound way.
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Make us into the people that you've called us to be.
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We pray in Jesus' name.
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And all of God's people said, amen.
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You become like that which you worship.
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It's a true statement.
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You become like that which you worship.
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You know, it's really obvious in children.
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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.
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Remember that show, "Leuphorigno"?
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That was me.
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(growls)
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Oh, then you go forward just a couple of years and I would have been running around the house with a sword fighting Skeletor.
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By the power of Grayskull, I was He-Man, right?
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And then you go forward a few more years, early '90s.
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Grunge.
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Ironically, I once again had ripped pants on and the flannel shirt, the mop hair.
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And you can laugh and make fun of me all you want, but I know some of you got hammer pants in your closet.
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Some of you ladies back then had a Debbie Gibson haircut because you become like that what you worship.
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It wasn't even my idea.
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Actually, the Bible says this.
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Psalm 115 verse eight says, regarding idols, says, "Those who make them become like them.
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So to all who trust in them, you become like that which you worship." And then we come to church.
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We come to church and the truth is still the same.
03:44-03:56
Because Ephesians 5, one says, "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children." Like, well, how do we imitate God?
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by worshiping Him.
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That's how.
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It starts with worshiping Him.
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You're like, okay, all right, but how in the world, even worshiping Him, how can I imitate God?
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And you know, I think that's one of the most awesome things about the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
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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.
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It's not conceptual, we've seen it.
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Yeah, the Christmas story, it's a familiar story, right?
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You know, you got the manger and the shepherds and the light.
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But that's Matthew and Luke's version.
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Matthew and Luke in your Bible give the historical version, but we're looking at John this year, and John gives the theological version.
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That God became something He's never been without ceasing to be what He's always been.
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It's the miracle of Christmas.
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God entered the world through childbirth, becoming a real human being while remaining God.
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So what do you want for Christmas?
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We started this series, we said, "I want to know God." The only way you can know God is through Jesus.
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Jesus is the revelation of God.
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He is the living word of God, right?
05:50-06:00
And on Sunday, Pastor Taylor gave a message, "I wanna belong to God." The only way you belong to God also is through Jesus Christ.
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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.
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Tonight, I wanna be like God.
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What do you want for Christmas?
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Really, all I want is to be like God.
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This section we're looking at talks about the glory of Jesus Christ.
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Those who received him get to know how glorious our God is.
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And when we worship him, we do become like him.
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So look at verse 14, John chapter one.
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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.
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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.
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"From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace." I love that last phrase, grace upon grace.
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It's just waves and waves and waves of grace.
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That's Jesus.
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He's not stingy with his grace.
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And he tells us in verse 16 that we've received from his fullness.
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We've received from the fullness of grace.
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You know what that means?
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We're always in, if you belong to Jesus, you're always in the waves and waves of his grace.
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Meaning, I can't say, well, I came to Christ in 1995.
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Boy, you should have seen me back then.
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I really needed his grace back then.
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I need his grace just as much today as I did then.
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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.
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But that's the good news.
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He says, "Grace upon grace upon grace," that if you're in Christ, you're always in it.
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He just keeps on giving it to us.
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On your best day, you're in His grace.
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On your worst day, you're in His grace.
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Look at verse 17, he says, "For the law was given through Moses.
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Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." There it is again, grace and truth, grace and truth.
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But the law though, he mentions the law.
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The law came through Moses.
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There was no grace in the law.
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Like you read your old testaments, there's only judgment.
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You break the law, you're guilty.
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In fact, the New Testament talks about that in Hebrews chapter 10.
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Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy in the evidence of two or three witnesses.
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There's no mercy, just guilt.
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That's what the law does.
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The law kills.
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The law only shows you that you are a sinner.
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Yet through Jesus comes, Did you see it again?
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Grace and truth.
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He's showing us that there's a stark contrast to the law with what came in Jesus Christ.
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Verse 18 kind of sums up the whole passage.
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Really sums up everything that we're celebrating at Christmas.
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Here it is.
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No one has ever seen God.
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The only God who was at the Father's side, "He has made him known." God the Son has made God known.
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John is saying we saw everything that is God, we saw that in Jesus Christ.
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So what's he like?
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What has God shown us of his character in Jesus Christ?
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I mean, what's he like?
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Well you notice in this passage, he said it in verse 14 and he said it in verse 17.
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If you were to say, "All right, describe God in two words," he does.
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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.
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Grace and truth.
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I want to talk about grace and truth for a few minutes.
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What is grace?
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Well, grace is compassion.
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It's mercy.
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Grace is kindness and patience.
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Grace is forgiveness.
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Read your Bibles.
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Jesus always manifests just a tender, loving grace.
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So He's full of grace, but it also says He's full of truth.
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Truth.
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Jesus always spoke the truth.
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Read your Bibles.
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Jesus always upheld the authority of God's word.
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Jesus never told half truths.
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Jesus never minimized the truth.
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Jesus never downplayed scripture, contradicted the Old Testament.
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Jesus never sugarcoated it.
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He never watered it down.
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And he never, not once ever did he apologize for what the Bible says.
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I wanna be like God.
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And when we look at this character of Jesus, it is astounding, full of grace and truth, simultaneously full.
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And we could have this temptation to just kind of step back and admire that, like, wow, isn't that awesome?
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Isn't that an awesome representation of God?
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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.
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The Bible tells us that Jesus' character isn't something just to impress us.
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Bible says that we should imitate his character.
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I mean, so many times, right, We are called to imitate Jesus.
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Matthew 11, Jesus says, "Learn from me." John 13, he was washing the disciples' grimy feet.
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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.
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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.
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We worship a God, according to this, who is to be received.
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You see, I can stand up here, and I could talk for hours about grace and truth.
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Don't worry, I know it's Christmas, I'm not going to.
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But I could.
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But unless you've received Jesus Christ, this isn't gonna matter.
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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.
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So that we can truly be his image bearers.
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So Jesus was full of grace and truth, perfectly full of both, a hundred percent grace and a hundred percent truth.
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And this is the profound thing.
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Jesus was never one or the other.
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Never lopsided, never compromising one over the other.
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one at 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 If we're to represent God to the world, we have to imitate grace and truth as displayed by Jesus.
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So you know what our problem is.
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Our problem is we are not perfectly full of grace and truth.
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and the reality is each of us have a tendency to lean more towards one than the other.
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Some of you are more grace people, and some of you are more truth people.
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And I just want to show you tonight that you can't be content to lean in one direction because that's not like Jesus at all.
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Like, well, can you give me an example?
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Yeah, there is an example I wanna show you.
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Look at John 8, just turn over in your Bibles a few pages.
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I want you to see, we're just gonna 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.
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If there's one story that would show that, it's this one.
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John 8, it says, "They went each to his own house, "but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
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"Early in the morning, He came again to the temple.
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"All the people came to Him, "and He sat down and taught them.
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"The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman "who had been caught in adultery.
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"And placing her in the midst, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught "in the act of adultery.
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"Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.
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"What do you say?" This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.
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Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
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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.
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But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones.
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And Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.
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Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they?
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Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, look at this, Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you.
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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 things down here.
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I want to be like God.
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Number one, grace without truth is not like Jesus.
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Grace without truth, that's not like Jesus.
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Grace without truth is weak enabling.
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Never holding people accountable.
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You ignore the transformation power of the Holy Spirit.
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You disregard the truth that God says in His Word that we are called to righteousness and holy living, and people who lean more towards grace care more about being liked than they care about what's right and wrong.
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But I want you to see in this account in John chapter 8, Jesus wasn't just grace.
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He didn't say to the woman, "I affirm you.
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You do you, ma'am.
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"Look, don't worry about what the Bible says.
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I mean, they're quoting the law of Moses and that was a long time ago and that's not really for us." And I affirm you, ma'am, he didn't say that.
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He wasn't just grace.
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You see, Jesus brought truth into it.
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Jesus says, "Go, and from now on sin no more." What Jesus said was, "Look, adultery dishonors God.
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Hey, stop living like that, okay?
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Stop living like that.
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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.
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Right now the truth people are like, "Yeah, give it to 'em.
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"Give it to the grace people." Hang on, truth people, because truth without grace is not like Jesus either.
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Look, I know the truth people.
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We've been around some truth people, haven't we, Aaron?
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Right now the truth people are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." How in the world could it be?
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I thought Harvest Bible Chapel, I thought Bible was your middle name.
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Like truth is all that matters, right?
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Truth, it's truth that matters.
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How in the world could you have truth without grace?
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We realized in John 1:17, he told us.
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Look at it again, John 1:17, "For the law was given through Moses." Do you know what that is?
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Do you know what the law is?
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It's truth without grace.
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So let me ask you, was the law truth?
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This is a shouted out verbal reply question.
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Was the law truth?
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Yes, it was.
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It is, not was, it is.
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The law is truth.
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100% every letter of God's law in the Old Testament is true.
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But there was no grace in the law.
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We referenced this earlier.
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This is how the law works.
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Oh, you broke the law, you're guilty.
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Now it's time for your punishment.
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Next, that's how the law worked.
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And truth without grace leads to cold, detached transactions with other people.
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That's truth without grace.
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You messed up.
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You're done.
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You're done.
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It leads to harsh judgment.
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Truth without grace leaves no room for mistakes.
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There's no second chances.
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There's no invitation to repent.
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There's no encouragement to turn it around.
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Listen, people who lean more towards truth than grace usually care more about their conviction, than they care about actual people.
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And that is a problem.
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But you see in this John eight account with the woman caught in adultery, do you notice Jesus wasn't just truth with her?
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Do you notice that?
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I mean, Jesus didn't say to the woman, they bring the woman before him.
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Jesus didn't say, "Hey lady, you know what the law says.
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You're guilty, there's nothing to discuss." He showed her grace when He says, "Neither do I condemn you, nor will you live differently." That's grace.
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And church, when we condemn people, when we are one striking you're out, when we refuse to allow people the opportunity to change, that's not like Jesus.
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So we imperfect people tend to fall on one side or the other.
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So now that you've heard, I just wanna ask you just for fun, which way do you lean?
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Show of hands, how many of you would say that you're more grace people?
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Put your hands up if you're more of a grace person.
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All right?
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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.
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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.
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I was thinking so much like, what is it that causes people to lean one way or the other?
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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.
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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?
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And then it hit me.
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Do you know what it is?
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And I am sure of this.
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They think they're being loving.
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I mean, think about it.
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You sit down with the grace person.
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Why do you lean more towards grace?
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because it's love.
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I'm loving, that's why my heart is so full of love.
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I'm so full of love.
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That's why, and you can't just discard the relationship just because of something the Bible says.
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I'm just so full of love, deep in my heart of heart of hearts.
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I'm so full of love.
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That's why I'm more of a grace person.
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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?
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It's love, because what is more loving than giving people the word of our Lord?
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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?
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So that's what I do.
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I don't mince words, I tell them the truth.
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That's how I show love, that's how I love them.
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There's nothing more loving than that.
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I'm more truth because that's the loving thing to do.
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There's a huge mistake in that line of thinking, isn't there?
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It's a mistake to think that grace is love, because it's not.
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And it's a mistake to think that truth is love, because it's not.
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You know what is love?
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God is love.
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And as a man, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, showed true love by being full of grace and truth both.
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Well, that's number three.
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What do you want for Christmas?
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I want to be like God.
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Well, grace and truth is like Jesus.
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And see, that's the point of the story of the woman caught in adultery.
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Jesus showed her grace and truth at the same time.
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Grace, He forgave her.
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He says, "Neither do I condemn you." That's grace.
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at the same time.
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Jesus said, "Your lifestyle is wrong.
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"Go and sin no more." Jesus gave both.
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He says, "I forgive you, now let's do better." Church, we need to learn this.
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We need to be people who represent Jesus accurately, full of grace and truth.
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I'm 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.
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We need to be a people who demonstrate acceptance and accountability at the same time.
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As John Piper put it, people who say, "I love you, but this is wrong." Parents, you've got to get that with your kids.
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Some of you parents need to sit down with your kids and say, "Look, I love you.
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I accept you, and nothing will ever change that, but this habit you have is wrong, and you need to stop this.
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and I'm going to help you stop this because I love you.
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Do you see that?
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That's grace and truth both.
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Some of you have family or friends that are stuck in a sinful lifestyle.
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Maybe it's an addiction.
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Maybe they're in an unbiblical relationship regarding marriage and sexuality, and you need to sit down and say, "Look, I care about you, but what you're doing is dishonoring the Lord.
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Come on, let's get on a better path here.
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Let's get on track." And for some of you, maybe it's even in church, maybe it's in your small group.
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Somebody 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.
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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.
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So what do you want for Christmas?
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I wanna imitate God.
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And 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.
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according to the Bible is full of grace and truth.
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Our worship team would make their way back up and our candle lighters would come forward.
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We're going to close our service By singing to candlelight.
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Why on Christmas Eve do we sing by candlelight?
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Because it's pretty, right?
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It's so pretty.
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And it's a tradition, but this year, there's another reason that we're doing this.
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This year, thank you, Ashley, this year, it's also an illustration.
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In anticipation of this service, you know, I was looking at the order of service and thinking about this moment actually right now.
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And I was thinking about this flame.
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I thought, you know, what is that flame?
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But two things perfectly.
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The flame is light and heat, right?
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You can see the light, you'll just have to trust me on the heat.
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I mean, you can try it out if you like, but it's hot.
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But you see that flame, it's not one or the other.
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It's light and heat.
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And it can't be one or the other.
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If you're gonna have the flame, you're going to have light and heat both.
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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. And then as you sing, I want you to think about grace and truth. Because like the flame imitating Jesus, you are to be full 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.
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.