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John 14:8–11 If Jesus Is God, Who Was He Praying To? · The TakeAway

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: If Jesus is God, who is he praying to?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is a simple question that leads into one of the deepest truths of the Christian faith.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: How can the Father be God, the Son be God, and the Holy Spirit be God?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: While Scripture insists there is only one God.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 14, Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus responds with an extraordinary statement: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: In this message, Pastor Harry examines what Jesus reveals about himself, the Father, and the God we often try to understand by fitting him into pictures our minds can contain.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Join Pastor Hattery as he unpacks why knowing God begins not with fully understanding him, but with receiving the one through whom God has made himself known.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Pastor Harry Barens with today's message.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, welcome again to the takeaway, where we search the scriptures to receive the reward of knowing who God is and finding rest for our souls in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, today we're going to be unpacking John chapter 14, verses 8 through 11, as we continue tracing the underlying theme of the ideas we hold on to in our own minds.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: The ideas about what we should be doing or where we should be going for God.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to focus on the image we hold in our minds of exactly who God is and how he reveals himself.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we're going to see that these ideas we hold are the very things Jesus is bringing to the surface in order to put them to death so that we can hold the image of God that he is revealing instead of protecting the one that we've created.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before we get started, I want you to remember a time that you heard someone ask, how can Jesus be both God and man?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now that is a simple question, but also a complex one at the same time, because he is both God and man for the simple reason that he said he is.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And yet the moment someone asks us how that can be, we experience the awkwardness of standing there with an answer we think we believe, and yet we have no easy way to explain it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now that awkwardness tells us something about the idea we hold about who God is or the lack thereof.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's a question that every believer has asked and has or will be confronted with at some point.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that is at the very heart of what we're going to see Philip ask today.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: He was holding on to an image of God in his own mind that was formed by his culture, teachings, relationships, and experiences.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're going to see is that Jesus destroys all of this in one blow and points in the only direction that reveals the truth of who God is and how both the Father and the Son are God.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, this has been a theme throughout this gospel, as we have already seen in John chapter 10, when the Jews gathered around him in the temple and said, If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then in John chapter 6, when the crowd asked, What sign do you do that we may see and believe you?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: We see that the human mind wants to know before believing, and yet we are told again and again to believe in him for who he is, and that he is the one who takes us to the Father.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the very thing that comes to the surface in today's episode as we see that Jesus has just told his disciples that he is going away and that they cannot follow him yet.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then Peter spoke first and asked why they couldn't follow.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then Thomas asked, and now we're going to see Philip, the third disciple to speak, but he doesn't ask a question like the others.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, just like the questions that Peter and Thomas asked, there's something at the root of it.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're going to find out how we see Jesus and know him well enough to believe that he and the Father are one, and how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit can be three persons and one God.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Christians have wrestled with that since the church began.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're going to do over the next few episodes is let Jesus Himself unpack it for us.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, let's begin in John chapter 14, verses 8 through 11.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: It reads, Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: How can you say, Show us the Father?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: What we have seen with Philip is also close to what Moses asked of the Lord in Exodus chapter 33, verse 18, when he said, Please show me your glory.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the Lord told him in verse 20, You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Moses asked to see and was shown the goodness and the name of the Lord.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And now Philip asked to see and is told that he has already seen, which tells us who's standing in front of him.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what is underneath the disciples' request is that they wanted something to do, to follow, and ultimately something to see.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in each case, the disciples are reaching for something they can actually hold.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is what we have been calling the idea of things.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it shows up again right here with Philip as he desires an image of what God is like that he can look at and be satisfied with.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: He even says what it would do for him, that if he could see the Father, it would be enough.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the promise every image makes, which is why the human heart keeps building them.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Paul says in Romans chapter 1, verses 21 through 23 that this is what the human heart does with God.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: It says, For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and birds and animals and creeping things.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is that the instinct to exchange the glory of God for an image is in us before any statue is ever carved.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the psalmist says what comes of it in Psalm chapter 115, verses four and five, it says, Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands, they have mouths but do not speak, eyes, but do not see.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then in verse eight, he adds that those who make them become like them.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So do all who trust in them.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: A God we made can only say what we gave it to say.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the image in our own minds works the exact same way because we made it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll always agree with us.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord answered all of this at Mount Sinai when he said in Exodus chapter twenty, verse four, you shall not make for yourselves a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Moses reminds Israel in Deuteronomy chapter four, verse twelve, of what they were given in place of a form.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire, you heard the sound of words, but saw no form.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: There was only a voice.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that God gave his people a voice and no form, because any form we make is a form we are in charge of, and a God we are in charge of is a God we have made.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So what does Jesus give a man who asks to see the Father when the Lord has said that no form of him is to be made?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Jesus answers Philip with a question of his own in verse 9, the way he often answers.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: He asks, Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what he is asking is where Philip has been looking, because the Father he is asking to see has been in front of him all along.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus says the sentence that this whole episode turns on.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Whoever has seen me has seen the father.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus says that whoever has seen him has seen the father.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the way he says it keeps both of them in view, because the father is the one made known, and the son is the one standing in front of Philip.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus follows it in the very next breath by saying that the Father is in him and he is in the Father.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Paul gives us the words of what the Son is to the Father when he says in Colossians chapter 1, verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what we know is that the Lord forbids every image we make of him, and then he gives the one image that he made himself.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let me say that one more time.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: God gives the one image that he makes himself, and that image is his son.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Every idol that man makes is an invention, and this image is a revelation.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: As the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a radiance is the light that comes from its source, and an exact imprint carries every line of what made it.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the writer is telling us that the Son has the very nature of God and shares his glory.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the Son we are looking at what God is, and that is why Jesus can say to Philip that he has seen the Father.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And in verse 10, Jesus asks Philip again, Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that question tells us two things at the same time.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: The first is that there are two, because a person can only be in another if there is another to be in.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the second is that the two are so joined that to look at one is to see the other.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the same verse, Jesus says, 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.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: The word, translated dwells, is in the Greek word meno, that same verb that sits underneath the word we looked at in our last episode, the rooms in the Father's house in chapter 14, verse 2, which are abiding places.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So the Father abides in the Son, and the place Jesus is preparing for us is where he is, which means we are being brought to the place where the Father dwells in him.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so verse 10 tells us how the Father is seen, which is in the words the Son speaks, and in the works the Father does in him.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Who the Son is in himself is spoken of more plainly in other verses.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where we turn next, because the hardest question believers are asked comes right out of what Jesus has just said.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: If the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son, and the Son is going to the Father and speaking to the Father, then who was he praying to?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: That question gets asked of believers all the time.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Peter tells us to expect it when he says in 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 15, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: So let's answer from John's own words, because every wrong answer to this question is one more picture of God that we drew for ourselves.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what we want is the image that he gave us.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the first thing the text shows us is that the Father and the Son are distinct.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, watch what's happening in John chapter 14, verse 16, where Jesus says, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the Son asks, the Father gives, and the helper comes.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that is three in a single sentence, each with a part of his own.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And as we saw in verse 12, Jesus says he is going to the Father.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And on the night he was betrayed, he lifts up his eyes in John chapter 17, verse 1, and says, Father, the hour has come.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Glorify your son, that the Son may glorify you.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 5, he says, And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: What this means is that the Son speaks to the Father out of a relationship that existed before the world did.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So when we hear Jesus pray, we are hearing the Son speak in the relationship he has always had with the Father.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a second reason the Son prays, because the Son became a man, and a man lives in dependence on the Father, which Paul describes in Philippians chapter 2, and which we're going to reach in a few minutes when we come to chapter 14, verse 28.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So what we see is that this is the first half of the answer, that the Father and the Son are distinct persons.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the second half is that they are one God, as we see that the Lord said to Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: That is the ground we share with every faith that confesses one God.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus never leaves it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: John opens his gospel with these words in John chapter 1, verse 1, which we looked at in our first episode.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It said, In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: The word was with God, and so he is distinct, and the word was God, and so he is what God is.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Then in John chapter 5, verse 18, John tells us why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then in John chapter 8, verse 58, Jesus says, Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now those words echo what God told Moses at the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3, verse 14, where it says, God said to Moses, I am who I am.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And in John chapter 10, verse 30 through 33, we hear the people who heard him say, I and the Father are one.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works for from the Father.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: For which of them are you going to stone me?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Jews answered him, It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that means is that the men who heard him knew exactly what he was claiming, because they picked up stones and said it was for blasphemy that a man was making himself God.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the Son is with God, and the Son is God, and there is one God.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit is spoken of the same way.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: When Ananias lied to the apostles about what he had given, Peter said to him in Acts chapter 5, verse 3, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 4, he said, You have not lied to man, but to God.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: So to lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God, and the Holy Spirit is the helper Jesus promised, as he says in John chapter 14, verse 26, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and there is one God.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the way the church has put it into words, what scripture holds together is that God is one in being and three in persons.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: If we go back to the year 325, we see that bishops from across the Christian world met in the city of Nicaea, and the creed they wrote condemns the teachings that there was a time when the Son was not, and describes him this way: God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Light of light echoes the radiance of Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3, and of one substance says in the church's words, what exact imprint of his nature says in Hebrews, what we see is that the creed puts into the church's own words what John 1 1, John 10.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to the verse people most often use to say that the Son is less than God, and it comes near the end of this same chapter in chapter 14, verse 28.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: It says, You heard me say to you, I am going away, and I will come to you.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, a great many people hear that the Father is greater than the Son and conclude that the Son has less of God than the Father has.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: But the situation Jesus is in is what we have to look at, because he is on his way to the cross, and he is telling the disciples that if they loved him, they would rejoice that he is going to the Father, which is a return to the glory he had with the Father before the world existed, as he prays in John chapter 17, verse 5.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then Paul explains what the Son took on in Philippians chapter 2, verse 5 through 8.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Paul says, Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is that the Son, who was in the form of God, took the form of a servant, and a servant stands under the one who sends him.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: So while Jesus lives as a man in obedience, the Father is greater in that place, just as the Son has said.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now Augustine dealt with this in the early 400s in his sermons on John's gospel.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: In the seventy-eighth one, which is on this very verse, his role was to give each statement to the nature it belongs to, so that I and the Father are one, belongs to the form of God, and the Father is greater than I belongs to the form of a servant.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in his own words, there was an accession of a servant form with no recession of the divine.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a second way the church has put it.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Gregory of Nazianzas, a bishop in Constantinople in the late 300s, said that we may call the Father greater in the sense that he is the cause, the one from whom the Son comes, when he writes, we assign this word greater to his nature, viewed as a cause.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the Father is greater as the source and the sender, and the Son is equal in the nature he shares.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the words of chapter 14, verse 28 sit together with John chapter 10, verse 30, and Philippians chapter 2, verse 6, and none of them cancels the other.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there are groups of people in the world today who read these very verses and come away with a different Jesus.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some teach that he is a lesser God, a mighty being made by God before everything else.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: In one English translation, the New World Translation renders John 1-1 as the Word was a God.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now some teach that he is an angel, the archangel Michael.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul warned the Corinthians about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 4.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus that we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that a person can say the name of Jesus and describe someone else.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that is another image we have shaped, a Jesus built to fit what the mind will accept.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the question that matters is who Jesus said he is.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now we went through all this back in John 1 1, where it reads the word was God in our first episode.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the Lord says through Isaiah and Isaiah 44 6, thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Besides me, there is no God.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if there is no God besides Besides him, a second and lesser God has no place.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And Scripture keeps the Son inside the one God.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: In John chapter 20, verse 28, Thomas says to Jesus, My Lord and my God.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus answers him in the very next verse by speaking of the faith Thomas has just shown.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we also see that the writer of Hebrews takes up the idea that he is an angel in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 5 and 6.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: It says, For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my son, today I have begotten you?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Or again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God's angels worship him.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the angels worship the Son, which places him above every angel.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to be fair to those who teach otherwise, because we agree on more than we sometimes say.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: They agree that the word was with God, and so a distinct person.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they confess one almighty God, but we part ways on the next words that say, and the word was God, which Jesus, Thomas, John, the writer of Hebrews, and the men with stones in their hands all heard the way that we do.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is the reason why it matters so much to be students of the word who know the author, the language, and the culture, and who listen to teachers that point us back to the original language, so that we hear what the author actually said and to whom he said it.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, even with all of that in hand, there is a part of this that none of us can fully explain.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: The God of the Bible is infinite.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if we could fully understand him, he would not be the God of the Bible.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: We know him truly because he has told us who he is, and we will never finish knowing him because he is God and we are his creatures.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul says in Romans chapter 11, verse 33, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yet this God has spoken to us in words we can follow.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And John Calvin said that when God speaks to us this way, he is talking to us the way a nurse talks to a little child, in simple words we can follow.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter one, verse one and two, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the fullest word God has spoken to us about himself is his son, and the son is the one who tells us who the Father is.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter two, verse seven, that knowing him continues into the ages to come.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: It says, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: That means there are coming ages, and in each of them he shows us more of the riches of his grace.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to spend eternity coming to know him, and the God we meet will be the same God with the same character, and his power and glory and mercy and love will be on display in ways we have never seen before.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I personally have been following him for over two decades, and I still say this that I do not fully understand him.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: But that is the beauty of discovering him.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I could fully understand him, I would stop searching him out.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that leaves us in a different position than the disciples, because Jesus stood in front of Philip where we haven't seen him face to face as he did.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so every believer since the ascension has had to answer to how we see Jesus so that we can see the Father.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now John gives us the answer in his own gospel.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: He says in John chapter 1, verse 18, no one has ever seen God.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Son has made the Father known, and Jesus says it himself in Matthew 11, 27.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: He says, All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the Father is known as the Son reveals him.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the Son revealed him in a body that God prepared, which John describes in John chapter one, verse 14.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: And 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.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter ten, verse five, that Christ, when he came into the world, said, Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is the answer to the images we draw.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: God refuses the image man creates, and he prepared a body for his son, so that we could know him and see him and touch him, as John says in first John chapter one, one through verse three.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon, and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was made manifest to us.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that those who saw him wrote what they saw.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus prayed for us in John chapter 17, verse 20, when he said, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now their word is the scriptures we are reading right now.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the apostles saw and heard and touched, and what they saw and heard, they wrote down for us.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Paul says in Second Corinthians chapter four, verse six, where the knowledge of God's glory is found.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote, For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus tells the disciples that this seeing will go on after he leaves in chapter fourteen, verse 19.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, because I live, you also will live.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're going to come to that verse in a few episodes where Jesus says in verse twenty-one that he will love the one who loves him and manifest himself to him.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Judas, not Iscaria, asks in verse twenty-two how he will manifest himself to them.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: But for now it is enough to see that Jesus promises a seeing for those of us who have not seen him in the flesh.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Spirit, He has promised, the helper who dwells with us and will be in us, is how that seeing happens.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we receive it by believing, which is exactly what Jesus says to Thomas in John chapter 20, verse 29.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: What we see is that we are the ones he was speaking about, and the blessing belongs to those who have not seen him with their eyes, and yet know him in the word by the Spirit and believe.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now that brings us to the last thing Jesus says to Philip in verse eleven.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: So Jesus gives Philip a way to believe that is open even to a man who cannot yet grasp what he has just said.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: He asked first for belief in his word, and he knows the mind wants something to hold.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So he points to the works which can be seen, because the Father who dwells in him is the one doing them.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So a person who is still working out how the Father can be seen in the Son has a second place to stand, which is the works themselves.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: The disciples already believe that Jesus came from God, as we will see in John chapter 16, verse 30, when they say, This is why we believe that you came from God.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: But Philip's request shows that something was still missing, because they had seen the works and had not yet understood who was doing them in him.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the very next verse, Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: And greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now that is one of the most misunderstood verses in this whole chapter, and we're going to cover that in our next episode.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it tells us this much right now that the Father who dwells in the Son and does the works is the same Father who will do his works in those who believe.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we do not have to see Jesus in the flesh to believe him.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: We could believe the works, and the works that the Father did in him, the Father goes on doing in us, which is how he makes himself known to those who have not seen.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So let me bring this back to where we started.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: When someone asks us how Jesus could be both God and man, we could say what scripture says that the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons and one God.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we could show it from John's own words.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And after we have said all of that, it's okay to say that we don't fully understand it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because the God who tells us is infinite, and that is the God of the Bible.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: The picture our hearts want to draw of him is the thing Jesus keeps killing.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the one he gives us instead in its place is himself.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now Jesus gives us a way to know him that does not wait for us to understand.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: He says to believe him.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if we cannot, then we are to believe the works.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the works come as we walk by faith when we say, I will go, because he says to go, even when I don't understand what the going means.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And in that, he works in us and through us.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that is how he makes himself known, which increases our faith.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now I can't explain it, but I could tell you that I have lived it.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Since I have left my job two years ago, God has provided for me every single day of my life, just like Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: He said, But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: So when people ask me how God does it, I say, I don't really know.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: He just does.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I seek him first, and he provides in different ways.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't tell you that he does it the same way every single time or every single day.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: My needs have been met every day, every week, and every month.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And here I am, two years later, still seeking the kingdom of God and still having my needs met through the works that he does in me and through me and around me.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now I can't tell you which levers he is pulling or how he is doing it.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: All I know is that he is the one doing it, and that how he is cannot be explained.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: But why he is can.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: He is doing it for his glory to make himself known, so that I would praise him for his glorious grace, just as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 6.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: He is producing praise in me by putting me in a place where I can't accomplish, so that when he accomplishes, I know it is not me and that it is all him.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now someone might say, But you did that, Harry.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: But really what happened was that I stepped out in faith into something I knew I couldn't do.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so often he calls me to a place where I fall flat on my face and he provides anyway, and then he carries me through it.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: We have all experienced that and felt it.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where Jesus is taking us in the next few verses, because he sets it up right here in the works themselves.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to ask before we close today, what is it we are waiting to understand before we actually believe him?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: What we need to know is that he makes himself known in the way he himself has chosen, and that we come to know him as we believe the words of Christ and live by them.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Father, thank you for sending your son to make you known to us and for the word who became flesh, so that we could see and hear and touch.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Forgive us for drawing pictures of you in our minds and asking you to fit them and for waiting to understand before we would believe.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Teach us to trust the words of Christ and work in us that we may know you and live to the praise of your glorious grace.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: We ask this in Jesus' name.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to thank you again for joining us today, and I hope today's episode has helped you rest in the Son who has made the Father known.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if anything today resonated with you, or if you have any questions or comments, please click on the text us link in the episode description, or you can send us an email at thetaway.faith, as we would truly love to hear from you.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: And now that we have heard Jesus say that the Father who dwells in him does the works, and that we can believe on account of the works themselves, it leads us to the next verse because in chapter 14, verse 12, Jesus says that whoever believes in him will do the works that he does, and greater works than these.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where we're going to pick this up next time.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.