Well, this morning I have been elevated by this platform and can be seen by all. That is why I am nervous to be with you. You know, sometimes it is good to be nervous.
One of the benefits, I feel, this morning is that it may be only fifty-five degrees in here, but I am sweating. I hope you do not get too cold. It seems like every year we have this situation in the auditorium: it goes down to the fifties and up to the eighties. But that just means you have to overcome a little bit more to get something out of the message.
We are talking about the fullness of Christ, and my responsibility is to share something of the fullness of Christ as seen in the Gospels. That is a pretty full charge.
I shared on Matthew and Mark for a moment yesterday, and today I will try to share on Luke and John. Now, some of you probably did your homework and read Luke and John since yesterday. If that is the case, you ought to be up here, because I have just forgotten everything I was going to say.
Well, I think I remember something. If I know it, I will just keep speaking anyway.
I would like for us to turn to John 1. These are very wonderful words. They locate, in a beautiful fashion, the whole message and burden of all the evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The Word became flesh, and made His dwelling among us.
We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.John testifies concerning Him. He cries out, saying,
“This was He of whom I said,
He who comes after me has surpassed me
because He was before me.”From the fullness of His grace we have all received
one blessing after another.For the law was given through Moses;
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.No one has ever seen God.
But God, the one and only, who is at the Father’s side,
has made Him known.—John 1:14-18
Father, we come to You now as the only One who can make Him known. We pray that Your Spirit would be upon us in this time, granting us the anointing to see the Christ of God.
We pray that You will open to us the testimony of Luke and John, and help us to see, in a fundamental and fresh way, the reality of our Lord Jesus. In that glimpse, may we find greater fullness expressed in our lives. Lord, we give this time to You now and thank You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I love the evangelists. I love the story they tell. This story is based in history and facts, and that makes it even better. We have a Gospel here that is sure. It is the Gospel of our salvation.
Every time we read the evangelists, no matter how long we have been Christians, it is like going to an eye doctor. They refocus us again. They take our vision and center it again in Jesus Christ whenever it has wandered and gone astray.
That is why, for me anyway, when I hear a real evangelist preaching, I always get refreshed, even though they tell the old, old story—because you see Jesus again.
Now, some of us may wonder, since we have been in this era of modern evangelists, where Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have gone wrong. You will notice that at the end of the Gospels there is no invitation: “Let us bow our heads and raise your hand.” You do not hear a choir humming in the background as they give some appeal or invitation.
Did these evangelists not know that you are supposed to give an invitation? What were they hoping in? How could you just write a book and leave it, as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John seemed to do, with no sinner’s prayer even written down in the back for those who want to come through?
Well, it is because these evangelists had something happen in their own lives which they believed would happen in our lives as the Holy Spirit takes these words and makes them live.
As we look at Jesus, recorded in these words, we will be confronted by the living Jesus. When we see the living Jesus, we will be changed.
If you and I are confronted by the reality of Jesus Christ as Lord, then it is our decision to accept or reject. As John says at the end of his Gospel:
These things have been written that you might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that by believing you might have life in His name.—John 20:31
To John, the process was very simple: “All I need to do as an evangelist is show you Jesus Christ. Then it is up to you. You do what you think. If you embrace what I have told you, if you believe what the Spirit is speaking to you, you will have life.” It is as simple as that—without an invitation, without a hum of “Just As I Am.”
These evangelists believed that if you see Jesus, something in your heart will know how you must respond. Maybe their method is a little better, huh? What do you think? They know what they are doing. They are sharing the good news.
As we read in John 1, there is a process here which John is sharing by way of testimony, I believe. Here is the process: “I saw this Jesus tabernacled among us, and He looked like any other human tent. But as I gazed”—the key word here is behold—“we beheld His glory.”
Now, behold does not mean I look at Him and say, “Oh, that is cool,” and then look over here. Behold means I gazed, and I kept on looking at this tabernacle.
As I looked at this Man, I began to see a most unique Man, as of the only begotten of the Father. As I watched Him, I saw, “This is not merely a man. There is something more here.”
John began to pursue, John began to search, and John began to watch. He kept on watching, and the more he watched, the more he saw grace flowing out of this Man’s life. The more he saw truth coming out of everything He said and did. The more he saw this grace and truth flowing, he said, “That is the Son of God.”
Now, I believe that is what happened to John personally. As a young man, he started following Jesus and looking at Jesus. The more he beheld, the more he saw glory; and the more he saw glory, the more he realized that Jesus was the Son of God.
The process continues, because John goes on to say:
Of His fullness we have all received,
and grace upon grace.—John 1:16
An amazing thing happened in John’s life, which happens in ours. As he continued to behold Jesus, he not only became convinced that Jesus was the Son of God, but something started to happen to him. Of His fullness, John began to receive.
Who was John, a young man? Who was John in those early days? He certainly was not some free evangelist who could speak the truth. Who knows? He was just a young man. But as he beheld Jesus, there was a freedom that came into his life—a fullness, grace upon grace.
He felt his sins forgiven. He felt his relationship with the Father. He felt some gifting flowing in his life. He felt some enabling from on high. He began to sense grace. He found grace to live, grace to be married, grace to serve. He found grace through his life.
He said, “You know what the key is? You behold Jesus. In that process of beholding, you are set free with grace and grace and grace—all the blessings that come from Jesus.”
Have we found that to be our experience? Picture John as a young man. Wherever Jesus was, when John was following close by, John was a veritable tiger. He was bold. He could preach the good news. When he was freshly sent out by Jesus into various towns, two by two, he could heal, cast out devils, and preach the good news with amazing clarity.
But he knew that it was a freedom that came whenever he was around Jesus. Whenever he looked at Jesus, he sensed the boldness. Whenever he looked at Jesus, he could overcome his own insecurities and fears and share the Gospel with confidence.
The amazing revelation for all those first-generation Christians was that when Jesus went away to heaven, they found something inside: grace to continue to serve, even outside of Jesus’ physical presence.
At first, John felt it was a freedom that came whenever you were around Jesus. “Whenever I am around Jesus,” John would say, “I can see the light. It is so clear.” He just looked at Jesus and could understand things.
You know how it is. Sometimes you will be here and Brother Lance or Stephen, or someone, will be talking. While he is talking, you are just sitting in the light. You understand what you should do back home, what you should do regarding your job, what you should do regarding beating the fool out of your kids—because, oh, it becomes clear while you are in the presence of Jesus.
The great revelation for those disciples was that even when Jesus had gone up to heaven, there was still that grace upon grace and the fullness that we receive. So we find Paul saying that as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are transformed from glory to glory into that same image.
What a process of fullness. Brothers and sisters, it behoves us to behold Jesus. That starts the process. So we want to do that this morning.
Yesterday we looked at the Gospel of Mark, and we said that we beheld Jesus as the powerful Servant of God. He went in there and invaded Galilee. That was Peter’s territory, and this is Peter’s Gospel.
The way Peter tells the story, Jesus spent almost His whole time there in Galilee, surrounding the lake, going across back and forth, up into Tyre and Sidon, over to Decapolis, back down to the Sea of Galilee. He was always around there, invading it, taking it over as the center—the powerful Servant of God.
He revealed Himself by the Father in heaven to be the King, the Messiah, who was in this present time serving. Then He went down to Jerusalem and forever held before us, as well as the disciples, the reality that the important thing was not the Servant’s life, but that the Servant laid down His life.
This powerful Servant of God, this Person whom you and I could try to emulate as a model for ourselves as servants of God, found it more important to lay down His life than to hold on to it, despite all the good He could do as a servant. That is the Gospel of Mark.
Then we looked at the Gospel of Matthew. We saw Matthew’s testimony that Jesus is undoubtedly the King—the King who has come and presented the kingdom in fullness. This is in order to fulfill the Scriptures.
Jesus’ coming fulfilled the Old Testament types, hopes, and prophecies. Jesus came, and everything He did seemed to Matthew to be a fulfillment of all that had been promised.
Jesus came upon this earth, and in comparison to the kingdom in Israel as it stood in that day, Jesus’ kingdom was alive and the kingdom of Israel was bankrupt. The message was: if you see that Jesus is the King, then repent in order to enter the kingdom—the kingdom that is eternal, the kingdom that really makes the difference.
In the end of the Gospel, the most beautiful part of the Gospel, Jesus reveals again that this King has not come to save His life and set up on some earthly throne. This King came to lay down His life. It is the ultimate of kingly service to lay down your life in order to have a kingdom.
Today, we are going to look at the Gospel of Luke—obviously flying over the thing. One consolation is that the Lord can reveal Himself even when we are flying over the Gospel. But obviously, these things should be read with greater depth.
Turn to the very beginning of the Gospel of Luke. We will introduce again the writer, Luke.
Many have undertaken to draw up an account
of the things that have been fulfilled among us,
just as they were handed down to us
by those who from the first were eyewitnesses
and servants of the Word.Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated
everything from the beginning,
it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you,
most excellent Theophilus,
so that you may know the certainty
of the things you have been taught.—Luke 1:1-4
This Gospel of Luke is perhaps, as many say, the most beautiful of the Gospels. It is beautifully written. The Greek is the most beautiful of the four Gospels. The account is orderly, fuller, and contains greater biographical detail.
The Gospel of Luke is actually the champion Gospel. For people championing all kinds of humanitarian concerns, they always find the Gospel of Luke their favorite. There is a reason for that. There is a reason why Gandhi loved the Gospel of Luke among all of them: in this Gospel, Jesus is portrayed as the perfect Man.
Luke is a doctor. Luke is a Gentile. Luke has a wider view of things, given his position and station in life, than merely concerns for Galilee or even the Jewish religious system and Israel.
Look at the doctor of the world. Look at the traveled man. Luke has looked around over all the world and studied, I am sure, to some degree Greek philosophy. He knew well Roman government, civilization, and law.
He knew that one of the desires of Greek philosophy, and indeed of Roman life, was to find the ideal man. But being a doctor has an effect on you. My dad was a doctor; it had an effect on him. You see man as he really is.
You cannot hold on to idealistic philosophies when you are a doctor. It is very hard to do. You see man as he really is.
In some sense, the Gospel of Luke is Luke looking over this whole world and casting the Gospel on a universal plane—not just some localized thing—because he is writing to Theophilus and other Gentiles.
Looking over the world as a whole, as a doctor, he sees the absolute pitiful condition of humanity. He sees poverty. He sees sickness. He sees demon possession. He sees man’s inhumanity to man.
Where is this ideal man? Is He in Roman civilization? Luke says, “No.” Is He in Greek civilization? “No.”
Then one day, perhaps Luke, being this worldly knowledgeable man, having heard and followed various philosophies and only been disappointed and even cynical, heard the Gospel of Jesus. Something resonated in Luke’s spirit. He found the Man—the Son of Man.
In the midst of all the misery, poverty, dying, sickness, and routine of it all, Luke said, “I found the Man.”
We do not know when Luke actually got saved. We know he traveled with Paul. But Luke made it a point in his Christian life, as seems obvious from the writing of this Gospel, that as he traveled and encountered different people, he would sit down with Mary, Jesus’ mother, and say, “Now, Mary, tell me the story of how the thing all began.”
He probably found himself compiling notes, hearing testimonies, and checking out accounts of the various things Jesus did over the years. Finally, he said, “You know, I have been on a lifelong hobby since I have been a Christian. I found Jesus. He is my preoccupation. I want to write down, in an orderly fashion, the best I can, from the things I have heard, the Jesus I have discovered.”
My, the picture Luke paints of Jesus is absolutely beautiful. If you have ever wanted to love somebody, here is the most lovely of men: Jesus, the Son of Man.
When you look in this Gospel, you see the perfect Man described. When Luke takes the genealogy of Jesus, he goes right back to Adam and says, “Aha, this is the last Adam.”
Here is Adam: he started the whole thing. Then you have all these bungled players, and then you come up to Jesus and find the ultimate, the last Adam. You can end the genealogy there. You do not have to travel on, because you have found the first Adam and the last Adam. He is the perfect Man.
Luke also shares information so beautiful that every year, in the middle of December, all the radio stations and television stations start cranking out the same story. Yet it is so wonderful that, somehow, even through all the crust of tradition and the shopping malls, the story is still beautiful.
The story, as Luke recounts it, is set right in the middle of human misery and poverty, in the unknown places of Bethlehem. There, in this little place, Jesus is born, and joy is found in the hearts of the humble.
When you look at the Gospel of Luke, it is so beautiful. Among simple people, there was all kinds of stirring going on. Chapter 1 and 2 of Luke are filled with songs and prophecies of people who were exploding with joy at what God was doing.
Right in the middle of human poverty and misery, here is joy. Mary receives a message from the angel that she is favored and will be overshadowed. She is so excited that she runs down to Elizabeth’s house.
Mary comes through the door, and the baby leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. Elizabeth says, “Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should come to my house?” That was the heavenly pregnancy test. Now Mary knew it was true.
It is one thing for an angel to show up. You can say, “Well, yeah, I do not know.” But Elizabeth confirmed it by a prophecy of God: “The Lord is in your womb.” That broke Mary out into song.
Then John the Baptist was born, and old Zechariah, after months of not saying anything, breaks out in prophecy. Jesus is born, and there are those miserable, pitiful shepherds out there throwing stones at sheep in the cold weather. Suddenly an angel shows up: “I have good news. Today, in this city, there is born a Savior.”
Then suddenly a heavenly chorus breaks out. Can you imagine those pitiful shepherds? They heard the best choir you ever heard. They ran into town, found a little Baby in a manger, and were so excited that they went back and spread the news.
Then Jesus is brought by Mary and Joseph into the temple. While they are going through the purification rites, old Simeon breaks down and says, “Praise God, take me home to Abraham, because I have seen the One I longed for all these days.”
Anna, that widow who spent an unusual and eccentric life in the temple praying and fasting, prophesied with joy at the birth of Jesus. Is it not amazing how Jesus can bring such joy? This little Baby brings joy in the human misery all around.
Luke tells a wonderful story. We find only a few sentences about Jesus’ childhood, but we see that Jesus grew perfectly—in wisdom, stature, and the favor of God and man.
We find the story when He was twelve years old. There He is in the temple, talking. He is God-conscious already: “Do you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” He said it so innocently. But Joseph did not know what to do, and Mary treasured these things in her heart.
Then He went back home, was obedient, and learned how to be a carpenter. That is all we know. But it is Luke who tells us. He checks it out. Mary may have said, “Well, doctor, maybe I should share some of the things I have been treasuring in my heart.”
Luke recounts these little, wonderful bits of the beautiful life of Jesus. Of course, that is just the beginning.
Jesus comes down to the baptism at the Jordan River. At that very moment, something begins with a ministry mentioned in Luke 4. As He eventually goes to Nazareth and enters the synagogue, He takes Isaiah 61 from the scrolls and reads:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
because He hath anointed Me
to preach good news to the poor.
He hath sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,
recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.—Luke 4:18-19
The poor yelled out, “Oh boy!” Now, folks, I know we tend to over-spiritualize those words, but those words mean just what they mean. He was preaching good news to the poor, and He was helping the blind recover their sight. Jesus had come on the scene.
The interesting thing about the time at the Jordan River was that Luke picked up two threads and continues to share them throughout the rest of his story. These two threads show us something of the person, this ideal, perfect Man that Jesus was: prayer and the Holy Spirit.
It is interesting at His baptism that Luke notes that Jesus was praying when the Holy Spirit came down and rested upon Him in bodily form.
Then Luke 4:1 says:
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.—Luke 4:1
We see that the ideal Man is Somebody led by the Holy Spirit, full of the Holy Spirit. Of course, He goes into the wilderness, where He is tempted.
When you see Him again in Luke 4:14, it says:
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.
—Luke 4:14
I wonder what the difference is between being full of the Spirit in verse 1 and being in the power of the Spirit in verse 14. It is something that had been worked out through those temptations.
It seems to us that we can pray and ask the Lord to fill us with the Holy Spirit, but He will work something in us through difficult times that causes us to move in the power of the Holy Spirit. This was Jesus’ experience.
When He came to Nazareth, He was totally in keeping with His sense of the Holy Spirit’s power and anointing upon Him. That caused Him to read Isaiah 61 and then say, “This day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your midst.” That is to say, “You are looking at the Anointed One, and I have been commissioned by God to preach the good news.”
Luke is the Gospel writer who mentions the Holy Spirit throughout the rest of the Gospel. It is a study you might look at with some interest.
Then there is the thread of prayer. What is the secret of this Man? Luke probably was not even an eyewitness to the Jesus who walked in Palestine. But having heard the stories, he says, “There is an interesting thing about Jesus: before every significant thing in His life and ministry, He was praying.”
Luke gives us the inside account that Jesus was praying at the baptismal waters. In Luke 5:16, Jesus often, during His times of ministry, would go off to a lonely place by Himself to pray. It was His habit—the habit of the perfect Man.
The other Gospels mention that Jesus chose twelve disciples, but Luke says that before Jesus chose the twelve disciples, He spent the whole night in prayer. Then He chose. How about that?
At His transfiguration, in Luke 9, it says that He was transfigured while He was praying. In Luke 11, when the disciples came and said, “Lord, we notice how You pray. Would You teach us to pray?” Jesus had been praying, and the disciples noticed that He prayed uniquely.
In Luke 22, just before Jesus’ betrayal, He went up to Peter personally and said, “Now, Peter, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat, but I prayed for you.” Luke alone shares that account.
We know that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. But Luke exclusively shares with us that just before Jesus died on the cross, with all the darkness surrounding Him, He prayed this final prayer:
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
—Luke 23:46
This Man, this ideal Man, was a Man of prayer. It was consistent throughout His whole life.
The Man’s ministry also was perfect in the sense that He truly sympathized with and helped mankind. Luke shares, as do Matthew and Mark, many accounts of demons being cast out and people who were blind, lame, and leprous being healed. But Luke shares particular insights.
He is the only Gospel writer who shares some incidents that give us an insight into how much sympathy Jesus had, how much Jesus loved and sought after people.
One of my favorite stories, if you just drop a quarter on the porch today and ask me to preach, I will preach from this Gospel sermon: Luke 5, the story I call “How Jesus Caught Peter, the Big Fisherman.”
You know the story about how He was standing in the boat, then told Peter to go out into the deep. Jesus caught Peter that day. When Peter got up on the shore, he followed Jesus because he had been caught by something of the love of Jesus. That is only found in the Gospel of Luke.
In Luke 7, we find the story of the sinful woman who, during a supper at the Pharisee’s house, came and washed His feet with her tears, wiped them, and kissed His feet. The Pharisees grumbled, and Jesus said, “I tell you, your sins are forgiven.”
He showed compassion and love toward pitiful and sinful people.
We know the great parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son—the prodigal son. These were shared in the context of Jesus eating with tax collectors and “sinners.” Again, a grumble came from religious leaders, and He said, “I have some stories to tell you.”
He told stories about how much God’s heart goes after sinners and seeks them out.
In Luke 19 we have the beautiful story of Zacchaeus, that crazy man who climbed up in a tree. We see Jesus’ love for Zacchaeus, recorded only in Luke.
Today salvation has come to this house,
because this man too is a son of Abraham.
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.—Luke 19:9-10
Jesus, the Seeker after men.
In Luke 23, we have the account of Jesus suffering and agony on the cross. Only Luke mentions that as those two thieves on either side of Him argued in their own agony, one told the other to be quiet: “That Man in the middle is being crucified, and He had no reason to be crucified.”
Then that thief, pitifully, in agony, looked at Jesus and said, “Remember me.” Jesus said:
This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.
—Luke 23:43
He is a lover of thieves who understands the repentant heart.
Even in His resurrected form, He finds two lonely disciples walking down the Emmaus road and burns their hearts by sharing Himself in the midst of their discouraged lives.
Jesus loved people. Jesus sought after that which was lost and sinners.
But Jesus, as the perfect Man, as the friend of sinners—as some referred to Him—was also a perfect Man because He was not just a man’s man; He was God’s Man.
There are several times in the Gospel of Luke when we see that, when it came to a choice of whom Jesus feared more—God or man—He always chose God. Luke shows Jesus clearly being God’s Man.
He set His face for Jerusalem, it says in Luke 9, and nothing could dissuade Him. All kinds of things tried to distract Him. There were needs, opportunities for ministry, controversy, and disappointments. But once He set His face, He set His face. He was God’s Man.
The reason Jesus was such a friend of sinners and loved man so much is that Jesus was God’s Man, who carried God’s heart—carried God’s heart.
I do not know if we realize, when we read the passage in Luke 19, the irony of it. On the one hand, you have a bunch of worshipers throwing down palms, yelling and cheering for Jesus, “Hosanna,” as He comes into Jerusalem. On the other hand, you have Jesus standing on top of the mount, weeping for Jerusalem.
Here was God’s Man, with God’s heart. He saw the bankruptcy of that whole thing called Jerusalem: the compromise, the darkness of it all.
He could not enter into the celebration, as it were, because He saw what was really going on. He was God’s Man who carried God’s heart and could not even be distracted by the shouts and hallelujahs of people watching Him come down.
Of course, the center of the Gospel is always the cross. Here we see an ideal Man who, I suppose we could say, if He had not gone to the cross, could have lived forever in His ideal human form. Because He was sinless, He would not have died. He could have been with us today as an ideal Man.
We could still look at Him and say, “What a great physician. What a lover of men. What a heart after God.” We would still be dazzled and amazed by the ideal Man standing before us in Jesus.
But Jesus laid down His life as an ideal Man in order to save those sinful, pitiful people around Him. He did the ultimate act of the great Physician.
Having ministered to people, bandaged their wounds, healed those who were broken, and given good news to those who were hopeless, He realized that these medicines were only temporary. Something permanent was needed, and He knew that He had to lay down His life as the perfect Man.
He laid down His life so that we imperfect, impoverished, pitiful people could find salvation. He came to seek and finally, on the cross, to save that which was lost.
Bankrupt Romans, bankrupt Greeks, bankrupt Jews—He came and laid down His life for pitiful humanity.
Here is what makes Him not just the ideal Man, but the perfect Man. The ideal Man is fully man. The ideal Man has a big heart. The ideal Man has tremendous anointing. The ideal Man is a man of prayer. The ideal Man is sinless.
But the perfect Man goes one step further, because the perfect Man fulfills all of His purpose for being here. Jesus came to die.
Although He was ideal, He would not be perfect until He learned and became perfect by the things that He suffered. There was still one thing needful in His life: for Him to give away His life.
God, who by grace upon grace formed the ideal Man, said, “But in order to make the ideal perfect, it has to die in order that the perfect may come.”
The perfect Man of God is the Man who not only finds grace for Himself but lays down His life and fulfills His purpose for being here. That is the Gospel in Hebrews: Jesus, as the first Man ever really to take dominion, laid down His life in order to bring many sons to glory.
That is you and me. Can you imagine it? This matter of fullness is a matter of sonship. Jesus was not satisfied just being the Son of God, the Son of Man, the ideal One. No, He wanted to bring many sons with Him. So He died for you and me.
What a story. What a fullness. Luke just looks at this Jesus and says, “What a Man. What a Man.” Willing to die on Calvary.
It tells us a lot about fullness when we look at ourselves by contrast. In order for us to have this fullness, we have to see this Jesus, who really has a heart for man.
God so loved the world.
—John 3:16
That means the people out there—pitiful people.
Is your view aligned with Scripture? The Lord is convincing me year by year that mankind is pitiful. We are in pitiful shape. We are poor and wretched and sick.
Medicines and medical treatment have done a lot to help our physical bodies, but we have so many sick-souled people around. There are emotionally crippled folks all over the place. It seems like all the mental institutions in the world have unloaded them all in my hometown.
I heard a famous evangelist make a comment one time. He said, “As I travel the world and preach the Gospel, I still find as many people in the net as I ever found before. But the difference is, you should see the fish we catch today. They come from polluted waters. They are mutants, open sores, terrible-looking, disfigured fish.”
He said, “Back in my early days, we would pull the net and find some people of noble character. Now we just find a mess every time we drag them out of the net.”
This is a pitiful world. But who cares about them? Who cares anymore? Only God’s heart.
He could only find a Man who was truly human enough to sympathize with what is going on around us. I find myself so hardhearted. I can look at somebody and write them off, and in some hardhearted fashion rationalize why I do not care for them—my own neighbors, I am talking about.
But we cannot get away with that if we are going to look at Jesus the Man, because Jesus always stopped when He saw these people.
The church has got to find again the heart of Jesus, who said, “I came to seek and save that which was lost. That is why I have come.” Here we are, the church. Is that not part of our mission? Can we be satisfied just being to ourselves?
I do not think we can and express the heart of Jesus. There is something big there. There is something of fullness that we will certainly miss.
But if that were not enough, that heart also beats for Jerusalem and weeps over Jerusalem. However you want to define Jerusalem—as a type of the church, as Jerusalem as it really stands today, certainly as a type of the church—I think the Lord’s heart truly weeps for the state of the church and for the people.
But He looks for a man—corporately, a man—who carries such a heart. Now I ask you a serious question: is that the fullness of Christ? Is that not the Christ into whose same image we want to be transformed?
Then we have to do something about our hard hearts. Actually, we cannot do anything except look at Jesus and then lay down our lives.
Many of us have some good news to tell. By the grace of God, many of us are being formed into—I hate to use the phrase—ideal men. By the grace of God, He has shown us some truth. He has given us some honesty. He has set our feet upon the rock and established our going.
By His deposit of life, love, mercy, and grace within us, we have gotten our lives together—at least compared to most other folks around us. There is some basic peace in our families. We only beat up the kids once in a while. We have enough money coming in to survive. You know what I am saying.
I wonder if our goal is to become a more ideal man, or if our goal is to lay down our lives in order that others might come to glory. We have a choice there.
I liked what Ernie said last night—well, I do not know if I liked what Ernie said last night—about that matter of planned poverty. Did you like that last night? Oh, no, there was something there.
Let me give you a final testimony here: Dr. Luke’s. Dr. Luke, by his writing, indicates that he was an articulate man, probably well studied and knowledgeable. Most doctors were; they were studying in all kinds of fields in those days.
Dr. Luke, by appearances and by the little record we have, became nothing. He became somebody who bandaged up Paul, helped him from place to place, and shared his testimony here and there.
He may have been able, we do not know, to become an outstanding physician in his field if he had kept on studying at the University of Rome. But he gave his life.
He gave his life to search for Jesus, to copy down things and write them down. He became a nothing. Can you imagine? Somebody said, “Well, Doc, what do you do now?” He said, “Well, I follow Paul, a tentmaker. I help him preach. I go around with him. I share Christ, the Christ I have come to know. I take down little tidbits of information that I find here and there about this Man Jesus.”
His fellow physicians would say, “What a waste.” But old Dr. Luke is the only one whose name is remembered now. He laid down his life.
Some folks think the ideal man is a doctor making two hundred thousand dollars a year and paying a hundred fifty thousand dollars in medical insurance. The ideal man. Old Luke laid it down and said, “I want to be Jesus’ man.”
Luke went from place to place. The book is filled with little medical details. Luke had a way of observing humanity. He saw what was inside people. He shared those little bits within the stories of Jesus’ healings and ministry.
Go back and read it again from the doctor’s point of view, and see if you do not begin to see more fully this beautiful Man, Jesus, the Son of Man.
Well, we have one more to cover: the Gospel of John. That should be easy. Ah, yes indeed, the Gospel of John.
I have one consolation. I know that if there is any one of the Gospels that you read, reread, and keep on reading, and know anything about, it is the Gospel of John. It is so simple, so profound. The pictures are so clear that, in my own mind, I basically have the whole thing memorized, just what happens sequence by sequence.
What a beautiful story. What a beautiful Gospel, written years after John saw Jesus walking on earth. Now John reflects upon Jesus and says, “My, my, my. What I want to tell you about Jesus, I cannot begin to tell. But let us start by saying this: you know who Jesus was? God-Man.”
That bedazzles most people right there. He is the Word become flesh.
Do not let the Jehovah’s Witnesses throw you off. John 1 says He was God and Man. That is it. Do not give me that thing about the indefinite article and all that stuff. That is baloney. He was God. He was Man. So I just cut through the Jehovah’s Witness argument right there.
That is the whole prologue of John. That is what he is saying. The Word, God from eternity, came down and pitched His tent as a man.
“We looked at Him, and as we looked at Him, we became more and more convinced. Everything He did flowed out grace and truth. We saw glory like we had never seen before. We heard about the glory in the Old Testament days—the fire and the clouds—but we saw something oozing out of this Man. It was totally unique.”
They had never seen such grace, such acceptance, such love, such power and enabling, such truth.
John basically testifies: “There are so many things I would like to tell you about Jesus, and so many things I could write. But I could not begin to tell you half of it, so let me nail it down to a few signs.”
John says, “I have been thinking about the many things I saw Jesus do. Can I pick out a few of those things? I think you will agree with me, as you look at these signs, that there is something for you and me regarding who Jesus is in His fullness.”
If you want to see who Jesus is, John says, look at these miracles, look at these moments. They are signs. Do not stand on the miracles and say, “Praise God, was that not great? He healed a blind man.” John says, “No, look behind that. There is something going on for you and me.”
John shares more fully regarding His person and what is going on than the other three Gospel writers. We have this beautiful, deep, and profound Gospel.
Basically, the good news John shares about Jesus is this: Jesus came, and if you believe on Jesus, you receive life.
We have to distinguish what John means: capital-L Life—zoe Life—Life from heaven, eternal Life. John contrasts that by picking out signs that depict scenes in normal life, little-l life, regular life.
John’s basic point and good news is this: if you are living regular life, and you believe in Jesus, that capital-L Life will completely transform regular little-l life.
I know you cannot find that exactly in the Gospel that way, but that is the way I understand it.
The first sign John shows us is how Jesus turned the water into wine at Cana in Galilee, at the wedding feast. That is John 2.
Now, John says, “Look at this. Do not just say, ‘What a miracle. Jesus, I have a bunch of water in my house.’” You are missing the point if you just want Him to change water into wine. Look underneath the sign and see what it says.
Water is little-l life—an everyday commodity, something everybody needs, useful for washing, drinking, whatever. When Jesus touches something with Life from above, it is transformed.
Little-l life becomes transformed into wine, capital-L Life, when Jesus comes into view. In other words, Life transforms life.
Anybody who hears this on tape is going to get confused about that. Capital-L Life transforms little-l life.
You and I live just life, existing. You wake up in the morning, say hello, go get coffee, drink the coffee, go to work, get through with work, come home, eat supper so you can go to bed, and go to bed so you can sleep and go back to work. That is life.
Now, if Jesus is allowed to come in and touch that life, life takes on a whole new meaning. There is purpose to the various events and necessary events of life. Life takes on a whole new purpose.
Jesus came to give us fullness of life. How can we sit here and exist when we should live? It takes His Life infused into our life to bring fullness about.
The next sign is in John 4, where He heals the nobleman’s son. This nobleman has a son who lives in Capernaum. The son is very sick, even unto death. He hears that Jesus is up in Cana—fourteen miles away.
The nobleman makes the journey to find Jesus. He comes to Jesus and says, “Jesus, You have got to come to my house. My son is at the point of death. Please come.” Jesus says, “Just believe.”
That is all the nobleman had to go on: “Just believe.” But there was something about the way Jesus said it that caused the man to say, “Well, what are my choices?” Jesus was not going to come, but there was a note of authority there. “Okay, I believe.”
He heads back home. About halfway home, he meets a servant who says, “It is okay, it is okay. The kid is well.” He asks, “Really? What time?” The servant says, “Twelve-thirty.” He says, “That is the time Jesus said, ‘Just believe.’”
There is a sign here. What is the sign? The effective power of Life is not limited by time and space. It is a matter of believing.
If we get together in a prayer meeting, we believe that God can do something in Korea. He can do it now. There is no limitation of time and space when Life is involved.
Jesus does not have to go with anybody. His Life is what does the work.
The third sign is in John 5, where a man has been on a bed for thirty-eight years. There, by the pool of Bethesda, Jesus comes by one day and says, “Do you want to be made well?” What a question.
The man had been waiting around for angels stirring the water for years. Jesus says, “Do you want to be made well?” He had to wake this man up. He had been lame so long that he figured that was the way it was always going to be.
Jesus said, “Take up your bed and go on out of here.” That man stood up, took up his bed, and went home.
That is a great miracle. We could get excited about it and find some local fool and try to raise people up, but it would not work. We need to see what is behind the sign of this man’s healing.
Basically, in a word, it is this: the quality of Life, capital-L Life, overcomes all infirmity and all circumstances. When Life from heaven, Life from the Son of God, is placed into a situation, the limitations are overcome and Life comes through.
Let Jesus pull you up by His Life. This Life is powerful. This is the Life we can have by believing in His name.
The fourth sign in John 6 is the feeding of the five thousand. There, I would basically say, in one sense, the quantity of Life is inexhaustible.
The punch line of John 6 is:
I am the bread of life.
—John 6:35
What Jesus is saying is that if you take His Life, it is inexhaustible. The quantity never runs out.
Brothers and sisters, all of us come to points where we feel we cannot go on. We cannot escape. There is not grace for us. I hear people say, “I do not have grace to live with that husband anymore.” Can you understand what they mean?
In all fairness, I think all of us come to the end of our rope. But I hope you do not really believe that is the case.
There is Life, no matter what your situation is, and that quantity can never be exhausted. There is grace for your marriage. There is grace for your difficult circumstance. There is grace. It is inexhaustible.
Jesus is full of grace and truth and wants to dispense it fully to us. As the feeding of the five thousand showed, as long as you keep breaking the bread and handing it out, it does not run out. It is Life from heaven, from the Bread of heaven.
The fifth sign in John 9 is the blind man who had been blind since birth. The disciples get into a theological discussion: “Why is this man blind? Is it his parents’ fault? Is it his fault?” They have a big go-round about that. Peter goes through Theology 101.
Jesus looks at Peter and says, “Peter, it is not theological. It is not theological. This is a matter of Life.”
Jesus heals the man, and the punch line of that story—the sign underneath the healing—is this:
I am the light.
—John 9:5
In other words, the fruit of Life is light. That has so many practical ramifications.
One of my problems is that I do not like cats, but I am as curious as one. I like dogs. I think dogs are man’s best friends, and cats are out to get us. But anyway, I am always curious. I always have questions. I always want to know, “God, what is Your will? I think I am missing Your will. Am I in the right place? Am I doing the right thing?”
I get myself in a real workup about that, and it only paralyzes me. It has never done any good.
Do you know when I almost always find the answer to these questions? It is when I am not seeking them, but when I am under God’s Life.
I am in a meeting, and my brother Ernie is sharing, and I begin to see some things. I make little notes, and some things I shared this morning came out of the Life I received and the light that came from that Life last night.
How do you explain that? If I throw questions at God and say, “Here is my question: am I in the right place?” I never hear.
But if I am in a worship meeting before the Lord’s Table, and we are singing a chorus, my heart is truly in it, and I am halfway to heaven, I hear God say, “Be faithful, My son, where you are.”
Life—the fruit of Life—is light. We all want light. I bet I can stir anybody’s soul up here this morning just by saying, “What is God’s will for your life?” Immediate insecurity can strike anybody.
But in Life we see light.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
—John 1:4
We need that fullness. We need to stop dilly-dallying around in all this nervous insecurity and say, “In His Life, I will find light.” Get into His Life, capital-L Life, and we will see what is going on.
The sixth sign in John 11 is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The punch line again is Jesus saying:
I am the resurrection, and the life.
—John 11:25
Here is one of the great mysteries, or secrets, of Life: Life comes out of death.
Are we learning that? Life comes out of death. I thought Life came out of life. As it turns out, it comes out of death.
Do you think Mary and Martha heard, “I am the resurrection and the Life”? All they grasped, I am sure, was, “He is Life.” Then they thought about it and said, “Well, Lazarus is already dead.”
The sign behind that is that Life does come out of death.
Then, of course, the great sign in the Gospel of John is Jesus’ own resurrection, clearly shown and presented in a wonderful, tender fashion in John 20.
The sign is this: Life is eternal. It is indestructible.
This is the Life that we need. This is the Life that the Gospels present to us. Jesus shows us these various signs, but to His own disciples He shared not only these signs, but so much more.
He shared with them the secret of His Life. They looked at Him and said, “Wow, full of grace and truth. What is the source of His Life anyway?”
Gradually, slowly, He began to reveal the source of the Life that pulsated out of Him in grace and truth. What was this source? Of course you know.
On the negative side, He said, “You know why Life comes out of Me? Because I do nothing of Myself.” On the positive side, He said, “You know why such Life comes out of Me? Because I speak when the Father speaks. I work when the Father works. I judge when the Father judges.”
There is a secret. I bet the disciples realized and worked that out for the rest of their lives. It was union with the Father that was the source of His Life.
They wondered, “How did that Life work out of You, then?” Jesus gave them the “I am” treatment.
Basically, He said, “You know how Life works out of you to others? It is not so much a question of what you do. It is a question of who you are.”
Ministry comes out of who you are more than what you do. It is not how cleverly you put together stuff, how much power you work up in your own brain and life, or whether you can feel pulsations in your fingertips before you go to heal somebody.
The outworking of Life is who you are that leads to the power of Life. When people would say, “Jesus, how did You do that?” He would say, “I only do what the Father does. I am. I am. That is the basis of what I do: I am.”
He also shared with the disciples the amazing authority of Life. He said:
I lay down My life; I take it up.
—John 10:18
Nobody else can touch that Life. The tremendous authority of Life.
Pilate, you think you can grab hold of that Life? Pilate said, “Do You not know I could take Your life?” Jesus said, “You cannot take My life unless I lay it down.”
There is authority to that Life. “I lay it down. I take it up.”
What a freedom it gives us, brothers and sisters, believers in Jesus Christ, to know that Life has authority. What is the authority in our assemblies? Is it that some guy has gotten loud—he is the leader now?
The authority among us is Life. Life. You can try to push it down; it will pop right up. There is authority in Life, capital-L Life.
Then He gave them that last lesson about Life—that strange lesson that we hear but do not always hear. In order for us to have His Life, He had to go away in order to come again in a closer way.
He had to tell His disciples before He left and died on the cross, “Life is a spiritual commodity. Right now, My Life is limited because I am limited by this body. If I go away, My Life will be in you, and in you, and in you.”
Of course, the going away is the cross. How does that Life come to us? We might look at Jesus and say, “Oh, look at Him, just full of grace and truth. But how could I ever receive this Life?”
Jesus went away for us. Jesus died on the cross, and in that death and resurrection, in that enthronement and pouring forth of His Life, that Life goes in you and in me.
The disciples had to learn that. They knew Life was with them, and when Jesus was around them, they felt Life was there. But Jesus said, “Now I am going away. I know you are sad, but I have to go away because I want the Life to be in you, not just with you.”
“I will send you another. But that Other is going to be Somebody different. That Other is going to be Me. It is the Spirit, but it will be Me. I will be with you, and My Life will be in you.”
“You will be one in Me, and I will be in you, and you will be in the Father. We will be united in oneness together. You will begin to experience the same thing that I have been experiencing: Life coming out of who you are; Life overcoming all your limitations; Life inexhaustible, Life whose quantity does not run out; Life experienced when you lay down your life.”
In the Gospels, we see only the introduction to who Jesus really is. In the Epistles and the rest of the New Testament, so much more is shared of the inside of the tabernacle.
But when you see that tabernacle, do you not adore Him? Here is the Gospel good news. Look at the fullness of Jesus we see in the Gospels.
There is Mark showing us the Servant of God. There is Matthew showing us the King. There is Luke showing us the perfect Man. There is John showing us God Himself in human flesh.
What a Jesus we have. I tell you, if anybody can bring us unto fullness, it is that Jesus.
That is the One we need to bet on. That is the One we need to behold and gaze at. That is the One who is going to set us free: grace upon grace. Of His fullness we all receive.
Let us glue our eyes on Jesus. When we read those Gospels, let us look and say, “Oh, Holy Spirit, show me Jesus. Show me Jesus. I want to see Him again.”
It will bring Life and Life. It is good news. I want Life, capital-L Life. I am burned out on little-l life. Are you not?
I also want to know Jesus in His fullness. Well, that is the Gospel report. Now it remains to be seen what the Gospel is according to you.